Melting the Snow on Hester Street Page 13

  ‘In case of what, Mrs Beecham?’

  ‘Oh … there were people,’ Eleanor said vaguely. ‘I can’t tell you everything. You have to understand that. There were people who were our enemies. Matz’s enemies. It was very dangerous for us … But you must let me tell the story. And keep your questions to the end.’

  ‘I shall try my best,’ he said. ‘But if we’re to make progress …’

  ‘Please. Just listen.’

  He sighed – a small sigh. She didn’t notice it. Her mind was back in Allen Street, in the tiny tenement flat she had left behind.

  ‘Sarah was dead. Of course. And Samuel – Mama didn’t know where he’d gone. But he’d gone, all right. Mama said he came and went from one month to the next. So there wasn’t only Isha for her to take care of. There was the baby, Tzivia, too. And no one else left to help her. The apartment was the same. Well, no. It wasn’t. But it took me a while to notice … The little things that used to make it home: the flowers Mama grew by the window, they were gone; and drapes, and the walls, the tablecloth – Mama used to take pride, but they were dirty. Tired. The place didn’t feel like home any more. Sarah was gone. Samuel, Matz and I – we were all gone. It was Mama, Isha, Tzivia – and new people. Boarders. She said they were cousins, but who cares? We didn’t meet them in any case. They were out at work all day and, when they came home, we hid in our room. And of course she didn’t tell them who we were.

  ‘We arrived at the door dressed like a couple of greenhorns. Because nobody looks at the greenhorns. They all look the same, don’t they?’

  ‘Greenhorns?’ he repeated, confused.

  ‘Fresh off the boat, Mr Gregory. Still in their peasant clothes. The women in their wigs, the men in their big, ugly work boots … I wore a shawl over my hair. Matz brought the clothes before we left. He had thought of everything. And when we came to the door, Mama didn’t recognize us. She looked weary. Old. She almost shut the door in our faces!’

  Eleanor smiled, remembering. ‘“We’re full,” she said. “Try over the way.” I had to whisper to her: “Mama! It’s me. Us. We have come for Isha …”’

  ‘I loved my mother. Of course. Who doesn’t? I loved her dearly. But right then, I only cared about getting to my baby. We stood in the hallway, people brushing past us, and I watched the haze lifting from Mama’s face: the weariness, the sadness. I had never thought it before, but just then I thought for the first time – perhaps she suffered as I did, with her only daughter gone. “My little girl!” she cried. Her face lit up and she hugged me so tight … She wasn’t expressive in that way. Not normally.

  ‘Matz told her to shush – there were people everywhere. Of course. There always were people everywhere. You couldn’t turn for people … It used to drive me half crazy. But I miss it sometimes … Well – she pulled us into the parlour.

  ‘“Who is here?” Matz whispered.

  ‘Nobody was there. Just Mama and Isha – and Tzivia. The boarders were all out at work. So.

  ‘Tzivia was at the kitchen table, her little head just peering over the table ledge. She was preparing the potatoes. And she had grown! Not a baby any more – three years old or so. Of course. It was eighteen months since we had left … Unlike Mama, she saw right through our disguises. She recognized us at once. Her mouth fell open. She looked absolutely terrified, as if she had seen a ghost. There was a photograph on the wall – a portrait of Matz and me with little Isha on my knee … And she looked from the picture, back to us, under our heavy disguises – and immediately burst into tears.

  ‘Mama had told the children we were dead, you see. For her own safety, and for ours and for Isha’s. For everyone’s safety. Because if she hadn’t … Tzivia called for her bubbeh, and her tears turned into wails.

  ‘But Mr Gregory, you have a daughter of your own. You can imagine, I wasn’t concerned about Tzivia. Poor darling. She was not my child. “Where is Isha?” It was all I could say. Why wasn’t she in the kitchen preparing potatoes with her cousin? We had come to fetch her, and we had imagined taking her off with us, there and then. That same day. Bundling her up amd taking her back with us to the train station, back to Hollywood …

  ‘My mother motioned to the bedroom and I turned towards it. She said, “But Eleana, you will frighten her. And she is sick. I must warn her first that you are not a ghost. She is so sick. Always. All the time. She is not strong enough for this sort of a shock. Wait a moment. I shall go in and prepare her … She will be so happy.”

