Time and Again (16 page)

"But I agree with the decision: What I want you to do is what we all want you to do; there's no conflict. And what we want you to do reminds me in a way of our first space capsule." Again he sat back. "The first tiny one weighing — what? A few pounds. Everyone wanted space on it, remember? The biologists wanted a few mice aboard to see the effects of cosmic radiation. The botanists had some seeds; the geographers, weathermen and military wanted space for a camera; the broadcasters, the entire communications industry, and Lord knows who and what-all had then-requests and even demands. So they worked up a package, or tried to, that would give them all a little something, at least in token.

"It's the same with us, Si. That's why the board decided to let you have a look at your man with the envelope. In some sort of way he is apparently connected to a fragment of history, to a minor adviser of Cleveland's. What is his connection, we naturally wonder. Well, our historians want to know whether the project can really help them: Is it true or not that we can actually increase historical knowledge in a way never before open to us? The sociologists have similar questions, the psychologists have theirs, and of course the physicists, of whom I'm one, have a million of them. Your man, somehow connected with a little footnote to history, makes an acceptable first tiny package. If you can cautiously study and watch him, and if you should get results that seem to justify it, we can carefully move on to larger more ambitious matters about which we need additional knowledge.

"So this is what we want, Si. Still observing, still very cautiously — as much as possible the mouse in the corner, the fly on the wall — we want you to observe him. Learn what you can; the purpose being to discover what's possible in this line. It increases, certainly, your interference with old events, but" — he hesitated, then shrugged — "minimize that all you can. Well? You know where he lives: Can you return and find a way to do that for us?"

I started to nod, but before I could reply Rube said quietly, voice perfectly friendly but without smiling, "Alone. This time alone. This time friend Kate is to stay where she damn well belongs."

My mouth opened but I didn't have any words ready. I just sat there with my mouth open for a moment, and now Rube did smile a little. He said, "Don't bother to answer; I'm fairly sure I can guess how it was, and you can't really be blamed, I suppose. And apparently no harm was done. But we've got enough to worry about without adding sightseers."

I nodded. "All right. I'd have told Dr. Danziger, and you can believe that. But how did you know?"

"We know. There's a lot to this project beside you, a lot of drudgery and detail. You've got the glamour part, and we don't bother you with the nuts and bolts. But we're watching out for the project in every way we can, and nothing else and nobody else matters but that. Okay?"

It was a warning and maybe a threat, and I accepted it because it was deserved. "Okay."

He grinned then, the really great smile that had made me like Rube from the start. Then he tipped his chair forward, the front legs striking the vinyl tile hard, and stood up. "Then it's back to the Dakota. Come on, you lucky bastard, I'll drive you."

12

This time, walking out of the Dakota onto Seventy-second Street, carpetbag in hand, I knew. I turned left immediately, toward Central Park just across the street ahead, and there was no difference in the park that I could see, but — I knew. And a moment later when a wagon full of baled hay, drawn by two horses, crossed the intersection just ahead, I felt no surprise. But I'd remembered something, and at the corner I didn't cross the street into the park; I turned north. I remembered the incredible open space I had stared across from the balcony outside my apartment window several nights ago: the dark emptiness I'd seen between the Dakota and the Museum of Natural History five blocks ahead to the north. Now I wanted to see it in daylight, and thirty seconds later when I'd walked the block along the face of the Dakota, I suddenly saw it and stopped, staring and flabbergasted; then I began to laugh.

I don't know what I'd expected — anything but this — and still smiling, shaking my head, I dug a small sketch pad out of my carpetbag as I walked along. Then I made a rough but detailed and accurate sketch, which I finished up later. The opposite page shows it. Standing a dozen yards off the sidewalk and facing the Dakota, just south of the corner at Seventy fourth Street and Central Park West, this is what I saw, except that I've given the trees a few leaves so that you can see them. Those people were
farming —
I mean it — raising actual crops and livestock, living in shanties and sheds that they'd obviously made themselves.

Here they are — the farmers and livestock raisers beside the elegant Dakota doing their chores, the kids playing, the animals foraging for whatever they could find among patches of half-melted snow.

I could hardly believe it, and when my rough was done, I walked on a block or so toward the Museum — now, in daylight, I could see that it was only a single building — and I stared out over a strange astonishing view of farm after tiny farm clear to the Hudson. Even stranger, the streets were all here; in places they were a great raised gridiron of block after block of new streets all graded up to uniform level, the land between the streets lying far below. And down in those uniformly rectangular block-square hollows lay hundreds of acres of farmlands. From here at street level I could see the regular lines of old cultivations under the thin layer of snow. On a few of these miniature farms, people were desultorily scratching at the wet ground with hoes, I don't know why. I sketched that scene, too, of course: That's Seventy-fifth Street there at the left, and you can see the Ninth Avenue El in the background, and as I stood sketching I heard the lowing of cows, the baaing of sheep, heard pigs squeal, geese honk, and at the same time the distant, familiar, incongruous clatter of the El. Then I left, to cross Central Park toward the Third Avenue El, then on downtown to Gunnery Park.

