Refiner's Fire (27 page)

 

Noi ci allegrammo, e tosto tornò in pianto;
chè della nova terra un turbo nacque,
e percosse del legno il primo canto.
Tre volte il fè girar con tutte l'acque:
alla quarta levar la poppa in suso
e la prora ire in giù, com'altrui piacque,
infin chè'l mar fu sopra noi richiuso.

 

Then it was sad, for it was dark and quiet and the boat had gone under even after Ulysses's great speech urging his crew to try for new lands in the track of the sun, beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Signor Pascaleo turned on a light, and remained with his hand on the switch. Signora and Paolo disappeared toward Paolos belated bath. Alexander said, “Let's get outa here and go to a noisy saloon.” Alexa didn't want to go. “C'mon,” said Al. “C'mon.”

In a place on Second Avenue—Julia's Cockroach Bar—a piano, a lot of rude bullyboy jostling, and a pint or two of beer made them forget the enjoining paradox which, without plan, had come to light in the reading. Everyone in the bar looked at Alexa, while Marshall and Al discussed their plan to explore beneath the city. In Signor Pascaleo's office was a set of forty master keys allowing access to every sewer, subway, water, gas, or steam passageway in the city. They were going to borrow the keys and spend a night underground. At night the sewer current was gentle enough to allow passage through all but the swiftest straits—the Fifty-third Street Flume, the West End Avenue Delta, and the great falls under the New York Times (absolutely impassable after lunch). They planned to return the keys by morning. They had already purchased miner's lights, high boots, a good rope, and a crowbar.

Alexa thought the scheme moronic. “The sewers smell disgusting,” she said to her brother. “You
would
want to walk around in the sewers for fun.”

“The sewers smell better than you do,” Al snapped back. “Did you ever not see a nude mule?”

“How much beer have you had?”

“Half a glass ... see. Did you ever not see a nude mule?”

“Are you crazy?”

“No. Did you ever not see a nude mule?”

“No!”

“You mean you always see a nude mule? Ha!”

“No!”

“You mean yes.”

“Oh, all right. Yes. I did.”

“Did what.”

“Did ever not see a nude mule.”

“When?”

“Most of the time.”

“You have then, I take it, seen a nude mule, on occasion?”

“I'm looking at one right now.”

“Then, did you never not see a nude mule?”

“When?”

“Ever.”

“Sometimes.”

“Not now?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“When?”

“Let me ask you this.”

“Go right ahead.”

“Okay. Who?”

“Marshall, of course, who else?”

“Is that so?” asked Al. Then for half an hour they sat without speaking, while in the rolling bittersweet music Marshall did not realize that in the shorthand of brothers and sisters, Alexa had said that she was in love with him.

The May night was clear and balmy; they walked along the river and watched lighted sparkling bridges, viaducts, elevated roadways, trestles, and barges, which lately had been washed by pure rain. Between the two boys was a glimmering girl, and the skyline was like a great forest of fireflies. As so often is the case, New York could easily have been an idealized picture of itself in a quiet, contemplative future.

Marshall wondered how such great power could be still and mild at times, and thoroughly abrasive and destructive at others. Cellular and divided, the city's rooms, lights, squares, and streets could in their complexity put to shame the heart of a great electronic machine, or the whirling mosaics of the most colorful mosque. All of it could never be seen, and therein lay its great promise—its swarming variations were as valuable as an ever-receding geographic horizon. Beneficent distance was within, hidden in the turmoil, as if a monster had swallowed nature.

“Let's drive,” said Al. He loved to drive, and prided himself on his knowledge of the streets, expressways, shortcuts, and detours through lost unknown neighborhoods. At night they often rode around the city, exploring the empty roads.

“Where to?” asked Alexa, as they climbed into the Pascaleos' vintage Dunderburg.

“How about a bridge tour? I'll take you over the Verrazano, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, Fifty-ninth Street, Triboro, Henry Hudson, and George Washington in less than an hour.”

