Specimen Days

by Michael Cunningham

  She said, “I can’t worry about you anymore. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I have too much else to think about.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me. Let me worry about you. Let me help you. Let me care for you.”

  She laughed bitterly. “What a good idea,” she said. “I’ll come live with you and your parents. We’ll live, all four of us, on what you make at the works. No, there will be five. That shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”

  For a moment, Lucas could see her as she’d said she was: a whore and a liar, a woman of the street, hard and calculating, naming her price.

  He said, “I’ll find a way.”

  She stopped, so abruptly that Lucas went on several paces ahead. Foolish, he was a foolish thing.

  She said, “Forget me. I’m lost.”

  He said, “Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded.”

  She emitted a small, muffled cry and continued walking. He stood watching the back of her blue dress, the pile of her copper-colored hair, as she passed out of the square.

  Always, then, it—everything—made a more complete and sickening sense. Simon would want her and the child as well. He sought to marry her in the realm of the dead, to live there with her and his child.

  She must be prevented from going to work tomorrow.

  Lucas couldn’t think what to do, yet he must do so much. He must keep her from her machinery. He must find money for her.

  He remembered the money she’d thrown at his feet. He hadn’t picked it up. He ran back to Eighth Street for it, but of course it was gone.

  He walked east on Eighth Street. He thought perhaps he could find the money again, if not the coins Catherine had tossed at his feet then some other money, some equivalent sum that might be out there, sent by a heavenly agency that forgave and abetted foolish hearts. He thought that if he scoured the city, if he went high and low in it, he might happen onto some money that was not being watched, that belonged to someone but was unattended, dropped on the pavement or otherwise misplaced, as his own coins had been. He didn’t propose to steal, any more than whoever had found his money had stolen it from him. He hoped rather to take his place on a chain of losses and gains, an ongoing mystery of payments made and payments received, money given from hand to hand, to satisfy an ancient debt that had always existed and might be finally repaid in some unforeseeable future. He hoped the city might produce help through incomprehensible means, just as his stamping of iron plates produced housings.

  He would search for whatever might be there.

  He went along Eighth Street to Broadway. If there was money overlooked, if there were coins carelessly dropped, it was likeliest to happen there.

  Broadway was filled with its lights and music, its departing shoppers and its glad men in hats, laughing, blowing smoke from the bellows of their chests. Lucas walked among them, looking attentively downward. He saw the tips of boots, the cuffs of trousers, the hems of skirts. He saw the little leavings that were trod upon: a cigar end, a curl of twine, a canary-colored pamphlet announcing “Land in Colorado.”

  He’d gone along for several blocks, twice incurring the muttered indignations of citizens who had to step out of his way, when he came upon a pair of boots that seemed familiar, though he knew he had never seen them before. They were workingman’s boots, dun-colored, stoutly laced. They stopped before him.

  He looked up and beheld Walt’s face.

  Here was his gray-white cascade of beard, here his broad-brimmed hat and the kerchief knotted at his neck. He was utterly like his likeness. He smiled bemusedly at Lucas. His face was like brown paper that had been crushed and smoothed again. His eyes were bright as silver nails.

  “Hello,” he said. “Lost something?”

  Lucas had gone searching for money and found Walt. A vast possibility trembled in the air.

  He answered, “Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery, here we stand.”

  Walt expelled a peal of laughter. “What’s this?” he said. “You quote me to myself?”

  His voice was clear and deep, penetrating; it was not loud, but it was everywhere. It might have been the voice of a rainstorm, if rain could speak.

  Lucas struggled to answer as himself. What he said was, “The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them.”

  “How extraordinary,” Walt said. “Who are you, then?”

  Lucas was unable to tell him. He stood quivering and small at Walt’s feet. His heart thumped painfully against his ribs.

  Walt squatted before Lucas. His knees cracked softly, like damp twigs.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Lucas.”

  “Lucas. How do you come to know my verse so well?”

  Lucas said, “I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself; they do not know how immortal, but I know.”

  Walt laughed again. Lucas felt the laughter along his own frame, in his skeleton, as an electrified quake, as if Walt were not only laughing himself but summoning laughter up out of the earth, to rise through the pavement and enter Lucas by the soles of his feet.

  “What a remarkable boy you are,” Walt said. “How remarkable to find you here.”

  Lucas gathered himself. He said, “I wonder if I might ask a question, sir?”

  “Of course you may. Ask away. I’ll answer if I’m able.”

  “Sir, do the dead return in the grass?”

  “They do, my boy. They are in the grass and the trees.”

  “Only there?”

  “No, not only there. They are all around us. They are in the air and the water. They are in the earth and sky. They are in our minds and hearts.”

  “And in the machines?”

  “Well, yes. They are in machinery, too. They are everywhere.”

  Lucas had been right, then. If he’d harbored any doubts, here was the answer.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Tell me of yourself,” Walt said. “Where do you come from? Are you in school?”

