A Storm in the Blood

by Jon Stephen Fink

  A sharp prod from Jacob roused Max. Yourka helped hoist Karl to his dangling feet, and, with Jacob propping him up on the other side, they carried Liesma’s leader slung between them like a drunk. The six of them made it to Cutler Street, Jacob loosing off shots at pursuers, Max and the two women hustling along at his back. Rivka alone thought, Here it is: all the truth of it in the flesh. Torn open and red wet on the ground. That policeman with the boy’s face. Our cruelty’s accomplishment. From the side of good…Nina barked at her to keep up. Rivka followed into the refuge of an alleyway…My good brutal friends. Help me escape here and stay alive. Tell me rest easy, they deserve the slaughter we dish out. We’re cruel and good…

  “You can’t go back to Perelman’s,” Nina said to her.

  Where then? The scorched hole in the back of Karl’s coat floated ahead of Rivka, its red stain bloomed around it. Nina, don’t call me your sister after this. No more. I won’t love suave, violent men.

  Twenty-five

  WHAT SUBSTANCE OF HIS LIFE does a man own? His choices. At each step, each choice is his possession alone. Anarchist or Social Democrat, street fighter, stay-at-home, whatever name anyone calls him or he calls himself, look for the substance of a man in the history of his choices. It’s a waste of breath and brain power to debate friend or enemy out of choices his nature made for him. Try to and you’re a dirty thief…So Peter wasn’t about to ruin a peaceful Friday night by preaching his own choices at Fritz and Yoska. They chose what they chose and that was the end of it. By keeping his talk clear of subjects like safecracking and the expropriation of bourgeois wealth, Peter discovered he had quite a lot to say on the comparison of afternoon beverages—coffee in Paris versus four-o’clock tea in London. (And he screened off any worry about Rivka, who at that minute was probably sitting bored out of her freckly skin in Houndsditch, by herself, utterly ignored by Karl, Nina, and the rest of them.)

  In Peter’s history, twenty-seven years of it so far, when his nature said fight, he fought; it was telling him now to pull back. He noticed something: the need to have opinions had drained from him. In place of them there was patience. Which made him a radical among radicals, freer to enjoy the card games in the restaurant with his friends and the midnight stroll with them afterward to the boulevard, where Fritz and Yoska turned toward Houndsditch and Peter went the other way back to his digs.

  Or he would have, if Fritz hadn’t stopped him by pointing to a party of men lurching toward them farther down the street. From that distance, the usual early-hours Commercial Road sight, straggling drunks. Then he saw the woman. “Is that Rivka?”

  Yoska made out the faces of the two men carrying the third. “Jabob and Yourka. They’ve got…who is it?”

  “Karl,” Peter said.

  Exhausted and sweating from the half-hour trek lugging Karl home through the back streets, first Jacob then Yourka stammered out fragments of the disaster they’d left behind them. “Nobody can tell me how they found us,” Jacob said.

  Yourka shouldered the limp weight of Karl’s body, lowered him to the ground. “Max says an informer.”

  Fritz, flabbergasted. “Who?”

  “He says me!”

  “Where’s Max and Nina?” Yoska knelt beside Karl, touched his knuckles to the unconscious man’s forehead.

  “They went to find a doctor,” Rivka said. She gripped Peter’s arm, then repeated the information to Yoska, who wasn’t listening.

  “Blue fuckers shot him in the back,” he said.

  “No, Max did,” Yourka said. Then, maybe not so quickly, “By accident.”

  “This bogie had him and didn’t let go,” Jacob said. “We shot that shit. And four more.”

  “How many killed?” Peter asked Jacob.

  “Two for sure,” Yourka said. “They bottled us in—”

  Jacob silenced him with a look. “Three. Definite, for sure. The one in the street,” he informed Yourka, “he’s dead, believe me.”

  “We can’t stay here,” Fritz laid it out to Peter.

  A piece of news he didn’t need to hear from Fritz. “Get Karl off the street.”

  “Get him to that doctor, the German. Fritz, what’s his name? Beron goes to him sometimes,” Yoska said.

  Fritz cried out, “Leave him here! He’s gone!”

  “No!” Rivka slumped to Karl’s side.

  “Help me lift him,” Peter said to her, calm as he could.

