chapter 10

The slow absolutely regular clip-clop, clip-clop of our horse's hoofs on the hard-packed snow —a little louder and more ringing when we crossed bare cobbles—was soothing, and so was the rhythmical sway and slight jounce of the hansom body on its springs. I began to recover from too much all at once, and opened my eyes now and then. But the glimpses I had were more of the same: This was a narrow, pleasant, tree-lined, expensive residential street, mostly. Occasionally we passed hotels with strange names: St. Marc ... Shelburn. And the union League Club looking just like a union League Club. Then I heard the distant frantic sound of a bell, growing louder with every clang, and as we crossed Thirty-third Street it was suddenly a brain-numbing fury of sound to the west. Kate scrambling upright beside me, I turned to look, and here it came straight for us, a team of immense white horses, manes flying, hoofs pounding, drawing a red-and-brass fire engine, the driver slashing his whip at the horses, a flat stream of white smoke lining out behind it like the wake of a ship. The bell was wild now, the pound of hoofs on the cobbles so fast and in such unison that the sound was a throb. It was frightening to see that smoke-belching fury roaring straight at us, and our driver lashed out at his horse, and we jolted on across the street and out of its way. Behind us, we saw it dash on across Fifth, red-and-gilt spokes flashing, drivers reining up to hold the path clear. Four or five blocks farther on we heard the sound again, this time to the south, and I remembered that this was a city of wooden beams, floors and walls, and of open-flame lighting and heat. All the while we clip-clopped on, block after block downtown into the busy part of the city, the street traffic grew heavier, Then suddenly Kate and I were bumped hard against each other. The cab had stopped abruptly, slewing sideways in the slush of the pavement. Then it jerked, starting forward again, and I sat up, hearing our driver cursing, and I lowered my window to stick my head out, and the noise was hard to believe. We were at the intersection where Broadway crosses Fifth, and vehicles were pouring from Broadway to join our traffic stream, which was just possible, or to fight their way across it, which was almost impossible. Nearly every vehicle had four wheels and every wheel was wrapped in iron that smashed and rang against the cobbles, every horse had four iron-shod hoofs that did the same, and there was no control whatsoever. Wheels clattered, wood groaned, chains rattled, leathercreaked, whips cracked against horseflesh, men shouted and cursed, and no street I've ever seen of the twentieth century made even half that brain-numbing sound. Bulling their way across Fifth or Broadway were varnished delivery wagons, each with a single slim horse; enormous-wheeled, flat-bedded wagons loaded sky-high with barrels, crates, sacks, some pulled by as many as three tandem teams of immense steam-breathing dray horses; carriages of black, maroon, green, brown, some shabby, some elegant and glinting with glass and polish. They trotted, lumbered, or rattled over the stones, or they slowed or stopped short in little knots and clusters; Kate leaning out her window and carriage horse at the intersectionrearhighonhishin(was) dlegs,whinnying,andIsawatruck(we) drive(saw) r(a) come out of Broadway, standing before his seat to force his way across Fifth, slashing out with his whip at his own horses and at any others who got in his way. Other drivers simply sat in numb patience, hunched and motionless against the cold, completely out in the open on their high wooden benches, wrapped to the waist in drab torn-edged blankets, wearing fur or knit caps pulled down low, and enormous coats of stained cloth or balding fur. Then we were across, resuming our steady clip-clop down Fifth, and I yelled at the driver, "There ought to be traffic lights!" and he opened his slide. "What's that?" "They ought to have signal lights to control the traffic," I said, but of course he just looked at me, then slid the panel closed. At Washington Square we turned left—there was no arch at the entrance, and to me, again, it looked as though it had been removed—over to Broadway, and I sat with Kate's hand in mine, my body, senses, and capacity for surprise used up. Kate laid her head back on the hard tufted-leather upholstery, and I did, too, watching the telegraph wires, which had appeared as soon as we turned into Broadway, angle endlessly across the top of my window. I didn't sit up or look out again till Chambers Street. Then, a block ahead on Kate's side, I looked out and saw City Hall, and it was so good to see something familiar that I dragged out my watch; it was five twenty, there was time to walk, and I rapped on the roof. We walked south, on past City Hall and the little park before it. I said, "This is the original City Hall you can't fight, you know," and Kate smiled. Then we crossed the street to the big main post office which filled the triangle of land just across from City Hall Park where Park Row ends at Broadway. By the time we got around to the front entrance of the post office, Kate and I were grinning at each other; it was such a ridiculous building, all windows and ornamental stone columns rising five stories to a roof of shingled towers; cast-iron railings; an ornamental cupola; and, fluttering from a flagpole, a long pointed pennant on which was lettered POST OFFICE. Inside, it was tiled floor and brass spittoons, dark wood, pebbled glass, and gaslights. We found an enormous panel of ornate brass letter-drops labeled CITY, BROOKLYN, STATEN ISLAND, ANNEXED DISTRICT, together with separate drops for each state and territory, and CANADA, NEWFOUNDLAND, MEXICO, SOUTH AMERICA, EUROPE, ASIA, AFRICA, and OCEANIA. Beyond this great panel was an entire wall of thousands of private numbered boxes. It was just past five thirty, and Kate at one side and I at the other, we took positions beside the big panel and began our wait.
