Over the dee-eep sea-ea-ea.…

Not far from where she sat, a huge star was reflected from the black emptiness above us in the greasy muddy water. When a ripple ran across the puddle, the reflection vanished. Again I stepped into the puddle, took the singer by the arm-pits, lifted her, and shoving her with my knees, led her over to the fence. She held back, waved her arms, and challenged me:

“Well, hit me, hit me! Never mind! Hit me! Ah, you beast! Ah, you butcher! Go ahead, hit me!”

Propping her against the fence, I asked her where she lived. She lifted her drunken head and looked at me out of the dark spots that were her eyes. I noticed that her nose had caved in and what was left of it stuck out like a button, that her upper lip, pulled askew by a scar, bared small teeth, and that her little bloated face wore a repellent smile.

“All right, let’s go,” she said.

We walked on, lurching against the fence. The wet hem of her skirt kept slapping across my legs.

“Come, dear,” she mumbled, as though sobering up. “I’ll let you in, I’ll comfort you.”

She brought me into the court-yard of a large, two-story house. Carefully, like one blind, she walked among the carts, barrels, boxes, and piles of firewood, stopped before a hole in the foundation, and invited me:

“Go in.”

Holding on to the slimey wall, grasping the woman by her waist, hardly able to keep her sprawling body together, I lowered myself down the slippery steps, found the felt strip and the latch of the door, opened it, and stood on the threshold of a black pit without having the courage to go further.

“Mammy, is it you?” a soft voice asked in the dark.

“It’s me.”

A warm stench of decay and a smell of tar struck my nostrils. A match was lit and for a second the small flame illumined a pale childish face, and then went out.

“Who else would be coming to you? It’s me,” said the woman, swaying against me.

Another match was struck, there was a clink of glass and a thin funny hand lit a small tin lamp.

“Darling,” said the woman, and swaying, tumbled into the corner. There, hardly raised above the brick floor, was a wide bed.

Watching the flame of the lamp closely, the child adjusted the wick as it began to smoke. He had a grave little face with a sharp nose and full lips like a girl’s. It was a little face that looked as though it were painted with a fine brush, and it was startlingly out of place in this dark damp hole. Having taken care of the lamp, he looked at me with eyes so heavily fringed that they looked shaggy, and asked:

“She drunk?”

His mother, who lay across the bed, was hiccuping and snoring.

“She ought to be undressed,” I said.

“Undress her,” the boy replied, lowering his eyes. And when I began to pull the wet skirt off the woman, he asked quietly and in a businesslike fashion: