Sophia felt tears of shame and frustration filling her eyes, but she held back from wiping them with her hand. She stared blearily into the rollers, letting her outrage and anger vent itself in her trembling flesh. Each sheet she pushed into the machine became the screaming bursting form of Giuseppe Mantia, and she watched his agonized crushing and ignored his piteous pleas with a joy she had never known before.
The angry self-pitying tears overflowed her eyes and ran down each cheek to the corners of her mouth, as she tried to check them without lifting her hands to her face and giving herself away. Why was she forced to work among such animals? Even the gypsy whores in the concentration camp had been better than her fellow workers here. And even the German guards and block-leaders had shown some subtlety in their off-handed sensuality with the women prisoners.
She was careful for the remainder of the afternoon, keeping her eye on Giuseppe as he moved around the floor with his wagon loaded with wash or laundry materials. The next time he came near her machine she raised her foot to him. He looked down at the cruelly pointed toe of her shoe, and though he grinned at her he stayed outside of kicking distance. She allowed her anger to end in fantasies of revenge. The hour between four and five passed like five minutes as she thought of the best way to permanently hurt and humiliate him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Gordon Lightfoot awoke with the sun tracing the pattern of the curtains on the floor beside his bed. Without lifting his head from the pillow he looked beneath the covers at himself and found that he was wearing pajamas. So far so good. He felt one foot with the other and found to his satisfaction that he had taken off his socks. He could see his suit folded carefully over the back of a chair with his shoes placed neatly beneath it. Feeling reassured by these signs he reconnoitred the floor, first on one side then on the other, and was happy to discover no litter, no paper bags, no empty cigarette packs, no spilled money, and no empty bottles. He must have come home quietly the night before.
He raised his eyes to the top of the dresser and fixed them lovingly on a bottle that was there. Because of the angle between the bed and the dresser, and that of his eyes and the dresser top, it was impossible to see more than the bottle’s empty neck and shoulders. For a long moment or two he lay there staring at it, afraid to raise himself and find that it was empty. Instead, he put off the moment of truth, content to believe it was half full, savouring the ecstatic moment when he would discover his foresight and would know that his present pain was momentary and of no real consequence at all.
He had been drunk the day before. Yes, and the day before, and the week before that. It had been a good bender, as benders went. As far as he knew he had not been arrested, thrown out of a hotel, punched in the face, or carried into the house by a humanitarian, paid or unpaid.
He had not eaten for the past few days, but could remember before that a meal of Chinese food. Sometime during the binge he had bought a bag of salted peanuts, for he had found its remains the day before in the pocket of another suit. Which reminded him, why had he changed suits at all?
This question proved too difficult to solve at the moment so he put it aside. He moved his limbs singly and together and found them all in working order. His calf muscles were sore and the little fingers on both hands were slightly numb from a chronic vitamin deficiency. His head bore no aches, contusions, or bumps and his brain was clear, with no hallucinations, noises, mirages, or other signs of delirium tremens. So far he had it made.
His teeth felt thick and dirty but his face was freshly shaved, and his fingernails were cleaner than they should have been. He remembered now getting a haircut, shave, shampoo, and manicure. But where? In a hotel, an office building? He would leave that question to be answered later also.
There was no use in torturing himself further. He pushed the upper part of his body erect and inspected the bottle on the dresser. It was empty, as he had known all along it would be. He fell back against the pillow, wondering what time it was but too weak and afraid now to look at his watch. That was if he still had a watch. Much more painfully this time he raised himself and looked along the dresser top. His watch, an expensive gift from his now dead sister, was lying on its face beside the empty bottle.
He got up and approached the dresser, lifting his feet from the floor with exaggerated steps. He picked up his watch and after focusing his eyes read the position of the hands. It was nine-fifteen. He moved to the chair over which his suit was draped, and unbuttoned the rear left pocket of his trousers and pulled out his wallet, finding to his intense joy that it still contained two ten-dollar bills. There was also a Quebec Army & Navy Sweepstake ticket, number 1313547. He vaguely remembered buying it from the French Canadian in the attic. From the right-hand pocket of the trousers he pulled out a small amount of change and a crumpled dollar bill. He carried the wallet back to the bed and found that his credit cards were intact. From a bill compartment he pulled a slip of ruled paper on which was written, in a woman’s handwriting, “Gloria, TO 3-3990,” and a laundry ticket stamped June 15, bearing a series of Chinese characters.
He climbed to his feet, placed the wallet on the dresser and hung his suit on a hanger in the closet. Then he shed his pajamas as he glanced at himself in the mirror. His tall thin figure was soft and white, his paunch reduced slightly by his malnutrition. His drunkards flush had been replaced during sleep by a sickly pallor. He stuck out his tongue and winced at its heavy white coating rimmed by a bright pink edge like the inside of a wound. He shook a couple of Beminal tablets into his hand and went to the sink and drank a glass of water to flush them down.
He drank a second glass of water to kill the raging thirst that the first had induced. As he stood there, his head bent above the sink, he caught sight of his toothbrush in its holder. A long fine hair was twisted through its bristles. His stomach tightened as the distasteful sight of the hair was carried by his burnt-out nerves to his gut, and with a few preliminary heaves he brought up the water he had drunk. A moment later he brought up the Beminal tablets.
“Oh, you crazy bastard!” he admonished himself. “Why do you punish yourself like this?”
There was no answer to his question, and he staggered back to the bed. He kept his movements slow, afraid to make a sudden move that would make him heave again. He felt the sweat start on his forehead and watched it slowly seep through the pores on the back of his hands. His chest grew damp and he looked down and watched the rivulets begin their course though the sparse grey hair on his breastbone. With the sweat came a false euphoria that was soon supplanted by the shakes. He knew the course of drink sickness enough to know its prognosis from then on and its eventual end. Staring at his hands he saw them begin to jump and beat an involuntary tattoo on his leg. His head seemed to swell to bursting point, threatening to carry him off aloft like a balloon. By holding his mouth slightly open he could hear the chattering of his teeth, his upper bridge rattling like castanets against his lower one. He sat there until his stomach lost its rawness and the urge to heave had disappeared, amusing himself with some critical and remorseful introspection while he waited.
Suddenly he was struck by the horrifying thought that it might be Sunday and the liquor stores closed. He jumped off the bed and ran to the window. Parked across the street was a cleaner’s delivery truck, its driver making a delivery to a house.
“Thank God!” he acknowledged aloud.
Then he heard Grace banging her dust-mop along the baseboards in the hall, like the call of a salvation drum to the saved and unsaved alike. He knew with gratitude that he was still alive, and with a little less gratitude that he was likely to remain that way.
When he looked at his watch again it was twenty minutes shy of the witching hour when the liquor store opened. What accomplishment or victory could be greater than this!
CHAPTER NINE
Clark had started on this new job on Monday but had sold only two floor polishers all week. The small commissions had kept him in eating money, but had not been enough to pay his rent. Now, on Friday morning, he had decided to hit an apartment and rooming-house neighbourhood off north Jarvis Street. Having to walk and carry his demonstrator made his arms ache, but this was nothing compared to the ache in his ego caused