The Pacific and Other Stories

by Mark Helprin

  He wished that he had been more circumspect. But to have been so might have been a far greater fault. It was not the first time he had been defeated by great desire, and he felt completely inadequate, dismissed, rejected. He left abruptly, because he was sure that she wanted him to go, because he wanted so much to stay, because, quite simply, he loved her. He never remembered much about the feverish and unhappy ride home, or how many times he had dismounted to pace back and forth in agony and puzzlement. He did, of course, resolve never to see her again. And he was a man of strong and tenacious resolution.

  LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, Cameron came to the meadows that led to the high wall. These meadows stretched for a mile and were dotted with stands of small pine that grew sheltered from the wind in depressions and hollows. At almost nine thousand feet, the horse moved slowly and breathed hard, and his rider found himself in a trance of sparkling altitude. The sky was flawless and still as Cameron inspected the last portion of his fence. Progressing slowly upward, he was sure that there would be no breaks. Where the final meadow began to rise steeply to the wall, he was going to check the fence from a distance, and turn around without actually making a ceremonial finish at the cliff—in touching it the way a swimmer touches the wall of a pool before he will credit himself with a lap. But he saw from the base of the meadow that a long portion of the fence was down. The wire was shining in the sunlight, spread in every direction on the field. The posts had been pushed over, snapped at the base, and scattered. With luck, if he had enough wire, and could salvage enough, and work fast enough, he might repair it by dark, and then ride home by starlight on trails that he could take blind.

  He cantered over to the damage. He knew from the tracks that a grizzly bear had done this—or perhaps two, while the cubs watched. Either they had been too big to get through the baffles, which were untouched, or they had just wanted the high meadow to be completely open. Because the splinters were moist and the leaves of the moss compressed, he knew that it had happened while he was just a few miles away thinking placidly about his good luck. The bears themselves might be gone, or they might be taking a nap somewhere amidst the sunny boulders. Removing his rifle from its scabbard, he worked the bolt to put a bullet in the chamber, and leaned the weapon against a rock. It was not that he expected the bears to lie in ambush for him but rather that, in working hard, he might not notice them until his horse panicked.

  They had pulled down sixteen stakes and broken eleven at the base, rendering them unusable. The wire was severed in two dozen places. Only a bear could have done that, even with the light steel that he had always used on the high meadows. His coil of wire was greatly diminished after the repairs he had made on the way up. If he had enough, it would be just enough, and still it would be hard to do it right. The splicing would be weak, with no tripled windings, and he would have to use fewer posts, spacing them farther apart than usual. But the fence might hold, especially if the bears were on their way to some distant, higher paradise in the north. He set to work.

  First, he rode a mile and a half back into the timber. Although he could have used the meadow’s little pines for posts, at that altitude they took forever to grow, and destroying them might have turned the upper pasture into a rutted and barren hillside when the rains washed the thin layer of soil off its base of rock and scree. In the timber, hidden from the world by distance, height, and the maze of a thousand pines, he used his axe to cut and trim half a dozen small trees. He was a very strong man, he had used an axe nearly every day of his life from the time he was a small child, and the axe he used was the best available, sharpened with a soft stone and oil, and kept, like some kind of strange one-legged falcon, in a leather hood. The trees went down in a stroke: they might as well have been celery. And he trimmed them of their branches with several sweeps close to the trunk. After a series of hatchetlike blows at the narrowing end, he had a sharp fence post soaked with its own resin as if it had been designed for placement in wet ground.

  He tied the posts up in two bundles and dragged them out of the woods. Then he slung them over his saddle and walked the horse back to the break. If the break had occurred sooner, steers might have passed through, though it was early in the season for steers to have reached this altitude. But even then it would hardly have mattered. Sanderson would have pushed them back over, as he would have done for Sanderson’s animals, with nothing said between them. In the twelve years since he thought one day that he had found a friend in Sanderson, he had seen him only half a dozen times along the fence or in Invermere, where Mrs. Sanderson had been forgotten and it was generally assumed that Sanderson lived alone.

