IN HER DREAM, Rivka walked alone, in bare feet and nightgown, along the Talsen road. High daylight washed farmland and forest at her back, but everything in front of her lay swamped in night. From this reach of darkness, her father emerged with his unmistakable knee-sprung gait, smiling at Rivka, much older than he should be, white-haired and loonily unaware of the danger just seconds away from overtaking him. A mob of men, some on foot, others in motorcars, hurried down the dirt road behind him. In the places where moonlight splintered the shadows, Rivka saw who they were: English policemen. Next thing, a tumbling wave of uniforms, truncheons, guns, and machinery curled over Mordechai, fell on him, and dragged him under.Barehanded, Rivka dived into the swirling disaster to fight off-not policemen, they were gone, but a swarm of insects. A thick chaos of them blinded her, thousands of tiny wings and soft bodies matted in her hair. As fast as her fingers combed out mashed, sticky black strings of them, more attacked her face and head, flew into her mouth and ears. Furiously, she raked her scalp, spun around, shocked, gasping, because the sticky black strings she pulled out were clumps of her hair. They collected at Rivka"s feet and mixed with the litter of damp straw there. She"d brought a broom with her to sweep the stone floor clean.The cubicle she stood in could be part of a stable block or laundry. In the past, it might have had some unremarkable use, but Rivka knew it to be her father"s jail cell. He was gone. The authorities had sent for her, to clean it, to prepare it for its next guest. Her first job was the sheet. Like the straw, the stone floor and wooden walls, it was damp and crusted with human filth. It waited for her in the middle of the stall, loosely bunched at both ends, the length of a man. For a second she thought it was Mordechai"s corpse she"d been summoned to wash and clear away, but his bedding was all that was left of him.With a winding motion, Rivka folded it over her forearms. Through the half-opened door, she could see the new prisoner waiting for her to leave. He was clothed in a sheet, which he gripped tightly against the cold. His head was bowed, and, she saw, wounded, cracked into three pieces crudely held together with loops of twine. The raw, unknit edges of bone sawed against each other. "I"m finished," Rivka said to him, eager to be gone. Peter didn"t reply or seem to recognize her. As she pa.s.sed him in the doorway he begged, with a defeated heave, "They won"t give me a light for my cigarette."Rivka startled herself awake. A taste of brine dissolved on her tongue as she came to. The shocking sight of Peter"s broken skull was the lone sc.r.a.p of the dream that followed her back to her bed in Harry"s office. That and a grim mood-the shadow of the certainty that she lived in a world arranged by troubled men, men wronged by other men and governments and empires of men. It was a true thing. It woould"nt change; this she had learned in London.Dread hardened into a premonition. Cold iron stairs, cold stone stairs, then the stinging chill of the pavement outside, numbed Rivka"s bare feet. Under the gray gloom and threat of snow, she picked through the rubbish blown around the Pavilion"s stage door for a message from Charles Perelman, frightened by the chance that she"d missed finding one, if he"d left it, last night. By looking in the wrong place. By looking too late, after the wind scattered it into the street or the rain chewed it to pulp. Empty-handed in the humming stillness, Rivka turned back at the mouth of the alley to stand inside the door and abide.
NO NEED FOR any philosophic discussion of the subject; as men, Frederick Wensley and Henry Wagner agreed that good order in the world is fragile, even unnatural. At best, they"d say, it"s a waning truce between belligerents compelled by their own moral purpose, the ones who can muster enough virile strength to demonstrate it. We net wild beasts and stake them to the ground. It"s what civilized men need to do to keep from being brought down themselves. Today"s seething menace occupies the front room on the second floor of No. 100 Sidney Street, E1. DI Wensley would meet it as a practical clash, not a political one; anarchy to a policeman is what an inferno is to the fire brigade.Under orders, Henry Wagner helped in the chicanery, sharpened the threats, magnified the authority, used his Yiddish persua siveness to empty the building of its good citizens. Betsy Gershon had to be tricked into coming downstairs, and then hauled next door, and then browbeaten for half an hour before she gave what sounded like an honest report of the fugitives she harbored in her room. Neither the detective-inspector nor his interpreter completely trusted Betsy"s word. In the open gates of the wood yard across from No. 100, Henry stood watching for any movement in the upstairs windows. Was it one gunman in there? Two? Three? Beside him, by the gate, Wensley also stared upward at the tenement, its windows, its attic roof, and then, a brief blink, further above into the answerless sky.Henry recognized in the officer"s face the pa.s.sing of cogitation into decision. The Weasel had finished measuring his opponents" tactical advantages and vulnerabilities, and turning aside from Henry set himself on a course. "That"s all we"ll need from you, Mr. Wagner," he said over his shoulder with deliberate courtesy. "Thank you for helping with your people.""Rikhtik, mayn folk," he replied to Wensley"s back, though his words were lost in the wind. The Jews, did he mean? The Russians, the Poles? Foreigners? Right. The interpreter"s people. A remark came echoing home to Henry, in Charles Perelman"s voice, from that sodden quarter of an hour he"d wasted tapping the old conniver for information outside Bevis Marks. Where Rabbi Perelman attempted to educate him. "You"re standing in the middle of a bridge." Though he, Perelman, was no more Henry"s people than the frightened, mulish occupants of No. 100 he"d spent the last hour talking out of their beds and rooms; and no more than the local gawkers collecting behind the line of policemen, the nuisance of c.o.c.kneys and Jews shouldering each other aside for a better view; and no more than the bullheaded imbeciles inside the building, too stupid to guess they were surrounded or too crazed to worry.And no more than the divisional superintendents, detective-superintendents, superintedents and detective-inspectors, bowler-hatted decision-makers who post a cordon around the English they speak, officer to officer. Henry couldn"t be completely sure, but he thought he heard one of them ask Wensley, "Who are the hounds?"Who are the hounds? The question of the day. While Henry interrogated himself with it, DI Wensley spoke to Sergeant Leeson. "Throw something at their window. Give "em a tickle." Here was one of Henry"s people, the sergeant, down in the ranks.Benjamin Leeson took a moment to choose pebbles heavy enough to fly the twenty yards or so and stay on target. He sc.r.a.ped up a handful of gravel with the same gentleness that m.u.f.fled the strength he"d called upon to lift Rosie Tra.s.sjonsky, inert as a sack of pebbles, from the floor of her dead friend"s room, carry her down two flights of stairs, then past the pack of newspapermen. His boots kicked through mud and slush on his way out of the wood yard, puddles sealed with thin panes of ice splintered to shards under his heels. Dull flecks of snow caromed off gusts of wind above the empty pavements. Sidney Street had the skeletal look of a place evacuated for demolition. The sergeant found a comfortable angle, took quick aim, and splashed his handful of pebbles across the second-floor window with a strong overarm throw. The rattle of them falling back to earth and skittering over the cobblestones was the only reply from the building, the only sound anyone heard.Before the window exploded.Behind the shower of gla.s.s, a concussing burst from a Mauser. Fritz sent a few more rounds stuttering in a line right across Sidney Street from pavement to pavement, following the sergeant"s headlong dash for the yard where he fell backward, tripping over his heels. From where he lay, Benjamin Leeson"s cry carried upward to the gunmen and behind him to his brother officers by the twin gates. "Jack, I"m hit!" To Yoska, the narrow-faced plainclothesman who knelt over the one Fritz wounded wasn"t a man with a name, he was another target.One who moved commandingly, got the gates pulled shut too quickly for Yoska to steady his revolver. Furious blows, bullets hammered at the entryway as Wensley knelt over Sergeant Leeson, tore back the man"s coat and shirt, and grimaced at the pooling blood.Fritz and Yoska fired again, wild shots into the first-floor rooms in the building across the street where Fritz said he"d seen men with rifles. "Sweet dreams! Sweet dreams, darlings!" he hollered, humiliating the English tsar"s police with another Mauser burst and the laugh of a heroic lunatic. "Hear what I told them, Yoska? That"s showmanship!""We"re running things!" Yoska laughed along. They could appear with the suddenness of ghosts in any window. "Hurt them enough and they"ll bargain with us.""No bargaining. What for?"There was no truer thing Fritz knew. In a feverish rhapsody, he thought, No politics or history here, no philosophy, no geography that isn"t a conversation between armed men. Us in here, them out there. Right where we woke up this morning, this thing that"s happening is proof of what the world is before politicians and philosophers get their hands on it. Simple. What you have, they want to take. Your food, your money, your house, your country, your manhood, your body, your life, your dead bones.One time I saw a twelve-year-old boy standing in a brown field. Late summer, in the middle of a drought. A cow was in the field with him. The boy picked up a rock and threw it, hit the cow in her eye. She didn"t know what it was, what was wrong, she tried to shake the pain away. It nearly broke my heart to watch her. The boy went over to her, picked up the rock, took a few steps back and threw the rock again. She went down on her front legs. The boy hit her again. I couldn"t watch anymore. Jesu, the pity of it. He was older than me by five years and a stronger fighter. This house is ours. Mine. I"ll struggle for it. You come to take it from me, now you"re notified. I"m no cow in a field.
