by Mark Helprin
And by this action, he did. When he put me down on the island and I ran and jumped about near the waves we had just crossed, I was shaken by new thoughts I could not put into words. I did not have to, for the music began again. They had begun to play a song that, like “La Vie en Rose”—a beautiful phrase, not quite translatable—was an anthem of the liberation. Though I never knew the name of this song, it was sung on the streets, I knew it well, and I was not surprised to hear it. Perhaps because I had lived in France for almost a quarter of my existence, in an ordinary neighborhood in Paris with people who had lived through the occupation, even at four I was deeply moved by it. Or perhaps this was due just to the nature of the song, which, in minors and majors, perfectly expresses both the great joy and unspeakable sadness of having come through the war. No song I have ever heard has its depth and complexity. No song I have ever heard unites strength so great with beauty so shy. And this is what I knew, when I was four, having come to Paris more than two years after it was redeemed. By necessity my father knew much more.
STEPPING FROM A C-47 into a void over Normandy, with rifle, pack, and a heavy load of ammunition strapped to his leg, he felt the rush of breath and blood subside as his parachute opened in magic air, as white as a cotton ball. A major and pathfinder of the 101st, he floated down to what could very well have been his death, and prayed as if his last, thanking God for his full life to that moment, for the blue morning, for his near-silent flight, and for the seconds as they passed.
He landed in a quiet and empty field, completely alone, and lived to become part of the greatest conquering army the world has ever seen, an army that, as it pressed toward Germany, was bent by the massive gravity of Paris, and, contrary to plan, rushed toward this city of light. Because he was French-speaking, he was put in the front of the Fifth Corps, and entered Paris with the French Second Armored Division.
“Until that day,” he told me when he was old, “I had not really seen gratitude or joy. If God, in remembering His work, had decided to replicate the glory of the Creation, He might have done so in the liberation of Paris. That’s what it was like. That’s why I took you and your mother there. Because it was as if the whole world was born on that day. And I thought, we can do the same.”
Quite so. History had never been nor would it be so buoyant as in a single day to rise from such darkness to such light. Most of the people who, at the end of August, surged across the Place de l’Étoile, running to follow flags, were in white. When seen from above, they were like the foam of a rising tide, their mass unlike the normal mass of crowds, being as quick as driven cloud. That they could move on that day almost as airborne as angels was because the idea that France would be free was more beautiful even than the idea of France itself.
Just to hear the song of the streets, the anthem of liberation, as we stood amid the windblown water, was enough to make my father cry. Seeing this, I embraced his leg, perhaps not so tightly as the bag of ammunition once strapped to it, and when he picked me up I put my arms around his neck. I did not know what he had seen or what he had come through, but my father was moved by the resurrection of a shattered world, and this I understood well enough.
Then came our own rush, a breathtaking run through the darkened streets of Venice, that I will remember for the rest of my life. I don’t know why he ran. He was astonishingly strong, but he could have walked. The passages through which we coursed at great speed were in renovation, and half the time scaffolding blocked the sky in alternating segments. We would run through terrific darkness, and then the boarding above us would disappear and we would emerge again to see the stars. I cannot forget that alternation of darkness and light, which is the way it has been ever since.
AT THE DINNER PARTY, because of my silence, they thought I was thinking about them. And so I did begin to think about them, which broke the spell and brought me back. Also, my wife kicked me.
I nodded, as I do when I’m brought back. I said something, I don’t know what. You see, they imagine that I have everything I want—cars and pools and appliances and Picassos—only because I have what they want. But what I want I cannot have. I cannot have so much time ahead of me that it is seemingly without limit. I cannot any longer be quite so deeply in love with the world now that I know that my love for it is unrequited. I cannot ride in my father’s arms. I cannot know any of the great store of his memories that he did not tell me. And I cannot change the fact, as I am the last one who remembers him, that all he saw, and learned, and loved, will have a second death when they die with me.