Nineteen Gramercy Park was a house I'd seen before. It still exists, far into the twentieth century, and I'd occasionally walked past it and the other fine old houses around the little square of park. As well as I could remember, it looked the same now: a plain three-story brownstone with white-painted window frames and a short flight of scrubbed stone steps with a black wrought-iron railing. In a corner of a first-floor window a small blue-and-white sign said BOARD AND LODGING.

I stood on the walk looking up at the house, holding my packed carpetbag, and I was like a man on a diving board far higher than any oilier he's ever dared. I was about to begin something much more than addressing a few words to a stranger and moving on. However cautiously and tentatively, I was about to participate in the life of these times, and I stood looking at that sign, enormously excited and curious but not quite able to find the nerve to start.

I had to move; that door might open, and someone step out to see me loitering here. I made myself step forward, climb the stairs quickly, and before I could hesitate I reached out and twisted the polished brass knob at the center of the door, a bell jangled on the other side, and then I heard steps. I'd done it now; for better or worse, I'd joined this time.

I watched the knob turn, saw the door move back as it opened, made myself look up. In the doorway, looking inquiringly at me, stood a girl in her early twenties wearing a gray cotton dress and a long green apron; a white dustcloth folded into a turban covered her upswept hair, and she held a cloth in her hand. "Yes?"

Once again the wonder of what was happening seized me, and I stood staring at her. She started to frown, about to speak again, and I said quickly, "I'm looking for a room."

"And board? That's all we offer."

"Yes. And board." I made myself nod and smile.

"Well, we have two vacancies," she said doubtfully, as though not sure she shouldn't get rid of me. "One at the front overlooking the park at nine dollars a week. The other's at the back; it's seven dollars and twenty-five cents. Both with breakfast and supper."

I said I'd like to see them, and she stepped aside to gesture me into the black-and-white-tiled hall; it was wallpapered and dominated by an enormous hatrack and umbrella stand, the middle section of which was a full-length mirror. In it, as she turned to close the door, I glimpsed the slim back of her neck and a wisp of dark hair escaping her turban. Nervous as I was, I smiled; there's something innocent and appealing about the back of a girl's neck when her hair is up. She was pretty, I realized.

I followed her up the carpeted stairs at the end of the hall. In order to climb them, she gathered her skirts at the knees, raising them to the ankles, and I saw that she wore black button shoes with slightly run-down heels, and thick cotton stockings striped blue and white. I glimpsed her calves, full and rounded, and, in spite of the handicap of those shoes and stockings, realized that she had very handsome legs.
She's dead, you know —
the thought spoke itself in my mind.
Dead and gone for decades past
I shook my head hard, trying to force the thought away; then she turned at the top of the stairs to gesture me into a room, and as I walked past her she smiled, and I saw — very close — the living reality of her complexion, the slight crinkles at the corners of her eyes, the split-second motion of her eyelashes as she blinked, and she was so clearly young and alive that the thought lost all meaning.

I stood looking around the room, and she waited, standing just inside the doorway. It was big and clean, well lighted from two tall rectangular windows at the front. The room was furnished in an old-fashioned… but of course it wasn't old-fashioned. The wooden rocking chair, heavy carved-wood bedstead, the little table between the windows with a green felt tassel-fringed cloth, were probably no more than a dozen years old. There was a green-and-pink carpet, worn in a few places, and patterned with huge roses or cabbages, take your choice. Under one window was a window seat cushioned in red velvet, and the windows were hung with starched lace curtains, mended here and there. A gilt-framed engraving of a shepherd in a smock, knee-deep in sheep, hung beside the door, and the wallpaper was a ferocious brown-and-green pattern of tormented doodads. There was a dark-wood dresser with porcelain knobs and a white marble top on which stood a pitcher in a bowl. The bathroom, shared with other roomers, was down the hall, she said. I said, "I like it. Very much. I'll take it, if I may."

"Would you have references?"

"I'm awfully sorry, but I haven't. I just arrived in New York, and don't know a soul. Except you." I smiled but she didn't smile back. She stood hesitating, and I said, "It's true that I'm an escaped convict, an active counterfeiter, and occasional murderer. And I howl during the full of the moon. But I'm neat."

"In that case, welcome." Now she smiled. "Your name?"

"Simon Morley, and very pleased to meet you."

"I am Miss Julia Charbonneau." She was suddenly reserved, almost cool, but I knew we were friends. "This house belongs to my great-aunt; you will meet her at suppertime, which is six." She turned to leave, hand on the knob to pull it closed behind her; then she stopped, and turned to look back at me. "Since you're from out of town, remember these are gaslights" — she nodded at the globed overhead lights, and at the gas jet projecting from the wall over the bed — "not kerosene or candle. Don't ever blow them out; turn the flame off."

