Part 5 (2/2)

In later years, it was the date of the burial, not that of the death, that I marked as an anniversary. I almost always remembered the former, and on May 9 of this year, I was on the 1 train on the way to work when it came to mind that he had been committed to earth for exactly eighteen years. In that time, I had complicated the memory of the day, not with other burials, of which I had attended only a few, but with depictions of burials-El Greco's Burial of the Count of Orgaz Burial of the Count of Orgaz, Courbet's Burial at Ornans Burial at Ornans-so that the actual event had taken on the characteristics of those images, and in doing so had become faint and unreliable. I couldn't be sure of the color of the earth, whether it really was the intense red clay I thought I remembered, or whether I had taken the form of the priest's surplice from El Greco's painting or from Courbet's. What I remembered as long, sorrowful faces might have been round, sorrowful faces. Sometimes, in waking dreams, I imagined my father with coins on his eyes, and a solemn boatman collecting them from him, and granting him pa.s.sage.

THERE WAS A MAN, I REMEMBER, ON THAT DAY OF THE EIGHTEENTH REMEMBER, ON THAT DAY OF THE EIGHTEENTH anniversary, who was moving around the subway cars. He was inspecting the vents above the automatic doors. He wore a dark blue MTA uniform, and carried some sort of counter with him, into which he pressed numbers and which emitted intermittent beeps. I watched him closely, imagining him a spiritual messenger, an angel of some sort, though whether for good or ill, I couldn't tell, and so focused was he on his task that his methodical examination of each vent did nothing to dissuade me from the fanciful ideas working themselves into my head. I looked up at the vents as we hurtled past the uptown stations, 125th, 137th, 145th, I thought of the final terrible moments in the camps, moments that no one has survived to give firsthand testimony of, when the Zyklon B was switched on and all the human captives breathed in their deaths, and how, while all this was happening in the early forties, my oma was on her way north to Berlin as a refugee, bewildered and frightened as everyone around her was. These were the conversations I would have wished to have with her: about the young men in her town who'd marched off to war, and never come back, or those who had come back eventually-like my opa, about whom I had been told almost nothing-or those who'd been rounded up and sent to Mauthausen-Gusen. anniversary, who was moving around the subway cars. He was inspecting the vents above the automatic doors. He wore a dark blue MTA uniform, and carried some sort of counter with him, into which he pressed numbers and which emitted intermittent beeps. I watched him closely, imagining him a spiritual messenger, an angel of some sort, though whether for good or ill, I couldn't tell, and so focused was he on his task that his methodical examination of each vent did nothing to dissuade me from the fanciful ideas working themselves into my head. I looked up at the vents as we hurtled past the uptown stations, 125th, 137th, 145th, I thought of the final terrible moments in the camps, moments that no one has survived to give firsthand testimony of, when the Zyklon B was switched on and all the human captives breathed in their deaths, and how, while all this was happening in the early forties, my oma was on her way north to Berlin as a refugee, bewildered and frightened as everyone around her was. These were the conversations I would have wished to have with her: about the young men in her town who'd marched off to war, and never come back, or those who had come back eventually-like my opa, about whom I had been told almost nothing-or those who'd been rounded up and sent to Mauthausen-Gusen.

At 157th, an Asian girl who had been drowsing suddenly got up, skittish, doelike, and sprang out of the subway car before the doors closed. Someone else came in and, for a brief, startling moment, I thought I recognized one of the boys who had mugged me. But I was mistaken. They had, of course, been floating in and out of my dreams, and the idea, so distasteful to me at the time, that it could have been worse now seemed the most sensible one. But in those dreams, I fought back. I was more badly injured, but I also beat them to the point of bloodiness. One of them fell, and I set on him, punching his face until it became like red paper under my fists, until he lost one of his eyes. When I woke, the pain of hitting him would become congruent with the ache at the back of my left hand.

I left my seat and went to speak with the MTA official as he was about to push open the door connecting our car to the next. He looked like a Guyanese or Trinidadian Indian-there was a touch of African ancestry in him, I guessed-though he could also have been directly from the Indian subcontinent itself. I asked him about his work. He was an air-conditioning specialist, carrying out temperature checks on the cars. He was friendly, and seemed surprised anyone had noticed him at all.

