From Time to Time (15 page)

There were maybe twenty tables in here but only one other occupied, by a pair of Japanese men. Rube had picked a table well away from them, taking the chair by the wall where he could see the whole room.

Waiting for our drinks, still smiling a little at our singing, Rube unzipped his case, saying, "What I got for my efforts was a couple Alice Longworth letters mentioning Z. I thought people would send me xeroxes -he brought them out- but they both sent the actual letters.

"Is that stationery Alice Blue'?

"I think so. And so does the Library of Congress. She was a little vain at having a color named for her. He brought out two xeroxes. "The Library of Congress has some AL stuff in their Roosevelt file, which got me a pair of notes from Z to her. Rube started to pass me a letter, but our drinks came and he waited, didn't want anything spilled or dripped on them. We tasted our drinks; then I nodded at his letters. "These all say Z'? Don't mention his name? Still trying his drink, Rube nodded. I said, "How come? Alice knew who he was, didn't she?

"Sure. He was a friend of the Longworths, but he still signed his notes Z,' and she said Z.' No secret to any of them, but here was a President edging into what was really congressional business, the way Presidents like to do. Those were pretty easy days though, long before C.I.A. time, so about all they did was keep their man's name off paper. If Taft writes himself a memo, he can just say Z,' case anybody happens to see it. And Z briefs his friends: Call me Z! Which Alice loved, thought it was hilarious. Pretty jokey hunch. The smart young set of Washington.

I put my hand out for a letter, and Rube handed me a blue sheet; the ink was blue too. In a slapdash but legible handwriting it was dated February 22, 1912, and began, Laurie, dear! Rube said, "You can skip most of that; pick up near the bottom. I did, and it said, And of course Z-and we simply must say Z-isn't it delicious?-will at last have his fill, and we shall hear of nothing but the two-a-day. At least he'll see over the ladies' hats! Nicky and I may just run up to see him, if only for a day. But I must tell you of 13 vie's famous party, or shall I say soiree? Of course we arrived late. Nicky had a tiresome-I turned the page, but Rube said, "That's all on Z in that one.

I said, "Just what does this do for the cause, Rube?

"Well. It tells us something. Two-a-day' means vaudeville; he must like vaudeville. And he can see over ladies' hats in front of him, so he's tall. It's quite useful.

"Sure. Beats rupp guft.' What else?

He handed me the second letter in the vigorous blue handwriting, this with the numeral 2 at the top, and Rube said, "That's all these people could find; first page is rniissing. It began: insists she couldn't possibly have known, yet she knew the name was Clara! And even his watch number! Which he actually gave me: 21877971. Doesn't that beat the Dutch! Z is simply darling, and we shall miss him when he leaves. The next paragraph began describing a dance, and I looked up at Rube, but before I could speak he said quickly, "Here's the envelope it came in, and handed it to me.

It was addressed to Mrs. Robert 0. Parsons in Wilmette, Illinois, and Rube said, "Look at the postmark. I did, a slightly smudged black circle stamped at the left of a canceled two-cent red stamp with a profile of Washington; it read, March 6, 1912, at the top, Washington, D.C. at the bottom. I didn't know what to say about that or the letter either, so I just nodded and passed it back to Rube.

"It's true, he said, as though I'd made some spoken criticism, "that those are just . . . small clues. But here's the real find! and he grinned with forced enthusiasm. "Here's where we actually pick him up, as we say in the trade. I think. I heard it on television. He brought out a folded white sheet. "They found the original of this in a book from AL's library, probably tucked in as a place mark.

I unfolded the little sheet, a xerox copy. Plaza Hotel, it said at the top in elaborate script, the P especially fancy. Beside it an old- style engraving of the hotel. Handwritten at the top, March 1. Then: From Z to A! Always and ever an enchanting city! And a splendid time of it thus far. Even my obligatory presence at Madam Israel's Delmonico lecture an unexpected pleasure, for the ever- smiling, ever-nimble Al himself made a surprising and very welcome appearance. Missed Knabenshue yesterday. Immediately following The Greyhound, however, I saw-actually saw!-the Dove Lady herself! Would have followed but stood dum founded instead, though I must say city-wise Broadwayites simply ignored her.

