The Navigator of New York (56 page)

Dr. Cook was reunited on the
Grand Republic
with his wife and children. Upon seeing me beside her husband, Mrs. Cook scowled and looked as if, were we not surrounded by strangers, she would have accused me of something.

Hundreds of passengers from New York who had paid for the privilege of seeing us first came up from below deck as a band on the upper deck began to play “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the sirens of the
Grand Republic
blared out across the water.

Several men hoisted Dr. Cook on their shoulders and carried him
around the deck. His protests that far too much fuss was being made of him were mistaken for modesty, further inciting the crowd.

The
Grand Republic
was hemmed in on all sides by press boats in which stood reporters busily taking notes. What an odd sight they made, that cluster of bobbing sentinels around the
Grand Republic
. In some boats there were men wielding cameras, whose clicking began all at once, as if an order had been issued to open fire.

A young woman holding a wreath of white tea roses began to make a speech in honour of Dr. Cook but was ignored, so she chased after the men who still had him on their shoulders and tossed the wreath of roses round his neck.

As Dr. Cook was carried to the top deck, he called out my name. I went aloft, following behind Mrs. Cook and her two little girls.

“Welcome, Dr. Cook,” said a tall, top-hat-wearing, red-faced man who grandly introduced himself as Bird Coler, the president of Brooklyn. The borough president, he meant. He confided to Dr. Cook that the mayor of New York had declined an invitation to head up the reception committee.

By this time, many ships in the harbour were blasting their whistles, so that the words of the next speaker, the president of the American Arctic Club, Admiral Schley, went unheard, as did those that Dr. Cook made in reply, except for his opening remark that the Danes “have guaranteed to all other nations our conquest of the pole.”

As the
Grand Republic
passed beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, thousands threw confetti down upon us from the walkway and all traffic on the bridge stood still—horse cars, motor cars, el trains. Drivers and passengers gaped from their vehicles at the overloaded, festooned ship.

Dr. Cook waved and blew kisses.

We continued up the East River. We passed under the Manhattan Bridge and then the uncompleted Williamsburg, from which workers waved and shouted while hanging from the cables. I looked up as though into the rigging of a ship so large it had to be constructed in mid-air.

The
Grand Republic
, after several turns up and down the river,
docked at last at the wharves at the foot of South Fifth Street in Williamsburg, just below the sugar refineries in whose shadows Dr. Cook had spent his childhood.

Tens of thousands of people lined the shore, cheering, screaming, having by this time seen the
Grand Republic
go by them without stopping half a dozen times. The warships gathered in the harbour for the naval parade began to blow their whistles. Soon the whistles of the refineries were blowing, too. Men leaned out the refinery windows waving with both hands.

We walked down the gangway, Dr. Cook with Helen on his shoulders and hand in hand with Marie and Ruth, who stood on either side of him. I followed close behind like some obscure but inex-cludable relation.

The police, about a hundred of them, formed a cordon around us, escorted us to a convertible motor car, where I sat beside the driver while the Cooks, with Dr. Cook in the middle with Helen on his lap, sat in the back.

A parade of two hundred motor cars streamed out behind us. Directly behind us, on a large flatbed truck, there was a brass band that began to play even as the drivers of the cars began to blow their horns. The combined sounds of all the ship whistles and sirens, the refinery whistles, the blaring and honking car horns, the brass band and the cheering crowds was deafening, raucously discordant in the early morning. When I turned around to look at Dr. Cook, I saw that Mrs. Cook and her daughters were sitting with their eyes closed and their hands covering their ears. Dr. Cook was standing in the tonneau, waving with both hands, rising to the occasion with more enthusiasm than I had expected.

Along the five-mile parade route, a crowd later said to number one hundred thousand waved and cheered. The crowd was so large and the parade so long that the trolley tracks were blocked. Dr. Cook, still wearing his wreath of roses, doffed his derby and bowed like an orchestra conductor, at which the crowd laughed as though he was well known for such antics.

