by Mark Helprin
Bedford shrugged his shoulders. “They just came on. I guess the mechanics were able to fix the machines.”
Bedford went downstairs to interview the mechanics.
When, later, Bedford reported to Harry Penn’s office, Harry Penn was sitting on a couch, smoking a cigar and staring at the paintings of Peter Lake and Beverly.
“The mechanics say that the machinery was hopelessly frozen and jammed,” Bedford told Harry Penn, whose eyes never left the paintings. “They had half of it eviscerated and out on the floor, and were prepared for six months of work, when the chief mechanic returned and fixed it in . . . well, they say a minute.”
“What! Trumbull? I don’t believe that Trumbull could fix anything in a minute. He takes a year to sharpen my Swiss Army knife. Something’s not right.”
“Trumbull was the one to whom I spoke.”
“That liar.”
“Mr. Penn, he’s no longer the chief mechanic.”
“He isn’t? Since when? Where was I?”
“For quite a while now, the mechanics have had a new chief, whom they themselves have elevated to the position.”
“Damnation, Bedford,” Harry Penn said furiously. “Nobody elevates anyone around here except me. No one designates shares except me.”
Bedford shook his head. “He takes apprentices shares. They made him chief because, they say, he was so good they couldn’t wait.”
“What is he, one of those computer kids? Get the son of a bitch up here. I want to talk to him.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Goddammit,” Harry Penn said, glancing at the ceiling in exasperation. “Who runs this newspaper?”
Bedford tried to answer, but no words came. At first Harry Penn was livid, but then he was simply amazed.
“What’s his name?”
“They call him Mr. Bearer.”
“Mr. Bearer,” he echoed.
“That’s correct.”
Harry Penn was not sure whether to reload his pepperbox or lapse into hysteria. “Why can’t you get him up here?” he asked.
“He’s taking a nap.”
“He’s taking a nap?”
“Yes, sir. They won’t let him be disturbed. They stand in awe of him. They seem to think that he’s the king of mechanics.”
“Look here,” Harry Penn said, fierce-eyed, rising from the couch. “I don’t care if he’s the king of the gypsies. I’m going to wake this ‘Mr. Bearer’ up, I’m going to fire him, and I’m going to kick his ass. And then I’ll rehire him as chief mechanic, and get down on my knees in front of him because I’m so grateful that the son of a bitch was able to keep the light burning.”
As Harry Penn took the stairs, rhythmically, one by one, he felt at first a chill, and then his hair stood on end, and then he could neither feel the steps under his feet nor hear his own footsteps or the sound of the machines on the machine deck. It couldn’t be, he thought to himself just before he confronted the mechanics. But—the best mechanic in the world, who fixed all the machines in one move, who was elevated by the other mechanics and still takes an apprentice’s shares—it could only be.
Numb with fear and anticipation, Harry Penn questioned the mechanics. “Where is Mr. Bearer? Is he here?”
“Yes, he’s here,” one of them answered.
“Show me.”
“He shouldn’t be disturbed,” Trumbull declared. “He’s sleeping now.”
“Oh no,” Harry Penn said, falling into Trumbull’s reverential tone. “I just want to look at him.”
“He’s down there,” Trumbull said, pointing. “Two rows, and then turn in by the compressor. You’ll see a little alley of generators. . . .”
Harry Penn was already on his way. He passed two rows, turned in by the compressor, and followed the little alley of generators until he came to a man who was sleeping up against a busy, smoothly running machine.
At first Harry Penn could not see his face. He knelt down, trembling, and shielded his eyes from the bright light of a lamp in a conical tin shade. And, then, he saw. He saw what no man has the right to expect to see even in a life of a hundred years. He saw the past arise. He saw the past victorious. He saw time and death beaten. He saw Peter Lake.
To SEE Peter Lake unchanged after eighty-five years was not only to see that time could be beaten, but that those whom one has loved do not simply disappear forever. Harry Penn might have died contentedly on the spot as Peter Lake slept before him. But privileges come in droves, this was not the last great thing that Harry Penn was to see, and he did not choose that moment to expire.
