The City Beautiful

by Aden Polydoros

  As I listened to her retreat, I allowed my hand to slide to the floor, my body shaking with ragged breaths. The shallow cut had reopened on my palm. Blood leeched through the silk handkerchief Frankie had wrapped my hand in, blotting out the monogram embroidered in Gothic script. I sank back and watched the stain spread.

  The droplets glistened black in the moonlight, as if I were charred inside.

  * * *

  That night, I was awoken by the sound of a struggle. Gasps, the crunch of straw or leaves, a strained groan. Disoriented, I first mistook the noises as a carryover from my dream. As I sat up, I discerned a figure leaning over Haskel’s bed. The moonlight glinted off the knife the intruder held. Then the blade disappeared between them, and when it emerged, dark liquid streaked its length.

  “Dovid, wake up!” I shouted, only to realize as I said it that his cot was empty. Of all the nights for him to stay out late, why tonight?

  I struggled to free myself from the tangle of sheets. My foot caught in the fabric. I fell onto the floor, nearly sending the bedframe toppling over in the process.

  The doorknob scraped back and forth as a person tried to open it from the other side.

  “Help!” I shouted. “There’s someone in here!”

  The man lunged at me. I snatched hold of the chamber pot stowed under the bed and hurled it at him. The heavy porcelain rim caught him in the side of the head, sending his yanked-down cap askew. Though most of the pot’s contents splashed across the floor between us, some must have gotten on his face. Liquid glistened in his mustache. He swatted at his eyes and snarled in rage, a guttural sound that was barely human.

  The person in the hall had begun throwing their body against the door. It shuddered with each impact.

  As the door’s cheap lock gave way, the stranger hauled himself through the window. I leaped to my feet and lunged across the room, just in time to catch a glimpse of him descending the fire escape. His hat had fallen off, revealing short, dark hair.

  Could it be Katz?

  “Alter?” a thin voice croaked.

  I swiveled around, recalling Haskel. He was curled on the bed, the sheets streaked with blood. With each ragged breath, more blood coursed between his fingers. I rushed to his side and sank to my knees, barely registering Mrs. Brenner’s presence until I heard her say my name.

  “Get help,” I yelled. “He’s been stabbed.”

  As she ran from the room, I grabbed the sheet and bundled it around my hand to form a compact, pressing it over the wound in Haskel’s side in an effort to stop the bleeding. The blade had caught him below the ribs.

  Haskel tried to speak, but no words would come, only the heaving gasps of a drowning man. His eyes fluttered shut.

  “You’re going to be fine,” I said, squeezing his hand.

  “It hurts so much,” he croaked.

  “Don’t speak. Save your strength.”

  As he fainted, the clang of police bells filled the air.

  31

  The Seventh District Police Station towered over Maxwell Street’s tenements and dusty storefronts. The lobby was ill-lit in spite of the ruby glow of morning spilling through the high windows. It should have made me feel secure to be surrounded by so many officers. Instead, the moment I stepped through the doors, my skin crawled with an anxious foreboding. I had spent several hours resting fitfully in Michael Reese Hospital’s lobby, stirred from uncertain dreams by the pealing ambulance bells and the groans of patients. By the time the police summoned me to the station, I had given up on sleep.

  Detective Rariden greeted me at the door and steered me into his office, his fingers digging into my shoulder. This time, he was accompanied by a Yiddish-speaking officer who translated him word for word, even the simple questions. It disoriented me to hear the two men speaking, their voices overlapping in a low din.

  “What am I doing here?” I asked. “Mrs. Brenner and I gave our statements back at the hospital.”

  Rariden nodded. “Ah, yes. Your next-door neighbor. She told us that by the time she managed to get into the room, the man was already gone.”

  “Yes. The door was locked.”

  “Strange, that. How was an intruder able to enter a locked room without waking you or Haskel?”

  “He came in through the fire escape.”

  “I see,” Rariden said with a smile that would have been disarming, if not for the glint of white teeth when he did it. He showed his teeth the way a dog would. “Would you care to explain your flat’s floor plan to us? Draw it out actually. Please.”

  He turned his notebook to a fresh page and passed it over with a pencil. At his prompting, I sketched out the room, with the door at the top of the page and the window at the bottom. Two beds were arranged against each wall. Mine and Yakov’s were nearest to the window, an enviable location during summer but terribly cold and drafty during winter. Haskel’s bed sat across the room from mine, nearest to the door.

  I laid down the pencil and stared at the drawing. Why would the intruder pass by me and head straight to Haskel’s bedside?

  Rariden took the notebook from me and turned it around. “Ah. Interesting.”

  I said nothing.

  “Young man, tragedy has a strange way of following you, doesn’t it? First your roommate Yakov Kogan is found drowned at the World’s Fair, and then your other roommate Haskel Lehr is stabbed in your flat. But don’t worry, it was only a flesh wound. It didn’t even penetrate the abdominal wall. Once he comes down from the laudanum, I’m sure he’ll be able to tell us exactly what happened.”

  I tugged at my shirt collar. Even though the office rested in the shade and the windows were cranked down, I struggled to draw in air. “I have nothing to do with this.”

