The Museum of Extraordinary Things(23)
Girls and a few young men continued to gather on the windowsills, gazing out over the scene before closing their eyes and leaping. It seemed an endless stream of beautiful young people would continue to fly above them. The twisted fire escape still popped and shot off sulfurous bits of metal into the sky, the echo resembling gunfire. The only other sound was that of the water hitting the building, then running into the streets, a tragic waterfall. Before long Eddie was standing in a black pool up to his ankles.
It was then he spied the owners being ushered away in chauffeur-driven cars, behind them a carriage drawn by two fine black horses. The bosses and their associates had all managed to escape by climbing onto the roof, then making their way to the rooftop of the next factory. Eddie turned his camera, catching the moment when one of the owners gazed at the burning factory before a younger dark-haired man drew him back inside the curtains of the carriage. For an instant Eddie thought he knew this young man, though it was impossible; he wasn’t acquainted with anyone of this ilk. No one he crossed paths with would wear a beaver coat and ride in a coach with velvet curtains while girls leapt into the air with no net to catch them, and no salvation, and no carriages to carry them away.
By then there were scores of bodies on the sidewalk. Even those hardened men who saw death every day, firemen and police officers, were crying as they worked. Eddie did his job, but as he photographed the fallen he had the sense that he was standing at the end of creation. If the ground split open beneath the Asch Building and took them all into the fires of hell, this day could not have seemed any more horrifying. The heat of the Asch Building could be felt two blocks away, though the flames were now smoldering. The crowd was hushed, even as more and more people were drawn to the scene, witness to the worst workplace disaster in the history of the city. Eddie took one photograph after the other. He could not stop, his angry heart convinced that he needed to document every inch of the catastrophe. In those hours on Washington Place, as he stood in the water and ashes, he lost the ability to be detached. All of those times when he hadn’t felt another man’s losses now came back to haunt him. He saw not only in black and white but also in every shade in between. The effect was humbling. The pools that bloomed red on the concrete were indeed blood, the white shards flung upon the cobblestones, bone. The bodies of the girls and a few strong young men were illuminated; each shone with light, the silver-edged sorrow of the recently deceased. Many were so wounded from their falls that the policemen who’d been sent to move them and tag the bodies so they might later be claimed, were doubled over in shock, the toughest among them gasping for strength and breath.
It was then a wind seemed to arise suddenly, for there was all at once a roar cutting through what had been silence. But in fact what they heard was the sound of sobbing, for those who had managed to survive were already searching for sisters and friends, and what they discovered was devastating. As the families of the dead arrived, many had to be restrained. Eddie himself felt maddened as he wandered among those who’d been lost, documenting as many as he could. He let the camera make his choices, for his eyes were burning with soot and his head spun. He continued to photograph the scene until a company man came over, there on behalf of the bosses, the very ones who had refused to install sprinklers, who some were saying were known to burn down their buildings for the sake of insurance money.
“That’s enough,” the company man said flatly. He was wearing an overcoat, though the air was stifling. He carried a thick wooden club he seemed more than ready to use. “Get going now.”
Eddie hoisted his camera stand over his shoulder. “No problem. On my way.” He muttered a few ripe curses under his breath, but he let it go at that, though he was steaming. He would have liked to have it out with the stooge, but this wasn’t the moment to create an incident. Instead, Eddie went along Washington Place onto Waverly, but, as soon as the company man had moved on, he continued to work, despite the warning he’d been given. The air was cold and damp in the oncoming dusk, but his skin was burning. He was in a fever, and sweat washed down his back and chest. He couldn’t help but wonder if Moses Levy had experienced this same heat, if true images burned their maker. He wondered, too, if the hermit at the riverside was right, if there wasn’t some element of capturing a soul in each photograph, if he wasn’t responsible for those whose images he caught, whether they be a bird in a cage, a fish in a pail, or a girl on a windowsill.
Eddie wiped his lens clean of soot. He tried to disappear from view as he photographed families desperate to find a sister or daughter, and girls crying in the gutter, arms around each other, clothes covered with ashes, the hems of their skirts singed black. In deference to their grief, he turned to photographing a clutter of personal trinkets, hair ribbons, purses, love letters, combs, all floating like debris in the drenched gutters, scattered over the cement like confetti. But every object seemed to have a soul as well, a throbbing heart, a remembrance of small pleasures and true love. There would be sixteen engagement rings found on the pavement by morning.
When darkness fell the police chased everyone away so they might cordon off the street to bring in the wooden coffins for the dead. So many were needed they could not gather enough in all of Manhattan. Carpenters came to fashion dozens more from floorboards and doors. Eddie huddled in a doorway so that he could continue on. His skin was aflame, and a cough had settled in his chest. He was still positioned on the soaked pavement when the firemen went into the building to retrieve the dead who’d been trapped in the charred rooms. They wrapped the bodies in sheets of oilcloth, and when those ran out they turned to using burlap, though the fabric quickly became damp and some of the sodden threads unraveled as corpses were lowered to the street on heavy ropes. The last image Eddie photographed belonged to one such terrible bundle, the pale feet of a lifeless young girl as she was delivered through the air.