William Faulkner, SANCTUARY – WordPress.com - literature save 2

upon the ceiling. Beneath the window he could hear a voice, a woman's, then a man's:
they blended, murmured; a door closed. Someone came up the stairs in swishing
garments, on the swift hard heels of a woman.
He began to hear sounds in the house: voices, laughter; a mechanical piano began
to play. "Hear them?" he whispered.
"She's got a big family, I reckon," Virgil said, his voice already dull with sleep.
"Family, hell," Fonzo said. "It's a party. Wish I was to it."
On the third day as they were leaving the house in the morning, Miss Reba met
them at the door. She wanted to use their room in the afternoons while they were absent.
There was to be a detectives' convention in town and business would look up some, she
said. "Your things'll be all right. I'll have Minnie lock everything up beforehand. Aint
nobody going to steal nothing from you in my house."
"What business you reckon she's in?" Fonzo said when they reached the street.
"Dont know," Virgil said.
"Wish I worked for her, anyway," Fonzo said. "With all them women in kimonos
and such running around."
"Wouldn't do you no good," Virgil said. "They're all married. Aint you heard
them?"
The next afternoon when they returned from the school they found a woman's
undergarment under the washstand . . . Fonzo picked it up. "She's a dress-maker," he said.
"Reckon so," Virgil said. "Look and see if they taken anything of yourn."
The house appeared to be filled with people who did not sleep at night at all. They
could hear them at all hours, running up and down the stairs, and always Fonzo would be
conscious of women, of female flesh. It got to where he seemed to lie in his celibate bed
surrounded by women, and he would lie beside the steadily snoring Virgil, his ears
strained for the murmurs, the whispers of silk that came through the walls and the floor,
that seemed to be as much a part of both as the planks and the plaster, thinking that he
had been in Memphis ten days, yet the extent of his acquaintance was a few of his fellow
pupils at the school. After Virgil was asleep he would rise and unlock the door and leave
it ajar, but nothing happened.
On the twelfth day he told Virgil they were going visiting, with one of the barberstudents.
"Where?" Virgil said.
"That's all right. You come on. I done found out something. And when I think I
been here two weeks without knowing about it-"
"What's it going to cost?" Virgil said.
"When'd you ever have any fun for nothing?" Fonzo said. "Come on."
"I'll go," Virgil said. "But I aint going to promise to spend nothing."
"You wait and say that when we get there," Fonzo said.
The barber took them to a brothel. When they came out Fonzo said, "And to think
I been here two weeks without ever knowing about that house."
"I wisht you hadn't never learned," Virgil said. "It cost three dollars."
"Wasn't it worth it?" Fonzo said.
"Aint nothing worth three dollars you caint tote off with you," Virgil said.