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PARTISAN REVIEW
rage, because now it was useless. He knew his name. He knew "Harriet"
and "David" and did not care about his brothers and sisters who wished
he was dead.
He did not remember when he was born.
Listening, as he did, to every sound, he heard how the noises in that
office were suddenly louder, because in a line of people waiting outside
one of the glass panels, a woman had begun shouting at the clerk who
was interviewing her, and because of this anger released into the air, all
the lines began moving and shuffling, and other people were muttering,
and then said aloud, like a barking, short angry words like Bastards,
Shits-and these were words that Ben knew very well, and he was afraid
of them. He felt the cold of fear moving down from the back of his neck
to his spine.
The man behind him was impatient, and said, "I haven't got all day
if you have."
"When were you born? What date?"
"I don't know," said Ben.
And now the clerk put an end to it, postponing the problem, with,
"Go and find your birth certificate. Go to the Records Office. That'll
settle it. You don't know your last employer. You don't have an address.
You don't know your date of birth."
With these words his eyes left Ben's face, and he nodded at the man
behind to come forward, displacing Ben, who went straight out of that
office, feeling as if all the hairs of his body, the hairs on his head, were
standing straight up, he was so trapped and afraid. Outside was a pave–
ment, with people, a little street, full of cars, and under the plane tree
where the pigeons were moving about, cooing and complacent, a bench.
He sat on it at the other end from a young woman who gave him a
glance, but then another, frowned, and went off, looking back at him
with
that
look on her face which Ben knew and expected. She was not
afraid of him, but thought that she might be soon. Her body was all
haste and apprehension, like one escaping. She went into a shop, glanc–
ing back.
Ben was hungry. He had no money. There were some broken crusts on
the ground, left for the pigeons. He gathered them up hastily, looking
about him: he had been scolded for this before. Now an old man came
to sit on the bench, and he gave Ben a long stare, but decided not to
bother with what his instincts were telling him. He closed his eyes. The
sun made a tiny bloom of sweat on the old face. Ben sat on, thinking how
he must go back to the old woman, but she would be disappointed in
him. She had told him to come to this office and claim unemployment
