Cambridge Colors
Fredrick Kuhn
Associate Professor of Industrial Design

Yellow leaves on the black asphalt were fluorescent in the November sun as I left Gund Hall and headed to the Square. Facing me, the red bricks of Memorial Hall contrasted sharply with the Graduate School of Design's cold white temple of modernism. The polychromatic, Ruskinian-Gothic massif, memorializing the sons of Harvard felled by the bloody violence of the Civil War, was resplendent in the morning sun. Arched windows of stained-glass, patterned slate roof, gargoyles, striations of brick, red turned black by the application of pitch: all an unabashed demonstration of Victorian sentiment and an absorption with mortality. The building reminded me, as a graduate student in architecture, that buildings should be more than containers for occupation. Somehow, we professionals had strayed ... lost the richness, the symbolism, the layering of metaphor, once an integral part of architecture, literature, culture ....

Passing the Cambridge Fire Headquarters that sits suspended between the vast memorial and the fenced precinct of Harvard Yard, I noticed all stop lights suddenly turning red and traffic coming to a halt. A maw in the facade of the fire house opened and a crimson emergency vehicle, blue lights flashing, erupted from the bowels of the colonial styled structure ... sirens pierced the calm with brain-shattering decibels. Distracted, I mindlessly followed the rescue wagon until I found myself on Mass Avenue at the westerly end of the Cambridge Common. The stroboscopic flashing long since vanished, I could now see the familiar blue awnings, yellow ochre lettering and circular logo on the corner of Shepard Street in the distance. Mid-morning, Starbury's should be empty, the corporate crowd long since decamped with their de rigueur containers of cafe latté.

As I approached, a gaggle of law school students, some sipping from ubiquitous Starbury's containers, ambled out, blocking the entrance. One could always recognize law school types by their vexatious air of entitlement ... the Dershowitz wannabes. My dislike was immediate, instinctive, and I pushed past them without apologies ... anyone so self-absorbed as to ignore their impeding presence didn't deserve courtesies. Inside, the post-modern decor of white maple flooring, black tables, canary walls, and lighting pendants of citron frosted glass was inviting. A persuasive aroma of freshly ground coffee filled the air. I ordered the coffee "du jour," a "Kenyan al fine," an arabica suggestively announced in cerulean chalk on the wood-framed blackboard hung strategically above the register.

Collecting my change, napkin and coffee, I turned to see an uncommonly attractive female sitting at a window, alone. Choosing a table that gave me a direct view of the woman, but irritatingly covered with an abstract composition ... intersecting rings of coffee, sugar and crumbs, I deposited my coffee and went for more napkins. I detested the slobs that left messy tables ... most likely the law school students. The table cleaned, I lifted my coffee ... sipped ... as I explored the vision at the window. She was beautiful, intriguing ... it was difficult to tell her age, perhaps thirty.

Dramatically fitted in black leather, knee length boots defined her thighs, a pleated miniskirt provided minimal modesty and a collarless top was provocatively unzipped, exposing cleavage. A delicate gold cross hung from a barely visible chain around her neck. Her black hair, bangs, was stylishly cut to frame the face; a Patrick Nagel poster beauty with porcelain white skin, full lips painted black red. The Armani coat hanging casually on the nearby wall was obviously hers. Draped indifferently from the back of her chair, a handbag with a paisley pattern of red, yellow, and blue, created a discordant note. The woman seemed engaged in a reverie and I wondered if I detected a sadness in her countenance. Mesmerized, I was unable to take my eyes off her. She must have sensed I was staring and looked up. Our eyes met and she smiled demurely. My heart fluttered and my imagination exploded. With a woman like that I could be a willing slave to her every whim. Presumptuously, I leaned forward to introduce myself when a frigid draft cut the nape of my neck, and as suddenly, she acknowledged someone behind me. Instinctively I slumped back, turned, stared ... in disbelief. She couldn't possibly be involved with the repellent creature walking toward me. Brushing me as he passed, he walked to her table and kissed her. My solar plexus felt the receiving end of a horse kick as my incipient fantasy collapsed. Before I could regain my composure they were gone.

I finished the coffee ... bitter. Starbury's coffee was over-roasted and over-rated. My senses suddenly acute, the smell of coffee cloying, the space confining, I found it difficult to breathe. Outside, the frigid air lacerated my lungs as I gulped for oxygen. The sky had turned leaden and Cambridge was suddenly a very ugly place.

