by Norman Lock
“Soon,” I said, not knowing why I hadn’t yet left the city.
“Don’t wait too long, Shelby, or the moment might pass you by.”
If it hasn’t already come and gone, I thought.
West Street Customs Office, May 12, 1882
Gibbs and I were down in the hold of the Harleem, which smelled aromatically of flaxseed oil, considered a delicacy by the Germans, who spoon it on potatoes. As on previous occasions, he behaved as if nothing were amiss between us. Naturally, I was suspicious, and as the afternoon wore on, I grew irritable, until I could no longer restrain myself.
“Why did you accuse me of defrauding the Customs Service?”
He gazed at me as though I’d denounced him for having taken a balloon ride to the moon.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he replied in astonishment.
“I was hauled before the officers of the port this morning to answer for myself. Or didn’t you know?”
By his look of amazement, you would have thought that I was an escaped lunatic.
“And what did you tell Martin Finch when you visited him last week?”
I expected him to deny the visit, but as unpredictable as always, he replied soberly, “I wanted to see how he was getting on.”
I laughed in his face. He took no offense, but, on the contrary, smiled warmly.
“His brother told me you upset him,” I said, ignoring the attempt to ingratiate himself.
“I don’t know why he would’ve said that. I stayed only a short time, and as far as I’m concerned, our meeting was amiable. Perhaps Franklin misunderstood Martin’s mood. Did he say what I’d done to upset him?”
I shook my head, suppressing the urge to strike him again.
“We’ve all been asking ourselves why you haven’t left for California—you and your friend. Has something happened to change your mind?” Had he pronounced friend in such a way that I should take offense?
I let my eyes probe his, but he was all solicitude, and I realized I could no more get the better of him than wrestle an anaconda.
“We haven’t had a chance to talk about our trip to ‘Aladdin’s,’” he said with a sly grin. “To relive it in all its choice details.”
I shivered, as though I’d been galvanized in the place where nightmares graze, appeasing their appetites on the memory of our crimes.
“I have nothing further to say to you, Gibbs!”
“I’ll never forget the sight of you lying on the Turkish rug, your clothing in the wildest disorder! I’ve been to the Slide once or twice since then, and your friends”—there it is, that sinister inflection!—“wish you would come again. You made a very favorable impression on them, my lad. I was as proud to have been your escort as I am to be your friend.”
I clenched my fists but forbore to strike him, knowing that it would give him a perverse satisfaction and stoke the fire of his enmity. The rage he had first shown, inside the hold of the Saxony, had turned inward. It lay coiled and waiting to unwind in a flash and rend his enemies. Smiling genially and talking of friendship, Gibbs had never been so dangerous as he was at that moment. Not content to insinuate, he became bolder as he worked the knife of his rancor into my vitals.
“I hope you will not blush, Shelby, if I allude to the special affection that one man will sometimes feel for another. The prudish call it ‘a sin’ and ‘an abomination,’ but we know the truth of human nature better than those hypocrites. You and I understand the love whose name cannot be spoken and, because it must remain a secret, is undying.”
Beware of the man who pledges his undying love; he can turn on you in an instant, if it profits him to do so.
“Well, Shelby?” His voice was silken. “Nothing to say?”
I turned from him and walked between the oaken casks waiting to be taxed. I would not let him see my hands shake.
The Finches’ House, May 14, 1882
At one o’clock, I left the pier and went to Maiden Lane. I found Martin in a terrible state of nerves.
“Why haven’t you been to see me?” shouted this timid man, who rarely raised his voice. “My foot is healed! We should have left already!”
“You seem in a god-awful hurry, Martin!”
“Have you changed your mind?” he demanded.
“No, I haven’t.” I paused, and then asked, “What happened the night John Gibbs came to visit you?”
Now it was Martin’s turn to be evasive. He blushed and stammered and finally managed to get the words out: “He wonders why we haven’t left for San Francisco.”
“Is that all?”
He turned ashen and began to bite a fingernail.
“What else did he say?” I spoke sternly, like a teacher interrogating a schoolboy.
He made no reply.
I pressed him. “What else, Martin?”
