Flesh and Blood

by Thomas H. Cook

  The three old people nodded together.

  “That’s right,” Berman said. “That’s what it was like that night.”

  Frank took out his notebook. “When was that?”

  “That was in December of 1935,” Clara answered. “I remember because my brother, may he rest in peace, had just died of TB.”

  “And when did you see Hannah again?” Frank asked.

  “After that? Oh, well, after that, we saw a lot of Hannah,” Clara answered. She looked at the others. “Some people, they make a stir, then they disappear. But not Hannah. She led the girls, led the strike.”

  “She led the strike?” Frank asked.

  “She started it,” Clara said, “and so she finished it. That’s the way Hannah Kovatnik was.”

  “How did she lead it?”

  “She worked with the union.”

  “Which union?”

  “The AGW,” Benny chimed in. “The American Garment Workers.”

  “Hannah was a member?”

  “Of course,” Clara said. “It was a union meeting, the one she spoke at. Schreiber, he was the local bigwig. He was on the Central Committee.”

  Again, Berman waved his hand. “Such a sniveler.”

  Clara nodded briskly at Frank’s notebook. “Take down his name. Leon Schreiber, a big thing in the union.”

  Berman shook his head. “He was a putz, that one.”

  “Is he still alive?” Frank asked immediately.

  “Leon? No. Been dead for years.”

  Clara looked at Berman scornfully. “He wasn’t such a putz, Leon. He worked hard.” She glanced back at Frank. “But he was a sort of what you call, what we call, a schlemazel.”

  “You see, a putz,” Berman yelped. “Just like I said.”

  Frank continued to keep his attention on Clara.

  “A person who … who … who don’t know how to act,” Clara explained, “an unfortunate person, always getting messed up.”

  “That’s putting the best light on it,” Berman said with a laugh.

  Benny touched Berman’s shoulder. “Izzy,” he scolded, “let Clara talk.”

  “So anyway,” Clara went on, “we saw a lot of Hannah. She was all over the neighborhood. Late at night you’d see her on Orchard Street. Early in the morning, on Ludlow Street, or Hester, maybe, or any of the streets that needed something. Sometimes food, some pumpernickel, a little herring. A little encouragement, maybe. It depended what they needed. Whatever it was, like they say, she did what she could. But she couldn’t do everything. Who can? She couldn’t make the world over. But like it’s written in the Talmud, to make it over, this is not required of a person. But to do what one person can to make it over, this much is a mitzvah, a good deed.”

  “And Hannah did it, that’s for sure,” Benny said emphatically. “She was like a voice in the wilderness that night in the meeting hall.”

  “No one ever forgot it,” Berman added. “A thrill like that don’t come too often.” He grinned impishly. “And at my age now, it don’t come at all.”

  “Do you remember her sisters?” Frank asked.

  “I remember one of them,” Clara said. “She was younger. I forget her name. But she was always with Hannah, always walking next to her.” She smiled. “They always looked nice. Hannah always kept herself looking nice. The sister, too. The little girl. Hannah kept her hair brushed, and always that little white apron. Clean, you know, kept nice.”

  “And what about the other sister?”

  “I don’t remember her much. Maybe just a little.”

  “Was she older? Younger?”

  “Near Hannah. Younger, older, who knows?” Clara said. She looked back at the two older men. “You remember anything about the other sister?”

  The two old men shook their heads.

  “I remember the little one,” Benny said. “She was very pretty, but I got no idea about her name.”

  “What about friends?” Frank said. “From the old days.”

  “You mean of Hannah?” Clara asked.

  “Yes.”

  Clara stared at the two men thoughtfully. “Friends?” she repeated, almost to herself. “Wasn’t there a girl Hannah used to see?” She stopped, trying to remember. “From some little place in Galicia.”

  The two men stared at her expressionlessly.

  “They all came from the same place,” Clara went on, “the ones that lived in her building.”

  “Where was her building?” Benny asked.

  “On Rivington Street. Where Clinton comes into it.”

  Benny nodded his head. “Yes, sir. From Lemberg, Galicia. All those people came from Rivington. That was their landslayt.” He thought a moment. “She stayed in the union, this girl. For many years.” Again he stopped to consider. “Polansky,” he said finally. “Etta Polansky.”

  Clara clapped her hands together softly. “That’s the name. Etta Polansky. I remember now.”

  “And she was a friend of Hannah’s?”

  “A good friend, yes,” Clara assured him. “They were together a lot, those two.”

  Frank wrote down the name, then looked back up at Clara.

  “Do you have any idea where I could find her?”

  “So many years,” Clara said. “I don’t know.” She glanced at the others. “You got maybe an idea?”

  The two men shrugged helplessly, then suddenly Berman spoke up. “Well, try the phone book.”

  “That won’t help if she got married,” Clara said scoldingly. “She would have a different name.”

  “But could be she didn’t,” Berman said, almost defensively. “Who knows? Could be an einzam maidel.”

  Clara shook her head. “Talk English, Izzy. He don’t speak Yiddish.” Then she turned back to Frank. “Einzam maidel,” she said. “A woman alone.”