I suppose some fifty-odd people came in and dropped letters into those slots in the next fifteen minutes, nearly all of them men; and the look of astonishment and disgust on Kate's face was something to see. Because just about every last man, without breaking stride, aimed a shot of thick brown tobacco juice at one of the several dozen cuspidors scattered around the big floor. Some were expert, hitting the mark squarely and audibly, then walking on toward or past us looking pleased and self-satisfied. Others missed by a foot or more, and now, our eyes used to the gloom of the feeble lighting, we saw that the floor was soiled everywhere you looked; and I saw Kate reach down the side of one leg, gather up her skirts, and stand holding them a good two inches from the floor. We waited, minute after minute, people streaming in and out, the squeak and clatter of the hinged brass flaps of the many letter drops almost never entirely stopping. I was sure Kate was picturing, as I was, the blue envelope, singed at one end, covered on the back with a man's last words. Were we about to see it again? Maybe not; it was possible that it had been posted at an outside mailbox, and at the thought I was instantly certain it had been, that we were never going to see "the sending of" the letter that would "cause the Destruction by Fire of the entire World...." And then here he came, at ten minutes of six by the big lobby clock, shoving through the heavy doors. Here he came, walking fast and full of purpose, a black-bearded round-bellied John Bull of a man, and the excitement flared so that for an instant I literally could not see. Filling my vision now, here he came heading across the great tiled floor directly for us, and his hairy right hand held the long slim robin's-egg-blue envelope. His stubby, flat-topped plug hat hung jauntily on the back of his head; and his unbuttoned overcoat, swept behind him by the speed of his walk, exposed the long curve of his belly shoved belligerently forward. His chin was lifted, thrusting his stiff beard almost horizontally outward as though he were defying the world, and a corner of his mouth gripped a cigar butt, lifting his lip so that he appeared to be snarling. He was an imposing and memorable man, and he didn't see me, didn't see anyone; his brown fierce little eyes looked straight ahead, lost in his own concerns and purpose and the importance of the act he was about to perform. And then we saw what we had come across the years to see. He thrust the long blue envelope toward the brass slot marked CITY and there was an instant when I had a glimpse of its face. I saw the strange green stamp, slightly tilted to the right; saw it in memory, canceled, and saw it in actuality, queerly unmarked; saw the slanted script, old and browning in memory, fresh-written and sharply black in actuality, but reading identically: Andrew W. Carmody, Esq., 589 Fifth Avenue.... The end of the envelope, unsinged and unopened now, pushed the brass flap inward, the hand holding it turned at the wrist, a diamond ring gleaming. Then the blue envelope was gone, the brass flap still swinging, its mysterious journey toward the future begun. The man had turned on his heel, was walking swiftly toward the outer doors, and—that was all we'd come to see but we simply weren't able to let him walk out and away, into the night and lost forever—Kate and I stepped forward to follow.
