At the very instant that Beverly opened the door to the iron stairs and the flash appeared in the sky, Peter Lake"s steel grappling hook was thrown in a perfect arc, and traveled smoothly up to the roof. It took hold with a sound like that of an ax lodging in a piece of timber. But Beverly didn"t hear it, for the hook landed and the door slammed at the same time. With his tool-laden knapsack on his back, Peter Lake climbed hand over hand up the knotted rope, like an alpinist, talking to the hook all the while, begging it not to pull out. Beverly made circles around the pole of the spiral staircase, as if she were dancing down the steps of a palace filled with music. Four o"clock in the morning.
Still, the city did not stir. A few thin willows of smoke rose straight and undisturbed, and on the river some pilot lights could be seen on vessels moored fast to buoys or stranded in the ice. Lightheaded and obsessed, both Beverly and Peter Lake were furiously engaged. She whirled about the second floor, tossing off her clothes as she went, waiting for enough water to fill the bathing pool so that she could take shelter in it away from the cold air that would be playing in invisible eddies above it. She was not used to such exertion, and probably should have refrained, but she danced the way people often do when they are un.o.bserveda"as unfettered and unself-conscious as a child, skipping like a lamb. Peter Lake was hard at work on the roof, panting like a bicyclist, turning a heavy auger.
"This G.o.dd.a.m.ned roof"s three feet thick," he said to himself as the drill went deeper and deeper and did not break through. He thought that he had hit a sleeper, so he started a new hole. After a few minutes, the brace came to rest against the top of the roof, and the bit still had not broken through." What"s going on here?" asked Peter Lake, with tremendous irritation. Usually, he would already have been knocking at the fence"s door. He did not know that Isaac Penn (being an eccentric and heinously wealthy old whaler) had had the house built by New England"s finest shipwrights, specifying that the roof be crafted like the hull of a polar whaler built to survive pack ice. For some reason, Isaac Penn was afraid of meteorites, and because of that the attic of his house was, more or less, a solid block of wood. The timbers were so thick and tight that Peter Lake could not have sawed open an entrance for himself had he had until June to accomplish the task. He grew more and more apprehensive as he realized that he might have to go down a chimney. It was bad enough doing that in summer, but in winter it usually entailed difficult complications.
As Peter Lake climbed along the roof, Beverly prepared to enter the bath. Isaac Penn"s bathing pool was a tank of black slate and beige marble ten feet long, eight feet wide, and five feet deep. Water flowed into it over a smooth stone ledge along its entire length, came upwelling in an explosion of bubbles from jets at the bottom, and played over the surface after spewing from the yawning mouths of golden whales. All the Penn children, most lately Willa, had learned to swim there. And despite his deserved reputation for being a pillar of virtue, Isaac Penn did not object to men and women bathing together in the nude, as long as it was not done coyly. He had learned the custom in j.a.pan, and maintained that it was highly civilized. Had the public known, he would have been pilloried.
The pool was half full, a churning sea of warm white bubbles. Peter Lake found the roof door and the lighted spiral staircase. He thought it might have been a trap, but he also thought that it mighthave been good luck. It was a heavy steel door: someone had mistakenly left it unlocked after leaving the solarium. Deciding to try it, he took out his pistol. Beverly raised her arms. No fever, it seemed. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She was beautiful; and how wonderful to be beautiful and not wasting away. Peter Lake peered in through the roof door, allowing his eyes to adjust to the light. Then he took a step, and Beverly tossed herself, feet first, with a whoop, into the whirlpool. He turned dizzily down the steps. She spread her arms and revolved easily in the current. Just as he reached the main floor, pistol in hand, eyes darting to and fro, she took hold of a golden whale and stretched out her feet to kick in place, singing to herself. She had plaited her hair in a loose braid, and it lay suspended in the clear shallows that washed across her back. Her limbs, smoother and more perfect than ivory, beautiful in themselves as examples of form, beautiful in their motion balanced one against the other, were stretched out and lean, and her arms made a lute shape as she clutched the golden whale in front of her. If the fever were to come back, it would do so after the bath, and make her once again redder than a field of hot roses. But she didn"t think about it, and she kicked and sang as the water flooded over the fall.
No longer fearful of entrapment, Peter Lake reached Isaac Penn"s study. It was sumptuous indeed, something a burglar might pray fora"ten thousand leather-bound books (some in gla.s.s cases); a glimmering collection of ancient navigational instruments, chronometers, and bra.s.s-sheathed telescopes; and half a dozen oil paintings. Peter Lake looked at a book in one of the gla.s.s cases. A printed card next to it read "Gutenberg Bible." Worthless, thought Peter Lake, since it could not have been very old, having come from Guttenberg, a town in New Jersey just south of North Bergen and north of West New York. Someone there was printing up tremendous unreadable Bibles.
