The Navigator of New York

by Wayne Johnston

  “I think you are exaggerating the degree of their interest in me.”

  “I assure you that I am not. How long it remains at its current level to some extent depends on you. But they will always be watching now to see what becomes of you. They like to bring in people like you and me as guests—not just into their houses, but into their lives. But guests are all that we will ever be. It is important to remember that.”

  “I would like it if, at some point in my life, I could just fit in somewhere, not seem like such an oddball,” I said.

  “Well, do not try to fit in among these people. Do not try to act ‘properly.’ Do not be anxious because you do not know the rules of polite society. Among the people who wish to meet you, it is universally assumed that you do not know these rules. They would be disappointed if you did. The last thing they want you to be is one of them.”

  “What do they want me to be?”

  “Yourself.”

  “But I am not what they think I am.”

  “Perhaps not quite what they think you are. But you are rougher around the edges than you realize. You will soon see what I mean.”

  “Now you have me terrified.”

  “They will love your accent.”

  “I didn’t think I had that much of one.”

  “My dear fellow, you have a brogue so thick it would blunt a butcher’s knife.”

  We drove up a well-lit driveway overhung by massive oaks and pulled up behind some other vehicles at the foot of a set of limestone stairs that fanned out widely at the bottom like the train of a wedding dress. We disembarked and, as our carriage was led away, ascended the stairs to a double-storeyed portico, on each side of which there were two massive fluted columns that supported an entablature whose centrepiece, though it reared above me, I could not make out.

  We were relieved of our scarves, gloves and hats just inside the door, swarmed by taciturn footmen who simply waited to be handed articles of clothing. If not for Dr. Cook, I would not have known when to stop, what to give them and what to keep.

  The moment I left the vestibule, I had to resist the urge to turn sharply right, to where I knew the business room to be.

  We were led by a short, scarlet-complexioned butler through the vestibule into the entrance hall and then upstairs to the enormous reception hall, a circular room at the heart of the house from which a dozen doors, now closed, led off to other rooms. As we climbed the bronze-work stairs, I put my left hand on the balustrade, only to withdraw it when I saw that the rail was encased in velvet of which only the light side showed, as if it had never been touched, never brushed against the grain. I looked at the mark left by my hand, the only such blemish the whole length of the balustrade, and, resisting the urge to turn back and erase it, hurried on.

  Dr. Cook and I joined a receiving line, in which, I was relieved to see, were Clarence Wyckoff and some of the other passengers from the rescue expedition.

  We had been waiting a couple of minutes, the line moving slowly, when Wyckoff glanced over his shoulder and saw us.

  “Dr. Cook and the doughty Mr. Stead,” Wyckoff said, and everyone in front of and behind him turned round to look. There was an outbreak of applause, led by Wyckoff, to which even Dr. Cook seemed unsure how to react. He smiled and bowed slightly, as if he believed Wyckoff was being playfully ironic. I did likewise.

  “How is the arm, Mr. Stead?” Wyckoff said. The arm. The arm that saved Lieutenant Peary, the arm we have all read and heard so much about, he might have said by the way people looked at my arms, both of them, as if, now that I no longer wore a sling, they were unsure which was the special one.

  “Much better,” I said. Instinctively, I flexed my right hand slightly, and now all eyes were on my right arm, people nodding and murmuring as if it was apparent to them, as it could never be to people who had not seen it with their own eyes, how such an arm could have saved Lieutenant Peary.

  It seemed strange to think that at that moment Peary was still up north, somewhere in Greenland, facing such hardships and privations as none of us but Dr. Cook could even begin to understand. He was facing almost certain death, while there I was in Manhattan being celebrated for having saved what little remained of his life—there were we all, lining up to meet the Vanderbilts and partake of their lavish hospitality, speaking with such cheerful ease of Lieutenant Peary, who by that time, along with Matthew Henson and Charlie Percy, might have been dead.

