Streets of Night

by John Dos Passos

There was a dark scattering of people through the beehive-shaped yellowshot emptiness of the Boston Theatre. On the stage in white dresses against red draperies the ladies' orchestra played the overture to Light Cavalry, violin bows sawing in unison, cheeks puffed out at trumpets, drumsticks dancing. In front stood the conductress in a neat tailored suit waving her arms discreetly. Nan sat in on the aisle with her little black hat topping some packages on the seat beside her, looking at the conductress's white gloves, thinking bitterly of suffragettes setting bombs under Asquith in London while the shiny glib marchtime of the music made her remember Balaklava and her spine going cold as she read: Into the valley of death charged the six hundred. How was it things she read never thrilled her now like that? Rights for Women ought to excite her as much as that silly antiquated poem. The music had stopped; two women in front of her were talking about the cretons at Jordan Marsh's. Let's see, had she bought the lace for the V, the ruching Miss Spence wanted, that blue crepe de chine, the buttons? She'd make sure on her list anyway after she'd picked up Fitzie. Fine it would be, if Miss Spence could finish it in time for Aunt M.'s tomorrow night. All those old people put her on her mettle; they'd think the brightness of it daring, bleared eyes watching her as she stood straight in tight royal blue, a gleam of red caught into her hair out of the violin. She had to affirm her separateness from poor dear Aunt M. and her friends. The orchestra was playing selections from The Tales of Hoffman which set Nan remembering being in Paris with Gertrude Fagan, the smell of tea and pastry through the foggy tang of the air on the rue Cambon, shopping, jumping in and out of cabs with silky things in tissue paper packages, hotel François Choiseuil and the two of them giggling together in the evening beside a pink shade over sole with wine sauce. If it had been Wenny in Gertrude's place; the thought set her blood seething. But I have you, my love: the word fluttered in her throat. She moistened her dry lips with her tongue. The music had stopped.

Nan looked about her restlessly. On the stage she could see Fitzie among the violins, next to a tall redhaired girl. That was where the other girl, Mabel something, used to stand last year, the girl who ran away with the flushfaced boy Fitzie told about, with bright teeth, the Italian who looked like a young Greek god, like Wenny perhaps. And he was dead. In all these months she should have got used to his being dead, but still when she thought of him she had to tell herself quickly he was dead, to escape the horrible pain of thinking of him, wishing him alive. Or did that all mean there was no death, that he was utterly surrendered to her. Fitzie 'ld say that, poor lonely Fitzie. Dull program it was this afternoon; a dismal ending for all that work and hysterical eagerness up at the conservatory, a lady 'celloist in the Fadettes.

Nan began to listen to the music again. They were playing the march from The Twilight of the Gods over-solemnly. The conductress brought down her baton for the last time. People got to their feet. The lights went on. Nan was adjusting her hat with two hatpins in her mouth. Had she got all her packages? She walked out slowly into the crimson sunset light of Washington Street, and round through a cold swirl of dustladen wind to the stage door. The women of the orchestra were coming out, short women in highcollared shirtwaists, a tall girl with high cheekbones and yellow hair, two stout women with glasses both rippling with the same laughter, the harpist, a consumptive-looking girl with white, drooping face and blue rings under her eyes; then Fitzie walking with jerky little steps, pigeonbreasted.

"O Nancibel, how sweet of you to wait... I'd just decided you wouldn't."

"Why should you think that?"

"O I don't know. I guess I must think sometimes that you're a little upstage, dear; simply horrid of me and I don't mean it a bit. Maybe it's that anybody who didn't know you would feel that you were a little, just the weenciest bit."

"I don't think I am, Fitzie."

They were drifting up the street in a compact stream of people like on a moving platform. Nan looked from face to face that passed her in a chilly flutter of expectation. She knew that before long she would see a man she would think was Wenny. What was this tremor that went through the procession of faces at sunset time, browned them, put blood in their lips, sparkle in their eyes, so that suddenly, as if dolls should come to life she would feel that she was going to meet Wenny. Dreading the pain of it, she tried to forget herself in Fitzie's shrill gossip of how the harpist had sauced the conductress and would have been fired except that she was such a good player and she'd only had to apologize and everybody had been in a dreadful temper and they'd played the Götterdämmerung piece much too slowly. So they reached Park Street.

"Fitzie, suppose we have tea at my place. D'you mind? I want to get there before Miss Spence goes away."

"It'll be charming, and is the dress finished, the blue satin? You will let me see it, won't you? I so love looking at lovely dresses the way I liked fairy tales when I was little. Even if I can't have them ..."