by Norman Lock
Yes, I read it in the papers at the time: The Manhattan tower rests on sand. You stopped thirty feet short of bedrock, knowing the bridge would be upheld by mathematics. It was a gamble, and one we all must take eventually: to hazard “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” on an uncertain foundation. Barnum is for Barnum, and it’s a silly business to rely on pachyderms for proof! But they will prove you correct, Roebling, once they’ve plodded across the river from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Your bridge will still be standing.
If you like, I’ll finish the story I began two years ago. I’ll tell you how my life slipped out from under me.
The Slide at 157 Bleecker Street, the Bowery, April 24, 1882
I didn’t visit Martin for a week after the accident. There was no reason I should have gone sooner. What purpose would have been served? We were not bound like the Siamese twins Chang and Eng, whom I once saw at Barnum’s circus. Would you call them twins, or being indivisible, did they constitute a single person? In any case, Martin and I were no more than friends, and only once have I felt the attachment for another that surpasses all the rest.
In his absence, Gibbs and I worked together, and as he’d done previously, he acted as if nothing extraordinary had passed between us. He was downright amiable and behaved toward me in a manner he must have thought charming. He was all smiles and pleasantries and would bring me small treats to savor: a jar of oysters, a slab of gammon, a cold meat pie, and once a sea cucumber from the chink’s doggery on Mott Street, which I couldn’t stomach. Each night when we parted, he’d pat my shoulder and wish me a safe journey home. He appeared to be a changed man, but I never trusted him. I don’t believe in the reformation of churches or of men. God and His creatures are immutable, or else the world would unravel into nothing, like a ball of wool.
I recall one afternoon in particular: We had gone down into the hold of a Dutch merchant ship to weigh and appraise a shipment of woolen cloth from Leyden.
“How is friend Martin?” asked Gibbs solicitously. “I hope his foot is mending.”
We had paused to smoke a cigar.
“Why should I know or care what’s become of Martin Finch?” I replied waspishly. It was a foolish question—the reflex action, say, of a starfish, one of whose arms has been poked with a stick.
“Why, isn’t he your friend?” asked Gibbs, amazed. “Before the poor fellow’s accident, you two were thick as thieves.”
“We are acquaintances.”
He sniffed and his nostrils flared. Had he been a bloodhound, he’d have bayed at the scent of a discovery worth the hunt and worthy of being torn apart.
“We have interests in common.”
“Ah! Reading books and such.”
Had he followed us to the library?
“We enjoy a yarn,” I said with the air of a man who likes to sit around a barrel of corn whiskey and guffaw over a vicious tale with his fellow good-for-nothings.
“We all do!” said Gibbs, and laughed. “A good yarn beats diddling a woman’s cunny. Am I right, Shelby?”
I could feel my face redden. “I don’t know about that!” I said, accompanied by what I judged to be an indecent wink.
“Ha! There’s the lad!” He smoked his cigar thoughtfully and then said, “Let’s you and me go see what the world of men is really like.”
He noted my hesitation.
“Come on, man! I’ll show you the sights of the city you missed when you were a big bug uptown. Unless you’d rather visit an injured friend,” he simpered tenderly. “Were you planning to see poor Martin Finch tonight?”
“No,” I snapped. “Why would I be?”
“Then you’ll let me take you on a trip to the Bowery, the pesthole where I grew up.”
I agreed. What else could I have done?
WE RODE A HORSECAR DOWN HUDSON STREET to Bleecker and then walked to a disreputable-looking house at number 157. It was like any other house in the street, save that through its windows I could see men and women behaving as though the curtains were not open to the inspection of the curious.
“Welcome to the Slide, Shelby!” said Gibbs, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. Had they been wooden instead of flesh, they’d have burst into flame. “Though we frequenters of the place call it ‘the Palace of Aladdin,’ in view of its manifold delights.”
We went inside the vestibule and, pushing through a beaded curtain, stepped into a large room infernally illuminated by gas fixtures, where every manner of vice was on display. I won’t bore you with a catalogue, Roebling, which would be varied and sordid. Suffice it to say, I’d never before encountered such depraved goings-on, except in the pages of The Pearl, which I threw into the fire in disgust.
