Читать книгу Look Homeward, Angel. A Story of the Buried Life онлайн

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"What does it mean? What do you reckon it means?" he whispered dryly to Otto Krause.

"Oh, you'll ketch it now!" said Otto Krause, laughing hoarsely.

And the class tormented him slily, rubbing their bottoms when they caught his eye, and making grimaces of agony.

He was sick through to his guts. He had a loathing of physical humiliation which was not based on fear, from which he never recovered. The brazen insensitive spirit of the boys he envied but could not imitate: they would howl loudly under punishment, in order to mitigate it, and they were vaingloriously unconcerned ten minutes later. He did not think he could endure being whipped by the fat young man with the flower: at three o'clock, white-faced, he went to the man's office.

Armstrong, slit-eyed and thin lipped, began to swish the cane he held in his hand through the air as Eugene entered. Behind him, smoothed and flattened on his desk, was stacked the damning pile of rhymed insult.

"Did you write these?" he demanded, narrowing his eyes to little points in order to frighten his victim.