Winter's Tale Part 28

1929-1937.

He then returned to the paragraph of smaller letters, and read a bronze inscription that had been there, patient and immobile, for most of the century. His guess had been right. He had seen it before. And now, even in the half-darkness, the dull bronze seemed as bright as the sun.

Here at the Golden Gate is the eternal rainbow that be conceived and set to form. A promise indeed that the race of man shall endure into the ages.

Like a parachutist about to make a jump, Hardesty briefly closed his eyes. Then he opened them, and with a restrained and ironic smile he lifted his gaze to meet that of Jackson Mead, who had been there in the fog and the mist all the time, staring toward San Francisco for more than sixty years. Hardesty was sure that in other places there were other statues with other names, but the same far-reaching stare.

IN one of the halls of the museum, where Hardesty had gone early in the morning to see Jackson Mead, was a huge painting that depicted scientists at work in the court of Frederick the Greata"who stood in the midst of several men and a complicated laboratory apparatus, posing heroically in a black-and-gray coat.

When told by an a.s.sistant that he could go in to see Mead, Hardesty walked down a long corridor with a floor and walls of the soft-polished beige stone that so often finds its way into museums. c.o.c.ksure for days, he suddenly felt as if he were on his way to an audience with Frederick the Great, and was somewhat taken aback to realize that, indeed, it might have been so. Neither Mootfowl nor Mr. Cecil Wooley was present, and the easels and paintings had been removed. Jackson Mead was sitting away from his desk, on a simple wood and reed chair. Under the artificial March light, smoking a pipe of cherry tobacco, he looked pensive and kind. He motioned for Hardesty to sit down. When Hardesty was comfortably settled on a couch of gray crushed velvet, he took out his own pipe, filled it, lit it, and began to puff in silence.

After a while, Jackson Mead looked down at the floor and said,"I get so discouraged sometimes." Then he resumed puffing on his pipe as if he hadn't said a thing.

"You do?" Hardesty asked.

"Oh yes. Deeply discouraged. It's not easy to architect these big projects: it's like holding together an empire. Without a perfect balance of art, pa.s.sion, and luck, all the elements tend to fly their own ways. And then there's the opposition. I always seem to be dogged by some mistakenly high-minded elitist who has taken it upon himself to protect from me and my work the people he is sure that he will permanently have underneath him, or by cliques of self-proclaimed intellectuals who have ruminated for decades upon a Marxist hairball that has turned their thinking to bile.

"For example, your friend Praeger de Pinto, a very long shot for mayor, seems to be focusing his campaign on me. Why doesn't he just leave me alone? I'm not going to do anything to hurt his sheep."

"Praeger's not one of the elitists of whom you speak," Hardesty a.s.serted."He's the most egalitarian man I've ever known."

"Then he's a Marxist."

"Of course he's not. Marxists are people whose insides are torn up day after day because they want to rule the world and no one will even publish their letter to the editor. Praeger is the editor. Besides, he grew up in the city of the poor. You know as well as I do that in this country Marxism is a religious pa.s.sion of the middle cla.s.s."

"Then why is he so intent on hounding me? Which of his principles demands that he poke around in my affairs? Neither a city nor a civilization can be run by its critics. Critics can neither build nor explore. All they do, really, is say yes or noa"and complicate it. (Not book critics, of course. They are second only to the angels.)"

"He's not hounding you because of any principles. He's after you because he's curious, that's all."

Jackson Mead sighed."Eventually, I will satisfy his curiosity, but I need time to get things into place. It's my only chance."

"I know," Hardesty said."The railroad lines from the steelmaking regions have to be completed. The reception docks and piers have to be put in place. The stockpiles of tools and alloys have to be a.s.sembled and moved."

Jackson Mead took the pipe from his mouth. He wondered if that was all Hardesty knew, and imagined that it was. But Hardesty went on. He was slumped back on the velvet couch, and his hair shone in the simulated daylight.

"You've got to get condemnations, and move G.o.d knows howmany people. You've got to clear away factories, houses, and commercial buildings. Then you can begin to lay the foundations. Everything will have to be right before you build this bridge, Mr. Mead for this eternal rainbow is going to anger the city, since what you have in mind is so much greater than anything that has come before and you know very well that people don't like to feel small, to be left behind as the hinge to the future is put in place by someone like you. In the old days, they burned the mills and put their natural philosophers on the rack. These days they think it's their duty to tie down the builders and humiliate them with the smell of the ground and they love it, to boot."

