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early sliver of returning normality: the sound of car honking.
My
trainer, a cubical young man from the Bahamas, told me about an
ex-client. She, a thirtysomething woman, is doing hard time for
having stolen three million dollars from her company, in increments
over a number of years. She sits in some federal slammer, deep in
upstate New York. He talked to her, post-attack, and she said, "I
feel very safe."
There
is little in the way of deliberate humor available, though it seems
to me that New Yorkers are on the point of craving it. I discussed
this problem with the maitre d' of a neighborhood restaurant, who
is also a stand-up comic who is just beginning to succeed. His best
answer was that after a hiatus, he and his tribe would have to feel
their way, seeing what works, what falls flat. The temper of New
Yorkers is naturally sardonic, which inhibits them now, for what
is most out of place is wise-ass jeering. What can they tell, airline
jokes?
A
friend taking the Harlem line on the weekend, a commuter train that
runs west of the Connecticut border, reported a common sight: cars
parked in the lots in remote corners. No one would have left them
there when the lot was practically empty. Ergo, they were
parked when the lot was full — either after the attack, by
hurrying firemen and rescue workers; or before it, by its victims.
A
poet who lives half the time in Pennsylvania, and half the time
in the city, came back after a week's absence, and felt a weight
of guilt: Why hadn't she been here? Why hadn't she helped? To a
lesser degree, these feelings operate within the city, depending
on how close one was to the epicenter. A literary agent who works
on the Upper East Side, but who lives near Wall Street (which was
becoming a more residential neighborhood) was telling me all that
the New Yorkers in the former place cannot know. Everyone has to
understand that each has his station. Some people stayed on the
Titanic, some made it into the lifeboats, others were in
the ships that came to the rescue. They also serve who only stand
and wait.
Tuesday
night I revisited the scene at Union Square. The artist who had
been out of town had just seen it for the first time, and was revolted.
I had noticed, even without looking carefully, that it had metastasized.
The circle of candles, flowers, and flags by the base of the impromptu
statue had become half a dozen circles. Many of the flowers were
plastic, or bouquets from delis, still left in their cellophane
wrappers. The cheesy disorder recalled the scene in Midnight
Cowboy when Ratso Rizzo, gone to a cemetery to visit a grave,
grabs a bunch of wilted flowers from a grave nearby, and tosses
it down on his. The artist also reported that the site was overrun
by kooks and axe-grinders. This made sense: As life returns to some
imitation of normal, normal people will go back to work, leaving
the field to the possessed, who have so much free time.
I expected
the worst, but did not find it. I went late at night, which helped.
Darkness dimmed the tawdriness; the candles, shining in the darkness,
looked their best. As on the first days, someone had laid long strips
of paper, this time white, down the path on the east side of the
park. People wrote and wrote, and while there was politics (a March
Against the War in Washington, D.C. — was Kabul booked?), idiocy
("I believe man is not aggressive") and fanaticism ("Nam
Myam Renghe Kyo" — the chant of some odd-ball Buddhist
cult), there was much else. AMERICA'S SPIRIT STILL STANDS; below
it, a message in Chinese (presumably the same one); below them,
a picture of the Trade Towers. "I learned there isn't enough
dust to cover our courage, our love, our spirit. This week, I became
a true American — Jorge." "I used to think living
for yourself was the best revenge; now I don't know what to think."
At the tip
of the park the visual focus has moved from the new statue, the
cement column, to the equestrian statue of Washington, which has
been strangely transmogrified. Modeled on a classical statue of
Marcus Aurelius, one guidebook describes it as "an essay in
quiet grandeur." Now it sprouts four flags, three American,
one a banner with a peace sign. Someone has chalked a peace sign
on the horse's haunch. But someone else put a huge color poster
of the World Trade Towers on the front of the granite base; above
that is a white and black sticker, WE WILL PREVAIL.
In front of
the statue, a camp-counselor type was encouraging people, mostly
kids, to hold hands. "Everybody hold hands! Everybody hold
hands!" he repeated. "Not if you don't want to,"
someone else cried: stubbornness supplying the voice of good sense.
I could see
how demagogues meet their payrolls. Most people are terrible at
public display — timid, confused, boring. Many are adequate
— they say what's on their minds, but not in any memorable
fashion. Someone who can speak arrestingly and to the point can
be like a wolf among sheep at moments such as this.
There haven't
been any such in New York, thank God and the murmuring, mostly good-natured
crowd will lurch on, until stress refines it further.
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