The Palace of the King of Night (Introduction)

In the spring and summer of 2007 I wrote a narrative entitled The Palace of the King of Night, described in its subtitle as "a novella, or folly." Later, when I phased out the website where I had originally posted it, I elected not to transfer it over to my current blog. Not being inclined to revise or or even re-read it at that particular moment, I suspected that the length and likely artistic shortcomings of the piece would render it a distraction from what I was interested in doing at my new address. For whatever it's worth, I have decided to make it available now, in installments, but spun off onto a separate blog [here].

The novella originated, as does much of the (relatively little) fiction that I write, in a dream or half-dream, and the opening scene and perhaps a little more derive directly from that source. Once the story got going, however, I more or less consciously steered it according to a preconceived plan, and it became a kind of ersatz Grail legend, set not in a forest, as is traditional, but in an arid landscape that perhaps was also a kind of underworld or land of the dead. The peculiar artwork of Charles-Frédéric Soehnée (see above) was a partial inspiration, at least for atmosphere, and their were faint traces of what I knew about ancient Egyptian mythology, which was (and remains) very little.

I am far happier composing shorter forms (a few paragraphs) and so the writing of the novella was both exhilarating and grueling. I'm afraid its deficiencies will be all too evident, but perhaps something of what impelled me to keep at it will come across. I dislike reading long texts on a screen, and ideally I would print this up as a chapbook, give the copies away to the twenty or so people who would be polite enough to pretend to read it, and leave it at that. Until I get around to doing so, here it is, warts and all.

Evening

He found some leftover pizza in the fridge, tossed it into the microwave, and watched it revolve on the glass plate like some slow-motion juggler’s trick. It tasted like cardboard when he pulled it out but he didn’t much care. The hunger was there, but appetite was another story; still, the beer he had opened to go with it didn’t taste half bad. Bill had lived on his own long enough that he could manage for himself in the kitchen if he had to, but mostly it wasn’t worth the dishes or the bother. Living mostly on take-out took a chunk out of his budget, but since it was pretty much his only indulgence he could swing it without any problem. He had never entertained in his apartment, except when his family flew in for a visit, and even then mostly they wanted to go out on the town while they were there.

The view from his balcony wasn’t so much of the river as over it, although naturally that wasn’t the way they put it in the real estate listings. The city had grown up along both shores, leveling hills and filling in marshes and brackish pools, abolishing the topography as it went. There had to be hundreds of thousands of living human beings, right at that moment, just in the buildings that were visible from where he stood. They were out there in the projects, in the office towers where people were still working late at their desks, at the stadium in the distance that was lit up for a home game, in the cars whose headlights were moving soundlessly along the encircling expressways, and yet he knew barely a soul among them. He had felt the same way once before, years ago, peering through the window of a Shanghai high-rise, when he realized that no one in that unimaginably vast metropolis knew his name or what had brought him there, that he was a stranger from another country who barely spoke the language and had no real reason for being there that he could clearly articulate, even to himself, that whatever his life was going to be about was of infinitesimal concern to the people whom he passed in the street or who waited on him in the crowded markets, that he was only of flickering interest even to his teachers and fellow students in the university where he attended classes five days a week. He had reconciled himself to the fact of his irrelevance and made it safely through, just as he would make it through tonight, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something, somewhere deep down in his gut, was slowly, relentlessly hollowing him out from inside. No one around him would notice, of course, because it wasn’t necessary for you to have anything inside you in order to get by, in fact it made it easier, you fit in better with everyone else who was in the same predicament, showing up on time, keeping your head down and your desk in order, breathing in, breathing out, going through the motions. He had abandoned some indispensable part of himself somewhere along the way, but one of the symptoms of the disorder — maybe the hardest of all to bear — was that he could no longer remember clearly just what it was that was now lost to him forever. All he knew was that it wasn’t somewhere lying ahead, in his future, waiting to welcome him with fanfares and open arms when he finally landed on the shore. It wasn’t even in his past, for if he had ever truly been the person that he now knew that he would never become, then there would always be a piece of that being tucked away somewhere deep within, no matter how scarred over or neglected it became, something he could call on in his darkest moments, if only to have it reproach and mock him him for forsaking it. But even that was to be denied him. He knew that now.

He flipped the TV on with the remote and lay down on the bed, still wearing the same pants and shirt he had worn to work, setting the half-empty bottle on the nightstand. He flipped from channel to channel, watching the news. In the other room his BlackBerry chimed every few minutes but he didn’t bother to get up and answer it.

Héctor

The police had cordoned off the sidewalk and were beginning to make arrests. Something in the air was making Héctor’s eyes water, and the cops were wearing masks that made them look like giant grasshoppers and which might have made him laugh if he hadn’t been so frightened. A dozen or so protestors had planted themselves on the sidewalk and were refusing to move, waiting for the cops to come and put plastic handcuffs on them and drag them off to the waiting vans. Héctor didn’t know which way to turn but whenever he saw two or three cops coming he moved off in the opposite direction as quickly as he could. He remembered some minnows he had seen once in a store, how they darted from one end of the tank to the other, desperately trying to avoid being scooped up in the net, as if they knew that their fate lay in being impaled on a fisherman’s hook. The strobe lights on the police vans kept flickering, making him woozy and even more terrified than he already was. He wished that he had never decided to go for a walk, that he had never let his curiosity get the better of him. Whatever this protest was about it surely wasn’t his business to get mixed up in, and now if he got arrested he was certain they’d find out he had no papers and send him packing. How could he pay back what he owed the polleros for bringing him across the border if he couldn’t stay in the city and work? How could he ever come north again, with no money? His cousin was going to be furious when Héctor called him from jail. Maybe they’d stick him in some prison and let him rot, surrounded by strangers. Héctor had never been in prison but he’d heard the stories. If you were lucky, they said, you only got beaten by the guards; if the other inmates went after you, you were finished.

A voice was issuing from a bullhorn, shouting insistent commands, but Héctor couldn’t understand what it was saying. There were screams from across the street, a concussion, and then the mist of whatever it was that was stinging his eyes suddenly hit him head-on, blinding him, burning his nostrils and throat. He bent over, choking and retching, and as he stumbled someone running by struck Héctor’s head hard with his elbow in his haste to escape. He dropped to his knees but immediately forced himself up again. Unable to see, he staggered away from what seemed to be the center of the fumes and the noise. People were rushing past, shoving, grasping, crying, and through his closed eyelids he sensed the pulse of the strobe lights, the shadows of figures moving all around him. He trod on something soft that he thought must have been a human hand, but whoever it belonged to was evidently either unconscious or simply oblivious to the pain.

