Melting the Snow on Hester Street Read online

  ‘Week after week, Matz sent the money back. And for a while, each week, we received three letters. One from Mama, one from Isha – and one from little Tzivia. Poor darling. She always said the same thing. “Isha is getting stronger every day. Love from Tzivia.” She could have said more. She could have told us other things. I would have liked to know her news … I was fond of her. But …’ Eleanor shrugged. ‘She would have loved it in California. But – what can you do? Her papa came back for her. Once, twice, three times. He came for her and he left that poor girl again – I lost count of the times. And then that was the end of it. I received no more letters from Tzivia. Her father, my cousin, was not a good man. I don’t know what became of either of them.’

  Gregory said, ‘But the letters from your mother and Isha – they kept on coming?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, they did. December finished, then January, February … We sent the money back each week. Mama said she and Isha would come in March. But then, there was snow in March. She told me to be patient. And I was patient! We prepared the apartment. Matz was working at Keystone. I was working more and more as an extra girl at Keystone, and then at the other studios, too. It was good. It was exciting. And I knew Isha and Mama would come. But then the spring came and went, and still Mama said Isha was too sick to make the journey. And spring turned to summer. I wrote to my mother that she and Isha simply had to come, or it would be fall again, and it would be too cold to travel. I told her I would come to New York myself, risk everything, and take Isha no matter what. But I was bluffing. Of course. Matz said I should go – he missed her too. But I trusted my mother. And I would never have made Isha travel unless she was strong. Of course not …’ Eleanor’s face twisted suddenly, in doubt and regret. ‘It was almost a year since I had seen her, Mr Gregory. A whole year. And I began to think Isha would forget me.

  ‘Finally, at the end of August, I received a letter from Mama telling me that the train tickets were bought, and that she and Isha would be arriving in Los Angeles at the beginning of September.

  ‘Can you imagine, Mr Gregory? Can you imagine my happiness?’ Mr Gregory grinned at her: ‘Mrs Beecham, I think I almost can!’

  ‘September came … And then another letter from Mama. Isha had suffered a relapse. The doctor advised two weeks’ further rest. Oh God, I was beside myself! October, November. By then we had enough money saved they could travel in second class – in warmth and comfort. Mama booked two more tickets. She sent a letter – you have it in front of you. Dated the second of November. They would arrive on the twenty-seventh of November 1914. It was done. There was money for blankets and coats, and a berth on the second-class sleeper. Isha had been strong for a whole month.

  ‘On the twenty-seventh of November Matz and I set out for the train station. Matz had taken a day off work. Of course. And so had I. I didn’t envisage ever returning to it … The apartment was ready. The beds were made. There was a little doll house I had bought, and I furnished it with … oh, never mind. We had filled the decking with flowers; fresh California lilacs, because I thought she would be amazed by them, the way I had been when I first came. And I had prepared a feast, Mr Gregory. All the foods I knew she loved – babke and blintz and …’ She glanced at Mr Gregory. ‘In any case, it was a feast …

  ‘She never arrived. We waited, just as Matz had waited for his papa at the dock – and the train pulled in, but they never stepped off it. We waited for the next train. And the next. Matz had to go back to his work. But I waited for seven days. Each day I returned to the station. I travelled back and forwards from the train station to my post-office box. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  ‘The flowers wilted. Of course. And the food … well. And the doll house,’ she smiled, ‘I still have it. At the Castillo. Hidden away. So.

  ‘But I never heard from Mama or from Isha again.

  ‘I waited a whole month. Even longer. God knows – I thought they would come. I couldn’t bear to leave, in case they … That was November. In the beginning of January, I left Matz in Los Angeles to work. He had a wonderful new job by then. Not playing piano, which he loved so much – that was all behind him by then. He had joined up with Butch … Butch Menken,’ she amended. ‘Anyway, his rise to becoming the big Hot Shot was just beginning.’

  Eleanor could hear the tang of sourness in her voice – and felt shocked, a little ashamed. Because what he had achieved was remarkable. Not something to belittle, no matter the cost. It was exceptional. He was exceptional, and – yes, of course she was proud of him. ‘That same week, he was hired by Mr Griffith. Second Unit, third assistant director. They were making The Birth of a Nation,’ she added, a little shyly. ‘You know it?

