“Or straight into the light. I don’t know which.”
He drummed his fingers. “Well, I’ll find out soon enough. Meanwhile you can get a nice safe job with Bill Baer in the family cigar store.”
Emmeline’s cheeks flared. “That was cruel. Why do you take that cruel tone?”
“Since you’re leaving me—”
“I’ll never leave you,” she said coldly.
Though his mind was made up, Emmeline’s hesitation, her failure to embrace his plan at once, set him wondering, and when a few weeks later he stood beside Rudolf Arling and bent over a great sheet of paper covered with meticulously drawn small strokes of black ink, indicating the structure of the grand ground floor, after which the architect spread out for his inspection an India-ink wash of the building itself, with its prickly roofline of turrets and gables, it struck Martin that she had been right: it was something you might come across in a dream. It was precisely what excited him about the drawing, and about the venture itself. Through the great arch of the entranceway, which rose to the height of two stories, Martin could see shadowy figures standing about, and bending closer he saw or seemed to see, through one of the scores of little windows, a woman’s face. “You appreciate my little joke, then,” Rudolf Arling said, and Martin saw that the architect was watching him closely. The fierce gray eyes had the shimmer of mercury. Martin saw that here and there in the windows of the hotel, little hands were clutching curtains. He had the sense that Arling had imagined, in precise detail, the furnishings of the more than two thousand invisible rooms, including the designs of the brass handles on bureau drawers and the contents of jewelboxes.
From a window in Arling’s small office, crowded with carved parlor stands heaped with statuettes and little ivory animals, there was a view of the East River and part of the Brooklyn tower of the great bridge. The view of the bridge made an impression on Martin, it seemed a secret bond between him and the architect, for hadn’t he as a child looked up at the great tower as the ferry approached the Brooklyn shore? But he was struck still more by the framed engraving that Arling had hung beside the window. The engraving showed a bearded, brooding Washington Roebling seated at his window in Brooklyn Heights with his hands folded tensely on the broad windowsill. Through Roebling’s window was a view of the Manhattan tower of the great bridge, its two Gothic arches crisscrossed by a pattern of cables and suspenders. On the windowsill beyond Roebling’s folded hands stood a pair of large binoculars. On a table beneath the window curtain lay a violin.
“Well I must say,” Margaret Vernon said, frowning down at the fan of cards in her left hand, “I don’t understand why there’s all this talk about going underground when there are already trains in the air and trains on the streets. It makes me wonder what the world is coming to. I think … yes.” She played the ten of diamonds.
“But mother,” Emmeline said, “you’ve always said the El roads were dirty and noisy and scared the horses to death. Your turn, Martin.”
Martin played the queen of diamonds.
“Well I might have known,” Margaret Vernon said, staring forlornly at her hand. She placed the cards face down on the table and heaved a sigh. “Mrs. Wallace told me that when she was a little girl she saw a live coal fall right through the track onto a butcher’s awning. It burned a hole clean through.”
“Well there you are,” said Emmeline. “Lucky it didn’t catch fire.”
“I don’t know whether it caught fire. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it did. Your turn, Caroline. Don’t forget that diamonds are trumps, dear. It’s just like Martin to have a queen of diamonds. Lucky in cards, unlucky in love, my father always used to say. Imagine those poor men working outside in this hot weather. How are things coming along up there?”
“Martin,” Emmeline said, “mother asked you a question.”
“Is it my turn?” Martin asked, looking up in surprise.
One winter day Martin picked Emmeline up at the Vanderlyn after work and took a long ride uptown in a hansom cab. It was already dark, snow glittered under the lamps in Madison Square Park. As a child he had always stopped at the park with his mother, so that the places beyond seemed to him not simply inaccessible but imaginary, like pictures of igloos or cactus flowers. Adulthood therefore was sheer magic: with a wave of the wand you summoned a cab and ventured into the imaginary world. He directed the cabby to go up Fifth Avenue and cut across the Park at Seventy-second Street. On one side the great palaces rose from the shadowy snow like presences glimpsed in mirrors. In the light of a streetlamp a bearded man in a shiny silk hat and a long coat with a black fur collar stood knocking his stick against the side of his snowy shoe. It occurred to Martin that Emmeline must be hungry, that he had forgotten about dinner. They turned into the Park; lights seemed to blink or tremble through faintly shaking black branches. Martin remembered riding in the Park on his wedding day, the purple flower, leafshade rippling on her white dress. On the other side of the Park the cab continued across town and turned up Riverside. Through the trees the river showed white and black: black water, white snow on ice. One by one the mansions behind their walls would melt away, they were nothing but palaces of snow and ice. Through the side window he could see up ahead a faint glow from the building site.
The building had not yet risen above the ground; the hoarding rose higher than Martin’s head. He led Emmeline through a gate behind which a guard with a kerosene lantern sat in a wooden shack. At the edge of the great pit two big arc lights gave off a harsh white light. Below, sharp black shadows lay crisscrossed over a sunken world of steel columns and snowy wooden planks, through which openings gave glimpses of lower depths. Here and there men worked beside glowing lanterns.
Martin led Emmeline along the grassy side of the pit to a place where the columns and floors came up to ground level. He picked up a lantern and stepped out onto the snow-streaked planks. “It’s safe,” he said. “Are you willing?” Holding out the lantern by the handle, he took her hand and led her onto the temporary floor. The floor ended ten feet later; a ladder led down to the next level, which stretched halfway across the excavation. Holding out his lantern, he made his way down. At the bottom he stamped. “It’s safe,” he called up, but Emmeline had already started down. When she stood beside him she looked up and said, “It’s like a canyon.” “A poured concrete canyon,” Martin said, pointing to a half-finished wall behind scaffolding. A face looked down from above. “You want to be careful down there, Mr. Dressler. Slippery as all get-out.” “We’re fine,” Martin called, and gave a wave. At a black opening he shone the lantern at a ladder going down. “I think we’ll be better off down there. Are you game?” He climbed down first, then held the lantern up for Emmeline, startled to see one of her button boots reaching down from shadowy shaking skirts. “Careful,” he called up. At the bottom she stamped snow from her boot and said, “Where now?” The darkness was broken here and there by patches of light from openings in the floor above. Shadowy steel columns rose up before them and in every direction. He led her along, holding up his lantern, past ladders and piles of lumber and a solitary black glove. “This will be the main shopping arcade,” Martin said, “with smaller branches running off. Watch it.” They were nearing an open end of the building. “Look!” cried Emmeline. She stepped to the last column and pointed down to moonlit rockpiles, swept her arm out at the shadowy moon-glittering far wall of the pit. “Come back!” Martin said. She turned and walked with him past dark columns glinting with lantern-light. Martin stopped and held up the lantern to Emmeline’s face. “Well? What do you think?” Her face in the light was so bright it looked wet. “I was right,” she whispered. “I was right, I was right.” He looked at her, not understanding. “What I said that time: it’s something you come across in a dream. It’s a castle in a forest.” He stared at her fiercely; she burst out laughing. “Oh come on,” she cried, “I want to keep going forever. Come on!” Her face was so bright that he had to lower the lantern.