The City Beautiful

by Aden Polydoros

  I looked into the chasm below. Something. Some thing was down there in the shadows, the same thing that had taken my father, and it would destroy me. I knew it would.

  No sooner had I perceived the presence swimming far below than I sensed another one right beside me. I lifted my head and looked into Yakov’s bright blue eyes. He drifted within hand’s reach.

  “I couldn’t do it. I tried, but I couldn’t do it. My whole body froze.” No bubbles rushed from his lips, because he didn’t need to breathe anymore. “Please, you have to help me. You have to.”

  If I spoke, I’d drown. So I took Yakov by the shoulders to save him.

  Whimpering through a mouth filled with water, he grasped hold of my waist with trembling hands. His fingers dug into my side, reaching in. His nails scraped against my rib cage; he seized my spine as though it were a pillar, void of pain but with unbearable pressure.

  Terrified, I tried to shove him away, but our skin had fused. I could hear his voice now in the crook of my neck, reverberating through my bones and the pounding pulse of my blood. Speaking words I couldn’t understand, Russian or the like, incoherent and fraught with panic.

  In the back of my mind lingered an awareness of the hideous irrationality of this situation, but at the forefront, there was only blind terror. If we stayed down here, we would drown together.

  I kicked my feet, trying to drag us up and away from the presence lurking below. Yakov’s arms were grafted to me, his legs hopelessly entangled in mine; our muscles twitched uncontrollably, trying to reconcile ourselves. Two hearts hammered against my breastbone. I couldn’t scream, for we shared a mouth now.

  “Alter?” a voice called from far away as the water lifted up around us, as if displaced by a massive form that swam unseen through the black depths below. “Alter, can you hear me?”

  Fingers closed around my shoulder. Wincing, I opened my eyes, blinking droplets from them. Seawater? No, just tepid rainwater from the mikveh.

  A pale face hovered over me. I scrambled back, thinking it was Yakov. As my vision cleared, I recognized Gavril’s gray eyes and squarish features.

  A humorless smile bent his lips. “Ah, so you’ve finally decided to rejoin the world of the living?”

  I coughed, my mouth still pickled with the taste of salt water. My entire body ached, my muscles in knots and my limbs as stiff as boards. Through bleary eyes, I took in the sight of the tahara room’s tile floor and the oil lamps casting their sullen glow.

  Yakov’s body had been returned to the table and was covered by a clean sheet. From where I sat, the lump didn’t even look like the shape of a person. It could have been anything under there, or nothing at all.

  “What were you thinking, Alter?” Lev hissed, suddenly towering over me. His face was dead-white and contorted in fury. I had never seen him show anger. I wouldn’t even have thought he was capable of it.

  “I... I thought...” I trailed off. My heart throbbed so fiercely that I could almost believe there were two separate beats. “I saw him move.”

  “You fainted,” Gavril said, but Lev was unforgiving.

  “Never in my life have I...” Lev shook his head in disgust. “Get out.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t be here.” He pointed toward the door. “Just leave.”

  “No, you don’t understand. Just let me explain.” I picked up my yarmulke from where it had fallen. It was wrong to talk in front of Yakov like this, but I couldn’t stop. I felt a desperate need to tell the others what I had seen. “Yakov opened his eyes. I know he did. He was still breathing. And when I fell into the water, he—”

  “Come,” Gavril said, his hand closing around my shoulder. “I’ll walk you home.”

  “I’m not a child,” I said, sharper than I’d intended, and tore free of his grip. “I can do it myself.”

  “Meshugener,” Sender muttered under his breath as I passed him on my way out. His clothes were soaked almost as badly as my own.

  I threw open the door, resisting the impulse to look back to see if the men were watching me. In the hall, I stopped to collect myself. Breathing heavily, I pressed my hands over my face. Where I had imagined Yakov reaching through me, my skin itched and burned.

  I was certain I had seen Yakov move. Could I have only imagined it?