"I hate them!" Jackson Mead screamed, rising to his full height, and pacing.

"They don't understand that we have a mandate. I can't just refuse to build these things: it's my responsibility. All the engines, bridges, and cities that we put in place are nothing in themselves. They're only markers in what we think of as timea"like the separations of notes in music. Why do people resist them so? They are symbols and products of the imagination, which is the force that ensures justice and historical momentum in an imperfect world, because without imagination we would not have the wherewithal to challenge certainty, and we could never rise above ourselves. But look! We have already set the wheels spinning. Their progress impels us forward in like proportion and, when they rise, we too will rise. Such a rising, Mr. Marratta, will mark the end of history as we have known it, and the beginning of the age that imagination has known all along. Machines challenge certainty so well. They should not be able to move. But they do. They turn, and move, and never cease-there is always an engine going, somewherea"like generations of silver hearts that keep the faith of the world and stoke imagination in its continued and splendid rebellion."

"But what about the real hearts," Hardesty asked,"of those who get in your way? There is nothing greater than what can occur in those lowly hearts, the least n.o.ble of which is capable of putting a thousand bridges across a thousand harbors."

"In their hearts rests the potential to throw a thousand bridges. In my heart rests the actuality of one. Who is more deserving?"

"The world needs both, equally."

"I won't deny it. Their course is perhaps more just than ours. Ultimately, I am their servant. But to be so, I must first be their master. Besides, I have no choice in the matter, do I? It has all happened before. They and I will fight like dogs, though, finally, I will prevail. The harder course prevails, because the bones of the world are made of rock and steel." He stopped pacing, and stood in front of Hardesty. Their pipes produced even columns of white smoke."How did you know?"

"A dozen of us spent four months on this, but, in the end, we were enlightened accidentally. I found the statue of Joseph Strauss, the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge, and when I looked into his eyes, you were looking back at me."

"A coincidence. I knew Strauss. We did look alike, though not so much then, when I was younger, as perhaps we do now."

"Be that as it may," Hardesty replied,"I was able to find out what you meant by an eternal rainbow."

"Do the others know?"

"No."

"And where do you stand? Are you with Praeger de Pinto, or are you with me?"

"I don't know. At the moment, things seem to be in balance, and my inclination is to let them stay that way. I'd like to know what's in that s.h.i.+p you've got riding at anchor out there."

"The tools and materials for building the bridge."

"I don't suppose they're conventional."

"You're right."

"What are you going to call it?"

"The name isn't important, but we're going to call it Battery Bridge."

WHITE HORSE AND DARK HORSE.

WHILE Hardesty Marratta and JacksonMead were debating the future, the city kept to its silent track. Nearly immune to the changing of the seasons, and forgotten by history, the people of the city of the poor struggled within a timeless empire that stretched from Manhattan to the sea, over fields of brick upon which factories stood like walled towns and flew snakelike pennants of blackened smoke from their chimneys. Talk as Hardesty Marratta and Jackson Mead might in the perpetual March light of the museum gallery, the city of the poor was always the same, and always would be. It was a weapon ready-c.o.c.ked, a shotgun in the mouth of those who did not think they had to get down on their knees to get to heaven, but imagined that they would ride there upright in something with wheels.

The white horse had lasted under the beam for more than fourteen months, during which he outlived several masters and ignored many chances of escape. While marching ahead in trancelike circles, he had lost his sense of time and come to believe that he was winding up an eternal spring, to which others from the starry meadows had been apprenticed long and often. Like the mill that ground the salt of the sea, the beam had to be kept going. He thought that he was almost done, and he wanted to see his combat with infinity through. Working the beam to crush himself, so that he might return to the place from which he had come, he kept turning it, and he refused todie.

Sometimes, at the oddest hours, because the city of the poor had long been disjointed from the clock of day and night, heads popped up over the board fence which hid Athansor from an alley that he could not see. Children stared at him. Drunks seemed to be amazed that he had the temerity to be a horse. Criminals on the run, or those who had just stripped a purse, smiled as if implying that he was one of them. The heads might suddenly arise at four in the morning or at noon, and they frequently talked to him. Perhaps because they a.s.sumed that he was lower than they were, they were at their worsta"cruel, vulgar, and vulnerable, all at once. And the most bedeviling thing about these marionettes was that what they said and did was so inconsequential. He half wished that a head would pop up from behind the fence and give him something to worry about.

