A hundred thousand people had been there the night before, but that morning there was not a single soul. All the tents had been packed up, everyone had retreated either to the snow city or to the city itself, and the ice was clear except for a few brick ovens which looked like mileposts, or pegs stuck in the ground. When the sun cleared the tops of the houses in Brooklyn Heights, the harbor turned blue and white, and a tremendous wind was generated as the sunlight woke the cold air over the ice. Their fire blazed up, and they bent their heads to protect their eyes from the wind. Pieces of paper flew past them in the air, and bits of litter (cans, tiny chunks of wood, sticks, tent stakes) shot across the ice like hockey pucks, and lodged in the walls of the snow cities. This was the wind that swept the ice clear of anything except the ponderous brick ovens, which moved as slowly as sick elephants.
"What"s that?" Asbury asked, pointing to a sacklike thing that was skidding along the ice. Judging from the way it moved, they thought it was fairly heavy. Sometimes it would stay put on a dent in the ice until the wind turned it. Then it would start off again, slowly, and build up momentum. And when it stopped, it stopped as gradually as it had started. Unlike the smaller projectiles that shot by, it appeared to be moving with graceful deliberation.
Only when they saw the arms flailing listlessly in slow motion did they realize that it was a man. Undoubtedly he was frozen solid but constant movement had kept the shoulders supple, and his arms tumbled alongside his body as delicately as petals falling off a rose.
They ran out on the ice, where they caught him and turned him over. Grimacing and immobile, coated with h.o.a.rfrost and snow, a St. Nicholas face greeted them from a ma.s.s of homespun rags, wool and pelts.
For a moment, Peter Lake hesitated. He nearly let the opportunity pa.s.s. But, kneeling on one knee, he lifted the body halfway off the ice, and held it in his arms."Abysmillard, " he whispered, suddenly pulled back a full century by a strong recollection of the harbor when the Baymen were its masters. Though Abysmillard"s face was coated with rime, it spoke to Peter Lake only of summer.
Now he remembered poling a canoe through infinite shallows and jumping out to drag it across sandbars the color of b.u.t.ter. The city itself was far away, obscured by mist and waves of heat. As a boy, he had never really had to look at it, but he had always known that it was there. He saw in memory a shabbily clothed child lost and contented in the world of the marsh, where it seemed to be summer all the time, and the strength and accuracy of his recollection suggested that although he had left that time behind, it was still replaying itself.
"You know him?" Asbury asked."Where did he come from?" Especially in his frozen and gnarled condition, Abysmillard did not look much like a modern man.
"Over there, " Peter Lake answered, looking toward what had once been the Bayonne Marsh."People used to live there, like Indians. They had clams, oysters, scallops, lobsters, fish, wildfowl, salt.w.a.ter boar, berries, peat, and driftwood. But that was a long time ago, and things have changed. Now the marshes are h.e.l.l."
"He must have been the last one, " Asbury said, unnerved by the savage and unfamiliar face of Abysmillard.
"No, " said Peter Lake."I am."
EX MACHINA.
PERHAPS instinctual knowledge of the Last Judgment is widespread because a life that leads to death is a perfect emblem for a history that at some time will be judged: both are stopped, stripped, and illuminated by the same powerful light. Or perhaps it is because, in living, one muddles through the years for the sake of those one or two moments which are indisputably great. Though such moments can occur on the battlefield, in a cathedral,at the summit of a mountain, or during storms at sea, they are experienced more frequently at a bedside, on the beach, in moldy courts of law, or while driving down sun-warmed macadam roads on inauspicious summer afternoons: for the castles of the modern age are divided into very small rooms. These rooms, nonetheless, are often crowded with large numbers of people, because history favors ma.s.s, and proffers greatness most readily when all the soldiers of an arrnv have gathered on one field, when a cathedral is packed to the rafters or when the mist lifts and the ships of an invasion fleet discover that far from being alone, they are a breathtaking armada.
Many a time when walking through the city"s magnetic and reverberatery streets, Praeger de Pinto had been overcome by too much light let loose, by a whiplash of energy that thundered through the gray canyons like a snapping cable. And sometimes when the city was so much itself that it shuddered and quaked, his spirit was lifted into the timeless corridors that ran invisibly above and through the streets, close to the blinding frictions that bind together all form. For him, the ferry"s low whistle, that elementary growl, opened corridors and corridors not only through the lacy and enticing fog.
