The City Beautiful

by Aden Polydoros

  No matter. Just keep moving.

  I made it no more than three meters into the forest before someone tackled me to the ground. Kicking and growling, I struggled against the person’s confining hands, twisted around. A hardened face loomed over me, beard like a bear’s pelt. Meir.

  “Feivel, quit your moaning and help me get him to the pond!” Meir shouted, seizing my bound hands.

  Terror engulfed me. If we made it to the pond, it wouldn’t purify me. I’d drown just like my father.

  “Listen to me, Alter.” Meir’s grip tightened around my wrists, hard enough to send pain shooting up my arms. “You need to go through with this. The body cannot sustain two souls in equilibrium. It is like a candle with two wicks. No matter what you believe Yakov’s intentions are, his dybbuk will first suppress you and then it will consume you. Do you understand me? This possession will eventually kill you.”

  He was lying. I refused to believe him. If we went through with the exorcism, it would destroy both Yakov and me indiscriminately. I knew it would.

  “I said, I’m not doing this!” With a sudden jerk, I broke free of Meir’s grip and wormed out from under him. He grabbed onto my legs in an effort to keep me from rising. I tore my ankle away from his hands and kicked him as hard as I could.

  He fell onto his side, panting in an effort to reclaim his lost breath. I lurched to my feet.

  “Alter, wait,” Meir croaked.

  I didn’t look back. I just ran.

  23

  The moon was just a sliver, and after I breached the initial overgrowth, the trees became high enough to block out its meager light. I stumbled through the humid darkness, knocking into trees, blind as a hunted animal. Bullfrogs croaked in a feverish dirge, while larger game, alarmed by my trespass, thrashed through the underbrush, making me feel as though I was being pursued on all sides.

  One thought filled my mind: I needed to get home. If I got home, I could lock the door and hide under the covers. Then none of this would be real.

  During our hike to Meir’s house, Frankie and I couldn’t have gone more than two hundred meters from the road. But after five minutes of half running, half stumbling, the forest remained as thick as ever. I slowed to a stop and listened for Frankie’s shouts. Nothing. Just silence so deep it felt alive.

  You are nothing, the darkness seemed to say, in its overbearing presence, in the humbling vastness of the night sky and the cold, innumerable stars. You are just a guest here. This was never your home.

  My throat ached as though it had been skinned. I spat into the dirt and stumbled forward, blindly reaching out to feel my way when the closeness of the trees allowed the darkness to circle in on me. I felt cursed like the biblical king Nebuchadnezzar, stripped of power and pride, and driven into the wilderness to live like an animal.

  Resting on a fallen tree, I searched the ground for a sharp rock to free my bound hands. I tried rubbing the braided tzitzis against the trunk’s rough bark. The only thing I achieved was getting splinters.

  A sudden crackling sound startled me, and I lifted my head. Through the trees, a light flickered. The glow of a fire. I froze, trapped between the urge to flee and the unbearable thought of being alone.

  Flames crackled, and a wave of heat reached me where I sat. Not a lantern at all. I rose to my feet. During my escape from the cottage, could Frankie or Meir have knocked over a candle? Had I wandered around in a circle?

  As I approached the glow, sparks swarmed like fireflies between the trees. The air was laced with the warm, festive scent of pine smoke. I stepped through the tree line, leaving behind the darkness for—

  —a sunset so intense, it appeared the sky itself had been set alight. The sun hung low on the horizon, crimson as though engorged with blood.

  I swiveled around, but the Illinois wetland had vanished. In its place, a wooden building loomed at my back. Ten meters tall or higher, the structure’s entire facade was engulfed in flames. All around it, sunflowers riffled in the breeze, bobbing their heavy heads. The ones nearest to me were burnt into blackened fists.

  I stared, stunned and speechless. My heart pounded like a hammer against my ribs.

  Faint cries reached my ears. Mouth dry, I took a hesitant step forward. Were there...were there people in there?

