Earth Abides

At Cathedral Parkway he swung east, and defying traffic signs entered Central Park and went south along the East Drive, thinking that on a summer day people might go to the Park as they would have done ordinarily. But he saw no one. From his previous visit as a boy he remembered squirrels, but he saw no squirrels either; starving dogs and cats had apparently accounted for them already. On a meadow he saw a bison bull grazing; not far off, a horse. He passed the back of the Metropolitan Museum, and saw Cleopatra’s Needle, now doubly orphaned. At Sherman’s statue he swung into Fifth Avenue, and a tag-end of verse popped into his mind: “Now all your victories are in vain.”

An island within an island, the green oblong of the Park will remain. It has open soil where the rain penetrates. The sun shines upon it. In the first season the grass grows tall; the seeds fall from the trees and bushes, the birds bring in more seeds. Give it two seasons, three seasons, and the eager saplings are sprouting. Give it twenty years, and it is a jungle of second growth with each tree straining upward to gain light above its fellows, and the hardy natives, fast-growing ash and maple, crowding out the soft exotics which man once planted there. You hardly see the bridle path any more; leaf-litter lies thick on the narrow roads. Give it a hundred years, and you walk in full-grown forest, scarcely knowing that man was ever there except where the stone arch still spans the under-pass, making a strange cave. The doe walks in the woods, and the wild-cat leaps upon the rabbit, and the bass jumps in the lake.

In the tall windows of the fashion shops, the mannequins still postured strangely in gay costumes, their jewelry flashing. But Fifth Avenue lay before him empty, as quiet as Main Street of Podunk on a Sunday morning. The windows of one great jewelry store had been smashed. “I hope,” thought Ish, “he found the diamonds good eating, poor guy. No, I hope he was somebody who liked pretty stones because they were pretty, like a child picking them up on the beach. Perhaps, with his diamonds and rubies, he really died happier.” On the whole, however, there was little disturbance along Fifth Avenue. “The corpse is laid out in good condition,” he thought. “Yes, Fifth Avenue makes a beautiful corpse.”

A few pigeons fluttered up at Rockefeller Center, disturbed now by the sound of a single motor. At Forty-second Street, yielding to a whim, he stopped the car in the middle of Fifth Avenue and got out, leaving Princess shut up.

He walked east on Forty-second Street, the empty sidewalk ridiculously wide. He entered Grand Central Terminal, and looked in at the vast expanse of waiting-room.

“Waugh!” he called loudly, and felt a child-like pleasure as an echo came reverberating back from the high vault, through the emptiness.

He wandered back to the street, and a revolving door caught his eye. He pushed against it idly, and found himself in the lobby of a large hotel. Flanked by huge chairs and davenports, the lobby led on to the desk.

Standing just inside the door, he had a moment’s idea of approaching the desk and entering into an imaginary conversation with the reservation-clerk. He had telegraphed from—well, Kansas City would be a good place. Yes, and his reservation had been confirmed! What were all these excuses now? But the insane notion faded. With a thousand rooms empty and the poor clerk gone—who knew where?—the joke was not very funny.

At the same time also he noticed something different. Over all the chairs and davenports and cigarette-stands and marble floors lay a distinct layer of gray dust.

Perhaps, not being a housekeeper, he had not previously noticed dust, or perhaps this place was particularly dusty. No matter which! From now on, dust would be a part of his life.

Back at the car, he slipped it into gear, crossed Forty-second Street, and continued south. On the steps of the Library he saw a gray cat crouched, paws stretched out in front, as if in caricature of the stone lions above.