Winter's Tale Part 3

They broke through the gabardine waves of people and patrons as.h.i.+ng and dancing on the Bowery. The sun was setting, writhing and gesticulating in the imperfect black gla.s.s of uncountable windows. Meat roasters and singers were flooded with the onslaught of new evening, and the music halls began to boom in strokes of purple green, and orange. The music could be heard even from steamers churning down the East River into the dark, leaving the Manhattan jewel box for warm sweet nights of mockingbird and the moon in the countryside and on the sh.o.r.e.

"I can tattoo."

Peter Lake stopped dead. He turned to young Cecil." You can what?"

"I can tattoo."

"How's that?"

"Before they put me in the wagon, I was an apprentice in a tattoo parlor."

"I thought you lived on a herring boat."

"After that. I became a tattooist."

"Where?"

"In China."

"Sure."

"I mean in that place where the Chinese are. What's it called? Chinatown!"

"All right, so what if you can tattoo."

"I can make money for food. I used to tattoo rich women, in their mansions, secretly."

"You?"

Cecil Mature shrugged his shoulders." I would tattoo things all over their bodies. They would lie naked on their beds and I would tattoo them. I was ten."

Peter Lake began to see Cecil in a new light." What did you tattoo on them?"

"Maps, Sanskrit, the Bill of Rights (I copied from books). I tattooed the bue-tox of the mayor's wife. Wa Fung told me what to do, while he and the mayor watched from behind a curtain. On one bue-tox, I put a map of Manhattan. On the other bue-tox, I put a map of Brooklyn. She did it for his birthday. They paid Wa Fung five hundred dollars, but I did all the work."

Impressed by this versatility, Peter Lake allowed Cecil Mature to come with him, but only on the understanding that they might part ways at any time, and that Cecil would have to abandon his scalloped cap. They went into a dry-goods store to buy a Chinese hat because Mootfowl had worn a Chinese hat and so had Wa Fung, of whom Cecil had affectionate memories. Peter Lake's discourse in public was heavily Irish, like that of an hypnotic platform speaker. The sounds of the language were exquisite as he said to the proprietor with courtly irony," My squash cook and tattooist, Mr. Cecil Mature, would like to purchase a Chinese hat." The proprietor got one for him. Cecil put it on. It looked rakish.

They lived on roofs and under water towers, existing at first almost entirely on Cecil's tattoo jobs. But then, when things quieted down and the Mootfowl affair receded into the past, Peter Lake took blacksmith's work under false names, or no name at all, and life for them began to look more promising. Late one night when they were ravenously hungry from having worked hard all day, they went to a saloon to drink beer and eat roast beef, freshly baked bread, and greens. The saloon was bright and noisy. There were at least two hundred people inside, and a hot fire, and talk rose to the ceiling and then crashed back over the heads of the saloon-goers in a general rush of breaking murmurs. A captivating roast, full of sizzling juices, was placed between Peter Lake and Cecil Mature. They were about to begin, but the place suddenly became silent. There had been such a great babble, and now all that could be heard was the ice melting in the icebox.

Pearly Soames had walked in, searching for something to do. He looked like a great big bristling cat. His silver mustache, silver beard, and the feline sideburns that projected from his rosy cheeks gave him a mesmerizing power that would have awed a cobra. Confidence, energy, and rascality radiated from him as if he had a marching band in his heart. He loved to quiet saloons just for the fun of He had recently become chieftain of the Short Tails, after the cruel and calculated slaughter of Mayhew Rottinel, their cruel and calculating founder. And he moved over to the bar, surrounded by a disgusting retinue of Short Tails, like a lord mayor. He looked around and noticed Peter Lake and Cecil Mature poised above their roast. His gaze went straight to the short sword hanging on Peter Lake's belt.

"Can you use that sword?" he asked from halfway across the room.

Because it was as much a threat as it was a question, Peter Lake stood. A path opened between him and Pearly Soames." Yes sir," he answered.

"Can you really use it?"

