Time and Again (12 page)

After a while I made coffee, dragged a chair to the window, and sat next to it, sitting sideways, legs over the chair arm. Then — it was early for supper, but I felt hungry — I made a sandwich and brought it, with an apple, back to my chair. The light had dwindled, and the white of the vast expanse of snow outside had picked up a blue tint. I sat eating, watching the day disappear. The traffic lights on the street under my windows had stopped, I noticed presently; either shut off to save current or interrupted by the storm. They looked different now, their tops and hoods mounded high with snow; they could have been streetlamps. In the cooling air the falling flakes became smaller, and a little wind began and carried the fine snow horizontally like a curtain of mist. Now I couldn't see beyond the center of the park; far on the other side the apartments along its eastern edge had vanished in the curtain; so had the buildings to the south and, of course, far to the north. The last of the children left; it was colder — I could feel it through the windowpane — and it was nearly dark. Then the streetlights came on. Nothing moved outside now but the snow in the wind, and the silence was complete. Staring down into Central Park, I wondered suddenly if it had also snowed in January 1882.

I didn't know but it was likely, of course. And if it had, at this time, then now
in every way
the scene I sat staring down at was exactly and without difference what I'd have seen from here then. I stood up and stepped to the window, glancing at my own dim reflection in the glass, and in these clothes, in this room, in this building, I knew I could have stood here then precisely as I stood here now.

I turned away, walked to the chandelier, struck a match, then reached up to light the lamps, one by one. There was coffee, still warm, in the china pot I'd set on the carpet beside my chair, and I poured out another half cup but I never drank it. I sat down again beside the window, the room, warm and comfortable, silent except for the tiny hiss of the gas jets and the occasional hard flick of a snowflake against the pane. I lay back in my chair, legs stretched out, holding the cup in my lap, staring up at the blue-edged flames shaped like tiny medieval ax-blades behind the etched patterns of the glass shades.

I was no longer thinking; you couldn't call it thought. I sat at rest, almost blank-minded, except that a picture involuntarily formed itself in my mind momentarily: of the people who had to be out in the streets, farther south, downtown in the busier parts of the city. I saw them bent against the blowing snow, men touching the rims of their derbies, women's hands snug in their muffs, and in the streets beside them the horses' feet were sliding, staggering for a footing. For an instant I had a glimpse in my mind of a lifted hoof wet with slush, the fetlocks balled with gray snow. And now I could — not imagine; that wasn't the word — I could
feel
the city around me, all the others, I mean: the people in their houses tonight like me, in the soft yellow light of a million gas flames.

I hated to move; it was so white and silent outside, the flakes scudding past my lighted window; it was so comfortable in here, the room's shadows occasionally shifting as the wedgelike flames momentarily flickered. I kept meaning to sip my coffee but never did. Finally I set down the cup, made myself stand, and walked to the last window to the left and pulled the blind. Who, watching from somewhere, would see that this one window was now darkened I didn't know and hardly cared.

And when the bell over my door jounced on its coiled spring I was nearly asleep in my chair. It was Oscar Rossoff, I saw without surprise when I opened the door, stomping off the snow clinging to his unpolished, heavily greased boots. He wore a shiny black beard trimmed to a point. "Hello, Si." He stood snapping off beads of moisture from a high-crowned derby in his hand. "I was passing by, and stopped to catch my breath, if it's convenient. A fine night, but hard walking."

"Come on in, Oscar! I'm glad to see you."

He stepped in, and stood smiling, unbuttoning his ankle-length fur-collared overcoat. Then he handed it to me and rubbed his hands together quickly, glad to be warm; he wore a black cutaway coat with silk lapels, black-and-white-checked pants, and a wing collar with a black ascot tie. We walked across the room to facing chairs, and Oscar unbuttoned his coat as he sat down. Across his vest hung a heavy gold chain strung with gold and ivory ornaments.

"Oscar, I'll make a fire. Would you like a drink first? Or coffee, if you'd rather. Have you had supper?" I was pleased to have company, and almost chattering.

