Melting the Snow on Hester Street Read online

  Eleana nudged her. ‘Dora – for goodness’ sake. The day has hardly begun. Can’t you calm down, just for a moment at least, and tell me what is happening?’

  But by then some of the others had spotted him too. Fury erupted from the ranks of striking women, and their chanting drowned out everything else.

  ‘WE’D-RATHER-STARVE-QUICK-THAN-STARVE-SLOW, BLUMENKRANZ!

  ‘WE FIGHT TO THE DEATH! AND WE FIGHT TO WIN!’

  ‘DORA! Tell me!’ Eleana yelled. ‘In God’s name, what is happening?’

  ‘WE-FIGHT-TO-WIN, BLUMENKRANZ!’ Dora yelled, and the veins stuck out on her thin neck. ‘WE-FIGHT-TO-WIN!’

  Blumenkranz scanned the crowed. Sweaty, in his thick woollen suit, despite the cold, he looked jittery – taken aback by the women’s passion. His eyes found Eleana, and stopped still.

  Dora pulled her friend’s ear towards her. ‘They have hired streetwalkers, Eleana!’ she shouted. ‘Filthy kurve from the Bowery! Yes, that’s right! To replace us machinists – they have herded up the Bowery whores! And the pimps are in on it. And everyone is in on it. And they shall be here any minute. And Emma says they will be driven here in automobiles—’

  ‘In automobiles!’

  As she spoke the word, a fleet of cars appeared from around the corner of Washington Place. The cars pulled up, one by one, stopping in a neat line by the workers’ entrance, directly in front of the striking women. Automobile doors opened – and from behind them the hated kurve emerged.

  With their gaudy clothes and hard, painted faces, there was no mistaking what they were. Nor, indeed, their pimps, tripping out, smirking, behind them. It had all been staged, of course: an elaborate, expensive taunt, dreamed up by the two factory owners, Mr Harris and Mr Blanck, penniless immigrants themselves, once. A long little time ago. Not only would they keep their factory running in the face of the strike – they would illustrate to the picketers in what low esteem they held the workforce, and just how easily they could be replaced.

  Max Blanck, snickering nervously from behind closed windows on the tenth floor, watched as their little stunt took effect. The ripples of hatred could be felt from ten floors above; so much so, indeed, that he turned to his brother-in-law beside him, and wondered aloud if they hadn’t perhaps taken the thing too far?

  His partner snapped for silence. He couldn’t hear what was happening.

  Far below them, before the still-locked gate, the strikers had closed in on the new arrivals and formed a seething, hissing line across the sidewalk, blocking the factory’s entrance. Of its own accord, with no instructions shouted, a quite different kind of picket line had formed: one that nothing but physical force would break.

  Torn between protecting their stock, and merry amusement at the unlikely drama unfolding, the pimps simply stood back to watch. So, too, for a little while, did the city police. Pimps, police, and factory-hired thugs mingled cheerfully together, and for several moments nothing happened. Hatred simmered. The women squared up to one another while the men stood still, smirking and goading. Violence simmered unexpressed in the air.

  It was impossible to say exactly when or how it began, but quite suddenly the fighting erupted. It seemed to break out simultaneously all across the line. Eleana remembered one of the streetwalkers spitting in Dora’s face. And then Dora lifting her hand to wipe the spittle away, or perhaps, Eleana feared, to lash out at her assailant. She remembered snatching Dora’s wrist and holding it there, and shouting out – yelling at her:

  ‘It’s what they’re waiting for, Dora! One wrong step …’ Eleana motioned to the police surrounding them, arms crossed, eyes peeled. ‘One wrong step, and they shall …’ But she couldn’t finish, because it appeared they had already taken it. From the left, the prostitute whose spit had landed in Dora’s eye seized her advantage and laid her clenched fist on Dora’s cheek. Eleana relinquished her grasp on Dora’s wrist; Dora hit out; a police officer grabbed Eleana from behind.

  … And then, pandemonium.

