Under a Pole Star

by Stef Penney

  ‘Yes, sir. Geology.’

  ‘And what do you hope to do with that?’

  ‘I want to travel. I want to go places where no one has been before.’

  Mr Urbino senior made a considering noise. Frank looked at Jakob. He had not expressed this precise wish before.

  ‘An explorer?’ This from Clara, sounding interested.

  ‘Well, perhaps. But there is so much to be done, surveying this country, and it offers opportunities to go to the wildest places – that is what I want to do.’

  ‘New York is not wild enough for you?’ Clara had a teasing smile, but her manner bordered on aggressive.

  Jakob was suddenly aware that all eyes were on him. He felt that he was exposing too much of himself.

  ‘It’s not that New York is not enough; it’s . . . too much. Too many people. I’d prefer somewhere quieter.’

  ‘You don’t like people?’ asked Clara.

  Smiling, knowing he was being teased, Jakob shook his head.

  Anna was looking at him. ‘I don’t like people either,’ she said, and stared at Clara.

  ‘Well, not a million of them,’ said Jakob. ‘I mean, I’m fine with up to . . . ten.’

  ‘What a relief,’ said Clara. ‘We’re all right, then.’

  Johnny said, ‘But Clara is equivalent to at least five normal people, with how much noise she makes.’

  .

  After lunch, as it was such a nice day, they went outside. Frank was the first friend Jakob had known who had a garden, as opposed to a backyard. Mr Urbino smoked a cigarette – as did Clara, despite her parents’ stares of disapproval. Jakob turned to Anna, who was tearing the heads off some flowers.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’

  She looked round at him. The movements of her hands were sharp.

  ‘Picking the spent heads off stops them from setting seed, so they will have more flowers.’

  ‘I suppose I should have known that, as a scientist.’

  ‘You’re a geologist.’

  ‘Yes, but we supposedly apply our observational powers to the natural world in all its forms. Not very successfully, perhaps.’ He laughed, and was encouraged to see an answering smile. ‘Although, in my defence, even had I known about the seeds, I could not simply assume that was why you were pulling their heads off. You might have been someone who hated flowers.’

  She looked at him with a spark of animation in her dark eyes.

  ‘I might. Or someone who loved them. It looks nicer now, doesn’t it?’ She trailed her hand over the bush, sending the flowers springing to and fro, and dropped the spent ones on the soil beneath.

  Jakob said, ‘Do you ever think of leaving New York and getting away from all those people?’

  ‘I would love to travel. But I don’t suppose I will get the opportunity.’

  Her voice flattened, and the spark went out of her eyes. He was aware that, when she wasn’t being sarcastic, Anna seemed miserable, and he felt a vague distress on her behalf. This was not a particularly generous feeling; in his newfound smugness, he had a general, more or less selfish desire that no one in his vicinity should be unhappy.

  ‘You could study. That gives you opportunities. There is the Normal College, for one,’ said Jakob. He knew of the Normal School for Females because City students often hovered in a predatory fashion around its premises.

  ‘I don’t think I could teach. I want . . . I don’t know.’ Anna stared dully at the ground. Jakob, for once, was lost for words. Then Clara was beside him with her cigarette case.

  ‘Do you?’ It was a challenge, not an invitation, and although he had never smoked before, he held out his hand to take one.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He was aware that Anna had started to speak, then stopped.

  Clara held a match, cupped in her fingers. He sucked at the flame carefully, determined not to cough. Anna walked away. He looked round, puzzled by her behaviour, then mentally shrugged it off. For some reason, he wanted to impress Clara with his newfound sophistication, the confidence that had grown in him because he knew he was desired and must, therefore, be desirable. Clara did not matter to him, except as a suitably polished mirror for his new, worldly self.

  A couple of days later, Jakob was in a good humour because only one more day stood between him and his next appointment with Cora. He was shocked when Frank burst out, in a way that suggested something long pent up, ‘I honestly didn’t think you would have flirted with Clara like that, on Sunday. I told you what she was like!’

  Jakob was so stunned he stopped walking – they were on their way to lunch. ‘I didn’t flirt with her! I mean, I didn’t think I did.’