  The slight pressure of their hands on his shoulders twisted a scream of pain out of Karl.

  And Fritz, too, a tortured complaint. “You see.”

  “You see?” Peter stood up to him. “Should I explain it to you, Fritz?” He nodded to Rivka and together they lifted Karl to his feet, but she was too short to hold him upright and steady. “Don’t let him fall. Good, Rivvie. Let Fritz take him.”

  “Where are we going?” Fritz demanded from Peter.

  “To your place. Nina’s bringing a doctor.”

  Rivka felt Peter’s hand reach for hers, squeeze it, and then let go. For the second time that night, she marched behind the black-red stain on Karl’s coat. At every street corner between Houndsditch and there, she’d held herself back from running off alone, abandoning Nina and the others, because they knew the safest route home.

  The farther from the horror, the closer to Peter. If she had to go on the run again she’d hide with him. She’d molded her naked body around his, lay in bed in his arms—one night ago? a different lifetime?—there and then Peter spoke to her in a careless voice he never used with anyone else. A touch from you is stronger than any argument Karl makes, he told her, and I want to live in a smaller world. This nightmare threw him back in with the gang of them. It changed everything.

  “HE GOES OUT from the house, Rosie, every time I think, This is when Fritz doesn’t come back. He says it’s some errand but really he’s on the boat.”

  “You know he’s going to Australia. He didn’t trick you about it. Fritz showed you the tickets. Two tickets, he bought. One for him and one for his wife.”

  “No. For me.” Luba’s flat statement of the facts, a barrier to argument, as if conviction was undeniable truth.

  In the bed beside her, Rosie nestled deeper under the blanket. “Then why do you say he’s on a boat?”

  “I know he isn’t, I just think it.”

  “No, that’s being simpleminded.”

  Luba snipped back, “You’d know about that. If you ever had a man you’d know how it felt and you wouldn’t call worrying about him simpleminded.”

  Rosie didn’t speak her unkind thoughts. Namely, that Luba’s stupid wailing was over her own unhappiness. For Fritz’s happiness she wouldn’t surrender the smallest portion of hers. She’s a little girl. Luba had no clue how a woman feels when she for gets herself, body and soul, contemplating the perfect beauty of a man. Luba frets and swoons for Fritz when he’s away for a few hours, even though when he’s with her, their fights about his wife are as terrible as the ones over who let ants swarm into the sugar bowl. She suffers over the daydream of her future as Mrs. Svaars, and loves Fritz most when she attracts him with her body. Love isn’t conquering, it’s surrender. That was the thing Rosie knew from experience. To quiet her, she said to Luba, “He’s with Peter and Yoska, not on a boat.”

  “Fritz told me a lie last night. Right in this bed.”

  “Why? What?”

  “Something with Yoska. I don’t know. Whispering. He told me go into Peter’s room because Yoska brought something and I shouldn’t see.”

  “Did you go?”

  “What else? Yoska barged in here and Karl, too…He said he’d explain to me later, so, yes, I went. What else?”

  “What did Yoska bring him?”

  Downtrodden, Luba groaned under the burden of a shrug. “He didn’t tell me. Lie, lie, lie.”

  “La, la, la…” Rosie’s singsong medicine for the heavy of heart teased a smile to the corners of Luba’s mouth. It flickered to life there, fluttered, and died.


  THEY COULD HAVE CAMPED at Rosie’s a ten-minute walk away, but the room there was drafty and damp. Also, waking on Saturday in Settle Street would deprive Luba of the pleasure of one of Fritz’s hangdog morning-after apologies. For the vacant hours till Friday midnight and after, Luba’s shared bed was a haven, momentarily separate from men’s existence. Which came banging and crashing in with what sounded like a grand piano cart wheeling down the stairs outside Luba’s door. Or up them. Fritz’s enemies, strangers he kept secret from her—was it them breaking in? Would hoodlums shut the door behind them? Would the police? In her nightgown, Luba stood by the door, stiffly listening.

  “It’s Fritz. I hear him.”

  “Stay here,” Rosie whispered from the bed.

  The low voices and confusion of footsteps collected in the front room. Luba heard the door pulled shut. “I’m going to see.”

