Time and Again (10 page)

Martin's control clicked, the screen went white and empty, another click and the big square was a sepia photograph: Two women in long dresses and big hats were walking, their backs to the camera, down a wide sidewalk shaded by immense trees; one of them carried an open umbrella against the sun. To their left lay a grassy parkway in which great trees grew, shadowing the street; to their right, long sloping lawns. Beyond the parkway lay the shade-dappled street, empty except for an open buggy, its horse tethered to a hitching post. It was a good moment; the photographer had caught a nice scene. Sitting in the semidarkness studying it, I could believe — I knew — that it had once really happened. But it was frozen in time, infinitely remote, and the two women up there were never going to take the next step.

A double click, and Sidney Urquhart's glimpse of the same moment filled the screen in color. It was only a sketch now, an impression, but the women's next step was imminent. They were really walking, then-bodies flowing into the next step, feet just lifting from the last one, and you knew that up out of sight the leaves of those trees were stirring and that the women, if somehow you could strain enough to hear, were quietly talking.

We spent all that morning looking at, first, a drawing or photograph of the early eighties, then a "translation," which was Martin's term, and a good one, by Urquhart, Karl Morse, Murray Sidorfsky, or someone else. Not all of them succeeded, and some only partly. But some of them worked, and I'd suddenly experience the thrill of glimpsing the actuality of a moment of the past.

Long before we were finished I knew I could do the same thing. I didn't need Urquhart now or anyone else; I, too, could look at an old cut or photograph and do the work of getting myself into and fully perceiving it until I found and touched the long-ago realness that had produced it. I could do it as well now as the makers of most of the new drawings I'd seen up there on the screen — better, I thought. Whether I could show it as well, whether I was artist enough, I wasn't sure; I doubted it. But I knew I could do it in my mind.

Walking to the cafeteria for lunch, I said so to Martin, and he nodded. "It's how we hoped you'd feel; Rossoff predicted it. But you won't have much time for actually sketching, and the point of this morning was to give you a head start; we've got a lot of stuff for you to study and translate for yourself." I spent three days then, alone with the projector looking at scene after scene of the eighties, staring, working at finding the actuality that lay under the surface of each, gaining experience and speed as the time passed.

At four o'clock one afternoon, in the tailor's workroom, I was measured from head to foot. Then I stood in my socks, holding a pail of sand in each hand, while a bootmaker traced the outlines of my feet.

During most of one week Martin lectured from file-card notes. What was the population of the United States in 1880? he asked me for a starter. I cut our present population in half and said a hundred million, but Martin told me to cut it in half again; there were only fifty million Americans then, most of them living east of the Mississippi. In the West, buffalo still roamed the open prairie, the new transcontinental railway was a national marvel and excitement in a way that even space travel isn't today, and Indians were still scalping Whitey. It was a very different country and world; there were animals alive that are now extinct, and social systems, too; Europe was full of kings, queens, emperors, czars and czarinas then, and they weren't figureheads, they
ruled.

Martin talked about how the world traveled and moved its goods. There were steamships, and the railroad was decades old. But just the same, cargo vessels still moved largely by sail and most of the world traveled as it always had, on foot or by horse. Most people in America lived and died in the state or even the town they'd been born in; more people traveled across the ocean than across the country. Yet different as the world of the eighties was, Martin said, it was closer to ours than it seemed; walking through that horse-and-buggy United States, Lee De Forest was a nine-year-old boy already thinking about the problems involved in the invention of radio, sound movies, and television. At the end of one day, waiting at the elevator with me, Martin said, "It's a hell of a different world, Si, but it isn't alien to this, and I think you could be at home in it."

Kate thought my collar-length hair and my new brown beard — I'd begun trimming it — made me particularly handsome, and I agreed. She'd begun helping me with my homework at night now. I'd taken her to lunch one day, at a Madison Avenue restaurant, inviting Rube and Dr. Danziger, and they'd liked her. Katie is attractive, physically and personally; she's intelligent, tactful, and can be witty if she's in the mood; she has charm. And after that, they let her visit the project; Dr. Danziger himself showed her the Big Floor, then his secretary showed her through most of the rest of the project. I wasn't along; I was too busy with Martin Lastvogel.

