I didn’t take the bait.
“This is where you’re supposed to laugh,” Frankie said. “A snicker at the very least.”
“It’s not funny.”
“Not funny?” He scoffed in disbelief. “You’re just about the only Jew in Chicago without a sense of humor.”
“Says the only Jew in Chicago incapable of telling a good joke.” I rolled my eyes. “Now, you said Victor was found in the river?”
“Minus a few parts of him.”
I choked on my cocoa. “You don’t mean...?”
“No. Just that the wound was deep and messy, and he’d been in the water for a while. He’d started to float. That’s how they found him. That’s what happens to dead bodies, I suppose.” His drumming fingers stilled, and his gaze wandered to the waterway running along the teahouse promenade. “It was over by Maxwell Street. Victor was living at a settlement house there. Before he died, he went back to the old ways, yarmulke and all.”
“In other words, a good mensch,” I said dryly.
“Right.” Frankie smiled a little, only to sober up. “Not that being pious or a good person has ever protected anyone.”
Seeing that I had finished my iced cocoa, he passed me his own glass with the unspoken expectation that I should drink the rest. I tried to push it back, but he wouldn’t have it, so I took it upon myself to finish his leftovers.
As I lowered my glass, a distant blast echoed through the midway, followed by two more bangs in rapid succession. I flinched and looked around for the source of the noise. “Were those gunshots?”
“Probably from Buffalo Bill’s across the street. You know how cowboys are.”
No, I didn’t know. But I wasn’t about to admit that.
Frankie picked up the menu and gave it a cursory glance. “You should know, Victor isn’t the only one who’s gone missing. Just the only one who’s been found.”
I paused in the middle of drinking. “Wait. Have they all been Jews?”
“At least the ones I know of.” He shrugged, fanning himself with the menu. “Not anyone in the crew, just friends of friends.”
A ball of ice formed in the pit of my stomach. Frankie clearly saw no common pattern, but I did.
“Why’re you giving me that look?” He narrowed his eyes. “What—you think someone’s killing Jews now?”
“My roommate Yakov was found dead here yesterday. The police thought it was an accident, but I don’t believe it. I saw his body, and he had a bruise around his throat as though he’d been strangled. That’s why I came here, to investigate it. And three others have disappeared in the last couple months.”
“Alter, this isn’t Russia. There aren’t pogroms here.”
“I’m not talking about that, not anything state-sponsored.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know. Someone acting alone. Someone who hates us.”
“This heat has gone to your head. You’re talking like a meshugener.”
Annoyed, I rose to my feet. “Thank you for the cocoa, but I have better things to do than sit around and let you insult me.”
“Alter, wait.” Frankie set aside the menu he had been fanning himself with. As I pushed back in my chair, he got up from his.
I didn’t want to be here anymore. I didn’t know how to explain to him that since Yakov’s death, the world had turned upside down, everything going topsy-turvy like a tumble down a rabbit hole. The mikveh, the writing, and now this. This feeling in my gut, that there was something more at work here than just the two of us. Not divine providence, but...something.
“Alter.” His voice softened as he touched my shoulder. “You’re trembling.”
I wanted so badly to lean into Frankie, lose myself in the heat and mooring strength of his body. But I brushed his hand away. All these old feelings, why did they have to come back now? Why couldn’t the past just stay dead?
“I need to go back to work.” I struggled to keep my voice steady.
“Your hands are freezing cold,” he murmured. “Why are you so cold?”
I flinched away, chilled to the bone, as if I had one foot back in that wintry afternoon when I’d first met him. It was suffocating being here, surrounded by this noise, the surging crowds, and blinding splendor. If I stayed even a minute longer, I’d drown.
“Alter, wait,” Frankie called. “I can help you.”
“No, you can’t.” I turned and walked away, not looking back when Frankie said my name. I couldn’t let him get close to me again, not after Yakov. I felt like a tornado, indiscriminately uprooting things and yanking them into my path. Nothing would ever harm me; I was the one that ruined everything around me. My father’s death had proved that fact, and Yakov’s had only reinforced it.
I was poison.
9
“You’re going to school?” Haskel asked when he saw me put my coat on the next evening. If the dark circles under his eyes were any clue, the last forty-eight hours had taken their toll on him as well. Instead of going to a saloon or dance hall with Dovid, he sat on his cot, playing game after game of solitaire. He stared at the cards as if they’d give him a glimpse into his fate.
“If I don’t show up, someone else will take my seat.” I buttoned my coat, averting my gaze.
I couldn’t stop thinking about yesterday afternoon. After leaving Frankie, I had spent thirty minutes ducking around the Fair’s outskirts, asking the workers if they’d seen Yakov on the Fourth of July. It was a complete waste of time. Nobody knew anything, and as I grew more agitated, my attempts at English dissolved into incoherence.
Even worse, Mr. Weiss gave me a scathing lecture when I showed up for work this morning, and put me to work cleaning and oiling all the presses. My palms were still stained with a dark crud of ink I’d scrubbed from the machines’ crevices.
