Oneiron

to the bridge, and many have jumped from its sides with boyish athletic intentions, as well as darker motives. The case of the cartoonist Otto Eppers is one of the most well known. In 1910 seventeen-year-old Otto climbed the bridge and jumped off, surviving the splash without a bruise, unlike many less fortunate aspirants. The tugboat Florence plucked Otto out of the water according to plan and took him to shore, where the police awaited the daredevil. Charges were filed against Otto for attempted suicide. Although the charges were later dropped, this chain of events, or, more precisely, its final act, raises bewildering theoretical questions. First of all: what individual fact makes an act suicidal, and can any outsider, and on what basis, define that? Because Otto was just insanely brave. Secondly: how can you punish anyone for attempted suicide? (By hanging, as was the case in nineteenth-century England. The body was also posthumously desecrated, a practice the church didn’t discontinue until 1823. In France suicide was lèse-majesté prior to the Revolution. In ancient Greece, one had to request permission for suicide from a court. We also know of a case in which doctors stitched together a prisoner who had slit his own throat so that he could be hanged properly.) Isn’t surviving suicide—if a person, unlike Otto, really wants to die—a punishment in itself? Shouldn’t a suicide candidate receive something more like, say, a hug after a failed attempt?

In any case, with its 5,989 feet of length, the Brooklyn Bridge remained the longest suspension bridge in the world for twenty years (until 1903, when the Williamsburg Bridge was built over the same East River). In consolation for the bridge, let it be said that it is and will remain, now and always, the world’s first suspension bridge built with metal cables (firsts, unlike lengths, are not threatened in the record books by anything other than lies).

When Shlomith has jogged under the skyway connecting the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ headquarters complexes (now she has a stitch in her side), she reaches tiny Everit Street and then Old Fulton Street, along which we find the first signposts for the most difficult portion of the route: how to access the footbridge. Look sharp now, copycats and wanna-be Shlomiths! Even the best map from Barnes & Noble won’t reveal the route, since the network of roads here is anything but laid out nicely in a grid. And to top it all off, the thick orange worm named the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (which leads the cursed lines of cars onto the bridge) obscures the cartographic information that a walker, runner, or cyclist needs most at this point. A green sign leads cyclists forward with a helpful arrow and those who need the stairs to the left, as well as those whose destination is the Manhattan Bridge (but best to keep quiet about that or else this guided tour will end up with altogether too many bridges).

So we turn in the direction of the arrow onto Front Street. Walk forward, past Dock Street, but don’t go overboard and end up on Pearl Street, because then you’re under the bridge and probably lost, even though it is a majestic sort of place in its own seedy way and even though you’ll find a helpful sign there too, BROOKLYN BRIDGE (STAIRS), although its arrow points at a corrugated steel wall. Choose the cross street labeled York Street and start going that way. On the left you’ll see a red-brick industrial building, with white lettering in vintage script stretching across the entire wall between the third and fourth floors reading THOMSON METER CO. WATER METERS. There isn’t anything else to see on that bit of road. (If you must know, in 1887 the Scottish-born inventor and manufacturer John Thomson patented a water meter for controlling and billing water usage. Naturally he began mass-producing the device for sale; a round meter that works on the same principle is found in nearly every building nowadays.) Now you’ve reached Washington Street and you’re almost at your destination. Walk for a moment watching the left side of the street. There it finally is: the bridge and the road that dives under it, or in other words the place where walkers enter the bridge.

In that shaded place under the bridge is a small sales cart and on the cart a yellow and blue Heja Sverige! sunshade to attract attention: 2 HOT DOGS + COLD WATER OR COLD SODA CAN—$4. Apparently people coming from the bridge or going to the bridge are hungry, or at least enough are that it’s worthwhile to stand in that exhaust-fume-choked rathole and sell bottled and canned drinks and snacks packed in cardboard and wrapped in paper. (Shlomith never buys anything from this establishment, but nothing would stop you from buying two discount hot-dogs and a refreshing beverage you may need as the heat of the day continues to rise, and God help us, it is hot up on the bridge . . .) In front of the hot-dog stand is a sign defaced with stickers and tags that says BROOKLYN BRIDGE (STAIRS). For once the arrow points in precisely the right direction: finally, after all this time, we see the stairs we need.

For a first-timer, finding these stairs must be similar to the joy experienced by the archaeologist Carlo Fea, when he began to unearth the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, which had been buried in sludge in the northeast corner of the Forum Romanum at the foot of the Capitoline Hill. But one must not linger distracted by daydreams, since Shlomith has already moved on. She runs along the handsome bridge toward Manhattan, and we let her run. She knows full well where to turn after reaching the island, where to find a pleasant route (although after the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, “pleasant” is a very relative concept) to her final destination, the Lower East Side, the intersection of East Houston and Ludlow. She walks into Katz’s Deli, which has been