The hidden palace, p.30
The Hidden Palace, page 30
We’re not allowed to peek.
He looked around, but the spectators had all moved on. Carefully he pulled the message free—and the words Chava Levy leapt at him from the paper.
He took a startled breath, then read it from the beginning:
MY NAME HAS CHANGED BUT I TRUST YOU REMEMBER THE FOUNTAIN IN CENTRAL PARK AND THE FIREPLACE ON FIFTH AVE RETURNING TO NYC THURSDAY PM MUST SEE YOU SEND REPLY HOTEL EARLE URGENT CHAVA LEVY MUST NOT KNOW.
SOPHIA WILLIAMS
He remembered, then, where he’d seen the man before. The morning after Triangle; his mother on the sofa, burning with fever. The tall man talking to Missus Chava in front of her boardinghouse, falling silent at Toby’s approach.
He stared up at the Amherst’s facade. Then he slid the cable back into its envelope and wheeled his bike around the corner, into the alley.
Only one of the boys had stayed behind, the smallest of the bunch. He was perhaps seven, and wore what looked to be an older brother’s cast-offs: a too-large shirt tucked into baggy short pants, with a rope belt to cinch it all together. The boy glanced up at Toby, then turned his attention back to the ground, where he was using a stick to poke at a dark, irregular patch that had been set into the concrete.
Toby leaned his bicycle against the alley wall. “So, that’s Ahmad al-Hadid,” he said.
“He’s just Mister Ahmad,” the boy said.
“Do you know him?”
The boy shook his head. “No one does. He’s—” And then a word that sounded like biddoo.
Toby frowned. “What’s that mean?”
“Means he ain’t Christian.”
“Huh.” Toby wondered how to proceed. “So, you aren’t allowed to talk to him?”
“Naw, we’re allowed, he just don’t. He never comes out, not since Mister Arbeely died.”
“Who’s that?”
“His friend. They bought the Amherst together. Now it’s just Mister Ahmad’s.”
Toby whistled low. “He must be rich,” he said, feeling the weight of the coin in his pocket.
The boy shrugged again, but his expression suggested that he shared this theory.
Toby considered a moment, then said, “You ever heard the name Chava Levy?”
The boy looked up. “I seen her once,” he said.
Toby’s heart leapt. “You did? Where?”
The boy gestured heavenward with the stick, and Toby realized he meant the rooftops. “With Mister Ahmad. They usedta walk up there, and talk in different languages, all twisted together. My brother said they’d done that since before I was born. They’d walk around all night and then go to Mister Ahmad’s apartment, and in the morning she’d come out again.”
Toby’s eyebrows rose. Missus Chava had kept a secret love-nest in Little Syria? “But this was all before Mister . . . before the other fella died.”
The boy nodded. “She never came around, after that. And all the people who worked in the Amherst left, too.”
“When was that? Do you remember?”
The boy thought. “Ma was pregnant. And Hanna’s almost three.”
“So he’s been in there all alone for three years?”
“Guess so.”
“Huh.” He would’ve liked to show the boy the cable, and ask what he made of it, but held back. Peeking at a message was bad enough; showing it around was worse. Still, the boy had been a surprising help. Toby reached into his pocket, past the golden coin, and fished out one of the City Hall nickels. “Here,” he said, handing it to the boy. “Take yourself to the pictures.”
The boy grinned his thanks, and ran off.
Toby frowned down at the envelope. He couldn’t just keep it; it belonged to the man in the building, even if he didn’t want it. For all Toby’s disappointment in Western Union, he still believed in the job itself. A message must reach its destination.
He wheeled his bicycle back to the front door, slipped the cable through the letterbox slot as quick as he could, and then pedaled away, thinking hard.
The Jinni stood among the shards of his work, cursing himself.
He never should have opened the door. He should’ve had the sense to ignore it. But the incongruity of the boy’s taunt—Was that Yiddish?—had wrested his attention away. He’d joggled the pane upon the stack, and they’d all shattered, four days’ worth of glass gone in an instant, and before he could stop himself he’d opened the door—
And the world had come rushing in.
