TAKE A NUMBE/?.., TAKE A SEAT
63
Yeah ?-Christina and Moonface now, they ain't never met.
Damn cute, the pictures bubble up in a joint like this, ain't they?
Me and Moonface, don't know each other from Adam, me and
him though, we're both in line, me
92,
him 9
5.
Christina, meet
Moonface. Him and me's old pals, ain't met till this minute,
but you'd
be
surprised how well we know each other's gizzards.
And on the other hand, Moonface, meet my love, Christina.
Oh my. 0-o-oh my. Some fun, eh keed?
Lookit. My old lady is an old woman at the age of forty–
four, worn out with doing the heavy wash and bearing four
kids and during the war dodging zeppelin bombs in London
and after the war years of starvation and hunger, my father
went to work in sweatshops when he was twelve, he is a little
man, he used to work all night under gaslight and he was not
yet thirteen when he did this, my little sister now, we live in a
house where in the wintertime there are icicles inside the walls
and it's too cold even for rats and when it rains anytime, the
rain comes through rotten roofs and we catch it in buckets till
we fall asleep and in the morning the floors ·are swamps, if we
don't move out soon the way the kid's coughing, but none of
us are working and the old lady ain't even got shoes to go to the
doctor, and all the people
I
know, all the people
I
have ever
known, are twisted and warped by poverty, they know nothing
of art and literature and how to order the headwaiter around
because they never had time to think about anything but what
to stop the cracks with, they never had time to grow tall and
straight.
But why do you have to call yourself a
proletarian
writer,
she said, aren't there other people in the world? You are young
and you are enthusiastic, says she. You are under a sense of
loyalty, says she, my life, my love, my almost-bride. You are
in
a phase, you will .grow out of it, you are of superior proto–
plasm, etcetera, oh what stone from such soft lips, oh goddamit,
before jt is over
I
have thrown her tits away, the whole damn
thing reminds me of a story my father once told me.
It was in London, he says, it was a long time ago, it was
long before we came to America, it was likewise long before
you
were born, but
I
was already of a mind that the level of a
workingman's life and the level of the gutter was of a height,
do
you understand my words, my son? W ell, in this shop where
I
worked, a strike was brewing and there was a lad in the shop
working with me, his name was Jonathan Pot, had no use for
