My Sister's Hand in Mine (19 page)

She saw coming towards her three young women holding onto one another's arms and giggling. They were very fancily dressed and were trying to hold onto their hats as well as one another. This made their progress very slow, but half-way down the hill they called to someone on the dock who was standing near the post to which the ferry had been moored.

“Don't you leave without us, George,” they yelled to him, and he waved his hand back in a friendly manner.

There were many young men coming down the hill and they too seemed to be dressed for something special. Their shoes were well shined, and many of them wore flowers in their buttonholes. Even those who had started long after the three young women quickly trotted past them. Each time this happened the girls would go into gales of laughter, which Miss Goering could hear only faintly from where she stood. More and more people kept appearing over the top of the hill and most of them, it seemed to Miss Goering, did not exceed the age of thirty. She stepped to the side and soon they were talking and laughing together all over the foredeck and the bridge of the ferry. She was very curious to know where they were going, but her spirits had been considerably dampened by witnessing the exodus, which she took as a bad omen. She finally decided that she would question a young man who was still on the dock and standing not very far away from her.

“Young man,” she said to him, “would you mind telling me if you are all actually going on some lark together in a group or if it's a coincidence?”

“We're all going to the same place,” said the boy, “as far as I know.”

“Well, could you tell me where that is?” asked Miss Goering.

“Pig Snout's Hook,” he answered. Just then the ferry whistle blew. He hastily took leave of Miss Goering and ran to join his friends on the foredeck.

Miss Goering struggled up the hill entirely alone. She kept her eye on the wall of the last store on the main street. An advertising artist had painted in vivid pinks a baby's face of giant dimensions on half the surface of the wall, and in the remaining space a tremendous rubber nipple. Miss Goering wondered what Pig Snout's Hook was. She was rather disappointed when she arrived at the top of the hill to find that the main street was rather empty and dimly lighted. She had perhaps been misled by the brilliant colors of the advertisement of the baby's nipple and had half hoped that the entire town would be similarly garish.

Before proceeding down the main street she decided to examine the painted sign more closely. In order to do this she had to step across an empty lot. Very near to the advertisement she noticed that an old man was bending over some crates and trying to wrench the nails loose from the boards. She decided that she would ask him whether or not he knew where Pig Snout's Hook was.

She approached him and stood watching for a little while before asking her question. He was wearing a green plaid jacket and a little cap of the same material. He was terribly busy trying to pry a nail from the crate with only a thin stick as a tool.

“I beg your pardon,” said Miss Goering to him finally, “but I would like to know where Pig Snout's Hook is and also why anyone would go there, if you know.”

The man continued to bother with the nail, but Miss Goering could tell that he was really interested in her question.

“Pig Snout's Hook?” said the man. “That's easy. It's a new place, a cabaret.”

“Does everyone go there?” Miss Goering asked him.

“If they are the kind who are fools, they go.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Why do I say that?” said the man, getting up finally and putting his stick in his pocket. “Why do I say that? Because they go there for the pleasure of being cheated out of their last penny. The meat is just horsemeat, you know. This size and it ain't red. It's a kind of gray, without a sign of a potato near it, and it costs plenty too. They're all as poor as church mice besides, without a single ounce of knowledge about life in the whole crowd of them. Like a lot of dogs straining at the leash.”

“And then they all go together to Pig Snout's Hook every single night?”

“I don't know when they go to Pig Snout's Hook,” said the man, “any more than I know what cockroaches are doing every night.”

“Well, what's so wrong about Pig Snout's Hook?” Miss Goering asked him.

“There's one thing wrong,” said the man growing more and more interested, “and that's that they've got a nigger there that jumps up and down in front of a mirror in his room all day long until he sweats and then he does the same thing in front of these lads and lassies and they think he's playing them music. He's got an expensive instrument all right, because I know where he bought it and I'm not saying whether or not he paid for it, but I know he sticks it in his mouth and then starts moving around with his long arms like the arms of a spider and they just won't listen to nothin' else but him.”

“Well,” said Miss Goering, “certain people do like that type of music.”

“Yes,” said the man, “certain people do like that type of music and there are people who live together and eat at table together stark naked all the year long and there are others who we both know about”—he looked very mysterious—“but,” he continued, “in my day money was worth a pound of sugar or butter or lard any time. When we went out we got what we paid for plus a dog jumpin' through burning hoops, and steaks you could rest your chin on.”

“What do you mean?” asked Miss Goering—“a dog jumping through burning hoops?”

“Well,” said the man, “you can train them to do anything with years of real patience and perseverance and lots of headaches too. You get a hoop and you light it all around and these poodles, if they're the real thing, will leap through them like birds flying in the air. Of course it's a rare thing to see them doing this, but they've been right here in this town flying right through the centers of burning hoops. Of course people were older then and they cared for their money better and they didn't want to see a black jumping up and down. They would rather prefer to put a new roof on their house.” He laughed.

“Well,” said Miss Goering, “did this go on in a cabaret that was situated where the Pig Snout's Hook place is now situated? You understand what I mean.”

“It surely didn't!” said the man vehemently. “The place was situated right on this side of the river in a real theater with three different prices for the seats and a show every night and three times a week in the afternoon.”

“Well, then,” said Miss Goering, “that's quite a different thing isn't it? Because, after all, Pig Snout's Hook is a cabaret, as you said yourself a little while ago, and this place where the poodles jumped through the burning hoops was a theater, so in actuality there is really no point of comparison.”

The old man knelt down again and continued to pry the nails from the boards by placing his little stick between the head of the nail and the wood.

Miss Goering did not know what to say to him, but she felt that it was pleasanter to go on talking than to start off down the main street alone. She could tell that he was a little annoyed, so that she was prepared to ask her next question in a considerably softer voice.

