by Mark Helprin
“What?”
“Pigs, if you want to be formal, but, idiomatically, porkos, piggies, or badge hogs. They’ll never ever suspect that we’re English.”
“But Freddy, they will. They’ll recognise us. We’ve been on the cover of nearly every American magazine, and the embassy reports that we’re continually on their televisions.”
“Mr Neil swore they wouldn’t.”
“I know, but do you believe him?”
“Yes. Context is all, and, besides, in a short time we won’t look like ourselves, you especially. God knows what we’ll be wearing, who will cut our hair, or what happens to the face during a quest. In battle, one’s features change. It’s remarkable but true.”
“We’re going down now, sir,” the serjeant said. “Here are the line and chock.”
Freddy seized a fire bucket and dumped out the sand. After attaching the line to its handle, he threaded the chock so it slid down the line, tilting the bucket like a drag scoop and giving it twenty pounds of weight. “Otherwise,” Freddy said, when he had it rigged, “the wind would keep it too high.”
The serjeant understood what was about to happen, and as Freddy buckled Fredericka’s seatbelt, the serjeant strapped on a safety harness affixed to a bulkhead. Freddy then donned another on the opposite side. The plane lost altitude and the serjeant opened the ramp. The sound of servomotors and wind was no less new to Fredericka’s ears than it was to the untouched sea. Though the atmosphere in the cabin had been fresh enough, the Arctic air that now flooded in was inexpressibly pure, voluminous, and sweet. Why the air above icebergs would be so sweet Freddy did not know. “The air is lovely,” Freddy shouted above the wind, and Fredericka nodded.
The ocean now was so close that they could see bubbles, froth, and the gauze of fragile wind lines that crazed its surface during the passage of the plane. The first iceberg they flew over at low altitude was so close that their hearts leapt. Almost as near as the snow ramp at the exit of a ski lift, it was only about four feet below them. They felt eddies of cold air drawn into the cabin from the untouched surface of the ice, and then the warmer air over the water as it followed on.
Freddy looped the line around a winch and let the bucket slip off the ramp until it trailed the plane at 30 degrees of declination. The weight of the chock was greater than the force of the lift against the bucket’s curved aerofoil. When the bucket was thirty or forty feet from the plane, Freddy stopped. “Hold on,” he said, leaning back with the rope end that came off the winch. Seconds passed, then a minute, and then the rope vibrated, shuddered, and was kicked taut. The bucket was dragging along a flat-topped iceberg over which they glided, planing up a rooster tail of glistening detritus. “I’ve got it,” Freddy said as he started the winch.
As the bucket drew closer to the plane, Fredericka bent forward to look. Freddy had snagged a gallon of the kind of crushed ice one finds underneath extremely large prawns in extraordinarily expensive restaurants. It looked perfectly edible. When it was in and the ramp was closed and the wind shut out, Freddy offered Fredericka the first taste. She received it gently. It was something few people had ever experienced, and she said, “Freddy, is this where iceberg lettuce comes from?”
“No, Fredericka. Lettuce doesn’t grow here. This is ice from the Sea of Snow—the first evidence of the quest. When they calve from glaciers, icebergs up-end. The freshness you taste now may be snow that fell twelve thousand years ago, and has slept in immobility until this moment—twelve thousand years ago, when the world was infinite and an utter mystery to those who lived in it, in short, direct lives pressed hard into every facet and sensation of nature. It may have been that when this water fell as snowflakes, it was snowing in England, too, where not a single wall had been erected, nor a single tent pitched, nor a single garment stitched. And, yet, people may have listened to the hiss of the snow landing in that dark night, hoping the sky would clear and bring to them a round and opalescent moon.”
SOMETIME AFTER TEN, the C-130 crossed the Hudson near West Point and banked southward at fourteen thousand feet. They would gradually descend for a landing at McGuire Air Force Base, where the unmarked cargo plane was to take on a load of classified electronic equipment. There had been no flight plan, and there would be no record. At any point between the New York–New Jersey state line and the landing, Freddy and Fredericka were to quit the aeroplane. Freddy had thought that Mr Neil would have had a set of coordinates picked out, but Mr Neil had not been to New Jersey, and where to jump was up to Freddy himself.
