To Paradise

V

The six days until his next class passed even more slowly than usual, and the following Wednesday he arrived so early in anticipation that he determined to take a walk in order to calm himself and use up some time.

The institute was in a large, square building, simple but well-maintained, on the corner of West Twelfth and Greenwich Streets—a location that had become less salubrious over the decades with the arrival, three blocks north and one block west, of the city’s brothel quarters. Every few years, the school’s trustees would debate whether or not they might relocate, but they always chose in the end to remain, for it was the nature of the city that apparent opposites—the rich and the poor, the well-established and the newly arrived, the innocent and the criminal—should have to live in close proximity, as there was simply not enough territory available to make natural divisions otherwise possible. He walked south to Perry Street and then west and north on Washington Street, but after he completed the circuit twice, it was too cold even for him, and he was forced to stop, breathing on his hands and returning to the hansom to retrieve the package he’d brought.

For months now, he had been promising the children that he would let them draw something unusual, but he had been aware, as he handed the object over to Jane earlier that day to wrap in paper and twine, that he was also hoping that Edward Bishop might see him carrying such an unwieldy, odd thing in his arms and might be intrigued, might even stay to watch him unveil it, might be filled with awe. He was not proud of this, of course, or of the excitement he felt as he walked down the hall to his classroom: He was aware of his breath quickening, of his heart in his chest.

But when he opened the door to his classroom, there was nothing—no music, no young man, no enchantment—only his students, playing and scuffling and shouting at one another, then noticing him and shoving one another into silence.

“Good afternoon, children,” he said, recovering himself. “Where is your music teacher?”

“He’s coming on Thursdays now, sir,” he heard one of the boys say.

“Ah,” he said, and was aware of both his disappointment, an iron chain around his neck, and of his shame for it.

“What’s in the package, sir?” asked another student, and he realized he was still leaning against the door, his numb hands gripping the object nestled in his arms. Suddenly it seemed foolish, a farce, but it was the only thing he had brought for them to sketch, and there was nothing else in the room with which to compose a tableau, and so he took it to the desk at the front of the class and unwrapped it, carefully, to reveal the statue, a plaster copy of a Roman marble torso. His grandfather possessed the original, bought when he was on his Grand Tour, and had had it copied when David was first learning to draw. It was of no real monetary value, but he had revisited it many times over the twenty-odd years he had owned it, and well before he saw another man’s chest, the sculpture had taught him all he knew about anatomy, about the way muscle lay over bone, and skin over muscle, the single, womanly crease that appeared in the side of the abdomen when you bent in one direction, the two downward strokes, like arrows, that pointed toward the groin.

At least the children were interested, impressed even, and as he positioned it on the stool, he told them about Roman statuary, and how the greatest expression of an artist’s skill was in the rendering of the human form. As he watched them draw, looking down at their paper and then up at the statue in brief, darting glances, he thought of how John considered his teaching foolish: “Why would you educate them in something that will be no part of their adult lives?” he had wondered. John was not the only one to think this—even Grandfather, for all his indulgence of him, thought this pastime peculiar, if not cruel, exposing children to hobbies and interests that they would likely never have time, much less money, to pursue. But David maintained otherwise: He was teaching them something that you needed only a scrap of paper and a bit of ink or a stub of lead to enjoy; and besides, he told Grandfather, if you had servants who understood art better, who knew its value and worth, perhaps they would be more careful, more appreciative, of the artwork in the houses that they cleaned and tended, to which his grandfather—who had seen several of his objects inadvertently destroyed over the years by clumsy maids and footmen—had had to laugh, and admit that he could be correct.

That night, after sitting with Grandfather, he returned to his room and thought of how earlier, as he sat at the back of the classroom and drew along with his students, he had imagined Edward Bishop, not the plaster bust, perched on the stool, and he had dropped his pencil and then had made himself walk among the children, examining their attempts, in order to distract himself.

