The City Beautiful

by Aden Polydoros

  “Yakov Kogan. Aaron Holtz. Josef Loew. Moishe Walden.” I snarled the names as though they were curses.

  A flicker of recognition dawned in his face. He narrowed his eyes. “How do you know about that?”

  Before I could answer, a gunshot resounded through the room. A meter to Katz’s right, a pipe shuddered as the bullet ricocheted off it.

  Mr. Katz lunged behind me and folded his arm tight enough around my neck that the breath exploded from my lungs in one gasp. He drew me against him and angled the shochet’s knife across my throat. Its flat end rested on my cheek, the edge cold as the tip of an icicle and even sharper still.

  “Drop the knife, shtik drek.” Frankie stepped from the shadows, leveling the same single-action service revolver he’d shattered Katz’s nose with nearly a year ago. He must have entered the slaughterhouse with another group of strikebreakers, for he wore the worn denim jeans and collarless shirt of a laborer.

  Katz’s arm lowered around my chest, only so that he could place the knife directly against the skin under my jawline. I was afraid to even breathe.

  “I knew you’d be here,” Katz said, his voice tight and hoarse. With anger, I thought, but as he cleared his throat and continued, I detected something like excitement. “Rats run in packs.”

  “Let him go now.” Frankie’s voice was steady and practiced, but his hands betrayed him. They trembled even after he cocked the Colt’s hammer once more. Past the hatred in his gaze, there existed a cold and hollow terror. “If you hurt him, I’ll shoot you.”

  “And if I don’t, you’ll shoot me anyway.”

  “Frankie, don’t do it,” I said. “You’ll—”

  “Shut your mouth.” As Katz shifted, the edge of the blade sliced into my cheek. Not deep, but I gritted my teeth and bit back a hiss of pain. A hot line of blood unraveled down my skin. “Are you familiar with the shechita process? For the meat to be considered kosher, the chalaf must be sharpened to a razor’s edge, with no nicks or imperfections. It is sharpened daily here, until it can cut through flesh like butter.”

  Frankie didn’t answer, but the trembling in his hands only worsened. He clenched down on the revolver’s handle and steadied his right hand with his left.

  “If you don’t believe me, it would be my pleasure to give you a demonstration. Perhaps your friend here would like a scar to match the one you gave me?”

  “Fuck,” Frankie swore venomously, and bent down to place the revolver on the floor. He raised his hands. “No. Please, don’t. This is between you and me. This has nothing to do with him. Just let him go.”

  “Kick the gun away.”

  “It might go off.”

  “I said, ‘kick it.’”

  Frankie lightly kicked the revolver across the room. It skidded to a stop six meters to my right.

  “I asked him to come that night,” Frankie said. “He didn’t know. There’s no reason for you to keep him here, when he isn’t the one you want.”

  “Come forward,” Katz said. “Slowly.”

  Frankie stepped closer.

  “No. Crawl.”

  Frankie exhaled a shaky breath and sank to the floor. It sickened me to watch him crawl across the filthy cement on his hands and knees, soiling his palms and trouser legs. All the pride and strength seemed to drain out of him, his shoulders hunched up and his head hanging down in resignation. As he came forward, he projected the appearance of a wounded, pitiful creature.

  He stopped before us and met my gaze through his unkempt hair. A spark of hope passed through me. His tawny eyes radiated hatred and fury.

  He was planning something. I was certain of it. He would take Mr. Katz off guard when the man least expected it.

  “Where is it now?” Mr. Katz murmured. “That insolent pride of yours?”

  Frankie didn’t answer.

  Suddenly, Mr. Katz pushed me out of the way so violently, I spun around. I grasped hold of the rope, toes skidding across the floor before I regained my balance. Behind me, I heard a grunt of pain and the hard thunk of a shoe striking flesh.

  The noises reassured me. Frankie had been as skilled at street fights as he was at boxing. He would know how to disarm Katz.

  I twisted back around.

  Frankie curled over, one hand clasped over his head to protect it, the other steadying himself as he tried to rise.