HIS SLEEP WAS so narcotic that Peter woke from it in confusion. He"d been captured and nailed into a crate. For deportation. They"d loaded the crate into the cargo hold of a ship bound for Riga. All right, then, somebody tell me who this woman is with her head tucked against my shoulder, her arm hugging me. Another prisoner? Fragments drifted back to color a picture of the night just gone. He"d left Fritz and Yoska in Sidney Street. He"d been shunted by the wind and rain from doorway to alleyway, shaking in the unstoppable cold, down turnings that led away to G.o.d knows where. At the dead end of one of these alleys, he"d crawled through a hole in a fence. He"d found a wooden shed there, with its jutting, coffin-shaped addition Peter guessed was a chicken coop. More shelter than a doorway, a better hideout than the stray tarpaulin he"d given up for the alley.Inside, the crust of bird droppings on the floor didn"t surprise him; what surprised him was that he could see it. A ragged spill of light spread from a wood fire in the middle of the shack where somebody had squared a few bricks together to make a pit. The haven of another street tramp. Too weak to fight anybody for it, or to drag himself outside again to face the freezing unknown streets, Peter sat down to wait for its owner to come back.Two potatoes and an onion baked in a pan of ashes. Famished as he was, Peter left them alone, as a token of his harmlessness. His integrity. He was in someone"s home. The coffin-shaped structure turned out to be an enclosed bedroom; inside, a quilt lay scrambled atop straw-cushioned bedding. On a narrow shelf, a row of homely belongings-pewter jug, china bowl and plate, teacup, spoon, fork, and knife. The planks of the wall were sealed (and by the look of them held together) with strips of newspaper pasted in neat vertical rows. For many minutes, Peter kept his eye on the flap of felt and tar paper draped across the entrance. When a gloved hand lifted a corner of it, he got to his feet-or tried to. Bright pain flashed in his ankle and seated him again."Lor", look at you! A man!"Lor", look at you! A woman! Peter might have answered, if he"d been sharp enough for farce.Not a flicker of fear in her. She set down the armload of strangely dry firewood and apologized to Peter for not being in when he"d arrived. "Since I was by the bucket I stopped for a p.i.s.s," she added. "It kept up for a great while."Her name was Roma. She didn"t ask Peter his name or anything else about him-his troubles, his human connections, the mysterious coincidences that brought him in from the night. Whatever she needed to know about her visitor was somehow obvious to her. Roma"s one-sided chatter made things easier. Her girlish voice came lisping from a mouth that was missing half a dozen teeth. The bundle of her hair that Peter could see (most of it she"d twisted under a headscarf) was colored with henna. Judging by her rough hands, and the stiff shuffle that moved her from the fire to the shelf, then over to Peter, she might have been his mother"s age. She handed him the plate and served him one of the potatoes from the end of a carving knife."I won"t hurt you," he said."No, "course you won"t." Roma skewered the other potato for herself, took a bite, and leaned across Peter"s legs. From the wall above her bed, she took down a crucifix to show him the guarantor of her protection. "I pray to "im twice a day. Three times today." Guarantor of tonight"s expected unexpected happiness.It was long in coming, Peter heard. Roma"s bad-luck bloodline was Didicai, she told him-gypsy-and in 1887 she"d made the mistake of marrying an Englishman, who gambled away the horses and wagon pa.s.sed down to them with song and ceremony by her Romany family. The sc.r.a.p of ground under her shack, like the row house at the end of the cinder path, belonged to her absconded husband"s family. "You live for the good souls. It betters "em an" betters you," Roma concluded, as though reciting a learned lesson to an angel of the Lord. Then she asked Peter, "How"d you hurt your foot?"Another blade of pain seared his ankle when he slid it toward the firelight. "I can"t remember. Twisted it. Not broken.""I"ll give you medicine for it."A fragrance of rosemary and lavender and herbs Peter couldn"t name enveloped him from the steam-warmed cloth Roma used for a bandage. Enveloped by the warmth, the earthy perfume, the unsought kindness, he let himself fall asleep.He awoke snagged in Roma"s unconscious embrace, lost in the morning. A V-shaped crack across the crystal of his pocket watch, its stationary second hand and the other hands stopped at 3:35, told Peter what time he"d probably hurt his ankle, but not the present hour.He whispered thank-you and good-bye to Roma, and gave her a soft push, but they didn"t budge her. She snuggled deeper under his neck, tightened her hug. Then he felt the wetness of her mouth on his collar, again on his neck, his chin. Her stagnant breath clouded his nostrils; her face dipped to kiss Peter"s throat as her sleepy hips rocked against his leg, happy prisoner of a dream. Roma tried to climb onto him. Peter gripped both of her arms and twisted her down to the floor."Are you awake or asleep?""Awake," she said, drowsy, crawling back to him, eyes and mouth half-open."Good-bye, good-bye." He looked around. "My jacket. What did you do with it?""Wait. Stay with me. In my bed. Lay back down. Look..." With one frantic hand, Roma shook out the jacket she"d folded to pillow his head; with the other, she fumbled along the shelf to get hold of a small tin box. "You can have money."Peter lifted himself on his good ankle and lunged forward on his bandaged one. He swiped Roma"s tar-paper door out of his way; instead of stopping to clamber through the gap in the fence, he fell against it and shouldered the rotten pales apart. As he walked the length of the alley and met the street to mix into its unremarkable business, Peter reminded himself to mask his limp. A few supple paces made him realize that his ankle pained him less. Was it a few hours of rest or the healing power of her gypsy remedy? Whichever he decided to believe.
