Winter's Tale Part 4

When the piano stopped, the optometrist swallowed. He heard the cover close over the keyboard. And then a young woman appeared in the doorway, apparently blus.h.i.+ng, with cheerful eyes that stared in the direction of the ice-clad windows. She breathed as if she had a fever, and the expression on her lovely face suggested a pleasant delirium. Her golden hair was lit so brilliantly in a crosslight that iteared to be burning like the sun. She gripped the doorpost with hands one on top of another, for steadiness and to indicate that she did not wish to interrupt the two men in the reception parlor. Though she was outwardly deferential, it was easy to see that she had need to defer to anyone. The optometrist thought that her dress was too fetching and sensual for a girl who was hardly a woman, who was a daughter in a parlor, a piano player, a girl with fever standing the presence of her father. The lace, without which the dress would have been scandalous, breathed rapidly up and down above her chest. It was hypnotic, too fast, unsettling. She had steady blue eyes, but she was so tired from playing the piano that she trembled, and held the doorpost now to try to stop herself from shaking.

Courtly and quick, Isaac Penn escorted her to a chair." Beverly," he said," this man has come to make you some new gla.s.ses."

OUTSIDE, the wind picked up in a sudden clear gale that had come unflinchingly from the north, descending quite easily from the pole,because all the ground between it and New York was white and windblown. On nights of arch cold and blazing stars, when the moon was in league with the snow, Beverly sometimes wondered why white bears did not arrive on the river ice, prowling silently in the silver light. The trees bent despite their winter stiffness, and some, in desperation, knocked and scratched against the windows. If a channel had been kept open in the frozen Hudson, any little bravely lighted boats would now be flying south, nearly airborne with sudden winter speed. Beverly had thought how strange and wonderful it would be if the earth were hurled far from its...o...b..t, into the cold extremes of black s.p.a.ce where the sun was a faint cool disc, not even a quarter-moon, and night was everlasting. Imagine the industry, she thought, every tree, every piece of coal, and every sc.r.a.p of wood were burned for heat and light. Though the sea would freeze, men would go out the darkness and pierce its gla.s.sy ice to find the stilled fish. But finally all the animals would be eaten and their hides and wool st.i.tched and woven, all the coal would be burned, and not a tree would be left standing. Silence would rule the earth, for the wind would stop and the sea would be heavy gla.s.s. People would die quietly, buried in their furs and down.

"Your horse," she said to the optometrist," will freeze to death if you leave him outside."

"Yes, I'm glad you reminded me. I must do something about that."

"We have a stable," Beverly said rather coolly." Why didn't you tell me you came in your own rig," scolded Isaac Penn, leaving to bring the horse into the stable. Beverly and the optometrist were alone.

She had no desire to intimidate him, and was unhappy that he was afraid of her." Come, measure my eyes," she said." I'm tired."

"I'll wait until your father returns." The optometrist was reluctant to be near her. It was not that he feared her illness but rather that he thought it improper to come close to the young woman while she was burning with fever, to feel the heat from her bare arms and neck, to feel her breath, to smell the sweetness that would undoubtedly arise, fever-stirred, from her lace and linen.

"It's all right," she said, closing her eyes momentarily." You can start now. If you think it improper, then I don't know what to tell you. But do what you came to do."

Since all his instruments were set up, he began immediately, breathing through his nose when he was close to her, as tense and silent as a hunted insect. She, on the other hand, breathed through her mouth, rapidly, because of the fever. Her breath was sweet. He moved laboriously and carefully as he manipulated ivory rules, ebony flags, and lenses in a case, lined up by the dozen, waiting for their great momenta"which was to be flipped back and forth while he intoned his chant," Better this way, or this way. This way, or this way. This way, or this way."

How many thousands of times in a day, she thought, does he say," this way, or this way." They are his words. He owns them. They must make him dizzy.

He thought she was beautiful. She was. Though she looked like a fully grown woman and carried herself like one, she had all the great and obvious attributes of youth. He desired, feared, and envied her. She was perfectly formed, rich, and young. And because he hadto struggle for his living despite his many physical imperfections, she seemed to him to be gifted and blessed beyond measure, despite the fact that he knew that she had consumption and was full of the wisdom of those who are slowly dying. The fever and the delirium made for a relentless elevation. Opium could have done no better.

Long bouts of fever, over months and years, were a dignified way todie, if only because death would have to take so much time to wrestle her down.

