The City Beautiful

by Aden Polydoros

  Hands wheeled me around, pushed me down. Cries of alarm and excitement filled my ears. They were real this time.

  Someone kicked me in the side, and I bowed over in the dirt, cupping my hands over my head to protect it. Everyone was pushing and shoving, the air hot and feverish with their frantic breaths. What were they trying to escape from?

  Through my tented fingers, the white flare of arc lamps dulled into a sullen crimson glow. Hands seized me by the shoulders and hoisted me up, off the raw dirt floor and—

  —my feet touched down on a solid floor of age-silvered oak. In a moment, the arena lot had become an enclosed smoke-filled space. Log walls led up to a vaulted ceiling painted blue to resemble the night sky; the stars blistered and peeled away as flames crept across them.

  “The door won’t open!” someone howled, and others cried out in despair.

  “Yasha, don’t you dare let go of my hand,” a man said, gripping me tightly. He towered over me like a Goliath. The smoke was so thick, I couldn’t catch more than a glimpse of him—bright blue eyes, black hair, a weathered face imprinted with fear and the deepest sorrow, as though he already knew our fate.

  Flames crackled overhead like demonic voices. The air scorched my lungs, reducing my breath to frantic wheezing. As Yakov’s father dragged me to the front of the chamber, I searched for an exit. Maybe a Chicago sewer grate where there should have been a window, or a ship’s steam stack in place of the carved Torah ark. No. Nothing. Just toxic clouds of black smoke and human-shaped shadows pounding at the walls.

  Three meters up, there was a window shaped like a porthole. In the heat of the flames, the glass had exploded, rimming the sill with jagged teeth. He let me down so that he could push one of the pews against the wall.

  “Climb onto my shoulders,” the man croaked, squatting down atop the bench. I did as he asked, grasping onto the wall to steady myself. The wood was so hot, it blistered my palms.

  I crawled through the window, the glass sliced into me. An even more agonizing pain spread down my back. The smell of burning skin and hair filled my nostrils. I didn’t realize until I hit the ground outside that the stench was my own.

  Gasping for breath, I rolled in the dirt in a desperate attempt to put myself out. As the flames diminished, I sank onto my stomach, too weak to even scream.

  Sunflowers bobbed gently in the breeze, gilded in the light of the setting sun. Through the encroaching darkness, I saw a rider approach on horseback. The torch he held set him alight. His skin cracked and split open, but there was only more fire beneath, his coattails rippling behind him like a pair of wings.

  A name welled on my tongue: “Tugarin.”

  As he stopped before me—

  —the arena’s electrical lamps flooded my vision. Overhead, the night sky loomed black and starless.

  “Are you all right?” Frankie asked, helping me to my feet. “I lost sight of you for a moment. I thought you were going to get trampled.”

  People jostled us, the air filled with their shouts of alarm and excitement. I could almost believe I was still in the fire, except the air I breathed was cool and untainted. Wincing, I pressed my palm over my wounded shoulder.

  “What’s going on?” I had to shout to be heard above the crowd.

  “Police!” a voice bellowed, followed by the unmistakable whack of a club striking flesh. “Police! Break it up! I’m telling you, break it up now!”

  Everyone in Chicago knew the last thing you wanted was to get caught in a riot when the police came in. The cops were eager to put their taxpayer-funded billy clubs to good use. Even with the World’s Fair just across the street, I doubted they were apt to discriminate between tourists and troublemakers in the heat of the moment.

  “Break it up! Break it up!”

  “Come on!” Frankie hooked his fingers around my elbow and pulled me through the crowd, shoving past the people who got in our way.

  As we stumbled through the fray, I glanced back the way we’d come, not sure what I expected to see. A burning shul, maybe. Or a boy on fire.

  Nothing, except for the uproarious crowd and swarms of cops like black hornets. No sign of Grigori.

  Frankie didn’t release my elbow until we had found safe refuge in an alley several blocks from the entrance to the Wild West Show.

  “Why didn’t you shoot him, Frankie?” I demanded, once we had stopped. “Damnit! You have a gun. Why didn’t you just shoot him?”

