“I don’t know.”
Etta waved her hand. “Anyway, it was all piecework, and the bosses were always speeding up the task-rate. You’d start with nine coats in a task, then the bosses would want ten, then twelve. You made twelve, it finished your task. You got paid by the task, so you got the same for twelve coats today that you’d got for nine the day before. That’s the way it worked.” She shook her head. “You made maybe twenty dollars a week. Sometimes less, sometimes a little more. And if you gave them any trouble, the bosses, you were out.”
“Is that what caused the strike,” Frank asked, “the takrate?”
“That was part of it,” Etta said, “but it was just the way things were. So bad. Up on the third floor, that’s where we worked. Maybe fifteen of us, all girls, all sitting at the machines.” She smiled. “They were good girls. Very sweet. Innocent.” Then her face darkened. “The owner, he used to walk around, touching them. ‘Meine vunderbare meydekh,’ he’d say, ‘my wonderful girls.’”
“Do you remember his name?”
“Who could forget it,” Etta said instantly. “Such a skinny little man. You thought the wind would blow through him. Feig was his name. Sol Feig.”
Frank wrote it down.
“It was a ‘hotshop,’” Etta said, “Feig’s was.”
“What does that mean?”
“That it was ready for action,” Etta told him. “You know, to be unionized.” She shook her head. “The way people were treated, that’s what made it hot.” She smiled. “There was no ventilation, no shaft for air, so in the summer, the heat was so bad, sometimes you couldn’t breathe.”
Suddenly the door cracked open and Etta’s niece peeped in. “I’m going out,” she said crisply. “For smokes.”
Etta waved her hand dismissively and the niece crept back slowly, closing the door behind her.
“Smokes,” Etta said derisively. “Dope, that’s what she’ll get. In the park, some dope of some kind. I don’t even know what it is. So many. I can’t keep up with them.” She shook her head. “If you have nothing to live for, you can live for anything.” She straightened herself slightly and turned back to Frank. “Where was I?”
“Orchard Street,” Frank told her, “the hotshop.”
Etta nodded. “Hannah was the first to talk about it. The union. She was the first. And everybody listened, all the girls, because she was a good worker, Hannah was. She was good at the piecework. She had fast fingers.” She took a deep breath, and Frank could hear a slight rattling in her chest. “She was a fighter, too,” she said. “Made of steel, Hannah.”
“What did she do exactly?” Frank asked. “In the shop, I mean.”
“She sewed, like me,” Etta said. “We made coats. So in that shop you had different people doing different things. You had a baster that kept the cloth moist.’ You had pressers and a button sewer. There was maybe a trimmer there, and a busheler.”
“And you worked together for five years?” Frank asked.
“Close to five years,” Hannah said. “We went through the strike together. My God, you should have seen Hannah. She was the leader.”
“Of the strike?”
“Our shop. Of our shop.”
“That was in …?”
“1935. The winter of 1935,” Etta told him. “They’d cut the piece-rate in half, and that meant you could work an eighteen hour day and barely make enough to live. We walked off when Feig did that.”
“And Hannah led the strike?”
“She made speeches,” Etta said. “The union paper published one of them, I remember.”
“What union was it?”
“The American Garment Workers,” Etta told him. “That’s the one that made the strike.”
Frank wrote it down quickly, then looked back up at Etta. “And Hannah worked with this union?” he asked.
“Oh yes, she did,” Etta told him. She smiled brightly. “We had a big rally one day in Union Square. Not just the garment workers, but everybody. What they called an Unemployment Rally. Hannah spoke for us, for our shop. You should have seen her, the way she stood on that platform. She wasn’t big, Hannah wasn’t. But on that platform, wrapped up in a big black coat—it was so cold, you know—she looked so big. Like a giant, I mean. She raised her hand when she spoke, always her hand in the air. And her voice, what a wonderful voice. It carried everywhere, like it was on a loudspeaker or something.” She looked at Frank intently. “It was something to be there, to see her.” She drew in a long breath. “Now, the way it is, you can live your whole life and never hear a voice like that. And what she said. Such great things.” She shook her head. “You hear things like that. In a crowd, you know? Everyone together. You don’t need to smoke anything, or stick a needle in your arm to make you feel good.”
