The sky rolls over itself in shades of black and gray. The sky is one long piece of steel, being melted by the sun above. The immeasurable clouds weep onto the earth. The air is bitter, like the taste of an orange floating in oil. A certain humidity assails the skin, as if the idea behind the sewage had risen to the sidewalk, and taken a form.
Our bus is stopped at a light. Inside, boys wearing blue corduroy hats, uniform white choir shirts with treble clefs etched into the right breast, and naval blue shorts and pants. About a hundred blue Dockers stamp on the floor of the bus, while the boys peer outside the rain-stretched windows of the bus. Outside this strange world, the Louvre is, the glass pyramid sticking out of the stone ground, while the ancient palaces court it, as if they were curious observers of a past age, looking upon something alien. Yet there is no movement, save some solitary shapes over the courtyard, sporadic shadows on the stonework.
The clicking of cameras, the repetitious flash. Perhaps it is the sky in anger, flashing its teeth in jagged light upon aged forests and deprecated villages. It is only the flashing of the cameras, however, the light reflecting back from the bus windows and lighting up the excited faces of the boys. One boy, who does not hold a camera and is not standing up, is immersed in a book. Stephen King's It. His face is nosed against the pages, and not even the phantasmagoria of France can rise him from his story. He has a hard face, dark, black hair, dark bushy eyebrows, and pointed cheeks.
A voice comes onto the bus loudspeaker. It is a man, who says that to the left is The Louvre. He regrets that we will not be able to visit it, and then makes a forgetful joke.
Our bus is stopped at a light. Inside, boys wearing blue corduroy hats, uniform white choir shirts with treble clefs etched into the right breast, and naval blue shorts and pants. About a hundred blue Dockers stamp on the floor of the bus, while the boys peer outside the rain-stretched windows of the bus. Outside this strange world, the Louvre is, the glass pyramid sticking out of the stone ground, while the ancient palaces court it, as if they were curious observers of a past age, looking upon something alien. Yet there is no movement, save some solitary shapes over the courtyard, sporadic shadows on the stonework.
The clicking of cameras, the repetitious flash. Perhaps it is the sky in anger, flashing its teeth in jagged light upon aged forests and deprecated villages. It is only the flashing of the cameras, however, the light reflecting back from the bus windows and lighting up the excited faces of the boys. One boy, who does not hold a camera and is not standing up, is immersed in a book. Stephen King's It. His face is nosed against the pages, and not even the phantasmagoria of France can rise him from his story. He has a hard face, dark, black hair, dark bushy eyebrows, and pointed cheeks.
A voice comes onto the bus loudspeaker. It is a man, who says that to the left is The Louvre. He regrets that we will not be able to visit it, and then makes a forgetful joke.
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