Threads and Flames (39 page)

As they came closer to home, Raisa turned to Fruma and said, “Will you please tell your mother that I'll be a little late? I told the Reshevskys and the Delvecchios that I was going to attend the verdict. I think it might be kinder if they heard it from me, not the newspapers.”

“There's no way this news can be kind,” Fruma said. “Look, let me help you. I'll go to the Reshevskys' for you; you see the Delvecchios.”

“I wish we could do it the other way around,” Raisa said.

“Why? You know Luciana's people and I don't.”

“I know, but—” She bit her lower lip. “I just hope Renzo's not there.”

“Isn't he your friend?”

“Yes, and he's a good friend, too, but lately I feel on edge when I'm in his company. Look.” She stopped under a street-lamp and pulled something out of her purse. The lamplight brought out the rich amber and deep brown of a small tortoiseshell comb. “He said that since my hair is so much longer and . . .
prettier
now, I should have something pretty to adorn it. I tried to give it back, but he swore I'd insult him if I didn't keep it. I think . . . I'm afraid he wants to be more to me than just a friend, and that's impossible.”

“Because he's not a Jew?”

“Because he's not Gavrel.”

“All right, Raisa,” Fruma said. “I'll tell the Delvecchios; you tell the Reshevskys.”

She shook her head. “No, I'm being silly. You're right, I know the Delvecchios and you don't. Besides, I'm a coward. I don't think I could stand to see how the Reshevskys take the news that Zusa's murderers are free men tonight.”

 

 

Raisa threw open the door of the Kamensky apartment with such force that it hit the wall with a bang like a cannon shot. Her face was blazing from the cold and from all the blocks she'd run. She held on to the doorjamb, afraid that if she let go, her knees would buckle and she'd go sprawling. She heard the sound of chairs in the front room being pushed back, of running feet as her landlords and Fruma hurried to see who had come bursting into their home. They gaped when they saw her, framed in the doorway, gasping for breath, her face stretched to the limit by a smile so wide it made her eyes ache.

And yet she would have smiled even wider if she could have.

“Raisa, child, what is it?” Mr. Kamensky raised one hand, but stopped short of touching her.

Raisa caught fast, shallow breaths, struggling to speak. The sound of footsteps climbing the stairs and crossing the landing behind her broke the spell. She took a few steps into the Kamenskys' apartment and turned back to hold out her hands toward the door.

“Tell them,” she said, her words tangled up in laughter. “
Tell
them!”

Framed in the doorway, Luciana Delvecchio leaned on her brother's arm and in slow, musical English softly said, “Your son is alive.”

A
ll the way up into Westchester County on the New York and Harlem Line, Raisa found it impossible to stay in her seat for more than five minutes at a time. None of the people with whom she traveled said a word to stop her, though once the conductor tried scolding her for bothering the other passengers. That was a mistake.

“Young man, if you want to throw your weight around, find a better target,” Mrs. Kamensky declared, rising like a thundercloud to stand with Raisa. “This girl is bothering no one.
We
know her.” She indicated the seat where Mr. Kamensky sat with a dozing Brina in his lap, her own empty place beside him, then in quick succession Fruma, Paolo, and Luciana. “As for the rest”—she made an imperious gesture that included the only three passengers in the car who were not part of their traveling group—“do any of these people
look
like they are being disturbed?”

“Well, she oughta sit down anyhow,” the conductor blustered through his thick mustache. “If the train takes a curve or stops short, she could get hurt bad, standing up like that.”

“And how many times do your passengers go tumbling down the aisles? Can't your engineer drive this train better than that?” Mrs. Kamensky lifted her chin and buried the man in scorn. “If you had any idea of what this girl has survived, you would not babble at her about a little bump or bruise or scratch she
might
get. If you had seen half the sights she has, and lived to walk away—”

“What'd
she
do, huh?” The conductor had a good supply of his own sarcasm to fire back at Mrs. Kamensky. “Jump off the
Maine
and swim back here from Havana?”