  The rustling of leaves drew my attention ahead. Beyond the sunflower field, a dark line of trees crested the horizon.

  Panic swelled like a blood blister inside me as the forest parted. Now, I heard the snap of branches and groan of falling trunks. A deep, guttural roar shook the trees.

  I took a step back, then another, though the flames’ heat beat against my back.

  Something was.

  Something was coming.

  Something was coming to devour me.

  I turned to flee. I made it two steps before a pair of hands seized me and wheeled me around. The moment my back was turned, the odors of swamp mud and decaying leaves drove out the tang of wood smoke, and darkness flowed in like a thunderclap. A face swam before my vision, barely illuminated by the moonlight—dark intense eyes, unkempt curls spilling over a brow furrowed in worry.

  “Get away from me, Frankie!” I tried to pull away from him, but he grasped hold of the tzitzis that bound my wrists. During our struggle, I caught a glimpse of where the burning building had been.

  There was nothing there at all.

  “Like hell I’ll get away.” Frankie used his hold on the cords to reel me closer. “You want to get yourself killed out here?”

  “I’m not going back there.” Tears filled my eyes. My voice caught in my throat like a trapped animal. “You wouldn’t listen. You bastard. I told you I didn’t want to go through with it, and you wouldn’t listen!”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t realize how much I needed him to hug me until he wrapped his arms around my waist and drew me against him.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, stroking his hand through my hair. “I should have listened to you.”

  I sagged against him, my legs weakening. A miserable sob welled in my throat. “I can’t do it. I just can’t. It’ll be like killing him all over again.”

  “It’s all right. We don’t have to go back, if you’re not ready. Now, if I let go of your hand, do you promise me you won’t run?”

  “I promise.”

  Leaves crackled deeper in the woods. As Meir emerged from the tree line, Frankie stepped in front of me, raising his arm to block Meir from getting close.

  “We’re going home, Reb,” Frankie announced, leveling his chin. “If Alter doesn’t want to go through with it, I’m not going to force him.”

  “You’re both making a terrible mistake,” Meir croaked breathlessly. Burs clung to his coat and beard. “You must understand, two souls cannot coexist within the same body. The dybbuk must be driven out.”

  “Would it hurt Yakov, do you think?” I asked. “Would it destroy him?”

  Meir didn’t answer.

  I had heard many theories about what happened to us after death, but even with Yakov’s dybbuk shifting inside my veins, I still didn’t have an answer. Did we spend some time in Gehinnom and then pass on to a different place? Was it like the kabbalists thought and we returned to earth in another body? Or did we simply cease to be?

  I wanted to ask Meir these things, but all I could do was repeat once more: “Tell me, would it destroy him?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted at last.

  “Then I can’t. I’ll find another way.”

  As Frankie and I walked across the glade, Meir said my name again. I looked back.

  “If you are truly determined to see this through to the end, you should know that there is one other way for a dybbuk to pass on.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us this before, old man?” Frankie complained. “You could have saved me a lot of pain
.”

  “Because the life on this earth takes absolute precedence over the whims of the dead, and for your friend, this method will be even more dangerous than an exorcism.” His icy blue eyes pierced into mine. “It is believed that dybbukim possess the living so that they may perform tasks they were unable to complete in life. What were those words he had you write, Alter?”

  “You must kill him,” I whispered.

  Meir nodded grimly. “If what you say is true and Yakov was murdered by the very man he intended to kill, then I fear you will have no choice but to complete the job for him.”

  24

  Frankie and I found our way back to the roadside and walked along it for a while. The carriage was long gone, but Frankie reasoned that if we reached the city’s edge, we’d find another late-night driver to give us a ride.

  “I’m sorry I kicked you,” I said, after we had made it some distance. From the way he walked, I could tell he was suffering from the effects of my low blow.

  “You’re lucky I don’t plan to have children,” Frankie said dully.

  He had freed my wrists with a pocketknife after we had made it to the road, but he held my hand as though afraid I would make another break for it. I didn’t mind his touch. I welcomed it.