Peter Lake nodded.

"Then use it!" cried Pearly Soames, pitching an apple fast and hard toward Peter Lake.

When the apple disappeared, Peter Lake was holding the same position that he had held before. It seemed to all that he had not been quick enough to draw his sword. Pearly Soames sneered. But then pieces of the apple were produced from the crowd behind Peter Lake, and brought to Pearly. It had been cleanly quartered, so Pearly declared that it must have shattered against Peter Lake's chest. Peter Lake laughed, and said, no, he had sliced it up.

"Show me your sword."

The sword was clean.

"Of course," Peter Lake declared." I cleaned it before I put it away."

"You did?"

"Yes, here." He showed Pearly Soames the streaks on his thigh where he had cleaned the sword. Even though Pearly bought them their roast, and plenty of beer, they knew that they were in trouble. But they were at an age when trouble was something they would have been hard pressed to do without.

He wanted them in the Short Tails. They protested that it was too dangerous." Certainly not for you!" said Pearly, in a rare compliment." Though, since I'm the one who's asking you to join us, it might be dangerous not to."

Unmoved, the two young men continued to devour the roast. Then Pearly's eyes sparkled." I know you," he said." Yes, I know you. You're the two fellas that drove a spike through the heart of that religious duck." They stopped chewing, and stared into Pearly's diamond eyes." What was his name? Mooc.o.c.k? Barn Owl? Blue Bird? Ah yes... Mootfowl! A nifty job, a very nifty little act. Every leatherhead in the city is looking for you. And you, fat boy, have a rather conspicuous silhouette. Wouldn't you say? So! What shall it be?"

Peter Lake and Cecil Mature joined the Short Tails that evening.

MORE than ten years in the Short Tails taught Peter Lake a number of unorthodox trades. And he grew to know the city better and better, though he knew that it was too vast and mercurial to be comprehended. It changed continuallya"as he did, s.h.i.+fting from job to job in the Short Tails, who were a living encyclopedia of crime. Being with them, half-desperate all the time, was good training. He was able to see the city from many angles, as if he were stepping around a prism and peering in at the light. At the time of the meeting in the "tea bag" under the Harlem River, Peter Lake was working as a woola boy. He had been burglar, fancy bunco man, card sharp, art thief, dispatcher, engineer, bag man, envoy to the police, harbor thief, vault blaster. Being a woola boy was a relatively new possibility, since it was a rather narrow subspecialty that had come into being only recently.

It was called "Woola Woola," and was a complicated technique for looting trucks and wagons. The chief woola boy was Dorado Canes, under whom were a dozen men in the Woola Woola team. Two or three of the men in the team hid in a doorway or an alley and waited for a wagon to pa.s.s. As it did, the woola boy would come from nowhere and run up to the driver, jumping up and down and screaming "Woola woola woola! Woola woola woola! Woola woola woola!" as loudly as he could. The drivers were shocked and distracted, and the watchers in the shadows then emerged to loot the wagon. A good woola boy could jump five feet in the air from a standing position. He would cross his eyes and say things in addition to "Woola woola woola," and emit sharp birdlike honks. The teamsters stared open-mouthed and amazed, and did not notice until long afterward that their wagons were suddenly half empty.