Right over a dark mahogany desk as s.p.a.cious as a room in servants" quarters was a painting of a racehorse standing in a meadow. Behind such a painting, Peter Lake knew, one could always find a vault. He swung the painting out from the wall." It"s as big as a vault in a bank," he said out loud. And it was, but it was in Isaac Penn"s study, and that meant something.
Isaac Penn was in many ways a genius. But he was also peculiar and eccentric. Enamored of the sciences, he had wanted to name his last child Oxygen, but everyone had prevailed in getting him to choose a more conventional appellation, which was lucky for little Willa. Years before, however, he had managed to saddle Harry with the rather uncommon middle name of Brazil. And he had prevailed entirely in the design of his house. One of its more unusual features was the vault that Peter Lake was so happy to find. Though the house itself was a fortress, still, Isaac Penn had thought to make sure that anyone who did manage to break in would be kept busy. Thus the vault was not a vault but rather a solid plug of molybdenum steel which extended into the wall for five feet. Peter Lake began to drill.
Half an hour later, the brace for the two-inch bit began to grind steel. He pulled away the drill and inserted a probe. He hadn"t broken through. Must have been machined imprecisely, he thought, or maybe my bit"s worn down. He took a set of calipers from his bag and measured the toola"exactly two inches. One of those foil deals, he said to himself, and placed an awl in the boring. He struck it hard with the steel mallet, and the mallet went shooting back over his shoulder and bounced off the wall. A three-inch door? Impossible: it couldn"t be opened. Let me check this. After careful measuring and calculation, he determined that the radius of the opening and the design of the hinge did not permit of a three-inch-thick door. He would try three inches anyway. He put in a longer bit, and resumed drilling.
Upstairs, Beverly did not know if the fever had returned or if the heat she felt was only because of the bath. She sweated as if she had 105, and feared that, though the fever might have gone away, her flirtation with steam and hot water had invited it back. Perhaps she should have been totally silent and held her breath, hoping that the fever would run blindly throughout the house unable to find her and then crash out a window to dissipate in the snow. But she was not sure that her indiscretion would not, in the end, serve her well, for she remembered what her father had said about those who bide too much of their time and keep too much counsel. He had told her," G.o.d is not fooled by silence." He had told her always to have courage, and sometimes to step into the breacha"though he need nothave told her, for it seemed to have been her temperament from the very start. So she cleared the steam from the mirror with a bold sweep of her hand and revealed a gorgeous sweating girl with a gleam of water covering her reddened face and chest. Fight the fever. Fight it, and, if necessary, go down fighting. The courage would not go unrewarded, would it? That is to be seen, she thought. But, meanwhile, there was no questiona"she would fight. She wrapped herself in a blanket-sized towel and fastened it near her shoulder with a silver clasp. With the fever, even standing upright was taxing. When she went into the hall on her way downstairs to play the piano, the cool air was like a breeze in the mountains.
Peter Lake, too, was sweating. When the brace ground to a halt, he pulled out the drill and blew away the tailings. In went the probe. Solid. In went the awl. He struck it a stupendous blow, and was nearly killed by the ricocheting hammer, which, this time, lodged in the wall behind him. His wrist and fingers stinging, Peter Lake forgot what he had broken in to do, and changed to a ten-inch bit." I"m going to break through this b.a.s.t.a.r.d," he said, angrily and with a trace of insanity," even if it kills me." Then he rolled up his shirt sleeves, and began to drill yet again. Sweat poured down his face, stinging his eyes, dripping onto the crimson carpet.
Beverly glided past the door of the study. Peter Lake saw a diffuse white reflection in the wet steel of the auger, and turned, half expecting to see a ghost. But she was already in the kitchen. He went back to his task, gripping the slippery beet-colored handle of the brace with all his strength as he worked it.
While she stared into the h.e.l.l of the toaster, Beverly heard the squeaking and mincing of the drill. m.u.f.fled within the walls, it sounded like a very large rat. Her eyes shot about suspiciously. Since when were there rats in the Penn house? She imagined him and shuddered, visualizing rats in the honeycombed tunnels that pa.s.sed through the dead in their graves, among the horrible tangle of roots that embraced the ground as pale and blind as maggots. But the rat would undoubtedly be satisfied with whatever was deep in the walls. Besides, gnawing sounds from inside a house always went away, and then seemed as if they had never been there. Up popped two scones, and she deftly caught them in midair.
