From Time to Time (3 page)

"And then very quickly, the tugs assembling around her, little blobs of color fussing at her waterline, their stacks blowing black, she was gone, cut from our view by buildings, but then I learned that the best was yet to come. My father had passes, he announced now, which would admit us to her dock, on the Hudson; she was a White Star liner. And if I hiked, we could go watch her dock, unless-and some more nonsense then about my deep love of school and learning.

"The only thing that might conceivably have made that day more wonderful for me would have been to find that down in the street at the cab rank one of the waiting cabs was an automobile. But this morning there were only two waiting cabs, both horse- drawn, and we climbed in, and moved up Broadway, through Washington Square, then over on Fourteenth, I think, and along the Hudson on West Street, to the docks.

"We walked down the stairs onto the pier, a partly roofed but otherwise open platform of thick splintery planking. It may be there yet for all I know, a long shedhike structure without sides, and our ship was already in sight, out there on the river. She was already turning toward the pier, in fact. For a moment or so as she made the quarter-turn, the black smoke boiled out-I loved this- more thickly than ever, and I stood staring across the water at her, truly spellbound. Very suddenly the smoke abated, almost stopping, as the tugs took over the work of moving her. Then, their own stacks pouring black, they brought her in, quite slowly, slowing even more as they neared, heading straight for the pier as it seemed to me. I stood watching, staring rather, and could not believe that anything could grow so large. The tugs turned her very slightly, and now I saw her not quite head-on. Saw her stacks now, painted beige, as I recall, with a black band at the tops. Four stacks, almost merged, like the pickets in a fence viewed at an angle. She grew taller. And taller. More and more enormous as she came at us, almost frighteningly, until-alongside the dock now, impossibly only a few feet away-she had become so tall, her sides swelling outward so far, that I could no longer see her superstructure, and I stood there stunned at the enormity of this thing.

"The tug far out at her stern suddenly boiled water, immense churning pools of greasy gray bubbles. At her other side tugs shoved her sideways with a sudden rumbling sound, and the dirty water separating ship from dock shrank to a yard, a foot, to inches, and then-very slightly, gently as an elephant accepting a peanut-she touched, and through the soles of my shoes I felt the movement of the entire dock, and heard the vast creak and groan of its planks and nails, and understood the enormousness of the weight that had just barely nudged us.

"Now the ship was still, immense hawsers flying out from openings in her sides to drop, uncoiling, and he snubbed tight to the hollards l)y waiting men. A gangplank, slanting up toward the black hull, was being wheeled to her almost at a run, and before it could even be fully secured a swarm of uniformed porters in white jackets and black-visored caps were running up it.

"Almost immediately then, hardly a minute's delay, down came the first-class passengers, the porters carrying hand luggage spotted with colored stickers bearing the names of foreign hotels. Don't think of these people moving down that gangplank as dressed in casual' clothes, sport' clothes, like tourists from Hawaii with paper leis around their necks. There were no casual or sport clothes, unless you count the white flannels in which men played tennis. These people, many smiling, some haughty, coming down from that great ship, were dressed for arrival in New York, the City, the metropolis. And the women wore hats. Huge wheels some of those hats, the brims wide as small umbrellas; I mean it. Others had jeweled turbans of intricately folded cloth, feathered, and worn down to the eyebrows. And dresses to just above the ankles, and sort of. . . curved in at the hem. Hobble skirts, yes. They wore or carried coats, some of fur or fur-trimmed. These women, believe me, were dressed. Dressed, I suppose, for the uplifted eyes of all of us down there on the dock, and for the reporters with press passes in their hatbands who had boarded from the pilot ship to interview some of them.

"The men wore suits, mostly. With vests and ties. A few wore black frock coats with gray, striped trousers, and stiff wing collars. A very few wore tall shiny silk hats-bankers and Wall Street people, I suppose, going straight to their offices. My father wore a felt hat, as most younger men did.

