The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale [180]
“If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned. If to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh’s lean kine are to be loved!” As he shouts, the Beggar King pivots to his left and right, swinging his belly before him like a sack of cement, addressing his involuntary audience personally, directly. Aggressively, even, confrontationally. He holds out his coffee can, rattling its contents to communicate that it is a receptacle into which bits of currency ought to be placed in exchange for his services, or at least to make him go away. The Beggar King goes generally ignored. The passengers regard him as an irksome presence, pretending that he is invisible and inaudible, even as they scrunch themselves into the sides of the train car to allow unobstructed passage for his elephantine girth.
As he works his way down the aisle, a passenger or two clinks a coin into his coffee can, gestures he acknowledges with a subtle nod of appreciation. Because I am trying to remain incognito, I am furiously looking away from him; even now I know—perhaps by intuition—there’s nothing that sets off a freak quite like another freak. Don’t look—I tell myself, as if to look would destroy me, as if to look at him were to gaze into the eyes of Medusa—don’t look, Bruno, don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.
The Beggar King continues: “No, my good lord: banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins…” The Beggar King approaches. I try to appear inextricably fascinated by something happening outside the window, out there in the void of the subway tunnel, the empty rushing blackness. But he sees me—I can feel it. I can feel his curious gaze lock onto me. I begin to sweat in panic. I look down, letting the brim of the hat shade his countenance. The Beggar King not only sees me—but he is intrigued by me. He is staring at me. The Beggar King seems to have temporarily forgotten his lines, his eyes are so fixed in curiosity upon the little creature sitting quietly on the subway in a black coat and a hat, like a pariah, like a tiny miserable deformed midget pervert. The Beggar King’s stare has now herded the eyes of the other passengers onto me. He is now standing directly in front of me. I stare down, dogged in my resolve to ignore him.
Then the Beggar King leans down toward me, decanting his mountainous self closer and closer to the only fully dressed hairless chimpanzee on this particular subway car, who is sitting—quietly, civilly, harmlessly—alone. He is so close I can smell the sweat beneath his Henry VIII costume, and smell the whiskey on his halitosic breath, breath which I can smell as well as also hear: it is loud and belabored fat-man’s breath, whistling in and out of his nostrils. With his free hand the Beggar King seizes a nearby pole to steady himself. He addresses my averted face as he says—softer, now, no longer shouting (though still probably loud enough for everyone on the train to hear):
“But for sweet Jack Falstaff… kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being as he is old Jack Falstaff…” Finally, I dare to look at him. I turn my face upward to his. His face is so close to mine that the brim of my hat brushes against his beard as I raise my head.
The Beggar King is probably in his fifties, though maybe he looks older than he is. A bramblebush of beard bursts forth from his face in matted gray fistfuls. His cheeks and his golf-ball nose are deeply dimpled with overlarge pores and tinged pink with rosacea, and under his floppy hat his