At the intersection of Bow Street and Arrow Street, the bronze bell in the Venetian revival campanile of St. Paul's announced vespers. I had just left Leverett House where I met with a distant cousin from rural Ohio, an undergraduate, hoping to pursue a noble life in biochemistry. Having promised my parents I'd touch base with cousin Michael, my obligation was discharged. I resented the familial distraction now that I was immersed in the routines of graduate school. GSD was a pressure cooker and left little time for niceties or social courtesies. Now I had to rush to the Graduate Commons before they closed the dining line or be forced to take my evening repast at one of the grease pits on Mass Avenue. The Harvard Graduate Center in the North Yard was convenient and as much as I despised the idea of living in a dorm, the proximity of my room to Gund and the Commons was appreciated. The Commons even served beer on tap, not my usual Corsendonk, but nevertheless it was nice to quaff a brew without leaving the center.

I still felt out of sorts, the image of the Starbury's woman continuing to insinuate itself into my ruminations as I vainly reconciled the incongruous relationship she apparently accommodated.

"How could such a beauty be involved with such a low life?" It just didn't compute.

Mt. Auburn was busy with evening traffic as I reached the eccentric home of the Harvard Lampoon. Time permitting, I usually stop to study the face formed by the polychromatic juxtaposition of red, yellow, and blue doors and windows. The unsophisticated hate it. Even though the building dated from 1909, it still had the capacity to provoke irrationality. A former mayor, a visual illiterate, regarded it as a "stick in your eye" affront perpetrated by the privileged students of Harvard, and mounted a crusade to have it demolished. Failing, he planted a sapling squarely in front of the building on what is ostensibly public property, hoping it would eventually mask the odious visage that stares with such animus from the diminutive red brick structure. It didn't last a fortnight; someone, presumably a member of the Lampoon — although it couldn't be proven — cut down the tree in the wee hours of the morning, leaving a solitary severed stump to mark the victory of architectural whimsy over the Stygian forces of municipal conformity.

Continuing, I noticed people running toward Holyoke Street and in the distance, a wa, wa, wa, wail. Fire?

An overcast sky had darkened the city prematurely and street lighting transformed color into value as I reached the corner of Holyoke and the former site of Elsie's, a gastronomic landmark where Harvard students had once been introduced to the joys of a greasy Bratwurst. With Elsie long since cooking in the Elysian Fields, and artery-clogging sausages now in disrepute, the cramped space evolved into what it is now an innocuous ATM port.

Blue lights flashing, klaxons screaming, a Crown Victoria with Harvard University Police clearly identified on its side, skidded around the corner, narrowly missing a girl in a cadmium yellow parka; a second Harvard cop car followed closely. The two vehicles stopped abruptly in front of the Andover Shop, their brake lights momentarily transforming curious pedestrians into red demons, filling the street with a vision of specters from hell. A man lay prostrate on the sidewalk grinning grotesquely at the crowd, the side of his head missing. Glittering pieces of gelatinous matter decorated the street; a free-form abstract expressionist painting compromised only by the evil geometry of a revolver protruding from a lifeless hand. I moved closer, propelled by my own curiosity and the gathering crowd ... then I saw the woman.

"Yeh, he shot her and then killed himself," an over-eager street character volunteered.

Some people were crying, others stood silent and stared. Static voices cracked intermittently and obscenely from the interior of the two police cars as the incessant blue flash of roof lights endlessly defined and redefined the spectators. The warm sweet smell of flesh, blood ... the dreadful sight of the two lifeless bodies ... the thought that minutes before they were alive and capable of gesticulation, chilled me. I started to shiver uncontrollably. Blood, red turned black by the overhead mercury street lamp, flowed profusely from the female, downhill until it met a ridge in the sidewalk and detoured, spilling through a small gap in the granite curb to form a pool of black liquid in the dirty street. Reflected light captured islands of dustballs floating lazily on its surface. The volume of blood draining from one single human being was incomprehensible. My eyes retraced the horrific path of blood to the prone body; a disheveled form lying akimbo, clothing in disarray covering her head, whatever skin visible, a ghastly white. Her lower torso lay exposed, panties soiled, humiliated ... it was difficult to determine her age.

The exanimate figures rang familiar as my eyes searched the tableau of violence for meaning. It was then I saw the handbag, red, yellow, blue ... its contents, a wallet, lipstick, sunglasses, keys, coins, handkerchief, a paper napkin with a Starbury's logo, all strewn randomly across the pavement. My intestines wrenched into an involuntary knot and a rush of searing sourness flooded my mouth.

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