  Just air in the lungs, you fool, I thought, swallowing down the miserable laugh that welled in my throat. Just air in the lungs, and now everyone’s going to think you’re a damn meshugener. You might as well check yourself into Dunning Asylum before they can do it for you.

  Yet the mikveh. The water. The dream. It had felt so real.

  I shook my head, trying to shove the whole matter aside. It was only a dream, just leave it at that and go.

  I changed into my street clothes in the adjacent dressing room, but I had to stop because my fingers were trembling so violently that I couldn’t button my shirt. My legs struggled to hold my weight. I sank against the wall, slid to the floor.

  Panting and bowed over, I ground my palms against my eyes. Even then I couldn’t escape from the memory of Yakov under a sheet, or Yakov in the mikveh, Yakov with a scarred back and bruises around his neck, and oh God—he really was gone, wasn’t he?

  Why did it feel like something had been ripped from me the moment Gavril had pulled back the shroud? Why couldn’t I stop thinking of how I’d spoken to Yakov just hours before, a smile teasing his lips?

  There would be no funeral, because he had come to America alone. No family members sitting shiva, no yahrzeit candle to commemorate his death. It would be as though he’d never existed at all.

  That was what you really became when you died. Not a body under a sheet, not even dust, but an absence. A person-size gap. I would know.

  My throat tightened into a pinhole, and an involuntary choking sound escaped my clenched teeth. The volunteers would be dressing Yakov now in pristine white garments. They would be putting him in a coffin. They would be placing broken pottery over his eyes and mouth. I couldn’t let them hear me. I pressed my wrist against my mouth, bit down as hard as I could, and began to sob.

  4

  Everywhere I turned were walls of flames, and the sky was an obsidian sea. I fled down alleyways as dark and stifling as the gullets of dragons, through sizzling sparks and palls of smoke, under clotheslines fluttering with singed sheets. Whips of fire crackled through the clouds. I reached the river, salvation! Except the water was black with soot, and shroud-swaddled bodies bobbed in the shallows. Overhead, something skirted through the smoke. I could not see it, but I heard the steady wick of its wings, like the flapping of oilcloth.

  As the beast’s shadow descended over me, I awoke with my heart slamming against my rib cage and my mouth as dry as ashes. A shrill clamor filled my ears as my room swam into focus.

  Lurching onto my side, I groped for my brass alarm clock. I stilled the ringing bells with a clammy palm. Kicking away the sweaty sheets, I drew in deep breaths, waiting for my heartbeat to return to normal.

  The sun was already high in the sky, a filmy white disc that winked at me through my window. It must have rained, for the glass was beaded with moisture, and water licked the brim of the leak bucket in the corner.

  Exhausted, I sank against the mattress and promised myself another minute to fully wake up. My back ached as though someone had sat on me while I slept, and my throat was sore. Staring at the brown water stain on the ceiling, I counted the droplets plunking from the saturated plaster.

  Strange with the dream. Ever since my father’s death, I had been plagued by nightmares of water and sickness. Never fire.

  “Hey, Alter,” Haskel said, and I turned my head. He lay on his back, maybe looking at the same water stain. Either way, he wouldn’t meet my eye.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Is it quick, do you think?”

  “Is what
quick?”

  “To drown.”

  My tongue felt glued to the roof of my mouth. I swallowed, tried to speak. Couldn’t.

  “Or is it slow? Does it hurt?”

  “I don’t know.” My voice came out very small.

  “What a way to go.” Rolling over onto his side, he turned his back to me. Across the room, Dovid didn’t even stir, though my alarm had surely woken him.

  Yesterday, after I had pulled myself together well enough to leave the tahara house without breaking down sobbing, I had gone home. I spent the rest of the day in bed, racked by chills and cramping muscles, and choked down the leftover potato kugel and beef kishka that Mrs. Brenner kindly brought over for dinner. The muscle cramps had returned with a vengeance. Had I torn something during my struggle over the rope?

