The Museum of Extraordinary Things

SIX THE BIRDMAN

AFTER ALL these years I could still remember sleeping in the forest in Russia, there beside my father in the grass. Sometimes when I woke I was surprised by my current surroundings, the light of New York City that streamed in through the window, my dog on the floor, the chimes of the tubular church bells ringing in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd from inside the walls of the General Seminary. For a very long time I believed that when we left our home, we left my mother as well. Where our village had stood the burned fields would again become green and her flesh would be in every blade of grass. When we fled we abandoned the past, or so I then believed. My mother was called Anna, a name I still cannot say aloud.

I wept when we ran away from our home, because I was young, and because the forest was dark and I was afraid. There were so many birds in the forest at night, and I imagined they would carry me away. Night birds are predators, and we were easy prey. A man and a boy in black coats and hats, shoes worn, shirts frayed and unwashed, both lost and uncertain of what lay ahead. I held my father’s hand and led him through the trees because my vision was better, my step steadier. When darkness fell, he told me to close my eyes and dream, for in my dreams I would find another world, and in my waking life I would soon enough find such a world as well, far from the forests we knew, far from the fields of grass where my mother bloomed again. My father was a realist, I see that now, and a fatalist as well. He believed we were in the hands of God, and that it was best to accept our fate, and not to battle impossible odds.

I often saw that quality in him when I worked beside him in the factory. He was a good worker and didn’t complain, and I faulted him for that as well. The meeker he appeared to be, the more rebellious I became. I wished to be the opposite of all that he was, and hated every trait of his that I found in myself. He was raised under the rule of the Cossacks, the mad horsemen who burned our village and murdered our people and turned us to smoke. Because of this he had learned to keep himself small, like the mice that ran across the table, catching whatever crumbs they could. The conditions of factory workers in New York were so deplorable even a boy my age could tell this should not be the order of the world, that we should suffer so for the sake of our bosses, who lived in town houses and rode in polished walnut carriages and bought the first automobiles, which they treated like fine horses, caring for them tenderly while the children in their factories worked twelve hours a day for pennies and went to sleep hungry.

Perhaps my father saw a new order when he closed his eyes and dreamed, for in his dreams surely his fingers did not bleed from stitching all day, and his tired eyes were renewed. He went to labor meetings, but he stayed on the fringes, not wishing to cause trouble. A mouse. Nothing more. I was excited by the idea that men could take their fates in their own hands and could choose to strike. “We’ll see,” my father said with caution, and in fact new workers were quickly hired to replace our striking group, brought in one early morning in horse-drawn carts as if they were cattle. We were beaten back with bully clubs by policemen from the Tenth Precinct when we tried to get at the men who had taken our rightful jobs. I remember that my father had a bruise on his face. He didn’t even mention the pain it must have caused him. At home, I noticed he was spitting blood. A tooth had been knocked out, and he tucked a tea bag into his cheek so that the tannic acid would stop the bleeding.

At the next factory where we were employed the entire floor of workers was fired when there was a mild rumble of discontent; the bosses struck before we could, and newer, green men were brought in. That was when my father went to the docks, that patient, good man I had so little respect for, though we were of the same flesh and blood and he had saved my life more than a dozen times when we traveled over continents, finding us bread and shelter. He was a mouse who feared the forest, yet he had managed to take us into France and on to Le Havre, where he worked shoveling coal in a mill until we could afford steerage on a boat to New York, the only dream we ever shared.

In New York, my father allowed strangers to stay with us; anyone from the Ukraine was welcome to sleep on our floor. At shul he gave to the poor, though I couldn’t imagine who could be poorer than we. He was a good man, but what was goodness in a world where men who were slaving in close quarters fell to tuberculosis and were all but worked to death? I looked upon the long-suffering immigrants with contempt. They were sheep to me, creatures who dared not raise their eyes to the bosses, let alone raise their voices.

On the night our village burned, when my father and I lay together in the grass, with owls swooping above us, our stomachs rumbling with hunger, I was not more than five or six. And yet this was when I began to view him as a coward. Side by side we were, a coward and a coward’s son.

How could we leave my mother behind? Whether she was ash, or grass, or air, in my mind she was in our village still. We abandoned her, and began our new life. I was certain that if I ever loved someone, which seemed impossible to me even then, I would never let her go.

I saw a kindred defiance in Mr. Weiss when he came to me. I have often wondered why I agreed to help him, and maybe this defiance was the reason. Weiss was unwilling to allow his daughter to vanish; he refused to consider her lost, a hail of ashes on the city streets. I had become the sort of man who stood on the edge of things, as my father was, but I liked to think it was my insolence that kept me separate, not any sort of timidity. I was a rat perhaps, but never a mouse.