Gavrel's mother gave him a withering look, but all she said in reply was, “
That
is her friend.” She pointed at Luciana.

The conductor was not a stupid man. One look at the Italian girl's face and he understood. The marks of fire were there, plain to see. Even though she wore a shawl pulled up over her head, it was impossible not to notice the patches of skin where the hair had been burned away. More than nine months had passed since the Triangle burned, but the newspapers were filled with reports on the verdict, refreshing all the horror of that March day. “God bless you, girls,” he muttered before striding quickly out of the car.

“Raisa, will you sit with me?” Luciana reached for her friend's hand, drawing her down beside her. Raisa couldn't understand the Italian words Luciana spoke to Paolo, but she could guess their meaning when he moved to another part of the car. “We are almost there,” Luciana said as soon as the two of them were alone. “Soon you will see him. Before that . . . I need to tell you something.”

“What?” Raisa felt a chill that had little to do with the late-December weather. “Is he very badly burned? Has he lost a leg, an arm, an eye to the fire? I do not care about that. I love him, Luciana.”

“I know. Raisa, I have scars, but where I was burned there was no deep damage done to my body. Your Gavrel, it is the same, even better. So little of the fire touched him that you would call it a miracle, if only—if only ...” Luciana looked down at her hands, still lightly wrapped in bandages. “The fire does not only burn the body.”

For a little while, the only sound was the passage of the railway car over the tracks, speeding north. Raisa waited for her friend to speak again. She had seen strange ghosts hiding in Luciana's eyes and she didn't dare say anything, for fear of calling them out into the daylight.

At last, Luciana went on. “Gavrel and I, we were very lucky. We worked on the eighth floor, where the fire began, so we had the most time to escape. The cutters like Gavrel hang the paper patterns from wires. They stuff the scraps that are left over into bins under the tables. The owners keep the scraps to sell, but the man who comes to collect all of those rags does not come every day. That was where the fire began, in the rags. We saw it happen. Gavrel and some of the other men tried to put it out with the fire buckets, but there were not enough. So we sent word to the other floors and then we ran. But Gavrel—your Gavrel did not run down the stairs into the street. He tried to run up the stairs to you.”

Luciana looked into Raisa's eyes. “He would have died. I could not let that happen. I ran after him, but the fire grew worse. The hanging patterns were burning, sheets of flame flying through the air. One fell on me and I screamed. Gavrel heard, and turned back to help me. I think he must have beat out the flames on me with his bare hands, then he got both of us out of the shop and down into the street. He had just left me in the care of an ambulance driver—” She began to shudder.

“You don't have to tell me, Luciana,” Raisa said. “Don't talk about what happened that day.
Today
he's alive. That's all that matters.”

“But I
must
talk, Raisa!” Luciana insisted. “And you must know. Once I was safe, Gavrel turned to go back into the building. He wanted to find you! The firemen in the street stopped him. They thought he was crazy. He fought with them so fiercely that I was afraid he would win and rush back to his death! I could not let that happen; he saved my life. I ran from the ambulance, I grabbed his arm, one of the firemen and I began to pull him away from the building.” She shook even harder, her whole body trembling so violently that Raisa stripped off her own coat and settled it carefully over her friend's shoulders just as Luciana said, “That was when the body fell beside us.

“Oh, Raisa, the sound of her striking the street! It will never leave me. And the sight of what was left on the pavement! The fireman, big and strong, I thought he would faint. Gavrel and I stood like ice, like stone. All we could do was stare at the poor, burned, broken thing. That—that was how we still stood when another body fell and struck us down.”

“Luciana!” Gently and carefully, Raisa hugged her friend. For all the dreadful things she had witnessed herself that day, she couldn't imagine how it must have been for Gavrel and Luciana, engulfed by horror.