Peter Lake hit ten inches. His muscles ached. He was thirsty. Just before Beverly pa.s.sed by the study door on her way to the conservatory (and this time, looking to her left, she would have seen him), he threw himself on a leather couch and closed his eyes in exhaustion.
She placed the little china plate that held the scones, and a bone-white cup of hot tea, on the piano. When she was a girl her father had scolded her for doing that. The piano did have some heat rings on it, but it had always sounded the same. She opened the keyboard cover and out flashed a smiling monster of soft ivory. What would she play? Perhaps "Les Adieux." It was one of her favorite pieces, and with it she might say goodbye to the fever. But no, the beauty of "Les Adieux" was also an invitation to return, strong enough to call back a galloping horse and its rider. Remembering what her father had said about those who were unduly silent, she decided upon a piece of music that was pure courage, the allegro of the Brahms "Violin Concerto," which she had in a piano transcription. She got it out and spread it open. The steam from the tea rose past the notes; their pattern was like what an eagle might see as he wheeled over a range of steep mountains. The opening was so bold and true that she feared to start, for its drawn-out melody was no less than a cry from a human heart. She shuddered, and then she began. The beauty of the music exploded through the house as its first phrases were sustained, echoed, and elevated by those that followed.
Peter Lake had been lying back on the couch, slack. His tools were strewn about the room. Neither crouching nor alert, nor packedup and ready, as his profession dictated, he was, to the contrary, uncharacteristically vulnerable. And when the music erupted furiously, it caught him completely off guard. He flew into the air, his heart stopped, and then he sank down with the expression of a dog kicked from sleep by a screen door. However, he recovered very quicklya"another part of his professiona"and by the time he was on his feet he was no longer a burglar attacked by a violin concerto, but a man. He left his tools and jacket where they had been, and walked toward the sound.
This was not the ringing piano of the music hall, sweet and sad, but something far higher. It moved him not as a succession of abstract sounds, but as if it were, rather, as simple and evident as the great strings of greenish-white pearls that glistened along the bridge catenaries at night. When early evening came, they were there, shining out, the symbol of something that he loved very much but did not really know. What would he have done if the lights of the bridges did not light in early evening? They were his center calm, his rea.s.surance, and much more than that. This music sounded to Peter Lake like the sparkling signal that the lights tapped out in the mist.
He arrived at the door of the conservatory, defenseless, as the echo and timbre of Beverly"s grand piano rang through him in a resonance as solid and direct as one of the physical laws. Running that fierce black engine was a girl in a towel. She was sweating, working hard, lost in powering the wide end of the speeding piano. Her hair was half wet, still plaited, delirious. She sang and spoke to the piano, cajoling it, tempting it, encouraging it. She spoke under her breath, and her lips moved to emphasize and verify." Yes," she said." Now!" She hummed notes, or sang them, she closed her eyes, and sometimes she struck down very hard, or withdrew with a smile. But she was working all the time; her hands were moving; the tendons and muscles in her neck and shoulders shifted and flowed like those of an athlete. Peter Lake could not see that she was almost crying. He didn"t know what was happening to him, and was resentful of the deep emotions that he tried to control and could not, so that, though he wanted to, he was unable to back away. He stood there, rooted, until Beverly, breathing hard, finished the piece and slammed down the keyboard cover. Her breathing was most peculiar. It was the breathing of someone deep in the lucid darkness of a fever.
She put her hands on the piano and leaned against it so she wouldn"t fall. Peter Lake neither moved nor took his eyes off her. He was deeply ashamed, mortified. He had come to steal, he had broken in, he was streaked with sweat and dirt from his work at the drill, and he was staring at Beverly without her knowledge.
He had unspeakable admiration for the way she had risen from obvious weakness to court with such pa.s.sion the elusive and demanding notes that he had heard. She had done what Mootfowl had always argued. She had risen above herself, right before his eyes. She had risen, and then fallen back, weakened, vulnerable, alone. He wantedto follow her in this. And, then, she was beautiful, half naked, glowing as if she had just stepped from a bath. Her fatigue seemed almost like drunkenness or abandon. Her bare shoulders alone might have absorbed his attention for many weeks. He was overwhelmed.
But how in the world would he, could he, approach her? It seemed to him as if the new dawn took an hour to fill the room, and all the while they were frozen in position. He finally concluded that she was, simply, unapproachable, and that he dared not try. As the dawn wind gently shook the windows, he took a step backward, hoping to leave un.o.bserved while she was immobile at the piano.