As with all professions, Woola Woola had its refinements. Forever condemned to it (he had called Pearly the son of a wh.o.r.e, something which might have been forgiven had it not been the truth), Dorado Canes was hot for innovative improvements. First, he was determined to jump higher, so he loaded himself with weights and practiced jumping, or, as he called it, the "up and down stuff." Eventually he carried two hundred pounds of lead on special belts and shoulder harnesses. To compensate for this, his leg muscles developed until he was transformed into a living spring. From a standing position, he could fly ten feet in the aira"a breathtaking sight. Then Peter Lake made a pair of alloy spring boots, which increased Dorado Canes' flight ceiling by five feet. Just the fact of a man jumping fifteen feet in the air while excitedly screaming "Woola woola woola!" was enough to hypnotize the wagon masters, but Dorado Canes didn't stop there. He made a pair of folding canvas wings, so that, when he spread his long arms, the wings extended and he could glide. By jumping out as well as up, he could land thirty feet from his starting place. He soon discovered that the drag of the wings, the spring boots, and the great strength and flexibility of his legs allowed him to jump from the third story of a building. With a little practice, he made it four, and then five, stories. Much impressed, Cecil Mature pointed out that since wagons were about one-story tall, Dorado Canes could jump from six floors up and land on top of them, or, in other words, he could operate at will from the roofs of tenements and commercial buildings. Dorado Canes st.i.tched himself a one-piece suit of s.h.i.+ny black silk that covered his neck and head in a tight cowl, leaving only his face exposed. He made up before every job, painting his face and hands orange, with the eyes in white c.o.c.kpits and the lips purple. The undersides of his wings were yellow. After his breathtaking work, Dorado Canes would always approach the benumbed drivers and say," I'm Vinic Totmule. On behalf of the clergy, the mayor, and the chief of police, welcome to our city. Don't take any wooden nickels, don't fool about with wicked women, and if there is no commode in your hotel room, don't pee in the sink."

Peter Lake loved the Woola Woola, and was pleasantly resigned to a life of varied criminal practice. There was much to learn, lots of work, and always the chance of a big haul. By the time he reached his early thirties, he was familiar with the rules of mechanics, the skills of a thief, and the strange skills of the Baymen, and he was just becoming free enough of the many happy anxieties of early life to notice the great beauty of the city and enjoy it. He was calm, content and resigned to his thinning hair. He wanted only to witness the tranquillity of the seasons, turn his eye to pretty women, and take in the great and ever-pleasing opera of the city.

All changed in the tea bag deep in the mud of the Harlem River's dense and mottled bed, when Pearly Soames alluded to the necessity of wiping out the Baymen, starting with the women and children. Peter Lake knew that if he attempted to dissuade Pearly, he would be killed. The only thing to do was to warn Humpstone John directly before the attack, and thus ensure that the Short Tails would be so badly hurt that they would never again even look in the direction of the Bayonne Marsh and the Newark Meadows.

This he did. When the one hundred Short Tails came drifting quietly on the mist, affixed by gravity to the floors of their slim brown canoes, the Bay villages were quiet. The Short Tails clutched their weapons, sure of an easy kill. But then the Baymen appeared as if from nowhere. Up they sprang from the water, blue with cold, after breathing patiently through reeds. Out they came from tunnels in the sand. They emerged from brakes of cattails, and dozens of them on Percherons and quarter horses came galloping down a spit of sand. They charged the Short Tails and dispatched them in great powerful strokes that made the air quiver. The enormous horses trampled the canoes, breaking them into pulp and staining the b.l.o.o.d.y water brown. Women and children with pikes harried the ablebodied among the enemy, chased stragglers, and dispatched the wounded. Terrified Short Tails tried to escape in the thigh-deep water and were struck dead by Baymen who overtook them in their swift canoes or on the horses that galloped in the shallows like trained prancers, churning a trail of foam and blood.

Romeo Tan, Blacky Womble, Dorado Canes, and ninety-four other Short Tails were killed. Poor Cecil Mature, just a boy in his twenties, ran like mad despite Peter Lake's urgings for him to stay close. A mounted swordsman was about to kill him when Peter Lake gave the thrilling and inimitable whistle that the Baymen used, and the swordsman turned back. But Cecil Mature continued running and he vanished into the cloud wall, clutching his Chinese hat. He seemed to have been swallowed up completely and forever.

Cool even in a losing battle, Pearly Soames took time from dispatching not a few Baymen (he, too, had special ties, and a destiny, and was not about to die at the hands of clamdiggers and minnow fishermen, no matter how good they were at war) to note the effects of Peter Lake's whistle. Had it not been for that shrill call, he might have remained unaware that Peter Lake was neither fighting nor attacked. Now the last Short Tail, Pearly Soames fought his way to fast water, and escaped by submerging himself in the rapid current that flows out the Kill van Kull.

