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| "In the streets is the sound of gunfire, in the distance is fire and smoke." The old man sat by the window in his wheelchair, bundled in a long overcoat. His white hair was long and tangled, and he was bald on top. His young assistant stood behind him. |
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| From the window he watched a group of youths chase a bystander off the sidewalk, through a line of parked cars and onto the pavement, where they caught up with him. They clubbed him with metal pipes, knocking him down, then kicked him savagely in the face, stomach and groin. He rolled over on his back, arms spread, and began bleeding from the mouth. The old man watched with attention as they crushed his knees, elbows and wrists one by one with blows from the pipes. |
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| A vast explosion welled up on the horizon, moving through the air like a river of heat. The floor shivered, the windows rattled, something fell from a shelf and shattered. An orange glow silhouetted the buildings. Thick clouds of oily smoke pushed forcefully into the air. |
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| "That would be the old refinery," the old man muttered. "Someone has exploded the old refinery. Now we'll have to break apart abandoned buildings and burn the scraps if we want to keep warm this winter." |
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| Nervousness flickered on the glasses of the young assistant, who was clad in a dark sportcoat. His pale hands rested on the back of the wheelchair. "What can we do?" |
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| "Nothing. There's nothing to do but watch. All my life I've dreamed of this, was hungry for this. Ever since I was young I knew it was coming, but it played with us, took its time. Now our role is simply to be here, to witness the catastrophe. It's a priceless jewel, you know, to be present at the end of the world." He cackled, then broke off. Something had disturbed him. "Now that we're here, it's not what I'd hoped. It's not a purifying force at all." |
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| "Will we survive?" |
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| "You might," the old man scoffed. "If it's important to you. No doubt, survival still comes naturally to you. I'm old, after all. I ask for death and it doesn't come. I'm being kept alive for some reason, my senses intact. It's like a punishment. Mistakes made in our youth, roads not taken—every cause has an effect, an irreversible chain that leads, that leads to this." His voice had sunk into itself, no longer acknowledging the other's presence. |
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| There was a silence in the room. The young man lit a cigarette, and the red tip reflected in his glasses. Outside, the street began to grow dark. The orange glow of the refinery remained lurid on the horizon. There was a shadowy movement in the window opposite. Below them, a woman in a red dress had joined the youths and was laughing with them, loudly and incontinently, as they stripped the clothes and searched the pockets of the man who lay there, dying or already dead. |
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| The old man spoke again. "This phenomenon, you know, is being repeated, not just here in St. Louis, but in a thousand cities everywhere. The other day, I was reading about how a mob had broken into the Louvre, taking the paintings from the walls and tearing them apart, stomping them into the ground or making fires out of them to cook potatoes. They were angry that art is so expensive, so treasured. Those few relics of another age were so precious that they had to have a whole palace to themselves, when there are millions of people with no shelter and nothing to eat. So they decided to do away with all that and start over. You know, I can sympathize—but there were some good paintings there, I hear. Even if any schoolboy would love to slash the Mona Lisa, simply because he's heard so often that it's a masterpiece." |
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