That is why, for me, reconstruction is so urgent and its appeal so strong. Floating down, in the last quiet seconds, it is indeed possible, with precise and joyous recollection, to return to life the roseate glow that once it brought to you. This I have tried to do, even at risk of smashing up a dinner party, or two. And when we left that night, I kissed Alicia, and we embraced for a second or two longer than anyone expected.
Monday
FITCH FLEW DOWN the few steps that descended from his front door, as he had done thousands and thousands of times. Landing on the pavement and pivoting lightly a hundred and eighty degrees left, he walked east, with many things on his mind.
Toward the end of January and early in the morning, the cold was dry, the air was still, and the light was not yet as white and full of glare as it would be later on, when the wind would rise to freeze the cross streets and whistle down the long avenues. For several months now he had left earlier than necessary, so early, in fact, that he would arrive at jobs before his crews and have to walk many times around the block or duck in to buy coffee that he did not want to drink.
By leaving early, he made it much less likely that he would encounter the mortuary convoys, which, just as he did, used Twenty-third Street to cross town. He told himself that this was a matter of convenience, because of the time he lost when they passed, when he would stop, turn to the street, put his hand on his heart, and bow his head. But those convoys raced by quickly, sirens blaring, always escorted by flag-bedecked fire trucks and many police cars, and for Fitch it was not a matter of convenience at all. Even by January, when the convoys were running with just body parts, he could not get used to them, and would never fail to bow his head in respect, though by January he was just about the only one who still did.
He had fifteen men flexibly apportioned among four crews doing five jobs. His rule was always to have at least one man on any job on any day, unless floors were drying or other contractors needed to work unimpeded. Despite trying to keep roughly the same men on the same job, the shuffling was prodigious. Although clients didn’t appreciate it, it was necessary for meeting his payroll. His men often had large families. They were immigrants for the most part, but also actors, writers, and painters who painted walls by day and then returned to unheated lofts to paint their canvases by night. One of these, a hair-thin Scotsman named Starr, whose paintings had greatly increased in size after he had begun to paint walls, lived on a diet mainly of hard-boiled eggs and beer. Because he was feather-light and driven, he could feed himself on twenty dollars a week, and did, so he could pay for his share of a loft in Dumbo and spend the rest of his earnings on colors, which he needed in prodigious amounts.
Fitch had two cell phones, and by the time he reached Eighth Avenue had already taken two calls, one in English and one in Spanish. His three best men, his foremen, were Colombians who in their country had managed large enterprises—a furniture manufacturing company, a group of restaurants, and a trucking line. They each would direct a job and sometimes two, running them with what might have been characterized as Swiss precision were it not as easygoing as they were.
Fitch was faultlessly honest, his lieutenants were skilled and efficient, and he and they were well spoken and civilized. Because of this, the Fitch Company was backed up for two years and could have been backed up for ten. They gave reasonable estimates, did the highest-quality work, finished on time, and had the bearing of hidalgos: that is except for Fitch,
who had the bearing of Fitch.
Everything ran at a wheeled pace, and what had to be done was done with energy and rapidity. They were tired neither at the beginning nor at the end of a job, because for them it was all an even tapestry. After punch list and payment, Fitch would go right to the next site, where his crew would already have been at work. They rolled through each day at the same fast, sustainable pace, renovating and finishing interiors in every borough of the city. As Fitch sped along, his phone rang again and a dozen people looked at their purses or felt their pockets. “Ya,” he said unceremoniously, thinking that it was Gustavo, who had told him that he would call right back with a materials list for the space they were doing in the Thread Building. Clients never called before seven, and people who wanted an estimate would always call after dinner. Static on the phone as Fitch walked and changed position briefly cut out the other party, so he said, “Gustavo? Gustavo?” and then the connection was reestablished.
“Mr. Fitch?” asked a woman’s voice.