  Dr. Cook, who had met the Vanderbilts before, stepped aside after a short exchange of pleasantries to introduce me. But before he could say my name, Mr. Vanderbilt put his hand on my left arm.

  “This must be Mr. Stead,” he said, as if he had not heard Clarence Wyckoff’s butler-like announcement of Dr. Cook and me.

  “How do you do, Mr. Vanderbilt?” I said, extending my hand, which he took in both of his, giving it a gentle squeeze.

  “Very well, young man. Very well,” he said. “I can now tell my friends that I shook the hand to which Lieutenant Peary owes his life. It was a great thing you did, a great thing that will never be forgotten.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  He introduced me to his wife, who smiled and held out her gloved hand to me palm down. For a moment I was mystified, then I realized that I was meant to kiss it, which I did. I must have been looking elsewhere when Dr. Cook had done so. I had never kissed a woman’s hand in my life. Should I bend to kiss it or raise it to my mouth, or both? Both, I decided. That there were no gasps of disbelief or disconcerted looks, I knew to be no indication that I had done it properly.

  “We are all very proud of you, Mr. Stead,” she said. “You might not have been born in New York, but when anyone who lives here does something great, we shamelessly claim him as our own.”

  After exacting from us a promise that at some point during the evening Dr. Cook and I would tell them all about the rescue expedition, the Vanderbilts turned their attentions to the guests behind us.

  Dr. Cook and I were admitted into the main chamber of the reception room.

  The room was lit by a row of identical, evenly spaced, globe-like chandeliers. I would later count six of them, though from where we stood, they all blended into one, as if a massive, sparkling, horizontal beam of glass was hanging from the ceiling. Whatever furnishings the room normally held had been removed, except for the reproductions of several Greek busts and statues, each of which stood on a pedestal in a grotto-like recess in the walnut-panelled walls.

  Along the walls innumerable armless chairs sat side by side, all with red plush seats and upright wooden backs. Most of the chairs were empty, but I imagined them all occupied, everyone sitting around the edges of the great room, solemnly surveying their fellows across the way as if the occasion was not a ball but a multitudinous assembly at which matters of great importance were to be discussed.

  Each half of the room was a mirror image of the other. Anyone entering by the opposite door would have seen exactly what we had, including the double doors themselves, flanked by the same Ionic marble columns. The doors at the opposite end were closed, and on a slightly raised dais in front of them, an orchestra was gathering.

  Dr. Cook inclined his head towards me, about to give me some instruction, I assumed, but before he could speak, a woman emerged from the teeming throng of people on the floor, holding out her gloved hand, which he kissed.

  “How nice to see you, Dr. Cook,” she said.

  “And you, Mrs. Frick,” he said.

  I guessed that Mrs. Frick was in her mid-fifties. She wore a large green feather in her hair and the mock décolletage favoured by older women who thought the bare-shouldered style no longer flattering to them—an opaque, flesh-coloured mantle from which, at the height of her bosom, her black gown depended. After we were introduced, she took my arm.

  “I wonder if I might borrow you, young man,” she said. “There will not be enough time for everyone to meet you both, though of course they would like to, so we have decided to split you up. I’m sure D
r. Cook can fend for himself?”

  Dr. Cook smiled at her and nodded, and just as Mrs. Frick turned away, he smiled reassuringly at me.

  Both hands on my upper arm, she led me along the edge of the guests, past punchbowls swimming with cherries and wedges of lemons and limes. We surveyed what might have been a foods-of-the-world display, including a sculpture of Neptune fashioned from whole salmon with jets of water spouting from their eyes. Somewhere beneath all those fish there had to have been a fountain, but I could not make it out.

  She took me to the nearest available pair of chairs, where we sat down. Still holding my arm, sitting side-on to me and looking at the floor as if to do so helped her to formulate her words and to hear my answers, she said she expected that I had not often had to “endure” an event like this one. Before I could object to the word endure, she told me she planned to make the evening as painless for me as possible.

  “I will take you around and introduce you to those people by whom you are least likely to be bored. Of course, no one will mind if you do not wish to dance—”

  “But I would like to dance,” I said. “I would like it very much.”