  “Alter, calm down,” Frankie said, and I realized I was breathing so rapidly, I couldn’t even catch my breath. The stench of smoke still filled my nostrils. My throat ached so fiercely, I was sure it must be scorched.

  I felt electrified at the thought of confronting Grigori, hurting him, killing him. I wanted to kill him. This wasn’t me. These feelings belonged to Yakov.

  “We need to go back there,” I said, but as I reached for the revolver in my pocket, Frankie seized me.

  “No,” he said forcefully. “No. We’re leaving.”

  “But—”

  “If you go back there, what will you do? Are you going to shoot him in front of half of Chicago’s police department? Well, Alter?” Frankie shook his head, his eyes burning wildly through his unkempt curls. “You want to get your head bashed in by some overexcited cop? No. We’re going. Now.”

  “We can’t just let him get away with this!” I spoke so sharply that my voice cracked. “What about Victor? What about Harry?”

  “We’ll avenge them,” Frankie said, searching my eyes. “Trust me. We will. I promise you that. But we’re not going to make any stupid mistakes either, you hear? I’m not just going to let you get hurt again, damnit! What happens next, we’re going to do it together.”

  45

  Back at Frankie’s place, I sat on his bed while he laid out salve and gauze on the nightstand. At his instruction, I took off my waistcoat and shirt, flinching when my fingers brushed against the welt. The scratch was shallow, but the area surrounding the abrasion was as red and swollen as a chain of kielbasa sausage.

  Frankie dabbed at the welt with a clean rag soaked in soapy water. I winced each time he touched me. After wiping away the blood, he wrung out the cloth into a bowl. With a stray bit of gauze, he applied a waxy yellow ointment to the wound, then loosely bandaged it.

  “Frankie, what are we going to do?” I asked once he had finished.

  “We’ll go to the police in the morning,” he said, shocking me with his levelheadedness. I had expected him to have concocted some plan by now to get Grigori alone and take him down for good.

  “You know as well as I do that the police won’t listen,” I protested. “We need to stop this ourselves, Frankie.”

  “You have a family, Alter. You have sisters, a mother. Do you really want to sacrifice everything? For what? So, you can pull the trigger yourself?”

  His blunt questions took me aback. I didn’t know how to answer.

  “Trust me, Alter,” Frankie murmured, sitting down beside me. He placed his hand over mine. “This isn’t you. You’re not a killer.”

  “But what about the dybbuk?” I asked. “If I don’t kill Grigori—”

  “I imagine the end result is more important to Yakov than how it happens. A noose works just as well as a gun.”

  I sighed, relenting. He was right. This desire, this murderous need that sent my fingers curling inward, my nails cutting into my palms—it was everything ugly inside of Yakov, left to grow inside me like a thornbush. If I succumbed to it, the hatred’s roots would choke me; its thorns would embed in my soul, until it truly became mine.

  “We’ll go to the police first,” he said when I didn’t answer. “The least we can do is hear what they have to say.”

  “All right...”

  “Good. Now, let me get something for that shoulder of yours.” His lips brushed against mine in the lightest of kisses be
fore he rose to his feet and left the room.

  Raindrops struck the roof above. Sitting on the bed, I watched the uneasy flicker of streetlamps dance across the window. Voices echoed from down below. Frankie’s landlady had returned. I could hear him talking to her in English, but I couldn’t discern what they were saying.

  Frankie returned, holding a bottle tucked in the crook of his arm and a tumbler in either hand, each filled a quarter way with golden liquid. He sat down on the mattress beside me and handed me a glass. “This will help.”

  “Really?” I took a whiff of the liquid, catching a hint of its light honeyed aroma. “You shouldn’t drink so much.”

  “There’s been a lot to drink about these last few days.” He nodded toward the tumbler. “Now, bottoms up. Doctor’s orders.”

  I lifted my drink in a toast. “L’chaim.”

  “L’chaim,” he echoed, tapping glasses with me.

  L’chaim. To life. After the last few days, the toast felt like a sick joke.

