The Tiger in the Well (28 page)

It was a still night, and the water slid under the boat like j oiled silk. Goldberg sat quietly beside her, and the gin-flavored old boatman looked half-asleep, only those quick light strokes, as regular as clockwork, showing that he was in command. Sally felt suspended—between sky and water, past and future, danger and . . . and what.^ She looked at Goldberg, but she wasn't sure of his expression under the, wide brim of his hat.

"What have you brought me here for.^"' she said. "Is there something you want me to do.'*"

He nodded. "There's a young woman traveling alone. She has some news of the Tzaddik, and I want to be sure we hear it as soon as possible. And we have to be quick. At the ship there will be women like the ones I told you about, j probably several of them, watching out for single girls. They J speak Yiddish, Russian, German. They pretend to come from ' Jewish charities—anything to take them in."

"The white goods.?" said Sally.

He nodded. "We must find Rebecca Meyer—that's this girl—and keep her out of their hands. The problem is, she's expecting to be met by a woman. If you find her and stay with her, she'll come with us. Will you do that.?"

Sally nodded. "How will I know her.?"

"I have a photograph. Here."

He handed her a tattered photograph and struck a match for her to see it by. The girl was pictured standing on the front step of a house in, she supposed, Russia; dark, heavy-featured, suspicious, with a shawl covering her hair. She was i holding a broom and looked like a servant of some kind. The match went out.

"Does she speak English?" said Sally.

"Not much. Some German, I chink. Show her the photograph if you need to. It's going to be difficult; you'll have to make her trust you. I won't be with you; I have other work to do on board. But you can do it."

/ hope I can, thought Sally. She tucked the photograph into her glove and sat back beside Goldberg as the boat moved out farther into the middle of the stream.

Then she saw the steamer. It sat some way off in a forest of masts, with lights glowing at the portholes and the bridge, and a swarm of smaller vessels—rowboats and dinghies like the one they were in, a steam launch or two, and many others she couldn't make out—clustered around it like bees. As they moved closer she saw that the deck was crowded with dark, huddled figures, and some were already swarming down the dimly lit, swaying stairs that hung alongside. Hands reached up to help them down, seized ragged bundles and swung them into the bottom of the boat before helping the owner down briskly and reaching up for the next.

Charlie, the boatman, kept the dinghy level with the steamer and a little way off, and Sally noticed for the first time that the tide was flowing strongly in.

One of the boats, laden and leaning over, moved away sluggishly, and another darted in to take its place. There seemed to be no order about which came next to the foot of the stairs—it was first come, first served, and the boatmen who jostled for position filled the night air with shouts and curses.

The boat that had just succeeded had two men in it, one to row and one, as Sally heard, to interpret. He was calling up in Yiddish to those on the deck, and Goldberg told her that the man was offering passage to the Pier Head, guaranteed cab journey to a clean Jewish lodging house, and an introduction to the landlord for no more than ten shillings. Sally drew breath at this, for the passage all the way from Rotterdam cost only a pound. Still, people were crowding

down the ladder. Perhaps they didn't know what ten shillings was worth.

"Ah," said Goldberg. "Look who's arrived."

A steam launch was next to reach the ladder, sweeping aside a couple of smaller boats and leaving them rocking in its wake. A large, round-faced man in a top hat and Inverness cape was getting out and climbing the swaying stairs with difficulty, followed by a smaller man in a bowler hat carrying a dispatch case.

"Who's that.?" said Sally.

"It's the famous Arnold Fox. If you haven't seen his name in the papers, you will. An anti-Semite. He's making a stir, trying to get Parliament to keep out the Jews. All right, Charlie, take us in. I want to see what he's up to. Ready, Miss Lockhart.f"'

Sally nodded. Hardly seeming to make any effort, the old boatman turned the dinghy and darted in skillfully between the stern of Arnold Fox's launch and the bow of the next.

As soon as they touched, Goldberg seized the railing and held it while Sally stepped over the side of the boat and onto the swinging narrow staircase. She was conscious of the stares from above, the jostling and shoving, the other boats crowding the dark water, and conscious too of Goldberg close behind her. She felt his hand on hers for a moment, looked down and met his eyes, and then turned back to the top.

