I pinched the bridge of my nose and concentrated until my sinuses burned. If I were him, where would I start a fire? It wouldn’t be just anywhere. There would be significance to it. Ceremony.
Grigori’s words passed through my head: An eyesore of rotten wood, stacked haphazardly, without taste or culture.
“A shul,” I whispered. “It’s going to be at a shul.”
In Piatra Neamţ and the surrounding towns, many of the shuls had been built with age-darkened wood from the firs and beeches that populated the Carpathians. I knew that to Grigori, what had resembled a blight had probably been a modest building from the outside, so as to avoid making a target of itself. The inside would have been a wealth of carvings, soaring domes, and paintings.
The shuls of Maxwell Street were all brick and clapboard, some with plaster walls painted to resemble stone. There were no shuls with walls of exposed wood here, except for one. The unfinished shul by the chevra kadisha.
53
Two stories high, the unfinished shul stood level with the brick buildings surrounding it. Backlit by the glow of the sun, it appeared prematurely burnt.
As we entered the building, Raizel retrieved a hammer from the scatter of tools lying in the corner. The scents of pine oil, tar, and sawdust hung in the air.
Stepping deeper into the sanctuary, my foot skidded in a slick patch. I looked down. A trail of clear liquid snaked across the floor.
Raizel bent down, traced a finger through the mess, and raised it to her nose. She took a sniff and turned to me. “Turpentine,” she whispered.
Grigori was here, and he had been coming here all along, hadn’t he? Perhaps the lantern light I had glimpsed in these windows the night Raizel and I met to go to the Whitechapel Club hadn’t just been a product of the dybbuk. The stranger who had pursued me down Maxwell Street in the dead of night, after emerging from this very building, had certainly been real.
I drew my revolver from the pocket where I had stashed it. This time, I made sure to cock the hammer as Frankie had shown me. I needed to end this. Now.
“Get the police,” I whispered to Raizel.
“No!” Her eyes flared. “I’m not leaving you.”
“If he kills us both, this place will—”
A floorboard creaked deeper in the sanctuary. I held my breath and eased forward. Reaching the cover of some stacked crates, I readied myself. Raizel found refuge behind a pile of boards.
I could do this. I had already shot one man. I squeezed my fingers tighter around the revolver’s ivory handle.
Stop trembling, I ordered myself sternly. You are strong.
This was not murder. It was an execution. Din rodef.
As Grigori emerged from the side chamber, I opened fire.
He reacted in an instant, pivoting even before the second gunshot rang out. He dived back through the open door. I barreled after him, already cocking the hammer a third time, praying I had landed a hit.
This liquid roar in my ears, this taste of char on my tongue—this was terror and the overwhelming will to live and the potential to kill. My hands had stopped shaking after the second pull of the trigger, and I held the gun steady. Three bullets left.
Blood splattered the floor of the stairwell that led to the women’s gallery above. I caught a glimpse of him at the top of the stairs and fired once more as he darted through the opening. I couldn’t tell if I hit. Too late to turn back now. I took the stairs two at a time, aware that if I hadn’t wounded him fatally, he would be waiting for us above. I must be ready.
Two bullets left.
As I reached the second-floor landing, a flash of steel glinted in the corner of my eye. Grigori’s knife slashed through the air centimeters from my face, close enough that I felt it whish. I stumbled back. I began to aim the revolver, but he was already lunging forward. I had no time to shoot.
I ducked underneath his raised arm, thrust the gun in his direction, and fired blindly. A scalding pain spread through my shoulder as his dagger cut into my skin. We tore away from each other. Blood coursed down his side. My bullet had merely grazed him.
Just one more bullet.
“How are you still alive?” he hissed, slashing his knife at me. “I know that I killed you. How can you survive that and the fire?”
“I am the Jew you can’t kill!”
“You’re a cockroach, an infestation!”