So now, in a sense, Kate was fully in on the project, and on more nights than not, usually at her place though sometimes at mine, she drilled me on facts from Martin's lectures, using his notes. And she worked with me on getting the feel of the eighties from the photographs and woodcuts I brought home. One Saturday morning I took her to the project and showed her the reconstructed dresses, hats, gloves, and shoes of the period, and she was fascinated, wishing she could try an outfit on. She was a big help, and I think she speeded up the learning process for me. Martin thought so anyway. And she was a tremendous help with the self-hypnosis technique; Kate got it right away just from my description of how you were supposed to do it. That made me realize it was really possible, and from Kate's description I got an idea of the actual feel of slipping into "trance." So that one night at her place, sitting in her antique rocker, a very comfortable chair actually, I made it: My arm genuinely would not, could not, move, and I sat staring at it, fascinated. I told myself then that it was now free to move, tried it, and it did. Now I told myself that I would forget my own street address and stay in trance until Kate spoke. Then I sat there trying to recall my address, and it simply wasn't there to remember; it was both fascinating and a little frightening. I looked over at Kate who was reading through some of Martin's notes, and she happened to look up at the same time. She smiled and said, "Any luck?" and I knew my own address just as always, and could feel that I was out of trance.

"Yeah, finally," I said. Then we spent an hour studying samples of money; coins of the sixties, seventies, and early eighties, including gold pieces; big old bank notes issued by local banks pretty much in their own designs and actually signed by the bank presidents; and the ones I liked best of all, gold certificates redeemable not in silver but in gold and printed on the backs in an orange-colored ink suggesting gold.

Once in a while Kate and I did other things: took a drive on a weekend, took a walk, even saw some friends. And one night — Kate and I had been seeing almost too much of each other, I felt, and I think she did, too — I phoned Matt Flax, but got no answer. Kate was going to iron, wash her hair, that sort of thing, and get to bed early. But I felt restless, and I phoned Lennie, and then Vince Mandel, who lived in town, but got no answers. So I stayed home and read, deliberately getting my mind off the project in a one-night vacation from it. In my living room I sat reading a one-volume complete Sherlock Holmes which I generally picked up whenever I had nothing else to read. At Dr. Danziger's request I'd quit reading newspapers, magazines, and modern novels; I'd also unplugged the television and my radio, no hardship.

Every day at the project I sat listening to Martin, a clipboard in my lap, and I spent part of one afternoon tasting food. That was after lunch, which I'd skipped at Martin's request, and the cafeteria was empty except for the fat middle-aged cook, Dr. Rossoff, and me. First the cook brought in a plate of mutton, potatoes and beets, all boiled, and set it down in front of me. Rossoff sat across from me, and the cook stood beside the table, both watching me, and grinning a little. I ate a little of each of the things on the plate, tasting, staring off into space like a wine connoisseur. I'd never had mutton before, and didn't know what to expect; it seemed all right. But the potatoes and beets tasted — not quite the way they should have. I chewed away, trying to figure out the difference, and pretty soon Rossoff said, "Well?" I swallowed, and said, "They're better, they taste better. They have more flavor than I'm used to."

They both grinned some more, and Rossoff said, "Vegetables were grown in the eighties without chemical fertilizers, insecticides, or special treatments before planting. Also, no preservatives or additives." The cook said, "And they were boiled in chlorine-free water."

I had some fudge made with sugar refined in a way I didn't follow, it tasted about like any other. I had a small piece of longhorn steak, tougher and distinctly different in taste from any other I'd ever had. I had some marvelous ice cream made with unpasteurized cream. And I had a straight shot of whiskey, especially distilled for me; rough, raw, and powerful.

And then one night I had supper at home, washed the dishes, and threw out everything in the refrigerator that wasn't canned or bottled. Then I sat down at a card table in my living room, and wrote a note or postcard to everyone I knew who might wonder about me.