"No, I can't stay, Si; I only stopped for a moment. So don't trouble with anything on my account. Except a drink; I
would
like a whiskey! Neat." He rubbed his hands together again, glancing at the windows. "Quite a night!"

I brought whiskey in miniature cut-glass tumblers, we raised them in salute, then tasted the liquor. "Fine," Oscar said, and sat back in his chair, and began absently playing with a coin-shaped gold ornament on his watch chain. "This is fine, sitting here with a glass of whiskey, the storm dying outside."

I nodded. "Yes. I'm glad you came, Oscar; I was falling asleep."

"A man could do that easily enough on a night like this." He sipped at his whiskey, then sat back again, idly fingering the disc on his chain; I sat watching it glow dully in the gaslight. "Nothing could be more relaxing, it's so quiet outside, so warm and peaceful in here." I nodded, and started to make some reply, but Oscar shook his head slowly, smiling, lying comfortably back in his chair. "Don't trouble to make small talk, Si; I don't need entertaining. It's so pleasant in here it should be enjoyed without thought, the mind at rest, content and serene. And the whiskey helps, doesn't it? You can feel your nerves and muscles relaxing. I think the wind has died down, it's so absolutely silent now. Still snowing, though; big soft flakes again. You're very contented right now, Si, I can see it. So relaxed and at ease. At peace. And I believe I am helping. Because although you're listening to me it's not so much to the words as the sound; the tone, the murmur, the suggestion. It's draining away all tension; I can see that you feel it happening. You're so at peace that even the glass in your hand is becoming a little heavy to hold; notice? You're more content and serene, more than you've ever been before in your life, just sitting here in peace listening to the sound of my voice. That glass
is
too heavy; set it down on the floor beside you. That's better, isn't it? If you tried to pick it up again it would be too heavy now. And you don't want to anyway, you don't care to. And you couldn't. Try, though, Si; just try to pick it up for a moment. Try harder; lift it for just an inch or so, then let it drop back. You can't. Well, no matter. It doesn't matter at all. You're very tired, and in a moment I'm going to let you sleep. I only want to tell you something first, then I'll go.

"You'll sleep for only a little while, Si. But it will be a marvelously restful sleep. Deep and dreamless. Restful as you've ever known. And when you wake, everything you know of the twentieth century will be gone from your mind. As you sleep, that entire body of knowledge will shrink in your mind; it will dwindle to a motionless pinpoint deep in your brain, and lost to you.

"It's beginning to happen now. There are no such things as automobiles, Si; there are no planes, computers, television, no world in which they are possible. 'Nuclear' and 'electronics' appear in no dictionary anywhere on the face of the earth.

"You have never heard the name Richard Nixon… or Eisenhower… Adenauer… Stalin… Franco… General Patton… Goring… Roosevelt… Woodrow Wilson… Admiral Dewey….Everything you know of the past eight decades is washing out of your mind; everything. All of it. Large and small. From the important to the smallest of trivia.

"But you know what the world is like; you know that very well. You know all about it. Why shouldn't you know what the world is like tonight, January 21, 1882? Because that
is
the date; that is the time we're in, of course. That's why I'm dressed as I am, and you as you are. That's why this room is as it is. Don't sleep quite yet, Si. Hold your eyes open just a bit. For just a few seconds longer.

"Now, hear what I say. I am going to give you a final, irrevocable instruction; you
will
hear it, you
will
obey it. You will sleep for twenty minutes. You will awake rested. You will go out for a walk. Just a little walk, a breath of air before you go to bed. You will be as careful as you possibly can be… that no one sees you. You will be absolutely certain to speak to no one. You will allow no act of yours, however small, to influence anyone in any way, however trivial.

"Then you will come back here, go to bed, and sleep all night. You will awaken in the morning as usual, free of all hypnotic suggestion. So that as you open your eyes, all your knowledge of the twentieth century will light up in your mind again. But
you will remember your walk. You will remember your walk. You will remember your walk.
Now… let go. And sleep."

