YET LET NO EMPTY GUST
OF PASSION FIND AN UTTERANCE IN THY LAY,
A BLAST THAT WHIRLS THE DUST
ALONG THE HOWLING STREET AND DIES AWAY;
BUT FEELINGS OF CALM POWER AND MIGHTY SWEEP,
LIKE CURRENTS JOURNEYING THROUGH THE WINDLESS DEEP.
I recognised Butterfly’s handwriting. I had come out without my bag, without a pen. I read the words aloud and looked away to see whether they had stayed in my brain. They hadn’t. I said the poem fifty times until the sounds left an imprint on my memory. I would have liked to hang out in the garden because that surely was the treasure, but I had to get to a pen and paper as quickly as possible.
Cat and I snuck back to the gate and climbed out, all the time repeating the poem over and over. I walked into the hotel on the corner and asked at reception to borrow a pen. I must have looked ruffled from my squeezing and climbing adventures, but if they thought I looked out of place, they didn’t give any hint of it and obliged me with writing materials. What I noted wasn’t terribly different from the original, and the first two lines were perfect.
But this was surely not Butterfly’s voice. She had borrowed the words from somewhere. When I got home I typed them into Google in case something came up and it did. They were an extract from a text by American poet and philanthropist William Bryant, inscribed at the base of his statue in Bryant Park, New York, NY, USA.
That’s a clue, I think.
PART TWO
August 20 to August 28, 2007
11
Arriving in New York
Waiting for three hours in the queue for passport control at JFK Airport was boring and kind of interesting at the same time. I pocketed one of the Department of Homeland Security US Customs and Border Protection Nonimmigrant Visa Waiver Arrival/Departure forms (with its genius questions) as a memento, or in case it came in handy as a comedy present for somebody, and they did appear to be free for the taking.
Everything in America seemed as if it belonged on television. Most people were played by actors I could nearly recognise, and the man speaking on the public address system was very probably a multiplatinum-selling hip-hop artist.
‘Would passengers Smith and Johnson on flight BA three eigh-dee from London Heathrow, please go to the Briddish Airways desk for information abou cho luggage.’
Sadly my name was not mentioned and there was no information about my luggage, which had had ideas of its own on where to travel, without leaving so much as a forwarding address or any notion of its whereabouts.
With a two-hour flight delay, I was now a good five hours later than I’d expected. I was starting to feel uncomfortable about arriving in Manhattan in the middle of the night, not knowing where I was going to stay. I thought about trying to look for a hotel on the Internet, but the airport had a kind of middle-of-the-night feel to it with everything closed, so I got directions from the semihelpful people at the information desk.
‘Where exactly do you want to go?’
‘Manhattan.’
‘Yeah, but where in Manhattan?’
‘Er, I don’t know.’ I’d never been to New York before, but I had an image of the kind of place I would like and the kind of place I probably wouldn’t like, but I didn’t really even know if they existed (I would have liked to go to Sesame Street, for example). Someone had once told me that I’d like the East Village, but that didn’t necessarily mean that I’d be happy to turn up there at three o’clock in the morning. And I didn’t want to say the East Village in case I’d misunderstood and it was some kind of postapocalyptic waste ground inhabited solely by hordes of flesh-eating undead, and the people at the airport would laugh at me because I was obviously stupid.
‘Well, it’s a big place, and how you get there depends on where you’re going.’
‘How do you get to the East Village?’
‘OK, you need to take the AirTrain to Howard Beach and then take the A train to Jay Street and then take the F train to, maybe, Second Avenue? Where you going in the East Village?’
‘I don’t know. Do you have a map?’
‘I’ve got this Brooklyn bus map.’
‘Does it show the subway?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Does it show Manhattan?’
‘Not really.’
‘OK. Thanks.’
* * *
I took the AirTrain and stared at a sign telling me a list of things that are forbidden in the territory of JFK Airport—including falling asleep. When I woke up, the train was going backwards. I had got to Howard Beach and was now heading back in the other direction. I decided to rest my eyes a little, promising myself to open them now and then to check which station I was at.
