“We know that, lad.” the sergeant nodded. “That you Yids hate Hitler makes sense to us, all right. But there’s no point in your going on about not belonging to the lrgun.”
The Captain held up the IRA leaflets and the crudely carbon-copied small-arms manual by Raziel. “We found these items in your closet, Mr. Kolesnikoff.”
“All right,” Herschel sighed. “1 flirted with the idea of joining the lrgun. But I never did join, honestly.”
The sergeant and the captain exchanged weary smiles. “We have two witnesses, Mr. Kolesnikoff,” the young officer said. “The rug merchant has already come by—you were unconscious—to identify you as the man who threw the grenades.”
Herschel stared, dumfounded, sick at heart. Up until now he had entertained a hope of talking himself out of this mess. Now that hope was gone. That the rug merchant might identify him Herschel could understand, but how did the police manage to nab him in the first place. “You said there were two witnesses?”
“Aye, lad,” the sergeant replied. “An Arab at the scene identified you by name.”
“But how?” Herschel cried out. “That’s not possible.”
“Lad, the two witnesses support one another, don’t you see? We’ve got you.”
“Now then, let’s have that list of names,” the captain said.
“I’m not going to tell you anything.”
The sergeant and the captain exchanged glances. “What the hell, lad.” The sergeant gave him a comradely pat on the shoulder. “There’s no real hurry. We can postpone your hearing for as long as we like. We’ll let you stew over your predicament for a while. Let you talk with your mother—oh, yes, your mother’s fine. Perhaps she can talk some sense into you. Cooperation with us might rescue you from the gallows.”
No longer any point in pretending, Herschel thought. “As an lrgun soldier I demand to be treated as a prisoner of war.”
“That’s not likely,” the sergeant said almost kindly. “If it were up to me—” He shrugged. “It’s true you lrgun blokes have yet to hurt a British subject, and I appreciate the fact that you personally volunteered. It’s a pity you didn’t think of it before you threw those bloody grenades.”
Herschel felt worse faced with sympathy than with bluster. He began the lrgun anthem. “In blood and fire did Judaea fall/In blood and fire Judaea shall rise again.”
“Perhaps,” the captain acknowledged brightly, “but unless you supply us the information we’re after, you shan’t live to see it, Mr. Kolesnikoff.”
“Kol,” Herschel said fiercely. “My name is Herschel Kol.”
The captain smiled thinly. “Quite. When the time comes, we shall see to it that the hangman gets it correct, won’t we, sergeant?”
Chapter 30
New York
It had long been Abe Herodetzky’s habit to sit in his rocking chair behind the meat counter and study the newspapers for mention of Palestine. With Becky handling things up front he often had an uninterrupted hour early in the morning to skim the English-language papers and then peruse the Yiddish press. The American papers ran little about what was happening over there, but the Forward and especially the Freiheit offered regular dispatches from the Holy Land.
The Freiheit was the Jewish Communist paper, and while Abe despised the Communists for what they were doing to the unions, he bought the paper for its coverage of Palestine. Ever since the Palestinian Zionists staged the bombing reprisals against the Arabs, the anti-Zionist Frieheit—despite Stalin’s devil pact with Hitler the Communists insisted that post-revolutionary Russia was the Jews’ Promised Land—afforded expanded coverage of the British administration’s efforts to “track down the terrorist fanatics.”
“Father,” Becky called for the third time. Giving up, she left her place behind the counter and walked back to the meat counter. “What’s wrong?” she demanded. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?” She stopped abruptly. Her father was ghost-white. He was staring at his newspaper like a man reading his own obituary. “Father, are you ill? What is it?”
Abe looked up at her and chuckled. “Nothing. I’m fine.” He breathed deeply and laughed again. “I gave myself a good scare, that’s all.” He gestured to his daughter to come around the counter and read over his shoulder. “See here? Look what it says: Herschel Kol, just like in Kolesnikoff, yes Becky? I was reading about this poor fellow who got arrested for blowing up the Arabs, and then I got to his name and for a moment—”
“In your head you thought his name was Kolesnikoff.” Becky murmured. “Oh, I’m sorry . . .”