“I thought you’d be staying at home. You know, since you used to go to class with Yakov, and with him being...” Haskel trailed off, laying down another card.
Just the sound of Yakov’s name made me tug my coat tighter around myself. I had been fighting with a chill ever since Yakov’s death, and now my body grew even colder still, as though sleet flowed through my veins.
“I’m not sitting shiva for him,” I said curtly, and stepped out the door.
The English night class was held several times a week in coordination with one of Maxwell Street’s many Jewish aid organizations. It met in a classroom at the nearby high school, and it was so popular that although I arrived ten minutes early, a new student had already taken my place. When I saw the girl’s face, I felt a jolt of surprise.
“That’s my seat,” I said as Raizel uncapped her travel inkwell.
“Is that so?” She lifted her eyebrows but made no effort to move. “Your name’s not on it.”
“What are you doing in a midlevel class? Don’t you already know English?”
“I believe in self-improvement.” She arranged her writing supplies on the desktop and opened her leather-bound journal to a blank page.
Apparently, Raizel wasn’t entirely pitiless, because she scooted her chair in so I could reach the seat next to her.
“Look at us,” I said, sitting down. “Mrs. Brenner would be pleased.”
“Because I haven’t thrown hot tea on you yet?”
“To be fair, it was only lukewarm.”
“Oh, how forgiving of you.” The corner of her mouth curled in a smile. “You should know, I have no intention of being anyone’s angel in the house.”
“I suspect your future husband will be dodging a great many teacups then.”
It soothed me to banter with her. It made things feel a bit more normal.
“Perhaps I don’t want a husband.” She gave me a pointed look. “Perhaps I plan to keep cats as children.”
I chuckled. “You’ll break Mrs. Brenner’s heart
. I think she’s intent on collecting a broker’s commission from the both of us.”
Raizel cocked her head, her gaze inquisitive. “And what do you want, Alter?”
Her direct question took me aback. We had reached a crossroads. This conversation could go two ways now. Two different directions, two different futures.
I knew what she expected to hear, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“I’d rather we just be friends,” I muttered, preparing for the worst. I was shocked when a bright smile spread across her face, an almost knowing smile, as though we were linked by a shared solidarity.
“Ah, I had a feeling,” she said. “So much for being able to read the future.”
“What?”
Raizel cocked her head. “You don’t know? Mrs. Brenner does palm and forehead readings on the side.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Haven’t you wondered about why she gets so many visitors during odd hours?”
“I thought they were her matchmaking clients.”
“She’s very serious about it. Next time you visit, ask to see her copy of the Khokhmes Hayad.” Raizel smirked. “She claims it’s some medieval palm-reading guide, but I think it’s just something she bought from a traveling kabbalist back in the old country.”
Class progressed as usual. The teacher, Mrs. Spektor, had a name befitting her appearance. Tall and bony, with hair the same chilly gray as her eyes, she hovered over the class like a vengeful spirit. She would speak only English, gesturing or miming to give us hints, if she was feeling generous.
Mrs. Spektor wrote the new vocabulary words over the faded sketches of algebra lessons. The lines of numbers made me envious. I would have liked to come here during the daytime hours when the classes were in session, surrounded by boys my age, American boys with their open smiles and boisterous voices. I’d never have that opportunity, but it came as a bittersweet relief to know that my sisters would.
I wrote down the new words and tried my hand at translation when Mrs. Spektor called on me, but I couldn’t focus. My hand was cramping badly, and my fountain pen kept swerving off course.
“Do you have a spare pen?” I asked Raizel.
“Why?”
“There’s something wrong with mine.” I wiped the nib on a cloth and tried again, but it was no better. The letters were coming out strange and blockish, neither English cursive nor the German-style Kurrent script I had been taught years ago by my tutor.
“Can I see?” she asked.
I handed the pen to her.
She tried it on her paper, examined the nib, and then shook her head. “Looks fine to me.”
“No, the letters are all wrong.” But I tried again once she handed the pen back to me, and this time the cursive flowed out the way I had been taught. “Huh. Maybe there was a blockage.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t try writing with your left hand,” Raizel said blandly.
“I wasn’t.”
She gave me a strange look. Oh. She hadn’t meant to be taken seriously. I sighed and turned my attention back to the chalkboard. Frankie would be glad to know he wasn’t the only Jew in Chicago incapable of telling a good joke.
“So, what are you doing here really?” I asked, when Raizel answered the third question in a row, drawing envious glances from the other students. I spoke softly, to avoid earning another acidic look from Mrs. Spektor. “You can’t be hoping to learn anything today.”
She had been tapping her pen end against her cheek and stopped. “The advanced class meets at the other end of the building. It was canceled unexpectedly, so I came here.”
“Canceled? Was your teacher sick?” Maybe I wasn’t the only one feeling unwell lately.
“No, it had something to do with Mrs. Strauss’s husband. He delivers ice down at the Stockyards. I suppose with the unrest that’s going on, a striker accidentally caused his horse to spook.”
“The unrest?”
