From time to time, p.26
From Time to Time, page 26
part #2 of Time and Again Series
More cabs, cars, and luggage-loaded trucks, filling curb space as fast as emptied, the countess’s car pulling away. Archie, Jotta Girl, and I looking at each other to nod and grin, then turning to the stairway down to the dock. I felt wondrously happy; just to be here, to have seen the countess, and to be walking down these wooden stairs. And was willing right now—eager—to sell my soul without asking for change, to be sailing out on this great lighted thing.
She lay there miles long, three never-ending rows of shining portholes, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them, dwindling off to dots. I’ve read that an ocean liner is the largest thing that moves, and this—walking down the wooden stairs, I stared—was hard to understand. How could it be so long, so large, how could it have been made, how could this monster float?
Down, then, across the scruffy wood floor of the dock, then up the gangplank, and it was exactly that, a wide plank, railed and slatted. And crowded, busy with laughing excited people. I glanced off, now strangely a little higher than the city down at my right, and then I stepped out of the world I’d known.
Into a world I’d never seen the likes of, its looks, warmth, its strangeness and even its smell told me so. Welcoming us stood a row of smiling men and boys in uniform, the bellboys or whatever they were called in brass-buttoned blue suits. All happy to see us, skillfully moving us on. On into a great room jostling with passengers, visitors, and sweating stewards. Booby-trapped with golf bags leaning against the walls, with tall flaring wicker flower baskets to be delivered to cabins. With brown paper packages on the floor against the walls, and, on little tables, enormous boxes of candy and stacks of telegrams, cablegrams. And with two-wheeled handcarts for luggage and baskets of fruit. And potted palms, and people, people, and the sound of people, and always more people stepping curiously in.
We moved on, the three of us, had to move with the flow, down a narrow passageway, then out into a great and beautiful room. Arching above us, a magnificent canopy of patterned colored glass, the walls of—what? I don’t know—glowing dark wood. And a long, long, white-cloth table, behind it smiling men in starched chefs hats and knotted kerchiefs waiting behind food, food, food. Including pâté de foie gras. Including black caviar. Including roasts. Cold cuts. Tiny steaks. Stews. Fruit, cakes, ice cream, anything, anything. Sliced salmon. And we ate, plates in hand, and grinned at each other, walking around the big room looking at wall paintings. People moved in and moved out, and we lost the Jotta Girl, she vanished. And I set down my plate and wandered, curious. Out into the corridors again, squirming with people, most of them laughing and happy, not all. Not the uniformed stewards battling along with buckets of ice.
On past staterooms crammed with fun-lovers yelling at me to come on in and have a drink. Past a room, door slightly ajar, a woman sitting alone on the edge of a bed, crying. Past worried people talking about luggage. Past others urging wild, insane children to bed and sleep.
In and out of the great public rooms, I hardly knew where. What to say about them? I don’t know, except that every one was different and all were the same. Each had a tremendous glass canopy almost covering the ceiling—to admit daylight from the open deck above. Each canopy different, yet all the same. One was cream and gold, the dining room with magnificent deep red carpets, upholstery a deep pink. Swivel chairs around the tables bolted to the floors; which said something to me about the ocean crossing ahead. Crystal chandeliers, carpets matching the drapes. Carpets in rose, carpets in green. Out of one crowded jabbering room into another, sometimes almost deserted. The lounge. The smoking room, which had an enormous working fireplace. The music room. The library. Dark polished wood everywhere. Paintings, luxury, a luxury liner; it was that all right. And everywhere, more potted plants.
I peeked into empty cabins, and one that wasn’t, yanking my head out before they saw me. In the bedrooms, dresser tops with rails to keep things from sliding off; glasses set in wells; a ship ready for rough water.