  Breathing heavily from exertion or exhilaration, Katz kicked him in the stomach, driving him down again. My gut twisted at the sound of impact. It was almost as terrible as Frankie’s breathless gasps.

  I strained against the ropes. “Stop, you’re going to kill him!”

  In the corner of my eye, I spotted a figure moving among the pipes, like a hallucination in her absinthe-green blouse. Raizel had discarded her shoes, hat, and petticoat somewhere back, and had a fistful of her skirt hitched up to keep from dragging as she crept closer. The light glinted off something in her hand.

  She made it within two meters before her foot struck a discarded pipe segment. It rolled across the ground with a hollow clang.

  Mr. Katz swiveled around, but Raizel was already lunging forward.

  She held her two hatpins with their brass orbs nested against her thumb and the twenty-centimeter spikes sticking out. I only caught a glimpse of them as she clapped her hand down.

  Mr. Katz screamed in pain and rage, dropping the chalaf to grasp at his upper arm as she danced back. She had thrust the pins up to their shanks. One had caught the meat of his biceps and gone all the way through to the other side, the filigree orb bobbing up and down with his frantic motions.

  He tore the pins free. The first prick was merely a flesh wound, but blood gushed from the second hole instantaneously. She had struck an artery.

  “Get the gun,” I shouted as Frankie threw himself over the knife. “Over here.”

  Raizel’s gaze darted around the room before landing on the revolver. She made a dash for it, except Mr. Katz already had a one-meter head start.

  As Katz raced past me, I seized hold of the rope tethering my wrists to the pipe overhead and swung myself forward, kicking out with both my feet. I caught him in the knee, throwing him off balance. He landed on the floor and scrambled for the revolver, a smatter of blood streaming in his wake. His fingers closed around the handle.

  Frankie fell on him from behind and brought his arm up and under Katz’s throat.

  If Katz made a sound, it was drowned out by the cry that tore from Frankie’s lips, as much a frantic sob as a howl of fury.

  The knife was as sharp as Katz had promised.

  It was over in an instant.

  35

  We crossed one by one through the narrow maintenance passage connecting the cellar to the refrigeration building next door. Damp with condensation, the brick walls appeared to palpitate in the lantern light, thrumming with the resounding force of the steam-powered engines and machinery in the rooms above.

  Frankie walked at the front of the line, his hand pressed over his side. I watched him, fisting my hands to keep from reaching out for him. I was afraid to touch him. I was afraid to look away. The shadows were deep here. He might just disappear.

  By the time we emerged into the evening gloom to the uproar and bustle of the striking workers, the distance between us had grown even greater. He felt unreachable now.

  With the crowd’s attention centered on the next group of strikebreakers being herded into the packing plant, our presence went largely unnoticed. There was fresh blood on Frankie’s shirt and pants, but blood was as common as water in this city of slaughter.

  I pressed my sleeve against my cut cheek until the throbbing pain spread like red-hot pincers, twisting into the flesh and burrowing deeper. In some ways, the sting calmed me. It made it harder to think about anything else.

  “Where is the boss?” a man shouted at the policemen keeping the crow
d at bay. “Hiding up in his office, unwilling to hear our demands?”

  Where was Mr. Katz? He was down in the cellar, among the waste and entrails. I didn’t know how long it would take for him to be found or for those remains to be pumped into the river. I thought I should care, but I didn’t. Yakov’s dybbuk was gone, and I was free. As for Mr. Katz, his blood could shriek from the deep for vengeance. Let it.

  “Are you okay?” Raizel asked once we had passed through the Stockyards’ limestone gate.

  “I’m fine.” I looked past her at Frankie’s retreating form. From the way he held his side, I could tell he was in pain, but I didn’t think I’d be able to convince him to see a doctor. Not now anyway. “How did you get inside? And how’d you know where to find me?”

  “One of the canning girls showed me to the back entrance.” A wan smile touched her lips. She had recovered her hat with her other garments, but rather than put it on, she picked the straw brim to pieces between her fingers. “I knew you’d be looking for more bodies. I will confess, I didn’t expect to help make one.”