It is amazing, he said, how a little variation, too hot or too cold, can lead to complaints. We have efficient HVAC systems-that stands for heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning-and in the summer, we try to keep things ten to fifteen degrees cooler than it is outside. We are constantly checking them, so it is a big operation. But of course no one notices the temperature unless it becomes uncomfortable, when the nozzles get blocked, or there's a local breakdown in the system. And, he added with a laugh, you don't ever notice your oxygen until it's gone: something goes wrong with the HVAC, even for fifteen minutes, and people are ready to riot.

TWENTY.

I was invited to John Musson's apartment for a party. It was in Was.h.i.+ngton Heights, just a little ways north of the hospital. The apartment overlooked the Hudson, Moji said, when she called me, and had a remarkable view, of water and trees and the George Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge, I simply had to come see it. She did not live with him, having her own apartment in Riverdale in the Bronx, but she spent many nights at his place, she said, and she was co-host of this party. I hadn't seen her since our day out in the park, but she had called me three or four times, and we had had brief, friendly conversations, usually late at night. Once, she had abruptly asked me how my mother was doing. I was silent, then told her that I didn't know, that we weren't in touch. Oh, that's too bad, she said, in a weirdly cheerful tone of voice. I remember meeting her. She was such a nice person. was invited to John Musson's apartment for a party. It was in Was.h.i.+ngton Heights, just a little ways north of the hospital. The apartment overlooked the Hudson, Moji said, when she called me, and had a remarkable view, of water and trees and the George Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge, I simply had to come see it. She did not live with him, having her own apartment in Riverdale in the Bronx, but she spent many nights at his place, she said, and she was co-host of this party. I hadn't seen her since our day out in the park, but she had called me three or four times, and we had had brief, friendly conversations, usually late at night. Once, she had abruptly asked me how my mother was doing. I was silent, then told her that I didn't know, that we weren't in touch. Oh, that's too bad, she said, in a weirdly cheerful tone of voice. I remember meeting her. She was such a nice person.

In the days leading up to the gathering, I suppose I made some effort to edge out of it, but then the date arrived, in the middle of May, and I found that I was without a good excuse and would have to attend. That day, I left work early, around five-thirty. I had time to kill, so instead of taking the subway, I decided to walk. I came around from Harkness to the intersection of Broadway and St. Nicholas, and the streets, as expected at that hour, were invaded in every lane and in both directions by impatient drivers. Mitchel Square Park, where the two main streets crossed, a vantage point of less than an acre, was dominated by a gently rising rock outcrop, from which one could read the overlay of buildings that had brought the medical campus to its current form. The new constructions not only sat close to the older buildings but were in many cases grafted right into them, s.h.i.+ny and strange as prosthetic limbs. Milstein, the central hospital building, was an amalgam of Victorian stone and a recent triangular frontage of gla.s.s and steel that gave it the aspect of a glittering pyramid in a dour and stately setting.

Such juxtapositions were common to the many buildings around, and the same layering extended to their names, which recounted the history of inst.i.tutions that had begun as civic establishments and gradually become dependent on philanthropic and corporate benefactors. In the ornately carved stone lintel of one of the older buildings were the words BABIES AND CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL 1887; BABIES AND CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL 1887; next door to it, in modern sans-serif font and glossy blue paint, was next door to it, in modern sans-serif font and glossy blue paint, was MORGAN STANLEY CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL MORGAN STANLEY CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL. From Mitchel Square Park-dedicated to veterans of the First World War and named for a New York City mayor who had died in the war-I could see the Mary Woodard Lasker Biomedical Research Building, the Irving Cancer Research Center, the Sloane Hospital for Women, and the Russ Berrie Medical Science Pavilion. Parked in front of the Children's Hospital was yet another donation, an ambulance of the FDNY Fire Family Transportation Foundation. Some of these were older, many were recent endowments, but all established the powerful link between modern medical care and memorials on the one hand, and memorials and money on the other. A hospital is not a neutral s.p.a.ce, it is not a purely scientific s.p.a.ce, nor is it the religious one it had been in medieval times; the reality now involves commerce, and the direct correlation between donating large sums of money and having a building named in memoriam. Names matter. Everything has a name.