When he did, the floor gave a wonderful, tortured, wooden squeak which told unmistakably of live weight. He froze, hoping that it would go unnoticed. She lifted and turned her head. And then she saw him. Half in delirium, she fixed her open gaze upon his face. Though her reaction built steadily within her, she gave no clue to what it was. He, on the other hand, felt shame flooding his cheeks like a hot geyser.
He could say nothing. He had no right to be there, he had already been profoundly changed, he was not good at small talk, she was half naked, it was dawn, and he loved her.
He moved his foot up and down on the loose plank that had given him away. It sounded like a child"s toy being pressed. He kept on moving his foot up and down, and he looked as if he were about to burst into tears." It squeaks," he said, with such emotion that he thought the whole world had gone mad." It squeaks."
Beverly looked at the piano, and then back at Peter Lake. What?" she asked, her voice rising gently." What did you say?"
"Nothing," replied Peter Lake." It"s not important."
She began to laugh. It was very loud at first, and reminded them that (except for the music) the house had long been silent. He, too, laughed, rather politely, and cautiously. She put her hand to her face, closed her eyes, and sighed. Then she was quiet, with her hand to her face still, until another short burst of laughter. Then she Pressed her forehead very hard, and she cried. The tears came terribly fast. Now she, too, was salty and streaked. It was horribly bitter crying, but it was soon over, and when she looked up again, she was drained, or so it seemed.
Morning sun now made the room as white as sugar, and the drafts and breezes made it cold." If you"re what I"ve got," she said," then you"re what I"ll take." He might have been offended, but she did not sound in the least sorry for herself. It was as if she knew about him more even than he did. He nodded to say that he understood. Whatever it was, it did not appear to be a marriage made in heaven. For the first time in his life, he felt exactly what he was, and he was not impressed. Still, he wanted to embrace her. But that seemed out of the question, and the room grew whiter and whiter.
Underneath them, in the bas.e.m.e.nt, the automatic furnace switched on, and the entire shiplike frame of the Penn house shuddered. They could hear the rhythmic beating of the oil burner and the bright yellow pounding of the flame. He wanted more than anything in the world to embrace her. But it seemed out of the question.
Then she turned to him and stretched out her arms. And he went to her as if he had been born for it.
ON THE MARSH.
THAT the river had frozen solid was causefor festivity and alarm. People immediately pitched colorful tents and built dangerous bonfires upon the ice, which, in one short day, became the site of a medieval fair for those who had been drawn out onto the river to see their city, now silent, in heart-filling perspective. Because the ferries had been trapped, the wagoners and produce men were the first out, taking mule trains, horse caravans, and even motor trucks across the new white roads. There were many who said that an ice age approached. They huddled like rats, around their fires and in their flannel beds, despairing, forgetful of the power of spring. Traveling one night in a heavy snow, Peter Lake used the ice as a road to the Bayonne Marsh. Though he could see nothing but blinding flashes cascading before him in a void of pulsating blue, he made his way faultlessly by listening to the distant roar of the cloud wall. It was a pure sound, like that of the cutting torch, or of a mysterious choir singing all sounds. It hinted that, beyond the furious barrier, a deep past and a bright and beautiful future were somehow combined.
In navigating, he used the fully laden sound like a light, and thought that if the sound were alivea"a chorus of spirits, somehow animate, perhaps a G.o.da"it would not be displeased that he made it a beacon, keeping it always to his left by ten degrees. And he found not only the right path, but a safe one, by listening to the ice, m.u.f.fled by newly fallen snow, as it resounded under the slow steps of the white horse.
Most horses, sensing the water underneath, would have been afraid. A fall through splintered ice would have meant drowning in cold black water, itself suffocated under an unyielding white plate and thousands of feet of vibrating blue air choked with cotton. But the white horse was unafraid, and moved as steadily as if he had been on a track. He kept his head up, and followed the sound of the clouds with what seemed to be affection. Peter Lake could hardly see the animal beneath him as white as the thickly falling snow, but he could sense that the horse was on his own ride, relearning what he had known long before. And it was not unpleasant, plodding slowly over the ice, to discover that of all the means to the tranquility he now sought, a quiet snowfall was the most elegant and the most generous.
Hours out, when he knew he was on the marsh because the ice rose in long whalish humps over the dunes, and brittle cattails jingled as they were shaken by his horse"s hooves, he sensed that he was being watched. Well he understood how careful the Baymen became when the marsh froze and roving bands could cross over and lay waste their villages. The Baymen remembered the Hessians, and the Indians, and others even before them. Certain that they were watching him, he advanced into the pressure of their eyes as if to the beat of a drum. The horse was alert, trying for silence in his steps.