  ‘So I had to wait. I could hardly stand it. “Please,” I said to Tzivia. “Tzivia, stop. Your bubbeh has important business. Stop your crying at once!” But Tzivia would not stop. She wanted to know where her own mama was. But her own mama was dead. Oh, I should have been kinder. Poor little mite … But how could I? “Mama! Hurry!” I cried. Oh God – it was the longest wait of my life.

  ‘Tzivia was quiet at last. She said to us, “Are you coming to take Isha away?” I said yes. She said: “Where are you taking her?” I told her – to the place where the sun shines every day. And where there is a beautiful ocean, full of fishes to eat, and where the oranges grow on trees, and the air is full of the scent of flowers … She listened to me in such wonder. As if this ghost before her were describing Paradise. And I was, of course! I was rehearsing it for my Isha. But when I saw Tzivia’s little face I realized how cruel I was being. And I realized, too, that there was nothing to prevent her from coming with us. And Mama, of course. They could all come to California! I said it there and then! As I waited to be allowed in to see my Isha, I bent down and took little Tzivia’s pretty face in my hands. I said, “Come with us, my darling! Bubbeh will bring you. Why don’t you come too?” And for a moment her little face lit up. And then the cloud. She said, “But I can’t come. When Papa comes to fetch me, how will he ever find me?”

  ‘Matz spoke. He crouched down before her. He said, “Tzivia! Your papa will find you. We will make sure of it. You have nothing to worry about … We will be happy. We will be a family.”

  ‘You see?’ Eleanor glanced at Gregory. ‘You see? Matz was a fine man. Was he not? A fine man. You can see why a girl would fall in love with him …’

  Gregory said, ‘He sure as hell sounds like it, Mrs Beecham. I look forward to hearing more about him. But – hey – it’s almost noon. Are you hungry? What do you say, we stop for something to eat? I could have some lunch sent in, if you like. Or, if you’re not afraid of the crowds, I know an excellent little eaterie on Virginia Street. They can provide us with a quiet booth, and we could continue with our conversation there?’

  Eleanor didn’t want to stop. Not for food, nor for anything else. And she dreaded being seen in public. How would she explain her presence here, if the reporters were to spot her? What would Mr Carrascosa say? She felt a fluttering of panic, only remembering his name … She had left the script on the bed unopened. Her contract was up for renewal. She wasn’t even meant to leave town without his permission.

  But Eleanor was polite. She was always polite. ‘Forgive me, Mr Gregory,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been talking so long. But lunch. Yes. Of course. Perhaps if we travelled by car. And I walked through the restaurant quickly, with my head down. I have learned to do it quite well, you know! Sometimes, in Hollywood, I wear a large hat and go to the movies! I do, you know! And nobody notices me at all!’ But she didn’t. She had never, in fact, done any such thing. She had heard that others did. Bigger stars than she – Rudolph Valentino, before he died. But Eleanor had never dared. Somewhere along the way she had lost the ability, lost the will, lost the taste for ordinary freedom. It occurred to her, just then, as she tripped out the easy lie, that she had lost her nerve for life. Where had it gone? What had she done with it?

  ‘Well, gosh,’ she said suddenly, in a burst of something quite new; something almost resembling her old spirit: ‘I should love it. Let’s do it! Let’s walk, for heaven’s sake. If it’s close enough! Let’s feel the sun on our skin!’

  26
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  The restaurant was only a couple of blocks away, and so far as Eleanor could tell, nobody spotted her. Anywhere else in the world, she and Mr Gregory might have made an incongruous pair. But in Reno – city of rich, elegant and newly detatched women – incongruous couplings were the name of the day. It wasn’t only lawyers who were exploiting the city’s chief source of income. And if Mr Gregory didn’t quite fit the archetypal gigolo mould, in his cowboy hat and gaudy, ill-fitting waistcoat, walking along beside Eleanor he looked, at least, like a man on the make.

  They ordered steak. Mr Gregory said he knew just how to ask for some under-the-counter hooch. Red wine, smuggled in across the Nevada desert, all the way from France, Gregory told her proudly. ‘Only the real McCoy in Reno!’ he said. But Eleanor only ever drank the real McCoy. Prohibition did not mean a hidden gin still in the bathroom, not to her. It meant Max seeing to it. Or Butch. Or whoever. Somebody else paying sweeteners, doing whatever needed to be done, keeping her champagne glasses full. In any case, she didn’t like to say it, but the wine Gregory poured into her tea mug tasted like vinegar. There was no way it had been brought in from France.