On the great rock of the square, some boys were playing on skateboards, negotiating the gentle but craggy gradient up and down, and laughing. I read the plaque at the 166th Street entrance memorializing Mitchel. He had been the city's youngest mayor when he was elected to office at the age of thirty-four, at the beginning of the war, and his death in Louisiana four years later, while he was flying with the Army Aviation Corps, had occasioned a great outpouring of public grief. As I read the plaque, musing on the strange middle name Purroy, a man in a large Yankees jacket came into the park. He stood next to me, and asked for two dollars for the bus, but I refused him wordlessly, and went back out to Broadway. Just north of the park, beyond the bronze and granite World War I memorial, its three heroes arrested forever in battle-one standing, one kneeling, the third slumped in mortal injury-the temper of the neighborhood changed, and the hospital campus, as though the past had suddenly transformed into the present, gave way to the barrio.

Almost immediately, there were fewer of the white medical professionals who had been milling about the entrance to Milstein, and the streets were full now of Dominican and other Latin-American shoppers, workers, and residents. Someone coming toward me waved, exuberant. It was a tall, middle-aged woman with an infant, but I didn't recognize the face. Mary, it's Mary, she said. I worked with the old fellow, you remember? She shook her head with the surprise of having seen me. I reminded her of my name. And it was indeed her; she lived up in Was.h.i.+ngton Heights now, and was going to begin a nursing program at Columbia once her little boy went to day care. I congratulated her, and felt in myself an amazement at how quickly life went through its paces. We spoke a little about Professor Saito. The old man was good, you know, she said. He always enjoyed your visits so much, I don't know if he told you. It was difficult to see him go like that, to see him have it so difficult at the end. I thanked her for having taken care of him. Her baby started crying, and we bid each other goodbye.

From the intersection of 172nd Street, the George Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge came into view for the first time, its lights soft yellow points in the gray distance. I walked past small shops selling knickknacks, the sprawling window display of El Mundo Department Store, and the perpetually popular restaurant El Malecon, to which I occasionally came for dinner. Across the street from El Malecon was a ma.s.sive and architecturally bizarre building. It had been built in 1930, and was known back then as the Loews 175th Street Theatre. Designed by Thomas W. Lamb, it was filled with glamorous detail-chandeliers, red carpeting, a profusion of architectural ornament within and without-and the terra-cotta elements on the facade drew from Egyptian, Moorish, Persian, and Art Deco styles. Lamb's stated aim was to cast a spell of the mysterious on the ”occidental mind,” with the use of ”exotic ornaments, colors, and schemes.”

Now the building had a marquee sign, with white letters on a black background, that read: COME ON IN OR SMILE AS YOU Pa.s.s COME ON IN OR SMILE AS YOU Pa.s.s. It had become a church, but the gilded-age excess remained. This religious function had begun in 1969, and the theater, renamed the United Palace, still hosted several congregations. The best-known and longest-running of them was the one shepherded by the Right Reverend Frederick Eikerenkoetter. Reverend Ike, as he was popularly known, preached prosperity and lived in the princely manner befitting, in his view, a faithful servant of G.o.d's word. Parked in front of the church, and weirdly congruent with its false a.s.syrian battlements and decontextualized pomp, was his green Rolls-Royce, one of several luxury cars he owned. His church, the United Church Science of Living Inst.i.tute, once numbered in the tens of thousands. It was spa.r.s.er now. But, still, the people gave freely, as they had done since the sixties.

The theater, America's third largest when it was built, seating over three thousand, had hosted films as well as vaudeville shows in its earlier incarnation. Al Jolson had played there, as had Lucille Ball, and back then it had been surrounded by expensive restaurants and luxury goods shops. Now, from the doorway of El Malecon, in the waning light of a Friday evening, it looked quiet. The jumble of architectural styles failed, more than seventy-five years on, to resolve themselves into anything meaningful. Even in its best days, it must have looked alien in the environment. It looked more so now, still reasonably well maintained, but utterly out of place, its architecture a world away from that of the small shops, its grand columns and arches irrelevant to the fatigued immigrants who rarely raised their heads to look above street level. The spell had faded.

