Opium and Absinthe: A Novel

by Lydia Kang

  “Oh. Perhaps I could do that,” Ada said. “If you wish.”

  Ada had the utmost difficulty hiding a smile. Lately, Ada had faint dark circles under her eyes from losing sleep, but she also fairly skipped about the house with a tiny mischievous grin. Tillie’d overheard Ada gossiping with the other maids about who danced with whom at the dance halls and who was getting married. Ada seemed afire with having a romance of her own.

  The next day at one o’clock, the doorbell rang, and James was ushered inside. By God, he was handsome: broad of shoulder, slim of waist, with those cheekbones that were sharp as creased paper. How had she not noticed for so long? He wore a fine striped suit with a buttoned vest in forest green. Tillie was ready, wearing a dress of dark aubergine (Mother had allowed her to occasionally skip the black dresses in favor of colors that seemed spun out of mist and storms). He was ushered into the salon, where he greeted her mother and grandmother, dutifully asking about their health. Tillie entered the room and smiled, and James’s face lit at her entrance. He kissed her cheek.

  “You look beautiful. You’re starting to get your bloom back,” he said.

  “I didn’t know I had any to begin with,” Tillie said.

  “You did. Yours is the kind of beauty that has to be searched for, but like any treasure, it’s worth the finding.” He held out his hand. “Shall we?”

  Such a compliment. The attention had its effect of warming Tillie but confusing her as well. He was only just this attentive to Lucy recently. It felt misplaced and wrong. Behind him, her mother and grandmother nodded almost simultaneously with pleasure. Tillie had not received such automatic approval from them both since she had stopped sucking her thumb at age five.

  “Where shall we go?” James said as the door shut behind him. He had a rich equipage waiting at the curb. The balmy air was lovely to inhale. Several hansom cabs trotted by, and an electric car drove painfully slowly down the street.

  “I’ve a favor to ask,” Tillie said. “It’s an odd request, but it will get me a little air and change of scenery.”

  “Oh? Perhaps out to Long Island?”

  “I was thinking more in terms of . . . Tompkins Square Park?”

  James paused and cocked his head. “I’m sorry, where?”

  “Well, near Tompkins. There’s a friend I’d like to call on. If that’s all right with you.”

  “It’s not very . . .” James was looking for the right words, and Tillie knew what he was thinking. The area was dense with German immigrants, pushcart vendors, and beer gardens—the kind visited by the working poor of the neighborhood. It was no glossy green avenue of stately oaks. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go elsewhere? A trip down to the Battery? We might watch the steamships enter the harbor.”

  “No, thank you. It’s nice to see how different parts of the island are evolving, don’t you think?”

  James nodded tepidly. Tillie had actually never had this thought until she said it, but it was true. Manhattan was developing in ways that struck her with awe—or puzzlement. As a child, she wouldn’t have thought that she would see restaurant and theater marquees lit with electric lights all along the Tenderloin district. She had not thought electric cars would hum down the street next to a barouche. Nor had she expected to see the telegraph lines that knifed across the sky being felled with shouts of “Timber!” as the poles were brought down and the lines buried underground, after the horrible blizzard in 1888.

  James’s driver opened the door, and Tillie was surprised to see that the carriage was not empty.

  “Dorrie!” she exclaimed. “Hazel!”

  “Good afternoon, Tillie!” Dorothy said, her face lighting with a smile. She was resplendent in a melon-colored poult-de-soie dress. Hazel was wearing a sober gray poplin, but the striking beauty of her large eyes and rosebud mouth could never quite be hidden. “Hazel and I were returning from a trip to the milliners, and James drove by. He offered us a ride home, but when he said he was coming by to see you, we thought we would surprise you!”

  “Oh,” Tillie said meekly. “Hello.”

  The carriage seated four. Tillie sat beside Hazel and James beside Dorothy. Tillie wondered if Dorothy had planned the seating as such. Not that Tillie wished to be so close to him. But now that they were seated together, it seemed like Dorothy looped her arm in James’s in a certain proprietary way.

