Metropolis Read Free Page A

the pair of miniature white Arabians, then the hacks. He ran down the hallway, pausing every few steps to open two more stall doors, stopping only once to stroke the quivering nose of his goat before he drove her from her stall, shouting, “Go on, go! Get out of here!” And then he shouted it again, in German, and she went.
    Saving the horses and the goat was a futile if good-hearted act. For in what way were their lives worth living anyhow? Split hooves and whippings, not pastured days, awaited most of them, even the ones that wore sequined saddle blankets seven nights a week. It took more than sugar lumps to train a stallion to juba. And when the toil and moldy oats had finally taken their toll, the soap and glue trades would pay cold cash for the honor of hauling the fallen away. But he didn’t think of that. He thought of low whinnies and bristly upper lips and the grateful munching of hay. The further he strayed from the main door, the harsher grew the air, until, by the time he thought of his own escape, the fire possessed the building. He could hardly see or breathe or move. His feet hurt where he’d stepped on coals before he got his boots on, blisters rising fast; his face was black with char, his hands were scorched and seared. He’d freed perhaps a quarter of the horses, but they hurtled to and fro in terror, unable to find the door. He’d never seen so many animals rear up in a single hour, never imagined the likes of Alice would again get beyond a trot.
    He had it in mind to run for the fire station next, as if he were the only man in Manhattan and there were no watchtowers, no alarm boxes, no neighbors, no hack drivers to notice the blaze that now burst through the roof in multiple places. But somehow that thought enabled him to make it, crawling, coughing and finally stumbling over the fallen lintel to the stable door. He was on his knees as he made his way into the night. The air was clear and cold, and the wind seemed to whip the smoke away from the Earth, straight to the stars. The stableman saw Orion’s Belt—three lights straight as ninepins, bright and fine and reassuring—and then he heard a fire wagon pull up at the curb, saw its steam pump gushing clouds of ice that mingled with the smoke. The clanging of bells suggested that other carriages approached as well. In the fire’s quavery light, a posse of men leapt forward to attack a small figure at the curb. General Tom Thumb? He wondered deliriously why they would do such a thing—unless they thought he had set the blaze? But of course it was only the fire hydrant on which the stableman had sat more than once, taking in the street scene, before the weather turned so cold. Soon a supple length of hose jerked and jumped. Water surged to its nozzle. Two men stood on either side to restrain it, like boys playing tug-of-war. They raised it toward the flaming doorway where he lay.
Salvation!
he thought, but it was a bit late for that.
    The spray of water hit him like the whole North Sea, icy and powerful. He was on his knees already, and it smashed him to his belly, crashed against him like a wave on the rocks, shooting out in a horizontal geyser. He could neither advance nor retreat. Behind, the fire roared; ahead, hoses spewed. Above, the sky was high and black and dry and windy, filling fast now with low gray billows. Cinders wafted bright among the stars and a light snow fell from the spray of the hose. But he saw nothing anymore, save a white death as perilous as the red-hot one he’d escaped. Nor did the firemen see him, or the torrent relent. His eyes clamped tight, his mind shut down. How many choices did he have? How many do I? To save him from an early death here may be only to deliver him to a slow one later, a lifetime of struggle and humiliation. It might be kinder just to end it here, but now that I’ve taken him on, how could I?
    It was Beatrice who spotted him. She wore an enormous winter shawl on top of her overcoat and for a