  ‘Exquisite!’ she murmured, taking a sip, and then another, because she could see how much it pleased him. ‘Too delicious for words!’

  And her mind wandered back to the tenement flat, and her mother, so tired and old, and the smell of horse manure and rotting vegetables, the thunder of the elevated trains, and Tzivia, her face alive with the dream of California …

  And her little Isha. Pale as snow, with the glisten of cold sweat on her cheeks.

  ‘Mama returned to us in the parlour at last … and I could tell from her face it was bad news. “I have told her you are here,” Mama whispered to me. “She wants to come out and greet you but I have told her to stay in the bed.” I moved to pass her – but my mother held me back. She pulled at my arm and insisted that I stop. “Understand, daughter. She is not well. I don’t think she really understands what I have said to her, but when she sees you by the bedside perhaps it will be clear … She talks of you.”’ Eleanor stopped there. Looked at her wine and took a careless gulp: because the words caught in her throat. ‘… “She talks of you all the time … ” I didn’t know that, Mr Gregory. You have a young one yourself. You can never be sure, can you, how quickly they forget? But my Isha had not forgotten. She talked of me all the time. It’s what Mama said. Well. Mama released me at last. She said, “Approach softly. She is fragile.”

  ‘I approached softly. I could not have approached more softly if I had really been a ghost. She was lying on the mattress that had once been Matz and mine. She slept on it with her bubbeh now, and her cousin Tzivia. Because all the rest of us were gone. Sarah, in the fire. Samuel – who knows where? Matz and I to California …

  ‘But it was going to be different now. They were coming back with us! You see? We were bringing them all to California, and then that filthy city, our filthy, disease-ridden streets … and that room with no light – we would leave it all behind. And never come back again.

  ‘Isha was lying on the bed, and she looked so small, so pale. She watched me crossing the small room. It was almost dark. There was no window. She watched me in the half-light as I sat – so gently – onto the mattress beside her. But her face did not change. She didn’t move. All I could hear was the wheezing … Her little chest, fighting for breath. Her dark hair was damp, sticking to her head so you couldn’t see the curls. You would never have known, looking at her just then, that she had the most beautiful, bountiful, joyful curls … You couldn’t have known it, Mr Gregory.

  ‘She was sick. I bent over her little body – so limp – and I kissed her forehead. It was damp and cold. She raised her arms and put them around my neck, and I wept so that my tears were falling onto her poor face. She said “Mama!”’

  Eleanor stopped.

  Gregory looked at his plate. At the juicy steak growing cold in front of him. And pushed it away. Tentatively, in the silence, he reached a hand across the table and patted her sleeve.

  ‘We will find her,’ he said. ‘I promise you. We will find her.’ He wanted to believe it.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  After that, until lunch was over, they talked about the markets. It was much easier for Mr Gregory. She asked him what his opinion was, and gave every appearance of attending to the answer. Mr Gregory assured her that the market was bound to bounce back. ‘Simply, Mrs Beecham, because it always has.

  ‘Why,’ he said, pouring himself another cup of wine, growing expansive at the pleasure of his own voice – it was such a relief to be away from that poor child’s bedroom, ‘we only need to listen to the experts on the subject. They are quite convinced.’

  ‘Charlie Chaplin has sold his interests,’ she said casually. ‘And on the advice of Jesse Livermore, no less. I think we must agree Mr Livermore is an expert.’

  ‘Jesse Livermore! You don’t say!’

  ‘They are terrific pals.’

  ‘Ha! The Tramp and the Greatest Stock Trader in America – are they indeed? Well, ain’t that a thing? What can they have to say to one another?’

  ‘Oh – but Charlie’s nothing like he is in the movies!’ Eleanor said. ‘He’s terribly smart, Mr Gregory. I mean to say he’s one of the smartest men you’ll ever meet.’

