Threads and Flames (33 page)

“I see her! I see her! Raisa! Raisa! Raisa! Raisa!” Brina's feet flew as she threw herself at Raisa so hard that the two of them nearly tumbled over. The child's face was slick with tears, her nose running, her body nothing but sobs. “I knew! I knew you were all right!” Brina kissed her countless times, her lips turning black from the soot smearing Raisa's face. When Mr. and Mrs. Kamensky caught up to the little girl and tried to make her let go of Raisa, she flailed at them with fists and feet until they gave up and stood back.

“Thank God,” Mr. Kamensky murmured over and over. “Thank God.”

“You came home alone?” Mrs. Kamensky asked.

“Of course she did!” her husband snapped. His eyes were rimmed with red. “What, you think two people could find each other in the middle of that Gehenna?”

“I'm sure Zusa and Luciana are fine,” Raisa replied dully. “It was bad on nine, but Zusa is smart. If I could get out, she could, too, and Luciana worked on eight where—”

“With the cutters,” Mrs. Kamensky said. “With Gavrel. Maybe she's home by now, your Italian friend. Maybe she saw him.”

Raisa blinked. She was hearing every word her landlady spoke, but she couldn't understand a single one. They made no sense. “It's Shabbos, Mrs. Kamensky,” she said as if explaining simple matters to a baby. “Gavrel never works on Shabbos. He goes to synagogue, he prays, he studies with the rabbi, but he never works on—”

Mr. Kamensky's stony voice cut off her words. “He left the house this morning after you were gone. We thought he was going to synagogue early, but he wasn't there. We got worried until Fruma told us what he'd told her, that he wanted to start working Saturdays for a while, that there was something very important he wanted to do, but he needed to earn extra money to do it.”

Raisa felt the blood leave her face. Still holding Brina, she began to sink to the sidewalk. Mrs. Kamensky took Brina away. Mr. Kamensky got his arm around her. She never knew how he managed to steer her up flight after flight of stairs, only that somehow she was in the apartment, in Fruma's tearful embrace as the two girls sat side by side on the bed in their room.

Outside, the street began to fill with howls and cries and keening. Sometimes the sound of a joyful reunion broke through the cries of loss. In the Kamenskys' apartment there was only silence. Even Brina sat quietly, sucking her fingers like an infant, her other hand knotted in Raisa's skirt. They waited and waited.

Gavrel did not come home.

“R
aisa, put on your coat. It's cold.” Mrs. Kamensky stood with her husband by the front door, waiting.

Raisa wrapped her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “I can't wear it,” she said. “I can't.”

“All right. I'm not going to argue with you.” There was a strange, brittle note in Mrs. Kamensky's voice, like a thin sheet of ice over a bottomless pool. One wrong step would shatter it and she would plunge from sight, lost forever.

“Lipke, my dearest, don't you think Raisa should rest? After what she's been through.” Mr. Kamensky spoke softly as he held fast to his wife's shoulders. All that sleepless night and all that bleak morning he had hardly let go of her once. It was impossible to say whether he was comforting her or whether he was afraid that if he let her go, he would no longer be able to stand.

“I'm all right, Mr. Kamensky,” Raisa replied, her fingers fumbling to secure her shawl with her mother's gold brooch. “I need to go.”

“I don't understand why you won't let me come with you, too,” he persisted.

His wife slammed her fist into the apartment door so abruptly that everyone jumped. “Do you
want
to take my last drop of strength?” she shouted. “I
told
you, it's Sunday. You will take care of the store, as always. Haven't we got enough troubles without letting the business go, too?”

“But, my dear, don't you think the customers will understand?”

“Understand what? That you want to sit shivah before we know for sure he's dead, God forbid? Do we have such riches to our names that we can
afford
to do that? Fruma will take care of Brina; Raisa and I will take care of—” Her voice caught on something in her throat and tore into a dry sob, but she recovered quickly. Pulling herself tall, she concluded, “It's settled.”

“Yes, Lipke.” He bowed his head. “I'll go soon.”

“We can come with you, Papa,” Fruma offered. She was still seated at the table in the front room. Brina sat in her lap, her face pressed hard against Fruma's shirtwaist. “In case Louis isn't there.”

