“The man I owe is no joke. You’ll have him to thank for scaring me straight. If he doesn’t get the money on time, he’ll come after me. I don’t want to get hurt, and I don’t think you do either. If, by chance, you should happen to be home and get in the way.”
Anger licked through Kristof. “If I’m in danger because of your mistakes, it won’t stop there. We have neighbors, Gregor. We all live in the same building. Think of that! Sylvie and Rose, Karl and Anna Hoffman. Women and old people! Even Tessa Garibaldi, the girl who works at the bookshop, could be at risk. Because of you.”
Gregor blanched. “I never intended to involve you in any of this, let alone all of them. I never thought—”
“No, you didn’t. You never thought. It seems I’m still doing all the thinking for you.” The rescuing, too. For what choice did Kristof have but to bail him out? He forced himself to take a spoonful of his cherry soup, then another, waiting for more of Gregor’s excuses. He was already calculating how far his own savings would go to cover rent and food for both of them for the next few months.
“Losing my job—our jobs—wasn’t my fault,” Gregor said. “I could have handled this if it weren’t for that.” He cut and stabbed a bite of the crepe. “I don’t want to need you right now, but I do. Please. Just do this one thing for me, and I’ll never gamble again.”
Several beats passed while Kristof studied him, allowing his brother to squirm. Gregor was far too old to behave with the recklessness of an adolescent. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to deny a lifeline to a drowning man, no matter that Gregor had sabotaged his own well-being with foolishness. Besides, this wasn’t just any man. Gregor was family. The only family Kristof had left.
At last, he spoke. “How much?”
Gregor named the sum.
Kristof leaned back in his chair, stared at the open timber beams of the ceiling, and prayed for patience while he mastered his composure. Gregor ought to feel the consequences of his poor decisions. But this time he wouldn’t be the only one paying.
“All right,” Kristof said. “I’ll cover it, but now the man you owe is me.”
A smile pushed brackets into Gregor’s cheeks. He reached out and grasped Kristof’s shoulder. “Fine, yes, thank you. At least you won’t break my legs if I need more time to pay you back, yes?”
“I’d settle for breaking your bad habit.”
Gregor laughed at that, then made quick work of finishing his meal. “I think I’ll celebrate.”
The color returning to his face, he pulled out his violin case and freed his instrument. Before Kristof could persuade him otherwise, he bounded up on stage and improvised a harmony to the Gypsy violinist, making the man’s solo a duet.
Kristof watched in genuine awe as the Gypsy eventually bowed out of the spotlight with good humor, allowing Gregor to command center stage. And command it he did. The thrum of the café died away as everyone fell under his spell. Diners forgot their food and clapped in time to the magic coming from Gregor’s strings.
However Gregor played, in music and in life, Kristof returned to the same refrain: they were brothers. And Kristof wouldn’t give up on family.
CHAPTER THREE
MONDAY, AUGUST 7, 1893
Sylvie tried not to breathe deeply. Halsted Street, especially in August, had that effect on people. This southern portion of the road, a few blocks west of the Chicago River’s south branch, bordered immigrant colonies the city didn’t often service. Trash built up in people’s front yards while privies crowded the backs. After the weekend’s heavy rain, some of the pine blocks that paved the street had broken loose and floated around, leaving gaping holes in the road. The sewage-contaminated rainwater made puddles that smelled so horrid they made Sylvie’s eyes water.
Rose didn’t complain, but her footsteps quickened on the slimy wooden sidewalk. In an effort not to stand out too much, the pale pink shirtwaist she wore was one of her simplest, the sleeves slim. Sylvie kept pace with her as they passed shops lining the street. A red-and-white-striped pole marked a barbershop, and a large glass globe filled with colored water indicated the drugstore. A brightly painted wooden Indian stood outside the cigar shop. Behind all of these establishments were overcrowded tenements, none of which were graced by a single tree or blade of grass.
At half past seven in the evening, peddlers still called out over children playing in the street.
Shiny red apples, come out and see!
Any rags, any bottles, any junk today?
Ripe bananas, five cents a dozen!
