AN
INSIDE STORY
277
"Are you hungry?" asked Gabriel, troubled. "Oh, no, you can't
be
hungry: first you give us a blow-by-blow description," he said,
"then you clam up on us!"
"I am not trying to keep anything back," said Tobias, "but
if
I tried to make sense, I would have to tell you what happened
when I was three years of age and you would not be interested: no
one except proud parents like to hear stories about children."
"Does he want us to coax him?" said Paddles to Gabriel in
disgust and irritation.
"What happened when you were three years of age?" asked
Gabriel patiently. "Ordinarily I don't give a f-- about what
happened to anyone before the age of consent, but you've blown
this up until everything sounds important!"
"Give, man, give," said Paddles, "take us off the hook!"
"Four years ago," said Tobias, his glance growing abstracted
as
he went down to the past in his mind, "I took the nice girl I
fell in love with to see my mother. Look, are you sure that you
want to hear this story?"
"Brother, I am all ears," said Paddles, wiggling his ears a little.
"Sure we want to hear the story," said Gabriel, "but it better
be good or you are going to have to explain it to us. And kindly
also
omit the double talk."
"I will
try,"
said Tobias. "You can see that this was a fairly
important occasion, for I was taking my best girl to see my mother.
I won't try to tell you all that happened, and I don't know if I
could, but anyway, during the evening my mother blew out all the
lights in her apartment when she plugged in a lamp. We sat in the
dark for a moment and then my mother lighted candles and looked
for a new fuse. There were no fuses in the house, so I went to look
for the superintendent, but he did not seem to be home, although
it
turned out that he was home and dead drunk. I went out to buy
a new fuse and I had to walk several blocks before I came to a store.
While I was gone my mother was telling my girl Isabel a story
about me when I was three years of age. This was supposed to be
the inside story of what I was really like, and don't forget that my
mother had never before known and talked with Isabel, not that
that
makes much difference, except to me. The story was about how
when I was three, she often told me a story about the oil painting
on
the wall-"