  ‘Goodness.’ Mr Gregory shuffled in his seat, blushed a little. ‘I most certainly do …’

  ‘He was assisting Mr Griffith himself!’ She smiled.

  ‘My goodness.’

  ‘It sounds better than it was, of course. Really, he was just a dogsbody. But it was the beginning – and he was in love with his work. Why shouldn’t he be? Of course – every man should be in love with his work. Isn’t that right, Mr Gregory?’

  ‘That’s quite correct,’ Gregory nodded keenly. He had been thinking perhaps they might take a break for lunch, see what news the tickertape heralded on the way out. And perhaps he and Mrs Beecham might enjoy a pleasant glass of wine again today? Perhaps she might tell him a few more amusing stories about Hollywood. His wife had found it most amusing when he’d told her about Chaplin no longer believing in the great stock market of America. ‘The little English tramp!’ she had laughed. ‘That’s some nerve! Thinks he knows better than all the experts in America!’ They’d enjoyed quite a little chuckle about that. ‘A man should always love his work,’ he said to Eleanor. ‘That’s how it should be.’

  But she wasn’t really listening. ‘In any case, Matz couldn’t leave Los Angeles. That’s the point. And I understand it. I do. In any case – New York was too dangerous for him. It really was. There was no question about that. Not after the last time. So I made the journey alone …’ There was a long pause.

  ‘I should have made it earlier, Mr Gregory.’

  30

  He asked her to lunch, but she declined. ‘It’s probably best for both of us, don’t you think? If we take a break. You have my voice, drilling into your head all day!’ she smiled at him ruefully. ‘I’m sure it would drive any man to distraction.’

  ‘Hardly a drill,’ he said, blushing. How did she do that, he wondered – transform herself like that? Lighten the mood, and herself, and the very air around her from one short second to the next? ‘You have a lovely voice, Mrs Beecham. If I may say so …’

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Well then. If it’s all right with you, Mr Gregory, might we continue, just for a little while? And then perhaps we could break for the day and you could take a late lunch and I could return to the hotel … only I’m not sure I can keep this up all afternoon.’

  ‘Yes of course,’ he said. ‘An excellent idea. Keep talking, Mrs Beecham. Forgive my interruption. You just keep talking until you want to stop.’

  ‘Two months had passed since I received her last letter, and not a word. So I turned the corner into Allen Street and the place was boarded up, Mr Gregory. There was a notice on the door. The building had been condemned … They were bringing it up to date, somebody said.’

  ‘That’s right. Allen Street, Delancey Street – several streets in the triangle. As you know, the “old law” tenements had been rendered unfit for habitation,’ Gregory chipped in, tapping his notes. It was something material to show for his father’s investigations. ‘And the process had been accelerated by the added health hazard attached to your particular building, because of the tuberculosis.’

  ‘But there was always tuberculosis! Pneumonia. Consumption. Whatever you want to call it! It was part of life. It’s simply how it was, Mr Gregory! People died every day. Don’t you understand it yet? So
why? Why that particular building? On that particular month. Why?’

  It was an outburst, and it shocked them both to silence for a moment.

  Ticker-tacker-ticker-tacker.

  They gazed at each other, miles apart: ‘I wish I knew,’ he muttered at last.

  ‘Yes. I wish you did too. But you don’t know, do you?’

  He opened his mouth, shocked. Thought better and closed it again.

  ‘All these years I’ve been paying you,’ Eleanor spat out, ‘but you can’t tell me. Can you? You can’t tell me anything at all. Nothing that I don’t already know! My mother was dead. I know that. There was a record at the City Hall. God knows, in those few weeks, before they shut down the whole goddamn building – what happened to everyone? One minute the building was swarming with us, hundreds of us, crushed in together, and we were dying like flies … And the next, nothing! Can you imagine it, Mr Gregory? Can you? In your fine offices here in Reno? With the sun shining outside – can you imagine what it felt like?

