No sooner has he got upon this streetcar than Mr. Krupper undergoes a certain alteration, not too subtle to betray some outward signals: for he sits in the streetcar with an air of alertness that he did not have on the bench in the public square, he sits more erect and his various little gestures, fishing in his pocket for something, shifting about on the dirty blond straw bench, changing the level of the window shade, are all executed with greater liveliness and precision, as if they were the motions of a much younger man. Anticipation does that, and we would notice that about him, that mysterious attitude of expectancy, very slightly but noticeably increasing as the car whines along to the other part of the city. And we might even notice him beginning to color faintly as he prepares to ring the bell and rise from his seat a block in advance of the stop at which he descends. When he descends it is with all the painful, wheezing concentration of an inexpert climber following a rope down the side of an Alp, and his muttered thanks is too low to be audible as he sets foot to pavement. This he does, finally, with a vast sigh, an almost cosmic respiration, and he lifts his eyes well above the level of the roof-tops without appearing to look into the sky, a purely mechanical elevation that might once have had meaning, a salute to rational Providence which is supposed to be situated somewhere above the level of the roof-tops, if anywhere at all. And now Mr. Krupper has arrived within a block of where he is actually going and which is the place where the mysteries of his nature are to be made unpleasantly manifest to us. For some reason, a silly, squeamish kind of dissimulation, Mr. Krupper prefers to walk the last block to his destination rather than descend from the streetcar immediately before it. As he walks, and still a little before we know where he is going, we notice him making various anxious little preparations and adjustments. First he pats the bag of hard candies. Then he reaches into the opposite pocket of his jacket and pulls out a handful of quarters, counts them, makes sure there are exactly eight, and drops them back in the pocket. He then removes from the breast pocket of the jacket, from behind a protruding white handkerchief, always the whitest thing in his possession, a pair of dark-lensed glasses, lenses so dark that the eyes are not visible behind them. He puts these on. And now for the first time he seemingly dares to look directly toward the place that attracts him, and if we follow his glance we see that it is nothing less apparently innocent than an old theater building called the Joy Rio.
So that much of the mystery is dissolved, and it is nothing more ostensibly remarkable than the little clocklike regularity of going three times a week, on Monday, Thursday and Saturday afternoons at about half past four, to a certain third-rate cinema situated near the water front and known as the Joy Rio. And if we followed Mr. Krupper only as far as the door of that cinema, nothing of an esoteric nature would be noticeable, unless you thought it peculiar that he should go three times a week to a program changed only on Mondays or that he never paused to inspect the outside posters in that gradual, reflective manner of most old men who make a habit of going to the movies but went directly up to the ticket window, or that even before he crossed the street to the block on which the cinema was located, he not only put on the secretive-looking glasses but accelerated his pace as if he were urged along by a bitter wind that nipped particularly at the back of the old man’s neck. But naturally we are not going to follow him only that far, we are going to follow him past the ticket window and into the interior of the theater. And right away, as soon as we have made that entrance, a premonition of something out of the ordinary is forced upon us. For the Joy Rio is not, by any means, an ordinary theater. It is the ghost of a once elegant house where plays and operas were performed long ago. But the building does not exist within the geographic limits of that part of the city which is regarded as having an historical value. Its decline into squalor, its conversion into a third-rate cinema, has not been particularly annotated by a sentimental press or public. Actually it is only when the lights are brought on, for a brief interval between shows or at their conclusion, that the place is distinguishable from any other cheap movie house. And then it is only distinguishable by looking upwards. Looking upwards you see that it contains not only the usual orchestra and balcony sections but two tiers of boxes extending in horseshoe design from one side of the proscenium to the other, but the faded gilt, the terribly abused red damask of these upper reaches of the Joy Rio never bloom into sufficient light to make a strong impression from the downstairs. You have to follow Mr. Krupper up the great marble staircase that still rises beyond the balcony level before you really begin to explore the physical mysteries of the place. And that, of course, is what we are going to do.
That is what we are going to do, but first we are going to orientate ourselves a little more specifically in time, for although these visits of Mr. Krupper to the Joy Rio are events of almost timeless repetition, our story is the narrative of one particular time and involving another individual, both of which must first be established, together, before we resume the company of Mr. Krupper.
