Barbary Coast Nightworld

Abstract

NIGHT FOG clung to the cobwebs that hung thick as torn stockings in the corners of the wharf tavern, slipping in through a window cracked to let out the whiskey thick breath of the thieves, pimps and sailors. Fog slipped in and stories slipped out, became fog, circled gas street lamps and floated back down into the sea or were wiped from the brow of a harbor patrolman, standing in his small boat still and silent, a pale form in dark robes, listening to the splash of brine against the rotting dock posts, cleats on the halyard whipping a mast in the wind, listening for the low bells of the ships of opium merchants who chose nights thick as these to dock their wares. Was it merely a sea fog or the stories in the fog that made the night watchman groping and blind? That made each glint of moon on the water seem a blade in a sleeve of black Chinese silk.