The women’s gallery was a treacherous expanse of crisscrossed beams, only partially floored. Sections of railing lay against one wall. The balcony led to a four-meter drop. Ropes stretched across the ceiling, attached to a makeshift pulley. Even more wires and cords dangled down from the metal scaffolding that stretched to the roof.
In these close quarters, I was unable to back up without the risk of ensnaring myself in the ropes or breaking my ankle in one of the gaps between the floorboards. As Grigori came toward me, Raizel rushed at him from behind.
“This is for Aaron!” she shouted as her hammer caught him square across the shoulders.
Grigori howled in rage and swung out at her. They were so close to each other, I was afraid to shoot in case I hit her instead. She ducked underneath his knife, but he snagged her by the hair with his other hand and slammed her into the wall. Her head met the plaster with a sickening thud, and she collapsed to the floor.
“Raizel!”
Immediately, Grigori swiveled around and came at me, giving me no time to react. His whip had appeared in his hand like magic, pulled from his belt in the heat of the moment. He gave a fluid snap of his wrist, and the leather coil lashed forward with a fearsome crack, catching me across the back of the hand. The metal shard embedded in the whip’s tip cut me nearly to the bone. The shock of the blow was so great, I didn’t even realize I had dropped the gun until I heard it clatter. My entire arm felt as though it was on fire.
“Now, I’ll make sure you stay dead,” he growled, advancing on me. I backed toward the balcony’s brink, reaching behind me to grope desperately for a weapon.
Behind him, Raizel rose to her knees.
Grigori took another step forward.
As I reached the balcony’s edge, my foot caught on a piece of wood. I toppled over a pile of beams, grasping onto the edge of the pulley in an effort to regain my balance. The motion shifted the wooden platform that the pulley was attached to, which in turn caused the ropes to move. I misgauged my distance and fell anyway.
On my way down, I caught hold of the edge at the last moment. Gasping in exertion, I dug my fingers into the unvarnished wood. My feet kicked the empty air as I struggled to hoist myself back onto the balcony.
The pulley swayed wildly, as did the ropes. One rope ensnared Grigori around the chest as he lunged for me, yanking him back. He reached behind himself, hacking blindly at the cord, but only succeeded in becoming more entangled, both in the rope and the oilcloth that had been draped from the scaffolding above.
Raizel rushed to my side to help me back onto solid footing. Overhead, the pulley groaned.
Grigori swore and struggled, his face contorted in rage. The knife slipped from his hand, yet his arm remained twisted behind him, wrapped in the oilcloth.
“Christ-killer! This time, I won’t leave you for the flames.” He spat out the words with such hatred, saliva flew from his mouth like poison. “I’ll crush your head in. I’ll tear out your heart. I’ll—”
His foot glanced against the beams stacked on the lift, sending them cascading down. Raizel and I scooted out of the way to avoid being brained by one. The difference in weight was enough to jerk him up, hoisting his body from the floor and cinching the rope even tighter around his throat.
Something cracked inside of him. His body shuddered convulsively, and his feet kicked out once more, before going slack.
I sat there for a moment longer, terrified that the minute we turned our backs on him, he would d
escend from his snare of ropes as nimbly as a spider. Yet in the darkness he hung there, and in the darkness he remained. His body swayed gently, the white oilcloth crumpled around his midsection like a pair of paper wings.
The tension slowly drained from my body. “It’s over.”
Raizel staggered from the floor, pressing a hand to the bump on her head. She spat on the ground at his feet. “May his name be erased!”
“No.” I rubbed my bruised throat, recalling the rustling of many wings and the low roar of the Atlantic. “May he suffer and remember.”
54
As Grigori’s swaying body stilled, I tried to rise. My legs failed to obey me.
“Alter?” Raizel looked back.
“I... I can’t stand.” I could feel my legs beneath me, and my ankle still throbbed where it had slammed against the stack of timber, but even when I cinched my fingers around my calf, the limb refused to obey.
