In Sunlight and in Shadow

by Mark Helprin

  “We were given luxury orders—general officers’ belts, Sam Brownes, attachés, wallets, map cases, presentation portfolios, the top end. So we weren’t raking in the money, we didn’t overextend, we stayed perfectly stable. Our civilian carriage trade declined to almost nothing, but all of the slack was taken up by the top-end production for the military. We neither expanded nor contracted. As a result, we haven’t had to lay anyone off, we haven’t relaxed our standards, we still produce the finest leather goods in the country, and we’re still connected to the right sources of supply. Everyone else is in chaos.”

  “Then what’s the problem? It sounds ideal.”

  “Europe. The first industries to revive are not the steel mills and automobile plants—it takes time to rebuild something like that—but the ateliers, the small workshops and family businesses like ours. They’re back up already. In Europe now people will work for nothing. The exchange rates are such that even with import duties and excise taxes an Italian briefcase of a quality similar to what we produce, or better, will soon go for half of what we can price ours if we pull in our belts. And the United States is not going just to sit still while Europe teeters and the Soviets keep their armies mobilized. We’ll have to help them. How will we do that? We’ll liberalize imports, for one. And when we do, the big industries here will bribe Congress to go easy on them, but small companies like ours, in small sectors like ours, won’t be able to.”

  “Then what can you do?”

  “I don’t know. If we cut prices, which we can’t anyway, it would destroy our image. I don’t want to lay people off, and if we scale back production it wouldn’t solve the fundamental problem. In fact, it would hasten our demise by reducing volume at the same time that margins are shrinking. A lot of companies are farming out work to the Italians. That just puts off the day of extinction, and it means layoffs, or shutting down. Any temporarily advantageous deal you make with your competition will run only as long as the date on the contract, if that.

  “A Cypriot who said he knew my father—although Cornell had no memory of it—came onto the floor a couple of weeks ago. He has workshops all over Italy, and wanted to take our production and mix it with the lines he’s importing here. He’s done it with other companies. It would be the end for us. He was arrogant in the way that people who suddenly make a lot of money can be arrogant, all puffed up—mania. He looked at me and said, ‘Oh, I thought you were Clark Gable, until my eyes came into focus.’ Can you imagine? That’s how he greets me, in my own factory, in my own country, where he’s a guest.”

  “You do look a bit like Clark Gable, when he was younger,” she said.

  “I do not. For Chrissakes, Elaine, when he was young, without the mustache, Clark Gable looked like a mouse. He still looks like a mouse.”

  “Some mouse.”

  “Elaine, nothing I’ve ever done or thought has had anything whatsoever to do with what I look like.”

  “I know. You have no prettiness. I’m not saying that.”

  “Be that as it may,” he continued, “I don’t know what to do. But it’ll come clear one way or another. It always does.”

  “And marriage?”

  “What does marriage have to do with it?”

  “When will you get married? You’re thirty-one years old.”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll marry a beautiful girl I saw on the ferry.”

  “Oh?”

  “She disappeared.” At this, Harry stood and offered his arm to his aunt. “Let’s take a walk,” he said, helping her up.

  “Take a walk?”

  “Just around the paths. You don’t have to leave the roses. The shells are so white. How do you keep them that way?”

  “We don’t use oyster shells,” she said. “They have a lot of black and gray. What we use is more expensive, but worth it. And we put down about twenty percent fresh every year. I mean, I put down.”

  “I know.”

  “Harry,” she said, as they rested at the top of a short flight of bluestone stairs from which they could see waves breaking white on the beach far below, “never forget that the time is always short.”

  He walked down to the ocean, reaching it at about one-thirty, with his jacket slung over his shoulder and held by one finger, arm cocked, sleeves rolled up, and tie loosened so much that the normally long ends were short enough to have been the flourish beyond the knot of a scarf. Were it not for the wind, his shirt would have been wet even though he had been going mainly downhill. Enforcing its own protocol, the beach slowed his pace before he reached the water. Fast walking, the universal pace of Manhattan, had the edge planed off it after he had left the pavement and crossed a weathered and neglected boardwalk onto glassy sand that forced him to half speed. He felt his weight as he pushed on toward the ocean, but as if taking strength from the roar of the waves he grew lighter as the sea filled his eyes. Although he stood on dry land, he could see only the ocean. The strong wind neither ceased nor changed direction, and no sail driven before it would luff. As steady and invariable as the air from an electric fan, it seemed to cover the world uniformly.

  He had intended merely to touch by the sea and then walk north to St. George and get the ferry, although no one expected him back at the loft that day. But just as upon his return from the war he had found the world still and becalmed before the century (and perhaps his life with it) would accelerate toward the gleam of fire at its end, his intentions were directed entirely apart from his will.

  When he had returned home, the troopship had pushed through the Narrows with everyone on deck, as impossible and unstable as that may have been, Brooklyn to starboard and Staten Island to port. He had had no idea what he might find, but it felt more like a beginning than an end. Perhaps after tests and deprivations, fighting on land, over the sea, and in the air, it would be settlement, the founding of a new family, and love. Yet nothing seemed to happen and everything seemed ordinary: subways, restaurants, telephone calls, business, the paying of bills. Now, however, on a beach where he had not planned to linger, some mercurial spirit held him as if by the leaden anchor of one of the ships that passed through the pillars of Fort Hamilton and St. George.