A particularly wicked image is engraved on my memory: A woman was kneeling before a rowdy, who looked never to have bathed. Roebling, you are a man of the world and know that sometimes we will stumble on a forbidden scene and cannot tear our eyes away. I’m ashamed to have stood there openmouthed and watched as all around me men and women were behaving with equal shamelessness. But the worst was yet to come. Gibbs went to the kneeling woman, whispered in her ear something that made her smile, and then pulled quickly at her hair, which came away in his hands! It was then I realized that the woman was a man!
The viperous congregation turned to me while, one by one, the women changed their gender as easily as you doff your hat. They regarded me with amusement, their faces sweaty and evil-looking, paint and rouge smeared, their wigs clutched in hands whose fingernails were long and lacquered. I could have vomited on the Turkish rug, where damascene pillows suggested to my overheated fancy the languid attitudes of vice. I was overcome by nausea. I pinched my arm like a child, hoping to find that I was dreaming. Roebling, I did not know where to set my eyes! So this is Whitman’s “manly attachments” and “athletic love!” I said to myself, feeling revulsion for the old man. Then they came at me, slithering on all fours like snakes. I was sinking into the delirium experienced by drunkards at the frothy frontier of madness.
You may think that I made too much of it, Roebling; that I had only to turn on my heels to put the scene behind me. But I was gripped by a debility—what you and the sandhogs would have felt when oppressed by the malady of men out of their depth. Had the house—a house such as Edgar Poe would have lovingly described—been set afire by the torches of an outraged mob gathered in the street, I could not have moved—no, not even to save myself from burning.
I stood, immobile and oddly impassive, while the savages pulled me to the floor and ate me—faces turned to masks of greedy appetite, and their hands and mouths turned bloodred by the ruby-shaded lamps.
I don’t know why I’m telling you this story, of all the stories that constitute my life. It feels as though it never happened, or happened to somebody else. Even now I look back on that night in disbelief, like a man who caught his reflection doing something shameful in a mirror. That’s the way of stories, and why we’re right to fear them.
While I lay upon the floor, my mind passed in and out of darkness like a leaf moving in a breeze from light into shade and back again. At times, the room was black as pitch; at others, it was lighted by the lamps’ lurid shades. Awakened, I longed for darkness and insensibility, but no sooner had I lapsed into stupefaction than I would be roughly brought to consciousness by a jarring noise or rude handling and would feel, upon emerging from my “caisson,” a gnawing on my bones.
Was I imagining it?
I don’t know; I might have been. I was beside myself. A nice expression—don’t you think? It draws a picture of me standing next to some other me. A Chang and Eng! I saw, or thought I did, the hideous Gibbs. He seemed to be everywhere in the room—more goatish satyr than a man. He was the image and definition of depravity. The worst of it was, I knew that I’d struck a bargain with him, whose terms had yet to be disclosed.
The Finches’ House in Maiden Lane, April 25, 1882
The following day, I sent word to Melville that I’d taken sick.
I did not say that the trouble lay within my soul. Maybe I should have; few others could have understood that organ and its maladies better than he. I wanted to be by myself awhile and worry the sharp tooth of guilt. I had done nothing worse at the Slide than to succumb to inertia. What others may have done to me cannot be charged to my account by an earthly or a heavenly tribunal. But conscience can be perverse, assigning guilt where none is deserved.
I wanted to atone!
I say again, Roebling, that I had nothing for which to atone. In any case, I felt guilty that I had not yet paid Martin a visit. He’d been charming company, and we’d grown close enough in spirit to speak frankly in a world where candor is seldom possible and rarely welcomed. Damn it, I had valued Martin as a friend and saw no reason why I shouldn’t visit him!