Then they closed with breathless speed, a full circle of them in cowled white robes of thick rabbit fur, their winter dress. The ring they made of their spear points was a mechanical expression of theineluctable, an absolute zero of escape. How silently they had come, how perfectly they had appeared from the blinding mist, as if they had been part of it. Peter Lake spoke to them in the ceremonial language. They recognized him and brought him in.
HE always took good care of the horse. After all, he loved him. And while he was clearing a s.p.a.ce between two enormous dappled Percherons, so that the white horse, who was even bigger than they were, would be warm and comfortable in the thickly reeded quonset stable, Humpstone John pushed his way through the door of felt panels. As Humpstone John grew accustomed to the light that streamed from a bra.s.s candle-lantern, he appeared stunned. This was not unusual, for he was a man who was often in the presence of great things. He looked at the horse with tremendous satisfaction. Peter Lake saw in John"s eyes the delight at seeing an old friend, and he saw as well that it was not on account of him.
The horse snorted. He didn"t know John, that was clear. John addressed Peter Lake in English." Where did you get him?" he asked.
"I got him... uh, I got him...."
"Well, where did you get him?"
"I didn"t really get him. He was just there."
"Where?"
"On the Battery. I had almost had ita"the Short Tails. I fell. When I got up I couldn"t run anymore. I thought it was the bucket. And then he came from..."
"From your left."
"From my left." Peter Lake nodded." How did you know?"
"Have you named him?" asked John.
"No."
You don"t know his name, do you?"
"No. There wasn"t any way to know." He thought for a minute." He can jump. Jesus, can he jump. The Dead Rabbits wanted to buy him and put him in the circus." Then his voice lowered." John, he can jump four blocks." "Not surprised." "You know about him. Why is that?"
"Peter Lake, I thought that you might come to no good (and you may yet). And when we sent you across the river, all alone, I had little hope that you would make out decently in that place." When he said "that place," he said it with the dread and revulsion that the Baymen had for the city." I thought that you were gone from us, and would become one of them...."
"I have," said Peter Lake.
"Maybe you have. But that"s not the end of it."
"Why?"
"You remember that there are ten songs."
"Yes."
"That one learns them, beginning at age thirteen, one each decade."
"Yes. I never learned them."
"I know, Peter Lake. We sent you away. The first, the song of thirteen, has to do with the just shape of the world. It is nature"s song, and is about water, air, fire, and things like that. I cannot ever sing you any of these, not anymore. But I can say that the second one, the song of twenty-three, is the song of women; and the third one, the third song, Peter Lake, is the song of Athansor."
"Athansor?"
"Yes," said Humpstone John," Athansor... the white horse."
THE next morning, when the snow stopped and the sky became cold crystal, every Bayman from everywhere arrived to view Athansora"that is, every Bayman who knew the song of the white horse. Refusing Peter Lake any information about what the song said, they just gazed in amazement at Athansor, who had had no idea that this was his name, but came to recognize it by noon. Peter Lake was irritated because, as he put it, he wanted to know what he was driving around. It didn"t take him long to stop wondering, since he thought he would never find outa"it was harder to pry a secret from a Bayman than it was to open a sick clam. He went to the white horse and comforted him, and was comforted in turn to realize that the horse"s sudden renown and new name meant nothing. It justdoesn"t matter, he thought; he"s the white horse; his nose is still soft and warm; nothing has changed.
But something had changed, or was changing. Everything always did, no matter how much he loved what he had. The only redemption would be if all the tumbling and rearrangement were to mean something. But he was aware of no pattern. If there were one great equality, one fine universal balance that he could understand, then he would know that there were others, and that someday the curtain of the world would lift onto a sunny springlike stillness and reveal that nothinga"nothinga"had been for nought, neither the suffering of all the children that he had seen suffering, nor the agony of the child in the hallway, nor love that ends in death: nothing. He doubted that he would have a hint of any greater purpose, and did not ever expect to see the one instant of unambiguous justice that legend said would make the cloud wall gold.
