OU_214051 UNIVERSA - Osmania University

H MAINLY MAIORET
When someone brushed against him, he winced and gave a stifled
cry, as if he had been dealt a blow.
He was looking for a jeweller's, but passed three before finally
turning into one. There he placed on the counter a lump of gold
shaped like a walnut—Sylvie's " nugget." She had carried it about
with her everywhere on her travels during the last two years, as
a stand-by in case she were stranded in some foreign town.
The jeweller gave him thirteen hundred Belgian francs for it, and
Elie found himself back in the street with many empty hours before
him.
He could recall nothing of the voyage to Marseilles; or, rather,
he remembered it as if it had been an experience in a previous life,
or something in a book. Nothing had reality for him but this bleak
darkness of unfriendly streets, this alien city of Brussels with its
narrow pavements off which he had to step at every moment to
avoid bumping into someone, these shop-windows, so chock-full
of food that it made his gorge rise to see them, cafes with livid
marble-topped tables that looked like fallen tombstones. . . .
He wasn't thinking: I'll do this; then I'll do that. Yet he had a
feeling he was about to do something, and he had a notion what
that something was. He was in a quarrelsome mood; he'd shown
it already over the " Egyptian " cigarettes. Now he showed it again
over a hot grog.
He had entered a cafe in the Place de Brouckere. The room reminded
him of the big waiting-hall at a railway terminus. In the
centre stood an enormous tankard of beer, twenty feet high, brimming
over with white froth, and round it some two or three hundred
people were seated at small tables. A band was playing; there was
a constant clatter of mugs and saucers. Waiters were dashing to and
fro.
Elie ordered a hot grog.
" Our grogs are made with wine, sir."
" I want one with rum." t.
" It's against the law to sell spirits in quantities of less than a
quart."
" All right. Give me a quart of rum."
" This is a cafe, not a wine-merchant's."
" Oh, go to the devil! "
To make things worse, the lights in the room were so bright that
they made his eyes smart, and there was no shelter from the glare.
After some moments he walked out. When he entered the street his