City of God (43 page)

Nick was familiar with the Irish enclaves in the Bronx and Harlem and along the route of the Hudson River Railroad they had helped to build, but there seemed no fewer Irish paupers in Five Points, a worse hellhole than ever these days. Better not to say that; Manon had grown defensive about her adopted allegiances. “Must one be a member of your religion to receive treatment at this hospital?”

“Absolutely not. We will care for anyone who comes to us without respect to creed. Or color,” she added pointedly.

“Be careful you’re not branded abolitionists. You’ve enough to bear simply for being Catholics.”

“I believe the word is papists in that context. Never mind, I think when one is sick enough and poor enough, such considerations seem to matter less. Nick, will you be a member of our board of prominent lay advisors?”

He had agreed, though he’d told her “prominent” was not a word he thought applied to him and that in any case he had no desire to be such. Manon replied that he was prominent whether or not he wanted to be, that his reputation had grown in spite of himself. She did not mention Carolina and said nothing about the illicit life Nick lived with her and their children, though he had no doubt she knew about it. However, it had never occurred to him that Manon had any knowledge of Mei Lin, Linda as she’d asked him to call her. Be that as it may, when Nick arrived for the board meeting at a few minutes to three Mei Lin was standing beside the hospital door.

“I went first to your office, Dr. Turner, but Dr. Klein said you were not seeing patients there today. He suggested you might be coming here.”

Nick had long since taken Ben Klein into his confidence. As for Linda, she would be sixteen in a few weeks, and even dressed in her exceedingly modest school uniform he found her exotic beauty quite breathtaking, perhaps because he didn’t see her frequently. Carolina tried to do the
right thing, but she could never be easy with the girl; the memories were too bitter. Still, apart from a sense of duty, it was vital to both of them to remain informed about Sam Devrey and so Nick had taken over dealing with the Cherry Street situation. “I wasn’t expecting your visit for another month,” he said. “Otherwise I’d have arranged to let you know I wouldn’t be at my office today. Is something wrong, Linda?”

“My father…”

“Yes?”

“He’s very poorly. I thought…I mean my mother thought…”
The this-place-red-hair
yi,
he will fix. Go get him
.

Nick glanced at his pocket watch. The board meeting was to start in ten minutes. He could not get to Cherry Street and back in that time. “Is it urgent, Linda? Does he need a doctor at once?”

She shook her head. “No. He’s been ill for some time. Taste Bad has been treating him, but he doesn’t improve. My mother thought you might be able to help.”

“Very well, I’ll go with you back to Cherry Street as soon as I’m finished here. I’ve a meeting to attend. Come wait inside. It won’t take long.”

Mei Lin was careful to sit as Mother Stevenson instructed in deportment class, hands folded in her lap, ankles crossed, and feet flat on the floor. She could not, however, manage to gain merit in heaven by keeping her back from resting against the chair for all the time Dr. Turner was gone.

The nun sitting behind the small table near the front door seemed indifferent to how Mei Lin sat. She bent her head over a ledger of some sort and did not once look up. Still Mei Lin was sure she was being watched. At school the nuns always knew everything that was happening, even when their backs were turned. Perhaps the ability to see without looking came with holy vows. Never mind that these were different sorts of nuns wearing a different sort of habit. Though they did seem a great deal less…ethereal, that was the word. The Mothers never seemed to touch the earth when they walked. Some of the girls wondered if they
had to do ordinary things like use a privy. Maybe God took that need away when they entered the convent.

Mei Lin sighed. She was assuredly not ethereal. Right now she had an itch above her left ear under the straw bonnet fastened beneath her chin with a black bow tied precisely as the Madams of the Sacred Heart said it must be tied. Mei Lin tried to ignore it, but the itch got worse.
A young lady does not remove her bonnet in public,
mes enfants.
It is not permitted.
One of Ah Chee’s chopsticks would be perfect, the long ones used for cooking. She could poke it up under the bonnet and scratch as much as she needed to. Never mind, she would say three Hail Marys and an Our Father, and if the itch hadn’t gone away by then she’d just—

The door to the room at the end of the hall opened and a gentleman came out.

The meeting must be over. The nun quickly left her place behind the table and went to stand by the door, ready to open it for the distinguished visitors when they left. Mei Lin stood as well, but no one else followed the gentleman into the hall. He pulled the door of the meeting room shut behind him with an air of trying not to disturb the people still in the room. Mei Lin sat down again. The man walked towards her, stopped directly in front of her, bowed politely—he was carrying his silk topper under his arm, so he couldn’t tip it—and said,
“Chi le fan meiyou?”
Have you eaten rice today?

