City Of Fire Trilogy 1 - Dreamland (29 page)

Freud sat contemplating the face of Jung while he tried to piece the puzzle together. Up on the screen, there was a rare close-up of the tramp’s face, poignant and child-like and slightly mad, all at the same time, the large, seal-like eyes pleading into the camera, the little smudge of a moustache twitching compulsively just below his nose.

Their next afternoon, Kid took her on all the wild, spooning rides. They rode on the Cannon Coaster—
WILL SHE THROW HER ARMS AROUND YOUR NECK AND YELL? WELL, I GUESS, YES
!—and the Barrel of Love—
TALK ABOUT LOVE IN A COTTAGE! THIS HAS IT BEAT A MILE
!—and on the Mixer and the Barrel of Fun, and the Bounding Billows and the Golden Stairs. They went on the Razzle Dazzle and the Human Roulette, and the Cave of the Winds and the Human Pool Table and the Down and Out—all the numbing, bone-jarring rides that were guaranteed to throw you together with your honey until they were banged black-and-blue by a pen salesman from Poughkeepsie, a scullery maid from Murray Hill, a collection of farmers from Flushing.

When it was over they were left just as frustrated as when they had begun—more so, thinking of the promises that had been made, of love in a cottage and all the rest. Kid had walked her way down Brighton Beach, and they found a spot in the dunes, and necked and ran their hands over each other until they had ached.

It felt delicious; it felt better than anything Esther had ever done. Smelling him, holding him as much as she wanted to, the taste of his skin, of his face and neck and shoulders. But it was still no good; it was too public, there was too much detritus from other summer romances here: a busted rum bottle and bits of bathing suit, a broken parasol and used condoms, discarded on the sand like little white, broken-necked birds. They brushed themselves off, and walked back to the train.

That night he got off with her at the Canal Street stop, and walked her all the way back to her door. Esther didn’t think she should let him—surely somebody would see them together—but it was the hottest night yet that summer, and by the time they reached her stoop all of Orchard Street was sleeping as if they’d been drugged. All the landings of the fire escape were covered with blankets and pillows, and there were children out on mattresses right on the sidewalk.

He walked up to the front door with her. He walked right up to the front, and came in. They went up the narrow hall stairs together, up into the giant hive, the sounds the building made even when it was asleep surrounding them, its boards and beams creaking and settling like a ship.

“Welcome to the
goldineh medina,”
Esther joked as she ushered him in, tapping the gas lamp to make it give off what little light it was capable of, revealing the dirty, blood-red, painted
lincrusta
that lined the hallway.

Many of the doors were yawning open as they walked up, the apartments deserted as if a plague had swept through. She remembered what her mother liked to say:
Poor people can leave their doors wide open, because nobody will come to steal poverty.
But Esther knew it wasn’t true. People would steal anything they could get their hands on, even other people’s misery. The open, abandoned apartments only marked the surrender of people too suffocated to care anymore.

“Where are they?” Kid asked.

“On the roof.”

“Ah. Of course.”

Their door was open, too. Esther had him wait outside, vaguely embarrassed to have him see how she lived, though she didn’t know why. She peered into the darkened apartment, cautiously calling out:

“Momma? Papa?”

“They went up.”

Kapsch the
roomerkeh
sat on the kitchen chair that was half her bed, his hands trying modestly to cover the long underwear he was wearing. He craned his neck, trying to peer out into the hallway at whoever was there.

“You should too,” she said affectionately, and crept into the kitchen, gathering up her bedding.

“Eh. It’s cooler down here alone.”

“Suit yourself,” she smiled at him.

She gathered the sheets and pillow in her arms, and led Kid to the roof door. They went up a small staircase reeking of cat piss—and there was the whole tenement camped out before them, white bundles of sleepers encamped on the black tar roof. Along all the roofs and fire escapes of the buildings around them, as far as the eye could see, there were more white bundles, more sleepers pried out of their apartments like soft white oysters.

She picked her way carefully among the sleepers, Kid following at a safe distance. Each apartment slept in its own little encampment, boarders and family together, a perfunctory gap between each group, like on the beach at Coney. They lay snoring head-to-head, tenants and subtenants alike, on the bedding and the cushions they had brought up from chairs and sofas.

Somewhere up here, she knew, her mother and father were sleeping

They made their way to the only space left, in the corner near the pigeon coops. The birds were cooing softly under their wings, huddled together, their smell dank and earthy. She made up their pallet on the rough tar paper, spreading out a blanket, then a couple sheets over it, and one pillow for her head—all the bedding she used herself, alone in the kitchen on her chairs every night. She slid underneath, fully dressed, and turned down the other side of the sheets, waiting for him.

He stood above her for a moment, watching—then climbed under, carefully removing his bowler first, and she had to giggle.

“A gentleman always removes his hat before coming to bed!”

He laughed, too, and they moved in close together. They lay on their backs, holding hands, unbearably warm in all their clothes beneath the sheets.

“I’d like to study the stars,” she said, in the same wistful voice with which she was always hoping for things.

“Oh? Where?”

They laughed softly again. There wasn’t a star in sight above them. Instead, the night sky was a cataclysmic orange color, as if there were some terrible conflagration just below the line of rooftops and the water tanks.

They lay there, and listened to the other voices whispering around them—young, excited voices like their own, before they were hushed by families and neighbors, or faded into sleep. Through the darkness, too, she could see other eyes staring at them, hard and covetous. The red flicker of a cigarette—

Somewhere, among the silent bundles, her mother and father were sleeping, maybe just inches away

He began to move, under the sheets—and to his surprise, she helped him, helped him work his way through all the catches and stays, all the yards of undergarments.