Once on deck, in the harsh light and strong shadows thrown by the kerosene lamps, he leaned close and spoke quietly.

"As soon as you see her, move in. There'll be others eager to do the same. Look over there—I know that old witch; I've seen her before. A brothel keeper called Mrs. Paton. Look what she's doing."

He indicated a woman dressed in expensive-looking furs, her face heavily made-up. She was in her fifties, Sally supposed, with a narrow trap of a mouth and eyes as cold as coins. She was stroking the lapel of a pretty dark-eyed giri who was holding a bundle of luggage, helpless, bewildered, polite, as the older woman spoke wheedlingly into her ear.

Rebecca's Story TAX

The beringed hand moved up from her lapel and stroked her cheek. The girl said something, and the woman glanced over to a man by the rail and nodded. The girl moved away with them toward the stairs.

Sally wanted to dart forward and hold her back, but she found Goldberg's hand on her arm.

"We attack the roots, not the leaves. You want to see more.** Watch that man."

He nodded at one of the passengers, a big man with a fur hat. As she watched, Sally saw that he was acting just like a sheepdog. The struggle for places, the jostling at the rail, the confusion weren't random at all. He was selecting some passengers to go down and holding others back, according to which boat was waiting at the bottom, and doing it so skillfully that it looked as if he was merely helping to keep the stream flowing.

"Who is he.?" said Sally.

"He's one of the crimps. Look at the boatmen. Some are in the organization, some not, and they'll have a password, some kind of signal, something like that."

They watched over the rail, but in the darkness and the swift movements of the shouting boatmen below it was hard to see any signal they were making.

"Who's he picking out.'*" said Sally.

"The wealthy ones. That's to say, those with a few rubles left. The ones with not much, he doesn't care about. Imagine this, all the way from Russia; parasites every inch of the way. But now you must look for Rebecca Meyer. I'm going to leave you for a little while, but I'll find you again. Good luck."

She nodded. He moved away into the crowd, and she looked around and got her bearings. There was plenty to see.

Bundles everywhere—rough canvas sacks tied at the neck, small parcels carefully wrapped in calico, roUed-up mattresses and feather eiderdowns bulging out of the cords that held them together. Hats: no bowlers here, no top hats but

Arnold Fox the anti-Semite's, no tweed caps or deerstalkers; but Russian-style caps with leather brims, moth-eaten fur hats, one sumptuous article in astrakhan, and shawls; all the women wore shawls tied over their heads. Children: hollow-eyed, white-faced, ill after the crossing or lethargic through hunger. The men and women: foreign faces, all the men bearded, all the women broad of cheek and dark of eye.

And the smell. Dirty clothes, dirty bodies, filthy boots; smells of fried fish and of seasickness; smells of illness and poverty and long, weary travel.

She was standing near a well-lit doorway into the inner part of the ship. A gray-bearded man in uniform was standing in the doorway, blocking the path of Mr. Arnold Fox and his companion, who had a notebook and pencil in his hand.

"Captain van Houten, I insist that you answer my question," came the high, rich voice of Arnold Fox. "I am conducting a survey on behalf of the British Parliament, and I must have an answer. Has the customs officer been on board or not.?"

"Of course," said the captain impatiently. "He came aboard at Gravesend, like always."

"And did he count the passengers.? Or did he merely accept your numbers.?"

"You mean my numbers are incorrect? You mean I can't count.?"

"I must know, Captain van Houten. What number did you give him for the aliens on board.?"

"Sixty-three. And that's correct."

"And did he count them.?"

"I don't care if he looked or not. That's for him to say. Why don't you ask him.? Why are you bothering me.?"

"Be assured, I shall ask him," said Arnold Fox. "I would like to see your official returns, please."

"You got no authority for that. I give the documents to the collector at the report office. You want to see them, you go and ask him."

I

"Captain, I would remind you that this is an official parliamentary report."

"You a member of the government?"

"No, but—"

"You a member of Parliament, even?"

"I hardly see—"

"Don't waste my time. Any fool can say he's making an official report; it means nothing. Go and play somewhere else."

