692
PARTISAN REVIEW
dictable light. The street lights were murky and bad and brown;
they seemed affected by the wind's long hullahoo. Into the torn
heavens the steeple raised a black admonishing finger.
By the railings of the church a platform had been erected. Its
clean timbers were startlingly white in the square's gloom: there was
also a good glow from the new windsor chairs upon it. A few noisy
boys danced provocatively on the platform while the mock-furious
man who was protecting the microphone kept chasing them away.
The boys' boots made a loud racket in the enclosed hollow place.
On a dead wall in the west side of the square (where
he
could
not fail to see it) was a slogan in whitewash. An unsuccessful attempt
had been made to obliterate it but it came up with the stubborness
of writing beneath writing. The slogan asked the people to remember
the man who was executed. The people did not need to be reminded
of the dead foxy lad; lately they had begun to fancy they saw him
in his old resorts, on river-bank and in ball-alley, on cinema-step and
in organ-loft. Since his execution the laughing foxy lad had suddenly
become possessed of a physical wispishness.
The square remained quite empty until the drums canle bum–
bling up the hill towards the town: then the townspeople- mostly
working men and shawled women-began to filter softly into the
area. Their neutral boots explained their motive for coming as a
type of rancorous curiosity. They drifted slowly along by the walls
of the shops, past the darkened pharmacy where the veterinary
window was dressed with iodized mineral licks, past the window of
the hardware shop where the fingers of a mowing machine were so
many sullen daggers, past the shoemaker's where a pair of ruby up–
pers had lighted their quiet lamps in the darkness. The seep of the
townspeople continued thus until
all
the black shutters and crannies
and recesses of the square were filled. The people stood quietly, be–
traying their presence only when a cigarette glowed slowly and
thoughtfully or when a woman dragged her shawl higher over her
head.
The boys had long since ceased their din and had raced across
the square to meet the band. The sound of the drums grew immense
-then through the slots of the night wind leaked the timid whinny
of the fifes. The band crashed into the square. Mter a few minutes
the morose undemonstrative watchers were able to see the procession
