He slides the panel of fine netting in the window and feels a surge of cold air that is bracing after it has slapped him. The sun itself will not burst so easily in the days that are to come. Up in the air, the wind is not content to rattle and loosen the leaves but is even turning around clouds that are blindingly white, speeding them and crisping their stranding edges as in a griddle. “I think of the city out there beyond the rims and under this sky. The keenness of the air today and its transience may be apparent all over the province and people may breathe in it before it is gone; but some of these people will be happy to breathe the tonic in this city, closing their eyes and dreaming uniquely of wonder from what is actual and what is possible.”
As if to underscore all the gamut of experience and sensation, the next morning silent rain is falling. The sullen sky watches as the puddles in the empty alley receive an occasional rippling splat. No pouchy cat crouches in the tangle outside the window nor does any dapper squirrel with a dominating tail dart upon the fence rail or on the black cables. It is cold as only a blast from the North can be cold. It is necessary to brace against the wind to gather the morning papers from the local station métro. The morning commuters, the stragglers and the dashers are walled up for the most part against this grey morning, their hands in their pockets and their postures in a certain rigid slouch. The umbrella may be laid aside to feel the reviving slap of the fresh air upon the face, but fine rain is coming with no surcease and it is best to put up this unsteady little sky-dome over the head.
In the Parc not far away from the station métro no dogs are to be seen gambolling upon the grassed slopes as they usually do. The gulls look wise in the jaspé splatter of dark colour on their bodies; they cluster on the edge of the crescent lake, reluctant to swoop in and float with the ducks, which carry the rainbow upon them. On such a bleak day all warmth will seem to go out of the universe; yet upon the few faces that pass by and that are passed on a straight street towards the north—some of them muffled and poised over the swaying handlebar of a cycle plied on the sidewalk—there is contentment and even a smile in delighting self-contemplation, and one warms to this emanation of life from the straight but dulled brick buildings and the ashen houses with walls of knobbed stone. “I wonder that something so strong can rise forth from behind those walls and emerge into the open when all the sobbing mournfulness of time is here. I warm to the people I see and I want to be happy in their joy and my own joy.”
It is another day of language class. From pauses in the cours de français écrit on the highest storey of the école one looks through the thick-glass windows; layer upon layer of swollen cloud in the more sombre tones of grisaille extend to the horizon where the leaning tower of the stadium drops lines that clutch a mound of white such as to make it peak in parts without distorting its roundness. “I have christened this dome Petit Mont Blanc, for it is white and when all else is in shadow across many a mile it can sometimes stand out in snowy conspicuousness.” The clouds are undulating but they do not budge as a very inky, shapeless shroud begins to spread upon them, or rather under them. The trees beside the rail tracks are colouring and from this position at the windows they are really reduced to midgets. The matronly dove outside on the window sill is fabulously distending her body and burying her head entirely in herself. Strangely, from the other end of the sky, sun falls upon large matured leaves of almost canary yellow on stately arboreals next to the windows on the westward side. Although the leaves end in a taper they are generously wide and carry a catchy reflection to the eye. All at once the sun is swelling; these blades begin to tingle with a glint while mellowed foils of yellow and green of the same tree compete for the attention and the light. The frolicking leaves are impressed upon the soft but radiant azure behind the trees. The scene comes directly from a deeper suggestion of a distant childhood when winters were fleeting and leaves sprung against the sky on quiet, sunny afternoons. The mount under the tour is now agleam but the sky above it becomes more and more ominous. Then, gradually, the most distant long clouds take on a shine and all the underbellies that were coalesced break apart to reveal sparingly the simple blue of the sky.
Outside, a chill grips the pedestrian round the throat and wraps itself around the face. This is surely a grasp of none other than the deepening mould of the coming winter and one must forbear henceforth to brave the air and even the sun with a bared caput. At the bus stop puddles of water stay in small depressions on the asphalt next to the sidewalk. Brownish leaves are pasted next to them as cars speed or skid by. Someone in stiletto heels gingerly crosses to the median of the lavishly wide road while the light is green. The trees at the opposite corner are still full of foliage and still so green; one will wonder about their names and of those at the Parc when they become bare in the following season. At the nearest corner a hoarding hanging close to the join of two high brick walls announces a process in interior decoration.
“When I emerge from the depths of my own local station métro I walk ahead to see how the hill appears under the continuingly solemn sky.” Drapes of quivering cloud lurid and livid overhang the hill, and just above its brow a flare of light diffuses and rips through the obstinate sheets, making a silhouette of the rise and throwing into undeserved dullness the deaf, huddling woods that withal exhibit some colour. The cross upon the hill will not blink or flutter and the two communication pylons that loom at respectful distances make no word. “The hill watches and perhaps waits and welcomes as it did when we first came to this island.” Up the street to the grocer’s two maples almost face each other; the one on the left is decked for a large part in orange gold while that on the right is so steeped in Burgundy red that it has shed all memory of affinity with yellow, brown, gold and even orange and pink.
very descriptive