We pushed through the doors, and it was dark out now. Our man turned north, back the way we'd come, walking along the Broadway side of the post office. We followed, watching him pass through the yellowy circles at the base of each streetlamp, the light sliding along the silk curves of his hat. Beyond the curb Broadway lay in almost complete darkness, its traffic still noisy but much less heavy. And now the traffic was dim shapes and moving shadows visible only in bits and pieces. You'd see a fan shape of muddy spokes revolving through the swaying light of a lantern slung from a van's axle, but the wagon itself and its driver and team would be lost in the blackness; or see the shine of a silvery door handle and the waxed curve of a jouncing carriage body under its own flickering side lamp, and nothing more of it. Across the dark street, the windows and doorways of business houses were almost dark, their shapes silhouetted only by turned-down night-lights. Pedestrians—the last of the office workers, I supposed—hurried past us, their faces yellowing and coming momentarily clear as they approached and passed through the cones of dim street-lighting, pale and almost lost in the in-between blackness. Across the street a man, a dark blur against the dimly lighted doorways and windows, carried a pole, and with this, as he walked, he reached up into each dark streetlamp, touching it into light. I'd felt Kate's arm tighten under mine, drawing my arm closer to her side, and I understood why. This strange dim street, still clattering steel against cobble in a blackness relieved by squares, rectangles and cones of vague light whose very color was strange, had me uneasy, too. And yet— oh, God, just to be here!—something in me responded to it and the mystery of the hurrying, dimly seen people around us, and I knew Rube Prien had been right: This was the greatest possible adventure. My arm squeezed down on Kate's, halting her beside me. Just beyond a streetlamp ahead, our man had abruptly turned to the curb and stepped out into the street. Now he stood within the slightly trembling circle of light on the cobbles, hat gleaming on the back of his head, belly jutting, looking past us to the south, his head moving from side to side trying to see through the oncoming traffic in the unmistakable attitude of a man impatiently searching for a bus. Vague in the dark of the street beside us, a heavy wagon trundled past. Kate and I watched its lantern jolting and swaying under the rear axle, watched its heavy black bulk clatter toward the puddle of yellow light ahead and the man standing inside it. The driver stood up, sharply silhouetted for us against the streetlight ahead. He was shouting, cursing, and we saw his arm move fast and heard the crack of his whip. The man standing in the street facing him lifted his head, jutting his beard, and we stood watching him stare up at the driver high above him without a change of expression and without budging or intention to budge. We stared at the driver's back, saw his whip arm lift high in threat. Then we saw the move of his left shoulder as he twitched his left rein. And under the lamp the horse and then the wagon curved around the man on the street. The upraised whip passed directly over the shining hat; but neither whip nor the man under it moved. Then, disappearing into the darkness ahead, the driver shouted an obscenity over his shoulder, and our man tossed back his head and—I thought his hat would tumble down his back, but it did not—he laughed. We'd had to resume our walk, slowing our pace, but we were very nearly abreast of him as he peered once more to the south, then swung impatiently away toward the curb. "A bus?" he said, as though suddenly astonished. "Why should I ever wait for a bus again!" He stepped up onto thewalk, Kate and I looking out into the street pretending to ignore him; he was only a step ahead of us now. He turned to walk rapidly north, and we stopped, giving him time to draw ahead. He didn't go far. We stood waiting, watching, and he walked quickly along a row of four or five hansom cabs lined up to the street corner ahead, and stopped at the first in line. "Home!" he said, his voice ringing out happy and exuberant as he reached for the door handle. "All the way home, and in style!" "And where might that be?" The faint silhouette of the driver leaned over the side of his exposed seat, his voice sardonic. "Nineteen Gramercy Park," the man said, climbing in; then the cab door slammed, I heard the driver cluck at his horse, heard the reins crack, and stood watching the cab pull out and into the thin stream of wavering lamps and lanterns. I turned to Kate, but she was staring at the walk. At the base of a curbside wooden telegraph pole lay a half oval of snow out of the pedestrian path, protected by the pole and still untouched. The patch of snow lay just within the circle of pale light from a streetlamp, and at the edge of the patch, sharply and clearly impressed in the snow, was a replica in miniature of the tombstone whose photograph Kate had shown me over the grave of