chapter 8

Rube said, "Tell us again. Think, goddammit!" the frustration and anger growing in his voice. "Was there anything else about the sleigh, anything at all? Didn't they say anything, for crysake?" "Easy, Rube, easy," Dr. Danziger murmured. He, Rube, and Oscar Rossoff, who wore his own clothes now, were sitting in my Dakota living room, each with a cup of coffee in his hand or beside him. Oscar was smoking a cigarette; I'd never seen him smoke before, and after he'd smoked a couple, Danziger asked him for one, and now he was smoking, too. I sat in shirt-sleeves, wearing carpet slippers, sipping coffee, and forcing every detail of my walk last night to life again, examining the pictures in my mind for anything new. Then once again I shook my head. "It was just... a sleigh. I'm sorry. And they didn't say a thing. She laughed after they'd passed, but if he said anything to cause it I didn't hear it." "Well, what about the streetlamps?" Oscar said irritably. "Were they gas or electric? That's not hard to tell." Irritability is contagious, and I said, "Oscar, I no more paid any attention to streetlights than you do when you go out at night." "And you saw no one else?" Rube said, squinting at me. "Nothing else? Heard no sound? What about that: Did you hear anything else, anything at all?" I hated to do it again—I felt guilty about it as though it were my fault—but after several seconds of trying to remember anything more of what I'd already told them in every possible detail, I had to shake my head once more. "It was absolutely silent, Rube; snow everywhere, nothing else moving." His mouth quirked in annoyance, lips pressing tight together to hold in the anger. Then he made himself smile at me to show he understood. But he had to find some physical release, and he stood, hands shoving into the back pockets of his army pants, and began walking the room. "Damn it, damn it, damn it! It could have been 1882, it could have! Or it could have been today! Someone got out granddad's old sleigh, and the traffic lights were out because of the storm." Rube swung around to Rossoff, flinging his hands helplessly, laughing without amusement. "It's ridiculous! Hemight have made it! Maybe he did! And there's no way to tell—Jesus!" He walked to his chair, dropped into it, and reached for his coffee on the carpet beside him. His voice slow, rumbling a little, lowering the level of irritability in the room, Danziger said patiently, "You came back up here, Si, after your walk? Meeting no one?" "Right." I nodded again. "Then you came into the living room here, walked to the windows, and looked down at the park." "Right." I nodded, staring at his face, hoping he could draw something from me I didn't know was there. "And you saw—nothing, really." "No." I sat back in my chair, suddenly depressed. "I'm sorry, Dr. Danziger, terribly sorry. But to me last night, it was 1882. At least in my mind. So there was nothing unusual about that fact, and I paid no special attention—" "I understand." He nodded several times, smiling at me; then he turned to the others, shrugging a shoulder. "Well, that's that. We'll simply have to wait for another opportunity and try again, that's all." They nodded, then we all just sat there. Dr. Danziger looked at the lighted cigarette in his hand, made a disgusted grimace, and ground it out in an ashtray, and I knew he'd just quit smoking again. After a little, maybe a couple of minutes, Rossoff said, "Si, walk over to the windows, will you? And step out onto the balcony the way you did last night." I walked over to the french doors, opened them, and stepped out, turning to Rossoff inquiringly; I was tired of this but felt obligated to go on as long as anyone wanted me to. Rossoff said, "Close your eyes." I closed them. "Okay; it's last night. You're standing out there looking down at the park. Keep your eyes closed, and see it again in your mind. As soon as you see it, describe it, Si; exactly." After a moment, eyes shut, I said, "Perfectly white snow still untouched, unmarked; it'beautiful... the trees look carbon-black against the whiteness. The street is level with snow,(s) completely unmarked: I can see that my footprints are gone, and the snow is still falling. In the light around the bases of the streetlamps the snow sparkles, and nothing is moving, nothing; there isn't a sound. I stand here, looking down at the park for a few seconds longer, then decide to go to bed. I'm turning away now, to step back inside. I see that several windows are lighted—the cleaning women, I suppose—in the Museum of Natural History; then I pull the curtains shut, and ... that's all, I'm sorry." I turned to look at the three of them, stepping back