Just before reaching Hull House at 800 Halsted Street, Sylvie and Rose turned onto Polk Street and entered the Hull House coffeehouse, where the theater group met.
With the windows closed against the summer stench, the air inside was even more humid than it was outside. But most of the Hull House Players were used to it.
“Sylvie! Rose!” Beth Wright waved them over to where she shared a long wooden table with another woman of middling years. “I’d like to introduce you to someone before practice begins.”
The rich smell of coffee flavored the air. The woman with Beth held herself with excellent posture. Her ash-blond hair was in a perfect chignon.
“This is Jozefa Zielinski, the actress from partitioned Poland,” Beth said.
“Of course!” Sylvie greeted Miss Zielinski, feeling rather plain in her sensible brown dress compared to this European fashion plate. “So lovely to meet you at last. I’m Sylvia Townsend, but call me Sylvie. And this is my daughter, Rose.”
Miss Zielinski bestowed a warm smile on both of them. “And you must call me Jozefa.” Her English was excellent, her accent charming.
Rose offered her hand, as well. “Pleasure to meet you. And I’m not really her daughter. That’s just something she likes to say. She calls me Rose, and I don’t mind it, really, but my real name is Rozalia, and I’m Polish, just like you.”
Sylvie felt the color drain from her face.
“Who’s thirsty?” Beth cut in, her voice a little too bright. “Coffee? Water? Tea?”
As soon as she bustled away with an order, Jozefa leaned closer. “So, the two of you are not family?”
“Of course we are,” Sylvie insisted. Rose was the only child she would ever have.
With both Jozefa and Rose staring at her, Sylvie swallowed.
“It’s true she’s Polish.” Briefly, she explained the circumstances that led to Rose becoming part of her life.
“So, you just took her from her father?” Jozefa asked.
Sylvie studied the actress, trying to register the question. “Against his will? I would never do that. Before he died, he asked me to promise I’d raise her as my own, and it has been my greatest joy to do so.” She had promised to keep Rose safe. All these years later, she was still trying to keep that promise.
Beth whisked back and set a tray on the table, handing a water to Rose and coffees to Sylvie and Jozefa. The glazed earthenware mugs were the color of new buds in spring. Beth excused herself again, and Sylvie slipped her fingers through the handle and drank. A hot beverage on a hot day was far from refreshing, but she hoped it would bring clarity of mind.
Rose ran a fingertip around the rim of her water glass. “In Chicago, even small children could have gone to work in the factories or lived on the streets if they weren’t in a family or an orphanage,” she explained. “So I went with her, where she let me do light housework. I don’t remember what I did to earn my keep. I wasn’t afraid of replacing my parents when I moved in because she wasn’t married. It was just her and her father.”
This story wasn’t the way Sylvie remembered it. “That’s not all you did,” she said. “You learned to read, you went to school. You helped me in the bookshop. You were never just a servant to me. Never. We cherished you.” She thought she’d made that clear. She had treated Rose like her own daughter for more than a decade. With Meg’s family, Rose also had an aunt, uncle, and three cousins who adored her. Before Sylvie’s father died, he was as
much a grandfather to Rose as he’d ever been to Meg’s children. “I may have saved you from a life of poverty, but you saved me from a poverty of soul. I have always loved you with a mother’s love.”
“How would you know?” Rose bit her lip.
Sylvie stilled. “I’m going to forget you said that.”
More young people from the neighborhood poured into the coffeehouse, swapping greetings in Italian, Dutch, Bohemian, Russian, and English. Their voices dimmed in Sylvie’s ears.
Rose frowned. “It’s just that I’m not a Townsend, I’m—”
“A Dabrowski,” Jozefa said. “Rozalia Dabrowski. Yes?”
“That’s right.” Rose locked her gaze with Jozefa’s.
Sylvie pushed her mug away. “I’m sorry, how do you know her last name?”
“She didn’t tell you?” Jozefa clucked her tongue.
