62
PARTISAN REVIEW
and feels anew the green strength of it. At the bottom of de–
spair, I become at the instigation of a thing remembered, a half
forgotten incident, like the man
I
saw this morning at the win–
dow, stretching, grinning upwards, stretching inwardly upwards.
He didn't know
I
was watching him, as he stood there, the win–
dow curtains blowing about him.
If
I
am no more than a smile
on the face of a lazy man,
le~
some one see that smile
I
Soon
I
came to an interruption in the little path, and had
to go across a pavement to another part of the park, and as
I
was walking along a much more public walk, looking for the
river again, a group of young people about sixteen or seventeen
were walking along behind me, talking.
I
heard bits of the
conversation.
"Jesus Christ," one of the girls said shrilly. "So da pansy
come right up behint ya, huh?"
"Yeah, he come snakin' up
to
me," her boy friend replied
nasally.
"So what dit ya do? What dit ya say?"
Chorus of brazen, hoodlum voices, "Yeah. Bob, tell us what
ya said."
"Well, da dirty ting he tried ta kiss me!" His voice was
hoarse with pleasure.
Chorus of jeers and bronx cheers : "YEAH? So WHAT?
So what den? Dit ya knock him flat?"
"Naw naw, but
I
didn't want da guy slobberin' on me so
what dit
I
do but slap him down. Aw, it was easy!"
"Chees, Christ," the girl whined.
"I
wouldn'a know
what
ta do."
"Yeah? Well, it wouldn'of happent ta you."
Chorus of jeers and cat calls. Then they turned aside and
I found my path along the riverside.
Since then I like to think of them as unreal, and yet, I
believe they are nearer to the truth than any c:tricature. They
were typical of what can happen to adolescents today. They
were embryonic whores and gangsters. Yes, perhaps I do exag–
gerate, but to me they also became symbolic, like the Negro
woman, like the ice men, and the stone wall, and the grass, and
the violinist who strains after beauty.
I often wonder about the music he plays. He seems to live
intellectually alone, and, in his music, feeds upon his own lyrical
sensitivity. Yet it is more than this; he seems to revel in orgies
of mysticism.
If
you would call it triumph, he represents the