The next day was Thursday, and he was trying to invent a reason to once again visit the school when he received word that Frances needed to see him to review a discrepancy in the ledgers relating to the Binghams’ foundation, which funded all of their various projects. He of course had no excuse for not being available, and he knew Frances knew this as well, and so he was made to go downtown, where the two of them examined the books until they realized that a one had been smudged into a seven, thus throwing the accounts into disarray. A one to a seven: such a simple mistake, and yet, had they not found it, Alma would have been brought in for questioning, and perhaps even terminated from the Binghams’ employ. By the time they had finished, it was still early enough for him to reach the school before Edward’s class concluded, but then his grandfather asked him to stay for tea, and, again, he had no reason to refuse—his leisure was so well-known that it had become its own kind of prison, a schedule in the absence of one.

“You seem very anxious about something,” observed his grandfather, as he poured tea into David’s cup. “Is there somewhere you need to be?”

“No, nowhere,” he replied.

He left as soon as he politely could, pulling himself into the hansom and telling the driver to hurry, please, but it was already well past four when they reached West Twelfth Street, and it was unlikely that Edward would have loitered, especially in such cold. Nevertheless, he bade the driver to wait and walked purposefully toward his classroom, closing his eyes and drawing his breath before turning the doorknob, and exhaling when he heard nothing but silence within.

And then: “Mister Bingham,” he heard a voice say, “what a surprise to see you here!”

He had of course been hoping for this moment, and yet, upon opening his eyes and seeing Edward Bishop before him, wearing his same bright smile, holding his gloves in one hand, his head tipped to one side as if he’d just asked David a question, he found himself unable to answer, and his expression must have given away something of his confusion, because Edward moved toward him, his face changing into a look of concern. “Mister Bingham, are you quite all right?” he asked. “You look very pale. Here, come sit in one of these chairs and let me get you some water.”

“No, no,” he managed at last. “I’m perfectly fine. I’m just—I had thought I left my sketchbook here yesterday—I was looking for it today and was unable to find it—but I can see I haven’t left it here, either—I’m sorry to interrupt you.”

“But you are not interrupting me at all! To lose your sketchbook—how awful: I don’t know what I would do with myself if I lost my own notebook. Let me look around a bit.”

“There is no need to,” he began, faintly—it was a shoddy lie: The room had so little furniture that there were few places his imaginary sketchbook could even be—but Edward had already begun looking, opening the empty drawers of the desk at the front of the room, peering into the empty cupboard that stood behind the desk, next to the chalkboard, even lowering to his knees, despite David’s protestations, to look beneath the piano (as if David would not have seen it immediately had the sketchbook—safe at home in his study—been somehow here). All the while, Edward was making exclamations of alarm and dismay on David’s behalf. He had a theatrical, deliberately old-fashioned, deeply affected manner of speech—all Oh!s and Ah!s—but it irritated less than it ought: It was both unnatural and genuine, and felt less a pretension than a reflection of an artistic sensibility, a suggestion of liveliness and good humor, as if Edward Bishop were determined to not be too serious, as if seriousness, the kind with which most people greeted the world, was the affectation, and not enthusiasm.

“It seems not to be here, Mister Bingham,” Edward declared at last, standing and looking at David directly with an expression, an almost-smile, that David wasn’t able to interpret: Was it one of flirtation, or even seduction, an acknowledgment of both their roles in this particular pantomime? Or was it (more likely) teasing in its nature, even mocking? How many men with foolish plans and affections had Edward Bishop endured in his short life? How long was the list to which David must now add his own name?

He would have liked to end this piece of theater but was uncertain how to do so: He had authored it, but he realized too late that he’d not conceived of a conclusion before he began. “You were very kind to search,” he said, miserably, looking toward the floor. “But I’m sure I simply misplaced it at home. I oughtn’t’ve come—I won’t trouble you any longer.” Never, he promised himself. I will never trouble you again. And yet he made no move to leave.

There was a silence, and when Edward spoke next, his voice was different, less fulsome, less everything. “It was no trouble, not at all,” he said, and, after another pause, “It’s very cold in this room, isn’t it?” (It was. Matron kept the facility chilly during school hours, which she claimed sharpened her charges’ sense of concentration and taught them resolve. The children had grown accustomed to it, but adults never could: Every teacher or staff member was always seen swaddled in layers of coats and shawls. David had visited the institute once in the evening and had been surprised to find it warm, even cozy.)

“It always is,” he replied, still unhappily.

“I thought I might warm myself with a cup of coffee,” Edward said, and when David made no response, uncertain once again how to interpret this statement, “There is a café around the corner if you’d care to join me?”

