New Yorkers (87 page)

Might have been three minutes or so before Borkan said, tentatively, “Simon—?” and was motioned to stay. A few more minutes on, he said, “You all right?”

“I’m looking at the harbor.” The portieres were still closed.

Borkan waited a few minutes more before he said, “They put a tower on this site, you
could
see the harbor. But it’s always voted down.”

“Every room in this city has a view of the harbor.”

Borkan subsided, clearly anxious to take him home. But he liked it here. He might well become a member of a club where the most serious matters could be discussed under no need to act on them—though he doubted he’d ever come to live in it. Even though he
could
see the harbor from here. Out beyond far Montauk, beyond Basch’s balustraded corner, and Henderson Place, and the solitary rose-of-Sharon bush once on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Seventy-ninth Street, his house was still being built by himself and all the cohorts beside him, just as he was helping to build theirs—a pyramid not built by the slave labor of others, Borkan—all of us slaving for ourselves. Out farther, forever translating this into the eternity those portieres were closed against, the waters exchanged themselves, in the unrepeatable coda of the waves. Houses were built on such music.

“Excuse me, Borkan. No, stay. I’m—thinking of someone.”

Borkan nodded expressively. “Your father was a lawyer.” It was what he would have done.

“My son-in-law.” He thought of Austin, who so long ago, at the beginning of their entente—which now by very relationship would be closed—had said, “I don’t feel private any more.” What was “public” life? The access of each organism into the current, and its submission to it, held all the dramas of life. But one couldn’t stipulate where the rises and falls might come, early in a particular span, or late. And death alone, as with David, doesn’t finish it. Consciousness is the experiment, which always, fails, Walter—and starts again. Is this worthy to be God, Dr. Hildesheimer. I am wounded, but I live. I am in healing—and shall never get over it.

Chauncey had given him ten years. It had taken him—more than twelve. How long you’ve waited for me, Chauncey. But I’m here, aren’t I, only a little later than Geoffrey Audley-Taylor. I got to you, in time.

What if he should say to Borkan, as Chauncey had said to someone, “I think my private arrangements might not bear scrutiny.” I do not wish to bring them into full view.

“Borkan?”

“Yes?”

“If I’d gone to war—and returned of course—my whole life would have been
neurologically
different. After that, I could have been a man of peace.”

In the corner, there was a majestic stir, while the old man there rose and was attended to, with the imaginary brushings-off which were so beautifully standard here that the Judge could have wept at the sight—of privilege still not interred. He was close enough to breaking down anyway. “Does the prisoner understand the sentence of the court?” Oh yes, your honor. The prisoner understands everything.

As the old man passed their table, they scrutinized each other. Eighty years to their sixty, his war would have been what? The “Spanish”? The “German”?—connotations blending or almost gone. He was the dodderer. He gave them a look of regal enmity, unsoftened by the sight of the Judge’s chair. Modern life!

The two at the table watched. Behind him, the door did
not
quite close.

“War and peace!” said Borkan. “If that were only all of it!”

“The decade to come is always the Hun,” said the Judge. “Take me home.”

He let Borkan help him into the chair. In full view of the city, the single story took place—and was the full view. This was the only allegory he knew; he had made it himself. He was willing now—to admit his generation into history. Oh, he was willing! There was light for all men in the truly finished life. And it seemed to him that he was at last united with her, the silken, raging woman who knew so much, but had never accepted it—that we were all of us gliding through a history which we would never see.

Hortense Calisher (1911–2009) was born in New York City. The daughter of a young German-Jewish immigrant mother and a somewhat older Jewish father from Virginia, she graduated from Barnard College in 1932 and worked as a sales clerk before marrying and moving to Nyack, New York, to raise her family. Her first book, a collection of short stories titled
In the Absence of Angels
, appeared in 1951. She went on to publish two dozen more works of fiction and memoir, writing into her nineties. A past president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and of PEN, the worldwide association of writers, she was a National Book Award finalist three times, won an O. Henry Award for “The Night Club in the Woods” and the 1986 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for
The Bobby Soxer
, and was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1952 and 1955.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1966, 1969 by Hortense Calisher

Cover design by Kelly Parr

978-1-4804-3894-1

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com