Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2. Ray Bradbury
new cap in my hand.
She glared up. ‘Your cap, man, your cap!’
‘Oh!’ Flushing, I seized the old cap from my head.
Now I had a cap in each hand.
The woman cranked. The ‘music’ played. The rain hit my brow, my eyelids, my mouth.
On the far side of the bridge I stopped for the hard, the slow decision: which cap to try on my drenched skull?
During the next week I passed the bridge often, but there was always just the old couple there with their pandemonium device, or no one there at all.
On the last day of our visit, my wife started to pack the new tweed cap away with my others, in the suitcase.
‘Thanks, no.’ I took it from her. ‘Let’s keep it out, on the mantel, please. There.’
That night the hotel manager brought a farewell bottle to our room. The talk was long and good, the hour grew late, there was a fire like an orange lion on the hearth, big and lively, and brandy in the glasses, and silence for a moment in the room, perhaps because quite suddenly we found silence falling in great soft flakes past our high windows.
The manager, glass in hand, watched the continual lace, then looked down at the midnight stones and at last said, under his breath, ‘“There’s only a few of us left.”’
I glanced at my wife, and she at me.
The manager caught us.
‘Do you know him, then? Has he said it to you?’
‘Yes. But what does the phrase mean?’
The manager watched all those figures down there standing in the shadows and sipped his drink.
‘Once I thought he meant he fought in the Troubles and there’s just a few of the I.R.A. left. But no. Or maybe he means in a richer world the begging population is melting away. But no to that also. So maybe, perhaps, he means there aren’t many “human beings” left who look, see what they look at, and understand well enough for one to ask and one to give. Everyone busy, running here, jumping there, there’s no time to study one another. But I guess that’s bilge and hogwash, slop and sentiment.’
He half turned from the window.
‘So you know There’s Only a Few of Us Left, do you?’
My wife and I nodded.
‘Then do you know the woman with the baby?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘And the one with the cancer?’
‘Yes,’ said my wife.
‘And the man who needs train fare to Cork?’
‘Belfast,’ said I.
‘Galway,’ said my wife.
The manager smiled sadly and turned back to the window.
‘What about the couple with the piano that plays no tune?’
‘Has it ever?’ I asked.
‘Not since I was a boy.’
The manager’s face was shadowed now.
‘Do you know the beggar on O’Connell Bridge?’
‘Which one?’ I said.
But I knew which one, for I was looking at the cap there on the mantel.
‘Did you see the paper today?’ asked the manager.
‘No.’
‘There’s just the item, bottom half of pagefive, Irish Times. It seems he just got tired. And he threw his concertina over into the River Liffey. And he jumped after it.’
He was back, then, yesterday! I thought. And I didn’t pass by!
‘The poor bastard.’ The manager laughed with a hollow exhalation. ‘What a funny, horrid way to die. That damn silly concertina – I hate them, don’t you? – wheezing on its way down, like a sick cat, and the man falling after. I laugh and I’m ashamed of laughing. Well. They didn’t find the body. They’re still looking.’
‘Oh, God!’ I cried, getting up. ‘Oh, damn!’
The manager watched me carefully now, surprised at my concern.
‘You couldn’t help it.’
‘I could! I never gave him a penny, not one, ever! Did you?’
‘Come to think of it, no.’
‘But you’re worse than I am!’ I protested. ‘I’ve seen you around town, shoveling out pennies hand over fist. Why, why not to him?’
‘I guess I thought he was overdoing it.’
‘Hell, yes!’ I was at the window now, too, staring down through the falling snow. ‘I thought his bare head was a trick to make me feel sorry. Damn, after a while you think everything’s a trick! I used to pass there winter nights with the rain thick and him there singing and he made me feel so cold I hated his guts. I wonder how many other people felt cold and hated him because he did that to them? So instead of getting money, he got nothing in his cup. I lumped him with the rest. But maybe he was one of the legitimate ones, the new poor just starting out this winter, not a beggar ever before, so you hock your clothes to feed a stomach and wind up a man in the rain without a hat.’
The snow was falling fast now, erasing the lamps and the statues in the shadows of the lamps below.
‘How do you tell the difference between them?’ I asked. ‘How can you judge which is honest, which isn’t?’
‘The fact is,’ said the manager quietly, ‘you can’t. There’s no difference between them. Some have been at it longer than others, and have gone shrewd, forgotten how it all started a long time ago. On a Saturday they had food. On a Sunday they didn’t. On a Monday they asked for credit. On a Tuesday they borrowed their first match. Thursday a cigarette. And a few Fridays later they found themselves, God knows how, in front of a place called the Royal Hibernian Hotel. They couldn’t tell you what happened or why. One thing’s sure though: they’re hanging to the cliff by their fingernails. Poor bastard, someone must’ve stomped on that man’s hands on O’Connell Bridge and he just gave up the ghost and went over. So what does it prove? You cannot stare them down or look away from them. You cannot run and hide from them. You can only give to them all. If you start drawing lines, someone gets hurt. I’m sorry now I didn’t give that blind singer a shilling each time I passed. Well. Well. Let us console ourselves, hope it wasn’t money but something at home or in his past did him in. There’s no way to find out. The paper lists no name.’
Snow fell silently across our sight. Below, the dark shapes waited. It was hard to tell whether snow was making sheep of the wolves or sheep of the sheep, gently manteling their shoulders, their backs, their hats and shawls.
A moment later, going down in the haunted night elevator, I found the new tweed cap in my hand.
Coatless, in my shirtsleeves, I stepped out into the night.
I gave the cap to the first man who came. I never knew if it fit. What money I had in my pockets was soon gone.
Then, left alone, shivering, I happened to glance up. I stood, I froze, blinking up through the drift, the drift, the silent drift of blinding snow. I saw the high hotel windows, the lights, the shadows.
What’s it like up there? I thought. Are fires lit? Is it warm as breath? Who are all those people? Are they drinking? Are they happy?
Do they even know I’m HERE?