“I was going to.” Rose slid Sylvie a guilty glance. “I wrote a notice and gave it to the special information bureau and the general headquarters for World’s Fair visitors from Poland. An advertisement, really, for them to put in their bulletins. It says my name and my parents’ names, our birth dates, and when my family came to Chicago. I asked for anyone who had any information about my relatives to write me at our address. I may never hear anything, but I had to try. It seems the whole world is coming to Chicago. It could be the best chance I’ll ever have of finding a real connection.”
Sylvie marveled at Rose’s resourcefulness even as she tried to deny the sting it brought her. “So you saw this notice,” she said to Jozefa.
“I never forget a name.”
Rose took a drink of her water and dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “You understand, though, don’t you, Mimi? I’m almost eighteen years old. I’d like to find my real family before it’s time to make one of my own.”
Sylvie nodded. On an intellectual level, she did understand. But on a deeper level, all she could think was that their little family of two had been real to her. And now it was falling apart.
“It’s time for practice to begin.” Rose stood, smoothing her skirt away from her belted waist. “Jozefa, I hope you’ve come to advise us.”
“I am at your service, my dear.”
Sylvie watched as the Hull House Players finished clearing some long tables out of the way, then acted out a scene from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. About a dozen actors practiced tonight, aged from fifteen to twenty-two years old. Beth stepped aside as theater director and allowed Jozefa freedom to coach. Following every piece of advice offered, Rose bloomed under the attention. Beth scribbled notes in the margins of her playbook, copper curls bouncing beside her jaw.
The coffee was tepid by the time Sylvie thought to try drinking it again. She pulled from her bag a well-worn copy of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, the current selection for the Hull House Readers Club. Their meetings were also on Monday evenings, after the Hull House Players’ practice, to allow those who wanted, like Rose, to participate in both. Rose was the only player who didn’t live in the neighborhood. But since she’d been coming here for so long with Sylvie, they let her act with them.
Before Sylvie opened her book, a familiar face caught her eye. Twenty-five-year-old Ivan Mazurek leaned against the wall, his folded arms brawny from laboring at the stockyards. Sylvie had known his family for years. She watched him, ready to wave should he look her way.
He didn’t. His walnut-brown hair was combed to one side, and a fresh nick on his cheek betrayed that he’d recently shaved. Frankly, Sylvie was surprised to see him here. If he was still as frugal as he’d always been, he’d never spend money at the coffeeshop, and she’d never known him to be interested in Shakespeare. He attended Readers Club but didn’t comment on the text.
Curious, she followed Ivan’s line of sight to Rose, who seemed completely oblivious to him. All the better.
Sylvie laced her fingers around her mug. Was this man a potential suitor for her daughter? He was Polish, but that alone did not make a match. In fact, Sylvie wasn’t convinced Rose needed a match at all. One’s happiness and fulfillment didn’t depend on it, at any rate. A truth Sylvie’s own life proved.
Giving it no further thought, she opened her novel and immersed herself in the story.
She was deep into Revolutionary Paris via Charles Dickens by the time practice ended and Rose returned to the table, glowing. Jozefa and Beth came right behind her.
“Will you come again, Jozefa?” Rose asked, and Beth echoed the invitation.
“Perhaps I will.” Jozefa smoothed her hair and brushed at a wrinkle in her skirt. “And perhaps next week I’ll come properly pressed, as well.”
“Where are you staying, Jozefa?” Sylvie tucked her book into her bag and stood. “Are the valet services inadequate?”
“My reservation is with the Palmer House, on the European plan.”
Sylvie’s brows lifted in surprise before she could hide her reaction. Then again, not all rooms at the hotel were as expensive as others, and the European plan meant Jozefa would find her own meals rather than eating each one at the hotel on the American plan. Still, she hadn’t realized the actress had the means to stay at the Palmer for an extended period of time. Perhaps Bertha Palmer, wife of the hotel owner and the director of the Fair’s Board of Lady Managers, had arranged a special rate for speakers at the Woman’s Building. It was the sort of thing she would do.
“But there’s been a mistake with the dates of my lodging,” Jozefa went on. “They weren’t expecting me until next Monday.”
Beth’s face screwed tight. “So where have you been sleeping, the broom closet?” She snorted when she laughed.