These events were excellent preparations for his inauguration, in which he got what he wanted and lost himself at the same time. The ceremony was much like an execution, though he was not killed. He was, however, removed from normal life and permanently set apart. In other, friendlier eras, the mayor had been just one of the boys. Now he was cloistered by grave responsibility, and his youth flew from hima"like the pigeons that, choosing to ignore the traditional proceedings, rose into the blue and carefully threaded their way among the ice-covered twigs that cracked the morning sky into dazzling cells.
The Ermine Mayor came out, dressed in the ermine-clad robes and ruffs, with the ermine cap, the ermine stole, and the ermine m.u.f.fs. He peered from the ma.s.s of purple, white, and black fur, and, looking like an effeminate sh.e.l.l-shocked woodchuck, moved onto the platform to stand sadly next to the mayor-elect.
Turning to greet the mayor, Praeger saw beyond the furry thing that glided up to him a line of bosses sitting on the dais. Behind them was another line of bosses, and so it went all the way back to the cream-colored walls of City Hall, where the reviewing stand came to a halt. Why were all political bosses, with hardly an exception six feet two inches tall, 225 pounds, with red noses and red cheeks on fleshy faces crowned by fluffy white and silver hair? They were either that or they were short skinny beings with pencil mustaches, hoa.r.s.e voices, and sungla.s.ses permanently attached to their faces.
The big fat red ones had no necks, and the little thin ones always limped slightly. Surely, Praeger thought, this was part of a divine plan.
He was the first mayor ever to be elected without the bosses, and now they and every notable in the city were gathered to hear his speech. They did not know what to expect from him. He might speak about winter"s charm, excoriate the evils of television, or wonder out loud about the city"s destiny. With exactly a month to go before the millennium, he chose in his inauguration address to discourse upon the metaphysical balance that informed all events and was so characteristic of the city as almost to be its hallmark.
"I see a lot of puzzled faces, " he said."Why? Don"t you understand that this city is a hotbed of the mechanism which keeps things in trim?
"Ah, I know. You have mistakenly called it contrast, looked upon its social lessons, and then turned away. But do you think, really, that the patrician clothed in ermine is more elect than the derelict who sits in a winter doorway slowly dying?
"My mother used to tell me, when I was small, that if I studied jujitsu with the local barber who taught in the loft over his shop, I would be able to throw a big man with only one finger.
""How many big men have only one finger, Mother?" I asked, being literal to the quick. But when I understood what she meant I was not surprised, since I had realized even earlier than that, that adversity has its compensations, that in falling, and in failing, we rise. It is as if there is a hand behind us that sets to right all imbalances. Why do you think the saints seldom had the temporal power that we mistakenly identify with the fruits of justice? Do you think they needed it, or cared?"
The bosses began to sweat in the cold. Not only was this new mayor talking like a man of the cloth, he also made the same churchified gestures. They had always known that the only real threat to their power was theocracy, and not only did they sweat in the cold, but their sweat itself was icy. Conversely, the prelates who were a.s.sembled like multicolored c.o.c.katoos in the back rows of the reviewing stand grew terribly excited. Could it be, they wondered, [ that their long-abandoned dreams would be realized by this man whohad taken City Hall in a frontal a.s.sault through the back door? They itched to know his religion, so as to claim him. With a name like de Pinto, he could have been a Catholic, a Sephardic Jew, even Greek Orthodox. Who knew?
"Do not mistake my views of temporal power and material wealth as a device to protect the current social order. I see the Marxists in row thirty twisting in their seats. Stop twitching. Redistribute wealth, if that"s what makes you happy. I agree, somewhat, with your notions of equalization, though not enough to accept the tyranny that people like you, who have no eyes for grace, would unleash if you were allowed to govern solely according to your mechanical precepts. Since I believe that the curmudgeon in his club chair is just as likely to see beyond the realm of the world as is the derelict of whom I have spoken, I have no objection to maneuvering the derelict in from the cold and letting him have beef Wellington, too. In fact it"s only fair, but it is, in itself, a theology of a very low order.
"Far beyond that, though, is an artful, ever-present, recurring balance. One can see it in nature and its laws, in the seasons, in terrain, in music, and, most magnificently, in the perfections of the celestial sphere. But it is ill.u.s.trated here as well, in the city.
