Project for a Revolution in New York Read online

  I calmly walked down the three stone steps. The man in the raincoat had not yet noticed—apparently—the presence of the tactical police, which seemed strange to me. Though they were still about two blocks away, you could hear the regular noise of their boots on the pavement quite distinctly. There was not one car in the street, which was deserted except for these four people: the two policemen, the motionless man, and myself.

  Hesitating a second between the two possible directions, I thought first that it would be better to take the same direction as the policemen and to turn at the first intersection, before they could have seen my fact at close range. As a matter of fact it is very doubtful that they would have marched any faster, without a specific reason, in order to catch up with me. But after three steps in that direction, I decided that it would be better to face the ordeal directly, rather than to draw attention to myself by behavior which might seem suspicious. So I turned around in order to walk along the housefronts in the other direction, toward the policemen who were continuing their steady, straight march. On the opposite sidewalk, the man in the felt hat was staring at me calmly, as though with complete indifference: because there was nothing else to look at.

  I walked on, looking straight ahead of me. The two policemen had no particular character: they were wearing the usual navy-blue jacket and leather belt and shoulder strap, with the pistol holster on one hip. They were of the same height—quite tall—and had rather similar faces: frozen, watchful, vacant. As I passed them, I did not turn my head toward them.

  But, a few yards farther on, I wanted to know how the meeting with the other man would turn out, and I glanced back. The man in the black raincoat had finally noticed the policemen (probably when they were between him and me, in the line of his gaze, which was still fixed on me), and he made, just at that moment, a gesture with his right hand toward the turned-down brim of his hat …

  There wasn’t even time for me to wonder about the meaning of this gesture. The two policemen, quite unpredictably, with one accord turned around to stare at me, freezing me where I stood.

  I can’t say what they did next, for I immediately went on walking, with an instinctive about-face whose abruptness I immediately regretted. Moreover, hadn’t my entire behavior since the beginning of the scene given me away: a hesitation (and doubtless a movement of withdrawal) on the threshold upon noticing the policemen, then an unaccountable change of direction which betrayed the initial intention of running away, finally an excessive stiffness at the moment of passing the patrol, whereas it would have been more natural to glance as though by chance at the two men, especially if I was to turn around to look at them subsequently as they walked away from me. All of which, obviously, justified their suspicions and their desire to see what this individual was up to behind their backs.

  But what was the relation between this understandable suspicion and the gesture made by the other man? That almost looked like a tiny salute: the hand, which till then had never left the raincoat pocket, suddenly appearing and rising casually to the indented brim of the soft hat. It is difficult in any case to suppose that it was the intention of this placid sentry to lower the felt any farther over his eyes in order to conceal his face from the policemen altogether … Instead, doesn’t the hand emerging from the pocket and slowly rising point to the man walking away, wanted by the inspectors for several days and whose suspicious behavior has yet again aggravated the already heavy charges weighing upon him?

  However, he continues on his way nonetheless, walking faster in fact, while trying not to let this be too apparent to the three witnesses behind him: in front of the building painted bright blue, the two policemen are still frozen like statues, their expressionless gaze fixed on this receding figure, soon tiny at the end of the long straight street, while the gloved hand of the man in black, completing a slow trajectory, has just come to rest against the far edge of the felt hat.

  Over there, as if he imagined he was henceforth out of sight, the suspect person begins going down the invisible staircase of a subway entrance which is in front of him, level with the ground, thereby losing successively his legs, his torso and his arms, his shoulders, his neck, his head.

  Laura, behind the window corresponding to the third-floor corridor, at the very top of the fire escape, looks down at the long street, at this hour quite abandoned, thus making the three disturbing presences all the more remarkable. The man in black whom she has already noticed the last few days (how many?) is at his post, as she suspected he would be, in his usual shiny raincoat. But two policemen in flat caps, wearing high boots and pistol holsters, walking side by side down the middle of the pavement, have also stopped now a few steps from the first observer—who gestures to them with one hand—and turn around in unison to look at what he is pointing at: the window where Laura is standing.

  She quickly steps back, quickly enough for neither the policemen nor their informant to be able to complete their head-movements upward before she herself has vanished from the place indicated by the black-gloved hand. But her recoil has been so rapid and spontaneous that it is accompanied by a clumsy gesture of her left hand, on which the heavy silver ring has just knocked violently against the pane.