Mei Lin’s gray-blue eyes opened as wide as was possible. The man was white, but he had spoken to her in perfect Mandarin. An ordinary greeting, but apart from her father, he was the first white man she’d ever heard speak Chinese words, and his accent was considerably more natural than Baba’s.
“Chi le. Chi le,”
she managed after a long moment. Eaten. Eaten. An equally ordinary and polite answer to his greeting. The man bowed again, then turned and left.

It was years since Nick had been on Cherry Street, and the first thing he noticed was that the neighborhood had changed. The houses were more run-down, the people on the street surlier and almost entirely men, the
two women he did see looked very much like doxies. Another surprise was how many of the men were Chinese. He’d always had the impression that Sam Devrey’s lodgers kept their heads down and traveled the city only to get to and from their jobs, but here on Cherry Street he saw idlers and small groups talking, a great many of them Chinamen and certainly more than could possibly cram themselves into the two Cherry Street houses. There was even a tiny shop with a Chinese shopkeeper selling sundries. That at least looked a respectable enterprise. “Mei Lin—excuse me, Linda—what does your mother think of all this?”

“You can call me Mei Lin if you like. It’s only with white people that it matters.” She suddenly realized what she’d said. “I mean, you’re white, but…”

“It’s all right. I understand what you meant. But there certainly seem to be many more Chinese people here than I remember. Does your mother find that unsettling?”

“If you mean how much more crowded everything is and how much dirtier, I don’t think my mother notices. It’s hard to see such changes from the window.”

“Are you saying she still never goes out? Even with so many more of her own kind about?”

“Never. Not once since she arrived, as far as I know. Ah Chee gets her everything she needs. Ah Chee’s too old to carry much, but one of the men goes with her to help.”

Nick knew of at least one time Mei-hua had left her rooms, but that was not something he would speak about to Mei Lin. “It’s hard to believe,” he said.

“It’s the Chinese way for a lady never to leave her house. At least, my mother has always believed it to be so among the—” She broke off and didn’t look at him. He would think what she had meant to say very stupid indeed.

“Go on,” he urged. “Among the what?”

She couldn’t get out of it. “Among the highborn. My mother believes herself a princess, Dr. Turner. She thinks my father is lord of a kingdom.”

Nick concerned himself with stepping over the piles of rubbish he had to navigate to get inside the door of number thirty-seven, where Mei Lin told him her father was to be found. “He almost never comes next door now,” she explained. “I don’t think he wants my mother to know how ill he is.”

“But you said she sent you to get me.”

“Yes. Taste Bad reports regularly to her. He comes to show his respect. They all do. At least the people who live in my father’s buildings.”

He wondered if the girl knew that the two houses no longer belonged to Sam Devrey, though the rents were still paid to him. Carolina thought that Mei Lin had heard and understood everything seven years ago, on the day of the final confrontation between herself and Sam. It was impossible to tell from the girl’s manner or her speech. She was so utterly and carefully refined it was hard to discern a real person beneath her mannered
politesse
. The Madams of the Sacred Heart did their job well.

“My father is in here,” Mei Lin said, opening the door of a tiny windowless room. The smell of disease and dirt—and opium—was overpowering. She stepped aside. Nick went in. Then she closed the door behind him.

Devrey lay on a straw pallet raised about a foot from the floor on a makeshift bedstead created from bits of wood roped together. Nick had to kneel down to examine him. If he had not known the man to be his Cousin Samuel, he’d not have recognized him. He was shrunken to the point of being skeletal, his skin yellowed and flaking. Clean shaven, however, which made it apparent how hollow his cheeks were and how black the circles beneath his eyes. They remained closed while Nick poked and prodded and used his stethoscope, a marvelous new one with a length of rubber between an earpiece and a flared listening trumpet. When Nick began to palpate the glands of the neck, Sam opened his eyes.

“Turner. What are you doing here?”

“Your daughter brought me.”

Sam struggled to lift his head and see over Nick’s shoulder. “She’s not in here, is she? I don’t want her in here.”

“No, she waited outside. Who shaves you? Doesn’t look as if you can manage that on your own.”

“Leper Face, not that it’s any business of yours.”

“Brings you your supply of opium as well, does he?”

“None of your business,” Sam said again. Leper Face would not touch opium, much less supply it. Big Belly brought him what he needed.

“It’s killing you. I presume you do realize that.”

“Wrong,” Sam said. “It already has killed me. I’m a walking corpse. At least sometimes. Don’t walk much these days.”

“Why have you done this to yourself?”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a man. Because you’ve got a—”

Sam chuckled. It came out like a death rattle and betrayed the fact that he had few teeth left. “Started to say I’d a wife, didn’t you? Which one did you have in mind? Carolina’s your whore now, I imagine.”