"At every turn, the city presents scenes of triumph and scenes of dejection. It is a kaleidoscope of sunshine and shadow that represents our condition far better than the wheel of fortune, for the wheel of fortune, though correctly polar, does not allow the proper fragmentation of time and events. The perfect simplicity of salvation is broken up upon these rocks that we have built, and scattered for us to ponder and piece together in a test that tries our patience and understanding. We learn that justice may not always follow a just act, that justice can sleep for years and awaken when it is least expected, that a miracle is nothing more than dormant justice from another time arriving to compensate those it has cruelly abandoned Whoever knows this is willing to suffer, for he knows that nothing is in vain.
"Now, let me tell you about the bridge that Jackson Mead is going to build."
Craig Binky was seated in a prominent place, and none of whatfollows was missed by a single soul. He clutched his chest and brow like a man suffering a heart attack and a stroke simultaneously, and then proceeded to grimace through a range of rapid-fire facial expressions that would have put Pantaloon to shame. And as Praeger continued, Craig Binky sank to his knees like a penitent, his spastic movements signifying greed and chagrin rather than newfound enlightenment or contrition.
"He showed me the plans, " Praeger said."In the sketches and elevations that I saw first, the curve of the great catenary seemed able to hold the entire globe in its jeweled and sparkling slope. Imagine my surprise when he told me that this was only a minor approach to the main structure. He then unfolded several dozen blueprints of astonishing bridges, unlike anything we have ever seen, and explained that these would radiate like spokes from the central span.
"Of the central span, there is no rendering. It is to be made of light. He speaks authoritatively of using the sea and the ice as a lens for beams which will be generated by several stations already under construction. Light of all frequencies will be shuffled, husbanded, harbored, held in reserve, magnified, reflected, reverberated, refracted, tuned, arranged, and focused so that it builds on its own strength. The key to achieving a beam of infinite power, I am told, is not the magnitude of generation, but the subtlety of control. Light under flawless tutelage knows no limits, and Jackson Mead proposes to train and tame a flurry of separate rays, escorting them through a complicated maze of development and augmentation, until they combine into a cool and solid beam upon which it will be possible to travel.
"Though one foot of the arc will rest upon the Battery, he would not say where this bridge will lead, preferring to leave that to my imaginationa"as I will leave it to yours."
There was an immediate protest from the crowd. Neighborhoods would be destroyed, expressways rerouted, and the city"s vital resources channeled into a rainbow bridge that had no end. It would nave been easier to get the pimps in Times Square to rebuild Chartres than to get the practical citizens a.s.sembled for the inauguration to agree to expend their powers in such fashion. Indignation chokedthem like thick wads of cotton. Had not Praeger de Pinto"s initial campaigning, before he fooled them into the winter madness, been in opposition to Jackson Mead?
Antic.i.p.ating this question, the new mayor answered it by stating that he had merely been against the secrecy."Now, I have ended the secrecy, " he said.
The bosses were enraged, which was, after all, how they earned their salaries. When they got mad, they lit up like flashing signs to signify to their const.i.tuents that they were working hard to represent them. The boss gallery was like a row of slot machines that had all hit the jackpot at once, because each boss wanted the people of his precinct to witness the luxury of his indignation. Even the clerics began to wonder if this bridge were not likely to denude their cathedrals after everyone had walked up it and disappeared into the clouds."The city of the poor won"t take this lightly, " someone said."They"ll imagine that the bridge is yet another enemy in a world of enemies. It will take a while for them to move, but when they do, they"ll move with a vengeance."
All that remained of the inauguration was for the council of elders to announce the new mayoral appellation. Praeger was apprehensive, believing that, after devaluing their currency in recent years, they would now have to be stringent. He feared that he was going to be called Pork Mayor, or Tin Mayor, and would have settled for a compromise, such as Bird Mayor. For as long as anyone could remember, there had been bone mayors, egg mayors, water mayors, and wood mayors. After the last bone mayor, the council had embarked upon an inexplicable and exciting trend, naming a Tree Mayor, a Green Mayor and then an Ermine Mayor. Praeger thought that it couldn"t last.
As the clock struck noon and the ice-covered trees rattled like belled tambourines, the Ermine Mayor shed his robes (which were then folded by his deputy), knelt, and presented Praeger with the scepter of office. There were no cheers, for the crowd was angry a confused. Then the council of elders (including Harry Penn) marched in line to the podium. Craig Binky had been summoned, but, having missed the meeting, did not have the courage to appear. The head of the council cautioned the populace to refrain from needless speculation."What we say here is not necessarily the future. We are not that wise. But we, like you, can dream." Then he announced that Praeger de Pinto was to be called the Gold Mayor.