  “What happened back there was self-defense.” The sharpness in my voice took me aback. I tried again, in a steadier tone. “It’s din rodef. Katz deserved it. He deserved more than it. He should’ve suffered.”

  Her dark eyes studied me. “Alter Rosen, you never cease to surprise me.”

  “Says the girl who impaled a man with her hatpins.”

  By now, the roads were filled with children swinging their fathers’ meal buckets and workers returning from saloons for the night shift. As Raizel continued in the direction of the railroad station, I approached Frankie with a sinking heart. I wanted so badly to comfort him, but there were no words to express what had happened back there.

  He swore at a passing hansom cab. “That’s the second one. Can’t the shmoyger see I’m trying to flag him?”

  Slowly, I released the breath I had been holding. “I think it’s the clothes.”

  “It’s always the clothes.” Wincing, Frankie pressed his hand against his ribs.

  “Do you need to go to a doctor?”

  “No, it’s only bruised.” He glanced over at me, his gaze unreadable. “Do you need a doctor?”

  “It’s just a scratch.”

  He sighed, turning back ahead to watch for the next cab. “I couldn’t get what you said yesterday out of my head. About the worker who died here. How young he was. I knew I had to do something, so I went to Katz’s home. I couldn’t get inside. His wife was there. His wife. Can you believe it?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Then I heard about the strikes, and I figured I’d take a note from the anarchist’s playbook, go Frick him up, if you catch my drift. I suppose you had the same idea, huh?”

  “No, like an utter schlemiel, I just walked in there. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  A faint smile crept across Frankie’s lips. “On second thought, it’s probably better if you don’t come back to work for me.”

  I snorted. “Because I’m not smart enough?”

  “Because you’ll get us both arrested.” His smile faded. “I want to go home.”

  “We can walk,” I suggested.

  “It’s three miles,” Frankie said, but after the next coach barreled past, he started walking. “My feet are killing me. I hate these boots. They smell disgusting, and they’re too small. I’ll have blisters the size of oranges once this is over.”

  “You can borrow mine,” I said, following beside him.

  “That’ll be even worse. Yours are nearly falling apart.”

  As we began the long walk to the Levee, I waited for Frankie to continue speaking. Instead, he just looked at his hands, which appeared bare and wounded without his rings. I wanted to ask him if he was all right, but I knew he wasn’t.

  “Is Yakov still with you?” he asked at last, without lifting his gaze from the pavestones.

  “I don’t feel him anymore. He’s gone.” Just saying it gave me immense relief, as though a cord had loosened from around my throat. Wherever Yakov was now, I wanted to believe that I had healed him.

  “Good.” He sighed. “That’s great.”

  Silence reasserted its place between us. Frankie flexed his fingers, curled them. I took out my pocket watch and watched the second hand continue its steady rotation. At least some things remained unchanged.

  We stopped at a public toilet, and I waited outside while Frankie went in. The door was open to promote airflow. I heard each thud he made against the floor or the wall, with his feet or fists, I couldn’t tell. Strangled sobs reached through to me. Each noise was like a scalpel to the skin, but I forced myself to stay against the brick wall, scraping my fingernails along the mortar.

  About five minutes later, he came out with his hands scrubbed clean, his shirt wet, and his face composed. He knelt at the water pump and drank deeply from the flow.

  There was so much more I wanted to ask him, but I knew how invasive questions could be. How unintentionally cruel. I had been asked about my past before—my father, how he died, where I was when it happened, how it had felt. There had always been an unspoken presumption that I must lay myself bare for someone else’s pity, like some strange organism that could only be understood by splitting it down the middle and rooting through its entrails. The fact was this: I was not entitled to Frankie’s suffering.

  But he must have wanted to share his pain, because two blocks later, he began talking.

  “I’m sure you have an image in your head of how it happened.” His gaze flicked toward me. His eyes revealed nothing. “Of exactly what went down between Mr. Katz and me.”

  “Frankie, you don’t have to—”

  “I know. I’m not telling you this because you deserve to know—you don’t. No one does.” He turned back ahead, staring at the dusk sky this time. “But you were there the night I returned to that house. I know you. I know the way you stand back in silence and observe, and turn things over in your head like they’re a puzzle, until you understand them completely.”