He struck something hard with his shoulder and knew at once that it was the wall of the building that soared above. Feeling his way along its surface, clambering over fallen bodies, he bashed his leg hard against a standpipe and let out a cry. He touched one of the building’s glass doors, tugged desperately at the handle, but found that it was locked tight. He could hear the sickening sound of a truncheon being struck against a body, no more than a few feet away, and winced in anticipation of the coming blow, but it didn’t arrive. As he reached the corner of the building something jutted against his chest and he realized that it was the cordon set up by the police. He grasped it with one hand and ducked underneath, then slipped away down the side street, still unseeing and in terror for his life.

The bus

There were no seats and several people already standing, so she grabbed hold of a strap and planted her feet as the bus lurched forward. She could have walked it in a half-hour and often did if the weather was okay and she wasn’t too tired, but today she was dead on her feet and eager to just get home and out of her work clothes. The traffic was bad, though, and she quickly regretted her decision. Gingerly easing its way around construction vehicles, crossing pedestrians, and cabs picking up or discharging passengers, the bus slowed to a crawl at every intersection and barely managed to make up time in the long stretches between avenues. All was quiet in the interior. One young woman was silently nodding to music, her headphones trailing down from her ear and disappearing into her clothes, but the other faces around Helen were patient, impassive, inured. If any of the riders were traveling together they had let their conversation lapse and were staring blankly ahead or out the window, rocking with the motion of the bus, when it moved at all. She recognized a couple of people from other times but no one she knew well enough to say hello to.

A voice came over the radio and the driver picked up the handset to respond. Over the noise of the motor she couldn’t make out all the back-and-forth but it sounded like the dispatcher was reporting a tie-up somewhere ahead. The bus had been stuck for several minutes, fifty yards from the end of a block, and streams of pedestrians — heavier than usual, Helen thought — were flowing past it on either side, as if the age of the automobile and the internal combustion engine had suddenly ground to a halt, undone by their own success, returning the streets of the city to older and more agile forms of transportation. No one complained or stood up or even let out a sigh, though the bus’s air conditioning wasn’t great and they were getting hit head-on with the declining sun in the west. The bus crept forward a few yards, halted, crept a few yards more, and finally pulled up to a designated stop where a dozen or so figures were waiting, skeptically, hoping to board. As the doors opened Helen made a snap decision, strode forward, and stepped to the sidewalk. She was only halfway home but anything was better than wasting the rest of the afternoon standing on a bus that wasn’t going anywhere.

The block stood in the middle of a busy wholesale and manufacturing district made up of older buildings, with narrow storefronts, fire escapes, and lofts in the upper storeys — not the trendy kind the bohemians liked, but the kind that still actually produced something, though Helen had no idea what. At night the area was pretty much deserted and she avoided it, but she felt no fear at this hour, other than the terror of getting bowled over on the narrow sidewalks by people darting past to run errands, deliver packages, or just be somewhere else. Keeping as best she could to a steady pace, she soon left the stalled bus far behind, but when she reached the end of the second block she saw that a crowd had backed up from the next avenue, that some people were trying to work their way through but others were just lingering there watching something. The traffic heading downtown was barely inching along, and when she turned to look she quickly saw why: a block away there were hundreds of people standing in the middle of the street, swarming around the unlucky vehicles that had advanced that far and now could neither proceed nor turn off. Some of the people held signs aloft but most just seemed to be staring further down the avenue, at something that Helen wasn’t able to make out. Two squad cars with flashing lights were parked at the edge of the crowd and the cops were trying to get traffic off the avenue, but the crowd was too big and the knot couldn’t be untied.

Walking (from a work in progress)

There was something going on in the park but whatever it was she wasn't in the mood. She walked slowly around the square, barely glancing at shop windows, smoking and blocking out everything but the taste of the smoke. Everyone in her family smoked and nobody had ever quit; she had picked it up from her cousins when she was thirteen and it was now as much a part of her as her skin.

She turned her back on the square and entered a block of quiet townhouses, all well-maintained but not too freshly scrubbed and polished, and so probably mostly occupied by longtime residents. There were sparrows hopping around on the sidewalk, looking for crumbs and seeds among the debris in the cracks, and someone was walking a huge, slow-moving basset hound that turned its head towards her inquisitively as she passed. She wasn't fond of dogs; they smelled and ate disgusting things and spread diseases, and back home they threw stones at them. It was different here but the attitude was engrained. Cats were better, if other people owned them, though she wouldn't want the bother herself.

She thought this was a block she wouldn't mind living on, someday. Money was the issue; whatever inheritance her parents would split up among her and her siblings would never pay for this. In fact she wasn't sure who could afford to live here: plastic surgeons? bankers? She didn't think the university faculty would be able to swing it, unless they had family money. Blue bloods, old money, she guessed, the ones who hadn't dissipated it all or made so much of it that they had moved on to crass palaces on the shore or ranches in Montana. There were house numbers but no signs, no Tot-Finder stickers on the upper storeys, just tidy planters with geraniums and pansies on the lower windows and fanlights over the doors.

She knew what her parents would think: they would disapprove because the houses were too narrow and the rooms too cramped for a family, and at the same time they would be intimidated by what they imagined was the exclusiveness of it all, those rich white people who will never accept you. They didn't understand that here it didn’t matter if they accepted you or made jokes about you behind your back because of what you looked like. If you had the money you were home free. You cut your ties, you kept your door locked, and someone would always sell you whatever it was you needed. The city was just a set of geographical coordinates. It didn't define who you were or determine where you belonged. Family, nation, social class — all of those loyalties were precisely what she wanted to leave behind. You slipped through the city like a ghost and no one saw you unless you wanted them to. The other people — they were all ghosts too. They turned back into flesh and blood when they returned to their houses, to their boyfriends or wives, but when you passed them in the street you could see right through them, and they could see through you as well. That's why nobody ever made eye contact, unless they wanted something from you, usually, in her case, because they wanted sex. You didn't stare at people, you didn't even look them in the eye, because to do so was an affront — or an invitation. You kept your sunglasses on, even in the rain.