The crowd gasped, and the bosses, too. Their machine, it seemed, was breaking apart. They feared not only for their livelihoods, but for their lives, since they knew that a machine coming apart as it runs is like a war unto itself. What, in their great wisdom, did they do? They scurried off the reviewing stand like a routed army and hurried home through the snow-packed streets to lay in stocks of food, firewood, and whiskey.
IT didn"t seem fair that Abby Marratta should be confined with dying old men, or that she should pa.s.s them in the corridors as she was wheeled from place to place on a long bed over which hung bags of blood and saline. Even the old men, who were adept at making their own misery their guard of honor, forgot about themselves entirely when she pa.s.sed by. They were terribly moved to see that the bed was largely unused, and that the child lay on only a small part of it in the center.
At first she was taken from one place to another by orderlies who arrived at all times, even in the middle of the night, as if her survival depended on how many rooms she visited and how many different people she encountered. These long and frequent journeys down hallways as clean as bone angered Hardesty and Virginia, until the journeys stopped, which angered them even more. She was now confined to her room, abandoned by most of the specialists and technicians, alone except for her parents, one or two nurses, and a young red-haired doctor, who cared for her, in shifts, twenty-four hours a day. Abby would often wake up, and when she did they had the difficult task of lifting her halfway into their arms and holding her as if the forest of plastic tubing that tangled around them were not there.
Then there were the specialists, half a dozen of thema"no, a dozen. They came highly recommended, and the names of physicians to trust flew about like parchments in a prayer wheel. Hardesty had so many slips of paper with the telephone numbers of doctors writtenon them that the long list he typed out to keep them in order took up an entire page. Each of the listed specialists was supposed to have been "the very very best."
After only a week of being worn down by changing faces and guarded opinions, Hardesty guessed the worst. No one offered any hope. They simply referred him on, until the last man he consulted took pity on him and told him the truth.
There was no greater authority, for he was the chief of the chiefs of the most prestigious medical inst.i.tution in the city. Friends of his had forwarded the records, he had studied them carefully, and visited Abby not once, but twice. He invited Hardesty to his office overlooking the East River because he knew that the majesty of the place, the painting of Lavoisier, the heavy furniture, the quiet, and the snow-covered gardens outside would make it easier for Hardesty to believe what he was going to be told.
"The best thing in the world, " the doctor said, "is the truth. You find it out anyway, in the end, or sooner."
Of course, he needn"t have said anything else. Hardesty fought back tears.
"Make your daughter as comfortable as possible, save her from pain, and don"t let her know what is going to happen. You do have other children, don"t you?"
"Yes, " Hardesty answered.
The doctor nodded, and stared at him, smiling just slightly.
Hardesty blinked his eyes, breathed in, and went to the window. First he saw the gardens, covered in snow. Then, beyond them, the river. The wind blew across the ice, bringing with it the bellows and whistles of ferries and tugs trapped at their docks like hounds confined by deep snows. Though afternoon had not ended, lights came on along the riverside, and in Queens the thin skeins of smoke issuing from many chimneys betrayed many early fires. Perhaps nothing is as sad as dying light in a quiet city.
"MY mother died when I was a child, and when my father died, Hardesty said, staring at a light and persistent snow that descended past the window of Abby"s room, "I was too young to take care of him, even though I was a man. It wasn"t my place. I suppose I could have taken charge and made him rest more, or eat differently, or do whatever he had to do to prolong his years, but the months he might have gained would have been all wrong. He was my father, and I had no right to father him.
"I didn"t know what to do as I saw him getting weaker and weaker. I was paralyzed. But he took that as a good sign. He said, *You save your strength to care for your own children. That"s the best you can do for me. Only a fool would waste his energy on a man as old as I am, and I"m glad to see that you know enough to conserve your courage for when it"s really needed." He left me with the sense that I hadn"t failed him, and he taught me how to die properly.
"But, you see, " Hardesty said, in controlled rage, his face tightening with determination, "I can"t let this happen to Abby. It"s not supposed to be this way. It"s wrong. I don"t just mean that it"s unpleasant, or that I don"t want it. I mean that it"s wrong. It isn"t her time yet. She"s too young."
