PASSAGE ONE

(1)When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less capablethan the next fellow. So at least he thought, and there was a certain amount ofevidence to back him up. He had once been an actor —no, not quite, an extra andhe knew what acting should be. Also, he was smoking a cigar, and when a man issmoking a cigar, wearing a hat, he has an advantage; it is harder to find outhow he feels. He came from the twenty-third floor down to the lobby on themezzanine to collect his mail before breakfast, and he believed—he hoped—thathe looked passably well: doing all right. It was a matter of sheer hope,because there was not much that he could add to his present effort. On thefourteenth floor he looked for his father to enter the elevator, they often metat this hour, on the way to breakfast. If he worried about his appearance itwas mainly for his old father's sake. But there was no stop on the fourteenth,and the elevator sank and sank. Then the smooth door opened and the greatdark-red uneven carpet that covered the lobby billowed toward Wilhelm's feet.In the foreground the lobby was dark, sleepy. French drapes like sails kept outthe sun, but three high, narrow windows were open, and in the blue air Wilhelmsaw a pigeon about to light on the great chain that supported the marquee ofthe movie house directly underneath the lobby. For one moment he heard thewings beating strongly,

(2)Most of the guests at the Hotel Gloriana were past the age of retirement. AlongBroadway in the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties, a great part of New York'svast population of old men and women lives. Unless the weather is too cold orwet they fill the benches about the tiny railed parks and along the subwaygratings from Verdi Square to Columbia University, they crowd the shops andcafeterias, the dime stores, the tearooms, the bakeries, the beauty parlors,the reading rooms and club rooms. Among these old people at the Gloriana,Wilhelm felt out of place. He was comparatively young, in his middle forties,large and blond, with big shoulders; his back was heavy and strong, if alreadya little stooped or thickened. After breakfast the old guests sat down on thegreen leather armchairs and sofas in the lobby and began to gossip and lookinto the papers; they had nothing to do but wait out the day. But Wilhelm wasused to an active life and liked to go out energetically in the morning. Andfor several months, because he had no position, he had kept up his morale byrising early; he was shaved and in the lobby by eight o’clock. He bought thepaper and some cigars and drank a Coca-Cola or two before he went in tobreakfast with his father. After breakfast—out, out, out to attend to business.The getting out had in itself become the chief business. But he had realizedthat he could not keep this up much longer, and today he was afraid. He wasaware that his routine was about to break up and he sensed that a huge troublelong presaged(预感) buttill now formless was due. Before evening, he’d know.

(3)Nevertheless he followed his daily course and crossed the lobby.

(4) Rubin, the man at the newsstand,had poor eyes. They may not have been actually weak but they were poor inexpression, with lacy lids that furled down at the corners. He dressed well. Itdidn’t seem necessary—he was behind the counter most of the time—but he dressedvery well. He had on a rich brown suit; the cuffs embarrassed the hairs on hissmall hands. He wore a Countess Mara painted necktie. As Wilhelm approached,Rubin did not see him; he was looking out dreamily at the Hotel Ansonia, whichwas visible from his corner, several blocks away. The Ansonia, theneighborhood’s great landmark, was built by Stanford White. It looks like abaroque palace from Prague or Munich enlarged a hundred times, with towers,domes, huge swells and bubbles of metal gone green from exposure, iron fretworkand festoons. Black television antennae are densely planted on its roundsummits. Under the changes of wheather [L1] itmay look like marble or like sea water, black as slate in the fog, white astufa in sunlight. This morning it looked like the image of itself reflected indeep water, white and cumulous above, with cavernous distortions underneath.Together, the two men gazed at it.

(5)Then Rubin said, “Your dad is in to breakfast already, the old gentleman.”

“Oh,yes? Ahead of me today?”

“That’sa real knocked-out shirt you got on,” said Rubin. “Where’s it from, Saks?”

“No,it’s a Jack Fagman—Chicago.”

(6)Even when his spirits were low, Wilhelm could still wrinkle his forehead in apleasing way. Some of the slow, silent movements of his face were veryattractive. He went back a step, as if to stand away from himself and get abetter look at his shirt. His glance was comic, a comment upon his untidiness.He liked to wear good clothes, but once he had put it on each article appearedto go its own way. Wilhelm, laughing, panted a little; his teeth were small; hischeeks when he laughed and puffed grew round, and he looked much younger thanhis years. In the old days when he was a college freshman and wore a raccooncoat and a beanie(无檐小帽) onhis large blonde head his father used to say that, big as he was, he couldcharm a bird out of a tree. Wilhelm had great charm still.

(7)“I like this dove-gray color,” he said in his sociable, good-natured way. “Itisn’t washable. You have to send it to the cleaner. It never smells as good aswashed. But it’s a nice shirt. It cost sixteen, eighteen bucks.”