Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America

In front, on a long incline, stretches the mobile prospect of display lights, which seem to put out of sight the red lights of the automobiles immediately in front of us. Through the rear window of the machine constantly penetrates the impatient light of the vehicles that are catching up with us. It is impossible to stop or to decrease speed. You must race ahead, ever ahead. The measured, blinding spurts of light cause a man to begin yawning. The indifference of sleep possesses him. It is no longer comprehensible whither you are riding or what for, and only somewhere in the nethermost depth of the brain persists the frightful thought: any minute now some gay and drunken idiot with an optimistic grin will cut into our machine, and there will be an accident, a catastrophe.

Mr. Adams was restless in his seat beside his wife, who with true American self-assurance entered into the mad tempo of this nocturnal race.

“Why, Becky, Becky!” he muttered in desperation. “What are you doing? It’s impossible!”

He turned to us.

His spectacles flared with alarm.

“Gentlemen!” he pronounced in the voice of a prophet. “You do not understand the meaning of an automobile catastrophe in America!”

Finally he managed to persuade Mrs. Adams to decrease her speed considerably and to deny herself the pleasure of outracing trucks. He accustomed us to the monastic routine of genuine automobile travellers, whose aim is to study the country and not to lay down their bones in a neatly dug trench beside the road.

Only a good deal later, toward the end of the journey, did we begin to appreciate the value of his advice. During its one and a half year’s participation in the World War America lost fifty thousand killed, while during the past year and a half fifty-six thousand of America’s peaceful inhabitants perished as a consequence of automobile catastrophes. And there is no power in America that can prevent this mass murder.

We were still about twenty miles from Schenectady, but the city was already demonstrating its electrical might.

Street lamps appeared on the highway. Elongated, like melons, they gave off a strong, yet at the same time not a blinding, yellow light. One could see it gathering in those lamps – that which was not a light but an amazing luminous thing.

The city came upon us unnoticeably. That is a peculiarity of American cities when you approach them by automobile.