Heartsick, Peter Lake went back to the city (the cliffs of brown buildings were a warm and comforting attraction even for those in despair) and there watched from a distance as Pearly Soames rebuilt and reordered the Short Tails. Soon they were once again a hundred stronga"faceless energetic soldiers, as wicked, obsessed, and steely as the age that bred them.

WITH the two automobiles a long way behind, the white horse flew in great sinuous bounds, sailing through the air in a breathtaking flash of muscle. Peter Lake was used to Bay horses that took big leaps to move efficiently through shallow water. But this horse was not just a strong bounder, he was a champion in self-discovery. Before he had escaped for good and thrown in his lot with Peter Lake, he hadn't been able to run as he was now running, or at least he did not remember it. There was a fire in his k.n.o.bby white knees and in his dovelike breast. With precision that might have put an arrow to shame, he went south faster than any racehorse could have run. He could cover half a block in one stride, and his capacity steadily increased. At intersections packed with crooked lines of wagons, he jumped over whatever was in his way without knowing what lay beyond the obstructions. He had enough control and time to take such chances, for midway in flight he could spot empty runs upon which to land, and sail to them faultlessly to resume the gallop. He did something in the crowded streets way downtown, which made Lake wonder. An entire block was full and waiting just north of Ca.n.a.l Street as heavy crosstown traffic tied everything up. With a muted and almost frightened whinny, the horse charged a crush of horses and trucks, and burst out above an amazed crowd, clearing the full block and Ca.n.a.l Street as well, landing almost on the corner of Lispenard. Though he had nearly lost his footing, by the time they reached the lean frozen trees at the Battery's edge he had become accustomed to very long leaps, and from then on could accomplish them with ease.

Peter Lake dismounted and walked in front of the white horse, who was shy and would not look directly at him. He had never seen such a lovely animal: gentle black eyes set far apart on a wide white face a soft velvety nose of pink and beige, an expression that looked like a sad smile, and a n.o.ble neck and chest finer than the best of any bronze monuments. The ears were tall, animated, sharp, alert, upright, and pointed. They had bent back in the gallop and moved like ailerons to help deal with the onrush of air. His arrogant tail strutted back and forth over flanks that were like big white apples.

"What are you?" Peter Lake asked quietly. The horse then turned to look at him, and, he saw, with a chill, that the eyes were infinitely deep, opening like a tunnel to another universe. The horse's silence suggested that the beauty of his gentle black eyes had something of all that ever was or would ever be. And, like every horse, he was incorruptibly innocent. Peter Lake touched the soft nose and took the big face into his arms." Good horse," he said. But, somehow, the animal's equanimity made Peter Lake very sad.

The people Peter Lake had known while on the run were on the run as well, tumbling through greed and fire, hardly able to breathe as the city overwhelmed them, winter and summer, laying waste to their powers merely with its unprecedented scale. What Peter Lake had not had the opportunity to learn in his more than thirty orphaned years was that these tumbling souls, the ones he hardly knew, often managed to find one another for a short time and to silence the din. In a rank of trees through which a cold wind was blowing, he looked into the eyes of a horse. And as if they were all alone on some vast and snowy field upstate, the city stilled. He hoped not to be forever the many millions on the run, always in the pitch of events, robbed even of their own inner tenderness. Something in the horse's eyes told him that he was about to change. He had seen something in those black wells that took hold of hima"a very tiny burst of gold which he had followed until he was overcome. He suspected that, in the gentle face and deep black eyes, he had seen everything.

Exhausted and cold, they left the Battery and returned to the streets. He intended to make his way uptown by way of the East Side, and to bed the horse and find a place to hide. That he knew precisely where to go and how to get there was a benefit of his iron-working days. The best refuge was above the barrel of the sky, atop the glowing constellations. To get there, they went miles and miles through snow-covered streets, until the violet evening made sleep dance in their eyes.

