Agirl sits at the river. She sits alone, her knees pulled up to her chin, her arms wrapped around them, in the centre of the concrete apron that spreads itself between the high, black-iron railway bridge some distance to her left, and the weir closer to her on her right over which the river pours unceasingly, dropping to boil and foam, and making a steady, not unpleasant, whispering roar as backdrop to the stillness of the warm spring evening.
Off to the girl’s right, a boy casts his line into the water below the weir at the fish ladder, where an abundance of fish tumble and jump. On the girl’s left, on the apron but nearer to the bridge, there is a shadowy figure. The girl—or more properly, a young woman—dark, small, and exquisitely pretty, appears lost in her thoughts, oblivious to both the fisherman and the person in the shadows, and also to the two boys who stand at the low, ineffectual rope-and-post fence above and behind, staring longingly down at her.
She sits, looking out over the river as the moon slowly rises to skim the dark water with its silver light. She might be waiting for someone, positioned as she is in a prominent spot, the more easily to be seen. A lover, a friend. Or perhaps like the rest of the city she’s been made a bit dreamy by spring’s arrival, and wants only to feel the soft warmth of the air a little longer before night sets in. Perhaps she is dreaming of the spring of her forest childhood, how she ran through the wet, greening pastures, the ragged, noisy Vs of geese passing overhead, how she gathered purple crocuses to take back to the cramped farmhouse for her mother. Or maybe her memories are slowly dissolved by her current dissatisfactions, the disappointing certainty, the dull rhythm of her days at the hospital where she nurses, the irritating sameness of desire among the abundance of young men in her life. Maybe she has begun to dream of a more fulfilling future: travel to exotic countries—impenetrable green jungles or vast gleaming deserts, or many-spired cities—glittering parties, brilliant, handsome men, her own place among the powerful of the world. Maybe she is thinking how she will leave this little city, go somewhere else, how she is ready to take that first, daring step from her old, tight little life into a limitless new one.
Danger is present as she sits there; surely guardian angels also hover around her; the air is fraught with imminence, and the girl sits, clasping her knees with her arms, gazing out over the river, unaware that she is about to die.