  My cheeks prickled with heat. I thought about all the small ways Dovid and Haskel poked fun at me—prude, frigid, prissy, frum, pious, cold, quiet as a mouse—and I lowered my eyes to the ground because I was too embarrassed to meet Frankie’s gaze.

  “It’s something I’ve always admired about you,” Frankie said, startling me. He smiled absently. “I hate being around the edges. If I stay out of sight for too long, I feel like I’ll disappear. And when you’re living in the middle of it all, right in the moment, it’s harder to recognize the bigger picture. Like, why would a grown man approach a thirteen-year-old boy in a crowded train station and offer him a job?”

  Frankie had told me how he had gotten from Brooklyn to Chicago, but not what happened after his arrival. His story always ended as a stowaway at the trainyard and began as a thief in the Levee. I had always thought the time between his Before and After had been unimportant, mundane. Now, I realized it had been everything.

  “A job.” Frankie savored the word, his voice deep with irony and spite. “He offered me a job as an assistant and took me to his home. I was starving, and he fed me. I looked like a good mensch back then... He said it was a mitzvah. He was old enough to be my dad, and I should have known. I should have known. I should have fucking known, and that’s what I can’t get out of my head.”

  “You were thirteen.” I found my voice, but my lips were numb and quivering. “You—you were just a child, Frankie. You couldn’t have known.”

  “I’d had my bar mitzvah. I was supposed to be an adult.” His bitter smile slipped from his lips. For a moment, in his face, I caught a glimpse of the boy he had once been, lost and frightened, his gaze hollowed out. “I think it was the drink, or something he put in the drink. Or maybe I just froze up. I don’t know. It’s as though I left my body. I watched it happen from above, and I couldn
’t stop it. Oh, why am I telling you this?”

  “Frankie, you don’t have to. You don’t have to tell me anything.”

  He continued to do just that, maybe because he had carried the memories on his back for so long, he was afraid their weight would crush him. Or maybe because giving voice to something, really claiming it, was the only way to free himself from it.

  “After what happened, after what he did to me, I felt stained.” Frankie flexed his fingers, regarding his scabbed knuckles, the slaughterhouse grime caught under his neatly trimmed nails. “I felt like everyone could see it, like he’d put a mark on me. And I couldn’t stop thinking about what I could have done. Maybe I should have fought back more. And if I hadn’t fought back enough, well then, maybe that meant I wanted it. Or maybe I just deserved it.”

  “You were thirteen,” I repeated, coming to a halt. He stopped beside me but kept talking. I didn’t think he was telling me the story anymore. He was repeating it to himself.

  “The first few months after I came here, they’re just a blur to me. I remember running from that house. I slept anywhere I could—on the lakeshore, in unlocked cellars, on rooftops. It was summer, and the mosquitos ate me to pieces. I remember that. The itching. And it itched even where they didn’t bite me. I thought he’d—he’d given me something, but it was just my imagination. For a while there, my whole body felt like it was crawling with filth. The scratching, I think it was just a way to, you know, scratch out the memory of him. How he felt. His nails. His stubble. His s-stench.”

  He gagged on the last word, and I began to reach for him, only to stop short, afraid my touch would be excruciating. I returned my hand to my side and curled my fingers against my palm so I wouldn’t be tempted to comfort him, until I knew that was what he wanted.

  Frankie took a deep, wavering breath. His smile returned, only this time he showed his teeth like a cornered animal.

  “I told myself, I’d never let anyone do that to me again. And I wouldn’t rely on anyone, wouldn’t put my trust in anyone, couldn’t. So, I’d steal if it meant I didn’t have to work under someone else, because I don’t know, maybe there’d be another boss down the line. But then I made friends with other boys living on the streets, and I allowed myself to get too comfortable. I began to put down my defenses. And then you came along, Alter.” A bitter laugh left his lips. “You, all bundled up in your winter clothes, with your tzitzis dangling out from under your coat, and your long hair. When I saw you, it was like I was back in Vilne. You made me feel like I had come home.”