Andrew Carmody outside Gillis, Montana. Almost matter-of-factly Kate murmured, "It'impossible." She looked up at me. "It's impossible!"shesaidagain,hervoicesuddenlyangr(s) y, and I knew what she felt; this was so far from any sensible explanation that it made you mad, and I nodded. "I know," I said. "But there it is." And there it still was; we bent forward to stare at it. All we could do was stand looking at that shape in the snow; straight-edged at bottom and sides, the top perfectly rounded in a cartoonist's tombstone shape, and, in its interior, the design formed of dozens of tiny dots, a nine-pointed star contained in a circle. The cab was long gone when I looked up, lost in the traffic and dark. I stood staring, eyes narrowed, but I wasn't looking after it. A second or so before, above the iron rattle of the thinning Broadway street traffic, I'd heard a sound, a familiar sound at the very edge of my attention, and now I realized what it had been. I said, "Kate, would you like a drink? In front of a great big fire?" "Yes. Oh, my God, yes," she said, and I took her arm, and we walked half a dozen yards ahead to the corner. Across the street one of the illuminated signs framing the streetlamp read BROADWAY, the other PARK PLACE. And a short block west on Park Place I saw the source of that familiar clackety-racketing sound. Its three tall slim windows were lighted redly, the familiar gabled shape of its roof black against the night sky: There, perched over the street, was an El station like an old old friend. We crossed Broadway—it wasn't hard now, the traffic sparse—and on the other side I turned to look back. This was a dark city, but just beyond the rear of the post office on the far side of CityHall Park I saw a five-story building that still stands in twentieth-century New York. But now the upper floors were brilliant with the light of hundreds of gas jets. Carved in the stone of the side of the building, clearly readable in the light streaming out the upper windows, was THE NEW YORK TIMES. They were up there now—I could walk back, climb a wooden staircase, and actually see them—derbied reporters scribbling in longhand; dozens and dozens of typesetters in sleeve protectors standing in long rows plucking type letter by letter from wooden cases, their hands blurred by motion as they set every word, sentence, paragraph, column and page of what would presently be, ink still wet, tomorrow morning's New York Times. They were there now as I stared across the darkness at those brilliantly lighted windows, preparing a paper I might already and long since have seen brown and crumbling at the edges, lying forgotten in an old file. I shivered, turning away, and we walked on a short block to the El station. As I climbed the steps, even the ironwork of the railings seemed wonderfully familiar. I'd visited New York often as a boy, ridden the El many times. And now here again, inside the little station, were the bare worn floorboards, the wooden tongue-and-groove walls, the little scooped-out wooden shelf projecting from under the change-booth window, grained and polished from ten thousand hands. There was a cuspidor on this floor and the station was lighted by a single tin-shaded kerosene ceiling lamp. But even the dimness was familiar; as late as the 1950's I'd been in stations just like this. I shoved two nickels in through the little half-moon hole at the bottom of the wide-meshed grill between me and the mustached man in the booth. He took them without looking up from his paper, and shoved out two printed tickets. Then we walked out to the platform, and for just an instant it was once again a tiny shock to see the dozen or so passengers: the women in skirts that nearly brushed the platform, wearing bonnets and shawls, some carrying muffs; and the whiskered men in their derbies, silk hats, and fur hats, smoking cigars, carrying canes. Then a whistle toottoot-tooted, a high happy sound, we turned to look down the tracks, and I was astounded. Martin had told me, shown me pictures, but I'd forgotten; a short, squat, toy locomotive was chuffchuffing toward us, red sparks flaring into the night from its miniature stack. Its brakes grabbed, the chuff-chuff slowing, white steam jetting from its sides, and the train—engineer leaning out its side window—slid into the station and on past us. There were three cars, enameled light green and trimmed with gilt arabesques. Inside, seats ran the length of the car; they were upholstered in brown, and at intervals along the backs New York Elevated Rail Road was elaborately woven into the cloth; there was a kerosene ceiling lamp at each end of the car. We'd hardly sat down before a conductor in a low-crowned, flat-brimmed uniform cap came through, walking fast, collecting tickets. The car was nearly filled, but once more I was used to the way people looked, and glancing at Kate's face, I could see that she was, too. It didn't pop into my mind that the brown-bearded man directly across the aisle from us might be going to a wedding; the shiny silk topper he wore was the hat he wore every