When someone enters, a bell on a coil spring sounds. The door always clatters. People mainly look up. The floorboards are bare and some men clump to the counter, others go on tip-toe. A tall well-polished coat-stand on three claw-feet with, between the feet, a silver-plated umbrella tray, has been placed in the very centre of the room. It is here that the newly-arrived pays his first visit.
A wooden bench stretches along the length of one wall, and on it sit a few girls in a small group; they sit cross-legged and talk to each other with eyes lowered only to each other.
Nearby, on a solitary chair, sits a man, knees together, who clenches to his chest a young girl. She is straddling him. The man's chin rests on the girl's shoulder and he stares out; the man's nostrils and lips are as red as sweets. The girl's arms, flung around his neck, are telling him something, and interpreting them as he will, he hugs her more tightly still. The man grins. The grin on the man's face however is grotesque. All along she has been holding her cheek away from his cheek.
A boy wearing a cloth cap and his father's boots, a boy who leans against the wall, has been watching the couple. He lowers his drink from his lips and stares at the girl from beneath his brows. She curls her lip and flings her hair back from her ear.
Outside it is raining. The drops drum against the window panes in gusts. There is a to-and-fro of people who get up from their seats, step out on to the pavement beneath the green awning, lean forward and hold out their hands palm upwards. They snuff the air rabbit-like.
Two men sit on stools at the counter; a fat man and a thin man. They have their backs to me. The fat man puts his arm around the shoulders of the thin, draws him close to his side and feeds him, mouthful by mouthful, food on a spoon. The fat man grins and frequently slaps the other on the back. The thin one's lips are moist with gravy. When the meal is over, the fat man fusses over him and dribbles on his neck while he sits on his hands and openly gazes at the bartender. Interrupting the fat man's luscious attentions, I catch his eye in the bar mirror and fix his gaze for several seconds.
The bar mirror reflects the glassy pear-green and egg-yellow bottles, a cluster of five others set aside, black with gold foil around their necks, and reflects also the flapping elbow of the bartender who is rubbing the insides of his glasses with a cloth.
At a table near the wall sit two girls, perhaps fourteen years old, in olive-green shirts and skirts below the knee. One girl is painting the other's nails; she talks into the ear of the other with sparking eyes, interrupting her words at times with a smothered guffaw followed by a snigger, all the while painting, with deft strokes, the girl's nails. Her friend is registering the sweetness of the act; she pouts her lips; she gapes; she crosses and recrosses her legs.
The bell above the door sounds. We raise our heads. A woman with a red umbrella walks across to the counter, taking a glove off with her teeth, finger by finger.
The thin man, on his stool at the bar, freed for a moment from the ministrations of his neighbour, swivels round, gazes blankly and stretches his arms. In mid-sentence the girl with the nail-brush drops everything and walks up to him. She unbuttons her olive-green shirt, presses her breasts together between her palms, and offers them to him.
The other, the one with half-painted nails, sits at the table still and looks along her shoulder at the girl and narrows her eyes. That look is not lost to my quick eyes, though her friend certainly missed it. When finally the girl returns to the table, her friend is twirling her cap on her finger, humming quickly.
At the counter the fat man is peeking at me. He has been sneaking views at my profile in the glass. Now he nods in my direction, lowers his head, and talks out of the side of his mouth to the thin man. The thin man sits with his elbows on the counter, covering his ears.
Against the wall now, the two girls who have left their table and bottle of nail varnish for the adult company, stand cross-legged, roll their feet on to their sides and back again, and tug at their lips.
Through the cafe window, above the net curtain, heads in profile on short necks bob past like ducks on a shooting-gallery.
A tall gentleman with a mustache and short pointed beard is sitting down at my table - it has got late and the seats at the empty tables have been upturned. His blue traveling coat is buttoned up to the neck; his grey panama tilted slightly forward casting his eyes into shadow. He bends down and sucks at a cigarette. The smoke tunnels out of his nostrils. Throwing his head back he closes his eyes and strokes the short beard between two fingers. The smoke is irritating some membrane of his. He coughs. He coughs into his palm and wipes he's wet mouth with the back of his hand. The man - I guess - like many solitary men takes pleasure in the functions of his body. He blows his nose into a handkerchief, opens the piece of linen, examines the contents with a private pleasure, and folds them up.
At last the action is to begin. I stand up, take off my hat and, holding the hat in my hand, address him: 'Perhaps you think this strange of me' - he looks up - 'for I know, of course, that we have never met before; and of course, as you must surely know by now, I would not have addressed you had we met in a deserted street, in the evening for example, ah! not, you must understand, that I am in the habit of addressing better company than you, no, for it is far from the case in my instance, no I would not have addressed you in the street - for fear of you (the man smiles). I address you because you are at my table; though I saw your dilemma; you are not at this table through choice are you; let me explain that I do not seek to give you an assurance that I mean no harm, and I seek no assurance from you, that's an exchange of assurances that we might permit ourselves in an empty street at night perhaps, to render unnecessary our fears. No, that is not the purpose of my greeting at all.' (Every customer has risen to his feet by now and they stand with their palms clapped over their mouths and chins.) 'I greet you, good man, wholly to express my pleasure at the arrival of human company.'
I sit back, stretch out my legs, and relax. And then I tackle the second task I have set myself. The fat man, like the others, is standing with his hand over his mouth. Our eyes meet. I turn from the tall one at my table and address him: 'Yes, O fat man, I did want you to recognize me. Of course it has been a long time but I know you recalled me. Of course we are not the people we were, perhaps that was it. Was it for fear of committing yourself to a closeness with a stranger now, possibly an uncongenial one, that you did not acknowledge me in the mirror? Or was it that you feared I might turn my head away at your nod and issue you with a snub? You should not have feared that. You should know me better than that.'
The fat man detaches himself from the crowd and advances upon me, hoeing the air with his chin, once, nearer to me, twice, nearer still, three-times close against my face. I hesitate at the door; turn; they stare all of them in a crowd, pointing their various chins straight at me.
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