But the lower pane itself may not be hidden from view—may be visible to the man in the black raincoat and soft felt hat—because of the landing of the fire escape, actually a discontinuous structure consisting of parallel strips of iron which are not contiguous and leave openings between them of an equal width through which can be seen, from either side … From this side—that is, from up above, looking down—doubtless more easily, for the metal platform in question is much closer to the window than to the ground. The fact remains nonetheless that the straight line connecting the lower pane to the indented brim of the felt hat may run well above it; and this would be all the more true of the broken pane.
Once again the young woman remembers that her brother has forbidden her, under threat of severe punishment, to show herself at the windows overlooking the street—her brother who must have left the house just when the policemen had reached the neighborhood: she did not see him go out or walk away, but, when he leaves, he stays on the near sidewalk anyway, entirely invisible from the closed window, even to someone who stands right next to the pane.
He may also not yet have gone outside, having had time in the vestibule to realize the danger, inspecting the situation through the opening protected by a grille set in the wood of the door. And he is still, at this very moment, at his concealed observation post, wondering why the three policemen are looking up that way, unless he has immediately understood the reason, having himself heard, from downstairs, the sound of the broken pane which has drawn their attention to the third floor.
And now he is silently coming back upstairs to catch the disobedient girl red-handed: creeping up to a windowpane exposed to all eyes, and this moreover at precisely the moment when the justification for the prohibition is particularly obvious.
After having laid his key as usual on the marble table top, near the brass candlestick, he slowly mounts the steps, one by one, leaning on the wooden banister, for the excessive steepness of the stairs makes him feel once more the accumulated fatigue of the last several days: several days of watchfulness, expectation, of prolonged meetings, of errands by subway or on foot from one end of the city to the other, as far as the most outlying districts, far beyond the river … For how many days?
Having reached the first landing, he stops in order to listen, ears cocked for the faint creaks throughout the building. But there is neither a creak, nor the sound of material tearing, nor breath caught; there is nothing but silence and closed doors along the empty corridor.
He resumes his ascent. Laura, who had knelt on the terra cotta tiles and was beginning to crawl toward the window, in order to see what was happening outside now, suddenly frightened, turns around and sees, only a yard above her face, the man leaning over her whom she has not heard coming, but who suddenly overwhelms her with his motionless and threatening bulk. With the reflex of a child found out, she quickly raises one elbow to protect her face (although he has not made the least gesture of violence toward her) and, attempting at the same time to draw back in order to avoid being slapped, she slips, loses her balance, and sprawls back on the floor, one leg stretched out, the other bent beneath her, the upper part of her body supported on one elbow, the other still crooked in a traditional attitude of frightened defense.
She looks extremely young: perhaps sixteen or seventeen. Her hair is startlingly blond; the loose curls frame her pretty, terrified face with many golden highlights caught in the bright illumination from the window, against which she is silhouetted. Her long legs are revealed as far as the upper part of the thighs, the already short skirt being raised still farther in her fall, which exposes and emphasizes their lovely shape almost up to the pubic region, which can in fact be discerned in the shadows under the raised hem of the material.
Aside from the attitude of the two figures (which indicates both the rapidity of the movement and the violent tension of its suspension) the scene includes an objective trace of struggle: a broken pane whose splinters lie scattered on the regular hexagons of the tiles. The girl moreover has injured her hand, either because she has scraped it on the broken pane as she fell or because she has cut it a few seconds later on the glass splinters lying on the floor, or because she herself has broken the pane in her fall when the man brutally pushed her against the window, unless of course she acted deliberately: breaking the pane with her fist in the hopes of obtaining a glass dagger, as a defensive weapon against an aggressor.
A little bright-red blood, in any case, stains the hollow of her raised palm, and also, upon closer inspection, one of her knees, the one which is bent. This vermilion color is precisely the same as the one which covers her lips, as well as the very small surface of skirt visible in the picture. Above, the young girl is wearing a thin powder-blue garment which clings to her young bosom, a blouse of some shiny material whose neckline seems however to be torn. No earrings, nor necklace, nor bracelet, nor wedding ring is shown, only the left hand wears a heavy silver ring, drawn so carefully that it must play an important part in the story.
The bright-colored poster is reproduced several dozen times, pasted side by side all along the subway passageway. The play’s title is The Blood of Dreams. The male character is a Negro. Till now I have never heard of this show, doubtless a recent one which has not been reviewed in the papers. As for the names of the performers, printed moreover in very tiny letters, they seem quite unknown to me. It is the first time I have seen this advertisement, in the subway or elsewhere.
Deciding that my pause has lasted long enough now to give any possible pursuers the chance to catch up with me, I turn around again and once again observe that no one is following me. The long corridor, from one end to the other, is empty and silent, very dirty like all the rest on this subway line, strewn with various papers, from torn newspapers to candy wrappers, and marked by more or less disgusting damp stains. The brand-new poster which stretches as far as the eye can see, in either direction, also contrasts by its brightness with the remainder of the walls, covered with a ceramic tile which must originally have been white but whose surface is now cracked, chipped, stained with brownish streaks, broken at certain points as though someone had pounded it with a hammer.
At the other end, the corridor opens onto a huge similarly deserted area, an enormous underground hall with no apparent function, in which nothing can be made out that suggests—neither architectural detail nor signboard—any particular direction to follow; unless placards are mounted on certain surfaces but these are so remote, given the considerable dimensions of the place, and its dim illumination, that nothing identifiable is apparent in any direction, the very limits of this useless and vacant interval being lost in the uncertainty of the zones of shadow.
The very low ceiling is supported by countless hollow metal beams, whose four sides are perforated with floral patterns dating from an earlier period. These pillars are quite close together, only about five or six feet apart, set regularly in parallel lines, which divides the entire area into equal and contiguous squares. The checkerboard is moreover materialized on the ceiling by identical rafters jointing the capitals in pairs.
Suddenly the asphalt floor is interrupted, for a considerable length, by a series of stairways with alternating railings, ascending and descending, each of whose first step occupies the entire distance between two ironwork pillars. The whole seems conceived for the flow of a huge crowd which obviously no longer exists in any case at this hour. In two opposing flights, a lower area is reached, resembling the upper one in every particular. On a still lower level, I finally reached the shopping gallery, brilliantly illuminated this time by many-colored harsh bulbs, the more painful to the eyes in that the upper areas were only dimly lit.
And with a similar lack of transition, there is also a crowd now: a rather scattered crowd, but one of regular density, consisting of isolated figures or those grouped by two or, exceptionally, three, occupying the whole of the surface accessible between the stalls as well as that inside them. Here there are only young people, mostly boys, although a close examination reveals among some of these, under the short hair, tight blue jeans, and turtle-neck sweaters or leather jackets, probable or even incontestable girls’ bodies. All are dressed alike, but their beardless pink and