Rules of Civility (45 page)

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Authors: Amor Towles

BOOK: Rules of Civility
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DECEMBER 30
Twenty minutes before the whistle, the foreman circled by and told them to slow the fuck down.
In a long chain, teams of two were relaying sacks of sugar from a Caribbean freighter to a warehouse on the Hell's Kitchen wharf. He and the Negro they called King were at the front of the chain. So when the foreman gave the order, King reset the tempo: one-one-thousand hook, two-one-thousand heft, three-one-thousand turn, four-one-thousand toss.
On the day after Christmas, the union of tugboat engineers had gone on strike without warning or the support of the longshoremen. At the edge of the Lower Bay, somewhere off Sandy Hook and Breezy Point, an armada of cargo ships were drifting, waiting to make landfall. So the word, up and down the line, was to ease it. God willing, the strike would be over before the ships in dock were empty, and they'd be able to keep the crews intact.
As the new man, well he knew that if they began cutting, he'd be the first to go.
But that was just as it should be.
 
The pace that King had chosen was a good one. It let him feel the strength in his arms and his legs and his back. The strength was moving through him now with every swing of the hook like an electrical charge. It was a feeling that he had lived without for a long time. Like the feeling of hunger before supper, or exhaustion before sleep.
Another good thing about the pace was that it allowed for a little more conversation :
(One-one-thousand hook.)
—So where are you from, King?
—Harlem.
(Two-one-thousand heft.)
—How long have you lived there?
—All my life.
(Three-one-thousand turn.)
—How long have you worked this wharf?
—Even longer.
(Four-one-thousand toss.)
—What's it like?
—Just like heaven: full of fine folk who mind their own business.
He smiled at King and hooked the next sack. Because he understood what King was driving at. It was the same in Fall River. Nobody liked the new guy to begin with. For every man the company hired, there were twenty brothers or uncles or childhood pals who'd been passed over. So the less trouble you made for yourself the better. And that meant carrying your weight and keeping your mouth shut.
 
When the whistle sounded, King lingered as the other men headed for the Tenth Avenue bars.
He lingered too. He offered King a cigarette and they smoked with their backs against a packing crate, watching the men retreat. They smoked idly without speaking. When they were done with their cigarettes, they tossed the butts off the pier and began walking toward the gates.
Halfway between the freighter and the warehouse, there was a pile of sugar on the ground. One of the men must have torn the burlap of a sack with his hook. King paused over the sugar and shook his head. Then he knelt, took a fistful, and put it in his pocket.
—Come on, he said. You might as well take some too. If you don't, it's just going to the rats.
So he knelt down and took some too. It was amber and crystalline. He almost put it in his right pocket, but remembered in time that the right pocket was the one with the hole, so he put it in his left.
When they got to the gate, he asked King if he wanted to walk a bit. King gestured with his head in the general direction of the elevated. He was headed home to a wife and kids. King had never said as much, but he didn't need to. You could just tell.
 