  11

  Frank glanced down at the name and address which he’d copied out of the Brooklyn directory, the only E. Polansky listed in any of the New York City phone books It was late in the afternoon by then, and the narrow sidewalks of Williamsburg were dotted with people returning to their homes. Large yellow buses, marked in thick black Hebrew lettering, rolled up and down the street, slowly emptying their burden of Hasidic Jews. The men emerged erect and silent their bodies wrapped in long black coats, their beards flowing down to their chests in tangled strands. As Frank walked among them, he felt like an intruder, for they seemed locked in an immemorial isolation, massed together against the surrounding city as if they knew it was poised to sweep in and engulf them. In Manhattan, he had seen them in such numbers only along 47th Street, the diamond district, where they scurried back and forth, their hands grasping plain black briefcases which were said to contain untold millions in gold and precious stones, and which they sometimes handcuffed to their wrists.

  But the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn was entirely different from West 47th Street. It was a grid of streets bordered by small rowhouses which seemed to lean wearily together, as if huddling for warmth against the cold winter air It gave off a disquieting sense of a people under siege, and as Frank turned right and made his way through the neighborhood, he could feel the heavy weight of the life that was lived around him, tight, enclosed, so utterly self-reliant, watchful and exclusive that it seemed to wall itself in from the rest of the world, to hold this, its bleak beachhead, as if it were the last on earth.

  The house at 2410 Van Kalten Street looked like all the others which surrounded it. It was made of wood which had been covered over with a simulated brick exterior. A small porch spread out from the front door, and just in front of the steps there was a tiny yard, little more than two small squares of green on either side of a cracked cement walkway.

  No one answered at the first knock, so Frank waited a moment, then tapped a little more insistently at the door.

  It opened slightly, but Frank could see the brass chain as it continued to dangle between the door and the jamb.

  “What is it?” someone asked.

  “My
name is Frank Clemons,” Frank said. He took out a card and pressed it through the crack in the door. A small white hand snapped it from his fingers, then stuck it out again a few seconds later.

  “I think you must be at the wrong place,” the voice said.

  “That’s possible,” Frank said. “But I wonder if you could tell me if an Etta Polansky lives here.”

  A single brown eye peered out at him through a hazy bar of light. “That’s my aunt.”

  “Is she here?”

  “What do you want?”

  “I need to talk to her about a friend of hers,” Frank said. “A woman named Hannah Kovatnik.”

  Silence.

  “Some people told me that your aunt might have known this woman,” Frank said, somewhat more emphatically. “Miss Kovatnik is dead, and we need to let her relatives know.”

  He could hear the chain rattle softly behind the door, and a moment later it opened slowly. A tall, slender woman stood in the dark interior of the house. She looked to be in her early twenties, and yet her face was drawn and deeply lined, and her eyes had the milky quality of someone who had not been in the open air for a long time.

  “My aunt’s not doing so good,” she said.

  “I only have a few questions,” Frank said.

  The woman stared at him silently. She seemed unable to focus, as if a murky glass divided her from the rest of the world. “I don’t know,” she said hesitantly. “She may be asleep, you know?”

  “No one has come forward to claim Miss Kovatnik’s body,” Frank explained. “We’re looking for a relative, so we can have it buried.”

  The woman said nothing. Her lean arms dangled from her shoulders like broken limbs, and for an instant she seemed almost to dissolve entirely, crumble into the air.

  “Your aunt might be able to help me quite a bit,” Frank said insistently. “I’d really like to talk with her a minute, if I could.”

  “She stays in the back.”

  “Is she there now?”

  “Yes,” the woman said. She remained in place, standing rigidly before him, her body like a thin shaft of flesh.

  “Would it be all right if I spoke to her?”

  “I guess it would,” the woman said. She turned and led Frank through the house and into a back room. It was cluttered with books and magazines. Pictures were strewn about the floor, along with jacketless records, paper cups, and an assortment of old pamphlets, dry and yellowing in the dusky light.

  “Etta,” the woman called as she stepped into the center of the room.

  Something stirred to the left, and Frank turned and saw a small iron bed, piled with soiled bedding.

  “Aunt Etta,” the woman repeated, this time more loudly. She walked to the bed, grasped its metal headboard and shook it violently.

  “Etta!” she cried.

  A low groan came from the mound of tangled quilts.

  “A man’s here, Aunt Etta,” the woman said dully. “He wants to talk to you about some old friend of yours.”

  The mound of bedding stirred uneasily again. Then a single gnarled hand crawled over the edge of the covers and pressed them downward to reveal a face that for all its age struck Frank as astonishingly beautiful.

  He stepped over to the bed and looked down at her.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said.

  Her eyes were black, utterly black, and they stared up at him without flinching. She did not speak.

  “Somebody’s dead. Aunt Etta,” the other woman said immediately. “One of your old friends.”

  The old woman nodded, but she did not look at her niece. Instead, she fixed her eyes on Frank. “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  “Dead, Aunt Etta,” the other woman repeated, “that’s what this man’s come to tell you.”

  The old woman’s eyes narrowed as they snapped over to the other woman. “Geh avec,” she said irritably to her niece.

  For a moment the other woman did not move. “I was just trying to help you,” she whined.