  “Mathilda would like to see a friend near Tompkins Square Park,” James said after they were all inside.

  “That far downtown? Really?” Dorothy’s eyebrows rose. “Hazel, isn’t it just like Tillie to be exploring strange new places?”

  “Of course,” Hazel said in her benign way. “Tillie likes to learn.”

  “I suppose we’ll drop you off before we go?” Tillie suggested.

  “But that’s the opposite direction,” Dorothy said. She leaned on James. “The more the merrier! And we’ve missed you so, Tillie.”

  As they rode on, James chatted with Dorothy, who seemed to monopolize his conversation. Hazel leaned toward Tillie.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “A little claustrophobic,” Tillie replied in honesty.

  Hazel smiled. “No, I meant your broken bone.”

  “Oh. It’s all right. It’s far from better.”

  “And how are you otherwise?”

  “Otherwise? Oh.” She meant after Lucy’s death. “I don’t know how to be.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Hazel said and patted her good arm. “You can read pamphlets on how to properly mourn a person. How many weeks before you can stop wearing black and crape. How to do your hair and when to leave a card. But there is really never a guidebook for your heart, is there?”

  Tillie shook her head. “No, there isn’t.” The significance suddenly crept up on her. “Have you lost someone, Hazel?”

  “I have. But not one that I can ever speak of.” She faced the window, her hands unconsciously going to her belly. Had she lost a child? Hazel was not married. She spent all her time catering to Dorothy’s needs. Such was the position of a lady’s companion. She had a roof and good food and good clothing and society, but all for the purpose of keeping Dorothy Harriman content. She was a higher-priced dog with better manners and opposable thumbs.

  The scenery changed outside their window as they passed the southern edge of Central Park. Tillie’s thoughts went to Ian and their walk beneath the arc lamps. She would meet him again soon. Being in this carriage reminded her how easy it was to speak to him. No frills or furbelows regarding etiquette. In this carriage, she was gently being suffocated.

  Dorothy chattered on as they passed the Waldorf-Astoria and, a while later, Madison Square Park. It was green and open, with electric streetcars running down its flanks; what was once swamp and a paupers’ graveyard now boasted a bronze statue of William H. Seward. They turned left onto Broadway and continued past Union Square and its lovely oval green.

  Down at Ninth Street, the city seemed to have folded closer on itself, and life bloomed with vigor. Groceries were crammed next to churches and dry goods stores, with pushcart vendors hawking tins, apples, and trousers to everyone walking by. Children burst around a corner, chasing an india rubber ball. This was Kleindeutschland, where the sounds of chattering German dialects filled the air.

  The Webers’ tenement was one of the nicer ones, perhaps only five years old. The sidewalk outside it was populated with pink-cheeked children. One mother, knitting something of gray wool, spoke rushed German to a cluster of sandy-haired toddlers. Two small mottled dogs fought over a scrap of food.

  “Here we are,” Tillie said as cheerfully as possible.

  “Are you going in there?” Dorothy asked, eyes round as saucers.

  Tillie was here; this was what she had set out to do. But now James was looking as if he might catch his death just by opening the door, and Hazel was quietly taking in their surroundings. Hazel seemed the least surprised by what she saw—it was the gaze of someone who recognized that their life was one
blink away from a different life altogether.

  “I’ll just be a moment. I have to . . . deliver something,” Tillie said. She looked to the driver, who seemed alarmed that he was to let her out here.

  “Oh. Are you doing what Lucy used to do? Bringing some castoffs to the poor? Really, Tillie, it would be safer just to drop them off at a church,” James said. “This was not what I had in mind when your mother and I agreed to allow you some fresh air.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Tillie said. Truth be told, she was terrified. She’d never been in this part of town, never been inside a strange building with strange people. Her hand shook as she readied herself to leave the carriage.

  “James! Go with her,” Hazel said. “She oughtn’t go unaccompanied. Especially—”

  Especially after what happened to Lucy, was what she did not say. Dorothy seemed aghast that Hazel had suggested James leave them.

  “Very well,” James said. He forced a gallant smile.

