Loving Liberty Levine

by Colin Falconer

  The barrage went on and on until dawn, which came with a creeping of greasy light over what was left of the houses. When it stopped, there was a stunned silence. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard someone sobbing in the back of the cellar.

  The beam of a flashlight flickered around the walls. For the merest second he saw the Christian Jesus Christ nailed to a wooden cross, men huddled together underneath. They looked like they were covered in snow, then he realized it was plaster dust from the ceiling.

  The captain shouted at them to get ready to move out.

  “Lance Corporal Levine! Get everyone out of here.”

  He went around dragging men to their feet, kicking at boots, so icy calm he wanted to laugh aloud. He knew what he had to do now.

  The men followed him up the stairs and into the street. The ring of their iron hobnails on the stone pavement seemed too loud. He wondered about snipers.

  They clattered in a long line past the Hotel de Ville, the clock and the mansard roof ruined from the shelling. Then the captain led them down a path toward a partly demolished steel mill. Beyond that lay the railroad, piles of coal sitting beside the tracks, wreathed in early morning mist.

  Men trooped down in a thin line to the river. There was the stab of rifle fire and the steady punch of machine guns from somewhere very close, but, because of the mist, he couldn’t make out if it was coming from behind them or in front.

  The captain took him and several other NCOs aside. Their orders were to take up positions on the hill on the other side of the river, he said. From there they could halt any advance into the town itself. “Get your men into position as quickly as possible.”

  My second chance, Micha thought. This time I won’t panic; I won’t try and save myself first; I’ll prove to everyone how brave I am. Then I can go back to America, to my Sura and my little Libby, and know I deserve them after all.

  A shell had struck the bridge halfway across, blowing away half of the roadway and leaving stones from the coping scattered about. There was a section no more than two feet wide for them to cross. The captain led the first platoon over himself. As they ran over, Micha looked down into the river at a snarl of blackened bricks and wire. Like being on that fire escape again.

  The Germans started shelling, columns of water and mud reared up around them. The enemy was trying to destroy what was left of the bridge. Micha shouted at his men to hurry and followed the captain up the hill.

  There was a wall halfway up the slope, and he headed toward it. It was only knee high in places, and in others it was just a pile of stones, but it would provide them with a little cover from the trench mortars. He threw himself down behind it and urged his men up the hill after him.

  As he watched, they started to jerk and scream and fall. He felt the jackhammer tearing of the machine-gun bullets in the air, scything back and forth over the muddy slope. He twisted around this way, that way, trying to see where the fire was coming from.

  There was a farmhouse about fifty yards farther up the hill, and bullets were punching deep holes in the stone walls, sending slates slithering off the roof. He saw two men run toward it, thinking to find cover, and the bullets tore them apart.

  He saw the captain signaling furiously at him, and he crawled over. “They’re behind us!” he shouted. “Get the men on the other side of the wall and tell them to stay down!”

  Even as the captain said it, Micha saw two more of his men jerk backward, and blood sprayed behind them up the stones. He jumped the wall and screamed for his men to follow. He couldn’t believe it, how few of them were still left.

  He heard the thump. Trench mortars. The Germans were in front of them as well as behind. They had been led straight into a killing field.

  Men were tearing open their first-aid packages, trying to staunch other men’s wounds, were holding their mates as they lay screaming at the sky. Others had curled into a ball and just lay there, not doing anything. Stone chips were flying everywhere. He felt a sharp sting on his face, he put up a hand, and it came away bloody.

  He crawled toward the captain, who lay propped against the wall, white faced.

  “We have to do something!” he said.

  The captain stared right through him like he wasn’t there.

  “We can’t stay here!”

  The man’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.

  “Captain!”

  The hammer of the machine gun was deafening. Perhaps he couldn’t hear him. He grabbed him by the tunic and shook him. That seemed to do it.

  “Sir, we have to pull back.”

  “We have orders to take the hill.”

  “The Germans are all around us! We need to go back.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” He seemed to shake himself, peered over the wall. “We can’t go back, Lance Corporal, not without covering fire.”

  “Someone has to get back to town, let the colonel know what’s happening.”

  “How? They’ll get cut down before they go ten yards.”

  Micha pointed away to the right. “There’s a drainage ditch over there, it runs down to the river. A runner could use the bridge as cover to get across to the far bank. They’ll be almost at the town by then.”

  “All right, you’d better call for a volunteer.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “It’s suicide, Levine.”

  “No, I can do it, sir.” This is it, Micha thought. This is my moment.

  “You really think so?”

  Micha nodded.

  “Good luck, then. Godspeed.”

  Micha turned and started to crawl along the wall, down the hill toward the ditch, the machine-gun bullets whipping the air above his head. The mortar barrage was getting heavier; twice, shells exploded close enough to send him a foot into the air, the concussion deafening him.

  He closed his eyes, his face pressed into the mud, fought the urge to get up and run, run and never look back. Isn’t that what you did last time? He looked up. He could have walked to the village in five minutes on a clear day; now the white houses looked as if they were miles away. Even the battle seemed to be getting farther away; he thought that the Germans had finally stopped shelling, but then he saw another gout of dirt spurt into the sky and realized the last explosion had deafened him.

