POST BURNING SITE

[MickNickPickMickNick]

On the waxed floor, the felt slippers have made gleaming paths from the bed to the chest, from the chest to the fireplace, from the fireplace to the table.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

And on the table, the shifting of objects has also disturbed the continuity of the film of dust, the latter, more or less thick according to the length of time the surfaces have been exposed, is even occasionally interrupted altogether.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

As distinct as though drawn with a drafting-pen, a square of varnished wood thus occupies the left rear corner, not precisely at the corner of the table but parallel to its edges, set back about four inches.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

The square itself is about six inches on each side, and in it the reddish-brown wood gleams, virtually without any deposit.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

Outside it is snowing.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

Outside it has been snowing, it was snowing, outside it is snowing.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

The thick flakes descend gently in a steady, uninterrupted, vertical fall--for there is not a breath of air--in front of the high gray walls whose arrangement, the alignment of the roofs, the location of the doors and windows, cannot be distinguished clearly because of the snow.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

There must be identical rows of regular windows on each floor from one end of the straight street to the other.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

A perpendicular crossroad reveals a second street just like the first: the same absence of traffic, the same high gray walls, the same blind windows, the same deserted sidewalks.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

At the corner of the sidewalk, a street light is on, although it is broad daylight.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

But it is a dull day which makes everything colorless and flat.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

Instead of the striking vistas these rows of houses should produce, there is only a crisscrossing of meaningless lines, the falling snow depriving the scene of all relief, as if this blurred view were merely badly painted on a bare wall.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

The snow has stopped falling.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

The weather has grown increasingly mild during the course of the day.

[MickNickPickMickNick]

The sidewalks are still white, but the street, where the trucks have been passing continuously for hours, has already turned black again along its entire central section, the half melted snow having been heaped in the gutters on either side.