THE MOHAMMEDANS
217
The next morning, he actually went to the office and lodged
his protest, but by that time his resentment seemed unimportant,
and in any case useless; indeed he realized instantly that he had
come only in the hope of learning something about Wiley Bey.
He ended by "performing" his indignation, as he sometimes per–
formed for his friends; and by parrying the man's insinuations
about the arrears on his rent.
He felt that something was going to happen: something por–
tentous, perhaps decisive. So that, later in the day, when he
caught the first rumbling of the "Wiley Bey Case," he was scarcely
surprised. A small rumbling it was-a set of insinuations hidden
on a back-page of a local newspaper-hut Simon, who spent hours
exchanging gossip with butchers and barbers, caught it and kept
it alive.... For two days he waited in ambush for Wiley Bey:
to no avail. He sat by his window, mulling over in his mind
the ambiguous phrases he had read, the endless possibilities, the
moral problem. This astonishing Negro-what was he after, what
did he mean?
At last, late in the afternoon of the third day, Simon con–
trived to meet Wiley Bey on the porch steps. It was very difficult.
The Negro smiled and said hello as though nothing had happened:
he deprecated nothing, excused nothing, simply broadened his
dazzling smile (which seemed to flatten indefinitely the shiny black
nose) and invited Simon to continue the conversation upstairs.
There--it all happened so swiftly that Simon had for an
instant the feeling that it had been planned in advance (hut by
whom?)-Wiley Bey arranged his short leg before him and sank
into the armchair. It obviously belonged to him. Simon sat
rigidly in an ancient loveseat, with his elbow uncomfortably
propped on the chipped armrest. In the broad dullness of the
afternoon, the apartment swallowed up the few pieces of furni–
ture,
the almost invisible pictures. Only Wiley Bey, with his
absurd and magnificent turban, seemed fully there, at ease, ex–
hausting the allotted space. He was in a warm mood. He rubbed
his
enormous blood-red palms and smiled slowly, like a paternal
Buddha. Simon stared at the white teeth in the glistening black
face, and found nothing to say.
At last, timidly, he hoped that Wiley Bey had straightened
out his ah, difficulties with the draft board.