  Rosie’s frantic signaling didn’t hold Luba back or stop her eavesdropping, ear pressed to Peter’s door. Was it Fritz’s moan she heard? “Fritz?”

  “Don’t come in,” he ordered her through the door. Shoulder first, Fritz leaned his weight against it. “Go back to bed.”

  Behind him, Yourka lifted Karl by the heels, Jacob by the shoulders, and together the two men hefted him onto the bed. Yourka said, “I’m going to get a doctor.”

  Jacob forbade it. “Nina went ten minutes ago.”

  “Then I’d better find Nina. He won’t last much longer.”

  “She’s bringing the doctor.”

  “I’ll hurry.” The cold pressure Yourka felt at the side of his head was the barrel of a pistol. “Jacob, wait. Wait. Listen to me. What are you thinking?”

  “You’re in a hurry to leave here.”

  “To get Karl help! Where else?”

  Jacob’s quick answer: “Turn yourself in. You want to do that, Yourka?”

  “I don’t!”

  “Help yourself?”

  “Wait. Where’s Max? Where did he go?”

  “You tell me.”

  “He told Rivka where.”

  She couldn’t see a thing except Jacob’s thumb as it clicked back the hammer. Mouth dry, Rivka said what she knew. “Max went with Nina.”

  “Maybe.” Jacob twisted his gun against Yourka’s forehead.

  “He did or he didn’t,” Yourka put to him. “But he isn’t here, is he?”

  “Where do you think Max went?” Jacob asked Rivka.

  “With Nina. For a doctor,” she said.

  Jacob replied by easing the Dreyse’s hammer down. He slipped the gun under Karl’s pillow, a precaution not wasted on Fritz, who shouted at Jacob, “Yourka wants to get away fast, then he’s smarter than you! They’re coming here. Tonight—now!” In uproar, he pleaded, “I’m innocent—but the police, they’ll take me!”

  “Innocent, sure.” Jacob’s contempt for the word matched his estimation of the weakling who spoke it.

  “I wasn’t there! But I’m still fucked because I can’t prove it!”

  “Fucked in a barrel,” agreed Yoska.

  “All right, so what?” Peter told Fritz.

  “I’ll vouch for you,” Yoska’s dark joke. He rehearsed his testimony. “Fritz Svaars was with me and Peter the Painter all night. We drank coffee. I beat him at gin rummy.”

  “Listen to Peter,” Jacob said.

  And Peter spoke to them all. “They know our names. How long before they come looking? We can’t be here when Nina gets back with the doctor.”

  “I said so,” Yourka reminded everybody.

  “She’ll think of something to tell him. It can give us half an hour, if we’re lucky, an hour. If he doesn’t know about the gun fight yet.” Gently, Peter moved Jacob aside and stood over the bed. He looked down at his friend, who lay on it suffering. “Still with us, comrade?”

  Karl opened his eyes. “I heard every word. Do you have a place to go?” Only Karl saw his quick nod. “Where’s Nina?”

  “Looking for a doctor.”

  “No doctor.”

  Behind Peter, Rivka said, “For his pain.”

  “Morphine, Karl,” Peter said.

  “No,” he replied. Then, faint crescent of a smile, “What’s the matter? Can’t you take it?”

  Fritz demonstrated the hour’s seriousness—his intentions too—by pulling the Browning automatic from his trouser’s pocket and flamboyantly double-checking its clip. Yoska did the same with his heavy pistol. “Fritz, you have bullets for me? I need more.”

  “In my room.”

  “Mauser shells?”

  “Boxes. Plenty.” Fritz’s glance landed on Peter. “Where’s yours?” Before he got a reply, he said, “You take my Mauser.”

  Karl’s groan contorted his face; it rose and fell on a crackling billow of pain and ended in a cry for Nina. It stopped the breath Rivka drew to speak to Peter. It choked off her natural kindness and made her fear for her fate. As if she’d become suddenly aware of a stink on her clothes or skin, a nauseating odor that soaked into her on her walk through the slaughterhouse. Unless her body itself was the source of this vileness, a stench so powerful it warned people away. Except the ones who carried the same smell.

  Untouchable.