The room was full of motion that spread from her in a dancing half-circle. The fire leapt and bent, running in place like a frantic wheel, the windows rattled as the house breathed, and the trees scratched the gla.s.s now and then like dogs who scratch at doors. Beverly could see winter as it ran about the room on the light, darting from the white lances, rays, and silver crosses in the optical gla.s.s, to the fire, to the reflective windows, to the blue sphere of her own eye. The room, as she saw it, was a web of motion, a symphony of mischievous dancing particles quite like the smooth and placid notes of a fine concerto. If she could see all this while a nervous man flipped his lenses in examining her eyes, what would she see when the fever grew too great to bear? It didn't matter. Now there were only inexplicable shards of busy light seeking her out as if they were courtiers.

"The horse is in the stable," announced Isaac Penn as he returned." Is there anything you want from your wagon? I can have it brought..."

"Just a moment, Mr. Penn," said the optometrist." This way, or this way. This way, or this way. This way, or this way." He sat back, relieved and disappointed, and declared that Beverly had perfect vision. She did not need spectacles at all.

"She's worn gla.s.ses since she was a little girl," said Isaac Penn.

"What can I tell you? She doesn't need them now."

"Good. Send me the bill."

"For what? I made no spectacles." "For coming here on such a night." "I don't know what to charge."

"She can see well, can't she?" "She can see perfectly."

"Then charge me for one pair of perfect spectacles." When a dinner bell rang, everyone in the house began to a.s.semble in the dining room, and, half bowing, the optometrist backed out the door, into the cold December night.

Dinner at the Penns was unusual in that they and their servants sat at the same table. Isaac Penn was no aristocrat. Having grown up, at first, on the wrong end of a whaling s.h.i.+p, he did not like the idea of separate messes for officers and men. And then, the Penn children (Beverly, before she grew up and got sick, Harry, Jack, and Willa, who was a child of three) were encouraged to bring their friends." This is our society," stated Isaac." Otherwise, we work. But here, all are equal, all are welcome, and all must wash their hands before eating."

So, that evening as the cold wind ripped up scrub in the park, as the stars ground into the sky their famous and inevitable tracks, and as a player piano in an adjoining room played popular waltzes, much to Beverly's chagrin (she liked popular waltzes, but was jealous of player pianos), the Penns (meaning Isaac, Beverly, Harry, Jack, and Willa), the Penns' friends (meaning blond Bridgett Lavelle, Jamie Absonord, and Chester Satin), and the Penns' servants (meaning Jayga, Jim, Leonora, Denura, and Lionel), gathered in the big dining room to eat. A fire burned in each of two fireplaces at either end of an informal table set with glimmering china and crystal and laden with an array of symmetrical chickens roasted and trussed, bowls of fresh salad, tureens of Nantucket potatoes in broth, and accessories such as condiments, seltzer, hardtack, and wine.

Chester Satin had slicked-down hair. He and Harry Penn were scared and guilty, and they looked it. They had skipped school that afternoon, gone downtown, and paid to see Caradelba dancing semi-nude like a Spanish Gypsy. And since Chester Satin had always been bold in a wicked way, he had purchased a stack of p.o.r.nographic postcards. These now resided under a floorboard in Harry Penn's room, right above the dining room. Both Harry Penn and Chester Satin felt that the pictures were sure to come sizzling through the plaster and shame them forever. And they could not take their minds off the stack of lascivious women photographed in various states of undress. Their bustles and hoops were jauntily dropped, and youcould see their legs below the knee, arms below the elbow, faces, necks, and (in one instance) "bosoms." These dishonored women had gone far beyond what decency allowed, and though clad in enough underwear to keep a polar explorer sweating at ninety below, they were ready to mortify the two boys simply by falling through the ceiling and floating into Isaac Penn's hands. Thus, throughout dinner, Harry and Chester behaved like condemned criminals.

Jack did his homework (it was allowed; any child could read at table), blond Bridgett Lavelle stared at Jack (who wanted to be an engineer), Jamie Absonord stuffed herself with chicken as though her a.s.signment was to eat all the chickens in the world, and Beverly ate like a bear. She was slim, but she burned up all her food faster than the fireplaces swallowed up logs. The other children were growing, and had spent the day in the cold. With amazing speed, the chickens became white snowy bones, the potatoes vanished forever, and the wine disappeared from its bottles as if a magician were at the table. Then the fruit fled from around its pits, and the cakes rapidly became invisible. All the while, the player piano sped through light waltzes. During one of them the roll got stuck and Beverly got up to fix it. When she returned she found Isaac Penn staring sternly at a handful of pictures. The two boys were bent over the table, groaning, and there was a big hole in the ceiling.

"Lovely women," said Isaac Penn to Beverly," but not a one holds a candle to your mother."

