and the click of heels on pavement. I walked toward the west. People bought food from a falafel vendor whose van was parked on the corner, or walked alone, in pairs, in threes. I saw black women in charcoal gray skirt suits, and young, clean-shaven Indian-American men. Just past Federal Hall, I walked by the glass frontage of the New York Sports Club. Right up against the glass in its brightly lit interior was a single row of exercise bicycles, all of them occupied by men and women in Lycra who pedaled in the silence and looked out at commuters in the dusk. Near the corner of Nassau, a man in a scarf and fedora hat stood with an easel before him and painted the Stock Exchange in grisaille on a large canvas. A stack of completed paintings, also grisaille, of the same building seen from different angles, lay at his feet. I watchedhim work for a moment, as he loaded his brush, and with careful gestures applied white highlights to the acanthus of the six massive Corinthian columns of the Stock Exchange. The building itself—which, following his gaze, I now scrutinized more closely—was illuminated from below with a row of yellow lamps, and with this footlighting appeared to levitate.
I went on, past Broad Street and New Street, where I noticed another sports club, this one called Equinox, from which another row of exercisers faced the street, until I came to Broadway, where Wall Street ended and at which junction stood the east façade of Trinity Church. The reappearance of traffic on Broadway startled me for a moment. I crossed Broadway and went up to the church entrance, with the unpremeditated idea that I might go inside and pray for M. He’d been sick for a while but, since his divorce came through earlier in the year, he’d taken a steep turn for the worse. He was by now completely in the grip of the delirium, and when he spoke it was with such distress that his heavily accented sentences seemed to be pursuing each other out of the troubled caverns of his mind.
I don’t blame her, he’d said to me earlier that day, any woman would do the same, I screwed up, I screwed up. I should have been more careful. I don’t find it amusing now, but I can imagine that it seems that way to other people, I can imagine that my suffering amuses people. I do so much for them, but they find my suffering amusing. I have to be responsible, though, more discipline, more and more discipline, and if I tried that I would still be married. Not that I blame her, or anyone else, they can do what they want, but I have to be responsible for the world, and none of them knows what that feels like. If I don’t organize things just right, you see, everything will be destroyed. You understand? I’m not saying I’m God, but I know what it feels like to carry the world. I feel like the little boy with his finger in the dike, like I am doing a small thing, but it takes a lot of concentration. Everything depends on this, I can’t even tell you, and I wish I didn’t have this burden, this burden that is so much likeGod’s own burden, but given to someone, Doctor, do you see the problem, who does not have the powers of God.
The gate at the front of the church was locked. I walked along the railing, first north then, when I couldn’t find an entrance there, south. There was a large graveyard that encompassed both sides of the church, white headstones, black ones, and a few monuments, among which Alexander Hamilton’s was prominent: THE PATRIOT OF INCORRUPTIBLE INTEGRITY, THE SOLDIER OF APPROVED VALOR, THE STATESMAN OF CONSUMMATE WISDOM, WHOSE TALENTS AND VIRTUES WILL BE ADMIRED . It gave the date—July 12, 1804—as well as his age, forty-seven. Hamilton, actually forty-nine when he died of the single gunshot wound he received in the duel with Burr, was not the only famous person interred in the Trinity churchyard. Among the stones were also those commemorating John Jacob Astor, Robert Fulton, and the abolitionist George Templeton Strong, whose
I went on, past Broad Street and New Street, where I noticed another sports club, this one called Equinox, from which another row of exercisers faced the street, until I came to Broadway, where Wall Street ended and at which junction stood the east façade of Trinity Church. The reappearance of traffic on Broadway startled me for a moment. I crossed Broadway and went up to the church entrance, with the unpremeditated idea that I might go inside and pray for M. He’d been sick for a while but, since his divorce came through earlier in the year, he’d taken a steep turn for the worse. He was by now completely in the grip of the delirium, and when he spoke it was with such distress that his heavily accented sentences seemed to be pursuing each other out of the troubled caverns of his mind.
I don’t blame her, he’d said to me earlier that day, any woman would do the same, I screwed up, I screwed up. I should have been more careful. I don’t find it amusing now, but I can imagine that it seems that way to other people, I can imagine that my suffering amuses people. I do so much for them, but they find my suffering amusing. I have to be responsible, though, more discipline, more and more discipline, and if I tried that I would still be married. Not that I blame her, or anyone else, they can do what they want, but I have to be responsible for the world, and none of them knows what that feels like. If I don’t organize things just right, you see, everything will be destroyed. You understand? I’m not saying I’m God, but I know what it feels like to carry the world. I feel like the little boy with his finger in the dike, like I am doing a small thing, but it takes a lot of concentration. Everything depends on this, I can’t even tell you, and I wish I didn’t have this burden, this burden that is so much likeGod’s own burden, but given to someone, Doctor, do you see the problem, who does not have the powers of God.
The gate at the front of the church was locked. I walked along the railing, first north then, when I couldn’t find an entrance there, south. There was a large graveyard that encompassed both sides of the church, white headstones, black ones, and a few monuments, among which Alexander Hamilton’s was prominent: THE PATRIOT OF INCORRUPTIBLE INTEGRITY, THE SOLDIER OF APPROVED VALOR, THE STATESMAN OF CONSUMMATE WISDOM, WHOSE TALENTS AND VIRTUES WILL BE ADMIRED . It gave the date—July 12, 1804—as well as his age, forty-seven. Hamilton, actually forty-nine when he died of the single gunshot wound he received in the duel with Burr, was not the only famous person interred in the Trinity churchyard. Among the stones were also those commemorating John Jacob Astor, Robert Fulton, and the abolitionist George Templeton Strong, whose
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