#371 The Purple Hat- Eudora Welty
It’s a rainy day in New Orleans, men sit in a dark bar:
“Beyond the open door the rain fell, the heavy color of the
sea, in air where sunlight was still suspended. Its watery reflection lighted
the room, as a room might have lighted a mousehole.”
As the slow scene unfolds, a fat man tells a story about the
woman in a purple hat. Everyday at five o’clock she can be seen at the Palace
of Pleasure, a gambling hall. There she meets a young man and stays till
midnight—this has happened everyday for the last thirty years.
The fat man tells his story as the bartender dismally looks
on. She is a ghost, the fat man believes, as he himself has seen her murdered
twice! When the clock strikes five, a young man listening at the end of the bar
takes up and leaves—probably to go search for the lady in the purple hat. “New
Orleans…is the birthplace of ready-made victims.”
No comments:
Post a Comment