New York - The Novel

The north facade was not faced with marble like the front, but with plain brownstone. At the time it was built, most of the city, and all the best quarters, had lain to the south. There had been no need to spend money on the northern facade therefore, which would only be seen by poor folk. And behind the gaudy palace, in the big, central sink of the city, there were poor folk in abundance.
    In Five Points.
    Once upon a time, there had been a big old pond there, and the village of freed slaves, with swampy land beyond. The pond and the swamp had still been there in Washington’s day, as the city started to extend northward around it. But then the city authorities had drained them, and lain acanal to draw away the water. And after that, they had built over the canal with streets of brick houses.
    Five Points. It was a swamp now, all right. A moral swamp: an infected warren of streets and alleys, tenements and whorehouses. In the middle of it all, the old hulk of a former brewery, like a cathedral of vice, opened its doors to welcome all that was unholy. If you wanted to watch cocks fight, or dogs kill rats, or have your pocket picked, or find a whore and catch the pox, you went to Five Points, where someone would be sure to oblige you. If you wanted to see gangs of Protestant Bowery Boys fight gangs of Catholics, you could often see that too. Travelers said it was the most absolute slum in the world.
    And who lived there? That was easy to tell. Immigrants.
    There were plenty of them. George Washington had known a city of thirty or forty thousand souls. By the time the Erie Canal was completed, one could add another hundred thousand, a population which far surpassed any other city in America, even Philadelphia. During Mary’s childhood, the increase had accelerated even faster. She’d heard the population was well past half a million now.
    They were all sorts. Many were escaping from the Old World to take their chance in the New. Her own family had come from Ireland twenty years earlier. Others came from the upstate farmlands, from Connecticut, New Jersey or further off, looking for whatever the city might offer. In the last two years, however, a new and sudden tide had washed against America’s shores, larger than any before, and sent there by the tragedy of the Irish Famine.
    They came by the shipload. And though they weren’t the poorest Irish—for at least they, or relations in America, had been able to pay the fare—once they had arrived, they usually had few resources. And for newcomers to the city, if all else failed and you’d nowhere to go, then the last resort was the filthy tenements of Five Points. God knows how many poor Irish were crowded in there now.
    The area contained one noble building: a huge rectangle, the size of a castle, whose tall window frames and thick stone columns were splendidly sculpted in the Egyptian style—so that you might have thought the ancient pharaohs had deserted their pyramids and come to live in New York. Whether its inmates appreciated the architecture was doubtful, for this was the local prison, known as “The Tombs”—a blunt reminder that the New World, too, could be cold and hard as stone.
    But as she glanced in the direction of Five Points, there was one thing Mary was sure of: every prisoner, every prostitute, every tavernkeeper, every poor Irish newcomer—every one of them knew the devil, and he knew them. Like as not, he was in there now. She quickened her pace, therefore, until she was well past.
    Only once did she pause, for a moment or two, at Reade Street, to look into the handsome windows of A. T. Stewart’s Dry Goods Store. She didn’t go past it often, but who could resist peeping at the calicos and silks, the beautiful gloves and shawls set out there? Once, she’d even dared to go in and look at some of the ladies’ underwear they kept in drawers behind the counter. Such lovely lacy things. Not that she could think of buying them, of course. But it gave her a thrill, just to look.
    She paused not even a minute, and was turning to hurry on, when she felt a hand clamp upon her shoulder.
    “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” she cried.
    “Going somewhere?” asked the devil.
    “Mind your own business.”
    “You said you had to work late.”
    “The manager changed his mind.”
    “Don’t lie to me, Mary. I always know when you’re lying. I’ve been following you all the way from Fraunces Tavern,” her brother Sean said.
    “You’re the devil all