We come, then, to a certain afternoon when a shadowy youth who may as well remain nameless has come into the Joy Rio without any knowledge of its peculiar character and for no other reason than to catch a few hours’ sleep, for he is a stranger in the city who does not have the price of a hotel bedroom and who is in terror of being picked up for vagrancy and set to work for the city at no pay and a poor diet. He is very sleepy, so sleepy that his motions are more instinctive than conscious. The film showing that afternoon at the Joy Rio is an epic of the western ranges, full of loud voices and gunplay, so the boy turns as faraway from the noisy and brilliant screen as the geography of the Joy Rio will allow him. He climbs the stairs to the first gallery. It is dark up there, but still noisy; so he continues his ascent, only faintly surprised to find that it is possible to do so. The darkness increases as he approaches the second level and the clamor of the screen is more than correspondingly reduced. In the gloom, as he makes a turn of the stairs, he passes what seems for a moment to be, almost believably, a naked female figure. He pauses there long enough to find out that it is only a piece of life-size statuary, cold to the fingers, and disappointingly hard in the places where he fondly touches it, a nymph made of cobwebbed stone in a niche at the turn of the stairs. He goes on up, and sleep is already descending on him, a black, fuzzy blanket, by the time he has wandered blindly into that one of the row of boxes which is to be occupied also, in a few minutes, by the old man whose mysteries are the sad ones of the Joy Rio…
By the time that Mr. Krupper arrives at the box and assures the usher’s neutrality with a liberal tip, the boy has plummeted like a stone to the depths of sleep, all the way down to the velvety bottom of it, without a ripple to mark where he has fallen. Head lolls forward and thighs move apart and fingers almost brush the floor. The wet lips have fallen apart and the breath whistles faintly but not enough to be heard by Mr. Krupper. It is so dim in the box that the fat old man nearly sits down in the boy’s lap before he discovers that his usual seat has been taken. At first Mr. Krupper thinks this nearly invisible companion may be a certain Italian youth of his acquaintance who sometimes shares the box with him for a few minutes, at rare intervals, five or six weeks apart, and he whispers inquiringly the name of this youth, which is Bruno, but he gets no answer, and he decides, no, it could not be Bruno. The slight odor that made him think it might be, an odor made up of sweat and tobacco and the prodigality of certain youthful glands, is not at all unfamiliar to the old man’s nose, and while he is now convinced that it is not Bruno, this time, it nevertheless makes him feel a stir of anticipatory happiness in his bosom, which also heaves from the exertion of having just climbed two flights of the grand staircase. In a crouched position he locates the other chair and carefully sets it where he wants it to be, at a nicely calculated space from the one that is occupied by the sleeper, and then Mr. Krupper deposits himself on the seat with the stiff-kneed elaboration of an old camel. It sets the blood charging through him at breakneck speed. Ah, well. That much is c
ompleted.
A few minutes pass in which Mr. Krupper’s eyesight adjusts itself to the almost pitch-black condition of light in the box, but even then it is impossible to make out the figure beside him in any detail. Yes, it is young, it is slender. The hair is dark and lustrous, the odor is captivating. But the head of the sleeper has lolled a bit to one side, the side away from Mr. Krupper, and sometimes it is possible, in the dark, to make very dangerous mistakes. There are certain pursuits in which even the most cautious man must depart from absolute caution if he intends at all to enjoy them. Mr. Krupper knew that. He had known it for a great many years, and that was why he had observed such elaborate caution in nearly every other department of his life, to compensate for those necessary breaches of caution that were the sad concomitant of his kind of pleasure. And so as a measure of caution, Mr. Krupper digs into his pocket for a box of matches which he carries with him only for this purpose, to secure that one relatively clear glance at a fellow-occupant of the dark box. He strikes the match and leans a little bit forward. And then his heart, aged seventy and already strained from the recent exertion of the stairs, undergoes an alarming spasm, for never in this secret life of his, never in thirty years’ attendance of matinees at the Joy Rio, has old Mr. Krupper discovered beside him, even now within contact, inspiring the dark with its warm animal fragrance, any dark youth of remotely equivalent beauty.