  “Don’t believe that shtuss about killing a man,” Frankie said, curling his fingers through mine. “You’re not cut out for that kind of work. We can find another rabbi, a Litvak one this time.”

  “Okay.” My voice sounded very small in the darkness.

  “I’ll ask around at the yeshivas.”

  “Right.”

  “Hey, Alter.” He squeezed my hand. “We’ll get through this.”

  I nodded, but I was unable to put into words what I had felt back there. Yakov’s fear. His humanity. Oh God, his pain.

  I didn’t know what to do. Even without a body, in some way or form, Yakov was still here. It was still him inside me. If I had an exorcism, I would be killing the boy who had survived the barn fire. And I would be killing the young man who carried water for train boilers. More than once, I had woken from dreams of him, trembling and breathless. By stepping into the mikveh, I would end everything Yakov ever was and could be.

  But if I had to hunt down his killer, then wouldn’t that be murder as well? I’d be snuffing out a life, no matter how much the man deserved it.

  It was like those old Romanian bubbe-meises my mother used to tell me, tales of Făt-Frumos venturing out to defeat the fire-breathing zmeu or save the boyar’s daughter. In all of them, the hero would receive a warning. Misery waited down one road, and tragedies just as great could be found down the other. There was no higher ground. There was only the descent.

  As we continued walking, the darkness soothed me. I wanted to pretend that anything that happened out here would slip away the moment we reached the glow of the city. That was how it was supposed to work; some things just couldn’t be talked about in the light.

  We made it another few steps before I tugged on Frankie’s wrist, stopping him. I needed to say this here, where it was too dark to see his expression and his eyes were just gleams.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quickly, before I could lose my nerve. “For leaving the way I did, and for all the things I said. I wasn’t thinking that night. I just thought I needed to get away, and by the time I started regretting it, I couldn’t go back.”

  “I’m not going to say I’m not mad,” Frankie said. “It hurt. It still does.”

  “I know.”

  “And for a while there, once I realized you weren’t coming back, I hated you even though I thought you were dead. No, because of that. And I hated...” He sighed heavily. “I hated that I woke up, and you weren’t there resting against the ladder, winding that stupid watch of yours. You were always so quiet around the others, so composed... That made it harder to realize you were gone. Sometimes, when I was with them, I’d look over and expect to see you there beside me, and I’d even get a bit hopeful. But you never were.”

  My voice clogged in my throat. I blinked back the tears that blurred my vision. “I never knew you cared so much about me. I thought... I remember, you made fun of me when we first met. You said, ‘He’s so fresh off the boat, I’ll bet he still smells like fish.’”

  “Because I despised you the moment I saw you.”

  I felt like Frankie had punched me in the stomach. I stared at him, and he stared back, a patch of darkness lighter than the rest.

  “You despised me?” I asked, aghast.

  He ran a hand through his hair, averting his gaze. “I’m sorry, that came out wrong. It wasn’t you personally, it was how you looked. How...how untouched you were by the city. Victor and the others, I met them when they’d been here awhile, when Chicago had already taken away their parents and homes and spat them out on the streets. But you were different. You were pure.”

  “You’re wrong,” I mumbled as we stepped back into the moonlight. “Frankie, you think too highly of me.”

  He looked at me, not comprehending. Why would he? He couldn’t see the rottenness inside my soul.

  “Alter, are you crying?” he asked softly.

  I didn’t feel the tears trickling down my cheeks until he mentioned them. With a chuckle of shame and mortification, I wiped them away with my sleeve.

  “Frankie, there—” I choked on my words “—there is something terribly wrong with me.”

  “I know, you’re possessed.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. It’s hard to put into words. Let me explain. You see, back in Romania, there was a boy my age who would go from house to house on Saturday mornings to light the ovens during winter. For years, he’d go with his father, but when I was eleven or so, he began coming alone. I got to know him over time, and we somehow became friends. His name was Mircea. He had the most beautiful auburn hair, and his eyes were this remarkable shade of blue. The fact that he was Christian only made him doubly intriguing, like...”