The day before, when work let out, he had walked south along the wharf. So today, he walked north.
With nightfall, the air had grown bitter cold and he wished that he had worn his sweater under his coat.
The piers above Fortieth Street reached into the deepest waters of the Hudson and were lined with the largest ships. Bound for Argentina, the one at Pier 75 looked like a fortress, impregnable and gray. He had heard that it was looking for seafaring men, and he might have angled for the job if he had only saved enough money. He was hoping to wander a bit once he'd made port. But there would be other chances on other boats heading to other places.
On Pier 77, there was a Cunard ocean liner stocked for a transatlantic crossing. On Boxing Day, it was blowing its horn and the confetti was falling from the upper decks to the docks—when word of the strike reached the helm. Cunard sent the passengers home, advising them to leave their trunks on board, as the strike was sure to be resolved within the day. Five days later, every stateroom had its share of cocktail dresses and evening gowns, of waistcoats and cummerbunds waiting in a ghostly silence—like the costumes in the attics of an opera house.
On Pier 80, the longest pier on the Hudson, there were no ships in dock. It jutted out into the river like the first leg of a new highway. He walked all the way out to the end. He took another cigarette from the pack and lit it with his lighter. Snapping the lighter shut, he turned and leaned against a piling.
From the end of the pier he could see the city's skyline in its entirety—the whole staggered assembly of townhouses and warehouses and skyscrapers stretching from Washington Heights to the Battery. Nearly every light in every window in every building seemed to be shimmering and tenuous—as if powered by the animal spirits within—by the arguments and endeavors, the whims and elisions. But here and there, scattered across the mosaic, were also the isolated windows that seemed to burn a little brighter and more constant—the windows lit by those few who acted with poise and purpose.
He scuffed out his cigarette and decided to dwell in the cold a little while longer.
For however inhospitable the wind, from this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wonderful, so obviously full of promise—that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving.
EPILOGUE
Few Are Chosen
It was the last night of 1940 and the snow was blowing two knots shy of a blizzard. Within the hour there wouldn't be a car moving in all Manhattan. They'd be buried like boulders under the snow. But for now, they crawled along with the weary determination of wayward pioneers.
Eight of us had stumbled out of a dance at the University Club that we hadn't been invited to in the first place. The party had been on the second floor under the great palazzo ceilings. A thirty-piece orchestra dressed in white was ushering in 1941 in the brand-new and already outmoded style of Guy Lombardo. Unbeknownst to us, the party had an ulterior motive—to raise money for refugees from Estonia. When a latter-day Carry Nation stood alongside a dispossessed ambassador to rattle her tin can, we made for the door.
On the way out, Bitsy had somehow come into possession of a trumpet and, as she was making a pretty impressive show of the scales, the rest of us huddled under a street lamp to plan a course of action. A quick look at the roads and we could tell a taxi wouldn't be coming to the rescue. Carter Hill said he knew of a perfect hideaway just around the corner where we could find food and drink, so under his direction we set off westward through the snow. None of the girls were dressed for the weather, but I had the good fortune of being tucked under one wing of Harrison Harcourt's fur-collared coat.
Midway down the block, a rival party coming in the other direction pelted us with snowballs. Bitsy sounded the charge and we counterattacked. Taking cover behind a newsstand and a mailbox, we drove them off hooting like Indians, but when Jack “mistakenly” toppled Bitsy into a snowbank, the girls turned on the boys. It was as if our New Year's resolution was to act like we were ten.
The thing of it is—1939 may have brought the beginning of the war in Europe, but in America it brought the end of the Depression. While they were annexing and appeasing, we were stoking the steel plants, reassembling the assembly lines, and readying ourselves to meet a worldwide demand for arms and ammunition. In December 1940, with France already fallen and the Luftwaffe bombarding London, back in America Irving Berlin was observing how the treetops glistened and children listened to hear those sleigh bells in the snow. That's how far away
we
were from the Second World War.
 
Carter's nearby hideaway ended up being a ten-block slog. As we turned onto Broadway, the wind howled down from Harlem blowing the snow against our backs. I had Harry's coat cloaked over my head and was letting myself be steered by an elbow. So when we got to the front of the restaurant I didn't even see what it looked like. Harry ushered me down the steps, pulled back his coat, and
voila
, I was in a sizable midblock joint serving Italian food, Italian wine, and Italian jazz, whatever that was.
Midnight had come and gone so the floor was covered with confetti. Most of the revelers who had spent the countdown in the restaurant had come and gone too.
We didn't wait for their plates to be cleared. We just stomped our shoes, shook off the snow, and commandeered a table for eight opposite the bar. I sat next to Bitsy. Carter slipped into the chair on my right, leaving Harry to find a seat across the table. Jack picked up a wine bottle left by the prior patrons and squinted to see if there were remnants.
—We need wine, he said.
—Indeed we do, said Carter, catching a waiter's eye. Maestro! Three bottles of Chianti!
The waiter, who had the big eyebrows and big hands of Bela Lugosi, opened the bottles with glum attention.
—Not exactly the jovial sort, Carter observed.
But it was hard to tell. Like so many Italians in New York in 1940, maybe his normal joviality was overshadowed by the unfortunate allegiances of the old country.
Carter volunteered to order a few plates for the table, and then made a reasonable stab at launching a conversation by asking people what was the
best
thing they did in 1940. It made me a little nostalgic for Dicky. No one could get a table talking nonsense like Dicky Vanderwhile.
As someone rattled on about a trip to Cuba (“the new Riviera”), Carter leaned toward me and whispered in my ear.
—What's the
worst
thing you did in 1940?
A piece of bread sailed across the table and hit him on the head.
—Hey, Carter said, looking up.
The only way you could tell it was Harry was by his perfect repose and a slight upward turn of his lips. I considered giving him a wink; instead I threw the bread back. He acted aghast. I was about to do the same when a waiter handed me a piece of folded paper. It was an unsigned note scrawled in a rough hand.
SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT?
When I looked confused, the waiter pointed toward the bar. Seated on one of the stools was a stocky, good-looking soldier. He was grinning a little impolitely. Well groomed as he was, I almost didn't recognize him. But, sure as the shore, it was unwavering Henry Grey.
 
Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Sometimes, it sure seems that's what life intends. After all, it's basically like a centrifuge that spins every few years casting proximate bodies in disparate directions. And when the spinning stops, almost before we can catch our breath, life crowds us with a calendar of new concerns. Even if we wanted to retrace our steps and rekindle our old acquaintances, how could we possibly find the time?
The year 1938 had been one in which four people of great color and character had held welcome sway over my life. And here it was December 31, 1940, and I hadn't seen a single one of them in over a year.
Dicky was forcibly uprooted in January 1939.

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