by Jack Finney
Over at the window I stood looking down at little Gramercy Park a story below, its benches, bushes and grass covered with snow. I couldn't recall when it was that I'd seen the park last, and couldn't tell whether it looked the same; it seemed to. Around the park three sides of the square were just as I'd always seen them; old old houses of brownstone, brick, gray stone. But on the fourth side, Twenty-First Street, there were no apartments now, just more old houses. The sidewalks and paths of the park were shoveled clear, but the snow was piled high in the gutters at the far sides of the street beside the park. It was speckled black with soot; this was still a dirty city, especially in the winter, I supposed, with tens of thousands of coal and wood fires pouring carbon into the air. At least it wasn't radioactive. Before every house stood hitching posts of black-painted cast iron; the tops of some were horses' heads with rings through the noses. Before each post stood a broad stone block for stepping up into carriages, every one clean of snow and ready for use. Otherwise it was the Gramercy Park I was used to.
A movement caught my eye across the square, and I located it through the intervening bare black branches: A door had opened, and a woman stepped out. Now she was pulling the door closed. Now she reached for the railing and, cautiously for fear of ice, walked down the steps. She turned left on the walk, and at Twentieth Street turned the corner, walking toward me. Free of the intervening trees, I saw her clearly now, Her shoulders, under a dark cape, were hunched against the cold, her hands deep in a glossy fur muff; her pillbox bonnet was tied under her chin; her brown cutaway coat was edged with a broad band of black lamb's wool; and the tips of her shoes appeared and disappeared under her skirt hem as she walked. And once more the truth welled up in me; this was New York City, January 1882, and I was here and a part of it.
In almost that moment it began to snow, the flakes tiny and scarce. But within half a minute, in only the time it took the woman walking toward me to reach Irving Place and turn into it, disappearing from my sight, the flakes had thickened. Then they flew fast, swirling, beginning to cover the walks, the paths, the stone steps and stoops, beginning to mound on the heads of the iron horses.
It was too much, I can't really say why, and I turned from the window and lay down on the long single bed, careful to keep my feet off the plain white bedspread. And I closed my eyes, suddenly more homesick than any child. It occurred to me that I literally did not know a single person on the face of the earth, and that everything and everyone I knew was impossibly far away.
For an hour, maybe a little less, I was asleep. Then occasional voices, the sounds of doors opening, closing, and footsteps in the hall pulled me awake. The room was dark now, but the slim rectangles of the windows beyond the foot of my bed were luminous from the new snow outside. I knew where I was, swung my legs to the floor, and crossed the room to the windows.
Streetlamps glowed around the square, the snow sparkling in the circles of light at their bases. To my right and just around the corner of the square a carriage door slammed, and I turned to see the reins flick on the backs of two slim gray horses. Then the carriage started toward me, its sides shiny-black in the light of its own side lamps. Almost immediately, its high thin wheels leaving blade-thin tracks, it entered a cone of lamplight, bursting into black-enamel and plate-glass glitter. Through the glass of my windowpane I heard the faint jingle of harness and the muffled clippety-clop of shod hoofs in new snow. The carriage turned the corner, and I stared down at the foreshortened figure of the driver, high on the open front seat, neatly blanket-wrapped to the waist, reins and whip in his gloved hands. Horses, driver, and carriage passed directly under my window; I looked straight down onto the harnessed gray backs, the jiggling top of the driver's silk hat, and the dull black of the carriage roof. Once again horses and carriage moved glitteringly through a cone of yellow light, and I watched then-shadows thin to nothingness on the new snow. The shadows reappeared, thickened, turned solidly blue-black, then raced on ahead of the carriage, lengthening and distorting. Now, in the oval rear window, two heads were framed, a man's under a top hat, and a woman's bare head; I saw her hair bound up in a bun at the back. The man turned to the woman, said something—I could see the movement of his beard—then the carriage turned the corner, and I saw its side light, saw the horses disappear; then the carriage itself was gone, except for its thin double tracks. And an exultance at being here in this time and this city raced through me. I swung away from the window, pulling off my coat, walked to the dresser, poured water from pitcher to bowl, and washed. I put on a clean shirt, tied my tie, combed my hair, and walked quickly to the door, the hall, the house, and its people.