As I was about to say more, a wave of pain struck me with the force of a runaway wagon. It felt as though my skin was being flayed from underneath, the sensation so excruciating my throat constricted around my scream and let out only a thin whinnying moan. I curled on my stomach, heaving until I retched up a thin clear bile marbled with blood.
“Alter!” Raizel sank to her knees before me.
“Yakov is trying—” I groaned, closing my eyes to block out the pain. “He’s trying to leave.”
When Yakov’s dybbuk had cleaved unto me, our souls had fused pelvis-to-pelvis and breastbone-to-breastbone, conjoined like twins in utero. That bond could not be gently dissolved. It must be ripped down the middle.
She placed her hand on my back. “What should I do?”
I thought I might vomit again if I tried to speak. Gritting my teeth and squeezing my eyes shut even tighter still, I pressed my cheek against the cool wood. Hot liquid streamed from my ears and nostrils.
“Oy gevalt, that’s blood.” Raizel lurched to her feet. “We need to get you to a doctor.”
“No. Chev—” I gagged on the word, but only dry-heaved this time. Once I caught my breath, I forced out the rest. “Chevra kadisha.”
“You want me to take you to the chevra kadisha?”
I nodded breathlessly.
She helped me to my feet, one hand supporting my back and the other holding my left arm crooked over her shoulder. Grasping onto each other, we stumbled across the balcony like a wounded chimera. My legs nearly gave out as we reached the stairs, but we took them one at a time, with excruciating slowness.
Outside, the afternoon was a riot of noise, movement, and color, smeared to shades of red and gray. I could barely tell if we were still walking or how much time had passed. It felt like hours.
Voices filtered down to me.
“...he okay?”
“Tahara...” That was Raizel.
“A hospital...”
“No. No... Tahara house.”
The world dissolved away for a while. The creak of a door being opened. Soothing dimness. My legs gave out beneath me and I collapsed against the entry hall’s marble floor. The stone was cool against my cheek.
“What happened? Did he fall?” Lev’s voice echoed in my ears. I’d never heard him sound so frantic.
“Dybbuk,” I croaked out. It was not my voice anymore. I couldn’t recall what mine had once sounded like.
“What’s he saying?”
“Mikveh.” I closed my eyes to save my energy. Their voices faded in and out of focus, dissolving into a din like the roar of the ocean. Raizel was shouting, and then Lev began raising his voice, too. I wished they’d be quiet. After an uncertain amount of time, Gavril and Sender joined in on the argument. All I could say was, “Mikveh. Please, I need tahara,” over and over, until blood filled my mouth and the room dimmed.
Were these my words, or were they Yakov’s?
“It’s okay,” Raizel murmured in my ear. “They’re going to do it.”
I felt several sets of hands lift and carry me. Through the haze, I discerned the volunteers’ faces. By the time they laid me on the washing table, I could no longer feel my limbs.
Lev and the others showed me the same reserved respect they held while tending to the dead, averting their eyes whenever possible, their faces solemn even as fear and confusion darkened their gazes. They did not speak to me.
Gavril cut my clothes from my body, pulling them away in fragments, a sleeve here, the leg there. I closed my eyes to spare us both the embarrassment, then opened them again, terrified of the darkness. When the shears’ dull edge brushed against my skin, there was no chill, only pressure.
As Gavril worked, Sender wiped the blood from my face and ears. His hand trembled, and worry welled in his brown eyes. The damp cloth felt blissfully cool against my skin. I wanted to weep with gratitude.
The pain started to ebb. Somehow, that was even more terrifying than the burning itself. I could still feel where Yakov and I were fused, as though my consciousness was being stretched taut to the point of splitting. His agony and anguish rippled through my muscles and bones; for him, this division was surely just as excruciating.
After I was fully undressed, they laid me on the slotted board attached to the pulley and conveyed it to the mikveh. The ropes creaked and shuddered. Lev stabilized the board as it descended, lower, lower.
Water lapped against my sides. Sender gave another tug of the rope, sending me under. The water—
—squelched beneath my feet. I looked down to find myself ankle-deep in muck afloat with the shriveled heads of dead sunflowers. Ahead, Yakov regarded the shul’s charred carcass.