The ghost in the rain

It's been raining since morning and the wind has been driving drops like shotgun pellets against the windows of my room for hours. Outside, the gutters are choked with crabapple petals, and here and there clusters of maple leaves have blown down as well, as if autumn had arrived before its time, but night still hasn't fallen, even at this hour, and the trees that line both sides of the street show the pallor of new growth. I'll stay inside now until the storm is over; I've had my dinner and I've nowhere to go. I may have another inch or two of wine before I retire.

I saw him again today. He was standing in an alley, a few yards back from the sidewalk, in among the empty crates and windblown trash. He tucked himself into the shadow of the adjacent building just as I approached, but it was too late. When our eyes met he averted his gaze at once, but as I stood there watching him he lifted his face again after a moment and under the brim of his soaked fedora I could make out his features, the same dismal eyes, the soft nose that could almost have been a woman's, the small, frightened, half-opened mouth. I chose not to intrude any longer. Already I could feel the pain he felt at my discovering him again, though I have never pursued him or presumed on his sorrows more than I could help. I went on my way. I didn't need to look back to know that already he would no longer be there, that he would have shuffled off to some other forsaken corner, away from the crowds and the lights and the din. By now we both know that he can't escape me, any more than either of us can ever leave this city. Weeks will pass and I won't see him; he will trace his silent and mysterious routes through the streets and back passages, unseen, as I trace mine, and day after day our paths won't intersect, but sooner or later, just at the hour when the city is at its most forlorn, in the shadows of the giant beech trees of the park or down in the deserted cobblestone lanes by the docks, just when I think I've forgotten him at last, I will sense him even before he appears, and then I'll see him, he'll be there once again, my curse as I am his.

Miss Eberle and Mr. Sullivan (conclusion)

In the weeks that followed, Matilda returned to the apartment on Bedford Street every Saturday afternoon. She would have come more often, if Mr. Sullivan had asked her to, but she had a suspicion that one session a week was probably as much as he could afford. On her third or fourth visit he asked her -- it was to be honest a little more than a request, though not quite a demand -- if she would disrobe entirely and pose for him lying on his bed. She hesitated for a moment, not sure that she was quite ready for that, but then she remembered her mother's injunction against half-measures and decided that she would either have to comply or leave immediately and never return. She chose the former. She didn't withdraw from the room to undress, but instead crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, draping her robe around her body and eyeing the windows. As soon as Mr. Sullivan turned his back for a moment she slipped off her skirt and undergarments, loosened her robe, and lay down. At first she assumed a position that she thought he would find artistic -- it was something she had seen in a French painting in one of her mother's books -- but when he turned to her and saw this he frowned and told her to just lie naturally, which she did, after a few seconds of awkwardness while she considered what to do with her hands.

He sketched her in silence from across the room, then, perhaps sensing that she was not entirely at ease, broke off after only a few minutes and told her she could get dressed. She resumed her position on the chair and sat for him fully clothed for the rest of the session. The following week, when she returned, she again lay on the bed, and this time he sketched her that way for most of an hour.

She found it rather a relief, a few weeks later, when they became lovers. He was quite gentle about it and wouldn't have persisted if she had objected, but she decided that she was ready for it to happen. At first he continued to offer her money for her time, but she felt quite strongly that it wasn't appropriate anymore. In any case he soon enough gave up on the idea of drawing professionally, and Matilda never posed for him again. Instead of accepting his money she insisted on leading him on a shopping expedition and making him buy himself some better clothes, an activity he consented to with only as much grumbling as he thought he was obliged to make about it. They went out to dinner sometimes -- nothing elaborate, for she quickly discovered that he had overextended himself financially by paying her for her sessions -- but often she just accompanied him on long walks around the squares and parks of the vicinity, sticking to the quiet streets so they could linger at their ease, talking quietly, strolling arm in arm. During one of their afternoons alone he finally revealed to her his given name, which from then on she used exclusively.

As spring arrived Matilda began to suspect that she might be with child; a discreetly arranged visit to a physician in the neighborhood confirmed her suspicion. She went home to New Rochelle for the weekend and to her surprise her mother raised rather a scene about it, at least at first, then she calmed down and said that after all Matilda was old enough to look out for herself, which Matilda didn't think was all that helpful, especially when her mother then almost immediately dashed off for the evening with some friends. Her father never alluded to the subject at all. Matilda didn't know when or how he was told of her condition, but she was fairly sure that her mother had pointedly told him to mind his own affairs and not meddle with women's business, an admonition with which he was no doubt more than happy to comply.

When she told Mr. Sullivan, a few days later, he was quite firm about marrying her, though she hadn't intended to insist. She informed her parents of their plans and from then on her mother largely took over the arrangements for the wedding. They were married in early June; Isabel, who was herself by now engaged to Friedrich, served as maid-of-honor. Her brothers were a little stiff about it, but they minded their manners.

The couple were promptly settled into a brownstone just off of Washington Square. It was a wedding gift from her father, as neither Matilda nor her husband seemed likely to be able to support themselves according to her family's station for quite some time, if ever. Her mother came to get along quite well with her son-in-law, though Matilda was afraid that her father never knew quite what to make of him. After the baby was born -- a boy -- her mother often came into the village to make sure that Matilda swaddled him up warmly enough when she took him out in the carriage for her daily circuit of the square.

Miss Eberle and Mr. Sullivan (VI)

Mr. Sullivan's lodgings occupied the back half of the top floor of a narrow four-story brick building on Bedford Street. There was a rather pretty fanlight over the street door, though Matilda couldn't help but notice that it needed washing. Inside there was a worn mosaic floor and then a series of steep and warped wooden staircases; on the second floor landing she could smell cooking -- roast chicken and potatoes, she thought -- but otherwise the building's tenants all seemed to be out for the afternoon. She climbed slowly, though she was used to walking and didn't find the effort taxing. She wore a simple peach blouse, a gray skirt, and an expensive burgundy cloche that her mother had insisted on buying for her, though Matilda wasn't sure that it went, and she carried a small handbag and a light sweater over one arm, just in case it became cooler later on.

She knocked on the door and heard a voice respond from within, followed a few moments after by footsteps and the sound of the latch being undone. Mr. Sullivan was in his shirtsleeves and had evidently been washing up in the kitchen, as he had a dish towel slung over one shoulder. He apologized for keeping her waiting and ushered her inside.

