Winter's Tale

by Mark Helprin

  Though it was said that winters like this one had come before, hardly anyone was old enough to remember them. The last one of such severity that it threatened not only the physical world, but beliefs and institutions, had been not too long after the turn of the century. Only the great wars had obliterated it from people’s memories. During that winter, it was as if time itself had been alive, had a will of its own, and wanted to be forgotten. Much about those years remained unexplained, as if they had been preparing a coup, and, shortly before they might have been discovered, had retreated to await a more propitious moment. The expressions of the men and women of that era, surviving in photographs, seemed all-knowing, and the subjects of the portraitists seemed to peer through time and know the innermost thoughts of those who studied their images decades after they had died. Such faces and eyes, constructed of light and truth, did not anymore exist.

  A plain of ice encircled Manhattan. Its southern limit was about a mile and a half past the Statue of Liberty (to which one could now walk), and icebreakers continually ploughed across it to keep a channel open for the Staten Island ferry. Even after the ferry moved into open water, however, it had to pass gingerly between enormous blocks of ice that had broken from the shelf and were floating toward the sea.

  One January evening at dusk, in a blinding downpour of driven snow, the ferry was halfway to Staten Island when it smashed its rear shafts and propellers against a submerged reef of ice, and went dead in the water. The captain chose to steam on the front blades and go back to Manhattan rather than to turn among the icebergs. The ferry was drifting slowly in the snow, about to shift power. This was a routine task, but it had to be accomplished quickly, because the boat drifted at a different rate than the ice, and was bound therefore to suffer collisions with it.

  On the bridge, officers and crew were properly calm—alert professionals enjoying the tension of the moment and the silent precision that it elicited from them. Suddenly, a passenger burst in. The public was not allowed on the bridge for any reason, and this gesticulating lunatic had not only interrupted the satisfying drama of the propeller transfer, he had also brought into a dim and elegant silence some of the cacophony of the city from which the ferry was usually able to keep a comfortable distance. He hardly spoke English, and none of the pilots spoke Spanish. Throwing himself around in a sort of epileptic dance, he seemed like the more dangerous type of escapee.

  “What do you want?” the captain screamed, enraged.

  The man took a deep breath, tried not to shake, and pointed out the window. When they looked through the falling snow, they saw an object in the water, about fifty feet away. It was moving in barely visible spasms. It was a man.

  As soon as they could hack the ice off the davits, they lowered a lifeboat, and pulled him in. He was so badly wounded and stunned that they didn’t expect him to talk. They would not have been surprised had he rattled over and died.

  Propped up in the crew’s shower, he faced the steaming water in apparent gratitude. Several minutes more in the chill harbor would have frozen him brittle.

  A Spanish speaker was found to interpret the account of the discoverer, now inflated with pride. He had been gazing absent-mindedly into the snow, when he heard a whistle in the air like that of an approaching artillery shell. Before him appeared a bright streak of light, and the water under it exploded as if someone had set off a dynamite charge to break apart the ice. Surprised by the intense white flash, he was further amazed when a body was elevated on the mushrooming foam. Then he had run to the bridge.

  “Are you sure you didn’t push him during a fight?” asked the captain of the Cornelius G. Koff—an ancient boat that was still in service. “I’m told he’s wounded.”

  The man who could hardly speak English stormed off the bridge. His countenance was enough to prove his innocence.

  “Call an ambulance to the slip,” the captain told his mate. “If the overboard wants to press charges against anyone, inform the police. If not, forget it. We have enough to do.”

  Several decks below, the overboard in the shower heard the engines start, and felt the boat lurch ahead. Someone beyond the shower curtain asked if he wanted to press charges.

  “Press charges against who?” inquired the wounded man, from within the hot water stream, startled by his own Irish accent.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure,” said Peter Lake, staring in amazement at his wounds, which, from their appearance, had to have been received recently.

  “But you’re all cut up.”

  “I see that,” answered Peter Lake. “I think I got some bullets in me, too.”

  “How did it happen?”

  The mate heard the shower dashing off Peter Lake’s pale skin. “I don’t know,” Peter Lake answered.

  “What’s your name?” There was no reply. “It’s not important, though they might want to know at the hospital. If you don’t want to say anything, that’s your business.”

  Feeling so weak that the foghorns speaking to each other across the winter harbor seemed like the music of a dream, Peter Lake struggled to put on a pair of torn pants, a work shirt, and a wool sweater that was dotted with specks of white paint. He was also given a pair of old shoes which, by some accident, fit perfectly. Leaning over to tie them made his heart race, and spots appeared before his eyes, but this was almost as pleasant as getting into a warm bed on a cold night. He was told that his own clothes—nothing more than soft shreds—had peeled off him and disintegrated when he had been hauled into the lifeboat.

  As the ferry was docking, he stepped before a small broken mirror on the bulkhead.

  “There’s an ambulance at the pier,” the mate said. “You’re bleeding like hell, but we had to put you in the shower. You would have froze to death. Besides, the harbor’s not exactly lily-white.”

  Peter Lake put his hands against the wall to steady himself. He was faint from loss of blood, and he felt and moved like a drunk. Staring at his image in the mirror, he shuddered. “Funny,” he said. “I don’t know who that is.”

