Ellis Island & Other Stories (25 page)

Living together as we had was rather unorthodox. But it had not troubled us, because America never seemed entirely real. For me, America was always very much like a dream. And when New York ties you up in its net, how can you know for sure what is real and what is not?

I suppose I could have gone on that way forever, and left the past to take care of itself. But one morning, in March, I awoke in intense sadness. I had been so busy and so content that I had forgotten Elise. Perhaps it was because I was afraid to return to the Island, fearing that the clouds would once more descend and I would wake up having just come off the boat, with the night class, the palace, and Hava only dreams.

I didn’t want that, but I dressed and shaved, tucked the employment certificate and my fountain pen (the badge of my real profession) in my vest pocket, and set out for Ellis Island, apprehensive that I might never return. In anticipation of being trapped there once again, I ached for Hava. It was a risk that had to be taken. Mainly for Hava’s sake, I wanted to be a man who kept his promises—and there is only one way to do that.

The waters of the harbor were translucent and aquamarine; they ran thick with shards of ice and white islands as big as polar bears. Ellis Island lay in the distance, its Byzantine domes and blood-red roofs glowing in the morning sunshine. The sloop in which I sailed was loaded with inspectors, officials, and sacks of mail destined for ships not allowed into port. Having passed through already, I knew the power of the Island and feared that I would be possessed. It is a lair of the deepest emotions, where hope has died and flourished, where those who love one another have been separated forever, where anything that can happen to a soul has happened, all in full view of the Battery. It is like a sinking ship just offshore, watched by those who have landed; a court of the world; a purgatory; the turning place of dreams.

Once I had set foot again on Ellis Island, I knew that I had come to one of God’s places, and that those of us who had been there were tied to it forever. I passed through warm kitchens, and halls decorated with signal flags. I went into the great room, and saw the same people still winding through, silently walking up the long stairs, their eyes glistening in gray light. But this time there was no underlying surflike noise. It was totally silent, and I thought I was deaf. They climbed the stairs without a sound; there were no voices; everything was light and cloudy in tones of gray and brown. In that unearthly place, people spoke and nothing came from their mouths.

By the time I reached the hall in front of the Commissioner’s office, I felt as if I had never left the Island, and the silence held me deep within its saddened chambers. What a shock, then, when I knocked at the glass and it rattled loudly in my ears.

“Don’t knock so loud,” said a bluecoat, who had jumped up to get the door. I was awake now, but only half out of the dream. “What do you want?”

He knew that I was not subject to the laws there. I had a pass in my pocket, but I never showed it to anyone, coming or going, since they could tell from your eyes whether or not you were bound to the Island. I asked him about Elise, and if he remembered us.

“How can I remember anyone?” he said with irritation. “Everyone’s the same here.” But he did take me in to the Commissioner, who—no longer a giant—sat behind his desk just like any other high-level bureaucrat. He received me politely, but I could see that he wanted to be busy. I asked if he remembered the time that we had gone with Elise into the tower to see Manhattan rising over the clouds.

“Of course I do,” he said. “She died.”

I was struck as if by the blast of a gun at close range, and only through the severest discipline did I manage to press him for the details.

“Not long after you left the Island,” he said, “a ship small enough to dock in the launch slip came in out of the fog. It had sailed from Constantinople, under the flag of a well-known shipping house. But something about it struck our inspectors as out of the ordinary—there were only a third as many people on board as usual, and yet these were poor people who normally would have been packed like rice into the steerage. They were bothered as well by the faces of the passengers as they filed off the gangway and headed for the reception hall. Only when all were inside, waiting on the benches, and several collapsed onto the floor—in itself a common occurrence—did the inspectors make the connection with what they had observed beforehand.

“These fellows are smart, you know. They have to pass a rigorous exam. When they figured it out, they acted immediately. Several of them raced to the hospital, and the rest went on board the little steamer. They found exactly what they had expected, but even then it shocked them. Corpses were lying all over the place, next to the barely living bodies of men, women, children, and the sailors themselves—more than five hundred dead and dying. Typhus. The boys at St. George must have been asleep: for, somehow, the ship had passed the quarantine.

