The Pacific and Other Stories

by Mark Helprin

  “Lilly. Does it matter?”

  Deansch shook his head, rocked it really, pursing his lips as he thought. “No,” he answered. Then he looked up at Fitch, and said, “Take what you need.”

  Fitch answered him with a quick nod, which was all that was necessary, and within minutes the trucks were being loaded.

  IN THE DAYS OF FURIOUS WORK, and the nights, when they labored in the blaze and heat of lights, something arose that made it easy. It was not merely a rhythm or a sense of progress. Nor was it the unusual speed of the work, nor the caffeine, nor the music, both of which powered them on all of their jobs and neither of which was capable of sustaining them as now they were sustained, power and perseverance flowing so voluminously and steadily that they were lifted from their fatigue, lifted above their difficulties, just as Fitch had imagined, as if on a wave in the wind. Such waves can without effort lift even immense ships, because the power of the wave comes from the great mass and depth of the sea.

  Without the slightest hesitation, Fitch’s men had refused pay, committed to staying twenty-four-hour days, and started immediately. The weeks in which they would work this way would be weeks in which they would not see their families, and it was not as if they and their families had no troubles to speak of that a month without pay would make worse. Fitch had no children and therefore no need to keep what he had or to come out ahead. They did. These people, who had less power over their own lives than anyone Fitch had ever known, were the most generous he had ever encountered.

  Wives, mothers, aunts, and cousins would show up to serve meals of rice and beans, fish, chicken, vegetables. The many children in tow, who were quiet, charming, brown-eyed, would take a turn at sawing, sweeping, or painting, their fathers’ hands often guiding them. Fitch paid their fathers well, but upon seeing this he resolved to pay them better, especially now that he had rid himself, or would shortly, of his carefully accumulated savings and, following upon that, of the need or desire to save.

  A lapsed but believing Catholic, he had not been to mass since mass had lapsed out of Latin, but what happened in the weeks of February and March made up for the thousands of masses he had missed. The mass existed, in his perhaps heretical view, to keep, encourage, and sustain a sense of holiness, and to hold open the channels to grace that, with age and discouragement, tend to close. Witness to those who had little sacrificing what they had, to their children contributing to the work in their way, and to the fathers’ pride in this, Fitch felt the divine presence as he had not since the height of his youth. The less he had and the closer to death he felt, the more intense, finer, and calmer the world seemed. It had been a long time since he had been on the ocean on a day of sun and wind, but now he and all his men were lifted and traveling on the selfsame wave.

  THIS WOULD HARDLY BRING BACK for Lilly what had been taken from her, and, knowing it, he would work furiously into March, as if it might. March broke with pale sun, spells of warmth, and respite from the snow and bitter cold. Sunlight now flooded in from the great airy spaces over the harbor and the mouth of the East River, from between the buildings in the financial district, from east, south, and west, and even by echo from the colder and bluer north.

  For long periods they forgot Lilly and forgot their purpose, as if the driving force of what they were doing was merely what they were doing and its driving force, self-sustaining, self-feeding, and rounding in perfection. The work itself became the object, and never in their lives had they done better. Never had the walls been straighter or smoother, never had the plaster been whiter, never had the wood been closer joined, never had the joints been tighter, the colors more intense, the proportions more artful.

  Georgy had been absent except to measure, and when he arrived with his cabinetry they had no need to comment as one might when someone else has made his best effort but not quite hit the mark, for what Georgy had done was so self-evidently beautiful at first sight that their quiet admiration was the greatest praise. And when they fitted it all in, something that normally would have taken four or five days but which now they did in a day, and when it was combined with the appliances that Fitch and the appliance dealer had bankrupted themselves to supply, the men kept on saying, “Look at that! Look at that!” because nowhere in New York or perhaps anywhere else was there a better job.