Her father had long ago confided in her that he studied the papers not out of Zionist fervor but because he still held onto the hope of finding mention of Haim. “One day his name—with a picture—will be in there,” her father predicted, wagging his finger. “With my luck the day I don’t buy will be the day it gets published.”
Becky scanned the article. It seemed that the man had yet to be sentenced. There was some flap about his being the grandson of a deceased famous painter, once a big shot in England, for that matter. Considering his crime, the young man’s heritage made for a good story. The British were afraid that if they hanged their prisoner, the publicity would exacerbate a sensitive political situation.
“Look, Becky,” Abe grumbled. “These Commies are saying the young man did it because he came from a wealthy background. They say that a boy from an honest worker background would never do such a thing.” Disgusted, he quit reading to crumple the paper into a ball. “Now, why were you calling me?”
“Just to remind you that I’ve got something to attend to this afternoon.”
“What, today? You’re leaving me alone in the store today?” Abe frowned, shaking his head. He remembered the crumpled newsprint still in his hand and set to work polishing the slanted glass windows of the meat counter. “You can’t go today. You know the freezer is coming.”
“Oh, Father, you can handle it.” The General Foods wholesaler was supplying the store with a small freezer to display frozen packages of fruits and vegetables labeled “Birdseye.” Abe had made room for the freezer by tearing out some of the old wooden produce bins.
“All right, go,” Abe said with a long-suffering sigh. “I’ll manage.”
At one o’clock Becky untied her apron and went upstairs to change her clothes. She’d been giving careful thought to her clothes for the last few days, so there was no indecision as she shucked off her skirt and sweater and put on her best navy blue dress with its white collar. Her best shoes were brown and low-heeled, but they would have to do. Becky sighed. At least they matched her coat, if not her dress.
She turned on the radio and absently hummed along as she looked at herself in the vanity mirror. She had no makeup of her own, but the drawers of the vanity were filled with her mother’s cosmetics. She selected a lipstick and carefully put it on, then peered doubtfully at her reflection.
She could not remember when she had last thought to wear makeup. She no longer attended school, had no beaus; there was no call for it in the store. There had been nobody to teach her how to put it on; all she had to go by were the photographs in the magazines.
Becky turned away from the mirror, feeling depressed. She was certainly no glamor girl. Her nose was too big, for one thing, and she was far too fat. Compared to the angels in strapless evening gowns who filled the society pages, she was a cow. But at least her lipstick was on straight and her hair was clean and shiny. She was so happy she’d found the gumption to defy her father and have it cut into a fashionable shoulder-length page-boy.
She grabbed her coat and purse and was halfway down the stairs before she remembered the radio. She hurried back to the apartment to cut off the warbling and then thought to wonder about the time. The alarm clock in her bedroom read a quarter past two. She’d frittered away over an hour at the vanity, as if all the lipstick in the world could help her if she was late.
She flew down the stairs and rushed through the store, stopping at the ca
sh register for a dollar. She hated taking money, whether it was to buy something for herself or just to have a little in her purse. Her father never commented on it, but he never failed to notice and winced at the amount, however small, as if his heart had begun to act up.
Today she had no choice. She had to have carfare if she was to be on time.
“I’ll try to get back before it gets busy,” she called to her father, who nodded morosely. She hurried out the door.
She took the subway to Fourteenth Street. As she rode she went over her strategy, trying to bolster her flagging courage. If this worked out, she would find the resolve to stand up to her father. He’d have no choice but to allow Danny to help out after school and on Saturdays.
She got out at her station and skipped up the stairs to street level. She ran the few blocks to Malden’s, the sprawling five-and-ten, crossed her fingers and searched the store’s plate glass windows. The small sign was still there. “Applications to be accepted for part-time sales clerks,” it read, and then the succinct instructions to apply on today’s date at three o’clock.
