The door to the Fleishmans’ flat hung open. Abandoned in secret at some ungodly hour, bequeathed to Yoska, everything in it. Preserved. A silver pocket watch. A jewelry box on a nightstand. They must have seen Yoska’s large body move behind the window. A shotgun blast took out the glass, the frame, spraying stinging fragments into the side of his face. He crouched behind the bed, protecting his eyes with a cushion. Shots from Bulldog revolvers rattled into the wall behind him. A man pulls a trigger and a bead of lead comes hurtling at me out of his gun. How many men? How many guns? How many bullets in each gun? So many they hardly have to aim! Sokoloff, you stupid clown, get out of this place…
From the doorsill, Yoska loosed off a few bursts at targets he couldn’t see. Shotgun fire answered him from half a dozen guns—loud enough, it sounded, to push down the brick wall. In the haven of this building Betsy waited for me at the top landing. Late at night. In her nightgown. I went inside to the kitchen and there was a bowl of soup, some bread, some beer, and a woman who didn’t care about my rotten skin or crooked leg. Sleep beside her in her bed and I’d be a thousand miles from England. Or anywhere. These stairs took me up, up, up…
But the voice calling him upstairs wasn’t Betsy’s; it was Fritz’s. “Go to the top window! Shoot from there!”
Yoska hung at the door to Betsy’s flat where he stopped Fritz with a touch of his sleeve. “If Peter could do it, we can. There’s probably not as many of them watching the back way.”
“Use your brains! And your stinking gun, Yoska! Keep them off!”
From his position across the street, Detective-Inspector Wensley saw the muzzle flash in the garret window before the man-shaped shadow loomed behind it. “The Gershon woman’s lying to us about how many are inside,” he said to the superintendent. “For my money there’s more than two.” They watched Yoska lean a little way out of the upper window, empty his gun—ten shots whistling furiously through the air, aimed at nothing. Shouts and gasps went up from the crowd, as if they’d just witnessed an acrobatic feat by a circus daredevil.
“Keep those people back!” Wensley hollered down to one of his sergeants.
His order was buried under a deafening volley from the Scots Guards marksmen at the end of the street and the barrage from police shotguns, which ploughed the brickwork, scoured glass from every window, tore splinters from the street door. In Betsy’s kitchen, Fritz hugged the floor, holding the stove door open for a shield against bullets that raked the shelves and dug furrows in the ceiling. Then, raggedly, the gunfire ceased. They think we’re dead. Storm the building, why don’t you, clear us out, charge straight into my pistol barrel.
Fritz raised himself to the window, where he counted the men ordered to fight against him, the ones he could see. He risked getting his head blown off to have a look at their faces. A commander, the man gesturing toward the police line, his narrow face busy, looking here, looking there, fixing the battle plan. They called in the army! Five snipers in position, on their bellies in the street, four more in peaked caps with the red-and-white checkered ribbon. Some excitement for the young experts with their Lee-Enfield rifles. One of them, blond and hatless, propped on his elbows, smoked a cigarette. He wants to get indoors, out of the sleet. They don’t want us to surrender.
“What’s there?” Yoska crouched in the alcove behind Fritz.
“Streetlamps. Look, daylight and they leave them burning.” Fritz rested his back against the wall. “Dangerous place for lamplighters.”
“If we shoot the lamps, you think it’ll make an explosion?”
As Fritz fed a ten-shell clip into his Mauser, he answered the question poor Yoska was really asking him. “We can get away from here.”
“Yes, good. Tonight?”
“If we do one thing.”
“What? Tell me. I’ll do it.”
“Kill them all.”
HARRY ENCOURAGED RIVKA to borrow a “good-looking dress” and whatever else she needed from the costume rack, a set of clean clothes that would be comfortable for her and inconspicuous at a family luncheon. “I’m inviting you for a home-cooked meal,” Harry announced. By one thirty, they had to be in Esher at his sister’s house, a bus and train journey that would take almost two hours. With these nuggets of news, Harry meant to hurry Rivka along, but they’d slowed her instead. Something besides his worry over her daily diet spurred this urge to shunt her miles outside of London.