I was embarrassed; the moment I woke up in my chair I glanced quickly over at Oscar's chair and saw that he was gone, his glass on a table, and I wondered what he must have thought at my falling asleep while he sat here, a guest. But I knew he wouldn't mind; we were old friends and he'd be amused.

I felt rested now, though; alive and energetic, a little too restless to feel like going to bed, and I decided to take a walk. It was still snowing, but big soft flakes. There was no wind, I'd been indoors too long, and I wanted to get out, into that snow, breathing chill fresh air; and I walked to the closet and put on my overcoat, chest protector, boots, and my round fur cap of black lamb's wool.

I walked down the building stairs, somehow glad to encounter no one; I didn't feel like chatting, and if I'd heard someone on the stairs I think I'd have stood waiting till he'd gone. Downstairs I walked out of the building, glancing quickly around, but saw not a soul — tonight I didn't want to see anyone — and I turned toward Central Park just across the street ahead. It was a fine night, a wonderful night. The air was sharp in my lungs, and snowflakes occasionally caught in my lashes, momentarily blurring the streetlamps just ahead, already misty in the swirls of snow around them.

Just ahead the street was almost level with the curbs, unmarked by steps or tracks of any kind. I crossed it and walked into the park. There was no path to be seen or detected; I simply avoided bushes and trees, and it was hard going, the snow seven or eight inches deep now. It occurred to me that I'd better not go too far from the lights of the street or I could easily become lost, and I turned to look back. The streetlamps were plainly visible, and I could still see my own footprints in their light, but they were covering over very quickly and I knew that in only minutes they'd be gone again and that I'd never be able to follow them back if I went on much farther.

I plodded on just a little way more though, feet lifting high, boots clogged with damp snow, enjoying the exercise of it, exhilarated by the feel of this snowy luminous night, and my aloneness in it. Behind me and to the north I heard a distant rhythmical jingle, perceptibly louder each time it sounded, and I turned to look back toward the street once again. For a moment or two I stood listening to the
jink-jink-jingle
sound, and then just beyond the silhouetted branches, down the center of the lighted street, there it came, the only kind of vehicle that could move on a night like this: a light, airy, one-seated sleigh drawn by a single slim horse trotting easily and silently through the snow. The sleigh had no top; they sat out in the falling snow, bundled snugly together under a robe, a man and a woman passing
jink-jink-jingle
through the snow-swirled cones of light under each lamp. They wore fur caps like mine, and the man held a whip and the reins in one hand. The woman was smiling, her face tilted to receive the snow, and the only sounds were the bells, the muffled hoof-clops, and the hiss of the sleigh runners. Then their backs were to me, the sleigh drawing away, diminishing, the steady rhythm of the sleigh bells receding. They were nearly gone when I heard the woman laugh momentarily, her voice muffled by the falling snow, the sound distant and happy. It was enough of a walk, I had no desire to push on into the park, and I turned back. The slim parallel lines of the sleigh runners were still there, down the middle of Central Park West, but they were fading quickly, and my own earlier footsteps were already completely gone. I climbed the stairs of the Dakota, took off my cap and coat, then turned off the living-room jets, ready for bed. I walked to the windows for one last look outside. Then I wanted to feel the snow once more, and I opened the french windows, and stepped out onto the balcony. Down on the street I'd crossed, the marks of the sleigh runners and of my steps were gone, the snow level and unmarked once more. I stared into the black-and-white park for several moments, then turned to look north. All I could see, barely visible through the curtain of snow, was the Museum of Natural History several blocks ahead, one row of its windows lighted, then I turned back into the living room. In bed I fell asleep almost instantly.

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! He might 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's beautiful… the trees look carbon-black against the whiteness. The street is level with snow, 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 my shoulder 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 were mostly along the line of, Could I emotionally feel as well as intellectually believe in the reality of what had happened? And, always obliging, I thought 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 cars flowing 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 own stuffy notions of morality. Because it simply did not matter to Kate that this was a government project, of the utmost seriousness, brought into being at tremendous expense and 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.