The match burns his fingers, he lets it fall to the floor. His vest is half unbuttoned, but he unbuttons it further to draw a deep breath. Something is hurting in him, first in his chest, then lower, a nervous contraction of his unhealthy intestines. He whispers to himself the German word for calmness. He leans back in the uncomfortable small chair and attempts to look at the faraway flickering square of the motion picture. The excitement in his body will not subside. The respiration will not stabilize. The contraction of his intestinal nerves and muscles gives him sharp pain, and he is wondering, for a moment, if it will not be necessary for him to return hastily downstairs to move his bowels. But then, all at once, the sleeper beside him stirs and half sits up in the gloom. The lolling head suddenly jerks erect and cries a sharp word in Spanish. “Excuse me,” says Mr. Krupper, softly, involuntarily. “I didn’t know you were there.” The youth gives a grunting laugh and seems to relax once more. He makes a sad, sighing sound as he slouches down once more in the chair beside Mr. Krupper. Mr. Krupper feels somewhat calmer now. It is hard to say why but the almost unbearable acuteness of the proximity, the discovery, now has passed, and Mr. Krupper himself assumes a more relaxed position in his hard chair. The muscular spasm and the tachycardia now are gently eased off and the bowels appear to be settled. Minutes pass in the box. Mr. Krupper has the impression that the youth beside him, that vision, has not yet returned to slumber, although the head has lolled again to one side, this time the side that is toward him, and the limbs fallen apart with the former relaxation. Slowly, as if secretively, Mr. Krupper digs in his jacket pocket for the hard candies. One he unwraps and places in his own mouth which is burning and dry. Then he extracts another which he extends on the palm of his hand, which shakes a little, toward the youthful stranger. He clears his throat which feels as if it would be difficult to produce a sound, and manages to say, “A piece of candy?” “Huh,” says the youth. The syllable has the sound of being startled. For a moment it seems that he is bewildered or angry. He makes no immediate move to take or reject the candy, he only sits up and stares. Then all at once he grunts. His fingers snatch at the candy and pop it directly into his mouth, paper wrapping and all. Mr. Krupper hastens to warn him that the candy is wrapped up. He grunts again and removes it from his mouth, and Mr. Krupper hears him plucking the rather brittle wrapping paper away, and afterwards he hears the candy crunching noisily between the jaws of the youth. Before the jaws have stopped crunching, Mr. Krupper has dug the whole bag out of his pocket and now he says, “Take some more, take several pieces, there’s lots.” Again the youth hesitates slightly. Again he grunts. Then he digs his hand into the bag and Mr. Krupper feels it lighter by half when the hand has been removed. “Hungry?” he whispers with a questioning note. The youth grunts again, affirmatively and in a way that seems friendly. Don’t hurry, thinks Mr. Krupper. Don’t hurry, there’s plenty of time, he’s not going to go up in smoke like the dream that he looks! So he puts the remains of the candy in his pocket, and makes a low humming sound as of gratification as he looks back toward the flickering screen where the cowboy hero is galloping into a sunset. In a moment the picture will end and the lights will go up for an interval of a minute before the program commences all over again. There is, of course, some danger that the youth will leave. That possibility has got to be considered, but the affirmative answer to the question “Hungry?” has already given some basis, not quite a pledge, of continuing association between them.
Now just before the lights go up, Mr. Krupper makes a bold move. He reaches into the pocket opposite to the one containing the bag of hard candy and scoops out all that remain of the quarters, about six altogether, and jostles them ever so slightly together in his fist so they tinkle a bit. This is all that he does. And the lights come gradually on, like daybreak only a little accelerated; the once elegant theater blooms dully as a winter rose beneath him as he leans forward in order to seem to be interested in the downstairs. He is a little panicky but he knows that the period of light will be very short, not more than a minute or two. But he also knows that he is fat and ugly. Mr. Krupper knows that he is a terrible old man, shameful and despicable even to those who tolerate his caresses, perhaps even more so to those than to the others who only see him. He does not deceive himself at all about that, and that is why he took the six quarters out and shook them together a little before the lights were brought on. Yes, now. Now the lights are beginning to darken again, and the youth is still there. If he is now alert to the unpleasant character of Mr. Krupper’s appearance, he is nevertheless still beside him. And he is still unwrapping the bits of hard candy and crunching them between his powerful young jaws, steadily, with the automatic, invariable rhythm of a horse masticating his food.
The lights are now down again and the panic has passed. Mr. Krupper abandons the pretense of staring downstairs and leans back once more in the unsteady chair. Now something rises in him, something heroic, determined, and he leans toward the youth, turning around a little, and with his left hand he finds the right hand of the youth and offers the coins. At first the hand of the youth will not change its position, will not respond to the human and metallic pressure. Mr. Krupper is about to fly once more into panic, but then, at the very moment when his hand is about to withdraw from contact with the hand of the youth, that hand turns about, revolves to bring the palm upward. The coins descend, softly, with a slight tinkle, and Mr. Krupper knows that the contract is sealed between them.
When around midnight the lights of the Joy Rio were brought up for the last time that evening, the body of Mr. Krupper was discovered in his remote box of the theater with his knees on the floor and his ponderous torso wedged between two wobbly gilt chairs as if he had expired in an attitude of prayer. The notice of the old man’s death was given unusual prominence for the obituary of someone who had no public character and whose private character was so peculiarly low. But evidently the private character of Mr. Krupper was to remain anonymous in the memories of those anonymous persons who had enjoyed or profited from his company in the tiny box at the Joy Rio, for the notice contained no mention of anything of such a special nature. It was composed by a spinsterly reporter who had been impressed by the sentimental values of a seventy-year-old retired merchant dying of thrombosis at a cowboy thriller with a split bag of hard candies in his pocket and the floor about him littered with sticky wrappers, some of which even adhered to the shoulders and sleeves of his jacket.