A mist was fluttering through the trees when she at last reached the appointed meeting place. Coralie was stone-cold, and yet she was possessed by a rising tide of emotion that coursed through her with its own brand of heat. She realized there was only one explanation for what she’d felt as she’d hidden behind the tree in her sopping clothes, watching the young man, her heart pounding. Maureen had told her that love was what a person least expected. It was not an appointment to keep or a trick or a plan. It was what she had stumbled upon on this dark night, without any warning.
When Coralie saw her father pacing beside the carriage, she felt the sting of resentment. The Professor had never raised a hand to her, but his disapproval was wounding and he would not be happy to have been kept waiting till dawn. Starlings were waking in the bushes even though the last of the stars were still strewn across the sky. Coralie often wondered if her father truly cared for her, or if perhaps another girl in her place would have suited him just as well.
“There you are!” the Professor shouted when Coralie appeared. He rushed forth with a blanket to quickly wrap around her shoulders. “I thought you had drowned.”
The Professor hurried her into the carriage. The liveryman, who was often overpaid to buy his silence, would likely demand double for this journey, for it would be bright morning by the time they reached Brooklyn. There would already be crowds on the Williamsburg Bridge, men and women walking to work on this blue March day, unaware that a monster passed by them, and that she wept as she gazed out the window of the carriage, wishing that she might be among them and that her fate might at last be her own.
TWO
* * *
THE MAN WHO COULDN'T SLEEP
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I REMEMBER my other life, the one in which I loved my father and knew what was expected of me. I had been named Ezekiel, after the great prophet of our people, a name that means God strengthens. Quite possibly it was a fitting name for me at some point, but, just as strength can be given, it can also be taken away. Mine was a path of duty and faith set out before me in a straight line, and yet, without asking anyone or even discussing my plan, if that is what it was, I changed my life and walked away from the person I might have been and, most certainly in my father’s opinion, the man I should have been. There have been times when the decision I made resembles a dream, as if I went to sleep one person and awoke as someone else, a cynical individual I myself did not know or understand, changed by magic, overnight. There are those who believe that evil spirits can imbue mud and straw with life, breathing wretched souls into inanimate objects to create living beings, and that these dybbuks walk among us, leading us to temptation and ruin. But what is made of water and fire—for isn’t that what a man whose nature opposes his responsibilities can be said to be? Does one quench the other, or do they combine to ignite the depths of the soul? I have wondered all my life what I am made of, if there is straw inside of me, or a beating heart, or if I simply burned for all I did not have.
My father brought me to this country from the Ukraine, where our people were murdered merely because of our faith, our blood marking the snow. All across the countryside there were pogroms, which in our language means devastation, a storm that devours everything in its path. When the horsemen came, they left nothing behind, not breath or life or hope. My mother died in that far-off place. She was alone in our small wooden house when the wild men on horseback came to burn our village to ashes. There was no one to bury and no body to mourn. My father and I did not acknowledge what we had lost or speak my mother’s name. When we traveled we kept to ourselves, trusting no one. I do not remember the ship or the sea, only the taste of the bitter, rusty water we had to drink, and the bread we brought with us from the Ukraine, the last taste of our past life falling to pieces in our hands. But I do remember the forest in Russia. For the rest of my life I carried that with me.
Our first residence was shared with twenty men and boys in a tenement building on Ludlow Street. The toilet was in an alleyway. There was no heat, only a stove that burned whatever coal and wood we could gather from the streets. There was very little light and the rain came pouring in through the roof. Out in the alleys people kept pens of geese, as they did back in their homelands; often the geese would break free and could be found wandering along the streets. Lice were everywhere, and it was impossible to get a good night’s sleep, for the bedbugs drove people crazy with itching as they spread from mattress to mattress, a plague we couldn’t purge.
Other men from our village who had also escaped the pogroms of the wild Russian horsemen soon befriended my father. In our homeland we called a village a shtetl, and each one was a world unto its own. The men, brothers. The women, sisters. Our brothers took pity on us and helped us find better living quarters, where we might, once again, be on our own. Farther down Ludlow Street we found a kind of salvation. A single room, but ours. My father had a bed, and I slept on the floor atop the feather quilt we had brought with us, sewn by hand by my mother. It was the only thing of any worth that we owned.
