Time and Again (24 page)

I took the El back to Gramercy Park. I'd noticed the station just east of City Hall Park, got on there, and it curved north through Chatham Square, and turned out to be the old Third Avenue El. I was used to people now; already, in my mind, the other passengers were dressed as they ought to be. But at Chatham Square a family got on that I couldn't look away from. They must have arrived from Ellis Island within the hour, and — incredible to a man of the twentieth century — I could tell where they were from by the way they were dressed. The father, who wore a huge drooping mustache, and the ten-year-old son, both wore blue cloth caps with shiny black peaks; short, double-breasted, porcelain-buttoned blue jackets; short scarves tied at the throat; pants that flared far out from the waist and tapered to the ankles; and although the father wore boots, the boy — I was fascinated, and had to force my eyes away — actually wore wooden shoes. The mother was stout, crimson-cheeked, wore two dozen skirts, and exactly the kind of bonnet you can see on the label of a can of Old Dutch Cleanser. On the floor at the father's feet was a carpetbag, and up on the seat beside him a big cloth-wrapped bundle. They looked happy, amiable, peering out the windows and commenting in what must, of course, have been Dutch. They were marvelous. They looked like a chocolate ad. And I realized that at this moment — almost the last moments — the world was still a wonderfully variegated place: that soldiers in Greece were probably still wearing pointed shoes, long white stockings, and little ballet skirts; Turks were in fezzes, their women veiled; plenty of Eskimos hadn't yet seen their first white man or caught his diseases; and Zulus were still happy cannibals in an unbulldozed, unpaved, unpolluted world.

I knew we must be getting close to my stop, and looked away from the Dutch family long enough to glance out over this strange low New York, its church spires the highest things on the island. It was weird to be able to look straight across the city and see the Hudson, and astonishing to see how many trees there were. Most of the cross streets seemed lined with them, and there were a good many on the avenues. Some were fine big ones, taller than the houses around them, and I realized that the greenery of all these trees would give the town a rural look in summer almost like a large village, and I wished I could see it then.

We were approaching my stop, and for an instant, down a cross street to the west — Seventeenth? Eighteenth? — I caught a glimpse of a fine and splendid-looking five-story apartment building with a mansard roof. I was almost certain — it was red brick with brownstone facings — that I recognized it as the Stuyvesant. A friend of mine, an artist, who had lived in it till they tore it down, sometime in the fifties, I think, had a watercolor he'd done of it on his livingroom wall. He still missed the place, it was such a magnificent, high-windowed, enormous apartment. It actually had twenty-foot ceilings and four wood-burning fireplaces; New York's first apartment building, he said, known as "Stuyvesant's Folly" while they were building it because people said no New York gentleman would ever consent to live with a lot of strangers. He liked to talk about it, and I was glad to have had even a glimpse of it.

I got off at Twenty-third Street, walked back to 19 Gramercy Park, and Aunt Ada heard the front door open and came in from the kitchen, her hands and forearms white with flour. I asked if Julia were home, and she said no, but that she ought to be here any time now, and I thanked her and went on up to my room.

It had been some day and I'd walked more than I had in a long time, so I was glad to stretch out on my bed and wait. Now and then, outside my window as I lay there, I heard children in the park cry out, their voices high and thin in the cold outdoor air. I heard the already familiar hollow clop of horses' hoofs and the chink of their harness chains. I didn't want to leave this New York; there was so much more to see in this strange yet familiar city.

I fell asleep, of course, and awoke at the sounds of Julia's return: her voice and her aunt's in the hall. I got up quickly, pulling my watch out. It was just past four thirty, and I put on shoes and coat and trotted down. They were still there in the hall, looking up at me, Julia still dressed for the street; she was showing her aunt some things she'd bought.