"Have you no concern for the plight of these unfortunate people?"

The captain snorted and turned away. Arnold Fox, quite unabashed, turned and called out over the noisy, teeming crowd on deck: "Anyone—here—speak—English? Anyone—on board—English?"

He moved through the throng, his large white nose wrinkling involuntarily as he tried to find an interpreter.

Sally moved away too, glancing at the photograph again to remind herself of Rebecca Meyer's appearance. But it wasn't a large photograph, and the girl's features were wrinkled against the sun, and in any case she had the same kind of build and look as many of these women. It wouldn't be easy.

She picked her way through the confusion on deck, ignoring the stares as best she could and looking carefully at every solitary woman or girl she could see. In the crowd, though, it was hard to see who was on her own and who wasn't. More than once she thought she'd found Rebecca Meyer, only for the woman concerned to pick up a nearby child or turn to a man behind her and say something, obviously part of a fam-ily.

Having moved through the whole throng as far as the bows, stepping over canvas bundles and mattresses and cracked and broken boxes tied together with string, she tumed and looked back. Goldberg was nowhere in sight, but the man in the fur hat was busily at work by the stair, pretending to help by signaling for boats and organizing the queue at the top. Sally

watched him for a minute and saw how he did it: he was beckoning the boatmen with four fingers for one sort of passenger, one finger for another. But how he sorted the passengers out, she couldn't tell. Arnold Fox, high voice braying over the bustle, was interrogating someone nearby, with his companion jotting down everything in his notebook. A little way off, the brothel keeper, Mrs. Paton, was talking to a young woman in a dark shawl, hand on her arm, exuding kindliness while—Sally could see—eyeing her figure.

But wasn't the young woman Rebecca Meyer.^

Sally looked at the photograph again: it could be. It could easily be. Sally was too far off to be sure, so she quickly moved forward to be closer. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mrs. Paton's male companion reach the top of the stairs and exchange a word with Fur Hat; perhaps Fur Hat had a cut in the business.

She got within three or four yards of Mrs. Paton and the young woman and stopped. It was so hard to know. Mrs. Paton was talking in a sympathetic voice, stroking the rough cloth of the girl's sleeve, and the girl was looking down expressionlessly at the deck. But as Sally watched, the girl looked up and wrinkled her face with what seemed like despair, looking around as if for an escape from Mrs. Paton, and Sally had no doubt.

She hastened forward.

"Rebecca!" she said, and before the girl could react she leaned forward to kiss her, whispering ''Ich bin deine Schwester ... I am your sister."

Rebecca's hands found hers, and a flash of understanding entered her eyes. Sally turned to Mrs. Paton.

"Please," she said. "My sister will come with me."

The older woman looked at her with steady hatred, and then quite calmly pursed up her mouth and spat deliberately on Sally's sleeve before moving away, shrugging to her companion at the stairway.

Sally, shocked, didn't move, but Rebecca took a handkerchief and wiped off the old woman's spittle. She was younger

than Sally had expected: hardly more than eighteen or so. But something had marked her soul, for her eyes were full of pain.

"I come with you?*' she said in German.

"Yes. Herr Goldberg is here. We'll go with him in a minute."

Sally looked around, but couldn't see him. Only a yard or so away Mr. Arnold Fox, his fact-finding completed for the night, was calling down to his boatman and gathering the tails of his coat about him fastidiously as he prepared to climb down the stairs. His bowler-hatted secretary was close behind, thrusting his notes into the dispatch case.

Sally had an idea; could she do it without being spotted.'*

She edged forward, and then, under cover of the crush, she nudged the dispatch case out from under the man's arm just as he was about to step onto the ladder. With a cry of dismay he grabbed for it, but too late: it struck the railing and burst open, and the papers swirled and fluttered out into the darkness, to float and sink and drift among the jostling boats. Sally enjoyed the secretary's horror almost as much as Arnold Fox's goggling rage.

Rebecca was watching, a puzzled smile somewhere behind her expression.

"An enemy," said Sally.

"Ah."