The apartment was in truth really nothing more than one sunlit room, with a little alcove for a bed in the back corner and a small cooking and dining area set off to one side. The larger space was dominated by a desk, a bookcase, and two swaybacked tables, all of the available surfaces of which were covered, with the exception of a cramped working space on the desk, by a helter-skelter assortment of books, magazines, manuscripts, and writing accessories. All of this furniture had been shoved rather awkwardly together in one corner, leaving a large open space exposed to windows on two sides, with a view over rooftops and trees in the direction of the river. Set back a bit from the rear windows stood a pair of easels; upon them, and along every available expanse of wall around the room, were a number of charcoal drawings as well as a smaller number of rather tentative pastels. While Mr. Sullivan went to fetch Matilda a glass of lemonade she inspected his creations. She had to admit that he possessed a certain natural gift -- more so than her former fellow pupils or the gentlemen that she had modeled for, she was sure -- but on the other hand even with her untrained eye she could see that his technique was either undeveloped or indifferently applied. Almost all of the drawings were of women, clothed and unclothed, and among them she noted several of herself done at the academy. Though the work showed a measure of expressiveness and a nice vigorous feel for form, he had quite clearly not mastered the intricacies of figure drawing; moreover, she quite suspected, looking around the room, that he in all likelihood never would. The best of the pictures were some pen-and-ink caricatures that he had done, evidently of some friends; these relaxed little sketches were entirely more convincing than the more sober nudes and portraits.

When he returned, bearing a tall glass and noticing her attention to his little gallery, he assured Matilda, in the face of her hasty assertions to the contrary, that he really wasn't much of an artist but that sometimes he tried to pick up a few extra coins by doing sketches for magazines. It wasn't really his trade and he hadn't yet sold very many pictures but every bit helped. He pulled over a chair and asked her to please sit, and Matilda did so and sipped her lemonade while she watched the fronds of a locust tree bowing at her through the rear window. While she sat there he moved some things about and tidied up the room a bit, all the while talking about his work as a writer, about how you could make a living, or a sort of one, if you kept at it and turned your copy in on time and kept an ear out for opportunities that tended to come and go at a moment's notice. Matilda listened, in a fashion, which is to say that she understood what he was saying and nodded or smiled at the appropriate moments but that it also seemed to her that she wasn't really present in the room at all, or maybe she was but he wasn't, he was far away somewhere calling to her but he couldn't see her, or maybe he was speaking to someone else entirely and it was she who was listening in on the wrong line.

After a moment she seemed to lose her train of thought, and she realized that he had stopped talking and was standing over her. He had donned a light smock and was holding a charcoal pencil in one hand, and he asked her if she were all right and said something about how if Matilda was uncomfortable he wouldn't be offended or think anything the less of her if she would rather not stay. Matilda eventually came to herself and took his words in and said rather hazily that she was fine and that everything was fine and that she would make herself ready whenever he wanted to begin, and she found herself thinking that Mr. Sullivan wasn't such a bad sort at that. He handed her a robe -- it was his robe, naturally -- and she withdrew into the bathroom to prepare herself. There was hardly anything on his bathroom shelf, just a bar of shaving soap and a razor and a bottle of witch hazel and a handful of other little things, and while she undressed she thought about her parents' bathrooms which were always stocked with bottles and lineaments and lotions and powders and which it was the maid's responsibility to keep clean and tidy, and she realized that Mr. Sullivan had never had a maid and probably never would.

He had set a chair in the center of the room, leaving the curtains parted so that the afternoon light would fall on her from a side window as she posed. This made her squint, however, so she stood up again while he repositioned the chair slightly. When she let the robe fall her body remained hidden by the back of the chair, while Mr. Sullivan worked off to one side, so that an onlooker from the building opposite would have seen nothing more than the head of a young woman apparently passing the day by herself in her room. He became very serious as soon as he began to work, and said hardly a word for a quarter of an hour. He stopped twice and crumpled his initial sallies into a basket, then worked steadily for several minutes before frowning and tearing off another unsatisfactory attempt. He asked her to move to one side slightly; she obliged and he resumed but he still wasn't satisfied and after a moment asked her to move again. Finally he set down his pencil, stepped softly over to her, and gently but quite firmly took hold of her bare shoulders and shifted them into the position he desired. Matilda might have been offended by this -- it was certainly the first time a man had touched her in such a manner -- but to her surprise she wasn't. In fact she found herself thinking that she would not likely be offended no matter where Mr. Sullivan chose to place his hands.

To be continued.

Miss Eberle and Mr. Sullivan (V)

Matilda spent the month of July at her family's summer cottage in the Adirondacks. Her parents -- separately -- and her brothers, came and went several times while she was there, but for much of the time she was alone except for a cook who seemed very cross, either at having been displaced to what she seemed to regard as untamed wilderness or at Matilda's indifferent appetite. Her mother twice swept her out the door to evening dances, where several young men of their set managed to persuade her to a few waltzes and attempted to engage her in conversation, but she wasn't interested in bantering with them and slipped away as soon as she had the opportunity. During the day, when no one else was around, she found a quiet path along the lake and followed it into a deep stand of towering pines, where there were no birds and no sound other than the light crunching of her sandals on the carpet of fallen needles. When she became tired she lay down in her white dress on a little knoll and slept for an hour or more in the dappled light, entirely undisturbed, and woke in the stillness half convinced that the rest of the world had ended while she reposed, that she would find nothing but endless forest forever in all directions, but of course it was not so. Back at the cabin the cook was more than usually peeved at her late return, and she and Matilda sulked at each other for the remainder of the evening. At the next opportunity Matilda caught a train going south, and after one melancholy night in her old room in New Rochelle -- a room that now seemed small and unfamiliar -- she returned to the familiar moorings of her apartment in the Village.

Isabel and Friedrich had gone off somewhere for a few days, and the summer heat and dust of Manhattan were oppressive, even around Washington Square. After sweeping up a bit and making herself a ham sandwich Matilda went out to the nearest newsstand and collected a supply of the latest magazines, then settled herself into a wicker armchair and read until nightfall. When hunger got the better of her she went out again. Working her way through the crowds on Eighth Street, she peered into eateries and bars until she found a little Italian restaurant that was emptier than the rest. The waiter, who didn't speak English well and seemed, she thought, rather disapproving, showed her to a table by the window. The table was made of cast iron ornamented with curlicues, surmounted with a glass top; its legs were uneven and rocked when she leaned an elbow on it. She ordered a carafe of red wine and a plate of clams on the half-shell cooked in tomato sauce. The waiter brought out a loaf, and when she had finished the clams she scooped up the remains of the sauce with the bread while she took in the flow of pedestrians on the sidewalk outside.

