Far away in the grayish early afternoon skyline, the Custom House Tower could be seen towering above all the other buildings. It pierced the clouds with its sharp tip. "Boston in the rain".
Was it one of those postcard images, a commonplace in this country? Arlette had her head bent forward, almost glued to the steamy window of the little café where she had taken refuge. She had no idea. She did not know this city or its weather. The rain had quickly turned into a deluge.
The young woman had imagined for a moment that this shower would be the only one of the day, like a single cloud carried by the sea winds, which unfortunately disintegrated above her head.
She realized as the sky grew darker and darker, that it was just the scout for a long procession of cumulus clouds setting off to attack the continent. Fortunately, she didn't have to go any further, it was in this café that she had an appointment.
It was a large room where hot meals and unlimited coffee were served, in a luxury brasserie setting, with large mirrors hanging on the walls, dark wood furniture, and copper lamps with shades of velvet.
One could easily imagine women with boyish haircuts sipping their champagne with men slumped in the large leather chairs at the back of the room. Now, the overly bitter coffee being served seemed to recall the nostalgic vibe of the place, forcing customers to grit their teeth and long for the booze time. This place must have been a den of lust before Prohibition began, Arlette thought.
She stared at the Custom House Tower and its huge clock face that made it look like a neoclassical Big Ben. The tower looked much grimmer in the rain. "496 feet high," the guard at the entrance had told him. He must have thought the tower impressed him when he saw her lingering in front.
In reality, she just couldn't convert those "feet" to metric. The Anglo-Saxons always seemed to want to make things appear more substantial by using monstrous numbers, with their feet in length and degrees Fahrenheit.
Finally, the Common House Tower was not as tall as the skyscrapers she had seen in New York, and much less than the Eiffel Tower. Moreover, she was not particularly elegant. It was 1930 after all, and this kind of architecture was no longer extraordinary for anyone in Europe.
It had passed in front of the other "old" buildings of the city if one could consider the three hundred years of existence of the city as antiquity. From Trinity Church to Bunker Hill, none of it evoked the venerable antiquity of stone. Everything here seemed strangely modern to him.
At least she had already taken on the colors of the country, she thought, seeing the spectral shadows of his face in the glass. Her usually rosy complexion had become as pale as the landscape, and her large brown eyes had clouded over with fatigue. The crossing of the Atlantic had been exhausting.
Her long red hair, dried by the sea air, was now as hard as the straw of a broom. The clothes she had rushed to buy when she arrived already looked faded. She felt ridiculous and old-fashioned with her black skirt and beige wool vest. She found herself looking like an austere old widow amid American women in colorful outfits and short skirts.
She looked again at her outfit in its reflection and an idea made her smile. Didn't she look like one of those newly landed pioneers, ready to set off to conquer the West, looking for a husband and a piece of land, ready to cross all the rivers to make a fortune in the cities? California gold diggers? She might not be dressed like the flappers dancing to jazz in Harlem, but her clothes would certainly be more appropriate when she had to go inland, she tried to reassure herself.
His whole crossing of the Atlantic on board the boat had been animated by these stories. What was she going to start? Where was she going to live? How was she going to make a living? In her little boat cabin, she had been able to take the time to dream, far from the dormitories one floor below which were teeming with migrants fleeing misery and political oppression.
It was only when she landed in New York that she realized the privilege she had of being able to emigrate and enter the quotas thanks to her connections, while among all these people who had spent days locked under her feet, half of them were going to be thrown back into the sea. This idea terrified the young woman.
So what were these people doing? Were they going back to Europe, abandoning all their dreams and certain members of their families?
She watched the water falling from the gutters like a thick curtain darkening the street. Outside, the headlights of the cars looked like will-o'-the-wisps passing randomly through the immense geometric streets.
She had never seen so many cars. Fords, Chevrolets, Austins, for those she recognized. And it was still only a brief glimpse of all the excessiveness of the United States. She had become aware of this when she found herself in front of a map at the station.
She had stopped in front of the counter and contemplated the expanse of the country, printed on the yellowed paper. Hearing all these travelers speaking English with different accents, she had suddenly had the impression of entering between the lines drawn in gray ink on the railway, of entering this world that she had imagined for years.
Texas, California, New Orleans, and Chicago. She read the names on the map and heard the station masters announce the last trains leaving for such distant destinations. She felt like she could ride in any. What did she want to visit first? The Grand Canyon? The Niagara Falls? The Great Plains? Would she see bison and Indians where she was going?
While she had begun to daydream in front of the huge map, her obligations had called her to order, manifested by the last calls for the train from Boston. It was from there that she would go to reach her true destination, Maine.
She had looked at the small print in the very northeast of the country which represented this state on the border with French Canada. What was she going to find on this little piece of the map where all the railway lines seemed to stop only in the center of the country? Was there anything at the end of the railway lines? Would she find roads beyond? People?
A waitress approached her with a hot coffee pot.
- Coffee ? she muttered.
"I…eh…yes, please.
Arlette let her fill her cup, lowering her head to hide her crimson face. She had trouble understanding the local accent. Even after months spent in England, she found herself disarmed as soon as someone spoke to her a little quickly. There was too much haste in the way the Americans spoke.
These people were like the others, they had nothing more than those she had met on the other side of the Atlantic, and yet she felt that the change of scenery of which she was the victim pushed her to consider them with more away as if they were made of a material different from his. They belonged to this world too big to be real.