At his side, Rudolph moved as a
soldier, carried onward by pressure and automatic rhythm, moves in the
apathy of a forced march. The day had been so real, so wholesome, full
of careless talk and of sunlight. And now this senseless picture blotted
all else, and remained,--each outline sharper in memory, the smoky lamp
brighter, the blow of the hilt louder, the smell of peanut oil more
pungent. The episode, to him, was a disconnected, unnecessary fragment,
one bloody strand in the whole terrifying snarl. But his companion
stalked on in silence, like a man who saw a pattern in the web of
things, and was not pleased.
CHAPTER V
IN TOWN
Night, in that maze of alleys, was but a more sinister day. The same
slant-eyed men, in broken files, went scuffing over filthy stone, like
wanderers lost in a tunnel. The same inexplicable noises endured, the
same smells. Under lamps, the shaven foreheads still bent toward
microscopic labor. The curtained window of a fantan shop still glowed in
orange translucency, and from behind it came the murmur and the endless
chinking of cash, where Fortune, a bedraggled, trade-fallen goddess,
split hairs with coolies for poverty or zero.
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