FullReads

MR. Y.
[Rising].

I believe I will suffocate–if the shower doesn’t break and come soon.

MR. X.
It will come soon. Just be quiet. And the back of your neck, too, it looks as if there were another head on it, with the face of another type than you. You are so terribly narrow between the ears that I sometimes wonder if you don’t belong to another race.

[There is flash of lightning.]
That one looked as if it struck at the sheriff’s.

MR. Y.
[Worried].

At the–sh-sheriff’s!

MR. X.
Yes, but it only looked so. But this thunder won’t amount to anything. Sit down now and let’s have a talk, as you are off again tomorrow.–It’s queer that, although I became intimate with you so soon, you are one of those people whose likeness I cannot recall when they are out of my sight. When you are out in the fields and I try to recall your face, another acquaintance always comes to mind–some one who doesn’t really look like you, but whom you resemble nevertheless.

MR. Y.
Who is that?

MR. X.
I won’t mention the name. However, I used to have dinner at the same place for many years, and there at the lunch counter I met a little blond man with pale, worried eyes. He had an extraordinary faculty of getting about in a crowded room without shoving or being shoved. Standing at the door, he could reach a slice of bread two yards away; he always looked as if he was happy to be among people, and whenever he ran into an acquaintance he would fall into rapturous laughter, embrace him, and do the figure eight around him, and carry on as if he hadn’t met a human being for years; if any one stepped on his toes he would smile as if he were asking pardon for being in the way. For two years I used to see him, and I used to amuse myself trying to figure out his business and character, but I never asked any one who he was,–I didn’t want to know, as that would have put an end to my amusement. That man had the same indefinable characteristics as you; sometimes I would make him out an undergraduate teacher, an under officer, a druggist, a government clerk, or a detective, and like you, he seemed to be made up of two different pieces and the front didn’t fit the back. One day I happened to read in the paper about a big forgery by a well-known civil official. After that I found out that my indefinable acquaintance had been the companion of the forger’s brother, and that his name was Straman; and then I was informed that the afore-mentioned Straman had been connected with a free library, but that he was then a police reporter on a big newspaper. How could I then get any connection between the forgery, the police, and the indefinable man’s appearance? I don’t know, but when I asked a man if Straman had ever been convicted, he answered neither yes nor no–he didn’t know.

[Pause.]

MR. Y.
Well, was he ever–convicted?

MR. X.
No, he had not been convicted.

[Pause.]

MR. Y.
You mean that was why keeping close to the police had such attraction for him, and why he was so afraid of bumping into people?

MR. X.
Yes.

MR. Y.
Did you get to know him afterward?

MR. X.
No, I didn’t want to.

MR. Y.
Would you have allowed yourself to know him if he had been convicted?

MR. X

.
Yes, indeed.