  “Who said you did?” he demurred.

  “Whoever broke into our room, he attacked me, too. If Mrs. Brenner hadn’t heard us, I don’t know what would have happened.”

  “Yet you ended up without a scratch.”

  Underneath the table, I grasped my hands tightly to still their trembling. There was so much more I wanted to say, but I didn’t know where to begin. If I told the detectives about my suspicions, other truths might rise to the surface like bloated corpses—like Mr. Katz and what Frankie had done to him that autumn night, or what I had growing inside me.

  Besides, I had known my fair share of corrupt officials both in the Levee and back in the old country. It was like buying a fish at market. If there was even just a whiff of rot, no matter how fresh the meat looked, it couldn’t be trusted.

  “Last time I checked, you called Yakov’s death an accident,” I said icily.

  “That was before tonight.” When Rariden had taken my previous statement, he had seemed bored and weary. Now, a hint of interest gleamed in his eyes. He had the look of a bloodhound tracking a scent. It occurred to me that perhaps in his mind finding a Jew to blame for the rash of disappearances on Maxwell Street might be better for his department’s reputation than simply ignoring them.

  “Can you think of anyone who might have a grudge against you or your roommates?” Officer Alperin asked, clearing his throat. He used his Yiddish like a secondhand suit, something worn at the elbows, ill-fitting, and a touch unpleasant. “Perhaps one of you owes money?”

  “No.” This wasn’t a grudge, but it was personal. Katz must have figured out who I was somehow. He had come to the apartment looking for Frankie and me.

  “Are you sure that there is nothing else you can provide us? Did you get a good look at the man?”

  “No. It was too dark. He had a mustache and dark hair. That’s all I know.”

  Alperin relayed the information to Rariden.

  Rariden’s smile returned. His eyes were as cold and flat as slate. “Of course. And he left through the fire escape, the same way he came in. How convenient.”

  I had no answer to that.
/>   He dipped his pen in the inkwell and wrote out a few more lines. Closed the book and set it aside. Sat there. Watching me.

  “You know, these things do not happen at random,” Rariden said. “There is always a reason. A history. A wound.”

  I cleared my throat. “I... I need to go. I have work today.”

  “Of course,” Rariden said.

  I hurried from the room. The station seemed even dimmer than before, as if the windows had shrunk since I entered the building. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I glanced up the way I’d come.

  Officer Rariden stood at the top of the stairs. The light streamed through the window behind him, yet his silhouette remained blanketed in darkness.

  32

  After telephoning the hospital to check on Haskel, I was too restless to return home. I arrived at work early to finish my tasks from the previous day. The sun was not yet past the horizon by the time I took my seat at the Linotype machine, and I worked in the glow of the single gas jet. Several articles for the Monday paper had been left at the machine overnight. I finished typing them before even the first newsboy arrived, eager to lose myself in the repetition of punching down key after key.

  During my lunch break, while waiting for Sarah to prepare the sandwiches for the newsmen, I wrote out a timeline of Yakov’s death and described how it fit into the overall chain of disappearances. I omitted the new developments with Katz and Haskel, afraid of condemning myself. There was still enough evidence in the timeline alone to show the police’s indifference and incompetence. I showed it to Mr. Lewin when I brought him his sandwich.

  He nodded thoughtfully, scanning over the paper. “This is good. Quite detailed. Why don’t you let me hang on to this and reformat it into something more acceptable?”

  I was more than happy to oblige.

  On my way home from work, I took a detour to the Arbeiter-Zeitung’s office, a three-story building clad in tan stone. The printers were already churning out tomorrow’s paper, filling the air with the scents of ink and hot metal. The vibrations of the machinery reached all the way to the office space on the second floor.

  Through the soles of my shoes, I felt the shuddering with increasing intensity. The noise was so pervasive that I even thought I heard the movements of those giant presses in the walls and the ceiling, as though the building itself were a vast meat grinder.

  I searched for Raizel, knowing that she stayed late to walk home with her mother. If Katz had followed us back to the tenement, that meant she was in danger as well. He might not have a grudge against her, but at the very least, she was a loose end in need of tying.

  Raizel wasn’t in the office space, nor in the printing room below. Her colleagues were of no help, until, on my way out, I came across a newsboy entering the building.

  “Raizel Ackermann? She went down to the Stockyards to document the strikes.”

  “The strikes?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Most of Packingtown had walkouts today.”

  “Thank you.” I hurried from the office and caught the tram just as it pulled into the stop across the street. Raizel could have gone to any number of factories and processing plants, but I had a feeling where I’d find her.

  Mr. Katz’s factory rose before me, all soot-stained brick and dark slate. Rubbish and abandoned placards lay in the dirt. Signs in English, German, and Yiddish. It was nearly supper time, and many of the strikers had gone home or left to partake of the nearby taverns. Only a small crowd remained. I spotted Raizel standing across the yard with a group of women workers in aproned uniforms, their hair tucked under nurse-like caps or white handkerchiefs.

  As I neared, she noticed me and broke away from the group. She came up to me, her notebook tucked under her arm. “Alter, what are you doing here?”

