“Is it a real place?”
“Near home,” Yourka said. “From my memory. You can criticize it. I want you to.”
Peter didn’t say it was a beginner’s study, a talented beginner’s. He mulled over the obvious composition, earnestly realistic colors, the movement in it halted by the thick masses of forest left and right. He told Yourka he had a “sharp eye for details,” and congratulated him on the delicacy of his brushwork. Yourka’s clean, long fingers were delicate, and his face, open and broad, wanted to hear the answer to every obvious question.
“Keep it for a while. Keep it. We don’t have to talk about it now,” Yourka said. “Give it back to me later. After Sunday. Or keep it, keep it.”
“Good. I can see how it looks in daylight.”
Along with the landscape, Yourka handed Peter his address on a torn corner of paper. “Come to me. I’ll give you coffee and cake. You can tell me where I’m going wrong with my painting.”
“Where’s this?”
“Shepherd’s Bush. West from Piccadilly.”
FROM THE TABLE where she stacked the casserole dish and dirty plates, Rivka saw Max Smoller and his wife by the door, leaving the party early. Max fluttered his hand good-bye to Karl. Standing there, the couple could have been empty-pocket immigrants boarding the gangway of a steamship, Max’s wife more oppressed and fearful than Max. No one had introduced Rivka to her, so she couldn’t tell Mrs. Smoller, Don’t worry, it isn’t a crime Max is doing, it’s an enterprise, for the sake of balance, so he’s not defenseless, he’ll get away with it. Also, It’s just a role I’m playing. She couldn’t think of herself for a single minute as Max’s woman.
FRITZ WASN’T DRUNK. Angry, though, anybody would take him for a drunk. He paced the landing in front of the food, waving his arms around. Every word out of him was an injured shout, his legs uncontrollable, marching him two steps in one direction, then off the other way, eyes blinking between fear and hate, tied by rope to his tormentor. “You paid too much!”
“How do you know what a chicken costs?” Luba faced him down.
“I walk in the street, I see the plucked ’ennas hanging and the prices.”
“Where? Brick Lane?”
“Brick Lane.”
“This one I got from Reuben who charged me tuppence more than last time.”
Fritz laughed it off. “Tuppence.”
“Of my money—mine.”
“Here it comes!”
“You ate more of it than anybody else.”
“Counted how many bites I took?”
“Two legs and two wings. I saw you.”
“Was that a good show, watching me eat?”
“No, disgusting. You’re disgusting.”
“Tomorrow you can measure how much I ate when it comes out. Meet me in the shitter with a tape measure!”
Both of them shouting now, squalling in public, naked as babies, clawing bits out of each other in front of friends close as family. For everyone besides Fritz and Luba, the flare-up quickly turned into something like a sporting event. Yourka Dubof and Yoska cheered and clapped every point Fritz scored. Nina and Rivka egged Luba on with little barks of solidarity. Embarrassed and unsure, Nicholas asked Peter, “Does he mistreat her all the time?” Peter had no answer for him; he merely looked Luba’s way as if to say, Just watch.
“Always the most!” Luba said. “More than anybody!”
“My share, that’s all.”
“More than anybody. Always the biggest piece.”
Fritz wore a look of the slandered and persecuted. “You’re lying.”
“No.”
“Don’t lie about me.” Fingers tucked into a fist, arm cocked to land the punch that wipes out the lie. Luba braced herself for it but it didn’t come. Fritz opened his hand and patted Luba’s head. “All right,” he said. “I won’t eat dinner tomorrow.”
Everyone laughed—except Luba, who stood her ground, trembling. “It’s not such a joke. Nothing’s funny.”
Fritz followed her out of the room. Before the sharp slam of the door, the others heard Luba threaten, “I’ll stop paying and he’ll throw you out. Peter, too!” Nicholas dived into the fun, picked up his balalaika, strummed a high-spirited introduction and sang, “Pust’ gitara zvenit nyeustannaya, pust’ rydayet struna za strunoi! Mozg durmanyat glaza tvoyi pyanye, tvoy napyev i tvoy smekh rokovoi…”
Let the guitar ring out, let it not tire
Let it cry, string by string,
I see your drunken eyes through a fog,
And through the song I hear your fateful laughter…
He stamped his feet to keep time, called out for them all to join in clapping, stomping, and singing along, to muffle the crying, blustering, and wheedling going on in the back bedroom.