"As these godlike passengers stepped onto the dock, they were met, and hugged, and kissed. They were presented with bouquets, and with telegrams and cablegrams by uniformed boys. Nearby, waiting and smiling, stood clusters of servants, the women not quite in uniform but you could tell who was maid or nann. The chauffeurs, some carrying folded hap robes like badges of office, wore livery and polished leather puttees. Out front, parked directly beside the dock entrance-we'd passed them coming in-stood a line of limousines I knew every automobile made by sight, and these were Isotta-Fraschinis, Pierce .Arrows, a Stutz roadster, and so on.

"The heavier luggage of these people was coming down from the side of the ship on a kind of plank of rollers, sweating men in porters' smocks heaving them off at the end. Most of these were huge steamer trunks lettered with names or initials followed by the name of the city: New York, Wien, Constantinople, London.

"Not until the first-class passengers, except for stragglers, were gone from the pier to customs were other gangphanks wheeled up for the second-class, third-class, and steerage passengers. Down they came now, and I remember them as simply uninteresting. They walked down their sloping gangplanks dressed like ordinary people you'd see on the streets. And not talking, almost as though they didn't have the right. A few waved a little to waiting friends, smiling but not calling down to them. And for me it had all turned drab. These people, I truly believe, knew their places in society. And without resentment. And little snob that I suppose I was then, though I did not remain one, I had no interest in them.

"Yet I didn't want to leave. Couldn't. And my father indulged me. I walked on toward the prow-wandered, really, sometimes stopping to lift my chin and look up at that immensity of curved black plating all riveted together to form a ship. Along this portion of the dock were fewer and fewer people, and as I approached the very nose of the ship, there were no others. But far up, several officers in their visored caps leaned on the rail looking dow'n. I wanted to wave but didn't for fear they might simply stare and not return it.

"Then I stood directly opposite the prow just looking at the very end of the great ship, the prow a perfectly vertical knife edge as ships were then. Far overhead, just short of the top of the hull and well back from the prow, hung the white block letters that spelled out the name of this great new ship. They w'ere a long way off, those white letters, and I could feel the weight of my own head tipped far back to look up at them. But I could see them perfectly plainly. Read them with no difficulty. I can see them in my mind right now', seven big white letters standing absolutely plain and clear, and of course you know what they spelled: It's why you me here.

"Yes, but . . . say it.

"The white letters high on the painted black hull of that ship read Titanic, as l've told people for the rest of my life. And that's that. Feel free to ask whatever you like, though you'll surprise me if you have a question I haven't often been asked before.

"Could this have been a . . . particularly vivid dream? One of those dreams so real it comes to seem like an actual memory?"

"A dream, could it have been a dream? Of course you must ask. But this is my answer: Occasionally you yourself have had a dream -everyone has-that was astonishingly real. Nothing fantastic about it. And that stayed in your mind afterward, clean and clear. Perhaps never forgotten. "

"Yes. "

"But this is also true, always. You know that nevertheless it was a dream. No one ever mistakes a dream for reality. The experience I've described to you-happened. "

"Did you also know that the Titanic never reached port?

"Yes, I remember hearing the news as a boy. The Titanic had struck an iceberg. On her maiden voyage. And sank, drowning two thirds of her passengers and crew. Oh yes, I remember that. I can't, of course, explain this rationally, but . . . I remember what I remember: that I also saw the Titanic dock.

A silence through several seconds, the tape hiss continuing. "One last question. Have you ever run into anyone else-

"Twice. One yes; the other maybe.

"And-?

"Both heard my story. A woman, middle-aged at the time, who said yes, she'd always had the same two memories. I believed her. Another, a man of my age, said the same thing. I simply wasn't sure about him. Maybe so.

Ted pushed a control. "The tape ran out. There's a little more on the other side, but you've heard it all actually. He does go on a bit.

"Yeah, well, it's a good one. It's a good one. Do us a report, Ted, and-do we get the tape?

"Oh, sure, that's what it's for.

