14
PARTISAN REVIEW
the year. His uncle had been right; he had arrived at the age of
thirty with the profound distaste for his profession of which I have
already spoken and with a set of habits directed to his enjoyment
of professional sport. During the long evening, seated in the darkness
of the living room and going to the window once in a while to look
down upon the street, (where the figures lay, blue-white and ghastly
corpses in the dimness of midnight) Faber Gottschalk was not able
to explain to himself by this examination of his past life the reason
for his emotion about the statues.
II
In the week of perfect weather which followed, the snow did
not melt. It retained its various shapes and remained firmly attached
to the ground, as if it were a natural growth of the asphalt. Automo–
biles had to move circumspectly and circuitously about the statues,
and in general the process of passage, whether walking or riding, was
modified. When the newspapers had exhausted most of the approaches
to the subject of which they were capable, when thousands had come
from out of town to see the sights, and remained, unable to depart,
as if fascinated, then I observed a distinct change in the consciousness
of the populace, both middle-class and proletarian. During the day,
many would go to the window to look down at the statues, and
during the lunch hour many would eat hurriedly, standing at the
counter, or not at all, in order to be able to get outside and look at
the creations of the fall. The strikes which were going on at that time
continued as before with no abatement, with no difference except
that the pickets were often absorbed in the figures outstretched upon
the white ground and in this contemplation they were joined by the
police who, despite this unity of interest, did not in the least cease
to harass the pickets. Sometimes, in fact, even a boss would pass by
on the way to his office, and pause to look at the statues, and look
up again only to gaze with undisguised hatred at the pickets. In
general, everyone did what he was supposed to do, but with more
devotion and concentration, and more efficiently, and with moments
of complete attention for the statues, no matter where they happened
to be. From each borough of New York City came reports of the
figures in various localities, indicating an equal absorption on the part
of everyone, an absorption which seemed to rise above the habits and
acts of daily existence, but not to destroy them. The only exception
to this carrying out of daily existence was Faber Gottschalk who
spent all of his time going from one end of New York to another,
attempting to see all of the statues.
Many of the statues were grotesque and even monstrous, espe-
