Page:Achmed Abdullah--Wings.djvu/249

Rh art balconies and carved near-stone struts left over from a bankrupt Bronx job. It towered over the smug red-brick dwellings—remnants of an age when English and German were still spoken thereabouts—with thin, anemic arrogance, like a tubercular giant among a lot of short, stocky, well-fleshed people, sick, yet conscious of his height and the dignity that goes with it.

He saw the lighted window as he crossed the square from the south side, and sat down on one of the benches and stared at it.

Steadily he stared, until his eyes smarted and burned and his neck muscles bunched painfully.

For that glimmering light, gilding the fly-specked pane, meant to him the things he hated, the things he had cheated and cursed and ridiculed—and, by the same token, longed for and loved.

It meant to him, life—and the reasons of life.

It meant to him humanity and the faith of humanity: which is happiness. The right to happiness! The eternal, sacerdotal duty of happiness!

Happiness?

He laughed. Why—damn it!—happiness was a lie. Happiness was hypocrisy. It meant the diet-