"Bravo," came Goldberg's voice from behind her. She turned, and then he said something in Russian to Rebecca, who responded guardedly.

"Let's go," he said, and waved over the side to Charlie the boatman. Sally saw the dinghy slip easily through the press of boats and reach the foot of the ladder, and then they were hurrying down and moving away, back on the dark water.

Less than an hour later, they were in a house in Spitalfields, drinking tea. It was the home of Morris Katz. His wife and their daughter, a young woman of Rebecca's age, welcomed Rebecca with embraces and a warm cloud of Yiddish, and

bore her away to wash and to find some clean clothes while Goldberg and the heavy, bearded Katz talked quietly for some time. Sally sat apart, aware of the warmth and the welcoming protectiveness of this home; or was it the Jewishness? Whatever the source, she wondered how she fitted in. It wasn't that she felt excluded; but it was a world she didn't know.

Presently the door opened and Rebecca came in. She was wearing a different dress, with a belt around the waist on which was hung a little purse of faded maroon velvet. She looked softer now, less tense, more tired, and she smiled at Sally and clasped her hands.

"I've got to go," said Goldberg. "Morris, Miss Lockhart is going to stay and talk to Rebecca."

He nodded to Sally, who watched him go, surprised as ever by his abruptness, the sudden shifts from warm to cold, friendly to distant, stern to vulnerable. She felt oddly diminished as the door closed behind him.

Rebecca sat down at the table across from Sally. She was a strange mixture; she looked at first sullen and heavy-featured and slow-witted, and then her face would come alive with intelligence and feeling for a short while before it sank into immobility again. At those moments she was almost beautiful; for the rest of the time she could have been any Russian-Jewish peasant girl, accustomed to docility and deference. But all the time, sparkling or not, there were shadows in her eyes.

In a mixture of Russian and Yiddish, which Morris Katz translated, and German, which Sally understood, Rebecca told them her story.

She had come from the shtetl, from a desperately poor Jewish community in the Russian provinces. She was the daughter of a dairyman. When the rest of her family was killed in one of the waves of slaughter that swept that world, she became a maidservant in the household of a more prosperous Jew, a merchant, who bribed his way out of the province and settled in Moscow. As Rebecca grew she learned to read and proved to be intelligent, and she attracted the closer atten-

tion of the merchant; eventually she became pregnant with his child. That was the point at which she ceased to be attractive to him, so he dismissed her. She drifted into a circle of students and artists, earning a living as a painter's model. When her child was bom she lived briefly with a student called Semyonov, a socialist, who was soon exiled to Siberia. Shortly afterward the child died. But while living with Semyonov, Rebecca had absorbed some of his ideas and had begun to study for herself. She had read as much as she could—including Goldberg's articles, which were appearing in various forbidden journals.

And like many others, she'd become aware of the shadowy figure of the Tzaddik, this brooding parasitical presence haunting the lives of those who wished to leave. All kinds of rumors swept the superstitious communities in the shtetl: the man was not human, but an animated mass of flesh brought to life by a corrupt rabbi; he had an evil spirit bound by magic to do his will; his agents enticed young girls into his house, where he ate them in an attempt to absorb their youth and strength. . . .

Sally remembered Goldberg's account of the girl in Amsterdam who drowned herself. It would be easy to believe crazy horror stories like that.

And as Rebecca continued with her story, Sally found her respect growing for this quiet, unimpressive, stolid-seeming girl; for she had found out the Tzaddik's Moscow address and found work with the neighboring household.

"I wanted to get close and see for myself. I'd thrown away superstition; I didn't believe in dybbuks and golems and all that old-fashioned folklore stuff. I just wanted to find out and maybe do something about it. I made friends with one of his maidservants. And I found that he had houses all over Europe, but that he spent most time in Amsterdam. He speaks many languages, but Dutch seems to be his native tongue.

"I saw him go in and out once or twice. He always travels by night. He is huge, gross. And paralyzed. He can speak and move his head, but none of his limbs. That's why he

The Tiger in the Well

has that monkey; it goes everywhere with him. It sleeps in his bed. He has electric bells instead of a bellpull, so the monkey can press the switch to call the servants.