FRITZ HAD BEEN gone from the party for an hour, tramping through the streets—to sweat the fever out of his steaming blood and “come back with calm nerves,” he said.
He dropped a small packet into Peter’s lap. “Also, look—cigarettes.” Then he folded himself on the floor in the corner of the room Rivka and Peter had colonized with two chairs, no apology for crashing in on their conversation. He’d made up his mind somewhere on his midnight stroll to bare his breast to Peter; now Fritz had returned to divulge disturbing information. Passing it along to Peter was the same as telling Karl himself, free of the Adonis’s scalding judgment. “Don’t repeat this to my cousin,” he said.
Peter could assure him, “Jacob isn’t interested in hearing anything from me.”
Fritz spoke to him as if Rivka weren’t there at all. “I didn’t want to go with them to Houndsditch. It’s a weight off me, I’m telling you, that Karl didn’t say, ‘Go in on Friday with me and Jacob.’” He clutched his wooden sword, bouncing its tip against his shoe. Ten feet behind him, Fritz noticed, his cousin was busy drumming away at Karl. “Because something’s wrong with me. Up here.” Fritz patted his forehead. “Russian police, you know? You know how they do it. They mashed me soft. Here, touch.” He bowed toward Rivka now, took her hand, and helped her find the teaspoon-sized dent on the side of his head. “I get headaches from it in the morning. It’s true. I’m scared of myself. If they grab me I’m scared I’ll get interrogated again.”
“Russians can’t touch you here.”
“No, English, English. They arrest me, put me in their torture room and…” He shrugged his guilty plea and apology. “I can’t stand up to them, Peter, I’m not so strong anymore. I won’t keep quiet.”
Pity moved Rivka’s hand as she stroked Fritz’s hair. And Peter damped down the fear bristling in his own gut. He said, “If you’re not going in, you don’t have to worry. None of us do.”
Fritz brightened up. “Going to Australia in January.”
“Maybe I’ll go with you,” Peter said.
“Yes?”
“Why not?”
“You have to find eighty rubles. That’s for one ticket.” Fritz slid his eyes from Rivka to Peter. “I’m taking my wife there.”
“…DAMAGE WE CAN DO if we’re smart,” Jacob was saying. “To their fucking city. We are smart. Don’t doubt it. You should be calm. You are calm, I know it. Nina’s feeding you? You’re eating? I don’t want to be your mother, I’m just making sure. Friday. Money is all right. It’s a necessity; I’m not fighting you on it. We’ll get it. How we get it, that’s going to hurt them. A bit. But I say to keep going, after Saturday. Saturday, Sunday, whenever we’re out of there. Hit them again, quick, bigger. A bank…”
Karl nodded his head to show serious consideration of each new point Jacob made. He scratched at a smear of food on his lapel. Yellowish brown against the black, an arc shaped like a comet. If it were in silver, it would be a decoration, a piece of effeminate frippery. How long had it been there, a gob of—what was it? horseradish? chicken fat? Dried now. Better—it would come off easier that way. He felt the grit build up under his fingernail as he scraped away at the dry layer. Still, the ghost of the stain stuck to the lap
el, arching toward his buttonhole.
“…every action. Two years, five years. Street warfare and executions, mobs running wild—when the government can’t protect them anymore, they’ll call the army. Don’t let them rest or prepare, show them it’s out of their hands. Really it’s out of ours, too. We’re a necessity of history: it’s necessary for us to be here at this moment. You’re doing what you need to do, same for all of us. It’s a terrible time. Why am I excited then? I’ll tell you: we’re lucky it’s us. This generation. Ours. We’ll be the ones with enough money and then, finally, we won’t have to lose time on robberies. Aim at clear targets. Make them feel the loss! I know how. Listen. Attack them with a bomb next time. On a train, or blow up the Tilbury docks, a warehouse. Or the British Museum. Fortnum and Mason’s. Bang, bang, bang. They recover from the first one—bang!—we hit with the next one. People in the streets—I promise you, when they realize the government can’t protect them they’ll be yelling, ‘Fuck the king! And his dead mother!’ And the Archbishop of Canterbury, with cherries on his tits for dessert…”
The smear looked more like mustard than chicken fat. There was one way Karl could find out: taste what he’d scratched up under his fingernail. No, that’s ugly. Mistake, mistake. Like allowing Nina to talk him into buying a jacket with velvet lapels in the first place. Any dirt, greasy dirt especially, locks in. Velvet never goes back to how it was, even after you clean it with a cloth. Can you use a damp cloth on it? Water’s no good, it ruins the material. Now there’s a permanent smudge, and every time he wears this jacket he’ll look like a pig-man, sloppy, careless.