The door of a parked minivan opened. A young boy stuck his head out, and vomited into the gutter, and from within the minivan, the rea.s.suring voice of a woman spoke to him. The boy vomited again, then he looked up, with a cherubic expression, and caught my eye. I walked on, farther up Broadway, drawn, it seemed, into the fast-changing face of the neighborhood. There was another ornate building at the 181st Street corner. And here was the old compet.i.tor to the Loews 175th Street Theatre, the Coliseum, which, in its own time, before the Loews was built, was the third largest theater in the country. A brief and sad claim to fame: to have once been the third largest. Now, greatly altered, it had become the New Coliseum Theatre, and it shared s.p.a.ce with a large pharmacy and a hodgepodge of other storefronts; only above its first floor were there hints of the 1920s architecture.

I turned left at 181st, and walked down to Fort Was.h.i.+ngton, past the A train station and the Fort Was.h.i.+ngton Collegiate Church, and then to Pinehurst, which was connected to 181st not directly but by a long and narrow flight of stairs rising into a small wooded tangle that opened out into the street proper. The stairs, vertiginous and reminiscent of the much longer stairs leading up to Sacre-Coeur in Montmartre, were in the shade of trees, fringed on both sides with dense, weed-choked plots, and bifurcated by a double rank of iron railings in a manner that evoked a funicular railway; I half-expected a tramcar to come chugging down the left side while I walked up the right. The stairs brought me out into the dead end of Pinehurst, a different world from the busy street life a few dozen yards below: residential buildings, a richer, whiter neighborhood. And so I proceeded among the whites, entering their quieter street life, feeling for minutes that I was the only person walking around a depopulated world, and rea.s.sured only by occasional signs of life: an old lady at the end of the block carrying a bag of groceries, a pair of neighbors in conversation in front of an apartment building, and the appearance, one after the other, of glimmering lights from within the windows of lovely brick houses set back from the street. To my right was Bennett Park, still and silent, animated only by the occasional fluttering of the American flag and the black POW flag hoisted below it. Pinehurst ended at 187th, and that brought me around to Cabrini, which ran alongside the river.

Following Cabrini a few hundred yards farther, to its farthest extent, would have brought me to Fort Tryon Park, in which was nestled, like a jewel in velvet, the Cloisters museum. I remembered my last visit to the museum, when I had come with my friend. We'd stood in the walled garden, which overlooks the Hudson. There was a large espaliered pear tree, shaped into a kind of green candelabrum against the stone wall, its branches, ramified like those on the Tree of Jesse, had been forced through the years by the attentions of gardeners into right angles and a single, two-dimensional plane. At my feet were the various herbs typical to a monastery plot-marjoram, parsley, marshmallow, garden sorrel, leek, red valerian, sage. They grew freely, thriving so well that we talked about how wonderful it would be to have a kitchen garden identical to this one.

I remember how, on that day, I knelt down close to the herb plot and inhaled its thin fragrance. The plot contained soapwort and liverwort, herbs that had been given their names by the old wisdom of simpling, or sympathetic herbal medicine, a quasi-mystical art by which the medicinal properties of plants were related to their physical appearance. Liverwort was thought to be good for liver ailments because its leaves evoked the shapes of the lobes of the liver; lungwort, likewise, was good for breathing complaints because its leaf was shaped like a lung; and soapwort was valued for its dermatological uses. This is where the search for meaning had led our medieval ancestors: to the certainty that G.o.d, who made all of creation, had scattered clues to the useful functions of created things in those things, and that only a little vigilance was necessary to decode those clues. Simpling was but the most basic of this kind of learning; the search for Signs, as undertaken by the sixteenth-century German humanist Paracelsus, was a further extension of the same idea.

For Paracelsus, the light of nature functioned intuitively, but it was also sharpened by experience. Properly read, it informed us what the inner reality of a thing was by means of its form, so that the appearance of a man gave some valid reflection of the person he really was. The inner reality is, indeed, so profound that, for Paracelsus, it cannot help but be expressed in the external form. On the other hand, as in the case of artists, unless the work of art addressed the question of an inner life, its external Signs would be empty. And so, Paracelsus developed a fourfold theory around how the light of nature is manifest in individual men: through the limbs, through the head and face, through the form of the body as a whole, and through bearing, or the way a man carries himself.