Though it had been only half a wish, it was granted. October was extraordinarily cold, and everyone knew that the coming winter would be apocalyptic. One night, as the north wind made the water in rain barrels ice, Athansor was, as always, moving forward at the beam. Pa.s.sing the fence, he felt that someone was looking at him. Then he came around again. Though the white horse had not paused once in fourteen months, the man staring at him from behind the boards made him stop dead. His nostrils flared and his eyes moved back in their sockets.

Still tied to the beam, he broke both the las.h.i.+ngs and the beam ttself as he reared to his full height, and bellowed like a war-horse. But though his hooves flew, his eyes flashed, and the ground shook, he did not frighten the man resting his elbows on the fence.

The intruder smiled, and his eyes went electric, digging intoAthansor's flesh like augers. Sparks flew, and the wind brought thunder."You don't know how long I've been looking for you, horse " he said. He held up his left hand, fingers spread, thumb on the palm."And now that I've found you, I hope that you're properly surprised."

Athansor broke from the remaining tatters of his harness and smashed through the boards, knocking aside not only Pearly Soarnes but a large ill-attired contingent behind him."That's right, you marble b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Pearly said as Athansor galloped off into the windy brick lots and the forests of dead and splintered trees."You find him for me. Take me right to him."

IT snowed on the twentieth of October, not a raging blizzard, but not a light dusting of the pumpkins, either. The ground was covered with almost a foot and a half of fresh white powder, which did not melt, as it usually would have so early in the fall, but stayed fearlessly in place while a paralyzing dream of absolute zero floated down from Canada and made the winter sky into a brittle blue arch. The street-cleaning equipment was trapped unoiled in its garages, and the streets went unploughed as the Ermine Mayor decreed that no salt or sand be spread on the roads and sidewalks."h.e.l.l," he said, in a magnificent preelection gesture,"if nature thinks we're the Yukon, let's roll with the punch. The snow will be left undisturbed, all schools will be closed for the duration, and city employees other than those in essential services need not report for work."

Only partly to satirize the Ermine Mayor's decree, Praeger de Pinto issued a statement promising that if he were elected mayor the city would enjoy the most beautiful winters it had ever experienced, that white snow and blue skies would be its share for months on em that sleighs and skis would become the conventional means of transportation, that horses would return to the streets, that every house would have a fireplace, that black nights would blaze with stars, that skaters would have their run of the rivers, bonfires s.h.i.+ne in the parks, children's cheeks be redder than cranberries, and snow fall almost incessantly in dizzying dances and waltzes of winter that would ma the population giddy with happiness.

Stunned at first, then hostile, people gradually began to believe him. They called him "The Apostle of Winter," "The Snow King," and "Daddy Christmas."

Praeger was anything but greedy. He wanted to win the election, but he wasn't willing to tie himself in knots to do so. Thus, his campaign became unorthodox, even for the darkest of dark horses. Though Craig Binky was supporting him, the populace was in one of its periodic fits of pique regarding this celebrated publisher, and it mattered little that Praeger's smiling face was plastered all over The Ghost, or that Craig Binky appeared on the television news programs to declare sanctimoniously,"Just vote your conscience. Vote de Pinto." Praeger started the campaign with six percent of the vote, the independent candidate Crawford Bees IV had thirteen percent, and the Ermine Mayor polled eighty-one percent.

Far from discouraging Praeger, this state of affairs ignited him, and he proceeded, in turn, to ignite the voters. Where most politicians, including the Ermine Mayor, were quick to promise things they would never deliver, such as clean streets or the absence of crime, Praeger's approach was different, and he left the others far behind in his wake. The Ermine Mayor might address a street gathering and say that in his next term he would put 30 percent more police on the streets, step up garbage collection, and lower taxes. Of course, everyone knew that in the next mayoral term, no matter who was in office, thirty percent fewer police would be on the street, the garbage piles would get higher and bigger, and taxes would go up. But they applauded anyway.

Then Crawford Bees IV would give them another set of figures, and they would applaud politely for him, too.

