by Mark Helprin
It was assumed that his crookedness, massive size, and unwholesome agitated way of living would quickly send him to the grave, and the Baymen were puzzled that he lived on while the rest died off. They thought he had nothing to live for, but they were wrong. He loved butterflies, and secretly believed that he, like the caterpillar, would lose his monstrous self to become a bright and graceful creature that everyone loved. As the years passed, he waited for his own molting, infused with a single purpose and strengthened by a single expectation. He was so invigorated by this belief, in fact, that he lived far beyond his time, until he was terrifyingly old even among a people of noted longevity. By the winter months just before the third millennium, he was the only one left on the marsh, and had been alone for several decades. It was fortunate, in a way, that the Baymen were no longer there to see what had happened to their world, and that the one who remained had been trained all his life to weather every kind of misery and see only into the far and hopeful future.
Hard times, prosperity, and war—in short, history—had brought about the development of the harbor and the decline of the marsh upon which the Baymen depended completely. In boom times, factories and the port expanded over the reeds and mud, changing living ground into something no more productive than rock. In depressions, public-works crews came to fill in the margins between land and water: since it was impossible either to walk there or go there in a boat, these areas were perceived as enemies of the body politic. In war, the land was taken for shipyards, freight terminals, and matériel depots. New roads, beginning with the Pulaski Skyway, were driven like arrows and spears through the heart of the marsh, and airboats and helicopters took from it its depth and serenity. The waters were poisoned and littered with greases and filth. Half a hundred refineries and chemical works made breathing a valiant deed. The cloud wall receded to a different locale. Though now and then it would sweep in and throw down some confused soul, or pull one after it as it fled, it seemed to prefer the open sea.
Some of the Baymen had been shot by police at the edges of the marsh, some crushed by huge ships in the expanded roads, and some caught under rushing cabin cruisers that sped down the channels with music blaring and oiled sunbathers splayed across their decks. As the century progressed and the refineries increased their output, the children began to be born in fantastic shapes, but, unlike Abysmillard, most of them had no talent for survival. Eventually, only Humpstone John, Abysmillard, and a younger man named Boojian were left. Humpstone John died of the ague. Boojian ventured too far toward the edge of the ice and was swept into the winter sea.
Abysmillard tried to live on in what was left of his house, but duck hunters and trappers were drawn to it in hopes of using it as a blind or a storage place, and if they encountered its owner inside their response was invariably one of such fear and loathing that they would shoot as a form of therapy, to exorcise the creature that lay in the darkness and stared at them with the impossible hollow eyes of the past. Though they missed him when they shot, they made a lot of holes in the thattle and waub. Fearing that they would someday hit their target, he moved into a soft damp hole in the earth, a muskrat burrow that he claimed after the muskrats had fled because the water in its vicinity had become too oily. This was a kind of grave, but it had an exit.
Every few days, he went out in the darkness to forage. He lived on reed shoots, snails, little darters that he caught in the nets that he could still weave, and a clam or two when he was able to find them. If he were fortunate, he might land a salmon or a shad that had come into the rainbow slicks by accident, or catch a migrating bird that had had the temerity to land. Everything he ate tasted as if it had been raised in a garage, but he didn’t eat much, and was saved.
For most of his life he had been huge—seven feet tall and three hundred pounds. Just before the beginning of the third millennium, he was only five feet tall and he weighed about a third of what he had weighed before. For twenty years or more as he lay in his burrow, breathing slowly, staring blankly ahead like a man with a fever, he had been changing. It was so slow that he never knew, but his flesh was rearranging.
The teeth had gradually aligned until they no longer pointed hither and thither, but only hither, and his eyes had become syncopated. What a great relief not to have to stare in two directions at once! And now that he could perceive depth he felt that he was more of the world, rather than an observer of flat pictures. As his body fed upon itself, it showed admirable discipline in partaking of the worst first. The boils, sores, goiters, and fungal constructions disappeared. His hair, no longer matted after he had nearly drowned in a sump hole filled with turpentine and kerosene (this killed all the bugs, too), was now white and flowing. Thoroughly dry-cleaned for the first time, his clothes became as soft and fluffy as they were the day the Baywomen made them from the wool of beach sheep and peccaries.
