THE
This
gigantic city has engendered oppressions far in excess of those numbered among
the largest towns. Where are the women
to soften our hearts? Have they grown
hard themselves? Are they too busy to be
worth looking at? Have they been swept
into the gutter of their sex-starved imaginations? Or are they strewn with the debris of
solitude, where the only scavenger is a mad psychiatrist who butchers brains
with the aid of a mirror, asks questions which have no rational answers, and
plays ludo with his equally demented nephew, the
leader of a social club?
The babies wail, the children wail, the
sirens wail, the workers wail, the bosses wail, the students wail, the cinemas
wail, even a madman, half-sober and a quarter-lucid, laughs himself blue in the
face for the sake of a few coins and casual wails!
Disaster strikes strikers in the guise of
mounted police. Dogs scramble for
safety, cats climb trees, and pigeons scatter.
A bus, red and ugly, spews its raw contents onto a street that
disappears below ground at the metro. A
storm builds up, rain falls. Umbrellas
open like giant mushrooms to ward off this necessary blow. No good!
Fierce winds slant them across the clothes of their bearers.
But what's this - a man endeavouring to
sell religious pamphlets in this infernal place? Good God, the people don't want them, they've
had enough!
Darkness falls as the nebulous curtain on
another city day.