City Of Fire Trilogy 1 - Dreamland (67 page)

That was when I saw the coach: a large black carriage by the back door, big as a hearse—a pair of coachmen loading it up with those exquisite child’s trunks. I raced back down the stairs, already knowing what I would find. I was just in time to see him whisking her out, behind his phony black magician’s cape.

“Wait!” I squealed, and she turned her head just a little for me to see—her face, hard and imperious as a queen, staring off beyond me.

She knew

“Wait!” I cried, but she turned and was gone, vanishing behind the cape, into the big black carriage.

“Too late!”

The phony Marconi grinned at me, above his huge cape. A foot shot out, kicking me backward as casually as an old football.

“Too late! You lost her!”

Then they were gone, the horses pulling the big black carriage away from The Little City at a gallop.

I ran after it—even though I knew I had no hope in the world of catching it. I ran after it, right out of the park, as far as my shrunken legs would carry me down Surf Avenue, yelling after it in my ridiculous, ineffectual dwarf’s voice:

“Wait! I’ll give you anything!”—until it was long gone, only a black speck slowly disappearing through the new flat lots of Brooklyn.

The elephants stood at the top of the Shoot-the-Chutes in their jeweled blankets and bridles, a long gray line winding up the towering water slide. Each one detached itself carefully, wobbling for a moment on top of the Chutes—then dropped, impossibly, into the great central lagoon of Dreamland.

Sitting up on their tails, holding up their forelegs like begging dogs. Hitting the water with a splash that left the whole crowd squealing and clapping and ducking, soaked by the tidal waves of water.

Big Tim watched closely, beaming and clapping with delight as each magnificent pachyderm came down. The beasts emerged, trumpeting and shaking themselves, spraying the delighted onlookers with water all over again.

The children around the lagoon watched it all wide-eyed, screaming with pleasure as the waves of elephant water hit them. In no time, Big Tim had emptied his pockets to them, buying great plumes of cotton candy, boxes of Cracker Jack, Red Hots™. Soon he had nothing at all, not even carfare back to the City, but he didn’t think about it.

Instead he now felt free to keep wandering, hands in his pockets, staring amiably at everything around him—at everything he owned. The midway with its tattoo parlors, and its shooting galleries, and camel rides and con men and hootchy-kootchy dancers. The great rotating Ferris wheels, and the darting, zizzing roller coasters, and the black pantomime policeman, and the delicatessen with everything made out of candy.

How the children he saw every day on the street would have loved this How they all would have loved it—

The gangsters stormed through the miniature city, tearing up the Big Tent, smashing the windows of the perfect little houses, the stained-glass windows in the church, until the glass covered the streets and crunched underfoot. Punching in doors, lifting roofs right off the tiny homes.

The dwarves screamed and fought and grabbed at them. A squad of midget cops bravely formed a phalanx and charged them, truncheons drawn.

The gangsters kicked them aside, flung them away by the scruff of their necks, stomped them like bugs. They looked everywhere, even crashing through the beautiful Town Hall and palace—but he was nowhere to be found. Whitey thought it might be worthwhile to wring a few of the midgets for information, but by now there were real police whistles blowing in the distance.

“Don’ worry, I’ll find the little bastard,” Gyp promised them. “They can go ahead an’ run, I’ll find ’em. I’ll find all the little bastards.”

Up on the sixth floor, the mother and daughter stood begging for their lives. Flames licking out through the windows behind them, black smoke trailing up into the brilliant, blue, indifferent sky. There was the clanging of fire bells somewhere off in the distance, but it was clear the engines would never reach them in time. They stretched their hands out toward the helpless crowd below.

Esther and Kid stood watching from the street, arguing about their future.

“How can you do it? How can we do anything with
him
still around?”

“I’ll go with you then,” Kid told her. “We’ll both go away.”

“But I don’t want to go,” she insisted. “Not yet.”

“Sure you do.”