inside the room. "I went to bed then, and slept all—" I didn't finish. Dr. Danziger was slowly standing, unfolding to his full six-five, his face coming to life. He walked quickly toward me, his hand reaching out ahead of him to grip myshoulder so hard it was painful. He swung me around, back to the balcony again, pushing me out onto it ahead of him. He stepped out, too, and said, "Look!" His big veined old hand moved past my eyes, seized my whole jaw, and swung my head to the north. "There's where you looked last night! Look again! Where is the Museum?" I couldn't see it, of course: Between my eyes and the Museum stood four solid blocks of apartment houses rising far above the roof of the Dakota. The Museum hadn't been visible—not from this balcony—since the early eighteen eighties, and as the realization roared through my brain, it did in Rube's, it did in Oscar's, and Rube whispered, "He made it." Then, his face an instant pink from the effort, he yelled. "He made it! Oh, my God, he did!" Rube and Oscar were grabbing at my hand then, shaking it, congratulating me and each other, and I stood grinning, nodding, trying to get hold of the knowledge that last night for a few moments I had stepped out of this apartment into the winter of 1882. Dr. Danziger's eyes were half closed, and I saw him sway for just an instant; I believe he came close to actually fainting. Then he and all of us were gabbling at each other, grinning, making lousy jokes, and while I was a part of it, responding, grinning back, elated, excited, in my mind at the same time I was back on the balcony in the dead of a silent white night staring across five city blocks of empty space which had long since and for decades been solidly filled. In the warehouse twenty minutes later I sat in a room I remembered vaguely from a tour of the building I'd taken with Rube. I sat in a swivel chair, the little tube of a chest microphone suspended by a tape around my neck. On a wall panel beside me, recording tape revolved, and a girl sat at an almost silent electric typewriter, a tiny headset over her ears, my recorded voice replaying into her ears only a matter of seconds behind my actual voice. Danziger, Rube, Rossoff, the Princeton history prof, Colonel Esterhazy, and a dozen others I'd met were standing around the room, leaning against the walls, listening, waiting. I said, "Frederick Boague—Frederick N. Boague—Buffalo, New York. I last saw him in an art class three and a half years ago." I sat thinking for a second, then said, "There was a movie called The Graduate. Anne Bancroft was in it. And a guy named Dustin Hoffman. Directed by Mike Nichols." I paused, listening to the muffled clatter of the electric typewriter. "There are Hershey bars, chocolate. Brown paper wrappers with silver lettering." A pause. "Clifford Dabney, New York City, about twenty-five, is an advertising copywriter. Elmore Bob is dean of girls, Montclair College. Rupert Ganzman is a state assemblyman. Living in Wyoming is a full-blooded Sioux Indian named Gerald Montizambert. There was a fire in an apartment building on East Fifty-first Street just off Lexington last October. Perm Station has been torn down." A young guy I'd seen in the halls came quietly into the room, almost tiptoeing. He carefully tore off the top typed half of the paper in the electric typewriter and walked out; the girl continued typing on the bottom half of the sheet. I continued talking onto the tape: names of people I knew or knew of, both obscure and prominent; facts large and small; any and every scrap of knowledge that came into my mind of the world as I remembered it before last night. "Queen Elizabeth is queen of England, but the Queen Mary—the ship, I mean—was sold to a town in southern California....
There's a barber named Emmanuel in the shop on Forty-second just west of the Commodore...."A man opened the door and stepped into the room, grinning; he was around forty and bald; I'd met him in the cafeteria. "So far, okay!" he said. "Everything we've been able to check." There was a murmur, everyone excited; the man left, and I continued. "There's a comic strip called Peanuts, and not long ago Lucy told Snoopy ..." At eleven o'clock Danziger cut me off; it was enough, he said. And by noon we knew. Every random fact I'd recalled of the world as I remembered it before last night was still a fact today. The few steps I'd taken, across the snow into the world of 1882 and back, hadn't altered that world—or in consequence altered ours. There was no one I'd known or known of yesterday, for example, who didn't exist this morning. No one else was in any way changed. No truth of any kind, large or trivial, was found to differ from my memory