“For a long time after that, I did not know where I was or what had happened to me after—after the second body ...” Luciana turned her face away from Raisa to gaze out the window at the peaceful landscape slipping past. “When I was myself again, the women told me that months had passed.”

“The women,” Raisa repeated. “The hospital nurses?”

“I was not in a hospital then, Raisa. At first, yes, to treat my injuries. But when I—when I came back, I was in the place where we are going now. It is not a hospital, but a place . . . a place of rest, created years ago as an act of charity by a society lady whose husband is a great doctor, very wealthy. She runs it, even works there—though she is not a nurse—with other ladies like her who don't turn their backs on the poor. Thank God it exists, such a shelter for people like Gavrel and me, whose worst hurts were in our minds! Those in charge of the place did not want us sent to the city shelters for—for the ...” She lowered her voice, shamed by the word. “Insane.”

Insane!
Raisa, too, cringed at the word. Most people she knew—even the kindest—regarded mental illness with the same childish ignorance and fear Brina had shown when Mrs. Kamensky was ailing. They were still too ready to drop the weight of blame for it squarely on the backs of its helpless victims.

“The women were very good to us, very kind,” Luciana went on. “They tried and tried to help me speak again, to come back to the world. They wanted to let my family know I was alive, but how could they, when they had no idea who I was? They had no clue, and I stayed silent. I had seen and heard too many horrors, so I—I ...” She struggled to explain. “I suppose I
chose
to forget for a while, until I became strong enough again to remember. It was the same for all of us in that place—for me, for Gavrel—”

“Tell me, Luciana,” Raisa said, her voice low. “How is he? Tell me the truth.”

“I came back,” Luciana said. “He did not.”

 

 

From the train station, they traveled in a hired wagon through tranquil country roads. Raisa sat up front beside the driver, Brina in her lap. The child was delighted by everything she saw, but for Raisa, each hedge and fence and house they passed only made her skin prickle with tension because it was not the house where Gavrel waited. At last the wagon turned up a tree-lined path to a house set well back from the road. Luciana told everyone that it was the summer cottage of a wealthy family, but in name only, the same way that the great mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, were “cottages.” Judging from the number of windowpanes flashing in the sunlight, it must have boasted at least twenty rooms. Even in winter the wide lawn and ample garden surrounding the house were impressive.

As soon as the carriage came to a stop in front of the cottage, Raisa spun around and swung Brina over the back of the driver's bench into Mrs. Kamensky's arms. Then she leaped down and ran to the front door, her hat blowing off her head and tumbling down the gravel walkway behind her. She banged the shining brass knocker against the door so furiously that it was a miracle the wood didn't split. She hardly glanced at the gray-haired woman who answered the door. She was across the threshold and flying through the house, his name on her lips, his face before her eyes.

She found him in an airy room on the second floor. He was propped up in a high-backed wicker wheelchair with his back to the window. She stood in the doorway, gazing at him with an unearthly combination of happiness, disbelief, and fear that if she took a single step forward, he would vanish.
It
is
him,
she thought, her pulse thrumming.
Luciana told us the truth and my eyes aren't lying. It's him, he's here, he's alive. He's alive!

“Gavrel! Gavrel!” She called his name as she rushed forward, arms outstretched. She grabbed his hands, raised them to her lips and covered them with kisses. She knelt beside him and sincerely believed that if the world were to end in that moment, she would go into eternity without regret.

But the seconds passed, and she realized that he was not responding. The room might as well have been empty. His eyes were open, but if they saw her, there was no sign. The hands she held so tightly were limp and cold in hers.

“Oh, please, don't you know me?” she implored. “Can't you see that I'm
real
? I'm here, your family is here, too—your parents, your sister, even little Brina! Luciana told me what happened to you, but that's over. Look, I'm just as alive as you are. I didn't fall, I didn't die, I'm here, we're both here, and I—I love you, Gavrel. I love you so much. Say something. Say
anything.
Come back to me, Gavrel! Please,
please
come back!”