A Storm in the Blood

by Jon Stephen Fink

  Scorched odor of soot, a moldy smell from canvas and damp pallets, coal smoke, sour residue of beer, the breath of the street. Through those early-morning absences, Rivka followed the track she used to walk between Shinebloom’s and Wellesley Street, her mind racing, at work on the problem of how to contact her landlord without dangerously exposing either of them. A glimpse of that danger froze Rivka at the turning into Commercial Road; the sight of that wanted poster tilted the ground under her feet.

  The City of London Police offered a reward of five hundred pounds for the murderer of the three good men Rivka had watched Jacob shoot dead in Houndsditch. Somehow, they had photographs of the criminal, and his name, and neither was Jacob Peters. The man they wanted to arrest and convict, jail and hang, was Peter Piatkow, alias Schtern, alias Peter the Painter. In the first photo, a debonair anarchist murderer, his hand jauntily tucked into the small of his back, a straw boater hanging off his fingers. It is clear that Peter has composed himself to present a mood of refined distraction, staring into the wings from a stage-set outdoor balcony. He’d struck the same pose in the art gallery, haranguing that man who’d laughed at the beautiful paintings.

  In the second picture, Peter’s expression isn’t so certain. He’s trying to relax and stand a little more naturally. What the camera captures is his soberly determined impersonation of a relaxed man leaning against the back of a chair. Under the ledge of his intellectual brow, Peter is gravely occupied. It’s how he’d be at a country house party, Rivka thought, exiling himself to the balcony, staring through the French doors. His eyes follow the spectacle inside. He observes the dance of Frivolous Beauty in the arms of Hollow Charm, the graveside waltz in a world he knows is ruled by tyrants. The photograph catches what Rivka calls Peter’s revolutionist stare, and she can tease him out of it with a kiss from her freckled lips.

  If it could secure his salvation, she’d pull down and set fire to every copy of the poster in the East End. Tacked by three corners to the wooden hording, this one came away whole. Rivka folded it in neat quarters, printed side in, and scratched on it with a pencil, Fun mir tzu P. Vie? Avek. From me to P. Where? Away. Then she picked up her pace and carried the secret appeal to Charles Perelman’s door.

  Now, in his wide overcoat that gave him the bulk of a bear, he came out to see who had rung his doorbell, who had stuffed a wanted poster underneath a brick on his stoop and then skittered off. A flick of his eyes caught Rivka unhidden on the pavement opposite his house, and, after another quick look up and down the street, Perelman approached her, showing no expression she could interpret. “Don’t go back to Wellesley Street,” Peter had advised her. Maybe this was why: the fear she’d raise in Perelman just by seeking him out, and no telling what he’d do if he was afraid of her.

  He didn’t speak to Rivka until he was standing so close she could smell breakfast on his breath. “For a minute I thought you were Nina.”

  “Would you yell at her to clear off?”

  “It’s better it’s you, Rivka.”

  “So you won’t yell.”

  “Are you in trouble again?”

  “I don’t know where Peter is.”

  “The police, either.” He rustled the wanted poster without completely unfolding it.

  “Peter gets the blame for what somebody else did,” Rivka said.

  “The police have it all wrong,” Perelman replied sarcastically. “They usually do! Who shot them, then? Do you know for sure?” Rivka glanced away. “Where are you sleeping? I guessed you stayed at Nina’s, or—where?” She refused again to say, and Perelman stopped prospecting. “All right. You shouldn’t tell me. If he knows you’re looking and the bogies are watching you, what do you think? He’ll make it easy for you to find him?”

  “You told me to be careful if I’m living in your house,” Rivka said, jumpy now. “Go inside, Mr. Perelman, please.”

  A touch on her elbow kept Rivka there. “The police talked to me. Asked me what you’re asking. What could I tell them?” Master of the situation, stage comedian, he reprised his immigrant excuse: “My Eng-litch no gudt!” Perelman laughed at how simple it was to trick the authorities and protect his friends. “You were gone.”

  At that, she decided to tell him: “He went somewhere with Yoska and Fritz.”

  “The Liesma bunch.”