  Peter’s scent. The hazy distance in him even in bed, even with her, no mystery to Rivka anymore. Always judging (she thought before tonight), lowering his judgment on all humanity. No. Peter is touchable to her at last. Is that judgment you see hardening his eyes? No. It’s knowledge of himself. He’s breathed these fumes for such a long time, the sick vapors around dying bodies and killers. I’m one of them, Rivka thought, a limb of the creature that rampaged and murdered. Revolutionary. Fighter. Our Common Cause. Words, alibis. There’s nothing in a human language for the thing she is now; find a name for it in the low grunts of animals, in screeches, barks, and howls.

  “What should I do?” she asked Peter.

  “You want to help? Wait for me in Luba’s room. Keep her inside, and Rosie too, if she’s still there.”

  Rivka wasn’t quick enough on her feet. Luba pushed through the door, Rosie following close. “My God, my God…” Luba cried out. In two breaths, shock turned to accusation. “Fritz, my God!”

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  “Liar!”

  Jacob barked, “Fritz wasn’t there.”

  “It doesn’t matter where I was. I was with Yoska and Peter.” He threw them a look. “It won’t matter for you, either.”

  Luba slapped Fritz’s face. Before he managed to get a grip on her wrists, she slapped him again and scratched his cheek. “I’ll tell the police you didn’t go, you stayed with me all night!”

  “You think they won’t arrest me? On your word? They’ll beat me until I confess to everything,” Fritz said. “They’ll make me confess I assassinated the tsar and deport me to Russia!”

  “Don’t say that! Not if I tell them you were here.”

  “Luba, don’t talk crazy. You’re not going to the police.”

  Almost unnoticed, Rosie shamed them all. She knelt next to Karl and spoke his name. With a handkerchief, she wiped the slick of sweat from his face. “Nobody looks after you.” Tenderly, she removed his boots, then opened his coat, and didn’t flinch at the sight of the blood leaking onto the coverlet from the bullet hole in Karl’s back. “I’m going to get you something.”

  “No doctor.”

  “Nobody’s coming,” Nina reported from the landing as she hurried inside.

  Jacob sprang over to ask her, “Where’s Max?”

  Echoed by Yourka: “Where did he go?”

  “To Perelman,” Nina said. “Is Karl worse?”

  “You can see,” Jacob said.

  Nina looked without budging an inch. “That doctor—I begged him to come here, he said no. I don’t trust him.” Then she said, “He might go to the police.”

  “Or he might not?” Jacob taunted, ready to run.

  “I think he will,” Nina said.

  “If he will, then he did,” Fritz figured. “Ho
w much money have you got?” he asked Luba.

  “What you gave me.”

  “That’s all? Look in the jewelry box. Bring me the money. You get out of the house. Go to your brother’s house.”

  Luba shook her head. “Jack won’t help me. Nathan, either.”

  Rosie came back carrying a wet towel, which she handed to Luba. “I’ll stay,” she said. “You go to mine.” From around her neck, Rosie freed the loop of brown string tied to the Settle Street key. She traded it to Luba for the wet towel.

  Fritz stopped Rosie and whispered, “When he dies, there’s kerosene. Let the whole house burn.”

  Downstairs, the door slammed. Fritz’s stomach jumped. At the window, Yoska pawed back the curtain’s edge in time to see Jacob and Yourka run down Grove Street in opposite directions, to take their chances alone.

  Peter had retreated, too, with Rivka, into the back bedroom, door shut against Fritz and Luba’s howling at each other. “I don’t know how long we’ve got, so listen.”

  “It’s good for Karl that Nina’s with him.”

  He shook Rivka by her shoulders. “Listen to me. She won’t stay here. You can’t, either.”

  “Where can we go? I don’t have any money.”

  “At Shinebloom’s, try your manager friend. He likes you,” Peter said.

  “Should I go to the restaurant?”

  “His house is better. You know where he lives?”

  Rivka closed her eyes to remember. “Club Row.”

  “You go there.”

  “If you won’t be here where will I meet you? When?”

  “We can’t stay together,” he told her. “It’s not safe.”

  “Peter, no! Why? No, if we—”

  “What happened in Houndsditch tonight decided things. I can’t stay here.”

  “Wait. I’m going with you. We’ll help each other.” She coiled her arms around his waist. “We can choose what we do.”

  He twisted free of Rivka, this anchor. “You’re talking like a real anarchist.”

  “I won’t give you up.”