  Eleana glanced through the scramble of bodies, the long skirts, broken banners, flying leaflets, lashing arms and legs. Someone yanked her backwards by the hair, her hat tumbled, her neck twisted … Wildly, she cast about her for something, someone to grasp hold of, some simple way to fight back. But she was helpless. From behind the grilles of his locked factory gate, she spotted Blumenkranz gazing at her, his eyes fixed, a look of pleasure – intense pleasure, revenge and desire – settled on his face. It was the last thing she saw before her head hit the sidewalk, and her assailant’s club came down on her.

  She lay still, face down in the snow, hands covering her bare head as the club beat down on her. Her arms were yanked from her head and into a shoulder lock, and she screamed in renewed pain, but still the blows rained down. Lying there, she believed her moment had come. She believed she was about to die. But then, suddenly, the pain stopped.

  Her arms fell loose. And the body of her attacker dropped like a stone beside her. Fearfully, she opened her eyes, saw his uniformed bulk lying limp, his face frozen with surprise. She stared at him, waiting for the next blow, but it didn’t come. He didn’t move. And then two hands were lifting her gently to her feet.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Matz said to her, holding her to him. ‘I’m a fool. I was a fool – Eleana. Can you forgive me?’

  ‘Forgive you?’ she repeated, confused.

  He indicated the policeman, still at their feet: ‘Did he hurt you?’

  ‘I’m fine …’

  Matz would have led her away. But the violence had reached a crescendo and he was yanked back into the vicious throng. She stood for a moment, disorientated in the midst of it all, her head spinning, blood seeping down her cheek, soaking her clean white collar. By now the pimps had launched themselves into the fray. They were trying to pull their women out. The factory-hired security, too, had come thundering in. Strikers were attacking the streetwalkers. Police were attacking strikers. Security, pimps and streetwalkers were attacking anyone and everyone in sight.

  And there was Eleana in the heart of it, staggering for balance, the edges of her vision slowly turning to black until she lost the battle and quietly sank to the ground, exactly where she stood.

  Somehow, from the chaos, the factory owners’ will prevailed. The kurve were extricated from the rabble and shepherded into the building. The factory doors slammed shut and the pimps slunk silently away. Yet the fighting between picket line and police continued unabated. Eleana lay in the midst of it, unconscious and ignored. A few yards away, a group of four officers had set to work on Matz.

  She came round as they were lifting his battered body off the sidewalk, dragging it to the police wagons around the corner, and the voice of Dora was ringing in her ears. ‘Eleana, WAKE UP! They’re taking him off! They’ll lock him in the Tombs! They’ll put a fine on him so high we shall never have enough to pay it. They might just as well throw away the key. Do something! Think of something! Oh, El, wake up!’

  With the prostitutes removed from the scene, and the police busy carting their crop of captives to the paddy wagons, the riot had lost its fire. Eleana looked on, helpless. She knew where they were taking him. Of course. And not for the first time, either. Matz was known to the police. Known to the city magistrates. Last time they took him, they fined him just $10 and he was able to walk free. This time, Dora was right, it wouldn’t be so easy. Now that Union activities seemed to pose a genuine threat, the courts were flexing their muscles. Added to which, Max had taken out a city cop; brought him to the floor in front of hundreds of witnesses.

  Eleana stood up, leaning her weight on Dora, and looked desperately through the crowd in search of someone who could help. But there were only women there, fighting for their own survival. She called after him, but he didn’t turn; didn’t appear to hear her.

  ‘Do something!’ Dora pleaded.

  ‘I don’t know what …’ But then, standing by the factory door, quietly observing the scene, she spotted Mr Blumenkranz. He loo
ked at Eleana, who looked back at him, and even then – from that position of power – there was a look of desperation about him.

  Dora nudged her friend towards him and tactfully melted into the crowd.

  16

  Two cold, painful days passed before they transported Matz from the cells to the court that adjoined them. It was not the first time he had appeared in that courtroom – nor even, as luck would have it, his first appearance before that same, hostile judge. On this occasion, as he stood before Judge Olmsted, his face cut and swollen and with a ribcage cracked, he struggled to stand unaided, and the judge, infuriated by all that the prisoner’s wounds implied about the men who had dragged him here, took exorbitant offence.