A FOREST of silver struts and perforated metallic arches surrounded Peter Lake, who reclined comfortably in a bent and fruitless grove, where riveted limbs were lit here and there by the backwash of small electric lights on the floor. The floor itself was a great half-barrel, the ceiling a grid of steel. All this was warmed by nearly visible streams of air rising above the lights, which were the stars of the constellations in the great vaulted roof of Grand Central Stationa"recently built with the notion of installing the sky indoors to s.h.i.+ne permanently and in green. Peter Lake was one of the few who knew that beyond the visible universe were beams and artifice, a homely support for that which seemed to float. And he had returned by craft and force to the back of the sky, where once in another life he had helped to forge the connections between the beams, to rest now amid the props of the designer's splendid intentions. He had provided himself with a plank platform of solid oak; a soft feather bed; a makes.h.i.+ft kitchen neatly tucked into a corner (canned goods and biscuits were stacked among the beams); a pile of technical books for late-night reading; a little lamp that had once been a star and had then disappeared without being missed from below; and a long rope on a drum, part of an elaborate escape system worthy of Mootfowl's best and brightest pupil.

He had spent an hour currying the horse and bedding him down in Royal Wind's stable for upper-cla.s.s carriage horses. Royal Wind was the son of a Virginia plantation owner whose property had been confiscated during the Civil War. He was bitter, pompous, and clean, and could be trusted not to divulge that Peter Lake was about. The stallion himself, never having seen such elegance in Brooklyn, was sleeping in the stable after a meal of fresh oats and sweet water. He was covered with a thick blanket of pure cashmere, and the bulb in his stall was shaded so that it would not s.h.i.+ne in his eyes.

Chases and struggles tire the heart and require long bouts of deep sleep. Peter Lake looked forward to a day or two of immobility on the vaulting. He would sleep well in the eternal twilight behind the sky, since all sound was reduced to the faint rush of faraway surf, there was plenty of fresh air, and privacy was a.s.sured. After running in bitter cold for the better part of a week, he slept in leaden stillness through the night, the following day, and the following night. He awoke in the morning, thirty-six hours later, breathing slowly and calmly, completely rested. With his strength renewed, he realized that he was ravenously hungry, and proceeded to cook an excellent bouillabaisse culled from cans of varied fish, tomatoes, wine, oil, and an enormous bottle of Saratoga spring water. After this, he bathed, shaved, and changed his clothes. There he was, like G.o.d in heaven Emerson in his study, and he began to think and plan.

I have this fine horse, he thought to himself, and have come to love him for his eyes and gentle face. He can jump the length of a city block, and he could no doubt take me deep into the pine barrens, or up to the Highlands, or out to Montauk, where Pearly doesn't set foot. I could rest. But it would start all over when I came back again. And I'm rested. So I stay. But staying is much the same as running, because I always have to flee to the marsh or hide in lofts and cellars. What's the difference? It's the same as the Highlands or the pine barrens, but in miniature. There's no way out unless I become some-one else. Perhaps I can change enougha"not so they won't recognize me they'll always recognize me sooner or later), but so that they won't care. If I became a nun, for example. They'd figure me for gone. Or if I were an ashman, or if I lost my legs, or if I found a devotion, a thing to get lost in even larger than the pine barrens....

They say that in his devotion St. Stephen changed form before the eyes of those who watched, that he could rise in the air, and be many things, that he knew the past and future, that he traveled from one time to another, though he was a simple man. All this (he thought, upraising his eyes and clearing his throat) is why they burned him.

Now, I'm no St. Stephen, but if I can concentrate hard enough on something apart from me, perhaps I can be changed. Mootfowl said that those who built the bridge were changed. Did he mean what I think he meant? He said that the city changed, too, and, strike me, Mootfowl was not one to care about little things. What if I become a monk? They would be smashed with wonder! Then they would kill me. What if I became an alderman, or something like that? They would kill me sure, since otherwise they'd have to pay me. What if I became a sweet-tooth and danced in a theater? Oh Jesus, I could never do that. What if I lived underground... a hermit, no, blind? I couldn't see them, but they could see me. Can I change into an animal? Never been done. Invisible! The scientists must have some sort of liquid....