He grabbed Peter Lake’s wrist and tugged at it to wake him up. Still asleep, Peter Lake pulled back his arm, and said, “That’s not what I asked you.”
“Wake up! Wake up!” Harry Penn shouted in delight, but no matter how much Harry Penn shook him, Peter Lake still slept. So, Harry Penn resorted to an old and effective reveille that he had used in the wars. Leaning over to within several inches of Peter Lake’s right ear, he shouted, as hard as he could, “Hand grenade!”
Peter Lake’s body coalesced into a bolt of lightning that took to the air, where he somehow managed to remain until he had scanned every inch of the floor. When he descended, he saw a very old man with a wide smile. “What did you do that for?” Peter Lake asked.
“You wouldn’t get up. It’s good. . . . What do I mean it’s good? It’s not just good, it’s magnificent, a glory, the happiest thing in my life, to see you again.”
Peter Lake eyed him with some apprehension. “Have we met?”
Harry Penn threw back his head and laughed with maniacal satisfaction. “I’m Harry Penn!” he said.
“You’re the publisher of The Sun. You’re my boss. But we never met.”
“Oh yes we did,” Harry Penn affirmed, gleefully bouncing up and down on his bent haunches. “More than eighty-five years ago! I wasn’t even fifteen. Of course, you wouldn’t recognize me now, but I know you. You haven’t aged a day. Ha!”
Peter Lake looked carefully at the old man, waiting for some more of the story. He tried to envision what Harry Penn had looked like as a boy, and found that it was too difficult to do.
But Harry Penn, still enraptured (as he would be until the day he died), slapped his thigh, and gathered up his thoughts. “You know,” he said, happily, “this reminds me of a time when I was just a small kid, and we were up in the mountains, on the way to the Coheeries. I was about four, I think.
“It was a beautiful June morning, and at the inn where we stayed the night, my father was sending a telegram, or waiting to receive one—I don’t know. I was itching to get to the Coheeries, but I was told that we wouldn’t be leaving until the afternoon. I went up to a high place that seemed to overlook all the world and take in half its sunshine, and there I found a field of blueberries. Soon I was lost in the grazing, and would have stayed there, eating, until my father called me—were it not for the approach of a train winding up the mountainside. The tracks were just a short distance from where I was, and I knew it was going to go past me.
“As I watched it draw close, I was greatly agitated. I wanted to stop it, because I realized that if it were going to come to me, it would have to leave me, too. And because I grieved in advance for its leaving, I decided to stop it, even if it meant that I had to destroy it. Do you know how I contrived to do that?”
Peter Lake shook his head to show that he didn’t.
“I was going to throw a blueberry at it,” Harry Penn said in a hoarse whisper.
“I got the biggest blueberry I could find, and went to wait by the side of the rails, stricken with guilt that I was going to slay a fine train, merely for my love of it. I remember that as it came closer and began to bear down on me I was trembling with remorse. At the very moment that the seventy-ton locomotive pulled up even with me, I forsook the world, and threw my blueberry at it.
“The next thing I knew, I saw the caboose rushing away into the meadows where I had been afraid to go because there
were too many bees in the wildflowers, and the train continued on, disappearing into the bright snowfields at the top of the ridge.
“Never in my life have I been so relieved. With that terrible weight off my chest, I skipped down to the hotel, and resolved not to throw blueberries at locomotives.
“I thought that when you saw me you would be as amazed as I am to see you. But you don’t have the slightest idea of who I am, do you?”
“No, sir, not really.”
“It was as vain of me to think that you would know me, or that I would matter, as it was for me to think that I could derail a seventy-ton locomotive with a little berry. You hardly knew me even then. But, don’t you recall my sister?”
“I can’t say that I do. You see, I know that you’re right when you talk about a hundred years ago. I remember it in flashes. But it’s never clear.”
“Then you don’t know who you are, do you?”
“No.”
“I do.”