  “Tasting the forbidden fruit,” Frankie said, and I laughed. My laughter frightened me—it almost sounded like a sob.

  “Yes. Yes. I wanted so badly to be acknowledged by him. To be admired by him. Then the summer before I left, we—”

  A sudden rumbling stole my next words. Up the road, a swaying lantern cast its glow.

  “Hey, hey!” Frankie stepped in the middle of the road, waving his arms wildly. “Stop!”

  As the vehicle neared, the lantern light washed over us. It was a wagon hauled by two old dray mares.

  “Easy there, nice and slow now,” the farmer called to his horses and clucked his tongue. The wagon slowed to a creaking halt before us, all wind-shorn wood and rusty nails, its bed heaped with green squashes and baskets of peaches.

  Frankie sighed and lowered his arms. “Thank you. Are you on your way to market?”

  “That I am. What are you two doing way out here?” The farmer squinted down at me. “Why’s that fellow wearing a nightshirt?”

  Frankie brushed off the question with a warm laugh. “My brother sleepwalks,” he said. “If I hadn’t caught up to him, he’d be halfway to St. Louis by now.”

  The man chuckled. Frankie was easy to like.

  “Well, get on in.” The farmer gestured to the back of the wagon. “The mosquitos will eat you two alive if you stay out here much longer.”

  We climbed into the wagon and settled down among the baskets and sacks. The sweet fragrance of ripe peaches and sun-dried hay settled over us. As the wagon rolled forward, I kept my eyes on the floor, unable to look Frankie in the eye. I could feel his gaze burning into me.

  I felt a vague sense of relief, knowing that I hadn’t gotten the chance to tell Frankie my secret. He had left religion behind back in Brooklyn, or maybe even before that, back in the old country, but some things were inexcusable. If I told him how deeply I had admired Mircea, his vision of me would be t
arnished forever.

  We passed the burning building twice more on our long ride. The second time, I cringed in fear and shied away. It was still aflame, only now against a backdrop of Illinois shanties. The third time, the flames had reduced it to a charred carcass amid the smoke-guttering factories and slaughterhouses of the Stockyards. By then, I was too exhausted to feel more than a twinge of trepidation as the hallucination faded into the smog.

  I knew it must be the same barn fire that had claimed the lives of Yakov’s parents. Trauma had a way of crawling back to you. I supposed even dybbukim weren’t spared from remembering.

  By the time we reached the inner city, all I felt was exhaustion. I had always thought that if the impossible were to confront me, I would be unbending in my rationality. I should have known that what doesn’t bend must eventually break. I could either accept this new reality or retreat from it, and the latter outcome might end up being even worse than the first.

  Frankie paid the farmer to take a detour through the wharfs, down a street lined with old but attractive gray-stone houses. Their dark slate roofs and tall hedges gave the buildings an atmosphere of solemn dignity, like matrons sitting shiva. From where the man dropped us off, it was only ten steps or so to the building Frankie called home.

  “I rent a room upstairs,” he explained, searching his pockets. He pulled out his keys. “It’s nice, out of the way. There’s an old servant stairwell, so my landlady doesn’t have to wonder why I return home so late.”

  “Ah, so the Levee isn’t good enough for you now?” I forced a smile. The humor felt weak even to me.

  “I paid too much for these clothes to have them turn into moth food.”

  “Speaking about clothes, can I borrow some?” I asked as Frankie unlocked the front door.

  “Of course. There is a bath downstairs, too. A real one, with plumbing. You’ll be able to wash up, get some of that drek off you.”

  After we had taken off our shoes, he showed me to the bathroom, all porcelain and dark wood, with running water and a toilet operated by a pull chain. The tub was a massive claw-footed affair of enameled copper. I waited for the door to close behind Frankie before twisting on the taps.