  Aching body or not, Head Editor Stieglitz and Press Supervisor Weiss would be expecting me at the Idisher Ḳuryer’s office at eight o’clock sharp. I forced myself to climb out of bed. As I went through my morning routine, the pain slowly faded, while the sense of disquiet lingered like a bad stench. Yakov’s death had thrown the world out of orbit, sent it hurtling. Anything might happen today.

  The remnants of Mrs. Brenner’s kugel had become stiff and brown, with an oily bottom. I forced it down just the same. It was nothing like my mother’s cooking, but it was either that or stale bread. Besides, if I didn’t eat now, I’d have to wait until my lunch break.

  “Alter,” Dovid said as I opened the door.

  I looked back at him. He had finally crawled out from under the covers.

  “If you keep stooping over like that, people are going to think you really are an old man,” he said, turning my name into a pun.

  “Funny.” I rubbed my back. “I think I hurt a muscle yesterday when I...”

  As I trailed off, Dovid’s weak smile faded. Without a word, he drew back into his cocoon of blankets. I wheeled my bike into the hallway, feeling stained.

  On my way out, I knocked on Mrs. Brenner’s door. When she opened it, I held the empty kugel pan out to her.

  She flinched at the sight of me.

  “A-Alter.” She drew in an unsteady breath and offered me a smile. “You startled me. I thought you were someone else.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, dear.” She took the kugel pan, holding the edge with the tips of her fingers, as though it was hot to the touch or profoundly unclean. “No. It’s nothing to apologize for.”

  “Thank you for the dinner last night.” I forced a smile of my own. “It was delicious.”

  “I’m glad to see you ate it all.” Mrs. Brenner stepped toward me, then hesitated. “Alter, I know you’ve been skipping meals. I can see it in your face. You know, if you ever need something, you’ll come to me, won’t you? Won’t you?”

  My throat clogged with gratitude. I felt my smile quiver on my lips, in danger of falling away entirely. “It’s fine. Thank you, but I am quite all right.”

  She looked unconvinced. I didn’t want to rely on her kindness, especially not now, when death felt treacherously close. Nothing good had ever come from getting close to others. One way or another, it always ended in blood.

  Raizel was waiting in the lobby when I came downstairs, flipping through a newspaper. She tucked it under her arm as I approached. Peeking out from under her straw hat, wisps of mahogany hair garlanded her ears like a laurel wreath.

  “How are you faring?” she asked.

  “I’m fine, thank you. Just tired.”

  “I can tell.” She paused. “Listen, Alter, don’t you think it’s a little strange that so many boys have run off recently? And now with your roommate—”

  “Yakov drowned, Raizel. It was an accident. The police said so.”

  “And Aaron ran off to Cincinnati,” she said flatly.

  Her words disturbed me. I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t even want to think about it.

  “I’m sorry, but I need to get to work,” I said, turning away.

  She dropped her paper in my bicycle basket as I passed. When I looked back, she favored me with a brief smile. “Mrs. Brenner told me you were tutored in German. To cheer you up, here’s something a bit more interesting than the Talmud.”

  Once the front door banged shut behind me, I retrieved the paper from my basket and sighed at the title.

  The Arbeiter-Zeitung. Of course. As if I wanted any more of the drek Raizel had tried peddling me at Mrs. Brenner’s dinner table. The tea hadn’t even finished steeping before Raizel had asked me if I heard how Governor Altgeld had pardoned the surviving anarchists responsible for the Haymarket bombing back in ’86. Once I told her I had, she immediately leaped into a passionate speech about the merits of the labor movement, the brutality of the Pinkerton Agency, and the need for sudden, even violent change.

  I wasn’t ready to get behind a class war, and told her so. Not that it would have done much good if I’d agreed with her. After Raizel stormed out in a fury, I learned that Mrs. Brenner had spent the fifteen minutes before my arrival regaling her parents about my family’s success in the textiles industry, as if that could make up for a dead father and absent mother. Conveniently, Mrs. Brenner had omitted that by the time I was twelve, we were left destitute.