Sunlight, near to blinding. A messenger-boy in a uniform, a badge on his cap. Children running away in fright. A chemist’s across the street that should’ve been a grocer’s. The Woolworth’s crown, the new copper already tinged with green. The shock on the boy’s face as the envelope burst into flame.
He wiped a shaking hand across his eyes and looked down at the fragments, then up at the Amherst, his private, perfect world.
Something’s missing.
No. Nothing was missing. It was merely unfinished. He would melt down the shards and begin again.
He swept up the fragments, heated himself at the forge, lost himself in his work. It was some time before he passed by the front door, and saw the singed envelope. Without missing a step, without allowing himself a moment’s thought, he grabbed it and turned it to ash.
* * *
“Hollandaise,” said Charlotte Levy, “is the most difficult to master of the five basic sauces.”
The girls of the third-period Culinary Science class listened in rapt attention.
“In fact, given the delicate chemistry of the sauce, it would not be out of place to cook it in a laboratory. But since this would be inconvenient for our purposes, we must make do with our classroom instead.”
This was as close to joking as Miss Levy ever came. She smiled at them, and they smiled back—all except for the new girl, Kreindel Altschul, who stood crammed into a corner of the island like an extra hour added to a clock. Had there been more warning, Miss Levy might’ve created a separate lesson for Kreindel, to smooth her way into the class. Then again, perhaps the girl would relish the challenge. At the moment she mainly seemed resentful of having to wear the cook’s whites.
Miss Levy launched into her lecture: the process of emulsification, the role of the egg-yolk and the binding properties of lecithin, the need to hold the sauce at a low and constant heat to keep it from curdling. From there she reminded them of the dangers of bacterial growth, and the symptoms of salmonella. When at last the girls began to light the burners and crack the eggs, the room was so charged with trepidation that they might’ve been stirring up batches of gelignite.
She began her circular patrol, watching their progress. Four of the girls’ sauces had curdled immediately; they stood over pans of thin, lumpy liquid, desperately whisking. “If the sauce has merely separated, an extra egg-yolk may be whisked in to improve the emulsion,” she told them. “But a curdled sauce can only be rid of its lumps.” The girls sighed, and fetched their strainers.
She came around to the corner where Kreindel stood beside Sarah Rosen, her reluctant partner. Kreindel was whisking their pan, her face a portrait of frustration.
“It’s gonna curdle,” Miss Rosen hissed.
“No, it won’t.” Kreindel whisked harder.
“Girls,” Miss Levy said—and then Kreindel’s head came up to glare at her, and she nearly gasped as the girl’s anger struck her with shocking force, near to a physical blow.
She took a step backward. “Excuse me,” she heard herself say. And then she was walking out the door, down the hall to the teachers’ lavatory, as time slowed down and the world pulled away.
The lavatory door closed behind her with a calm and faraway sound. She went to the sink, gripped its sides, and stared at herself in the mirror, her sharpened vision showing her the minuscule particles of clay that made up her face, the rouge smeared atop them like paint on a wooden doll. There was a crack beneath her fingers. She released the sink, saw the new fracture that webbed through the porcelain—like the cracks in the concrete, the crater in the alley where—
No, she told herself. You are not her. You are Charlotte Levy.
She stretched her fingers out, pulled them in. Slowly, the world in the mirror returned to normal. Time resumed its usual pace.
She frowned down at the crack in the sink, and left the lavatory.
The class was quiet when she reentered. Inevitably, a few of the girls were wondering if she’d fallen pregnant, and had left to vomit in secret. Kreindel had abandoned her whisking and now stood with folded arms, staring at her saucepan and its mess of curdled yolks.
“I told you,” Sarah said.
“It doesn’t matter anyway, it’s just a sauce,” muttered Kreindel, a touch too loudly.
The room stilled in shock. Didn’t matter? Only Kreindel would dare say such a thing—an insult to their teacher, not to mention their own accomplishments! And yet she’d said it with such offhanded certainty that they were suddenly unsure of their convictions. Was Kreindel right? Did a sauce matter, like other things mattered?
