the hibernation of molluscs
Back from the mountains Oek was walking on the large boulevard Nr.42
crossing the city from North to South on a very windy day. Clouds were
scattered all over the sky, forming intertwining fields of deep blue and
rugged greyish or reddish white. In the very South these clouds were
accumulating and forming a huge dark cluster on the horizon. In the late
afternoon, traffic-lights, illuminated shop-advertisements and headlights
of passing vehicles were forming a strange counterpoint to the fainting
light blue of the evening sky. In the almost constant presence of a great
variety of sounds, the sounds of the wind, the noises of cars, trucks,
motorcycles, the peeping of the traffic signals, occasionally the wind
would suddenly stop for some seconds and the phases of the trafficlights
would keep off vehicles from both directions so that short periods of
silence would break in as if corresponding to the spots of clear blue on
the sky. Almost no one was walking on the large pavement, everyone
used vehicles to pass by these long rows of small and dirty concrete
buildings. Oek thought that this is what moonlight must be made of:
moonlight is dirty concrete and stinking exhausted gases and dark
clustered clouds. Someone was calling from a green telephonebox,
shop-clerks wearing dark-red silk jackets and baseball-caps were
removing dislayed heavy motorcycles from the pavement in front of a
motorcycleshop. Oek had already forgotten how much rent he had to
pay for his flat.