by Jack Finney
At the corner we stood watching both the Nassau Street face of the building and the Beekman Street side, but there was no one at any of the windows now and even the ladders had been taken down. Like the rest of the crowd along both streets we just stood in helpless fascination, staring at the streams of water arching in through the window openings of the burning building, at the fountains of heated air and sparks rising endlessly from the stacks of the steam-powered pumpers, at the slanting, whirling curtain of snow.
Suddenly the fire ended: The roof fell in, crashed tremendously onto what was left of the next weakened floor, then the entire interior smashed through to the basement and an enormous gust of sparks, smoke, and whirling burning fragments rose fifty feet over the roof with a sighing whooshing sound that must have been heard for blocks.
In moments, the building gutted, the fire was over, and you could see through the window openings on up through emptiness to the sky. In the basement the wreckage still burned but almost feebly, the force of it gone, and the snow fell, whirling prettily, down through the emptiness enclosed by the walls. Above every gaping window-opening of the burned-out building lay a great fan-shaped smear of blackened masonry, and already it was becoming hard to picture this great dead hulk as having once been alive and full of people. It seemed impossible that we'd been in it listening to Jake Pickering and Andrew Carmody only—I pulled out my watch, and couldn't believe it—an hour ago.
The enormous spectacle over, the crowd around us began talking, the sound rising to a steady excited murmur, and I heard a voice say, "It's a blessing the paper moved out."
To Julia I said, "What paper is he talking about?"
"The World" she said dully. "Until a few months ago that was the World Building, and most people still call it that. They occupied the entire top floor; scores of them would surely have died up there."
"The World," I said slowly, trying the sound of it, and then I understood. That the sending of this, the note in the old blue envelope in Kate's apartment had said, should cause the Destruction by Fire of the entire World—"Building " was the missing word—seems well-nigh incredible. Yet it is so.... And for the rest of his life that was to torture Carmody's conscience. I felt the weight lift from my own conscience: Now I knew that nothing Julia or I had done had caused the fire.
I took Julia's arm and worked our way out of the crowd, south down Nassau Street. We heard a shout, a single warning cry, then a vast murmur from the watching crowd, and as we swung around to look, the entire Beekman Street face of the building leaned inward, very slowly, nearly imperceptibly, then faster, faster, and—still nearly all of a piece—it crashed like a felled tree down onto the burning wreckage in the basement. And now, the entire empty interior opened to view and to the storm, the building was truly gone.
We took the El home. Julia sat looking blindly out the window, and I spoke to her now and then, trying to comfort her, but couldn't. It was true, and I knew it, that nothing we'd done had contributed to causing the fire. We'd been invisible spectators influencing events in no least way. And while I couldn't explain why I knew that, the certainty of it sounded in my voice, and I think I persuaded Julia of that truth. But of course she wished that we had altered subsequent events; I'd literally forced her out of Jake's office and now Julia had to wonder if we could have helped him by staying. I had to wonder, too, though I wouldn't have changed what I'd done, or most likely we'd be dead too.
At the house Julia went straight up to her room, exhausted. There was no one downstairs, the place silent. It was past lunchtime, and we'd had no breakfast, but I wasn't hungry so much as empty, and I didn't feel like prowling around the kitchen. I went up to my room, took off my coat, and lay down. After the night and morning we'd spent I was very tired but too full of what had happened, I thought, to be able to sleep. But of course I did, within only minutes after stretching out on top of my bed.
It was dark when I woke up from a hunger so intense it made me dizzy. I had no idea what time it was; it might have been very late. But Maud Torrence and Felix Grier were in the parlor reading when I came downstairs. They glanced up and nodded to me casually, and I understood that they didn't know I'd seen the fire. Just as casually I asked if Jake Pickering were home, and Felix, already turning back to his book, just shook his head.