“I would be most relieved if you would let me in on it. It’s been at the tip of my tongue ever since they pulled me from the harbor.”
“You don’t even know your own name?”
“No, sir, not even that.”
“Then come,” said Harry Penn. “Come upstairs with me, and I will show you who you are, not in words, but in beautiful images that could not ever be counterfeited or forged. And you will know exactly who you are, forever, by knowing what it is that you love.”
AS HE and Harry Penn ascended the hanging staircases at The Sun, Peter Lake clutched his side. Each step was a greater agony, for the wound had not healed. But, still, he almost floated up the stairs, and when they reached the last floor, Peter Lake continued to rise beyond the landing, and had to pull himself down so as not to strike the ceiling. A young copy boy who witnessed this dropped both his lower jaw and a large sheaf of papers that he had in his arms, and the breeze carried the papers down the hall with the same graceful, free weightlessness that had been the mark of Peter Lake ascending the stairs.
Only with ironclad discipline and concentration was Peter Lake able to move through the long halls one step at a time. He knew that if he lost himself for even a moment he would accelerate through the walls and into the open air—hurtling toward something that pulled him forward with mounting and limitless velocity. He wondered what it was that was pouring into him the power to float, and run, and rise.
All that had been raging within him subsided in the gold and blue aura of the paintings that stood upon a long table in Harry Penn’s office, leaning at a slight angle that made Peter Lake and Beverly seem to look into the distance.
A crown of color emanated from the life-sized portraits, in roses, yellows, and blues that boiled in the air, perpetually unfurling, like the sunlit spray of a wave that hangs in the light. To Peter Lake and Harry Penn, it appeared that the two figures were actually alive. The dark background with its slight radiance (as if a strong beam of light were passing through invisibly except for a few telltale glimmers of the dust) was in no way flat, and even though it was merely a few millimeters of paint, it led the eye far and deep. Beverly seemed perpetually to be reaching a smile. She had not only the look of grace and forgiveness common to those who stare from the past, but she seemed to be brimming over with the knowledge of something excellent and good. In his portrait, Peter Lake seemed unsure, uncomfortable, and not as well initiated in the brilliant mystery that surrounded Beverly with such force and confidence—despite the tentative way her left hand touched the folds of blue silk that billowed from her shoulder and were tied by a silver clasp. But he was, obviously, soon to learn. In her right hand, she held a folded fan against the pearly gray of her dress. Though it was not apparent in the portraits, they had been standing almost together when the artist had painted them, and her left hand was reaching to touch Peter Lake. Though their hands were not together, one would, if one were to know the circumstances of the sitting, see them on their way.
They were alive. To say so is not just a figure of speech, a device, or a metaphor. They were alive, and, what is more, she had seen everything.
“Your name is Peter Lake. And that was my sister—Beverly,” Harry Penn offered.
Peter Lake held out his hand as if to say, “Shhh! I know. Of course I know.” And he knew, as well, exactly what he had to do, though he didn’t know how he was going to do it.
With a last look into Beverly’s eyes, for courage, he turned from the portrait and left the room, with Harry Penn hard on his heels.
Harry Penn could only just keep up with him, and Peter Lake didn’t turn when he spoke. “We sat for that portrait on a very beautiful day,” he said. “I wanted to be outside, but she made me stand beside her from morning until night. Sometimes when I got tired of standing, I knelt on a little stool in back of her. I didn’t see the sun once that day, but only a perfectly blue sky through the upper part of a north window.
“Later, at night, I was quite surprised to find that my muscles were pleasantly sore, and that my face and arms were sunburned.
“She said it was my reward, and that it was only a part of what was to come. I didn’t know then what she meant, but now I do know.”
Harry Penn stopped, and looked after Peter Lake as he disappeared down the stairs. The old man had done his part, and he returned to his office to direct The Sun.