Every morning we recited the same prayers, swaying back and forth in meditation. We dressed in black coats and black hats. We were Orthodox in our practices and beliefs, as our grandfathers and great-grandfathers had been. In the Ukraine I would have been a scholar, but in New York I followed my father to work, as I followed him in all things. His name was Joseph Cohen, known in our village as Yoysef, and he took pride even in the lowliest tasks, as if he were still a scholar reading God’s commands. If he’d had a wife and daughters, they would have been employed, and, like many other Orthodox men, he would have spent twelve hours a day in study and prayer, but that was not meant to be. In the factory I sat on the floor watching his nimble fingers turn rolls of fabric into dresses and coats. In this way I learned the tailor’s trade. I was proud to bring my father needles and spools of thread. Other men murmured they wished they had a son as smart as I was, as promising and as studious. I was a worker from the time I was eight years old, and I had a gift for creating well-made clothes out of plain cloth. That was the way my fate unfolded. And yet, despite the harshness of our lives, I did not question my faith. I still carried a prayer book in my coat pocket.
We knew we were lucky to have employment. Bands of day laborers waited for work in Seward Park on the corner of Hester and Essex; when we passed by we shook our heads and said they were like pigs at the market. I was alongside my father and his friends when the bosses came unexpectedly to the factory one day and fired everyone without warning. This was the day my life changed, when I lost my soul, or found it, depending on what you believe. As garment workers, we had no rights, but at least we earned enough to survive, until the bosses decided otherwise. They’d brought in new workers, cheaper labor, men just arrived from Russia and Italy who would toil eighteen hours a day for pennies and never complain when they were locked into workrooms to ensure they didn’t take time to eat or drink or even to rest for a few moments. These newly arrived men asked for even less then we did, and the Jews, desperate for the pennies we would earn, agreed to be at their sewing machines on Saturdays, the holy day for our people, when as Orthodox Jews we could not work. It seemed we were no longer needed, and no objections would be tolerated. Men who looked like gangsters stood at the door; should anyone dare to complain, they wouldn’t hesitate to beat down the agitators. On that afternoon some of those who had been dismissed went home and cried, some looked for work, but my father went to the river.
I was tall for my age, as quiet as I was studious. My life was in the shul and in the factory, but on the day we were let go I followed my father to the docks of Chelsea, and because of this I became someone else. Something inside me grew hardened, or was it that something inside me was freed, a bird that flew from its cage? I trailed after my father, though he told me to hurry back to Ludlow Street. The docks were crowded with men in black coats, some who were clearly of our faith, friends of my father’s, but opposing them were a gang of thugs cut from the rough cloth of the docks, men who carried brass knuckles and were good and ready for a fight. I could think only of keeping up with my father. When he noticed me, he shouted that I must go home. I ducked behind some barrels, hoping he’d assume I’d done as I was told. That was when it happened. My father seemed to leap all at once, like a strange unwieldy bird he rose into the air and flew away from the pier. There was the slapping sound of flesh into water that I still hear.
Dockworkers nearby were unloading a ship of its cargo, huge steel beams, each of which took a dozen men to handle. When they heard the splash they all came running. My father floated, his heavy coat spilling out around him like a black water lily. I feared this was to be our last good-bye, and I would now be on my own. I sprinted back to the dock, sweating and in a panic. My feet were on the railing and I was about to jump in to rescue him. I didn’t know how to swim, but that was not the reason I did not leap in. It had often seemed possible that he might take his life when we wandered through the forest. Once I had discovered him with his belt made of rope looped in his hands. He was staring into the branches of a tree filled with black birds. I grabbed his arm and told him there was a path only yards away, and then, as we wandered forward, I found it.
We had come this far together, and I was stunned that he was now willing to leave me behind in this world of grief. But hadn’t he been looking for a way to rejoin my mother? Wasn’t his love for her more compelling than his concern for me? Now the cage had opened; the bird had flown. In that instant, my responsibility to my father vanished. It was then I decided the person I would save was myself. I owed nothing to my father, nor to anyone else in this world.
The dockworkers pulled my father from the river and wrapped woolen blankets around him, but I walked away. That night, when my father came home, he acted as if nothing had happened, and so did I.
But it had.