  The impact has produced a loud, distinct noise. At the same time has appeared, extending across the entire surface of the rectangle, a star-shaped fracture. But no piece of glass falls out, unless, much later, it is a tiny pointed triangle, about half an inch long, which slowly leans inward and falls on the tiles with a crystalline sound, breaking in its turn into three smaller fragments.

  Laura stares a long time at the broken pane, then through the next one, which is similar but intact, at the blue wall of the house on the other side of the street, then at the three tiny splinters of glass scattered on the floor, and again at the starred pane. From the withdrawn position she now occupies in the corridor, she no longer sees the entire street. She wonders if the men watching her have heard the noise of glass breaking and if they can see the hole she has just made in the pane located below and to the left of the iron latch. To be sure, she would have to put her eye to that hole, leaning down to get closer to the window and then gradually raising her face against the pane of glass.

  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 blond faces also look alike, with that bright and uninflected coloration which suggests not so much good health as the paint used on store-window mannequins, or the embalmed faces of corpses in glass coffins in the cemeteries of the dear departed. The impression of artificiality is further enhanced by the awkward postures of these young people, doubtless intended to express self-confidence, controlled strength, scorn, arrogance, whereas their stiff attitudes and the ostentation with which every gesture is made actually suggest the constraint of poor actors.

  Among them, on the contrary, like tired guards in a wax museum, linger here and there occasional adults of indeterminate age, discreet and inconspicuous as if they were trying not to be seen; and as a matter of fact, it takes a certain amount of time to become aware of their presence. They reveal in their gray faces, their drawn features, their uncertain movements, the quite visible signs of the night hour, already very late. The livid glare of the neon tubes completes the illusion of invalids or addicts; the various races have here become almost the same metallic tinge. The huge greenish mirror of a store window reflects my own quite comparable image.

  Nonetheless, old and young possess one characteristic in common, which is the excessive slackening of every movement, whose affected deliberation among some, whose extreme lethargy among others, threaten at any moment a total and definitive breakdown. And all this is, moreover, remarkably silent: neither shouts nor words spoken too loud, nor racket of any kind manages to disturb the muffled, padded atmosphere, broken only by the clicking of slot-machine levers and the dry crackling or clatter of scores auto
matically registered.

  For this underground area seems entirely devoted to amusements: on each side of the huge central mall open out huge bays filled with long rows of the gleaming garish-painted devices: slot machines whose enigmatic apertures, which respectively devour and spit forth change, are embellished so as to make more obvious their resemblance to the female organ, games of chance allowing the player to lose in ten seconds some hundreds of thousands of imaginary dollars, automatic distributors of educational photographs showing scenes of war or copulation, pinball machines whose scoreboards include a series of villas and limousines, in which fires break out as a result of the movements made by the steel balls, shooting galleries with tracer bullets trained on the pedestrians in an avenue set up as the target, dartboards representing the naked body of a pretty girl crucified against a stake, racing cars driven by remote control, electric baseball, stereopticons of horror films, etc.

  There are also, alongside, huge souvenir shops in which are set out, arranged in parallel rows of identical objects, plastic reproductions of world capitals and famous structures, ranging, from top to bottom of the display, from the Statue of Liberty, the Chicago stockyards, to the giant Buddha of Kamakura, the Blue Villa in Hong Kong, the lighthouse at Alexandria, Christopher Columbus’ egg, the Venus of Milo, Greuze’s Broken Pitcher, the Eye of God carved in marble, Niagara Falls with its wreaths of mist made out of iridescent nylon. Lastly there are the pornographic bookshops, which are merely the extension in depth of those of Forty-Second Street, a few yards, or dozen of yards, or hundreds of yards up above.

  I discover without difficulty the shop window I want, easily found because it displays nothing: it is a wide plain ground-glass sheet with the simple inscription in moderate-sized enamel letters: “Dr. Morgan, Psychotherapist.” I turn the nearly invisible handle of a door made of the same ground glass, and I step into a very small bare cubicle, all six surfaces painted white (in other words, the floor as well), in which are only a tubular-steel chair, a matching table with an artificial marble top on which is lying a closed engagement book whose black imitation-leather cover shows the date “1969” stamped in gold letters, and behind this table, sitting very stiffly on a chair identical with the first, a blond young woman—quite pretty perhaps, impersonal and sophisticated in any case, wearing a dazzlingly white nurse’s uniform, her eyes concealed by sunglasses which doubtless help her endure the intense lighting, white like everything else and reflected on all sides by the immaculate walls.