  I sipped the liquor. Just as I thought. Sweet as syrup and so potent that it made my eyes water. “What is this?”

  “Krupnikas, made with honey. It’s supposed to be good for you.”

  I drank the rest. The liquor stoked a soothing warmth in my chest. By the second glass Frankie poured for me, the pain in my shoulder had mellowed to a subdued throbbing. As I lifted my glass to my lips, I noticed that his remained full.

  “You’re not drinking,” I said.

  “Ah, so it’s a race now?” Frankie polished off his glass. “Satisfied?”

  “Very.” A small smile touched my lips.

  He restlessly tapped his fingers against the cut crystal. “Let’s talk.”

  “About what we’re going to do to Grigori?”

  “How about your family? Still saving up money to get them over here?”

  “I have a hundred dollars saved up. I just need forty more.”

  “I could lend you some money,” Frankie said, pausing to splash another finger of liqueur into his glass. “Twenty dollars every few weeks. You could pay it back slowly, no interest.”

  His offer shook me so much I choked on my krupnikas. I stared at him, breathless. Twenty dollars was more than what had been my weekly paycheck.

  He turned to me. “They’d be here in time for Rosh Hashanah.”

  “I can’t accept that. I’ll find another job.”

  “It’s just twenty dollars. It’s not that much. Besides, what am I going to spend it on?” He cupped his bloodstone watch fob in his palm. “Another fob? Some cuff links or a nice watch? I spoil myself too much as it is. You’d be doing me a favor by taking it off my hands.”

  My face burning with shame, I took in the sight of Frankie. His polished boots, the thick gold watch chain cinched across his waistcoat, the handsome fob.

  “Thank you, but I can’t accept your money,” I said firmly, despising myself for my pride.

  “Give it some thought.” He took another sip of his drink. “Maybe you’ll wake up tomorrow and realize this is just the dybbuk talking.”

  “You know what?” My voice came out soft and a bit slurred. I supposed I was drunk after all. “Deep down, you’re a good mensch, Frankie.”

  “Oh ho, so you’ve seen through my disguise.” He took out his pocket watch to check the time. I blinked heavily. In the hissing gaslights, the watch’s golden case glowed like a beacon.

  We drank. We sat in soothing silence, listening to the leaden tick of the hallway clock and the barking of a nearby dog. Tomorrow, we would finish this. For good.

  I lifted the glass to polish off the final drops of krupnikas. My fingertips brushed my lips; my hand was empty. Befuddled, I looked down. The glass lay on the floor in pieces.

  “Sorry,” I said, reaching for it.

  “No, it’s okay.” Frankie had risen to his feet without me realizing it. “Don’t worry about it.”

  I bent down to pick up the pieces anyway. My eyesight suddenly blurred, and I felt myself swoon. I had to stop and lean back, afraid I might fall.

  What was happening to me? This wasn’t another vision coming on.

  “Frankie.” My tongue barely cooperated. “Something... Something’s wrong.”

  His features clouded together like smoke. “Just rest, Alter.”

  “F-Frankie.” I tried to stand and toppled over instead. I struggled to hoist myself from the mattress. It felt as though my body weighed a thousand kilograms. “You—what did you do?”

  “I’m sorry, Alter. I’m not a good mensch.” Resting his hand upon my chest, Frankie eased me down again. Darkness flooded my vision. “I never was one. That’s the difference between you and me.”

  46

  When I woke, my head felt as though it had been stuffed full of cotton, and my mouth tasted of rancid honey.

  I swung myself up and immediately regretted it. The room wobbled in frantic circles. Groaning, I lay down again and waited for the nausea to pass.

  Frankie was gone. Of course he was. The bastard.

  Judging by the quality of light, it was already eight or nine in the morning. Whatever he had slipped into my drink had been strong enough to knock me out for hours.

  It wouldn’t have taken him more than an hour to return to the Wild West Show. Plenty of time to take care of business. Unless...

  No! I wouldn’t even think about it.