  “Get out, Rachel,” the old woman said. “Just go back outside.”

  The other woman turned feebly and left the room, her bare feet padding softly across the plain wooden floor.

  The two black eyes turned back to Frank.

  “Sit down,” she said.

  Frank settled into one of the small chairs which rested near her bed. “I won’t be too long,” he said.

  “You think I care?” the old woman asked with a slight shrug. “If I don’t talk to you, I talk to her.”

  Frank smiled.

  “You got children?” the old woman asked.

  Frank shook his head.

  “I have only the niece,” the old woman said bitterly. “Such a prize.” She sat up slightly and poked one of her fingers into the soft tissue of her upper arm. “Drugs, you know? There’s nothing left of her.” Her lips curled down in a deadly snarl. “Such a prize, that one. A gift from God. Used by everybody.” The finger plucked at her chest. “Nothing of her own in here.”

  Frank took out his notebook. “I was down in Chelsea today,” he began, “a housing project. A lot of people from the Lower East Side live there now.”

  The old woman nodded slowly. “From the trade, yes,” she said. “Old radicals, some of them.”

  “I was asking them if they knew a woman from back in the thirties,” Frank said.

  The old woman stared at him evenly. “A woman? What woman?”

  “Hannah Kovatnik.”

  Suddenly, Etta’s eyes drifted down toward a stack of yellowing newspapers, and as she looked at it, a soft wistfulness came into her face.

  “Hannah,” she whispered.

  “She’s dead,” Frank told her quietly.

  Etta’s eyes lingered on the dusty pile of papers.

  “She was murdered,” Frank added.

  For a moment, some sort of fierce emotion passed over her face. “Oh, Hannah. Dear Hannah,” she said gently. “Who would kill Hannah?”

  “The police are looking into it,” Frank said.

  The old woman shook her head unbelievingly, but she said nothing.

  “Her body is still at the morgue,” Frank told her. “I’m trying to find a way to get it released for burial.”

  “At the morgue,” the woman said mournfully. “Poor Hannah.”

  Frank sat back slightly. “The people down in Chelsea, they said that you knew her pretty well in the old days.”

  The old woman looked puzzled. “I did. But that was so long ago. How could I help her now? She’s already gone.”

  “You worked together, they said,” Frank asked.

  “Yes,” the old woman said. “We worked together, the two of us. In the thirties. At the sewing machines together. That’s the way it was.” Her mind seemed to drift back effortlessly to that distant time. “In those days, you never stopped. You wanted maybe to eat, to take a bite of something, it was at the machines you did it. You needed to go to the bathroom, it was a big deal.” She smiled. “But at least, the way it was, you got to know the person next to you.” The second hand emerged from beneath the blanket, its fingers holding gently to a tangled ball of red yarn. “There was a connection, you understand? Between you and the next person.” She shook her head despairingly. “Now, it’s different. A different world.”

  Frank nodded. “You remembered her right away,” he said coaxingly.

  A soft smile fluttered onto her lips. “Who wouldn’t remember Hannah? Some memories don’t go away.” Her fingers gently tugged at a slender strand of yarn. “She had such qualities, Hannah. Such great qualities.” Her eyes drifted toward one of the tall stacks of yellowing pamphlets. “She was a bom leader. La Pasionaria, you understand? Like that, a voice in the streets. That’s what she was. A Rose Luxemburg, you understand?” Her eyes turned toward the small window. “In those days, everything was possible.”

  “When did you meet Hannah?” Frank asked.

  The eyes lingered on the window, and the small green shutter that close
d off the light. She did not answer.

  “You mentioned the thirties,” Frank said, gently drawing her attention back to him.

  “1930,” Etta said. She turned to him and smiled. “The fall, I remember.”

  “Where?”

  “Her father, he had died. The rabbi. That’s what he was.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “It had been very hard,” Etta went on. “They had nothing. And now, the father was dead. What could they do? Who could help them? They had come alone, the whole family, from a little shtetl in Poland. The synagogue tried to help, but where there is nothing, there is nothing. Who can give what he doesn’t have?” She shrugged. “They stayed in the basement awhile. But they couldn’t stay forever.” She smiled mockingly. “You know how it is, God must be served. There must be a new rabbi. The prayers must be said. There must be a shul. And so, in the end, the children had to go.” She straightened herself slightly, pressing her back against the wall. “And so Hannah had to find work,” she continued. “She was the oldest. She took on the family, you understand? Everything was on her shoulders. Finally she came down to Orchard Street. There was a sweatshop on the third floor. That’s where I saw her.” She smiled appreciatively. “She dressed herself up very nice, in a white dress, the only one she had. She looked very good. The manager noticed that. He hired her right away, and they put her at the sewing machine next to mine.”

  “And that’s how you came to know her?”

  “Yes,” Etta said, “at the machines.” Her mind seemed to drift back again, her fingers now turning slowly, spooling the yarn delicately around them. “It was a hard shop. The one on Orchard Street. But they were all hard. A friend of mine, he used to say, ‘If the people knew how a coat got to Bloomingdale’s, it would break their hearts.’” She looked at Frank intently. “Do you think that’s true?”