by John Smolens
Motka came down the stairs, carrying the bottom of her long green dress in one hand, and entered the parlor. She had enormous blue eyes, wasn’t too plump, and had what was called good carriage. Without saying anything, she took Hyde’s hand and led him up the stairs. They climbed all the way to the third floor, passing closed doors. There were the sounds of bedsprings, of coughing, of giggles and laughter, of a headboard knocking on the wall. The top floor was quieter, though the music from the parlor echoed up the stairwell. They entered her room, which was small, with a sloped ceiling. She lit candles, and then sat on the chair next to the bureau. She undid his trousers and, using a fresh cloth and warm water, washed him gently. When she was done, they undressed and got into bed. Overhead rain began to fall on the roof, and it was soon pouring—drumming on the shingles so hard that the protests from Motka’s bedsprings were nearly drowned out.
When they were finished, she said, “I have cigarette, mind? Big Maud does not let us smoke in the parlor. Only the men.”
“You go ahead.”
She got up, opened the bureau drawer, and came back with a pack of cigarettes, matches, and a flask. “Your friend, he does not come here before,” she said, climbing back under the sheets. “What’s his name?”
“Fred Nieman.”
“He is a nice-looking boy, but I bet you a dollar—he does not leave the parlor the whole time.” Motka liked to make little bets and she usually won. She opened the flask and took a sip, and then handed it to him. Compared to her warm skin, the silver flask seemed absurdly smooth and hard.
“You really think so?”
She lit her cigarette and exhaled slowly. “He will be right there sitting by that plant—ignoring every girl that talk to him. Big Maud even sit with him a spell, try to make him relax.” Shaking her head, she said, “He just look holes into the carpet.”
“You could see that?”
“Moment I saw him.”
“But not me?”
“You?” She laughed as she placed a hand over him. “You could knock on front door with this stick of wood.”
“Why do you suppose Fred is that way?”
“You the kind that think a lot. He the kind that think too much. Or maybe he has too much Catholic.”
“Not anymore,” Hyde said. He drank some more whiskey before giving her the flask. She took it with the hand that held the cigarette, while her other hand continued to fondle him. Motka was a three-dollar girl, the most expensive in the house, other than Bella Donna, who had been there the longest. Ordinarily you were given a half hour for three dollars; and if you could go more than once in that time, it was an extra dollar for Motka. “How long you been in America?” he asked.
“Four years. I come over at sixteen.”
“From where?”
“Smolensk. Russians throw Jews out. That or they kill you.”
“Pogroms?”
“Yes. Both my parents dead. My brother and sister leave with me, but she die on the ship. First I go to Pittsburgh, then come to Buffalo because my brother, Anton, is here. He has wife and child and does not like much my life here.” She took a drink from the flask. “I cannot blame him. Maybe someday I will not have to live this life. There is either something better, or you are dead. No in-between. Like Clementine.”
“I heard they found her in the canal.”
“She was sweet girl,” Motka said. “Here one day, dead tomorrow. Girls come and go from house like this. And nobody care. The madam tells us never to speak about her.” She tapped her forehead with a finger. “But I remember.”
They didn’t talk for a moment but only passed the whiskey back and forth, while Motka smoked. There was something very deliberate about the way she held her cigarette, how she examined the ash before taking another drag. Her other hand continued to caress and stroke him, and he couldn’t help but watch her small, delicate fingers, which seemed to possess full knowledge of him.
“Why do you think Fred won’t come upstairs?” he asked.
“Who knows? He is afraid?”
“Everyone is afraid.”
“What does he like?”
“I don’t know,” Hyde said. “Whiskey. He likes good whiskey, but not too much. And cigars—he likes a stogie. And he once mentioned trains.”
“Trains?” She crushed her cigarette out in the ashtray she kept on the nightstand. “Maybe he find women ugly? Or maybe he think he is too good for us. Maybe that is his problem.”
“You’re very smart, Motka. Too smart to stay in this place forever.”