When Virginia asked, "What can we do?" it was not entirely in rhetorical fashion. She was willing to believe that something could be done, and that it was their responsibility to do it. Everyone had cautioned them against this, saying that, afterward, they would never forgive themselves for imagining that intervention was in their power when it was not.
"But who says it isn"t?" Hardesty asked, remembering their words."Surely, more miraculous things have occurred. We hear about entire armies that are resurrected, or saved by a closing sea. Pillars of fire arise in the desert, thunder and lightning rage, and hills skip like rams to protect those who believe from fierce and vicious enemies."
"Do you believe, " Virginia asked, "that a pillar of fire actually rose in the desert?"
"No, " Hardesty answered."I don"t believe that. I believe that the account of the pillar of fire was merely a metaphor, but for something so much greater and more powerful than just a pillar of fire, that the image, for all its beauty, doesn"t even begin to do it justice."
"Isn"t it vain to imagine that we can tap that same source by an act of will?"
"I don"t think so, " Hardesty said. He seemed to be piecing something together."I think it would be vain to imagine that we could be favored without effort. As I understand it, miracles come to those who risk defeat in seeking them. They come to those who have exhausted themselves completely in a struggle to accomplish the impossible.
"I held back when my father died. He said it was my duty, and that I was right. His last wish was that I save myself for a battle I would not understand. Do you know what he said? He said, *The greatest fight is when you are fighting in the smoke and cannot see with your eyes.""
PETER Lake wanted to go to the marsh to see what he could remember. Because the harbor was frozen, he didn"t need a boat. Instead he bought a pair of skates and laced them on tight. Then he tied his shoes together and threw them over his shoulder. He set off across the ice early in the morning, with his hands in his pockets, as a strong east wind pressured by the rising sun poured down the darkened streets of Brooklyn and sped over the harbor. Peter Lake found that he didn"t have to skate, but could lean back on the wind and let it push him toward the marsh. As he sailed effortlessly over many miles, he saw again the familiar outline of the Bayonne peninsula, and the way it once had been began to come back to him even though it was now covered with factories, wharves, and huge construction sites. In the cold dawn, men labored by the thousands under flood-lamps and rows of sparkling bulbs that made the caissons and steel girderwork look like naval ships in liberty lights. Shooters Island came into view. The Baymen had called it Fontarney Gat, and there had been fresh water and fruit trees on it.
As he sped into the Kill van Kull, which the Baymen had called Siltin Allandrimore, he turned to look at the city. It gave him a shock, for it was so familiar from that perspective, and his recollection of it so strong that he thought he had lost touch with both worlds. Still, he found pleasure in seeing the cliffs of the city lighted in the dawn, as he had seen them so many times before. Though its gla.s.s palisades blazed, and the light that pa.s.sed through them covered the Jersey sh.o.r.e in refracted rainbows, enough older buildings were left to give Manhattan the air of an island of rock cliffs, and to make the Battery seem like a very tough chin.
He was about to head up the Kill van Kull to explore the bays, reed-covered bars, and salt-water channels, when he noticed a group of barely perceptible black dots above the ice, several miles behind him. He wouldn"t have known for sure that they were after him were it not for the graceful ebb and flow of their movements as they rushed forward at high speed, changing course at different times but keeping to the same general line. Knowing that in physical mechanics the appearance of such smoothness meant either unearthly precision or high speed at a distance, Peter Lake wondered not why the skaters would be out at dawn, but why they would be so determined and fast.
Instead of vanishing into the Kill, he skated east against the wind, and watched the intoxicatingly beautiful sway of the forms, much larger now, as they realigned themselves according to his position. They were headed beyond him, on an intercept. Then he turned and raced west. Sure enough, they wheeled gracefully to the right, keeping him, as it were, in their sights.
Peter Lake came to a sudden stop, shredding the ice into a cascade that fell upon its smooth surface and broke into crystals that were scattered by the wind. He stared at the approaching skaters. How steadily they moved, with none of the lurching of those not lucky enough to have the wind at their backs. They came on straight. And they were coming for him.
Despite the apparent peril, Peter Lake was glad to find himself in what seemed like a familiar situation, and he felt a rush of strength and elation which seemed inappropriate for a man of his agea"as if the strange forces which had battered him and beaten him down while he was on the street, and the powers that had worked against him and punished him with lightning flashes and thundercracks, were now in him.
