280
PARTISAN REVIEW
"Come again," said Gabriel, who felt that he liked the stranger,
even though he was certainly strange. "Next time I will tell you
a very funny story about what the housewife did when the
milk–
man looked her straight in the eye and said: 'Do you have the
time?' "
Tobias smiled vaguely and left, saying that he would come again
during the week and knowing that Gabriel wished to tell
him
the
funny story immediately probably in the friendly hope of cheering
him up and making him forget himself or forgive himself. It was
easy to forgive others,
it
was very difficult to forgive oneself, but
one had to forgive oneself or one would never be truly able to for–
give others.
Tobias moved through the restaurant bar of the
Vienna Woods
awkwardly, for it was half dark. He reached the door and went
out, walking toward the hope which is on the other side of despair,
where one learns to care and not to care.
"What's the story?" asked Paddles, putting his trumpet case
under his arm as Gabriel turned out the lights, after reaching for
his
hat and coat. "What does the housewife do? What does she
say?"
"She pulls
him
through the doorway and asks him what he
likes? 'My husband owns a pistol,' she says, 'but he's away
all
day!'" Gabriel answered his friend but listlessly and tiredly, so
that he did not sound self-amused or gay.
Paddles made no comment, looking at himself in the darkened
jewel of the looking-glass above the bar.
"In God I trust," he said despairingly, "and no one else!" He
was thinking chiefly of his first two wives ,as he looked critically at
his
thin and balding image.
"Do you know," said Gabriel sadly, "a lot of guys are
all
f-ed up, a lot of guys and a lot of dames too, and the guys be–
cause of the dames and the dames because of the guys. Which re–
minds me.
If
you heard this one, stop me. A soldier is telling another
soldier about what he did on his one-day leave the day before. 'First
I take a £--n bus to get out of the £--n camp, then I go to
the f--n whistlestop town and go to a f--n bar and pick up
a f--n piece
of
gash and take her to a f-- n hotel and get us
a f--n room-' "