Abysmillard was aware only that he was slowly starving to death, that the seasons passed, and that he was still alive. Like the animals, he was capable of staying still for periods that seemed like an eternity. He did little more than look at the light and listen to the wind. In winter he could see snowflakes landing just beyond the exit of his burrow, and the sun would come down low enough to shine like a hunter’s flashlight and blind him as it reached to warm the underground. Blizzards sometimes raged above, entertaining him with their wailings and concussions. If a low-flying plane roared over the marsh, he thought that an angel was coming to take him.
This slow diminution could have continued until he was as thin as a thread, at which point he might have been eaten by the air or taken up by the wind and blown as far away as Polynesia. But he was forced from his resting place.
In the ancient fire dreams of the Baymen, the last days, though difficult, were not to be feared. According to the Thirteenth Song, a sure sign that the last days had arrived was “when a solid rainbow springs from the ice to leap the white curtain, and on its arc of beating lights are a thousand smiling steps.” As workers stayed through the night to build them all around the marsh, Abysmillard was able to see the piers and foundations of this rainbow. Though the sites were cluttered with huge scaffoldings and shrouds, they often lit up and glowed, and light in many colors practically burned through the flapping tarpaulins. Because he knew the Thirteenth Song, Abysmillard suspected that these piers would generate beams to be joined into a single magnificent arc.
He would have been content to wait for this quietly, but the ice was so thick that he could no longer get food. He tried to chop through it with his wooden adze, and even with his sword (the sword was seldom disgraced with such a task). Never had he seen such a perfect mirror. And the last time he had tried to make a hole in it, he had seen when the leads were connected in the scattered foundations that the light on the surface was as nothing compared to the multicolored streets and avenues which shot through the frozen world below. The woven beams ignited like flash powder and remained in front of Abysmillard’s eyes for half an hour as he groped about, blinded, trying to find his tools.
His only hope was to get to the edge of the ice where it met the sea, where he could fish right off the shelf or bore a hole in it because it was not as thick as the more stable inland ice. A long time before, when the harbor had frozen over and the Baymen were still on the marsh by the thousands, in dozens of villages, they had gone to the sea and had lost many men. Sometimes, he remembered, eight-foot waves had leapt over the ice like a great tongue, and pulled the fishermen into the frigid ocean. Men vanished among the undulating shards of razor-sharp ice, and were cut up in so many pieces that by the time their friends reached the spot where they had disappeared, the only thing to see would be a bright red patch blooming smoothly against the underside of the transparent floor upon which they stood.
To go there alone at night was most dangerous, since it would be hard for him to make his way over the fractured ridges, the wind was high, and the ocean sent tides slithering for miles along the frozen surface. In the dark he would have litt
le chance of seeing or avoiding them. It was not likely, however, that he would ever reach the sea, since a fifteen-mile walk in subzero winds was not an easy matter for someone of his frailty. Like all Baymen, he was drawn to danger, and he set out one night when the moon lit the way and the cold was an angel with a sword of ice.
Though he was only partially aware of it, he had finally come into his own. He moved with grace, his eyes had become kind and intelligent, his long white hair flowed like that of a patriarch, and he was now ready to enter the thriving communities from which he had been excluded all his life. But there was no one left! Though he had come through to the end, he had come through without ever having been embraced. He supposed that there were others like him, perhaps whole legions. And he imagined that it would not be just for so many people to have lived through such loneliness and not come to a final reward. This gave him courage for his last walk on the ice.
PEOPLE WERE thrilled by the sudden onset of so great and (they thought) so unprecedented a winter. Even those who feared and hated cold weather and snow were quickly seduced by the silvery polar nights, and joined in a medieval pageant of sledding, gatherings about the fire, and evenings under the stars. It was as if the occasional joyful paralysis that winter sometimes lays at the foot of Christmas had come for good. Layers of clothing made the flesh more mysterious and enticing than it had been in many a year, a certain courtliness was restored, and the struggle against the elements reduced everyone in scale just enough for people to realize that one of the fundamental qualities of humanity was and would always be its delicacy. The entranced citizens did not go to so many places or work as hard as they usually did, but they lived far better than they had ever lived.
