Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2

The beggars on one corner, the other, across from, in front of, the hotel, leaned toward my wife. Their eyes glowed.

My wife looked calmly at them all for a long moment.

The beggars hesitated, creaking, I was sure, in their shoes. Then their bones settled. Their mouths collapsed. Their eyes snuffed out. Their heads sank down.

The wind blew.

With a tat-tat like a small drum, my wife’s shoes went briskly away, fading.

From below, in the Buttery, I heard music and laughter. I’ll run down, I thought, and slug in a quick one. Then, bravery resurgent …

Hell, I thought, and swung the door wide.

The effect was much as if someone had struck a great Mongolian bronze gong once.

I thought I heard a tremendous insuck of breath.

Then I heard shoe leather flinting the cobbles in sparks. The men came running, fireflies sprinkling the bricks under their hobnailed shoes. I saw hands waving. Mouths opened on smiles like old pianos.

Far down the street, at the bookshop, my wife waited, her back turned. But that third eye in the back of her head must have caught the scene: Columbus greeted by Indians, Saint Francis amidst his squirrel friends with a bag of nuts. For a terrific moment I felt like a pope on St. Peter’s balcony with a tumult, or at the very least the Timultys, below.

I was not half down the steps when the woman charged up, thrusting the unwrapped bundle at me.

‘Ah, see the poor child!’ she wailed.

I stared at the baby.

The baby stared back.

God in heaven, did or did not the shrewd thing wink at me?

I’ve gone mad, I thought; the babe’s eyes are shut. She’s filled it with beer to keep it warm and on display.

My hands, my coins, blurred among them.

‘Praise be!’

‘The child thanks you, sir!’

‘Ah, sure. There’s only a few of us left!’

I broke through them and beyond, still running. Defeated, I could have scuffed slowly the rest of the way, my resolve so much putty in my mouth, but no, on I rushed, thinking, The baby is real, isn’t it? Not a prop? No. I had heard it cry, often. Blast her, I thought, she pinches it when she sees Okeemogo, Iowa, coming. Cynic, I cried silently, and answered, No – coward.

My wife, without turning, saw my reflection in the bookshop window and nodded.

I stood getting my breath, brooding at my own image: the summer eyes, the ebullient and defenseless mouth.

‘All right, say it.’ I sighed. ‘It’s the way I hold my face.’

‘I love the way you hold your face.’ She took my arm. ‘I wish I could do it, too.’

I looked back as one of the beggars strolled off in the blowing dark with my shillings.

‘“There’s only a few of us left,”’ I said aloud. ‘What did he mean, saying that?’

‘“There’s only a few of us left.”’ My wife stared into the shadows. ‘Is that what he said?’

‘It’s something to think about. A few of what? Left where?’

The street was empty now. It was starting to rain.

‘Well,’ I said at last, ‘let me show you the even bigger mystery, the man who provokes me to strange wild rages, then calms me to delight. Solve him and you solve all the beggars that ever were.’

‘On O’Connell Bridge?’ asked my wife.

‘On O’Connell Bridge,’ I said.

And we walked on down in the gently misting rain.

Halfway to the bridge, as we were examining some fine Irish crystal in a window, a woman with a shawl over her head plucked at my elbow.

‘Destroyed!’ The woman sobbed. ‘My poor sister. Cancer, the doctor said, her dead in a month! And me with mouths to feed! Ah, God, if you had just a penny!’

I felt my wife’s arm tighten to mine.

I looked at the woman, split as always, one half saying, ‘A penny is all she asks!’, the other half doubting: ‘Clever woman, she knows that by her underasking you’ll overpay!’, and hating myself for the battle of halves.

I gasped. ‘You’re …’

‘I’m what, sir?’

Why, I thought, you’re the woman who was just back by the hotel with the bundled baby!

‘I’m sick!’ She hid in shadow. ‘Sick with crying for the half dead!’

You’ve stashed the baby somewhere, I thought, and put on a green instead of a gray shawl and run the long way around to cut us off here.

‘Cancer …’ One bell in her tower, and she knew how to toll it. ‘Cancer …’

My wife cut across it. ‘Beg pardon, but aren’t you the same woman we just met at our hotel?’

The woman and I were both shocked at this rank insubordination. It wasn’t done!

The woman’s face crumpled. I peered close. And yes, by God, it was a different face. I could not but admire her. She knew, sensed, had learned what actors know, sense, learn: that by thrusting, yelling, all fiery-lipped arrogance one moment, you are one character; and by sinking, giving way, crumpling the mouth and eyes, in pitiful collapse, you are another. The same woman, yes, but the same face and role? Quite obviously no.

She gave me a last blow beneath the belt. ‘Cancer.’

I flinched.