Our man Bernie Kraft, our bald, big-fat, and heavy-bearded bear of a man, comes shuffling toes-in along the hall, in his suitcoat pocket a book he’s going to talk about to his freshman class if he gets around to it, and between his teeth a fat green cigar whose smoke intoxicates his brain and makes his loins itch. Big all over, he’s immense in the face, with a great sweating wad of a nose and a two-car mouth, the rubbery upper opening to the furnace roaring in his paunch. For lunch he has downed half a roll of knackwurst, a raw onion, and a Par-T-Pak Cola, because he wants his imagination fueled to the peak for teaching; and, since he wants to appear sharp in front of the class, he has shaved again during the noon hour. He is sweating like a stallion. His eyeballs bulge out against his glasses and see all kinds of things, while his brain sorts and regroups and amplifies them in 3-D magi-color with stereo-audient sound. The result is such pictures that it knocks his heart to think about them.
But think Bernie can’t help doing, for even the squish of his crepe soles on the tile conjures up a rainstorm, and the rainstorm a city for it to fall on. The city breeds people as a dead dog breeds worms, and Bernie evokes in a flash a whole burrowing population, bundles them to the eyes against the weather, and sends them creeping about the pavements in sodden misery. Students half-starved on their way to lectures, slit-eyed grocers polishing their kumquats, red-necked traffic cops agleam in their slickers—bankers, bakers, and bartenders; whores, thieves, and housewives: humans in droves infest the streets, inching out their dismal lives under the gray rain.
Already have an account? Log in
Join KR for even more to read.