Covered with furs, he lay in his hut, staring out an open door at Manhattan far across the white and frozen bay. He had spent two decades in the city that sat on the horizon like something floating in the clouds, and now he knew what the gray and red palisade was; he knew its scale, its music, its interior, the sound of its engines, the plan of its streets. Great as they were, the bridges were fathomable. He understood how the new skysc.r.a.pers were built. Mechanics built them, and he was a mechanic. For twenty years, he had been on the streets of that city, and he loved it. He was a guide, an intimate. And yet, from a distance, catching the sun in the clear, it looked like nothing he had ever known. Following its brown spine as far as his eye could see, he lifted his head to pa.s.s over the spires of tall buildings. A hundred plumes of smoke and steam curled about this Beeping thing, which would not have surprised him had it immediately come alive. Its growing animation was catapulted across the ice, and though it was sleeping in dark chains, he had no doubt that someday it would rise and brighten, like a whale bursting from the sea into light and air.
It was easy to become lost in vivid memories of such a city, and they a.s.saulted him with the energy and disorder of the streets themselves. Within the traffic of many forms and colors, serene imagesspoke quietly, but they were as bright as enameled miniatures, and as lovely to recall.
A family of South American grandees had toured the park one summer day, in a line of four carriages pulled by horses as gray as November. It seemed that they were used to another life in a place that was vast, wild, and full of sun and animals, and as they rode in the lacquered carriages, they carried themselves like knights. The women were more alluring than Spanish dancers at the core of their frenzy: s.e.x gleamed all about them like metal. There were a silent patriarch and matriarch, each of whom had wise old eyes, and hair whiter than the unprinted edge of a postage stamp. Peter Lake had envied them as they approached: though they did not know the city, they were obviously masters of some foreign ground. As they came closer he saw that sitting with the driver in the front carriage was a cretin or idiota"a son, brother, or grandson of those within the scallop of the carriage itself. He was dressed like them, but his eyes bulged, and he drooled from a smile that was far too easy. His hair seemed like fur, and his limbs were loose and dangling. Every now and then the grandmother would stand up in the carriage, steady herself with one hand, and pat him like a dog, while the others talked to him affectionately. For him, it must have been a great thing to ride with the driver. They were not in the least embarra.s.sed by this stroke of fortune. On the contrary, they seemed to benefit from it, as sails flying through bright air benefit from a suffocated keel ploughing blindly through dark water. He was one of them, and always would be. They loved him. The carriages had long pa.s.sed, but Peter Lake never would forget the boy"s pale moonish face bobbing up and down at the head of the procession.
Now and then, from the windswept platforms of the Brooklyn crossing, he saw the ranks of soldierly skysc.r.a.pers in their tight stone lines. Once, late in spring, he watched them stop a continental sea of cloud and mist, damming it up like the water in a millpond, until it sifted through their fingers and made them individual islands. At night they were a palisade of flickering light. Long after everyone was asleep, they conspired in wind tones and vibrations. They held through the blinding weather, speaking in their strange static, trying to touch across great heights, striving to effect the marriage of heavenand h.e.l.l to which they were pledged. Watching in a storm, Peter Lake had seen lightning dance across their granite needles in sheets of solid white.
But no memory, no matter how fine, sharp, or powerful, could match his memory of Beverly. It was electrifying and perfecta"except that he could not remember the color of her eyes. They were round, bright, and beautiful, that was sure, but were they green, brown, or blue? Why remember the color of her eyes, when she was dying? But blue-eyed (was she blue-eyed?) Beverly, in a claret scarf, drew him back to her when he least expected and wanted it.
He tried to distract himself. Remembering a string of fortunate summers, he summoned from his bed on the windswept ice a picture of Manhattan reverberating with heat. There he was, bobbing and floating on rafts of color high above the streets: silvered canyons and warm red brick, the lisp of a huge broken clock, trees like bells shuddering sound in green, silent streets as dark and elegant as mirrors in dim light, a thousand paintings left and righta"islands in the stream cascading from above, the heat of pale stone, merchants forever frozen who never ceased to move, cooing purple pigeons shaped like sh.e.l.ls, an a.r.s.enal of roses in the park, streets that crossed in forks and chimes, leopard shadows, dappled lines. But what was it without green-eyed (was she green-eyed?) Beverly in her claret scarf.
He might hide deep in the city, and lose himself in the blurring colors, the violent action, the wavering summer furnaces of air at the end of every street. But then, enjoying the pleasure of being lost, he would turn to find that he had been followed, and changed. Brown-eyed Beverly (was she brown-eyed?), in her claret scarf, could easily pull him from his contemplations. A young girl, a frailty, simple and true, who had been unable to stand up from the piano and had had to be carried; a girl half his age; a girl who could not shoot a gun, had never been in an oyster house, atop a tower, or under the wharves; a girl hotter always than noon in August; a girl who knew nothing; had thrown him so hard that he would be out of breath forever.