“Where else would he be?” Mrs. Kamensky's words shrilled through the apartment. “You and the child stay
here.
If someone comes with news and no one is home, what then?” She whirled on her husband. “
Tell
her!”

Mr. Kamensky sighed. “Listen to your mother, Fruma,” he said. “Please.”

“Be a good girl for Fruma, Brina,” Raisa called out. “We'll be back as soon as we can, I promise.” She got no answer.

Just as she and Mrs. Kamensky were about to walk out the door, Fruma called, “Raisa! Raisa, wait just a moment. I have something for you. It's on top of my bureau. I'd get it for you, but ...” She nodded at Brina, cradled in her lap.

Raisa went into the bedroom and returned holding an unsealed envelope. “This is all I found on the bureau, Fruma.”

“That's what I meant. It's a letter. I wrote it this morning when I couldn't sleep. It's for you.”

Raisa was confused. “Why would you write me a letter?”

“I didn't write it
to
you, Raisaleh; I wrote it
for
you, for you to send to the woman who raised you, Glukel.”

“Since when does she need someone else to write her letters for her?” Mrs. Kamensky chafed at the delay. “In Yiddish, in English, she knows how!”

“I know that, Mama,” Fruma said softly. “I did it to help her. Who knows how far or how fast the news about the fire can spread? Across a country, across an ocean—who knows? She's told Glukel the name of the shop where she works—used to work. Better for a letter that says ‘There was a fire, but I'm safe and well' to reach that good woman before she hears about what happened from somewhere that talks only about the dead.”

Raisa took the letter out of the envelope and read what Fruma had written. She could have wept with gratitude. Without concealing the truth, Fruma's every sentence would set Glukel's heart and mind at ease.

When Raisa lowered the paper at last, Fruma looked up at her friend. “You're carrying so much, Raisa. I wanted to share the burden. If you don't like what I've done, tear it up. I won't be offended.”

“God bless you for this, Fruma.” Raisa bent to kiss her friend's cheek. “How could I be offended by this? I'll sign it and—”

“Fruma wrote it; let Fruma sign your name to it and see that it's mailed,” Mrs. Kamensky snapped. “I can't wait any longer. We must
go.
” She strode out of the apartment and Raisa had to scramble after her.

Mrs. Kamensky walked down the street like a queen, her eyes set on some far-off goal that only she could see. Every sentence was a royal command. “First we will go to look after your friends. Then we will hear what they know about my son. Then we will see.”

They came to Zusa's home first. Raisa led the way up the dark and narrow stairs to the Reshevsky apartment. Cousin Selig answered the door before Raisa was able to rap more than twice. He looked like a man hoping for a miracle, but when he saw who the visitors were and that they weren't smiling, his face fell.

“Anything?” he asked. Raisa shook her head.

“We are going to look for my son,” Mrs. Kamensky said calmly. There was no need to ask if anyone under this roof had news of Gavrel; the air echoed with emptiness.

“I was just about to go, too,” Selig said. “But I didn't want to leave Dvorah alone.” He nodded back into the eerily still apartment, where somewhere, out of sight, Zusa's mother waited. “One of our neighbors said she would stay with her. I thought you were her. I can't leave until she gets here.”

“We're sorry, we can't wait.” Mrs. Kamensky was firm. “There will be many other people.”

Selig nodded. “Like last night and this morning. We only came home a few hours ago. Were you there, too?”

“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Kamensky spoke so sharply to Zusa's cousin that Raisa jumped back, shocked.

“The shop,” Selig said. “The building where . . . The moment we heard the news, Dvorah and I went uptown. God, so many people filling that park across the street! We must have numbered thousands, tens of thousands! The police were struggling to hold us back. I heard one man say that the whole fire was over in less than half an hour. Half an hour! Can you imagine that? So little time, and yet—”

“We didn't go uptown last night,” Mrs. Kamensky interrupted. “We're going today,
now.
” She spoke urgently, raising her voice as if to keep Selig from saying any more. “We have to be on our way.”