A thin young man in shirt-sleeves carrying a shallow pan of water came walking along the hall toward me from the bathroom. He had dark hair parted on one side, and a brown Fu Manchu mustache. The instant he saw me he grinned. "You the new boarder?" He stopped. "I can't shake hands"—smiling, he gestured with his chin at the pan he held—"but allow me to introduce myself. I'm Felix Grier. Today's my birthday; I'm twenty-one."
I congratulated him, told him my name, and he insisted I conic to his room and see the new camera his parents had sent him for his birthday. It had arrived yesterday, and with a light stand he showed me—a horizontal gas pipe on a stand, punctured for a dozen flames and backed by a reflector—he'd taken portraits of everyone in the house, and even photographed some of the rooms by daylight. He developed and printed his own films; there were a couple dozen of them strung out on a line like a washing, drying, and I saw that he'd printed them in circles, rectangles, ovals, and every other style, having a great time. I looked his camera over, a big affair weighing seven or eight pounds, I judged, holding and examining it. It was all polished wood, brass, glass, and red leather, wonderfully handsome. I told him so, said I was a camera bug, too, and he offered to lend it to me sometime, and I said I might take him up on it. Then he made me pose, and took my picture—a shorter exposure than I'd have thought, only a few seconds—and promised me a full set, too. I didn't particularly want them then, though I was glad to have them later. I left Felix washing more prints, and that night when I got back to my room I found a full set under my door; everyone's portrait including my own, plus some of the house.
On the following page is one of them, Felix's own picture, and a good likeness except much more sober than I saw him; he was grinning and excited every moment I talked to him,
While I'm at it, I'll include the portrait he made of me: the one on the right. I'm not sure how good a likeness it is, but all in all I expect that's what I look like, beard and all; I never said I was handsome.
I left Felix, and went downstairs into the big front parlor that opened off the hall; a fire was moving behind the mica windows of a large black nickel-plated stove standing on a sheet of metal against one wall. Surmounting the stove stood a foot-high, nickel-plated knight in armor, and I walked over to look at it, reached out to touch it, and yanked my hand back; it was hot. Behind a pair of sliding doors I heard the clink of china and silver, and a murmur of voices. One was Julia's, I was sure, the other an older woman's. I imagined they were setting a table, and I coughed.
The doors rolled open, and Julia stepped in. She was wearing a maroon wool dress with white collar and cuffs, not the one Felix had photographed her in. This is his portrait of her, and tonight she wore her hair as you see it here, loosely arranged, covering the tops of her ears, and arranged at the back in a bun. Behind her I saw an oval table partly set; then a slim middle-aged woman stepped into the parlor after Julia.
Above right is Felix's portrait of her, and a very good one; this is just how she looked.
Julia said, "Aunt Ada, this is Simon Morley, who arrives without reference or much luggage. But with an abundance of soft sawder with which he is most generous. Mr. Morley, Madam Huff."
I didn't know what "soft sawder" was, but learned later that "soft solder" was the phrase and that it meant exaggerated speech or flattery or both. Smiling at what Julia had said,
her aunt actually curtsied; I'd never seen it done before. "How do you do, Mr. Morley."
It seemed only natural, as though I'd done it always, to bow in response. "How do you do, Madam Huff. Miss Julia leaves me nothing to reply except that I'm happy to be here. This is a charming room." Listening to myself, I had to suck in my cheeks to keep my face straight.
"May I show it to you?" Aunt Ada gestured at the room, and I glanced around it with genuine interest. This is the view Felix took of part of the room with his birthday camera; it doesn't show all of it by any means. It was carpeted and wallpapered, and at the windows, in addition to white lace curtains, there were purple velvet drapes fringed with little balls. There were two large brocaded settees, two wood-and-black-leather rockers, three upholstered chairs, a desk, gilt-framed pictures on the walls.