  This was repeated in rosewood paneling, in limestone baseboards, in nickel, marble, granite, and unobtrusive plaster molding that physics said could not be whiter, purer, or more like snow in bright sun. It was apparent in the ironwork, brass work, and glazing. The solid walnut doors were two and a half inches thick, with the same brass hardware and hinges as in the White House, and they closed more smoothly and quietly than the doors of a Rolls-Royce. The lighting had been planned by a theatrical lighting designer who had worked for free and delayed a Broadway opening (“So what?” the lighting designer had said), and its effects seemed to double the space. It shone here or there with such clarity and purity, or softly and gently, that moving from room to room was like passing through the seasons.

  Although these attributes, some massive, some almost undetectable, were of interest in themselves and had taken sacrificial labor and care to create, the remarkable achievement was that they were all subsumed quietly into something greater. In the place Fitch and his men built, the trees and the garden below were pulled in, as were the water and the light, and the openness of the view in all its intricacy. It was a refuge, and yet it was not closed. It was a fortress, and yet it was light and airy. It was luxurious, and yet it was modest and austere. Everything was in perfect balance, contending forces in abeyance, as had been intended, and when on Sunday, the seventeenth, they withdrew, leaving the surfaces polished and perfect, they knew much more than that the next day they would be going to the big job at U.N. Plaza and would once again be earning. They knew that they had made something beautiful, and, because of this, they were content.

  ON MONDAY, the eighteenth of March, 2002, Lilly arrived at the apartment late in the morning. Her train into Grand Central had been delayed, and the Number Four to Borough Hall had sat on the track for twenty minutes, its doors opening and closing as inexplicably as if they were responding to radio signals from Mars.

  The sky was delft blue, and broken clouds spread across it were touched with yellow as the sunlight passed through them. In the playground at the foot of Columbia Heights, scores of young children worked the swings and bars as if these were the machines in a factory run by monkeys. Half were watched by their mothers and the other half by nannies who took benches according to nationality, with the world appearing largely Jamaican. As Lilly walked by, she saw a little girl on a sprung horse, a child of no more than two, with round red cheeks and marvelously intelligent eyes. Her grief flooded in—for the husband she had lost, for the child they would never have.

  She could not appear to Fitch with her eyes red, so she veered onto the Promenade. She would look up at her apartment to see if they had made any progress on the outside, although there was not much you could tell from the outside. When she got there, she looked first across the river at the skyline, to the space that had been occupied by the World Trade Center, and where now there was only light. And then she looked at her building. They had done the roof garden. Instead of the rusting iron railing, now there was a limestone balustrade. She could see the tops of stone planters in which were rooted elegant topiaries. And where a toupee-like edge of crumbling tar had lapped over the roof, now there were heavy copper gutters and downspouts.

  Was this her building? She had to check, counting from the big apartment house, remembering details from the garden and the lower floors. It was, but her windows had been replaced. They were beautiful, French. Fitch had not been supposed to replace the windows. She was alarmed, thinking that perhaps she had been cheated. And she drew in a sharp breath when, looking closer, she noticed that the sills and lintels, which had been wood in dubious condition and were supposed to have been painted, were now the same taupe limestone as
the balustrades of the roof garden.

  Almost in a panic, she made her way around the apartment house and then south along Columbia Heights. Out of politeness, she rang her buzzer to let them know she was coming. She saw that her mailbox was brass, the buzzer solid and new. Even her nameplate was elegantly engraved. No one answered. She rang again, and then, like someone who is worried and ready to be hurt, pushed her key into the lock. As she went up the stairs, she heard no hammering, no saws, no radios, no machines, the things that might have drowned out the buzzer, which, although she did not know it, was now a bell.

  At her landing, she was shocked. She had certainly not ordered a marble floor, nor the beautiful millwork, nor the pinpoint recessed lighting, nor the coco mat flush with the floor and surrounded by a heavy brass rim. She stared at the door in disbelief. Where once a single door had been was a double door, and she could tell by looking at it that it, like the windows, had actually come from France. She didn’t know what to do, because she hadn’t called for the replacement of the existing door, much less for the opening to be rebuilt, much less for the importation from Paris of a paneled and chamfered walnut door that was so substantial and perfectly crafted that she guessed that it and putting it in could not have cost Fitch any less than fifteen or twenty thousand dollars.