  I struggled to my feet and searched for my shirt. He had left it folded on the dresser and laid my keys and pocket watch atop it, like an apology.

  By the time I buttoned my clothes and tucked in my tzitzis, I felt a bit more in control. Whitby’s revolver was in my coat pocket. After some struggle, I managed to open the cylinder. The bullets were all there.

  Downstairs, I was greeted by the scent of freshly brewed coffee, a smell as disarming as it was disorienting. After ten months on Maxwell Street and over twelve months in an attic before that, I expected mornings to smell like dust and mildew.

  Voices echoed down the hall.

  “As I told you, there is no one here by the name of Alter Rosen,” a woman said, her voice strained by annoyance. “And I am certainly not going to give you a twenty-cent tip, no matter what Frankie said.”

  “But he told me—” a young boy said.

  “I don’t care what he told you. Now, leave.”

  “Wait,” I said as I barreled into the foyer. A fair-haired woman stood at the door, draped in the polished jet and black lace of a mourner. She turned at the sound of my voice.

  I swallowed hard. By the moment, the air in the hallway seemed to grow thinner. Something was terribly wrong.

  “I suppose you are Alter Rosen?” She said it almost wearily.

  “Yes.”

  “This is the first time he’s brought home a guest. Did you stay up there all night?”

  “Drunk. We were...” I tried again. “We were drinking in the Levee. I didn’t want to walk home.”

  “I do hope you will not make a habit of it, or Frankie will have to find alternative housing. I will not abide by strangers in my home.”

  “It won’t happen again.” I went to the door to see who she had been talking to.

  A message boy stood on the front steps. He was no older than twelve, and his scraped knees, tattered shoes, and windblown hair spoke of a life spent dodging wagons.

  He offered me a smile, the relief clear in his face. “Alter Rosen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Frankie Portnoy paid me fifty cents to tell you there’s been an incident.”

  “An incident.” My voice echoed in my ears. It sounded so much like Yakov now, I barely even recognized it. “Is he...?”

  “He’s at Michael Reese Hospital. He was found this morning down by the fairgrounds. Somebody shot him.”

  * * *

  The carriage ride to t
he hospital was an hour-long free fall. Even with my coat on, I felt frozen and feverish, my body all nausea and cramped muscles. My hands were so stiff, I could hardly move them; death loomed closer here.

  Paralyzed with dread, I sat through the ride imagining going to the tahara house. It would be cold, as it always was, and Frankie would be waiting in the washing room like a wax doll, gray and shrunken.

  I never wanted to see him that way. I didn’t even want to think about it.

  Death was not kind or glorious; it was not the Lord’s kiss that claimed Aaron and Moses. Like a greedy child gorging on clusters of grapes, the Angel of Death tore all of the beauty and dignity from a person and left behind a terrible, dripping mess. What was the end? The end was blood and piss and shit, and trying to move frozen limbs without resorting to dislocating them. The end was typhus.

  Why had I ever thought I could change that?

  By the time the carriage pulled up in front of the hospital, I was certain I was too late. I jumped onto solid ground before the carriage had stopped moving, stumbled forward, regained my balance, kept moving. The revolver in my coat pocket slapped against my thigh with each step; I reached inside and held it, afraid of accidentally shooting myself in the leg.

  The hospital was a Goliath of brown brick and gleaming glass, looming over a green lawn as bright as bread mold.

  “Frankie Portnoy,” I said breathlessly to the first nurse I came across. “He was brought here. Is he all right? Where is he?”

  She balked at my questions. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is.”

  “He might be going by the name Feivel Portnoy or Frankie Porter.”

  “Give me a moment, please. Let me ask around.”

  After inquiring with several other nurses and two doctors, she was able to find where they had placed Frankie. She showed me to a recovery ward at the far end of the building. In the hall, I passed an orderly pushing a shrouded gurney, a lump of a body.

  Not him. I stared straight ahead, refusing to look back. It couldn’t be him.

  We entered the same room the gurney had been wheeled from. Choked with dread, I expected the nurse to lead me to an empty bed, her hands folded and her face shaped in careful sympathy.