We are familiar with this theory of Signs in the debased forms of phrenology, eugenics, and racism. However, this sensitivity to the play between inner spirit and outer substance also underpinned the success of many of the artists of Paracelsus's time, not least the wood sculptors of southern Germany. By showing an extreme attentiveness to the properties of wood, and to how those properties might be translated into sculptural character, they created enduring works of art, precisely of the kind that lined the rooms and halls of the Cloisters. Riemenschneider, Stoss, Leinberger, and Erhat brought a complicated material knowledge of lindenwood to bear on their carving of it, and their attempts to marry the spirit of the material with its visible form, craftlike though it is, is after all not so different from the diagnostic struggle that doctors are engaged in. This is particularly true in the case of those of us who are psychiatrists, who attempt to use external Signs as clues to internal realities, even when the relations.h.i.+p between the two is not at all clear. So modest is our success at this task that it is easy to believe our branch of medicine is as primitive now as was surgery in Paracelsus's time.

On that day, with these thoughts of Signs and simpling in mind, I had tried to give my friend an account of my evolving view of psychiatric practice. I told him that I viewed each patient as a dark room, and that, going into that room, in a session with the patient, I considered it essential to be slow and deliberate. Doing no harm, the most ancient of medical tenets, was on my mind all the time. There is more light to work with in externally visible illnesses; the Signs are more forcefully expressed, and therefore harder to miss. For the troubles of the mind, diagnosis is a trickier art, because even the strongest symptoms are sometimes not visible. It is especially elusive because the source of our information about the mind is itself the mind, and the mind is able to deceive itself. As physicians, I said to my friend, we depend, to a much greater degree than is the case with nonmental conditions, on what the patient tells us. But what are we to do when the lens through which the symptoms are viewed is often, itself, symptomatic: the mind is opaque to itself, and it's hard to tell where, precisely, these areas of opacity are. Ophthalmic science describes an area at the back of the bulb of the eye, the optic disk, where the million or so ganglia of the optic nerve exit the eye. It is precisely there, where too many of the neurons a.s.sociated with vision are cl.u.s.tered, that the vision goes dead. For so long, I recall explaining to my friend that day, I have felt that most of the work of psychiatrists in particular, and mental health professionals in general, was a blind spot so broad that it had taken over most of the eye. What we knew, I said to him, was so much less than what remained in darkness, and in this great limitation lay the appeal and frustration of the profession.

I FOUND THE RIGHT BUILDING, AND FOUND THE RIGHT BUILDING, AND J JOHN SPOKE TO ME ON THE intercom, and let me in. I took the elevator up to the twenty-ninth floor. He was at the door, wearing an ap.r.o.n. Come on in, he said, it's nice to meet you in person finally. There were quite a few people there already. John was a hedge fund trader, quite wealthy already, to judge from the house, which was s.p.a.cious and rather richly decorated with mid-century modern furniture, an a.s.sortment of kilim rugs, and a Fazioli grand piano. I estimated he was about fifteen years older than Moji was. There was something forced in his gregariousness, and the ruddy pink cheeks and salt and pepper goatee did not appeal to me. Moji came up to me, and we embraced. What's with the bandage? she said. You've taken up boxing or what? I mumbled something about slipping on a threshold, but she had already gone into the kitchen. From there she called out, asking what I wanted to drink. I shouted an answer, unsure of what it was even before the echo of my voice faded, as my mind was still on how beautiful she looked, how desirable and, of course, unavailable. intercom, and let me in. I took the elevator up to the twenty-ninth floor. He was at the door, wearing an ap.r.o.n. Come on in, he said, it's nice to meet you in person finally. There were quite a few people there already. John was a hedge fund trader, quite wealthy already, to judge from the house, which was s.p.a.cious and rather richly decorated with mid-century modern furniture, an a.s.sortment of kilim rugs, and a Fazioli grand piano. I estimated he was about fifteen years older than Moji was. There was something forced in his gregariousness, and the ruddy pink cheeks and salt and pepper goatee did not appeal to me. Moji came up to me, and we embraced. What's with the bandage? she said. You've taken up boxing or what? I mumbled something about slipping on a threshold, but she had already gone into the kitchen. From there she called out, asking what I wanted to drink. I shouted an answer, unsure of what it was even before the echo of my voice faded, as my mind was still on how beautiful she looked, how desirable and, of course, unavailable.