The next morning was Sunday; a steady rain had begun to fall and the wind was billowing through the canyons, swirling up aggregations of dust, old newspapers, and desiccated horse droppings and redistributing them in the gutters or under the oilcloth-covered tables of sidewalk cafés. The park and its environs were deserted. Gripping her umbrella firmly with both hands, she traversed the park and began to head east along Washington Place. When she reached the corner of Greene Street she turned around, tilted her umbrella back, and looked up at the building that had been, a scant few years before, the site of the terrible fire. She stood gazing upwards at its summit for several minutes, oblivious to the rain. She couldn't say why, for she had passed the building any number of times before, but at that moment she found herself unable to stop thinking about the women who had died in the fire, many of them girls younger than herself, about how their stories had simply ended there, on that March afternoon, without a hint of warning. One by one they had leapt into the air to escape the flames and each in turn had fallen to earth, coming to rest -- if rest it could be called -- on the very spot where she stood. When the day was over and the flames were at last extinguished they didn't gather themselves up and go about the rest of their lives; they didn't marry or have children or move out of the city or die of consumption. Matilda felt a cold desolation sink into her bones; she lowered her umbrella to hide the sight, and began to turn away, and just at that moment the umbrella of a passing pedestrian bumped against hers and broke the spell.

She found work a week later, in an art gallery just south of Union Square. The salary was minimal -- in a week she made less than what she had earned in a night of modeling -- but it was outwardly respectable and the work was undemanding. Her mother, who had visited the very gallery once or twice in the past, seemed to approve, and although her brothers appeared to have given her up for lost, her father continued to cover the rent, which, even more so than before, exceeded her monthly earnings by a considerable margin. She was seeing less and less of Isabel, who, in truth, had now largely settled into Friedrich's quarters and maintained her old address only in order to mislead her parents. Matilda thought that they might get married before too long, if Friedrich could somehow be made presentable, which Matilda thought a bit doubtful.

In the interests of economy -- and since cooking for herself seemed too much of a bother -- Matilda limited herself to a roll and some fruit in the morning, and a bowl of soup in a little diner in the evening. The waiters knew her by now and kept an eye out for her, slipping her a biscuit or a piece of cake on the sly and now and again even a glass of wine, and they called her Miss Matilda and gave her the same table every night, one where she could look out through the glass and watch the traffic streaming by. It was there, one night, just as she was finishing her coffee and preparing to leave, that she caught sight of a man in his twenties as he emerged from the crowd and crossed in front of the window. With his brow gravely inclined beneath his fedora as if deep in thought, just before he disappeared from view he turned, though still barely raising his head, and seized hold of the door to enter the diner. She watched him climb the steps, and only when he paused to wait at the counter and removed his hat did she recognize the familiar visage of Mr. T. Sullivan, whom she had not seen again since the night he had accosted her.

Matilda lowered her head and turned slightly away from him as she fumbled in her purse for the price of her soup. She meant to remain thus until the man had been ushered safely to his table, but there was some delay in the appearance of the host and for a moment he was left standing alone. She stole a glance at him and was quite sure that he had not noticed her. Finally a waiter emerged from the kitchen, apologized, and conducted him to a table within, which Mr. Sullivan took without once looking in Matilda's direction. In later years she was never able to convincingly explain to herself why it was, as she set her coins upon the table and gathered her things, that she was suddenly possessed of the unshakable resolve to follow him to his table, to re-introduce herself and shake his hand, and to tell him that if he was still in need of services on the terms he had proposed she would be happy to put herself at his disposal.

To be continued.

Miss Eberle and Mr. Sullivan (IV)

Mr. T. Sullivan did not appear at Matilda's next modeling session, nor the one that followed it, and she decided that he probably felt that any further attendance on his part, now that they had been, however fleetingly, introduced socially, would constitute an embarrassment for her, or for him, or for both parties. But his absence must have been due to other reasons, or perhaps he had simply changed his mind, for there he was, the following week, at his usual easel in the back in the room. Though she caught sight of him as soon as she entered the room and climbed onto her stool, she pointedly avoided looking in his direction; not that she ever made eye contact with the students, if she could avoid it. She had to confess that she felt a little more flushed than usual as she disrobed that evening, but she by now regarded herself as an old pro at the business; she drew in a deep breath, lifted her chin, and carried on. Mr. Sullivan did not greet her or otherwise presume upon their fleeting acquaintanceship. Instead he went about his mute labors with the same seriousness as before, barely nodding when the instructor passed behind him and muttered a few words of encouragement or advice. When the hour was up Matilda retired to her changing room, donned her street clothes, and departed exactly as she always did, though she may have walked home a trifle more quickly than was her custom.

For several weeks his attendance was sporadic and unpredictable. At one point she thought that he had gone for good, but he returned again, and for a time appeared more regularly. She wondered -- not that she cared, mind you -- if he showed up more consistently when her fellow models were scheduled to work, for though the school did not officially announce who was slated to appear in advance, it seemed to Matilda that word did somehow seem to get around.

It was not until one evening in early June, when she had almost forgotten Mr. Sullivan entirely and was walking home from a session beneath the gently stirring sweetgum trees that lined Washington Square, that she heard a voice she didn't immediately recognize hailing her by name from behind. She ignored it at first, and quickened her step as unobtrusively as she could, but the voice came again, closer this time, and as she was not absolutely alone -- there were clusters of other pedestrians around her, out taking the air -- she decided that there was no harm in turning to see who it was. When she did so she was surprised -- and not a little aghast -- to see Mr. Sullivan advancing upon her, out of breath and with some apparent urgency. He raised his had and begged her pardon for having followed her, and before she could even acknowledge his apology had begun a nervous and rambling statement of his purpose. He told Matilda that although his own artistic limitations were no doubt mostly to blame, he found himself entirely unable to concentrate on his work in the distracting presence of other students whose devotion to the task lacked, might he say, the essential seriousness that artistic creation required, that the instructor's approach was hidebound and academic and showed no sign of familiarity with the exciting new developments in Europe with which Miss Sullivan was herself no doubt well aware, that the artificial light was harsh and uneven, in short, that he wondered if Matilda was available for private sessions, for which, naturally, she would be paid -- though he was not a man of means, by any measure -- her usual fee, and perhaps a small premium, if, that is, she were willing and felt comfortable with the arrangement --

