And water. It would have to be cold
water. But after all, he thought (light-headedly), at this time of
night----
Outside, they were at the shop again. The crowd's habit is to forget
a thing quickly, once it is out of sight and hearing. But there had
been something about that solitary cry which continued to bother them,
even in memory. Where had it been? Where had it come from? And those
who had stood nearest the cobbler-shop were heard again. They were
certain now, dead certain. They could swear!
In the end they broke down the door.
If Boaz heard them he gave no sign. An absorption as complete as it
was monstrous wrapped him. Kneeling in the glare of the lantern they
had brought, as impervious as his own shadow sprawling behind him,
he continued to shave the dead man on the floor.
No one touched him. Their minds and imaginations were arrested by
the gigantic proportions of the act. The unfathomable presumption of
the act. As throwing murder in their faces to the tune of a jig in a
barber-shop. It is a fact that none of them so much as thought of
touching him. No less than all of them, together with all other men,
shorn of their imaginations--that is to say, the expressionless and
imperturbable creature of the Law--would be sufficient to touch that
ghastly man.
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