They put the top down and glided smoothly in the pulsing arteries, achieving precise transitions from one highway to another, taking corners with just the right G, maintaining near constant speed. Marshall and Alexa leaned back and watched the city lights, which seemed clearer and gentler than in winter when they sparkled and cut like diamond grit. Now, there was a fresh wind, and young trees had a chance.

Marshall felt as if he could stay in New York forever. He imagined making his way up the echelons to find ease and power in a high place. He imagined living in a loft south of Houston Street, where artists were beginning to set up studios as they had done long before in Greenwich Village. He imagined entering ward politics with no protection or perspective except what he would get from the heat of his own effort. In summer the streets boiled and the air burnt his eyes, but he could always look down long disappearing avenues to the small blue square of sky at the end waving upward in viscous snakes of air. And if Alexa would return from Rome, or not go at all...

But as they flew across the wide rivers and had laid before them great important views, Marshall felt the draw of other times and other places. His origins seemed as well to pull him from the fine scenes that he often saw, so that within his own life he frequently felt like an observer. However, Alexa was too intoxicating to ignore, and he soon fell back into the mill of his infatuation, eyeing her delightful profile as the three of them did the bridges. The ways to love, it seemed, were as tangled and marvelous as New York's great network of roads.

O
NE EVENING
while Signor Pascaleo paced back and forth like a
matron glace
in a dressing gown, Marshall and A1 were tramping through the vast system of tunnels under Manhattan. They had given up completely on maps, which were about 800 times more complex than subway charts, and had decided just to wander. They entered by the basement of the Yale Club (accessible via an unlocked door in the Hotel Roosevelt tunnel) and quickly found their way to an enormous main through which knee-deep water was rapidly rushing. The conduit was so high that they would not have reached its top even had they jumped. A1 had been right—it didn't smell, except for a dank odor like that of a sweating rabbit. They had the distinct impression that the water was coming from some specific place and going to yet another place of particular importance. Underground water seems issued from momentous chambers and destined for hidden seas. Actually, or so it was believed, the current came from countless gutters, sluices, and drains, and no Valhalla was at either end. But the rushing suggested a purposefulness that water does not have. They walked in the big tunnel, pushing against the current, and they stopped to rest, peering northward into the darkness, from which emerged a cool wind. Straight down the tunnel was a tiny yellow light. It flickered, and it was moving. “Look,” said Al, “that light is moving toward us.”

“How could it be?” asked Marshall.

“I don't know. Turn off your lamp.” They switched off their miner's lamps and hid in a recess near an exit ladder. The light
was
moving toward them.

Marshall broke the silence. “They don't have night patrols down here, do they?”

“Nope,” said Al, his throat tightening. “My father says that, except for emergencies, no one is ever here at night—no one, for any reason whatsoever.”

“Then what's that?”

“Maybe it's debris.”

“Debris? With a light on it?”

“I don't know what the hell it is; don't ask me.”

As it drew closer they could see that it was a torch of pitch, burning with black smoke. They heard muffled sounds, words, and wood against wood, and then they saw that the torch was on the prow of a boat, fixed on a metal tripod. The boat itself was long and thin, crudely built of overlapping planks. It had a small sail of coarse, striped wool, and it went faster even than the rapid current. As it swept past them, they were speechless. A dozen bearded men in rags and tattered homespun manned little stunted oars and a seemingly unnecessary rudder. They spoke in a strange guttural language, and they were arguing vehemently. As soon as they had passed, the boat picked up speed and the torch got smaller until it vanished from sight completely.

At first, Marshall and Al remained frozen in place, jaws hanging open. Then Al got angry (he always got angry at things that he could not explain), and he jumped back into the main, sloshing ahead. “Before you ask,” he said angrily, “I don't know. So don't ask.”

“It must be beatniks going to the Village,” said Marshall, “or maybe farmers who came from upstate in the aqueduct tunnel.”

Al turned in disgust. “Maybe,” he said, “it's a bunch of stockbrokers who have found a new way to get to Wall Street.”