I walked on through the darkened dining room to the kitchen; I could see a light under the crack of the door. Julia sat at the kitchen table with her aunt, eating—cold sliced roast, from dinner probably, bread and butter, hot tea—and as soon as I walked in Aunt Ada hopped up to get me some, too. From her face I could see that she knew all or at least something about what had happened, and she didn't question me. Julia looked up and nodded wanly; there were dark circles under her eyes. I was certain I knew the answer, but had to ask, "He's not back?" Julia said no and, squeezing her eyes shut, dropped her chin to her chest, and sat shaking her head as though trying to deny a mental picture or a thought or both, and I didn't know what I could say to her.
When I finished my supper Julia was still at the table, hands folded in her lap, waiting. I looked at her, and she said, "I want to go back, Si," and I just nodded: I didn't know why, but I had to go back, too. Outside it was snowing again and there was still a wind. The snow on the walks was too deep for walking now but there were wheel marks in the street, and we walked in those to the El station on Twenty-third Street. And by ten o'clock we were standing against the east wall of the post office, sheltered from the wind, and:
...the snow in Park-row in front of the Times office and in front of what remained of the old World building [says The New York Times of February 1, 1882] was disturbed only by the feet of the firemen and Police officers. Lines of hose across the car tracks were buried out of sight in the snow, and the streams of water that played from the nozzles were seemingly wasted. The flames continued as bright as though a great flood could have no effect upon them. The gas supply pipes created much of the glare. Men and women and children huddled close to the walls of the Post Office on the Park-row side....The wind increased to a gale, and the snow beat about with such effect that the crowds were driven to seek refuge elsewhere, and by 10 o'clock the streets in the neighborhood were almost deserted. A few staid persons, who appeared like statues of snow, seemed to think they were in duty bound to be on hand. They rubbed their backs against the sides of the Post Office and kept their eyes fixed upon the ragged Park-row wall of the burned building. The winds howled through Beekman-street, and Park-row, and whipped up Spruce-street into Nassau and Park-row with such fury that those who ventured to turn those corners were fairly lifted from then-feet. The City Hall clock appeared as though in a mist.... By 11 o'clock the snow had almost ceased to fall, the shrieks of the winds had died away, and the atmosphere was clear and cheerful, but the crowds did not return.
We were among the last to leave, hypnotized by the black hulk across the street. The streetlamps before it were smashed and unlit, and the face of the wall was dark and without detail. But the lower window openings were sharply defined by the steady glare of the flaming gas pipes on the other side, and we could see the new snow mounded on their sills. The wreckage looked centuries old, an ancient ruin, and the dark shapes of the firemen were motionless, the only movement the play of the water arching through the empty windows. Higher up, the walls were touched by the diffused sourceless light that so often accompanies a nighttime snowfall; and we stared up at the smoke-blackened OBSERVER sign along which we'd crawled, and just beyond it on the face of the Times Building the sign of J. WALTER THOMPSON, ADVERTISING AGENT, onto which we had stepped and saved our lives. Finally we left; as we crossed Park Row into Beekman Street, the City Hall clock said ten to eleven.
The Beekman Street sidewalk had been trampled clear of snow all day and into the evening; now with only an inch of untouched new snow it was easily passable. We looked across the street; here the wall had fallen, and we looked into the emptiness of what had been the inside of the building. The flames of the br
oken gas pipes roared softly, steadily, white arches of water wetting down everything near them. But the fire itself was over, "the Destruction of the World" complete, and it was already passing into—not even history, but oblivion. At this moment a swarm of artists would be hard at work under gaslight, over at Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper a couple of blocks to the west at Park and College Place, and at Harper's, carving out the woodcuts of the fire that would appear in a week or so. The girl beside me, and most of the city, would look at their work for a few moments, recreating the sensation. But I understood as they could not how quickly the men now carving those wooden blocks would be gone, together with the entire population that would look at them, incredibly including this girl. Here and there a last few copies would yellow in files, turning into something quaint and faintly amusing; and this vanished building and awful fire would be gone from all human memory. For a few moments, walking along Beekman Street across from the wreckage already being covered over with snow in places, I was overwhelmed in melancholy; human life was so short it seemed meaningless. It's the kind of thought you have, usually, only in the deep middle of the night waking up alone in the world. But I knew a time when this building and fire were as though they'd never been, and so I had the feeling now.