To reach the less operatic fashions, Rivka had to tunnel through half a roomful of Russian peasant wardrobe, the sack-shaped skirts and billow-sleeved blouses that would have raised questions around the dining table in Esher, never mind on her way to the bus in Commercial Road. That is, if she’d intended to leave the Pavilion at all. The fact that there’d been no signal from Charles Perelman yesterday didn’t mean no signal today, so for thirty minutes Rivka dragged out her wardrobe search. When he knocked for the second time, she confessed that she’d only just pulled out a blue skirt and jacket and a lace-trimmed cream blouse that fit her. “Why do you want me to go?” she challenged him through the closed door.
From Harry, she heard a fractured version of the story that was agitating everybody else in London—the showdown that had been boiling since dawn in Sidney Street. Most of it was rumors, he told her: The police have trapped the Houndsditch murder gang in a house there; the notorious Peter the Painter is one of them; another policeman lies dead at his hand; the foul anarchists are encircled…“Nobody’s saying they caught him. If they catch him, Rivka—if Peter gets arrested—we can’t do anything until he’s on trial. We’ll do something. You hear me? We got to think about you first. There’s a wig on the shelf, you see it? Goldish-colored. Rivka?”
Wrong as he could be, Harry took her silence for emotional collapse. As she robed herself in the skirt and blouse and jacket, Rivka was weighing every word Harry had said. The police are on the lookout for the Liesma anarchists, their friends and associates, accomplices. It’s all right, it’s fair. Harry’s afraid for himself.
“Look who it is!” he said when Rivka stepped from the wardrobe room, costumed. “Anna Southam, the Stepney Songbird! Your debut!” He paused a moment. “Not as a singer today. Next year.” With an impresario’s sweep, he ushered Rivka past him to the staircase.
Uncage a zoo animal in the wild and its senses would be as keen as Rivka’s in the alleyway behind the Pavilion Theatre. Above the scatter of rubbish and city dirt, a sweetness flavored the air; the sharp edge of the cold had scraped it clean. A blanched disk of sun turned the cloud over Whitechapel to gray pearl. The scaling dark green paint on the stage door, the rusted gooseflesh of the iron railing, the glossed black cobblestones under Rivka’s feet—they were all insistently present, vibrant physical realities, so close to being forced away from them. Everything she saw was exceptional.
Under the corner of a dumped carpet, the white sludge of yesterday’s newspaper. Beside it a single shoe. The mossy stack of laths, bound with rope at one end, the other end sprung apart, tucked against the wall. A strip of rose-colored cloth fluttered, snagged on the end of a lath. That was new. Not snagged, Rivka saw: tied there. She lifted the splayed slats; underneath them, not fallen but placed with care, was the brick she’d left on Charles Perelman’s front step. Wrapped in wax paper under the brick, she found the twice-folded wanted poster that carried her prayer to him. Fun mir tzu P. Vie? Avek.
Harry called to her from the stage door, “Sorry, sorry. Wanted to tidy away your bed things.”
She didn’t give him a chance to shut her out. Rivka tucked the paper under her jacket and flew at Harry, shrieking, “No! I want to go back in!”
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?” Harry expected to see a squad of armed detectives charging after her, but they were alone behind his theater, Harry and this terrified woman flailing at him to get back inside. He touched Rivka’s arm to calm her. “We’re going to my sister’s—it’s fine. You’ll be all right in Esher.”
She cried louder, from the deep pit of
a pain he couldn’t fathom. “No! No, no, no, no! Let me in! I don’t want to go, Harry!” Panicked tears wet her face and his coat. “No! They’ll get me! I want to go in!” What was Harry going to do? Fight her off? Carry her to the train like a sack of potatoes? She fell through the door, choking, desperate for breath, holding onto control only long enough to repeat, “They’ll take me!”
“All right, you’ll be fine here. Stay inside.” From the other side of the door, Harry said, “I have to go.”
The click of Harry’s key in the mortise lock broke the grip of Rivka’s hysteria, leaving her with a dizzy head and pounding heart. To keep from fainting, she rested on a crate and unfolded the wanted poster. Her bold plea slanted down one margin.
Fun mir tzu P. Vie? Avek.
From me to P. Where? Away.
In reply, along the crease at right angles to Rivka’s message, was Charles Perelman’s smudgy, Arabic-looking handwriting.