The sun caught his pursuers. There were at least a dozen, and the steady and determined way they moved was threatening. Peter Lake headed for the island. They had the wind, and there was no way he could escape to the left or right of them, since, if he tried that,all they needed to do was to change course slightly and intercept him. Nor would it have made sense to continue west. The marshes had changed, and he was not so sure of his knowledge of them anyway. The best strategy was to round the island and go to the middle of the far side. When he saw them coming around on one side or another, he would set out again to the northeast, with a slight lead and the wind would be against everyone.
He got to the far side and stood there only long enough to realize that, if they were smart, they would break into two groups and put him in a pincer.
After a high-speed leap across the cattails, he flew onto the beach, and dug his skates into snow and sand as he raced awkwardly across the island. At its highest point, he saw that they had indeed divided into two groups, and were coming around in a set of slowly spreading phalanxes that would have trapped him had he followed his original strategy.
He was already on his way down to the free ice. But these skaters in black coats were not to be written off lightly. They had left two of their number as pickets several hundred yards offsh.o.r.e. The only thing he could do was to head straight for them, and he did.
They saw him shortly after he moved onto the ice. They put about a hundred yards between them, and fired two shots in the air to call back the others. He went right up the middle. As he gathered speed against the wind they braced themselves and fired at him. He heard the bullets in the air and was grateful, for bullets in the air seemed to be his calling.
As they shot at him methodically and accurately, but missed because he was bobbing wildly and going too fast, he caught a glimpse of them. They wore black coats of an old-fashioned cut, much likethe coats he had seen on the two short men in the restaurant. He still didn"t know who they were. Their tactics had been masterful, and it was only by luck that he had been able to remain unscathed.
But they were not as smart as they could have been. This he discovered as he flew between them. They had been training their pistols at him, waiting for the moment at which he would be closesta"which was, obviously, when he intersected the line that went from one to the other. They pivoted mechanically, taking good aim.
When he crossed the line, they fired with an exact.i.tude that identified them as creatures of geometry. Antic.i.p.ating this, Peter Lake sank down in the kind of compressed crouch from which barrel leapers spring, bent his head, and listened to the doubled Doppler effects of the converging bullets as they pa.s.sed just above him. It was an unusually long sound, spindle-shaped. Rising to skate, Peter Lake was delighted to see that his two attackers had slaughtered one another with enviable precision, and lay sprawled on the ice, motionless.
"My sincerest apologies, " he said out loud as he pushed forward without a pause, not wanting to waste even a second to look back at the others, who he knew would be building up speed. He went straight for the populated ice under the East River bridges. There, he could vanish among the newly rising tents and in the snow walls and burrows along the banks.
He skated effortlessly, taking hard forward strides that made his skates quiver and threatened to crack the steel blades. Then, crossing toward Manhattan, he remembered that the last time he had returned to the city across the ice he had been on a white horse. Such fragments of memory falling into place were common now, and though they were at present more enticing than edifying, he was certain that if things continued apace he would know everything.
THE ice city that lay under the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, and its sister cities to the north, were the intermediary ground between Manhattan and the city of the poor. Although, unlike their rich cousins, the poor did not fear for their physical safety in neighborhoods other than their own, they were intensely uncomfortable in the sparkling enclaves that they saw day and night from their own drab city. Walking down a well-kept street as doormen watched and matrons looked on disapprovingly was an experience to be avoided. The two cities had long been polarized, and though the lines were not physical they did exist, as the invisible boundary of the Five points could easily attest. When the rivers froze, however, new territory was opened and neutral ground was established. Though the contact between the rich and the poor might have brought about apositive exchange, it was the grosser appet.i.tes of each that sent them to the city on the ice. While most people and their children were on the bay looking at the galaxies, a cynical transaction was occurring under the bridges. The wealthy came to abandon just those virtue that they might have contributed, and to indulge in a licentious parody of what they imagined were the morals of the poor, and the poor came in turn like sharks to prey upon them. One group wanted to buy slaves and sycophants, and the other wanted cash, watches and jewelry.