The balalaika music jangled into Karl’s ears, congealing and hardening into a headache. With a friendly grip of Jacob’s biceps, he said, “How are your arms? I’m counting on you and Max digging one-hour shifts. Thirty-six hours, I want to be out.”
SHE FRAMED HERSELF in the doorway, Luba did, reached both arms around Fritz’s neck and pulled him into view. That was her intention, for the others to see what he did when she offered her mouth to him. Fritz kissed her with a growl of sexual power, but the force in it wasn’t his—no, the show of strength belonged to Luba, her kiss blood-hot defiance. The pull of destiny (she’d used that dizzy word) wrapped her body around his; Fritz’s assaulted, stupefied mouth sucked at the passing opportunity. All for an audience of one, as Rivka alone watched them. And Peter alone watched Rivka.
“CHTO MNYE GORYE, v zhizni morye nado vypit’ nam do dna! Serdtse, tishe! Vyshe, vyshe kubki starogo vina!” Nicholas en cored. Yoska danced around in a circle by himself, wiggling a bottle of beer over his head, singing along on the chorus.
What do I care! In our lifetime a whole sea
we have to drink to the bottom!
My heart, be still!
Higher, higher, raise the glasses
with old wine!
On the landing, where Peter failed to get through to Karl, he also failed to talk Rivka out of the Houndsditch escapade. Her steady resistance forced him to see her the way she wanted to be seen: as a woman whose strong heart decided things for its own settled reasons. That same spirit of hers would keep Rivka from hardening into a moll like Nina; this Peter understood. Let her find out for herself what the robbery costs against what it brings in, and after it her passion to live will take her the other way, in the direction these actions took Peter—away from never-ending revolution.
“You’re the youngest,” Peter said, mentalist’s fingers tented on his forehead. “I’m saying the youngest daughter.”
“I’m not impressed.” Rivka smiled.
“Not the baby. Everybody’s favorite, though.”
“I’m the only one who’s got freckles all over.”
“The strange one. So Mama and Papa worry about you more.”
“They know it’s useless. I hope they don’t.”
“We’re not such favorites outside the family.”
She swept a look over Peter, haircut to shoes. A shake of her head. “You’re the strange one in your family? I don’t think so.”
“Ask my uncle, the colonel.”
“Does he have medals and a sword?”
“Presented to him by the tsar.”
“This impresses me.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t mention it sooner.”
“When?”
“Before you came to the art gallery with me.”
“I went anyway,” she said.
Peter replied, “You did.”
“Can we go again?”
He dipped his head and felt Rivka’s hand cradle his cheek. Peter leaned down further and breathed in the aroma of her hair, kissed her forehead, then her mouth. He surrounded her in his arms and felt her body shiver faintly against his. From Rivka’s lips, an aching stillness reached him, reached into him, tender and undeniable as a fall of snow.
“WE KNOW HOW Peter is thinking,” Nina said. Her words, her tone, battered Karl’s exhausted ears. But he was the only one left in the flat. And after all he was in charge. “You said he wanted to keep her out of it, so now that’s what he’s doing. With his prick!”
What is it her business! Why do they aggravate her? Karl considered Nina’s profile, puzzling out her condemnation of Peter and Rivka. Twenty minutes ago they left together. Since then, every noise outside gave Nina a twitch. She’s sitting here waiting for them to snap out of their trance and come back. At last, he said, “Why shouldn’t they? Three of us still camping in Peter’s bedroom.”
Nina went on bunching and rebunching the handkerchief she’d balled up in her hand. Rosie kept clear of the spat, stoking the coal fire helpfully. Then Nina hinted at the nub of her anger. “They can’t go to her room. Think of Perelman finding him with her under his roof! He’d chase Peter out with a gun.”
“Maybe he took a room at the Ritz.”