He agreed before he even knew he was doing so, before he could demur, before he was able to examine what this offer might really mean, and then, to his surprise, Edward was fastening his coat and they were leaving the school and walking east and then south on Hudson Street. They did not speak, though Edward hummed something as they went, another popular song, and for a moment, David doubted himself: Was Edward all surface and gloss? He had been assuming there was a serious person beneath his smiles and gestures, his white, neat teeth, but what if there was not? What if he was a mere flibbertigibbet, a man who sought only pleasure?

But then he thought: And so what if he is? It was coffee, not an offer of marriage, and, assuring himself of this, he thought then of Charles Griffith, and how he had not heard from him since their last meeting, before Christmas, and felt his neck grow hot, even in the cold.

The café, when they reached it, was less a café than a kind of teahouse, a cramped, rough-floored place with rickety wooden tables and backless stools. The front part was a shop, and they had to inch past a crowd of patrons examining barrels containing, variously, coffee beans and dried chamomile flowers and mint leaves, which the establishment’s two Chinamen employees would scoop into paper sacks and weigh on a brass scale, totting up the numbers on a wooden-bead abacus, whose constant, rhythmic clacking provided the place with its own percussive music. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the mood was lively and convivial, and the two men found a place to sit near the fireplace, which sent a stream of snapping embers spiraling through the air like fireworks.

“Two coffees,” Edward told the waitress, a plump Oriental girl, who nodded and trotted off.

For a moment, they sat staring at each other across the small table, and then Edward smiled, and David smiled back at him, and they smiled at each other smiling at each other, and then both began, at once, to laugh. And then Edward leaned close to him, as if to deliver an intimacy, but before he could speak, a large group of young men and women—university students, by the look and sound of them—came in, settling down at a table near theirs, not even pausing in their debate, one that had been fashionable for college-age young men and women to have for decades, since even before the War of Rebellion: “I am only saying that our country can hardly consider itself free if we cannot welcome Negroes as whole citizens,” a pretty, sharp-featured girl was saying.

“But they are welcome here,” countered a boy across from her.

“Yes, but only to pass through on their way to Canada or to the West—we do not wish them to stay, and when we say we open our borders to anyone from the Colonies, we do not mean them, and yet they are even more persecuted than the ones to whom we offer shelter! We think ourselves so much better than America and the Colonies, and yet we are not!”

“But Negroes are not people like us.”

“But they are! I have known—well, not I, but my uncle, when he was traveling through the Colonies—Negroes who are just like us!”

There was jeering from some of the group at this, and then one boy said, in a lazy, arrogant drawl, “Anna would have us believe that there were even redskins like us, and we ought never to have eradicated them but left them to their savagery.”

“There were Indians like us, Ethan! That has been documented!”

This was greeted with the entire table shouting their response, and between the ruckus they made, and the click-click of the abacus, now louder than before, and the heat of the fire on his back, David began to feel woozy. It must have shown on his face, for Edward leaned again across the table and asked him, in a near-shout, if he might want to go elsewhere, and David said he would.

Edward went to find the waitress to tell her they didn’t need the coffees, and the two of them shouldered past the table of students and the customers waiting for their bags of tea, and out into the street once more, which felt, for all its activity and life, a relief, spacious and quiet.

“It can get quite loud in there,” said Edward, “especially toward late afternoon—I should have remembered. But it’s nice, usually, really.”

“I’ve no doubt,” he murmured, politely. “Is there somewhere else we can go?” For, although he had been teaching at the school for six months, it was not a neighborhood in which he dallied—his visits there were short and purposeful, and he felt himself too elderly to frequent the pubs and inexpensive coffeehouses that made the area so attractive to students.

“Well,” said Edward after a moment’s silence, “we could go to my flat, if you could bear it—it’s very nearby.”

