Broken Necks/Black Umbrellas

Little people hurry along in the dark street, their heads tucked away under black umbrellas that float jerkily like expiring balloons. Over them are the great buildings and the rain.

The day is darkened and the city is without faces. A symmetrical stream of little black arcs stretches from the distance to foreground as if emerging from a tunnel. The little people drift with precision through the wash of the rain, bundled together by the great buildings and the sacred puerilities. The tops of their umbrellas run like waves, clinging to each other, eddying blindly at the crossings and careening on again with precision.

All day long the umbrellas have been moving their black and endless little current through the rain—a monotone of precisions, an unvarying symbol of the unvarying. Beneath them the dresses of women stretch themselves into thin triangles and the trousers of men reach in unchanging diagonals for the pavement.

The little people clothed themselves in the morning with much care and there was a stir in the bedrooms of the city, a standing before mirrors and a determination to have, some day, more captivating pieces of cloth to hide themselves in. Now the little triangles and diagonals make a swarm of patterns identical as the rain, and, like the rain, the little people are pouring out of yesterday into tomorrow.

Life with its head hidden in an umbrella—little people with bits of black cloth giving half outline to the impenetrable cells they exchange at death for wooden boxes—the rain drums and chatters about them and the day, like a dark mirror, ignores them. The great buildings, magnificent grandfathers of the little black-arched umbrellas, stand dutifully excluding the rain. Electric lights already spray their circles of yellow mist upon the air. The stunted little sky of the city—the corridor of trade and restaurant signs that almost brushes the tops of the black umbrellas—is prematurely ablaze. A checkerboard flight of windows gleams out of the spatula-topped skyscrapers. The eyes of people wandering beyond the dripping webs of umbrellas catch sudden glimpses through the yellow spaces of the checker- board of little puppet worlds inhabited by parts of furniture and unexpected faces.

Thus the city looks and moves under an umbrella in the street. I move with it, an old dream like a fawning beggar at my elbow. It is the dream of the urge of life. It follows me with the eyes of dead years. I have already given to this dream too many alms. Yet it fawns for more. Sorrowful dream of the urge of life, insatiable mendicant at my elbow, its lips cajole, but its eyes, deep and empty as a skull’s, stare with many deaths. We walk on and the rain carries a whimpering into my heart—the whimpering of an old dream asking alms.

I invent names for the half-hidden faces and give meanings to them. Adjectives are an antidote for the companion at my elbow, and perhaps some day, wearied of listening to them, he will abandon me.

There is a kinship among the black umbrellas bumping and scraping at each other. I observe this. And yet, beneath them there are only solitudes. The trousers of men and skirts of women move in solitude—precise little solitudes as identical as the black umbrellas and the rain.

Walking before me under an umbrella is a young woman. Her face, hidden from the rain, is that of a rouged nun, as are the faces of the young women of the city who mask their vacuity with roses. She has been hurrying, but now she moves more slowly. I invent a name for her and a meaning. She is unaware of this, for it is the common fancy of little people swarming in streets that their solitudes are impenetrable. Within them they move, brazenly giving themselves to the outrageous underworlds of thought.

So the young woman walks before me in the street, locked in her little depths, surrounded by the secret names and images of her yesterdays and tomorrows. I walk, following at her elbow as an old dream like a fawning beggar follows at mine. For it has occurred to me that the young woman is peering out of her solitude. She has become aware of the halloo of the rain as if it had just started.

It is obvious that she has been moving, aimlessly preoccupied, through the downpour, her words following lazily upon the pretty tracks of memory. And then the words suddenly jumbled and the pretty tracks became a circle ina void. It is this that makes hurrying little people abruptly slow their step and look up from the ground—as if to recover something.

The young woman, deserted by her solitude, looked quickly about her and perceived only the solitudes of others which, though identical, are always meaningless. I observe and understand. She has for the moment escaped from a cell, a pleasing enough cell of remembered and expected destinations, to find herself free in a world of cells. Umbrellas run by her. Legs and arms thrust themselves senselessly about her. It is a matter of little enough importance—a young woman standing bewildered in the rain. Yet I remain at her elbow. There is in her bewilderment opportunity for the employment of adjectives.

Something has amazed her. In her unoccupied brain the little world darting about under her eyes reflects itself as an unoccupied world; an unoccupied world stripped of destinations. In the umbrellas alone there seems a startling kinship and an even more startling superiority of purpose. They, perhaps, have meanings, but the little people under them have none. Their destinations have deserted them and they are moving with an incongruous hurry, having neither beginnings nor endings.