“That's a good theory,” said Marshall, laughing nervously. “Just keep on coming up with theories. It's the only way I know of dealing with something like this. Use the data that you have. For instance, they were arguing. We know, for example, that they couldn't have been arguing about which course to take. We know, for example, that—”

“Marshall, forget it. No one would ever believe us anyway.”

They could not see the end of the tunnel—which was many miles long—and they turned into a sizable tributary, slashing an underground mist with the beams of their helmet lights. A little down the road they came to a large platform fifteen feet above them in a high recessed well. Shining their lamps on it, they saw a door with a gleaming lock. A1 leaned against the wall, facing it, and Marshall climbed him until he stood on his shoulders, Marshall's hands also on the wall. Then Al took both of Marshall's feet in his hands and backed down until his arms were straight, after which he slowly walked against the wall until he was standing at his full height, arms straight. Marshall was standing on Al's palms, a platform at least seven feet above the ground. Marshall stretched as much as he could, but his fingers did not quite reach the ledge. “I can't reach the ledge,” he said. “Can you stretch some more?”

“No,” said Al in a gasp. “When I count three, I'm going to toss you into the air. Jump on three.”

“Wait a minute,” said Marshall.

“One.”

“Wait just a minute,” said Marshall.

"Two."

“Thanks,” said Marshall.

“Three,” and Al threw him as he himself jumped. Marshall's fingers caught the ledge so slightly that he hesitated in space and then began to fall back. In complete panic he somehow threw his right hand up and caught hold. After pulling himself up, the entire right side of his body and brain contorted in a deadly cramp.

“What are you doing up there?” called out Al from below, where the end of a convention or intermission at the theater had caused the current to swell and rise to his thighs. Marshall hardly had the breath to speak.

“My ribs are scratching my heart,” he scrawled with his voice.

“Your what?”

“My ribs are scratching my heart.”

“Put your hands above your head and crack your knuckles.”

He did this and was able to breathe again, just in time to throw down the rope, for the water was coming close to the top of Al's boots.

The lock was of stainless steel. They tried several wrong keys, and then began to work systematically through the forty. At twenty-nine the door opened and they stepped through as carefully as turn-of-the-century burglars with sacks and raccoon masks. On the other side was a clean dry tunnel through which ran steam pipes and cables. Spread over the floor were many pieces of zwieback and an occasional baklava. “What are these for?” asked Marshall of Al, who had attended high-level discussions of the sewers.

“Those are here to trap Specials. They're highly poisonous.”

“Specials?”

“Yeah. That's what they call a live rat. Rats reproduce when they're two months old, have about six or eight litters a year of ten to twenty babies a shot. If two of them started in perfect conditions and none of their offspring died of hunger or poison, in a year they could produce five million. My father says that there are at least two rats underground for every person in the city. That's at least sixteen million. If something happened down here and they all came out at the same time, let's say in front of Bloomingdale's, it would be hell on earth.”

“How come we haven't seen any?” asked Marshall.

“Are you crazy?” asked Al, shining his light on two dozen little ones tucked into a hole in the wall. Marshall knew that they were vile, but somehow he sympathized with them. Everyone in the world tried to kill them, when they wanted only to survive. They carried disease, but not intentionally. All they did was eat garbage, and squeak. Then, one ran up and tried to bite his foot, and he kicked it into the air with hatred and disgust. “That was a Dewey,” said Al, “a live one which attacks. A live one which runs is a knocker. Knocker or Dewey, they're all Specials.”

“What's a dead rat called?”

“A Beebuckle.”

“A Beebuckle!”

“Yup. I don't know the origin of the term.”

“I suspect,” said Marshall, “that it's Irish.”

At the end of the passage was a wall-mounted iron ladder which led up into darkness. They climbed for about ten minutes, until they were so high that they did not hear a penny hit bottom. They thought that they were close to ground level, when suddenly they saw a light from above. Switching off their lamps, they climbed quietly to the grate through which the light was passing. They could not believe what they saw, and they froze to the ladder.