TEN THOUSAND PEDESTRIAN ERRANDS threaded through Spitalfields. Peter slipped in among them as neatly as a swimmer arcs under a swell. On business that would mark him out if it were unhidden. He pa.s.sed by in the market, as noticeable to strangers as any other stranger, a man down on his luck, looking for a tailor to sew the ripped collar of his jacket and a cobbler to mend the heel of his boot and a watchmaker to repair his pocket watch. Unremarkable business. Follow this track along the stations of an unmemorable day, ten thousand of them; follow the trail of those days into an untroubled life.A porter pushes a hand-truck. A merchant unrolls a bolt of cloth. A customer buys two bags of salt. Peter could do any of those things, and after a hundred repet.i.tions or a hundred thousand reach the bottom of an uncomplicated existence sustained by the grace of a philosophy good for nothing better than to pilot you safely on to the next errand: Hope for No Great Change.At the market"s exit, a clock on a cast-iron stanchion told Peter the time was 9:45, more than two hours before Perelman"s "arrangements" (with Harry? the local constabulary?) opened a way back to Rivka at the Pavilion Theatre. At the next corner, Peter recognized the turning into Cheshire Street. Harry"s theater was behind him, the same as Sidney Street. People fluttered past him, excited faces, rushing steps, men, women, and children fired up by a rumor of some spectacle. Fritz and Yoska-what else? Last night, praise G.o.d in the highest, Peter had had the good sense to obey his instincts and get out. Good or bad, their fate was their judgment.The relief of being in the free air lasted as long as it took Peter to step off the curb and walk into Sclater Street. He"d gambled on finding a haven till noon in Shinebloom"s restaurant; instead, he was gripped by the fear that encircles a young child in a blind dark room, cold, trapped, asphyxiating in a tank of rising water. Under the words MURDER OF POLICE OFFICERS, and in larger, bolder lettering 500 REWARD, Peter saw two photographs of himself.In Germany I"m a German. In Ma.r.s.eille I"m a Frenchman. In Paris, or here, with Jews all around me I"m a Jew...Peter remembered what he"d said to Rivka outside Shinebloom"s, his stomach shuddering, his future in the smell of her hair, the smell of her hair an anchor chain around his neck. Five hundred pounds the price on his attachment to Rivka. Also a few shillings for the hangman"s rope.He left the wanted poster, his stomach shuddering again, bent over the brink. Here. Outside Shinebloom"s door-the reality of it, not the memory-the Mayor calmly invited Peter to come in off the street. "I wasn"t sure it was you," he said, loosely circling his own face with a finger, remarking the change to Peter"s. "Your beard.""Gave it to the razor.""It"s good. From here I wasn"t sure it was you. You look-""I look like a vagrant," Peter said. "Do I smell?"The Mayor sniffed Peter"s jacket. "Onions. Not so bad." He offered his hand. "Come inside."For a small man, the Mayor"s grip was bone-crunching and harsh. The handshake he gave Peter was the kind a father gives a son miraculously returned home, a solemn pumping of the arm before the lovable neck is embraced and the weeping starts. His thick fingers worked Peter"s hand until their warmth turned humid. To hold off any face-kissing and neck-hugging, Peter took a step into the restaurant. In a blink, the Mayor had a grip of Peter"s right wrist, and with a darting move he s.n.a.t.c.hed his left one. Then he shoved Peter against the doorjamb. The Mayor was short, but he was compact and muscular; he handled himself like a wrestler. Legs braced, he twisted from the waist and dug his shoulder into Peter"s chest, winded him, pinned him hard to the door."Help over here! Somebody help!" the Mayor shouted into the street as Peter twisted himself half-free. "Peter the Painter! It"s Piatkow, the anarchist!"A grandmother, head-shawled and gowned for a funeral, trotted in to cane Peter with her walking stick. Frail blows skidded off the side of his head. One hand loose, he grabbed the stick and swung it across his body. The silver handle crushed the Mayor"s nose, yet he clung on, sputtering blood. "Somebody help!" Peter coshed him and broke free. He brandished the b.l.o.o.d.y stick as he ran, in what direction he didn"t know, out of the district.
"RIFLES OVER THERE." Fritz tipped his Mauser"s long muzzle against the window frame, at the upper floor of the brewery beyond. "Shotguns in those windows." The muzzle slid an inch to the side, pointed at the building directly across Sidney Street. "Something in the doors too. That"s how I"d do it.""Write your plan on a piece of paper. I"ll take it over to them." Yoska straightened his bad leg as far as he could and lowered himself to the floor next to Fritz. "What-you don"t think I"d come back?"A tolerant sigh. "I"m saying it"s an obvious strategy.""To make us come out?" Nothing, not even tolerance from Fritz, who turned his head away. With a nudge to Fritz"s shoulder, Yoska apologized for his own slowness. "Fritz, you"ve got the right idea. Figure their tactics. They want to scare us with all the guns they"ve got.""They don"t want us to surrender." Fritz angled a look at the brewery. No movement, nothing to see, but his breath was short and he felt dryness in his mouth. Then he saw the long double barrel of a shotgun dip into the light from a shop doorway below. He crawled back from the window and tilted his head to get Yoska to do the same.Yoska leaned forward to see for himself. He grinned. "They can"t hit us with one of those."His grin twitched at the corners of his mouth; he reminded Fritz of a weightlifter quivering under a barbell he was no longer strong enough to hold. He reached over and patted Yoska"s back to steady him.His grin sank. "d.a.m.n Peter," Yoska said."He surprised you?" Now Fritz was the one wearing the plaster smile. "Peter always looks out for himself. I"m his friend and I never know what he"s thinking.""He doesn"t talk. Or, when he does, he doesn"t say anything clear.""It sounds like he means something else, even when he doesn"t." Arms crooked on his knees, Fritz recalled, ""Ignore her-she"ll get worse." That"s what Peter advised me about Luba!""Another runner."In silence, Fritz agreed. Then he said, "Peter doesn"t know how else to be.""Anyway, he"s a good fighter.""Listen, Yoska. The way things are, we wouldn"t be better off if Peter was in this room.""Another gun...""We"re together. This is our action. Yes?"After a second"s rumination, nodding his dark head, Yoska said, "What happens to you happens to me." A loud crack of a rifle shot made him twitch toward the window. "Missed. They"re just showing us."Fritz knew different. "Did he say one word to you last night?""About going? No. Oh," Yoska remembered. "He said I should shave off my mustache." He presented his face to the light. "How does it look?""Pale.""Shows off more of my rotten skin."Another rifle shot. Another miss. Fritz checked his Mauser"s clip. "From that brewery. I told you."The noise of cheers outside at the end of the street tempted Yoska to peep over the windowsill. He saw mounted police and a police cordon, seven or eight constables with their arms linked, capes flapping in the snowy wind, holding back a hundred-strong crowd of sightseers. To protect them from the terrorist a.s.sa.s.sins. "Is that the uprising, you think?" Yoska joked sourly.Another rifle shot. On the roof above them, a chimney pot shattered, blown apart by a perfectly aimed high-caliber round. "Found us," Fritz said, and dived for the floor.A hailstorm of bullets pelted through the second-floor window, opened jagged holes in the furniture, the walls, exploded dishes in the kitchen, porcelain ornaments on the table, sent shrapnel spinning through the air. Flat on the carpet, Yoska followed Fritz out the door and down the stairs.From the landing outside the first-floor room, Yoska saw Fritz kneeling at the blown-in window, squeezing off shots one- two-three into the brewery, one-two-three toward the wood yard. "Go down! Down!" Fritz shouted to him, pointing toward the ground floor.The door to the Fleishmans" flat hung open. Abandoned in secret at some unG.o.dly hour, bequeathed to Yoska, everything in it. Preserved. A silver