At first Rudolph was popular in this hell of the underworld. He
spent money easily, he danced well, he had audacity and a sort of
sardonic humor. They asked no questions, those poor wretches who
had themselves slid over the edge of life. They took what came,
grateful for little pleasures, glad even to talk their own tongue.
And then, one broiling August day, late in the afternoon, when the
compound was usually seething with the first fetid life of the day,
Rudolph found it suddenly silent when he entered it, and hostile,
contemptuous eyes on him.
A girl with Anna Klein's eyes, a girl he had begun to fancy,
suddenly said,
"Draft-dodger!"
There was a ripple of laughter around the compound. They commenced
to bait him, those women he would not have wiped his feet on at home.
They literally laughed him out of the compound.
He went home to his stifling, windowless adobe room, with its
sagging narrow bed, its candle, its broken crockery, and he stood
in the center of the room and chewed his nails with fury.
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