of it. Things were as I'd left them, there had been no detectable change, and that meant the experiment could cautiously continue. But before it did I saw Katie. I walked across town after lunch, she closed her shop, and we sat upstairs for forty minutes while I told her three times what had happened. "What was it like? How did it feel?" she kept asking in a variety of ways. I'd try to tell her, hunting for the words that would do the job, and Katie would sit leaning toward me, eyes narrowed, lips parted, straining to extract the full meaning of what I was trying to convey from my mind to hers. At times her head would shake unconsciously in wonder and awe, but of course she was disappointed: I couldn't really transfer my experience, and when I had to get up to go finally, I knew she still wondered, "What was it like? How did it feel?" At the warehouse again, I changed clothes in Doc Rossoff's office, and he had his questions while I dressed. They mostly along the line of, Could I emotionally feel well as intellectuallybelieveintherea(were) lityofwhathadhappened?And,alwaysobliging,Ithough(as) t about it as I got into my clothes. In my mind I saw the sleigh drawing away through the swirl of soft snowflakes, the jingle of the harness bells diminishing. And again I heard the clear musical sound of the woman's laugh in that marvelous winter night, and a thrill of pleasure touched my spine. I nodded at Doc and said yes. He drove me to the Dakota then; we were in a hurry now. It had taken me a long time of living in the Dakota apartment to reach the point of last night's success; now I had only this night, tomorrow morning, and part of the afternoon to reach the same point again—if I were to see Katie's long blue envelope mailed in "New York, N.Y.; Main Post Office, Jan. 23, 1882, 6:00 P.M." And this time, to advance the experiment, I was to try it alone with no help from Doc Rossoff. By four I was climbing the building staircase. The package from Fishborn's lay on the hallway floor before my door, I picked it up, and when I unlocked the door and stepped into my living room, it was astonishingly like coming home. At six, standing at the kitchen stove, a long fork in my hand, waiting for my potato to boil and reading the Evening Sun for January 22, 1882, it was as though I'd never left this familiar routine. Just before I'd come up I'd seen that last night's snow had been removed from the street below my windows, that the traffic lights were working and the carsflowing past again. But these things no longer mattered. Because now I knew—I knew—that January of 1882 existed out there, too. And I knew—knew—that when the time came I was going to be able to walk out into it once again. I poked into my potato; it was still hard in the center, and with my paper folded lengthwise I stood at the stove reading on. The trial of Guiteau, Garfield's assassin, had continued today, Guiteau conducting his own defense as usual; the inquiry into the Star Route scandals dragged along, an entire family living on an isolated Wyoming farm had been found scalped. My front doorbell jangled. Newspaper at my side, I walked down the long, wide old hall in my carpet slippers, opened the front door, and Katie was standing in the hallway. In an ankle-length winter coat, a scarf tied on her head, she stood smiling nervously, waiting for me to say something. After a moment during which I just stood staring, she slid quickly past me and into the living room. I turned, automatically closing the front door behind me, saying, "Katie? What the hell?" But she was crossing the room, shrugging out of her coat. She tossed it to a chair and turned to face me in a bottle-green silk dress trimmed in white lace, buttoned at neck and wrists, and its hem, still swaying from the motion of her turn, brushed the insteps of her buttoned shoes. In one swift sweeping motion she peeled off her dark scarf as though afraid I'd make her keep it on if she didn't hurry. Her hair was parted in the middle, drawn straight back off her forehead, and gathered in a bun at the nape of the neck. I had to smile with pleasure, she looked so good; that thick dark coppery hair, her pale slightly freckled skin, those big brown defiant eyes, with the shimmering bottle-green of her dress; she knew what she was doing when she picked that color. As soon as I smiled she said quickly, "I'm going with you, Si. To see the letter mailed. It's mine, and I'm going to see it, too!" I like women, I never run them down as somehow inferior to men, and I have a contempt for men who do. And I think, for one thing, that women are just as principled as men—but they sure as hell aren't the same kind of principles. I knew I could trust