Читать книгу Bivouac - Kwame Dawes - Страница 6

Unpublished notes of George Ferron Morgan

Already I am beginning to sound like an ungrateful complainer. They say I should be grateful for the scraps thrown before me. So I have a job. I have a job working as a ghost editorial writer for this paper. If the people who have been reading my editorials knew who was writing them, they would be startled, and in some cases quite outraged, I am sure. That Merchant Party lot is still so giddy with victory that the taste of blood is still fresh in their mouths. Peace simply leaves them hungry and thirsty. They would ravage me if they knew. The joke is that the People’s Democratic Party lot would do the same. Here I am, suffering because they did not protect me, and yet they would slaughter me for writing editorials for the enemy. Well, screw the lot. None of them have the gumption for revolution. These days, I don’t care what they have to say. I feel cheap sometimes. Some mornings I get in early enough to see the two prostitutes who must own this end of Duke Street eating their breakfast out of cheese pans in a shadowy alcove. You can see the fatigue in their eyes—that mute gaze, staring into the asphalt and not seeing. One of them has the most striking cheekbones. But she can’t hide her decay. Perhaps I would have judged them once, or simply ignored them, but now I think of myself as a kindred spirit, an old broken-down whore, hustling money from the very people who broke me down. God, I am so cynical. It wouldn’t be so bad, this cynicism, if it had the proper effect of making me feel superior, somehow above sentiment and pathos; but what I feel is a truly pathetic gratitude. This is what I have come to. I take my pay with sniveling, bitter gratitude. Who said irony helps?