  ‘My mother was dead. There were records. You have them. There were records of her death. Records of exactly sixty-three deaths, in that one building, in those few weeks. But do you know how many people were living in that building? Of course you don’t. Because nobody ever knew. We were uncountable, Mr Gregory. Because there were swarms of us, in our peasant clothes and our wigs, pouring into the city every day. Learning the American way, from our little tenement hutches! We were all the same! Interchangeable. Uncountable. And not only to you, Mr Gregory. But to ourselves! We came, we went, we lived, we died. But where, Mr Gregory, where did they put my daughter?’

  Matthew Gregory – Reno born, and Reno bred, with a wife at home and a child on the way, and a garden which needed watering – opened his mouth, and closed it again. He had seen the war. He had seen his father drink himself to an early grave. And now … he had seen this. He was not a cruel man – and not stupid. Or not entirely stupid. But such depth of feeling – such wild and deep emotion – left him confused. Listening to her, it was as if his most valuable client had suddenly launched into a made-up language. It left him confused and, above all, irritated. She had no business to yell at him. As if it were his fault. He spoke into the silence, while she glared at him, waiting for an answer which she knew he could not give:

  ‘Mrs Beecham. I understand your anger. I would feel angry, too, in your position. I surely would. But there comes a time, you know … when you have to ask yourself some real hard, cruel, bad questions—’

  ‘No. I disagree. I disagree. We haven’t reached that time yet. We have only just begun.’

  ‘Your daughter had a history of illness, and, most especially, of a weak chest and lungs. There was an outbreak of tuberculosis in the building which killed most of the inhabitants, many of them previously fit and healthy … What happened to your daughter? … Mrs Beecham, do you really want me to tell you what I believe happened to your daughter?’

  ‘But you can’t know, Mr Gregory. You can’t possibly know!’

  ‘But I believe—’

  ‘But we have only just begun; I have so much more to tell you. We’re both tired. That’s it, that’s all it is. Perhaps we should break for lunch after all? It’s too early to guess at what happened! We simply cannot know—’

  ‘I disagree …’ he said. And was surprised by his courage. ‘We have been working on the case for seven long years.’

  ‘Not really. You haven’t.’ She sounded desperate. ‘It doesn’t matter. Not any more. I’m not complaining about it. And before – just now – I didn’t mean to be rude. Forgive me. Please. I beg you. I’m only saying that your father – he didn’t work on it. He wasn’t working on it all these years. I’m not a fool. I can see – look at your file! There is nothing in it!’

  ‘There is nothing in it. I can’t argue with that. But, Mrs Beecham … I have to put it to you that there may be nothing in that file because, after all, there is really nothing left to put in it.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Your daughter – by your own admission, was a very sick little girl. The building in which she lived suffered an epidemic that killed seventy –’ he looked at his notes – ‘I beg your pardon, sixty-three unfortunate inhabitants—’

  ‘And Isha’s name is not among them! Isha Kappelman. Born 17 October 1907. Do you see it? Did you see a record of her death, during all those years of research?’

  ‘Batia Esther Kappelman—’

  ‘Was my mother!’

  ‘I am aware of that.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. I’m sorry. I apologize.’

  ‘Mrs Beecham. Forgive me. But I can’t simply sit here and fail to say what I know is on both of our minds. Is it not highly likely, Mrs Beecham, is it not as good as certain that little Isha died that same December, while that dreadful illness was rampant in her home; and that, in the tragic and chaotic circumstances, your poor mother was in no fit state to trouble herself with the demands of City bureaucracy – or perhaps, by then, may even have passed away herself already—’

  ‘Stop it!’

  But he couldn’t quite, not now. He leaned across the table, put out a hand but failed to reach her. ‘Do you not think,’ he asked her gently, ‘fifteen years after these tragic events, that it’s time to confront the very real possibility – that little Isha is at peace? That she has been at peace for a long, long time … And that it time for you to find some peace now, and to try to accept … that life is cruel, and life is short?’

