The red-blood life
deserted the towns; indeed it had never really existed in them; and
there came a white-paper life that was death. When death means life
there is no death, but the towns were still-born.
There were harrowing scenes in the spring, when, like incense at
funeral-rites, the smoky wood-piles smouldered on the pillaged,
ransacked, and bespattered streets with their broken windows,
boarded-up doors, and defaced walls, consuming carrion and enveloping
the town in a stinking and stifling vapour.
Men with soft-skinned hands still frequented restaurants, still wooed
lascivious women, still sought to pillage the towns; they even
plundered the very corpses, hoping to carry loot into the country, to
barter it for the bread that had been gained by horny-handed labour.
Thus might they postpone their deaths another month, thus might they
still fill up papers, still go on wooing (legally) carnal women and
await their heart's desire, the return of the decadent past. They
were afraid to recognise that only one thing was left them, to rot in
death--to die--that even the past they longed for was a way to death
for them.
... Forests, thickets, fields, a tranquil sky....
Many dwelt in the towns--amongst them a certain man, no different
from the rest. He had no bread, and he too went into the country to
bargain for flour in exchange for his gramophone.
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