  She knocked. Then she saw the doorbell, yet another thing for which she had not asked, and rang it. As she lifted her key to the lock, she imagined that Fitch had spent all her money—then she realized that she hadn’t yet paid him anything—on the roof garden, entry, and windows, and would now extort much more to finish the interior. She was sure that he could not have touched the interior, not in that short time, not with all that had been done on the outside. Holding her breath, she turned the key in the lock and opened the door.

  As she walked from room to room, she trembled. This could not be. It was a dream. How could he have worked so fast and so well? She was practiced in the close reading of complicated texts, and here was a work of art, in every detail of which the essential condition of art—as she believed it to be—shone through, and that was a beauty that arose from love. She did not know where she stood, what she had to pay, or when, or how. She did not know why Fitch had done it, or at least she thought she didn’t know. No matter what, it was too much for her now. Fitch was too much for her now. It was too soon.

  But then she thought of the child she had seen in the playground, of her innocence, of her eyes, and she thought that for the sake of such a child nothing was too much, nothing was too difficult, nothing was too soon. This made her tremble even more, not helplessly but with something akin to resolve. And then she saw on the mantle—and what a beautiful mantle it was—the Fitch Company bill, standing like a pup tent.

  She knew before she unfolded it what it would say, and as she unfolded it she was calmed. The lettering was unpretentious. It said, “Fitch Co.,” and, in a universal typeface for this word, “Invoice.” Paying no heed to the lines printed on the paper, Fitch had written, “No charge through completion, paid in full,” signed his name, and dated it “Monday, 18 March 2002.” Lilly’s hands fell to her sides, the bill fluttering down with them.

  FITCH WAS WALKING SOUTH on First Avenue in pale sunshine that had everything about it of spring about to break the siege of winter. He had many things on his mind. His men were happy and reassured. Now they were working for pay, and they had the quiet power of those who had done right. They knew, as he did, that their work would go beautifully now that they had turned a corner. He himself couldn’t wait to get at the job. Down the long prospect of First Avenue, glittering like mica in the sun, the building was in sight.

  He was standing on the northwest corner of Fiftieth and First, waiting for the light, when his cell phone rang. He thought it might be Gustavo, but was not surprised that it wasn’t.

  “Fitch,” she said, “Oh Fitch, this is Lilly.”

  And then he stood in silence with nothing coming from the other end of the line, but he did not call her name or think that they had been cut off, and when he saw the light change he stayed in place, for he knew that she needed time to regain her composure.

  A Brilliant Idea and His Own

  THE SUPPOSITION, reasonable upon its face, was that the enemy would neither suspect a parachutist during a bombing run nor emerge in any case, and that the bombs would have burst before he floated down. Therefore, he would parachute from the last Liberator to have released its ordnance over a town that flowed across a hilltop, on a night with moonlight enough to guide a parachutist’s descent upon a landscape burned into his eyes by flares and explosions. Were he to land safely he would find his way to a high place overlooking the battle and there conceal himself amid rocks and brush to report upon the progress of events below and direct the fire both of naval guns and the allied artillery beyond the river to the west.

  He had written himself off and wanted to get it over with. The sooner he could fly out the side door into the darkness, the less time he would have for apprehension. Soldiers who have been blooded know that action is an instant cure for fear, and when battle approaches their experience makes them long for it to come quickly, even if, as in this case, the chances were not the best.

  Certainly it was outrageous to parachute into an enemy area during a bombing, gliding amid flack, in the dark, onto rough terrain, but it was a brilliant idea, and it was his own. Even when he had first suggested it he knew that he himself would end up doing it, for he could ask no one else, and that it was one of those things that, having come into existence, would nag at the imagination of anyone who knew of it, until it was accomplished. How foolish then to have broached it. And how further galling to have to argue for it in the face of opposition, explaining away doubts and portraying the mission as he had designed it, or rather as it had come to him instantly. They had argued that it was an attractive idea, but that it would probably leave him dead, and the staff to whom he had proposed it had asked if he were a pathfinder in a parachute regiment seconded to intelligence, or an intelligence officer seconded to an airborne regiment as a pathfinder. Whatever he was, it would make a splendid show, and the way he thought of it was that, in throwing himself into a night battle, he might by clawing back the curtain as he fell make a track of light like the traces of a shooting star.