In the library, nearly empty, I stood looking around: another glass canopy, more dark paneling, shelves of books, a lot of upholstered chairs, all looking new. I’d heard a voice in a corridor say the Mauretania was just out of dry dock, refurbished. I sneaked a look around: nobody. And took a twenty-five-cent piece from my pocket, stood on tiptoe, and dropped it behind a row of books: even though I could not, something of mine was going to sail tonight. The Jotta Girl came in, glass in hand, and we went out and up to the promenade deck. Funnels, looking like enormous white saxophones, stood everywhere, the deck crowded with them. They scooped up air from the ship’s forward motion, no air-conditioning. We strolled past lifeboats, reaching a hand up to touch the bottoms. Found Archie leaning on a rail talking to his friend, to whom he introduced us: the painter Francis Millet.
From somewhere a boy’s voice: “All ashore that’s going ashore!” and I must have looked excited, because Arch smiled. “No hurry,” he said. “They’ll say that half a dozen times yet, and no one will pay a bit of attention. But when you hear the ship’s horn, they mean it. Let’s meet up on the sidewalk near the top of the stairs; the dock will be pretty crowded. And first one up hold a cab; they’ll be scarce for a while.”
But after that—the Jotta Girl and I wandering, getting a little bored, finally—the all-ashore calls came more frequently. Then they came with chimes, boys moving through the ship tapping out chime notes, calling their warning. And finally the panic-inducing repeated blasts of the ship’s terrible horn, and for an instant I was back hurrying up the aisle of The Greyhound matinee. Blast! Blast! Blast! Blast!—hurry off now or be carried out to sea!
At one of the open hatchways in the side of the ship, the Jotta Girl and I edged into the crowd moving toward a gangplank. Then, holding hands not to get separated, we walked down the steep slant to the solid safety of the dock, back into reality. But didn’t yet climb the stairs to the street; we stood watching, gaping up at the great ship. Passengers gathered along her railings now, calling down to friends, while stewards walked among them handing out something or other. Handing out thin rolls of colored paper, which the passengers tossed out now, holding on to one end, to unroll down toward friends here on the dock who caught the other end. So that suddenly hundreds of these many-colored paper ribbons hung between ship and shore, gangplanks down and being wheeled away fast, black hatchway openings slamming shut and dogged down to become parts of the long sides of the ship. Behind the great Mauretania the slow, sluggish beat of the tug engines, black smoke popping from their stacks. Gulls crying now, lifting, gliding; a strip of gray water appearing along the side of the ship. Then her huge growl, the great lonely departing cry again. And again, and again.
The Mauretania came sliding past us, backing out into the Hudson, the hundreds of paper ribbons going taut, breaking, the voyage begun. And we stood staring up at her mesmerized. The backward-sliding prow came toward us, then slipped on past, and we stood gazing up at her lighted decks, and the waving passengers, and Archie—Archie up there at the rail—his palm facing us, giving us a final small embarrassed and, I think, apologetic farewell.
25
* * *
AND SO I LOST HIM, RUBE. Well, what did you think! What did you expect? I could have done this, should have done that, you bet. But I’m not supersleuth. Did the best I could, which wasn’t very good, I know, I know. These defensive thoughts moving uselessly through my mind as I stood in my tenth-floor room looking down onto the darkness of Central Park. I was very tired, shucking off my coat, wondering what I ought to feel about my failure. Well, I said to myself, whatever Rube had argued me into, it had never seemed real or possible to me that anything I could do could really and truly prevent an enormous war involving nearly all the world. And I felt no sureness at all that Dr. D wasn’t absolutely right: Don’t ever, ever alter the past . . . or you’ll alter the future in a way or ways you cannot know.
But I did feel stupid, looking down onto the paving and the shining tracks of motionless Fifty-ninth Street. Then, as sometimes happens, another thought came winging along out of nowhere and inserted itself. And I swung around, walked out of my room in my shirtsleeves, and actually trotted down the staircase to the lobby, where the night clerk glanced up at me walking fast across the lobby. The newsstand had closed, but the papers were left out; you dropped your money into an empty cigar box on the counter. There were two copies of the Evening Mail still left.
Back in my room with one of them spread open on the bed, I turned pages, found the Jotta Girl’s Wanamaker ad, and—as well as I could approximate what she had done—carefully tore out a section of the ad, for a woman’s shoe. Glanced at it, then turned it to look at the other side. Out into the hall fast then, and tapped on her door.