I should have remained aloof from someone else’s misery as I was on most occasions, yet I was drawn in. Weiss was an older man, dressed in the black clothing of the Orthodox, but he was hardly timid. He had gone to all of the authorities, stationed himself in the corridors of Tammany Hall, where he was ill treated and berated. He had brought his story to reporters at the Yiddish newspaper, the Forward, on East Broadway, as well as to the English-language daily the Sun, but they had failed to look into his daughter’s disappearance. Only when all other efforts had been unsuccessful had he come to me, the finder of what was lost. He believed I had abilities granted by God.

I agreed to do as he asked because he was a man so unlike my father.

And perhaps I did have a gift, as Hochman always said, for I knew how men’s minds worked. When I imagined myself in their circumstances I could think the way they did, no matter how different their lives might be from my own. I became a criminal, a forger, a philanderer. I played out my desires in these various guises, and therefore came up with a map of where I might hide if I were such a person, how I would occupy my time, and on which vices I would spend my money. This turn of my imagination had helped me as a boy in my ability to find men who thought they had escaped detection. But now, in my search for Hannah Weiss, I found myself lacking in skill and soon enough came to an impasse. My usual ability to uncover a person’s innermost self failed me. Even when Hannah’s sister took me to their haunts—Miss Weber’s hat shop on Twenty-second Street; the shul where they worshiped; Madison Square Park, where they fed pigeons on Sundays—I found no clue. Hannah seemed a sweet, pretty girl, hardworking and loyal. But in my background, I had no practice with such people. Good, trustworthy individuals were strangers to me, mysterious in their small desires.

I spoke with several survivors, girls who had known Hannah, in the hope they would help me uncover who she was. I took notes in a small leather-bound book where I kept my appointments jotted down. Her friends spoke with hushed voices when they talked of the fire that had moved through the workroom. It came upon them like a swarm, one survivor told me, red bees bursting through the wall. Many of the girls who had escaped thought Hannah, too, had survived, but it turned out it was Ella they had seen, for the sisters looked so alike it was nearly impossible to tell them apart, especially on that smoky afternoon.

As far as I could tell there was nothing unusual about Hannah—no secrets, no flaws. But perhaps everyone has a secret life, and on the last day of my interviews, I discovered someone who knew more about Hannah than the others. This survivor asked me to refer to her in my notes only as R, the first letter of her name. She didn’t wish to be in the public eye, and feared the fierce determination of the press. The building where her family lived had been circled by reporters after the tragedy. She had been hysterical for over a week, unable to speak or understand what was said to her. Still reporters called out her name from the street when her parents refused to have her interviewed. R was too distraught to be in our world, a place where she had seen her two younger sisters perch like doves upon the ledge of the ninth floor. She had told her sisters to go on without her, and she went back for her new coat, cranberry-colored wool. By then the smoke was everywhere and the elevators were no longer running; she had managed to grab hold of the burning ropes in the elevator shaft by throwing her coat around the sizzling twine so her hands wouldn’t burn as she lowered herself down.

She ran outside, and she saw her sisters on the ledge when she looked up. She thought that they saw her as well, for one tossed down her ring, as a gift and a keepsake. Unfortunately, the speed that carried it had embedded the ring in the sidewalk; the silver had been flattened, becoming a part of the concrete. R blamed herself for not catching the memento, though it would have likely burned her hand, perhaps even broken the small bones of her fingers.

R’s parents only allowed me to speak to their remaining child because Mr. Weiss had contacted them and vouched for me, and because they knew of his predicament. When I agreed not to use their daughter’s name in any way, and swore I would not upset her, I was at last invited to their home. Time was passing, and I knew from my work with Hochman that after twenty-four hours a missing person was half as likely to be found, and after a week, the chances were slimmer still. We were now passing the two-week mark, a very bad portent for recovery. Hochman always said that in two weeks a man could completely refashion his history; he could walk all the way to Ohio or Iowa, change his name and his accent, disappear into another life. In the woods, footprints faded, the wind rose up to disperse shreds of clothing, flesh became grass.

I sat in an unfamiliar parlor on East Thirteenth Street. The room was close, and there were rollaway cots that had been covered with white sheets, the beds where R’s sisters had slept. A sheet also covered the mirror on the wall, as was always the case during mourning periods. R was nineteen and had been burned on her arms and legs. The skin was red and mottled now, coated with a healing gel of aloe and fish oil. She had been a pretty girl, but now she seemed ravaged, not just by the effects of the fire on her body but by the memory of all she had seen. She told me she had no wish to be awake. There were days when she slept for eighteen hours or more, doing her best to bypass time completely.

“Did I deserve this?” R asked me. Her voice was so young and plaintive I felt only a fool would dare to respond. Who was I to remark upon her life? All the same I made a comment I thought might ease our conversation. I told her no, she did not deserve her fate, and if there was a God, something I myself doubted, then he had made a terrible mistake.

She laughed hoarsely and said, “God has nothing to do with this. It’s men’s greed that made this happen.”

Her mother was watching from the hallway, to ensure I didn’t tire R or upset her by dredging up memories of March 25. I recounted what I had so far learned of Hannah Weiss. R’s eyes were lowered as I spoke. When I finished she lifted her gaze to meet mine.

