"Look here," Miss Reba said, "you little whipper-snapper." Then she began
to laugh, her hand at her breast. They watched her soberly while she
laughed in harsh gasps. "Lord, Lord," she said. "Come in here."
The room was at the top of the house, at the back. Miss Reba showed them
the bath. When she put her hand on the door a woman's voice said: "Just a
minute, dearie" and the door opened and she passed them, in a kimono. They
watched her go up the hall, rocked a little to their young foundations by
a trail of scent which she left. Fonzo nudged Virgil surreptitiously. In
their room again he said:
"That was another one. She's got two daughters. Hold me, big boy; I'm
heading for the henhouse."
They didn't go to sleep for some time that first night, what with the
strange bed and room and the voices. They could hear the city, evocative
and strange, imminent and remote; threat and promise both-a deep, steady
sound upon which invisible lights glittered and wavered: colored coiling
shapes of splendor in which already women were beginning to move
110 WILLIAM FAULKNER
in suave attitudes of new delights and strange nostalgic promises. Fonzo
thought of himself surrounded by tier upon tier of drawn shades,
rose-colored, beyond which, in a murmur of silk, in panting whispers, the
apotheosis of his youth assumed a thousand avatars. Maybe it'll begin
tomorrow, he thought; maybe by tomorrow night . . . A crack of light came
over the top of the shade and sprawled in a spreading fan upon the ceiling.
Beneath the window he could hear a voice, a woman's, then a man's: they
blended, murmured; a door closed. Someone came up the stairs in swishing
garments, on the swift hard heels of a woman.
He began to hear sounds in the house: voices, laughter; a mechanical piano
began to play. "Hear them?" he whispered.
"She's got a big family, I reckon," Virgil said, his voice already dull
with sleep.
"Family, hell," Fonzo said. "It's a party. Wish I was to it."
On the third day as they were leaving the house in the morning, Miss Reba
met them at the door. She wanted to use their room in the afternoons while
they were absent. There was to be a detectives' convention in town and
business would look up some, she said. "Your things'R be all right. I'll
have Minnie lock everything up beforehand. Aint nobody going to steal
nothing from you in my house."
"What business you reckon she's in?" Fonzo said when they reached the
street.
"Don't know," Virgil said.
"Wish I worked for her, anyway," Fonzo said. "With aH them women in kimonos
and such running around."
"Wouldn't do you no good," Virgil said. "They're all married. Aint you
heard them?"
The next afternoon when they returned from the school they found a woman's
undergarment under the washstand . . . Fonzo picked it up. "She's a
dress-maker," he said.
"Reckon so," Virgil said. "Look and see if they taken anything of yourn."
The house appeared to be filled with people who did not sleep at night at
all. They could hear them at all hours, running up and down the stairs, and
always Fonzo would be conscious of women, of female flesh. It got to where
he seemed to lie in his celibate bed surrounded by women, and he would lie
beside the steadily snoring Virgil, his ears strained for the murmurs, the
whispers of silk that came through the walls and the floor, that seemed to
be as much a part of both as the planks and the plaster, thinking that he
had been in Memphis ten days, yet the extent of his acquaintance was a few
of his fellow pupils at the school. After Virgil was asleep he would rise
and unlock the door and leave it ajar, but nothing happened.
SANCTUARY ill
On the twelfth day he told Virgil they were going visiting, with one of
the barber-students.
"Where?" Virgil said.
"That's all right. You come on. I done found out something. And when I
think I been here two weeks without knowing about it-"
"What's it going to cost?" Virgil said.
"When'd you ever have any fun for nothing?" Fonzo said. "Come on."
"I'll go," Virgil said. "But I aint going to promise to spend nothing."
"You wait and say that when we get there," Fonzo said.
The barber took them to a brothel. When they came out Fonzo said, "And
to think I been here two weeks without ever knowing about that house."
"I wisht you hadn't never learned," Virgil said. "It cost three dollars."
"Wasn't it worth it?" Fonzo said.
"Aint nothing worth three dollars you caint tote off with you," Virgil
said.
When they reached home Fonzo stopped. "We got to sneak in now," he said.
"If she was to find out where we been and what we been doing, she might
not let us stay in the house with them ladies no more."
"That's so," Virgil said. "Durn you. Hyer you done made me spend three
dollars, and now you fixing to git us both throwed out."
"You do like I do," Fonzo said. 'That's all you got to do. Don't say
nothing."
Minnie let them in. The piano was going full blast. Miss Reba appeared
in a door, with a tin cup in her hand. "Well, well," she said, "you boys
been out mighty late tonight."