  He thought, briefly, of the two friends he had left behind him in France, and quickly, through force of well-practised habit, blinked their memory away again. ‘I think your daughter is dead, Mrs Beecham. I believe she died of tuberculosis in December 1914. I also believe that you believe it too, or you would never have tolerated my father’s … lack of …’ He shook his head, unwilling to finish the sentence. ‘But – I am happy to continue with the search, if you feel it will help you. If you feel there may be a small chance—’

  ‘There is a small chance.’

  He sat back and looked at her. ‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘Indeed.’

  ‘She might have been taken up by someone. Don’t you see? A small girl, all alone … After her grandmother died, someone might have taken pity. They might have believed she was all alone in the world. Someone might have taken her. Or perhaps the authorities, after they closed the building. They might have taken her and put her into an orphanage. Have you checked? Did you ask the orphanages?

  ‘Every orphanage in the state. Yes. My father did that.’

  ‘Batia Isha Kappelman?’

  ‘Yes. Of course. But I can do it again. If you would like me to.’

  ‘Someone might have taken care of her. Or perhaps taken her out of State? She might be anywhere – don’t you see? Or she might be just like her father, Mr Gregory! Her father survived alone on the streets. And look at him now!’

  Gregory opened his mouth – and closed it again.

  Belatedly, she noticed her mistake: ‘I mean to say …’ she said. ‘That is …’ She fell silent.

  ‘Is Mr Kappelman still alive?’ Gregory asked at last.

  ‘Mr Kappelman?’ She looked at him blankly.

  ‘Is Matz Kappelman still alive?’

  She took a long time to answer. She thought about it. Finally she said, ‘Oh no. Matz has been dead for years.’

  31

  Tuesday 22 October 1929

  Max Beecham didn’t make an appearance at Silverman Pictures until the Tuesday afternoon. He called in to his secretary late on the morning that he, Silverman and the editor Mr Leeson were meant to have been re-cutting his precious film. He explained he was heading out of town. There was an actor he needed to woo in Palm Springs, he said, and a location he wanted to check out along the route.

  She sounded worried. ‘Mr Silverman has been asking for you since nine o’clock. He’s on the warpath, Mr Beecham. He’s got that look in his eye … What shall I tell him?’

  ‘Tell him you can’t r
each me,’ said Max. ‘Tell him I’m out of town.’ He hung up.

  But by Tuesday afternoon he was ready to face the music. He sauntered into the studio, freshly shaven and sleek as he ever was, an athletic spring to his step which belied … everything. It seemed to him that even the receptionist trembled just a little when she greeted him. She said, ‘Oh Mr Beecham! You’re here at last!’

  ‘I sure am,’ he said, bestowing on her his famous smile.

  She said, ‘Well – good luck!’

  ‘Bad as that, huh?’ He winked at her and she blushed.

  ‘He was making a stink all yesterday … Making life hell for all of us, Mr Beecham. You’re going to need all the luck you can get.’

  He took the elevator to the first floor and again hoped – against all experience – that he might be able to sneak along the corridor to his office unobserved. But God knows – Silverman must have had some kind of sixth sense. Before Max had even taken a step out of the elevator, he could hear his name being roared.

  ‘Max Beecham, is that you?’ bellowed his employer, shaking every pot plant along the corridor. ‘Get your ass in here!’

  Max paused, just for a second. Took a small breath. And followed the sound of the roar.

  As he passed her desk, he nodded at Silverman’s secretary, gave her a cockeyed kind of a grimace. Ordinarily so collected, she could think of nothing to say to him, and as he reached for the door that opened into the lion’s den, she released a tiny, empathetic whimper. ‘Oh dear,’ she whispered.

  He grinned at her and walked on in.

  Silverman sat at his desk as usual. His small, round face was angrier than Max had ever seen it, the pate of his small, round head shining in the early sunlight. Max had heard it said of people before – but he’d never observed it so literally: Joel Silverman’s compact outline stood out against the morning sun behind him, and it really did look as if it was ready to explode. Even so, as Max travelled the long, long length of his office, beams of sunlight reflecting off the floating dust particles between them and causing Max to screw up his eyes and squint, Silverman did not stand up, or even speak.