Colum McCann - Thirteen Ways of Looking

Dark it is too. For this time of day. But onwards, let’s go.

A chill at the neck. Didn’t even button up my coat properly. Spent so long inside sliding my arms into the sleeves, they must have felt they were getting me in a straitjacket. Still, they were happy, all of them. Left a ten-dollar bill for a sulky Dandinho, and gave Rosita thirty percent, why not, she deserves a thing or two beyond the blue mark on her wrist.

A beauty.

Reminded me somewhat.

As all beauty does.

He balances precariously against the wall of the foyer, shifts the collar and lifts the scarf out and over his mouth. An impromptu balaclava.

Here, Eileen, come take my hand and step me out onto Madison. Many days we walked here together, though I remember you in sunshine, you wore a pale sundress and a simple pearl necklace, though the truth is we probably remember things as more beautiful than they actually were. The years put a few pounds on her in the end, and she walked with a bit of a lopsided limp. The folds and the creases and the humps at the hip. Cruel, the way God plays it. The more we know of time, the less we have of it. The less we have, the more we want. The scales of justice. If there is such a word. I was born in the middle of something or other.

On now. Soldier forth.

Sally too.

Out into the hard bite of snow, one step, two. An immediate chill against the high of his cheeks. He closes his eyes and tries to shake the burn away. The shock of it. The wind and the storm wrapping itself around him. He stops to adjust the precarious leftovers. How quickly we step from one state to the other. Can’t be much beyond two o’clock and it’s already pitch-black. The dark rises from the ground and wings itself up.

— Elliot Mendelssohn.

Yes. No. Of course not. Question or statement? Who’s to hear a thing when the goddamn car horns are going and the wind is howling and your scarf is up around your ears and the city is in uproar and there’s still a symphony in your head from the restaurant, it’s simply impossible to hear anything at all, but was that my name? Am I my son? Surely not. Not in this lifetime at least. The voice seems to come from behind and he turns to look over his shoulder, his tongue flickering against the wool scarf. Am I the son of my son? A better question. Though not one I’d like to answer right now.

Get me out of this storm, please. Good God, it’s cold, and the snow stings and I can hardly see a thing, but there’s no voice from behind at all, just the orange light of Chialli’s catching the snowflakes and the footprints of others who have gone on before me.

Should have called Sally.

He turns slowly and the tip of the walking stick crunches in the soft snow. He slides his right foot around and follows, inch by inch, with the left, careful now, no handles along Madison, more’s the pity, two glasses of Sancerre rolling through me, and who is this spectacle striding up to me now, deep brown eyes behind spectacles and a little spray of grayish hair from the baseball cap, who, leaning forward, a shade this side of homeless, maybe looking for a few shekels, though something vaguely familiar about him, who, and why in the world do his eyes have that shine, where is that coming from, how many faces have I seen like his, they were out there in Brooklyn for so many years, the hustlers the haters the barkers the bakers the shoeshine boys the two-bit conmen from every corner of the globe, but he knows my name, or my son’s name at least, and maybe something has happened to Elliot, he might have slipped in the snow, hurt his back, or landed soft on his wallet, who knows, he didn’t, after all, pay for lunch.

A twitch in the man’s face like he’s been carrying something and just let it drop, and then picked it up again and there again, someone’s lived in that face a long hard time, I can recognize, that, and what is it I can do for you, young man, though he is not young at all, maybe forty, fifty, who can tell anymore?

No more than three steps away and something indeed has got the man’s goose or his gander or his goat or whatever they call it. Hat pulled down just a little bit farther and I can’t even see the shape of his eyes anymore. Mouth in a snarl, but something gentle, too, about that face, a chub to it — is that Tony? — it looks like Tony, off the door, what in the world did I do wrong with Tony, my stupidities, my Kan, my Kant — what is wrong with you, Tony? — did something happen to Sally perchance, has she sent you out in the snow to rescue me, Saint Bernard, where’s your brandy, I thought about that just a moment ago, and why in the world are you striding up to me so fast, Tony, without your doorman clothes, without your gloves even, and your knuckles shiny brown, I have never seen you in your street clothes, did I not tip you enough at holiday time, did I say something errant a little while ago, one of my silly phrases, there are many, my head is an avalanche, and still he keeps coming, his shoulders rolling around in his dark jacket, he’s small and he’s boxy, an odd look for Tony—

Once, long ago, I skated on a frozen lake with knifeblades attached to the bottom of my shoes—

A single step away, but maybe that’s not Tony at all, is it, not enough of the chub, and a bit on the short side, muttering something in Spanish now about my father, or his father, or someone’s father, what in the world has gotten into the man, someone help me, now, what’s he saying, the snow blowing hard around us, a cyclorama, and it’s impossible to hear what the man is shouting, spittle coming from his mouth, his own little snowstorm, rapidfire, how many words do they have for it, leaning forward, oh the hat on my head shifting, but what is that you’re saying, man, I can’t hear a word in the thunderous roar, calm yourself down, hold on one second, you don’t look a bit like Tony at all, who are you, where are you from, where have I seen you before, and oh the leftovers are shifting that’s my son’s name you’re shouting my treacherous son you are unaproned and oh all over the street that white coming down not even the snow can stand up straight and oh—

The canal was easily the best place to cannonball.

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

If it had been another day — without the snow, the wind, the early dark — they would have seen him fall like a character out of an old epic, all hat and history.

It would have been captured from the traffic-cam atop the ornate limbs of the lightpole on Eighty-sixth Street. Even in a low-definition download, he would have emerged from the restaurant, his scarf looped around his neck, and the hat perched rakishly. He would have stopped to adjust his overcoat and then he would have stepped forward on his walking stick. In the picture he would have accepted the punch and he would have stood stockstill a moment, as if registering its seismic quality. The blow would have landed in the middle of his chest. The knees of his trousers would have started to accordion, his legs would have pleated and the lower scaffold of his body would have begun to totter as if on delay. It would have taken a second or two for the puppetry to achieve full motion: the swoon, the dip, the crumble. His body would resign and he would keel over, all eighty-two years of him, disintegrating downward. They would see the ancient Homburg staying on his head for most of the fall, defying physics, the bag of leftovers from his lunch leaving his grip almost immediately, opening with a thump against the ground, the same time as his head cracks off the pavement. It would capture, too, the shape of the assailant standing on the street having just delivered the punch, momentarily frozen in place, unsure of what has happened in front of his eyes, looking down at his fist, then stuffing his hand into the pocket of his puffy jacket, walking quickly ten steps north, confused, then furtive, pulling the brim of his hat down farther, stepping into a shadowed entrance, opening the heavy metal door. A slice of anonymity dissolving into a further anonymity. The street would be quiet for just a moment, and then the busboy and the manager and the waitress would appear over the prone body on the street, and baby carriages would move along the avenue — more of them of course, if there had been no snow, no wind, no dark — and there could, then, have been eyewitnesses from the neighboring shops or from passersby to attest to the man stepping in and out of the entrance.