3:3

The street ran east-west. Descending the hill, the street was the west side’s most prominent feature. At this point in its route it had entered an older part of of town with old stone buildings worn by time and displaying that gritty grey colour that comes with decade of grime and exhaust. On either side the views were blocked by 5- and 6-storey tenements, some bearing a sordid appearance from years of neglect and lack of care, and others showing a more elegant face to the street, with touches of colour and signs of recent work.

More significant were the front doors of the buildings. Those that housed the rising middle class, the more recent immigrants to this old neighbourhood, had portal-ways of gleaming brass and worn but well oiled dark woods with neatly printed numbers on cards by the buzzer. There was even the occasional doorman in his somber uniform, always under a canvas canopy bearing a stately name as if to guarantee the building a more prestigious place amongst its fellows.

The older-looking, more worn buildings bore names too. But they were etched in the sandstone above the doors’ archways, often defaced or covered over by some later alteration. No doorman or covering adorned these entrances; instead they were distinguished by the multiple coats of peeling paint often producing a motley, shabby look. Such doors reminded passersby of the cracked and worn skin of man whose entire life had been exposed to the elements. The metal work was often missing, leaving gaping holes and cracks in the facade, and any glass had long since been replaced by bits and scraps of wood and plastic. Here and there one of the doorways would display signs of long past work, half-hearted attempts to halt or overcome the harsh markings left by time’s passage. But the door was always a reflection of the spirit of the building; it could not escape its legacy and could not avoid its fate. If the spirit of the building had not changed, if the destiny of its occupants had not evolved from their basic struggles to survive, then any attempts at beautification remained nothing more than a dispirited plastering of cheap makeup, doomed to smear quickly, leaving behind a mockery of the beauty it sought to create.

That was the neighbourhood that the man stood in. A place of transition and inequality. A segment of the whole that was neither here nor there, and not soon likely to find its place. Yet most of this remained unnoticed. It was the nature of the people on this block of the city that the man was most aware of. It was the pressure of their existence that pushed upon his senses. And he would not turn away from them; he would make no attempt to shut them out.