But Aunt Ada was walking to a glass fronted what not in a corner, and I followed. "These are some of the things Mr. Huff and I brought home from our tour of Europe and the Holy Land." She pointed. "That vial contains water from the River Jordan. And those are marble fragments we picked up at the Forum." She gave me a brief account of everything on the shelves: a tiny folding fan from France that was a souvenir of the Revolution, a little gilt slipper enclosing a velvet-covered pincushion she'd bought in Belgium, a sea-shell her husband, "my late husband," had picked up from the beach at the English resort at which they'd stayed. And she ended with the prize of her collection: a daisy, brown and pressed flat, from Shelley's grave. Young Felix came bouncing down the stairs and into the room. He had a clean collar on now, and a tie, vest, gold watch-chain, a short black coat, and black-and-white-checked pants. When he saw I was being given the tour, he caught my eye and winked. Then he sat down at the front windows and began to read a newspaper he'd brought with him, the New York Express. Julia was back in the dining room, setting the table, and Aunt Ada and I moved to the white marble mantelpiece and a row of Christmas cards there. On cards as shiny as though they'd been varnished, there were frowzy-haired little-girl angels extending flowers; a few thin Santa Clauses in red-and-white garments like monks' habits, with attached hoods, and skirts to the ground; and quite a few humorous cards, one of them, for example, showing a Christmas dinner at which a quarreling family was throwing plates and glasses. I was even more startled by the "agony" cards, her name for them. One showed a sobbing little girl lost in a howling blizzard; another offered us a child's footprints in the snow, ending at the edge of a river; another a dead bird flat on its back, claws in the air, the caption reading Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings! I didn't know how I ought to react till Aunt Ada cued me. She said, "They're absurd, of course, ridiculous, but all the go nowadays," and I smiled.
A man in his middle thirties came down now, and Aunt Ada introduced us; this is Felix's photo of him.
He was a tall thin man named Byron Keats Doverman, and he wore a mustache, the tips of which flowed into little explosions of whiskers overhanging his jaw. His hair was thick, wavy, red-brown.
He sat down, congratulated Grier on his birthday, borrowed part of his newspaper, and ignored the tour, which continued. I inspected and admired a bamboo easel on which stood a framed painting of some fruit and a dead rabbit. Aunt Ada led me to a small table with porcelain casters, then stood waiting, hands demurely clasped, while I bent over to examine a large sepia photograph propped against a vase filled with cattails. It was a full-length portrait of a woman in tights and wearing a peaked felt hat from which trailed a long feather; she had an elbow planted on a marble pillar and, chin in hand, stood in profile staring off into space. The caption, in gilt script, was The Jersey Lily, and in the opposite corner was what I took to be the name of the photographer, Sarony.
She saved the best for the last. Beside a small handsome organ of dark wood, on the mantelpiece of the fireplace, stood a yard-high set of plaster figures that must have weighed a hundred pounds. The title, cut into the base, was Weighing the Baby, and the figures were of a bearded frock-coated doctor and a mobcapped midwife examining the reading on the balance arm of a scale, in the scoop-tray of which lay a wailing baby. On one side of this plaster tableau stood a glass dome under which sprouted a formal bouquet of strange flowers. Looking closely, I saw that they were made of dyed feathers.
Aunt Ada had to leave before we were finished; supper was nearly ready, and Julia signaled her. But there were plenty of other things to see: family portraits, framed pictures, a giant fern in a corner by the front windows. I told her I liked her parlor very very much, which was true. I think it's the most pleasant room I've ever been in. Sitting there waiting for supper, then Felix Grier handed me a section of his paper, and I glanced at it but didn't read it—I sat looking around that crowded, interesting room again, listening to the crackle of the fire in the stove, feeling the heat of it on the side of my face, watching the wind fling an occasional scatter of snow past the front windows, and I felt at peace.
I sat facing the stairs, watching for the man I'd come to see, and presently Miss Maud Torrence came down and joined us: a small, plain, sweet-faced woman of about thirty-five. She wore a blue-serge skirt, a white blouse buttoned high around the neck, and a small gold watch on a necklace chain. She worked in an office, I learned later, and this was the way she dressed for work. Byron Doverman introduced us, then she stood by the windows watching the night outside, and I saw a wooden pencil stuck into the bun of tight-rolled hair at the base of her neck. She asked me politely if I didn't think the weather had been "fierce" lately, and I agreed but said it was what you'd expect in New York at this time of year; then Julia spoke in the doorway behind us to say that supper was ready.