He wouldn’t answer. I let it go. I knew, without needing to be told, what had passed between them.
Why had Gibbs decided to go after Martin when it was me he wanted? Sitting in my cell, I had time to speculate on the whole sorry business and concluded that Gibbs’s motives might not have been clear even to himself. He wanted to destroy me—that much was clear. By ruining my reputation, he could hound me into the poorhouse or an early grave. Apparently, his revenge insisted on Martin’s destruction, as well. But was Gibbs driven by something else? I would not—could not—attempt an answer.
I managed to calm Martin with assurances that, within a week—two at most—we’d be boarding a transcontinental train at Grand Central Depot. I helped him into bed—he was as shaken as a child—and said good night.
Franklin and Ellen were waiting downstairs.
“Is he all right?” Franklin asked gruffly, in the manner of all large men whose feelings have been touched.
“Come into the kitchen, so he won’t hear us,” said Ellen.
She had made coffee, and when Franklin and I were seated, she poured three cups and joined us at the table.
“What’s the matter with him?” she asked. “Who was that man who came to see him?”
“His name is John Gibbs; he works on the pier.” I swallowed some coffee because my mouth was dry and because I wanted to postpone the lie I knew I would shortly tell. “Martin’s his helper. Gibbs wanted to know when he’d be coming back to work.”
“Doesn’t he know that you two are going west?” asked Franklin.
“No, he doesn’t.”
You know how it is. We tell lies the way we burn logs to keep the wolves at bay.
“I don’t approve of not giving proper notice,” said Franklin, frowning.
“Melville knows, and so do the collector, the naval officer, and the chief surveyor. I met with them yesterday to give my notice, as well as Martin’s, since he couldn’t be there himself.”
“Well, that’s all right, then,” said Franklin.
“I thought it better to keep Gibbs in the dark.”
“Why?” asked Ellen.
“He’s a mean-tempered so-and-so, who could make things difficult for Martin.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I’ve met his sort before,” said Franklin, nodding over his cup. “It does no good to rub his kind the wrong way.”
“Maybe he begrudges Martin his luck in getting away from the port. I know Gibbs hates his work.”
“He could do something to Martin out of spite. You did right to keep it from this Gibbs fellow, Shelby.”
I had satisfied the brother, but the sister-in-law looked doubtful. Women have an instinct for the truth, whether or not they choose to tell it.
“Are you sure that’s all there is to it?”
“That’s all there is.” I hated lying to her, but what else could I have done?
We were silent awhile, each occupied with his own thoughts.
“When do you and Martin plan on leaving?” asked Franklin, setting down his cup.
I had been running my hand over the yellow oilcloth that covered the k
itchen table. The sensation was luxurious, and I’d become insensible to the drama playing out around me.
“Shelby!” said Ellen, with a sharpness in her voice I had not heard before.
“Yes?” I must have looked an absolute fool.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m tired,” I said, glad to speak the truth for once. “It’s been a long day.”
“Well, we won’t keep you,” she said—almost coldly, I thought, unless my imagination had gotten the better of me.
“Finish your coffee, then off you go!” said Franklin with his usual lack of insight into the secret motions of the heart. His question regarding Martin and my departure had been forgotten.
Are you beginning to disapprove of me, Roebling? Are you sick of this “confession,” which seems to have no end? Every story is one made by its author—clothe it in raiment or rags, as he will. If it’s any consolation, you’ll never know if what I’ve been telling you is completely true or only partly so. One has to make allowances for the plot, which has its own power and obligations. To believe that life is plotless is to deny that the stars and planets have their fixed courses as they wander through the universe.
Roebling’s Second-Story Room on Brooklyn Heights, May 17, 1884
I am sorry I couldn’t have been here for the opening of your bridge. Melville forwarded the invitation to my cell in Sing Sing without comment. I’ve saved it for the sake of history and for the auction houses of the future, when the relics of our age will have acquired value. You see, Roebling, I still dream of posterity, if no longer of prosperity.
THE EAST RIVER BRIDGE
Will be opened to the public
Thursday, May 24, at two o’clock.
Col. & Mrs. Washington A. Roebling
Request the honor of your company
After the opening ceremony until seven o’clock.