Miss Levy took a steadying breath. “It’s true,” she said, “an individual sauce may not ‘really matter,’ as you say.” She turned to address the class as a whole. “But tell me, if you would. Above all else, what is every resident’s complaint about the Asylum?”
“The food,” the girls groaned in chorus.
She smiled. “Exactly. And this is not to disparage our kitchen-workers, by any means. In fact, one might argue that theirs is the most difficult task in the entire Asylum. They must plan nutritious meals for over a thousand children, on a closely monitored budget, using ingredients that can be purchased in large quantities and held in storage for days—and on top of all that, they must also follow our dietary laws. Given so many restrictions, it’s a wonder there’s any variety to your meals at all. But—let us imagine that, one day, the kitchen staff forgoes all the rules. You arrive at your breakfast, and find that on every table is a bowl of brandied vanilla sauce, to pour over your usual eggs and toast. Or, at supper, a béchamel with grated nutmeg, for your boiled vegetables. What would the general reaction be, do you think? Would it be memorable?”
Their wide eyes assured her that it would be memorable indeed.
“An unfair example, perhaps, but you see my point. Any individual dish may not make a great difference in itself—but well-prepared food, in variety and abundance, matters greatly in the aggregate.”
The girls nodded with her, their certainty restored. Kreindel stood sullen and alone, arms still folded against them.
The bell sounded then, and in a rush the girls peeled off their white coats and caps and began to file toward the door. “Thank you, ladies,” Miss Levy called. And then, “Miss Altschul?”
The young woman paused, longing to leave. Her teacher waited until the others were out of hearing, and then said, “I’m told that you joined my class under protest. I can understand your frustration—but please do give it an honest try.”
“Yes, Miss Levy,” Kreindel said; but her voice was dull with resentment.
16.
Sophia stood naked in a crowded ballroom.
She tried to cover herself, mortified. She’d been wearing a dress, a wine-colored silk, but it had disappeared somehow, and now the guests were all staring. She ought to leave the party, but she couldn’t; she was waiting for someone, only she couldn’t remember his name . . . Oh, her mother would be furious. She tried to pretend it didn’t matter to her in the least. Her nakedness was a choice and she preferred it that way, they were the ones in the wrong—but she was too cold, far too cold—
Next stop, Pennsylvania Station, someone called.
She woke with a shivering jolt. She was on a train from Baltimore to New York. And, to her relief, she was fully clothed.
She rubbed her eyes. Her head ached; her entire soul was weary from travel. She glanced up at her trunk in the luggage rack, already dreading the mood that the jinniyeh would be in when they arrived. They’d argued about it on the Kansan, the jinniyeh declaring she’d rather fly into the ocean than get in the trunk again. But Sophia had insisted that she couldn’t go about with some animal perched on her shoulder like a witch’s familiar, and that if Dima went on refusing to wear clothing, there was nothing else they could do. So at last, with much grumbling, the jinniyeh had consented to the trunk. Secretly, Sophia was relieved. It was easier to keep track of her this way, and it saved her the cost of a second ticket.
She peered out the window at New Jersey, the flashing greenery slowly acquiring streets, buildings, railyards—and then the Hudson tunnels swallowed them in darkness. The train slowed, emerged at a platform, and stopped.
I’ve come back, Sophia thought.
The carriage began to empty. One of the porters fetched down her trunk, and offered to carry it up to the taxi stand. She thanked him, wondering if he’d noticed her trembling, or if the porters simply carried everyone’s luggage for them. She followed the man’s broad back onto the platform, up the staircase to the top—
To a room of steel and marble and shining glass, and vast overhead arches that seemed to hold back the clouds.
She stopped in surprise. Her eyes widened; her jaw dropped. “Oh, my goodness,” she murmured.
The porter noticed, and smiled. “First time here, miss?”
She nodded, still gazing about. “I’ve been away. It’s beautiful.”
“There was a man who used to sit there”—he pointed to a bench—“and look around for hours. Never took a train that I saw. Just wanted to be here, in the station.”
“I can see why,” Sophia said.
He led her through the Concourse to the Waiting Room, where she stopped to buy a map of the city, and then to the taxi stand. She tipped and thanked him as the taxi-driver tied the trunk onto the rack—she made certain it looked secure—and they were off.