"Okay. Well, it's a little late, folks. I had an interim report, but it'll hold till next time. It's a little more on the old book, is all: the Turnbuhh biography. For those who came in hate last time or fell asleep, that's Amos Fumnbulh, friend of Jefferson and Franklin, member of the Continental Congress. But mentioned nowhere else, and no other copy of my book known by anyone. All my interim really says, though, is that I spent a lot of hours this summer reading Colonial newspapers on microfilm. Which will either drive you blind or crazy; it's a photo finish. And found nothing, not a mention of Amos. Oh, Irv-you had some film?

"Yeah, but no projector: this is thirty-five-millimeter. Thought I had a projector borrowed, but it fell through. I've got about a hundred feet of old black-and-white.

"Showing?

"A couple of blocks of a street in Paris; 1920, 21, along in there. Very bright and sharp. Shops, people walking around, nothing much. But at the end of this particular street you should see the Eiffel Tower.

"And it's not there?

"Right.

"Okay, hike to see that. Next time?

"Count on it.

"All right, then, it's a wrap. See you all in a month, those I don't see tomorrow; Audrey will send out notices. Anybody need a ride?

No one did, and chattering-less of the meeting than of work, classes, children, clothes, recent vacations-they began gathering belongings from the tabletop, shoving back chairs. The bearded chairman stood by the door speaking good-nights as they left. When the last of them had passed through the door, the sound of footsteps in the wood-floored hallway diminishing, the nighttime silence beginning, he glanced at the campaign button in his hand, then flicked down the light switch and pulled the door closed, standing in the hall listening till he heard the lock click.

CHAPTER 1

WE STOOD BUNCHED in with the little crowd you can see on the balcony down there at the right-see it?-just over the pillared entramice to the Everett House: Julia and I, her hands in her muff; and our four-year-old son, chin on the balcony rail. When I leaned over him to see his face in the light of the marching torches below us, his expression was fixed in wonder. I was here on assignment, but this was also a part of nineteenth-century life, a great parade, that I liked a hot. We had no movies, radio, or television, but we did have parades, and often. Now every possible inch of standing room down there in Union Square was lost under the packedtogether shoulders audI the tops of derbies, tall hats, fur caps, Jack Finnev From Time to Time shawled hair, and bonnets. Winding around the roadway through that thick crowd, hundreds of marching men, and floats, flags, bands, horses, all fitfully visible in the bobbing firelight from rank after rank of gimballed canisters of smoky flame.

The sound was a thrill: the splendid brass blare of marching bands and the yells of the crowd. What they yelled, I'd noticed again and again, was "Hurrah! -actually pronounced hurrah. We stood hearing fireworks whistle up, watched them burst gorgeously against the black sky with that muffled fireworks pop. Skyrockets shot through these bursts and curved off, dying. Where did they land? And paper balloons, their swinging baskets of orange fire shining through the sides. Every now and then flame crawled up a paper panel, and the balloon would drop, blazing. Where? Were there men waiting on the dark rooftops around the square with buckets of water? Must have been, must have been.

It was glorious, all black dark and flowering color, marching leather shuffling on cobbles, drums banging, cymbals smashing. Only a political parade, the election weeks ahead, but fun. Another band moving past now, this one in tall flat-topped shakos with plumes and tiny peaks, the snares rattling, lots of powerful horn and trumpet and that bell-like thing that tops it all off. Splendid blaring sound, very close, and once again that night I felt the actual chill right up the spine, and the slightly embarrassing eye sting, of easy emotion about nothing.

Now a turnverein band in funny costumes, and we stayed for that-Willy insisted. Then we left to beat the crowd, coming down through the hotel. I liked the hotel because someone had told me that a couple of the old men sitting around the lobby were veterans of the War of 1812, but there were none there tonight. I didn't believe it anyway. Out the side entrance of the hotel, and across the street, around the square, the curbs were sobd with waiting carriages, their lamps lighted, an occasional iron horseshoe stomping the stone. Just as we approached him a horse began urinating, fascinating Willy, who wanted to stop and watch, Julia's arm under mine tugging us past, me grinning. A few carriages further on we stopped to lift Willy to pat the soft nose of a more genteel horse, something he loved.