For moments the young woman stares. I do not know her thought, but I know that a lonesomeness has fastened upon her, that having lost her solitude she has lost the oblivious kinship of people in crowds. The intricate little furniture of life, her minutie of preoccupation, have vanished from her as if a light that was shining on them had been shut off. So for—this instant during which I have been observing her she is free of the world and there is in her the terrible premonition—for the world beats remorselessly on without her. The black umbrellas float jerkily like expiring balloons. The long V-shaped stretch of people crawls with continuous patience out of distance into distance. "Nowhere, nowhere," chatters the rain, and in the mouth of the young woman life lies suddenly tasteless. An old dream like a fawning beggar is at her elbow—the dream of the urge of life that but a moment ago was the reality of realities.

We walk on and the young woman, surrounded by an unaccountable emptiness, listens with foreign ears to the rain and with scrutinizing eyes regards the fantastic rim of her umbrella. The contours and noises of life seem not like the contours and noises of life, but like haphazard lines and sounds without content. I employ my adjectives and she, lost in a curious despair, feels the pain, the nostalgia for the unknown, slowly distend her breasts and sink thin-edged into the depths of her body. As she tries to think, little fears burst excitedly in warm clouds in her throat; keen mists lacerate and darken the little channels of her senses. Then words form themselves, and she is saying:

"I want something. Something."

The rain drums and chatters about us. The tides of umbrellas careen with precision along the base of the great buildings and the lights of the city, like bits of vivid pasteboard, drift over us in the downpour. The echo of the cry that rises from all endings burns in my heart. Cry of the dead, passionless fever of the emptied senses reaching for life beyond contours, I listen to the echo of its murmur in a city street and stare into a tangle of trousers and skirts. Life is a crafty beggar, masking its dead eyes with new darknesses.

Despair with thin fingers caresses the heart of the young woman and her senses sweep furtively the horizon of her little world and she searches in vain for the face of her longing. "Nowhere, nowhere," chatters the rain. The great buildings and the little black umbrellas say a nowhere and the long crowd in the street—the long crowd in the street runs away.

I know the thought of the young woman. It has hurried hopefully to the man from whose arms she has come. She images again the delicious, thrilling hour of his talk and caresses. But as she thinks of them quickly, frightenedly, they become a part of the puppet worlds that lie within lights shining out of building windows.

We walk on and the young woman stares into the dark mirror of the rain whose odors and lines give fugitive forms to the mystery of space. Under her umbrella the rouge of her cheeks, like a mask, slips away and her face is white. There is a whiteness in her heart, the gathering of fear of one who waits for unexpected things. The echo of the words of longing swims sickeningly in her body. From the underworld of her thought demoniac impulses raise a dizzying babble. Inanimate, they burst into wild flight and yet leave her motionless. The words of her longing have gone into her fingers and I watched her closed hand shiver; into her legs that plunge with violence beneath her skirt. She feels them almost coming to life in her breasts. So she is walking swiftly again, flying from an emptiness.

We walk on until the block is ended and the young woman pauses to smile expectantly into a shop window. She breathes deeply and moves her umbrella aside so that the rain may wet her face. I know of what she is thinking. There is a curious sense of guilt— the confused shame of little people who turn their backs for a moment upon life as upon a beggar, and for a moment give words to the cry that rises from all endings.

The young woman, penitent and again alive, whispers to herself it was the man from whose arms she has come. For there was no other something. Is not love one of the finalities? So her thoughts are again with him. Again he talks and caresses and there comes to her the glow, the keen yearning for satiety —for some completion—that she calls by the name of love.

There was nothing else she wanted. The rain made her dizzy. And yet the memory of the terror and elation that for an instant, beneath the black umbrellas, created a vacuum of her solitude clings to her like the ghost of a mysterious infidelity.

Away from the shop and it, too, is gone. The little black-arched umbrellas swarm about us as if trying to fly over each other. Under them are the faces of people safely and intelligently locked in little solitudes. The rain drums and chatters about them, dropping walls from their umbrellas and burying them deeper in their secret destinations. To the young woman the thing in the street is again explicable. It requires neither words nor thought. It is rain and people, buildings and umbrellas, ights and a shining pavement, and out of it rises the swift urge of life.

We walk on and her hand touches mine. Her fingers close prettily over it. We talk and her words are eager. She has been thinking of me, she says, and her eyes lie avidly. She struggles against a confidence, wondering what there is to tell. It blurts forth then adroitly in a laugh, a laugh that belongs to the orchestra of sweet sounds.

I am so happy, she says. I am so happy. The joy of return has made her buoyant, return into her solitude with its familiar little furniture, among which I stand, a decoration of the moment. She has forgotten the beggar who fawned in the rain at her elbow and things are explicable, things are clear, and have names and swing vividly through the dark day.

We walk on, hands together, and an old dream whimpers in my heart.