  He looked at his best friend, anxious. Frank looked distinctly unhappy.

  ‘It’s not that . . . I mean, damn it . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry. I really had no thought of doing anything of the sort. I thought I treated everyone in your family the same. Did she say I flirted with her?’

  Frank sighed. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t spoken with her.’

  Jakob was at a loss.

  ‘It was thought – well . . . maybe you didn’t notice this either’ – a slight but definite barb – ‘I think Anna has got it into her head that she likes you, and she was upset, after Sunday, that you didn’t talk to her . . . or something.’

  Jakob was silent for a moment. ‘I didn’t have that impression. I’m sorry if I said anything that, could have, um . . .’

  Unfamiliar with the language of emotional nuance, he floundered. He had met so few girls of their sort that he did not know what level of friendliness was normal, or standoffish, or familiar.

  Frank sighed again. ‘Perhaps you didn’t. It seems that Anna was upset. She’s sensitive, you see. More than the rest of us. And Clara – Clara always gets all the attention. It’s always been like that, and, you know . . .’ He forced a laugh. ‘Families!’

  .

  Jakob couldn’t help but be flattered that any of the Urbino girls would think of him in that way, even Anna, who was, candidly speaking, the least prepossessing. They queued at the lunch counter and ordered grilled cheese and soup.

  ‘I don’t know, Jake; forget it. Unless . . . I mean, do you like her – Anna?’ Frank was awkward. ‘I don’t want to interfere.’ Although he obviously did. ‘You know, it would be okay with me if you . . .’

  ‘Frank, on my honour, I’m not interested in any of your sisters – in that way. I mean, they’re very nice, but . . . I can’t get involved with anyone. I won’t be in a position to get married for years, if ever.’

  ‘Gracious, no one’s talking about marriage yet!’

  ‘Well, in any case, I’m not looking for . . . that, either.’

  Frank watched him.

  ‘Oh my God . . . You have a little girl!’

  Jakob nearly choked. ‘No!’ The absurdity of calling Cora Gertler a ‘little girl’ made him smile. What should he call her? His mistress? His lover? Such words were unsayable in daylight, in a diner, with a spotted mirror reflecting their distorted selves. Unsayable to Frank. He muttered, ‘I don’t.’

  Frank stared at him. Was there something in his face giving him away?

  ‘I knew there was something going on. When were you going to tell me?’

  Jakob shook his head, but couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

  ‘Aren’t we friends?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well then!’

  ‘Look, there are some things I just can’t tell you.’

  ‘You’ve . . . You have, haven’t you? God damn!’

  ‘It’s . . . you mustn’t say anything to anyone, Frank. Promise me? You see, she’s married.’

  He looked at Frank and never forgot his face at that moment; it so purely expressed his shock, his envy and his judgement.

  Ja
kob’s experience of the Gertlers’ apartment was limited to the hours between seven and ten on Thursday evenings, long after the sun had sunk below the roofline opposite, so he knew it as a dim, twilit place. It smelled of wood polish, sauerkraut and a sweet, limey scent that Jakob later realised was Mr Gertler’s hair pomade. On Thursdays, Cora’s husband went to his social club – that was all Jakob knew about him. Cora did not discuss him, either to make excuses for her own behaviour, or to complain about her husband’s; Jakob knew nothing of their marriage and did not ask.

  Cora never made any claim on Jakob’s feelings, nor did she express any of her own, beyond teaching him, without embarrassment, how to please her, and pleasing him in ways he had never even dreamt of. He was an enthusiastic pupil, and if his lovemaking sometimes had an element of experimentation about it, it was a happy experiment. He tried things and observed how she – or he – responded. He asked questions.

  ‘God,’ she said, out of breath, when he had got her to change position for the third time. ‘Are you taking notes?’

  ‘I don’t need to take notes,’ he said, smiling up at her from his supine position. ‘I just want to know which feels best, this way or . . .’

  For answer, she reached one hand down to grasp his penis and guide it into her; the other she placed firmly over his mouth.

  .

