They crossed more streets, dodged more cars, bumped into more and more people and, finally, they came to Times Square.
At Forty-second Street they stopped and Carla looked at the lights for a long time.
It seemed as if all the commercialism in the world had decided to concentrate itself in one place, as if by blazing colored lights and moving signs it could justify itself.
At one end of the square a giant sign exploded colors, advertising cigarettes. Another cigarette advertisement had a man puffing smoke; it was most realistic because real smoke or something like smoke came out of his mouth. Soft drinks and chewing gum and cigarettes—all the small things—were displayed in the most magnificent manner. There was an almost religious appeal in the brightness of the lights, the cathedral-like splendor of the signs which supported countless colored bulbs of light: everything was so large, so magnificent, so desperately appealing.
“Such wonderful strength,” murmured Carla, “so much misguided energy.”
“It’s very nice to look at,” said Robert Holton, speaking self-consciously for America.
They stood pressed against a building while hundreds of people pushed by them in a thick stream. Carla studied the lights, mesmerized by their colors: red passionate ones and guttering greens, blue and yellow glowing, and moving figures; they even had the lights turn on and off in such a fashion that silhouetted men appeared to dance and animated animals had adventures. The lights were most splendid and nowhere in the world was so much grandeur hung against the sky. Carla watched the lights.
Yellow taxicabs clattered by them and everyone moved quickly. Everyone had at least a destination and that was a hopeful sign. She didn’t care to think what their destinations might be.
She looked at the buildings and saw that they were not tall. They looked like buildings in Paris or London. Squat and dirty and rather Victorian: the buildings were most ordinary but there was so much light over them, against them, all around them that they became as insubstantial as theater props.
The movie houses which filled the lower parts of most of the buildings of the square had the most light. Their marquees rippled and glittered with names. Large posters were hung wherever there was no electricity. People moved in constant streams into the movies, while other people, as constantly, came out, blinking their eyes, adjusting themselves to reality.