She opened it cautiously, saw me, closed the door to remove the chain, then let me in, looking at me as I walked in past her, waiting for me to explain. She’d removed her bedspread, the bed still unopened, so I sat down on the edge of the bed, nodding at the chair near it, expecting her to take it. Instead, she sat down beside me, a little too close, so I lay back, on my side, head propped on elbow. She was having fun tonight, and did the same, and we lay there, faces about three inches apart, while she blinked at me slowly, smiling. It flustered me, as she knew it would, and for something to say, I murmured, “The Jotta Girl.”
“What?”
“It’s what I’ve called you. In my mind. The Jotta Girl. From the song.” I began quietly singing the foolish nonwords that had once so appealed to my five-year-old mind. “Jotta . . . jotta! Jotta, jotta, jink-jink-jing!” She smiled, nodding, and when I continued, “Yes, jotta,” she joined in, and we both sang, “Everywhere you go you hear ’em sing.” Grinning at this two-in-the-morning foolishness, we sang, “Jotta! Oh, jotta! Jotta, jotta, jink-jink-jing!” and ran out of words. Still smiling, I said, “How come you know that?”
“I don’t know: always have. From an old song, isn’t it?”
I nodded, quite slowly. “Yes. A song from the 1920s.” I waited for her reaction, her confusion at knowing a song that wouldn’t be written for years to come. But she didn’t get it, didn’t realize, just lay watching me, waiting.
So I said, “Did you get your shoes?”
“What shoes?”
From my shirt pocket I took the little rectangle of newsprint I’d torn from the Evening Mail, unfolded it, and held it up to show her the ad she’d torn from my first copy of the paper—for a woman’s shoe. “This is the shoe you said you were interested in.” Then I turned my little clipping to show her the other side. “Or was it really this you wanted torn out of my paper so I wouldn’t see it?” Printed on the side now facing her was a column of type headed: Departures. Below that, in small type: Sailing tonight on the Mauretania for Le Havre and Southampton: Colonel and Mrs. William T. Allen, Kenneth Braden and Susan Ferguson and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Ausible, Marguerite Theodosia, Tom Buchanan, Ruth Buchanan, Miss Edna Butler, Major Archibald Butt, aide to the President . . . I said, “You didn’t have to tear this out of my paper; I’d never have noticed it.”
She shrugged. “I had to be sure.” She didn’t move; just kept lying there, head propped on an elbow, waiting, so I said it.
“Dr. D sent you, didn’t he?”
She nodded. “We were afraid you’d remember me: because I was at the Project when you were. But he didn’t have anyone else to send. I remember you at the Project!”
“Yeah, well, sorry. Your hair is different or something.”
“Sure, but still.”
“Well, I’m teddibly, teddibly sorry. I do apologize. He sent you here to sabotage me, didn’t he?”
“I suppose you could say so. Simon, Dr. D knew who Z was the moment you first mentioned him! On the phone that night.”
I nodded.
“Everyone knows who Archibald Butt was! Everyone in the world but you and Rube.”
I nodded again.
“So yes, sure. I was here to keep you apart if I could. Till he sailed. I think Archie was suspicious of you anyway; you came on pretty strong and fast.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t have a lot of time.”
She moved her face slightly closer. “So I’m guilty. What are you going to do about it?”
“Oh, I’m not mad. Or even sorry about it. I even think Dr. D may be right.”
“Oh? Then how come—really, Simon, how come you were willing to try such a stupendous thing?”
“As preventing World War One? Oh, just as a favor to a friend.”
We lay looking at each other, lying very close on a bed behind a closed door at two in the morning. Separated by the length of a lifetime from everyone who might care. We lay there looking at each other, and didn’t move. Looked some more, and didn’t move. Then smiled a little, the moment, if there’d ever been one, gone. “You’re going home,” she said. “I can tell. Back to dear old Julia.” And I nodded, and we sat up.
“As soon and as fast as I can. I told Rube I’d report back, and I’ll do it. Then it’s home forever. You?”
“I guess so. Sure.”
“Wisconsin, isn’t it?”
“ ’Fraid so.”
“How do you go?”