  I dropped the paper in the rubbish bin on my way down the street. The last thing I needed was to be swept up in someone else’s revolution, when I was battling my own war trying to get my family here.

  5

  The chaos of Chicago was even worse than the disarray of wagons, horses, and dray carts on Piatra Neamţ’s market days. Pedaling down Maxwell Street, I took care to stay away from the hansom cabs and wagons that rushed through the road as though they were racing to see who could mow down the most pedestrians.

  Two years here, and I still hadn’t quite adjusted to the city’s loudness and bustle. I was afraid I’d never feel at home, that I’d always find myself flinching away from train whistles or the metallic uproar of streetcars.

  No matter. I just had to remind myself this city wouldn’t ruin me. Soon, I’d get my mother and sisters here. And if I worked hard, eventually we could move to one of those idyllic little villages nestled up alongside Lake Michigan, unsullied by the coal smoke. Except not Lake Forest. They didn’t allow Jews there.

  Outside of raising the funds to bring my family over, I had a hard time envisioning my future. I’d have liked to go to school, but it cost too much, and I didn’t have the time. Besides, with my English skills, I’d be lucky to test into the kindergarten.

  In those months of anticipation before we had left Romania, my mind had brimmed with dreams of the future. My father called America a goldene medina where even poor Jews could make a name for themselves, where anything was possible. He saw men like Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis as icons, proof of the success waiting for us here. For a man who had built his fortune from the ground up and seen it demolished overnight, he had been so hopeful. He had fooled himself, and like a child listening to a bubbe-meise, I had believed every single word of it.

  We would start a family business in Chicago’s garment district. We would persevere and make a name for ourselves, and I would go to school, an English school where Jews were able to learn right beside gentiles. It had all seemed like a wonderful dream, and with my father’s death, it had dissolved like one, too.

  I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life anymore. I used to dream about exploring the world, but now each time I closed my eyes, I was haunted by numbers. Ninety dollars for steamship tickets. Seventy cents a day for food. Ten dollars for railway tickets, and another ten for lodgings. Fifteen for miscellaneous expenses and fees.

  My mother and little sisters weren’t to blame for how things had turned out, but a part of me resented them for having to put my life on hold.

  Three blocks from my tenement, I reached the tahara house. I turned down the street a
fter it, weaving my way through the familiar sprawl of tenements and small businesses. When I crossed the river’s northern bend, I avoided glancing at the brownish water churning below, noxious with runoff from the slaughterhouses.

  I loathed to admit it, but my dream had put me on edge. If I looked down, I was afraid the water might be black with soot. There might be corpses.

  Soon enough, I reached that area of the riverfront known as Smokey Hollow, an industrial labyrinth of factories and workshops. The smoke was so thick that it billowed through the roads in drifts as wide as glaciers, dimming the sunlight until it became impossible to tell whether it was morning or midday.

  I turned down a side street of narrow limestone offices, stopped at the third building, and wheeled my bicycle through its wrought-iron gates.

  The second floor of the Idisher Ḳuryer was all office space, while the ground level was devoted to the printing presses and the supplies associated with the trade. I hung my coat on the rack and stowed my bicycle in a back room, amid ink pots and reams of blank paper. Before taking my place at the Linotype machine in the far corner, I double-checked that the tassels of my tzitzis, the tunic-like garment I wore under my shirt and waistcoat, were still tucked into my pants. I had no desire to acquaint myself with the machine’s crushing gears and movements.

  The Linotype machine resembled a medieval torture device with its hulking metal form and the wisps of steam curling from the cauldron of molten lead in its core. I sat down at the keyboard and leafed through the stack of typewritten articles on the nearby tray.

  More of the usual. News of the shul being built across from the chevra kadisha, due to be complete by the end of summer. An interest piece about pushcart vendors at the Sunday market. A report about a fourteen-year-old worker’s accidental death at one of the Union Stockyards’ kosher slaughterhouses, accompanied by a brief statement by the factory boss, Mr. Katz.