He was surprised by this offer, but also gratified—for was this not exactly the kind of behavior that drew him to Edward initially? A promise of free-spiritedness, a blithe disregard for conventions, a dispensing of old modes of behavior and formality? He was modern, and in his presence, David felt modern as well, so much so that he accepted straightaway, emboldened by his new friend’s irreverence, and Edward, nodding as if he’d expected this answer (even as David was momentarily stunned by his own boldness), led him first north and then west on Bethune Street. There were handsome houses on this street, newly built brownstones in whose windows tapers of candles flickered—it was only five in the afternoon, but already the night was drawing around them—but Edward strode past them all to a large, shabby, once-grand structure quite close to the river, a mansion of the kind David’s grandfather had been raised in, although in ill condition, with a swollen wooden door that Edward had to tug at repeatedly to open.

“Watch the second step; there’s a stone missing,” he warned, before turning to David. “It’s not Washington Square, I’ll grant you, but it’s home.” The words were an apology, but his smile—that beam!—made them into something else: not quite a boast, perhaps, but a statement of defiance.

“How did you know I live on Washington Square?” he asked.

“Everyone knows,” Edward replied, but in a way that made it sound as if living on Washington Square had been David’s own accomplishment, something worthy of congratulation.

Once inside (having taken care to avoid the troublesome second step), David could see that the mansion had been converted into a boardinghouse; to the left, where the parlor would be, was a breakfast room of sorts, with a half-dozen tables of different styles and a dozen chairs, also of different designs. He could tell, by just a glance, that the furniture was poorly made, but then he noticed, in a corner, a handsome, turn-of-the-century secretary of the kind his grandfather had in his own parlor, and moved to examine it. The wood had not been polished in apparently months, and its finish had been destroyed by some inferior oil; its surface, when he touched it, was sticky, and when he brought his hand away, his fingers were padded with dust. But it had once been a fine piece, and before he could ask, Edward, behind him, said, “The proprietress of this place was once wealthy, or so I’ve heard. Not Bingham wealthy, of course”—there it was again, a mention of his family and their fortune—“but moneyed.”

“And what happened?”

“A husband given to excess gambling, who then ran away with her sister. Or so I’ve been told. She lives on the top floor, and I rarely see her—she’s quite elderly—her distant cousin manages the place now.”

“What’s her name?” David asked—if the owner had truly once been rich, his grandfather would know of her.

“Larsson. Florence Larsson. Come, my room is this way.”

The carpet on the staircase was frayed in some places, worn clean through in others, and as they climbed the flights, Edward explained how many boarders lodged there (twelve, including him) and how long he’d lived there (a year). He seemed not a bit embarrassed by his surroundings, its poverty and disrepair (water had discolored the posy-print wallpaper, rendering it a haphazard pattern of large, irregular splotches of yellow), nor to be living in a boardinghouse at all. Of course, many people lived in boardinghouses, but David had never met one, much less been inside this kind of building, and he looked about him with curiosity and some small measure of trepidation. How people lived in this city! According to Eliza, whose own charity work involved the resettlement and housing of refugees from the Colonies and of immigrants from Europe, the conditions of most new residents were deplorable; she had told them of families crammed ten to a single room, of windows that went uncaulked even in the coldest weather, of children who were scalded while edging too close to a grateless fire in a wretched attempt to warm themselves, of roofs that wept rain directly into the living quarters. They would listen to these stories and shake their heads and Grandfather would cluck his tongue, and then the talk would turn to something else—Eden’s studies, perhaps, or a show of paintings Peter had recently seen—and Eliza’s deplorable residences would fade from their memories. And yet here he was, David Bingham, in a home of the kind none of his siblings ever would have dared enter. He found himself aware that he was having an adventure, and then ashamed at his pride, for, in truth, being a visitor demanded no kind of bravery at all.

On the third-floor landing, Edward turned right and David followed him to a room at the end of the hall. Around them, all was silent, though as he unlocked his door Edward held a finger to his lips and pointed to the door next to him: “He’ll be asleep.”

“So early?” he whispered in return. (Or was it in fact so late?)

“He works nights. A longshoreman—he doesn’t leave the house until past seven or so.”

“Ah,” he said, and once more, he was struck by how little he knew of the world.

They entered the room, and Edward shut the door quietly behind them. It was so dark David was unable to see anything, but he could smell smoke and, faintly, tallow. Edward announced that he’d light some candles, and with each hiss of the match, he watched as the room clarified itself into shapes and colors. “I keep the curtains closed—it’s warmer that way,” Edward said, but now he drew them open, and the space was revealed at last.