“They didn’t know her completely,” R said. “I was her closest friend.”

I signaled to the mother then, and asked if she would bring us tea. She had been suspicious of me from the start and had insisted I leave my camera in the front hall. Now she looked at R with an uneasy expression, but R merely said, “I’ll be fine with him. We could use the tea for our parched throats.”

When her mother went down the corridor, I asked R what she meant.

“Hannah went to labor meetings and didn’t tell her father. Mr. Weiss was strict. She knew he would fear for her safety. He would have never allowed her to risk going to prison. I saw her once with several strikers outside another factory on Great Jones Street. She ran after me and made me promise not to tell. So I gave her my promise. She hugged me to thank me. She said, I’ll remember this.”

“Even if her father wouldn’t approve, there’s nothing so unusual in any of that,” I countered.

“She wasn’t alone. She was with a man. She started going to union meetings with him. I think she was in love with him.”

I leaned forward, interested. “And you knew this because?”

R laughed at me. I think she definitely took me for a fool. “From the look on her face.”

That was all R could tell me—she did not know the man’s name or address—but it was enough to make me wonder if the image of Hannah I’d been carrying had been distorted by the tide of her father’s love. Perhaps I hadn’t been able find a map of who she was because I’d been misled. She was more independent than I’d thought. More willing to take a risk.

I walked for a long time after leaving R. Without thinking, I found myself outside the building where the Weisses lived. I went upstairs and knocked on the door. I went by nearly every day, though I had little to report. It had become a ritual I felt I needed to complete, even on those occasions when I stayed only a few moments, embarrassed by how little I’d discovered. And yet Weiss never faulted me. He was still hopeful.

“Did you find anything?” he asked after he’d let me in. “The gold necklace? Her shoes? Anyone who saw her?”

I said no. I couldn’t tell Weiss that his daughter had loved some man he’d never heard of or met and that she’d had a rebel’s soul.

“You’ll find her,” he said, sure of himself, sure of me, perhaps desperate to be so.

I stayed for dinner, reciting the evening prayers along with him out of respect. I still remembered them. Hannah’s sister made us a meal of barley soup, stuffed cabbage, then a roast chicken, along with bread, butter, and pavel, a plumlike butter. For dessert there was an apple strudel with sugar sprinkled on top. To me, it was a feast. I was reminded of my mother’s cooking, the way she sang to herself as she went about her chores, her use of herbs to make the meal more appealing. I thanked Ella and said, in return for including me in their dinner, I would help her clean up. The truth was, I wanted to stand beside her out of the old man’s hearing, so we might have some privacy.

“Your sister was in love?” I said.

Ella shot me a look. “What difference does it make?”

“Maybe nothing, maybe everything.”

“If so, she didn’t tell me.”

“She told you everything,” I reminded her.

“He was just a boy. Nothing serious. She’d only just met him. That’s all she said. All I know is that his name was Samuel. She said I would meet him, but that day didn’t come.”

The plates were chipped and the dishwater was tepid. I didn’t blame Ella for leading me astray by not mentioning this Samuel, nor did I berate her for the time I’d wasted searching for a vision that was untrue. I would now have to begin all over again, and think of Hannah as a different sort of person. I was about to let the topic drop when Ella surprised me by gripping my hand.

“I dreamt again that Hannah was in water. She was whirling in a circle, dressed in blue. When I woke up I heard her voice. She told me she couldn’t come back to me. That she’d tried, but it was no longer possible.”

She grasped my hand tightly, and I comforted her as Hochman might have, assuring her this wasn’t an unusual reaction to great loss. I hoped I didn’t sound as pompous as he always had. “It’s normal to have such dreams.”

I didn’t tell Ella that I sometimes heard my own mother’s voice after all these years, when I could barely remember her face and couldn’t bring myself to say her name. Nor did I mention that I often dreamed of my father. Though he was alive, he was lost to me as well. In my dreams, he stood in silence, knee deep in the grass.

“You’re saying this is normal? That I see her clear as day?”

“It is when you love someone,” I said. I didn’t know what I was talking about, but I’d heard Hochman express similar sentiments and I parroted his words. My next statement, however, I knew to be true. “You imagine what you wish for.”

“My pillow was wet,” Ella insisted. “She was there.”

I shook my head. “You wept. It was you.”

On the way home, I stopped across the street from my father’s home. I had to pass nearby. It was dark, and the night was unusually warm. I wondered how it was that we could have slept side by side in the forest at one time in our lives and be complete strangers to each other now. Would he know me if he passed me by on the street, without my black hat and coat, my hair shorn close to my head, or would I just be another citizen of New York? I thought of my younger self, the child who did not understand how a person could be on earth one instant and gone the next. How was it possible that my mother, who had been so alive, had become nothing more than ashes? Surely she must be somewhere. I became a finder because I needed an answer to this question. So perhaps this was my gift.

I did not know Hannah Weiss and, if her sister was correct, I never would, but that didn’t matter.

I could not let her go.