Here he broke off. He appeared utterly flustered, as if he hadn't fully expected to make it all the way through his declaration and was now at a complete loss as to what to do next. He let his hands dropped to his sides and backed away a half-step, and Matilda thought that he was considering whether to cut his losses and beat a quick retreat before the encounter became even more painfully awkward than it already was. Thoroughly discomposed herself, she at least had the presence of mind to make an outward show of weighing his proposal, though at that moment it seemed to her to be the most appalling suggestion she could possibly imagine. In her confusion she heard herself replying that she would take his proposal under advisement; even as she spoke the words she wondered how she had managed to come up with such an absurd formulation. She blurted a quick good evening, turned away, and resumed her homeward course; to her infinite relief she heard his footsteps promptly departing in another direction.

That night Matilda gave more serious thought to her present position than she had done in some time. She was willing to admit that she had rather enjoyed the dalliance with impropriety in which she had for several months been engaged, and that she had more than once imagined with delight the mixture of horror and secret envy that her activities would provoke should they ever become known to her old schoolmates. But putting herself in the position of being propositioned by unsavory individuals like Mr. Sullivan was, frankly, a little deeper water than she had reckoned on. Perhaps it was time to make for dryer ground, and to abandon her incipient career. A few days later she gave notice at the academy, and by the middle of the month Matilda Eberle was no longer employed on its premises.

To be continued.

Miss Eberle and Mr. Sullivan (III)

Through the rest of the winter and into the spring Matilda modeled at least twice a week. There were classes every weeknight, but she was only one of several young women who alternated at the sessions, in order to provide what the academy described as "practice in capturing the variability of the human form" but which Matilda suspected was merely a ploy to keep the students from losing interest. From the end of March on, however, she was asked back at least three times a week, and on occasion even four, so she gathered that either some of the models had dropped out or her appearances were having a favorable effect on turnout. There was some turnover among the students -- the young women who had attended her first session had long since disappeared, to be replaced by others of their sex -- but several regulars continued to come nearly every week, and with two or three Matilda had developed a nodding, if silent, familiarity, though one that was strictly confined to the premises of the academy.

Her earnings for this activity were not substantial, but supplemented by a few odd jobs they were sufficient to cover her daily expenses, if not her rent, which her father continued to provide. Her parents displayed no curiosity about the source of her income -- like many persons of wealth they had long since lost any idea what it cost ordinary people to live or how difficult work was to come by -- and she didn't trouble to enlighten them. She visited at home once or twice a month for Sunday dinners, and now and then her mother breezed into town and brought her, and Isabel if she was at home, out to tea at a fashionable restaurant on lower Fifth Avenue.

In the evenings, if they had no other plans, Isabel and Friedrich would often invite Matilda out for drinks at one of the busy little cafés on Eighth Street or Bleecker. Neither young woman had acquired much of a taste for liquor -- Matilda's mother, in spite of her reputation for being modern in all things, never touched anything stronger than wine -- but it seemed to amuse Friedrich, who himself drank only beer, to order the latest and most potent novelty cocktails for his companions to sample, and this manner Matilda and Isabel partook of -- or at least sipped at -- a bewildering succession of highballs, manhattans, daiquiris, rickeys, slings, and fizzes, none of which were terribly much to their liking, although they did admire the ones that had pretty colors.

It was on one of these evenings, about ten o'clock, that a man in his middle twenties, exiting the dark recesses of the inner barroom and squeezing by their table, hesitated politely for a moment while Isabel pulled in her chair to allow him passage. As he thanked her Matilda looked up from the other side of the table and happened to catch his eye. For a brief moment she didn't remember where she knew him from, and by the time she did it was too late; she had already smiled and greeted him. He was one of her regulars, a quiet young man who sat in the back and wore a weathered corduroy suit that did not quite fit him and which she suspected had been purchased second-hand. The young man seemed momentarily befuddled, as if he couldn't place her either, or simply from the shock of seeing her in an unfamiliar setting. In a reflex of manners he raised his grey fedora -- that at least seemed new -- smiled, and returned her greeting, and before he had a chance to collect himself and take his leave Friedrich, who was flush with cash that evening and in high spirits, had risen from his chair, extended a hand, and insisted that he join them. He of course declined and began to withdraw, but Friedrich waved away his objections and grabbed another chair with such authority that, short of seeming ungrateful and boorish, retreat would have been impossible. The man reluctantly took the proffered chair and Friedrich at once summoned the waiter. He stood the man a drink and himself one at the same time, and would have replenished the ladies' glasses as well had they not only just barely begun their previous round of cocktails.

As introductions were now inevitable the man said that his name was Sullivan. He had a given name of course, but he had either misplaced it or didn't care for it; on the masthead of the several, mostly insolvent, little magazines with which he was nominally affiliated he was listed only as T. Sullivan. His friends, or better acquaintances as he had no intimate friends to speak of, sometimes called him Sully, but if they were observant they noticed that this made him quietly cross and did not repeat the mistake. He scratched out a living writing articles and reviews, generally of a political or artistic bent; as such work generally paid little -- or sometimes not at all -- he was forced to do a great deal of it, and to supplement his income by selling off review copies, when he had them, on Fourth Avenue. He was soft-featured and slightly built -- noticeably so next to the robust Friedrich -- but Isabel decided that he was not disagreeable to look at and indicated as much with a surreptitious wink to her roommate, though without suspecting the source of their acquaintanceship. She failed to notice that Matilda herself, though maintaining an outwardly pleasant expression, had suddenly become quite tense, and while Friedrich buttonholed the newcomer she was stirring and sipping her drink with an almost physically painful precision.

The man -- Sullivan -- stayed only long enough to finish his drink, them made his excuses, a trifle abruptly, barely making eye contact with Matilda before leaving. Later that evening, after Matilda had revealed to Isabel how she knew him, the pair giggled themselves into exhaustion before retiring to bed.

To be continued.

