thought this because he saw something sly, closed, conspiratorial, mocking and full of hatred and mistrust, in their relations with people who were not members of their race and their religion; he thought they had a warm, secret and passionate life of their own which never could be known by a stranger. But he soon found that this belief was untrue: even in their conversations with one another, they were almost inarticulate—a race which thought, felt, and spoke with the wooden insensitivity of automatons or dummies on whose waxen souls a few banal formulas for speech and feeling had been recorded. He heard some amazing performances: every evening toward six o’clock the family would gather in their dingy living-room at the end of the hall, Mr. Feeney and Mr. O’Doul would join them, and then he could hear the voices of the men raised in argument, protest, agreement, denial, affirmation and belief, or scepticism, evoking a ghastly travesty of all of man’s living moments of faith, doubt, and passion, and yet speaking for hours at a time, with the idiotic repetitions of a gramophone held by its needle to a single groove, a blunted jargon of fifty meaningless words:
“What guy?”
“Dat guy!”
“Nah, nah, nah, not him—duh otheh guy!”
“Wich guy do yuh mean—duh big guy?”
“Nah, nah, nah—yuh got it all wrong!—Not him—duh little guy!”
“Guh-wan!”—a derisive laugh—“Guh-wan!”
“Watcha tryin’t’do—kid me? Dat guy neveh saw de day he could take Grogan. Grogan’ud bat his brains out.”
“Guh-wan! Yer full of prunes!… Watcha tryin’t’give me? Dat guy’ud neveh take Tommy Grogan in a million yeahs! He couldn’t take Tommy duh best day he eveh saw! Grogan’ud have him on de floeh in thirty seconds!”
“Ho-ly Ghee!”
“Sure he would!”
“Guh-wan, Guh-wan! Yer crazy! Grogan! Ho-ly Ghee!”
And this, with laughter, denial, agreement—all the appurtenances of conversation among living men—could go on unweariedly for hours at a time.
Sometimes he would interrupt these conversations for a moment: he would go back to leave a message, to pay the rent, to ask if anyone had called.