“My moon—my tiny dove,” he began to chant distractedly.

“Wait,” she told him.

She wanted to stop, and smell his sweet breath, the sweaty, musty smell of sleeping bodies all around them. She kissed him on the mouth again and again, and then placed his hand on her breast herself.

“Okay. Go on.”

She helped him some more then, fumbling under the sheets, her hands feeling curiously around. He was mortified at first by how his body smelled, the shabbiness of his clothes. He wasn’t used to taking off all his clothes for the act, for the whores he usually slept with, but he let her undress him. She went on until he had absolutely nothing on, not even the socks on his feet, and they were both completely naked beneath the sheet. He began to kiss her again, running his hands quickly and roughly over her beautiful breasts, her thighs, but she made him slow down.

“It’s all right, my sweetness, my birdie boy—”

He moved onto her, and began to make love to her, up on the tar roof, with the pigeons cooing over their heads, and the sleepers turning and groaning in their sleep, all around them. She smiled up at him, her brown eyes large and luminous in the reflected orange light.

“My wealth—my little crown—my golden heart,” he panted quietly, trying not to use her name—though there was no indication that anyone heard, no sound from her sleeping family and neighbors save for their restless sighings and turnings.

He moved slowly over her body—surprised to find that she was still a virgin, and then trying to go even slower, desperate not to hurt her—and at the height of their awkward lovemaking, he put his hand up to cushion her head against the rough surface of the tar paper.

She took him in, held him to her by his skinny thighs, and kept kissing his mouth as they did it. It hurt, and when he was finished she lay there, a little sore, and curious, but so pleased with herself that she had done this thing.

“You have to go soon,” she told him, holding his head in her hands, rubbing his hair, kissing him on both cheeks.

“It will be morning.”

“Yes.”

Oh, what a thing she had done!

She lay back running a hand along his thigh, happy at the reluctance in his voice.

If she could do this on the same roof with her mother and father all the neighbors all around what could she not do? What could she not do?

“My dybbuk.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

They slid into sleep for awhile. She awoke with a start, the brooding sky still reassuringly in place above them, billowing orange clouds drifting slowly past.

“You have to go.”

“Yes.”

He sat up, and began to pull on his shirt.

Kapsch the
roomerkeh
saw him rise, and began to back toward the stairs. He crept swiftly down into the apartment, careful to make as little noise as possible on the uneven floorboards. When he was inside he listened for the man to go past, thinking over the dim view of bodies he had seen across the rooftop, wondering if it really could have been what he thought it was.

He loitered ecstatically in the night.

After he left her, he walked out under the Bowery el and the crowds there. It was after midnight, but the street was busier than ever, the dime museums and the barber colleges, the tattoo parlors and the shooting galleries and the mission halls all glowing like little coals dropped from the roaring trains above.

Kid liked to catch the face of a stranger hove up suddenly before him—surprised in the streetlamp light, walking purposefully, somewhere, at this hour of night. The drunken young gentleman, staggering along the sidewalk, money all but falling out of his pocket. The soiled dove, who stared boldly back at him, just outside the ring of light from the theatre lobby.

Sated and magnanimous, he knew the City was his. He could go anywhere, do anything. He knew whorehouses, and bars, cockfights and gambling joints that were just getting warmed up. He knew where he could go to get fresh bread on Hester Street, or a quart of strawberries for five cents on Essex Street, or a man on Pitt Street who would write a letter to his love for a dime, so beautiful it would make her cry. Now that he had a love—if he had a love—

Pushcarts full of food still lined the gutter, each one lit by its own blue gas jet, glowing faintly in the night. He bought some oysters, and potatoes in sour cream, wandered aimlessly on down the street.

Anything was possible at night. Once he had seen a long string of llamas on the Bowery at four in the morning, being guided up from the docks to the Madison Square circus by Peruvian peasants. Another time he had seen a delegation of Sioux Indians, another time a string of elephants, linked trunk-to-tail.

It was dangerous, he knew—but then it always was, and not just because of Gyp the Blood. His checkered suit, his scent and hair pomade marked him as a man with money. Even the most consumptive Bowery wretch could lie in wait until the next express train thundered overhead—drowning out all other sensation—then dump a pail of ashes over his head, and club him with a slung shot, take his watch and money and slit him gizzard to navel like an upended turtle.

He could not worry about it. Somehow, he could not even worry about Gyp, who might be waiting around the next corner. At worst he would be broken down to his particulars, his useful parts. Tumbled back down into the East River, among the drowned rats, and the wretched refuse from whence he had come.

After he had saved the boy, after he had spent his first night in the City in jail, a man came down from Tammany to bail him out. He only figured that out later, of course, he had no idea why he was free, or what the man was doing—staggering along the street after him still dizzy and nauseous from his clubbing the night before, fearful of what new trap this might be. But the man—a simple peanut politician who looked mighty important, then, to Josef’s untrained greenie eyes, in a new coat with a pocket watch and a brown derby cocked on his head—the man merely bought him a two-dollar suit, and a cap, and gave him fifty cents for a flop-house. Then he shook his hand, told him he was a citizen, and walked away. And from that moment on, Josef had roamed through the streets, looking for his opportunities, looking for the money that was everywhere,
everywhere,
just waiting to fall into his hands.