Tonight, my dear, something that should thrill your usually unthrillable soul, I am to meet that man whom of all the world I most admire, at-but no, I will not use so ugly and utilitarian a name. Too much like calling a lovely woman Tillie! Rather, her prow sharp and straight as that of the Mauretania herself I say she is a ship! Of stone and steel, true, yet seated within her, a wheel and tiller in hand, I do believe one might sail her up Broadway or the Fifth Avenue to the delight of all. We meet tonight, not, I regret to inform you, at the stroke of midnight, but a drab hour earlier. And then, finally, I will have-The Papers!

Of course, dear girl, this is serious business, and I do assure you that in practice I am in deadly earnest. But not with you and Nickie; no fun in that! Wish me luck, my dear, wish very hard. Love, Z.

I handed his letter back to Rube, and sat nodding thoughtfully; I didn't know what to say. "Did people really write that way?

"Yeah. Talked that way too, I think. It was obligatory, everything light and jokey.

"I don't suppose The Greyhound' was a bus.

"It was a play. By Wilson Mizner and somebody else. Opened at the Knickerbocker Theatre, Broadway and Thirty-eighth. I checked out the old theater ads.

"And what's the Dove Lady?

"Don't know.

I sat forward toward Rube, and spoke very carefully; I knew he'd worked hard on this. "Rube, I said quietly, "what would I do with this stuff? I get there, if I can-

"You can, I know you can.

"Yeah, well, maybe. I get there, go to this lecture, and he's there, we know that. But how do I pick him out, Rube, how? And this other stuff-

"Well, God damn it, Si, I'd give you his photograph if I could. In 3D and color. Plus his fingerprints and a letter of introduction. Si, it's all we've got.

"Okay. Not trying to give you a hard time, Rube. I reached over and with a forefinger sort of stirred his pathetic little stack of letters around a little. "But these are nothing. They tell us nothing. The Dove Lady. Somebody in a large crowd sees her. Well, the whole crowd sees her, don't they? And sees what? A lady in a dove- gray dress? Or who flaps her arms and coos like a dove? Or wears a dove on her head? And what is this building like a ship? Christ Almighty.

"Oh, you're right. Absolutely right. Face the facts, and this is hopeless. All you actually know is his goddamn watch number! He reached out, and with a hooked forefinger began tapping his papers. "But Si, right now these things are dead. Connected to nothing anymore. The people who wrote and read them gone. The very buildings they were sent to gone. The mailman who delivered them and the clerk who sold this stamp, dead. Read these, and it's like staring at an anonymous nineteenth-century sepia photograph you pick up in a junk store, wondering at the face looking out at you from under the funny hairdo. To ask who she was is hopeless now because all the connections, every friend, every relative, even every acquaintance is dead and gone. But when that face was alive and smiling at the camera, so were her friends alive, her relatives, her neighbors. And you just might find out who she was because the connections are still there. Well - he tapped his letters again- vou and only you can return to the time when this ink was still wet. The people alive, the events happening, the connections all there!

I nodded. "Okay, and if I found Z, what then?

Rube just shook his head. "I don't know. You'd . . . stick with him, I suppose. Try to-protect him, maybe. Hang on to him, get him back okay. I don't know, Si! But I'll tell you something I've never told anyone else in my life. I won a medal once. I was a kid in Vietnam. I don't wear it, don't show it. But I can tell you I value it. And I won it in a hopeless situation in which I acted anyway. And succeeded in the only way there was to succeed. By luck. That's all. If something is truly hopeless, Si, then luck becomes your only hope. Because it exists. Luck happens. But you have to give it a chance to happen.

"Is that true, Rube? About your medal?

"No, hell no. I was never in Vietnam. But it's basically true, and you know it! It's the way I'd have thought and acted. It's what I'd have done! If the situation had ever come up.

I nodded. It was true.

"So I don't know how you find a man in New York in 1912 or any other time, when you don't know who he is or what he looks like. Or what you do if you find him. But you know what's at stake. So you have to try. Give luck a chance.

"Go in and win one for the Gipper.

"Sure.

"When I was a kid I thought it was pronounced gypper.

"It often should be.

"So I've got what-two, three days? In New York, 1912? If I can make it. If. In and out fast. Make or break. Find Z or not.

"That's about it.

"Well, okay, no use blathering away about it, because we both know I'm going.

