The rain was still crashing down, its violence unchanged. The eight o’clock news continued its talk of havoc and disaster — a multiple crash on Route 9, railway tracks flooded at Schenectady, traffic at a standstill in Troy, heavy rain likely to continue for several hours. American life is completely dislocated by storms and snow and hurricanes. When American automobiles can’t move, life comes to a halt, and, when their famous schedules can’t be met, they panic and go into a kind of paroxysm of frustration, besieging railway stations, jamming the long-distance wires, keeping their radios permanently switched on for any crumb of comfort. I could imagine the chaos on the roads and in the cities, and I hugged my cosy solitude to me.
My drink was nearly dead. I kept it just alive with some mo