  Mrs. Cameron’s warm invitation, a week in the mail even though the lands adjoined, was never answered. Now that his children were old enough to ride by themselves wherever they wanted, Cameron feared that they might ride east on some adventure and discover the great secret of his life. But, being young, they would not have been able to see her in the way that he had seen her. Perhaps no one did, although she had implied that at least some had; and she had known immediately that, as she put it, his head had been turned. Perhaps she had had children, had aged, and lost her beauty. He wished that she had, but knew that no such thing could ever happen to her. That her features had, accidentally, been fine and unusual had little bearing on the woman herself. If she had lost the accidental beauty of her form, it would only have served to accentuate the substance that form had been privileged to convey.

  One of the things that hurt him most in his speculations east was the possibility that she had died or gone away, and that, without his knowledge, his life had been rendered meaningless. And he didn’t know her name, something that was difficult to bear in light of the way he loved her.

  After several years, he did not think of her very often. By the time England was again at war (this time he was too old), it seemed almost as if he had forgotten her. After all, his wife, too, was a beauty, with a softness that Mrs. Sanderson did not have, and the luck of a pretty face and a graceful body. But she was not as deeply faulted as Mrs. Sanderson, or quite as radiant. And it had been the fault—not the deafness but the mistaken, unnecessary shame—that had driven deep into Cameron’s heart.

  As the years went by, he put her more and more out of his mind. But time proved immaterial, for suddenly, in the midst of a false peace, he would dream of her, and for weeks thereafter suffer intense desire. Then the desire would slowly fade, and he would continue getting older, waiting for the next potent and surprising reawakening. Were it not for this, he would have been a happy man. Perhaps he was a happy man even so.

  THE POSTS had to be placed in rocky soil, and in sinking them he strained like the soldier he had never been, breathing hard and evenly, sweating, taken up by his love of the work, for only work could conduct away his unfortunate passion. Because of the new spacing, four or five new holes had to be made, and a similar number of broken pieces extracted from the ground. Some were easy, some not easy at all. How fine the task, though, of building back this fence, with all his strength, discipline, and experience. It was for the sake of the lovely woman he had married, for the children they had had, for Sanderson, for Mrs. Sanderson, and for himself—though he couldn’t see exactly how it was to his benefit unless it were purely a matter of honor.

  He pounded in the posts until they flattened against the underlying sheet of rock. His strokes and timing with the heel of the axe were perfect, and each downward blow married solidly with the posthead.

  The second and last time he had seen her had been in Vancouver, during the war. The disarray of the cattle market had brought him to the coast seeking a better price for his beef. He never got it, and he never found out what she had been doing there, apart from bowling on the green, in a formal white suit, in the company of a lot of pretty old ladies who took the game very seriously.

  He was resting in Stanley Park, at midday, watching the old ladies at their game, when she appeared and took her turn. A long time passed before he was able to beli
eve that it was actually she, and then to summon the courage to rise. But when he did approach her, it was easy. He almost floated across the green, hypnotized, pushing the carefully placed shots all to hell with his feet.

  She recognized him immediately, and when she turned to face him fully her expression was reminiscent of those days when strong sunshine and deep shadow alternate in silent breathtaking contrast. The emotion that swept across her face told him that he was not the only one to have spent the years in longing.

  They stood in the center of the bowling green, oblivious of a growing stream of reprimands—she because she could not hear them, and he because he didn’t care. The old ladies were incensed: not only had their game been spoiled, but they had been ignored. So they returned the fire and resumed play, paying no attention to the two wickets who stood, apparently insensate, staring at one another in the middle of the contest. Balls began to whiz about like shrapnel.

  They didn’t notice; they couldn’t look away. With no words spoken, all custom was shattered as he put his hands on either side of her white waistband, touching her gently. She extended her arms, and they found themselves in a subdued embrace appropriate to a crowded Vancouver bowling green. But everything was said, at last, and in the silence that she had always known.

