16.
There
were, all around Leicester Square so many public places, each one with its own
peculiarities. For example the "Cafe Paris" behind his seeming
normality, kept a secret known only to a small circle. It was frequented by old
and rich women in search of gigolò or any handsome young man in order to forget
for a few hours, their loneliness and their time, perhaps ran too quickly; or "The worm", a
meeting place for gays and lesbians; the "Cokney Pride", where was
played the traditional London’s music.
Just in
front of my pitch used to gather a group
of tramps. They sat very often in a
circle on the benches, right in the middle of the square. The benches were set all around a circular flowerbed in care to Mary, a girl with no age, brown skin
and black hair, stained teeth partially broken on the front. As a young woman she had been a maid at
Buckingham Palace and had been sacked for his drinking or stealing; or perhaps because of an unwanted
pregnancy; her friends called her "Queen Mary" or simply
"Queen". With her I had more frequent contact, for she was fond of ice cream. I presented one cone to her, from time to
time. Afterwards I knew many of them. Each one with his own story.
Miss Rambling, an elderly paralyzed
lady who juggled with her wheelchair in London traffic, better than a gymkhana
champion, was the only to be strictly
abstemious.
The others guys and girls, including Mary,
were all heavy drinkers. They drank alcohol in place and more than any other
liquid drink, including water and milk. However, not everyone had reached the
terminal stage of alcoholism.
Max, for example, was sloping slowly
but inexorably on the verge of addiction. It was increasingly difficult for him
to "hook" in the Cafè Paris,
from which he portrayed his only source of income.
As a young man, as shown by some of
his youthful photos he proudly showed, he resembled Clark Gable and of his
original beauty only remained in his face a distant halo, distinguished by
black mustache, still well-groomed and thin, on a vaguely sensual lip. But when
he was in group with the tramps, with a
bristly beard on his reddish cheeks and crumpled clothes, he looked more like
the shadow of himself than that of the American celluloid myth he had looked
like in his youth.
Max had played at the races,
one by one, all the properties inherited from his family. He often talked to me
about horse racing and sometimes, in the transportation of his story, he said
with rage that he would succeed on redeeming at least one country house in Wales,
where he would finally retire for a quiet and sweet old age.
The others, for the most part, were
however much more battered and unkempt. Hair without care, black face, of that
black that only the road can give; always dirty and torn clothes; beltless trousers and laceless shoes, signs of their frequent go to and from
places of forced hospitalization, if not from the Royal English Prisons.
They always had the inevitable
bottle of liquor or wine in their hands or pockets, or, in the lean periods, a
concoction they called "sloppy drink", or more simply
"slop" of which I could never understand exactly which ingredients it
was made of.
"A Stuff" - Joe, an ex-boxer, once told
me, - "that when you drink it, it kills you
kindly".
16. to be continued...