Before Beverly went to bed that night, she undressed and stared at herself in a full-length mirror. She was more beautiful than any of the women in Harry's photographs, far more beautiful. She wished that she could go dancing at Mouquin's and glide about the floor, using her beautiful body to its greatest effect, flowing with the music. She wished that a man would undress her and embrace her. The music circled about in her head as she took deepening swirls upon an imagined marble floor, and for lack of a man she embraced herself. Then she began to dress for bed: a far more practical matter, for Beverly Penn slept upon a platform on the roof, and it was unforgivingly cold up there. But despite the cold and perhaps because of it, the sights she saw were what other people would have called dreams, desires, miracles.

TO Beverly, fires and tight rooms were like a death sentence. If the open air were not blowing past her face she felt as if she couldn't breathe. Her regimen, inclination, and promised salvation were one and the samea"to stay outdoors, and this she did for all but three or four hours a day, hours in which she bathed, played the piano, and ate with the family. At all other times she could be found in her tent upon a special platform that Isaac Penn had commissioned to be built astride the peaks of the roof. Here she slept. Here she spent the day reading, or just watching the city, the clouds, birds, boats upon the river, and the wagons and cars on the streets below.

In winter she spent most of her time alone, for few people could sit very long in the bitter cold while the north wind came awash over them like a fall of icy water. Beverly was not only used to it but could not live without it. Her face and hands were usually sunburned, even in January. And despite her frailty and sickness she was as much inured to rough weather as a Grand Banks fisherman, a point of irony apparent when healthy visitors became insensate blocks of ice while she carried on as if she were in a blooming garden late in spring. The visitors were not as seasoned as she. Nor had they the elaborate exquisitely tailored wraps, coats, and hoods, not to mention the gloves, quilts, and sleeping sacks that she had, all of wool, down, or soft black sable. She had an Eskimo parka of down-lined sable that was probably the best piece of winter clothing in the world. It was light and comfortable, flexible, dry, and perfectly warm at all times. The fur hood drawn about her face was like a black sun. Her teeth were so white in contrast that when she broke into a sudden smile it was not unlike turning on a light.

Winter and summer, she climbed several flights, resting at each landing, until she came to a special staircase leading to a small door. From this door, a catwalk of steel and wood led to her platform, a deck on a steel truss that spanned two roof ridges. The platform was twenty by twelve, and upon it a little tent was anch.o.r.ed more securely than a circus trapeze, and with at least as many wires: the virtuoso rigger who had tied it down had engineered a catenary between pole and pole so the wind could pa.s.s over naturally. Threedeck chairs faced in three directions to afford varied views, different positions in the wind, and constant attention from a weak winter sun. She had hinged windbreaks of heavy gla.s.s, mounted in an ingenious system of pulleys and tracks. She could raise the gla.s.s on all four sides up to five feet high. And she had a row of weatherproof cabinets. In the first were enough blankets, pillows, and wraps to have kept Napoleon's army warm in Russia. In the second was s.p.a.ce for about thirty books, a stack of magazines, a pair of binoculars, a lap desk, and some games (Willa was allowed to come in the warmest part of the day to play checkers or war). In the third was a rack of vacuum bottles and canisters in which she could keep hot drinks and whatever food might strike her fancy. The fourth held a weather station. She was an expert at predicting the weather and hardly needed the barometer, thermometer, and wind gauges, but they were useful because she kept carefully penned recordsa"as well as a running commentary on the birds and their behavior, the flowering of the trees, fires in the city (their bearing and duration; the height, density, and color of the smoke; etc., etc.), the pa.s.sage of balloons and the appearance of kites, the way the sky looked and the kind of boats that went up and down the Hudson. Every now and then a great old schooner would pa.s.s, as silent as it was tall, and often the city was so busy that she was the only one to notice it.

At night as she lay on her bed in the open, or in the tent withsome of the canvas rolled back so that she could see the sky, she watched the stars, not for ten minutes or a quarter-hour as most people did, but for hour after hour after hour. Even astronomers did not take in the sky with such devotion, for they were constantly occupied with charting, measurements, the fallibilities of their earthbound instruments, and concentration upon one or another celestial problem. Beverly had the whole of it; she could see it all; and, unlike shepherds or drovers, and the rough and privileged woodsmen who work and sleep outdoors, she was not often tired..

The abandoned stars were hers for the many rich hours of sparklingwinter nights, and, unattended, she took them in like lovers. She that she looked out, not up, into the s.p.a.cious universe, she knew the names of every bright star and all the constellations, and (although she could not see them) she was familiar with the vast billowing nebulae in which one filament of a wild and shaken mane carried in its trail a hundred million worlds. In a delirium of comets, suns, and pulsating stars, she let her eyes fill with the humming, crackling, hissing light of the galaxy's edge, a perpetual twilight, a gray dawn in one of heaven's many galleries.