  ‘Straighten up, Mr Beekman!’ he said. ‘Bear yourself like a man at least, when you stand before me!’

  Matz Beekman did not attempt to bear himself any differently. He could not have done so anyway, even if he’d wished, which he did not. ‘I have been clubbed and beaten, sir,’ Matz replied. ‘I have been kept in a cell for forty hours without food, and dragged to this court for what? For exercising what is my legal right to picket peaceably—’

  ‘Silence. Stand up!’

  ‘I bear myself like a man, Your Honour. But do you?’

  ‘You are charged with—’

  ‘Do YOU?’ Matz yelled out, unable to contain his fury. And the thunder of it, from that broken body, made the courtroom jump.

  It did not help his case. A fine was set at $100: an impossibly large amount, as the judge well understood. Matz would be held at the city jail until he paid it, Olmsted decreed, or for a maximum of three years.

  As they yanked him, handcuffed, from the dock, every muscle and bone in his body protesting, he scoured the public gallery one last time. But Eleana was not there.

  They put him in a cell with two other men: a Union member, in no better physical shape than he was, and a common house robber. Matz might have shared his own experiences with both, but he spoke to neither. The bars of their tiny cell, four floors up, overlooked the internal gangway, and for an hour each morning he watched his fellow inmates tramping past on their daily exercise, but his own body was too broken to join them. He lay on his cot, thinking.

  He knew she would come. And he knew she would come with the money. Because he knew her. And that was what he thought about as he lay there, too battered to move or to speak. He thought of Eleana – doing what he knew she would do, because she loved him; what he prayed she would do, because he hated it here, and what he prayed she would not do, because she was his.

  She came for him four days later, the money in her purse. After she had filled in the forms and paid the dues in Blumenkranz’s filthy dollar notes, she sat down to wait for him.

  It was a long wait, but at length he emerged from behind the last of the heavy, locked doors. She leapt to her feet, unbearably nervous, and stood before him at the far end of that long, bleak room, waiting, holding their child to her hip, the tighter, the closer he approached. Behind her, at their high wooden counter, a couple of officials were busy at work. Behind him the heavy door slammed shut. There was no one else present but she held back, watching him on his painful journey through the room. The gash across his forehead was beginning to heal, she noticed, but the bruises – the edge of an imprint of a policeman’s boot – were still livid on his face, and he was obviously weak.

  He shuffled to a standstill before her without yet raising his eyes to meet hers. Instead he looked at his beautiful Isha, beaming up at him. He held out his arms, the child clambered into them and he buried his face in her hair, breathed her sweet smell. And collected himself.

  ‘Mayn Khaver,’ Eleana said softly. ‘My friend. My good friend. Hello there, Matz … You look terrible.’ She smiled.

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘I missed you,’ she said. ‘We both missed you. And you see …’ She stopped. ‘I have missed you horribly, Matz. I couldn’t have borne it. Not for three years. Thank God you are free.’

  ‘It’s not God I have to thank,’ he said roughly, through his daughter’s thick hair. She waited until he looked at her. A moment passed, when even Isha didn’t speak. Standing alone in that long, barren room, the mundane echoes of officialdom behind them, Matz and Eleana searched each other’s faces.

  He put the baby down. It was a long silence, longer than most people could have endured. Finally, he reached out, touched her: ‘Mayn likhtik ponim, my Eleana. No matter what. I love you …’

  ‘No matter what,’ she said, ‘I love you too.’

  And they kissed, and took the baby, and headed home.

  Divorce Capital

  17

  Hollywood, 18 October 1929

  M,

  I shall be gone for a few days. I think it’s about time we talked, don’t you?

  E

  Max laid her letter back on the dressing table just as he found it and stood before it, at a loss, stunned to inactivity. It was not his natural state. He was a little drunk, he realized. Rather more than a little. In any case, he returned downstairs, crossed the yard to the staff bungalow and rapped on Teresa’s door.