pocket watch. A jewelry box on a nightstand. They must have seen Yoska"s large body move behind the window. A shotgun blast took out the gla.s.s, the frame, spraying stinging fragments into the side of his face. He crouched behind the bed, protecting his eyes with a cushion. Shots from Bulldog revolvers rattled into the wall behind him. A man pulls a trigger and a bead of lead comes hurtling at me out of his gun. How many men? How many guns? How many bullets in each gun? So many they hardly have to aim! Sokoloff, you stupid clown, get out of this place...From the doorsill, Yoska loosed off a few bursts at targets he couldn"t see. Shotgun fire answered him from half a dozen guns-loud enough, it sounded, to push down the brick wall. In the haven of this building Betsy waited for me at the top landing. Late at night. In her nightgown. I went inside to the kitchen and there was a bowl of soup, some bread, some beer, and a woman who didn"t care about my rotten skin or crooked leg. Sleep beside her in her bed and I"d be a thousand miles from England. Or anywhere. These stairs took me up, up, up...But the voice calling him upstairs wasn"t Betsy"s; it was Fritz"s. "Go to the top window! Shoot from there!"Yoska hung at the door to Betsy"s flat where he stopped Fritz with a touch of his sleeve. "If Peter could do it, we can. There"s probably not as many of them watching the back way.""Use your brains! And your stinking gun, Yoska! Keep them off!"From his position across the street, Detective-Inspector Wensley saw the muzzle flash in the garret window before the man-shaped shadow loomed behind it. "The Gershon woman"s lying to us about how many are inside," he said to the superintendent. "For my money there"s more than two." They watched Yoska lean a little way out of the upper window, empty his gun-ten shots whistling furiously through the air, aimed at nothing. Shouts and gasps went up from the crowd, as if they"d just witnessed an acrobatic feat by a circus daredevil."Keep those people back!" Wensley hollered down to one of his sergeants.His order was buried under a deafening volley from the Scots Guards marksmen at the end of the street and the barrage from police shotguns, which ploughed the brickwork, scoured gla.s.s from every window, tore splinters from the street door. In Betsy"s kitchen, Fritz hugged the floor, holding the stove door open for a shield against bullets that raked the shelves and dug furrows in the ceiling. Then, raggedly, the gunfire ceased. They think we"re dead. Storm the building, why don"t you, clear us out, charge straight into my pistol barrel.Fritz raised himself to the window, where he counted the men ordered to fight against him, the ones he could see. He risked getting his head blown off to have a look at their faces. A commander, the man gesturing toward the police line, his narrow face busy, looking here, looking there, fixing the battle plan. They called in the army! Five snipers in position, on their bellies in the street, four more in peaked caps with the red-and-white checkered ribbon. Some excitement for the young experts with their Lee-Enfield rifles. One of them, blond and hatless, propped on his elbows, smoked a cigarette. He wants to get indoors, out of the sleet. They don"t want us to surrender."What"s there?" Yoska crouched in the alcove behind Fritz."Streetlamps. Look, daylight and they leave them burning." Fritz rested his back against the wall. "Dangerous place for lamplighters.""If we shoot the lamps, you think it"ll make an explosion?"As Fritz fed a ten-sh.e.l.l clip into his Mauser, he answered the question poor Yoska was really asking him. "We can get away from here.""Yes, good. Tonight?""If we do one thing.""What? Tell me. I"ll do it.""Kill them all."
HARRY ENCOURAGED RIVKA to borrow a "good-looking dress" and whatever else she needed from the costume rack, a set of clean clothes that would be comfortable for her and inconspicuous at a family luncheon. "I"m inviting you for a home-cooked meal," Harry announced. By one thirty, they had to be in Esher at his sister"s house, a bus and train journey that would take almost two hours. With these nuggets of news, Harry meant to hurry Rivka along, but they"d slowed her instead. Something besides his worry over her daily diet spurred this urge to shunt her miles outside of London.To reach the less operatic fashions, Rivka had to tunnel through half a roomful of Russian peasant wardrobe, the sack-shaped skirts and billow-sleeved blouses that would have raised questions around the dining table in Esher, never mind on her way to the bus in Commercial Road. That is, if she"d intended to leave the Pavilion at all. The fact that there"d been no signal from Charles Perelman yesterday didn"t mean no signal today, so for thirty minutes Rivka dragged out her wardrobe search. When he knocked for the second time, she confessed that she"d only just pulled out a blue skirt and jacket and a lace-trimmed cream blouse that fit her. "Why do you want me to go?" she challenged him through the closed door.From Harry, she heard a fractured version of the story that was agitating everybody else in London-the showdown that had been boiling since dawn in Sidney Street. Most of it was rumors, he told her: The police have trapped the Houndsditch murder gang in a house there; the notorious Peter the Painter is one of them; another policeman lies dead at his hand; the foul anarchists are encircled..."n.o.body"s saying they caught him. If they catch him, Rivka-if Peter gets arrested-we can"t do anything until he"s on trial. We"ll do something. You hear me? We got to think about you first. There"s a wig on the shelf, you see it? Goldish-colored. Rivka?"Wrong as he could be, Harry took her silence for emotional collapse. As she robed herself in the skirt and blouse and jacket, Rivka was weighing every word Harry had said. The police are on the lookout for the Liesma anarchists, their friends and a.s.sociates, accomplices. It"s all right, it"s fair. Harry"s afraid for himself."Look who it is!" he said when Rivka stepped from the wardrobe room, costumed. "Anna Southam, the Stepney Songbird! Your debut!" He paused a moment. "Not as a singer today. Next year." With an impresario"s sweep, he ushered Rivka past him to the staircase.Uncage a zoo animal in the wild and its senses would be as keen as Rivka"s in the alleyway behind the Pavilion Theatre. Above the scatter of rubbish and city dirt, a sweetness flavored the air; the sharp edge of the cold had sc.r.a.ped it clean. A blanched disk of sun turned the cloud over Whitechapel to gray pearl. The scaling dark green paint on the stage door, the rusted gooseflesh of the iron railing, the glossed black cobblestones under Rivka"s feet-they were all insistently present, vibrant physical realities, so close to being forced away from them. Everything she saw was exceptional.Under the corner of a dumped carpet, the white sludge of yesterday"s newspaper. Beside it a single shoe. The mossy stack of laths, bound with rope at one end, the other end sprung apart, tucked against the wall. A strip of rose-colored cloth fluttered, snagged on the end of a lath. That was new. Not snagged, Rivka saw: tied there. She lifted the splayed slats; underneath them, not fallen but placed with care, was the brick she"d left on Charles Perelman"s front step. Wrapped in wax paper under the brick, she found the twice-folded wanted poster that carried her prayer to him. Fun mir tzu P. Vie? Avek.Harry called to her from the stage door, "Sorry, sorry. Wanted to tidy away your bed things."She didn"t give him a chance to shut her out. Rivka tucked the paper under her jacket and flew at Harry, shrieking, "No! I want to go back in!""What"s wrong? What"s happened?" Harry expected to see a squad of armed detectives charging after her, but they were alone behind his theater, Harry and this terrified woman flailing at him to get back inside. He touched Rivka"s arm to calm her. "We"re going to my sister"s-it"s fine. You"ll be all right in Esher."She cried louder, from the deep pit of a pain he couldn"t fathom. "No! No, no, no, no! Let me in! I don"t want to go, Harry!" Panicked tears wet her face and his coat. "No! They"ll get me! I want to go in!" What was Harry going to do? Fight her off? Carry her to the train like a sack of potatoes? She fell through the door, choking, desperate for breath, holding onto control only long enough to repeat, "They"ll take me!""All right, you"ll be fine here. Stay inside." From the other side of the door, Harry said, "I have to go."The click of Harry"s key in the mortise lock broke the grip of Rivka"s hysteria, leaving her with a dizzy head and pounding heart. To keep from fainting, she rested on a crate and unfolded the wanted poster. Her bold plea slanted down one margin.Fun mir tzu P. Vie? Avek.From me to P. Where? Away.In reply, along the crease at right angles to Rivka"s message, was Charles Perelman"s smudgy, Arabic-looking handwriting.Naben di greener tir. Vart. Haynt.By the green door. Wait. Today.SKILL OR TALENT?