Abelites… denounced sexual intercourse as service of Satan.
Abimelech I, son of Gideon by a Sheshemite concubine, who made himself king after murdering all his seventy brethren except Jotham, and was killed while besieging the tower of Thebez…
Abortion…
No; his hands were icy and he felt a little sick from stuffing down so many chocolates.
Abracadabra.
Abydos…
He got up to drink a glass of water before Abyssinia with engravings of desert mountains and the burning of Magdala by the British.
His eyes smarted. He was stiff and sleepy. He looked at his Ingersoll. Eleven o’clock. Terror gripped him suddenly. If mother was dead… ? He pressed his face into the pillow. She stood over him in her white ballgown that had lace crisply on it and a train sweeping behind on satin rustling ruffles and her hand softly fragrant gently stroked his cheek. A rush of sobs choked him. He tossed on the bed with his face shoved hard into the knotty pillow. For a long time he couldn’t stop crying.
He woke up to find the light burning dizzily and the room stuffy and hot. The book was on the floor and the candy squashed under him oozing stickily from its box. The watch had stopped at 1.45. He opened the window, put the chocolates in the bureau drawer and was about to snap off the light when he remembered. Shivering with terror he put on his bathrobe and slippers and tiptoed down the darkened hall. He listened outside the door. People were talking low. He knocked faintly and turned the knob. A hand pulled the door open hard and Jimmy was blinking in the face of a tall cleanshaven man with gold eyeglasses. The folding doors were closed; in front of them stood a starched nurse.
‘James dear, go back to bed and dont worry,’ said Aunt Emily in a tired whisper. ‘Mother’s very ill and must be absolutely quiet, but there’s no more danger.’
‘Not for the present at least, Mrs Merivale,’ said the doctor breathing on his eyeglasses.
‘The little dear,’ came the nurse’s voice low and purry and reassuring, ‘he’s been sitting up worrying all night and he never bothered us once.’
‘I’ll go back and tuck you into bed,’ said Aunt Emily. ‘My James always likes that.’
‘May I see mother, just a peek so’s I’ll know she’s all right.’ Jimmy looked up timidly at the big face with the eyeglasses.
The doctor nodded. ‘Well I must go… I shall drop by at four or five to see how things go… Goodnight Mrs Merivale. Goodnight Miss Billings. Goodnight son…’
‘This way…’ The trained nurse put her hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. He wriggled out from under and walked behind her.
There was a light on in the corner of mother’s room shaded by a towel pinned round it. From the bed came the rasp of breathing he did not recognize. Her crumpled face was towards him, the closed eyelids violet, the mouth screwed to one side. For a half a minute he stared at her. ‘All right I’ll go back to bed now,’ he whispered to the nurse. His blood pounded deafeningly. Without looking at his aunt or at the nurse he walked stiffly to the outer door. His aunt said something. He ran down the corridor to his own room, slammed the door and bolted it. He stood stiff and cold in the center of the room with his fists clenched. ‘I hate them. I hate them,’ he shouted aloud. Then gulping a dry sob he turned out the light and slipped into bed between the shiverycold sheets.
‘With all the business you have, madame,’ Emile was saying in a singsong voice, ‘I should think you’d need someone to help you with the store.’
‘I know that… I’m killing myself with work; I know that,’ sighed Madame Rigaud from her stool at the cashdesk. Emile was silent a long time staring at the cross section of a Westphalia ham that lay on a marble slab beside his elbow. Then he said timidly: ‘A woman like you, a beautiful woman like you, Madame Rigaud, is never without friends.’
‘Ah ça… I have lived too much in my time… I have no more confidence… Men are a set of brutes, and women, Oh I dont get on with women a bit!’
‘History and literature…’ began Emile.
The bell on the top of the door jangled. A man and a woman stamped into the shop. She had yellow hair and a hat like a flowerbed.
‘Now Billy dont be extravagant,’ she was saying.
‘But Norah we got have sumpen te eat… An I’ll be all jake by Saturday.’
‘Nutten’ll be jake till you stop playin the ponies.’
‘Aw go long wud yer… Let’s have some liverwurst… My that cold breast of turkey looks good…’
‘Piggywiggy,’ cooed the yellowhaired girl.
‘Lay off me will ye, I’m doing this.’
‘Yes sir ze breast of turkee is veree goud… We ave ole cheekens too, steel ‘ot… Emile mong ami cherchez moi un de ces petits poulets dans la cuisin-e.’ Madame Rigaud spoke like an oracle without moving from her stool by the cashdesk. The man was fanning himself with a thickbrimmed straw hat that had a checked band.
‘Varm tonight,’ said Madame Rigaud.
‘It sure is… Norah we ought to have gone down to the Island instead of bummin round this town.’
‘Billy you know why we couldn’t go perfectly well.’
‘Don’t rub it in. Aint I tellin ye it’ll be all jake by Saturday.’
‘History and literature,’ continued Emile when the customers had gone off with the chicken, leaving Madame Rigaud a silver half dollar to lock up in the till… ‘history and literature teach us that there are friendships, that there sometimes comes love that is worthy of confidence…’
‘History and literature!’ Madame Rigaud growled with internal laughter. ‘A lot of good that’ll do us.’
‘But dont you ever feel lonely in a big foreign city like this… ? Everything is so hard. Women look in your pocket not in your heart… I cant stand it any more.’
Madame Rigaud’s broad shoulders and her big breasts shook with laughter. Her corsets creaked when she lifted herself still laughing off the stool. ‘Emile, you’re a goodlooking fellow and steady and you’ll get on in the world… But I’ll never put myself in a man’s power again… I’ve suffered too much… Not if you came to me with five thousand dollars.’
‘You’re a very cruel woman.’
Madame Rigaud laughed again. ‘Come along now, you can help me close up.’
Sunday weighed silent and sunny over downtown. Baldwin sat at his desk in his shirtsleeves reading a calf bound lawbook. Now and then he wrote down a note on a scratchpad in a wide regular hand. The phone rang loud in the hot stillness. He finished the paragraph he was reading and strode over to answer it.
‘Yes I’m here alone, come on over if you want to.’ He put down the receiver. ‘God damn it,’ he muttered through clenched teeth.
Nellie came in without knocking, found him pacing back and forth in front of the window.
‘Hello Nellie,’ he said without looking up; she stood still staring at him.
‘Look here Georgy this cant go on.’
‘Why cant it?’
‘I’m sick of always pretendin an deceivin.’
‘Nobody’s found out anything, have they?’
‘Oh of course not.’
She went up to him and straightened his necktie. He kissed her gently on the mouth. She wore a frilled muslin dress of a reddish lilac color and had a blue sunshade in her hand.
‘How’s things Georgy?’
‘Wonderful. D’you know, you people have brought me luck? I’ve got several good cases on hand now and I’ve made some very valuable connections.’