  Moments later the housekeeper stood nervously before him, dressed in nightshirt and curling rags. She held her front door barely ajar, alarmed to see him at such a time, and in such a place. He had never ventured to the staff bungalow before. Alarmed, too – though of course she had seen his wife’s note when she came to take the breakfast tray – by his dishevelled state. In her experience, having worked for the Beechams since the house was completed eight years before, Mr Beecham was never dishevelled. Like his wife, he was always in control.

  ‘Teresa – my apologies. My apologies,’ he mumbled, aware – suddenly – of the awkwardness of his presence. ‘But I wondered if you might … Do you or Joseph happen to know … Did Mrs Beecham happen to mention …’ He tried again. ‘Teresa – do you know where she has gone?’

  It was Teresa’s husband, Joseph, who had driven Eleanor to the train station. Teresa called him to the door.

  ‘Did she tell you where she was going, Joseph?’

  ‘She didn’t specify, sir.’

  ‘You didn’t ask?’

  Joseph shrugged. ‘She didn’t seem to be in the mind for talking.’

  Max thought about that. ‘Was she … alone?’

  Again Joseph seemed to hesitate. ‘Joseph, was she alone?’ Max asked again. ‘Or did she … was she … For example, was Miss Gredson with her?’

  ‘Miss Gredson?’

  ‘Or one of her other girlfriends?’ he suggested hopefully. Eleanor didn’t have many girlfriends. ‘One of the other girls. I don’t know … Or perhaps – did she meet anyone at the station?’

  ‘There was a young lady at the gate …’

  ‘What kind of young lady?’

  He shrugged. ‘A young lady. I think she was a fan. She was waving some kind of an autograph paper.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She was gone when I got back, so I guess she was after Mr Cooper.’

  Impatiently, Max shook his head. ‘But no one at the station, I’m asking you? For example …’ He stopped, swallowed. ‘There wasn’t a tall, light-haired … gentleman?’

  ‘No, sir! Absolutely not! Not that I saw. Mrs Beecham was all alone.’

  But by then Max had decided not to believe him. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Thank you. I’m sorry. Very sorry to bother you. Good night to you both …’

  He turned back towards the house, returned to the hall – his beautiful black and white marbled hall, smelling of lilies. How quiet it seemed, suddenly! He stood still, stared at the telephone, its silence thundering in his ears. His hands were burning. His head was aching. The telephone was quiet.

  I think it’s about time we talked, don’t you?

  He made two calls. The first, to Blanche. Because … He wasn’t sure why. It felt better to hear her voice than to hear no one at all.

  But Blanche wasn’t home. Where in hell was she, he wondered �
� briefly, vaguely. And then, because he was drunk and desperate, and he had to do something and he couldn’t think what else to do, he called Butch. It was the first time since he left for Silverman.

  No answer. Max spoke to the night porter, who told him Butch was away for the weekend.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I’m sorry sir?’

  ‘I’m asking you where he is.’

  ‘Well, sir, I have no idea.’

  ‘Can’t you find out?’

  ‘No sir. He doesn’t tell me where he goes. But would you like to leave a message for him?’

  Max didn’t bother to reply.

  He couldn’t face the empty house, or the curious looks of his housekeepers, or the silence of the goddamn telephone. Nor the note, declaring war: still sitting at its unjaunty angle beside the little jewel box with the ruby heart inside, which meant nothing to either of them. Less than nothing, actually. The memory of it – and the hurried vulgarity with which he had chosen it, fobbed her off with it, was not comfortable for him. It wasn’t something he wanted to dwell on.

  He thought of dropping in at Blanche’s. He was sorely tempted. But to do that, to turn up at her door without invitation, drunk, in the middle of the night, would be breaking all sorts of unspoken rules between them. She might be with someone else. Or she might not. Either way, she would take his appearance on her doorstep – in such a state, at such a time – to signify more than he wanted it to. And in any case, he realized, he didn’t want to see her. He wanted to see Eleanor. He wanted her to tell him that nothing had changed. They didn’t have to talk. He loved her. She loved him. There was nothing to talk about.

  He needed to find her, he realized, so he could tell her that. They still loved each other. There was nothing to talk about.