by Daisy Waugh
But Eleana was clever, in her quiet way. And somehow she had survived Blumenkranz’s cloying attention for longer than the rest, while still keeping him at bay. Her pleasant refusal to engage with him, her ability to slip so innocuously through his fingers, only left him panting for more. Mr Blumenkranz had taken to standing behind her as she bent over her sewing machine, which whirred from the same motor under the same floorboards and at the same speed as the machine beside her, and the machine beside that, and all two hundred machines on the factory’s eighth floor …
‘Ah, Miss Beekman!’ he would sigh, above all the racket of the whirring. ‘A born machinist, if ever there was one!’ As if that were any kind of compliment. And he would turn to the rest of the row, heads bowed, necks and backs twisted over their work: ‘If only all you girls could work as efficiently as the lovely Miss Beekman!’
She corrected him once. ‘It’s Mrs Beekman, Mr Blumenkranz.’ Though, strictly speaking, it wasn’t. She was still Miss Kappelman. She and Matz weren’t yet married. It was something Eleana’s mother protested about from time to time. But somehow they had never quite got around to it. There was always something else more urgent to be done, some other more essential way to spend the time and money.
Mr Blumenkranz knew perfectly well she lived with Matz Beekman the cutter – Union sympathist and nothing but trouble, as far as Blumenkranz was concerned. If he could have his way the man would be fired. But a good cutter was hard to find. And everyone knew, Matz was the best they had. So Blumenkranz ignored Eleana’s comment. He laid a plump, yearning hand on her thin shoulder. ‘Continue your work like this, Miss Beekman,’ he said to her, ‘and before long we shall make you head of the line!’
Head of the line. Meant an extra $1 a week.
‘Head of the line, Miss Beekman! I don’t need to remind you – it’s another dollar a week!’
She let his hand rest on her shoulder – glanced across at Matz briefly, at the far end of the same floor, where the cutters stood. But Matz was oblivious – busy with his knife, slashing away, muttering Marxist revolution into the ear of the cutter beside him. She let Blumenkranz’s finger touch the skin at the top of her neck. Felt nothing – not a shiver of revulsion, because after all, the moment would pass.
When he finally wandered away, Dora, working beside Eleana, glowered at her closest friend.
‘Dershtikt zolstu vern!’ she said furiously. ‘You’re such a fool.’
‘You think so?’ Eleana giggled. ‘Why’s that? The stupid man is driving me crazy!’
‘“Miss” Beekman. “Mrs” Beekman. Who the hell cares? Not you! That’s for sure. Or you might have done something about it.’
‘Oh!’ Eleana tutted mildly. ‘For sure I care.’
‘Blumenkranz adores you, Miss Eleana Kappelman. You’re his One and Only.’
‘Nonsense! Shh!’
Dora chortled. ‘For sure – you’re his Chosen One, Ellie! The Only Girl for Him.’
‘Shut up, Dora!’
‘He loves you better than his own life!’
‘You’ll have us both fired!’
‘Carry on treating him as you do, Eleana, and pretty soon you shall be out of a job. That’s for certain.’
Eleana tipped her head to imply disagreement, but said nothing.
‘You want another a dollar a week? Or don’t you?’ her friend burst out impatiently.
‘Of course I want an extra dollar a week.’
‘Because if you don’t want it, “Mrs” Beekman, I surely do! Mr Blumenkranz can call me anything he likes! I’ll take an extra dollar for it, gladly.’
‘I’m sure you would, my friend,’ Eleana smiled.
‘You think I’m a kurve? Very well. Perhaps it’s so. I am a survivor. That’s what I am.’
‘And a kurve,’ Eleana added, laughing now. ‘And I shall tell your mama, too. The very next time I see her.’
Dora smiled. ‘You think my mama was any better in her day?’
‘Well … yes, Dora.’ Eleana looked at her, quite startled. ‘Indeed I do! And you know it too! You’re mother is a good woman.’