  Then he saw two ambulance attendants coming down the stairs, carrying a stretcher between them. They caught him just as he was about to hit the floor.

  HE AWOKE at dawn in one of the very old ward rooms of St. Vincent’s Hospital, looking out on Tenth Street. It was snowing, and because the light was diffuse, all the shadows in the room were gray. He remembered the cold water, the ferry, the shower, and little else. Certainly, he would snap to at any moment. Sometimes you forget your name, he thought. Like hell you do. Maybe he was drunk. Perhaps he was dreaming.

  Written on a plastic band around his wrist were the day and month that he was admitted, a four-digit number, and “No Name.” Never before had he seen plastic. He felt how smooth it was, not knowing why he was amazed, because, although he knew it was not familiar, he couldn’t imagine that he had never come across it. There were certain things that he simply could not recollect, and this he found unbearably annoying. Who was he? How old? What month was it (the bracelet said “2/18”)? Still, he believed that everything was near at hand, at the tip of his tongue.

  A group of doctors and medical students entered the ward and began their rounds. By the time they got to Peter Lake, attendants were serving breakfast to the patients who had been examined, most of the white curtains were drawn back, and the silvery light—within which the snow wound and unwound in the manic convulsions of a spinning jenny—had a bright daylike sheen.

  As a dozen medical students and nurses gathered around Peter Lake’s bed, the senior physician snatched a clipboard from the bedstead, glanced at it, and addressed the patient. “Good morning,” he said. “How are we feeling this morning?”

  A shot of hostility welled up in Peter Lake. Although he didn’t like the doctor and he didn’t know why, he trusted himself, perhaps because he had nothing else.

  “I don’t know,” he snapped back, eying them one by one. “You should know how you feel.”

  �
��I see,” the doctor said. “If that’s how you want it, that’s how you’ll get it.”

  “Just don’t saw off my legs,” Peter Lake responded.

  “Then let’s start with your name. You were unconscious when you were admitted. You had no identification. . . .”

  “What’s identification?”

  “A driver’s license, for example.”

  “For what, a locomotive?”

  “No. For a car.”

  “When you say ‘car’ do you mean an automobile?” Peter Lake asked. The students nodded their heads. “You don’t need a license to drive an automobile.”

  “Look,” the senior physician said, “you had three bullet wounds. We had to take your fingerprints and give them to the police. They’ll have your name, so you might as well tell us.”

  At the mention of the police, Peter Lake lunged forward, and discovered that he was handcuffed to the bed. The medical students started at the rattle of the chains. “What are fingerprints?” he asked. But they had lost their patience. Rather than an answer, he got a needle in the arm, and he watched them depart.

  Breathing slowly, Peter Lake stared at the ceiling. He had no strength, and could not move. His eyes were wide open, and a million thoughts crowded his head, like snowflakes in a blizzard. And yet, despite manacles, wounds, and drugs, he felt as if he had some fight left in him. He didn’t know from where it came any more than he knew who he was. But he did know that deep inside the immobile body handcuffed to a hospital bed, there was still a lot of fire. And when he fell asleep, he was smiling.

  FIVE DAYS later, Peter Lake awakened to a springlike evening. The ward was quiet, and he had been corralled within a screen of frilly snow-white cloth. Opening his eyes, he saw a dark violet sky through the upper corner of a window, and strange white lights in the ceiling, which he took to be some sort of adaptation of a cathode ray tube. When he turned his head to the side, he saw that there was a young girl in the cubicle with him.

  She was sitting on a chair at his bedside, staring with a youthful optimism that seemed to flow from every atom in her body. She looked no more than fourteen or fifteen, had astonishing green eyes, and red hair that was piled up in beautiful waves and falling tresses. She was freckled, as someone of her coloring might be, and she was slightly chubby. Peter Lake noticed (and then felt properly ashamed for making such an observation about so young a girl) that she had a most attractive bosom, moving visibly and seductively under her white blouse. This he attributed to early development and healthy plumpness.

  The girl, in fact, was twenty-seven years old, and looked young for her age. She was a former resident of Baltimore, a hardworking, good-natured young woman—his attending physician. But, of course, he didn’t know that, and he smiled at her with a slight elongation of the strange smile that he had had during his five days of sleep. “Hello, missy,” he said.

  “Hi,” she answered, responding to the warmth of his greeting.

  “How long have I been asleep; do you know?”

  She shook her head to indicate that she did. “Five days.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “You got a lot better in that time. Sleep did wonders for your wounds.”

  “It did?”

  “Yes. You should be up and about in less than a week.”

  “Is that what they said?”

  “Who?”

  “The doctors.”

  “No, it’s what I say.”

  “That’s nice, but what do they say?”

  “They generally agree,” she stated, after thinking for a moment. “If the matter isn’t too complicated. These things are pretty straightforward.”

  “No handcuffs,” Peter Lake said, looking at his wrists. “When did they take them off?”

  “I took them off when it became clear that you were going to sleep awhile. Then the police report came: you’re not under suspicion of anything, and they didn’t have your fingerprints. They would like to know how you were shot and slashed, but they’re not going to press.”