“There’s a place beside the East River. Sit there at night when you can’t really see the other shore . . .” I was nodding, and she said, “You?”
“Brooklyn Bridge, if I were going home. But tomorrow—Central Park.”
“So strange. This thing we can do. To be able to do it. I’ve never really gotten used to it.” She leaned close, and I thought she was going to kiss me, just lightly kiss me goodbye, but she only touched my arm for an instant, and I nodded, and we smiled, and I left.
An hour or maybe a little less before sunset next day, I checked out of the hotel, spare clothes left behind for whoever found them, and walked into the Park. From Fifty-ninth Street behind me, as the Plaza’s doors opened and closed, I heard the music of the thé dansant, and the occasional merry-melancholy fish-horn honk of a cab. It wasn’t l’heure bleu, not today; there was a sharpness, a hint of rain in the air. But my bench when I found it was sheltered, and I sat down, and began the relaxation of mind and body, began the strange, actually indescribable mental search and simultaneous renunciation the Project had taught me.
And when presently—dark now, Fifth Avenue streetlamps on—I came around the last turn of the path, the Plaza had a spotlighted fountain twinkling before it, and cars pulling up to and leaving from, and people walking in through and out of, the Fifth Avenue entrance. And all around, and behind it—a great backdrop for it—the hard-glittering towers of Manhattan in the time I’d been born into.
26
* * *
AT RUBE’S APARTMENT I had the easy chair, sitting by the windows in a parallelogram of late-afternoon sun, coffee mug in hand. But Rube—well, he didn’t pace, wasn’t nervous. He just walked, in his army pants, leather slippers, and white shirt. Wandered around his little living room listening, smiling, nodding, interested. I’d actually found Z but Rube didn’t seem to care about that. What had I done in New York? What had I seen? What was it like?
He laughed genuinely when I quoted from The Greyhound, then wanted to know what the usherettes wore. And what the audience wore, and what they said in the lobby during intermission. And Mrs. Israel, and Professor Duryea, the dance teacher—and Jolson, my God! Tell me about them. And what the streets looked like. And Broadway.
He couldn’t get enough, walking the room listening, smiling, nodding. Didn’t give a damn about Z, far as I could tell. Finally I asked him about it, and he said, “Oh, we’ve been working too, Si, since you left. And now we know all about Major Archibald Butt. Your Jotta Girl was dead right. ‘Jotta Girl,’ ” he repeated mockingly. “How’d you come up with that?” I shrugged, a little annoyed, and he said, “I remember her all right. From the Project. Hot little number.”
“ ‘Hot little number.’ Rube, if you ever develop the ability, head for the 1920s; you’ll be right at home.”
“I only wish I could. Anyway, your Jotta Girl was right: Everybody in the world but us knew who Major Archibald Butt was. The checkout girl at Safeway knows. Your paper-delivery boy knows. And Dr. D sure did, once you’d blabbed to him. But now I know too. I’ve read all about him. Your pal Major Archibald Butt sailed for Europe. As we learned too late to brief you. We also know that he got his papers; the letters of intent or whatever. And that he sailed for home. We know the date now, and we even know the ship. But he never got home.” Rube stood at my chair grinning down at me like a little kid.
“Well, if you should ever happen to feel like it, you might let me know too.”
“He sailed . . .” Rube began to laugh, shoulders jiggling. “Huh, huh, huh, huh, oh my God. He sailed—ah, hah, hah, hah, hah! Si, he sailed for home on the goddamn Titanic!”
After a moment I said, “Maybe you won’t mind if I don’t laugh. I knew him, God damn it!”
“You disappoint me. Always have. Because you don’t really have any imagination. This absolutely astounding ability is wasted on you, wasted. All it has ever really meant to you is going back to 1880-whatever, and Julia. Willy. And your goddamn dog. Add fireplace and slippers, and that’s enough for you.”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“What I could do with your ability!”
I pretended to cross myself at the thought.
“Simon, old fellow, even though you know that it isn’t so, I believe you still actually think of the past as immutable. The Titanic sank. Major Butt drowned. World War One happened. Nothing to be done about it. You’ve never really and truly got hold of the idea that if you can go back before these things hap—”
