Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker

by David Remnick

  SUDDENLY, on this common level, in this state of social displacement, Emma wished to hunt for Alfred and urgently tell him that she hoped it had not been as bad for him as it had been for her. But naturally she was not so naïve, and she got up and went purposefully to look at two Holbeins. They pleased her, as Holbeins always did. The damage, though, was done, and she did not really see the pictures; Eisenburg’s hypothetical suffering and her own real suffering blurred the clean lines and muddied the lucid colors. Between herself and the canvases swam the months of spreading, cancerous distrust, of anger that made her seasick, of grief that shook her like an influenza chill, of the physical afflictions by which the poor victimized spirit sought vainly to wreck the arrogantly healthy flesh.

  Even that one glance at his face, seen from a distance through the lowing crowd, told her, now that she had repeated it to her mind’s eye, that his cheeks were drawn and his skin was gray (no soap and water can ever clean away the grimy look of the sick at heart) and his stance was tired. She wanted them to go together to some hopelessly disreputable bar and to console one another in the most maudlin fashion over a lengthy succession of powerful drinks of whiskey, to compare their illnesses, to marry their invalid souls for these few hours of painful communion, and to babble with rapture that they were at last, for a little while, no longer alone. Only thus, as sick people, could they marry. In any other terms, it would be a mésalliance, doomed to divorce from the start, for rubes and intellectuals must stick to their own class. If only it could take place—this honeymoon of the cripples, this nuptial consummation of the abandoned—while drinking the delicious amber whiskey in a joint with a juke box, a stout barkeep, and a handful of tottering derelicts; if it could take place, would it be possible to prevent him from marring it all by talking of secondary matters? That is, of art and neurosis, art and politics, art and science, art and religion? Could he lay off the fashions of the day and leave his learning in his private entrepot? Could he, that is, see the apple fall and not run madly to break the news to Newton and ask him what on earth it was all about? Could he, for her sake (for the sake of this pathetic rube all but weeping for her own pathos in the Metropolitan Museum), forget the whole dispute and, believing his eyes for a change, admit that the earth was flat?

  It was useless for her now to try to see the paintings. She went, full of intentions, to the Van Eyck diptych and looked for a long time at the souls in Hell, kept there by the implacable, impartial, and genderless angel who stood upon its closing mouth. She looked, in renewed astonishment, at Jo Davidson’s pink, wrinkled, embalmed head of Jules Bache, which sat, a trinket on a fluted pedestal, before a Flemish tapestry. But she was really conscious of nothing but her desire to leave the museum in the company of Alfred Eisenburg, her cousin-german in the territory of despair.

  So she had to give up, two hours before the closing time, although she had meant to stay until the end, and she made her way to the central stairs, which she descended slowly, in disappointment, enviously observing the people who were going up, carrying collapsible canvas stools on which they would sit, losing themselves in their contemplation of the pictures. Salvador Dali passed her, going quickly down. At the telephone booths, she hesitated, so sharply lonely that she almost looked for her address book, and she did take out a nickel, but she put it back and pressed forlornly forward against the incoming tide. Suddenly, at the storm doors, she heard a whistle and she turned sharply, knowing that it would be Eisenburg, as, of course, it was, and he wore an incongruous smile upon his long, El Greco face. He took her hand and gravely asked her where she had been all this year and how she happened to be here, of all places, of all days. Emma replied distractedly, looking at his seedy clothes, his shaggy hair, the green cast of his white skin, his deep black eyes, in which all the feelings were disheveled, tattered, and held together only by the merest faith that change had to come. His hand was warm and her own seemed to cling to it and all their mutual necessity seemed centered here in their clasped hands. And there was no doubt about it; he had heard of her collapse and he saw in her face that she had heard of his. Their recognition of each other was instantaneous and absolute, for they cunningly saw that they were children and that, if they wished, they were free for the rest of this winter Sunday to play together, quite naked, quite innocent. “What a day it is! What a place!” said Alfred Eisenburg. “Can I buy you a drink, Emma? Have you time?”

  She did not accept at once; she guardedly inquired where they could go from here, for it was an unlikely neighborhood for the sort of place she wanted. But they were en rapport, and he, wanting to avoid the grownups as much as she, said they would go across to Lexington. He needed a drink after an afternoon like this—didn’t she? Oh, Lord, yes, she did, and she did not question what he meant by “an afternoon like this” but said that she would be delighted to go, even though they would have to walk on eggs all the way from the Museum to the place where the bottle was, the peace pipe on Lexington. Actually, there was nothing to fear; even if they had heard catcalls, or if someone had hooted at them, “Intellectual loves Rube!,” they would have been impervious, for the heart carved in the bark of the apple tree would contain the names Emma and Alfred, and there were no perquisites to such a conjugation. To her own heart, which was shaped exactly like a valentine, there came a winglike palpitation, a delicate exigency, and all the fragrance of all the flowery springtime love affairs that ever were seemed waiting for them in the whiskey bottle. To mingle their pain, their handshake had promised them, was to produce a separate entity, like a child that could shift for itself, and they scrambled hastily toward this profound and pastoral experience.

