by Mark Helprin
The turbulent breezes which crossed and folded above seemed also to be mild, despite the clarity of the air. Had they closed their eyes, they could easily have imagined palms. They had never realized that spring announced itself by running rings of lapping fire. It was half over, and they slid down the hill and began their walk to the factory.
They expected to resume the slaughter. But Monroe came to them and said, “Tonight they stopped it. You can wash in the baths, and go see the whores. Are you tired? You see, I told you. Some times, they go to the whores two times, or three times, or none at all. You can go once.” He smiled, and padded away. Then he turned, saying, “C’mon, I’ll take you to the baths.”
They came to a little wooden door at the end of a walk which wound between the giant buildings. Mornoe opened it. It seemed as if no one had been there in a long time, though it smelled quite fresh. He groped around looking for the lights. They thought that they were at a workmens bathhouse, with gritty floors, missing shower heads, and forty-five seconds of almost hot water. “Here it is,” he said, flicking a switch.
A hundred and fifty heavy floodlights positioned around a vast ceiling of Finnish arches and cedar beams projected thick penetrating rays throughout the baths. A central rectangular pool of bright blue water took up most of the room. Mornoe said that it was 200 feet long and 100 feet wide, and that at one end it was seventy feet deep. Around its edges were smaller pools—a thrashing whitewater mechanico, a little blue ice cube over which vapors condensed, a mineral hot spring, warm and shallow rivers interconnecting the static bodies to feed and refresh. At one end of the main sea stood a permanent scaffolding of heavy aromatic beams, on which were staggered diving platforms ranging to seventy-five feet, chutes leading into the water, tilted trampolines, ropes and trapezes on which to swing out and let go, and a wire on which one could glide by hand trolley high above the pool, choosing when to drop. Waterfalls and fountains poured into the main and small rafts had drifted to its edges. Gymnasts rings and a high bar were suspended over the far end.
Monroe went to a great armoire to fetch a load of supplies, which he set down before him. “This one’s for you,” he said, “and this for you,” handing them green velvet towels, soft, new, and blanket-sized. Then he handed each of them a piece of soap as big as a melon.
“What’s that?” asked Marshall. Monroe squinted at him, as if Marshall were crazy or from another civilization.
“That’s soap. Ain’t you ever seen soap?” Marshall looked at the turkey-sized mass in his arms, which weighed at least fifty pounds, and said nothing. “What influences you?” asked Monroe of a sudden. It surprised them.
“What influences us?” echoed Al.
“Yeah, what influences you? Don’t bother to answer, ’cause I already know. Now you can stay here for a time, and then you can go to the bus, and the bus will take you to town.”
“How long can we stay?” asked Marshall. “This place looks better than whores to me.”
“You can stay for a time. You come again before you get paid, to wash up. So only stay for a time. You have to be clean for the whores. Disease. Use the soap to wash. I’ll be back in some time.” He left, carefully closing the door behind him.
First they had endless showers, wrestling with the soap. Then when they were clean they put on bathing suits that Monroe had left for them, and began to work on the amusements. What a delight it was to sail through the air and crash into the clean water, to climb the beams, to fly on the trapeze and then release, traveling like a dolphin into a broken front of white wave. Finally they were so tired that they fell asleep on rafts, only to be awakened by Monroe, who stood at the side of the pool and tapped a gourd. They dressed in black pants and white shirts which were baggy and did not fit, so that they looked like Russians. They were apprehensive, for they had never been with whores and did not want to be; but it had been an eternity without women, so they went to a little bus full of other workers in ill-fitting clothes, and sped to town. Behind them the factory was lit like a crown of flames.
The bus let them off in front of a bar. Inside was an enormous purple room, in the center of which hung an electric sign which read: ST. LOUIS. Music and light were so profuse, and the atmosphere so wild and deep with sex that Marshall had the overwhelming feeling of being on a rock in the midst of fast-running, breaking, thunderous rapids; with trees being felled and cliffs collapsing; houses, cars, and logs sweeping by; and the observers stolid in the middle. Light smoke coursed through the room, rising in eddies like mist from the rushing river.