"And he has one special servant, a valet called Michelet, who does everything for him that the monkey can't do— washes him, dresses him, and so on. He's an abominable man. Because he's so close to the Tzaddik, he's got power over all the other servants, and he uses it, especially on the women.

"The servant told me all that. And she told me about the whistles."

"The whistles.?" Sally said.

Morris Katz nodded. "I've heard those whistles. In Kiev and Berdichev, and other places, too, the rioters who loot Jewish shops and houses are controlled by whistles. Someone blows a signal, and what looks like an innocent crowd turns into a raging mob. Then the whistle blows again, and they stop and melt away. Once you know what the whistle means, it's terrifying when you hear it. And he had something to do with it.'"' he said to Rebecca.

"Yes," she said. "He dictated a letter to his secretary, to be sent to one of his agents in Byelorussia. He described the whole system. He dictated it in German and the secretary translated it, but the Tzaddik can't read Russian, and he doesn't trust anyone, so he got someone else to translate it back for him. The maid overheard. And then . . . she stole it and gave it to me. I've got it with me."

Katz smiled, the smile of a man proud of a comrade's achievement. Sally found herself hoping for the chance to do something worthy of a smile like that; but Rebecca looked down as if she was ashamed. She went on: "But then the Tzaddik found out that the maid was speaking to someone and had her punished. He gave her to Michelet. ... I don't know what he did to her, but I never saw her again. And I know they inflicted terrible punishments. The Tzaddik had one of his servants flogged with the knout. They hardly ever

use that nowadays, even in government prisons. That man died, apparently. But no one lifted a finger to protest."

She stopped to sip some tea, and went on: "I was friendly with that maid, and I wanted to do something to avenge her. I knew the Tzaddik was going on a joumey soon, and I didn't have much time, so I broke into his house and . . . well, I don't know what I thought I was going to do. His luggage was stacked in the hall. I'd only just found it when an alarm went off. Men came running from all over the house. They took me down to the basement."

She stopped again. Her face was expressionless. Sally reached over the table and took her hand, and Rebecca held it tighdy.

"After a while they'd had enough, I suppose. They threw me out into the street. I never saw the Tzaddik, then or afterward. So I'd failed. Except—"

There was a pounding at the street door, and she stopped at once. Sally felt through her hand a great bolt of fear strike Rebecca, and squeezed hard. They all sat frozen.

Morris Katz put his finger to his lips and stood up. Footsteps were miming down the stairs, and then the door opened and Mrs. Katz, breathless with fear, looked in and said something in Yiddish. Katz closed his eyes a moment and nodded. His wife withdrew.

"It's the police," he said quietly. "We'll have to let them in. Come on—the cellar."

He pulled aside a low curtain behind the rocking chair. The pounding on the front door was getting louder, and shouts were coming: "Open up! Police!"

Katz shoved Sally and Rebecca in front of him.

"Down!" he said.

Behind the curtain was a door about three feet high. Katz pushed it open, revealing a stairway down into darkness. Sally crouched low and followed Rebecca down the first couple of steps—^and then there was a crash from somewhere outside.

"The front door—" said Sally, turning back.

But all she saw was Katz, outside, putting his finger to his lips, and then shutting the cellar door.

Sally found Rebecca's hand, and they sat balanced uneasily on the stairs in the pitch dark, listening.

A hectoring voice was saying "Mr. Morris Katz, I believe that you are sheltering a wanted person—"

A torrent of Yiddish followed in Katz's voice, but the first man cut in: "Enough! I'm looking for a man called Goldberg. Is he in this house.'*"

Sally gripped Rebecca's hand. She'd thought they were looking for her.

"No, he is not," said Morris Katz. "And have you got a search warrant.'"'

A rustle of paper.

"Satisfied.'' All right. Constable Bagley, you take the upstairs. I'll have a look around down here. Did you know you'd been sheltering a fugitive from justice, Mr. Katz.? And a murderer, what's more. There's a death sentence waiting for him back in his own country. What do they do in Hungary, Mr. Katz, d'you know.? Do they hang 'em.? Or is it the guillotine.?"