The work wasn't going very well here in New York, I said in each of them; and this was January 4th, a new year, so I'd bought an old station wagon on impulse, packed, and was leaving in the morning before I could change my mind. I was just going to tour around, I didn't really know where — I might head for one of the Western states — drawing, sketching, and taking reference photographs as I went. I'd write when I could, I said, and would be in touch when I got back. I didn't like doing it this way but I knew I wasn't up to convincingly answering questions if I tried doing it in person or by phone.

I mailed my cards and notes on Lexington Avenue, a block from my apartment. I dropped them into the box, then stood looking around for a moment at New York in the second half of the twentieth century. But there wasn't much to see besides the walls of the buildings around me, a long stretch of asphalt on which only a single cab was moving and a fragment of gray-black sky directly overhead too hazed for any stars to be visible. The day's car-exhaust seemed to have settled down here and was making my eyes smart; it had turned cold; and half a block down the cross street, on the corner of which I was standing, a group of young Negroes was walking toward Lex, so I didn't hang around to encounter them and explain how fond I'd always been of Martin Luther King. I walked on, up Lexington and then across town toward the warehouse; I felt tired, a little sleepy, yet so excited I was conscious of the beat of my heart.

At ten minutes after one in the morning, an hour and a half later, we left the warehouse; Rube had his car, a squat little red MG sedan, parked in the street at the side door. He drove, Doc Rossoff sat on the outside, and I was more or less hidden between them wearing Doc's raincoat over the costume I'd put on at the warehouse, though I tried not to think of it as a costume. No need to hide my long hair and beard, of course.

I like New York late at night, most places closed and dark, the streets as nearly empty of movement and as quiet as they ever get. We could hear the sound of our own tires on the asphalt, and at Amsterdam Avenue, waiting for a light, I heard someone cough half a block or more away. We didn't talk to amount to anything; we crossed Broadway, stopped for another light at Columbus, and Rube said, "Funny-looking dog," nodding toward a woman walking a clipped poodle in a jeweled dog-coat. A block or so further on Oscar Rossoff pointed at a darkened restaurant and said, "Good seafood there." I don't recall saying anything, but I yawned a lot from nervousness. Rossoff understood the reason, glancing at me occasionally to smile.

Rube parked a dozen yards from the Dakota's main entrance; he held out his hand to me, and I took it. All he said was "Good luck, Si; I wish it were me." Rossoff had his door open, and he stepped out, and I slid across the seat to follow him.

The uniformed doorman was expecting us; he simply nodded and we walked on past him, under the great main arch, then on across the courtyard; the two huge green-bronze fountains were empty. We climbed the wide old staircase in the northeast corner of the Dakota, meeting no one, stepping out onto the seventh floor; my apartment was a few doors off, and I brought out my key. "My coat, Si," Oscar said, and I took off the raincoat and handed it to him. "Want to come in?" I said, but he shook his head; he was staring at my clothes, then he lifted his eyes to stare at my hair and mustache as though he'd never seen them; he seemed suddenly awed. "No," he said, "I don't think anything of the present belongs in there now, Si." He held out his hand. "Good luck. You know what to do when you're ready."

We shook hands, then I walked to my door, slid my key into the lock, and turned the big ornamented brass knob; the door swung soundlessly back on its hinges as though it were weightless, but I could sense its solidity. I turned to say a final goodbye, but Doc Rossoff was down the hall, just turning onto the stairway again; he turned to glance back at me, then he was gone.

I walked in, closing the door behind me, my eyes widening, accustoming themselves to the faint light from the tall rectangles of the windows. I knew the layout and appearance of the apartment; I'd been here with Dr. Danziger and Rube the day it was completed. Now I walked over to one of the windows, stopped, and stood looking down onto the pale curves and jumbled shadows that were the paths and greenery of Central Park under the moon. Directly below my window if I'd cared to lean forward and look straight down, I knew I could have seen the street, Central Park West, and its traffic lights and occasional cars. Far across the park, if I'd lifted my eyes to look, I could have seen a few still-lighted windows in the block-after-block row of great apartment houses bordering Central Park's eastern side. By turning my head to the right, I could have seen the rooftop neon of the hotels at the southern end of the park, and the lights of the great midtown office buildings beyond.