With her face open to the bitter cold of the clear sky, she could track across the Milky Way, ticking off stars and constellations like a child naming the states. She hesitated only when a column of wavy air came streaming from a nearby chimney and shuffled the heavenly artifacts. Otherwise, she said their names in an almost hypnotic chant, as if she were calling to the high stars in the s.h.i.+fting black air of the December sky." Columba, Lepus, Canis Major, Canis Minor, Procyon, Betelgeuse, Rigel, Orion, Taurus, Aldebaran, Gemini, Pollux, Castor, Auriga, Capella, the Pleiades, Perseus, Ca.s.siopeia, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Polaris, Draco, Cepheus, Vega, the Northern Cross, Cygnus, Deneb, Delphinus, Andromeda, Triangulum, Aries, Cetus, Pisces, Aquarius, Pegasus, Fomalhaut." Her eye returned to Rigel and Betelgeuse, and then slipped back and forth from Rigel to Aldebaran, and to the Pleiades. In the smallest part of a second, she traveled from one to another, spanning light-years. Velocity and time, it seemed, were a matter of perspective.

She felt as if she knew the stars, and had been among them, or would be. Why was it that in planetarium lectures the telescopic photographs flashed upon the interior of the dome were so familiara" not just to her, but to everyone. Farmers and children, and, once, Paumanuk Indians pausing in their sad race to extinction, had all understood the sharp abstract images, immediately and from the heart. The nebulae, the sweep of galaxies, the centrifugal cl.u.s.tersa"nothing more, really, than projected electric light on a plaster ceilinga"carried them away in a trance, and the planetarium lecturer need not have said a word. And why was it that certain sounds, frequencies, and repet.i.tious rhythmic patterns suggested stars, floating galaxies, and even the colorful opaque planets...o...b..ting in subdued ellipses? Why were certain pieces of music (pre-Galilean, post-Galilean, it did not matter) harmonically and rhythmically linked to the stars and suggestive of the parallel light that rained upon the earth in illusory radiants bursting apart?

She had no explanation for these or a hundred other questions about the same matters. Since she had had to leave school, and had learned little of science when she had been there (girls did not take physics or chemistry), she was amazed to awaken one morning and find in her notebook long equations penned in her own hand. She thought that perhaps Harry was playing tricks. But the handwriting, without question, was her own. The notations went on for pages.

She took them to the planetarium lecturer, who didn't know what they were. She watched him for an hour as he sat in a pale flood of northern light that came in his window, bent over a rolltop desk, copying. He said that though he could make no sense whatsoever out of any of them, he found them intriguing. In his handwriting, they looked more authoritative.

"What do they mean?" she asked.

"I don't know," he answered." But they look sensible. I'm going to keep them, if you don't object. Where did you get them?"

"I told you," she said.

"But really."

"Yes."

He stared at her. Who was she, this lovely blus.h.i.+ng girl dressed in silk and sable." What do they mean to you?" he asked, leaning back into the portable thicket of his gray vested suit.

Beverly took back her pages and studied them. After a while, she looked up." They mean to me that the universe... growls, and sings. No, shouts."

The learned astronomer was shocked. In dealing with the publiche was often confronted by lunatics and visionaries, some of whose theories were elegant, some absurd, and some, perhaps, right on the mark. But those were usually old bearded men who lived in lofts crowded with books and tools, eccentrics who walked around the city, pus.h.i.+ng carts full of their belongings, madmen from state inst.i.tutions that could not hold them. There was always something arresting and true about their thoughts, as if their lunacy were as much a gift as an affliction, though the heavy weight of the truth they sensed so strongly had clouded their reason, and all the wonder in what they said was shattered and disguised.

He would have been more comfortable had he been speakingwith a disabled veteran of the Civil War, or a recluse inventor from some archaic Hudson River town: those were the people that normally came in with sheets of equations. That she was a pretty young girl still in her teens, privileged and well cared for, contrasted so sharply with her obsession that he was deeply saddened and even somewhat frightened.

"Growls?" he asked, gently.

"Yes."

"How, exactly?"

"Like a dog, but low, low. And then it shouts, mixed voices, tones, a white and silver sound."

The astronomer's eyes were already wide, but she made his heart thud when she said," The light is silent, but then it clashes like cymbals, and arches out like a fountain, to travel and yet be still. It crosses s.p.a.ce, without moving, on a fixed beam, as cleanly and silently as a pillar of ruby or diamond."

