Tenement stories

We regret yesterday's interruption to the great work of socialist construction; the responsible parties have been dealt with appropriately. But now, we return to the struggle and will - you bloody well guessed it - redouble our efforts.

The evening sky is still a gentle blue even now that the sun has gone his way, with only a few plump clouds drifting aimlessly across it; but gradually, too gradually to notice until the dark has settled, the colour is draining from it, and from the red and yellow tenements.

Here and there, windows are lighting up: the facades look like half-finished jigsaws or mosaics.

Stories lurk in the shadows of a fading day. There are stories hidden in the ornamental pots on front-steps, so heaving with black soil and flowers of every colour that it’s hard to tell where one bunch ends and another begins. Another story spreads over the front of a fanciful sandstone frontage along with a huge growth of creepers, wrapping its fingers round the very stones and drainpipes, but trimmed neatly away from all the windows.

The flags and ranks of ornaments loudly vie for the attention of the scant audience passing in the streets below, or above the stoops. Books, tucked on their shelves at the back of the lighted rooms, are sniffily above it all: the few switched-on televisions are surely beneath their contempt.

The young man hunched over his desk is surely telling a story, whether or not he’s writing one. Stories intersect and tangle: at drunken parties, or with two people sharing a room in silence. Stories wink at you, as the lights go out.