  “You know some of them? Other ones besides Karl and Nina? Friends?”

  “I haven’t been in with them for years,” he said truthfully. “Did you hear Peter or anyone mention John Rosen? Or Federoff—Osip Federoff?”

  She shook her head.

  “Hoffman?”

  “Nobody. Who are they, Rosen and—”

  “I’ll try to find out something,” he said. His hand still gripped Rivka’s elbow. “Peter ordered you to keep away, yes? Don’t follow him?” Perelman, her guardian, stroked her face. “Out of love, that’s all. Does he say he loves you?”

  Better he should ask if she loved Peter. Let Peter be the thinker; she would love for both of them. His mind, her body, pressed so close together under the goose-down cover that they made one human creature. Whatever he said to her, the flame Rivka felt warming him wasn’t Liesma, it was her.

  Rivka’s lips curled inward to keep the secret from escaping her mouth, but it found a way out through her reddened cheeks. They had each other, these lovers, their love like belief in witches or ghosts. “It’s a sacrifice to be alone,” Perelman said, his eyes damp. Honesty for honesty, he felt the truth of it in his groin.

  “You’ll send me a message? You can bring it to me at the Pavilion,” Rivka said.

  “That’s where you’ve been sleeping?”

  “A friend let me. He leaves the door open.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “He’s the…He works there sometimes.”

  “The Pavilion, sure, I know it. It’s not a good idea to meet there. It wouldn’t be safe for you. Me, either. Rivka, listen—I don’t know how long it’ll be before I hear something. I’ll leave the poster outside the stage door. Someplace you can’t miss it. Look for it around ten or eleven in the morning. If it’s not there when you look, it means I don’t have news. When I put it there, I’ve got a plan. You and he should be together.”

  WISELY, OR SHREWDLY, Nina’s landlord washed his hands of the brown paper package she’d left in his safekeeping. Two or three times on their slow walk to Arbour Square, his son assured him that the instinct to turn the package in, unopened, showed everybody he was a man of unflinching morals who put his faith in the law. And Mr. Gordon junior’s Yiddish conveyed to Mr. Gordon senior the personal and official gratitude expressed in frank English by Detective-Inspector Wensley, along with a reassurance that, without being spoken, warmed all three men: whatever they did, they did on the side of common good.

  Even uncommon good. Their transaction was a compact between allies in a rational fight against irrationality. Whose friends were these malcontents, anyway? Radicals who lived by nobody’s rules except their own, outsiders, no part of the Jewish community, never mind the English. Under the black flag, they don’t care who they rob, maim, or kill. To oppose these criminals was a principle of citizenship for Isaac Gordon, and one of service for DI Wensley.

  They opened the package together. Books and revolutionary tracts, personal papers, and a dozen or so photographs acquainted the detective-inspector with “Minna,” daughter of Indrik Gristis, the lodger and cigarette-maker the Gordon family called Nina Vasilyeva, and whom they now met as the lover of the dead anarchist George Gardstein. DI Wensley was no believer in the spirit world or destiny, but watching Mr. Gordon & Son leave his office cradling the rewrapped package as if they’d been handed back a fizzing bomb, he had the feeling that some kind of clairvoyant channel had peeped open between him and Nina. She was cut off from the rest of the Liesma gang, her lord and master lay in the police morgue, her old gang scattered—what could she do? Nina’s fear twitched inside Wensley and her lonely thought came through to him: Find somebody
who can get me out of London.

  At that moment, in her room at the Gordons’, Nina grabbed relics from Houndsditch—her blouse and black hat, skirt, and jacket—then set about burning them. A suicide will shed her belongings, the traces of her life, and for Nina this was a kind of kill ing. Her life in London with Karl gone, finished, her heart clawed out of her chest, she buried her face in what was left of him, his blood on her coat, and rocked herself into nothing like sleep. His blood won’t dry, won’t burn…it’s my blood on this coat…If she kept it with her, or shredded it with scissors, what difference would it make? Run from what will happen or toward it or do nothing, wait for it to catch up; in this deep trouble it’s all the same thing. They’ll make me suffer for it. The end is the end, but anything else is impossible: do nothing, stay put, not a murmur, don’t put money in the meter, they won’t hear the coin rub the slot or the dial twist and click, I’m not here anymore, not anywhere.