On the roof, she turned her eye again to Rigel, and then to Orion. The Pleiades were, as always, perfectly balanced in confounding asymmetry. Aldebaran winked." You're flas.h.i.+ng tonight," she said into the wind, and Aldebaran burst into a sparkling dance, deaf and dumb, but pleasing nonetheless to her heart. Rigel, Betelgeuse, and Orion, too, spoke to her. There was no finer church, no finer choir, than the stars speaking in silence to the many consumptives silently condemned, a legion upon the dark and hidden rooftops.

The legion of consumptives lay upon the rooftops that night in bitter cold as the wind came down from the north like a runner in lacrosse, violent and hard, to batter every living thing. They were there, out of sight in the square forest of tenements and across the bridges that dipped and shone better than diamond necklaces. They were there, each one alonea"as all will someday bea"in conversation with the stars, mining ephemeral love from cold and distant light. Ice was everywhere. The river was frozen very deep, the walks and trees brittle, the crust of the snow hard enough for horses. And yet the sleepers on the rooftops blazed on in their quilted coverlets like little furnaces, and when Beverly had had enough love that night from her lovers the stars, she turned quietly and contentedly, and fell asleep buried in her furs and down.

A G.o.dDESS IN THE BATH.

IN December, all the Penns except Beverly were leave for the country house at the Lake of the Coheeries, whichso far upstate that no one could find it. Beverly was to join them the holidays, by which time they were to have seen to the provision of the special sleeping-loggia that she required, and have opened the house to be ready to receive her after the long and harrowing journey from the city. She had in mind writing a telegram, begging to be excused from the winter gathering at the lake, for she was fitful and disturbed, and wanted to be alone. But, as it was, she would go by sleigh, river steamer, a second sleigh, and iceboat to a big house that stood on a small island in a crescent of the lakesh.o.r.e, there to celebrate Christmas.

Isaac, Harry, Jack, and Willa (in her snowsuit, Willa lookedlike a cherub with the body of a pillow) were soon to go. Of the servants, only Jayga would remain. But, as soon as the family departed, Beverly would tell her to go home to her people in the Four Points. Beverly knew that Jayga's father was slowly dying, and she had made Isaac send the Posposils enough money to support them many times over." But we have a charitable trust," Isaac had said "We don't give away our money. That's what the trust is for, and it's entirely independent."

"Daddy," Beverly replied," soon enough Harry will be on his own, and so will Jack. Willa has her own trust, and I'll be long buried. Tell me, what will you use the money for?" Isaac then gave with a vengeance, although he knew that all his money and all the money in the world could not influence what was pursuing Mr. Posposil, and Beverly, at such terribly close quarters.

So Jayga would leave and for several days the house would be empty but for Beverly, who, for no reason that she could understand, was convinced that something special was about to happena"that she would, perhaps, get well, or run a great and sudden fever that would finally kill her. But nothing seemed to happen. Two nights before they left, it snowed, and the stars were buried. The next night, a driven lace of white cloud hid even the moon. But Beverly had faith and patience. She waited. And then, on the day of departure, it cleared.

PETER Lake had been thinking so hard about St. Stephen that he became temporarily religious and actually set foot inside a church. It scared him half to death. He had never been in one before, for Reverend Overweary had not let the boys enter the gleaming silver sanctum that he had made them build near Bacon's Turkish bungalow. And a day could not pa.s.s when Peter Lake and his kind would not be denounced from half a thousand pulpits throughout the city. It was the enemy camp, and he was extremely uncomfortable as he padded down the great center aisle, a.s.saulted by a mult.i.tude of unfamiliar colored rays wheeling in through the stained-gla.s.s windows. He had chosen the Maritime Cathedral, the city's most beautiful. It was to St. Patrick's and St. John's what Sainte-Chapelle was to Notrename. Its windows rose upright like fields of mountain wild flowers, ill.u.s.trating scenes from s.h.i.+ps and the sea. Isaac Penn had endowed the cathedral, insisting that the story of Jonah be splayed across its lighted windows. He had killed many whales.

There was Jonah, his mouth open in astonishment as he was swallowed by the whale. And the whale! This was no silly symbolic emblematic whale, with a man's mouth and the eyes of a hypnotized vaudevillian, but one filled with the beauty of real whales. He was lone, black, and heavy, with a monstrous creased jaw. His baleen was yellowed and corrupt, honeycombed like a Chinese puzzle. The huge blue b.a.s.t.a.r.d was covered with old wounds and deep gashes. A steel harpoon claw still stuck in him, and he was blind in one eye. He planed water not like a little silver fish in a Renaissance miniature, but like a real whale that can smash and bruise the sea.