“I suppose you know I could snap your neck with my two hands.”

“Of course. But you won’t. You’re a gentleman. A Christian. A doctor who took an oath to heal. All the things I am not, Nicholas Turner. But I’ll be pissing on you from hell. You can count on it. I’m told she has a third clipper now. I lie here praying for the grandmother of all storms to take her to the bottom. I—” He coughed, then spit up yellow, blood-specked phlegm. “I won’t die yet,” he said when he could speak again. “Not until I hear about how Carolina’s clippers have gone down.”

“There’s nothing I can do, Mei Lin. I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t expect anything else, Dr. Turner. I only came to get you because my mother asked me to.”

“Yes, I understand. Shall I go up and tell her how things are?”

“No, it’s better if I tell her. Dr. Turner, it’s the opium, isn’t it? That’s why he’s so ill.”

“It is indeed. It’s a vicious and fatal habit, my dear. I am sorry it has been so available to him. Providing the drug is a misguided kindness, I assure you.”

“He doesn’t get it from us, Dr. Turner, I promise you.” She thought it best to change the subject. “Dr. Turner, there was a man who left the meeting at the hospital a few minutes before you did. Not very tall, stocky, fair hair. Do you know him by any chance?”

“Kurt Chambers,” he said after a few moments’ thought. “He joined the board recently. I know nothing about him except that he’s arrived recently from Europe, London I believe, and he’s been a generous benefactor to St. Vincent’s. Why do you ask?”

“I saw him leave,” she said. “And I just wondered who he was.” Unless he asked her directly she would not tell him that Mr. Kurt Chambers spoke Chinese. It wasn’t really a lie, just as not telling him that Lee Big Belly supplied the clouds for Baba to swallow was not a lie. Never mind that he did it with such a free hand Mei Lin, who knew
ya-p’ien
to be a source of considerable profit, was astonished. If she was not asked, not telling was permissible.

“Y
OU WILL TAKE
some tea, Papa Klein?”

“Yes, Bella, I will take a little glass of tea.”

Ben’s wife brought her father-in-law the tea on a tray covered with a lace-edged white cloth, with a small dish of cherry preserves on the side. A silver spoon was placed invitingly beside the preserves. Jacob Klein had himself made the spoon; it was part of the silver service for twelve he had made for Ben and Bella as a wedding present. Next to the spoon was a silver dish, also his work, filled with her homemade cookies. Before Bella had married Ben, after a test in her kitchen so there could be no cheating, Frieda Klein had pronounced her future daughter-inlaw an excellent cook. That had sealed the bargain, though there were things about Bella Markus’s family which did not meet with Jacob Klein’s approval. Never mind. The couple had been married fifteen years and Bella had given him seven beautiful grandchildren. The youngest, a girl named for Jacob’s great grandmother Rachel of blessed memory, was just six months old. He thanked Bella for the tea and did not touch either the cookies or the cherry preserves.

“So, Papa Klein, you like the new house?”

“It is very nice, darling. Beautiful.” What could he not like about a four-story brownstone house on the north side of elegant Hudson Square, west of Broadway, where rich people lived. Even, nowadays, rich Jews. “Only…Benjy doesn’t find it too far to walk to synagogue on the Sabbath?”

Bella looked away, busying herself with something not quite right about the lay of the lace doily beneath the lamp beside her chair. “He doesn’t find this location inconvenient, no. And to the office, only twenty minutes to walk on a nice day. Invigorating, he says.”

“And on a day that is not so nice?”

“He takes the buggy.” Something else on the table required her attention.

“Benjy will be home soon?”

“Yes, Papa Klein. By two always on Thursdays. He writes his reports on Thursday afternoons. In his private study on the second floor,” she added, unable to resist this tiny bit of bragging. “He says the light is better here than at the office.”

“So. Good light is important. I agree.”

“That’s why the older children aren’t here. Sofie takes them to the park on Thursday afternoons. So Ben can have quiet.” They had hired a woman, a free black, to help with the children after Bella lost their four-month-old twins to the croup and was for a time despondent. Sofie had been with them ever since. “Of course,” his daughter-in-law added, “if we’d known you were coming…”

Jacob waved away the apology. “I was in the neighborhood. Delivering a pair of candlesticks to a customer.” Not exactly. The customer lived ten blocks up the town. No, wait. According to his daughter Esther, these days he must say “uptown.” “Up the town” was old-fashioned. Esther had married a man who owned an insurance company, and they lived in a house even grander than this one, uptown as Esther said, at Twenty-first Street on Gramercy Square.