BY ABOUT 2:00 A.M., MANY PEOPLE HAD LEFT, AND THE PARTY quieted down. Someone replaced the electronic dance music that had been playing on the stereo with a recording of Sarah Vaughan with strings. The dozen or so guests that remained were all sprawled on the sofas. A few were smoking cigars; the smell was pleasant, seductive, a baritone fragrance that evoked feelings of equanimity in me. One couple slept in each other's arms, and a girl with heavy black eye shadow was curled up on the carpet near them. Moji and John were deep in conversation with an Italian physicist. He was from Turin. His wife, a woman from Cleveland, whom I had met earlier, was also a physicist. There had been something about both her delayed reaction in conversation and the slightly odd way she spoke that had made me wonder if she was deaf. Naturally, it wasn't possible to ask, and I let the matter slide. I had spoken to her and her husband for a while. She'd been happy to get into a discussion about Italo Calvino and Primo Levi with me; he'd seemed bored and, on the pretext of going to refill his drink, had drifted away. quieted down. Someone replaced the electronic dance music that had been playing on the stereo with a recording of Sarah Vaughan with strings. The dozen or so guests that remained were all sprawled on the sofas. A few were smoking cigars; the smell was pleasant, seductive, a baritone fragrance that evoked feelings of equanimity in me. One couple slept in each other's arms, and a girl with heavy black eye shadow was curled up on the carpet near them. Moji and John were deep in conversation with an Italian physicist. He was from Turin. His wife, a woman from Cleveland, whom I had met earlier, was also a physicist. There had been something about both her delayed reaction in conversation and the slightly odd way she spoke that had made me wonder if she was deaf. Naturally, it wasn't possible to ask, and I let the matter slide. I had spoken to her and her husband for a while. She'd been happy to get into a discussion about Italo Calvino and Primo Levi with me; he'd seemed bored and, on the pretext of going to refill his drink, had drifted away.

I stepped out onto the terrace, which I had been wanting to do all evening: the view was a marvel, as Moji had promised. It wrapped around the apartment on two sides and, from up there on the twenty-ninth floor, I could take in, in a single glance, the dwellings of millions. The way the tiny lights winked across the miles of air made me think of all the computers in all those homes, most of them sleeping now, with their single lights silently toggling between on and off. I was on my third gla.s.s of champagne. The day felt far away, and my spirit was soothed. There was, too, the pleasant sensation of flirting with Moji, not with any expectation, but for the pleasure of it. And I noticed, this time, less tension, less conflict, in my interaction with her. I was glad I had come.

The gla.s.s door clicked open behind me, and John came out onto the balcony. He also had a full champagne gla.s.s in his hand. His cheeks were flushed with drink. I complimented him on his generosity, and on his beautiful apartment. There was a row of bonsai trees, maybe a dozen plants in all, along the plate-gla.s.s window in the living room. They could not have been more different from ordinary houseplants. Each bonsai tree, stocky, ancient, and gnarled, had been growing since before we were born, and each had within its trunk and roots the genetic secrets that would ensure that it would outlive us all. I had been admiring them earlier, I told him. He asked me if I had noticed the one tagged Acer palmatum Acer palmatum. That little baby is a hundred and forty-five years old, he said. Some call it the j.a.panese maple, and it can grow, I don't know, seventy feet, eighty feet. But this game is not about size now, is it? Did you notice how its leaves are like those of the marijuana plant? He chuckled. I was put off, but even he couldn't spoil my mood.

