Of all HP Lovecraft's stories, The Street, which was published in 1920, shows the more negative side of his writing, particularly his racism. Wikisource has the full text of Lovecraft's story however, for those who haven't read it, he shows how a street (presumably in Boston) develops from a country lane in Colonial times, becoming a pleasant, prosperous road lined with rose gardens until, around the time of the Civil War with the coming of the industrial revolution, it gradually degenerates into a slum.
Then, and here Lovecraft's racism kicks into high gear, it becomes filled with swarms of hideous, non-WASP foreigners plotting violent revolution against the old order shortly after the First World War. However, before their evil plans come to fruition, all The Street's buildings collapse at the same time killing the revolutionaries. Afterwards, a wandering poet claims he has seen a vision of the ancient Georgian street.
According to Daniel Harms, author of The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, "If someone came up to me and said, 'Hey Daniel, I think HP Lovecraft was a wordy, overly-sentimental bigot whose stories don't make much sense,' this would be the last story I would hand to him to convince him otherwise."
This short tale looks at the events on The Street from a different point of view although I'm not sure HP Lovecraft himself would have appreciated this.
FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET.
Slipping through the door, I pushed my way into Petrovitch's Bakery. The smell of unwashed, sweaty bodies – hot and sour – together with cheap tobacco overrode the usual yeasty smell of fresh rye bread. I didn't mind as I knew I stunk just as bad, or even worse, as I'd come from a ten hour shift at the meat-packers. Some of the men made way for me and I nodded to those I knew. "Vasyl, Yuri," I smiled tiredly.
A group of women, all wearing head-scarves, stood along one wall, those at the back leaning against Petrovitch's white tiles. Nodding apologies to those men I jostled, I made my way over to them. Closer, the women looked exhausted, worn-out and older than their years. Hardly surprising given the hours they slaved in drudgery for nickels and dimes.
Many of them had worked in munitions factories during the Great War – hard jobs but well paid. But since the end of that terrible conflict, they had mostly been sacked and now struggled to support their families with whatever work they could find – piece-work seamstresses, street sweepers, washer women, cleaners or domestic servants. And they were the fortunate ones. Some, it was hinted, had to earn their living in less wholesome ways, servicing the lusts of equally downtrodden men.
Fortunately, my girlfriend, Rosa, worked as a nanny for a wealthy Anglo woman who treated her half-way decently. She looked round, saw me approach and her tired face lit up with a smile. I took her work-roughened hand, lifted it to my lips and kissed it. An Old World gesture, but she liked that. We both came from Odessa, a beautiful city on the Black Sea that neither would see again. With many others, we'd fled Admiral Kolchak's savage counter-revolutionaries, his Tsarist Whites against the heroic people's Red Army, and crossed the storm-tossed Atlantic seeking better lives in the New World. We'd traveled in steerage, crammed in like cattle.
But our hopes were cruelly dashed when our ship docked. The only place we could find to live was herded with our compatriots in terrible, unsanitary slums – exploited by Anglo landlords who crammed as many tenants as they could into already overcrowded tenements. These tottering buildings were never designed to hold so many people.
I remembered my first week here. One of the men in the apartment I shared, only one step up from a flop house, took me along to the meat-packers where he worked. The bosses were always looking out for strong men who would work all the hours in a day. Men who could stand up to the daily grind of hard labor. Accidents were common, especially in the stock yards. And for the privilege of coming home filthy and exhausted every day the Anglo owners paid a wage to starve on.
Life has to be better than this.
"Is he here?" I asked.
Rosa shook her head. "I think he's in with Petrovitch and the committee in the back. He'll be out soon."
We were all here to listen to Klein – a revolutionary firebrand speaker. Klein had come from Russia to organize a series of strikes and protests about our terrible jobs and living conditions. Like everyone, we had come to America to improve our lives – not to live and work as beasts of burden. The Anglo establishment ground us into the dust but Klein would make them fear us and give in to our just demands.
Other meetings were taking place in the neighborhood this evening – at the Rifkin School of Modern Economics, the Circle Social Club and the Liberty Cafe. Our grievances were numerous and widespread and resentment had built up to a point where we could take no more.
There was a stir, rippling out from the front of the bakery. I stood on tiptoe, craning my neck to peer above the masses before me. A door leading to smoky backrooms opened.
"Is that him, Leonid?" Rosa hissed.
"I can't tell," I replied.
Murmurs, spreading like waves, came from the front of the room. "Klein," the men said. Over the susurration I heard a scraping sound as a box was dragged out. Then Klein himself stepped up onto Petrovitch's bread counter.
Klein was a short man who looked like he knew hard work. His face was sunburned – what we could see of it that wasn't hidden beneath a thick, black beard. His deep-set brown eyes seemed to take in everyone in the room at once – to see us as individuals and also, at the same time, as members of America's downtrodden proletariat.
The murmuring and muttering died away as we all looked up at Klein. Behind him, on the other side of the counter, stood Petrovitch – looking like a true Russian bear – as well as the rest of the revolutionary committee. Klein spread his arms wide, encompassing us all. Even under his black jacket, I could see he was well muscled.
Rosa squeezed my hand and snuggled up against me.
"Without you no cog can turn! Workers, you can do without the bosses!" As many people in the room couldn't speak English; Klein spoke in Russian; not the tongue of our oppressors.
We cheered the start of Klein's speech. No grasping, capitalist bosses, no greedy landlords. That was what the revolutionary committee promised. At times impassioned, at others his voice calm and reasonable, he fired up the crowd for tomorrow's day of action.
I looked down at Rosa's upturned face. She had beautiful green eyes set over high cheekbones. Odessa is a cosmopolitan city and I could see several nationalities reflected in her face.