It was a quick jaunt to Washington Square. The driver dodged all over the road and honked his horn at every corner—Sophia feared for the trunk, but it stayed stubbornly upon the rack—and then they were at the Hotel Earle, where Sophia paid the driver and then stared at the trees and the pathways and the Arch above, feeling as though she’d arrived inside her own memories. Fifteen years; and yet it seemed only days ago, no time at all.
They passed into a lobby—dark wood paneling, velvet couches—and Sophia signed the register at the desk. She wished her hand were steadier; the second half of Williams was nearly illegible. “Are there any messages waiting for me?”
The clerk checked the cubbies behind him. “Afraid not, miss.”
Well, it meant little. Perhaps he’d moved the business. Or, he simply hadn’t answered yet. They’d go to Little Syria tomorrow and look for him. She’d fulfill her half of the bargain. And then . . .
Perhaps it’ll happen, perhaps it won’t, she told herself. Promise or not, she was still at the jinniyeh’s mercy. But it was difficult not to think, Soon, I won’t shake anymore. Soon, I’ll be warm.
The room they’d given her was on the top floor. It was small but well-appointed, with a radiator and—Sophia rejoiced to see—a bathtub. She tipped the bellboy, reassured him she had everything she needed, then closed the door and opened the trunk.
The jinniyeh materialized, looking ill, and sat down on the floor at once. “By the six directions,” she said through gritted teeth, “I shall never do that again.” She glared around at the tiny room. “And this is little better.”
Sophia sighed. “At least there’s a bath.”
Dima shuddered. “That hardly helps me.”
Sophia ignored this. She was exhausted, and hungry as well. First, though, the bath. She’d grown used to disrobing before the jinniyeh—it was abundantly clear that Dima thought little of it—and soon she was inside a steaming tub of water, her hair floating about her, the weeks of travel sloughing from her skin. Her shaking diminished. Before long, her eyes were drifting closed.
The jinniyeh, meanwhile, flew about the tiny room, trying to shake her sense of confinement. It astonished her how humans seemed to hate open spaces. They built their buildings and then put rooms in them, and then trunks inside the rooms, and cases inside the trunks.
She approached the window, blowing the thin curtains to the side. Outside, the twilight was deepening toward evening. She heard the growl she now knew to be an automobile, and the ring of hooves upon stone. Beyond were treetops, a space cleared of buildings—and in the middle of that space—
An enormous arch, bone-white, rising into the air.
She shot backward. The Cursed City, it was here! But how was that possible? Had it followed her somehow, were the demons real after all? Or—had she truly left the desert? Sophia had kept her in so many boxes; she’d never seen any proof of their destination, had merely trusted the woman’s word—
Terrified, she raised winds to flee. The curtains whipped about, tangling her inside them.
“Dima!”
Sophia stood dripping wet, a towel hastily wrapped around herself, one hand shielding her eyes from the wind that spun through the room.
The jinniyeh took form; the winds stopped. “You tricked me! We are still in the Cursed City!” She advanced upon the woman, fury in her eyes.
“What?” Startled, Sophia looked to the window. “Wait—the Arch?”
“Yes!”
The woman put up her hands. “Dima, please! Look again. It’s not Palmyra. It’s not the same.”
Was this a trick, too? The jinniyeh glared at her, but went back to the window—and saw that the woman was right. This arch wasn’t old and crumbling, but new and whole. Carvings decorated its sides, undamaged by time.
“I should’ve thought to warn you,” Sophia said. “That’s Washington Square Arch. It’s only a hundred years old.”
The jinniyeh stared at it. “But . . . it’s so alike.”
“It’s in the Roman style, just as Palmyra was. Here—wait a moment, I’ll show you something.” She replaced the towel with a dressing-gown from her trunk, then dug through her valise and found a rectangle of paper that she unfolded once, then again and again, until it was nearly too large to hold. She placed it upon the bed. “It’s a map of Manhattan,” she said. “Like the railway map I showed you in Damascus, but only one city, and in much greater detail. We’re here, in Greenwich Village, on Waverly Place.”