110 Columbia Heights
Brooklyn
R.S.V.P.
According to the World, opening day was the most splendid celebration the city had witnessed since the inauguration of the Erie Canal in 1825 and, years later, the Confederacy’s capitulation. I heard about the great day from Melville, who would sometimes visit me while I was serving my sentence. My crime was other than conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Treasury. That affair had been settled by Melville’s defense. In actuality, it was overtaken by events.
According to the newspapers, both sides of the bridge were mobbed by the curious, in their tens of thousands, many of whom had spent the previous decade in ridiculing both it and you. Almost all our sacred institutions were closed for the day—banks, businesses, even the U.S. Custom House, which reluctantly suspended its hunt for frauds and swindles. The stock market remained open in honor of a higher purpose called “profit.” The roofs of Printing House Square, as well as those atop the Morse Building, the Temple Court Building, the Mills Building, and that owned by the Police Gazette were packed. Every window, doorway, and sidewalk was thronged, and boys were perched in trees and hanging like monkeys from the public monuments—all to watch the regiments and their bands parade through downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan. The best vantage had been appropriated by a solitary photographer sitting on top of the Manhattan tower. He was welcome to it!
The ships of the North Atlantic Squadron steamed underneath the bridge, as did the enormous excursion boat Grand Republic. The harbor bristled with masts and billowing stacks. The noise of artillery fire from the warships, answered by batteries at the navy yard, Fort Hamilton, and Governor’s Island, resounded in Manhattan’s cast-iron and granite chasms.
President Arthur, Governor Cleveland, and Mr. Edson, the mayor, led the parade across the bridge’s elevated promenade to Columbia Heights. At night, Chinese lanterns in the trees were lit, their feeble light swallowed by the illumination of seventy electric arc lamps. Only the spectacle of the fireworks could distract the crowd from its admiration of the spectacularly illuminated bridge.
Melville described the celebrations in great detail. Even now I can close my eyes and vividly picture “The People’s Day.” I’m sorry, Roebling, that you had to witness it through this window. You should have been at the head of the parade, walking beside Emily, not Chester A. Arthur, the mayor, Cleveland, and two hundred other dignitaries, who basked in the vivifying effect of public acclaim as if they had deserved it. All those high silk hats bobbing down Fifth Avenue and Broadway—I’d much rather see Barnum’s menagerie! The Irish protested. They are a pugnacious race and love rioting with a bottle or a stick of dynamite. The twenty-fourth of May also happened to be Queen Victoria’s birthday, and municipal authorities feared that the “Dynamite Patriots” would blow up the bridge in spite, regardless of how many of their own had died or sickened in building it. Revolutionaries ignore contradictions and are fond of ruins. Having lost my place at the top of the mountain, I wanted to clamber up again—not to blast it into rubble. My mountain had been no more than a termite mound beside the Alpine summits lorded over by “Diamond Jim” Fisk, Rockefeller, or Vanderbilt, but a termite mound is taller than an anthill. After a stretch in Sing Sing, my old room in Mrs. McFadden’s boardinghouse seemed like a palace, and I’d be living there now if she hadn’t let it to an Irish road mender.
My story is nearing its end. What follows may strike you as incredible. Maybe it is. We’ll leave it to the future to decide. Let us hope that the people there will be curious about us. I am pessimistic; it is easy to imagine an age that will repudiate its past, or—what is worse—not acknowledge it. The people will look at the dead without comprehension or recognition. “Who is this man?” a son will ask about the dead man who used to be his father. A young woman will come downstairs to breakfast and wonder who the old woman is, slumped over the table, her withered cheek lying in the butter dish.
The Finches’ House, May 18, 1882
In the early-morning hours after I had sat in the kitchen and lied to Franklin and Ellen, Martin went to Gansevoort Pier. Other than a watchman asleep in his shack, the dock was desolate. Once again, the earth was taking on form as the night gradually withdrew beyond the western horizon.
I don’t know why Martin would have gone alone to the pier. Whether in the hope of finding Melville and asking for his help or in obedience to Gibbs’s command, I can’t guess. He might have arranged to meet his tormentor at the scale house, with a mind to being rid of him once and for all. While I find it difficult to picture him confronting the older man on his own, fear can goad as sharply as desire, and cowards have been known to throw off their terror in desperation.