  By evening, she’d circled the city by bus and Underground, even queued at Victoria Station clutching money for the boat train to Calais, without luggage, to start from nothing. But Nina came back badly scared, limp, as undefended as a sleepwalker. Polly Gordon sat next to her on the floor. For many minutes, neither spoke. In the company of a sweet-natured twelve-year-old girl, Nina could only think, All her mistakes are ahead of her, remembering herself at that age, ignorant, stiff-necked, hopeful. “You want it, you can have it,” she said, hardly aware she was speaking out loud.

  Polly took the blue dress lining from the pile of rags by the fireplace. “What are those feathers?”

  “You want them? They came off my hat. Take them.”

  “I can sew them on again,” Polly said.

  “Everywhere I went there were detectives. Following me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Men follow me. You’re right, it’s true,” Nina said, with faded boldness. “Not like these men. When I looked at them they hid from me. Behind newspapers.”

  Polly concentrated. “So did you see them or didn’t you?”

  “If I go to Russia they’ll shoot me, darling. If I stay here they’ll hang me,” Nina cried, abducted by grief. She didn’t feel Polly’s small hand rubbing her shoulder.

  “I’ll sew the feathers back. So it can be as good as a new hat.”

  For Polly’s sake, with a small shudder, Nina stopped crying. “What’s going to happen will happen,” she said, and surrendered herself body and spirit to her agonies—which settled Nina’s fate as sure as chutzpah settled Rivka’s.

  Thirty-two

  NOT IN HIS seven MONTHS IN ENGLAND, and never in Russia, did the balalaika player rub elbows with such luxury. Stretched on his back in his hotel bed, he breathed the clean incense of linen brought cool and pressed from the laundry that morning. Englishmen asked him what he wanted, then delivered to his room whatever he said—new clothes, boots, food—and they gave him money. Nicholas floated in a pool of luck, composing the letter he planned to write home after the killers were locked tight in their jail cells. Dear Mama, your son is a success in London. The Authorities have given me a great responsibility. My value to them is beyond question because I know things about certain people. I am under the protection of the police and they are in my debt! Your little Nicky is the one with answers for them. The fine carpet in my hotel room would make you swoon, not to mention the respect they show me at every—

  A daydream ruptured by DI Wensley’s blunt knock on the door. Abrupt as a rock face, he stood over Nicholas and informed him that the time to make good on his promises had arrived. Today, armed and braced for resistance, they’d accompany him to Jacob Peters’s address. Arriving there after a cramped and solemn journey by motorcar, Wensley delivered his instructions to Nicholas in a fresh burst of bluntness. “We don’t need you inside,” he said, his hand pressed flat against Nicholas’s chest. “Wait for us over there,” he said, pointing to a fruit seller’s barrow across the street. “Don’t interfere.”

  Narrow shoulders slumped, feet not yet ready to move, Nicholas stood by and watched the four police officers until they reached the building’s street door. They took with them the virtuous moment he’d imagined for himself, when he’d step forward to touch the wanted man on the shoulder, formally identify him, and declare himself England’s friend. “What if they don’t recognize Jacob when they see him?” he said to the interpreter, whose name was Casimir.

  “Little man!” Casimir twisted around to chuckle at Nicholas, then hustled along the pavement to catch Wensley and the others before they shut the door behind them.

  HOUSEBREAKERS DIDN’T HUNT in packs. A quick look at his clothes and knickknacks littered across the floor, his mattress upturned against the wall and gutted like a fish, told Jacob that he wasn’t walking in on a burglary. Not to mention the two men picking through the debris and the two others who were suddenly clamped to his arms.

  “Is your name Jacob Peters?”

  He heard the question twice, first in brittle English, then in Russian. He might wrestle free of the grip they had on him and make it to the street, but on a raid like this, Jacob could count on there being more police outside, so it was no good to run. His brotherly appeal to Casimir came out in a greener’s Russian, too ignorant to know even the English word for England.

