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A larcenous fireman - And they were all larcenous, I believe, or most of them were: the year is 1900 and his mouth is as dry as the mouth of a patient to whom atropine has been administered - makes one at the burning of the last great cityblock patroonship on Manhattan's Fortress Fifth; and his heart is very zealous for the good, for the good and inconspicuous, and for whatever is subject to a quick exchange at the pawns on Canal Street. O, a fat wish, certainly.
And it burns inside him as the fats and membranes of a caul might burn, full of fry on a votive griddle.
But the Man of the House gets in the way with his "Save them." "Save my Little Ones." - This, while his favorite horses scald: Matched bays, the pride of the avenue, they kick down their stable door, rise up, and dance on the hoses. Hook and ladder: this building is only twelve years old. And the fortune it was built to trumpet less than fifty. Yet an Admiral had waltzed here and a Prince of the Blood. For fun! Pulitzer's flying squad of photographers bob and weave through the smoke.
Police lines burst with the yellow kids - all of them
in wonderland. And the fireman, the fireman is in Hell. Hot Hell. His several fires spit and spasm. For he can find nothing.
Nothing at all. Were there others then? Theiving Sergeants of police, and faster fireman? He is too late.
And he cries the fat tears of a furious child, the milk fat tears, only his are black and bloody. Ah, but here are the Little Ones in expensive French night gowns. They scream as rabbits are supposed to as their night gowns burn. And the fireman damns their eyes, and those in their portrait by John Singer Sargeant, who boldy has pictured them against the long blue silver dress of their mother, a beauty and a sportswoman.
"Bitch," says the fireman as the picture goes up like a tong house joss stick. "Bitch," he sobs, "where's mine I'd like to know?"
Then the terror of an answered prayer. The miracle, if you must. For a fugitive flame reveals the hiding place of what? An apostle spoon. Two candlesticks and a silver creamer.
The forgotten horde of whom? Some backstairs dragonet, perhaps? An otherwise inept domestic, dimissed now for the drink and back in her cold water flat in Brooklyn?
For this was way back when, when the rich were fat and the boxers were Irish, and there were servants, lots of them, and half those servants stole.
For fee, and fi, and foe and fum. And the fireman sings his triumph to the red ruin of the house around him. He exults. He waltzs.
And it is to be hoped that he picks up those pathetic Litttle Ones before he lowers his head to crash through the leaded French window that gives onto fifty first street. |
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