FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142  
143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   >>  
ments that used to drape the chair by his bed. Then he would remember and sink back while a great wave of depression swept over him. Nothing to get up for. Store clothes on the chair by the bed. He was taking it easy. Back home on the farm in southern Illinois he had known the hour the instant his eyes opened. Here the flat next door was so close that the bedroom was in twilight even at midday. On the farm he could tell by the feeling--an intangible thing, but infallible. He could gauge the very quality of the blackness that comes just before dawn. The crowing of the cocks, the stamping of the cattle, the twittering of the birds in the old elm whose branches were etched eerily against his window in the ghostly light--these things he had never needed. He had known. But here, in the unsylvan section of Chicago which bears the bosky name of Englewood, the very darkness had a strange quality. A hundred unfamiliar noises misled him. There were no cocks, no cattle, no elm. Above all, there was no instinctive feeling. Once, when they first came to the city, he had risen at twelve-thirty, thinking it was morning, and had gone clumping about the flat waking up everyone and loosing from his wife's lips a stream of acid vituperation that seared even his case-hardened sensibilities. The people sleeping in the bedroom of the flat next door must have heard her. "You big rube! Getting up in the middle of the night and stomping around like cattle. You'd better build a shed in the backyard and sleep there if you're so dumb you can't tell night from day." Even after thirty-three years of marriage he had never ceased to be appalled at the coarseness of her mind and speech--she who had seemed so mild and fragile and exquisite when he married her. He had crept back to bed, shamefacedly. He could hear the couple in the bedroom of the flat just across the little court grumbling and then laughing a little, grudgingly, and yet with appreciation. That bedroom, too, had still the power to appall him. Its nearness, its forced intimacy, were daily shocks to him whose most immediate neighbour, back on the farm, had been a quarter of a mile away. The sound of a shoe dropped on the hardwood floor, the rush of water in the bathroom, the murmur of nocturnal confidences, the fretful cry of a child in the night, all startled and distressed him whose ear had found music in the roar of the thresher and had been soothed by the rattle of the tractor and
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142  
143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   >>  



Top keywords:
bedroom
 

cattle

 

feeling

 
thirty
 

quality

 

marriage

 

ceased

 

married

 

fragile

 

exquisite


coarseness

 
speech
 

appalled

 
stomping
 
middle
 

Getting

 

sleeping

 

shamefacedly

 

backyard

 

bathroom


murmur

 

nocturnal

 

confidences

 

dropped

 

hardwood

 
fretful
 

thresher

 

soothed

 

rattle

 

tractor


startled

 

distressed

 
quarter
 

appreciation

 

grudgingly

 

laughing

 

couple

 

grumbling

 

people

 

shocks


neighbour
 
intimacy
 

forced

 

appall

 

nearness

 
intangible
 

midday

 
twilight
 
opened
 

infallible