HAROLD BROOKEY
397
solence, of impertinence toward the wills and sacrifices and egos at
the party, an earthly sharpness toward their
awful
human velocity
which was maybe the most important single
worldly
truth; but I
could have no honest part of it, a man of my sort, a remnant Jew like
me.
I mean I could do it, or be part of it, only as a kind of rage or in
a self-emptying- I could no more do it in the ways they expected of
me than I could ever write what I actually felt in any language other
than English.
But this was secret. And incomplete.
At the Avenue cars and trucks sporadically ran with headlights
blotching the urban dark between the rows of the giant buildings–
they were maybe like phosphorescent crabs in an immense streambed.
Some lighted windows were in high buildings - a high, teetering
geometry of latter day illumination - after dark. Some distant neon
signs were lit - the urban colors of messages. Taxis carrying people
went by, pallid faces behind glass. A taxi stopped and took me on;
and the taxi driver and I in mutual dislike and caution at sight - he
looked dirty and crooked, and I looked educated and I don't know
what else - spent the time bumpily mute, in ignorance of each other
effortfully, one of the series of transactions by which I made my way
back to Ora and to the rooms and things and notions and the bed in
which my life was rooted that year.