  ‘Well,’ Gregory laughed, ‘I dare say I shall never meet him …’

  ‘No,’ she smiled at him. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘So Charlie Chaplin has sold out his positions, has he?’ Gregory muttered. ‘And on Jesse Livermore’s advice … But then again, Mr Livermore goes bust as often as he makes a fortune. We mustn’t forget that!’

  ‘It’s true …’

  ‘Believe me, Mrs Beecham. The market will recover. I say, hold firm.’

  They returned to the bureau in something approaching companionable silence. It was a short walk and the sun was shining. In the hallway, he stopped at the ticker machine, picked up the paper coil at a point somewhere between floor and tabletop, scowled at it for a moment. Muttered under his breath.

  ‘Do you understand it?’ Eleanor asked. ‘I can never understand any of the symbols.’

  ‘Oh you get used to them,’ Gregory said, dropping the tape, no wiser than when he lifted it. ‘They’re really very simple. Shall we get back to our work?’

  His secretary bustled in with more coffee, and Eleanor returned to her tale.

  27

  ‘So, our idea to return that same day to California proved impossible. Isha would not have survived the journey. There is no doubt about it. Matz wanted to wrap her up warm and to leave right away. But I wouldn’t allow him. My mother was in agreement. So we stayed. There was a pattern, generally, to Isha’s illnesses; every few weeks she would relapse again, and return to bed for a day or two, sometimes for longer. Mama said that recently, since Matz and I had left, each bout of sickness had seemed a little worse than the last, and it seemed to return to her more quickly. Even so, we were full of hope. We had money – not much. But enough to buy her some good, healthy food, and to bring a doctor to see her, and even to pay for medication.

  ‘Mother assured us that none of the boarders would know us. In any case, as soon as they returned from work, we kept to our room – Isha’s room. And they barely paid us attention. I don’t believe they knew who we were.

  ‘There was a danger in little Tzivia of course. We had to impress on her the importance of telling no one who we were. And she seemed to understand. I think my stories of California had cast a little spell. She was terribly excited. She would have done anything, poor darling, if she knew it would help her to come to California.’

  ‘She sounds like a sweet girl …’

  Eleanor didn’t hear him. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t Tzivia. She was still a baby. Half of everything she said was gibberish, in any case. Nobody would have listened. Nobody would have believed her. I’ve thought about it so often, wondered again and again who it might have been … Because
we were so careful. Matz was fanatical about it. We stayed inside. Spoke to no one but Mama. Not even the boarders heard us speak. We stayed in that small room, hidden away, talking in whispers … Poor Matz! It nearly killed him, being cooped up like that. But he loved her, just as I did. You see? We sat by her bedside, feeding her, talking to her, watching her sleep. She was so happy we were there. When she returned to herself and the fever dropped, she would look at us, one to the other – and that smile would light up her face. And then she would mutter something; sometimes we couldn’t hear what she said … She would close her eyes, and that smile would still be lingering.

  ‘It must have been the doctor. He came to visit us twice, but Matz and I took care – we didn’t meet him. Or speak to him. But somehow … he must have wondered where the money came from to pay for him. And perhaps Isha said something, in her fever. Or perhaps one of the boarders. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Not any more.

  ‘We’d been there three days, and Isha was growing stronger. And that morning, when she woke, the breathing sounded easier – less painful. And the fever had dropped. She was still weak. But the delirium had gone. We were going to wait one more day … Maybe even leave that same evening … And then they came for us.’

  ‘Who came for you?’

  ‘The police, Mr Gregory. We couldn’t stay. Mama heard them on the street. And she knew at once. They came thundering up the stairs. We were on the fifth floor, and we could hear them – the angry voices in the hallway as they stormed past, knocking everyone out of their path. They were heading directly for our door—’

  ‘Why were the police after you, Mrs Beecham?’

  ‘What’s that?’ she said. She sounded startled.

  ‘I think you should tell me why the police were coming after you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, because it might have some bearing—’

  ‘I was collecting her things together, talking to her about the journey we were about to make. Maybe that very evening. Maybe the next day. And she was lying back on the pillow, too weak to sit up, but her eyes followed me. She was listening, I knew it – I was describing the beach at Santa Monica, and the mimosa trees, and the sweet smell of the California sunshine. And she smiled at me. She said …’ Eleanor laughed suddenly. ‘It was the most she had said in all the days we were together: “Sheyn vi di zibn velten.” It means—’