We all went into the parlor, Julia untying and pulling off her hat, and I told them the story I'd composed, astonished at how guilty I felt to be looking at these two trusting women and lying. I'd gone to the post office, I said, to cancel the box I'd rented until I got permanent quarters. But I'd found an urgent letter in the box. My brother was sick, and while he'd recover, I added quickly — I didn't want condolences — they needed me meanwhile to help out on my father's farm, so I'd have to leave today; right now in fact. I was suddenly afraid they might ask questions about farming, but of course they didn't. Those two nice women were sympathetic, genuinely. And they said they were sorry I was leaving, and it seemed to me that was genuine, too. Aunt Ada supposed that I wouldn't leave till after dinner, at least, but I said no, I ought to leave right away; it would be a long train trip. She offered to refund part of my week's lodging, which I refused.

Then Julia, suddenly remembering, said, "Oh,
no!
My portrait!"

I'd forgotten it completely, and stood looking at her, my mind scrambling for an excuse. Then I realized I didn't want one. I wanted to do this portrait very much; it seemed like a particularly good way to say goodbye. So I nodded and said that if she'd sit for it now — I wanted to avoid Jake — I'd do it right away, then leave. Julia hurried upstairs to get ready — I asked her to keep on the dress she was wearing — and I followed to get my sketchbook from my overcoat pocket.

Upstairs I packed my carpetbag, stood looking around the room — ridiculously, I knew I'd miss it — then walked out, carpetbag in one hand, sketchbook in the other, and I flipped the cover back to look over the day's sketches.

As I turned toward the stairs Julia stepped down off the enclosed third-floor staircase, almost bumping into me; her hair was freshly coiled on top of her head now. "Oh, may I see!" she said, reaching for my sketchbook. I might have made an excuse, but I was curious and gave her the book. Walking slowly down ahead of me, she looked first at my reference sketches of the farming near the Dakota; they weren't really sketches yet but more like a set of notes to myself, and she didn't comment on them, but turned the page to my sketch of City Hall Park and the streets around it.

I think I might have guessed the kind of response she made; I knew this was an age of absolute and almost universal faith in progress, and very nearly a love of machinery and its potentials. We were downstairs, and now she stopped in the parlor and said, "What are these, Mr. Morley?" Her fingertip lay on the paper at the cars and trucks I'd sketched onto Centre Street.

"Automobiles."

She repeated it as though it were two words: "Auto mobiles." Then she nodded, pleased. "Yes: self-propelled. That's an excellent coinage; is it your own?" I said no, that I'd heard it somewhere, and she nodded again and said, "Perhaps in Jules Verne. In any case, I'm quite certain we
will
have auto mobiles. And a good thing; so much cleaner than horses." She was already turning the page, and now she looked at my rough of Trinity and Broadway. Before she could comment I took it from her, and very rapidly sketched in the enormous buildings that would someday surround the little church. I handed it back to her, and after a moment she nodded. "Excellent. Wonderfully symbolic. The highest structure on all of Manhattan to be eventually surrounded by others far taller: yes. But you're a better artist than architect, Mr. Morley; to support buildings this tall, the masonry at the base of the walls would need to be half a mile thick!" She smiled, and handed my pad back. "Where shall I sit?"

I posed her at a window in a three-quarter view, making her let her hair down, and worked with a very sharp hard pencil to force the best delineation I was capable of; no obscuring faulty draftsmanship with a fine thick dash of a line. The hard pencil also allowed the finest shading and cross-hatching I was capable of.

It was turning out well. I had the shape of the face, and I had the eyes and eyebrows, the hardest part for me, and I was working quite carefully on the hair: I wanted to really catch the way it was. But I was slow: Young Felix Grier came home, and I dragged out my watch and saw that it was just before five. He stood watching for a few moments, not saying anything. He smiled when I looked up at him, and nodded a quick polite approval, but his eyes were worried, and I knew why. I was worried, too — that Jake Pickering would come in and raise hell once again, and it was no part of my mission here to make trouble. I stepped up my speed, trying to hang onto my control; I wanted this good. It seemed unlikely that he'd be home from a job at City Hall before five thirty or six, and I expected to be finished and gone within minutes now.