Suddenly he froze, like a stag in the bush who hears a faraway breaking of branches. The years of being chased had sharpened his senses, and he had heard running footsteps, barely audible, far below. They had the greedy rhythm of the hunt. He peered through a star at the s.h.i.+ny marble floor a hundred feet beneath him, and watched a line of men divide as if they were horses in a military tattoo. They went for the two sets of stairs that led to the constellations.

"Dead Rabbits!" he said." That's who they are, but why them?" He opened a hatch that was to have been used once in several decades to lower a cable for the scaffolding upon which a painter would stand to freshen the signs of the zodiac. He grabbed the end of the rope, and let himself fall. As the rope slowly played off the drum, Peter Lake descended silently through the cavernous s.p.a.ce under the stars. He was afraid, though, that he had not left in time, and he was right.

"A block or so. Maybe two."

"Two blocks!"

"Maybe."

"We'll buy him, Peter Lake, and enter him at Belmont."

"No," said Peter Lake." You don't understand. He wouldn't jump for money. He does it *cause he likes it, or for some reason or other, but he wouldn't do it for money, if you know what I mean. That is, he won't do it without me, and I won't... and besides, he's not for sale."

"We'll give you ten thousand dollars."

"No."

"Twenty thousand."

"No."

The Dead Rabbits looked at their chief, who had been hanging back amid the beams." Fifty thousand," he said.

"Didn't I tell you? He's not for sale."

"Seventy-five, and that's it!"

"No."

"Eighty."

"Not selling."

"Okay, one hundred. But that's all we can offer."

"Chicory," Peter Lake said," you could have a million, and it still wouldn't do you any good."

When the Dead Rabbits had finally been convinced that Peter Lake was not going to part with the horse, they filed morosely down the stone steps that followed the hump of the vault. At that moment Peter Lake decided that he had been chased as much as he could be chased." I'm getting out," he said to himself, his lips taut with determination." I'll do anything to do it, but I'm getting out.

"I'll chew nails!" he screamed, and then added, very quietly," if necessary."

Rather than chew nails, he decided to steal enough money so that he could set himself up and try to become something other, and perhaps better, than what he was. He felt strongly that it could be done. Not only was there the lesson of St. Stephen, but there was the example of Mootfowl, who had worked all his life in a fury to transform and exceed himself. He had failed. But, on the way, he had seen, perhaps, in the curling and rolling of a molten red block of steel, what Peter Lake had seen in the eyes of the white horse.

Peter Lake climbed an iron ladder to the outside roof. It was covered with knee-deep snow. The real stars blazed like faraway white flares and put to shame the imitations in the station ceiling: there were pinwheels of fire, round phosph.o.r.escent spirals of light. Peter Lake leaned into the wind while all around him the snow swirled in sparkling chains, their motion suspended and stilled, as in the stars. Deep within the high blazing tunnels, motion and stillness met and fused. The wind shrieking across the drifts on the station roof turned the snow to white vapor that flattened into spinning vortexes. Seen from afar, the city's pulsating lights were like stars, and the distant avenues and high plumes of steam that curled and twisted were like the star roads themselves.

"With all that I've seen," Peter Lake said to himself," I've seen nothing. The city is like an engine, an engine just beginning to fire itself up." He could hear it. Its surflike roar matched the lights. Its ceaseless thunder was not for nothing.

BEVERLY.

ISAAC Penn, publisher of The Sun, built his house in the middle of lots and fields on the Upper West Side, so that it stood alone overlooking the reservoir in Central Park." I have no desire," he had said," to live with a bunch of dumbbells on Fifth Avenue. I was born in a little house in Hudson, not far from the wharves. There was noise twenty-four hours a day even before they put in the railroad, and loose pigs snorted around everywhere. Come to think of it, they do that in New York, too, but they wear waistcoats. That's where we lived. We were poor. I remember that all the proper people lived in the same place, like a bunch of cigars in a pack. They were mostly dumbbells who had never thought a decent thought in their lives, so they banded together to hide it.