“Please, Papa Klein, have a ginger cookie. I baked them myself just this morning.”

Jacob put a hand to his stomach. “My digestion…Forgive me, Bella. I’m sure the ginger cookies are delicious.”

“And my cherry preserves?” Bella could feel the heat of her reddening cheeks. She could sometimes control her temper but never her cheeks. “I made them myself as well. You’ve always loved cherry preserves in your tea, ever since I’ve known you.”

“Yes, darling, but lately…I don’t know—”

“My kitchen is
kosher,
Papa Klein. I would not serve you anything from a kitchen that was not
kosher
.” She stood up. “How can you think I would do such a thing? That Ben would permit such a thing? How can you?” She did not add that it was so all the Kleins could eat in their house that she and Ben had determined to keep a
kosher
kitchen. “Are we
goyim
that we do not understand the importance?”

Jacob leaned forward and took a heaping spoonful of cherry preserves and dropped them into his tea. They shimmered like red jewels at the bottom of the glass. “I apologize, Bella.” He put two ginger cookies into his mouth at the same time. That way he did not have to say what he was thinking she meant. The importance to him, not to her.

The door of the parlor opened and Ben came in. He and his father embraced. Bella offered to get fresh tea, but both men refused. “In that case,” she said, “you’ll have to excuse me. It’s time to feed Rachel. Your newest granddaughter has an enormous appetite, Papa Klein.”

Jacob made a point of kissing Bella’s cheek before she left. Seven grandchildren: three girls and four boys, all healthy and beautiful. Never mind whatever he didn’t like about her relatives. Some of the relatives of Esther’s wealthy-from-insurance husband Jacob also didn’t like. They were Bavarians, a group Jacob, who was from Prussia, had never fully trusted. But Esther and her husband and their two boys attended a proper synagogue. Indeed, they had been instrumental in founding a new one three blocks from their home. Not so with his son.

“Very nice, Ben,” Jacob said. “Everything. Very, very nice.”

“We were waiting to have you and Mama see the house when we were more settled. It’s only been three weeks. Still everywhere boxes.”

“I was in the neighborhood.” With a shrug. “Anyway, I didn’t mean the house only. Your Bella looks beautiful. I like when a woman gets plump and pink.” When Ben married her Bella was thin as a rail and so pale.
Jacob had worried she might be sickly, but his son the doctor had assured him Bella was perfectly healthy. Apparently he’d been correct. “And little Rachel and Morris, I saw them as well. They are also beautiful.”

“We’re calling him Morrie, Papa. That will be easier for him. In New York. In America.”

“I know where New York is, Benjy. Only I’ve been wondering do you?”

“Papa, what do you mean?”

“I mean that New York is not just geography. It is a place that
Hashem
sees. Like every other place.”

Ben motioned to the sofa. “Sit, Papa. Tell me what you want to tell me.”

“I shall, Benjy. With no fancy words, because you are my son and from me you should hear only the truth without any decorations. I am wondering if in two years, when it is time for my eldest grandson, your David, to be a
bar mitzvah,
if—
Hashem
permit me to live to see that day—I can stand next to him on the
bimah
and feel my heart swell with pride as a grandfather’s should.”

“Why would that not be the case, Papa?” Ben asked quietly.

“Because if David is to be a
bar mitzvah
at this Temple Emanu-El on Chrystie Street, presuming those idolaters follow even that much of the law, I cannot attend.”

“Idolater is a very strong word, Papa. There are no golden calves on Chrystie Street.”

“To worship
goyim
, to think that one must be like them in every possible way, what is that Benjy if not idolatry?”

Ben shook his head. “Worship
goyim?
Papa, where did you get such an idea? And I’m not a member of Temple Emanu-El.”

“So tell me, please, where are you a member? To pray sometimes during the week and on the Sabbath, what synagogue do you walk to, Benjamin, my son? When your mother and I die, where will you go to say
Kaddish
for us?”

“Papa, there are almost fifty thousand Jews in New York now. It’s not the same as—”

“Yes, that I know. Waves of them have come. And now, here in New York, there are five hundred thousand people all together. So from being a tiny drop in a not so big New York we fifty thousand Jews have become a big part of a very big bucket. And there are probably ten synagogues. I lost count some time ago. By the way, that’s probably ten not including your Temple Emanu-El.”

“Why are you not counting it? True, their synagogue is in space they rent only, but Shearith Israel began in a room behind a mill, so—”

“Shearith Israel obeys the law, Benjy. Maybe I do not like the prayer book they use or the way they do some things, but they follow the rules given us by
Hashem
. They do what Torah and Talmud tell us Jews are supposed to do.”