On Bedford Avenue, an American flag flew from every house. We passed the milk depot where Dr. Cook had worked with his brothers to put himself through school. On the roof of it was a massive wooden bottle, painted white and bearing the company name, Cook Bros. Milk wagons were parked end to end along the curb.

As we came into view of the intersection of Myrtle and Willoughby, not far from 670 Bushwick, we saw a huge triumphal arch spanning the intersection like a train bridge, higher than the el-train viaduct beside it, made of canvas and wood. It was hung with laurel wreaths and garlands and bore a giant globe, from the North Pole of which flew an American flag. It was a garish spectacle, painted with Arctic scenes and hung with imitation icicles, a child’s vision of the North, all of it bordered with electric bulbs that in the sunlight shone to no effect. At the centre of the arch was a giant cameo-shaped portrait of Dr. Cook, and above it a banner that proclaimed, in letters six feet high, “WE BELIEVE IN YOU.” As we passed beneath the arch, a number of white pigeons were released.

I
WAS WALKING IN
M
ANHATTAN
. D
R
. C
OOK WAS LECTURING IN
Boston. I had decided not to go with him, feeling that I could use a break from all the public appearances we had been making since the day of our parade. Also, it gave me a chance to spend time with Kristine. When we met in Central Park for the first time in almost thirty months, we hugged and kissed, unheedful of the disapproving stares of strangers. “I thought I would never see you again,” she said. She showed me the letter in which I had told her that I loved her. “I read it every day,” she said, “wishing I could write you back and tell you that I loved you, too.” I told her that regardless of what her mother thought of Dr. Cook, I would have to meet her soon.

Everywhere, newsies were hawking papers, on the front pages of which were photographs of Dr. Cook or Peary, or both of them side by side, as if they had been linked in some unravelling conspiracy. My own photograph was appearing in the papers, though not often on the front pages. Still, I was recognized from time to time, addressed as Mr. Stead by strangers who told me they were pulling for me and Dr. Cook.

With no purpose or destination in mind, I strolled along Broadway until I came to the edge of Union Square, where I sat down on a bench to rest. Horse-drawn vehicles of many kinds shared the street with motor cars, all teeming ceaselessly past.

I was not on the bench a minute when I heard my name spoken by someone who had sat beside me. I turned to see a man who looked like he had once been prosperous but doubted he would ever be again.
He raised his derby as if to let me see his silver hair, as if it was proof that he was not a crank of some kind. He introduced himself as “George Dunkle, insurance man.”

He said that an old friend of Roald Amundsen’s, a Norwegian sea captain named August Loose, was staying in his house during a brief visit to New York. Mr. Dunkle said that he and Captain Loose believed Dr. Cook’s claim to have reached the pole was “not only true, but verifiable.” Dr. Cook’s claim, Mr. Dunkle said, was deficient only in “navigational vocabulary,” something Captain Loose could help him with. Dunkle said he had planned to telephone me to invite me to his house to see Captain Loose, but he had happened to spot me on the bench. Would I like to go with him to his house now?

Although I was sceptical, I thought I ought to at least give this friend of a friend, this Captain Loose, a hearing, so I went by car with Dunkle to a brownstone house in Gramercy Park. Dunkle showed me to the front parlour and excused himself, saying he would soon be back with Captain Loose. He closed the parlour doors behind him. Looking around the room, I realized that to whomever this elegant house belonged, it was not Mr. Dunkle.

The doors slid open and standing there was not Capt. August Loose but Comm. Robert Peary. There was no sign of Mr. Dunkle.

“I was tricked into coming here,” I said. “I’ll be leaving now.”

“I need only a few minutes of your time,” Peary said.

“Whose house is this?” I said.

“It is, as a matter of public record, the house of Herbert Bridgman,” Peary said. I had never been in the house before, having always met Bridgman at his office.

Peary was clearly staying as a guest, for he was wearing a pullover sweater and woollen trousers. It was the sort of outfit he might have worn in his quarters on a ship, or at home when he was convalescing from an expedition and not accepting visitors. Despite his recent polar expedition, he looked more like he had in Washington than he had in Etah, robust but roundly so, less muscular, less angular than when I saw him last.