The city took lives in an instant, by the hundred, without a blink. She would be quickly overwhelmed amid the tenements, she would vanish and disappear, she would melt on the barriers, shewould be lost, exhausted, unable to follow as he made his way through the bladed maze. And yet, those green, blue, brown eyes followed him down all streets, on all paths, everywhere, effortlessly.
The best thing to do was to stop it while he still could, since it was something that would lead nowhere, painfully. There was no shortage of women for him in that sea of architecture that lay across the ice. The women there, in seemingly infinite number, were as startling and beautiful as a quiet green square at the exit of a wildly busy street. They could clasp him tight in their speech, keeping him like a pearl in a stiff silver mount, because it had always been easy for him to fall in love with just a voicea"a source of endless trouble when he used the telephone. One woman had been so consumed with jealousy that she tried to shoot him as he was standing at the bar of an oyster house. A bullet lodged in mahogany, another killed a clam, and yet another drilled a hole in the blade of a slicing machine. Peter Lake turned to her, and asked," What does this have to do with romance?" She and all the others were quickly fading as Beverly took hold. Beverly. This one young girl colored his mind and memory as if he had been dragged through a trench of dye.
How could he explain this to Mootfowl, who was always present, in the air, as if Peter Lake lived in a painting and Mootfowl were a figure in a painting within the painting. Sitting high up in an arched window in the sunlight, staring into the chapel of Peter Lake"s life, Mootfowl was always willing to forgive, but he had to hear the truth. And the truth, as Peter Lake saw it, was that the girl was consumptivea"not just consumptive, but near death. He knew of such things from a lifetime among the dark or glowing souls ready to depart the plain of tenement rooftops and sail through the air. The child in the hallway was by no means the only one he had seen about to cross worlds. They were as numerous as flowers in spring and could be found by the row in lofts full of iron beds, or overflowing into the neglected gardens of hospitals for the poor. As they drifted upward, ghosts, they could not even cry out.
She would soon join the disappearing souls, faintly glowing, gossamer. How could he trust that he loved her? She was rich, and there was much to gain. The rich died, too, disappointing all those who thought that somehow they didn"t. Peter Lake had no illusionsabout mortality. He knew that it made everyone perfectly equal, and that the treasures of the earth were movement, courage, laughter, and love. The wealthy could not buy these things. On the contrary, they were for the taking. Though Peter Lake was, by his account, a fortunate man, he was not wealthy. That was something else entirely, which depended solely upon things like gold, silver, and commercial paper (he had stolen a lot of commercial paper from banks: it was hard to fence). Beverly was an heiress to the kind of fortune that altered one"s character in contemplating it, the kind of fortune that was like an injection of stimulants directly into the bloodstream. His heart pounded when he thought of the millions, the scores of millions, the hundreds of millions.
How could he explain to the airborne Mootfowl that what had overtaken him was love and not greed. She was soon to die, and he would love other women who had, as Mootfowl used to say, a faster grip on the world. And how would he explain to a clerical spirit in a lighted window that his l.u.s.t and love had finally converged, undiminished.
He had carried her from the piano, not to the reception room nor to her father"s study, but to a bedroom. There, he put her down on cotton sheets as fresh and cool as silk, and watched in amazement as she removed the clasp from the towel that was wrapped about her, and, while leaning back on the pillows as if she were about to suffer a medical examination, undraped herself. She breathed heavilya"the feverish breathinga"and stared straight ahead. Then she forced herself to look at him, and saw that he was more frightened than she.
She took a deep breath and moistened her lips. Then she exhaled, and said to the man standing by her bedside," I"ve never done this before."
"Done what?" answered Peter Lake." Made love," she said.
"That"s crazy. You"re burning up. It"s too rough," Peter Lake said almost all at once.
"Go to h.e.l.l!" she screamed.
"But, miss," he said," it"s not that you"re not beautiful, it"s that I..."
"You what," she asked, half imploringly and half in disgust.
"I broke into the house." He shook his head." I came to steal."
"If you don"t make love to me," she said," I don"t think anyone ever will. I"m eighteen. I"ve never been kissed on the mouth. I don"t know anyone, you see. I"m sorry. But I have a year." She closed her eyes.
"Maybe, according to the doctor who came from Baltimore, a year and a half. In Boston they said six monthsa"and that was eight months ago. So I"m two months dead," she whispered," and you can do with me whatever you want."
Peter Lake, who was both decisive and brave, thought for a moment." That is exactly what I will do," he said as he sat down on the bed to gather her in his arms. He pulled her in and swung her over and began to kiss her forehead and her hair. At first she was as limp and shocked as someone who has begun to fall from a great height. It was as if her heart had stopped.