  [1948]

  JAMES STEVENSON

  NOTES FROM A BOTTLE

  (A bottle containing the following notes was discovered on a mountainside on Ascension Island, in the South Altantic.)

  MARCH 23RD. 7 A.M.: Looked out the window of my apartment, saw that the water was up to the second story all along Eighty-sixth Street. Yesterday, the movie marquees toward Lexington were still visible at twilight, but this morning they are gone. There were, of course, no lights last night—there has been no electricity in the city for three days. (No telephones, no water, no heat, no television. Heat and telephone service had been gone for several days before that, owing to the fuel strike and the phone strike. Some portable radios still work, but they receive only the grainy sound of static.) A light snow is falling.

  4 P.M.: It is almost dark again, and the water is approaching the fourth floor. No planes or helicopters were seen today; the airports were probably the first to flood, and any planes that managed to get aloft would have run out of fuel by now. It looks like another night of parties and celebrations. Across the street, candles and flashlight beams move about in the windows, and in our building loud, cheerful voices can be heard echoing in the fire stairs. There is a lot of shrieking and laughter. The children, as usual, are riding bicycles up and down the halls, as adults—bundled up in all manner of clothing, and carrying drinks and candles—roam the building, going from one party to another. The Williamses, who were supposed to go on a cruise, have been dancing around in their vacation clothes—Audrey in a fur coat and bathing suit, Harold in a mask and flippers. A lot of things have been thrown out of windows; Ed Shea on 7 was tossing an orange back and forth to somebody in the building across the street; one group was skimming L.P. records, throwing them like Frisbees. There has been a good deal of horseplay. Carson on 8 would lean out his window and drop a paper bag full of flour on any head that was sticking out below. The biggest party last night was in the MacNeills’ on 4—Alice played the piano, and everyone sang and danced until around three. (Today, a group of volunteers is moving the piano up to the Webers’ on 6, just in case, and the Webers intend to have everybody in.) Phil Lewis amused everybody last night, saying that an ark was on its way and that it was going to take two people from the upper East Side. Martin, the doorman, has been drunk for a couple of days; he opened the Wenkers’ apartm
ent on 10—they’re in Spain—and he has been holding court up there, dispensing the Wenkers’ liquor with a free hand. There is still no explanation for the flood, beyond rumors shouted from one building to another. A lot of activity on Eighty-sixth Street during the day. For a while, everyone was throwing piles of flaming newspapers out their windows and watching them float away, burning, and there was considerable boat traffic—outboards, rowboats, a Circle Line boat with a crowd aboard, a small tug, a speedboat full of howling drunks towing a water skier in a black wet-suit. An hour ago, the Mayor went by, smiling grimly, in a large Chris-Craft cruiser with the city flag on the stern, the deck jammed with officials. Presumably, the water has reached Gracie Mansion by now, although the mansion is on high ground.

  MARCH 24th. 3 P.M.: The water is now just below my windows on the ninth floor. There is nothing to do but watch. The water is filthy—there had been the six-week garbage strike, and all the city’s garbage is awash—and the seagulls are everywhere, feasting. A number of people came up to stay in my apartment during the night, but they have left now and gone to a higher floor. They all arrived with apologies and genial remarks, but when they left they did so without fanfare—simply disappeared, one or two at a time, when I wasn’t looking. I’d hear the door click shut, and I’d know they’d gone upstairs. There has been constant speculation on the cause of the flood—an atomic test in the Arctic is a popular explanation—but no one has any information at all, and no one really expects any. Those of us who have lived here for any length of time have become hardened: one simply waits. Langford, the lawyer, who recently moved to New York and lives on 8, was furious at first. “Why haven’t we been informed?” he kept demanding. “I have contacts in Washington . . . .” But when I saw him a few minutes ago—he was standing in the hall, eating a once-frozen TV dinner—he was brooding, and when others spoke to him he didn’t reply.

  5 P.M.: The strangest thing is the silence of the city. No car noises, honking, sirens. Bodies float by, tangled in wreckage—furniture, lumber, trash. Suddenly a boat’s horn, but then it is silent again—extraordinary silence. The loudest sound, except when the gulls come near, is the slap of water just below the windowsill, or the scrape of something bumping the window air-conditioner.

  MARCH 25th: We are on the roof now. I have no idea what time it is, but it is daylight. The lower buildings have been submerged, the tall office buildings stand like tombstones above the heaving waves. There are white-caps toward Central Park. An ocean liner stood by the Pan Am Building for a while, then moved out to sea. Our rooftop is packed with people; many huddle against the chimneys, trying to keep away from the bitter wind. Alice MacNeill—her piano was abandoned on 8—tried to get everyone to sing “Nearer My God to Thee,” but there was little response. No one wants to accept the situation as final, and yet everyone is keeping to himself. Langford, I notice, has moved toward the tallest TV antenna and has stationed himself near its base. He dreams, I suppose, that when the water covers the roof and the skylights and the chimneys, he will shinny up the pole and cling to the top. In his mind, probably, the water will rise until it reaches his ankles, and then stop. That is his hope. Then the water will recede, go down, down, down—and he will be saved. The water is swirling around the skylights now. The wind shifts. The waves are coming straight in from the Atlantic.

