Long After Midnight (17 page)

 
          
"Who
are you?" she asked. "You set my tongue loose! What're you up
to?"

 
          
"Up
to no good until a minute ago when I came around this corner," I said.
"Ready to knock over Nelson's pillar. Ready to pick a theater queue and
brawl along it, half weeping and half blasphemous . . ."

 
          
"I
don't see you doing it." Her hands wove out another yard of song.
"What changed your mind?"

 
          
"You,"
I said.

 
          
I
might have fired a cannon in her face.

 
          
"Me?"
she said.

 
          
"You
picked the day up off the stones, gave it a whack, set it running with a yell
again."

 
          
"I
did that?"

 
          
For
the first time, I heard a few notes missing from the tune.

 
          
"Or,
if you like, those hands of yours that go about their work without your
knowing."

 
          
"The
clothes must be washed, so you wash them."

 
          
I
felt the iron weights gather in my limbs.

 
          
"Don't!"
I said. "Why should we, coming by, be happy with this thing, and not
you?"

 
          
She
cocked her head; her hands moved slower still.

 
          
"And
why should you bother with the likes of
me?"

 
          
I
stood before her, and could I tell what the man told me in the lulling quiet of
Doole
/s Pub? Could I mention the hill of beauty that
had risen to fill my soul through a lifetime, and myself with a toy sand-shovel
doling it back to the world in dribs and drabs? Should I list all my debts to
people on stages and silver screens who made me laugh or cry or just come
alive, but no one in the dark theater to turn to and dare shout, "If you
ever need help, I'm your friend!" Should I recall for her the man on a bus
ten years before who chuckled so easy and light from the last seat that the
sound of him melted everyone else to laughing warm and rollicking off out the
doors, but with no one brave enough to pause and touch the man's arm and say,
"Oh, man, you've favored us this night; Lord bless you!" Could I tell
how she was just one part of a great account long owed and due? No, none of
this could I tell. So I put it this way:

 
          
"Imagine
something."

 
          
"I'm
ready," she said.

 
          
"Imagine
you're an American article writer, looking for material, far from home, wife,
children, friends, in a hard winter, in a cheerless hotel, on a bad gray day
with naught but broken glass, chewed tobacco, and sooty snow in your soul.
Imagine you're walking in the damned winter streets and turn a corner, and
there's this little woman with a golden harp and everything she plays is
another season, autumn, spring, summer, coming, going in a free-for-all. And
the ice melts, the fog lifts, the wind burns with June, and ten years shuck off
your life. Imagine, if you please."

 
          
She
stopped her tune.

 
          
She
was shocked at the sudden silence.

 
          
"You
are
daft," she said.

 
          
"Imagine
you're me," I said. "Going back to my hotel now. And on my way I'd
like to hear anything, anything at all. Play. And when you play, walk off
around the comer and listen."

 
          
She
put her hands to the strings and paused, working her mouth. I waited. At last
she sighed, she moaned. Then suddenly she cried:

 
          
"Go
on!"

 
          
"What...
?"

 
          
"You've
made me all thumbs! Look! You've spoilt it!"

 
          
"I
just wanted to thank—"

 
          
"—me
behind!" she cried. "What a clod, what a brute! Mind your business!
Do your work! Let be, man! Ah, these poor fingers, mint, mint!"

 
          
She
stared at them and at me with a terrible glaring fixity.

 
          
"Get!"
she shouted.

 
          
I
ran around the comer in despair.

 
          
There!
I thought, you've done it! really done it! By thanks destroyed, that's her
story. And yours, too, you must live with it! Fool! why didn't you keep your
mouth shut?

 
          
I
sank, I leaned, against a building. A minute must have ticked by.

 
          
Please,
woman, I thought, come on. Play. Not for me. Play for yourself. Forget what I
said!
Please.

 
          
I
heard a few faint, tentative harp whispers.

 
          
Another
pause.

 
          
Then,
when the wind blew again, it brought the sound of her very slow playing.

 
          
The
song was an old one, and I knew the words. I said them to myself.

 
          
Tread lightly to the music,

 
          
Nor bruise the tender grass,

 
          
Life passes in the -weather

 
          
As the sand storms down the glass.

 
          
Yes,
I thought, go
on.

 
          
Drift easy in the shadows,

 
          
Bask lazy in the sun,

 
          
Give thanks for thirsts and quenches,

 
          
For dines and wines and wenches,

 
          
Give thought to life soon over,

 
          
Tread softly on the clover,

 
          
So bruise not any lover.

 
          
So exist from the living,

 
          
Salute and make thanksgiving,

 
          
Then sleep when all is done,

 
          
That sleep so dearly won.

 
          
Why,
I thought, how wise the old woman is.

 
          
Tread lightly to the music.

 
          
And
I'd almost squashed her with praise.

 
          
So bruise not any lover.

 
          
And
she was covered with bruises from my kind thoughtlessness.

 
          
But
now with a song that taught more than I could say, she was soothing herself.