It was smaller than David’s study at Washington Square, and in one corner was a narrow bed, over which a rough wool blanket had been pulled tight and neat. At the foot of the bed was a trunk, its leather peeling in strips, and to its right was a wooden wardrobe that had been built into the wall. On the other side of the room was a meager slice of table, atop which sat an old-fashioned oil lamp and a sheaf of papers and a blotter, and around it were stacks of books, all of them worn. There was a stool as well, obviously inexpensive, like the rest of the furniture. In the corner opposite the bed was a substantial brick fireplace, and hanging from an iron arm was a heavy, black, old-fashioned pot, the kind he remembered from his childhood, when he would stand in the back courtyard of their house uptown and watch the maids stir their laundry in great cauldrons of boiling water. On either side of the fireplace was a large window, against which the bare branches of the alder trees traced cobwebbed shadows.

To David, it was a remarkable place, like something out of the newspapers, and he once again marveled at his presence, the fact of his being in the room even more notable than the fact of being in the company of the person whose room it was.

Then he remembered his manners and returned his gaze to Edward, who was standing in the center of the space, his fingers laced together before him in what David knew, already, to consider an uncharacteristic expression of vulnerability. And for the first time in their brief acquaintance, David recognized a sort of tentativeness on the other man’s face, something he’d not seen before, and understanding this made him feel both more tender and braver as well, so that when Edward at last said, “Shall I make us some tea?” he was able to step forward—just a single step, but the space was so minute that it delivered him within a few inches of Edward Bishop, so close that he could see his each individual eyelash, each as black and wet as a stroke of ink.

“Please,” he said, and he kept his voice especially soft, as if anything louder would bring Edward to his senses and startle him away. “I would like that very much.”

And so Edward went to fetch the water, and after he left, David was able to inspect the room and its contents more closely and carefully, and to realize that the equanimity with which he had accepted the reality of Edward’s home was actually not equanimity at all, but shock. He was, David could now recognize, poor.

But what had he expected? That Edward was someone like himself, of course, a well-brought-up, educated man who was teaching at the school as an act of charity, and not—as he was now made to consider was probable, even certain—for money. He had registered the beauty of his face, the cut of his clothes, and had assumed a kinship, a likeness, where none existed. But now he sat on the trunk at the end of the bed and looked at Edward’s coat, which he had laid there before leaving the room; yes, the wool and construction were fine, but the lapels (when he turned them over to examine them more closely) were just a touch too wide to be fashionable, and the shoulders had been worn to a satiny sheen, and a piece of the placket had been darned with rows of tiny stitches, and there was a pleat in the sleeve where a hem had been let out. He shivered a little, both at his miscalculation and also at what he knew to be a flaw in himself: Edward had not tried to deceive him; David had simply decided that Edward was one thing and had ignored the evidence to the contrary. He looked for signs of himself, and for others of his world, and when he found them, or something close enough, he had simply stopped looking, had simply ceased to see. “A man of the world,” Grandfather had greeted him the day after he’d returned from his yearlong tour through Europe, and David had believed him, agreed with him, even. But was he indeed a man of the world? Or was he only a man of the Bingham-created world, one that was rich and varied but, he knew, vastly incomplete? Here he was, in a room in a house that was less than a fifteen-minute hansom ride from Washington Square, and yet it was more foreign to him than London, than Paris, than Rome; he might have been in Peking, or on the moon, for all he recognized in it. And there was something worse in him as well—a sense of incredulity that spoke to a naïveté that was not just distasteful but perilous: Even as he had entered the house, he had persisted in thinking Edward lived here as a lark, as an affectation of poverty.

This knowledge, coupled with the room’s chill, a cold that felt almost wet, it was so pervasive and insistent, made him realize the absurdity of his being here, and he stood, re-buttoning his coat, which he’d not even removed, and was about to leave, to prepare to encounter Edward Bishop on the stairs and make his excuses and apologies, when his host returned, lugging a sloshing copper pot. “Stand aside, please, Mister Bingham,” he said with mock formality, his earlier confidence already recovered, and poured the water into the kettle before kneeling to build a fire, the flames snapping to life as immediately as if he’d summoned them. All the while, David stood, helpless, and when Edward turned to face him again, he sat down on the bed, resigned.