Peter Lake was quite surprised to find in this cathedral a hundred beautiful models of s.h.i.+ps, sailing through nave and transept as if they were at sea on the major routes of trade. If this was what one found in a cathedral, then this was what one found in a cathedral. He had wanted to see what religion was, so that he might become like St. Stephen, and so that he might pray for Mootfowl. Although Moot-fowl's death had long been forgotten, anyone who did remember it thought that Peter Lake had killed him. And he had, but not really. Mootfowl had killed himselfa"in a strange and peculiar fas.h.i.+on that tied Peter Lake to him forever. Why had Mootfowl been so dejected? Jackson Mead had remained for a few years, half-celebrated, half-obscure, while he built a great gray bridge across the East River. It was high, graceful, and mathematically perfect. Mootfowl would have loved it. But there were other bridges to be built, and Jackson Mead had vanished as inexplicably as he had arrived, disappearing with his train of reclusive mechanics, not even bothering to be present at the dedication. It was said that he was putting up bridges on the frontiera"in Manitoba, Oregon, and California. These were, however., only rumors.

Peter Lake wondered how to pray. Mootfowl had often made them pray, but they had just knelt and faced the fire, staring at the suns and worlds that danced within it. That had been enough. There was no fire in the Maritime Cathedral, just the pure cold light that washed the great weeping colors from the windows. Peter Lake knelt." Mootfowl," he whispered," dear Mootfowl...." He did not know what to say, but his lips moved in silence as he thought of the forge reflecting in Mootfowl's eyes, of his Chinese hat, the strong thin hands, and the absolute devotion to the mysterious things that he believed he could find in the conjunction of fire, motion, and steel. His lips moved, saying something other than what he thought. He had wanted to say that he had loved Mootfowl, but that had proved too difficult and inappropriate. So he backed out of the cathedral feeling as irresolute and frustrated as when he had entered. Who were those who found it so easy to pray? Did they really talk to G.o.d as if they were ordering in a restaurant? When he himself knelt down, he was tongue-tied.

Peter Lake sat on the horse, high above the sidewalk. He often felt that the horse was a heroic statue, a huge bronze whose job was to guard some public field without moving. But then the horse warmed to motion, and they cantered in slow and easy strides until they reached the park. Peter Lake had wanted to case some mansions on upper Fifth Avenue, but the horse leapt the lake at its narrow waist near the Bethesda Fountain, and took him to the West Side, to Isaac Penn's house, which he had never seen. Standing in the snow, he saw Isaac, Harry, Jack, Willa, and all the servants except Jayga, mounting three large sleighs, one of which was piled high with luggage. They pulled away in a ringing of bells and snapping of whips. The horses were harnessed in troikas. Peter Lake stood next to the white horse, and watched the house until nightfall.

The white horse sat down on his haunches, like a dog, and watched too. Within an hour, darkness closed over the city as if someone had slammed shut the door of an icehouse, and powerful winds began to move through the park like big trains long overdue from Canada. Peter Lake was hopping from foot to foot. He turned up his collar, acutely aware that his tweed jacket was whistling as the wind coursed through it. He turned to the horse, but the horse was still on his haunches, staring contentedly at the house. Peter Lake began to mumble complaints." I'm not a horse," he said." I get cold a lot faster, and I don't sleep standing up."

But the possibility of slowly freezing to death did not compromise his professionalism. He noticed that, of the seven chimneys, five had been smoking when the family got itself and all the luggage on the sleighs. Now only three were bending stars and sky with their viscous ribbons of heat. He suspected that they would soon shut down. But they didn't, and at about six o'clock a fourth began operation, and then a fifth." Maybe it's oil," he said out loud." An automatic system. But no, not even a house like that would have five furnaces. Maybe two, and two hot-water boilers, at the most. Those are fireplaces. Ah, I can smell *em. Someone's in there."

At six-thirty, a light went on in one of the windows. After all the darkness he had been in, Peter Lake was blinded. He felt vulnerable, and stepped behind a tree. It was extremely cold, but he was right to have waited. The light was in the kitchen. A girl came briefly to the window." They left a servant. It figures." But he waited still, for he was of that cla.s.s himself (lower, in fact), and knew very well that when the master was away all kinds of things could happen." It's a girl," he said to the horse." I'll bet she has a lover. I'll bet he comes and they go on a six-day drunk. That would be fine with me. While they're sleeping naked in the master's silken bed, I'll go in and requisition the downstairs valuables. Now all we have to do... is wait for the lad to show."

At seven, there was a flash against the sky. Peter Lake thought it was a shooting star, or a rocket summoning a river pilot. It was neither, but, rather, Beverly opening the door to the spiral stairs which led down from the roof. Some other lights went on. She's turning down the covers, thought Peter Lake. Soon he'll arrive at the door, cast a few glances, and be whisked in like the milk.