It was filled with whores of sex, who sat blinking in satin draped over their revealed bodies. A thousand-lensed sphere turned above, tapping out interruptive rays. The color violet and the flashing lights began to defeat Marshall’s will. He hoped that any convulsion or battering would come later, upstairs, or wherever they would take him. He was ripe for the taking. In a minute he was glossy and gone.
Sensing deep ecstatic breathing, a purple sister glided across the darkness smooth and iridescent as a shark. She sat down at their table and stared at Marshall’s eyes. Al was negotiating a treaty with a long-legged black beauty. The woman of flashing lights stared Marshall into liquefaction. She seemed just loose and lithe enough, and her face was lit with the intelligence of sex. He could not see if she were in any way beautiful, because he was too moved by her other elements. Normally, he linked love with love. But lost in the revolving ultraviolet of that bat cave, he said what the hell, and when she took her breasts in her hands, stretched her neck upward, closed her eyes, drew in a breath, and said, “I want to be sucked,” there was simply nothing to do but stagger after her to the far end of the room, where they mounted a circular staircase to the second story. A small chamber had a floor of glass bricks through which purple light from the room downstairs came darkly and thick. She unhooked and dropped all her shiny satin in a moment and lay on the bed, moving. “The ocean is coming up here,” she said, pointing to the end of the bed. Marshall had always loved the ocean.
4
ON THE way back to the factory, heaters puffing over limp, exhausted men heading once more into endless night and work, Marshall had a luminous memory and, like an old man, was overcome with affection and love for a moment in his past. Remembering it, he understood that nothing vanishes, that between the mirrors of heart and mind is a meditation long standing, infinite, and full, that Jamaica still lay hot and lush, as green as a bird of green feathers, slow-moving like Jamaican speech. He had it precisely, a locking incision. Dash’s kiss tasted like apricots. Even Farrell’s death and the arrival of the constable had not altered the bloom of his rosy trust. From High View he could see that ships were shearing across a blur as green water hissed through the reefs.
When they arrived, the other workers left for their stations, but Al and Marshall were told to go inside and see Mornoe. They expected the worst, for it was said that after the first visit to the whores, a new man was sent to the killing chamber, there to bludgeon the steers. Inside the cathedral room they approached the old men, one of whom said, “I suppose you came to see Mornoe."
“That’s what we were told to do,” said Marshall.
“Okay, I’ll get him.” He hopped up and walked to the fire. “He’s in the fire again. Monroel Momoel Come outa there!” Monroe. appeared.
“Oh,” he said, “it’s you. You been gone for some time.”
“That’s right,” answered Al. “We’ve been gone for some time. Mornoe, some times its irritating to listen to you, since you have no idea of time.”
“Do you have an idea of time?” questioned Mornoe.
“More or less.”
“Then how long you been gone?”
“About ten or twelve hours,” answered Al.
“Ten or twelve hours!” Marshall said in astonishment. “It was no more than forty-five minutes.”
“I haven’t seen you boys for some time,” said Mornoe. “That’s all I can say.” He looked around, and then said, almost u
nder his breath, “You boys interested in a short card game?”
“Short!” said Al. “You see!”
“What you mean?” asked Mornoe, genuinely puzzled, taking a stubby deck of cards out of his overalls. “We plays with short cards.” He held one up. “You can get a credit of two hundred and fifty dollars on your pay for the card game. You want to play?” The old men were poised on the edges of their boxes and rockers.
“Why not?”
“Yahoo!” they screamed, moving like greased lightning to set up a table, lower a gambling lamp, and put a big mesh grill on the fire. “That’s for shrimps and bacon,” one said. “When we play cards, we grill up shrimps and bacon, and drink beer.”
“Suits me,” said Marshall, for he loved shrimp cooked on an open fire. “Got any soy sauce?”
‘Any what sauce?” asked Mornoe.
“Soy sauce.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a sauce they have in Japan.”
“Is this Japan?” queried Mornoe.
“No.”
“Then we ain’t got no soy sauce.”