“The living were put in isolation, the ship itself taken out to sea and sunk, with all the bodies on it left in place. But to get this done someone had to go on the ship to bring out those who were still alive. The doctors and inspectors asked for volunteers from among those interned or waiting. Several who went aboard and who later cared for the survivors caught the disease and died. I suppose it was in the handling; I don’t know about those things. But Elise, that pretty red-haired Danish girl with whom we went into the tower—yes, I remember—was one of them.”

Half in a daze, I left the Commissioner’s office and went outside the main building. Sitting on the quay in a weak spring sun, I watched the ferry pull in and out a dozen times, and still I was not moved. I could see Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Narrows, and the Island itself. In the silence and tranquillity of one privileged or damned (I did not know which), I watched small ships and lighters bringing to the piers of Ellis Island a flood of new immigrants caught in a dream, people who had left their homes and everything they loved to come to a new world.

Unless they were wiser than I had been, they probably did not know that a new world of new dreams is a fierce and demanding thing, that it takes from you as much as it gives, and that their difficult voyage was far from over—for the city itself is like wild surf, and lessons are hard to learn when one is breathless in a cold and active sea. But they must be learned nevertheless. For hardened hearts and dead souls are left to those who do not understand that we sometimes do grave damage to those whom we love. Hardened hearts and dead souls are left to those who harm an innocent and then do not embark on a life of careful amends.

I was not certain of my responsibility to Elise, for I had fulfilled my promise; I had only delayed. But that was no comfort. I remembered how beautiful she had been, like a rising light, as she had ascended the staircase and helped me to see. And then, watching the hopeful immigrants newly arrived at Ellis Island—one of God’s places, I am sure—I realized that part of my life was forever ended. I was no longer one of them, and I, too, was able to cry halting, choking tears, as the dream subsided in favor of what is perhaps the binding principle of this world.

I got home just before Hava returned from the sewing loft. When she came in, it was almost dark. She saw me sitting near the window. What lovely eyes she had in the half light. She lit the lamp, and it came up bright and strong. Hava!

“A personal metaphysics…”—
The New York Times Book Review

This novella and ten stories are capable of working a fierce and beautiful magic. From the turn-of-the-century immigrant in “Ellis Island” whose overactive imagination and unshakable confidence get him in and out of trouble, to the photographer who tries to escape his grief in a desperate assault on the high Alps in “The Schreuderspitze” here is honest humor and amazing truth… and the kind of masterly storytelling that transforms folktales and visions into timeless art.

“Rarely less than breathtaking, every single story sings with purity, vibrates with light” says
The Plain Dealer
(Cleveland).
The Washington Post
praises Ellis Island as “one of the best collections of short fiction… a celebration of the transforming power of the imagination”
The Baltimore Sun
has said that Mark Helprin “writes with the ease and assurance of… Graham Greene or Sean O’Faoláin” and urges: “Read this book. It will delight, open, and elevate you!”

MARK HELPRIN
was born in 1947 and holds degrees from Harvard College and Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He has seen service in the British Merchant Navy and in the Israeli Infantry and Air Force. He is the author of
Refiner’s Fire, A Dove of the East and Other Stories,
and of the current best seller,
Winter’s Tale.

“His eye is precise and his spirit is compassionate, and when we finish the stories we have been rewarded, once more, with that astonishing catalyst of art.”—
The Chicago Tribune

“Helprin creates strange, magical worlds. His rich textures alone would be enough to delight a reader… wonderful stories, richly plotted, inventive… moving without becoming sentimental, humorous without being cute…”—
The Washington Post

“Maybe it’s just youthful energy or luck. But I don’t think so. I think it’s genius…
Ellis Island
ascends to the peak of literary achievement.”—
The Boston Globe

“The words… beg to be read aloud… Through the humor, the beauty, the sheer delight of Helprin’s creations shines a reverence for life, a gentle faith in the rejuvenation of the spirit.”—
Houston Chronicle

“Helprin’s prose looses the mind from its moorings and endows the senses with an almost painful clarity… The title story, ‘Ellis Island,’ is a marvelous blend of pathos and humor.”—
The Kansas City Star

Scan Notes, v3.0:
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