I rode an omnibus down Eighth as far as Greenwich Lane, then walked east to Broadway. The marvelous air and light and many scenes of contentment along the great thoroughfare were tonic for one whose mind was in turmoil. The locusts were already blooming, and the chestnuts seemed impatient to show their blossoms. On such a day, the world rediscovers its instinctual leaning toward spring and clemency. I studied the shop windows, thinking that I ought to buy a gift for Martin after having neglected him. In a bookseller’s on Broome Street, I hunted among volumes of poetry for one whose gift would not be misconstrued. Tennyson, perhaps, or Keats. And then my eyes lighted on a book by Melville: Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. I bought it at once, persuaded by its subtitle, although I was ignorant of its contents.
In Canal Street, I bought three cigars—for Martin, Franklin, and me. There are few places as pleasant as a tobacconist’s. One can stand and dream amid the humidors of the fragrant ends of the earth.
Arriving at the Finches’ house in Maiden Lane, I knocked and was shown inside by Franklin’s wife, whom I hadn’t met during my first visit. She’s a pretty woman, no older, I would guess, than thirty. She has an Irish colleen’s face, fair and lightly freckled; her eyes are green and flecked with gold; her smile is warm, her hair russet. She’d been in the kitchen when I knocked, and was apologizing for her hand, which felt moist and floury as I took it in greeting. Her smile was frank, her laugh delightful, and I thought that any man could easily be bewitched by her.
“Martin’s in his room. Why don’t you go up and visit?”
I hesitated.
“Martin!” she called up the staircase.
“Well?”
“You’ve a visitor!” Her voice, although raised, lost none of its sweetness. “Shelby Ross is here to see you.”
“Send him up!” Martin shouted in response.
“You’ll stay for supper!” she said peremptorily.
Her name is Ellen, by the way, and if one were liable to falling in love, she would be a likely object of affection.
“Hello, Shelby!” cried Martin as I walked into his room. “I’m glad you stopped!”
I had been afraid of finding him morose or, worse, angry for my not having come to see him sooner. His expression, however, conveyed only a genuine pleasure at my visit.
“How are you?” I asked, determined to put behind me the upheaval of the previous night. “You look well.”
“I feel well!”
I was unprepared for his jubilation; his mood could be called by no other name.
“Sit down!” he said. In his excitement, he spoke in the imperative.
I sat in a straight-backed chair by the window, through which I could see your bridge, Roebling, towering above the rooftops. It is the presiding muse and judge of all who beetle about in the streets of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.
“You seem uncommonly cheerful,” I said, “for a man who’s lost his toes.”
“Not all of them, Shelby; I’ve enough left to be getting on with.”
“Here. I bought you something.”
I gave him Clarel. He glanced at it and offered a perfunctory “Thank you” before putting it aside. I was offended by his lack of interest in the gift but believed that I deserved no better. I realize now that my mind had been stained by the horrors of the Palace of Aladdin; its memory was a stain, which took the shape in my fancy of everything we consider monstrous.
“What’s got you so excited, Martin?”
“While lying here, I thought of the most extraordinary plan!”
“What might that be?”
To leave—”
“Leave?”
“—and go out west! I couldn’t wait to tell you.”
I should have realized that what he really hoped to leave was Gibbs, but I didn’t then.
“And what will you do there? Dig for gold? Carry the Word into the wilderness and convert the savages? Join the cavalry and murder them? Or do you want to be a cowboy—or a cardsharp on a Mississippi riverboat?”
In the intoxication of his idea, he did not notice my mockery. I couldn’t see it, Roebling. He was too damned slender and refined. Why, he seemed to be verging on frailty! I still could not picture him in a native canoe on the Río de la Plata, where he’d been stricken with malaria.
“Martin, you were pulling my leg!”
“I’m perfectly serious.”
“It takes money to emigrate, unless you intend to walk across the continent and live off the land like one of Sherman’s ‘bummers.’”
“I’ve got money saved,” he said, unwilling to be put off by a joke. “I was saving for a trip to Italy to see the frescoes and whatnot. It was always my dream, Shelby, to travel for a while in the Old World. But I’ve decided to go west, young man! And you, my not-so-young friend, are going with me!”