Quickly is not an adequate word for how fast they lost their $250, and they didn’t get one bit of shrimp or bacon, or one sip of beer. In what seemed like the most superbly co-ordinated collaboration in the history of mankind, the old men conspired to distract, cajole, and waylay them, depriving them of food and money. Just as Al or Marshall would reach for a sizzling lean shrimp, a man would pick it off the plate, and another would say, “Call!” They carried this off with unimaginable skill until Marshall and Al were completely skinned. Despite the smell of broiling seafood, neither Marshall nor Al was hungry. “Now you only got five hundred dollars in your paycheck,” said Mornoe, “but that’s all right, because spring will come, and you won’t need too much money.”
He looked at Marshall and said, “I said you’d ride to the plains, and you did. And I’ll tell you that by the time you get to the mountains, you won’t need money at all. And then you’ll go away, but in some time, you could be back.” He laughed. “What’s that stuff? Joy sauce?”
“Soy sauce.”
“Like I said, this ain’t Japan.” He disappeared into the fire, and they walked through the darkness to get back to work pulling apart the sad-looking bodies of slaughtered cows.
5
AL SCHEMED to resist the timelessness. He offered a nearby worker his pay for a watch. “What do you want me to watch?” asked the man. They decided to observe the course of the moon, but there was no moon. They counted cows and, after some time, compared figures. Al said they had processed three, and Marshall said a hundred and twenty. So they gave up.
They were working hard when they heard a singing noise in the distance, like the vibration of high-tension wires. It got louder and louder. They dropped their knives and rakes, and rushed to the door.
The sun was coming up fast and big, as if it were in a telephoto lens. They could hear musical tones and reedlike vibrations. In a vale of gold, it mounted steadily to a natural position high in the sky, where it seemed not to move but rather to beat and pulse. Steam covered the landscape as the snow melted and the fields became spring green. They could smell cows in the holding pens, see white clapboard houses in town, hear distant freights. The sun was warm, and the steam from straw-colored ground was good to feel. In the west, a range of mountains appeared as a light purple haze on the horizon. The plains flowed in all directions like a windy gulf.
Waving his arms, Mornoe trotted down the path. “C’mon with me,” he said. “C’mon. Spring came. It’s time. Gotta wash up, wash up.” They ran after him to the baths. The door was open and a ticket-taker stood in front. “Okay for these two,” said Mornoe, and they went inside. It was packed with screaming children, adolescents, women, workers, and even old people crammed into the mineral baths. Sunlight streamed through fifty-foot windows, and puddles from the childrens splashing covered the floor. They'received watermelon-sized soaps and green towels, and soon after they had washed, shaved, and immersed themselves with the octogenarians in the hot brine pools and fresh-water rinsos, they went outside into an emerald of a prairie day. Flowers had arisen on the fields. The climate was perfect. Their clothing had been cleaned, and Mornoe gave them each fifty brand new ten-dollar bills. “You feel healthy, don’t you?” he asked. “The mountains there are west, as any fool can see.” He made them kiss him goodbye, and then went about his business. Al had decided to head south. He wanted to see the Andes, but Marshall was to continue west. They agreed to meet on top of the Eiffel Tower at noon on July 4, 2000. Then they shook hands and parted.
Marshall walked silently through the courtyard of the slaughterhouse, past brick walls and smoking chimneys, past dozens of men in gray and blue hoods and bloodstained clothing, men who did not see him while they worked amid the carcasses and trucks and black smoke rising upward in a coil of bitterness. He walked as if in a military review, or graduation from a European war academy. But no one looked as he made his way past the brick and the wood, on which shone a golden sunlight as if from underneath a ceiling of storm clouds. He had lasted the slaughter intact, he was as solid or more so than he had been, and he hoped to leave it forever, graduating from that school with a full beating heart, heading west on a day into which a piercing ray had penetrated decisively. Mornoe had said that spring would come—it had.
