The City Beautiful

by Aden Polydoros

  He did not speak of his childhood. He did not speak of his mother or father, except to tell me once how they had been taken from this world.

  I wanted so badly to reciprocate, but what could I tell him that would ever compare to such adventures? My childhood was an endless blur of narrow streets of dirt and cobblestone, my squabbling baby sisters, and the rural silence. After two years in Chicago, it all felt terribly boring and rustic.

  “I’m ready to go if you are,” Yakov said, once he secured his watch chain in place.

  “I’m ready,” I said, and he took me by the shoulder and drew me from the room.

  Chicago was just beginning to settle in for the night. Horse-drawn carts and carriages lumbered past us. The creak of their wheels joined the calls of the pushcart vendors clustered along the curb. Each breath I took was soured by the scorched, sickly sweet odor of the glue processing plants, while the canal, polluted with animal carcasses from the slaughterhouses, reeked of ghastly carnage.

  The city was constantly changing—day by day, old buildings were being knocked down to make room for newer ones and a labyrinth of streetcar rails was being laid. With the city ever-expanding, it would only be a matter of time before the marshland at its outskirts was filled in and built upon.

  As we walked, Yakov fished his cigarette case from his pocket. He was left-handed, and it always fascinated me to see the way he handled things, like a street magician’s parlor tricks. He offered me a cigarette, but I shook my head. In the corner of my eye, I watched him draw a match from his brass vesta case and light it with an unassuming flick of his fingers.

  Another bouquet of flames bloomed across the night sky. In the fireworks’ diminishing glow, the tenement houses across the street seemed precarious, as though they would collapse into ruin and rubble at any moment.

  Back in Romania, there was no celebration like this, not even on the day commemorating when Wallachia and Moldavia had united to form the kingdom. If there had been one, my family would have stayed inside anyway. Celebrating meant drinking, which meant that once it got dark, some men might decide to take a little tour through the Jewish quarter.

  It was different here. We didn’t have to hide behind bolted shutters and locked doors. We were a part of the community, not severed from it.

  “I’ve been waiting for this night for a long time,” Yakov said, taking a drag of his cigarette.

  “Oh, right, this is your first Fourth of July here. It’s really something, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Aren’t the fireworks amazing?”

  “Beautiful.” He looked at me as he said it. Smoke curled from his proud lips, as though the same crackling sparks that lent his blue eyes their intensity now stoked a blaze beneath his skin. “I’m glad we could do this. I want to savor it.”

  “As do I,” I said softly, and we continued on our way.

  As we neared the market, the warm glow of firelight beckoned us closer. The ground was littered with rotten fruit and corn silk, their fermented scent lacing the more pleasant aromas of sizzling sausages and beer. Music wafted through the dusk—the trill and wail of a klezmer’s violin rivaled by a woman fiddling a lively Irish jig.

  In front of the dusty storefronts where the peddlers would spread their secondhand wares on Sunday mornings, the threadbare awnings had been unrolled to shade carts and tables overladen with food and drinks. For a penny apiece, an elderly Italian man scraped up careful balls of lemon ice into miniature glasses.

  Yakov stopped me when I held out a coin, closing my fingers around the copper. “Allow me. You have your family.”

  “It’s only a penny.”

  “I received a raise at work, so let me treat you tonight.”

  “Thank you,” I said as he handed me one of the glasses. There was only enough for a couple mouthfuls, but I savored each lick.

  Yakov’s lips quirked in a smile. “Alter, you missed a drop.”

  Oh no. Before I could swipe it away, he brushed his finger across my cheek, close enough to my mouth that I felt a shiver of longing pass through me. “Right here.”

  As we continued down the street, I wiped my face with the back of my hand. I prayed the darkness would hide the blush burning my cheeks.

  “Food next,” Yakov declared, his gaze roving up and down the rows. “Ah, over here.”