  As they stepped onto the sidewalk, dodging bits of newspaper that came rolling down the sidewalk like printed tumbleweeds, James placed Tillie’s good arm about his.

  “Stay close. Let’s make this brief, shall we? Where is your parcel?”

  “Well . . .”

  They paused outside the front door of the tenement. The children who had been playing outside, the knitter, all stopped what they were doing to stare at them.

  “I thought you said you brought something to drop off.” He looked about her. “Mathilda. What is going on?”

  “I’m not dropping off a donation. I have to speak to someone here.”

  “Someone is expecting you? Here?”

  If she told him the truth, he might tell her parents. He might frog-march her back into the carriage and right back home. But there was no other way.

  “I’ve come to ask the family of Albert Weber how he died. He’s the lad who was killed the same way Lucy was.” James’s mouth opened, and she pushed the words out before he could chastise her. “I can’t sit still without knowing what happened to her. I have to know. I must.”

  James closed his mouth. He arched his back to examine the facade of the tenement—brown and dingy, but with windows open and laundry cheerfully waving outside. The children were now racing crickets on strings down the pavement, and the knitting lady had disappeared.

  “This is madness, Mathilda. Let the police do their job.”

  “They haven’t done anything. The person who did this to Lucy has taken the life of a child now. I can’t stand idly by. I cannot.”

  James looked at her appraisingly, somewhere between the glance one might give a raw diamond, estimating its worth, and a pile of horse manure on the street, wondering if it could be avoided.

  “Very well. I won’t stop you,” he said at last. “And I won’t tell anyone, as long as I can accompany you on these ventures. I’ll not lose you like I lost Lucy.”

  Tillie felt her face untwist into a smile that surely lit the day. James opened the front door of the tenement, and the darkness inside swallowed them. A stench rose from deeper within, and they strode forward, their footsteps moist beneath their soles. The hallway was strewn with discarded newspapers, and black dirt caked the corners and floors. Tobacco spittle stained the once-cream-colored walls.

  James held on to her arm tightly as they maneuvered up the stairs. On the fourth floor, they both paused to catch their breath. There were four apartments. Tillie knocked on the first she saw, hoping it was the right one.

  A woman answered the door. She was middle aged with light-brown hair combed tightly back from her head. She had the wrung-out look and red-lined eyes of someone who had been crying for days.

  Mrs. Weber. It must be.

  “Yes?” she asked. A man with brown hair and a beard appeared at her elbow, tall but bowed over, as if he’d spent a lifetime chopping logs.

  The man spoke. “Was ist das? Wer sind diese Leute?”

  “Mrs. Weber? My name is Tillie Pembroke, and this is James Cutter. May we speak to you? About your son Albert?” Tillie asked.

  “No. We already spoke to the police.” She had a strong German accent. When Tillie hesitated, she began to shut the door.

  Tillie put her hand out. “Please. My sister—she died the same way. I just have a few questions. Please.”

  The door halted its closing. The lady’s eyes still shone, blue and clear as glass in their red rims. James seemed so out of his element that he’d temporarily lost his ability to speak.

  The woman opened the door. “After this, no more callers.”

  Inside was a small room that seemed to act as kitchen, dining room, sewing station, playroom, and bedroom. Or at least, one bedroom. Two doors led to other rooms, and Tillie could hear the sounds of children within them. The walls were papered with a repeating pattern of clocks, an onerous reminder to hurry, hurry, hurry. Smoke stains from the cookstove darkened the paper, which peeled near the ceiling. A whatnot stood in the corner, holding a single framed photo of a fuzzy couple and a few figurines centered with care on embroidered linen circles.

  Tillie was overwhelmed by the poverty of the room. She wished she had brought something—food, perhaps, or a blanket, or even sewing thread, the way Lucy would have done. Why, the food we don’t finish at our supper could feed this whole family for a day, she thought. And yet, Mrs. Weber had a straightness to her posture that read self-sufficiency. Her clothes were old yet very clean. In a glance, Tillie could see that she was the caretaker of her children, a strong worker, a provider for their bleak and tiny pantry. There was no time to mourn, but she must somehow mourn nevertheless, in the fractions of her day.