  Lucas couldn’t find a way to answer plainly. What could he tell Walt, how account for himself?

  He said at length, “I’m searching for something, sir.”

  “What are you searching for, lad?”

  He could not say money. Money was vital, and yet now, standing before Walt’s face and beard, under the curve of his hat, it seemed so little. Saying “money” to Walt would be like standing in Catherine’s hallway, blazing with love, and receiving a lamb’s neck and a bit of potato. He would have to say what the money was for, why he needed it so, and that task, that long explanation, was more than he could manage.

  He could say only, “Something important, sir.”

  “Well, then. We are all searching for something important, I suppose. Can you tell me more exactly what it is you seek?”

  “Something necessary.”

  “Do you think I could be of any help?”

  Lucas said, “You help me always.”

  “I’m glad of that. Do you hope to find this precious thing on Broadway?”

  “I’ve found you, sir.”

  Walt drew up more laughter from the earth. Lucas felt it throughout his body. Walt said, “I’m hardly precious, my boy. I’m an old servant, is all I am. I’m a vagrant and a mischief-maker. Do you know what I think?”

  “What, sir?”

  “I think you should walk far and wide. I think you should search Broadway and beyond. I think you should search the entire world.”

  “That would be hard for me, sir.”

  “Not all at once, not in a single night. I suspect you’re something of a poet yourself. I suspect you’ll spend your life searching.”

  Lucas’s heart caught. He needed the money now. He said, “Oh, I hope not, sir.”

  “You’ll see, you’ll see. The search is also the object. Do you know what I
mean by that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You will, I think. When you’re older, you will.”

  “I need, sir—”

  “What do you need?”

  “I need to know which way to go.”

  “Go where your heart bids you.”

  “My heart is defective, sir.”

  “It’s not in the least defective. You can believe me on that account.”

  Lucas flinched. He thought he might weep. He hoped Walt couldn’t see the tears rising in his face.

  Walt said softly, “Would you like me to give you a direction?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Please.”

  “All right, then. Go north. Go up to the edges of the city and beyond. Go see where the buildings diminish and the grass begins.”

  “Should I?”

  “It’s as good a way as any. If you want instructions, I give them to you. I hereby tell you to walk north.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Will you come here tomorrow?” Walt asked. “Will you meet me here at the same time tomorrow night and tell me what you’ve found?”

  “Yes, sir. If you’d like.”

  “I’d like it very much. I don’t meet someone like you every day.”

  Lucas said, “A child said—”

  Walt joined him, and they spoke together. They said, “What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; how could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  “Good night, Lucas. I hope you’ll come back tomorrow. I’ll be here, waiting.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Lucas turned and walked away. He went north, as Walt had told him to. He strode up Broadway, past the stores and hotels. Presently he turned and saw that Walt stood watching him. Lucas raised his hand in salute. Walt returned the gesture.

  He had gone looking for money and found Walt instead. Walt had sent him north.

  Lucas continued up Broadway. He went past Union Square and farther, until the grand buildings dwindled and there were fewer and fewer people, until fields spread out around him, lit here and there by the lights of farmers’ cottages and more brightly by the windows of important houses, houses of brick and limestone, that stood proudly in the flatness and quiet. He passed like a ghost along the road, which was sometimes paved and sometimes not. He passed a house of particular grandeur, with a stone front and a white portico. He saw within (they did not draw their curtains, so far away) a regal woman in a white gown, lifting a goblet of ruby wine, standing before a portrait of herself in the same gown. A man came and stood beside her, a man in a waistcoat. His chin came to a sharp point—no, his beard was the color of his skin, and the hair on his head was the color of his skin. Lucas thought the man would appear in the portrait, too, but he did not. The man spoke to the woman, who laughed and gave him her goblet to drink from. In the portrait, she continued looking out serenely.

  Lucas watched them. The dead might be present and absent like this, in the world but not of the world. The dead might wander as Lucas wandered, past the windows of strangers, looking in at a woman and a picture of a woman.

  He left the man and the woman and the woman’s picture. He passed other houses. Through another window he saw the crown of a chair and a framed mirror that showed him the crystal drippings of a chandelier. He saw a farmer’s wife pass out of her door and pause, gathering her shawl. He saw an opossum that walked as he did, along the road. The opossum went alongside him with her quick, humping gait, unafraid, like a companion, for fifty or more paces, then slipped away, pausing to show him the pale, articulate line of her tail.

  Lucas went as far as Fifty-ninth Street, and stopped before the gates of the Central Park. He had heard about the park but had never been there before. Behind the low stone wall were trees and blackness and the sound trees made. He lingered outside, and then, hesitantly, as if he might be trespassing, he went in.