  We ate hot beef sausages served on split buns and slathered with whole-grain mustard, followed by deep-fried knishes stuffed with mashed potatoes and caramelized onions. We washed it all down with root beer and pithy lemonade.

  Then it was the shell game, and craps, and three-card monte. Yakov won the first two games, but when it came time to find the Lady at three-card monte, he uncovered a worthless heart. He squatted in front of the apple crate the dealer had set up as a makeshift table and flipped down another nickel. “Again.”

  The dealer laid out another three cards, each one heavily creased. Yakov considered the arrangement, his gaze flicking back and forth, before pointing toward the middlemost card.

  The dealer flipped it over with an alligator’s smile. Nine of spades.

  The man pocketed the coin. “Better luck next time, kid.”

  Yakov bit his lower lip, staring down at the spread of cards.

  “It’s a trick,” I whispered, resting on my haunches beside him. “No one wins this game, Yakov.”

  “I know, but...” His gaze returned to the cards. “I wanted to win all three games.”

  “You won the other two. That’s an accomplishment enough. It’s better to stop while you’re ahead.”

  He said nothing. Down the street, a firecracker sprayed crimson sparks across the sky. Even after the flames died down, I thought I could still see their glow reflected in his blue eyes, the memory of fire.

  A commotion drew my attention across the lot. At the other end of the street, a small crowd had gathered.

  “Let’s take a look.” Cramming the last bit of knish in my mouth, I took Yakov by the wrist and pulled him closer.

  It was a monkey and an organ grinder. The monkey scampered up to the people who had gathered to listen, cupping its hands for coins. When it came to us, Yakov gave it the dime left over from his winnings, as though he could only leave here with less than what he had brought.

  I chuckled, a bit taken aback. “That monkey’s going to eat well tonight. I think it gets paid better than I do.”

  He glanced over. “Speaking of which, have you shown your boss that article yet? The one about growing up in Romania?”

  “I need to work on it some more,” I said.

  “Alter, you’ve been working on it for weeks now. Have some confidence or you’ll end up running the printing presses forever.”

  “It’s just...it’s not ready.” I looked down at the monkey. “Mr. Stieglitz has said before, he isn’t interested in stories about the old country. And it isn’t an article, not really. It’s just memories.”

  “Sometimes those are the most important thing.”

  As the organ grinder reached the end of his song, the crowd applauded, and the monkey danced. Their clapping was joined by the sudden rustling of wings overhead. I searched the indigo sky for the noise’s source. Night jays, no doubt.

  When I looked back down, Yakov’s smile had faded. He had his pocket watch in one hand, held to the glow of a lantern. He snapped its case shut and slipped it into his pocket.

  He averted his gaze. “I’m sorry. I need to go.”

  “It’s not even eight yet.”

  “I’m going to a show at the Fair, and if I wait any longer, I’ll be late.” He hesitated. “I’d invite you to come along, but I’m meeting someone from back home. Besides, I suspect it’s not your kind of show.”

  My face felt paralyzed. I understood it now. This had only been an appetizer for him, an interlude before the main event. He hadn’t gotte
n dressed up so nicely to attend a street fair with me, it had been to go to the real fair, the World’s Fair, with someone more special to him. Of course. It shouldn’t have upset me. It shouldn’t have felt like a punch to the gut.

  “I—I see.” Taking a deep breath, I forced a smile. “It’s all right. I’m actually rather tired. I think I’ll just head home.”

  He placed his hand on my arm. “Let me walk with you.”

  I brushed his hand away and took a step back, hating the sting of his words, hating my own pettiness even more. Why was I so upset? He had always been kind to me. It wasn’t as though he would change his plans just to suit me.

  “No, it’s all right,” I repeated. “You go to your show.”

  Not your kind of show. Long after I had returned to our room and retreated to the fire escape, Yakov’s words echoed in my head. Not your kind of show.

  Sighing, I stretched out on the mattress I had left to air out on the platform and stared at the night sky, exposed in bits and pieces through the fluttering clotheslines. All the fireworks had died down, and there was only darkness now.