The next time I woke I could clearly see a sign saying Howard Beach. I stared and tried to remember why it would seem familiar. A long beeping tone sounded, the doors closed and the train headed off in the wrong direction again. I got off at the next stop, which was a car park, and decided to walk to the subway; simple enough to follow the overhead lines of the futurist AirTrain. I walked through the car park for a few hundred yards and arrived at the subway station.
I’d been waiting around ten minutes and had paced up and down the platform three times before an overfriendly and oversized bum started chatting up the few people who had luggage. I decided to hang out at one extreme end in the open air to avoid having to talk to him, and thought this a harmless moment to smoke my first cigarette in the eighteen hours or so since I had checked in at Charles de Gaulle airport in France. I spotted a law enforcement officer as he strolled over to the bum and some of his words drifted into earshot. He had a patronising tone and didn’t want to have to tell the bum every night not to bother people. And then he turned and continued his stroll along the platform towards me. When I felt he was appropriately near I nodded and said good evening and he said, ‘Hey, you know you can’t smoke that here.’
I lifted my hand and looked at it. ‘It’s a cigarette,’ I said.
‘I know what it is, and you can’t smoke it here.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought because I was in the open air it would be fine.’
‘You can’t smoke anywhere on the transportation system.’
‘Oh, OK,’ I said. In France I’d never seen anyone get told not to smoke in the open air. I suddenly felt a long way from home and as if I didn’t know the rules. I imagined putting the cigarette out on the ground and being told to pick it up, or getting thrown in the penitentiary, or deported. ‘Where can I put it out?’ I asked.
‘You just put it on the ground there,’ he said, and I thought that I could have disposed of it more appropriately. As I crushed it out I noticed other cigarette ends on the floor and judged that I had just been unlucky. ‘Hey, are you English?’ he asked me.
‘Yes I am,’ I said.
‘Yeah, I recognised your accent. You just get in from London?’
‘Yes,’ I lied, because I thought it would make things easier than explaining that actually I lived in Paris and I hadn’t been to London for years.
‘You got any ID on you?’
‘Yes, one moment.’
And as I rummaged for my passport he said, ‘I just wanna check because if you have just arrived from London, then you don’t know the law, and I’m not gonna write you a ticket because it’s probably not the same there.’
‘I just got here,’ I assured him, and then hoped there was nothing in my passport that said that I’d actually just arrived from Paris and not London, which would show me up to be an obvious liar. He looked at the visa-waiver form stapled to my passport.
‘OK, you’re lucky today because you just got here, so I’m not going to write you a ticket this time.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But next time I’m gonna have to write you a ticket.’
‘Yes, I understand, but I won’t smoke in the subway again now that I know that it’s illegal.’
‘It’s illegal to smoke anywhere
on the transportation system.’
‘Yes, I won’t be smoking anywhere from where one could be transported, or while being transported.’
‘Look, I’m just doing my job and trying to make sure that people stick to the law. And if everyone sticks to the law, then there’s no trouble and I’m a happy cop. You just got here and I’m telling you now, but I’m also saying that next time you may not be so lucky.’
‘No, of course. Thank you.’
‘So you just be careful.’
‘I certainly will. Thank you.’
‘All right, you stay out of trouble.’
‘Yes, I will.’
‘OK, have a nice day.’
‘Yes, thank you. You too.’
It took a lot of effort, but eventually I managed to have the last word. Why did I need to have the last word? Cat would have looked at me despairingly.
* * *
When I arrived at Second Avenue it was light and I walked out of the subway station and into New York, disappointed to find that it didn’t look anything like I’d expected. I thought it would be a forest of dizzyingly tall buildings, or if it wasn’t all like that, then at least I’d be able to see a few dizzyingly tall buildings, or some towering district in the near distance. But the buildings around me were no taller than anything Paris had to offer. What’s more, the city that never sleeps seemed to be shut down for the night. Had New York changed, or had Frank Sinatra lied?