Kate in virtually anything, relying on her absolutely, her sense of right and wrong as lively as mine. Yet now we argued interminably: Kate at the stove, where she'd taken over dinner preparations, I at the kitchen table, waiting; then, sharing my two chops, we continued the battle at dinner. I began to feel like a hick upholding my stuffy notions of morality. Because it simply did not matter to Kate that this a gove(own) rnmentproject,oftheutmostseriousness,broughtintobeingattremendousexpenseand(was) effort, and involving important people from all over the country. With no trouble at all Kate saw through the transparency to the truth—the feminine truth—underneath the serious pretense. She knew this was really a great, big expensive fascinating toy; we were all of us playing with it, and like a determined tomboy on a playground shouldering her way into a circle of boys, she was damn well going to play, too. I switched to practical arguments but that was a blunder. Because she was instantly able to point out—shaking her fork at me, her food getting cold—that she was prepared, too; that she'd learned as much about the 1880's as I had. As a matter of fact, she pointed out, she was betterprepared now than I'd been at this time last night, because now she knew as I did that it was really possible. Under my verbal argument lay the knowledge that she was right. I knew in my bones that I'd succeed tomorrow; it wasn't just optimism but a matter of certain knowledge. And I knew, if I can convey this, that the sheer strength of my certainty could carry Kate along with me. I knew absolutely that we could succeed, both of us, and in the living room after dinner, the dishes washed, the argument dwindled out. I never agreed in so many words. But she was pacing back and forth arguing, that long skirt swinging and making an audible swishing sound as she'd turn. I sat watching her, having a little trouble now not to smile because she looked so fine—her hair had a new special shine as she'd pass under the gaslights of the overhead chandelier. She looked so great, I just got up, finally, walked over, took her in my arms, and kissed her. She responded, we kissed again, then she stepped back. She'd won; the arguing was over. We'd said it all and she knew I wasn't going to throw her out bodily. She said, "No more, Si. Only one thing matters, and that's success tomorrow. We can't let anything at all interfere with that." During the days and weeks I'd spent here alone, I'd daydreamed about having Kate here with me, and now she was here. But what she'd just said was so clearly true that there could be no question about accepting it, and we spent a quiet, domestic evening of the eighties: reading Harper's Weekly, Leslie's, then trading; and finally, over a cup of tea, we played some dominoes. We went to bed around ten thirty. While I turned out the overhead chandelier, Kate walked to the closet beside the front door. From the pocket of her heavy winter coat she brought out a rolled-up white bundle, her nightgown, and I smiled, shaking my head, at her certainty that I'd let her stay. My hand on the key of the little green-shaded student lamp on the game table where our dominoes still lay, I waited for Kate to light the hall light. I heard the faint pop of the gas, then the wavering light steadied on the wall of the hallway, and I turned out the student lamp. Kate stood waiting in the doorway of her room; the L-shaped bracket of the open-flame hall light was just over her head and to the right of her doorway, and again I noticed the special glow that gaslight gave the red of her hair. She said, "Good night, Si; see you in the morning." "Right. Good night, Kate." "It's going to work, isn't it, Si?" I nodded. "I think so. You shouldn't be here but I'm glad you are. And I think it'll work." We spent most of the next day—once breakfast, the dishes, and the morning paper were out of the way—reading aloud. I got a coal fire going in the living-room fireplace first. Then I found, where I'd left it on the floor near the windows, the book I'd been reading when I'd glanced down atthe park and seen the snowstorm—only day before yesterday, I was mildly shocked to realize. This was a book from the living-room shelves: a bright, fresh new copy of Tried for Her Life, by Mrs. Emma D.E.N. Southworth, published a year or so ago, in 1880. It was a two-bit paperback but there were no semi-naked women on the cover, just black type on plain red paper. I gave Kate a synopsis of what I'd read so far, then—sitting comfortably slouched in a chair, my feet in carpet slippers up on a hassock—I found my place and picked up the story aloud. It was a good day to be in here, snug and