“Tell me,” she said to him, “is that place at all dangerous, or is it merely a waste of time.”

“Surely, it's as dangerous as you want,” said the old man immediately, and his ill humor seemed to have passed. “Certainly it's dangerous. There are some Italians running it and the place is surrounded by fields and woods.” He looked at her as if to say: “That is all you need to know, isn't it?”

Miss Goering for an instant felt that he was an authority and she in turn looked into his eyes very seriously. “But can't you,” she asked, “can't you tell very easily whether or not they have all returned safely? After all, you have only if necessary to stand at the top of the hill and watch them disembark from the ferry.” The old man picked up his stick once more and took Miss Goering by the arm.

“Come with me,” he said, “and be convinced once and for all.” He took her to the edge of the hill and they looked down the brightly lighted street that led to the dock. The ferry was not there, but the man who sold the tickets was clearly visible in his booth, and the rope with which they moored the ferry to the post, and even the opposite shore. Miss Goering took in the entire scene with a clear eye and waited anxiously for what the old man was about to say.

“Well,” said the old man, lifting his arm and making a vague gesture which included the river and the sky, “you can see where it is impossible to know anything.” Miss Goering looked around her and it seemed to her that there could be nothing hidden from their eyes, but at the same time she believed what the old man said to her. She felt both ashamed and uneasy.

“Come along,” said Miss Goering, “I'll invite you to a beer.”

“Thank you very much, ma'am,” said the old man. His tone had changed to that of a servant, and Miss Goering felt even more ashamed of having believed what he had told her.

“Is there any particular place that you would like to go?” she asked him.

“No, ma'am,” he said, shuffling along beside her. He no longer seemed in the least inclined to talk.

There was no one walking along the main street except Miss Goering and the old man. They did pass a car parked in front of a dark store. Two people were smoking on the front seat.

The old man stopped in front of the window of a bar and grill and stood looking at some turkey and some old sausages which were on display.

“Shall we go in here and have something to eat with our little drink?” Miss Goering asked him.

“I'm not hungry,” the man said, “but I'll go in with you and sit down.”

Miss Goering was disappointed because he didn't seem to have any sense of how to give even the slightest festive air to the evening. The bar was dark, but festooned here and there with crepe paper. “In honor of some recent holiday, no doubt,” thought Miss Goering. There was a particularly nice garland of bright green paper flowers strung up along the entire length of the mirror behind the bar. The room was furnished with eight or nine tables, each one enclosed in a dark brown booth.

Miss Goering and the old man seated themselves at the bar.

“By the way,” said the old man to her, “wouldn't you like better to seat yourself at a table where you ain't so much in view?”

“No,” said Miss Goering, “I think this is very, very pleasant indeed. Now order what you want, will you?”

“I will have,” said the man, “a sandwich of turkey and a sandwich of pork, a cup of coffee, and a drink of rye whisky.”

“What a curious psychology!” thought Miss Goering. “I should think he would be embarrassed after just having finished saying that he wasn't hungry.”

She looked over her shoulder out of curiosity and noticed that behind her in a booth were seated a boy and a girl. The boy was reading a newspaper. He was drinking nothing. The girl was sipping at a very nice cherry-colored drink through a straw. Miss Goering ordered herself two gins in succession, and when she had finished these she turned around and looked at the girl again. The girl seemed to have been expecting this because she already had her face turned in Miss Goering's direction. She smiled softly at Miss Goering and opened her eyes wide. They were very dark. The whites of her eyes, Miss Goering noticed, were shot with yellow. Her hair was black and wiry and stood way out all over her head.

“Jewish, Rumanian, or Italian,” Miss Goering said to herself. The boy did not lift his eyes from his newspaper, which he held in such a way that his profile was hidden.

“Having a nice time?” the girl asked Miss Goering in a husky voice.

“Well,” said Miss Goering, “it wasn't exactly in order to have a good time that I came out. I have more or less forced myself to, simply because I despise going out in the night-time alone and prefer not to leave my own house. However, it has come to such a point that I am forcing myself to make these little excursions—”

Miss Goering stopped because she actually did not know how she could go on and explain to this girl what she meant without talking a very long time indeed, and she realized that this would be impossible right at that moment, since the waiter was constantly walking back and forth between the bar and the young people's booth.

“Anyway,” said Miss Goering, “I certainly think it does no harm to relax a bit and have a lovely time.”

“Everyone must have a wonderfully marvelous time,” said the girl, and Miss Goering noticed that there was a trace of an accent in her speech. “Isn't that true, my angel Pussycat?” she said to the boy.

The boy put his newspaper down; he looked rather annoyed. “Isn't what true?” he asked her. “I didn't hear a word that you said.” Miss Goering knew perfectly well that this was a lie and that he was only pretending not to have noticed that his girl friend had been speaking with her.

“Nothing very important, really,” she said, looking tenderly into his eyes. “This lady here was saying that after all it did nobody any harm to relax and have a lovely time.”

“Perhaps,” said the boy, “it does more harm than anything else to date to have a lovely time.” He said this straight to the girl and completely ignored the fact that Miss Goering had been mentioned at all. The girl leaned way over and whispered into his ear.

“Darling,” she said, “something terrible has happened to that woman. I feel it in my heart. Please don't be bad-tempered with her.”

“With whom?” the boy asked her.

She laughed because she knew there was nothing else much that she could do. The boy was subject to bad moods, but she loved him and was able to put up with almost anything.

The old man who had come with Miss Goering had excused himself and had taken his drinks and sandwiches over to a radio, where he was now standing with his ear close to the box.