After dark the twisting lights had died and fog had risen, a shroud across the street market. Throngs of daytime vendors and shoppers had taken away the fruit, bread, and swaying clothes and left behind empty booths and carts which rested under awnings, their wooden arms folded. Maurice went slowly down the street with his footsteps loud in his ears. He took pictures of the city as it slept. Watching the beast placid in gauzy shadow made it wider, newer; it was indistinguishable in night from its dizzy waking self.
Without the pressure and bound of the crowd, Maurice saw now that the market street was quite narrow. On both sides ran contiguous facades that shrank him, amplified him, as though he were a tiny figure on a tightrope above a vast night circus. The parade of bulky carts were like animals and he tread softly to leave them their slumber.
The moon fuzzed the fog silver and black. High windows along the way, most dark, some yellow, or blue with television, sighed vaguely with talk. Maurice listened to the city between each shutter snap of his camera. He used no flash, only turned toward the moon where it fell. He did not want to light the street even for even an instant. It would disturb the night or bring curious heads to their sills, and the sun might come shooting up to throw everything to bright and sound.
A door slammed and something metal clinked on the asphalt. Maurice went toward the noise behind his viewfinder, and shrank back when a man was thrown from an alleyway into the street. Three men followed him out of the alley, picked him up, and then started hitting him. Maurice was unnoticed in the dark, but he could not move if he wanted; his joints were locked and he could only watch with shock. The man on the ground was being kicked and punched. He tried to cover himself, but they pulled his arms away and hit and hit. They were rough looking men even in the dim light: boots and frayed trousers and cigarette smoke.
Their prey cornered, they stopped hitting him for a moment. Their victim was still pitifully trying to protect himself. One of his shoes had come off and there was a dark gleam of blood on his face.
“Come on, what are you gonna do?” one of the men said. “Get up!”
“Stop it,” the man said. He tried to get to his feet but he was yanked by his sleeve and struck again in the face.
Maurice had a storm inside him, all anger and fear. His finger was still poised to snap a photo, but the sound would turn the men on him. They delivered another blow to the man on the ground. One went back into the alley and picked up something that sounded heavy and metallic.
Maurice pressed the button that charged the flash on his camera. The whistle of the flash charging filled up the fog. It rose and thinned until it was all he could hear, and it turned the night as hot as the vein on Maurice’s neck, until it seemed the sky would pop. The man on the ground was sitting up, two of his assailants holding him by the shoulders. The last man came from the alley with a weapon in his hand.
“Hey!” Maurice shouted. He could feel the city stir as he pressed the shutter button and turned the street to day. The men froze and their eyes fixed on him like gleaming mirror shards. The next flash stopped them in motion, as the man with the rebar in his hand turned. Blind from the flash, Maurice took another shot, then another, his legs finally waking to move him. Silhouettes of the men pressed through the solid wall of light after him. Every picture was another piece of evidence, and Maurice held his camera behind his back as he ran, flashing over and over, no longer bothering to wind the film. Now footseps were all he could hear — his echoing loudest down the narrow street, his pursuers fast and many but growing distant. He did not stop until he was back in his car, but when he locked the doors and started the engine, he realized he had gone five or six blocks and was now alone.
Maurice flipped the headlights on and maneuvered the car back the way he’d come, along the tightrope. His breath clouded the windshield and he swiped at it with his sleeve. Tenants had gone to their windows and the beast was stirring with voices and lights. The market street was now empty and amber. The break and swell of dawn lurked behind the perforated paper sky. There was the sound of men somewhere distant, footsteps and shouts that would shake the city limb by limb awake.