Before them stood a perfect replica of a city tenement, exactly like the ones most of the crowd had come from. And there in the windows were themselves: men and women and children, dressed like anyone else. A peaceful evening scene: the families settling in for dinner, the mother laying out the table, father reading his paper, the children playing quietly. The crowd sighing to see how tranquil, how serene it looked, how much more peaceful than real life.

“We can’t get married. How could we ever afford it?”

“Sure we could. We could live like real people. With a place of our own, maybe children.”

“I dunno,” she said slowly. “I gotta go back.”

“Why? Whatta you owe them anymore? Is that the kind of life you want?”

Did she? The stale, dingy hotel rooms, nights in smoky traveling car parlors. All the far-off cities she had never seen. Coming into a new town in the dead of night, negotiating head-to-head with the sneering men bosses and local union presidents. Standing up to the goons, and the leering, taunting cops.

She wanted it more than anything she had ever wanted in her whole life, including the love of her father.

The afternoon fire started slowly, creeping up between the walls, but easily visible to the crowd below. They shouted up warnings, but the tenants went about their lives, oblivious to it all. But they—they could see the flames, could smell the gasoline.

Suddenly it was everywhere, shooting right up to the top floors. Real flames and smoke, exploding through the windows, showering the street below with glass; sending the crowd reeling backwards. Now the tenants were edging out on their window ledges, looking petrified, clutching tightly to each other for support.

“Wait, wait! Wait for the engines—don’t jump!”

“We’ll save you, don’t jump!”

The crowd shrieked with fear, clutching and clawing unconsciously at each other. A black trellis fire escape ran down the middle of the building—but as soon as a few of the tenants put a foot on it the whole structure fell away with a terrible, ripping sound, leaving the people, men and women both, swinging in air, clutching on to the narrow ledges by their fingers.

“Save them! Save them!
Oh, for the love of God, save them!”

A fire engine raced up to the front of the building, the crew rushing a single, round life net to the foot of the building. It looked too flimsy to hold anything. Yet up on the sixth floor the flames were licking right up the broad, black skirts of the women, the vests and pants legs of the men.

It was soon obvious they would have to jump. The firemen flung up a ladder—but it only reached partway, only up to the third floor, still much too low—

“Save them!”

Even as they watched, a couple on the top floor picked up their young son—gave him a boost up on their hands—then propelled him downwards, head first.

The crowd gasped, and swayed, trying to will him on to the life net. At first the boy seemed to be on target—but soon it became obvious that he was headed well to the right of the net.

The crowd cried out in horror, wondering if this was some kind of stunt gone wrong—the firemen scrambling desperately toward the falling boy with their net.

“You’re missing him!”

He tumbled head over heels now—once, twice, three times—then landed feet first on the net, did another, neat backwards tumble, and came out on his feet, arms extended in triumph.

The crowd burst into applause. Next the boy’s mother jumped, then his father. Soon they all began to leap from the windows and the ledges, with superb, clockwork precision—each jump more spectacular than the last. Tearing away the burning clothes they wore to reveal the black leotards, the sleek, muscled acrobats’ bodies underneath.

More trucks pulled up, the firemen stepping deftly around each other, smartly flipping out more life nets. The jumpers coming down now two, three, sometimes four at a time, grasping each other’s arms, forming human pyramids. The ones from the lower floors not even using the nets but tumbling out to safety on their own, right onto the street. The men and women who had survived the fire escape letting go of their window ledges, falling in effortless, breathtaking pirouettes. Some of them plunging on down right through the street—only to jump up, unscathed, through the cunningly hidden trapdoors.

The crowd cheered and clapped wildly for each one, the acrobats still swooping down, graceful as birds out of the clear blue sky. These were not easy or risk-free stunts, performed without a real net—yet all of them reached ground safely, landing without a scratch, taking their bows.

Esther and Kid limped away, still weak in the knees at the shock of such a spectacle, clutching to each other’s arms.

“Whatever you want, my golden heart, my angel—don’t you see?” he crooned to her. “Anything we can dream up, we can have it. Anything! Only—us together.”

She smiled weakly, put her hand on his arm, still thinking of the spectacle of the fire.

“Tell me about the children again, and a place of our own, like real people.”