  “Then you’ve danced before?” she said, still staring, as if the better to appraise me, at the floor.

  “Yes,” I said. “Many times. I’m thought to be quite a good dancer.”

  “That’s wonderful,” she said, though clearly she was wondering if I meant the same thing by dance as she did.

  She introduced me to a great many people, never allowing me to stay long in one place, steering me away from people she said she had already introduced me to, though I could not remember having met them. Looking about the room, I could not remember having met anyone. But Mrs. Frick, I was certain, was keeping track and, even had there been five thousand guests in the room, would not have made the mistake of introducing me to the same one twice.

  I was congratulated over and over for having saved Lieutenant Peary’s life.

  A number of young women who looked to be unescorted stood in a semi-circle near the wall, all talking at once, it seemed, though they stopped talking and smiled when they saw me staring at them.

  Mrs. Frick led me over and introduced me to each of them in turn. Though they were my age, they had an assurance about them, an ease of manner, that even Mrs. Frick did not possess.

  “Devlin Stead, the young man you have all heard so much about,” Mrs. Frick said.

  “How do you do, Mr. Stead?” they said one after the other, and one after the other I kissed their gloved hands, which they offered to me until the repetition struck me as absurd, though they betrayed not the least embarrassment.

  “Mr. Stead says he is thought to be quite a good dancer,” Mrs. Frick said. “Perhaps you should include him on your dance cards.”

  There was a chorus of “Yes, indeeds,” and much scribbling on cards that seemed to appear from out of nowhere and just as quickly disappear.

  Except for the colours of their evening gowns, the women at the Fall Ball were dressed almost as uniformly as the men. Their gowns were décolleté, cut very low to just above the cleavage, so that the bare necks, arms, shoulders and upper backs of women were distractingly everywhere.

  It was as if they were all wearing the same form-fitting, ideally complected, skin-like fabric, chosen because it would show to best advantage beneath the chandeliers of the Vanderbilt ballroom.

  Through it faintly showed the shapes of collar-bones and shoulder-blades, though clavicles and scapulas were the words that came to mind, delicate, fragile words better suited for describing the frames of girls like these than bones and blades.

  Many of the women wore chokers that seemed to be pinned to them by brooches that fit snugly in the hollows of their throats. Almost all the women clasped, at waist height with both hands, small mesh bags made of tightly interwoven metal links. Some were silver, some gold. A couple of the women sported beau-catcher curls in the middle of their foreheads.

  “Step-step-close, step-step-close,” I kept repeating to myself. What a fool I had been to boast of my proficiency at something I had not done in years. It had been second nature to me at one time, requiring little more effort, little more concentration, than walking. For all I knew, the sort of dancing that Aunt Daphne had taught me had gone out of fashion everywhere but Newfoundland a hundred years ago. What if, in this time of invention, someone had dreamed up a new kind of dancing?

  To my relief, the orchestra, when it began to play, did so in my accustomed three-quarter time.

  One of the young women Mrs. Frick had introduced me to approached us.

  “Mr. Stead,” she said.

  “Miss Sumner,” said Mrs. Frick.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Frick,” Miss Sumner said. “I have only a few new names to remember. Poor Mr. Stead has hundreds.” She held out her arms to me. I took her hand, and we began to dance.

  Miss Sumner. Having for so many years been deprived of fellowship, I was almost overwhelmed now to be faced with this open-armed young woman, who might have been appointed to dance with me as a gesture of propitiation. The meaning of her smile might have been that, though I had been wronged, I should regard the past as past, there being no remedy for it but to keep it from determining my future.

