The huge crate was safely stored in Van Zandt’s warehouse. Mr. Partridge shouldered his heavy bag, refused Cormac’s offer to carry it for him, grabbed two smaller satchels in each hand, and they set off together into the town. They walked up the slope of Wall Street, heading west, and the crowds filled Cormac with a sense of the marvelous. Here were all the nations of the earth, their languages drifting through the soggy air, or cleaving passages between the nouns and verbs of English. He didn’t yet know French from German or Spanish from Dutch, but Mr. Partridge kept saying, Listen, listen to them, lad while telling him the names of the languages. The faces seemed to fit the words themselves, and their smooth or jarring rhythms: lean or fat, dark or fair. Cormac felt that he had entered the main street of Babel. New York was an English town, of course, and had been one since 1673, the second time the English took it from the Dutch at gunpoint (Mr. Partridge said), the way they’d taken Ireland from the Irish.
