Yesterday I took my kid on the A-train all the way up to Dyckman Street Like most subway stops in New York, you descend in one kind of neighborhood, jostle and clatter and try not to stare at the various oddities that are always on display, then emerge into a place wholly other. This ride featured a very well dressed woman in the most ridiculous shoes I’ve ever seen.
We climbed the stairs and were welcomed by a hotly disputed business transaction that seemed to involve a scooter. It was conducted in rapid Spanish, one party yelling and slapping the seat while the other stood with arms crossed shaking his head. To the side were several more men commenting about it and laughing. Once in a while, one or the other of them would mount the scooter and ride a circle that spanned the sidewalk and two lanes of the street. Everybody was smoking weed, which is now as ubiquitous as cigarettes were in the 1950s.
We crossed the street and entered Fort Tryon Park, one of Frederick Law Olmstead’s lesser-known masterpieces. Giant oaks and maples towered over the wending cobbles as we made our way up steep stone walkways to our destination, the Met Cloisters.
The building itself is something between a chateau and a castle. I guess the architects wanted to memorialize the fort’s role in the American Revolution without seeming to be overly martial. Thick walls, but no cannons. It’s in the tradtion of naming the organization in charge of prosecuting military incursions in foreign lands “the department of defense.” Anyway, it is a lovely building. They pulled bits and pieces from various abbeys and monestaries and cobbled them together into a unified whole, the purpose being to display a treasure trove of religious acquisitions culled from a shattered postwar Europe.
The story of how this happened could fill an entire novel.E.L. Doctorow would have knocked it out of the park, or maybe Wallace Stegner. Hell, even Annie Proulx, if you didn’t mind her giving characters hideous names and making them all terrible people.
Maybe the best thing is to Google it and let your imagination fill in the blanks. The characters are a polyglot sculptor oozing charisma and poor business sense, the richest men in the world locked in a bitter philathropic struggle, a continent wracked by the greatest war ever witnessed, steamships, stonemasons, farmers, and peasants.
In that spirit, here’s a vignette for you:
Pére Gabart wakes to the clatter of a motorcar in the clearing. Before the war it would have been an extraordinary event, but now such machines were almost commonplace. Indeed, the old man has often dreamed of purchasing a tractor and using it to improve the neighboring fields. That he does not own them is beside the point; a tractor would clearly demonstrate his industry so the snooty landowner who would be forced to grant him the right of farming. The beautiful fields have lain fallow these sixty years and more, and besides is it not better to ask for forgiveness than permission?
He tugs on his trousers and old boots and steps outside into the pearly twilight. It was his wife who was the habitual early riser. Since her death he has been sleeping longer and longer.
A man stands by the pig barn, an electric torch in his hand. He is dressed in expensive looking tweeds and wears tall boots covered with mud. The motorcar is a new one, though Pére Gabart cannot tell its color in this dim light. The man squats down to inspect the repair of which Gabart was justly proud.
“Ingenious, no?” Gabart calls, by way of introduction. “And there was no cost save the hauling of the stones!”
The man stands up, smiling.”Yes, quite.”
“You are Parisian?” says Gabart, his voice edged with customary suspicion.
“Oh no,” says the man. “American. As you know, our countries have long been friends.” He extends a hand. “My name is George Barnard.”
“Your accent is Parisian,” the old man says.
“I learned my French while I was at the Académie.”
“Ah.”
The man points his torch at the carved stones that prop up the corner of the barn. In the pool of light, the carved face looks strangely tormented. Odd how Pére Guyard has never noticed this before. The man squats and touches the face. “Did this come from the destroyed Abbey at Froville?”
“Of course. All of them did. As I said, they were free of cost.”
“How many are there?”
Pére Gabart shrugs, aware now that this American wants to do business. He has heard they are all this way. Perhaps there will be a tractor after all. “Ten or twelve.”
The man stands, pointing to the new wall above the stones. “I didn’t know the battle had come this far.”
Pére Gabart points at the sky. “It came from an aeroplane. One of the filthy German craft with black crosses on the wings like a bird from hell. It almost crashed, but released a bomb instead. It plunged through the roof and exploded, causing the damage you see. It killed my sow, but fortunately her farrow was weaned. All are healthy now.”
As if to confirm this, a large hog ambles out of the barn and grunts at them. Another follows close.
“Looks like they want to be fed. You need help slopping them?”
Pére Gabart is astonished. From the car and accent he assumed this American was one of those wealthy young men who never raised a callous on their hands their whole life through.
Without waiting for an answer, the man unbuttons his cuff and rolls up the sleeves of his jacket, then strolls into the barn as though he was a hired man. The other pigs began to squeal with anticipation and delight.
At this moment, the sun peeps over the horizon, illuminating the rolling green hills above the fog-shrouded valley. The suddenness of such beauty seems to open his heart for the first time since he learned of the death of both sons at Verdun.
Pére Gabart feels a tendril of hope and his eyes fill with tears.
Happy Sunday, everyone. <3