  [1969]

  DANIEL FUCHS

  MAN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN

  ARNOLD D

  ARCY WAS A CIVIL engineer who worked for the city as a building-plans examiner. He handled skyscrapers, one of three men in the department who O.K.’d blueprints on construction twelve stories and higher, and it was a fairly important position, but, like everybody else on a fixed salary these days, Darcy was trapped by inflation. He lived at the end of the subway line, way out in Jackson Heights, in one of those modern, close, cluttered-up, three-room apartments. A Phi Beta Kappa, he was married and had one child. Darcy didn’t particularly get along with his wife. They were married a good number of years now, ten or so.

  He’d come home from work; he’d change his shirt and carefully hang up his suit, saving his good clothes so that he’d look neat in the morning; he’d go into the kitchen and greet his wife. “Darling,” he would say. “Dear. Sweetheart. How are you, lover? Did you have a vexing day? Did the washing machine break down?” He’d kiss her. It was an artificial, painful performance, slightly ridiculous under the circumstances, but Darcy went through this rigamarole, he faithfully made the effort every night, because the pediatrician advised it for the sake of their son, to create a solid family atmosphere. Gary, a city child, was afflicted with a mysterious collection of allergies, and the doctors said the allergies were no doubt due to a basic sense of insecurity induced by the strained situation in the home. When Darcy came home from the Municipal Building, Gary would generally be in the living room, all by himself in there, looking at the television while he had his dinner. Darcy had to eat in the kitchen, at the kitchen table.

  That was the way it was in that apartment in Jackson Heights. Darcy never blamed Natalie, his wife. He understood. He knew how the countless petty household cares and frictions could wear away on a person over the years. After all, to illustrate with a specific instance, Natalie worked hard all day, fighting with the butcher, watching the budget, running to the doctors with Gary and his rashes, and then when she’d come home and see Darcy, say, calmly playing Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor on the phonograph attachment—well, naturally she’d lose control and let go with a mean, caustic remark. It was human and probably didn’t mean as much as it seemed.

  One evening as Darcy was sitting at the kitchen table eating his dinner in an unhappy peace, the phone rang. His wife promptly flung a dish towel on the sink, and muttered something under her breath.

  “What?” Darcy said.

  “Nothing,” Natalie said. “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to myself. Your sister called. I told her you weren’t home.”

  “Rita called?” Darcy said, a little stupidly, not wanting trouble.

  “Don’t sit there like a lummox—talk to her,” Natalie said. “Answer the phone, it’s ringing!”

  Darcy winced. Rita and his mother were an old running argument in that house, the familiar, distressing, in-law problem. Natalie always claimed he spent too much time with his mother and sister, that he had no right to give them money every week when he had enough trouble supporting his own family, that his mother smothered Gary with excessive affection and had a bad influence on the child, and so on—all the rest of it. But when Darcy picked up the phone, it wasn’t Rita at all. It was Arthur Colie. Colie and a man named Charles Angus were the two other examiners with whom Darcy worked down at the department. Colie was calling now to say something very urgent had turned up and they had to see him right away. Colie told him where to meet them, at an address over in Manhattan.

  Darcy put the phone back on the rest. He couldn’t imagine what Angus and Colie wanted with him or what could have turned up that was so terribly urgent, but on the other hand he knew he couldn’t afford to keep them waiting. Charlie Angus was a power downtown. He had all kinds of political pull and had a hundred different subtle ways of making your life miserable for you if you tried to antagonize him.

  “Flies to his mother the minute she calls him,” Natalie said. She still had it in her head, of course, that it had been Rita on the phone.

  “I am not flying to my mother the minute she calls me,” Darcy said quietly, with dignity, but he couldn’t do a thing with Natalie. She was boiling. He patiently explained it had been Colie on the phone, not Rita or his mother—just Arthur Colie and Charles Angus. They wanted to see him, something had turned up, business, and he made it clear why it was only expedient to keep in the good graces of a man like Angus, but it was hopeless. Natalie wouldn’t even listen to him.

  Darcy understood. He knew it was a fixation with his wife, a subconscious resentment directed against his mother and sister because Natalie herself
had never had any family life of her own, having lost her mother and father when she was still a child. Darcy sympathized. He made allowances. Psychologically everything was clear to him. But nevertheless it wasn’t very satisfactory.

  He put on the shirt he had just taken off. He put on his good suit, and he left to see what Angus and Colie wanted.

  DARCY had a vague, peculiar feeling something was wrong as soon as he reached the address Colie had given him over the phone. It was an exclusive-looking apartment hotel in the East Sixties, just off Fifth Avenue. Darcy stepped from the elevator into a fantastically lavish apartment—a triplex with one whole wall in the living room nothing but a big plate-glass window overlooking Central Park. It was the first time in his life he had even been in a triplex, although, of course, he had examined the plans of many of them in the course of his duties at the department.