comfortable, the fire occasionally snapping; outside it looked cold, the sky gray and completely overcast. " 'When Sybil recovered from her death-like swoon,' " I read, " 'she felt herself being borne slowly through what seemed narrow tortuous undergroundpassage;buttheutterdarkness,relieve(on) donlybyalittlegleami(a) ng red taper that moved like a star before her, prevented her from seeing more. A presentiment of impending destruction possessed her, and overwhelming horror filled her soul and held her faculties.' " I looked up to smile at Kate, who was on the settee, her feet tucked under her. I was smiling in acknowledgment of this overblown prose; I was certain that reasonably sophisticated people of the eighties did smile a little at this sort of thing, too. But I didn't smile much, and Kate took her cue from me. I'd read a lot of these books now, and whatever slight amusement there might be in their style, it was worn thin long since, and—skipping a lot—I was able to read for the stories, which weren't any better or worse than many a modern mystery I'd read. We took turns reading, stopping for coffee, and stopping for lunch, finishing the book by midafternoon. It ended the way nearly all these books did by giving you some idea of what happened to the characters after the story ended. It's not really a bad idea; I've read many a book and wished I had some notion of whatever happened after the final page to the people I'd come to know, especially those I liked. In fact, the better the book and more real the characters, the more I've wanted to know. Well, Mrs. Southworth let you know. Kate was reading when we reached the final page. " 'There is little more to tell,' " she read. " 'Raphael Riordan and his stepmother, Mrs. Blondelle, came over to view the corpse, and see to its removal. Gentiliska, now a very handsome matron, gazed at the dead body with a strangely mingled expression of pity, dislike, sorrow, and relief.' " "Hold it," I said, and when Kate looked up at me I widened my eyes, frowned a little, then lifted one corner of my mouth. "That look like pity to you?" "Sort of." I deepened the frown, kept one eye wide with pity, then narrowed the other a little. "I've just added dislike. Now watch: here comes sorrow." I opened my mouth plaintively. "And now, in the center ring, juggling all four at once: relief!" I threw my chin high, opening my mouth all the way, trying to hang onto all the other expressions. Without moving my mouth I said, "How do I look?" "Strangling.""I was afraid of that. But I'll bet Gentiliska managed without strain. She could probably have piled on horror, chagrin, and ecstasy, without straining a facial muscle." "You kind of like Gentiliska, don't you?" "My all-time literary favorite. Pray continue." " 'Raphael, now a grave and handsome man, met Mrs. Berners with a sad composure. He worshipped her as constantly and purely as ever. He had known no second faith. The widow Blondelle sold out her interest in the Dubarry White Sulphur Springs, and with her step-son Raphael Riordan, returned to England. Mr. and Mrs. Berners have but one child—Gem! But she is the darling of their hearts and eyes; and she is betrothed to Cromartie Douglas, whom they love as a son.' " Kate closed the book, and we both sat smiling a little. But then she said seriously, "I'm glad Gem and Cromartie got engaged. Even though it was long after the story ended. I thought they would be eventually, but it's nice to know." "Right. As for Gentiliska and her mingled emotions, the more about her the better. And I'll tell you something else I like: I think I like the kind of people who like a story like this." Katie nodded, and we sat silent. The draft in the fireplace made a subdued miniature roar, then a coal fell. I said, "Kate, they're out there now." I nodded toward the windows across the room; all we could see was the silvery winter sky. I meant what I said; all day I'd felt the living presence of the New York winter of 1882 gathering itself around us—with more strength and reality now than in all of the days and weeks just past. Because now one truth could never change: I knew that that time existed. "They're waiting for us, Kate," I said, and—strong moods and powerful certainties reach from one mind to another—Kate nodded, believing and knowing, too, caught up in my absolute certainty. I said, "Kate, I think it's time," and for an instant she looked frightened; then she nodded, and closed her eyes. I closed mine, reached over and took Kate's hand, then sat, warm and comfortable, letting each muscle relax, letting all least tensions drain away. And presently—as Kate, too, was doing—I silently spoke to myself. In a few moments, and for a few