  “Where’s the women’s ward?” Peter Lake asked, wondering if perhaps this little girl were some kind of loony, because she seemed to think that she was in charge, and, besides, she was probably not allowed to be with him.

  “It’s on the floor above,” she answered, pointing up. As her lovely eyes swept upward, she looked like some sort of mystical icon. “Why do you ask?”

  “Don’t you think you better get back, dear, before they catch you?” In fact, he wanted her to stay—perhaps because she elicited from him both paternal goodwill and a slightly nagging sexual interest. She laughed at his question, and her amusement convinced him that she was an escaped lunatic who had broken out of her chains.

  “This is my ward,” she volunteered, thinking that he assumed a female doctor would not be allowed on a male ward. She didn’t suspect that he was ignorant of her position, for her tunic, her paging unit, and the stethoscope sticking out of her breast pocket were obvious signs of her profession.

  But Peter Lake had never seen that style of doctor’s tunic, had never seen or heard of a female doctor, had never seen a paging unit, was just nearsighted enough that he could not read the small print of her security badge, and thought that the flesh-colored rubber tubes coming out of her pocket were part of a slingshot. “Why would they put you in a men’s ward, missy, when you’re obviously, delightfully, and undeniably a woman?”

  After a short silence, she spoke up. “Don’t you know that I’m your doctor?” she asked. “I’m the physician in charge of this ward. This is my second year as a resident. Is that what’s confusing you?”

  Certain that she was mentally ill (though a pure delight), since no adolescent girl—especially one who carried a slingshot—could possibly be chief of a men’s ward in a hospital, Peter Lake decided to go along with her. “Oh, now I see,” he said. “Yes! That was what was confusing me.” He smiled. She smiled. “But it’s all clear now”—he hesitated, to give emphasis to the next word—“Doctor.”

  “Good,” she said, pleased that she had gained the confidence and cooperation of a patient she had been told would be difficult and, perhaps, violent (a burly orderly sat on a cart on the other side of the curtain). As Peter Lake took her sweet, rather chunky little hand, and squeezed it, she said, “I’ll be around tomorrow. We have a lot to talk about. I’m going to try my best to see that you can leave here as quickly as possible.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “It’s my job,” she said. “Meanwhile, believe it or not, you need to sleep some more. So I’m going to give you an injection.” She pulled out a needle the size of a meat skewer, and began to top it off in the fiendish way that needles are topped off.

  “Now wait a minute!” Peter Lake screamed. He hadn’t bargained on actual treatment, and didn’t know what was in the syringe, or where she wanted to stick him. “Let’s not. . . .” It was too late.

  With an expert thrust, she got him in the arm, and he dared not move for fear of breaking the needle in his flesh.

  “What’s in it?” he asked, as the fluid entered his veins.

  “Trioxymetasalicylate, dimethylethyloxitan, and Vipparin.”

  “Ohhhh . . .” cried Peter Lake, perhaps one of the most confused beings that had ever been on earth. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  She smiled her reply as he drifted off to sleep.

  AWAKENING SEVERAL hours earlier than the young doctor had thought he would, Peter Lake stretched out his arms. At first he had no idea of where he was or what had happened. Then he grew anxious, for he was able to remember that, in fact, he could not remember. He turned his head. The only thing he could see was the white cloth screen, and in that quiet moment he finally understood that he was alone. If there had once been those whom he had loved, who had loved him, he was now separated from them. Even were they suddenly to appear, he reasoned, he might not know them. Though the way in which he was lost was the most serious way in which a man can be lost, still,
he hoped that it would pass, and that his confusion would dissipate like fog as it burns off the bay on a hot morning in July.

  The silence was suddenly broken. Peter Lake rose onto his shoulder to free his ears from the pillow so that he could hear better the sound of horses on the street. This was something he knew, something at last familiar. There was a whole detachment of them, fifty or more, and he could tell from the way they were shod, the way their bits clinked, and the way they were packed close together that they were police mounts changing shift. It must be four o’clock, he thought. They’re on their way downtown, and right now the night horses are stomping as the black boys curry them, and mounted policemen are filing in from all over to begin the rides that end at midnight.

  The horses soon passed, and he was left with the discomfort of the many things around him that were not familiar. A box that was bracketed to the wall, at a tilt, stared at him with a blank glass face. It couldn’t have been a cabinet, because it was too high to reach, and, besides, everything in it would have been all jumbled up. He couldn’t imagine what it was. And then, the way things were shaped, and the materials of which they were made, seemed almost otherworldly. “There isn’t any iron in this place,” he said to himself, “or any wood.” Everything seemed to have grown smooth, to have lost its texture.

  What, in God’s name, were the panels above his head, that seemed to glow in red and green. He thought at first that they were stove doors, but the light was green as well as scarlet, and he knew that neither coal nor wood burned green. He propped himself up and got close enough to them to see that they were tiny lights jumping around like fleas. Astonishingly, they made their little pulses and flickered on and off in sympathy with his breathing and his heartbeat, or so it seemed, for when he strained to get near them they went mad with activity, and when he recovered, they did, too. He wondered if he were dreaming.