He took a step forward, then stopped, frozen, his eyes riveted. What’s that . . . ? A strangely familiar object beckoned and repelled him. He went closer and squinted. Then he exclaimed, “Aw . . .” Lit by the light sifting through the manhole cover was a little nude brown baby snagged by debris and half-submerged in water. At first he thought that the baby was alive and he moved impulsively forward to save it, but his roused feelings told him that the thing was dead, cold, nothing, the same kind of nothingness he had felt while looking through the slit at the men and women singing in the church. Water streaked about the tiny head, the tiny body, the tiny arms, the tiny legs, cracking in white foam and rushing onward. He felt the muscles of his body contracting unconsciously as he looked at the shriveled limbs. The tiny eyes were closed tightly, as though in sleep; the tiny fists were doubled, as though in vain protest; and the tiny mouth gaped black as though in an eternal and soundless cry.

He straightened and drew in his breath. Some woman’s thrown her baby away. . . . He felt as though he had been standing for all eternity looking at the tan skin lit with ghostly light, white foam blossoming about the head as cascades of veined water skimmed impersonally about it. He flushed with a nameless shame and involuntarily took a step backwards and his lips moved in an effort to utter angry words against the whole configuration of the senseless world. This thing was his enemy; it condemned him as effectively as had those policemen. It made him feel guilty. But, at the same time, he felt that his guilt was futile, for what could he do in the face of this?

He lifted his hand to sweep away this obscene vision, but the knowledge of his helplessness made his arm fall listlessly to his side. Then he acted; he reached forward with his right foot, and, as he reached, he closed his eyes so as not to see when his wet shoe touched the dead flesh; he felt his shoe push the baby’s stiff body from where it had been lodged. He kept his eyes closed for a long time, imagining that he saw the little baby twisting in the current as it washed from sight. He opened his eyes and stared into the misty cavern into which the baby had vanished, then he placed his knuckles in his eye sockets, listening to the water as it rushed past in the somber shadows.

II

He sloshed on down the sewer, poking the rod before him, his feet squishing slimy objects. At times he would sense a sudden increase in the tug of the current as he passed some conduit whose grey waters were swelling the stream that shot past his feet. A few minutes later he saw ahead of him another patch of light sifting down from a manhole cover; he was nearing another street intersection and there came to him a chorus of noises that gradually grew to a deafening rumble. Yeah, cars and trucks. . . . He stood directly under the manhole cover and looked down to his left; a stagnant pool of sludge covered with a grey-green scum was lit to distinctness by the falling columns of light. At intervals the scum would swell and a balloon-pocket would rise slowly and spherically, filling with gaseous air, glistening with a greenish sheen, and then burst with a hissing sound. Ten seconds later another dilation would rise and burst. Then another. He shook his head to break the spell. He could stand no more. He turned and tramped back to the dirt cave by the church.