Except that the town is no longer Puritan and Yankee.
It has been betrayed; it has become an outpost of the Portuguese
islands.
This man, this blind cobbler himself, was a Portuguese from St.
Michael, in the Western Islands, and his name was Boaz Negro.
He was happy. An unquenchable exuberance lived in him. When he arose
in the morning he made vast, as it were uncontrollable, gestures
with his stout arms. He came into his shop singing. His voice,
strong and deep as the chest from which it emanated, rolled out
through the doorway and along the street, and the fishermen, done
with their morning work and lounging and smoking along the wharfs,
said, "Boaz is to work already." Then they came up to sit in the shop.
In that town a cobbler's shop is a club. One sees the interior
always dimly thronged. They sit on the benches watching the artizan
at his work for hours, and they talk about everything in the world.
A cobbler is known by the company he keeps.
Boaz Negro kept young company. He would have nothing to do with the
old. On his own head the gray hairs set thickly.
He had a grown son. But the benches in his shop were for the lusty
and valiant young, men who could spend the night drinking, and then
at three o'clock in the morning turn out in the rain and dark to
pull at the weirs, sing songs, buffet one another among the slippery
fish in the boat's bottom, and make loud jokes about the fundamental
things, love and birth and death.
Pages:
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475