Delights stumbled across can sometimes entice us from the hermit-cell of the mind. And so, all in a moment, James is alive with the knowledge that he is at the heart of a delicious thing. He stands in the bristling fuzz of people lining the sidewalk and gawps like a child. He catches the infection of smiles and laughs, as row upon row of heads go by, like coloured beads spilling from a box. Then he moves along with the thing, marries his own step to the serpentine train of humanity; marches with the drums and rides high with the pipes as they waft silkily along the bright avenue. What a wonder that a human spirit can, in the span of a sigh, soar from the darkest pit to the most rarefied peak.
Nor has James abandoned reality. In a few moments he will turn away from the Parade and continue his sober journey. But now he will be able to go into Paolo and – if he is not already gone – tell him that on the way to the hospital today he witnessed a fine, lovely thing. Indeed, he is duty-bound to take the glory of it with him. Maybe it will bring a smile to Paolo’s harrowed face, or perhaps he will be in that place where words and gestures cannot reach. But either way, James is certain it will mean something, it will mean something.
CHAPTER TWO
M ARCINKUS the grocer goes out front to loosen up and straighten out and swallow a coffee. The day has been so-so but bitty; it’s great to have Jenny’s help and to see little Sylvie, but when she and Benjy get together it’s like being in a kindergarten. Then there’s the question of Old Aunt Rosa. These frequent showdowns are unsettling because, if the truth be known, they make him feel guilty, and something in him still longs to hear her speak, to recapture a trace of the affection that had once existed between them. As her nearest relative, it had fallen on him to come to the rescue when she’d started to become strange all those years ago. At one time, he and Grace had given much to keep her on her feet and try to coax her back to the heady, happy life she’d once led. There had been kindnesses and high hopes, but each time she had relapsed until finally she had ended up like this – lonely and insane, pretty much. He knows that she has a bona fide condition. Syllogomania it is called: people who cannot throw things away, who hoard everything, their garbage even, and end up living in their own filth. He takes consolation in the fact that she has a recognized syndrome, but it never quite eases those guilty pangs.
Michael has seen people grow old. He has watched them struggling with seized joints, and slowing brains and memories blanching with the years. He has made a personal study of the phenomenon, doing his best to countenance the fact that he and Grace will surely go the same way. But what really gets to him about Old Rosa is how at eighty-seven years of age she is still able to keep on going with her stubborn rebellion. It must take a hell of an effort to remain so apart from the life of the city and yet to continue to walk abroad in it, repeating the tiresome routines it takes simply to continue to stay alive. It must take every atom of concentration, every last distilled drop of her willpower just to go out and buy bread in the morning, each step painful and empty of joy. How amazing, then, that she can at the same time keep the avenues of her senses so strictly closed off to the world. How exactly does she wake up each day, her mind moulded into the same negative cast? How do the molecules or electrical messengers, or whatever they are, in her brain stay fixed so doggedly around such cussed ideas? Why does she not simply fade away or disintegrate mentally, as so many of them do?
On top of all that there’s the matter of the boy Harrison. Once he had been their shop boy, just like Benjy, coming in after school and at weekends. They had hoped the job would take him from hard-working kid to boy made good. But he had blown it, crazily, once, twice, three times over,