It made for a place of raw nerves and much ugliness, completely unlike the other ice cities on the other banks, for, as is almost always the case, the architecture followed the plan of the inhabitants" souls. Peter Lake sailed in on his skates at breakfast time, making zigzags through the warrens of ice and snow until he was lost in them. After one last turn, he found himself in the courtyard of an inn. Snow walls had been raised against the wind, and a fire burned in a brick oven that had been stolen on the open ice to the south. At a large wooden table, a group of revelers sat awaiting their food, which was a crisp corn gruel and a milky cereal mixed together into a yellow paste. What faces they had, rich and poor, men and women, even the dogs who were curled up next to the oven: the greedy eyes, the chins and noses that flowed together into an undisciplined snout, the loose intoxicated smiles that came far too easily, the oyster-sack bellies that hung by threads, and the horseshoe-shaped rows of teeth that stuck out in aggressive unpearly necklaces from mouths that were continually barking.
Peter Lake took a place at table and was given a wooden bowl of gruel. The food was carried to the diners on a stretcher made or thick boards and logs. To transport eleven little plates of porridge, two men had to carry a 250-pound sledge. It wasn"t bad stuff, and all except Peter Lake ate like a pig, surrendering to their appet.i.tes and to the food. Peter Lake"s eyes darted about to take in the scene. Prost.i.tutes in upper-floor windows were stuck in public kisses that were not so much kisses as the draining of swamps. And the bogs from which they sucked were slovenly boil-covered creatures with hairy backs and meat-red lips. Before he was halfway throughgruel, Peter Lake saw two pockets being picked, and then he saw someone picking a pickpocket"s pocket.
For a moment, Peter Lake forgot where he was and lost himselfin trying to remember a rhyme of his boyhood in the Five Points that had to do with pucks and woodchucks, and what one might do I to the other. But, glancing through pillars of the snow courtyard, he saw a huge delegation of black-coated skaters pa.s.sing by like the centurions of a Roman city.
Peter Lake quickly found himself under the table, staring at fatty calves and trench foot. He noticed that, as they were eating, half of these people had their hands either on their own genitals or on someone else"s. In fact, he shared his place of refuge with a poor anonymous woman who knelt on the ice, rendering service between the legs to both s.e.xes in return for a coin held out in the hand of someone who never even saw her. The black coats came in and questioned the diners, who hadn"t noticed Peter Lake, and could not provide any information. They were so drunk that they couldn"t answer anything straight anyway. Peter Lake peeped out from a thicket of varicose veins and saw the bottom halves of his pursuers. They wore coats that looked like abruptly shorn tails.
"That... those are. Oh Jesus, Short Tails!" he said, b.u.mping his head against the table.
The Short Tails heard it, and toppled the diners onto the ice. Peter Lake bounded, knocking the table into the next enclosure. With the Short Tails in pursuit, he ran for the inn and raced up the stairs. Although the walls were white, it was almost pitch-dark inside. At the third story, Peter Lake stopped short and nearly reeled backward. A child who probably belonged to one of the prost.i.tutes and was more than likely involved in the activities at hand, staggered from one of the rooms onto the landing. She was only four or five years old, but she wore a loose dirty gown, and she moved like an aged drunk. Peter Lake was so stunned by this sight that he nearly let the Short Tails catch him. But then he took hold of himself, and continued.
The top of the stairs was a dead end. Everywhere he looked there was a snow wall, and in back of him the Short Tails were crunchingand burbling up the steps. Peter Lake took a leaf from his time as a derelict, and rammed the wall head first.
After bursting into an adjoining bordello where thirty people were moaning in a bath of thickened coconut milk, he excused himself, ran down the stairs, and skated back to the city.
In the real, solid city, the Short Tails now were everywhere like cinch bugs in flour. Though not all of them recognized him, those who did gave chase. He obliged them with leaps through windows, theatrical bounces on snow awnings, and plough runs through unsuspecting crowds, in which people were b.u.mped about like billiard b.a.l.l.s and parcels flew into the air in ballistic arcs.
