In Sunlight and in Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page A

by the sea and then walk north to St. George and get the ferry, although no one expected him back at the loft that day. But just as upon his return from the war he had found the world still and becalmed before the century (and perhaps his life with it) would accelerate toward the gleam of fire at its end, his intentions were directed entirely apart from his will.
    When he had returned home, the troopship had pushed through the Narrows with everyone on deck, as impossible and unstable as that may have been, Brooklyn to starboard and Staten Island to port. He had had no idea what he might find, but it felt more like a beginning than an end. Perhaps after tests and deprivations, fighting on land, over the sea, and in the air, it would be settlement, the founding of a new family, and love. Yet nothing seemed to happen and everything seemed ordinary: subways, restaurants, telephone calls, business, the paying of bills. Now, however, on a beach where he had not planned to linger, some mercurial spirit held him as if by the leaden anchor of one of the ships that passed through the pillars of Fort Hamilton and St. George.
    He had never liked reading a folded newspaper as one did on the subway, and here he was on the beach with not a soul in sight, not even the ghost of a coast guardsman in one of the abandoned watchtowers or concrete fortifications, and certainly no passengers pressing on all sides, but the wind forced him to the subway rider’s origami, and until sometime after three he read the news in his usual disciplined fashion, pausing to burn into memory important facts and figures. When he had no more to read, he collapsed the paper into a pillow, and as he stretched out and relaxed on the sand everything became quieter, the apparently immutable wind having been thrown off its game by the imperfections of the ground. Listening to his own heartbeat, he fell asleep in the sun. And in the airy, unburdened moments before sleep, he saw her in full.
     
    Throbbing from hours in the open, he sat in the dark ferry hall, impatient to pass through the gates and out to bright water. In the harbor and under a shield of inconstant smoke, ships by the hundreds moved in and out, each bent upon its purpose, crossing a surface brocaded by the sun into flashes like a forest of leaves turned up by a sudden blast of wind. The only time he had ever been in the presence of more ships had been during the invasions of Sicily and Normandy, and these he had rapidly flown over. Unlike the invasion fleets that had been silent and immobile as they rested on surprised seas, the ships and boats in New York harbor were as loose with their horns and whistles as if they were desperately trying to speak.
    Pigeons that had been trapped inside rose against the dark green walls all the way to the highest windows, glanced off them, and fell back to the rafters to rest. The floor glinted with ground glass that had been mixed into the concrete to give it traction. A hundred electric lights burned steadily to relieve the darkness even as the sun beat against the roof and walls. Footsteps, and the sound of a clock ticking. Claxons, engines, wind, water, wings flapping, the sound of breathing, the beat of the pulse, the rush of one’s blood.
    Harry closed his eyes lest he lose his way in the confusion. As the gate swung wide at the call for the next boat and he opened them, he saw a flash of white in the air, like a hawk cartwheeling in a turn, and then it vanished. As he stood, he apprehended in a split second that it had been a newspaper that, with the speed and certainty of a throwing knife, had been propelled into a trash can. And he apprehended just as suddenly that this perfect, powerful, nonchalant shot had been made at a fast clip by a woman walking toward the boat, it seemed, angrily.
    All sense, propriety, and inhibition left him as he bolted forward, pushing through the crowd to close, determined not to lose her again.
     
    She went to the top deck, to