Reflections - A. Szepesy (VI) - "Janus" Spring 1958

THE SUN was staring down from a heavy sky. The air was full of dust and a hard, dry heat that not even the nearby sea could soften. Everything was a dry grey or a dusty brown and there was no fresh or rich colour anywhere. Even the beer was flat and warm. I stared around the little bar and noted the dingy walls and faded furniture. There were cracks in the ceiling and dosing flies buzzed aimlessly around. An electric fan carved futile circles out of the baking air and gave the heat a droning, relentless voice of its own. I got up and walked slowly outside. There had been no people in the bar and there were few outside. Flat, pasty faces walking past, flat and with nothing behind them.

As I crossed the road I could feel the heat of the tar through the soles of my shoes. I looked up at the houses. Old, dusty, tired houses begrimed and covered with soot. They stood there patient and immovable, sweating silently in the heat. It was funny how those old houses seemed to be more than just bricks and mortar, how they seemed in some way to have a certain life which was more than mere existence. It was funny how these old houses were more sympathetic and friendly than those flat, shallow faces, those facades for emptiness which walked along the street. They didn't move around, they didn't hustle to see, they just waited for life to come to them and what they saw was enough. Nothing was kept secret from them and they could hear and see several lives at once, lives of people who didn't know that they lived and therefore didn't bother to hide anything from them.

They didn't move but they shared several lives at once and so they were both inside and outside themselves whereas man could move but was locked forever in the castle of his skin. Man could speak but he was always alone with himself and no amount of moving or speaking or drinking could change that. A house could have new tenants but a man could only have moods. The sky seemed to be crowding in on the earth in an earnest endeavour to crush the overloaded air into a yet more intolerable position. A dull glare came down from the oppressive clouds and was reflected from the simmering Tarmac of the road. A piece of thistle down floated up from some abandoned garden and floated effortlessly out over the grimy quay, mounting on some hidden breeze and seeming incredibly light and free in all the dusty heaviness of the day. I stopped and watched it away gently in the distance over the idling sea.