As difficult as this was, he loved it, and could not imagine a better sport than to be chased from place to place and have to climb up the sides of buildings, hide in drains, and leap from roof to roof. It kept him so busy and was so pleasurable that he forgot everything except the city itself, and this was of tremendous value when he had to decide where to go or how to hide, since the whole of the city seemed to be in his blood, and he was able to rush forward at great speed and never miss a step. It seemed to him a fine destiny, and he would have been disappointed had they not tracked him everywhere he went. Sometimes he would pull himself up onto a fire escape and drop down on a couple of Short Tails as they ran underneath, knocking their heads together savagely. Once, he cornered one of them in a deserted building. The terrified Short Tail had long, greasy black hair, which he nervously twisted into tiny little pigtails with his left hand, while, gun in the other hand, he paced about the rubble looking for Peter Lake, who was hiding in a closet. When the Short Tail opened the closet door, Peter Lake screamed "Boo Hoo Hoo!" so ferociously that the Short Tail began to dance and jiggle, firing his pistol into the floor at uncontrollable rhythmic intervals. When all the chambers were empty, Peter Lake said, "That"s a nice dance you"ve got there. You ought to get up an act and take it to the Rainbow Room." The man"s teeth were knocking together like an automatic stapler. Some were dislodged, and fell on the ground."When you get through with yourself, " Peter Lake told him calmly, "you"re going to need a good dentist. I was going to knock you out, but this is better. Still, I have to be going. When you finish, would you be sokind as to turn out the lights and tear down the building?"
Then Peter Lake vanished into the darkness, the snow, the vast sea of lights, and the plumes of steam that on a winter night are feathers in the city"s cap.
He dared not go back to his room, for, whoever they were, they had found him out. He knew that they were called Short Tails, and that their job was to chase him, but he didn"t know why, and he still knew precious little about himself."As far as I"m concerned, " he proclaimed out loud, to no one in particular, striding down Fifth Avenue on a night bustling with shoppers, "this is a dream, and they can chase me until kingdom come."
But he had to sleep. What a delight, then, to be able to remember yet another piece of what he now realized must have been an extraordinarily rich past. He went straight to Grand Central.
Commuters and pa.s.sers-through crossed the prairielike floor much as they had always done, in a silence that invited the eye to rise and view the vaulted sky above. It was as if the building itself had been skillfully constructed to mirror life on earth and its ultimate consequences, and to reflect the way in which men went about their business mostly without looking up, unaware that they were gliding about on the bottom of a vast sea. From the shadows of the gallery above Vanderbilt Avenue, Peter Lake looked above him and saw the sky and constellations majestically portrayed against the huge barreled vault that floated overhead. It was one of the few places in the world where the darkness and the light floated like clouds and clashed under a ceiling.
They hadn"t tended the lights of the stars for decades, and the unlit sky was stormy and somber. Perhaps no one remembered how it was done, or even that the stars were there to be lighted. He went straight to the little hidden door, where he found a familiar lock."I know how to pick this lock, " he said, taking out his wallet of fine tools, and not realizing that he himself had set the lock in place almost a hundred years before."It"s an old bra.s.s McCauley six." He opened the padlock with such finesse that it finally occurred to him that he might once have been a burglar. But, since he had no memory of it, he dismissed the thought.
Once inside, in back of the sky, he threw a familiar switch, andall the stars lit up. Not a single bulb was burnt out or missing. It was just that no one had ever been there to throw the switch. In the forest of steel pillars above the warm vault, Peter Lake heard the distractive sound of low faraway engines, something that he had once taken to be the rhythmic blizzard of the approaching future. He went to his bed, which, after nearly a hundred years, was dusty but intact. Cans of food now probably deadlier than nerve gas were neatly stacked between the pillars. Stacks of Police Gazettes and old yellowed newspapers lay by the bed. He looked at all this in wonder.
Peter Lake lay back contentedly on the bed. It was winter, the stars were on, and he was safely in back of the sky. Down below, on the cream-colored marble floor, people still glided silently by without ever looking up. But had they done so they now would have seen stars shining brightly in a sea-green sky.
HARDESTY hit the streets in an hypnotic fury that barely distinguished him from the thousands already there. Of all the places in the world, New York was the one where it was easiest to get your blood up. All you had to do was step out on the street, and immediately you were ready to pit two short human legs against the Bel-mont ponies. Hardesty knew that on the avenues and thoroughfares the surf was always in a gale. His plan was to agitate himself until he discovered some random secret by which he could then save the life of his daughter. Though there was neither much time nor much chance, he sought voraciously that which Peter Lake had never been able to avoid. He was willing to risk everything, and he didn"t even know exactly what he was looking for.
His first desire was to fight, and there was plenty of opportunity for that, as the streets were filled with armed and desperate men who had been trained since childhood to rob and kill. That they, too, had no fear, and sought violence the way bees crave pollen, did not bother him.