-this ability Peter possessed to materialize in a different building, country, ident.i.ty. Or had it become a habit, a necessity of life? The oily water in the ca.n.a.l reflected brown-green shadows, nothing else. What would it take for him to jump in and drown? One more step, a last push. The last decision he"d make. Later on this afternoon, Peter"s body would bob up in some other pocket of West India Docks-unless he were as adroit dead as alive and it washed by unnoticed to the Thames and out to sea. Let it float.Consider this: he"d made it past the guards at the arched gate to the freedom of the wharf, riding on the feeling that he belonged there as much as anywhere. No one challenged his right, scruffy as he looked, to trawl for day laborer"s work. Peter looked up at a featureless lid of gray sky, which minutes ago showed him the sun adrift behind it, flat as a silver coin. Gone again. Blame this island weather. On the ground, meanwhile, dray carts hauled crates and bales; dock workers shifted cargo; gangplank and crane fed hundreds of ships" holds at crowded moorings and attracted Peter with the force of an occult power. A one-word spell invoked it: Away.Peter"s mind ached, his heart and body too, disconnected parts of him held together by the single yearning for a reason to be anywhere. On the quayside, ships supplied a reason to be at the West India Docks. And after, to hire on as a deck hand, as an apprentice from Alsace named Probst. And after, to work that job to its port of call. And after, to start again. The things I did that put me here-let them float."Late for the call-on." No suspicion, accusation, or threat in the gang master"s voice. "You"re looking to ship?""Is there work, do you know?" Peter straightened his posture."Depends on the dock or ship, today or tomorrow.""Today.""Nothing on the dock. You want to ship, talk to Mr. Beek. He"ll be hiring for the Evangeline Tay, bound for Caracas. Not till tomorrow, though.""Mr. Beek, thank you," in his best English accent, edges smoothed by the quayside clatter."No, I ain"t Beek. He"s short and ugly. Get here early for the call-on, lad, case you lose out on the Evangeline. Best of luck," the gang master wished him.After that, Peter scoured the sky for a reason to double back to the Pavilion. A second"s thought flung up a dozen reasons not to. Trust the word of that scoundrel Charles Perelman. And after, find out that Rivka isn"t where he said she was. And after, prowl the district looking for her. And after, pay for it. Trust the word of an agitated girl; find out that Rivka couldn"t keep Perelman"s arrangements, or she misunderstood them, or didn"t trust him, and she wasn"t waiting where he said she"d be. And after, miss her in the street. And after, keep going, unanch.o.r.ed.As Peter looked back at the docks through the imperial arch of their gate, as if he"d left his settled mind on the wharf, another reason maddened him. Trust Perelman"s word, he told himself, trust Rivka"s, and you"ll shed a skin. He fought his garbled instincts. And after, he buried his revolutionist history. And after, not alone under the London sky, he decided to be a man who trusts.Every obstacle complicating Peter"s life until then fell away. What remained was a practical problem: find a route to the Pavilion Theatre that circled clear of Brick Lane.
THE ELATION THAT carried Charles Perelman on light feet from the Pavilion"s back alley was not his own, he realized happily. It was a bubble of joy borrowed from Rivka. As he went on his way, he pictured her opening the wax paper, unfolding the poster, and reading the message she was hungriest to hear: today she"d be with her missing lover. Never mind that he"s a criminal running from the police, violent, deep-dyed in red; forget for a moment that, from today onward, any life she"d have with him would be precarious and persecuted. If finding Peter gave her happiness, that was good enough for Charles Perelman.She"ll be happy because of what I did.Good enough, but not enough. The population of the world, he philosophized as he walked, is nine-tenths composed of deluded types. From naked savages in the jungle who eat their enemy"s brains to George Gardstein lying dead in the morgue. An undeluded man sees the truth of things clear. You learn this by living seventy years with your eyes open. You observe other lives. Not just in your circle, my friend, but a variety: revolutionists and monarchists, English, Russian, Letts, Jews, and the rest. The trick is not to let politics influence you; politics is nothing but a gang of deluded men telling you that the world is exactly as brutal as it needs to be. Laws, too, though sometimes your independent thoughts will agree with them.As he approached the solid stone front of the City Police Headquarters, Charles imagined a different conversation from the brief one he had. For a start, he expected to be speaking with a higher-ranking officer-not DI Wensley, who (courtesy of yesterday"s tip-off) must be handling things in Sidney Street. A respectful welcome wasn"t too much for Charles to expect. Not fawning, only a sign that the desk sergeant and the plump constable remembered and regarded him. Be fair: until he told them the reason for his second visit in two days, how could they guess its importance?""Ere"s Mr. Wensley"s bad penny turned up again, George," the desk sergeant quipped. Charles missed it.The constable looked up. "Yes, sir."And the sergeant took over. "Mr. Perelman, again, is it?""Perelman, yes," Charles said."Detective-Inspector Wensley"s grateful for the information you supplied "im. Very handy. He"s not here at the moment, you understand.""Yes. His boss? Somebody more?""Tell me whatever it is and I"ll do what needs doing.""Other information for him." Charles noticed the wanted poster on display beside the desk. He tapped his finger next to the words "Portrait of the said Peter Piatkow.""You"ve got information about this man?" The desk sergeant tapped on the poster too. "Him?""I know where is he."George said to the sergeant, "Thought they had "im in Sidney Street with his friends.""Not there," corrected Charles. "I am together him before. Not Sidney Street no more.""You know where he is, you say?"Charles checked the time on his pocket watch. "Soon. Pavilion Theatre.""How d"you spell it?""I know the one, Sergeant," George said. "The Yid music hall in Vallance Road.""Vallance." Charles confirmed it with a sharp nod. "Soon, soon. Today. With girl. She"s good girl. Not anything of Liesma men.""Piatkow"s meeting a girl...at the Pavilion Theatre...today." The sergeant wrote the details on a notepad as he spoke. "Do you know this woman"s name? Can you describe her?""Her name Rivka. Is lodger. Only good girl, Rivka, best good."The elation that settled in Perelman"s chest on his walk home belonged to him alone. Wasn"t he the Matador?-who"d swept his cape over the horns and brutal haunches of another bull. He outsmarted them and he"d outlive them, too. Because of what I did. The only honest revolutionist in the bunch! A revolutionary act comes down from the conscience of an independent man. Do What You Will.His broad stomach rumbled, his mouth puckered at the delicious thought of comforts waiting for him in his kitchen. Chicken broth and Russian rye bread. Strong cheese. Dark beer. Warmth from the stove. As he ate and drank, warmed his frigid bones and opened his newspaper, a fleabite of doubt p.r.i.c.ked the surface of Charles Perelman"s contentment. I know there must be something wrong with giving Peter to the police. But I don"t know what it is.
