Free Proud Beggars by Albert Cossery, Thomas W. Cushing

voices. A café was nearby; despite the distance Yeghen could clearly hear the rattle of dice against wood: backgammon players. He waited, terribly excited, his head turned in the direction from which the girl would come.
    Their first encounter had been purely by accident. That night, under the delightful influence of the drug, Yeghen was tramping through this same street when he saw her loom up like a superb apparition in the light of a streetlamp. Their eyes met, and he thought that he read a promise and an impulse in hers to which he was hardly accustomed. Her look was one of intelligence, able to appreciate mystery. Instead of a frightened beast’s retreat, it showed her assent before the vivid manifestation of his presence. Hers was the only woman’s gaze wherein Yeghen felt neither pity nor sarcasm, but the instinctive knowledge of human nature at its most horrible. He suspected her to be the daughter of a civil servant. She was perhaps sixteen and took piano lessons, as he could tell by the music books she carried under her arm. She paraded along like a princess visiting the poor neighborhoods. It is true that with her music books she clashed strangely with the surroundings. In this quarter, to take piano lessons was such a rare, incongruous thing that one risked antagonizing a crowd. Yeghen was surprised not to see the neighborhood children pursuing her with their taunts. No doubt it was her bearing, rather than her father’s position as a civil servant, that kept them at bay. He himself broke into a cold sweat each time he tried to accost her. He had finally decided to do it this very night, but in an indirect manner, to so speak. It involved a poem he had composed in her honor and that he wanted to give her in an elegant, original fashion.
    Yeghen always used the same tactic: whenever he saw her coming from afar, he would begin to walk in her direction, so that the meeting would appear to be accidental. But was she fooled? Last time, she had smiled at him knowingly, as if to say that she’d understood his stratagem. He had concluded that she was now expecting more daring on his part. Yeghen couldn’t get over this conquest. “She feels no disgust seeing me,” he said to himself. “She’s truly a brave girl!” Or was she simply very myopic? To be more certain, he arranged it so they always met under a streetlamp. He wanted full light, so there could be no mistake. Thus, she was duly warned of his ugliness and couldn’t come later telling him that she hadn’t seen him well in the darkness of the night. Inside, Yeghen exulted each time she looked at him, his face in full view in the streetlamp’s light. She must think he believed himself handsome, and that by showing himself in full light, he was trying to conquer her by the charm of his appearance.
    The girl was late. Perhaps she’d already gone home or didn’t have a piano lesson today? Yeghen began to grow tired of the prolonged wait; he stood motionless in the shadows, surrendering to the biting cold and the hostile stares of passersby, who no doubt took him for a thief about to rob them. In fact, waiting around like this was very risky. In the nearby café the rattling of dice had stopped and the muddled sounds of conversations could now be heard, of which Yeghen could only make out bits and pieces. A sweet-potato vendor woke from his torpor and began to praise the quality of his merchandise in a loud voice; he used such voluptuous terms that one would have thought he was describing the charms of a prepubescent girl. Several people passed close to Yeghen, stopped a moment to look at him, then walked on shaking their heads.
    He saw her coming from afar and sighed with relief. This prolonged waiting in a suspicious, middle-class neighborhood could end badly; he was glad it was over. He hesitated a moment, then began to walk, calculating his route so that the meeting would occur precisely under the