It was my fault, of course, for not thinking of the obvious: that a man like Jake Pickering, hating his job and status as a clerk, would walk back to City Hall and quit his job after seeing Carmody. And now — this time I didn't see him approaching the house — the front door opened, closed, and there he was standing in the hall doorway again. But now he was swaying ever so slightly, and his tie was undone. His overcoat was unbuttoned, his hands shoved into his pants pockets, and his plug hat, far back on his head, had a streak of dried mud at the crown and along one curled rim.

He wasn't out of control; he was drunk but knew what he was seeing. Julia and I staring at him, his eyes moved from her face to the lines on my pad, back to Julia's face, back to the pad. There have been primitive people throughout the world who would not permit a likeness to be made of themselves; they believed it took something of the living person away. And it may be that this man, not realizing or understanding it, had some of that nearly instinctive feeling. Because my sketching of Julia enraged him as though in his mind my eyes on her face, my moving pencil taking her likeness, were a kind of deep intimacy. As it is in a way. In any case, it was somehow unbearable to him; more than rage, it was emotion past thought: berserk. His eyes lifted from the pad to my face. They were very small now, the whites reddened, and they were absolutely implacable. He lifted his arm to full length, and his lips parted to bare his teeth like an animal as he pointed at me wordlessly; I don't think there were words for the fury he felt. Then the arm swung in a short arc to point at Julia. His neck looked swollen and his voice was so thick it was hard to understand. He said, "Wait. Stay here. Wait. And I'll show you." Then almost nimbly — the swaying vanished — he swung round on his heel and was gone, the front door opening and slamming an instant later.

I finished the portrait: why not? After the door slammed I looked at Julia, and my mouth opened to say something but all I did was shrug. Nothing to say, except
Well, well, well,
or something just as inane, occurred to me. And Julia forced a smile and shrugged, too, but her face was white and stayed so. I'm not sure why: fear, anger, shock; I don't know. But she was defiant too, her chin unconsciously lifted through the rest of the sitting, another ten minutes or so.

She liked the portrait: I could tell that she really did by the way she looked at it again and again; and some color came back to her face. My drawing was fully detailed, very literal; it could have been a
Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper
woodcut. But this one was also a good portrait. Not only did it look like her; I was a good enough artist to manage that, given the time and incentive, but it also caught something of Julia herself, of the kind of person she was, so far as I knew. Maybe it
did
capture something of Julia's "soul."

Anyway, it was good. The others had come into the house; Byron Doverman just as I was finishing, and then Maud Torrence, each stopping to admire and praise before going on upstairs. Aunt Ada came in from the kitchen to call upstairs, saying dinner would be on the table in five minutes. She admired the drawing too, and then insisted, since I was still here, that I stay for dinner. And unless I wanted to look as though I were running from Jake, leaving Julia to face him alone, I had to stay, and I said I would; the harm, if any, was already done. I was afraid, I realized — I didn't know
what
the hell this guy might do — but I was curious, too. Still admiring her portrait, Julia looked up at me and asked me to sign it. I took it, fumbling in my pocket for the pencil, trying to figure out what to say: I couldn't just write my name and nothing more. Then I thought, "In for a penny, in for a pound," or whatever the saying is, and I wrote "For Julia — Affectionately, admiringly," mentally adding,
And to hell with you, Jake,
and signed my name. In the time I'd been here I'd thought almost not at all of Rube Prien, Dr. Danziger, Oscar Rossoff, Colonel Esterhazy, or even the project itself; they were motionless in my mind, at the small far-off end of the telescope, dwindled and remote. But at dinner they turned real again: what were they going to think of what I'd have to tell them? That I'd disturbed and interfered in events with inexcusable clumsiness? Probably; and maybe they'd be right, yet I didn't know how I could have avoided it. The talk at dinner was all of Guiteau, with a little weather, and I wasn't interested. For me now, Guiteau was once again only a name in an old book; tried, executed, and long forgotten, the world I was preparing myself for hardly even knowing his name anymore. I sat eating mechanically, trying to look as though I were interested, responding when spoken to. But as the project and the people in it returned to life in my mind, I began to recede from this time and place.