  Such transcendence notwithstanding, in the Liberator he comforted himself with inventory, counting magazines and rounds of ammunition, noting the position and attachment of a knife, visiting the bulging pockets of his jumpsuit to remember the placement and existence of pouches and bundles, first-aid kit and maps, signaling mirror, flares, telescope, pistol, tarpaulin, and line. And in his pack, food and blankets, a radio, and grenades. Even a Lilliputian book of paintings, and a Bible of the same size. He had passed through university with distinction and had chosen to be a painter, and the Bible was a gift from his father, who had served in the First War. “Take this,” he had said as he gave it to his son, “and bring it back to me.”

  But now he dared not think of either his father or his mother. Rather, he considered the design of the moment, the shape and color of webbing and patches, the chance and philosophy that had brought him to look as he did dressed in the uniform of battle. Much had been planned in a great hurry and produced with no less speed. Shortages of materials led to almost bizarre substitutions, and all that was new had the mark of pure function and the feel of emergency, whereas that which had lasted through time and other wars and had been worn smooth had the feel of elegance. A few things made in desperation for this war would last, but just a few, and then they would be antique, and then they would be gone.

  Now, however, the things he carried were everything, fresh and new, and he depended upon them. His parachute—the color of mother-of-pearl, sheer, smooth, soft, and clean—that would in perfection of form billow with invisible air. The cord and webbing, so strong that even in thin sections it could hold the weight of automobiles dangling above the ground. The rifle, and its scope, about which the arm
orers had said that as long as a shock were insufficient to shatter the glass, it would be insufficient to disalign the one with the other. If the scope were whole and you could look through it, it was properly sighted. Pack, battle dress, helmet, and boots fit him comfortably amid the din of engines as the Liberator made a wide left turn and flew up the coast.

  In ten or fifteen minutes, were he still alive, the sounds of engines, guns, and bombs would have been replaced by those of crickets, cicadas, and the flow of the wind. And the moon, in a thin crescent, would be dipping quietly into the sea.

  MIDWAY OVER TARGET, in the buffeting of flack—after the sudden buoyancy of the aircraft upon releasing its bombs, and its insistent, duty-bound descent to jump altitude—the red light went on, and he stood. A crewman in communication with the navigator listened intently on his headset. Then he raised his hands and pursed his lips as he watched the heavily laden soldier step to the door.

  Let’s go, the soldier’s heart said, and when the signal came he jumped into the night and flew past the plane like smoke. In falling, fear vanished. In its place came alert expectation. Gravity worked with perfection, but his complete surrender to it was also his temporary victory over it as its effects disappeared during a few angelic seconds, only to return in the softest modulation as the chute began to open. Then the slight tug, always less than in the simulator, that signaled the beginning of a smooth descent.

  He twisted his head and saw that the Adriatic was covered with light skeins of fog and smoke in which the moon and its weak reflection were tangled and lost. He pulled the lines until he was crosscutting the path of the bomber, as he had wanted, taken by the wind.

  To the right, in a crescent south and east of an immense hill, was the port, dimly illuminated in the fires of the bombing, as if by embers. To the left, as the hill fell back down and curved slightly to the sea, was the “new” town, begun in the days of Rome. There the last of the bombs were falling. First they would flash, and seconds later the shock waves would swing him like a pendulum and tickle the inside of his lungs. Behind him, in the dark, were the enemy lines, between the hill and the river. And beyond the river were the allies: British, Americans, Canadians, Poles, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, South Africans. Except for the Poles, they all spoke English, and if not invincible they were at least colorful. They were the empire of English-speaking peoples, something toward which since birth he had directed a great deal of affection, and in the contemplation of which he had always found pride.