  The park was faintly lit near the gates, by the streetlamps of Fifty-ninth Street, but beyond that it rolled on into deep shadow. Here by the entrance were grass and the trunks of the nearest trees, which were small, newly planted. They might have been men transformed into trees, lifting their wooden arms, displaying the leaves that had burst forth from their slowed and altered flesh. Farther in, the grass went from bright green to deep jade, and the trunks of the remoter trees were pewter, then iron, then black. Beyond the jade-black grass and the black trees it was pure dark, as if the entrance to the park were a ring of forest that surrounded a lake of black, filled with the rustle of leaves and an unnameable, underlying sound that must have been insects and something else. Beyond the visible woods lay the sound of some limitless attention.

  Lucas wondered if this might be where the dead resided, the dead who were not caught up in machinery. Here was grass, here were trees. Here was a rustling, alert silence far from the world of the living, with its lights and its music, its windows full of goods. Lucas gathered his courage and went forward, as he might have dived into water of uncertain depth and coldness, water that might or might not harbor fish and creatures that were not fish but lived in water, creatures that would be eyes and teeth and sudden movement. He had never seen such dark. It was never so, not even in the bedroom with the lamp extinguished, not even when he closed his eyes.

  The park as Lucas walked into it, however, was not as dark as it had appeared. It was not pitch-dark. The grass beneath his feet was impenetrably black but steady; the trees were black but lesser black, their shapes discernible against a field of blackness. He felt as if he carried with him some faint illumination, a candle that was his own seeing and hearing, his human presence.

  Something was here, among the trees. It deepened as he walked into it.

  Presently he arrived at a stone balustrade, with a broad, curving staircase descending on either end. He went down the stairs. And there, in the middle of a dark plaza, stood an enormous figure. It spread its wings, touched faintly by moonglow. Its face was canted down, toward Lucas. It seemed for a moment that he had found the park’s avenging mother, the entity that waited, watching and listening, that had dreamed the park into being and did not like to have its sleep interrupted. Lucas trembled. He made as if to turn and run, though he thought that if he did, the figure would stir its wings, take flight, and snatch him up as easily as a terrier takes a rat.

  In another moment, he understood that it was a statue, only a statue. He drew nearer. It was a stone angel, standing on a pedestal above an immense stone bowl of water. He saw that the angel was severe and contemplative, that she had blank and sorrowful eyes, that she had turned from heaven and looked down at the earth.

  He looked up. There, beyond the angel’s arm, were the stars.

  He had reached the heart of the park, and what the angel guarded—what she had wanted to show him, what Walt had sent him to find—was stars. Then he understood that here, so far from the city proper, the smoke was dispersed, and the stars were visible. He nearly lost his balance, looking up. The stars sparked, brilliant and unsteady on a field of ebony. There were thousands of them.

  He knew them, some of them, from the map in the schoolroom. There was the Great Horse. There was the Hunter. There, so faint he could not be sure, but there, he thought, were the Pleiades, a cluster of minor stars, the seven, a circle of phosphorescence.

  He stood for some time, watching. He had never imagined this star-specked stillness. Had the farm in Dingle been like this? He couldn’t know, for the farm was the past; it had existed before he was born. He knew it from his parents’ memories as the place where the hens had died, where the potatoes had died. It was what his mother meant by heaven: Dingle with the hunger removed. He wondered now if it had stood under stars like this. If it had, she would naturally believe that the dead went there.

  A sensation rose in him, a high tingling of his blood. There came a wave, a wind, that recognized him, that did not love him or hate him. He felt what he knew as the rising of his
self, the shirting innerness that yearned and feared, that was more familiar to him than anything could ever be. He knew that an answering substance gathered around him, emanating from the trees and the stars.

  He stood staring at the constellations. Walt had sent him here, to find this, and he understood. He thought he understood. This was his heaven. It was not Broadway or the horse on wheels. It was grass and silence; it was a field of stars. It was what the book told him, night after night. When he died he would leave his defective body and turn into grass. He would be here like this, forever. There was no reason to fear it, because it was part of him. What he’d thought of as his emptiness, his absence of soul, was only a yearning for this.

  At the apartment, his parents remained behind their door. Lucas didn’t venture in. He thought it would be better to let them rest. With rest, they might yet become themselves again.

  He went into his bedroom and read the book.

  What do you think has become of the young and old men?

  And what do you think has become of the women and children?

  They are alive and well somewhere,

  The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

  And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,

  And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

  All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

  And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.

  Lucas lay in his bed with St. Brigid above him and Emily across the way, eating behind her curtain. He slept. If he dreamed, his dreams were lost upon awakening.

  His parents were still quiet behind their door. He decided it was better to leave them. He couldn’t help them anymore. He could help only Catherine.

  He was waiting before her building when she emerged in her blue dress. She was not glad to see him. Her face settled into an expression of sorrowful blankness, like the angel’s in the park. She said, “Hello, Lucas.” She turned and started off in the direction of the Mannahatta Company. He fell in alongside her.