Inside Becky negotiated the maze of aisles through Notions, past Dress Goods, Costume Jewelry, Clocks, Hosiery, Stationery. She began to panic. It was just a few minutes before three. Where was Personnel?
“Help you, sweetie?” It was a matronly woman with silver hair and a badge that read “Floor Supervisor.”
“Oh, please,” Becky gasped, breathless with anxiety, “the personnel department?”
The light died in the older woman’s eyes. “Straight back, sweetie, just after Domestics. When you get there you can follow the thundering herd.”
“You mean, somebody’s here before me?”
“You poor kids.” The woman clucked sympathetically. “Go on, you’ve no chance at all standing here.”
“Thanks,” Becky called, hurrying off. In Domestics a woman dusting throw pillows directed her to a set of double doors marked “employees only.” Becky pushed through into pandemonium.
At least a hundred and fifty women from adolescents to grandmothers were crowded in like cattle in a box car, chattering to each other as they filled out applications with pencils tethered to clipboards. There were only three short rows of folding chairs and the women who’d claimed them showed no signs of budging. A woman tapped Becky on the shoulder and thrust a clipboard into her hands.
“Fill it out and wait till you’re called,” she said, her eyes darting past Becky toward the two women who had just come through the double doors behind her. “Move to the front,” she ordered. “Make way for the rest.”
At the opposite end of the room a bald, fat, weary-looking man in a three-piece suit sat behind a desk smoking a cigar. “It’s three o’clock,” the man called out, his tone harried. “I’ll be interviewing those with experience first.”
This is hopeless, Becky thought. I don’t have a chance. She began to burn with humiliation, pondering how naive she must have seemed to that floor supervisor—“. . . Somebody here before me?”
Furious, she bore down hard with her pencil as she began to fill in the application. Before she had finished printing her name the lead point broke. She looked around for the woman in charge of the clipboards and noticed a young man carrying a sign under his arm come from an interior office. The sign was of similar size and shape to the one Becky had seen in the store’s front window. She craned her neck, trying to read what it said. “Shipping,” “wanted” and “apply” were the only words she could decipher before he was past her.
She made her decision in an instant and dropped her clipboard to the floor to stride out of bedlam. There was no point in waiting around here; they’d fill the job before they ever got to her.
She made her way to the basement, past House Furnishings and through the dented steel doors to shipping.
It was a man’s job she was going after, of course. A woman had no more business working in inventory or on the loading docks than a man had on the sales floor, but down here at least she could talk to the man who ran the department. If she talked fast, perhaps she could demonstrate her knowledge of ledgers, of packing and unpacking goods—if he’d just give her the chance she’d lift something for him and her best dress be damned. She lifted heavy boxes in the store all the time, especially since her father’s heart condition was worse. She doubted that Malden’s sold anything much heavier than a cardboard carton containing three dozen ten-and-a-half-ounce cans of condensed soup.
The shipping and loading areas, which were closed to the public, differed greatly from the rest of the store. Here illumination was provided by bare bulbs encased in wire, and the institutional green paint on the cinder block walls was chipped and peeling. Wooden pallets of goods were stacked to the ceiling. The loading bays, where the trucks pulled in, were up ahead. Becky heard the lusty shouts of men calling and joking with one another. These were men who relied on the strength of their backs to earn a living. They swore, they spat; they probably forgot women existed for the eight-hour workday.
Of course Becky knew she had one chance in a million of getting a shipping clerk’s job. Even if by some miracle she managed to persuade the supervisor to hire her, management still had to agree to it. No, she was over-optimistic; her chances were closer to one in a billion.
But at least she would have the satisfaction of knowing that she’d tried everything. For the past couple of days she’d been able to entertain a wonderful dream of breaking free of the Cherry Street Market and starting an exciting new life of her own. That had ended now, but even if she did have to admit to failure, she was going to try everything.
“Hey, lady, you ain’t supposed to be back here.”
