Streets of Night

by John Dos Passos

A bar of light burned his eyes. Through musty darkness from beyond the foot of the bed a bar of light came whitely at him. Gradually other streaks arranged themselves at right angles to the light. It was the sun through a shutter beyond the foot of the bed. He had no pajamas on. His chest suddenly contracted with sickening agitation. There was a sound of breathing beside him. Very cautiously he slipped from between the sheets and groped about the room. His clothes were on a chair. He pulled them on anyhow and put his hand on the knob of the door. The gentle breathing from the bed was regular like a child's. Softly he turned the knob and opened the door. The shriek of the hinges was a knife in his ribs. He hurried through the parlor with its pink wallpaper and gold-framed mirrors that smelt of stale cigarette smoke and lipsticks. The door on to the stairs was open. He slunk down the winding staircase, straightening his necktie as he went. Then he found himself in an enclosed court. In the upper wall that glowed with dazzling sunlight were windows with balconies full of potted geraniums, red and pink, stirring like flame in the sun. The pavings of the court had just been washed and a cool wet stone smell came from them. Which way now? Two geese waddled past him, letting a little querulous quacking noise dribble from their bloodorange bills. Under an archway an old woman sat shelling peas into a saucepan. She looked up at him and said something he did not catch as he darted past her and out the street door. He walked slowly down the sloping street. In the doorways were brightly dressed children with dirty mouths and stringy, uncombed hair. The street was full of dust and flies; shouts and shrieked talk, and sounds of braying donkeys and rattling carts swarmed about his ears. In front of the theatre he hailed a cab that carried him with a quick jingle of harness through sunny, humming streets to his hotel. There he went to his room and ordered a bath.

It was ten o'clock. He dressed again carefully in clean clothes, breakfasted off coffee and rolls and honey, paid his bill, and had himself driven to the boat.

Once on board in his ample white stateroom with his baggage about him, a terrible lassitude came over him. He sat in his bunk staring up at the blue round of the porthole through which came a sound of derricks and a smell of pitch and a sunseared wind off the harbor.

The day he and Nan had sat together on the beach at Marblehead and listened to the waves hiss and rattle among the pebbles and thought how all the strength of Wenny, now that he was dead, might perhaps ... Poor Nan, if I'd had the nerve ...

He looked at his watch. Half past. At the same moment the ship's whistle started booming loud and throbbing. The noise tailed off into a harsh wail.

Tarred and feathered and drawn in a cart
By the women of Marblehead.

Wenny used to sing that. Poor kid, he'd had nerve enough. The time he and Wenny had walked at night down a street in Somerville where the rare arclights were pinkish blobs among the shuddering green fringes of elms and Wenny had wanted to pick up a girl. Stumpy girls with heavy jowls strolling in couples, swaying from the hips. It was mostly the ugliness ... Yohimbine.

Tina had been pretty in her pink dress.

And now I'm going back. Venetian Art and Culture in the Eighteenth Century. The afterglow of the Renaissance. In a vermilion barge, lost ... in the Charles, Wenny had said.

And Nan had understood; she had never been surprised at Wenny's killing himself. Perhaps they'd had secrets, things in common, the two of them, that he had never known.