A favorite pastime was to skate down the rivers to the harbor. High winds kept the surface of the ice clear of snow and piled it up against the banks of the Hudson, the East River, and the shores of the bay, in many-storied ramparts through which had been driven—on the model of the Roman catacombs—a hundred thousand passages and tunnels leading to the snow rooms that served as impromptu restaurants, hotels, shops, and inns. The informality and variety of these nameless places proved far more attractive than the conventional stores in the city, and New Yorkers did everything they could to escape the squares and rectangles into which Manhattan had been scored, and get to the serpentine snow cities. Crescents, circles, dim galleries with partially inclined paths, and rooms that led to chambers that led to chains of halls, caverns, and secret places, did a lot to free and delight those who had been brought up on the right angle. Skaters glided from place to place, losing track of time and disappearing for days into the cities of the snowbanks. Whole families went there to sleep in the snow rooms, eat roasted meats on tiny skewers, and take part in the ice races—only to realize that they had been gone for days at a time, and that all their appointments had been violently broken. But often those with whom they were supposed to have met had forgotten as well, and were themselves to be found on the ice. The snowbanks and the long frozen rivers were, however, just the means to get to the harbor, which, by day, was now like a plain that held assembled armies, and by night a festival and observatory of the stars.
Thousands of tents were pitched on the ice, rivaling the snow palaces. If one did not cheat and move between rows, one could easily be lost in a maze of alleys and avenues that were filled with skaters, merchants, and teams of colorfully clad hockey players, racers, or curlers traveling to tournaments in the great squares that were placed at random throughout the tent city. Above innumerable fireboxes, caldrons steamed and boiled, lobsters tumbled, and many grosses of eggs jiggled in the hysterical dances of the legless bald. Roasted meats, hot drinks, and fragrant fruit pies that were baked in brick ovens which had been built on the ice, were everywhere and cheap. Trick skaters, jugglers, acrobats, music students, and dancing pigs performed at the busier junctions. Children zipped about on their skates like supersonic mites, passing through crowds and under tables laden with merchandise or food. The nine-year-old boys seemed to be the fastest and the most daring. They were as skinny as elastic bands, knew no danger, and stopped only long enough to shovel fruit pastries into their mouths. Then they were off at a hundred miles an hour, dodging, darting, and continually raving in squeaky voices for everyone to move out of their way. As speedy as pions, muons, and charmed quarks, they were all places at once, the possessors of pure and boundless energy.
At night the fires burned until nine, and then were damped down and put under grates so as not to interfere with the astronomical observations. A strange residue of warmth lingered until well after midnight, permitting intense scrutiny of the heavens. Entrepreneurs rented out thick pads and quilts for people to use as they lay on their backs absorbed by the celestial sphere. Though the inhabitants of New York had hardly been aware of the stars for a hundred years, they now were highly enamored of them.
Not only astronomers, but various astrologers, charlatans, and quacks in pointy hats and sequined boots discoursed for a fee upon the Pleiades, Sextans, Rigel, Kent, Pavo, Gacrux, Argo Navis, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, and Atria. Little books about the stars stuck out of many back pockets, telescopes and tripods proliferated into a forest of three-legged trees, and the populace became aware for the first time in a long while that something existed that all could love and never lack. Had it continued, this might have taken the city very far. But every night the wonder was balanced by the scourge of winds so fierce and cold that the tents came down, and the ice was abandoned so completely that in the morning all that was left were the boxy ovens—and even they were moved by the wind, colliding like curling stones. As the days grew shorter and real winter piled its severities upon those of the winter that was charmed, the ice became less and less hospitable, and the hours of astronomical observation were steadily reduced.
Early one morning, Peter Lake went down to The Sun’s slip at Whitehall to help Asbury fix the engine of the launch.
