Outside, twilight swooped down on the city like a vandal's hand: suddenly without warning. On the red and gray rooks of the squat houses, on the living wall of ants surrounding the cemetery, on the nervous, watching dogs. No light anywhere. Every window blind. The streets almost empty. In the square near the Municipal Theater only Old Martha, the official town drunk, exuberates. She has the whole city to herself, and her performance unfolds in a kind of demoniac ecstasy. She dances, flaps her voluminous skirt, displays her naked, scabrous belly, gestures obscenely, shrieks insults, flings her curses to the four winds. Joyfully she prances before the universe as if before an audience, her mirror.
- From The Town Beyond the Wall by Elie Wiesel
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