“I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
“I apologize for calling so early. Is this a bad time? If you like, I can call later.”
He stopped, to make sure the connection was pure and stayed that way. “No, this is a good time. Are you happy with the kitchen?”
“You recognized my voice.”
“I did.”
“After two years? That’s amazing.”
“I do that,” he said.
“The kitchen’s worked out very well. We had a problem with the microwave oven, but that had nothing to do with the renovation.”
Fitch nodded. “What can I do for you?” he asked, as the subway rushed by, pushing warm air up through the grates, and then pulling frigid air in after it as it disappeared, its noise growing fainter.
“We redid the kitchen so we could sell the apartment, and last summer we finally did. The closing was yesterday.”
“I hope you did well,” Fitch said.
“Yes, and this morning I’m going to close on a duplex in Brooklyn Heights.” She told him the address.
Because there was silence on the line, he moved around to pick up a better signal, saying, “Hello? Hello?”
“It needs some work,” she said. “It’s unoccupied, which I suppose would make it easier than the last job.”
Fitch was totally backed up with work, but rather than simply turning her down—if he did not turn her down he would lose half a dozen other jobs—he was indirect. “The question is,” he said, “how long can you stay where you’re staying? Because we’re so backed up. I’ve got jobs scheduled one after another for. …”
“I’m staying with my parents,” she interrupted, “in Westchester. It’s not a problem. When would you be free?”
“Two years,” he said. Usually, he enjoyed saying that, because of what it meant about his work, his business, and himself. But, this time, he didn’t enjoy it.
“Two years?”
“Look,” said Fitch, for no reason that he could discern save something in her voice, “if it’s small, if it’s a small job. …”
“It isn’t,” she told him, expecting that the conversation would soon end. “A kitchen, two bathrooms, moving some walls, painting, floors, windows, everything.”
“Let me look at it,” Fitch said. This made no sense, because he could not afford to take on anything new. It was one of those decisions that contractors make, in memory and fear of lean times, that subsequently they cannot honor. “I’m going to be in Brooklyn in the afternoon. If you like, I can meet you there. What time would be convenient?”
“Can we make it later, in case of problems at the closing? How about five o’clock? I should be able to get there by then.”
“See you then,” Fitch said. “If you’re not there, don’t worry. I’ll wait for you, Lilly.”
She was pleased that he had remembered her name. “How long?” she asked, which seemed strange, even to her.
“Until you arrive,” he replied.
“There’s no lobby.”
“That’s all right, they don’t let me wait in lobbies anyway.”
“Thank you.”
A bus went by, and in its ugly brown roar the connection vanished.
AS HE WAS WALKING in the cold wind and blinding sun, he recalled this woman and her husband. They were almost young enough to be his children. The husband, who worked on Wall Street, wore dark horn-rims and had the face of a rabbinical student. A genius of sorts in the abstract, he had delicate hands and seemed actually to fear the resistant power of the apartment’s walls and woodwork that had to be pulled apart and put together again. Fitch knew that this was because of the precision of his nature, that what he feared was the breaking of more than had to be broken, the pulling out of more than had to be pulled out, and the damage to parts that were to remain, creating in irreparable shattering not only more work than was necessary, but chaos as well.
A contractor, however, learns early on to deal with chaos, and the technique is simple: if you can build, you need not fear the terrors of demolition. For example, if you know how to build a window-opening into a wall, how to set a window in it, how even to build a window itself, and how to do the trim and painting around it, you need not fear any of the process of taking the window out, for you can go down clear to the bone and come back cleanly, rebuilding, better than in a partial repair.
Like her husband, she was delicate and dark. Graceful and beautiful, she had treated Fitch and his men neither patronizingly nor with false sympathy, as was often the case when clients dealt with the Fitch Company. An academic, she taught classics and was working for tenure at Columbia. “That’s my country,” Gustavo had said dryly.