Beverly descended to the kitchen. There, she ate with Jayga, who was already dressed for the street. They said few words. Both were women in love with men who did not exist, and they shared the resigned sadness that comes from too much dreaming and longing. They were used to imagining that when they were alone they were observed in their graces and beauties (in Jayga's case, these were to be found in the eye of the beholder) by a man who stood somewhere, perhaps on a platform in the air, invisibly. And when they did whatever they did, sewing, or playing the piano, or fixing their hair in front of a mirror, they did so with tender reference to hisinvisible presence, which they loved almost as if it were real.

As Jayga cleaned up, Beverly got ready for bed. No piano playing, no chess or backgammon, no games with Willa and her dolls. She missed Willa already. The child looked just like Isaac. She was not really pretty yet. But she was loved by all who saw her for her fine quality of face. Such a sweet little girl. And a shrieker! And a giggler! It was the first time that she would be able to remember a Christmas at the Lake of the Coheeries, and, because of that, Beverly thought not to send a telegram after all. She turned the white handle of the faucet to shut off a thick stream of hot water. In the morning, when no one was in the house, she would spend an hour in her father's wonderful bathing pool. But now she was tired. She said goodnight to Jayga, told her that she would expect to see her in a few days, and went back upstairs.

Peter Lake did not notice the second flash, when the roof door opened, because he was watching lights in different rooms as they went out one by one during Jayga's processional through the house. And then the kitchen light was extinguished. Jayga stepped out the front door and put a suitcase on the steps. She double-locked the door and shook the handle to see if it were tight. Peter Lake was overjoyed to see a servant girl in her heavy coat and scarf, carrying a suitcase. After Jayga scurried down the street, he looked up to see that only three chimneys were now ribboning out heat, and even these were failing.

That's that, he thought. At four in the morning, the five cops on duty in Manhattan will be sitting around a wood stove in a wh.o.r.ehouse somewhere, looking out for the sergeant (who will be upstairs, unconscious, snoring into a pink feather boa, his knees curled up into the b.u.t.tocks of a poor young girl from Cleveland). I'll hit the place at four and be out by five-thirty with the silverware, the cash, and half a dozen rolled-up Rembrandts.

He wondered, though, how such a prize could be left unprotected. Certainly they had intended to have the servant girl stand guard. That was it. She was ducking out. Of course they might have electrical alarms and other gadgets, but that only made it more fun.

He s.h.i.+vered. He had to have some roasted oysters and hot b.u.t.tered rum or he would die. The horse had to have some oats andsome hot alfalfa horse tea. They dashed through the night toward the music and fire of the Bowery, gliding swiftly over the park's snow-covered trails.

YOU could hear people eating in the roast oyster place from five blocks away. There is something about a roast oyster, a clean stinging taste of the blue sea, hotter than boiling oil, neatly packaged in its own bone-dry kiln, that makes even the most refined diners snort, sniffle, and hum as they eat. Peter Lake got the horse his due and then sailed into the oyster place at the peak of the dinner hour. It was a vast underground cave between the Bowery and Rochambeau. The walls of stone were gray and white throughout half a dozen grand galleries. Arches like those of a Roman aqueduct touched the floor and then bounced away. At seven-thirty on a Friday night, no less than five thousand people dined within this subterranean oyster bin. Four hundred oyster boys labored and cried as if they were edging a great s.h.i.+p into port, or rolling Napoleon's cannon through Russia. Candles, gas lanterns, and, here and there, clear electric lights illuminated paths between rumbling little fires. The background noise was not unlike the famous record that Thomas Alva Edison had made of Niagara Falls, and the trajectories of the flying oyster sh.e.l.ls reminded some old veterans of the night air above Vicksburg.

A poor harried oyster boy appeared before Peter Lake, knitted his brows, and asked," How many are you going to have?"

"Four dozen," said Peter Lake." From the thyme-hickory fire."

"To drink?" asked the oyster boy.

"No," said Peter Lake." To eat, boy. To drink, I'll have a knocker of b.u.t.tered rum."

"Rum's out," said the boy." We have hard cider."

"That's fine. And, oh yes, have you got a nice roasted owl?"

"A roast owl?" asked the oyster boy." Don't got no roast owls."

Then he disappeared, but was back in less than a minute with four dozen roasted oysters hotter than the finest open hearth in all ofPittsburgh, and a flaming quart of hard cider. Peter Lake reacted to all of this like a Bayman, and for an hour his eyes saw straight without a blink while he grunted and hummed, alongside those withpink skulls and dangling powdered wigs, in disgusting disarray amid a thousand loose and distended oyster bellies hanging by cords of white sinew.