Frank nodded slowly. He could feel the crush of the crowd in Union Square, see its thousand faces lift up toward the small young woman in the long black coat, as her voice began to pour fervently over them. He could hear the people as they continued to murmur inattentively, then grow silent as her voice rose higher and higher, until it finally reached its greatest height and then slid, almost shyly, beneath the thunder of their cheers.
“She did her best,” Etta said finally. “Not just for herself. For everybody. For what you call ‘the far and near,’ the ones you know, the ones you don’t.”
Frank nodded quickly. “She had two sisters, I understand,” he said. “Did you know them?”
“Yes,” Etta said. “Gilda and Naomi. She brought them to the shop from time to time. Eventually they both worked there. Gilda was very pretty. All the men were after her, but she wouldn’t give them the time of day. I don’t think she ever had a man.” She shrugged. “Naomi was sort of plain, but she was a nice girl.”
“What can you tell me about Naomi?” Frank asked immediately.
“She got married eventually,” Etta said. “To a nice man, I heard. He was a teacher, I think.” She smiled again. “They were nice girls, the sisters. How are they doing?”
“One of them died,” Frank said.
“And the other one?”
“I don’t know.”
A deep sadness moved into her face. “Gone, too, I guess. Like everything else.”
“Naomi’s husband,” Frank said. “Would you happen to remember his name?”
“No.”
Frank held his pencil poised over his notebook. “Would you happen to know if Naomi and her husband ever had any children?”
“No.”
“The husband, did you ever hear that he had died, anything like that?”
“No.”
“Do you know anything about him?” Frank continued determinedly. “Something that might help me find him?”
“I only saw him a couple of times,” Etta said. “He wasn’t handsome at all, but he looked sturdy. I guess that appealed to Naomi.”
“And you said he was a teacher?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you know where he might have taught?”
“Maybe public school,” Etta said. “Maybe a yeshiva.”
Frank wrote her answers down quickly, then glanced back up toward her. “And what do you know about Gilda?”
“She was a beautiful girl,” Etta said. “And smart, like Hannah.”
“How about Hannah,” Frank said. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“She stayed in the shop for a while,” Etta said. “After the strike, I mean.”
“When did the strike end?”
“March of 1936.”
“And you all went back to work?”
“Back to our machines.”
“Hannah, too?”
“Yes,” Etta said. “She came back to Orchard Street. She was the same old Hannah for a while. She was still working with the union. She wrote articles.”
“Articles?”
“For the union paper,” Etta said. She reached down to a stack of newspapers that leaned unsteadily beside her bed, pulled one from t
he top and handed it to Frank. “This is the latest one, but I’ve kept them all over the years.”
Frank glanced down at the paper. “And Hannah published articles in this paper?”
“Yes, she did,” Etta said. “Quite a few after the strike. You want to see them?”
“Yes.”
For the next few minutes, the old woman rumbled heavily around the room, randomly snatching at the yellowing editions of the union paper that she’d collected over the years. She was able to gather about fifteen of them together before the task seemed finally to overtake her and she slumped back on the bed, wheezing, exhausted, but with an oddly lingering fire in her eyes.
“I hope that’ll help you,” she said as she handed them to Frank. She smiled quietly. “You can take them with you, I guess. I won’t need them anymore.”
“Thanks,” Frank told her. He tucked the crumbling papers under his arm and started toward the door.
“That’s how I saw Hannah the last time, you know,” Etta said from behind him.
He turned toward her. “How?”