  A ship began a series of powerful whistle blasts as it coasted through the inlet on its way to the war at sea. This, the deep steam whistle, was the one thing she could hear, or, rather, feel—a symphony for her, the one precious rumbling sound of the world. It pushed through her chest and took her by surprise, moving her by its suddenness and power. She held up one of her hands and spread her fingers to see them vibrate, as the air itself was shaken from its sleep. He had told her that he loved her, and admitted it finally and forever to himself. At least he had done that.

  AFTER THE POSTS WERE UP, Cameron began to string the wire. Not only had it been broken, but he himself was obliged to cut it in the stringing, and to replace rusted lengths that likely would not stand being stretched onto a new arrangement of posts and baffles. The skill with which he wielded the splicing tool was something of which he did not think to be proud. But he had the sure facility of a fisherman minding his nets, or a woman with years at the loom, and there was no tentativeness in his movements, which seemed to pull his hands forward as quickly as they would follow.

  As he worked, his thoughts turned to Mrs. Sanderson. There were things in the mountains to make up for a love that was unfulfilled. When his tongue was tied, when he could not act, or in the punishment of forever parting, he had found compensations. And if the discipline that kept him from her had not been so sweet in itself he would long ago have jumped his horse over the fence and ridden down to the house at the base of the thin column of smoke. But having what he desired was not important, for the mountains would remember, and, once, in Vancouver, he had been lucky.

  When he finished, the sun hovered red and gold above a sharp and distant ridge. The new wire looked like lines of silver and platinum, and the pine posts were solid and black. A pool of meltwater had formed in the middle of a patch of snow about a hundred feet from the fence. Cameron took off his clothes, walked across the snow, and threw himself in. The water was even colder than he had expected, but, wanting to get clean, he thrust his head under and rolled himself over. The pain of doing such a thing was pleasant, for, afterward, when he rose slick and sparkling from the ice water, he was warm and relaxed, and he could reflect pleasurably upon the half a minute or so of breathless cold when his discipline had kept him under and served him well. After he had dressed, he threw the saddle on his horse, cinched it up, and put back the bit. When his tools were gathered and tied on, and the rifle chamber emptied, he mounted. The wind was clean and cool.

  He walked the horse from the first splice to the last, and swept his eyes over each new post and twisting of the wire, up to the rock wall itself. Then he veered across the meadow and wound down through patches of snow now blood-red with the declining sun. Several hundred yards west of the fence, he reined the horse around to face what he had done. It was a good piece of work, and undoubtedly it would hold. The wires now glowed like molten metal.

  He was not a stupid man. He knew what he was about to do, he knew very well, and he finally felt a deep brotherhood with young Charles S. R. Reed, who had gone to Passchendaele of his own accord, and who, in his lack of wisdom, had perhaps been wise.

  Cameron realized that the horse would want to canter, and that he would have to kick him into a gallop. As they crossed the quiltwork of snow and grass, the horse would begin to tense for the jump, and his rider would have to let out the reins. They would take the fence quite easily.

  Whatever he did, his heart would be half broken. That was what Reed had risked at Passchendaele, for he had not gone to war except to come back to love.

  Like the soldier he had never been, Cameron spurred his horse toward the ranks of glowing wire. They took the fence. They cleared it by at least two feet, and left it behind in the sunset, a very sad thing.

  Jacob Bayer and the Telephone

  EVERYONE HAS HEARD of Rabbi Smilksteen of Pokoik. Everyone has heard of Rabbi Merman, the Gaon of Vitebsk. Everyone has heard of Rabbi Grittle of Havemayer. Everyone has heard of Rabbi Blottis of Geldenhorn. These were famous men, they wrote long books, they had followers, they occupied positions and directed institutions, they were sheltered by buildings, and cooks brought them food. But who has ever heard of Jacob Bayer, who walked thousands and thousands of versts and taught thousands of students, and slept on the hard wooden benches of the hadarim? Nor was he entirely unknown, although how he became slightly famous and what happened subsequently have not been recorded and are bittersweet, as events that are largely forgotten often are. If he had not been physically so huge, perhaps the biggest person in the Baltic and White Russia, no one would know about him at all. But when Jacob Bayer walked into a town, even horses turned their heads.