I had no particular sense of which direction I was facing, but didn’t feel worried because I guessed all the streets would have numbers and fit into an easy-to-navigate grid that any fool could understand. I guessed I was somewhere on the east side of Manhattan and I looked at the street names. I was at the intersection of East Houston Street (which I later discovered is pronounced How-ston for no reason anyone could explain) and Allen Street, scuppering my idea that New York could be navigated on numbers alone. But as I had no idea where to go, this was not a real problem.
Crossing over the massive junction, Allen Street became First Avenue. The side streets acquired numbers starting from one and I walked knowing that I would check into the first reasonably priced hotel I came across. An hour later I was at Forty-Second Street. I realised I had been walking with my brain switched off—counting blocks automatically and not looking out for hotels. My tiredness made me feel sorry for myself. I could see water to my right so I headed left and New York quickly became the towering metropolis of my imagination.
Grand Central Station must surely be the most beautiful station in the world. How could anything else compete with its orangey-marble wonderfulness. I wanted to sit down. Grand Central Station offers architectural beauty, but not seating (at least not at first glance). After wandering around for ten minutes, I came to the lowest level, where there is a refreshment area with large comfortable chairs, and I sat and closed my eyes.
I found an Internet café and stumbled onto the website of a hotel that looked nice, just about affordable and in the East Village. I rang and booked myself a room. They told me I could check in at two o’clock. I went back to my email account and sent a message to Butterfly: ‘I’m on the other side of the world and as tired as I have ever been in my life. I’m not really sure what I’m doing here. Where shall I go, Tomomi Ishikawa? I’m lost.’
I still had five hours to kill and felt like I was going to go mad if I wasn’t tucked up in bed in the next few moments. I walked south for a while and then moved to the east a little to line myself up for where I imagined my hotel to be, and after about a hundred and twenty miles I was walking down a nice street called Avenue A which had no place on my imaginary map of Manhattan.
I eventually arrived at a big square with trees and found a bench. I sat staring at nothing, feeling the morning on my skin and wishing I had my luggage with me. Then I slid into a slightly more comfortable position, resting my head on my arm on the back of the bench, and fairly soon I was lying down with my head propped up on my elbow. My legs tucked up and my arm became a pillow and the warming air a quilt. I looked at the trees and the clouds and urged them to pass by quickly so that I could go to bed soon. It was a shame to waste precious time, but my body could do no more.
After an hour or two—who knows—I got up and staggered over to a bar with seats outside and ordered a hot chocolate. I noticed a sign on the corner saying Tompkins Square. I knew this place. Butterfly had written about it. Maybe the bench I’d just been lying on was the one where she sat on the evening of September 11, 2001, waiting for a stranger.
At ten to two I was standing at the reception desk of the hotel. An oldish man gave me a key and directed me to my room.
‘I don’t normally work in the day,’ he confided; ‘I’m the night guy.’
I tried to look interested, but I had no conversation in me and he picked up on that. I apologised, telling him I was jet-lagged, and went off to find my room. It was quite possibly the nicest cheap hotel room I’d ever stayed in, but I was too tired to care. I had a shower and went to bed.
12
On the Steps of the New York Public Library
I was too hot and woke up in a room I didn’t know. My body clock couldn’t tell the time, but the sun was beating directly onto the curtains. Hotel rooms may all be different, but they have something in common too, it’s hard to define what, but you’d know one the moment you woke up in it.
There was a moment when I couldn’t remember what was in my dream and what was in my head.
I wished I had a toothbrush and toothpaste, but they were lost with my luggage. I made a gesture towards oral hygiene with some toilet paper and went out.
I found a café I liked and ordered breakfast. I was half-asleep and muddled. Why was I here (in New York)? I was following clues, but is that reason enough to take the next flight to another continent, or am I sinking new claws into something I thought I’d let go of?