 
          
I
waited until she was well into the third chorus before I walked by again,
tipping my hat.

 
          
But
her eyes were shut and she was listening to what her hands were up to, moving
in the strings like the fresh hands of a very young girl who has first known
rain and washes her palms in its clear waterfalls.

 
          
She
had gone through caring not at all, and then caring too much, and was now busy
caring just the right way.

 
          
The
corners of her mouth were pinned up, gently.

 
          
A
close call, I thought. Very close.

 
          
I
left them like two friends met in the street, the harp and herself.

 
          
I
ran for the hotel to thank her the only way I knew how: to do my own work and
do it well.

 
          
But
on the way I stopped at
Doole
/s.

 
          
The
music was still being treaded lightly and the clover was still being treaded
softly, and no lover at all was being bruised as I let the pub door hush and
looked all around for the man whose hand I most wanted to shake.

 
          
It
was one of those night that are so damned hot you lie flat out lost until 2 :
oo
a.m., then sway upright, baste yourself with your own
sour brine, and stagger down into the great bake-oven subway where the lost
trains shriek in.

 
          
"Hell,"
whispered Will Morgan.

 
          
And
hell it was, with a lost army of beast people wandering the night from the
Bronx on out to Coney and back, hour on hour, searching for sudden inhalations
of salt ocean wind that might make you gasp with Thanksgiving.

 
          
Somewhere,
God, somewhere in Manhattan or beyond was a cool wind. By dawn, it
must
be found. . . .

 
          
"Damn!"

 
          
Stunned,
he saw maniac tides of advertisements squirt by with toothpaste smiles, his own
advertising ideas pursuing him the whole length of the hot night island.

 
          
The
train groaned and stopped.

 
          
Another
train stood on the opposite track.

 
          
Incredible.
There in the open train window across the way sat Old Ned
Amminger
.
Old? They were the same age, forty, but .. .

 
          
Will
Morgan threw his window up.

 
          
"Ned,
you son of a bitch!"

 
          
"Will,
you bastard. You ride late like this often?"

 
          
"Every
damn hot night since 1946I"

 
          
"Me,
too! Glad to see you!"

 
          
"Liar!"

 
          
Each
vanished in a shriek of steel.

 
          
God,
thought Will Morgan, two men who hate each other, who work not ten feet apart
grinding their teeth over the next step up the ladder, knock together in
Dante's Inferno here under a melting city at 3:00 A.M. Hear our voices echo,
fading:

 
          
"Liar
. . . !"

 
          
Half
an hour later, in Washington Square, a cool wind touched his brow. He followed
it into an alley where . . .

 
          
The
temperature dropped ten degrees.

 
          
"Hold
on," he whispered.

 
          
The
wind smelled of the Ice House when he was a boy and stole cold crystals to rub
on his cheeks and stab inside his shirt with shrieks to kill the heat.

 
          
The
cool wind led him down the alley to a small shop where a sign read:

 
          
MELISSA
TOAD, WITCH

 
          
LAUNDRY
SERVICE:

 
          
CHECK
YOUR PROBLEMS HERE BY NINE A.M. PICK THEM UP, FRESH-CLEANED, AT DUSK

 
          
There
was a smaller sign:

 
          
SPELLS, PHILTRES AGAINST DREAD CLIMATES,
HOT OR COLD. POTIONS TO INSPIRE  EMPLOYERS AND ASSURE
PROMOTIONS. SALVES, UNGUENTS &
MUMMY-DUSTS RENDERED DOWN FROM ANCIENT CORPORATION HEADS. REMEDD2S FOR NOISE.
EMOLLIENTS FOR GASEOUS OR POLLUTED AIRS. LOTIONS FOR PARANOID TRUCK DRIVERS.
MEDICINES TO BE TAKEN BEFORE TRYING TO SWIM OFF THE NEW YORK DOCKS.

 
          
A
few bottles were strewn in the display window, labeled:

 
          
PERFECT MEMORY.

 
          
BREATH OF SWEET APRIL WIND.

 
          
SILENCE AND THE TREMOR OF FINE
BDiDSONG
.

 
          
He
laughed and stopped.

 
          
For
the wind blew cool and creaked a door. And again there was the memory of frost
from the white Ice House grottoes of childhood, a world cut from winter dreams
and saved on into August.

 
          
"Come
in," a voice whispered.

 
          
The
door glided back.

 
          
Inside,
a cold funeral awaited him.

 
          
A
six-foot-long block of clear dripping ice rested like a giant February
remembrance upon three sawhorses.

 
          
"Yes,"
he murmured. In his hometown-hardware-store window, a magician's wife, miss
i
. sickle, had been stashed in an immense rectangle of ice
melted to fit her calligraphy. There she slept the nights away, a Princess of
Snow. Midnights, he and other boys snuck out to see her smile in her cold
crystal sleep. They stood half the summer nights staring, four or five
fiery-furnace boys of some fourteen years, hoping their red-hot gaze might melt
the ice. ...

 
          
The
ice had never melted.