moments, your mind will give up thinking; and you will almost sleep. This is January 23. And that will be the date, of course, when presently you open your eyes again: January 23, 1882. You and Kate have an errand to do; you will walk into the park with her, and there will be nothing at all of any other time in your mind. All you will be thinking is that you're going to the post office. Be there by five-thirty, no later. And see who mails the blue envelope. Do not interfere with events. Observe them, move through them, but do not cause or prevent any. One difference: This is new but it is going to work, it is going to work. At point, walking through the park very likely, at some point when you know absolutelythat(some) this is a winter afternoon of the year 1882 ... you will remember the present. You will remember the present and for the first time be truly an observer.
I jumped a little, and my eyes popped open; I'd actually dozed, it seemed to me. Kate sat watching me, her hand in mine. She said, "I was asleep, too. We have to go to the post office, Si. Do you feel like it?" "Yes." I nodded, and stood up, yawning. "Do me good to get outdoors and wake up; come on." At the hall closet, yawning, I got into my overcoat with the attached cape, my overshoes, my round black fur cap. Kate put on her coat and tied on her scarf. I no more gave thought to what year or century this was than anyone else getting ready to go out today. And downstairs, walking out of the Seventy-second Street building entrance, our shoulders hunching and our chins ducking into our collars as we stepped into the cold, I didn't look behind me to the west, and crossing the street bordering the park, I glanced neither north or south. Why should I have? It never occurred to me; the air was sharp and cold, and I kept my head down. In the park we angled across it to the east and south, toward the entrance at Fifty-ninth and Fifth. It was cold, we saw no one, and here in the park the city seemed nearly silent. We heard only the steady scuff of our feet on the path, and I felt snug in my greatcoat, a little less sleepy, and began enjoying the exercise. Except for the paths, the snow was nearly unmarked, though there occasional trails of footprints. For a few dozen yards our path paralleled the winding roadw(were) ay, and on its packed snow I heard, absently, a faint axle squeak and the slow muffled clop of hoofs, but didn't trouble turning to look, and neither did Kate. We simply walked across the park, used to the cold now, enjoying it and the walk, hardly thinking at all. We came out of the immense rectangle of Central Park at its southeast corner, at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, and I unbuttoned my coat to reach into my pants pocket for our fares. Katie moaned, and I looked at her quickly. She had a hand pressed to her forehead, her eyes were squeezed shut, and I saw her face turn paper-white. I turned to grab her but instead I staggered half a step sideways to keep my balance, and had to stop, feet wide apart and braced, slowly bending almost double, my elbows jamming into the pit of my stomach, both hands sliding up over my face, fighting against fainting as memory lighted up every cell of my brain. Neither of us had anticipated physical shock. I got an arm around Kate's shoulders and she was trembling. Trying to support us both, I stood leaning against a tree trunk at the curb, feeling the sweat pop out on my forehead and upper lip, and knew I must be deathly pale. My eyes were fixed on my own shoe tips, and I stood drawing deep breaths of the sharp chill air; then I felt the sweat drying on my face and knew I would be all right. I looked at Kate; her eyes were open now, her tongue moistening her lips. "I'm okay now; thanks," she said, and straightened up. "But, oh, my God, Si!" she whispered, and I could only nod. We didn't turn immediately; we couldn't quite bring ourselves to do that. But we heard the squeal of iron tires crunching cold dry snow, heard the loose wood-and-iron rattle of the body, and the crack of leather reins on solid flesh. Then, very slowly, we turned our heads to look again at the tiny, arch-roofed wooden bus with high wooden-spoke wheels, drawn by a team of gaunthorses, their breaths puffing whitely into the winter air at each step. It was closer now, filling our vision; and staring at it I knew now from where and when I had come. It took a moment of actual struggle for my mind to take hold of what it knew to be the truth: that we were here, standing on a corner of upper Fifth Avenue on a gray January afternoon of 1882; and I shivered and for a moment felt shot through with fear. Then elation and curiosity roared through me.