We turned the corner into Nassau Street and—without speaking, each sensing it in the other—we began to hurry, suddenly anxious to leave this place forever. Ahead, just across the street from the Nassau Street entrance to the Times Building, the streetlamp was unbroken, and its circle of yellow light lay sparkling and softly beautiful on the snow of our walk. Here, too, on this walk, the snow was almost untouched, but not quite; a single line of footsteps marked it, disappearing into the darkness beyond the lamp. They began as though someone peering into a window opening of the destroyed World Building had crossed Nassau Street, stepped up onto the curb, and walked on.
We reached the footprints, our own beginning to appear beside them. Then, directly under the lamp, I gripped Julia's arm, and we stopped. Sharply imprinted in the snow, just as I'd seen it once before, lay the tiny shape of a tombstone; within it dozens of dots formed a circle enclosing a nine-pointed star. But this time there were a lot of them. Behind each sole print in the line of footsteps ahead lay the round-edged straight-bottomed tombstone shape. "They're heel prints," I said; then I crouched beside one, pointing. "The star and circle are the heads of the nails."
I looked up at Julia, and she nodded, mystified. "Yes, of course; men often have that done when their boots are made, a personal design of some sort." She shrugged. "It's just a good-luck sign."
I nodded; I understood. This was Carmody's sign; he had escaped the fire. And only a few moments ago he was here—to look once more upon what he had done. For a moment longer I stood staring at that strange little print in the new snow. He'd be buried under that sign. Years from now his widow would wash and dress his newly dead body, then bury him under this identical sign. Why? Why? The question still remained.
We walked all the way home. The wind gone, the snow stopped, it was no longer cold; and this late and so soon after the storm, the streets were deserted and we had the world to ourselves. At least the streets we walked on were empty; half lost most of the time, we traveled back and forth east and west, but working always to the north along the old old streets of the old old city of lower Manhattan. The walks were occasionally shoveled clear but generally not, so we walked in packed-down carriage and wagon ruts. As the storm clouds broke up, a half-moon began to appear and disappear, so that sometimes, a block or more from a streetlamp, we moved through darkness. At others we walked in moonlight that, doubled by reflection from the snow, was like day.
Often we walked along, or crossed, silent residential streets precisely like those still existing in great areas of twentieth-century San Francisco. In San Francisco not just isolated relics but entire whole blocks of nineteenth-century houses stand untouched, looking in every way, except for parked cars, like still-existing old photographs of themselves. And now, here in lower Manhattan of the nineteenth century—we often think of it wrongly as having been nothing but block after block of brownstones—were whole blocks and streets of tall, wooden, wonderfully ornate houses exactly like their counterpart streets in modern San Francisco. Occasionally there was a light far back in a house behind a curtained window; someone sick, we supposed. And once in a while, far ahead or down a side street, we saw a moving figure. Occasionally, no wagon tracks visible, there were stretches of knee-deep drifts, and taking her hand, I helped Julia through them; until presently, after one such stretch, we didn't let go. Holding each other's hand, we walked through that silent bright night, and, as I'm certain Julia did, too, I could feel the horror of the fire begin to recede into the past and let go of us. At a long, shiny stretch of hard-packed snow surface, icy at this time of night, we ran on impulse, still hand in hand, then slid along that stretch, balancing in a way I'd done last in grade school. It was late and we didn't laugh or call out, but we grinned. And once or twice we scooped up snow, packed it, and arched it high into the air for the fun of it. It was fine, that walk, and at one point we heard—from a stable somewhere back of a house, I suppose—the sudden high whinny of a horse and I was suddenly aware of the enormous mystery of being here, walking the streets of New York City on a winter night of 1882.