“It’s called the rasputitsa,” Yakov said as I waded over to him. His gaze remained fixed on the blackened ruins. “It happens every autumn and spring, but that year, there was also terrible flooding. After my back had healed, I remember coming back here with my uncle. There was nothing left in my house. It had been stripped to the bones by the peasants. And this place...this filthy place was the only proof that my mother and father hadn’t just gone off on some exquisite journey to a faraway land. They were truly dead.”
Tears filled my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Yakov. For everything.”
“I know.” He turned to me. “I swore to myself that day I would do whatever it took to hunt down that monster. My uncle thought I was a traumatized child. In the early days, I spoke of dragons. Over time, the real memories emerged.”
“How did you find him?” I asked. “How did you know he was here?”
“My uncle knew tsarist officials back in Kiev. In the last months of the sickness that claimed him, he reached out to them. I suppose curiosity got the better of him. I had told him what Tugarin Zmeyevich had told me as I lay wounded in the dirt—‘This is for my brother, who your people butchered in St. Petersburg’—and from that, my uncle was able to find Tugarin. Or a trace of him. His real name. His age. The host he had descended from. He had left the empire after completing his prison sentence for another murder, the butchering of a rabbi’s son in Odessa. He joined the Wild West Show, and while they were entertaining kaisers and queens, he brought death and suffering wherever they went. After my uncle died, I used the inheritance he left me to begin my hunt. I wish I’d been able to finish it.”
“You did. Grigori is dead now. He’s never going to hurt anyone ever again.”
“I never wanted to get you involved. I hope one day you’ll be able to forgive me for what I put you through.”
When I had reached out to Yakov in the mikveh, I hadn’t realized how exactly he wanted me to help him, or what sacrifices it would entail. Yet, I knew that in that moment I would have done anything to bring him back to life.
“I made my choice,” I said firmly.
He nodded, his gaze welling with sorrow. “I suppose this is goodbye then.”
I looked around us. “This place...”
“Is my Gehinnom. I suspect I’ll be here for a few months yet, but it’s time for you to leave.”
“Yakov, wait,” I cried as he strode toward the ruined shul. As I stumbled after him, the mud grew even deeper still. “Yakov, I love you!”
“I love you, too.” He looked back at me and smiled so sadly. “That’s why I have to let you go.”
I opened my mouth to answer as I sank under. Instead of mud, I drew in a mouthful of water. Lurching up and coughing, I seized onto the side of the wooden board to keep from toppling into the mikveh.
Gavril smiled weakly, extending his hand to me. “Welcome back to the world of the living.”
55
What happened at the chevra kadisha was not spoken about again. Tending to the dead was an act of ultimate kindness, and such things were meant to be performed in silence, for an audience who would never acknowledge it. The volunteers considered their intervention no different.
The builders found Grigori the next morning. From Raizel, I learned that it had been dismissed as a tragic accident. If Lev and the others suspected the truth, they did not say a word. People trespassed in unfinished buildings all the time, after all. He never should have gone where he didn’t belong.
The same indifferent system that had allowed Grigori to kill with impunity had made it so he died anonymously. He had been buried without funeral or rite in the Cook County Cemetery at Dunning, amid the mad and the unknown dead.
As for Mr. Katz, his body was dredged from Bubbly Creek a week later. In the overflow, police also recovered Moishe Walden’s clothes and mailbag. Suspecting Moishe had connections to anarchist groups in Chicago and had helped assassinate Mr. Katz, despite only being sixteen, the police put out a manhunt for him. He was never found.
Like many things in Chicago, Katz’s death slipped from public memory, and everything returned to as it had been.
Within days, Raizel found me a temporary job working the presses at the Arbeiter-Zeitung. It was slow and boring but familiar, which was what I needed. I could lose myself for hours arranging typeset, inking and oiling the presses.
The City Beautiful Page 35