On the way across he had studied the map. “Our best option,” he had told Fredericka, “is to jump into these meadows opposite New York.”
“Bayonne Meadows,” she said. “That sounds lovely. Being so close to New York City, they must be like Hampstead Heath.”
“Yes. We’ll go to a boutique and buy some clothes. I imagine a boutique in Bayonne Meadows will be upscale enough to take sterling.”
Fredericka liked the site. Being just across the river Hudson from Manhattan, it was probably very trendy. So they arranged with the serjeant that they jump over the heath itself. Their worry was that they might parachute into a chamber music festival or a Shakespeare performance, but the chances were that they would land softly in a windswept field, unseen except perhaps by dons making astronomical observations.
“We’ve just crossed the New Jersey frontier,” an officer shouted from the front of the plane. “Look at the gorgeously lit bridge ahead, which I believe is named after the rebellious George Washington.”
“Oh, Freddy, I’m so nervous,” Fredericka said. “I just want to get it over with. I can’t move.”
Freddy knew that the first jump was like facing execution. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The moment the chute opens, your fear will vanish and in its place will be elation.”
“It feels like dying. Why do I want to rush it?”
“Fort Lee!” cried out the serjeant, on his way back to open the ramp, with the excitement and urgency always present before a jump. As the ramp was lowered they had to shout ever higher above the sound of wind and servomotors. “Static line check!”
“Check static lines,” Freddy repeated, confirming not once, not twice, but three times that all was in order with the lines.
“Check chutes and harness,” was the next command. They did, and the serjeant, as if before battle, followed on.
“Ten thousand five hundred feet, check harnesses again.” They did. “Static line final check.” They did.
“Chutes, lines, and harnesses in order,” Freddy barked.
“Chutes, lines, and harnesses in order,” Munchkin-Tito repeated.
“Confirmed,” Freddy shouted.
“Ten thousand feet. Thirty seconds.”
Freddy and Fredericka moved toward the edge of the ramp. Below them the lights of Hoboken and Bergen shone to the right, and farther right and to the north the George Washington Bridge sparkled with a bluish-white light more entrancing than any diamond necklace Fredericka had ever worn. “Oh God,” she said, for the lights seemed so far below, and the intervening emptiness impossibly vast.
“You will be jumping on my command. Altitude ten thousand feet. Plenty of time to manoeuvre to the centre of the heath. Are you ready?”
“Go,” said Freddy.
“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.”
Expecting to die, Fredericka followed Freddy from the ramp. As she fell, time seemed to stop, her heart seemed not to beat, and she did not breathe. Never had she fallen so far—several hundred feet until the chute deployed—and as she fell she forgot entirely about her hair. For years, whenever she had been conscious, she had thought about her hair. But not here, for here she fell through the black air with her soul momentarily in the hands of God. Then she felt the tug of the lines. “Freddy!” she called.
“I’m right here,” he said, “circling you. Do you see my red light? I see yours.”
“Yes, yes, I do.” Though they were not supposed to, th
ey had little red diodes in the front and back of their harnesses—a gesture from the serjeant, who had reservations about sending a novice parachutist into the dark above an untested drop zone.
“Good,” said Freddy. “Now. Pull the left toggle. That’s right, that’s right. Enough, let go. Very good. Just relax. We’re going to make some broad circles, and we’ll touch down right in the centre of that black mass, away from roads and structures.”
“This is marvellous!” she exclaimed. “Why haven’t we done this before?”
“I’ve always considered it part of my work rather than entertainment. It never seemed like something to do for pleasure. Usually, you know, I’m weighted down with equipment. And, besides, I’ve never been able to get you even to go off the high diving board.”
“I love this!”
“Right toggle,” he said. “Some more. Good.”
“And I love you,” she said, her heart buoyant. She really did love him, although each time she said it and he could not reply, she loved him perhaps a little less.