“Torah yes, Papa. That is the authority. But Talmud is commentary only. Old-fashioned notions from rabbis arguing hundreds of years ago about the meaning of this or that. You don’t know the exact date of a particular holiday, which way the moon maybe was or is going to be? You will then keep the holiday for two days. So you should not by accident make a mistake. In Exodus it says, ‘Thou dost not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.’ From that you get a million laws about what you can put in your mouth and even your stomach, and how long it will take to digest so maybe you can put something else in your mouth. I am a man of science, Papa. I do not need rabbis from Babylon who have been dead already a thousand years telling me how long food stays in my stomach.”

“From Isaac Markus you get these ideas. They can come from nowhere else.”

“Isaac Markus! Papa, Bella’s grandfather has been dead for thirty years, may his name be for a blessing. He never came to America. I never met him.”

“But I met him. In the old country, in Prussia. He was a follower of Samuel Holdheim. Who called himself Rabbi Holdheim, but I don’t think so. This reform of his is nothing that would come from a rabbi. Isaac Markus, he believed also in so-called reform. My question to you, my Benjy, my only son, is this, do you?”

“I’m not sure, Papa.”

“Not sure. Very well. Can you then promise me that David will be a
bar mitzvah
at B’nai Jeshurun? So I can stand beside him?”

Ben hesitated, but not for long. “I’m sorry, Papa. Bella and I think…I cannot promise that.”

Countess Romanov Lilac Langston called herself these days. After all, she had actually been at the imperial court of Nicholas I, Tsar of all the Russias, in St. Petersburg, dressed up in an elaborate gown such as she’d never yet seen, much less owned. With a tiara. Never mind that later, when she tried to sell it, she found out the tiara was paste. She always knew the entire adventure was a sort of a dream. So when she woke up one morning to find Vladimir gone, she wasn’t surprised.

There was no note, but he had left her a whole pile of rubles—not that she’d ever reckoned him to be entirely truthful about what they were paid for Manon Turner’s diamond, which was now part of the Russian crown jewels—but she’d never supposed Vladimir to be the staying sort. In fact, he’d hung around two years longer than she’d have guessed. As for the money, he was a fair sort, no doubt about that. When they ran away from New York together, Vladimir told her he’d left the keys to his fancy-goods store beside his wife’s bed.
I only took this tiara for you, Lilac darling. Because where we’re going you will need it.
Grand it had been wearing a tiara and a ball gown and making a deep curtsy to the Tsar and Tsarina. A woman could get used to that sort of thing. So when she realized Vladimir was gone and she was on her own again, Lilac had instantly made up her mind that from then on she’d be Countess Romanov.

But not in St. Petersburg or anywhere in Russia. Not with them fierce winters they had, and their language being so difficult to learn. London or New York, that was the question. There were black marks against both: In London, even as Countess Romanov, she might find herself drawn right back to Spitalfields, lured by the old ways, and pretty soon she’d really be Francy again. In New York there were those who might
think Lilac owed them something. Addie Bellingham for instance. Or Mrs. Manon Turner.

But when was Lilac Langton who had been Francy Finders and was now Countess Romanov not a match for the likes of Addie Bellingham or Manon Turner?

New York it was.

Only it turned out she changed her mind or had it changed for her. The steamship
Russian Empress
was supposed to stop in Oslo first, then Greenland, where seems like they didn’t have any cities, at least none she could pronounce, then Halifax in Nova Scotia, and finally (wouldn’t it be grand!) down the coast to old New York. But four days out of Oslo the ship developed engine trouble, and since Portsmouth was the closest port, that’s where they put in. At least a week was needed for repairs, it turned out. And what with one thing and another, she never did get back aboard the
Russian Empress
.

There was a little cottage on the edge of the town, flowers all around, and even a few sheep grazing in a pasture out behind. And it was for sale. Like a country estate it was, like the
dachas
the rich Russians had. Perfect for Countess Romanov. Cheap, too. She had plenty of brass left after she bought it, but that’s not what she planned to live on. Too clever for that she was, whatever name she called herself. Do a bit of business with the lady needles, real quiet and only for the gentry, that was her plan.

Then, when she was just getting started, two women—leastwise they were dressed like women, though she’d never seen ladies who looked so much like men—came and beat her silly. She was black and blue for days, and ever after missing one of her front teeth.
Don’t do to cut in on business as is already established, love. Have to make your living, best you get ’em in the family way rather than out of it.
Later she found out they were called Sapphos, women as were lovers with other women, though God knows what they actually did. And in these parts it turned out, Sapphos had the abortion business stitched up tight.