  Jakob was in heaven. At times he believed himself in love with her, at others he told himself they had nothing in common outside her bedroom. He was deeply attached to her, and she seemed fond of him. But she was, from beginning to end, a mystery he couldn’t fathom. She was sharp-tongued, often sarcastic. He had never met anyone so cynical, and when he chided her for it, she laughed, and cited the difference in their ages.

  He felt he knew her body better than his own, had mapped every inch of her skin, from the roots of her hair to the thin, shiny skin of her instep. She was a whole country, a continent with many types of contour and landscape that he never tired of exploring. He learnt the subtle, secret architecture of labia and clitoris, amazed and thrilled to find her pleasure as intense as his own. Her breasts were a wonder to him: soft and pendulous, with large brown nipples he would take in his mouth, caressing them with his tongue as they hardened and wrinkled. She seemed to take as much delight in his body as he did in hers, in his softening and hardening flesh; she would lick and suck him, and dig her nails into his buttocks as he trembled with the effort of holding back his excitement.

  She teased him. ‘You want to do that again? But we just did that. Always the same thing – how boring, no?’

  He grinned and shook his head, and nuzzled his lips down the mysterious silvery tracks on the side of her breast, paths only visible in certain angles of light.

  ‘You don’t mind them?’

  ‘Mind?’ Jakob was astonished. ‘Why would I mind?’

  ‘You don’t know what they are, do you?’

  Jakob admitted he didn’t.

  ‘Young girls don’t have them. They are . . .’ Unusually, she was at a loss for the English word. ‘Dehnungsstreifen . . . Strain . . . stripes – from being a mother. Mother scars.’

  He knew she had had two children. He didn’t want to think about them, didn’t know where they were, how old they were, even if they were alive. He didn’t dislike anything that revealed the history of her body, other than when she reminded him of the gulf of life that divided them.

  Around ten minutes to ten – always – she stroked his back with light fingers, as though regretting the necessity.

  ‘Time to go, Liebling.’

  He would protest sleepily, winding himself more tightly around her body, kissing and caressing her, as if to imprint the sensation on his hands and mouth for the coming week. He wriggled on top of her, weighing her down.

  ‘I want to stay here. I want to wake up with you.’

  ‘Ha. You’re sweet. Now get up.’ Here, she would slap his rump, or pinch him, no longer gentle. ‘Or there will be’ – this was one of her favourite words, used in all sorts of contexts, with relish – ‘a bloodbath.’

  Chapter 5

  New York, 40˚42’N, 74˚00’W

  Spring 1883

  One lunch, towards the end of April, Frank looked up from his paper.

  ‘Hey, it’s finally opening. There’s going to be a firework display. And balloonists. Should be something to see.’

  The New York and Brooklyn Bridge, which had been growing with infinite slowness throughout their conscious lives, was complete.

  Jakob agreed, without much enthusiasm, to go and watch the festi­vities. He was even less enthusiastic when he found out that the 24th May was to fall on a Thursday. Frank knew that his friend spent Thursday evenings with the person he persisted in referring to, with a coyness that did not quite disguise his disapproval, as Jakob’s ‘little girl’. But the occasion felt like a test of their friendship. The next time he saw Cora, Jakob mentioned it, with a show of regret, before they undressed.

  ‘Oh, the bloody bridge. My husband is going to take me. It’s going to be the biggest firework display in history, they say. It’s a Thursday? Ah, well . . .’ She kissed him on the nose. ‘That’s too bad.’

  Annoyed that she regarded the loss of his company with so little regret, Jakob took her in his arms and muttered into her ear, ‘Can I see you on another day, then? I’m not sure I can go without you for so long.’

  ‘No other days. It is not possible.’ She had said this before, and betrayed a hint of impatience at having to repeat herself.

  ‘I wish I could take you,’ Jakob said sulkily.

  ‘Silly. How could that be?’ But she saw the look on his face, and decided, perhaps, to humour him. ‘I like very much that you come here, Schatz. But this is the way it has to be . . . yes?’

  She had unbuttoned his fly and was now cradling his scrotum in her hand, two fingers paddling the excruciating area behind it. Jakob closed his eyes and held his breath, his petulance withering in the heat of a force majeure.