He scuffed across the floor as he had along the beach at Etah and to the podium in Washington. With an effort so great that it almost inspired in me the effrontery to offer him assistance, he slowly lowered himself into the chair across from mine, wincing and grunting until, in one motion, he dropped the last few inches, causing the chair to momentarily tip back slightly on two legs.

He looked at me. His eyes had a wistful, almost forlorn look about them, as if he had just heard of some great disappointment. I would soon realize that this was his permanent expression, and that it was not so much one of disappointment as it was the look of a man who knew that he could have no life beyond exploration, that he had to sacrifice everything to it, that even were he to succeed, he was past the point of being able to derive any benefit or satisfaction from it. He was resigned to the absoluteness of his obsession. All else had been forsaken. He might have been alone on the polar sea, staring out across the ice, his mind made up that he would never make it home.

“You saved my life once, Mr. Stead,” he said. It was a simple statement, a declaration of fact, an admission, the closest thing to gratitude that he could muster, I supposed.

“It may not be too late to save yourself,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“You have been duped by Dr. Cook,” he said. “As of now, you are guilty of nothing more than gullibility. But things may change.”

“I have not been duped,” I said. “There is no doubt in my mind that I was at the pole with Dr. Cook.”

You who can barely cross this room, who could barely have crossed it
before
your expedition, would have the world believe that you have just been to the pole, I restrained myself from saying. There was no point arguing the merits of his claim, repeating criticisms of it already made a hundred times by his detractors.

Peary looked as if he had long known that such a meeting would take place between us. Then suddenly he laughed in a way that was so familiar I thought I had seen him laugh before until I realized that I was remembering Dr. Cook’s description of it. There was no mirth in it, but
nor was there derision or malice. His mouth came open, a laugh-like sound came out, his mouth closed again, his back teeth clicking loudly as if some mechanical part had clamped back into place.

“It is not for me to make Dr. Cook’s case,” I said. “Especially not under these circumstances.”

“I knew your mother, Mr. Stead,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

“I met her once. Briefly. At a party for some doctors in Manhattan. That is where she met Dr. Cook. That is where we all met.”

He paused as if to see what effect this revelation would have on me.

“I know, as you do, that Dr. Cook is your father. But there are things about Dr. Cook that you do
not
know, Mr. Stead. Tell Cook that if he does not tell you what I mean by this, I will.”

“You are only trying to make me doubt him,” I said. “I will tell him nothing.”

“I suspected as much. He has not had the courage to tell you everything. He has almost convinced himself—But I will say no more about it. Confront him. Confront your father. He will tell you. I will not recount his story, having played no part in it worth mentioning. No doubt he will twist things. Let him. I would rather you heard his sordid story from his lips. Confront him. Tell him what I said. If you are not satisfied with his response, come back to me. And perhaps when you know the truth, you will be a gentleman and admit that you were fooled, and that the honour that you thought was yours and his belongs to me.”

I could not think, let alone speak.

“Cook will tell you,” Peary said, “so it is unlikely that you and I will ever meet again.”

He shifted slightly in his chair. I thought he was about to extend his hand for me to shake. I was not sure what I would have done if he had. How strange it would have been to hold that hand again. His eyes were no longer blue. They were black and shining like water at the
bottom of a well. They brimmed over, and two uninterrupted streams of tears ran down his face.

“I will not have it taken from me,” he shouted, though his expression did not change. “I will not share it with a cur like Cook. I will not let him make them doubt me. There must be no doubts. If there are doubts, then it will all be spoiled. I must be remembered for what I did, not for what I might have done. There must be no controversy. It must be settled, absolutely settled, or else Cook will be remembered, too.”

Peary was well into this tirade before I realized that he was no longer speaking to me, looking not at me but at someone in the doorway.

I turned and saw Jo Peary. Peary stopped shouting, stopped pounding the arms of his chair with his hands.