New York [antikvár]

»VAii:/. .i- ,'i. i.I'' i \t 'ji.r .'-i I • J M :way For many years now, I have returned to Manhattan from the airports— Kennedy International, when the flight to New York was a long one; LaGuar-dia when the flight was much shorter—over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to the Williamsburg Bridge. One is apt to be tired at such times no matter how short the flight and slightly depressed by the airline food, the pressure of descending, the wait for baggage, the megalomania of New York City hackies driving sixty-five miles an hour over bad roadways. Yet I am also exhilarated—a tiny anticipatory tingle in my breast, a purling of excitement at who knows what in my belly. I know what is there. But what is there? I am driven home at breakneck speed. What sort of jazzy Grand Prix does this mad driver have in mind as he takes our lives in his hands in and out of the narrow pieces of road left by enormous aluminum trailer trucks, Cadillacs, Volkswagens, the rusty heaps all going more slowly than he? And he, all the while, chewing on a cheap cigar, unlighted, and swearing to himself. The meter will never click fast enough for him. But, fast as he may drive, whatever Homeric rage consumes him, whether it be day or night, sunlight, rain, fog, the green smokes sent up by factories darkening the skies, he cannot go so fast that I do not see that which always tells me that I am home. Whatl see to my right just before I reach the bridge had become one of my several metaphors for New York City long before I found out anything about it. It is a small old apartment building, its bricks painted a pale yellow, its fussy cast-iron pilasters, sills and lintels a chocolate brown, its top story