Refiner's Fire by Mark Helprin Page A

beautiful. I guess we’ll take it. It’s healthy and all that, isn’t it, certified, all right in the reflexes?”
    â€œOh yes,” said Sister Bernadine, “he’s very smart for his age. He has a touch of pneumonia and his spine is a little bent, but he’ll be all right. You see, he must have been premature. He’s so tiny.”
    â€œWhere does he come from?”
    â€œHe’s French
(Vive la France! as
they say), from Marseilles; we suspect from a very good family killed in the war. Tragedy.”
    â€œWhat’s his name?” asked Livingston, beginning to like the little thing, which was clearly suffering and hot with fever.
    â€œIt doesn’t really matter. You can adopt him and he’ll take your name.”
    â€œI want him to have his own name. I think he’ll want it that way. What is his name?”
    â€œPearl.”
    â€œPearl?” said Livingston. “I thought it was a boy.” He peered at Marshall. “It is a boy, by God, don’t you know that, Sister Bernadine?”
    Sister Bernadine blushed deeply. Her heart beat like a jackhammer. “It is a boy. Yes, it is a boy. A boy, a boy. His name is Marshall Pearl.”
    â€œWhat the hell kind of name is that for a French aristocrat? Anyway, it sounds Jewish to me.”
    â€œOh no no no...!” said Sister Bernadine in peals of nervous laughter. Livingston watched the baby punching the air, and assented readily to the adoption.
3
    L IVINGSTON TOOK Marshall up the Hudson in a sleeping compartment on the Twentieth Century. He had relatives in the Grand Central stationmaster’s office who had arranged this short passage, and for the train to make a special stop in the woods which led from the river to his house. He had called ahead so that Mrs. Livingston could improvise a nursery and the doctor would be there when they arrived. The train left at seven in the evening. Livingston spent his time gazing alternately at the child and at the landscape. They passed the Palisades, and in his mind he saw long red files of British troops climbing to make a surprise assault. They passed the Tappan Zee—wide like an ocean bay—and they passed Croton Bay, where, in a spirit of daring and wild enterprise, the Colonists had pushed rafts of explosives up to the wooden walls of British warships. Livingston always leaped back to the wars. When the baby cried, he quieted it by stroking its forehead with his finger. Marshall grabbed the finger with his little fist, and although he could hardly hold, it seemed to Livingston that this was somehow a valiant act.
    When it was beginning to get dark the train entered a curve of the river where forests descended to the shore and thick oaken limbs hung out over the water, in which were great boulders. Later, Marshall would have a rope hanging from one of the limbs onto a rock island that became his own. It was the end of August; the weather was hot and steamy. When the train stopped and Livingston got off with Marshall, black porters leaned out the exits to scan the dark forest. The stop at nowhere reminded them of earlier days on the railroad. Steam came up from the tanks and gaskets. A sweating porter in a blue hat with silver badge asked, “You live here?”
    Livingston nodded. “Up a ways on the path. You want to visit, you’re welcome to.” He looked at the sick infant in his arms. “I mean that.”
    The porter smiled and touched his nose, and then pulled a lever in the vestibule. Steam rose as the brakes released and the train began to move forward slowly. The porter kept his eye on Livingston and little Marshall as the train inched forward with increasing force and speed. The porter himself seemed to draw energy and power from the accustomed momentum, and when he spoke it was as if he were in a preacher’s pulpit. Livingston did not doubt the moment. “Chicago...” said the porter. “Chicago and the plains.