But then Praeger de Pinto would rise. He never talked about garbage, electricity, or police. He only talked about winter, horses, and the countryside. He spoke almost hypnotically about love, loyalty, and esthetics. And just as they thought he was beginning to sound slightly effete, he would get very tough, in his Havemeyer Street way, and lacerate the mayor for conspiring with Jackson Mead. He would throw low punches, where it hurt. He would be terribly cruel (they loved that), and then he would surface again into his world of light to make the crowds sway and daven with longing forthe purity of winter. He promised them love affairs and sleigh races cross-country skiing on the main thoroughfares, and the transfixing blizzards that howled outside and made the heart dance.

They thought, or so it was generally stated at the time, that if they were going to be lied to, they might as well pick the liar who did it best. Since in describing the world he wanted Praeger could leave them with their mouths open and their hearts beating, he advanced slowly in the polls. The Ermine Mayor panicked and declaimed ferociously about garbage and taxes. Praeger held his ground and raved with unexcelled charm, dizzying the electorate with visions of justice and paradise.

"WE can't go to the Coheeries, at least not today. The north roads are blocked, and the railroads shut down because the plough trains are still being overhauled," Hardesty reported upon his return to Yorkville one wintry Sat.u.r.day in October, after he had skied from place to place to get information.

"Who cares about trains?" Virginia said disparagingly."Or whether the roads are blocked?"

"How do you propose to get there?" he asked.

She looked at him as if he were an idiot, and said,"By sleigh."

"Sleigh?"

"Yes. Just because they don't work in San Francisco doesn't mean that they don't work here."

"You've been listening too hard to Praeger's campaign speeches. I'll bet you're even going to vote for him."

"Of course I am," she returned."And so are you. Go out and get a sleigh. I'll get the children ready."

"What sleigh? Where am I going to get a sleigh?" he asked.

"That's your problem, but don't forget to get a horse to pull and hay, oats, and a blanket for the horse. We may be on the road for several days before we get to Fteley's."

"Fteley's?"

"Hurry!" she commanded.

He returned at dusk in a beautiful sleigh with a supple newharness and gleaming silvery runners. Hitched to it was an elegant mare as black as obsidian.

"We can't leave now," he told Virginia."It'll be dark in a fewhours."

"That's the way you do it," she said."At night, when there's a full moon, and the world is white."

Abby had been listening to this conversation, and she decided that she was not going to have any part of either Lake of the Coheeries or nocturnal sleigh rides. She went to the kitchen, took five rolls and half a pound of baking chocolate from a cupboard, and retreated to the top shelf of the linen closet, where she planned to stay until she had to go to college.

"Where's Abby?" Hardesty asked Martin.

"I don't know," Martin replied. Though he knew exactly where she was, he didn't want to compromise the hideout, since he had invented it.

For two hours they looked frantically for Abby. They thought that she had fallen from the balcony, but, of course, she hadn't. They went to the neighboring apartments, to the local stores, and they even looked in the linen closet, but she had burrowed toward the back of the top shelf, behind a rampart of pillows, and didn't answer when Martin called hera"though she knew that he realized where she was.

Eventually she was starved out, and they caught her waddling from the kitchen with a fresh loaf of dough in her hands. The minute she saw them, she broke and ran, screaming,"I don't want to go!"

"Is that why we couldn't find you?" Hardesty shouted."You were hiding?"

"I don't want to go!" she screamed back, and took refuge under the kitchen table, where she was able to stand without bending her head.

"I'm sorry, but you're going to have to," her father said, crouching."Now come out of there, because we have to get you in your snowsuit and leave before it gets too late." "No."

"Abby. Come bere!" he said, snapping his fingers. She was terified, but she refused to move.

"I'll just come in and get you," he threatened, feigning anger this time, because the expression on her face, her little bell-like yellow dress, and the soft intense blue eyes, focused in defiance, moved him a great deal. Nonetheless, he went on his knees and reached under the table. She threw the dough at him, and missed. It slid across the kitchen floor. Then he grabbed her. In two minutes she was in her snowsuit, clutching Teddya"her stuffed gray rabbit with red b.u.t.ton eyes and a gingham dress, a present from Harry Penn.

