PARTISAN REVIEW
stand being helped even a little, by anyone." "Why, this is your
shirt I'm wearing, and
these
are your socks. I appreciate them, hut I
don't want anything else."
"Joseph!" he exclaimed. "I don't know what to do with you.
I'm beginning to think you're not all there with your convictions and
your hop-! I wish I knew how it was going to turn out with you.
You'll ruin yourself in the end. Think of Iva, sometimes, What's her
future going to he like?" "Oh, the future." "That's what I said."
"Well, who the devil has one?" "Everyone," Amos said. "I have."
"Well, you're
in
luck. I'd think about it a little, if I were you. The1e
are many people, perhaps hundreds of thousands,
who
have had to
give up all thought of future. There
is
no personal future any more.
That's why I can only laugh
at
you when you tell me to look out for
mine in the Army, in that tragedy. I wouldn't stake a pin on my
future. And maybe I wouldn't have yours...." Toward the end my
voice had
begun
to shake. Amos faced me quietly for a while. Then
ha said, "Take the money, Joseph," ·and left.
J
heard him going down·
etairs.
I sat on the bed groggily holding my head. There was a weak
lamp burning in the corner; from its copper slot one hand of light
crossed the curtain; the rest of the room was nearly dark. The ceiling
had become a screen for the accidental motions of the greenish street
beyond, and across half its width was thrown intact a reflection of
the venetian blind, like the ribs of some immemorial fish. What sort
of impression had my words made on
Arr·
os? It was impossible to
tell. What could he think? Perhaps he considered me more hopeless
than ever. But what did
I
think? Was what I had said half as true
as it was impetuous? His neat vision of personal safety I disowned?
but not a future of another kind. Still, how could I reason with him.
He was a distance beyond reckoning from the craters of the spirit, so
that
they
were no more than small pits or. h!is horizon. But in time
they would draw closer. Yes, everyone came to face them, I thought,
when those horizons shrank, as they could not fail to shrink. I went
to the bathroom and washed. The crammed feeling at my heart began
to wear off and when I hung the towel back on its glass rod I was
less confused. I picked up the hundred dollar bill from the dusk of
the carpet where
it
had fallen.
If
I tried to hand it back now there
would he a scene; I knew better than to try. I searched the top of
Amos's dresser for a pin or clasp of some kind. Not finding one
there I opened one drawer after another until, in Dolly's dressing
table, I
cam'e
upon a pincushion. I went to the bed and stuck the hill
to the counterpane over the pillow. Then, in the hall, I stood a few
seconds hearing the husky voice of the radio speaker below and the
comment and laughter of the others. I decided not to join them.
Instead, though I knew it meant working a hardship on Iva to