“Oh, I shouldn’t be so presumptuous as to sit on your bed!” he said, bolting to his feet.

Edward smiled, then. “There is nowhere else to sit,” he said, simply. “Please.” And so David sat again.

The fire made the room seem friendlier, less bleak, the windows turning opaque with steam, and by the time Edward had poured his tea—“Not really tea, I’m afraid; only dried chamomile buds”—David felt less uncomfortable, and for a moment, there was a companionable silence, as the two of them drank.

“I’ve biscuits, if you want them?”

“No, no thank you.”

They both sipped. “We shall have to go back to the café again—earlier in the day, perhaps.”

“Yes, I should like that.”

For a moment, it seemed they both struggled to speak. “Do you think we should allow the Negroes in?” asked Edward, teasingly, and David, smiling back, shook his head. “I feel for the Negroes, of course,” he said, staunchly, echoing his grandfather’s opinion, “but it is best that they find their own places to live—in the West, perhaps.” It was not, his grandfather said, that the Negroes were uneducable—in fact, the opposite was true, and that was the trouble, for once the Negro became learned, would he not want to enjoy the opportunities of the Free States himself? He thought of how his grandfather would only refer to the Negro question as “the Negro issue,” never the Negro dilemma or the Negro problem, for “once we call it that, it becomes ours to solve.” “The Negro issue is the sin at America’s heart,” he often said. “But we are not America, and it is not our sin.” On this matter, as on many others, David knew his grandfather to be wise, and it had never occurred to him to believe differently.

Another silence, broken by only the sound of the china cups tapping against their teeth, and Edward smiled at him. “You are shocked by how I live.”

“No,” he said, “not shocked,” though he was. He was so stunned, indeed, that his conversational abilities, his manners, had deserted him altogether. When he had been a shy schoolboy, slow to make friends and often ignored by his classmates, Grandfather had once told him that all one had to do to seem interesting was to ask questions of others. “People adore nothing more than to speak of themselves,” Grandfather had said. “And if you ever find yourself in a circumstance in which you fear your place or standing—though you should not: You are a Bingham, remember, and the best child I know—then all you must do is ask the other person something about him- or herself, and they will forever after be convinced that you are the most fascinating individual they have ever encountered.” This was an exaggeration, naturally, but his grandfather had not been incorrect, and this advice, once followed, had, if not transformed his place among his peers, then certainly prevented what would have promised to be a lifetime of ignominy, and he had relied upon it on countless occasions since.

Even now, he was aware that, of the two of them, Edward was by far the more mysterious, the more compelling figure. He was David Bingham, and everything about him was known. What would it be like to be someone anonymous, someone whose name meant nothing, who was able to move through life as a shadow, who was able to sing a music-hall ditty in a classroom without word of it traveling among everyone one knew, to live in a frigid room in a boardinghouse with a neighbor who woke when others were settling in their parlors for drinks and conversation, to be someone who was beholden to no one? He was not so romantic as to desire this, necessarily; he would not much like to live in this cold little cell so near the river, to have to fetch water every time one wanted to have a drink instead of merely giving a single sharp yank to a bell pull—he was not even convinced he would be capable of it. Yet to be so known was to trade adventure for certainty, and therefore to be exiled to an unsurprising life. Even in Europe, he had been passed from acquaintance to acquaintance of his grandfather’s: His path was never his own to forge, for someone had already done it for him, clearing obstacles he would never know had once existed. He was free, but he was also not.

So it was with genuine longing that he began asking Edward about himself, about who he was and how he had come to live the life he had, and as Edward talked, as naturally and fluently as if he’d been waiting for years for David to come into his life and question him, David found himself aware, even as he listened with interest to Edward’s story, of a kind of new and unpleasant pride in himself—that he was here in this unlikely space, and that he was talking to a strange and beautiful and unlikely man, and that, although he could see that beyond the mist-shrouded window the sky was becoming black and that therefore his grandfather would be sitting down to dinner and wondering where he was, he made no move to make his apologies, no move to leave. It was as if he had been bewitched and, knowing it, had sought not to fight against it but to surrender, to leave behind the world he thought he knew for another, and all because he wanted to attempt to be not the person he was—but the one he dreamed of being.