Carmen Firan
The rest is silence
New York, where are you?
June 2020. For the first time in four months of quarantine isolation, fear and frustrations, we drive to Manhattan. From the Queensboro Bridge, the heart of the city looks in place. An orange sunset lingers over the skyscrapers and the cemeteries of Queens, with graves freshly dug graves a few weeks ago. At this hour we used to go to a show, and traffic was always a wild card. Now there aren’t many cars, nor shows. The theaters and concert halls are closed.
A summer night apparently like any other, and yet so different. A few restaurants have tables on the sidewalk, people sit calmly, some wear masks, all mimicking normalcy. Waiters with face coverings and gloves serve dinner on paper plates, and later a steep bill. Humidity and heat, the manholes’ putrid smell mixes in the overall miasma. A suspect silence hangs over the once noisy and energetic city. Fifth Avenue and Madison display boarded-up windows, to protect the luxury stores from nighttime vandalism. Other stores are open but empty. Few people in the streets. New Yorkers ran away and tourists didn’t come. Lifeless mood in a torrid heat. A place like any other in the world you can reach by mistake. Or, perhaps, I exaggerate. The tourist carriages parked in front of La Plaza disappeared. The food stands too. The peddlers selling counterfeit merchandise made in China vanished as well. Gone are the groups of street artists around the fountain, black acrobats cheered by passers-by of all colors. On a normal weekend we would have dashed into the MET to check the temporary exhibitions and cool-off in the sound of chamber music playing in the east wing balcony, but the museums are closed. In front of the Columbus Circle shopping building, police cars line-up. Further down, on Fifth Avenue, heavy security guards the Trump Tower. We peek at the Columbus statue, still in place, and enter the park. The huge improvised hospital tents disappeared. A bit more seems to happen over here. Children and dogs, bikers and joggers give us some hope. Everything is fine, I tell myself, even the Chinese amateur caricaturists are in place, ready to draw your portrait in a flash. We stay away from narrow paths so that we can avoid intersecting with too many people (dangerous encounters) and walk on the main alley flanked by statues, our favorite place to walk in Central Park. The word statue gives us chills now. What if one of the writers is confused with a someone else as happened to Cervantes, spray painted and vandalized by protesters? The virus wasn’t enough; the city is now ravaged by other chronic diseases. Scores of scenarios, with domestic and international enemies, try to explain the chaos and gridlock faced by today’s America. We reach Shakespeare’s Garden, dedicated to him on the 300the anniversary of his death. The herbs in the garden are ones mentioned in his plays. The conclusion of Hamlet comes to mind: after the Dutch, -- something was rotten in Denmark from the beginning --, become either mad or kill each other, the rival King Fortinbras decides the time has come to conquer them.
Not much left to do, so we get on the road back over the Queensboro Bridge. We leave behind a city tired and dull. Nonetheless, who is to gain from the fall of the empire? How will the future look like? Night falls over the skyscrapers waving a dusty, torn-off cape. “The rest is silence”.
New York, where are you?
June 2020. For the first time in four months of quarantine isolation, fear and frustrations, we drive to Manhattan. From the Queensboro Bridge, the heart of the city looks in place. An orange sunset lingers over the skyscrapers and the cemeteries of Queens, with graves freshly dug graves a few weeks ago. At this hour we used to go to a show, and traffic was always a wild card. Now there aren’t many cars, nor shows. The theaters and concert halls are closed.
A summer night apparently like any other, and yet so different. A few restaurants have tables on the sidewalk, people sit calmly, some wear masks, all mimicking normalcy. Waiters with face coverings and gloves serve dinner on paper plates, and later a steep bill. Humidity and heat, the manholes’ putrid smell mixes in the overall miasma. A suspect silence hangs over the once noisy and energetic city. Fifth Avenue and Madison display boarded-up windows, to protect the luxury stores from nighttime vandalism. Other stores are open but empty. Few people in the streets. New Yorkers ran away and tourists didn’t come. Lifeless mood in a torrid heat. A place like any other in the world you can reach by mistake. Or, perhaps, I exaggerate. The tourist carriages parked in front of La Plaza disappeared. The food stands too. The peddlers selling counterfeit merchandise made in China vanished as well. Gone are the groups of street artists around the fountain, black acrobats cheered by passers-by of all colors. On a normal weekend we would have dashed into the MET to check the temporary exhibitions and cool-off in the sound of chamber music playing in the east wing balcony, but the museums are closed. In front of the Columbus Circle shopping building, police cars line-up. Further down, on Fifth Avenue, heavy security guards the Trump Tower. We peek at the Columbus statue, still in place, and enter the park. The huge improvised hospital tents disappeared. A bit more seems to happen over here. Children and dogs, bikers and joggers give us some hope. Everything is fine, I tell myself, even the Chinese amateur caricaturists are in place, ready to draw your portrait in a flash. We stay away from narrow paths so that we can avoid intersecting with too many people (dangerous encounters) and walk on the main alley flanked by statues, our favorite place to walk in Central Park. The word statue gives us chills now. What if one of the writers is confused with a someone else as happened to Cervantes, spray painted and vandalized by protesters? The virus wasn’t enough; the city is now ravaged by other chronic diseases. Scores of scenarios, with domestic and international enemies, try to explain the chaos and gridlock faced by today’s America. We reach Shakespeare’s Garden, dedicated to him on the 300the anniversary of his death. The herbs in the garden are ones mentioned in his plays. The conclusion of Hamlet comes to mind: after the Dutch, -- something was rotten in Denmark from the beginning --, become either mad or kill each other, the rival King Fortinbras decides the time has come to conquer them.
Not much left to do, so we get on the road back over the Queensboro Bridge. We leave behind a city tired and dull. Nonetheless, who is to gain from the fall of the empire? How will the future look like? Night falls over the skyscrapers waving a dusty, torn-off cape. “The rest is silence”.