"I like to relax myself before a burglary," Peter Lake said to a nearby barrister as they both stared over the horizons of their swollen stomachs, picked their teeth, danced with the orange tongues of fire, and partook of steaming hot tea in pewter mugs with hinged lids." It makes sense to be slack before great exertion, to lose control in advance of a big job, don't you think?"

"I certainly do," said the barrister." I always get drunk or go whoring the night before a big trial. I find that wildness of that kind clears my mind and makes of it a tabula rasa, so to speak, able indeed to accept the imprint of pytacorian energy."

"Well," answered Peter Lake," I don't know what all that means, but I suppose that you must be a good lawyer, talking like that. Mootfowl said that a lawyer's job was to hypnotize people with intricate words, and then walk away with their property."

"An attorney, this Mootfowl?"

"A mechanic. A master of the forge. I loved him. He was my teacher. He could do anything with metal. He would beat it up into a darling frenzy, charm it into motionless white windings and red helixes of flame, and then strike it into just the shape willed by his mighty eye."

"Lovely," said the barrister.

Peter Lake floated up into one of the many clean white rooms and there slept a refres.h.i.+ng sleep until three in the morning, when he arose with an unusual sense of well-being and a great deal of energy. He washed, shaved, drank some ice water, and went into the cold. Moving through the deserted streets as if it were early summer, he was warm inside, wound up like a spring, happy, full of affection, and strong. And what a nice surprise it was to arrive at the stable and find that the horse, too, was awake and bright-eyed, bursting with energy, eager to set out.

ALMOST at four sharp, Beverly's eyes opened upon a spring scene in the stars. So pleasant, peaceful, clear, and calm were they, withhuman attention at the nadir, that even the winter air above her seemed warm and gentle. She saw no spirits, no open roads, but, instead, a summer sparkling of winking little stars that might have been the backdrop of a deliriously happy musical play.

Beverly smiled, delighted at how the universe suddenly seemed to have become an artifact of the Belle Epoquea"navy blue, dazzling, light, full of grace and joy, and as wonderful as the lucid moments before a rainstorm. She couldn't sleep, so she sat up, and then she rose to her feet without the customary effort. The stars were now all around her, and she hardly dared to move or breathe, for the air was still fresh and warm and she felt no fever. Could it be? Yes. There was no overheatedness upon rising, no deep labored breathing, no trembling. She pulled off the glistening sable hood and felt the benevolent air. Could it be, really? Yes, but she would have to be careful. She would go inside, bathe, take her temperature, and then see if, after a few hours, she still did not send the silver column soaring like a gull gliding on a summer thermal.

Peter Lake had arrived downstairs and begun to stalk around in the moonlight. All the nonacrobatic entry points were heavily barred. But that was hardly a problem: in his bag he had a portable acetylene torch that could slice through iron rods as if they were sausages. He was about to spark the torch, when he had a second thought. He rummaged in his knapsack and pulled out a voltmeter. There was a current running through them. They were so thick that, to bypa.s.s them electrically, he would have needed conductors of similar diameter to mimic their low resistance. He thought for a minute to get somea"the Amsterdam Machine Works were not too distant, and he often went there at night, because they didn't keep a careful inventory and he had a key to the front doora"but he saw that the bars were of varying thicknesses. When he examined them carefully he was astounded to find different strips of metal incorporated into them in complex helical patterns and inlaid crosshatchings. It would take a day at the blackboard just to figure out the theory of this alarm system. He had no hope of controverting it in the dark at six degrees above zero. Impressed and even delighted, Peter Lake went around the side of the house and climbed onto the broad ledge of a window. He was now on the level of the parlor floor, having seen fromthe ground that the rectangular silver bands often traced in Egyptian fas.h.i.+on around the edges of grandiose parlor windows, were absenta"though it was never much of a ch.o.r.e to foil them, as long as one insisted upon remaining delicate. The window in front of him was locked and alarmed, but all he had to do was cut a nice big hole in the gla.s.s and step through gingerly onto the piano.

The moon saved him, for it cleared the eaves and shone down upon the gla.s.s, illuminating ten thousand hair-thin channels etched on the inner surface like orderly rime. He took out his loupe and examined them. By some sophisticated technique that even he did not know, the fine lines had been filled with hardly visible strips of metal. Obviously, every opening in the place was rigged. Peter Lake did not know that Isaac Penn was obsessed by burglars, and had taken heroic steps to bar their entry.

"That's all right," said Peter Lake." They can jam up the windows and doors. That's fine. But they can't wire every square foot of the walls and roof. And since there's no one here, I'll cut myself a hatch."