  He had never liked reading a folded newspaper as one did on the subway, and here he was on the beach with not a soul in sight, not even the ghost of a coast guardsman in one of the abandoned watchtowers or concrete fortifications, and certainly no passengers pressing on all sides, but the wind forced him to the subway rider’s origami, and until sometime after three he read the news in his usual disciplined fashion, pausing to burn into memory important facts and figures. When he had no more to read, he collapsed the paper into a pillow, and as he stretched out and relaxed on the sand everything became quieter, the apparently immutable wind having been thrown off its game by the imperfections of the ground. Listening to his own heartbeat, he fell asleep in the sun. And in the airy, unburdened moments before sleep, he saw her in full.

  Throbbing from hours in the open, he sat in the dark ferry hall, impatient to pass through the gates and out to bright water. In the harbor and under a shield of inconstant smoke, ships by the hundreds moved in and out, each bent upon its purpose, crossing a surface brocaded by the sun into flashes like a forest of leaves turned up by a sudden blast of wind. The only time he had ever been in the presence of more ships had been during the invasions of Sicily and Normandy, and these he had rapidly flown over. Unlike the invasion fleets that had been silent and immobile as they rested on surprised seas, the ships and boats in New York harbor were as loose with their horns and whistles as if they were desperately trying to speak.

  Pigeons that had been trapped inside rose against the dark green walls all the way to the highest windows, glanced off them, and fell back to the rafters to rest. The floor glinted with ground glass that had been mixed into the concrete to give it traction. A hundred electric lights burned steadily to relieve the darkness even as the sun beat against the roof and
walls. Footsteps, and the sound of a clock ticking. Claxons, engines, wind, water, wings flapping, the sound of breathing, the beat of the pulse, the rush of one’s blood.

  Harry closed his eyes lest he lose his way in the confusion. As the gate swung wide at the call for the next boat and he opened them, he saw a flash of white in the air, like a hawk cartwheeling in a turn, and then it vanished. As he stood, he apprehended in a split second that it had been a newspaper that, with the speed and certainty of a throwing knife, had been propelled into a trash can. And he apprehended just as suddenly that this perfect, powerful, nonchalant shot had been made at a fast clip by a woman walking toward the boat, it seemed, angrily.

  All sense, propriety, and inhibition left him as he bolted forward, pushing through the crowd to close, determined not to lose her again.

  She went to the top deck, to port, where the sun would be. He followed, embarrassed and troubled that he was following, not knowing what he could say or if he would be able to utter a word. He had yet to see her face, and yet he knew that she was beautiful. Walking past her, not two feet to her right as she took a place near the rail, he looked toward the bow and waited for the gates to close, the boat to shudder, and the harbor to splay into view. He stopped ten or fifteen paces away from her, put on his jacket, restored his tie, and placed his forearms on the rail, clasping his hands in front of him as if in relaxation. He would casually turn to his left, glancing to see that the last passengers had cleared the ramps, and he knew that when he did this, and if she were still in the same position, he would see her profile. What he would do then, he did not know.

  Far more slowly than someone who might be checking to see if the ramps were up, he turned, expecting to see her, if at all, in profile, fifteen feet away. But when he came around he saw that, having moved forward, she was close enough to touch, and was looking right at him, her penetrating eyes magnified in her clear lenses, a neutral, almost disapproving expression on her face, which seemed to indicate a fine judgment hard at work on subjects far from sight.

  He had fallen in love with her at a distance and in an instant, and now, as he saw her for the first time in the shade of the wooden pilings and palisades, with a diffuse sun making her hair golden and casting muted shadows within shadows, what had been playing upon the surface began to plunge deep. He found himself staring at her without the ability to feign looking elsewhere. As seconds passed, he thought she was returning his gaze, perhaps waiting for him to introduce himself as someone whom she had already met, for no one but someone she had already met would be so forward and rude as to lock his eyes upon her like this.

  And then he realized that she understood from his expression and his stance that in fact they hadn’t met. And yet she didn’t turn away. She was simultaneously curious, irritated, expectant, and reserved. To save his life, Harry would not have been able to say something clever or even appropriate. At that moment, as betrayed by his expression, he hadn’t the ability to say anything at all. He remembered being told, If you want to meet somebody, drop a sheaf of papers, but he had no papers to drop.

  Not one woman in a thousand would have failed to retreat, perhaps resentfully. But she had read him as finely as he had read her. The ferry whistle blasted, catching even daily ferry-goers unaware and making them jump as if they had been jolted by an electric current. It shook the two of them and made their lungs tremble as it seemed to hammer them down into fixed positions on the deck and separate them from the world. As the ferry started to move and the wind came up, the sun broke out. And when the harbor appeared she stepped toward him, moving in the direction of their travel. Not taking her eyes from his, she held her right hand within reach for him to grasp, which he did, as if in a formal introduction. To touch her hand was overwhelming. And then, in the most beautiful voice he had ever heard, she said the most beautiful word he had ever heard: “Catherine.”