“With a stack of union papers under her arm,” Hannah said. Her mind moved back slowly, gracefully, without fear, as if, after a long and difficult journey, it was returning home. “She was up on Herald Square,” she said. “It was around Christmas because I remember there were bells ringing all around her. It was snowing, too, and she was standing in the snow with a rolled-up copy of the union paper in each hand, and she was calling out to the people going by. ‘Read this,’ she was saying, ‘Read this, and keep a place in your heart for justice.’” Her eyes shifted over to the small window, then back to Frank. “I’ve never forgotten that,” she said. “She was so small, but brave.” She smiled quietly. “Little Hannah Kovatnik.”
“After she left the shop,” Frank said, “did she stay in touch with anyone?”
“No.”
“Not even you?”
“No,” Etta repeated. “She seemed sad all of a sudden. This was just before she left the shop. Very sad. She looked sick. People said, ‘Hannah’s got TB,’ things like that. Then, a little later, she was gone.” She shook her head wonderingly. “And she took Gilda with her. Naomi was already married by then. I guess she moved away.” She shrugged. “We never heard from any of them again. It was as if all three of them—the Kovatnik sisters—had just dropped off the edge of the world.”
12
It was nearly night by the time Frank got off the subway at West Fourth Street. He walked east, through the heart of Greenwich Village, until he reached the Bowery. To the north, he could see the great red facade of Cooper Union, and the little concrete park which spread out in front of it. A few of the evening’s small army of street vendors had already begun to display their wares: jewelry, old clothes, and an enormous assortment of books and old magazines. Each night they swept out onto the streets with their varied supply of abandoned goods, and as he crossed the wide square where Third Avenue and the Bowery met, Frank remembered how they’d been on the streets the first night Karen had taken him here, and how he’d stopped at one of them and bought her a small plastic cameo. At first, she’d worn it every day after that, then only from time to time, and finally not at all. He imagined that it was somewhere on the bottom of her jewelry box now, nestled warmly among the emeralds and pearls.
The synagogue was almost exactly where Riviera had remembered it, a square white building only a few paces in from the Bowery. Its outer walls had begun to crack and crumble, and even in the darkening air, Frank could make out the cracked windows of the second floor and the rusty, battered drain which drooped above them.
A short wrought-iron gate blocked the stairs to the second floor, and Frank leaned softly against it as he peered down toward the line of dark basement windows. She had lived down there, Hannah Kovatnik, with her father, the rabbi, and her two sisters, the one so beautiful, the other, as Frank had begun to imagine her, quite plain. In his mind he could hear their voices, high, girlish, speaking in another language as they did their nightly chores or lay together in their bedroom, their three faces lit by gas jets or candlelight. Three sisters, one beautiful, one plain, and the third, Hannah, somewhere in between, lovely in a flowered hat, but plain in a dark scarf, so that perhaps she had come to realize that it was clothes which made the difference, which made her either attractive or ordinary, and out of that, the beginning of a life’s devotion.
“You looking for something?” someone asked suddenly.
Frank turned and saw a tall, very thin man eyeing him cautiously from a short distance away. He was dressed in a long blue overcoat, the back of his head covered by a small black yarmulke. His beard was white and it fell almost to his chest. For a moment, he continued to peer at Frank intently. “Are you Jewish?” he asked finally.
“No.”
“This is a synagogue.”
“I know.”
“It is no longer functioning,” the man added, in a low, heavily accented voice. “Closed now for many years.”
“Did you ever go here?” Frank asked.
“Many times, yes,” the man replied hastily. “You are not from New York?”
“No,” Frank said. “But I live here now.”
The man frowned deeply. “Who would move to such a place, I ask myself?”
Frank smiled. “I followed a woman,” he said.
The old man nodded slowly. “And you are staying?”
“I guess,” Frank said.
The old man shrugged. “Maybe you’re an architect,” the man said. “I notice you are looking at the building.”
“No,” Frank said. “I’m checking on some things about a woman.”
“The one you came here with? She lives in the neighborhood?”
Frank shook his head. “No. A Jewish woman. She lived here.”
The old man looked astonished. “Lived here?”