‘Well, Eleana, and so am I. That is exactly my point. I, too, am a good woman. And so are you. But a “good woman” needs to survive. And these are different times. This is America. Life isn’t what it was in the Old—’
‘Oh, please don’t start …’
It wasn’t that Eleana disagreed with her. Far from it. She only wished that all roads, all conversations – everything – didn’t have to lead to the same point. Dora’s socialism was becoming more irksome, more all-consuming than even Matz’s.
Nevertheless, Eleana didn’t correct Mr Blumenkranz again. She put up with his calling her Miss Beekman, leaning over her shoulder so his warm breath ran damp down her spine, and always smiled brightly when he passed. By the time of the strike neither the salary raise, nor the promised head-of-line advancement had materialized. On the other hand, she still had a job at the factory.
And here he was still, all these months later, slip-sliding after her over the ice as she returned from the Greene Street picket line. ‘Wait, Eleana!’ he panted, skidding in the frozen grime. ‘Can’t you stop a moment? I have something terribly important—’
‘I have to get home, sir,’ she said, still walking. ‘I have a small daughter waiting. Unless …’ Away from the factory floor, in these teeming streets, it was harder to hide her disdain. She threw him a glance, mid-stride. ‘Unless of course you have a message for the workers?’ She smiled at him, without warmth. ‘In which case, I’ll be sure to pass it on.’
‘Not for all the workers. No.’
‘Oh. Well then.’
‘Eleana.’ He took hold of her sleeve and pulled her to a halt. She might have snatched it back. She fought the urge. Because – even now, in the street, with the pathetic, pleading look in his eye, he was still powerful. The strike would not last forever, and there was the life beyond it to consider, when Mr Blumenkranz would once again be standing behind her, his hand on her shoulder, his finger on her neck – choosing whether to fire her, or to make her head of the line.
‘What is it, Mr Blumenkranz?’ she snapped.
He seemed surprised, as if he hadn’t really expected her to stop. ‘I have an offer for you,’ he said. ‘I wrote it down …’ He fumbled in the pockets of his thick winter coat. Eleana, standing still and wearing a jacket far thinner than his, began to shiver. ‘Wait a moment,’ he mumbled. ‘Wait there …’ But the paper could not be found, not in all the many pockets of his thick, warm coat and, finally, he abandoned the search. ‘I simply wanted to say … that you’re better than all this! It is irresponsible nonsense, what you are engaged in, and you can do better, Eleana. Much, much better.’
‘Better than what?’
‘Look at you – so cold. Your coat is so thin.’
‘Certainly it is thinner than yours.’
‘Eleana, my dear, you know you cannot win. None of you can win!’
‘Several other factories have already settled. You know they have.’
‘But not Triangle! Mr Blanck and Mr Harris have both said that they will fight you to the end. And they can because they have the rescources, and they have done so and, trust me, they will continue to do so. They will keep the factory working with or without you. They will never accept the Union. Never.’
He looked up at her, spotted the split-second of uncertainty in her eyes and, instinctively, he pressed his advantage. ‘But I could help you,’ he wheedled. ‘If you would allow me, Eleana, I could help you. Did you have breakfast this morning? I’ll bet you didn’t.’ His eyes were on her lips. ‘I can organize a payment. For you. It would be our secret, just between us. I can do that … if you are willing …’
‘What sort of payment, Mr Blumenkranz?’ she asked him politely. ‘Tell me, sir. What did you have in mind?’
But he didn’t hear her, not properly. He was gazing at her lips, and imagining himself, with his arms around her – pushing her
back into the alley, right there, behind the rubble, the pile of rotting … whatever it was, and pulling up her skirt – and he couldn’t do all that and listen properly, not at the same time.
‘… Fair pay for all,’ she was saying. ‘Union recognition. Fewer hours for all of us, Mr Blumenkranz, not just for me. It cannot continue …’
‘But I can help you,’ Mr Blumenkranz pleaded. ‘You look hungry. Eleana. Of course you are hungry! What are you living off, while the strike is on? You cannot live on ideals! And nor can your child. Think of your child! Do you need money? I can give you money. How much do you need?’ Again, he was fumbling in his pockets.
But this time, when he looked up, she was gone; vanished. And he was standing alone on the bustling, noisy street. Yearning. Burning.
