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By Root 638 0

unwrapped from the night, palely lighted at the yellow horizon, cut into light strips by the black scissors of cawing crows. I feel: this is life. Everyone is stuck within himself, within the day to which he wakes up, the hour which belongs to him, or the moment. Somewhere in the semidarkness of a kitchen coffee is brewing, the cook is not there, the dirty glare of a flame dances on the floor. Time deceived by silence flows backward for a while, retreats, and in these uncounted moments night returns and swells the undulating fur of a cat. Kathy from the first floor yawns and stretches languorously for long minutes before she opens the windows and starts sweeping and dusting. The night air, saturated with sleep and snoring, lazily wafts toward the window, gets out, and slowly enters the dun and smoky grayness of the day. Kathy dips her hands reluctantly into the dough of bedding, warm and sour from sleep. At last, with a shiver, with eyes full of night, she shakes from the window a large, heavy feather bed, and scatters over the city particles of feathers, stars of down, the lazy seed of night dreams.

At such a time I would dream of being a baker who delivers bread, a fitter from the electric company, or an insurance man collecting the weekly installments. Or at least a chimney sweep. In the morning, at dawn, I would enter some half-opened gateway, still lighted by the watchman's lantern. I would put two fingers to my hat, crack a joke, and enter the labyrinth to leave late in the evening, at the other end of the city. I would spend all day going from apartment to apartment, conducting one never-ending conversation from one end of the city to the other, divided into parts among the householders; I would ask something in one apartment and receive a reply in another, make a joke in one place and collect the fruits of laughter in the third or fourth. Among the banging of doors I would squeeze through narrow passages, through bedrooms full of furniture, I would upset chamberpots, walk into squeaking perambulators in which babies cry, pick up rattles dropped by infants. I would stop for longer than necessary in kitchens and hallways, where servant girls were tidying up. The girls, busy, would stretch their young legs, tauten their high insteps, play with their cheap shining shoes, or clack around in loose slippers.

Such are my dreams during the irresponsible, extramarginal hours. I don't deny them, although I see their lack of sense. Everybody should be aware of his condition and know how to accept it.

For us, old-age pensioners, fall is on the whole a dangerous season.

He who knows how difficult it is for us to achieve any stability at all, how difficult it is to avoid distraction or destruction by one's own hand, will understand that fall, its winds, disturbances, and atmospheric confusions do not favor our existence, which is precarious anyway.

There are, however, some days during fall that are calm, contemplative, and kind to us. Days sometimes occur without sun, but warm, misty, and amber-colored on their edges. In the gap between the houses, a view suddenly opens on a stretch of sky moving low, ever lower, toward the last windswept yellowness of the distant horizon. The perspectives opening into the depth of day seem like the archives of the calendar, the cross-section of days, the endless files of time, floating in tiers into a bright eternity. The tiers order themselves in the fawn sky, while the present moment remains in the foreground and only a few people ever lift their eyes to the distant shelves of this illusory calendar. Eyes on the ground, everybody rushes somewhere, impatiently avoiding others; the street is cut by the invisible paths of these comings and goings, meetings and avoidings. But in the gap between the houses, where one can see the lower part of the city and its whole architectural panorama, lighted from the back by a streak of sun, there is a gap in the hubbub. On a small square, wood is being cut for the city school. Cords of healthy, crisp timber are piled high and melt slowly, one log after