 
          
"Wait,"
he whispered. "Look . . ."

 
          
He
took one more step within this dark night shop.

 
          
Lord,
yes. There, in
this
ice! Weren't
those the outlines where, only moments ago, a woman of snow napped away in cool
night dreams? Yes. The ice was hollow and curved and lovely. But... the woman
was gone. Where?

 
          
"Here,"
whispered the voice.

 
          
Beyond
the bright cold funeral, shadows moved in a far comer.

 
          
"Welcome.
Shut the door."

 
          
He
sensed that she stood not far away in shadows. Her flesh, if you could touch
it, would be cool, still fresh from her time within the dripping tomb of snow.
If he just reached out his hand—

 
          
"What
are you doing here?" her voice asked, gently.

 
          
"Hot
night. Walking. Riding. Looking for a cool wind. I think I need help."

 
          
"You've
come to the right place."

 
          
"But
this is
mail
I don't believe in
psychiatrists. My friends hate me because I say
Tinkerbell
and
Freud died twenty years back,
with the circus. I don't believe in astrologers, numerologists, or palmistry
quacks—"

 
          
"I
don't read palms. But... give me your hand."

 
          
He
put his hand out into the soft darkness.

 
          
Her
fingers tapped his. It felt like the hand of a small girl who had just rummaged
an icebox. He said:

 
          
"Your
sign reads
melissa
toad, witch. What would a Witch be
doing in New York in the summer of 1974?"

 
          
"You
ever know a city needed a Witch more than New York does this year?'
^?

 
          
"Yes.
We've gone mad. But,
you?"

 
          
"A
Witch is born out of the true hungers of her time," she said. "I was
born out of New York. The things that are most wrong here summoned me. Now you
come, not knowing, to find me. Give me you other hand."

 
          
Though
her face was only a ghost of cool flesh in the shadows, he felt her eyes move
over his trembling palm.

 
          
"Oh,
why did you wait so
long?"
she
mourned. "If s almost too late."

 
          
"Too
late for what?"

 
          
"To
be saved. To take the gift that I can give."

 
          
His
heart pounded.
"What
can you
give me?"

 
          
"Peace,"
she said. "Serenity. Quietness in the midst of bedlam. I am a child of the
poisonous wind that copulated with the
East River
on an oil-slick, garbage-infested
midnight
. I turn about on my own parentage. I
inoculate against those very
biles
that brought me to
light. I am a serum born of venoms. I am the antibody of all Time. I am the
Cure. You die of the City, do you not?
Manhattan
is your punisher. Let me be your
shield."

 
          
"How?"

 
          
"You
would be my pupil. My protection could encircle you, like an invisible pack of
hounds. The subway train would never violate your ear. Smog would never blight
your lung or nostril or fever your vision. I could teach your tongue, at lunch,
to taste the rich fields of
Eden
in the merest cut-rate too-ripe frankfurter. Water, sipped from your
office cooler, would be a rare wine of a fine family. Cops, when you called,
would answer. Taxis, off-duty rushing nowhere, would stop if you so much as
blinked one eye. Theater tickets would appear if you stepped to a theater
window. Traffic signals would change, at high noon, mind you! if you dared to
drive your car from Fifty-eighth down to the Square, and not one light red.
Green all the way, if you go with me.

 
          
"If
you go with me, our apartment will be a shadowed jungle glade full of bird
cries and love calls from the first hot sour day of June till the last hour
after Labor Day when the living dead, heat-beat, go mad on stopped trains
coming back from the sea. Our rooms will be filled with crystal chimes. Our
kitchen an Eskimo hut in July where we might share out a provender of Popsicles
made of
Mumm's
and Chateau
Lafite
Rothschild. Our larder?—fresh apricots in August or February. Fresh orange
juice each morning, cold milk at breakfast, cool kisses at four in the
afternoon, my mouth always the flavor of chilled peaches, my body the taste of
rimed plums. The flavor begins at the elbow, as Edith Wharton said.

 
          
"Any
time you want to come home from the office the middle of a dreadful day, I will
call your boss and it will be so. Soon after, you will be the boss and come
home, anyway, for cold chicken, fruit wine punch, and me. Summer in the Virgin
Isles. Autumns so ripe with promise you will indeed go lunatic in the right
way. Winters, of course, will be the reverse. I will be your hearth. Sweet dog,
lie there. I will fall upon you like snowflakes.

 
          
"In
sum, everything will be given you. I ask little in return. Only your
soul."

 
          
He
stiffened and almost let go of her hand.

 
          
"Well,
isn't that what you
expected
me to
demand?" She laughed. "But souls can't be sold. They can only be lost
and never found again. Shall I tell you what I really want from you?"

 
          
"Tell."

 
          
"Marry
me," she said.

 
          
Sell
me your soul, he thought, and did not say it.

 
          
But
she read his eyes. "Oh, dear," she said. "Is that
so
much to ask? For all I give?"

 
          
"I've
got to think it over!"

 
          
Without
noticing, he had moved back one step.