Such is the lot of the small, plain man with an unhappy wife and a hateful job: neither in one camp nor the other, neither rich nor poor, and in thrall to a young woman who despises him, to whom he has promised a dollar-a-week raise, and from whom, until recently, there had rarely been anything but smiles. No wonder, by the following morning, after he’d tossed and turned and failed to sleep on her rejection, while his unhappy wife snored foully beside him – no wonder he was angry.
15
It had been agreed by strike organizers that the pickets should, as far as possible, consist of young and attractive women workers whose suffering elicited better public sympathy, and that the striking men would be more usefully put to work behind the scenes. So it was that the following morning Eleana was due back on the picket at Greene Street, outside the workers’ entrance to her own factory. Meanwhile, Matz intended to spend the morning flitting between picket lines city-wide, informing strikers of the Union meeting later that day, boosting morale with his eloquent passion and, above all, keeping an eye on the police – who were less liable to erupt into violence when there were men about.
Eleana hadn’t intended to mention the incident with Blumenkranz, but as she and Matz were leaving the apartment that morning – without breakfast, and with a sickly daughter clinging tearfully to Eleana’s neck, the thought flitted through her mind: if she’d said yes to Blumenkranz, how different things would be. There would be breakfast for everyone. And a good breakfast for Isha. There might be a new coat for Isha, too; and warm blankets, a new coat for herself, and even for Matz. She spoke over her daughter’s small, frail shoulder without pausing to think of the consequences:
‘Blumenkranz stopped me as I was coming home.’ She smiled, a shy smile. ‘He took a hold of my sleeve, and wouldn’t let go. And he called me “Eleana”! Can you believe it?’
Matz, waiting impatiently for her at the door, didn’t reply. He scowled.
A moment passed. Matz understood at once what Blumenkranz would have been after – of course, as she had intended he would. What on earth had possessed her to mention it? Silently, Eleana cursed herself. She turned back to Isha, wailing with surprising gusto for a sickly child. She stroked her daughter’s face, embarrassed of herself, and relieved of the distraction. ‘Enough,’ she murmured, kissing the small, dark head – ‘You have to stay with your bubbeh today, my darling. I have to leave now. Try to help your bubbeh. Or you can play with Tzivia.’
‘Tzivia is not kind to me.’
‘Nonsense. She’s a baby!’
‘Bubbeh likes Tzivia better.’
‘Oh, what nonsense!’ Eleana laughed. Looked across at her mother. ‘Bubbeh doesn’t like either of you much. And I don’t blame her, the fuss you both make!’
Isha fell silent, uncertain whether her mother was teasing.
‘… And I shall be back before you know it,’ Eleana said, kissing her daughter’s sweet, soft cheek, postponing the moment of departure.
Matz looked on, forcing himself to wait – but his anger with Eleana only added to his vast impatience. Every cell in his body longed to extricate itself from this small, domestic scene and to get back out into the world. It was eating up what little air there was in the room. ‘Ishie, angel,’ he said a moment later, ‘let go of your mother. You’ll see her in no time. Be brave, now. She has important work to do. Let go of her at once.’
He took a few steps back into the room, dropped a kiss on the girl’s head. Disentangled her small arms from Eleana’s neck and dumped her, without further ado, at the feet of her grandmother.
‘Take her, Bubbeh! For goodness sake,’ he said. ‘We are already late, as it is.’
Leaving behind the small, crying child, and the crowded, airless flat, they walked quickly through the brittle cold. Beneath the lines of grey laundry, frozen stiff in the filthy city air, dodging pedlars and garbage heaps, Matz and Eleana walked through the clotted, squalid streets in angry silence, Eleana struggling to keep pace. Beside her, or just ahead of her, she could feel Matz’s brooding fury, and it infuriated her. She had done nothing wrong. Nothing whatsoever. Except to inform him of an event for which she had absolutely no responsibility. If Matz wanted to be kept in the dark about such things, then he was a fool. More of a fool than she realized. And more of a child than Isha.
She didn’t want to walk all the way to Greene Street with him, not in his current mood. ‘Perhaps you should head over to the Bijou factory?’ she suggested, panting behind him. ‘I hear they had the police at the picket there yesterday.’