ONE THING the home secretary knew: rank by itself doesn"t command-not a troop or battalion, a man or mob. Presence does. His motorcar nudged into the crowd that for five hours had been ma.s.sing around Sidney Street, but among those members of the public, Winston Churchill"s arrival didn"t command much besides a curled lip and irate thumbs-down. Any patriotic cheer for the minister fell under the jeering that started when he stepped into the street with his top hat and walking stick.""Oo let "em in?" From one voice, then ten, then fifty, who took up the taunt as a slogan. ""Oo let "em in?"He did, Winnie and his softhearted, softheaded chums did: he pushed the Tories into it in "05, his government did it, and Look, Winnie, look what you done bein" humane and open-handed towards the poor sods dyin" in their thousands, Jews kep" down an" Rooshians practickly slaves! Come on to England, lads, here"s your asylum and new temple! ""Oo let "em in?" These hovel-dwelling parasites who shelter inside British freedoms and tolerance like ticks inside a horse blanket, to huddle together and plot bloodthirsty revolution. No respecters of sovereign borders-who did they think they were, bringing their feuds, guns, savage temperaments, and bomb factories to England? Who let them in, with their peasant culture, tribal G.o.d, and satanic l.u.s.t for control of the world masquerading as high morality and religious devotion?A punch to an old rabbi"s face earned two punches back, though not from him. English roughs laid into Yiddishers, attacked them for the insult of putting up a fight. Over here the crowd boiled, over there it churned. Fists jabbed, boots kicked, women cried out, men cursed each other. Somebody raised an iron bar over his head but didn"t smash it down-a policeman snapped it out of his hand, another one grabbed the brawler in a headlock, tackled him to the ground. Some poison in the cordite you could see bluing the mist across Sidney Street infected the people; it corroded the buildings, gnawed pieces out of the bricks, liquefied the mortar, showed everyone the augury of a ruined city.Three rifle bullets had blown holes in the ebony back rest of Betsy"s favorite chair. Yoska fit a finger through each one, lifted the chair back onto its legs and placed it where it belonged at the end of the sofa. He did the same for the little round mahogany table, which he also brushed clean of plaster dust. Then Yoska sat in the chair and rested his elbow on the table as if the destroyed room around him were a boulevard cafe and his waiter had just gone to fetch him a gla.s.s of beer. "What?" he said in reply to a look from Fritz, which begged him to recognize the ridiculousness. Yoska twisted in his seat to examine the three bullet holes. "You think they can hit the identical place twice?""No, I was just thinking-if you"re going to tidy the place before Betsy comes back, you should start in the kitchen."They both heard the shouts in the street and looked toward the gla.s.sless windows. Yoska made the same joke about the overdue insurrection in Stepney, the partisans who will break through the police lines and save their brothers" doomed skins. This time Fritz granted it a soft laugh. "I"m tired," he said. "You?""Sleepy, you mean? I don"t want to sleep." Yoska listened again. "What if they"re waiting to see if we come out?""They"ll be disappointed. You have more ammunition?"Yoska felt in his jacket pockets. "Eight clips. We can stay in here for a month. Plenty of food in the other rooms. If nothing bad happens."A flick of his eyes. "Bad?""Worse.""Don"t make my head hurt, Yoska. I depend on you.""You don"t want to have a conversation. I understand.""We don"t have time to talk about nonsense, that"s all.""Can I ask you a question?"Fritz held out his hand and jiggled his fingers at Yoska"s revolver. "Let me look at it.""How come?""Make sure you"ve got it loaded."While Fritz reloaded the Browning, Yoska leaned close and asked him, "Is this a leap year?""No. Yes. How do I know?" He pa.s.sed the gun back. "The safety"s off.""Because I can"t remember if a leap year is when you add a day or lose one.""Add one," Fritz said, with authority. "At the end of February. Every leap year there"s a February twenty-ninth.""That"s where I"m not sure. If leap years are the ones that go three in a row, then you"d lose a day when it isn"t a leap year and end up on February twenty-eighth.""You"ve got it backwards."Yoska puzzled, "Divide by four...add one to the month...""The year. If you can divide it by four.""Four into nineteen-eleven...Do you have a pencil?""Please forget about it.""Sure.""You want to stay here or go to the ground floor?""Because I was wondering," Yoska said, "where I"ll be at the end of February. If I"ll get an extra day."As though Fritz had finally reached a conclusion about his friend, he said, "You"re a humble man, Yoska. Don"t let them see it."From the people outside, a chorused cheer-or jeer-flared into the air. On hands and knees, Yoska crawled to the window and peeked over the sill. "What are they screaming about?"Fritz listened a second. "It"s English. I don"t know enough words. "Long live the king"?""Can"t see them very good." Gun hand on the windowsill, Yoska lifted himself to his knees and leaned out. "Some gent"s come down here in a taxi."In a heaven where severed souls live through an eternity of their last moment before death, Yoska hears English voices and thinks, What"s the name of that song I know?The concussion of thirty rifles, the yellow flash and burst, the red plume and spray of dust: none of these drove Fritz back, they rushed him to the window. He retrieved Yoska"s revolver and fired quick rounds against the bombardment, his Mauser in his other hand firing too, until both guns clicked empty. He slipped down against the kitchen wall to reload. The spare clips for the Browning were in Yoska"s pockets, so Fritz couldn"t look away from the pitiful sight of Yoska"s body sprawled backward on the floor. Arms flung up, bad leg bent under him, a black-edged bullet hole in his forehead, the back of his skull gone, curds of Yoska"s brain in the splashed stew of his blood and hair on the carpet. And in his face a heavy-lidded expression of mild surprise and absence."You"re not a dead animal," Fritz prayed over Yoska"s corpse.Rifle shots sparked through the windows, cracked, ricocheted off the bricks outside. Kill them all. Fritz stood and fired again, every pull of the trigger, every bullet blessed with a shout. "You can"t kill me!"I"m absolutely innocent...I told Peter don"t carry Karl home. This from that...I"m clean. My darling I can"t write to you...Two weeks on the run, I don"t know how much longer I can go...This from that...They were guarding the roads...If they catch me they"ll hang me for sure for spite...I want to say this for the sake of my reputation. The good that somebody like me can bring to Humanity isn"t worth a penny...If we were on the ship going to Australia...Be peaceful...We"ll be ashes the same as everyone...Threads of smoke wound out between the wallpaper"s curling seams. Fritz watched brown patches bloom in the pattern of pomegranates, leaves, and vines. Then finger-sized flames blistered shreds from the paper and wafted them through the win dows. Flakes of paper, smoke scarves, hungrier fire explored the ceiling."You can"t kill me."In the kitchen, three walls crawled with flames. A thundering wave of dark smoke drenched the outer room, then surged in around Fritz. Blind in this furnace, for as long as he could he held on to a memory-of cool water, a cooling wind on a riverbank, his wife"s bare feet in the mud, the thin dress clinging to her hips in the stream, blue flowers on white, trailing like a water weed. A memory in her, the same."You can"t kill me!"And Fritz shouted it again into the squall of gunfire, barrage after barrage from police shotguns and snipers" rifles, against the eruptions of cinder wind and flames battering property back into dirt: what used to be an accordion, a chair, a carpet, gone to dirt, what used to be a house, the cremation pit for Fritz"s body and Yoska"s, anarchists no more, gone to dirt.
