The blue southern sky was bedimmed by the dust rising from the haven;
the burning sun looked dully down into the greenish sea as if through a
thin grey veil. It could not reflect itself in the water, which indeed
was cut up by the strokes of oars and the furrows made by steam-screws
and the sharp keels of Turkish feluccas and other sailing vessels,
ploughing up in every direction the crowded harbour in which the free
billows of the sea were confined within fetters of granite and crushed
beneath the huge weights gliding over their crests, though they beat
against the sides of the ships, beat against the shore, beat themselves
into raging foam--foam begrimed by all sorts of floating rubbish.
The sound of the anchor chains, the clang of the couplings of the
trucks laden with heavy goods, the metallic wail of the iron plates
falling on the stone flagging, the dull thud of timber, the droning of
the carrier-wagons, the screaming of the sirens of the steamships, now
piercingly keen, now sinking to a dull roar, the cries of the porters,
sailors, and custom-house officers--all these sounds blended into the
deafening symphony of the laborious day, and vibrating restlessly,
remained stationary in the sky over the haven, as if fearing to mount
higher and disappear. And there ascended from the earth, continually,
fresh and ever fresh waves of sound--some dull and mysterious, and
these vibrated sullenly all around, others clangorous and piercing
which rent the dusty sultry air.
Granite, iron, the stone haven, the vessels and the people--everything
is uttering in mighty tones a madly passionate hymn to Mercury. But the
voices of the people, weak and overborne, are scarce audible therein.
And the people themselves to whom all this hubbub is primarily due,
are ridiculous and pitiful. Their little figures, dusty, strenuous,
wriggling into and out of sight, bent double beneath the burden of
heavy goods lying on their shoulders, beneath the burden of the labour
of dragging these loads hither and thither in clouds of dust, in a sea
of heat and racket--are so tiny and insignificant in comparison with
the iron colossi surrounding them, in comparison with the loads of
goods, the rumbling wagons, and all the other things which these same
little creatures have made! Their own handiwork has subjugated and
degraded them.
Standing by the quays, heavy giant steamships are now whistling, now
hissing, now deeply snorting, and in every sound given forth by them
there seems to be a note of ironical contempt for the grey, dusty
little figures of the people crowding about on the decks, and filling
the deep holds with the products of their slavish labour. Laughable
even to tears are the long strings of dockyard men, dragging after
them tens of thousands of pounds of bread and pitching them into the
iron bellies of the vessels in order to earn a few pounds of that very
same bread for their own stomachs--people, unfortunately, not made of
iron and feeling the pangs of hunger. These hustled, sweated crowds,
stupefied by weariness and by the racket and heat, and these powerful
machines, made by these selfsame people, basking, sleek and unruffled,
in the sunshine--machines which, in the first instance, are set in
motion not by steam, but by the muscles and blood of their makers--in
such a juxtaposition there was a whole epic of cold and cruel irony.
The din is overwhelming, the dust irritates the nostrils and blinds the
eyes, the heat burns and exhausts the body, and everything around--the
buildings, the people, the stone quays--seem to be on the stretch,
full-ripe, ready to burst, ready to lose all patience and explode in
some grandiose catastrophe, like a volcano, and thus one feels that
one would be able to breathe more easily and freely in the refreshened
air; one feels that then a stillness would reign upon the earth, and
this dusty din, benumbing and irritating the nerves to the verge of
melancholy mania, would vanish, and in the town, and on the sea, and
in the sky, everything would be calm, clear, and glorious. But it
only _seems_ so. One fancies it _must_ be so, because man has not yet
wearied of hoping for better things, and the wish to feel himself free
has not altogether died away within him.
Twelve measured and sonorous strokes of a bell resound. When the
last brazen note has died away the wild music of labour has already
diminished by at least a half. Another minute and it has passed into a
dull involuntary murmur. The voices of men and the splashing of the sea
have now become more audible. The dinner-hour has come.