Henna

"But what's he done?" Sally said, her voice shaking. "What's this crime?"

It was half an hour later. Sally and Rebecca had sat in the darkness for most of that time, not even daring to whisper as the heavy feet moved about overhead and the loud voices called up and down the stairs. Eventually, with a warning to Katz, the police had left, but he didn't open the cellar door for another five minutes.

Sally couldn't think of anything except this new threat. What would she do if Goldberg was captured? And—her fear coming alive again— was he a criminal?

"It's politics, not crime," Morris Katz was trying to explain, though he didn't know himself exactly. "They say he's not legally in this country—he should—I don't know—"

"But a death sentence?" She could hardly speak.

"In England you don't kill people directly for politics. Other places . . . they pin any crime on you; it doesn't matter to them what the excuse is."

"But they said he was a murderer ..."

"They would say anything. Goldberg is not like that. A fighter, yes, but—"

Then Sally remembered something Rebecca had been about to say when the police arrived. She turned to her urgently.

"Rebecca, when the police came you were telling us about what you'd done, and you said abgesehen von —except for . . ."

''Abgesehen von — Ahl Der Tzaddik, jaF'

"Yes, that's it. You said you'd failed, except for something. . . . And then the police came. Remember.^"

Sally was clinging hard to Rebecca's story, because even through the mist of fear about Goldberg she felt that something important was almost in reach, just beyond the edge of her vision.

"Ah! I know what it was. I said I'd failed, except for one little thing. When I was in the Tzaddik's house, before the men came, I saw his luggage."

"I remember. And.'*"

"And there were labels on it. I took one. I brought it all the way—it's here in my purse."

She fumbled in the shabby little purse, and a second later she had found it. It was crumpled and torn, but still legible were the words H. lee, ESQ., 12, fournier square, spital-

FIELDS, LONDON.

"So that's his name," Rebecca said, "or one of them. Lee. Esq. is not part of the name, no.'* And this address—Spital-fields ..."

The name sounded odd on her lips, all its sounds came from the front of the mouth, unlike the sounds in the words she was used to speaking. But Sally didn't notice that. Her fists were pressed together and she was shaking them back and forth as if that would help her remember.

"Sally.? What is it.?"

Then she had it. Mr. Bywater, the lawyer's clerk, all that time ago, telling her about the case his friend had reported to him. Lee v. Belcovitch —how Lee had dispossessed the man Belcovitch of his business and set up Parrish as manager— how Mr. Bywater had said that that proved that Lee was the man behind Parrish. How had she forgotten that.? And the address in the case—a square in Spitalfields with a French-sounding name that began with F —

"It's him! That proves it!"

More struggle then, to explain what she meant, and how she was involved at all; about Harriet, and Parrish, and her flight and refuge in the mission. It took a long time, but

Rebecca looked at her after it with a new understanding, and with a complex expression: part envy, part compassion. And Sally remembered that Rebecca had had a child, and it had died.

But all the time part of her mind was desperately beating, frightened, at the question of Goldberg, and as soon as she'd finished explaining her own case she came back to it.

"We must find a lawyer. There might be a way to stop them from sending him back. Has he got a lawyer.'' Do you know anything about him, Mr. Katz.'' I hardly know a thing. . . . But we must find a lawyer."

Morris Katz shrugged. "There is a man at Dean Street in Soho—but whether they have a lawyer ..."

"Mr. Wentworth!" Sally remembered the name of the lawyer Margaret Haddow had told her about—the one who'd helped, when was it.'' Only that day.''

She stood up too suddenly, and she felt faint and had to clutch at Rebecca's hand for support. The other girl stood too.

"I'm going to find a lawyer for Mr. Goldberg," she said after a dizzy second or two. She thanked Mr. Katz for his help, then put on her cloak and bonnet. Everything moved too slowly—her shaking hands fumbled at the fastenings, and she felt paralyzed with cold.

Rebecca came to the door, and the two of them clung tightly and kissed like sisters.

Bengal Court by moonlight looked ancient, villainous, and secret. Shadow lay like a great curtain across half the court, and Sally hesitated to enter it; but she had to. Her key turned in the lock.