Though the sun had just risen and was putting things in a fresh and vigorous light, the air was still very cold, and they could hardly speak. They built a fire in an oil-drum, and every five or ten minutes they climbed down from the launch to warm their hands. Since they were working with steel and had to touch it often, their fingers quickly got numb. As Peter Lake and Asbury crouched by the fire, they stared across the deserted plain of ice that had formed over the once busy harbor.
A hundred thousand people had been there the night before, but that morning there was not a single soul. All the tents had been packed up, everyone had retreated either to the snow city or to the city itself, and the ice was clear except for a few brick ovens which looked like mileposts, or pegs stuck in the ground. When the sun cleared the tops of the houses in Brooklyn Heights, the harbor turned blue and white, and a tremendous wind was generated as the sunlight woke the cold air over the ice. Their fire blazed up, and they bent their heads to protect their eyes from the wind. Pieces of paper flew past them in the air, and bits of litter (cans, tiny chunks of wood, sticks, tent stakes) shot across the ice like hockey pucks, and lodged in the walls of the snow cities. This was the wind that swept the ice clear of anything except the ponderous brick ovens, which moved as slowly as sick elephants.
“What’s that?” Asbury asked, pointing to a sacklike thing that was skidding along the ice. Judging from the way it moved, they thought it was fairly heavy. Sometimes it would stay put on a dent in the ice until the wind turned it. Then it would start off again, slowly, and build up momentum. And when it stopped, it stopped as gradually as it had started. Unlike the smaller projectiles that shot by, it appeared to be moving with graceful deliberation.
Only when they saw the arms flailing listlessly in slow motion did they realize that it was a man. Undoubtedly he was frozen solid, but constant movement had kept the shoulders supple, and his arms tumbled alongside his body as delicately as petals falling off a rose.
They ran out on the ice, where they caught him and turned him over. Grimacing and immobile, coat
ed with hoarfrost and snow, a St. Nicholas face greeted them from a mass of homespun rags, wool, and pelts.
For a moment, Peter Lake hesitated. He nearly let the opportunity pass. But, kneeling on one knee, he lifted the body halfway off the ice, and held it in his arms. “Abysmillard,” he whispered, suddenly pulled back a full century by a strong recollection of the harbor when the Baymen were its masters. Though Abysmillard’s face was coated with rime, it spoke to Peter Lake only of summer.
Now he remembered poling a canoe through infinite shallows and jumping out to drag it across sandbars the color of butter. The city itself was far away, obscured by mist and waves of heat. As a boy, he had never really had to look at it, but he had always known that it was there. He saw in memory a shabbily clothed child lost and contented in the world of the marsh, where it seemed to be summer all the time, and the strength and accuracy of his recollection suggested that although he had left that time behind, it was still replaying itself.
“You know him?” Asbury asked. “Where did he come from?” Especially in his frozen and gnarled condition, Abysmillard did not look much like a modern man.
“Over there,” Peter Lake answered, looking toward what had once been the Bayonne Marsh. “People used to live there, like Indians. They had clams, oysters, scallops, lobsters, fish, wildfowl, saltwater boar, berries, peat, and driftwood. But that was a long time ago, and things have changed. Now the marshes are hell.”
“He must have been the last one,” Asbury said, unnerved by the savage and unfamiliar face of Abysmillard.
“No,” said Peter Lake. “I am.”
Ex Machina
PERHAPS INSTINCTUAL knowledge of the Last Judgment is widespread because a life that leads to death is a perfect emblem for a history that at some time will be judged: both are stopped, stripped, and illuminated by the same powerful light. Or perhaps it is because, in living, one muddles through the years for the sake of those one or two moments which are indisputably great. Though such moments can occur on the battlefield, in a cathedral, at the summit of a mountain, or during storms at sea, they are experienced more frequently at a bedside, on the beach, in moldy courts of law, or while driving down sun-warmed macadam roads on inauspicious summer afternoons: for the castles of the modern age are divided into very small rooms. These rooms, nonetheless, are often crowded with large numbers of people, because history favors mass, and proffers greatness most readily when all the soldiers of an army have gathered on one field, when a cathedral is packed to the rafters, or when the mist lifts and the ships of an invasion fleet discover that, far from being alone, they are a breathtaking armada.