  He forced himself to keep crawling. At last he reached the ditch and threw himself in. The smell of gas was cloying. Even his hands were stinging. He fumbled for his mask and put it on.

  What if he didn’t get back to America? What would Sura and Libby do without him? Just stay alive, Micha. Stay alive and get back to New York, and after this you won’t ever have to think about that woman’s hands trying to pull up the window through all the smoke. You’ll have made amends.

  He fixed his helmet farther down his head and started to crawl.

  The ditch was dry at first; it got increasingly swampy the closer he got to the river. It took him half an hour to reach the bank.

  He started to wade, then swim across. He knelt on a tangle of submerged barbed wire. He tried to get free of it, but only got more caught up. Soon his hands and legs were bleeding. He fell backward into the water, and his mask filled with water and he almost choked. He threw it aside in frustration, finally managed to tear himself free of the wire and scramble on, never mind the pain. He had to find the command post and give the colonel the coordinates of those machine guns, give the captain and the men covering fire so they could get off the hill.

  There was a pontoon downriver from the bridge. He used it as cover, crossing hand over hand along the boards. When he reached the far bank, he lay there in the mud and water, exhausted, his lungs bursting. His eyes still burned, but the river had washed off most of the gas. He vomited.

  He raised his head above the bank. He could see the command post a hundred yards away, behind the Hotel de Ville, at the top of the cobbled street.

  The street was littered with bodies. He counted them off. They all had red armbands, couriers like hims
elf. One, two, three, four, five. None of them had made it farther than halfway. There must be a sniper.

  He slithered back down the muddy bank. He was safe there if he did not move.

  You don’t have to do this, Micha. Think about Sura, think about Libby. They need you.

  He dared another look up the street. He saw the face of the dead runner closest to him, the look on his face, he looked so surprised. I suppose everyone feels surprised when they die, he thought. No one ever thinks it will happen to them.

  “Yellow, I call it.”

  He launched himself to his feet. He had almost reached the last dead runner when the sniper’s bullet hit him in the back of the head, and his helmet went spinning across the cobblestones. He was dead before he even hit the ground.

  An ambulance stopped in front of the dressing station. The air was hazy with black smoke and the gag-inducing odor of high explosive.

  The captain stopped when he saw the medics carrying out the bodies. A blanket fell away from a man’s face, and he realized he knew him. “Levine,” he said. “Goddammit.”

  He felt in his jacket and took out the letter the man had given him the night before. What was it he had said about stealing? He couldn’t remember. But he said the letter was for his wife, that it was important. He would write to her as soon as he got a moment, tell her she should be proud. Levine was one of the bravest men he had ever served with. He must have known he couldn’t make it to the command post with snipers everywhere.

  And in the end, it didn’t matter a damn anyway. The colonel had figured out the situation for himself, their artillery had taken out the machine-gun post.

  He heard the whine of a shell overhead. He looked up, almost with a smile, as if it was a rocket at the Fourth of July. Perhaps he had heard too many shells for one war. He was numb to them by now. He had survived so much that day, and he felt, well, immune. He wasn’t going to get killed by some stray shell. Hell, the Germans had been trying to kill him all day, and here he still was.

  It was only at the last moment that he realized that the round was going to land almost directly on top of him. “Goddammit,” he said, and a moment later he vanished in a plume of flame and smoke. His body scattered over the entire stretch of the street, and the letter he held in his fist drifted through the air as burning specks of ash, and then vanished on a breath of the evening wind.

  PART 3

  17

  Garment District, New York, Spring 1922

  The bell rang—another quarter of an hour until they could finish. Sura—Sarah Levine, please, I’m not a greenhorn anymore—had three more sleeves in her pile. She could finish them by five o’clock if the thread didn’t break or the belt on her no-good Wilcox didn’t come loose again. She could not wait to get outside, away from this stink of oil and clatter of noise, and into the fresh air, if this New York air you could call fresh. That Mr. Schonberg wouldn’t open the windows, said they were too stiff.

  What kind of person wouldn’t fix a window when it was too stiff to open?

  He stood up from his desk in the corner, where he had finished reckoning the slips for the week. She had earned nine dollars and forty-five cents, by her own count. A good week.

  It would be a fatter pay packet than the other girls, but not everyone could be a sleeve cutter. You had to work fast, and you couldn’t afford to make mistakes. She had the good skills her father had taught her, and now she had put them to good use. She earned her money.

  Schonberg went down the row of benches, dropping the little brown packets in front of them. When he got to her, he stopped and gave her a sly grin, waited until she looked up before he put it down in front of her. Schmendrick! She tucked the envelope in her stocking and kept working; she wanted to finish these last sleeves in her pile before she went home.

  The bell went off, and everyone started packing up to go home. Sarah worked a few minutes more to finish her sleeve before she got up and went to the cloakroom to check her pay packet. Seven dollars and ninety cents.

