Streets of Night

by John Dos Passos

"I believe she came of a good family in reduced circumstances; that's all there is about it."

"Well, Fitzie, I'm going home. If I don't see you again before you go, here's wishing you all the luck in the world." Nan leant and kissed Fitzie on the cheek.

"You will write, won't you, dearie? I'll let you know the addresses."

"Of course, I will."

Nan walked fast down a cross street. What a relief to be alone. Shouldn't have left Fitzie so abruptly, but couldn't stand her chatter a moment longer. Silly to be so upset; what am I so upset about anyway? My nerves are jumpy as the dickens this winter. In a cold fury of dismay she walked home through the yellow twilight, her chin pressed into her fur neckpiece as she leaned against the wind that blew razorkeen down the long street that led to the Fenway and made her ears sting and her forehead ache. Muffled by closed windows, shattered by the gusty wind, there came to her from the houses on either hand wail and tinkle of music students doing their scales on piano and violin, growls of cellos, trilling of dramatic sopranos. Street of scales; they expect to climb into life up their scales like up ladders. She remembered savagely she hadn't practiced that day. And that Worthington girl, did she ever practice, did she work and contrive to get on, or was everything as easy to her as the bellboy's frightened blush under her smile? And this husband she had picked up, what could he be like? A short loud man in a checked suit probably, with a bulging red vest and a brown derby. I'm glad I didn't see him, men like that are too disgusting.

She dug her chin into her fur and battled furiously with the wind. If it'ld only snow it wouldn't be so cold. At length the letters spelling out The Swansea were dark against the light ahead of her, she was in the elevator, the key was clicking softly in the lock of her door. The homelike smell was soothing to her nostrils. Thank heavens, I left the heat on. Before taking off her hat and gloves she stood a moment in the window, her hands over the steampipes. The sky, beyond the hardetched tangle of branches of the Fenway and the purple cubes of the further apartment houses, was a wide empty yellow, chilling to green overhead. Nan felt its bitter emptiness like a rasp on a half-healed wound. With wincing lips she pulled down the shade and turned her back on the window.

That night she dreamed that she sat in the great yellowshot beehive of the Boston theatre and that Fanshaw sat on one side of her and Wenny on the other, both in evening dress, and she was a little girl in spotted calico with her hair in pigtails and on the stage was the orchestra of the Fadettes playing like mad and in front of them Mabel Worthington with her mouth open and her head thrown back and a sheet of music agitated in front of her and Nan kept turning to Wenny and to Fanshaw and saying: I can't hear a word, not a single word. Suddenly Wenny had slipped from her side and was in a taxi with his arms round the Worthington girl, kissing her, kissing her, and Nan was in another taxi driven by a young man with a red face and a diamond horseshoe in his tie and they were hurtling through red-flaring streets under a black sky, streets lined with faces staring and hands pointing and to all Nan's crying to them to tell her where he had gone there was no answer but hissing and stamping and catcalls.

Nan sat up in bed rubbing her forehead trying to remember what she had been dreaming. The glow of the street-light in her window was full of furtive padded movement. Snow.

* * * *

Nan closed the front door gently behind them.