“No, Karl,” she disagreed, as if that guess of his had been serious. “Houndsditch. She took him there. Our furniture’s moved in there. There’s a bed.”
“She did, all right. So what? He won’t stay longer than he has to. Don’t expect to find Peter eating breakfast there tomorrow.”
“Birds flying around her head,” Nina said under her breath. “Come down to it, it’s just sex. Men are so grateful.”
He teased her, “Who are you talking about?”
“In particular?”
Playing along, “Give me names.”
“Yoska’s like a cow who needs milking.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you think? Fritz, the same.” Even in the dim light she saw Karl’s face go the color of cold wax, drained, mutely appalled. “It’s nothing. A few strokes, a touch, nothing.” She gestured with her hand, the one clutching the handkerchief. “Like a doctor. I touched them a few times, over, finished.” She buzzed her lips.
He tried to show her nothing; he’d stopped playing. “Who else?”
“Here? People you know?” He nodded. Frankness was her virtue, so Nina told him, and the telling pardoned every act and drew the borders around her love for him. “Three days I carried Fritz’s piss in a bottle to the toilet when he came back from prison. When he was sick in bed, in Great Garden Street, remember that? A comrade needs a favor, you do it for him.”
Different men, other times, they’re gasping and groaning in her, breathing my air. Nina was a stranger, as she was before he entered her life, how she is when he’s absent. Gently, she asked him if he wanted to know about any of the others. He gave her silence for an answer, make of it what she wanted. The only sound in the room came from the roasting coal, which tinkled and cracked like melting ice. Behind his closed eyes Karl watched a blond woman bend over him, his friend’s mother—old, he thought at the time, though she couldn’t have been thirty. She planted kisses on his hairless chest, licked his nipples, dragged her tongue over his ribs, kissed his belly, the tops of his hips. He didn’t know what she meant by it; he thought she was going crazy right there in her own kitchen. “Beautiful boy. My beautiful boy…”
LATE, EARLY, did the exact hour matter? Karl’s bed waited for him somewhere else. He moved his mind toward it, but his body refused to lift itself out of Peter’s chair and follow. For his body, here was warmth and quiet. No reason to concentrate, listen, or elaborate. Nina also waited for him somewhere else. It’s the middle of the night down in Houndsditch too; by now she’s found whatever she’s found there. Made them stop or didn’t. So be it. Inside this blessed solitude Karl felt the winds that all night were battering his ears drop to nothing. Behind them not even a tattered breeze, only vacant stillness that let him drain into sleep.
ROSIE COULD KEEP herself awake feeding coal to the fire till sunrise if need be. He knows I’m nearby…She inspired herself with that thought. And she went on thinking—
He can rest and be peaceful because he’s not alone. This is love. Every good thing Karl is in his heart Nina ignores and neglects. I see the whole way down. Under his beauty under his perfect bones. Once you admit you’re less than him it’s plain and clear. Big as a building. Karl is golden. I’m less than him. I’m lower in looks and health, I’m lower in brains. But when God tied a knot in my spine he gave me special powers. A mound of bone and bad meat on top of my shoulder. A lump of ugliness you can’t hide in an overcoat. A piece of luck. To remember every time you’re naked in a mirror good or bad doesn’t show on anyone’s body so you must look under. Pray God (Elohim hear my prayer) give Karl something that shows him where to look. Let him look under. If he opened his eyes this minute he’d love me.
Twenty-two
NOT THE FEAR of being found or found out, and not a last-minute dread of the crime going on downstairs. Not the worry she’d be abandoned by them without warning, and not the dull throb of boredom. Rivka couldn’t put a name to the restlessness jittering through her, a sensation so physical it made her arms itch.
“If I had a deck of cards I could play solitaire,” she said to nobody. “If I even knew how to play solitaire.” They’d left her alone in the flat—part of the plan all along—so why was she kicking? She had her pot of tea, loaf of bread, bowl of jam, a fire to keep her warm. In her half-furnished rooms, this ersatz Mrs. Levi was uneasy for other reasons. Table and chairs, a daybed planted in the downstairs room: as Rivka looked around, she could see the seeds of a home, as long as she ignored the safe-cracking drill, sacks of sand and mortar, squares of asbestos, sixty feet of red rubber tubing…
A Storm in the Blood Page 18