day, of course, like many another man in this very car. Next to him, staring absently into space, sat a woman wearing a navy-blue scarf tied under her chin, brown knit shawl, a long dark-green dress, and—I caught a glimpse—between the end of her skirt and the tops of herblack button shoes she wore heavy white knit stockings with broad horizontal red stripes. But I could see more than the clothes now; I could see the girl who wore them. And see that in spite of the clothes she was young and pretty. I even thought I could tell—I don't know how, but I thought so—that she had a nice figure. Kate was nudging me. "No ads." She nodded toward the spaces over the windows. I looked, and said, "I wonder how long before some genius thinks of them?" We'd taken a right-angled curve to the left almost immediately after starting up, then a curve to the right a block or so farther on. I didn't know where we were, or what street we were over now. But we were heading in the right direction, steadily and rapidly north, stopping for only seconds at each station. We were no longer curious about the people around us, but just sat staring out the windows. We were facing west, and looking past the shiny topper of the man opposite, I peered through the shiny window out at the strange nighttime New York sliding past us. There were lights, thousands of them, but of no brightness: these were thousands of tiny flecks affecting the darkness not at all; they were gaslights, most of them, white at this distance and almost steady; but there was candlelight, too, and, I supposed, kerosene. No colors, no neon, nothing to read, just a vast blackness pricked with lights, and all of them, I realized, below us. This was a Manhattan in which we looked out over the rooftops, its tallest structures the dozens of church spires silhouetted against—yes, the Hudson River, just becoming visible under a rising moon. A few minutes later—we couldn't the moon, but it was higher now—the river brightened,itsdarksurfaceglinting,andsuddenl(see) y I saw the darker bulk of sailing ships anchored offshore, and the silhouettes of their bare masts. I shivered then, staring out that window at the strangeness of the city flowing past. This was Manhattan and there lay the Hudson, but I was a very long way from anything I knew. We got off at the last stop, Sixth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, only a block from where we'd come out of Central Park this afternoon. We crossed the street and again entered the park, walking through it silently, postponing anything we had to say till we reached the sanctuary of the Dakota; we could see it far ahead, towering alone against the moonlit sky. Then Kate and I sat in my living room, our second drinks in our hands: good stiff drinks, whiskey and water. The fire was going again, and we'd said, and then said once more, all there was to say about the blue envelope and the man who'd mailed it, and the tiny image of the Gillis tombstone marked in the snow. Now, after a little silence, I said, "What's the one single thing of all you saw that made the strongest impression? The streets, the people? The buildings? The way the city looked from the El?"Kate took a sip of her drink, thinking, then said, "No; their faces." I looked at her questioningly. "They aren't like the faces we're used to," she said, shaking her head as though I were disputing her. "The faces we saw today were different." I thought possibly she was right, but I said, "An illusion. They dress so differently. The women have hardly any makeup. The men have beards, chin whiskers, side-whiskers—" "It's not that, Si, and we're used to beards. Their faces are actually different; think about it." I sipped at my drink, then said, "You may be right. I think you are. But different how?" We couldn't say, either of us. But staring at the fire, sipping my drink and remembering the faces we'd seen—on the bus, the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue, on the El, in the gaslighted marbleand-dark-wood lobby of that strange vanished post office—I knew Kate was right. Then I realized something: "Vanished," I'd just said to myself, and I looked over at Kate. Testing her impression, I said, "Katie, where are we? What's outside the windows right now? Are we in 1882 still?" For a moment she considered it, then shook her head. "Why not?" "Because..." She shrugged. "Because we came back, that's all. We were finished, so we came back to the apartment, and we came back in our minds, too." Suddenly doubtful, she said, "Haven't we?" We got up and, glasses in hand, walked over to the windows and looked down into the blackness of Central Park, hesitating. Then we leaned forward and, foreheads touching the windowpane, looked straight down into the street. And saw the long string of traffic lights, red as far as we could see in both directions. They all flicked green, the cars starting up, and a cab horn shrieked in rage at a car speeding out of the Park to beat the light at Seventy-second. I turned to Kate, shrugging, lifting my drink to finish it. "Yep," I said. "We're back."