I shrugged. I could go immediately back to Paris on the grounds that to come here was folly, or I could explore a new city, walking around, and have a break from everything.
I guessed I was near to the bottom of Manhattan, and that the southernmost point would be as good a place as any to start. So I zigzagged towards the south with shadows from the morning sun as my compass, until the buildings got so big that the sun didn’t reach down to street level except at junctions. A sign pointed left to the Brooklyn Bridge, but that would have to wait for another day. As I walked past Wall Street, it seemed narrow and unimpressive below the buildings lining it. I eventually came to Battery Park and the water. I looked across to the Statue of Liberty. It was a long way off and little more than a blur to my tired eyes. I stood with my back to the water and all Manhattan before me. I stayed by the water, moving west and circling the tall buildings, and then after a while cut inland and came to Ground Zero, with its fence blocking out the world and its tall neighbours dark and shiny. On the east side was the subway station and a kind of visitor’s centre with photographs of 9/11. I could see through the fence down into a great pit. On the south side there was a gateway open for lorries to come and go, leaving muddy tracks on the road. I stood and looked in. I was hungry. I didn’t know what I wanted to eat, but if I carried on walking I was sure to find something.
At Washington Square my legs had had enough and I looked down at my tired feet to see mud on my trainers. Ground Zero mud. And so I walked with the dead on my feet, staring mostly at them and smelling the streets as they changed shape and size. I was on Sixth Avenue but I had no idea of a destination. Onwards, to the north. The numbers of the streets started to go up and I could feel my legs struggling to drag the weight of a thousand souls uptown with me. I cut from Sixth to Fifth Avenue along leafy West Tenth Street with its brownstone houses and broad steps leading up to wide doorways. And then, as I carried on north, buildings got higher and higher. These weren’t like the oppressive dark blocks of the financial district daring doom to rain down death and misery upon them; these were older, light-coloured buildings of an out
dated and maybe misplaced optimism. They went on and on.
If I’d been disappointed by how unlike my idea of New York this place had been when I’d arrived all that time ago (when was it? Only yesterday morning?), now I was in a New York so like itself it seemed like a parody, although it was curiously quiet and fresh. The taxis were yellow, but there was no honking, police cars rolled slowly and silently—the occasional and gentle whoop of a siren flicked on and off made me imagine exotic birds—and the bums seemed sober (they didn’t even seem like bums—perhaps they were just people sitting). And I walked ten blocks and another ten and the buildings just kept getting taller and taller and the weight of the dead on my feet called out to me and told me to stop sometime soon, but I didn’t. No time to stop. Stop when you’re dead. I wonder how many miles I’d walked this morning. The Empire State Building is so tall you can’t see the top (not from where I was standing anyway).
The lowest building on this part of Fifth Avenue is large and ornate with pillars and steps, guarded by lions. Butterfly must have liked this building. I walked up and stopped directly in front of it and then noticed the lettering along the front telling me that it was the New York Public Library. Yes, Butterfly loved this building. I went in through the door and joined a short queue to have my bag searched.
I walked upstairs, dragging my hand along the stone balustrade, and meandered down corridors and up more stairs. I found an enormous reading room with hundreds of people silently expanding their brains and I carried on walking. There’s something about this library that I didn’t understand. Where were the books? I walked down another stairway and found an empty room full of identically bound brown volumes of a catalogue for something or other. I pulled one from the shelf and opened it on the table; there were eternal entries in alphabetical order, but I couldn’t understand what they referred to. I leaned my head on my hands and stared down at the page while I rested the dead on the marble floor. Time passed (probably not much, but some) and then I walked more, along, up, and down until I came back to the entrance and joined a small queue of people waiting to have their bags checked as they left. When I got outside, the sun was shining almost directly downwards onto my head. I lit a cigarette, sat on the steps and watched the people and the cars.
Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa Page 10