Miss Eberle and Mr. Sullivan (II)

When the term ended Matilda carried her finished compositions back to her apartment, and as soon as Isabel went out on an errand she opened her portfolio and spread the drawings and her few tentative essays in painting around the rooms, propping them up on chairs and bureaus in order to give the collection a considered look in the afternoon sunlight. She was not impressed. Matilda was not in the habit of harboring false illusions, about herself or about anything else, and in the end it pained her very little to come to the unshakable conclusion that she would never make an artist. Before she had a chance to put her work away Isabel returned; she sized up the situation immediately and silently withdrew to her bedroom. By the time she emerged, her roommate had completely reconciled herself to her failed vocation and announced her firm intention of withdrawing from the school before classes resumed in January. Isabel asked her what she would do and Matilda said that she would have to think.

When she returned home for the holiday break her parents accepted her decision without objection. Her mother seemed to assume that her dropping out would have no bearing on her continued occupancy of her Village apartment, and Matilda, though she did not at bottom doubt her mother's fondness for her, suspected that she considered the stage of her daughter's life in which she lived at home to have come to an end. Matilda decided, on reflection, that this suited her as well, provided that her father continued to pick up the tab for her rent, which he was evidently amenable to doing.

After the New Year she filled a trunk with some additional clothes and a few keepsakes from her old bedroom and returned to the Village. Isabel was thrilled and immediately began to plan outings for the pair in the environs, including some rather seedy districts in which her beau would have to be enlisted as escort. For two weeks Matilda uncomplainingly allowed herself to be squired around town, ranging as far as Staten Island and the Jersey shore on one occasion, but once classes resumed Isabel's days were again largely occupied, and Matilda found herself left to make her own amusement. This was not unpleasant for her -- she had never really been much of a social butterfly -- but after spending the latter part of a rather grim and rainy January window-shopping and walking down cobblestone backstreets she decided that she would need to find an occupation. She did not, in the end, want to be an ongoing burden on her father's finances, though she suspected that the amount he expended on her rent was well within his means.

There were a number of small clothing manufacturers in the neighborhood, most of whom had signs advertising for seamstresses in their windows, but Matilda's mother had not set high store on such homely occupations as sewing, and as a result Matilda's skills in that regard were negligible. After a little looking around she found employment in a little bookshop off Fourth Avenue, but she was evidently ill-suited for this as well, as she had never heard of most of the titles the customers were seeking and could not seem to learn the system -- a rather eccentric and arbitrary one, it seemed to her -- by which the books were shelved. After a week of having to come to her rescue for even the simplest requests, the manager gently sacked her. Isabel told Matilda that Friedrich had offered to find her employment as a waitress in a club whose owner he knew through some connection or other, but she said it in such a way, raising an eyebrow and looking altogether rather doubtful about the matter, that Matilda deduced that even Isabel, who was liberal-minded in most things, thought that the establishment in question was probably not suitable.

Her search for gainful employment frustrated, but unwilling to be idle, Matilda at last hit upon the idea of offering her services to her old school. Isabel had mentioned, without any implied allusion to Matilda's situation, that some of the academy's models had recently departed, but when Matilda applied to the directress she was told quite firmly that there were no positions open. (Only afterwards did it occur to her that the school's reputation might be damaged if word got around that a student -- even a former student -- had disrobed in class.) Undeterred, she located a less fastidious institution, a night school whose sign she had spotted in the window of the upper storey of a building on McDougall, and was instantly accepted.

The students at the academy were mostly men; the handful of women, most of whom Matilda took for recent immigrants, seemed to have enrolled there by mistake. It was quickly evident that the level of instruction was rudimentary -- the sole instructor, though apparently legitimate, seemed quite befuddled about how to go about teaching pupils who demonstrated neither aptitude nor the ability to concentrate on their task -- and that the men had, in fact, come only for the view. Matilda, who might have been offended by the scam, took it with equanimity; she regarded her presence in the studio as a commercial transaction, an exchange from which both parties derived benefit with no apparent harm done to either. She did not, it was true, inform her parents of her modeling activities, but she did not conceal them from Isabel, who, when she was admitted to the secret, seemed filled with newfound admiration for the resourcefulness and daring of her roommate.

It was sleeting and a fierce wind was ricocheting between the rows of low buildings as Matilda arrived at her first evening session. She ascended the stairs and was ushered by a severe, middle-aged matron (whose presence was one of the academy's outward concessions to propriety) into a tiny windowless changing room that served double duty as a supply cabinet. By the light of a single overhead bulb she removed her overcoat and simple blue frock, and donned a rather dingy and threadbare robe that was several sizes too large for her. As soon as she had a chance to compose herself she stepped into the studio. To a man the presumptive artists looked up, lowering their pencils or brushes as they took the newcomer's measure. She was shown to a stool in one corner; the room was a bit drafty but not uncomfortably cool, and as soon as she had a chance to settle herself comfortably the matron give her a silent nod.

Matilda reached up to the collar of the robe and slowly pulled it loose, then straightened her shoulders slightly as it slid to her waist. The room was utterly, uncannily, silent as every pair of eyes was fixed upon her. She felt herself blush furiously and for a moment was certain that she was going to pass out, but after a moment she collected herself and began to breathe again. She folded her hands and shifted her spine, only once, to gain a better perch, and then sat quite still.

Some seconds passed before the men took up their implements again and began their halfhearted efforts at capturing her form. The matron strolled between the rows of easels, silently prompting the laggards with a raised eyebrow if necessary, and after a moment the instructor's voice could be heard mumbling advice to a student in the second row, who made a show of receiving it. The men scratched with their pencils, lifted their gaze, scratched again, all without a word. Matilda found that, after her initial discomposure had passed, she felt quite normal, in fact, that all her task demanded of her was to remain absolutely motionless and empty her thoughts, two things that she was more than usually good at. She didn't steal a look at the faces of the men as they worked, but neither did she cast her eyes downwards. Through a flyspecked window she could see an illuminated clock on the building opposite, and she stared out at it through the flakes of snow that had begun to fall and focused her eyes on the minute hand as it slowly circled the dial.

To be continued.

Miss Eberle and Mr. Sullivan (I)

Matilda Eberle was eighteen years old. She was a little taller than other girls her age and passably pretty, though she was resigned to the idea that she would never be as pretty or as interesting as her mother, who though nearly fifty was said by nearly everyone who met her to be one of the most fascinating women they had ever met.