They toggled again and wheeled through the darkness until they faced Manhattan below and to the east. Were he not able to tell her that he loved her—he wanted to, but could not state what was not true—at least he could show her this. England was civil, splendid, ancient, and deep. Nothing was finer than its perfectly bright colours softly combined against a field of misty blue sky, and nothing could ever be more eloquent or beautiful. But now, as if floating among the stars, they looked out upon a world burning in white. Uncountable lights were crushed together in gleaming walls or strung in chains across silvered bays lit as if by the dust of the moon. In depth, it was infinite, disappearing into all points of the compass, though gracing the quadrant of the Atlantic with a few sparkles only, of ships at sea mounted as if on a pewter shield. Each and every one of the uncountable lights blinked and sparkled. Summer air gave them their restlessness as their rays were bent in its rising, but hundreds of thousands had a life of their own, flashing on and off, changing colour, flaring, fading, burning, appearing through smoke, blocked by cloud, peeking out again. And many more hundreds of thousands were actually moving in traffic, gliding softly upon rivers and bays, or sailing in smooth trajectories along the high decks of bridges. From altitude, the clutter of moving lights looked, in its abrupt starts and stops, like illuminated diamonds shaken back and forth in a box. And in the sky itself hundreds of busy planes levitated above the city like gnats in an August clearing. Blinking and floating, they gave the darkness its immense depth.
South of the black heath were cities of flame set upon the horizon like castles under siege. Each had scores of brilliant towers topped by flares or bulging plumes of smoke that on their undersides mirrored the yellow and orange flames but at their cloud-like tops were pure ebony. On the plain that they enclosed, in a tangle of light, were roads, factories, and yards from which flashes emanated as if from ranks of artillery. Welders’ torches, arcs, acetylene, and pantographs scraping their cables made a continuous dance of sparks and fire.
“Freddy?” Fredericka asked. “I’ve never seen anything like this. How was it done?”
“Heaven and hell collided,” he said.
“Perhaps the heath isn’t as trendy as we thought. It seems a bit industrial.”
“This area is certainly industrial,” Freddy answered. “Left toggle. Left. Hold. But the heath itself is black, perhaps playing fields for the workers. You see there? Off that way a bit? I think it’s a bonfire. Probably an association picnic. We’ll try to land close to it. First, as they probably have had a cricket or football match, it would be near a field. Second, in reasonable proximity to the sports park are undoubtedly expresso bars and boutiques. Probably they’re open late, as in the Via Veneto. Right toggle.”
They took ten minutes to descend, and as they dropped lower and lower they saw, heard, and smelled evidence of untrendiness. “You would think,” said Freddy, “that if this were like Hampstead Heath, it would not smell so sulfurous.”
“What about fashionable restaurants with highly spiced cuisine?” Fredericka asked. “Remember the one in Paddington Mews?”
“Yes,” Freddy answered, forgetting for a moment that he was parasailing. “Two days later I was in a receiving line, and when I breathed into the face of a beautiful Swedish princess, she closed her eyes and reeled.”
“What princess?” Fredericka asked, also forgetting that she was dangling from a parachute.
“Imogen of Fätso Bruggen.”
“What’s so special about her?” There was a blade in Fredericka’s voice.
“She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, and yet she was as big as a sequoia.”
“What’s a sequoia?”
“Right toggle.”
“What’s a sequoia?”
“Right toggle!”
“Freddy, what is a sequoia?”
“A tree.”
Fredericka toggled right, which put them back on track. “You’ve got to respond quickly,” Freddy told her. “As you can see, there are many obstructions below. We don’t want to land dangerously. Had I known that the Bayonne Meadows were surrounded by industry we could have parasailed right over the river and landed in Central Park.”
“Why didn’t we anyway? You can see it from the Carlyle.”
“Don’t you know, Fredericka, that Central Park is dangerous?”
They were low enough now to see and hear distinctly what rose to meet them. Huge arterial highways and thick bundles of railway track wove the landscape into thousands of patches, some of which seemed empty, others overwhelmed by ships in inland slips, yards for trucks and trains, factories, pipelines, transformer stations, stadia, and residential streets.