FAT, GENTLE, slit-eyed Cecil Mature was in a rage. “Do this! Do that! Do this! Do that!” he said furiously to a desk littered with bushels of request slips, materials orders, looseleaf papers, queries, demands, and several dozen bright red and blue memos from Jackson Mead that had all arrived at the same time bearing the following inscription: “Most urgent, absolute, top, 1,000% priority—if I were a king in ancient times, I would lop off your head were you not to deal with this immediately.”
He clenched his fist until it resembled a small stack of bagels, and slammed it hard against his huge desk, causing half a dozen cathode-ray screens to flicker in effeminate protest. Seething with an anger that threatened to compromise his extraordinarily sweet disposition, he tried to lose his temper the way other people did, and to become mean. Edging himself on, as it were, against an edgeless nature, he found himself in a struggle between a hard external voice and an inaudible but omnipotent inner gentleness.
“He just sits there, and doesn’t even move,” Cecil said, trying to work himself up. “Just commands, commands, commands. His lips hardly part when he talks, all for conservation of energy. ‘Mr. Wooley, send twenty thousand freight cars to the iron fields of Minnesota. Mr. Wooley, convert the supertankers we are building in Sasebo into carriers of liquid hydrogen. Mr. Wooley, draw up the plans for a titanium smelter in Botswana. Mr. Wooley, do this. Mr. Wooley, do that.’ I can’t!”
Mootfowl glided up from nowhere. “He wants you to find out about the progress of the fire. It’s coming down from the north at a fast pace, and he says you ought to get close to it, scout around, and try to pick up some information about the Short Tails.”
“What about all this stuff?” Cecil asked, referring to the stack of “urgent” memos. “What about the charge fluctuations at Black Tom, the polarity reversal at Diamond Shoals, the switches that have to be changed in South Bay? How’s that going to get done?”
“He says not to worry.”
“Not to worry? After all those years? You mean he’s not worried himself?”
“He isn’t.”
Cecil was astonished. “What about you? Aren’t you a little tense? God knows, I am. The city’s burning; we’re pressed from all sides; the harbor’s so turbulent I don’t see how in the world the lenses will remain stable, and they’ve got to be completely immobile for the beams to concentrate perfectly, since the ice lenses are gone, and. . . .”
“I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over that, Cecil,” Mootfowl said. “I’m not going to.”
Cecil couldn’t believe his ears. “How can that be?” he asked. “You? You, the most nervous, jumpy, stiff, keyed-up divi
ne that ever lived? We’re so close!”
“Cecil, do you understand what happens if we throw that bridge, and it takes?”
“Eternal salvation, heaven on earth, the sight of God’s face, the golden age—everyone slim and trim,” Cecil answered in a sort of reverberatory awe.
“That’s right,” Mootfowl confirmed. “And what’s left for us?”
“Wha?” said Cecil, nearly rolling off his chair.
“We’d be out of a job. If everything were bliss, there’d be no need for us, would there?”
“Don’t you want it that way?”
“Quite frankly, I don’t. I’ve changed my mind. And he’s having second thoughts, too. We like it the way it is. We’re enjoying the oscillating balances, the ongoing war between good and evil, the wonderful small triumphs of the soul. Perhaps it’s too soon to end all that. Perhaps we need some more time to think things out.”
“Another hundred years?” Cecil inquired.
“We were thinking about the excellent times that we’ve had, and we decided on maybe another thousand . . . or two.”
“What about Peter Lake?”
“Must his triumph be absolute? None of the others had that, not Beverly Penn, nor any of the ones before, though when it’s his time to act he may far outshine the others, and take the matter out of our hands.”
“They don’t do that.”
“They haven’t done it as yet. Who’s to say that he won’t? By the way, it’s all working out very well with him, as far as we can tell.”
“You’ve found him!”
“At about two o’clock this morning,” Mootfowl said, “sleeping against a bank of machinery, I trained him to that.”
“Like hell you did,” Cecil snapped. “Don’t you remember where you grabbed him?”
“Well, yes. But I sharpened his sense of the machine’s nature. You do recall, don’t you, that he thought they were animals?”
“Where is he?”
“You were always loyal to him, much more than to any of the others.”