We reached Fourteenth Street and turned east to walk a short block to the foot of Irving Place, which led, then as now, straight up to Gramercy Park. Just ahead, the building on the southeast corner of Fourteenth and Irving Place was brilliantly lighted, and we heard music: a waltz. "The Academy of Music," Julia said, and when we reached it the side entrances were open, and we stopped at one of them to look inside.
What we saw was stunning, dazzling. At least a third of the main floor, the seats removed, was covered by a slightly raised dancing platform, waxed and shining, filled by whirling, dipping, waltzing couples. In the gallery a great orchestra played, violin bows in slanted motion, and every box—level after level of boxes curving in a great horseshoe from one side of the stage clear around to the other—was filled with chatting laughing people overlooking the dancers. Still more spectators filled the stage and the entire rest of the main floor. Great urns of flowers stood along the edge of the dancing platform, and high above the stage hung huge letters and numerals made of gas pipe. They were lighted, and the yellow-white letters of flame spelled CHARITY—1882.
The ball was an island of light, music, and excitement in a white and silent winter night; it seemed magical to have come onto it like this. Every man there wore white tie and tails, yet the variety of hair length and style and the even greater variety in beard, mustache, and sideburns kept them individuals, recognizable and interesting to the eye. And the women in their long but off-shoulder and often surprisingly low-cut gowns—well, if the daytime dress of the eighties tended to be drab, these women made up for it tonight. I don't know the terminology of women's clothes or the materials they're made of; I'll quote again directly from next morning's account of the ball in the Times:
Mrs. Grace wore cream colored brocaded satin with pearl front. Mrs. R.H.L. Townsend wore blue satin brocaded with leaves and flowers of gold; Mrs. Lloyd S. Bryce wore white brocaded satin flounced with lace; Mrs. Stephen H. Olin wore white watered silk, with pearl and diamond ornaments. Mrs. Woolsey wore black tulle with black satin waist and diamond ornaments. Mrs. C.G. Francklyn wore white silk and diamonds. Mrs. Commodore Vanderbilt wore white silk and diamonds. Mrs. Crawford wore blue silk. Mrs. J.C. Barron wore white satin and lace with diamonds.
My reason for quoting this is that these women, a hall filled with them, absolutely glittered.
Standing a few feet from us, a man in white tie and tails but with the look of a cop had been watching us; tolerantly enough, the time for ticket collecting long past. I looked over at him now, and he sauntered over. "I know someone here," I said to him. "Is there any way to locate her?" I narrowed my eyes and pantomimed looking out over the hall; for
some reason we treat cops as though they were all dumb. He turned to a little gilt chair, picked up a handwritten list of several pages, and handed it to me. "Proscenium Boxes," it was headed, and under this it listed boxes and then-occupants by letters beginning with D, and I looked quickly down a long column of names. "Artist Boxes," said the next column, and these boxes were listed by composers' names, beginning with Mozart, Meyerbeer, Bellini, Donizetti. I looked through the names under these, all beautifully written in a woman's hand; I looked under Verdi, Gounod, Weber, Wagner, Beethoven, Auber, Halévy, Grisi, and then, under Piccolomini, I found the names of four women and their husbands, and one of the four was the name I was looking for.
The guard, or cop, pointed out the Piccolomini box, and it was nearly full; four women and three men sat watching the dancers below. The guard walked off, and I murmured to Julia, "There they are: four women. One of them almost certainly knows that today her husband killed half a dozen people. And nearly burned to death himself. So tell me: Which of those four women is she?"
"There is no question of that, is there?" Julia said. "The woman in the yellow gown.''
I nodded; there was no question at all. There she sat, her spine straight, her back not touching the little gilt chair, a strikingly handsome woman in her mid-thirties; and her face was absolutely composed. She'd have been good-looking, very nearly beautiful, except that looking at her face you hardly thought of that; I've seldom seen a face, and never before or since a woman's, of such utter composure, extreme capability, and absolute determination. "Do you see what she's looking at?" Julia said, and I realized that the woman in yellow wasn't watching the dancers.