Melville opened the scale house door at eight o’clock and found Martin hanging from the balance beam. Questioned by police, the watchman stated that he hadn’t bothered to look inside, because he knew it to be empty of freight—the cotton bales recently arrived from New Orleans having been forwarded to the mill on the previous day. And so it was that the assistant weigher was himself weighed. If he was found wanting in the scale of justice, only God—the collector and appraiser of souls—knows. Once I believed in universal justice, by which men and women ultimately got what they deserved. In this Gilded Age, however, the mechanism of reward and retribution is as readily tampered with as a grocer’s scale. Ours is a time of false weights, false measures, false promises, and false hopes. In an age such as this, God will not stay the hand of Abraham, whose face is turned expectantly to heaven as he holds the flaying knife to the throat of his son Isaac, half brother of Ishmael, of whom the angel said to Hagar, his mother, “And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him.” So it has been since the days of Cain that men’s hands have been clenched into fists or about the throats of their fellows.
When I arrived later that morning, I was greeted by Melville, who stood up behind his desk—a formality unusual for him. The American aristocracy, said not to exist, except in the imaginations of reformers, anarchists, and muckraking journalists, both courts and covets the old regime, to wh
ich Herman’s father, Allan, martyred himself and his family in vainly trying to join it. His son would have none of it, preferring admittance to the society of successful writers, which insisted on excluding and finally ignoring him.
“You’re white as a sheet,” said Melville, coming from behind his desk and taking me by the arm. “Sit down.”
He had just finished giving me the news of Martin’s suicide. I was leaning against my desk, dazed and wanting to be sick. Inside the office, all was still, as if waiting for instructions, while outside a wind was rattling the window in its sill. He took the flask from his jacket pocket and gave me rum to drink, and then we waited as if for something to happen that would cut us down from the hook by which we two seemed suspended. In spite of myself, I watched Melville’s eyes turn inward, where his thoughts were revolving in their own eccentric orbits.
Finally, he broke the silence with an unsettling observation: “The horrific aspect of the case is that Finch hanged himself by degrees—piling weight upon weight in the pan at one end of the beam while the noose slowly tightened around his neck at the other end. He would have been lifted gradually up onto his toes and then beyond their reach of the ground, at which point he’d have been asphyxiated. The weights are still in the pan—the topmost one is the straw that broke poor Martin’s neck. Thus was Giles Corey crushed to death by the Salem magistrates for his refusal to admit to witchery, as stone was piled on top of stone.”
There is a sliver, a fraction, the merest hairsbreadth between the quick and the dead, I thought. If one day I were to write a story, I’d set it there—at the fatal intersection, where a remnant of life meets an intimation of death. I can’t imagine a more excruciating crisis. What happens in that instant would test every metaphysical notion our kind has entertained since the first philosopher. Such a tale, if carried to its conclusion, could shatter worlds, never mind a human breast.
In due course, Martin’s body was conveyed by a freight wagon to Maiden Lane, where he was washed, dressed, combed, rouged, and put on view inside a coffin plain as a Quaker’s barn. Melville and I went and swelled a little group of mourners fitted into the parlor. Franklin stood stiffly in a new suit and starched collar, his arm protectively encircling Ellen’s small waist. She sniffled; her eyes and nose were red from weeping. God forgive me, but I felt repelled by her mask of sorrow. Lying in repose, which churchmen and morticians call “eternal,” Martin didn’t look in the least as though he were asleep—an observation often made at wakes and funerals, by way of consolation. A halibut on a bed of ice at the Fulton Fish Market could not have looked any the less dead. The thoughts that sometimes enter, unbidden and unwelcome, into one’s head are hardly Christian, though all too human. Silently, I apologized to Martin for my heartlessness and to Ellen and Franklin for my irreverence. I shuddered to think of my young protégé about to begin his tenancy in a plot of earth at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, a destination that his parents and mine had already reached and to which Ellen and Franklin would one day arrive, each in turn, on board a hearse pulled by a black horse plumed with jet feathers.