“We cannot all be ignorant immigrants.” She threw back the covers and got on her hands and knees, facing toward the foot of the bed. Looking around at him, she said, “Now, for another dollar, I am engine and you be caboose. Like choo-choo train.”
THIS time Norris was early. He liked the fact that Hyde had arrived at their first meeting before him; it suggested that he had good instincts. This is how it goes, little distinctions, small observations. Don’t miss anything. Everything is important. And this time Norris sat in a booth in the back of the Three Brothers Café. When Hyde finally arrived, he was reluctant to sit down. He stared at the folded newspaper on the table.
“You look like you need a good night’s sleep,” Norris said. “Sit, will you?”
Hyde slid into the booth. “You promised more. Five dollars is not enough.”
“You’ll like what’s in this edition, Hyde. Don’t sound so desperate.” He took out his silver cigar case, knife, and box of matches and laid them on the table. “I was wondering, you being an orphan and all, where do boys like you get your name?”
Hyde prepared a cigar, and Norris struck a match. “The nuns just give you a name,” Hyde said once his cigar was lit. “I was left on the steps in an apple crate. The name of the farm was printed on it: Hyde.”
“And the first name?”
“The nuns often gave the boys the names of saints. If you were taken in at the protectory on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, chances were that would be the name they’d put down in their records. But I was a bit of an exception.” Hyde appeared reluctant as his fingers stroked his mustache. “It had to do with the weather. They tell me it was pouring and I was sopping wet. They thought it was a miracle I didn’t drown, so they wrote down Moses.” He took his hand away from his mouth. “But I don’t use it much.”
“Moses Hyde,” Norris said. For a moment, the two men sat in silence, enshrouded in blue smoke. “Tell me about Czolgosz.”
“I lose him,” Hyde said. “He comes and goes. The man does not stay in one place. Sometimes he says he’ll be at a meeting, but he doesn’t show. I ask where he’s been and he laughs and says Chicago or Akron or Columbus. I think he makes a lot of it up. With him there is no difference between the truth and a lie. That is the danger, you see.”
“But—”
“There’s something about him. Or maybe he’s just a lonely man who can’t find decent work. The city’s full of them.”
“Do you think he suspects you?” Norris asked.
“No. He told me that sometimes he goes by the name of Fred C. Nieman. He’s unpredictable. Very quiet, shy. But then after a meeting he’ll talk forever. He can find strange things to laugh about.”
“He drink?”
“Of course. And good stuff, but he’s no drunk.” “Women?”
Hyde almost smiled. “He sees a decent woman on the street and he crosses to the other side to avoid her. That’s the truth. I took him to Big Maud’s but he’s afraid to go upstairs. Sits down in the parlor and listens to the player piano.”
“How do you know? You sit down there with him?”
“No. I lost a dollar bet on it.”
“Maybe his problem is virginity?” Norris asked. “Can’t Big Maud cure that? Something with big pink nipples? Your first time you want to have pink.”
“You’re right,” Hyde said. “I should take him to Big Maud’s again.”
“Listen, I was sent out here from Washington to do a
job, to protect the president. I talk to people like you every day, and every one of them has some conspiracy to sell me. You come to me with one man, Leon Czolgosz, and I’m starting to wonder if this is about nothing more than the act of fornication.”
Hyde was considering the ash on his cigar. Norris sensed he was grappling with something. Hyde would be a good spy if he could only get rid of his conscience—but then without one he wouldn’t be able to get close to people like Czolgosz. The problem was, Hyde still half believed all that socialist crap.
“What is it?” Norris said. “Tell me.”
“He told me he has met Emma Goldman and Abraham Isaak—all the people in Chicago connected to Free Society.”
Norris put both elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Yes, your workers’ bible,” he said. “Emma Goldman often stays at Isaak’s house when she’s in Chicago. We don’t think he’s screwing her. Isaak has a wife and family, but with Emma you never know. How a woman who looks like that can get so many men in the sack, I don’t know. She must talk them into bed.”