Matilda's father was in business. She wasn't sure exactly what that entailed -- whether he made things or owned things, or a little of both -- although one of her school chums who possibly was in a position to know had once made an offhand remark that implied that he owned a skyscraper, or perhaps more than one, on lower Broadway. He knew a lot of people, mostly of what seemed to Matilda a fairly dull sort -- bankers, lawyers, people with political connections -- and traveled quite often, ostensibly on business, though when he did so he nearly always called home once a day and spoke to his wife, or to Matilda if her mother was not at home. She had two older brothers, both still bachelors. They worked with their father but lived in an apartment in the city that the family had owned since her father was little. She saw them infrequently and when she did they were pleasant to her but made no effort to include her in their conversation.

Her mother had a reputation as a bit of a rad. She was friendly with artists and theatre people and subscribed to illustrated periodicals that Matilda never saw in any of her friends' homes, though Matilda wasn't sure that she had ever seen her mother read them. She went into town several evenings a week in the company of a variety of acquaintances, both male and female, and Matilda found it frustrating that she was never able to decide which -- if any -- of these might be her mother's lovers. Her father did not seem particularly put out by these comings and goings, and Matilda took this as a sign that he had arrangements of his own. Though her mother's activities never quite crossed the line into outward scandal she made it clear that she considered herself unbound by social convention and free to do as she pleased.

The fiercest term of opprobrium her mother could wield was "stingy"; "thrifty," spoken with a tone of withering sarcasm, was a distant second. She could be quite blunt about declaring to anyone within earshot that she and her family were New Yorkers, citizens of the most modern and sophisticated metropolis in the world, and not a bunch of grim, bottled-up, buttoned-down, penny-pinching New Englanders. (That the family actually resided in a mansion in New Rochelle within sight of the Sound she would have considered one of those petty objections that only the small-minded would raise.) She was adamant in her contempt for half-measures of any kind, whether it involved saving money by buying oysters of inferior quality for a dinner party or diving too tentatively off the dock at the lakefront resort where the family spent part of each summer.

There had been a German governess when Matilda was small, but her mother had found her too stern and after several quarrels had sacked her, and after that Matilda was left ungoverned until it was time for her to be sent to boarding school. She disliked the school but managed to survive it, proving herself at best a middling student, though she demonstrated a modest aptitude for foreign languages which was set down as her governess's one positive legacy. Upon graduation her mother raised the issue of college, but Matilda wasn't interested in becoming a teacher and had no particular desire to spend a further two or four years in the company of young woman of her set. She made a vague comment about possibly taking some art classes -- though her accomplishments in that direction to date were entirely unremarkable -- and her mother characteristically seized upon this, promptly enrolling her in an art academy in Greenwich Village. The idea of commuting having been waved off as impractical, suitable lodgings in the neighborhood were found through some connection of her mother's. She was to share the small but tidy second-floor apartment with another student two years her senior, whose name was Isabel.

To her surprise, she found herself quite liking Isabel, once they became well-acquainted enough to share each other's confidences. Matilda, for her part, had no secrets to speak of to confide, but Isabel, on the other hand, had a beau named Friedrich, and she left little doubt about the nature of their relationship, though her young man was not permitted by the landlord to call on her on the premises. He was said to be some sort of gangster, which if true Matilda regarded as a great disappointment and a poor reflection on the species, since he proved, when she eventually met him, to be outwardly as ordinary as a goldfish, a creature to which he bore as well more than a passing physical resemblance. His income seemed to fluctuate wildly. On some occasions he would be quite out of pocket and Isabel had to content herself with accompanying him for a cocktail or two at a nearby cafe; at other times he would show up flush with cash and had once even whisked her off for a weekend at Niagara Falls, at her suggestion to be sure.

Matilda purchased a smock at a store on West Fourth Street and for three months dutifully attended her lessons, though she considered that she was making scant progress in either the techniques her teachers attempted to impart to her or in discovering her vocation as a creative artist. The academy accepted only female students, mostly of means, and though there seemed at least to be a greater variety of type than she had encountered at boarding school she found that she had little interest in socializing with her fellow pupils. She instead went out evenings with Isabel and Friedrich, if she were invited, and otherwise occupied herself exploring the shops and alleys in the vicinity of Washington Square Park. When all else failed or if it rained she would retreat to the solitude of her room and leaf through magazines.

It was the unstated philosophy of the academy that any previous artistic instruction the students might have was of no value, an assumption that in Matilda's case was not far off the mark. As a consequence the pupils were first taught to copy simple two-dimensional forms in black-and-white, and were gradually exposed to a series of simple and rather generic artworks that they were expected to duplicate before they attempted to draw from life. Matilda's first still-life assignment consisted of a pineapple, which she found very daunting, and a shallow bowl that she made a complete muck of, though her instructress seemed pleased with her progress. For the next several weeks she executed a number of what seemed to her entirely unconvincing drawings, all of which involved a combination of utilitarian household objects and some variety of fruit, though thankfully never again a pineapple. Having almost mastered this process to her satisfaction, she was rather dumbfounded when she came to class one day and found herself presented with a live model, in the person of a comely young woman dressed in a simple white robe, the folds of which Matilda had no end of trouble with.

After an hour or so of this the young woman was allowed a break. When she returned to her stool, at a signal from the instructress she undid the top of the robe and let it drop to her waist, exposing her bare torso beneath. Matilda had not expected this, though she did not find it shocking, as her mother had never shown any particular concern for modesty; in fact she found it a relief to outline the simpler contours of the model's body rather than struggle with the awkward bunching of her robe. After another hour the young woman covered herself and withdrew into an adjoining room. As she did not re-emerge Matilda assumed that she had exited via another door after, presumably, changing into her street clothes.

The model, or another, as it was not always the same young woman, returned every session for two weeks. She would be instructed to assume various poses for the benefit of the class, and Matilda soon learned to sketch her from every conceivable angle, but she never entirely removed her robe. She maintained a uniformly pleasant if distant expression, and Matilda never heard her once speak a syllable. Isabel, who had taken the life drawing course the previous year, at first told Matilda that the models were prostitutes, but later admitted that she had only been teasing and in fact knew nothing about them, though she had heard that they were paid rather well for the sessions and that there was no shortage of prospective models. Most of them appeared to be in their late twenties or even in their thirties, and Matilda wondered if they had jobs or husbands -- she doubted the latter -- and whether their families knew and approved of their unusual line of employment.

To be continued.