  3. Her Hands and the Way She Held Them

  AS THE FERRY strained forward to reach top speed, it left behind long garlands of white water at the edge of a turquoise wake. A rope hanging loose from a davit swung back and forth in the crosscurrents of wind and with the slight roll of the boat as it reached open water. He had been waiting for her for the longest time, although he had not known he had been waiting. And there she was, standing before him, too beautiful for words.

  She spoke first, accusingly, but enjoyably. “Have we met?”

  “No, we’ve collided.”

  Lost in infatuation, he had moved incautiously ahead to the point where he was in love with even the smallest detail of her. Had she known of each or perhaps any one of the specifics, she would have had the evidence that she had begun to sense, and that had begun to sweep over her in the rare feeling of being adored. Although she had neither designed nor sewn her blouse, nor accomplished the sinuous, restrained embroidery, nor given to the embroidery the gray and rose color of mother-of-pearl, she had put it on, and it embraced her hour by hour, absorbing the heat of her body and the scent of her perfume. The collar, the buttonhole, the button, the threads that made a basket knot within the button’s ivory recess, became for him more than just a symbol, for he had never loved just a symbol, but a part of her—touched, regarded, accepted, and chosen by her.

  And of other things about her that overwhelmed him there were many. Her hands and the way she held them, unconsciously. And yet her fingers never existed in relation to each other except beautifully, no matter how they moved or where they came to rest. My God, he thought, she has beautiful hands. Every syllable she uttered, the way she pronounced every word, the bell-like quality of her voice. Her grace when she moved, or when she was still. Even the few wrinkles in her skirt. The line of her neck as it rose from the top of her chest. Her bosom, though he hardly dared look, but did. And beyond all that, far beyond it, he took the greatest pleasure in anticipating the surprise, delight, fascination, anger, and love with which she would greet all that she would encounter for the rest of her life. He wanted to listen to her history, to know her microscopically and also from afar, to see her and also to see through the eyes that now held him in thrall.

  This unreasonable heat was chilled only by the occasional currents of his fear that he would assume too much and move too fast, or that she was spoken for and would not transfer her allegiance, or that if she did abandon someone else she would someday abandon him. But each anxiety was outweighed by the moment itself, which gave rise to an uncalculated grace in which even their silences were perfect and needed no saving.

  “I have no idea,” he said, “how old you are, what you do, or where you live. The effect is that, somehow, you do everything and you live on the Staten Island Ferry. So I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Begin what?” she asked, her severity in reserve but detectable in response to his having stepped over the line.

  “A conversation,” he responded, barely saving himself.

  As they sped over the water toward Manhattan, she said, “I could say that I didn’t expect to go back to the city today, or to see you again.”

  He was astounded. “You saw me earlier?”

  “I did. You were moving swiftly around the decks. I thought you were chasing someone. Are you a policeman? Whom were you chasing?”

  He made no comment except a slight, self-incriminating smile.

  “Oh,” she said. “Uh-huh. In that case I can confess that I threw my paper in the trash can near you to wake you up. I hadn’t finished it.”

  “If you want to do confessions, I can do better than that,” he said. “I was thinking of taking the ferry every day, all day long, though it would have been really inconvenient.”

  “Do you live on Staten Island?”

  “No. You?”

  “Not even slightly.”

  “You were going to stay there a while?”

  “No.”

  “You were going to stay there forever, immigrate?” he asked.

  “There is another possibility,” she said. This game meant nothing
for either of them other than that it was an opportunity to remain in one another’s presence, and a way for him not to ask, intrusively, what she was doing on Staten Island, a question that may have choked the bud of many an incipient romance.

  “You were going to go on to someplace else. Elizabeth?”

  “Catherine,” she said, teasingly, as if he were an idiot.

  “Elizabeth, New Jersey?”

  “Catherine Sedley.”

  “Catherine Sedley.” Just saying what he thought was her name (it wasn’t) gave him pleasure. “Where were you going to go when you got off the island?” He drew back a little and surveyed her—a lovely task—as if trying to solve a riddle. “You’re flushed with sun. You were on the beach.” She seemed pleased by his desire to work through this. “You weren’t waiting for a boat, were you?” She brightened, impressed by his sharpness. “The boat would have to be either very small or large enough to launch another boat to pick you up.”

  “A hundred and five feet,” was her response.

  “That’s the length of a corvette. Was it? Canada has been decommissioning them, and people are making them into yachts.”

  “No, it was built in nineteen twenty-eight for the America’s Cup.”

  “But it didn’t show.”

  “It didn’t win the Cup, either. It travels with the wind, and the wind is unreliable. I waited my appointed hours, and then I left.”

  “Today,” he said, “the wind moved as steadily as a conveyor belt.”

  “Perhaps yesterday the wind was not so steady, or the boat lost a mast. Things like that happen on the sea all the time. Meanwhile, I’m unexpectedly on my way home.”

  “You have no luggage. The boat is yours?”