“Czolgosz says he saw her speak in Cleveland last spring.”
“That would be the first week of May.” Hyde looked surprised. “We keep tabs.”
“Czolgosz talks about her often.”
“How?”
“It’s like he’s made up his mind about something.”
“And you think Goldman has something to do with this?”
“I don’t know,” Hyde said. “It seems no one gives a speech like her.”
“Red Emma is an ugly little Jew from Lithuania. Maybe she gets up on the stage and raises her skirts? Bends over for the crowd and spreads her fat legs?”
“She believes marriage is a form of enslavement.”
“Maybe she’s not so crazy after all.” Norris smiled, but Hyde didn’t. “What happened between Czolgosz and her?”
“He said in Chicago they rode the train together. In Cleveland she gave him some reading material on the Haymarket martyrs.”
“Martyrs,” Norris said. “You hang people for inciting violence that kills officers of the law and it makes them martyrs. That was Jesus’s role. The rest of them ought to be a message, an example of what you get when you break the law.” Norris finished his coffee and tucked his cigar case inside his coat. In his experience it was usually more effective to keep these meetings brief. “I can’t use this, Hyde. Two people discuss reading material? It’s not against the law. This is a free country, so they can complain about our government all they want.” He started to get out of the booth but then paused. “Jesus, I’m irritable today myself. Maybe I should pay a visit to one of Big Maud’s girls.”
“Czolgosz wants to meet Goldman again.”
“He told you that?” Norris stabbed his cigar out in the ashtray.
Hyde nodded. “You and Czolgosz, you have something in common, you know?”
“Really? What’s that?”
“You are both obsessed with Emma Goldman.”
“You got that right, comrade. I’d like to fuck her good.” Norris slid out of the booth and picked up his newspaper, letting the envelope drop out from its folded pages onto the table. “There’s something extra in there, like I promised. But you listen to me: don’t you lose Leon Czolgosz. Or Fred Nieman. Or whatever he goes by. Keep close to this one. And meet me here tomorrow morning.” Norris turned and walked toward the door.
THE next time they went to Big Maud’s, Czolgosz decided against the whiskey.
“I get it,” Hyde said.
“Do you?”
“Some don’t want to get liquored up,” Hyde said. “They can’t … you know.”
Czolgosz stared at him, helpless.
Hyde seemed to understand. “You want to have all your powers of concentration.”
He went across the parlor to the Russian girl, Motka, and spoke to her a moment before bringing her to the bar. She was so petite compared to the other girls, with their heavy thighs and ample arms. There was a look of expectation on her face that frightened Czolgosz.
“I thought you always went upstairs with her,” Czolgosz said to Hyde.
“It’s all right,” Hyde said. “Tonight you take her upstairs.”
Motka put her hand on Czolgosz’s forearm, startling him. “I’ll make to you a little bet, darling.” She spoke English slowly, with care, trying to compensate for the angularity of her Russian accent. He liked her voice, which was soft and had the slightest quaver, as though she were chilled. It made him want to offer her his coat. “My room is very quiet,” she said. “We can just talk a little—would not you like that?”
Czolgosz looked at Hyde. “A bet?”
“A small wager,” Hyde said. “Just go upstairs. You’ll see.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you are a true comrade,” Czolgosz said.
Hyde shrugged, as though he did not wish to take credit for a small accomplishment.
Motka led Czolgosz out of the parlor and up the staircase, her skirts rustling about her hips as they climbed to the third floor. There, in her room, she had him sit in a straight-back chair and watch as she went around the room lighting candles. She made small talk, about where he was from, how long he’d been in Buffalo, speaking now in a combination of Russian and Polish—and when she hit upon an English phrase it was as though it were a great discovery.
“You are studying English?” he asked when she had all the candles lit.
“I buy an English newspaper every day. I have much used with the dictionary.”
“That’s good,” he said.
“But I do not always buy what I read.” She smiled at her joke, but then with great concern asked, “Is this the correct English word—‘buy’?”
