It was a dismal grey-in-grey evening, the atmosphere laden with moisture as if it had not the energy to condense into rain, like forlorn moods of world strangeness and nostalgia when the human soul would seek relief in weeping and finds itself incapable of tears.
Under an old battered lamp post whose head was bent to one side as if weary of its vain endeavor to brighten that cheerless scene, a little girl with folded arms and crouching head crouched on the curbstones. Only when a slight draught floated through the broken panes of the lantern, the flickering flame shed a vague, hasty glare over the dry, haggard form of the little minx, whose dull eyes were seen to throw searching glances along the gutter, as if in quest of some unknown treasure hidden in the mud.
Suddenly she started up, her eyes, growing wide, had caught sight of something lying within her hand’s reach,—a little pale green lump; she stretched out her foot and examined it with her toes. It was a single grape, slightly rotten on one side, that had dropped into the gutter. On recognizing what it was, she picked it up with greedy fingers, while her homely, careworn face became distorted with a grinning grimace, which was meant for joy. She began to suck the little fruit, and her harsh features assumed an air of gentleness for the moment, that relaxed, as soon as the pleasure was over, into that phlegmatic expression of despair, which in older beings interprets disgust of life.
The occasional passers-by hardly noticed her; the picture she made was so insignificant in composition, so faded in tone, without the slightest suggestion of brightness in her dirty face, streaky hair, and ragged, patched clothes, that it disappeared entirely in the background of the muddy pavement, on which the reflections of the lantern glimmered like luring gold.
Had she been older, one would have supposed she was thinking, but the little girl had not yet learned to think, nor was she really conscious of or responsible for the stammering expressions of her soul battered like the lamp post. In her mind one blurred picture followed the other, and these impressions made out her life, as they make out that of every child, and also of many grown-up persons, but hers were all steeped in mud like her feet. They were like figures we see with closed eyes, weaving to and fro in a room deprived of light, the forms and meanings of which we cannot define. Only now and then some object stood out distinctly in that chaos of sombre colors,—a huge beer pitcher which she could hardly carry when filled—rings of spilt liquor—a broken pipe—a hairy fist on the table—two drunken forms in a squalid room, a stagnant atmosphere never purified by sunshine, and with them all the associations of sound, familiar to her, coarse laughter, hoarse voices, curses and bestial exclamations.
A stout, blear-eyed wench stepped off the sidewalk to cross the street, brushing the face of the little girl with her greasy, rose-colored wrapper. She saw that spot of color waddling across the sunken filthy pavement and disappearing in the frivolity of a nocturnal scene formed by a loafing crowd before a lighted saloon on the opposite sidewalk. For a moment she felt like following that luring apparition and, after wading through the mire of sin, losing herself in that deluding brightness. But she did not give away to the temptation and remained as before in her crouching position, with gloomy face. Her unconscious meditation returned to the former pictures, which grew darker and still darker, the web of her consciousness being spun without the former threads of blackish blue and red.
The shrill sound of a bell! An ambulance dashed through the street. Men and women interrupted their flirtation and craned their necks with curious astonishment to witness an event so commonplace in a large city, but, nevertheless, an excitement, a vibration, a break in the appalling, unbearable monotony of routine life.
The little girl had also risen, but slowly, not like the others, and now moved along slowly, as if by mere accident, in the same direction. Her thin legs gradually moved in a quicker rhythm, and, aimless, she pressed forward with her head still crouching and swaying abruptly from side to side, along the long street with its dark rows of tenement houses, one looking exactly like the other, and indicating by their dismal similarity that they also shelter human beings, leading, one exactly like the other, a monotonous routine life, minute for minute, and score for score, void of all ideal pleasures, and growing darker and more deserted towards its end, like the street as the little outcast neared the river.
The oppressive atmosphere, spreading like a veil of despondency over the city and seeming to absorb all sounds and colors, bored itself without pity, deeper and deeper into every sensitive soul. Poets and artists hastened into the taverns or to their own humble homes, for to abandon oneself, like the little girl, to the atmosphere of such a night might prove dangerous to one’s pulse.
Suddenly she found herself at the end of the wharf, looking down into the water, lapping against the framework like the soft caresses of living hands. Before her lay the river, a dark, sluggishly floating mass, on whose surface the convulsive play of rising and falling waves was hardly perceptible. In the distance a few forlorn lights blinked like the solitary moments of joy in our life of disappointment. The outlines of huge storehouses, looking like medieval castles with towers and turrets in the dim atmosphere, suggested vague reveries to her, never felt before. Profound silence lay on the river. Only far from the distance a melancholy melody was wafted over; some boatsman playing on a harmonica. Then a ferryboat with its many lighted windows floated by like a phantom. Was it a vision of our life, so full of delusion, so beautiful, and yet nothing but a passing show—transparent glass and artificial light?
The little girl stood for a long time on the extreme edge of the framework; she had raised her head and breathed slowly and calmly; her face looked less gloomy. Suddenly she straightened herself, opened her arms as if to embrace that night with all its dark dreams and desires—a little black figure fell—a splash in the water—a suppressed scream that almost sounded like a laugh of satisfaction—then everything grew silent as before, only where the child had disappeared the circles on the dark and desolate flood became wider and wider until they met with the foaming keel water of the phantom boat of happiness, that invariably glides by on the gray river of our life.