Naben di greener tir. Vart. Haynt.
By the green door. Wait. Today.
SKILL OR TALENT?—this ability Peter possessed to materialize in a different building, country, identity. Or had it become a habit, a necessity of life? The oily water in the canal reflected brown-green shadows, nothing else. What would it take for him to jump in and drown? One more step, a last push. The last decision he’d make. Later on this afternoon, Peter’s body would bob up in some other pocket of West India Docks—unless he were as adroit dead as alive and it washed by unnoticed to the Thames and out to sea. Let it float.
Consider this: he’d made it past the guards at the arched gate to the freedom of the wharf, riding on the feeling that he belonged there as much as anywhere. No one challenged his right, scruffy as he looked, to trawl for day laborer’s work. Peter looked up at a featureless lid of gray sky, which minutes ago showed him the sun adrift behind it, flat as a silver coin. Gone again. Blame this island weather. On the ground, meanwhile, dray carts hauled crates and bales; dock workers shifted cargo; gangplank and crane fed hundreds of ships’ holds at crowded moorings and attracted Peter with the force of an occult power. A one-word spell invoked it: Away.
Peter’s mind ached, his heart and body too, disconnected parts of him held together by the single yearning for a reason to be anywhere. On the quayside, ships supplied a reason to be at the West India Docks. And after, to hire on as a deck hand, as an apprentice from Alsace named Probst. And after, to work that job to its port of call. And after, to start again. The things I did that put me here—let them float.
“Late for the call-on.” No suspicion, accusation, or threat in the gang master’s voice. “You’re looking to ship?”
“Is there work, do you know?” Peter straightened his posture.
“Depends on the dock or ship, today or tomorrow.”
“Today.”
“Nothing on the dock. You want to ship, talk to Mr. Beek. He’ll be hiring for the Evangeline Tay, bound for Caracas. Not till tomorrow, though.”
“Mr. Beek, thank you,” in his best English accent, edges smoothed by the quayside clatter.
“No, I ain’t Beek. He’s short and ugly. Get here early for the call-on, lad, case you lose out on the Evangeline. Best of luck,” the gang master wished him.
After that, Peter scoured the sky for a reason to double back to the Pavilion. A second’s thought flung up a dozen reasons not to. Trust the word of that scoundrel Charles Perelman. And after, find out that Rivka isn’t where he said she was. And after, prowl the district looking for her. And after, pay for it. Trust the word of an agitated girl; find out that Rivka couldn’t keep Perelman’s arrangements, or she misunderstood them, or didn’t trust him, and she wasn’t waiting where he said she’d be. And after, miss her in the street. And after, keep going, unanchored.
As Peter looked back at the docks through the imperial arch of their gate, as if he’d left his settled mind on the wharf, another reason maddened him. Trust Perelman’s word, he told himself, trust Rivka’s, and you’ll shed a skin. He fought his garbled instincts. And after, he buried his revolutionist history. And after, not alone under the London sky, he decided to be a man who trusts.
Every obstacle complicating Peter’s life until then fell away. What remained was a practical problem: find a route to the Pavilion Theatre that circled clear of Brick Lane.
THE ELATION THAT carried Charles Perelman on light feet from the Pavilion’s back alley was not his own, he realized happily. It was a bubble of joy borrowed from Rivka. As he went on his way, he pictured her opening the wax paper, unfolding the poster, and reading the message she was hungriest to hear: today she’d be with her missing lover. Never mind that he’s a criminal running from the police, violent, deep-dyed in red; forget for a moment that, from today onward, any life she’d have with him would be precarious and persecuted. If finding Peter gave her happiness, that was good enough for Charles Perelman.
She’ll be happy because of what I did.
Good enough, but not enough. The population of the world, he philosophized as he walked, is nine-tenths composed of deluded types. From naked savages in the jungle who eat their enemy’s brains to George Gardstein lying dead in the morgue. An undeluded man sees the truth of things clear. You learn this by living seventy years with your eyes open. You observe other lives. Not just in your circle, my friend, but a variety: revolutionists and monarchists, English, Russian, Letts, Jews, and the rest. The trick is not to let politics influence you; politics is nothing but a gang of deluded men telling you that the world is exactly as brutal as it needs to be. Laws, too, though sometimes your independent thoughts will agree with them.