  I didn’t do anything. Why are you in my room?

  Casimir said to Wensley, “He says he don’t know why you come to him.”

  “Inform Mr. Peters that he’s under arrest.”

  At the sound of the Russian words pod arestom, Jacob’s outrage flared. His upper body thrashed in the constables’ grip. One of them punched Jacob in the neck. They bent back his arms, trying to restrain a maniac. I didn’t do anything! Do I have a bad reputation? Who told them my name? What crime? What crime? Who accuses me? Casimir struggled to keep up with the angry stream—a translation of phrases, not whole sentences—and his confusion only magnified Jacob’s thrashing bewilderment. Any innocent man would fight like this.

  “Calm down,” Wensley said to Jacob, without effect. “Get him to quiet himself, Casimir.”

  I didn’t do anything.

  “We know your friends. George Gardstein, Nina Vasilyeva, Luba Milstein, Fritz Svaars, Peter Piatkow. You’ve visited them at Fifty-nine Grove Street.”

  Fritz? He’s my cousin.

  “Peter Piatkow. Peter the Painter. Where is he?”

  I don’t know him.

  “He was at Houndsditch. With you and the others. Where the three policemen were shot.”

  Not me.

  “Where’s your cousin Fritz now?”

  Jacob stopped struggling to show them that this assault on him, this slander and false arrest, was something he could withstand. My cousin did wrong. Not me. What can I do if Fritz shoots a policeman?

  Wensley gave a shallow nod to the constables and they started for the door, Jacob in tow. “Wait. Casimir, ask him if he knows what happens tomorrow.”

  Jacob shrugged, innocently.

  “What happens tomorrow?”

  Nothing.

  Jacob’s arm got a stiff shake from one of the constables. “Guv’nor wants to know what’s tomorrow.”

  Nothing. I don’t know.

  As he’d guessed, Jacob found more policemen outside. Through the sheen of blanched daylight, there was the balalaika player, flanked by bogies. He shouted to Nicholas, “Got you too? Same as Russia. They arrest innocent men here!”

  DI Wensley didn’t bother to listen to Casimir’s translation. With a leaden softness, as a private thought, he repeated the question he wanted to hear the foreigner answer. “What happens tomorrow?”

  The young man standing closest to the detective-inspector thought the question was for him. Nicholas used the opportunity to practice his English. “Excuse me, sir. Yes. What is tomorrow. Yes.”

  “I’m going to find the others. Bring in the bloody lot of them.”

  “Fritz, Yoska,” Nicholas struggled. “Two. Two.” He pressed his index fin
gers together. “With.”

  Now Wensley listened to Casimir say, “He means they’re together.”

  Nicholas had more to say. “Peter and his woman,” Casimir spoke for Nicholas, who showed Wensley his two snug fingers again.

  “What about them?”

  I remember her name.

  “Yes?”

  We sang duets at Fritz’s party. Rivka.

  “You know her second name?”

  Maybe I can find out.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Wensley said. “They’re all dead dogs.”

  FUNERAL OF THE POLICE HEROES.

  IMPRESSIVE SCENES AT ST. PAUL’S.

  STREET CROWDS.

  CITY SHOPS CLOSED DURING THE SERVICE.

  THE WREATHS.

  Amid universal sympathy and sorrow, a funeral service was held today for the three City policemen:

  Sergeant Tucker,

  Sergeant Bentley, and

  Constable Choate

  who were murdered on Friday at Houndsditch, the as sassins being a gang of alien burglars, whom the dead officers were about to arrest.

  There were a good many people waiting outside St. Paul’s at ten a.m., and by half-past eleven the crowd had become dense.

  When the rite was over a procession was formed in St. Paul’s Churchyard, and the three hearses of the murdered constables moved slowly past a crowd of several thousand people, who reverently bared their heads.

  Both the three hearses and six carriages in attendance were covered with the crosses and wreathes of white, purple and scarlet flowers.

  The bodies of Sergeant Tucker and Sergeant Bentley were taken to Ilford Cemetery; the body of Sergeant Choate was conveyed to Waterloo Station, as this officer is to be buried in Surrey.