358
PARTISAN REVIEW
"Where are you going?"
"This way," Ben shouted into the wind.
The great machine growled and roared and bounded along, they were
whisking through the traffic, and Ben was roaring too: it sounded like
a song, a shout of triumph, and the youth driving, hearing all this exul–
tation just behind him, laughed and yelled too, and then began singing
a real song, which Ben did not know, though he joined in.
Now there was a little town. There the motorbike turned sharply left,
and in a moment had left streets behind for country, but Ben was shout–
ing, "Put me down, I'm going wrong."
The youth yelled, "Why didn't you say?" and turned the machine in
a dangerous swoop in front of cars and lorries, and they sped back to
the town center. "Here?" yelled the youth, and Ben shouted, "Yes."
He was on the pavement in the middle of the town, and the bike was
speeding away, and the youth was giving him the thumbs-up.
Ben set his face to where he knew he must go and walked on, think–
ing of the motorbike, and his teeth were showing white in his beard,
from happiness. They had covered a good distance. Ben would reach
where he would have to be hours before he had thought; and in fact he
was walking into the road he knew so well by mid-afternoon. There was
the house, the big wonderful house, with the garden all around it and
there.. ..He was looking at windows that had bars on them, and at
once a cold but vigorous anger was taking hold of him. Bars: the bars
had been for him. He had stood up there shaking those bars with both
of his strong fists, and they had not given way at all; only where the bars
were set into the walls were bits of paint flaking from all his shaking,
showing how little use his strength was. But the anger he felt now was
being driven away by a stronger need, pulling him towards the house.
His mother, he wanted to see his mother. Because of the kindness of that
old lady, he had remembered that other kindness, and understood that
that was what it had been: she, like the old lady, had not hurt him, she
had come to rescue him from
that place.
...
And out of the front door
came small children, running. He did not know them, and thought, "Of
course, they've moved." His mother wouldn't be here now. He turned
away from the house, his home, and began walking this way and that
through the streets, like a dog nosing for a scent, but it was not a scent
he was after; he had actually seen the other house, the one the family had
moved to...but wait, there had been another house, after that, and it
was the address of that house his mother had put on the big card.
It
was
that house he was moving towards, but it was not what he needed. He
had never been to the house where they lived now. He had no way of
