Rainy Landscape

Hour after hour, all night long, the patter of the rain rained down. All night long, as I tossed and turned, its cold monotony beat against the windows. A gust of wind sometimes whipped overhead, and the rain would wave with sound, passing its quick hands over the panes; at other times there was just a muffled sound that made everything sleep in the dead exterior. My soul, as always, whether among bedclothes or among people, was painfully conscious of the world. The day, like happiness, kept procrastinating – indefinitely, it seemed.

If happiness and the new day would never come! If at least we could never have the disillusion of getting what we wait and hope for!

The chance sound of a late-night car, jostling roughly over the cobblestones, became steadily louder, clacked rudely beneath my window, and faded away at the far end of the street, at the far end of my fitful sleep that never became true slumber. Now and then a neighbour’s door would slam. At times there was a splashing of footsteps, a swishing sound of wet clothes. Once or twice, when the steps were numerous, they made a louder sound. Then they died out, the silence returned, and the rain relentlessly continued. If I opened my eyes from my pretended slumber I could see, on the darkly visible walls of my room, floating snatches of dreams to be dreamed, dim lights, black lines, hazy shapes climbing up and down. The various pieces of furniture, larger than in the daytime, indistinctly blotted the dark’s absurdity. The door was distinguishable as something no whiter or blacker than night, just different. The window I could only hear, not see.

Again, fluid and uncertain, the rain pattered. Time dragged to its accompaniment. My soul’s solitude grew and spread, invading what I felt, what I wanted, and what I was going to dream. The room’s hazy objects, which shared my insomnia in the shadows, moved with their sadness into my desolation.