She had not counted on affection. It startled her. He kissed her temples, her cheeks, and her hair, and stroked her shoulders as tenderly as if she had been a cat. She closed her eyes and cried, much satisfied by the tears as they forced their way past a dark curtain and rolled down her face.
Beverly Penn, who had the courage of someone who is often confronted by that which is gravely important, had not expected that someone else would be that way too. Peter Lake seemed to love her in exactly the way that she loved everything that she knew she would lose. He kissed her, and stroked her, and spoke to her. How surprised she was at what he said. He told her about the city, as if it were a live creature, pale and pink, that had a groin and blood and lips. He told her about spring in Prince Street, about the narrow alleys full of flowers, protected by trees, quiet and dark. He told her about the colors in coats and clothes and on the stage and in all kinds of lights, and that their random movement made them come alive." Prince Street," he said," is alive. The buildings are as ruddy as flesh. I"ve seen them breathe. I swear it." He surprised even himself.
He talked to her for hours. He talked himself dry. She leaned back on the pillows, pleased to be naked in front of him, relaxed, calm, smiling. He talked hills. He talked gardens. What he said was so gentle, strong, and full of counterpoint and rhyme, that he was not even sure that it was not singing. And long before he was alltalked out and exhausted, she had fallen in love with him.
Her fever had subsided enough so that she could feel the coolness of the room. After a comfortable moment of silence and ringing in the ears, he bent over, and, in kissing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, was overcome by a graceful, mobile desire. She was cool to the touch, and though she had imagined with stunning accuracy everything that they did in their rush to find one another out, she had not had the slightest idea of the power and abandon with which they united. It was as if they had been kept from one another for a thousand years and would not come together for yet another thousand. But now, chest against chest, arm cradled in arm, hallucinatory and light, they felt as if they were whirling in a cloud.
How would he explain to the airborne Mootfowl that, when her fever returned and she grew delirious and begged Peter Lake to marry her, he thought to do it quickly, so that she could not change her mind. She wouldn"t live too long, and he was thinking of the money. Then he had wept. Half asleep, she hadn"t even known. The next morning, when he left, she stood at the back of the stairs, shorn of all her powers, which he carried away in complete indifference as if, in the large white bed, they had traded substance and spirit. He knew that she had given him everything she had, and as he left her he was thinking about lathes and machines and complicated measurements, and things that were precision-milled with surfaces as smooth as gla.s.s or polished bra.s.s.
He was in love with her, he was not unmoved because she was Isaac Penn"s daughter, and the two factions were much at war. In the painting"s bright corner, Mootfowl seemed amused, which surprised Peter Lake, who had thought he was guilty of a great transgression. But the laughter and color in the bright window at the periphery of his vision suggested that this was not so.
And then he saw a strange white cloud moving across the now golden face of the city"s cliffs in the sunset. It changed shape and form as it flew about the towers like a whimsical ghost. He realized that it wasa"pigeons, millions of pigeons, in a cloud electrified by reflection. They wheeled across the skyline like particles of smoke in Brownian motion, caught brilliantly in a dark chamber by a clear stroke of light reverberating between a sky and floor of yellow bra.s.s.
Next to the bodies of the buildings they were like mites, or snow, or confetti, or dust... and yet they were one single flight, rising like a plume in the wind. Peter Lake knew from this that the city would take care, for it was a magical gate through which those who entered pa.s.sed in innocent longing, taking every hope, showing touching couragea"and for good reason. The city would take care. There was no choice but to trust the architect"s dream that was spread before him as compact as an engine, solid and sure, shimmering over the glinting ice. He lay back, resigned until he saw her again not to know the color of her eyes.
And then he was suddenly overwhelmed. It was as if a thousand bolts of lightning had converged to lift him. All he could see was blue, electric blue, wet shining warm blue, blue with no end, everywhere, blue that glowed and made him cry out, blue, blue, her eyes were blue.
LAKE OF THE COHEERIES.
IN winter, the Lake of the Coheeries was the scene of a siege. No Renaissance engine belching fire or hurling stone could keep pace with even one white clap of a New York winter, and winter there clapped as endlessly as a paddlewheel on one of the big white boats slapping across the lake in seasons gone by. Battalions of arctic clouds droned down from the north to bomb the state with low, to bleach it as white as young ivory, to mortar it with frost that would last from September to May. Lost in this white siege was the; town of Lake of the Coheeries, which in comparison to the infinite, dazzling, never-ending lake that terminated, some people said, China, was about the size of a s...o...b..x.