  When she came out again, Schonberg was writing figures into a ledger. I can do these same tricks, she thought. She stood in front of his desk until he looked up.

  “This is wrong,” she said.

  “It is good money,” he said. “You are lucky. That some of these girls should get as much.”

  “Should be nine dollars and forty-five cents.”

  “How do you know how much?”

  “I know how to figure. You think because you are a man, you can count better than me. I am short. Count my slips again.”

  “I throw away all the slips when I finish. Go home.”

  “You are counting crooked.”

  The chair creaked as Schonberg leaned back, his fingers steepled in front of him. Such a greasy man, with that wiry red beard and no-good teeth. “You want to earn a little bit more money,” he said. “I show you how.”

  Sarah looked around. Everybody was gone, even Kohn on the door, the old man who checked their bags at closing time to make sure they weren’t stealing scraps. Foolish girl, she thought. How can you let this happen? Never be alone with Schonberg, wasn’t that what they told her from the very first day?

  But he owes me a dollar fifty-five cents, this little putz!

  She was afraid, but she was also angry. What she could do with so much money at the butcher!

  Schonberg got up and took two one-dollar notes out of his pocket. He put them on the desk and shrugged off his suspenders. “You want a bonus? You can earn it.”

  She turned away, but he grabbed her wrist and dragged her back. “You think I can’t get another sleeve cutter? Plenty of girls out there in the street. I only have to put up a sign, and I have a hundred girls line up.”

  “Let me go!”

  He pulled her back toward the desk. “Teasing me all day. I should teach you.”

  Teasing him? All I do is stitch sleeves and try not to faint from the smell of the oil and the squinting in this bad light! She tried again to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her go. Well, never mind the one dollar fifty-five cents. She had to get out of here.

  They heard someone coming, and Schonberg let her go. One of the cutters, Max, came in and saw them. He stopped, his mouth open in surprise; he knew straightaway what was happening. “I forgot my glasses case,” he said, and hurried over to his workbench.

  “Hold the elevator for me,” Sarah said.

  She rode down with him. Neither of them looked at each other. When she reached the street, Sarah walked as fast as she could the six blocks to the Third Avenue El, not looking at anyone, her cheeks on fire, so ashamed, so scared, and so angry. Take her husband, take her family, take her money! How much more this life going to cheat her?

  It was shoulder-to-shoulder on the platform for the Elevated, the conductors in their green caps shoving and shouting, and the train wheels shrieking as the next train pulled in and the doors opened. She crammed into a carriage, everyone in so tight she could not move, so hot and breathless in there, and after everything that had just happened to her, she thought she was going to faint.

  She hung on to one of the straps as the train moved off. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out Schonberg, that look he gave her, greedy little eyes like a pig he had. If Max the cutter hadn’t come back, he would have started pawing at her, or worse.

  It was as if she could feel his hands squeezing at her.

  At first, she thought she was imagining too hard, but then realized it was real, someone really was touching her, squeezing her bottom. She tried to squirm away, but there were too many people, she couldn’t move, not even her arm. The carriage swayed around a bend, she tried to look over her shoulder to see who was doing it to her, but she couldn’t see for sure, got a glimpse of an old rabbi in a yarmulke, next to him a swarthy man with slicked-back hair, a bald goy in a nice suit.

  Which one of them? Maybe all of them, she thought. I am just a bit of meat now for the whole of America to feel up.

  I should shout out, she th
ought. But then what would happen? All the world looking at me, like Schonberg looked, even the women, all thinking: Well, she must have asked for it. Everyone knew, even in the shtetl she had heard her father say, “Men only touch a girl who wants it.”

  When people got out at the next station, the touching stopped. She looked around the carriage, wondering which of the men had done it to her. What was the use? It was the way of it. A girl wasn’t safe until she was married, that was why her father had married her and her sisters off so young. But she was a widow now. She had no one to look after her, and she had to go to work so she and her little baby girl didn’t starve.

  She got out at Rivington and walked fast through the crowds. Today she didn’t look at the bearded rabbis in their skullcaps and silkaline coats or into the tiny dark shops with fabrics all spread across the tables, not a glance for the children in their dirty clothes playing in the gutters.

  Felt up, cheated, treated like a whore. This America. What a place she had come to, what a place to bring up her daughter.

  She vowed her Liberty would never have to live like this. Wherever you are, Micha, help me. I have to do better for our little girl.

  The Florence Nightingale public school was across the road from their tenement, and Frankie and Libby were supposed to go straight home after the bell, but they never did. By now they knew every inch of Delancey and Hester, and they wandered farther and farther every day, sometimes right up to where the Irish lived. They always walked arm in arm, or with their arms about each other’s waists, like the girls did around here. They looked an odd pair: Libby with her home-chopped red hair and green eyes and Frankie with her dark eyes and coal-black braids. They horseplayed all along the street; there was never any rush.

  “Joey Robbins said he’d give me a penny for a kiss today,” Frankie said.

  “He never.”

  “He did.”