Selig leaned against the doorjamb. Slowly he slid to the floor, the expression on his face unchanging, his eyes still filled with the horrors of the night. “As soon as they could, the firemen began bringing down the bodies that were still in the building,” he said. “They lowered them from above in nets. Someone in the crowd said that the elevators collapsed during the fire, before everyone could get out. The rails they ran on buckled from the heat and the weight of so many people trying to get into the cars. Some of the girls left behind threw themselves down the shafts. Better to break than to burn. We heard that the fire escape over the back courtyard also gave way, twisted into nothing but a tangle of metal. The girls who were still on it fell, they fell. ...”

Raisa knelt beside Selig. “Let me help you up,” she said, slinging the man's arm over her shoulders. It was a struggle, but she got him back on his feet. “You should go inside and sit down. Lean on me and we can—”

“No!” Standing on his own once more, Selig jerked away from her as if her touch had burned him. “Don't you see? If I sit down, I don't know when I'll be able to move again, and I have to! It's all in my hands now. I have to find her, our dear one, our little Zusa.” His face was suddenly awash with tears.

“I—I can look for you, if you want.” It cost Raisa a lot to make that offer. “Not just—not just at the—where we're going now. There are hospitals to visit, too. I promise you, I'll look for—”

“She is
our
Zusa,” Selig declared. “After all we witnessed, trying to find her last night, I can't just let this pass into someone else's hands. You don't know what it was like. We saw everything from the crowd. They set up electric searchlights. The firemen and the police were gathering the bodies and—and stacking them. They covered the stacks with tarpaulins. In the old country, that was how I stacked
wood
for the winter fire! Wood for the burning . . . wood ...” He bent his head and covered his face with one hand.

“You're right, we
weren't
there,” Mrs. Kamensky said. After her small outburst, she was again cold as stone. “We waited at home. Now we've waited long enough.”

“Wait!” Selig uttered a stuttering, crazy laugh. “That was what they told us last night, to wait. As if we were back on the lines at Ellis Island, waiting for someone to open the gates to the Golden Land! But how could we wait? The sidewalk was littered with their things, their torn, burned, ruined, pitiful possessions. A trampled hat. A broken hair comb. A single shoe with the heel torn away. No, no, we couldn't wait. We rushed the police lines. Some of us broke through, but not for long enough. They thrust us back. They used their clubs against us. They kept us away from our dead.”

“You don't
know
that she's dead!” Mrs. Kamensky grabbed Selig's arms and shook him. “Don't say such things when you don't know. Listen, we're leaving now for—for the morgue. God willing, from there all of us will be able to go to the hospitals.”

“The morgue?” Selig echoed bitterly. “The city morgue is too small for this. It didn't even have enough coffins. In the crowd, we heard that they had to send to the hospital on Blackwell's Island for more. We stood watch in the cold when the ambulances came, and the dead were coffined and taken away. They aren't in the morgue; they've been taken to the covered pier on Twenty-sixth Street, by the East River. We would have followed them, but by then, she”—he gestured weakly back into the apartment a second time—“could take no more. So I brought her home.”

“You should stay home yourself,” Mrs. Kamensky said. “We will look for your Zusa, too. We will look for her when we look ...” The hardness left her voice and seemed to take her strength with it. Her body crumpled, but Raisa was there to catch her and hold her up. “When we look for my Gavrel, my baby, my son!”

Mrs. Kamensky's collapse had a galvanizing effect on Selig. He put his arms around her and, with Raisa, brought her into the apartment. Zusa's mother was nowhere in sight; the door to the bedroom was closed. Selig got a bottle of cherry schnapps from the sideboard and poured glasses of the strong fruit-flavored liquor for everyone. It made Raisa's throat burn, but she drank it down. Before they were done, a neighbor came to the door to sit with Zusa's mother, so Selig was able to travel to the Twenty-sixth Street pier with them after all.

 

 

They saw the line of people long before they saw the pier. It stretched for blocks and moved with deliberate slowness. Raisa pulled her shawl up over her head. She could hardly stand the sight of all the grief-stricken faces in the crowd, the despairing eyes of mothers, daughters, husbands, wives, sons, sisters and brothers, even aged grandparents who had come seeking their cherished dead. The sound of weeping and moaning ran softly through the line, but there were worse sounds, as well.