The Glatstein Chronicles by Jacob Glatstein

Author:Jacob Glatstein [Glatstein, Jacob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Jewish
ISBN: 9780300168785
Google: e4V4UeTrt0sC
Goodreads: 844644
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2006-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

2

People were streaming toward the park from every direction. They walked with controlled impatience, as though restrained by propriety from actually running. They were just able to keep from bumping into each other.

Past the gate, where the guard inspected us casually, we were enveloped by the wholesome smell of the thick foliage lining both sides of the paths. Most people kept to the dusty main avenue. The last colors of sunset were beginning to blur and fade away. The water in the little lake around which the main promenade divided was blue black.

From a bandstand partly hidden by the trees came the brassy music of a small but vigorous group of musicians. A card with a large number five was posted on the bandstand, indicating that the orchestra had reached that piece on the program. It was L’Arlésienne, and it was almost over. The newcomers, as they closed in, seemed to fall in step with the music. Even had one been obsessed with one’s private thoughts, the music must surely have penetrated them. And when the music stopped, everything slipped from memory—the thoughts with the music.

People were wandering around the little lake and all over the park. Even on the other side of the lake you could hear the band. From over there the music served as a bridge, a guarantee that you were not striking out on your own, but still at one with the community.

Just opposite the leafy bandstand was a wooden structure built out of logs, but not exactly a log cabin. You went up a few steps and found yourself on a shaky floor, only a scaffolding, really, where people sat in pairs or alone, doubtless dreaming the same musical dreams—dreams that a single note of the trumpet dispels or a drumbeat frightens away. This was the outdoor café. Just to walk past was to taste the cookies. Couples sat at tables looking into each other’s eyes. Around the little lake, more like a pond, were elaborate flower beds, severely patterned with respect to both color and shape. Little clumps of flowers sprung up every few steps as you walked, but they had begun to lose their vivid reds, yellows, and greens. In the twilight all colors were blending into a common color, a dormant, latent color. The flowers now looked like wildflowers, there was dew on them, and they were losing their sharp, shrill, carefully cultivated individualities. The surface of the water was settling to a jelly—a thin film over a dense darkness.

The band was playing the “Blue Danube” waltz. The electric lights in the trees were turned on, and the whole area was drenched with a brightness that made the side paths look darker still. As the waltz played on, it more than ever seemed that those who walked around were dancing. And indeed, in the café couples actually got up to dance, leaving only a few solitary drinkers at the tables. It was the end of August, and these melancholy men were probably the first to become aware, in the midst of summer pleasures, that winter was on the way.

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