FOR THREE HOURS Rivka kept her eyes on the door, the solid rectangle transformed by her imagination into gauze lit by wildly spinning thoughts. Staged on its far side was everything Harry said was possible, and more. The police trapped Peter in a house...He"s under arrest, in jail...He"s escaped from London...He"s hiding in Brick Lane...He"s on his way to find her...The police have shot him dead...Each playlet whirled Rivka"s thinking around to its aftermath: if Peter was arrested, she"d stay with Harry"s sister...If he got out of London, she"d borrow money and follow him...If he was hiding somewhere close, she would do what she had been doing for two weeks: she"d go on waiting for him...If he was dead, she wouldn"t allow another man to touch her for the rest of her life; her spinsterhood would be Peter"s memorial. Rivka stared with such intensity at the back of the stage door that she almost believed she could reach Peter, alive or dead, with the power of her mind. Absurdly, she spoke his name.The doork.n.o.b rattled; a force pressed from outside. A fist thumped the middle of the door, angry and dire. Here was a different possibility Harry was too delicate to name: the police, come to the Pavilion to take her. So Rivka didn"t call out. The door shook against its deadbolt. She pressed her ear close and said, "Is it you?""Let me inside."Rivka scrabbled at the lock, pounded on it, tore at the doork.n.o.b, but the door stood as solid as a headstone. "Harry locked it. He went to his sister"s house. I made him leave me here." The only meaningful and obvious fact was the locked door; who locked it, why, or when, thoughtfully, thoughtlessly, or secretly, didn"t make a difference."Do you see a key anywhere?" Peter controlled the anger in his voice to keep it from crumbling into desperation.No hook on the wall, no cubbyhole, no time to ransack Harry"s office. "Peter, I can"t find it. Tell me what to do." Both of his fists answered her, drumming on the other side, a lunge with his shoulder, a parting grunt. "Tell me what to do..." Rivka moaned to him and to herself. She hugged her stomach, doubled over, paced to the wings and back to the door, where her moaning rose to a wounded howl. Like a restless spirit haunting the staircase, Rivka climbed to Harry"s office. Each small defeat brought on another moan-the desk drawer stuffed with papers, the locked drawer, the empty shelf, the promising china box-then the ghost of the Pavilion Theatre moaning for her lost lover drifted downstairs again to keep her vigil at the stage door.Another fierce slam against the other side of the door shook Rivka"s bones. "Peter?" No answer came back to her. She leaned close to the door and said his name again.From somewhere deep in the theatre a soft cracking sound disturbed the air. Rivka stood where she was and stared into the silence and the backstage shadows until one patch of dark came loose from the rest. She saw the figure of a man."It"s all right." A sudden uncertainty tightened Peter"s voice. "Rivka?" s.p.a.ce collapsed between them. He pulled Rivka to him with one arm, Rivka bent him down to kiss his mouth, his smooth face, his tall brow. "Your hair," he said. "I thought it wasn"t you.""Me," she said, sc.r.a.ping the blond wig from her head.He fumbled with a couple of the hairpins, plucked them free and buried his face in the scent of her red-brown hair. "You," he said. A squeeze from Rivka"s hand shot a pain through his and he flinched it away. "Not as bad as it looks." He let her look at the sticky, still weeping, gash in his palm. "Cut it on the window getting in. My knee, too.""But you"re here.""Yes. Here I am. Look at me." He sounded ashamed, not triumphant.In front of her, Peter"s torn trousers and ripped jacket, the mud spatters, bloodstains, trailing shoelaces, askew necktie. And his control disintegrating. "Thank G.o.d for Charles Perelman," she said."I wasn"t sure you"d be here," he said, looking at his rescuer: Rivka, not Charles Perelman. It was Rivka"s hand pulling him from the suffocating wreckage of this earthquake. She was the one to explain how catastrophes can be reversed, this long ca lamity that"s ended by crushing the good out of everything he"d done. Rivka waited for me here. His cheek trembled, his shoulders softly shook. "This time...""Peter, we"re here. Together.""This time I knew I"d get caught.""But you didn"t. You"re here.""If they caught me-no, what I"m saying, the police..." Peter wept to her, sobs that broke his words and emptied the fragments into Rivka"s hair. "It would be a good thing if they caught me. Did I rob people because I"m a thief? Kill them because I"m a murderer?""You didn"t kill anybody. I know you didn"t. Jacob did. Karl and Max did." She tried to hang on to Peter"s arm as he pushed away from her with a disgusted groan. He stalked the backstage corner, grabbed at the curtain ropes, brushed his wet eyes with the back of his hand. He wiped his brow and trailed a smear of blood across it. "You did what you did. Then the next thing." All she had was the throb that choked her throat (since she"d temporarily lost the power of speech) to tell Peter her dearest faith was in his goodness as a man."What did I do? Opposed them. Oppose, oppose, worse than Jacob or Karl. That"s the truth. I was against the Romanovs in Courland, and imperialists everywhere. Social Democrats, too, because I was a nationalist. First! First I called myself a nationalist. "Russia out of Latvia!" Until I woke up, whenever it was, et voila, I was a socialist revolutionary." Another pained, self-disgusted groan, an impotent swipe at the curtain ropes."Those Cossacks on the Talsen road," began Rivka."With your father. You told me."She sat on the staircase. "He tried to kill Russians, yes," she said. "A Russian tried to make him look weak in front of us. My mother, my sisters and brothers. That army colonel, Orlov, he smashed up my father"s beautiful work. Well, Papa couldn"t fight this big-shot officer, so he tried to get him a different way. He wanted to wreck something that belonged to Orlov and make him look small. Not because Orlov was a Russian. He did it to make himself equal." Rivka laughed, in pity, at the memory. "That rope across the road! To ambush the Russian army!" Her head shaking had the look of palsy, uncontrollable, afflicted. "When the Cossacks were chasing me across the field, all I was thinking was, Next get to the woods, next get to the farm road, next my cousin Jankel. Then I went on a boat, and then I was here. Here I am. Not because of politics. To stay alive, that"s all-because then I"ll be with you."Peter sat on the step below hers. The color of Rivka"s eyes, the blue that captured particles of the unreachable high atmosphere, reflected the substance of his own sorrows. "It"s the same thing," he said.