“Yes, very good.”
“Perhaps I should find more lovers who speak English?”
“We can speak only English, if you like.”
She sighed dramatically. “With you, it will be good. So much times I think that a man’s vocabulary to be most limited.” She came over and sat on the bed. Her knees were almost touching his left thigh and he moved his leg away from her. Yet her hair was beautiful in the candlelight and he fought the urge to reach out and touch it. “You like a whiskey?” she asked.
“No.” He coughed into a handkerchief, and then blew his nose.
When she reached out toward his face, he began to withdraw, but then allowed her to lay her hand on his forehead. “You are ill? You seem most warm.”
He started to get up from the chair, but she caught his arm and guided him to sit next to her on the bed. “Is there something I do wrong?”
“No, of course not. It’s just this catarrh.” He leaned back into the pillows, exhausted. “I can’t breathe, and my sinuses hurt. I get headaches so bad they make me dizzy.”
“Is there a favor you want?” she asked. “Just tell me what it is, please. What do you like to do?”
“Do? Well, I like to ride trains.” She stared at his mouth, trying to comprehend what he was saying. “It’s something about the speed, the noise, watching the countryside pass by.”
“Trains,” she said vaguely.
He turned his head away. “What was this bet you made with Hyde?”
“It is of no importance now. I have already won.” He looked at her and she giggled. “It was only for me to get you up to this room.”
“For how much?”
“A dollar. You are disappointed it is not more?”
“No.”
After a moment, she said, “Then let me ask you to do this favor for me?”
“What?”
“Read,” she said. “Read with me. Help me. My pronunciation is—it’s not good, I have been told many times.”
“I can understand you.”
“No. I must make better.”
“What do you want to read?”
“I have newspaper, but it is a week old. You are not interested in old newspapers? What would you have me read, Fred?”
He wiped his nose again with h
is handkerchief. “My name isn’t Fred. It’s not Fred Nieman. It’s Leon Czolgosz.”
She smiled then. “I make false names, too. But this is America and now I know it is no matter. My real name is Motka—Motka Ascher is who I was and who I will be.” She leaned toward him. “You have the interesting blue eyes, Leon Czolgosz. They are most beautiful. Like two dreams. You almost seem in a trance, and when you stare at me I feel—powerless? What makes your eyes to be like that?”
For the first time he smiled. “Because I read a lot. I’ve always liked to read.”
“Will my eyes be like that if I learn to read good English?” “Maybe.”
“What will you have me to read?”
“There’s a book I’ve read over and over for … eight years or so—a novel called Looking Backward. Have you heard of it?”
“We have not time for books here.”
“It’s very popular.”
“One book for eight years? What is it about?”
“A man named Julian West. He lives in Boston, he’s well-to-do. It’s 1877 and there are strikes and workers’ protests everywhere,” he said. “Then he falls asleep—and he wakes up in the year 2000.”
“Two thousand!” She laughed. “That is ninety-nine years from here.”
“Now. From now,” Czolgosz said. “He finds that Americans have reached a solution to all their differences, all their problems, and they’ve done it without some bloody revolution. He discovers a workers’ utopia.” He could tell she didn’t know the meaning of the word. “There is no competition between factories. No difference in salaries. Everyone has enough to eat, a decent place to live.”
Her eyes drifted up to the sloped ceiling above their heads. “Women do not work in houses like this?”
“No,” he said. “Everything is perfect. The strange thing, though, is that Julian West discovers that he has somehow lost his own identity, but he realizes that this is a necessary step, and like everyone else he is happy.”
“Do you think we are headed to this … you-top-e-a?”
“Utopia,” he said. “Yes, maybe it’s a step.”
He reached into his pocket and took out the article he’d been carrying for the last year. Motka watched him unfold it carefully—it was about to fall apart along the creases. Slowly, she read the headline, “Bresci Assassinates King of Italy,” and then leaned away from him. “You knew him?”