  Not your kind of show.

  The statement was harmless, but the memory of it made my cheeks burn. It felt like an insult. How did he see me? Did he think that I was too cold? Too prudish?

  I cringed. Too frum?

  I liked to think we were close. We had shared in our griefs. I had told him about my father’s sickness, and he had told me about the accident. Yet there was still so much I didn’t know, so many things I wanted to ask him. Such as: Why do you cry out at night, Yakov? Were you having a nightmare? It’s okay, you can tell me. I won’t tell anyone.

  I’ll never tell.

  Everything about Yakov intrigued me. I yearned to uncover all his history, like parting the petals of a closed bud. But there was danger in getting close to a person, any person. The only way to ensure that nobody found out how rotten I was inside, was if I kept my distance. Over and over, I reminded myself: be careful and give him nothing he could use against you. Don’t trust him, don’t get too close to him, and don’t feel. Never feel.

  2

  Dovid and Haskel returned when it was still dark, reeking of booze and sweat, and passed out the moment they crashed into their separate cots. When I rose at six o’clock to prepare for work, Yakov’s bed was still empty, the blanket smoothed and folded. I stared at it as I went through my morning routine—washing my hands, putting on tallis and tefillin and davening.

  I had said Shacharis so many times, I didn’t even need to concentrate on the prayers’ words. Instead, numbers raced through my head. Ninety dollars for three steerage tickets. Sixty cents per day for food. No, make that seventy just to be safe. But what if my mother or sisters needed a doctor? And once they arrived here, what about train and ferry tickets?

  When I had first started raising money for my family’s passage, it had felt impossible. I had been so afraid I’d never be able to save enough money to get them here. Now that I was so close, it terrified me to actually think of their arrival. I couldn’t stop imagining the three of them being hustled down the gangway of Ellis Island, my mother gripping the twins’ hands tightly, the Statue of Liberty turned toward the shore, as though having forsaken them. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society would be able to point my mother in the right direction, even help her get tickets at the train station. But there would also be a myriad of predators stalking the streets of Manhattan, waiting for new arrivals.

  I couldn’t stand the thought of Rivka and Gittel being carried off by America’s false glitz. By the whoremongers and sweatshop bosses. By the cruelness.

  After saying the Pesukei DeZimra, I asked God for protection, strength, and endurance. Nobody answered, and the silence grew heavier. The strip of leather that bound my arm became as hefty and cumbersome as a chain. Slowly, I unwrapped the tefillin from around my arm and lowered its twin from my brow. As I put them away in their velvet bag, Dovid stirred and groaned.

  He cracked open one eye and regarded me blearily. “What time is it?”

  I glanced at the clock. “Six twenty.”

  He laid his arm over his eyes. “Oh, kill me.”

  “Whatever you drank looks well on its way to.”

  He laughed, then groaned.

  “Yakov isn’t home yet,” I said.

  “Nu? He probably found a girl.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed reluctantly, but I didn’t think that was the case.

  As Dovid rolled back under the covers, I poked through my grocery box’s contents. Ugh. The loaf of bread was already as hard as a rock, no good for anything but boiled dumplings. As for the half bushel of potatoes, they had begun to sprout in their sack.

  “Lovely.” Sighing, I scrounged my finances journal out from under my pillow and tried to figure out what I could afford at the market.

  For a city whose economy was built on slaughter, kosher meat remained an unobtainable luxury. How could I spend thirty cents on a kilo of beef roast, when I could get twice as many potatoes for a fifth of that price? That extra quarter-dollar would mean two more meals for my sisters, a fraction of a train ticket, or part of a bribe to pay off corrupt officials.

  “I guess it’s more potatoes,” I muttered, glancing at the sack. My stomach turned at the thought of boiled potatoes, or mashed potatoes, or potato latkes fried in schmaltz. No, if I had to eat another potato today, I’d turn into one. Maybe I could grab something small before work.