"I'll remember." She nodded, stood looking about the room for a moment longer, found nothing more to add, and turned toward the doorway. "Miss Charbonneau." She looked back, and for a moment I had nothing to say, then I found something. "Please excuse any ignorance. This is my first visit to New York, and I don't know the customs."

"I don't expect they're much different from anywhere else." She smiled again, a little mockingly now. "Anyhow, you don't look as though you'd stay a greeny for long." She walked out, pulling the door closed.

Over at the window I stood looking down at little Gramercy Park a story below, its benches, bushes and grass covered with snow. I couldn't recall when it was that I'd seen the park last, and couldn't tell whether it looked the same; it seemed to. Around the park three sides of the square were just as I'd always seen them; old old houses of brownstone, brick, gray stone. But on the fourth side, Twenty-First Street, there were no apartments now, just more old houses. The sidewalks and paths of the park were shoveled clear, but the snow was piled high in the gutters at the far sides of the street beside the park. It was speckled black with soot; this was still a dirty city, especially in the winter, I supposed, with tens of thousands of coal and wood fires pouring carbon into the air. At least it wasn't radioactive. Before every house stood hitching posts of black-painted cast iron; the tops of some were horses' heads with rings through the noses. Before each post stood a broad stone block for stepping up into carriages, every one clean of snow and ready for use. Otherwise it was the Gramercy Park I was used to.

A movement caught my eye across the square, and I located it through the intervening bare black branches: A door had opened, and a woman stepped out. Now she was pulling the door closed. Now she reached for the railing and, cautiously for fear of ice, walked down the steps. She turned left on the walk, and at Twentieth Street turned the corner, walking toward me. Free of the intervening trees, I saw her clearly now, Her shoulders, under a dark cape, were hunched against the cold, her hands deep in a glossy fur muff; her pillbox bonnet was tied under her chin; her brown cutaway coat was edged with a broad band of black lamb's wool; and the tips of her shoes appeared and disappeared under her skirt hem as she walked. And once more the truth welled up in me; this was New York City, January 1882, and I was here and a part of it.

In almost that moment it began to snow, the flakes tiny and scarce. But within half a minute, in only the time it took the woman walking toward me to reach Irving Place and turn into it, disappearing from my sight, the flakes had thickened. Then they flew fast, swirling, beginning to cover the walks, the paths, the stone steps and stoops, beginning to mound on the heads of the iron horses.

It was too much, I can't really say why, and I turned from the window and lay down on the long single bed, careful to keep my feet off the plain white bedspread. And I closed my eyes, suddenly more homesick than any child. It occurred to me that I literally did not know a single person on the face of the earth, and that everything and everyone I knew was impossibly far away.

For an hour, maybe a little less, I was asleep. Then occasional voices, the sounds of doors opening, closing, and footsteps in the hall pulled me awake. The room was dark now, but the slim rectangles of the windows beyond the foot of my bed were luminous from the new snow outside. I knew where I was, swung my legs to the floor, and crossed the room to the windows.

Streetlamps glowed around the square, the snow sparkling in the circles of light at their bases. To my right and just around the corner of the square a carriage door slammed, and I turned to see the reins flick on the backs of two slim gray horses. Then the carriage started toward me, its sides shiny-black in the light of its own side lamps. Almost immediately, its high thin wheels leaving blade-thin tracks, it entered a cone of lamplight, bursting into black-enamel and plate-glass glitter. Through the glass of my windowpane I heard the faint jingle of harness and the muffled
clippety-clop
of shod hoofs in new snow. The carriage turned the corner, and I stared down at the foreshortened figure of the driver, high on the open front seat, neatly blanket-wrapped to the waist, reins and whip in his gloved hands. Horses, driver, and carriage passed directly under my window; I looked straight down onto the harnessed gray backs, the jiggling top of the driver's silk hat, and the dull black of the carriage roof. Once again horses and carriage moved glitteringly through a cone of yellow light, and I watched then-shadows thin to nothingness on the new snow. The shadows reappeared, thickened, turned solidly blue-black, then raced on ahead of the carriage, lengthening and distorting. Now, in the oval rear window, two heads were framed, a man's under a top hat, and a woman's bare head; I saw her hair bound up in a bun at the back. The man turned to the woman, said something — I could see the movement of his beard — then the carriage turned the corner, and I saw its side light, saw the horses disappear; then the carriage itself was gone, except for its thin double tracks. And an exultance at being here in this time and this city raced through me. I swung away from the window, pulling off my coat, walked to the dresser, poured water from pitcher to bowl, and washed. I put on a clean shirt, tied my tie, combed my hair, and walked quickly to the door, the hall, the house, and its people.