"You'll be careful tomorrow, Leo?" she said. She could speak English better than me but tonight she spoke our mother-tongue.
I nodded, not speaking; wanting to hear what Klein had to say.
Tomorrow was the Fourth of July. The Anglos would be celebrating their revolution but we had nothing to observe. Merely lives of hard, unremitting, back-breaking toil amid overcrowded, unhealthy, unsanitary conditions. We worked like dogs in the smoke and died young out of sight of the sun. In this land of opportunity, we deserved better than this.
"Workers," Klein declaimed, "While the bosses play tomorrow, we will rise up. Down tools and strike. We will demand redress for our grievances. We will march through the streets and smash the capitalist system that grinds us down!" His eyes were large with expectation of triumph.
There were cheers at this. We workers had nothing to lose but our chains. For months we had been preparing for this day. The committee had circulated handbills – in our Cyrillic script – as well as making placards. The women, Rosa among them, had spent weeks and months embroidering beautiful red banners and flags that would be carried high tomorrow.
Klein told us that revolution wouldn't just happen in this one city. It would be national. Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, New York itself. All the cities of this land from coast to coast where the downtrodden masses struggled would rise as one.
Eventually, Klein wound up his speech. "Comrades, today the capitalist oppressors have their boot heels on our necks. Tomorrow we will throw off their iron shackles and take our places as free men. Demand your rights, comrades. Demand a workers' collective. Tomorrow, we smash the system!"
We cheered fit to raise the roof. Yuri looked back at me. I felt sorry for Yuri. Last year, he had been injured working on the docks when a crate fell on him, crushing his arm. The arm was ruined but he got no compensation, no sick pay and would never work again. Who would hire a cripple when strong men fought for every job? Now he eked out a living with his push-cart selling apples on street corners. Just another victim of the capitalist oppressors. Yes, we would change this rotten system and get justice for all victims like Yuri.
Petrovitch the baker spoke afterwards, giving details of assembly times and the routes we would be marching. Eventually, we made our way outside – but not into fresh air as the wind was blowing a hot stench from the stockyards in our direction.
"We shouldn't have to live like this," Rosa said. A film of sweat made a sheen on her brow. I wanted to kiss it away.
"After tomorrow's day of action, we won't have to," I said. "We'll demand full equality with the Anglos. After all, they were once immigrants, too."
"Do you really think that will happen?" she said, softly. "Look at the chaos back home. Whites against Reds with ordinary people caught in the middle."
I thought for a moment. "Yes. It will be different here. These Americans will give into our demands."
"Do you really think so? You don't think they will call out their army and crush us? There's been a lot of troops around here recently – it's like they know what's going on."
Rosa was right. There had been plenty of olive-drab troops on the streets recently. No doubt the government had its informers among us but their searches had turned up nothing. Our leaders were too wise and cunning to be caught out by the authorities.
I shook my head. "No. They can't stop us. They won't be able to resist us all – not when we act as one." That was one of Klein's lines.
"They probably have their spies among us," she continued.
"Doesn't matter now – it's too late to stop us. We rise up tomorrow."
Linking arms, I walked Rosa back to her lodgings. She lived in a room in one of those cheap, ugly newer buildings that backed onto the larger houses that looked to be over a hundred years old.
As we walked I saw an Anglo. He was out of place here but occasionally we saw the odd one or two, thinking that our slum was really made up of quaint old buildings. He carried a sketch pad under one arm and looked about him with an expression of wonder. He didn't have to live in this squalor. Some of the other men scowled at him and grumbled under their breath thinking he was a government spy.
Rosa sat on her stoop. I wasn't allowed to enter her lodgings – not with that tartar of her landlady – but on a hot summer's night like this, that was no hardship. I took her chapped hand in mine and wished I could rub away the calluses and rough skin and make her as beautiful as the women I sometimes saw out shopping up on the hill. Yet I loved her so much it ached inside.
We made our plans for the morrow. Once again, she made me promise not to take any rash action and to stay clear of any violence. "Let Klein and the committee take those risks."
Reluctantly, I agreed. Satisfied, she stood to go in and I stood an instant later. We kissed. I didn't want to let the moment go but eventually Rosa broke apart.
"I love you," she said. It sounds better in our native Russian than in English.
"I love you, too," I replied. I knew then that I wanted to make this woman my wife.
I watched as she opened the front door and let herself in, silhouetted against the hall light. I never saw her alive again.
Turning away, I was too keyed up to rest and I didn't fancy returning to my sweltering room listening to my friends' snores. Instead, I walked past the wandering artist and uphill, away from our neighborhood. I was deep in thought about tomorrow – and also my Rosa.
I walked further than I usually do and it was very late when I came back. Turning the corner into my street, I heard a rumbling, a groaning and then sudden crashing. I stopped, aghast, because, as one, all the crumbling, rotting, worm-eaten edifices collapsed. These slums should have been condemned years before but how had they all fallen as one?
Running forwards, I screamed out Rosa's name. Yet it wasn't only Rosa who had been crushed in the catastrophe. Hundreds died that night as nobody living on the overcrowded street survived. Digging through rubble with my bare hands, desperately searching for her body yet hoping against hope that she had survived; I saw all that was left standing was one brick wall and two chimneys.
I screamed my rage and pain to the skies. It had to be the government. Somehow, they must have got wind of our plans and detonated explosives beneath the buildings. Nothing else would explain how all the buildings, old as they were, fell at the same time. I would take revenge on the men who had killed my love – and my people. Somehow, I didn't know how, I'd find out who was responsible for this. And then I'd kill them. With my bare hands if I had to.
Yet I took no notice of those foolish poets and travelers who claimed afterwards they'd seen the ghosts of fair Georgian houses or smelled a delicate fragrance as of roses.
THE END.