As Fitch walked, he thought about her closing and then his own, when he had sold his apartment on the Upper West Side before moving to Chelsea. He had owned the apartment in the clear, and was sitting calmly at a table with half a dozen lawyers, waiting out the hours of paper shuffling, when a man burst into the room and, with evident pleasure, held up his right index finger and declared, “I’m from the Hapsburg Fund, and nothing closes here until we say so!”
He had the wrong room. Nevertheless, everyone froze, even Fitch, though only momentarily, for, having no mortgage, he had nothing to fear. “Please sit down,” he asked the officious interrupter. The man from the Hapsburg Fund sat down. Fitch cleared his throat. “We’re going to close without you,” he said.
“You can’t close without me.”
Fitch nodded to the lawyers, who laughed.
“You think it’s funny? I’m going to shut this whole thing down. It’s within my discretion entirely.”
“It’s not,” said Fitch.
“You can’t close.”
“Yes we can.”
The man from the Hapsburg Fund said, “Guess what? It won’t go through unless I sign off.”
“Ah,” said Fitch, “that’s where you’re wrong. You see, we’re from another planet, and your law doesn’t apply to us. Isn’t that right, lawyers?” he asked the lawyers, who nodded with certainty.
“You’re insane,” said the interloper.
“Sign where there are arrows,” said one of the lawyers, pushing a tide of papers toward Fitch, who signed on page after page.
AS HE WENT FROM ONE SITE to another, hauled materials, made deliveries, and took measurements, Fitch thought about how she had referred to her closing, not his, her husband’s, or ours. Perhaps this was in the self-centered way many women refer to shared bedrooms as “my bedroom,” something every contractor has observed. But she was not that kind of woman. Nonetheless, while he waited for her on Columbia Heights he was saddened to think that her husband had left her, or that she had left him. Half his renovations, it seemed, were associated with recent or impending divorces, but when he had dealt with this couple he had thought that they were destined for a long life together. It was none of his business, but when they did a job he and his men would discover in many conversations far more than th
ey needed to know about their clients’ lives.
The building was a brick double-wide with limestone sills and lintels on the street side. Hers were the top two floors and, he assumed, a roof terrace. It had a separate entrance, which was excellent from his point of view—no paying off superintendents, and work at any hour as long as it was quiet. And though it was set back from the Promenade enough to keep it from the roar of the BQE, the building had a magnificent view of the harbor and lower Manhattan. He and his men loved to work with a view. Still, whatever its attractions, he dared not take this job, because he simply couldn’t work it in without the risk of badly disrupting his business. She would be disappointed, but he would give her invaluable advice that would protect her in dealing with whoever would bid for and do the job. He would keep them there until eight, until she and her husband—who, if they were not divorced, would probably show up, since he worked just across the river—were giddy from hunger. And if they remembered every detail, or took notes, it would save them two months’ time, a hundred thousand dollars, and much heartache. Though he couldn’t do the job, Fitch would in this way make up for it, because they had been kind to him. And he hoped that when he saw someone walking with the tense and expectant gait of a person who is rushing to a meeting, whoever was moving toward him on Columbia Heights as the sun was setting would not be moving toward him alone.
IN THE DUSK the street was briefly empty—with not a single person or car moving along it. Though the wind was blowing and it was twelve degrees, still the lull was otherworldly, because at a quarter of five people should have been returning from work. And though the wind was terribly cold it was clean, having come from the south over the ocean, from the empty parts of the world.
Three people suddenly appeared near Pierrepont Street and the playground. Given the way they walked, he knew they were coming to meet him, especially when, still two minutes away, a hand went up tentatively from the one in the middle—Lilly—like a semaphore. From the unmoving attitude of their heads he could tell even several blocks distant that their eyes were on him. It was impossible to discern except indirectly, by noting that the upper parts of their bodies seemed immobile in comparison to the far greater fluidity of the rest. When people walk, everything moves, except when they are anxiously fixed upon a destination.