Becky ignored the shout and hurried toward the wide open bays of the loading dock. She saw two men talking as workers hurried to unload the cargo from several trucks backed up to the docks. One of them was older-looking and had close-cropped reddish-brown hair and silver-rimmed glasses. He was dressed in sturdy work clothes and a necktie. Holding a clipboard he unconcernedly puffed away on a briar pipe. Becky had spent enough time at the grocery wholesalers to recognize the boss when she saw him.
It was the man he was talking to Becky couldn’t place. He was in his early thirties, of middling height and wearing a splendid tweed suit with pleated trousers and a jacket with a belt in the back. He was clean-shaven, but even from a distance Becky could discern the blue-black shadow of his heavy beard along the strong line of his jaw. His hair was charmingly tousled, thick and black. There was a glossy sheen to it beneath the overhead lights.
He’s got to be a salesman, Becky decided. Nobody employed at Malden’s five-and-dime could possibly earn enough to afford a suit like that.
At that moment the well-dressed man noticed her. His hazel eyes stared into hers for a moment. He smiled and tapped the pipe smoker on the shoulder, pointing in her direction.
The manager glanced her way, did a double take and stared. “You shouldn’t be around here, miss. Did you lose your way?”
Becky took a step forward. “Hold it right there,” the manager squawked. “Don’t come past that there yellow line painted on the floor. There’s heavy loads here. This is no place for a woman.”
Oh, God, Becky thought. All around was the noise of bantering men, thudding boxes, idling truck motors. A driver, grown impatient, began to lean on his horn.
“Hey, I think you’ve scared her,” the man in the suit chided the manager.
“No, I’m not scared,” Becky shouted, trying to make her voice carry over the commotion. “I’ve come to apply for the job.”
Suddenly there was silence all around as the men stopped what they were doing. She could feel them staring at her. Only the impatient truck driver, who’d not heard, continued to lean on his horn. “Cut that,” the man in the suit commanded. The honking ceased.
“Honestly, mister,” Becky said to the manager, “I can handle this kind of work.” She realized that she was still shouting, and lowered her tone. “I mean, if yo
u needed someone to sort out the manifests or—”
Behind her, someone had started to laugh. “Yeah, Charlie, why don’t you hire her? We wouldn’t mind a skirt around the place.”
Others joined in the laughter. Becky felt herself blushing, and cursed everything—emotions, gender, parents—that a person could not control.
“Hey.” The man in the suit swept his hazel eyes around the room and the laughter died down. He regarded Becky. “Come here.”
Becky cautiously eyed the supervisor, but his downcast expression combined with his sudden preoccupation with his pipe told her that in this particular instance he was not in charge.
As Becky approached, the other man cocked his index finger in her direction. “Ain’t you Abie Herodetzky’s little girl?”
“She ain’t little no more,” one of the workmen cracked.
“Hey, wiseacre,” the man snapped, “get back to work.”
“Yeah, everyone, back at it!” the supervisor echoed. He nodded at Becky. “You’ll see to the young lady and show her out?”
“Yeah, Max. Don’t worry about it, all right?” He turned to Becky as Max walked off. “You shouldn’t put Max on the spot like that. He’s okay, but he can’t hire you. You gotta understand that—” he closed his eyes, snapping his fingers, “—Rebecca, right?” When she nodded, he continued, “Yeah. Becky, they call you. I never forget a name, not when it belongs to somebody in the neighborhood.”
“Why don’t I recognize you?”
“Well, I’ve only been in a few times, buying smokes or chewing gum, you know? Anyway, usually I come by when your father’s around. We discuss business.”
“With my father?” Becky asked, puzzled. “What sort of business are you in?”
“Trucking,” he said smugly, rocking on the heels of his two-tone suede bucks, his hands thrust into his pants pockets.
Becky giggled. “You mean, ‘trucking’ like in dancing?”
He laughed. “Right, trucking.” He launched into a finger-waving, hip-rolling dance step, his two-tones moving quick as lightning across the rough concrete flooring of the loading dock. Becky offered a mile-wide smile in appreciation.
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