They packed the sleigh with provisions and presents for Mrs. Gamely, and climbed into the front seat. Hardesty drove; Virginia sat next to him, with Abby on her lap; and Martin sat on the outside, with a buggy whip in his hand and instructions never to hit the horse, but just to touch her on the hindquarters when Hardesty told him to. Abby was bundled up into a melon-sized coc.o.o.n of fur and down; her little face showed through a silver-colored ruff like an Eskimo's, and her eyes darted back and forth in trusting antic.i.p.ation. Looking like the child of nomads, Martin was dressed in seal leather and coyote furs. His mother was in her sable, and Hardesty was once again in the sheepskin jacket that he had earned in the Rockies. Thick green plaid woolen blankets covered them up to their waists.

"Have we got everything?" Hardesty asked.

"Yup," Martin replied.

Virginia nodded.

"All right," Hardesty said."To the Lake of the Coheeries."

He snapped the reins, and the sleigh moved off. The horse was strong and well rested, and she seemed to crave a night journey, especially since, being a horse, she knew how bright the moon was going to be.

They went through the park, their sleigh bells ringing, and were soon on Riverside Drive, heading north as the last piece of sun vanished behind the Palisades like a melting ingot, fiery hot. river was choked with blocks and shards of ice. Lights flashed on an fires were lit in apartments along Riverside Drive as the Marrattas pa.s.sed by in their sleigh, almost silently were it not for the m.u.f.fled hoofbeats of the horse and the soft wild sound of the bells. After running through the deserted tolls, they crossed the Henry Hudson Bridge and made their way entirely along roads that were empty andwhite.

In a diminutive Westchester valley between two low hills, they saw a glow in the sky. The horse picked up her pace instinctively, and when they came out from between the hills into a little prairie of s...o...b..und gardens and small fields, they saw the moon hiding in an orchard, ready to climb through a tangle of limbs until its mild pearl color would turn fiercely white. When the cool globe finally rested atop the delicate black branches, it seemed so close that Abby held out her arms and tried to touch it.

Then it climbed smoothly to its customary place among the stars, and the Marrattas sped northward through the dark shadows of its white light.

SOMEWHERE in Dutchess, when the moon had reached its apogee, and the children were asleep, they found themselves running through hollows and pitch-black places where snowy owls and eagles perched on ramparts of rock and dead trees like the pickets of some lawless mountain stronghold. The way was proving too difficult and steep for an elegant carriage-puller born and raised at Belmont.

"Go left at that fork," Virginia directed.

"Do you know this place?" Hardesty asked.

"I know the terrain. It's just like the mountains that lead to the Coheeries. A road like this has got to descend to the river. The horse is tired because she's city-bred and her legs are far too thin for running all night in the hills. Our horses, with their thick frames, can go for a week without stopping, just like the polar bears that swim in the sea for a month at a time, or the seals that migrate from Alaska to j.a.pan. If she's going to make it through the night, this mare needs some running on the flat. We'll take her to the river, which will be frozen solid."

"Hee-ya!" Hardesty screamed in a manner not exactly characteristic of local horsemans.h.i.+p. With the snap of oiled leather, he flicked the reins, and the Belmont mare veered left.

It was even darker by the river, the true abode of owls andeagles, a place that was haunted by mysterious loonlike hoots, and the black horse sped through almost on tiptoe, cursing the bells that gave away their position to the leering pumpkin-headed ghosts who lived in the crags. The only way to follow the road was to follow the ribbon of slightly luminous sky between the trees. The sleigh pa.s.sengers and the horse lifted their heads to see the pale and dusty track above. Had there been a brick wall across the path they would have smashed right into it, but the road was un.o.bstructed, and they were able to navigate successfully its numerous descending switchbacks solely by reference to trees and sky.

When they came to the riverbank they saw a white highway on the snow-covered ice. Knowing that the ice could hold her, the mare went right onto it, making the slightly airborne transition in a way that b.u.mped the sled and woke the children. Hardesty whistled, and she veered north. Soon she was satisfied and calm, and she found a gait that swallowed the miles. Snow blanketed most of the river, but where the wind had blown it clear, dazzling lakes of silver ice reflected the clockwork motion of the moon. The mountains on the western side stretched into the distance in white ranks that, as the moon sank, seemed to rise to it like a staircase.

"Look," Hardesty said to the children, and when Abby didn't see,"Abby, look there. Those mountains are the stairs that lead to the moon. Would you like to go? All we have to do is turn left before it sinks down beneath the last step...."