6
HIS WARM parka was neatly rolled and lashed to the strap of his rucksack. They had not only cleaned and pressed his clothes, but repaired and waxed his mountain boots. He traveled across a flat, endless prairie, an ideal picture of a man walking. Healthy, somehow well-fed, clean, strong, and happy to have lasted his slaughtering task, he walked with buoyant step toward the mountains. He knew that eventually he would come across railroad tracks, and there he could jump a freight. Meanwhile, in the sunshine, he thought about Mornoe and Professor Berry.
They had curious similarities. One snowy day in Cambridge, Marshall had been winding from room to room in Kirkland library and had come across Professor Berry alone in a firelit study. The strange thing was that Professor Berry had been standing practically right in the flames. He quickly hopped out, and made some excuses about having lost his watch in the fire.
And once, a hairy ruffian had invaded Professor Berry’s famous lecture on Magellan, and shouted him down. This ideologue had beaten professors, stood nude in the Yard, and shouted obscenities at children. In these activities he received thorough support from many not on the scene. But he did not dare touch Professor Berry, whose health, strength, and willingness to fight deterred him like a battalion of Gurkhas. Professor Berry looked at him with compassion, understanding, hate, and disgust. After uttering some nonsense about colonialism and imperialism, he turned to Professor Berry and said, “Like, look at you. Like, you’re looking at me like I was like an animal.”
“Like you are an animal,” replied the good, one-legged professor with such severity that the room vibrated. “And you will like remove yourself from my class or I will like murder you and tear you into like small indivisible pieces uglier than your original self.” The ruffian didn’t budge. Professor Berry was suddenly galvanized; his face beat with red and purple blood; and he charged with unstoppable ferocity, his wooden leg thundering against the floorboards. The ruffian ran out the door. Professor Berry remounted the podium, straightened himself, and resumed his lecture despite the wild heart-pounding applause of his students, who loved their professor for his courage in the face of the wave.
Then Marshall recalled what Monroe had said. He had been standing amidst the screaming half-slaughtered calves: “I been in every state in the Union, on the railroad. That was before I retired, some time ago. First, I worked in the dining cars, when I was young. In those times, rich men rode in cars bigger than houses. You wouldn’t know about that. And we used to serve them all kinds of fancy dishes—Forfit of Cheese Mongolian, Paté of Turk, Larchmont Birch Beer, roasted Plant Pappy, Honeymoon Bungalow Cake, and Log
of Chocolate Byzantine. But we never did what was dishonorable. We never bent our necks, no sir, and we always bucked trends. I say, fuck ’em. It throws you down and knocks you out, but when you get up again you feel twice as strong. I know. I did it. I do it. I been from Alaska to Alabama. I seen babies born. I seen bullets stop dead in the air. You always got to fight trends. You get alone, but it strengthens the heart.” He thought for a while, knitting his brows. “Britain stood alone. Lord, there is a texture in life, and a reward.”
Marshall caught sight of a magnificent, earth-shaking, three-hundred-car freight shuddering across the sunlit plains. He began to run, pounding over the flat ground. It was a joy to run, and, like a horse in effortless gallop, he came even with the train. He took hold and sailed onto it. Once on top, he sat on a catwalk and looked at the rolling grasslands and distant mountains. The landscape was nearly maritime in its expanse—like a Homer painting. He bent his head and lifted his eyes to the slit of the horizon, making a clean thought of the colors. They were so strong that he could almost lean against them as the train started up the western grade to the mountains.
Proceeding to vast areas of thinner air, he found them quite different from the Hudson. At Eagle Bay Marshall often looked through his white-framed windows into a green and humid landscape suggestive of a badly managed terrarium. The trees were wet and entangled, with corky bark and a sense of lizards. The fields were rich and loamy. But in the cool mountain range the trees were mainly evergreen, their disciplined quills as neat as a good hardware store; the dry pine scent inseparable from the wind whistling through their needles. There were some poplars and some ash, their leaves rippling the light like sun-covered water or bronzed sequins. He could tell that the water was fresh, just by looking at it. He was excited to be approaching once again alpine country in which bear, elk, and mountain goats bolted across unknown pastures close to the stars. The train went around bends, through the trees, over bridges of match-stick steel—vertical nets of metal contoured against red ravines with streams of white foam leaping down the crease.