On a day like this, he says, on a day like this, when the wind plays cello
music across the rooftops.... I think about things. The town is like a
fireless, dimly lighted room. Yesterday the windows sparkled with
sunlight. To-day they stare like little coffin tops.
On a day like this, he says, on this sort of a day I walk along smoking a
pipe and wonder what I was excited about yesterday. Then I remember, he
says, that once it rained yesterday and I waited under the awning till it
ended. I remember, he says, that once I walked swiftly down this street
toward a building on the corner. It was vastly important that I reach this
building. I remember, he says, that there were days I hurried down Clark
Street and days I ran down Monroe Street. Now it is windy again. There is
long silence over the noises of the street. The sky looks empty and old.
* * * * *
There were people gathered around an automobile that had bumped into the
curbing. I stopped to watch them, he says. There was a man next to me with
a heavy gray face, with loose lips and with intent eyes. There was another
man and another--dozens of men--all of them people who had been hurrying
in the street to get somewhere. And here they were standing and looking
intently at an automobile with a twisted wheel.
I became aware that we were all looking with a strange intensity at this
automobile; that we all stood as if waiting for something. Dozens of men
hurrying somewhere suddenly stop and stand for ten, twenty, thirty minutes
staring at a broken automobile. There was a reason for this. Always where
there is a machine at work, digging or hammering piles, where there is a
horse fallen, an auto crashed, a flapjack turner, a fountain pen
demonstrator; where there is a magic clock that runs, nobody knows how, or
a window puzzle that turns in a drug-store window or anything that moves
behind plate glass--always where there is any one of these things there
are people like us standing riveted, attentive, unwavering.
People on artificial errands, hurrying like obedient automations through
the streets; stern-faced people with dignified eyes, important-stepping
people with grave decision stamped upon them; careless, innocuous-looking
people--all these people look as if they had something in their heads, as
if there were things of import driving them through the streets. But this
is an error. Nothing in their heads. They are like the fish that swim
beneath the water--a piece of shining tin captures their eyes and they
pause and stare at it.
The broken automobile holds their eyes, holds them all riveted
because--because it is something unordinary to look at, to think about.
And there is nothing unordinary to look at or think about in their heads.
* * * * *
And I too, he says, on this day when the wind played cello music across
the rooftops, stood in the crowd. We were all children, I noticed, more
than that--infants. Open-mouthed infantile wonder staring out of our
tired, gray faces. Men, without thought, men making a curious little
confession in the busy street that they were not busy, that there is
nothing in life at the moment that preoccupies them--that a broken
automobile is a godsend, a diversion, a drama, a great happiness.
I smoked my pipe, he says, and began to wonder again. Why did they stare
like this? And at what? And who were these staring ones? And what was it
in them that stared? I thought of this, he says. Dead dreams, and
forgotten defeats stood staring from the curb at the broken automobile.
Men who had survived themselves, who had become compliant and automatic
little forces in the engine of the city--these were ourselves on the curb.
And this is a weary thing to remember about the city. When I am tired, he
says, and the plot of which I am hero, villain and Greek chorus suddenly
vanish from my mind, I pause and look at something behind plate glass. A
bauble catches my eye. Long minutes, half hours pass. There is a marvelous
plentitude of baubles to look at. Machines digging, excavations,
scaffoldings, advertisements, never are lacking.
And at such times I begin to notice how many of us there are. The hurry of
the streets is an illusion. The noises that rise in clouds, and the
too-many suits of clothes and hats that sweep by--all these things are
part of an illusion. The fact drifts through my tired senses that there is
an amazing silence in the street--the silence inside of people's heads.
Everywhere I look I find these busy ones, these energetic ones stopped and
standing like myself before a bauble in a window, before a broken
automobile.
* * * * *
Of people, authors always make great plots. Authors always write of
adventures and intrigues, of emotions and troubles and ideas which occupy
people. People fall in love, people suffer defeats, people experience
tragedies, happinesses, and there is no end to the action of people in
books.
But here is a curious plot, he says, on a day like this. Here is a crowd
around a broken automobile. The broken automobile has trapped them,
betrayed them. They realize the broken automobile as a "practical" excuse
to stop walking, to stop moving, to stop going anywhere or being anybody.
Their serious concentration on the broken wheel enables them to pretend
that they are logically interested in practical matters. Without which
pretense it would be impossible for them to exist. Without which pretense
they would become consciously dead. They must always seem, to themselves
as well as to others, logically interested in something. Yes, always
something.
But the plot is--and do not misunderstand this, he cautions--that the
pretense here around the broken automobile grows shallow enough to plumb.
There is nothing here. Two dozen men standing dead on a curbing, tricked
into confessional by a little accident.
So I will begin a book tomorrow, he says, and empties his pipe as he
talks, which will have to do with the make-believe of people in
streets--the make-believe of being alive and being somebody and going
somewhere.
And saying this, this garrulous one walks off with a high whistle on his
lips and a grave triumph sitting on his shoulders.