I was too excited to eat much, too conscious of being here at this table under the almost silent hiss of the gaslights of the overhead chandelier, and beginning to feel worried because my man hadn't appeared. We sat, six of us, with one empty chair, Aunt Ada at the head of the oval table carving the breast of a turkey, then passing our plates to us. For a time we were silent except for murmurs of thanks as dishes were passed. I sat looking around a little, not too obviously. There were half a dozen large framed pictures on the walls. One was a sepia head-and-shoulders of a stern middle-aged man, a family portrait, I supposed; the others were black-and-white engravings of the Roman Forum, pastoral scenes, and the like. Then, all of us served, we began eating, and Byron Doverman tossed in the conversational ball by announcing that he'd just finished reading Ben Hur. Julia and Felix said they were surprised he hadn't read it long since. There was a little talk about Ben Hur then, especially about its "message," and Aunt Ada asked if I'd read it. I never had but I'd seen the movie, so I said yes, adding something or other about the excitement of the chariot race. Then Byron Doverman said casually that he'd once seen the author, General Lew Wallace, ride past his regiment when he'd been a soldier encamped near Washington during the war. As I stared across the table at this still-young, reddish-brown-haired man whose face was almost unlined, it took me a moment to realize that he meant the Civil War.
"Heard the latest about Guiteau?" Felix was asking the table in general. "Someone took a shot at him through his cell window—"
"That was in the papers," Julia said.
"Yes, but this wasn't—the story was all over town this afternoon. The bullet hit the wall and flattened into an absolutely perfect profile of Guiteau as the wretch looks when frightened."
I glanced cautiously around the table but they were all nodding soberly, accepting this as fact without a smile. Then I realized that Aunt Ada was speaking to me, asking my opinion about the trial verdict. I sat looking thoughtful, as though considering, trying to remember what little I knew about Guiteau. I hadn't read much about him, but knew he'd been found guilty, and executed. I wasn't here to reform social attitudes, and I told Aunt Ada that since he was clearly guilty I felt sure he'd be hanged.
Down the table Felix was discussing the ice crop; they'd begun cutting near Bordentown, New Jersey, he said. Then there was a little talk about the Metropolit
an Elevated scandal, whatever that was. I smiled at Julia and said the turkey was wonderful; I've always thought of turkey as dry and nearly flavorless but this was succulent. It was wild turkey, Julia said, and when I looked surprised, and asked where she'd got it, she looked surprised. "At the market, of course." I asked about that, and found that they also sold quail, grouse, partridges, tame squabs, wild ducks including canvasbacks, redheads, and mallards, and hares and rabbits. I'd always thought hare was another name for rabbit, and started to ask about that but didn't; Julia's eyes were narrowed, and she was staring across the table at me wonderingly. I turned to Felix beside me, and just to be saying something asked if he were interested in baseball.
He said he was, a little. He'd gone to the polo grounds a few times last summer when they weren't playing polo, to see the Mets play. I said, "Who?" He said, "The Metropolitans." I nodded, and said I thought that's what he said. "How did they do?" I asked. He said, "Not so well; they had bad pitching," and I said I wasn't a bit surprised.
For dessert we had a birthday cake, Felix blowing out the candles. And then we had a birthday party! Julia and her aunt stayed in the dining room, closing the sliding doors, to clear the table. In the parlor Maud Torrence sat down at the organ and began looking through the sheet music on the rack. Felix Grier and Byron Doverman stood behind her, and when I sat down with the paper, they called me, and I knew there was no escape, and walked over.
I was able to join in on the first song, "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen," and when we finished young Felix said, "If only Jake were home we'd have a quartet!" That was my chance to ask, "Jake who?" and Felix said, "Jake Pickering, our other boarder," and now I knew his name, and felt I'd made some progress.
The next number was "If I Catch the Man Who Taught Her to Dance," or something like that, and all I could do was try to follow along. Then Julia and her aunt came in, and we all sang "In the Evening by the Moonlight" and "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers." Aunt Ada did pretty well, but Julia was a little off the beat occasionally. Byron Doverman said, " 'Cradle's Empty, Baby's Gone!' " Julia said, "Oh, no," but the others insisted. Maud found the music, and—all reading the words over her shoulders—we sang what is probably the most lugubrious song I've ever heard, about this poor dead baby, and including lines like "Baby's gone to join the angels, peaceful evermore." Julia smiled at me, shrugging; she seemed to think it was ridiculous. But when Maud finished she turned from the organ saying she'd played enough, and her eyes were bright, she was on the edge of tears, and I remembered that this was a time when babies died easily; maybe the song meant something to her.
