ENOCH AND THE GORILLA ENOCH EMERY / TUTORIALOUTLET DOT COM ENOCH AND THE GORILLA ENOCH EMERY / TUTORIALOUTLET | Page 7
Enoch’s humiliation was so sharp and painful that he turned around
three times before he realized which
direction he wanted to go in. Then he ran off into the rain as fast as he
could.
In spite of himself, Enoch couldn’t get over the expectation that
something was going to happen to him.
The virtue of hope, in Enoch, was made up of two parts suspicion and
one part lust. It operated on him
all the rest of the day. He had only a vague idea what he wanted, but
he was not a boy without ambition:
he wanted to become something. He wanted to better his condition.
He wanted, some day, to see a line
of people waiting to shake his hand.
All afternoon he fidgeted and fooled in his room, biting his nails and
shredding what was left of the silk
off the landlady’s umbrella. Finally he denuded it entirely and broke
off the spokes. What was left was a
black stick with a sharp steel point at one end and a dog’s head at the
other. It might have been an
instrument for some specialized kind of torture that had gone out of
fashion. Enoch walked up and down
his room with it under his arm and realized that it would distinguish
him on the sidewalk.
About seven o’clock in the evening he put on his coat and took the
stick and headed for a little restaurant
two blocks away. He had the sense that he was setting off to get some
honor, but he was very nervous,