Joseph Hergesheimer

“ The last traces of stolidity, of calculated caution, vanish magically from the men; they are freed from the hypocrisy, the material baseness, from the gaol that custom, that lies, that the struggle, pitiless, inhuman, for the cold counters of civilization, the empty symbols of success, have built about their hearts. For a moment youth, the youth of the world, of men, so soon slain on doubtful altars, stirs faintly, glows with a reflection of vanished warmth—an, anodyne from the dead past to the dead future. ”

“ Slowly, inexorably, all fade, all disappear, are lost: the sands are as blank as they were a thousand, thousand years ago, as they will be when a thousand, thousand, thousand years have fallen into the termless fog that absorbs all effort, all time. ”

“ The fog drifts in and envelops the women; it veils them in a cold filament that cloaks their lustre, it blackens their lips, strews ashes on their vague countenances.
It wraps its chill about the men, extinguishing the fire of their blood, of their life. Slowly it blots out their edifices; the hotels vanish, the lighted cafés dwindle into an utter gray waste. ”

“ The men are opulent, flushed from the festival of the senses; they look masterfully at the gleaming lights, at the great hotels, the blazing cafés; at the material splendor that is the evidence of their success, of their importance, their domination. They look masterfully at the women, hung with barbaric ornaments, laced into provocative forms. The blinding spectacle of light, of living, of illimitable riches, seems to fill the earth, the sky ... ”

“ Onto the luminous expanse the passing hour pours a horde of humanity, clad scantily, informally, for bathing—the men in gaudy jerseys; the older women in black, baglike garments; the younger with figures exposed, their legs thrust forward, their naked arms raised to their hair. ”

“ She advances to the edge of the platform, and, with a sudden stamp of her foot, to the beat of piano and violin, bursts into a song, a song with a provoking, delayed tempo, now explosive, now pensive, melodious. She abandons herself to the music, she is utterly free, utterly pagan ”

“ Hundreds of girls, gay in ribbands, in a momentary whiteness, eddy like butterflies over the sordid human stream, shining for a second on the streaked surface, fluttering for a moment in the sun—for a moment only, before they sink bedraggled, drowned. The voices of the girls rise thin and hysterical, staccato giggling mingles with the husky pleasantries of social youths; the merciless voices of the girls deride the makeshift hats, skirts, about them—they dissect their sisters' souls for the amusement of casual young men. ”

“ Their fingers, the busy fingers of the idle women, the nails pointed and enamelled with vermilion, sparkle with platinum and prismatic stones.
Their sparkling fingers pass and repass over the squares of linen that form their task, their occupation, that absorb their energy, their time. They embroider the minutes, the hours and days, into the useless web in their busy hands; they embroider their inutile lives into the empty designs, link their vacuous imaginings in the stitches of the wasted threads. ”

“ Furtive boys, with cunning eyes and soft, pale palms, flexuously thread the mob; mechanics, stupid, patient, their heavy shoulders bent under a hopeless burden of toil, pass with dragging feet; predatory women, bloodless as mummies, ladened with mephitic perfume, smile their sterile invitation; old men struggle impotently in the torrent, their senile faces working piteously, uttering quavering cries. ”

“ The men, bare to the pitiless light, white like bone, clasp calloused hands about their stringy knees; their feet are atrophied from misshapen shoes; their bodies cramped, shrunken, from garments rigid, unnatural, grotesque. Their bodies are scorified by the poisoned vapors of dye vats, from the deathheat of furnaces, the fumes of lead and sulphur; their bodies are bleached, sapped, from lives fed into machines in rooms closed like boxes. ”

“ Flat-breasted women, calico clad, herd children in voices that eat like acid through the tumult, fretfully admonish spindling babies that wail persistently with blue and bubbling lips. The men, coat over arm, their vivid-colored shirts sticking wetly to their bodies, laugh harshly, laugh knowingly with obscene intent, nudging each other, winking leaden lids. ”

“ They gather in council, conversing in half whispers sharp as steel, in words that burn whereon they fall like deathly acids; they nod their heads in corrosive malice, they nod the cold, dyed birds, the gilded straw. ”

“ They rub their over-ripe cheeks with carmine, their eyes glitter from amid purple pencillings; they dabble odorous ointment on their dry lips. A miasmic perfume swims from the idle women into the streaming sun. ”

“ The men drink ceaselessly, served by a legion of waiters that converge in a sombre stream at the outlet to the bar, the men various yet alike, dull, insensible, blank; but the light of the glasses illuminates the dulness, the insensibility grows less evident—animation courses slowly, doubtfully, over the masks of the human commonplace ”

“ They sprawl on the beach, singly and in groups; they are all constrained, all uneasy, breathing by jerks, with labored lungs. Nowhere is there the repose, the immobility, of nature; no one rests save a few old men, nearing death, and drunkards with empurpled visages. ”

“ The moving, humming throng is gaily-colored, various, prodigal: the women are clad in silks, in carnation and mauve and blue, they are clad in white that clings closely to their soft limbs, that foams in lace upon their smooth shoulders. ”

“ Their pockets are distended with bottles of spirits: they drink, wiping the necks of the bottles with hardened palms ... the liquor sends a livid flush, a purple veil of heat, over faces seared and pitted with poverty. ”

“ They smooth their sleek hips complacently, and lament the absence of their little dogs, their silky-white dogs with pink flesh and uxorious eyes. They dwell upon the painted men in exotic plays, the hermaphrodite heroes, the frozen prostitutes, of their favorite fictions. ”