“In the basement.”
“The basement? Of the synagogue?”
“Her father was the rabbi.”
“Ah, yes,” the old man said. “This was many, many years ago. No one has lived here since then.”
“She was a young girl then.”
“And now?”
“In her seventies.”
The old man leaned against the gate. He seemed to be going through a series of calculations. “That would have been Rabbi Kovatnik.”
“Did you know him?”
“A little,” the man said. “He was nice, but nothing in the head. Rabbi, it means ‘teacher,’ but this one he had nothing in the head.” He nodded toward the gate. “You want to go in? Maybe you would like to look around a little?”
“It’s locked.”
The old man pulled an enormous ring of keys from beneath his coat. “I manage a few buildings on this block. This one is easy. No tenants.” He stepped briskly between Frank and the gate. “Just a second.” He fumbled awkwardly with the keys for a moment, then the gate swung open. “Okay, come in.” He chuckled to himself. “You couldn’t hurt this place, it’s been falling down for years.”
Frank followed the old man up a short flight of concrete stairs to the door of the synagogue. The old man opened it, then stepped inside, keeping Frank on the walkway.
“Please keep the hat on in here,” he said quietly. “It’s not exactly a synagogue anymore, but God, He may think it is.”
“Of course,” Frank said.
“We keep on the electricity in case for a buyer,” the old man said as he flipped on the light switch. “Since there’s no more Jews in the neighborhood, it’s of no use to anyone, this building. So, we’re trying to sell it.” He pointed to the ceiling. Dark water stains swept out from the four corners and plaster sagged here and there in large gray flaps. “But as you can see,” the old man added, “it’s not such a bargain.”
“How long has it been closed?” Frank asked as he stepped toward the middle of the room.
“I think maybe fifteen years.”
“What happened to the rabbi?” Fr
ank asked.
“The last one? He went to a bigger place. Somewhere in California, I think.”
“I meant Rabbi Kovatnik,” Frank said.
The old man didn’t seem to hear him.
“And the people who used to come here, the ones who used to hear the prayers on Shabbas?” he said, almost to himself. “Dead. All dead.” He drew an old, badly wrinkled prayer shawl from one of the unpainted wooden pews. “Where have they gone, I ask myself?” He drew his eyes over to Frank. “But who ever hears an answer?” He folded the prayer shawl neatly and draped it over the pew. “You want to see where they lived. Rabbi Kovatnik and his daughters?”
“Yes.”
“Come with me.”
A narrow wooden staircase led shakily to the basement, its steps creaking loudly as Frank and the old man made their way down.
“For the time, it was not so bad,” the old man said as he switched on the light.
The walls were whitish-pink, and paint hung from them like strips of skin. A small pool of filmy water rippled in the far left corner, and Frank could see tiny wet tracks leading out of it and into the dark adjoining room. There was a single table at the center of the room. A menorah rested in the middle of it, along with a stack of crumbling prayerbooks. A rickety stand of bookshelves leaned heavily to the right, its scarred sides bearing down on a small wooden high chair.
“Is there anything interesting in this place?” the old man asked as he looked quizzically at Frank.
Frank shook his head. “Not much.”
“You want to see the rest?”
“Yes,” Frank told him.
“A regular tour,” the man said with a wave of his hand. “But I got nothing but time.” He motioned to the right then walked into the next room and turned on the light.
It was the bedroom, and it was not unlike what Frank had briefly imagined as he had lingered outside, leaning on the gate. Three iron beds stretched end to end across the room, their metal springs drooping almost to the ground. There was a paper calendar above one of them. A red X had been placed on the date, October 15, 1929, and as Frank stepped over and looked at it, he tried to imagine which of the sisters had put it there and what it had marked: a date, a religious holiday, some upcoming event that had been important enough to signify. He could feel the heaviness of time all about him, the brevity of life, the way it drained away in a quiet rush of days until it was gone, gone as if in one quick, invisible streak.
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