Read Online Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick - Free Book Online
Authors: Elizabeth Hardwick
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went down toward Broadway, deftly twirling her hands and pointing her arms right and left in the now-arcane signals, receiving the admiration of the passers-by for her marvelous effort of conservation. She is leaving the grand old two-story apartment for the summer, abandoning without sentiment the crackling, insecure voices trying out “Dové sono,” “Un bel di,” and “The Last Rose of Summer.”
She then had her aged mother with her, a tyrant of primitive snobbery who, as she grew older and older, went back to the grievances of ancient robberies, thieving charwomen, malicious in-laws. The mother was like the old woman Herzen mentions in his memoirs, the one who could not forgive Napoleon for the premature death of her favorite cow in 1812.
On Christmas Eve Miss Cramer is wearing the same print dress and a short knit sweater. She is almost barefoot in the canvas shreds. Poverty for the autocrat came like a bulldozer, gouging out her pretensions, her musical education, her trips to Bayreuth. The mother died, summers vanished, the voices were silent. Out of the apartment went the piano and the trash of two and a half decades, brilliant American, English, and European trash. Miss Cramer moved down the street, and the move was a descent on the roller coaster, hair flying, trinkets ripped off the ears and the fingers, heart pounding and her head filled with a strange gust of air, which was never again released and seemed to be still blowing about behind the brow, rippling the dark eyelashes.
How are you, Miss Cramer?
Very well, thank you, she replies without smiling and yet in possession of the full, throaty voice.
Today she pauses at the end of the block where trucks and cabs and cars are flowing and raging with their horns. She approaches an appalling wreck of great individuality, a black woman who wanders in and out of the neighborhood, covers the streets with purposeful speed. No one has ever seen the black woman’s mouth, since the whole lower part of her face is always bound tight with a sort of turban of woolen cloth. Fear of germs, disfigurement, or symbol of silence? She has three large bags of rubbish, larger than herself, which she carries without effort. Her dark purdah glance is strong and still as rock. She gets on the city bus without fare and sometimes so black is her glance the driver shrugs in panic and lets her pass.
She and Miss Cramer meet suddenly at the corner and both stop for a moment. The wind is so strong a beer bottle rolls in the gutter. They are both fearless and they gaze bitterly at each other with their terrible virginal inviolability, their sore purity. These are not cases, they do not fill out forms or wait for the mails. They are gladiators, creatures of the trenches, accustomed to the streets at night, to the toughness of weather, the pain of stones, and the itch of dirt. Mad strength, hideous endurance, hostility, nightmares, met for a few seconds at the corner but it seemed to me that there was no sign of recognition. The two women do not know what they look like, do not see their lives, and so they wander about in their dreadful freedom like old oxen left behind, totally unprovided for.
PART FIVE
D EAREST M .: I saw Alex A. on the street recently. He is still handsome. I suppose that is, with him, the first thing one thinks—that and the waving shadow, the shadow of his own self-reproach. Not quite liking himself, he whom everyone adores. I must say he was wearing a very good-looking raincoat and so the “presentation” isn’t much altered. That’s something, isn’t it? But what is his intention? I mean the intention of his life.
That was a year ago. And now it is this year. It is time for cocktails. The moment for which all of New York works, lies, exercises, hurries, dresses.
New York—this is no city for poor people. Their presence ruins everything, everything. Dread—that is the noxious air around them. The rich in their pyramids have a nice time. All of the
She then had her aged mother with her, a tyrant of primitive snobbery who, as she grew older and older, went back to the grievances of ancient robberies, thieving charwomen, malicious in-laws. The mother was like the old woman Herzen mentions in his memoirs, the one who could not forgive Napoleon for the premature death of her favorite cow in 1812.
On Christmas Eve Miss Cramer is wearing the same print dress and a short knit sweater. She is almost barefoot in the canvas shreds. Poverty for the autocrat came like a bulldozer, gouging out her pretensions, her musical education, her trips to Bayreuth. The mother died, summers vanished, the voices were silent. Out of the apartment went the piano and the trash of two and a half decades, brilliant American, English, and European trash. Miss Cramer moved down the street, and the move was a descent on the roller coaster, hair flying, trinkets ripped off the ears and the fingers, heart pounding and her head filled with a strange gust of air, which was never again released and seemed to be still blowing about behind the brow, rippling the dark eyelashes.
How are you, Miss Cramer?
Very well, thank you, she replies without smiling and yet in possession of the full, throaty voice.
Today she pauses at the end of the block where trucks and cabs and cars are flowing and raging with their horns. She approaches an appalling wreck of great individuality, a black woman who wanders in and out of the neighborhood, covers the streets with purposeful speed. No one has ever seen the black woman’s mouth, since the whole lower part of her face is always bound tight with a sort of turban of woolen cloth. Fear of germs, disfigurement, or symbol of silence? She has three large bags of rubbish, larger than herself, which she carries without effort. Her dark purdah glance is strong and still as rock. She gets on the city bus without fare and sometimes so black is her glance the driver shrugs in panic and lets her pass.
She and Miss Cramer meet suddenly at the corner and both stop for a moment. The wind is so strong a beer bottle rolls in the gutter. They are both fearless and they gaze bitterly at each other with their terrible virginal inviolability, their sore purity. These are not cases, they do not fill out forms or wait for the mails. They are gladiators, creatures of the trenches, accustomed to the streets at night, to the toughness of weather, the pain of stones, and the itch of dirt. Mad strength, hideous endurance, hostility, nightmares, met for a few seconds at the corner but it seemed to me that there was no sign of recognition. The two women do not know what they look like, do not see their lives, and so they wander about in their dreadful freedom like old oxen left behind, totally unprovided for.
PART FIVE
D EAREST M .: I saw Alex A. on the street recently. He is still handsome. I suppose that is, with him, the first thing one thinks—that and the waving shadow, the shadow of his own self-reproach. Not quite liking himself, he whom everyone adores. I must say he was wearing a very good-looking raincoat and so the “presentation” isn’t much altered. That’s something, isn’t it? But what is his intention? I mean the intention of his life.
That was a year ago. And now it is this year. It is time for cocktails. The moment for which all of New York works, lies, exercises, hurries, dresses.
New York—this is no city for poor people. Their presence ruins everything, everything. Dread—that is the noxious air around them. The rich in their pyramids have a nice time. All of the
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