  Before he came to Koidanyev he had been employed in a small heder in Pahzhilski-Dominitzin, which was one hundred twenty versts to the west of Minsk, whereas Koidanyev was to the east. The rabbi of Pahzhilski-Dominitzin had gone to check on the class and had come to an empty room. Running about in the summer heat with the physical symptoms of a panicked intellectual, he found Jacob Bayer and his students gathered at a fence that had been almost completely subsumed in dangerous brambles. Grasped in the fingers of each boy was a rose held as gingerly as if it were a bomb.

  “What is this?” the rabbi asked, feeding delightfully on the shock of discovering an irregularity.

  “What is what?” Jacob Bayer asked in return.

  “These boys are holding roses!”

  “Yes?”

  “Why?”

  “As we were reading the passage about the rose of Jericho, it became clear that none of them had ever held a rose. I’m teaching them the meaning of the word.”

  “By standing near a dangerous bush?”

  “Rabbi Bing-trellis,” said Jacob Bayer, “the word for rose was written to turn us to the rose itself. Without knowledge of the rose itself, the word is meaningless. Vered, as it is written, is beautiful, but the rose is more so.”

  The rabbi was so enraged and confused by this arrogant concretism and its resulting action—boys holding roses, by the thorny stems, in the sunshine—that the blood stayed in his head and made him the color of the roses themselves, though his neck was thicker than their stems, even if not by much. And although Jacob Bayer had been happy in Pahzhilski-Dominitzin and had begun to awaken in his students the love of truth, he was gone that night, heartbroken at yet another failure, another alienation, another expulsion, another going out. But as he walked under the summer stars—of June, 1913—his memory of the redness of the rose made his heart as light as moonlight, and floated him above all disappointments.

  JACOB BAYER had been told by his father that Koidanyev was a pious and interesting place of low hills and tall pines, with a clear river that rushed through it
freshening the air. In summer, people swam in the river, and the town that had formed along the banks was wealthy and beautiful. It had been known as the Switzerland of White Russia. Its metal and tile roofs, glinting above the blue-gray water, were famous throughout the pale, and the hills of Koidanyev caught the wind and afforded views over light-filled plains in all directions.

  After a week on the road, a sunburned and lean Jacob Bayer encountered three Jewish peasants fixing an irrigation gate. “Erev tov,” he said, using Hebrew to impress them. “Where is Koidanyev?”

  “Koidanyev! Everyone wants to go there,” said one, quite sullenly, “because, because. … You see, in the distance, that flash of light? That’s it.” Five or six versts away, the goldenness of the town caught the sun.

  Though most settlements of the pale were arranged along the road like the branches of a tree, not Koidanyev, because of its relation to the river. From the main highway a spur led directly to its heart. You entered upon this road and left on it. The road was bisected by the river, against which the citizens of Koidanyev had retaliated by bisecting the river with a bridge. When Jacob Bayer came to this bridge he saw two guards dressed in policemen’s caps. They wore belts from which hung pistols, and they were sorry, they said, but Koidanyev was full.

  “Full of what?” he asked.

  “Of people who have come to get rich. The rooms are taken, the streets are crowded, the restaurants are stuffed.”

  “Then there will be many children who will need teachers, and rabbis who will need assistants.”

  “They don’t do that anymore,” one of the guards said.

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Study.”

  “Torah?”

  The guard shook his head from side to side.

  “Talmud?”

  “No.”

  “Anything?”

  “Many things, but not these. They don’t need to.”