Character guide

Effie

major

Effie survives at the edge of starvation, married to a feckless man she calls the creeper, who borrows shillings and invites acquaintances to tea he cannot provide. When he proposes pawning the baby's only dress, she refuses — the one line she will not cross — and instead walks the surging London streets with the child, crushing back tears. Her mute endurance draws the notice of a dark Italian visitor whose serious eyes measure her, pulling her unwittingly toward the world of anarchist protest and the tortured prisoners of Montjuich.

Bernard

supporting

Bernard is the youth who proposes a communal farm and presses his love on a woman who calls herself too old to learn and mend her mistakes. She tells him plainly that what he loves is her energy, her life, and that when her feet stop springing he will want dancing feet beside him; he retorts that he knows his own mind. Their exchange unfolds against a road where radiant girls and racing young men pass by, sharpening the ache of the years between them and the question of whether devotion can outlast the body's fading.

Bella

supporting

Bella remains after the man who measured the window and set the geranium on the sill plunged to the stone below — the kind, hard stone that was merciful. She sits in summer on the step, her seeing blindness fixed on what she cannot understand, sometimes kissed by a skull-like face that loves only the Doll, the one thing that does not shun her. Stranger hands, professional and sterilized, do their kindly duty, but no living breast enfolds her; her soul freezes while her body rots, the sin of the father visited upon the child.

David

supporting

Also known as Davy

David is the youth whose face and soul the older woman confesses she loves, and whose passion she receives with a mixture of gladness and dry foreknowledge. He bends to kiss her feet and is checked — too much like self-abasement, she says — and then told that the time will come when he wishes he had saved that kiss for someone to whom it would all be new. His white, quivering face and buried hands register the wound of being loved for his beauty by a woman who cannot believe she is loved at all.

The Old Shoemaker

major

The Old Shoemaker sits in his alley over a teacup when the Mighty One comes walking over the sun-beaten bricks, taking no note of the others, entering without asking. He shows no surprise, sets down the cup, and enters into communion with the Stranger, while the infinite dignity of the Unknown covers his wasted limbs and wizened face. Those who witness it understand without words that they have stood at the foot of Tabor and seen a worn soul pass upward smiling, its crust crumbled away — they have been in the presence of Freedom.

Mrs. Bossert

supporting

Mrs. Bossert sits sunken in a chair while the narrator watches the gray vacancy move inward toward the last dull red point of fire in her eyes, and hears her shudder with an inhuman whine: 'Alone.' Behind her gathers the midnight specter with royal, malignant eyes — the Monarch of human ruins, the murderous Bridegroom of widowed souls, King Alcohol. The narrator mutters that it is as well that way as another, leaves the money on the table, and goes out into the wild rain where the wind whines the same word through the lashing, leafless trees.

M.

minor

A mysterious or initialed character appearing in the narrative.

Angiolillo

major

Angiolillo moves through the story as a figure of historical weight and intimate tenderness, measuring the room one last time before he plunges to the kind, hard stone below. What survives him is the child, locked in a narrowing circle of strangers' sterilized hands, her soul freezing while her body rots. His act and its aftermath force the narrative to ask where justice lives when the innocent inherit the father's sin.

Albert

minor

A named character with limited but distinct appearances.

Nathaniel

minor

A named character with multiple proper mentions.

Mr. C.

minor

Also known as C.

An initialed character appearing in the narrative.