“Look there,” said Freddy. “Houses all across the hillside. It is like Hampstead.”
“Yes,” said Fredericka. “I saw it on the map. It’s called . . . Ho-Ho-Kus.”
“No,” said Freddy. “You’re mistaken. I believe it is called . . . Ho-Bo-Kus.”
“I don’t care what it’s called, as long as I can buy a decent dress and some shoes, and get something to eat besides iceberg. I feel like médaillons of boar with a citron-lingonberry relish.”
“I’m sick of boar,” said Freddy. “I want some wasabi ptarmigan.”
“Freddy?”
“Yes?”
“What’s that?”
Freddy looked around, and just as he saw what was approaching he heard its roar. Not an eighth of a mile from them a commercial jet had begun to bank and descend. Freddy looked over his shoulder to ascertain the position of the airport. Then he looked at the plane. Long a pilot, he understood the problem.
“If we don’t drop faster, we’ll intersect. Pull both toggles hard!”
“What’s ‘intersect’?”
“Pull!”
They pulled their toggles and plummeted. As they fell, the jet closed in on them, headlights blazing, engines screaming. Fredericka was terrified as much by the high-speed fall as by the plane bearing down on her. For a long moment it seemed as if they would be hit, but they fell below the plane’s nose, and its belly passed a few feet from the tops of their collapsed chutes, jerking them into the turbulence.
“Release! Release!” Freddy screamed as soon as they had come into the clear.
At first Fredericka held the toggles clenched in her fists, but then she opened her hands. “Too fast! Too fast!” Freddy called out. “Right toggle, left toggle. Right toggle, left toggle.” He wanted to manoeuvre into aerial switchbacks to keep them over a thermal that would slow their descent, but she was confused by his instructions. Trying to stay close to her erratic path, Freddy, too, lost control, and they were both dropping too fast for the little altitude they had. As he was attempting to guide her, they collided head-on, smashing face to face, body to body, as in the dalliance of eagles but with none of the grace.
When their mouths struck as if in a Dantean travesty of a kiss, each lost the two upper front teeth, an
d when an instant later their heads banged together yet again they were quickly dazed and incapacitated. Their blood was spattered by the wind against their goggles and into their hair as they fell in a rubble like broken kites, unable to scream or think. And then, in a breathtaking, solar-plexus-paralysing thud, the universe was transformed from a realm of ethereal lights to one of foetid black water in which they could neither breathe, see, nor move, and into which they sank tangled in the white parachutes that like the wings of angels had wrapped about them in their fall.
THOUGH FREDDY had parachuted into water many times, in most cases he had been able to see it as he approached in the day or by moonlight, and could release himself from his harness fifteen feet above the surface, dropping into the sea and swimming out from under the potentially fatal shroud as it settled upon the waves like snow. Even when for one reason or another he hadn’t been able to release in advance, he had had a knife with which to cut himself free. And he had been trained to do this, first in a swimming pool and then in the sea with divers by his side.
Now, it was dark, the impact had been unexpected, without release, and after injury, and he had no knife. For him it was rather difficult, but Fredericka was certain to be overwhelmed. When he broke the surface and held up the parachute enough to get a breath of air, he heard nothing, which meant that she was trapped underwater. He had to hurry to save his own life so that he could save hers. He called out to her reflexively, but his cry was muffled in the black and malodorous water.
He pulled his emergency pins to untie from the billowing nylon and tangled lines, but still he was trapped. The cloth that in air was light, compliant, and diaphanous took on immense weight in water, like a sea anchor. He tried to dive down and swim under but couldn’t because he was too enmeshed. Normally he might have had several goes at it, but to save Fredericka he would have to be quicker.
In savage, painful, animalistic motions, he gripped the fabric in his now gapped teeth and tore at it like a mad dog. Eventually he bit his way out and swam across his dead parachute toward the other lotus-like bloom, which he feared was Fredericka’s grave in the waters.
