Colum McCann: Thirteen Ways of Looking

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

The first is hidden high in a mahogany bookcase. It shows the full expanse of room where he lies sleeping on a queensize bed among a heap of pillows.

The headboard is intricately carved. The bedframe, sleigh-shaped. The duvet, Amish-patterned. An urn sits on the left bedside table, a stack of books on the right. An antique lantern clock with exposed weights and pulleys is hung on the wall near a long silver mirror, freckled and browned with age. Beneath the mirror, tucked in a corner, almost hidden from view, is a small oxygen tank.

Half a dozen pillows are placed in the armchair, away from the bed. Several cushions rest on an oak chair with leather armrests.

The writing table sits near the doorway, with a number of papers neatly towered, a silver letter opener, a seal embosser, an open laptop. There is a pipe on the desk but no tobacco box, matches, or ashtray.

The artwork is contemporary: three urban landscapes, sharp lines and blocks, and a small abstract seascape on the wall by the bathroom door.

Amid it all, he lies lumpen in the bed, a blanket-shape, his head little more than a blur.

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

I was born in the middle of my very first argument. He should rise, find a notebook, scribble the phrase down, but it’s frigid in the room and the heating hasn’t yet kicked on, so he’d rather not move. But at least the sheets are tight and warm. Perhaps Sally came in to re-tuck him, since he seems, now, to remember the journey, or the several journeys, or — more to the point — the endless voyages to the bathroom. I was born in the middle of my last epic voyage. Above him, the ceiling fan turns. The handymen have reversed its usual spin. But how is it that a reverse-spinning fan creates warmth? Something to do with the updraft of air and the way a current flows. If only we could catch the draft, reverse our spin. I was born in the middle of my first jury argument. Strange to rethink the memoirs at this age, but what else is there to do? It was a surprise that the original book didn’t sell well, back in the eighties, nicely published, nicely packaged, nicely edited. All the niceties. Even with a modesty pill he would have thought it would sell a few copies here and there, but it ended up, after three months, on the remainder tables. I was born in the middle of my first public failure. But when was it really, truly? I was born the first time I made love to Eileen. I was born when I touched the hand of my baby son Elliot. I was born when I sat in the cockpit of a Curtiss SOC-3. Oh, bullshit really. Bullshit with two capital L ’s. Truthfully he was born in the middle of that first case when he stood in front of the Brooklyn court, a fresh-plucked assistant DA, and he shaped the words exactly the way he had dreamed, and they entered the air, and he could feel the way they fluttered, and what they did to the faces of all the all-male jury, and what they did, also, to the sympathetic judge who beamed with something akin to pride. A very solid argument, Mr. Mendelssohn. He knew right then he would never turn away. The law was what he was made for. How many eons ago now? He should write it down. But that’s the problem with age, isn’t it? You have the feeling, but not the dates. Find the dates, you lose the feeling.

A pencil and some paper, Sally, my dear, is that too much to ask? I was born in the middle of my very first memory loss. Why, oh, why is there is never any paper by the bedside? Maybe I should use a tape recorder? One of those little digital marvels. Perhaps there’s one on my BlackBerry — it has, after all, everything else. He has taken, recently, to tucking it into his pajama pocket where it remains during the night, the little red light pulsing. A wondrous machine, it brings news of all the latest triumphs and terrors while he dozes and snores. Coups and wars and revolutions and rebellions and other sundry sadnesses all plotting their escape from the comfort of his bed.

Interesting that. They design the pajamas so the pocket sits on the left-hand side, over the heart. Something medical perhaps? A little compartment for the doctor to search. Somewhere to hold the stents and tubes and pills in case of attack. The accoutrements of age. He should ask his old friend Dr. Marion. Why is the pocket over the heart, Jim? Maybe it’s just a tic of fashion. Who in the world invented pockets for pajamas anyway? And for what purpose? A place for a little extra bread or cracker or toast in case we get hungry during the night? A spot for the love letters from long ago? A slipcase for the alter ego, waiting, out there, in the wings?

Oh, the mind is wandering, plotting its escape: out the frosted window and away. And who was it, anyway, invented the cool side of the pillow?

He moves his toes a little in the sheets, rubs them together slowly, lets the warmth crawl up through him. He has never understood the heating systems in New York. All these underground steam pipes and oil trucks and board meetings about boilers, and Nobel-winning engineers, and smarty-pants architects, and global-heating specialists, a veritable brain trust, geniuses every one, and still all you get is a terrible clack clack clack in the morning. Dante in the basement, trying to prime the pipes. Good God, you’d think that in the twenty-first century they’d be able to solve the mystery of the fucking heating, excuse my French, my Polish, my Lithuanian, but no, they can’t, they won’t, never have, possibly never will. They don’t turn the boiler on until five in the morning unless it’s eastern Siberia outside. The building’s superintendent is a chess master, hails from Sarajevo, once played against Spassky, boasts about his brain capacity, says he’s a member of Mensa, but even he can’t get the goddamn heating going?

He grabs the BlackBerry, keys it alive. Twenty-two minutes still before the pipes kick on properly. He is tempted to break his ritual, do an early check of the news and his e-mail, but he slides the BlackBerry back into his pajama pocket. I was born in the middle of my first jury argument and I came out onto Court Street with a spring in my step. Not quite true. There was never much of a spring in my step, even in those days. Always lagging a pace behind. Not quite Joe DiMaggio or Jesse Owens or Wilt Chamberlain or anyone else for that matter. The spring was kept coiled, instead, in the language, the intonation, the shape of his words. He sometimes stayed up all night at the mahogany desk, crafting lines. He had wanted, when younger, to be a writer. The fountain of Helicon. I was born in the middle of my first contradiction. Great arguments had nothing to do with substance. It was all about style. The right word at the right time. All fools know that a touch of fancy language can make any stupidity shine. In court he would study the jury’s faces to see what fine words he might slip under their skin. The grace of an orator and the shape of a snake, said a colleague once, or was it the shape of an orator and the grace of a snake? A compliment anyway. Even a snake has its sibilant slither.

Eileen loved reading his judgments, especially in the later years, after he was promoted to the Kings County Supreme Court, when one newspaper or the other was always out to get him, The Village Voice, The New York Times, that chip-choppity New Amsterdam rag, what was it called? Not the Brooklyn Eagle, that’s dead long ago. They cartooned him once as a praying mantis. He hated the face they gave him, the pouchy cheeks, the spectacles perched on his nose, the little round sling of belly as he chomped away on another praying mantis. Fools. They got it wrong. Only the female eats the male, after a bout of love. Still and all, it was hardly complimentary.