AFTER I I LEFT LEFT J JOHN'S PLACE, I STOPPED BY A DINER AT 181ST AND STOPPED BY A DINER AT 181ST AND Cabrini for a coffee. I drank it quickly, then walked farther down Cabrini to 179th, and negotiated my way around to the George Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge. I wanted to see, closer at hand, the sun rising over the Hudson. The city was still asleep. In the diner, I had seen one man with a tattoo that covered most of his arm resting his head on his knuckles. When I came out, I saw another man, Dominican or Puerto Rican, in a parked car, who was either asleep or staring blankly at the GPS device in front of him. The reflection of the sun turned half of the winds.h.i.+eld into a bright metallic field. When I got on the pedestrian walkway on the Fort Leebound side of the bridge, I saw, ahead of me and on the other side of the median, a stalled, maroon-colored car. It was one of the large American models from the late eighties, possibly a Lincoln Town Car, and it had plowed into a guardrail. The accident must have happened not more than fifteen or twenty minutes before I got there; the fire truck and police cars were just arriving. They pulled up in silence, cl.u.s.tering along the length of the bridge; there was almost no traffic, and they hadn't needed their sirens. I could see that both of the car's front doors were open, and that the windows had been smashed. The front end of the car was crumpled, and there was gla.s.s on the road, and blood as well, pooled on the pavement like an oil leak. I walked a few yards more, and could now see the car from the east. Cabrini for a coffee. I drank it quickly, then walked farther down Cabrini to 179th, and negotiated my way around to the George Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge. I wanted to see, closer at hand, the sun rising over the Hudson. The city was still asleep. In the diner, I had seen one man with a tattoo that covered most of his arm resting his head on his knuckles. When I came out, I saw another man, Dominican or Puerto Rican, in a parked car, who was either asleep or staring blankly at the GPS device in front of him. The reflection of the sun turned half of the winds.h.i.+eld into a bright metallic field. When I got on the pedestrian walkway on the Fort Leebound side of the bridge, I saw, ahead of me and on the other side of the median, a stalled, maroon-colored car. It was one of the large American models from the late eighties, possibly a Lincoln Town Car, and it had plowed into a guardrail. The accident must have happened not more than fifteen or twenty minutes before I got there; the fire truck and police cars were just arriving. They pulled up in silence, cl.u.s.tering along the length of the bridge; there was almost no traffic, and they hadn't needed their sirens. I could see that both of the car's front doors were open, and that the windows had been smashed. The front end of the car was crumpled, and there was gla.s.s on the road, and blood as well, pooled on the pavement like an oil leak. I walked a few yards more, and could now see the car from the east.

On the concrete ledge near the car, with the rising sun gliding up the sky behind them, sat a couple. They were silent, bewildered, taking in the bad dream of a Sat.u.r.day morning. From the distance, they looked Filipino, or perhaps Central American. As I walked onto the overpa.s.s, the firemen had just reached them, all business. The bright red of the fire truck was like a gash across the empty road. Where could all the blood near the car have come from? The man and woman both had leg injuries but didn't seem to be bleeding profusely. It was surreal, as surreal, in my memory of it now, as anything I had ever seen. This vision of needless suffering colored what else I saw of the sunrise, the river, and the quiet morning roads in the hour that followed, when, coming down from the bridge, I walked down Fort Was.h.i.+ngton until it met 168th Street, at the medical campus, and from there walked on Broadway, through the littered, sleeping barrio, all the way down, through Harlem, then on to Amsterdam and Columbia University's quiet campus. I saw my neighbor Seth-it had been months, I don't think I had seen him once since he'd told me of his wife's death-and I stopped to greet him. He was, with the building superintendent's a.s.sistance, dragging the second of two large mattresses out to the front of the building. Have to buy new ones, he said. He appeared to be reading something on the surface of the mattress, which had been propped up against the front of the building. Then he turned around and, by way of explanation, said, These ones have been invaded by bedbugs.

Seth asked if I had seen any sign of them in my own apartment, and I said I hadn't. But then I remembered that, before he left about two weeks earlier, my friend had mentioned trying to rid his place of them. His tenure application at Columbia had been unsuccessful, and he had left New York, bedbugs and all, for a teaching position at the University of Chicago. Much to my surprise, the new girlfriend, Lise-Anne, had gone with him. And it was at that particular moment, speaking with Seth in the front of the infected mattresses, that I had an inkling of how acutely I would feel the absence of my friend.

EACH PERSON MUST, ON SOME LEVEL, TAKE HIMSELF AS THE CALIBRATION point for normalcy, must a.s.sume that the room of his own mind is not, cannot be, entirely opaque to him. Perhaps this is what we mean by sanity: that, whatever our self-admitted eccentricities might be, we are not the villains of our own stories. In fact, it is quite the contrary: we play, and only play, the hero, and in the swirl of other people's stories, insofar as t

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