Specimen Days

It was funny, hearing her say that. She thought he'd been waiting for a gift, some marvel he would not want to lose, when what he wanted, all he wanted, was to lead her away.

He ran on. He was sure of where he was going, where he was taking her, but couldn't name it. He knew only that it lay in this direction. He imagined it was somewhere safe, a place of trees and mountains. Trees and mountains were out there, ahead of him, ahead of Catherine, and though they lay at an unknowable distance he knew that with every stride he led her closer to them, farther away from the dead. He knew only, but he knew with utter certainty, that he must keep moving. He knew he must take her with him and couldn't do it with words or explanations. He had no language for that. He had only his body to speak with, he had only his legs.

Catherine strode after him. He was moving too fast for her. He slowed a little, so she wouldn't fall too far behind. She said, "If you don't come back, they won't take care of you."

"The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections."

She called out, "Somebody stop him. Please. He's sick, he doesn't know what he's doing."

Lucas saw a man and then another man wonder if he should interfere and decide not to. There was the lump of blood at Lucas's breast. There were the troubles of others, unfathomable, and these men had troubles enough of their own.

He was near Washington Square, with Catherine following, when he heard sirens. He thought at first that they were trumpets, piercing and cacophonous. (Why would he why would anyone think angels would make a beautiful sound?) He thought that he, he and Catherine, were entering a promised realm, that they were being greeted by a host of… not angels, no. A host of spirits that were like animals, that were like ghosts, that were like Mr. Cain and the crying man, inscrutable, possessed of a language the living didn't know but would come to understand. They were not kind, but they were not cruel. Lucas knew he must go to them. He knew he must take Catherine. He knew that the trumpeters were the book and that the book was the world.

He smelled the smoke before he saw it. For a moment it seemed simply the usual smell of the air, brought to him in heightened form. But this was sharper, more acrid. Others on the street seemed to notice it, too. An ember floated by, brilliantly orange, like the little lights in the curtain of pain but far brighter. He paused, he couldn't help pausing, to watch the ember drift past.

Catherine caught up with him. She was out of breath. She said, "My God."

She walked on, hurriedly. Lucas followed her. He was glad to be the one following. He was glad that she seemed now to understand.

The Mannahatta Company was breathing fire. Licks of flame snapped like banners from its upper windows. The windows, some of them, were orange squares. Plumes of black smoke billowed up, fat and velvety.

"Oh, my God," Catherine said. Lucas stood beside her. Fire engines glowed in the street. Firemen in black coats, husbands for the nuns, sent up streams of bright water that fell short of the windows where the fire was. Lucas thought of the jewelry in the window of Gaya's Emporium, glinting among the folds of faded cloth.

He went with Catherine until a policeman told them they could go no farther. Catherine stood before him as she had stood before the doctor in the waiting room. It seemed she would summon her power of insistence. She would tell him there was not, could not be, a fire.

She said, "I work there."

"Lucky you're not there now," he answered.

Catherine reached for Lucas, held him close to her. They watched together as the flames unfurled, demonstrating their beauty, which was neither cruel nor kind. They watched the water rise in brilliant threads and fall back to the pavement as rain. They heard the sirens blare.

And now, finally, Lucas understood. It had all been for this. It had been done so that Catherine would not be at Mannahatta when the fire came. Simon had loved her; she was wrong about that. He had not married the machine, he had sacrificed himself to it, as the saints gave themselves to glory, as St. Brigid gave herself to the fiery circle of her headache. Simon had known for he was intimate with machinery, Lucas had learned how intimate that the sewing machines at Mannahatta adored and desired their women but were too puny to take them as the greater machines took their men. Simon had known, he had guessed (had the machine told him?) that the sewing machines were waiting to take their women in the only way they could.

And Catherine alone had been spared.

She held Lucas fast. He felt the thrum of her heart. He answered with the beat of his own, paltry and birdlike but resolute.

A woman appeared at a window, seven stories up.