  In one way, I had broken free into the world the instant I leapt into that rowboat at the foot of Signal Hill, had been making my way further and further into it since then. But here, it seemed, was my official, ceremonial welcomer—not Dr. Cook, not Clarence Wyckoff or the Vanderbilts, but this young woman whose first name I did not know and who had no idea, any more than did the other guests, perhaps including Dr. Cook, how momentous an event this was for me. It was as though I was being exonerated of a crime of which I had been presumed guilty for so long that I had come to feel that I was guilty of it. I felt so many things at once—relief, self-pity, gratitude, resentment, curiosity, arousal—that there rose up in me what I was almost too late in realizing was the urge to cry. I hoped that the struggle to suppress it did not show.

  I was not used to being watched while I danced, let alone surrounded by other dancers, but I soon grew accustomed to it. At first, Miss Sumner felt like an annoyingly altered version of Aunt Daphne. Everything about her seemed slightly off, but she seemed not to notice my annoyance and gradually it passed. I had never been this close to any woman but Aunt Daphne before, had never been allowed so close a look at any woman’s bare arms, neck, shoulders and back before. I spoke only when she spoke to me, or rather only when she asked a question, which she did repeatedly, as if word had gone out from Mrs. Frick that nothing less than a question would draw any sort of response from me. I felt like I was being interviewed. Not that I minded. I tried to answer such unanswerable questions as “What is Greenland like?” To elaborate beyond yes or no my replies to such questions as “Did it hurt when you broke your arm?”

  The second woman I had danced with in my life and the first one not related to me. The first one of the latter kind to whom, under any circumstances, I had been this close. It seemed a miracle, this young woman’s face, her eyes, her nose, her lips almost touching mine. The smell of her perfume. The smell of her hair. The soft, pliant feel of her upper back beneath my hand, the part of her back that exactly corresponded to her left breast. The wonder of moving in concert with a woman, her body moving in willing sympathy with mine.

  She seemed impossibly poised. Nowhere on all the bare parts of her was there so much as a hint of high colour. I had always, when aroused, felt as though my own body was mocking me, mocking the idea that for me women would ever be anything more than things to be gawked at from afar, material for fantasies of which I could never bring myself to make practical use, knowing how I was regarded by the girls and women who inspired them.

  Fresh from my long-imposed solitude, I could not believe that after Miss Sumner, another woman would dance with me, and after her another—that I was being sought after.

  I felt that I had spent my life in a cell, and tha
t, though it still contained me, though I was not yet free to leave it, I was at last being allowed visitors, a steady stream of whom were filing through to meet me.

  I was soon able to gauge in seconds the distinctive rhythm of each woman. There were some good dancers among them, but most of them danced as though performing by rote some necessary and painstakingly acquired social skill.

  It seemed to me that there was something frank, generous, almost wanton in the way the young women held open their arms as they prepared to receive me.

  My hand still warm from the last hand I had held, I took hold of another—my shoulder still warm from the last hand that had rested there, another one was placed upon it—and the whole thing began again, a new pair of eyes to look into, a new face close to mine, a new voice issuing from lips that I could not stop staring at or wishing I could kiss. Men and women could not touch like this in public, could not converse at such close quarters except when they were dancing. Hurray for dancing, which conveyed this strange but wonderful exemption.

  Sometimes, if I looked long enough at the other dancers, all I saw were the bared upper bodies of the women, a teeming fleet of marble busts, as if the sculptures in the hollows of the walls, having left their pedestals, were gliding about in perilous proximity.

  The women seemed to find it both charming and also faintly amusing that someone so uncultivated, someone who looked like he could not have named the other social graces, had become so masterful at one of them. I saw that they were intrigued, but that they could think of no way of asking me to satisfy their curiosity that would not offend me.

  An account of the Fall Ball and my part in it would appear the next day in the society pages of the papers under the bylines of people who had attended the event and whom I had taken to be guests, among them Mrs. Frick, who listed, in the order in which I danced with them, every one of my partners, pointing out whose daughters they were and to whom of note they were otherwise related. Me she would describe as “taciturn but self-composed, a trait he seems to have learned from Dr. Cook; a marvellous dancer, his manner of becoming which was the subject of much debate among his charming partners; deceptively frail-looking, almost delicate, except for his eyes, which are those of a young man well used to roughing it.”