  I was in the process of buttoning my shoes when someone knocked on the door. Three hard knocks, insistent, impatient.

  Yakov.

  “I’m coming, just hold on.” Setting down my buttonhook, I rose to my feet. I was forced to walk lopsidedly across the room with one shoe on and one foot bare, weaving through the mess of furniture and junk.

  Two more knocks, then a light rapping of the knuckles, like a message in Morse code. A cry for help.

  “I said I’m coming.” Annoyed, I twisted the lock and threw open the door. “Yakov, did you lose your...”

  I trailed off.

  A man in a dark blue uniform stood at the threshold. Underneath the leather brim of his cap, his pale eyes looked me up and down. He opened his mouth and shot out words in a fast staccato I could hardly make sense of.

  “Can you repeat that?” I asked in English. “Slower, please.”

  “Police.” He stretched out the word: Puuh-leece. “Is this the residence of Yakov Kogan?”

  “The what?”

  “The residence. The home. The abode.” He sighed impatiently. “Does Yakov Kogan live here?”

  “Yes.” I stepped out into the hall. “Er, what’s this about? What did he do?”

  Out of the four of us, Yakov was the last one I expected to get arrested. Must’ve been some show.

  “He didn’t do anything.” The officer looked at me with flat pity in his eyes. “He’s dead.”

  * * *

  “You can start by telling me your name,” the officer said, tapping his fountain pen against the desk. He had introduced himself as Johnathon Rariden, a mouthful of syllables I struggled to wrap my tongue around.

  “Alter Rosen.” The precinct’s Yiddish-speaking detective was absent, so I spoke in halting English, question after question flung at me like pummeling fists. My eyes ached in the harsh sunlight spearing through the office’s wooden blinds.

  Officer Rariden lifted his eyebrows. “Can you spell that out?”

  “A-l-t-e-r R-o—”

  “That will do. Alter. An unusual name, that.”

  I supposed that to Officer Rariden, it sounded rather silly. As a Christian, he wouldn’t know that my first name was a talisman. I had spent the first week of my life at the threshold between two worlds, too sick to suckle, too weak to wail. My parents had been so afraid the Angel of Death would take me, they’d given me the name Alter to confuse hi
m into thinking I was an old man. Undesirable.

  Over the years, I had come to realize that my name was as much a mirror as a talisman—by hiding me, it diverted the Angel of Death’s vulgar gaze to the people around me. Childhood friends were ravished by illness and violence. An adder bit my cousin in the forest deep, its venom rotting her from the inside out. And the infant who I should have called brother had been strangled to death with the noose of his own umbilical.

  And then, of course, there was my father.

  “How long have you known Yakov?” Officer Rariden asked after jotting down my name.

  “A few months.” I shifted in my chair, the cane seat hard and uncomfortable. “He showed up at the tenement back in early April.”

  “Did he have any living relatives?”

  “He told me his parents died in an accident.”

  “An accident?”

  “A cow knocked over a lantern.”

  “This wouldn’t happen to have been in 1871, would it?” He cocked a brow. “The Great Chicago Fire?”

  “Uh, no? He was born in 1874, I think.”

  “All right then.” Officer Rariden sighed, rubbing his face. I could tell that he was annoyed, and I had a sinking feeling that my English was to blame. “What was he doing at the Columbian Exposition last night?”

  “The what?”

  “The White City.” When I didn’t answer, he groaned in exasperation. “The Fair. The World’s Fair. Jesus Christ. If you’re going to live here, you should at least know the names of the Fair.”

  I did, just not in English.

  “He was with a landsman—er, friend, I think? I’m sorry. I don’t know.” I tapped my fingertips nervously against the cup of coffee the officer had given me. “He said something about a show.”

  Officer Rariden grunted and jotted something else into his book. When he shifted to dip his pen in the inkwell, the sunlight caught the gold buttons on his uniform jacket and made them glint like blades. I stared down at my coffee, afraid that if I made eye contact, he would read it as insolence.