I cannot quite escape the rain, despite the umbrella which my neighbour holds. My suit is sodden at the shoulder. My socks and shoes are wet. My forehead sweats with rain. The entertainment never ends. The weather is a ballet for the streets. But then there is a more substantial dancer too. Cellophane is kicking water in the air. He thinks we’re going to throw him coins for the show. He bows. And as he bows the rainbow arches up, connecting the old town and the new. It is a bridge beyond the wit of architects reflected in the glass of Big Vic and Arcadia. The rainbow relishes windows. There is no need to draw conclusions, though. We all know rainbows start and finish everywhere, that they are simply sun, shining from behind to trick the light from falling rain, if we look east in the middle afternoon towards the dealing shower of the day. They are not omens – but they are signs that it is safe to walk onto the streets again. The rain has almost done.
My face and eyes are wet. I have to frown and squint for focus as I pass between the glare and darkness, as I cross streets and circumscribe the puddles, as I avoid collisions with people and with cars. So many people with so many purposes. Too many people to know well.
I would not wish to be too grand for streets. To be removed from them is to lose the blessing of the multitude. The tallest buildings throw the longest shadows, it is said, by those who spend their lives in contemplation of their monuments, and those for whom the shadow life is better than the real. But most of us who live in cities die and take our shadows to the grave. We don’t outlive the masonry or glass. It’s said that great men have the grandest tombstones, too, and throw the longest shadows even after death. The cemeteries prove the truth in that. But I prefer to think that worms and damp and degradation are open-minded democrats which treat us all the same. We are all citizens at last. At least until we are all soil.
I make my mark upon the city, too. My living mark. I stretch my legs as best I can and set off slowly down the street. My rainy footprints on the pavement will soon dry, but footprints and the thousand sodden paper bags which held a thousand pears, the eyes, the cores, the stalks, the rinds of daily life, are more substantial – are they not? – than shadows. They swell the middens of the town.
There are people, wet and poor, who walk the pavements with a skip as if the puddles and the cracks are civic birthday gifts. And there are many whistlers around. My legs are old. That’s all that holds me back from skipping on the spot or kicking up a puddled loop of rain. My tongue’s kept busy by the scrap of pear skin lodged between my teeth. That’s all that stops me sucking in our city air, and whistling.
Jim Crace, Arcadia
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