As he approached the solid stone front of the City Police Headquarters, Charles imagined a different conversation from the brief one he had. For a start, he expected to be speaking with a higher-ranking officer—not DI Wensley, who (courtesy of yesterday’s tip-off) must be handling things in Sidney Street. A respectful welcome wasn’t too much for Charles to expect. Not fawning, only a sign that the desk sergeant and the plump constable remembered and regarded him. Be fair: until he told them the reason for his second visit in two days, how could they guess its importance?
“’Ere’s Mr. Wensley’s bad penny turned up again, George,” the desk sergeant quipped. Charles missed it.
The constable looked up. “Yes, sir.”
And the sergeant took over. “Mr. Perelman, again, is it?”
“Perelman, yes,” Charles said.
“Detective-Inspector Wensley’s grateful for the information you supplied ’im. Very handy. He’s not here at the moment, you understand.”
“Yes. His boss? Somebody more?”
“Tell me whatever it is and I’ll do what needs doing.”
“Other information for him.” Charles noticed the wanted poster on display beside the desk. He tapped his finger next to the words “Portrait of the said Peter Piatkow.”
“You’ve got information about this man?” The desk sergeant tapped on the poster too. “Him?”
“I know where is he.”
George said to the sergeant, “Thought they had ’im in Sidney Street with his friends.”
“Not there,” corrected Charles. “I am together him before. Not Sidney Street no more.”
“You know where he is, you say?”
Charles checked the time on his pocket watch. “Soon. Pavilion Theatre.”
“How d’you spell it?”
“I know the one, Sergeant,” George said. “The Yid music hall in Vallance Road.”
“Vallance.” Charles confirmed it with a sharp nod. “Soon, soon. Today. With girl. She’s good girl. Not anything of Liesma men.”
“Piatkow’s meeting a girl…at the Pavilion Theatre…today.” The sergeant wrote the details on a notepad as he spoke. “Do you know this woman’s name? Can you describe her?”
“Her name Rivka. Is lodger. Only good girl, Rivka, best good.”
The elation that settled in Perelman’s chest on his walk home belonged to him alone. Wasn’
t he the Matador?—who’d swept his cape over the horns and brutal haunches of another bull. He outsmarted them and he’d outlive them, too. Because of what I did. The only honest revolutionist in the bunch! A revolutionary act comes down from the conscience of an independent man. Do What You Will.
His broad stomach rumbled, his mouth puckered at the delicious thought of comforts waiting for him in his kitchen. Chicken broth and Russian rye bread. Strong cheese. Dark beer. Warmth from the stove. As he ate and drank, warmed his frigid bones and opened his newspaper, a fleabite of doubt pricked the surface of Charles Perelman’s contentment. I know there must be something wrong with giving Peter to the police. But I don’t know what it is.
ONE THING the home secretary knew: rank by itself doesn’t command—not a troop or battalion, a man or mob. Presence does. His motorcar nudged into the crowd that for five hours had been massing around Sidney Street, but among those members of the public, Winston Churchill’s arrival didn’t command much besides a curled lip and irate thumbs-down. Any patriotic cheer for the minister fell under the jeering that started when he stepped into the street with his top hat and walking stick.
“’Oo let ’em in?” From one voice, then ten, then fifty, who took up the taunt as a slogan. “’Oo let ’em in?”
He did, Winnie and his softhearted, softheaded chums did: he pushed the Tories into it in ’05, his government did it, and Look, Winnie, look what you done bein’ humane and open-handed towards the poor sods dyin’ in their thousands, Jews kep’ down an’ Rooshians practickly slaves! Come on to England, lads, here’s your asylum and new temple! “’Oo let ’em in?” These hovel-dwelling parasites who shelter inside British freedoms and tolerance like ticks inside a horse blanket, to huddle together and plot bloodthirsty revolution. No respecters of sovereign borders—who did they think they were, bringing their feuds, guns, savage temperaments, and bomb factories to England? Who let them in, with their peasant culture, tribal god, and satanic lust for control of the world masquerading as high morality and religious devotion?
A Storm in the Blood Page 30