  “I heard about the strike,” I said as she capped her fountain pen. “But it seems like it’s over.”

  “Until the end of dinner, at least. Mr. Katz refuses to concede to the workers’ demands, so I suspect the strike will continue through tomorrow. They just brought in one group of strikebreakers, and more are on their way.” She furrowed her brow. “Mrs. Brenner told me about your roommate. I heard the police bells last night, but my parents wouldn’t let me leave our flat. What happened? Is he going to be okay?”

  “He’s going to be fine. The doctor said the wound was shallow.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m just glad I didn’t wake up to a knife in my gut.”

  “You think it was Mr. Katz?” she asked, once I told her in more detail what had happened.

  “It had to be. He must have found out somehow where we live. After we left the Stockyards, he could have had someone follow us back to Maxwell Street.” I turned to the slaughterhouse. “He knows we suspect him.”

  “But to attack your roommate...” She hesitated. “That feels personal.”

  “I think he might have mistaken Haskel for me.” As I said it, it occurred to me that Katz could have just as easily mistaken him for Frankie. With how dark it had been, Katz would have only been able to see his loose curls.

  My jaw, my nose, my eye socket, broken. They had to wire my jaw shut. The one who did it, I would pay dearly to be put alone in a room with him for just five minutes.

  Perhaps it had been quite personal after all.

  A group of men soon appeared, accompanied by several police officers with their batons drawn. At the sight of the new workers, the remaining strikers began clamoring in protest and grouping forward.

  “Stand back,” one of the police officers barked. “Make way, unless you want to spend the night in the pen.”

  As the strikebreakers neared, I turned to Raizel. “This is my chance. If I get inside, I can look around. There might be something in there that can connect him to the other boys.”

  There had to be something. Anything. Just enough proof so that I could do what I needed to free myself from this possession. I had no doubt now. I would have to take Katz’s life with my own hands. For Haskel and Yakov. For the dead.

  “Alter, that’s a terrible idea. Mr. Katz is still in there.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t plan to confront him.” The lie came out smoother than I expected. She didn’t look convinced.

  Raizel called after me as I merged with the crowd, but her words were lost to the strikers’ roars. I passed through a gauntlet of enraged faces and shifting bodies, ducking my head to avoid hurled stones. The doors fell shut behind me with a metallic groan, sealing me in the slaughterhouse’s darkness.

  33

  As we were herded deeper into the slaughterhouse, I drifted to the back of the crowd. The superintendent took us down a corridor as narrow as the wooden run that bulls were sent through to their slaughter. From there, we passed through a series of rooms crowded with machinery and crates.

  The superintendent had to shout to be heard. He spoke in English, and I couldn’t make out what he was saying. We climbed to the second floor and then the third. Through the open doorway, I caught a glimpse of line after line of cattle carcasses, butterflied with their ribs exposed like spread fingers. Deeper in, men worked to adeptly remove the large arteries and segment the limbs. Others immersed the carcasses in long vats of salt water murky with the blood and fluids of the cattle that had come before them.

  Back in my hometown, slaughter had been something performed in yards or in the fields. For larger animals, our community would employ the help of a shochet, who would kill the goat or cow and prepare it according to our laws. I recalled him as a grizzled old man whose low mariner’s cap and dark coat were perpetually stained with blood and grease. He had terrified me at first, but in time I had seen the way he spoke soothingly to the animals we brought him, stroking their fur until they nuzzled against his palm.

  This was nothing in comparison. There was no compassion here, only mechanical efficiency. Once t
he meat was soaked, it would be transported to the lower levels to be ground, canned, pickled, brined, extruded into sausage casings, or cut into chops.

  The overseer cleaved five men from the front of the crowd and sent them to work the vats and conveyer system. On my way out, I glanced up at the wide windows of Mr. Katz’s office, which overlooked the processing floor. The electrical lights glazed the glass, turning it opaque.

  The overseer led us back to the stairs. From there, they would go to the top floor, where the cattle were slaughtered. As the others filed up the steps, I ducked beneath the rickety metal stairwell. I hid there until I was certain the crowd had moved on.

  Things descended here. Just as the carcasses were sent down below after slaughter, the blood and offal were probably pumped to the sublevel through a network of chutes and pipes. The same place where a body would be disposed. I imagined that human remains didn’t look much different than animal parts after a week in the waste pit or the Stockyards’ communal sewer. I needed to go lower.

  Before emerging from cover, I made sure my shirttails and tzitzis were tucked in and smoothed down my shirt and waistcoat. It soothed me to take part in this simple routine. I adjusted my tie and reached for my pocket watch, held it tight for comfort.

  “You belong here,” I whispered to myself. The last two years, I had told myself this more times than I could count. “You belong.”

  I stepped down the stairs with my head held high and my back straight. Mr. Katz would likely be in his office if he were still here at all. That was right where I wanted him. He could stay there all evening, until I needed him.

  I made it to the second floor without encountering anyone, then continued even lower still. Filtered through the Stockyards haze, the light of the setting sun congealed like rancid lard on the stairs. It would be getting dark soon.