“You’ll do it, then?”

“No. But tell me it again, it’s so nice.”

He smiled at her, and started to speak—when he noticed something up ahead. Just what it was, he wasn’t sure, but he put his face to the wind.

They stalked them past the Barrel of Fun, and the Razzle Dazzle. Past the Venetian Gondolas and the Golden Stairs and the Chanticleer, past the Barrel of Love and the Human Roulette and the Cave of Winds and Human Pool Table and the Down and Out. They stalked them all through the parks, past the diving elephants, and the Fall of Pompeii, and the Hall of Life.

Then Gyp smelled the smoke. The same smell from when he had gone to see
him,
up in the charred little apartment—a ruin, empty save for
him,
and Kapsch the
roomerkeh,
who sat silent and loyal as some old family retainer.

“My repentant son returns,” the old man had said, joyously caustic as ever.

Their mother lay on the table, eyes staring upward. He rocked slowly back and forth, the ritual mourning cut in his coat reopened—as if for one more old combatant from the Lodz synagogue.

“I know who he is. I know where they are.”

“Too late!” his father snapped. “Do you think it matters
now?
Do you think all this would have happened if you had done what I asked you?”

He stood in the doorway, sizing up the old man. Thinking that if he killed him now, he’d have to kill Kapsch as well, and that might make too much noise.

“I don’t know.”

“No, no, of course you don’t!” the reb laughed bitterly, then wiped his hand across his mouth. “It’s just another mistake—you didn’t
mean
it. Like losink the money for the
cholent
—like your whole worthless pimp’s life. Just a mistake.”

He waved him closer, and Lazar walked reluctantly into the apartment, within arm’s reach of his father.

“C’mere, c’mere,” he urged, still waving, until Lazar bent over, his ear to his father’s mouth—his beard and clothes, and even his flesh, still reeking of smoke.

“C’mere, I want to tell you somethink.”

He waited, listening.

“It’s all your fault,” he breathed into his ear.

The old man reached his arms out around him, grasping for him.

“It’s all your fault, everything that happened. All of it.” He laughed again, as if it were a great joke. “It’s your fault I am reduced to ashes—but I forgive you! Come to me.”

Lazar stepped back so fast he almost knocked over a chair.

“I forgive you, my son!”

“Get away from me. Get away, get away,” he chanted, even as he ran out into the hall, away from that house and his father, stinking of smoke.

Now he smelled it again: the same burning smell, the smell of death in the tenements. He moved toward it—Whitey and Louie trailing behind, mystified.
She
would be there, he was certain.

Freud lay nearly prone on his bench on the boardwalk, soaked handkerchief pasted over his forehead like a plaster, waiting fearfully for when he would be disturbed again. Where the rest of his party had got to, Jung and Ferenczi and Brill, he didn’t know, and frankly he didn’t care anymore just so long as they left him in peace.

Already, he had been rousted from one bench after another by an electrical shock, a marching band, and a roving band of gigantic, pantomime grotesques: an Indian chief, a nine-foot Irishwoman, a huge, obese policeman in blackface. A gang of maniacal caricatures, gleefully exhorting him to move on, have fun, spend money—enjoy himself!

He mopped at his brow and took his own pulse, wondering that he had not yet had a stroke. They had been around all the parks, buffeted here and there like so much flotsam by the great waves of people. They had been on a staircase that divided in half—one side suddenly plunging down, the other yanking you up. They had been on the sidewalk that sent them plummeting into a giggling heap of clerks and salesgirls, and a roller coaster that left his stomach curdling, and a set of spinning teacups that knocked their heads together.

He had been bashed and jerked and spun about until every part of his body ached: Blasted by the marauding bands and the relentless organ music. Bombarded by the frying grease, and the great, droopy-lidded heads of wolves and clowns and devils, leering from the walls above their head as if suspended there in midair.

A large, well-dressed man with a solid slab of a face plopped down on the bench next to him, whistling a little through his teeth. He braced himself for some further interference, but the man seemed harmless enough—another patron, or victim.