  “Sit,” the woman said as her husband disappeared into another room. “We talk together, and then no more. Too many visitors. I have work to do. Sit.” She gestured to a chair.

  “Thank you. We won’t take much of your time,” Tillie said, sitting. James stood behind her, like a human backrest. “Who else has been visiting? The police?”

  A tiny explosion of laughter issued from a room behind them. One small child, about four, ran out screaming in glee and hid behind her mother’s apron.

  Another child followed—a boy, about six, sitting astride a man who ambled in on all fours, the horse to the child’s “Giddy! Giddy!” As the man/horse looked up, Tillie jumped out of her seat in surprise.

  “Ian!” she exclaimed.

  CHAPTER 11

  How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.

  —Lucy Westenra

  “What are you doing here?” Tillie asked, all astonishment.

  Ian startled and tapped the leg of the boy on his back. “Das reicht jetzt, Carl,” he said. The boy tumbled off and ran after his sister into the corner, where they began playing with a few tin soldiers. Ian slowly got to his feet, not bothering to wipe the dust from his knees and hands.

  “What are you doing here?” Ian said.

  “That’s what I asked you.”

  “I think we have the same answer,” Ian said, smirking.

  James cleared his throat.

  “Oh,” Tillie said, hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. James Cutter, this is Ian Metzger.”

  “How do you know Tillie?” Ian asked. There was a slight edge to his voice.

  “You mean Miss Pembroke?” James replied icily.

  Tillie felt her face grow hot and her heart throb from discomfort. “Ian, James is . . . was . . . Lucy’s fiancé. James, Ian is . . . he’s . . .”

  “I sell papers,” Ian said, shaking James’s hand. James discreetly wiped his hand on his jacket.

  “Sit.” Mrs. Weber motioned to everyone. There was only one other chair available, so James and Ian had to content themselves with sitting too close to each other on a decrepit chaise longue by the window. They gave each other wary glances. “Five minutes. Then I must work.”

  “I didn’t know that you and Mr. Metzger were acqu
ainted,” Tillie began.

  “We weren’t until about ten minutes ago, but her kids kept interrupting, so . . .” Ian shrugged. “Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?”

  Mrs. Weber nodded. “I tell you what I tell police,” she began. “Albert is very sick for months, after eating some food brought by his uncle in Germany. His stomach is very bad. My medicine does not work. So I take him to the drugstore, and still the medicines do not work. We try leeches, calomel. Then, Durchfall. So much Durchfall. We try new medicine, new drink. Smells like . . . what is word? Lakritze. Is green color.”

  “Absinthe?” Tillie asked. Ian caught her eye, and he frowned.

  “I don’t know the name. People say wormwood is good?” Mrs. Weber shrugged. From another room, Mr. Weber spoke angrily in German, and there was a thump on the wall. “And then Albert, he gets better. He gain weight, he look good. He plays on the street with the other children. A man gives some children some sugar candy, and Albert, he goes away. We look everywhere. And next day, they find him by the reservoir. Leer. Kein Blut.”

  Ian translated. “Empty. No blood.”

  “And the police? Do they know who did it?”

  “Well, the man who gave the children candy, this is what we think.” Mrs. Weber looked at a clock on the wall. It had only an hour hand; it was nearly three o’clock.

  “What did the man look like?” James asked.

  “The children say, hunched over. Wears an old hat, says not much, only offer candy. But Albert went to him quickly, like he knows this man. We were upstairs when he gone.”

  “It was daytime?” Tillie asked.

  “Yes. Late afternoon.”

  “And Albert had bites too? On his neck?” Tillie curved her fingers, like fangs about to bite.

  “Yes. We think, der Vampir. Der Blutsauger. We not think they are here, in America.”

  “You think they are real?”

  “Stories, they always come from somewhere,” Mrs. Weber said. She stood up. “And now, I must work. Please.” She indicated the door. Tillie, the last to exit the tiny apartment, turned and gripped the door.