‘Of course that’s what you hear,’ Matz snapped. ‘I told you about it.’
‘A couple of the girls were beaten to within an inch,’ she persevered. ‘And they arrested twenty more.’
‘That’s what I told you.’
‘They’ll be in need of a boost. After something like that …’
‘You’re trying to get rid of me, are you?’
She laughed, and shook her head.
‘So you can cuddle up with Blumenkranz, I dare say. How much did he offer you?’
‘Oh! You’re being ridiculous.’
‘How much?’
‘How much?’ ‘she mimicked irritably to the back of his head – more to herself than to him. ‘How much, indeed? Es iz nit dayn gesheft …’
‘What’s that?’ he stopped abruptly, glared at her. ‘Es iz nit dayn gesheft? What, exactly, is not “my business”, Eleana? When my own wife is offering herself like a whore! Tell me!’
She glanced at him and kept walking, too angry to speak.
They marched on through the teeming crowds, stepping around the scrawny, frozen carcass of an old horse on the corner of Essex Street without even noticing, too accustomed to the squalor to register it. They were oblivious to everything but their anger. At the end of the road, Matz stopped again. ‘How much did he offer?’ he repeated. ‘He must have offered something! Did he name a price?’
She gazed back at him, torn between laughter and pure, burning rage. How dared he even ask? ‘He told me, any price,’ she said. ‘So I told him fifty dollars, Matz. Which would help us enormously, would it not? Since you insist on giving half your money away, and I am earning nothing at all, and we have a daughter who is sick. We could buy a warm jacket for Isha. Give her a decent meal …’ They gazed at one another. She wondered, briefly, wildly, if he might hit her. And if he did – what she would do? Of course, she would hit him back. ‘I told him fifty dollars,’ she said again. She leaned a little closer to her husband. ‘And he is considering it.’ She turned, then, without another word, blood roaring in her ears.
By the time she reached Greene Street, twenty minutes later, she regretted having lost her temper. Of course. Bitterly regretted what she had said. He must have believed her. She must have hurt him. In any case, he had not followed her.
There were fifty or more of her fellow workers clustered together by the factory’s locked grille gate, already in position, chanting slogans, their banners aloft.
At the sight of her friend, Dora Wiseman broke off at once. ‘At last! I thought you were never coming!’ she shouted, pulling at Eleana’s arm. ‘Where have you been? Have you heard what they have planned for us? Stand firm, mind! We m
ust not rise to it, or they triumph. I swear, when they come, I shall laugh! I shall laugh in their filthy faces!’
‘When who comes, Dora? What are you saying? Pass me a banner, won’t you! And some leaflets. I hate to stand here empty handed—’
‘Don’t you see all the police, El? They have their paddy wagons parked just round the corner. They’re only waiting to fill them up and cart us off to the Tombs!’
Yanking her mind, finally, from her stupid squabble, Eleana glanced about her – they were indeed surrounded. The city police were everywhere; and they were waiting for something, all right. They were standing in a semicircle around the women, arms folded and smirking, as if in possession of a secret and highly amusing joke. Eleana could sense, as all the women could, that something was afoot. Something bad was surely about to happen.
The factory gates were due to open any moment. Mr Blumenkranz would be down, with his stopwatch, and then the strikebreakers would come shambling in. Shamefaced. Scooped from hunger and desperation – direct from the immigration office at Ellis Island, more often than not, before the poor souls had even made it to the mainland. Normally the sight of them, shuffling pathetically through the factory gates, only strengthened Eleana’s resolve. It was the factory owners who were her enemy, not the bedraggled creatures they employed to keep their dirty, dangerous factories making money for them.
‘They think they can insult us—’
‘Who? Dora—’
‘Why, the bosses, you fool! But they have no idea of the strength of our feelings. A fink is a fink no matter who or what else they are. What do we care? Oh! And there is Mr Blumenkranz – look! He’s come down at last. They shall be arriving any minute. Look at him, with his secret smirk – he thinks he can shock us! Ha! But we already know!’ She leaned forward and yelled though the crowd, ‘Nothing will shock us, Mr Blumenkranz! You cannot insult us! You only insult yourselves!’