UPSTAIRS THE WATER was cold; the carbolic soap covered his skin with the unlucky odor of a hospital. But for those moments, Peter sleepily bound himself over to Rivka"s care. She bathed his body, washed the cuts in his hand and leg, and dressed them with strips of clean muslin. In the wardrobe room, she had an easier time digging out a new suit for Peter. The collection of men"s costumes was mercifully short on peasant shirts and sashes; male characters in the Yiddish operettas seemed mainly to be landowners, burghers, and comfortable city-dwelling bourgeoisie. The costume that happened to fit Peter was the apparel of an altogether higher-caste gentleman: dark woolen trousers, a morning coat, a pair of dove-gray gloves, a top hat, and a walking stick from the prop box.Peter and Rivka stood in front of the mirror, framed like a couple in their wedding photo, and saw two conspirators who had come through their disasters to conspire in each other"s survival. Looking him over, Rivka said, "We can leave by the front door.""Maybe, if it were nighttime, after a performance." Heading to the turning of the staircase, Peter grabbed the fire ax from its corner; he didn"t stop until he was standing at the stage door in a woodsman"s stance. "Stand back," he warned Rivka.Peter brought the ax down on the broken wood in a powerful arc. His first blow glanced off of the lock. His next one split the doorjamb above it. The fourth stroke cracked a hole twice the size of the ax head in the door where the deadbolt used to be. Rivka and Peter left the Pavilion like burglars. But they entered the jostle of Whitechapel Road like any couple on an afternoon promenade.Down the hugger-mugger row of market stalls, barrows, and shopfronts, their clothes attracted glances. Beggar boys held out their grimy caps, tin cans, or just their hands, following Peter and Rivka along the pavement. Other youngsters noticed them too, with the fidgety loafing, keen eyes, and nimbleness of veteran pickpockets. By the entrance of one shop, the owner deliberately blocked their path with a grinning invitation to be amazed by the beautiful quality of his rugs, and by his even more beautiful prices. Without obvious hurry, Peter smiled his thanks and led Rivka around him.The sluggish foot traffic stopped dead at a fabric stall, where a clutch of buyers and sellers jammed the pavement for ten yards on both sides. Peter"s gloved hand pressed Rivka"s elbow as he walked her to the street side. At the other end of the stall, a plump, fair- haired police constable, dispatched by his sergeant into the wind and cold to patrol for fugitive anarchists, did likewise. Rivka saw him step from behind the barrow-half a second before she noticed the seep of blood staining Peter"s glove. She took his arm, covered his injured hand with hers, and stopped dead, staring into the constable"s young face. Blocked on one side by the barrow, on the other by motorcars, wagons, people on their blind business, and-between their shoetips and the policeman"s-a muddy green-brown tower of horse manure.What civil rulebook tells a person whose right it is to go and whose duty it is to halt? It was one more conflict decided on the spot, down in the grains of a human being"s pa.s.sions. The PC glanced from Rivka to Peter and back again. Peter"s grip choked the handle of his cane. Then the constable raised his finger to his helmet"s brim, took a step back, and made room for the immaculately turned-out English couple to pa.s.s."Thank you," Rivka said quietly, her eyes lowered.Peter accorded the policeman a genteel nod. "You"re most kind.""Keep an eye out for whizzers, I was you, sir," he advised Peter with a dipping gesture of his hand. "Pickpockets. Ten a penny "round Little Jerusalem."Brown-tiled, begrimed, loud with public conversation and train-track clatter, Whitechapel Underground station opened to Peter and Rivka as bright and teeming as a Tahitian beach. Together there on the platform, someplace beyond it, they could hear the slap of water on a boat"s hull, see an edge of land divide the sea-the single prospect that filled their view a fresh beginning in an unmade world.EpilogueTO SAY THAT NOTHING IS KNOWN about the life Peter the Painter lived after the Stepney siege would be to deny a weight of heartfelt testimony. What can be said is that little is known for certain. After his supernatural disappearance, British newspapers, urgent for triumph, reported that the terrorist Peter Piatkow had burned to death in the holocaust of 100 Sidney Street. But neither of the two bodies salvaged from the ruins belonged to him. Death-defying Peter, criminal mastermind, avatar of the anarchist underground, disappeared in a shimmer of heat and smoke. Willo"-the-wisp Peter, nemesis of immigration police, sighted in Australia in 1917, in New York the next year, the south of France in 1926, in Siberia after World War II. A Russian apparatchik turned loose from there in the fifties testified that he was in prison with an Englishman who spoke perfect Russian, and this foreigner ad mitted, confessed, to him that he was Peter the Painter. Who had died in the gulag in 1949. Nothing you could verify.In July 2005, an eighty-nine-year-old retired stage manager (and locally notorious h.o.a.rder) named Bernard Burston died at home in Stoke Newington. His place in Osbaldeston Road was declared a health hazard by the Senior Environmental Officer of Hackney Council, and a Court Order of Entry was enforced on the nearly derelict three-story house. A crew of private contractors set about clearing out the decades of foraged rubbish Mr. Burston had methodically a.s.sembled inside and outside his home.The cleaning gang"s archaeologically-minded foreman rescued a tea chest that was crammed with Burston family memorabilia. The acc.u.mulation was crowned with a long doc.u.ment written by Bernard Burston, in which he made an eccentric claim: that his father had lived a false life under the name Edward Burston, carrying on a middle-cla.s.s suburban existence indistinguishable from thousands of others in their neck of north London. That his real name was Peter Piatkow, known to police as Peter the Painter, anarchist, armed robber, and murderer. Bernard"s chief evidence for this was a wanted poster, found in the tea chest nested among the Post-it notes, photographs, Xeroxed newspaper articles, theater playbills, stapled jottings, and other leafy jumble. Down one margin, in handwriting he recognized as his mother"s, were the words Fun mir tzu P. Vie? Avek, and in another, not in her hand, the reply Naben dir greener tir. Vart. Haynt.A beguiling picture emerges from Bernard Burston"s cranky forensic research into his parents" double history: Rivka"s and Peter"s history, if we"re inclined to believe it.Edward and Anna Burston lived in France before moving to England at the end of World War I. Edward taught French lan guage and geography at a boys" school in Highgate. Bernard describes him as a father he mocked for his shuffling conformity, his petty-bourgeois pleasures and a vacancy in him where political consciousness and moral outrage should have been. Edward"s fussy table manners were tokens of a restrained man, untroubled and untroublesome. Untroubled because he was untroublesome. A stickler at the dining-room table, preparing his next day"s lessons and nibbling his vegetarian suppers, who delivered the phrase "please yourself" in his slight Talsen accent with a retreating shrug as he unhitched himself from any responsibility whenever his c.o.c.ksure son demanded his way.For instance, the time teenage Bernard trooped out of the house to hector Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists. Barracking them from the pavement, lobbing the odd brick, getting into dustups with Blackshirt roughs, Bernard writes, he "notched up the hard experience" that gave him the right to slam the door on his father and brand Edward "a physical and moral coward."Edward Burston"s neighbors saw him as a good citizen. The right sort. A decent chap, considering-considering that he was a foreigner and Jewish to boot. Unambiguous evidence was out in the open. He was a professional man, industrious about getting and unostentatious about spending, a serious-minded gent who harbored no evident grievances and partook of no outbursts. Once, Bernard remembers, he was helping his father bury daffodil bulbs in the back garden, when Edward"s eyes suddenly misted over. "Look at the life I"m living now," he said. A teacher, taxpayer, honorary Englishman, settled down and bedded in, an orderly man, guided by the natural exercise of self-control. Bernard called his dressing table a "jeweler"s showcase" of hair brushes and combs, a silver tray under a bowl of cuff links, a French pocket watch always wound and accurately set.Of