“There’s always unrest, of course, but the strikes have become particularly bad. I’ve heard that there’s going to be walkouts any day now. There’s even been talk that the Pinkerton Agency is going to be called in like they were in Pittsburgh last year.”
She meant the Homestead Strike, which had ended in a shootout that left over a dozen men dead. I remembered how tense everyone had been after the news broke. For me, it had been just another sign that America was not the goldene medina my father had envisioned.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I said, turning in my seat to face her. “There’s actually something I’d like to ask you about. I know you’ve written articles for the Arbeiter-Zeitung.”
“Under a pen name, but yes. I even got an opinion piece published in the Freiheit last September.” Her voice swelled with pride. Based in New York, the Freiheit was even more notorious than the Arbeiter-Zeitung in its calls for revolution.
“I was wondering if—”
At the front of the room, Mrs. Spektor whacked her pointer against the desk.
“Mr. Rosen.” Her voice was as wooden as the pointer she wielded. “If you must insist on talking in class, may I suggest you continue your conversation outside?”
With a meaningful look in my direction, Raizel gathered her things, rose to her feet, and left the room. I sat there for a moment longer, petrified in embarrassment, before following after her with my head ducked down.
Raizel waited for me outside, twisting her chin-length hair between her fingers. After the disastrous matchmaking attempt, Mrs. Brenner had gossiped to me that Raizel’s parents had cut her hair short at a physician’s advice, due to a touch of brain fever. But I had a feeling that brain fever might’ve just been another way of saying uncooperative, or outspoken, or brilliant. I had a suspicion she might have even cut it herself, considering the raggedy edges.
“Took your sweet time, didn’t you?” she said. “I thought you’d stay in there forever.”
“I was tempted to,” I assured her, earning a hint of a smile.
Just by talking without a chaperone present, we were committing a social taboo. Still, something about this felt right. Felt proper. As a child, I had many friends who were girls, but somewhere along the way, new expectations had been enforced and I had been taught to keep my distance. It had always struck me as wrong, for a reason I couldn’t articulate. Maybe this had been the right way all along.
“So, what were you going to say before Mrs. Spektor banished us from the classroom?” Raizel asked.
“The police don’t care about the disappearances, but if we can stir up some public outrage, maybe that will inspire them to look into it.”
“Good luck doing that.”
“I mean it. I want to write an article about Yakov’s death and the disappearances that have been happening on Maxwell Street. Like you said, it’s too much of a coincidence that three boys from our tenement disappeared within the last two months. And it’s not just them. Another boy I knew was found dead a few weeks ago. Stabbed. And then with Yakov...”
“You volunteer at the chevra kadisha, right? Did you see something that might suggest Yakov’s death wasn’t an accident?”
“He had bruises on his body.” My hand lifted to my collar as though drawn by muscle memory. I loosened my ribbon tie to hide the gesture. “And a mark upon his throat, as though he had been strangled.”
Raizel mulled it over. “Aaron was active with me in labor. For a while now, he’d been talking about getting a story published at the Arbeiter-Zeitung. He thought that if he could write just one article, it would open doors for him at the Socialist Labor Party or International Working People’s Association. He thought he’d become famous and go on tours around the country. That he’d be like Daniel De Leon, the party’s National Lecturer.”
“For someone so famous, I’ve never heard of this De Leon person.”
She gave me
a withering look. “That’s because you’d rather read about challah recipes and Torah dedications than pull your head out of the dirt. Mr. De Leon edits The People in New York—”
“Never heard of that one either.”
“—but he’s also been a lecturer at Columbia College and an attorney.”
“You sound like you really admire him. Don’t tell me you’re aiming to be the next National Lecturer?”
“Very funny.” She huffed. “My point is that even if Aaron had managed to get an article published, it isn’t as though it’d earn him points with the SLP. I tried to tell him this, but he wouldn’t listen. Anyway, a few days before Aaron disappeared, he kept telling me that he was following a story. Something that would really earn the editors’ respect.”
“What kind of story?”
“Nothing involving the labor movement, so it would never be published. It seemed so foolish when he first told me about it. It had something to do with the body parts they’ve found washed ashore Lake Michigan these last few months. You’ve heard about it, haven’t you?”
“I saw an article in an English newspaper, but I couldn’t understand all of it.” I adjusted the brim of my cap, my lingering anxiety giving way to a slight discomfort at being out here in the open where anyone could see us. “I haven’t really been paying attention to the news lately. With work and everything...”
I expected Raizel to make a quip about capitalism, but instead, she said, “Alter, are you familiar with Jack the Ripper?”
Her question took me aback. “I’ve heard of him, of course. Who hasn’t?”
When my father and I had passed through Bucharest on our way to America, the Ripper had been the talk of the capital. A serial killer in London, preying on women. Dismemberment. Mutilations. Organs missing. Most of his known victims had been butchered outdoors, but I also remembered reading about torsos and limbs washing ashore the Thames. The killings had ended in 1891, nearly two years ago, but the killer had never been found.
The City Beautiful Page 7