  ‘Yes, Liebling?’ asked Cora, caressingly. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Yes . . . yes,’ said Jakob in desperation, although he could no longer remember what they were talking about.

  .

  He had never told Frank the cause of his father’s death. He suffered from the nightmares less frequently now, but occasionally, still, he would find himself awake in his tiny room, sweating, heart pounding with a vague horror. Shortly after that conversation about the bridge, he had the nightmare again. He told himself that it would be a good thing to go and look at the bridge, see it for the technical miracle it undoubtedly was. Twenty-seven men died during its construction. Stone and steel marvels exacted their toll in lives; his father was one of many. He didn’t know if that helped or not.

  .

  On the evening of the opening, Frank and he were part of the mass of people crammed into the waterside streets and parks. Balconies and rooftops were black with onlookers. Jakob caught the excitement in the air; from the bank where they stood, the bridge was so massive, yet so graceful, soaring away to the far shore, the taut cables forming a loom of extraordinary intricacy and perfection. In the crush, fragments of conversation struck their ears like hail rattling a window: a woman saying, ‘They put on special trains from Philadelphia . . .’ A man gesticulating wildly, speaking rapidly in a language that might have been Polish. Someone saying that the Governor had been the first person to cross the bridge. Or perhaps it was the President . . . Jakob and Frank exchanged glances, and grinned.

  There was cannon fire, and the whine of a military band was occasionally audible through the rumble of talk. When the fireworks started, the crush at the waterside became worse and they decided to find something to eat. Jakob was desperate to relieve himself and was shy of doing it in the street. They fought their way back from the river and headed for a beer cellar. Frank kept half an eye out for his sister,
Clara, who had said she was going to watch the festivities with friends. It was partly the thought of her presence somewhere that stopped Jakob unbuttoning his fly in the street like everyone else.

  Around eleven, Frank and Jakob left the beer cellar and began to head back to the bridge, which was due to open to the public at midnight. In the stream of people – now heading both to and from the river – in light spilling from a lit doorway, he saw a face that, even before he consciously recognised it, caused a strange clutch somewhere in his solar plexus. It was Cora, walking with a heavy, middle-aged man. Her face was turned towards Jakob; she wore a brown coat and hat, and seemed older and more alien than the woman he had come to know and had assumed was, in some way, his. He had never seen her dressed in street clothes (had rarely seen her dressed since that first evening) and it reopened the gulf between them.

  The Gertlers were heading away from the bridge; it was past their bedtime; they were going home, as befitted people of their age, while he and Frank were going to cross the bridge, into the future. She did not notice him. He was disturbed at seeing her, for once, without a flicker of desire. How was it possible that they had anything in common? At the same time, he was jealous of the Derby-wearing Mr Gertler. A primal resentment took hold of him and held him until they were on the bridge itself.

  ‘What’s up? You haven’t heard a word, have you?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Jakob gave Frank his most engaging grin. ‘Incredible, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ Frank was elated.

  They climbed the stairway to the wooden promenade that carried pedestrians along the middle of the bridge. The walkway shot, arrow-straight, to the Brooklyn shore, piercing the huge tower near the Manhattan side, before leaping confidently over the great span. They were surrounded by a web of steel: giant harp strings, soaring to the tops of the towers. Crowds poured on to the bridge; Jakob and Frank had to shuffle at an uncomfortably slow pace; people kept stopping to exclaim in wonder at the view.

  The water seemed far below, very black. Growing from both sides, the crowd became denser. Behind them, a man yelled out for those ahead to hurry it along. Some people turned back, adding to the confusion. Jakob and Frank kept walking, but there was a disturbance up ahead. A woman cried out in alarm. The crowd was suddenly a crush. Someone screamed, and the festive atmosphere shivered and cracked. The boards beneath their feet drummed and vibrated with footsteps. Someone shouted, ‘It’s giving way!’ and screams rose all around them. Those ahead tried to run back to the shore, but those coming on to the bridge far behind kept coming. Caught in between, Jakob and Frank seemed to be in the densest part of the crush. Jakob, suddenly and icily calm, shouted, ‘It’s not giving way. Don’t run!’ and was surprised at the authority in his voice.