He had spoken grandly and with such flourish that I could picture a cartouche in the air enclosing his fervent words—each sentence finishing in an exclamation mark.
“You must’ve lost your last wit lying here. Or did the sack hit you on the head after all?”
“If you’ll be serious a moment, you’ll see the beauty of it. We’ll take the transcontinental to Frisco. I have an uncle there. He owns a small newspaper. I telegraphed him two days ago, and he immediately replied, ‘Yes.’”
“‘Yes’ to what, exactly?”
“To our going out to work for him! You’re not following very well, Shelby. You look like raw liver, by the way.”
“I don’t know anything about a newspaper, except how to read it, preferably with gloves on to keep my fingers clean.”
“I’m going to be a reporter—I can write as well as the next man. And you, Shelby, are going to manage the circulation. Any damn fool can do it!”
In his enthusiasm, he’d managed once again to offend me.
“The man whom you’ll be replacing had a seizure last week and died.”
“Undoubtedly from poor circulation.”
He ignored my flippancy. “Don’t you see? It was meant to be!”
I fell silent, picturing myself in San Francisco, managing the circulation. I admit the idea was not so preposterous as I’d first believed. Why not start again someplace new?
“We’ll leave as soon as my foot’s healed. What do you say?” He put out his hand. “Partners?”
I found myself clasping Martin’s hand and saying, “I see nothing to stop us!” I had been swept away by the “beauty of it.” Then I remembered that my means were slender, my savings nonexistent. “But I have no money of my own to speak of.”
“I’ve enough to get us started. We’ll need to be frugal—no Pullman car, champagne, buffalo tongue, and oysters.”
No trousseau or wedding supper, I said to myself, and immediately shook my head to rid it of the thought. The “Imp of the Perverse” was thumbing its nose at me.
“We’ll pack a few things and vamoose. Uncle Myer is sending tickets. He’s even found a cheap hotel near the Presidio where we can flop till we get on our feet.”
“Minus a few toes.”
“Reporters don’t write or type with their feet,” he said, laughing.
“Do Franklin and Ellen know?”
“They think it’s a grand idea! In fact, I promised to look around to see if I can find a typesetter’s berth for Franklin. This city’s going to the dogs.”
After they had brought Boss Tweed home in handcuffs from Spain and locked him in Ludlow Street Jail, where he had the good sense to die of pneumonia, we thought to have seen the last of Tammany Hall and its henchmen. It didn’t take Tweed’s old cronies long to crown “Honest John” Kelly the new king of the dunghill. Not dogs, but rats have taken over the town, and the pickings are choice.
“Out there, we can make something of ourselves! We can make ourselves over.”
“And Ellen?” I asked.
“She’s the sort who can find a job anywhere.”
“What does she do?”
In the space of the family’s foyer and in the briefest of durations, she had captivated me. And why not? I’m a man like any other.
“She operates a Sholes typewriter.”
That explained her hands, which were smooth and attractive, with nicely shaped nails. On the Eighth Avenue ’bus, I’d watched a young conductor flirt with another Irish girl. Her face, like Ellen’s, was fair, and her hair ginger. She’d replied to his impertinences in a sweetly lilting voice, which nonetheless was capable of paying him back in kind. She was pretty, save for her hands, which looked boiled. I recognized them as belonging to a laundress.
“That is a highly desirable skill,” I said earnestly.
“She’s very good at her job. She works for a stenographic bureau. She’s been typing manuscripts for Henry James while he’s staying in New York.”
The name Henry James meant nothing to me.
That evening with Ellen, Franklin, and Martin was one of the happiest in memory. My supper with the Melvilles could not hold a candle to it—no, not even if Herman in a temper had set fire to the tablecloth. Unlike that night, which had ended in rancor and, after too much drink, in stupefaction, the conversation on Maiden Lane was lively and amiable. The Finches were charming, and in that I can be charming, as well, I was able to hold my own. But they were far more cultivated than I, and when they got onto books, the theater, or the opera, I’d fiddle with my fork or tap my nose thoughtfully with a spoon.