A hint of a smile tilted Jozefa’s lips. “Not quite. The Palmer staff referred me to the Sherman House while I wait for my room to open at the Palmer, but the Sherman is full up, too. Still, they’ve given me a cot and a corner of the lobby, among several other cot-sleepers. In Chicago during the World’s Fair, it seems there is literally no room at the inn.”
“Oh no.” Sylvie felt her cheeks flush at the thought of an international guest being treated this way.
Rose gasped. “That’s terrible! The Sherman House is just down the block from us.” She clutched Sylvie’s arm. “She can stay with us, instead, can’t she, Mimi?”
Before Sylvie could reply, Jozefa broke in. “I couldn’t impose.”
“Nonsense.” Rose turned back to Sylvie, pleading. “She can have my bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa. I don’t mind at all, and I’ll help with all the cooking, I promise.”
Beth lowered her voice. “If you don’t mind, Sylvie, it really would be a step up from a cot. I’d take her in myself if I had any room to spare.”
“Of course,” Sylvie said, and she meant it. After all, she had been the one to invite Jozefa to come at her own expense, which was no small sum. “It’s the least I can do, and we really are neighbors to the Sherman House. What we have isn’t fancy, but it’s home, and you’re welcome to it.”
Rose hugged Sylvie with a spontaneity that called to mind years past, when affections between them were freely bestowed and received. Heart in her throat, Sylvie held her daughter, then let her go.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1893
If Sylvie’s pulse skittered with excitement, she could only imagine how Rose felt as they sat with Kristof at a table near the restaurant’s entrance. She could scarcely believe it had worked. But here they were, waiting for a man who had answered Rose’s notice searching for her Polish roots. Wiktor Janik hailed from the Dabrowskis’ hometown of Wloclawek, Poland.
Beyond the second-floor windows of the Casino, Lake Michigan sparkled beneath the midday sun. Inside, waiters glided between tables. Swags of red, white, and blue festooned the Corinthian pillars designed to match those in Music Hall, the building’s twin on the other end of the Peristyle that connected them. Chatter hummed in the open, airy restaurant.
“I’m so nervous,” Rose murmured. “How well did he say he knew my parents, again?”
&n
bsp; “He was their neighbor for several years,” Kristof said. “It sounds like they might have been friends. We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?” He had been the one to translate the note sent in Polish and pen the reply on Rose’s behalf.
Sylvie thanked him again for meeting for lunch between his concerts so he could interpret for them. She’d known he was multilingual from growing up and studying in Europe, but she hadn’t realized until he met and spoke with Jozefa that his languages included Polish. The actress had offered to come and translate today but then recalled she had a lunch date with other women speakers. It was just as well. For such a momentous occasion, it was more fitting for Kristof to be here than a woman they’d met less than a week ago.
“Oh, I’m so nervous,” Rose said again, her knee bouncing beneath the table. “I don’t know why, but I am.”
Sylvie could practically feel Rose’s anxiety radiating from her. She looked younger than her seventeen years just now, and yet it seemed a lifetime since she’d been parted from her father. Sylvie prayed she would learn something meaningful today, something she could hang on to.
“Are you sure you want me to be here for this?” Sylvie asked. She wanted to stay, but she would understand if Rose wanted to receive Mr. Janik privately. As long as Kristof was there to translate and chaperone, she had no qualms about it.
“Of course, Mimi. You deserve to know about my family as much as I do. And if this man was my family’s friend, I’m sure he’d want to meet the woman who raised me.”
Sylvie exhaled. “I’m eager to meet him, too.”
Across the expanse of white linen, Kristof smiled at her over the centerpiece of pink and lime-green hydrangeas. As usual, his tuxedo appeared crisp and spotless, even after his morning concert.
She nudged the salt and pepper shakers out of alignment on the table and waited. Two seconds later, Kristof’s long, lean fingers moved them back into perfect place. This was what he did. She teased him about his need for order, but in all honesty, it was comforting that he took what was crooked and made it straight again. He fixed things.
Shadows of the White City Page 4