"I like my house. It stands alone in the fresh air. My childrenlike the house. They stand alone in the fresh air. I listen to them, not to Mrs. Astora"and she knows it."

Because Isaac Penn was so abrasive, outspoken, powerful, rich, wise and old, the optometrist was very frightened when the master of the house himself met him at the door and escorted him in. He felt like a child who imagines that he is soon to be eaten by a huge unfriendly animal that lives in the dark. And, further, he could not understand why he had been summoned to appear with all his equipment at the Penns' house. He had the real carriage trade, and his celebrated customers always came to the shop. He was puzzled as well to see that Isaac Penn wore no spectacles, which he thought most unusual for an old man whose business flowed before his eyes in small print.

"Then we are not for you, I take it," the optometrist said to Isaac Penn, who had gone to sit in an enormous leather chair. He could hardly make himself heard over the piano that was being played in an adjoining room.

"What?" asked Isaac Penn.

"We are not for you, then, I take it."

"Who's we?" asked Isaac Penn, looking around the room.

"You don't need gla.s.ses yourself, sir, do you?"

"No," said Isaac Penn, still wondering if the optometrist had brought an a.s.sistant." Never needed gla.s.ses. Grew up looking for whales. Gla.s.ses wouldn't have been the thing."

"Is it your wife that needs spectacles, Mr. Penn?"

Dead," said Isaac Penn. The optometrist was silent, unable even to begin a forced condolence. In fact, he almost panicked, becausehe felt that for some reason Isaac Penn thought of him as an undertaker.

"I'm an optometrist," he blurted out defensively." I know," answered Isaac Penn." Don't worry, I have some for you. I want you to make a pair of spectacles for my daughter. That is she," he said, pointing to the sound of the music," playing the piano. She'll be finished soona"half an hour, maybe an hour. It's nice, isn't it. Mozart."

The optometrist thought of his horse standing hitched to the wagon, in the snow. He thought of his dinner gone cold. He thoughtof his shattered dignity (he was, after all, a professional man), and he said," Don't you think, Mr. Penn, that we should inform her that I have come to make her some spectacles? Wouldn't it be wise?"

"I don't think so," said Isaac Penn." What's the point of interruptions? Let her play. When she's finished, you'll fas.h.i.+on her a pair of gla.s.ses. Do you have your stuff? I hope you do. She needs them tonight. This morning her brother sat on her spectacles, and they were the only pair she had. She has long eyelashes, unprecedented eyelashes. They bat the insides of her lenses. I think it's uncomfortable for her. Can you put the lenses far enough away so that she won't bat the gla.s.s with her lashes?" The optometrist nodded." Good," said Isaac Penn, and leaned back to listen to the smooth tumult of the sonata. She was a superb pianist, almost flawless, at least as far as her father was concerned.

As the music continued, the optometrist set up his instruments and eye charts. Then he sat down and listened, barely breathing, wondering why such a man as Isaac Penn was so indulgent with his daughter. Actually, for reasons that he did not understand, the optometrist was afraid of her. His palms sweated. He began to dread the moment when she would finish and enter the room, royal princess that she was, to confront a simple grinder of lenses.

The front door burst open. Two adolescent boys pounded up the stairs and were gone sooner than the gla.s.s in the windows could stop vibrating from their entrance. Isaac Penn acknowledged this with a brief smile, and walked over to a corner desk upon which were many fresh Suns. Clattering noises and the smell of roasting chickens came from a nearby kitchen. A dozen fires burned, and the sweet winter woods scented the house with resin and cherry. The piano played. Darkness grew stronger. Finally, night and evening were solidly entrenched outside the house and inside wherever bright lamplight fought deep shadow.