He smiled, that fine Rube Prien smile you could not resist, and beckoned to the waitress. When she arrived with her little silver tray he said, "Keep em coming! Till you close! Smiling to show he didn't actually mean it. Then he nodded toward the two Japanese. "And see what the boys in the front room will have.

She returned first to the Japanese table to unload two of her drinks, and when we had ours, all four of us lifted our glasses, smiling, nodding, bowing, Rube murmuring, "Remember Pearl Harbor! And then to me: "They're probably saying the very same thing.

CHAPTER 12

I PHONED DR. DANZIGER THAT EVENING, out of courtesy and respect, trying to explain why I was going to do what I was, or try to. He listened, always polite, and as a kind of consolation I told him how unlikely it was that I could even find Z, and how little I had to go on. He asked about that, pleased, I suppose, at how slim my chances were. I knew he regarded that as interfering with the past, the great sin, but he didn't preach at me. And finally, all he said was, "All right, Si; we all have to do what we must. Thank you for phoning.

When I first joined the Project long ago, the struggle for me was to believe that Albert Einstein meant exactly what he said. And what he said, Dr. D assured me, was that the past existed. And he meant that literally: the past was truly there . . . somewhere. Therefore, Dr. D believed, it just might be reached.

I hardly knew what it meant to say the past existed. How? Where? And whenever disbelief washed over me and I was suddenly certain that this strange project was only an old man's delusion, I would hang on to-like a monk gripping his cross as he struggled to hold on to his faith-Einstein's Twin Brothers.

Think of two brothers, he said, as I recall what I was taught at the Project. They're twins, thirty years old, and one is shot into space in a rocket traveling at nearly the speed of light. The round trip takes him five years, so he returns to earth thirty-five years old. But his twin, left on earth, is now ninety, because time itself isn't fixed but is only relative to other aspects of the universe, and moves differently for each. The very idea seems absurd-but Einstein said it, and meant every word.

And proved it. An atomic clock, whatever that is, is perfect; neither loses nor gains even the tiniest fraction of a second. Two such clocks-costing millions each, naturally-were made, each keeping precisely the same time to the billionth, or maybe it was the zillionth of a second, I don't know. One stayed on earth, the other was shot into space in a rocket traveling as fast as man could make it go. And when the rocket returned-this is actually a demonstrated fact; it happened-those clocks no longer showed the same time. The clock kept on earth was a fraction faster, only a tiny fraction of a second but a fraction with a world of meaning. Time, for the clock in the speeding rocket, had moved slower. Impossible. Impossible. Except that it truly happened. Each had briefly existed in a different order of time. And when I sat in a Project classroom listening to Martin Lastvogel as he taught me what the New York City of 1882 was like . . . I hung on to the twin brothers like a talisman. If there was such a thing as two orders of time-and there was, the two clocks proved it-then the rest of Albert Einstein's theory was also true . . . and the past truly and actually exists, I didn't have to understand how. What I did have to do was find it.

So now, on a Monday morning, I sat down at an old wooden table in the newspaper room of the New York Public Library and began to look for it. I was comfortable, in new blue denims and a gray crew-neck sweater, and I began scanning the front page of a newspaper. Printed in the upper right-hand corner was not 60 CENTS but ONE CENT. And the printed date was January 12, 1912. The masthead, though, reading, The New York Times, looked identical-the same familiar Gothic lettering-to that of the paper I'd read with my room service breakfast. So was the little box that said, "All the News That's Fit to Print.

And so was the news, really. Political Chaos France's Peril, said one front-page heading, which I had no trouble skipping. Hold Up Aged Merchant, said another, and I read that "four men sprang out of a doorway in Water Street yesterday, and "grabbed George Abed, an iron merchant. "The four men throttled him, while one of them went through his pockets and took his gold watch worth $150 and $50 in cash. Then they beat the aged merchant, who is 72 years old, about the head and face. . ." Ho hum.

I read that Andrew Carnegie had stonewalled a congressional committee. Saw nothing wrong with inducing the President of the United States to appoint one of Carnegie's steel company lawyers secretary of state. Said that "his personal contributions to various Republican campaign funds had nothing at all to do with the alleged violations of the Sherman antitrust laws by the U.S. Steel Corporation. Didn't seem to understand, in fact, just what this antitrust law was. Denied that he was head of the company: he was only a stockholder who happened to own fifty-eight percent. Didn't even know what his lawyers did or what their duties were. The editorial page ran a verse: