Some Danger Involved (9 page)

B
ARKER WAS SILENT AFTER WE RETURNED
to the office. He sat in his chair, with his fingers intertwined and his elbows on the desk, and did not move for twenty minutes. Whether he was praying, or meditating, or merely thinking, I took the time to go through the final post. At exactly five thirty, Jenkins sprinted out the door on his way to the Rising Sun and his first pint.

“How many men,” Barker said aloud, “would it take to start a pogrom in London?”

I considered. “Fifty at least. Perhaps a hundred.”

“And how many men in London have such a hatred of the Jews that they would band together to create one?”

“I have no idea.”

“It cannot be that many. Oh, there is always that part of society that finds others inferior. We all have our little prejudices. But hatred, enough to form a league bent on destroying them…”

He went over to a smoking cabinet among his shelves and took down another carved pipe, a coiled dragon. Then he crossed to an old wooden jar, full of his new tobacco, and charged his pipe.

“There’s only one way to gather a group of any size. One must canvass. Now, if I walked into a pub and said, ‘Let’s go next door and attack the Jews, beat them, and destroy their businesses,’ I don’t think I’d get many to go with me. The English are not barbarians. But if I said, ‘Those Jews are taking our jobs, our homes, and pretty soon our women; let’s teach them a lesson,’ I’d probably clear the room. It’s how mobs start. Most of the men in pubs are half bored, looking for something to do, and anxious to air their grievances.”

“Someone should be watching the pubs, then,” I stated.

“I agree.”

“That’s too tall an order for us. There are hundreds of them.”

“We need volunteers watching them.”

“The Jews!” I suggested.

“The Sephardim, perhaps. The Ashkenazim would be too obvious. I suppose we’re only talking about the East End. Take a letter.”

I reached for my notebook.

“What about the Reverend McClain?” I asked. “Didn’t you say he frequently went into pubs?”

“Now you’re thinking like an enquiry agent, lad! Unfortunately, he is not generally in a position to overhear anything, considering that his face is so well known. He wears the blue ribbon of temperance and is not above busting up a pub with a stout hammer. Also, he wouldn’t send any of his own people, for many of them have given up the bottle themselves. It would be too much of a temptation for them.”

“Just the letter, then.”

“Aye, the one letter will do. We’ll drop it in the pillar-box on our way.”

I knew he wanted me to ask where we were going, but I decided to keep silent. Barker went down the short hall, into one of the anonymous rooms with the yellow doors, and returned with two disreputable-looking Gladstone bags. He tossed one to me and we left the chambers.

We had sandwiches at the Rising Sun, across from Scotland Yard. The proximity to the Yard rather unnerved me, for I still had the former prisoner’s antipathy to policemen. For a moment, I felt the clasp of cold iron around my wrists and ankles again, and the prodding of a truncheon in my kidneys. I had a sense of what would happen next, and I spoke up.

“We’re going into ‘A’ Division, aren’t we?”

Barker nodded between bites of ham and cheese. I found the ham almost inedible, but my employer was tucking it away between those square teeth of his.

“I teach a class there most Monday evenings,” he explained. “Physical training and antagonistics, adapted to police work. Unarmed defense. You should find it instructive, and you’ll get to toss around a few constables for a change.”

Reluctantly, I followed my employer across the short street. The Yard looked large and foreboding in the twilight, like a medieval keep. As we walked into the building, I felt as much a prisoner as I did when I wore a convict’s broad arrows.
Step by step,
I told myself.
One foot in front of the other.

We passed a desk by the back entrance and were waved through by an officer. He seemed to know Barker on sight, but then Barker was not easy to forget, once seen. We passed down a congested hall full of constables, regular citizens, and idlers, and through an unmarked door, into a room full of lockers. Following Barker’s example, I began to disrobe and hang my clothing in one of the lockers. In the Gladstone I found a thick, cable-knit black jumper and a pair of tight trousers of gray wool, with padding at the knees. The clothing looked comical on me, I thought, and only marginally better on my employer. He wore a pair of canvas shoes with rope soles. I was barefoot.

I was not prepared to walk out into the hallway in this bizarre costume, so I was relieved when Barker opened a side door and led me into a small gymnasium. The room had a wooden floor, with canvas mats here and there, and a wide mirror along one wall. Several men in clothing identical to our own were already in the room. Some were stretching, and others tumbling on the mats. One of them, I noticed, was Inspector Poole. As soon as Barker entered the room, all of the men stopped and moved to the mirror, lining up in a row.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Barker said, giving the men a formal bow. The men returned the bow and mumbled a greeting. “Tonight, I shall be showing you a few ‘come-along’ tricks that might be helpful to you with reluctant suspects. But first, we must warm up.”

We began with various stretching exercises and some pushups. Barker showed us how to rise swiftly from a seated position on the ground, which we practiced repeatedly. Then my employer taught us some of the “come-alongs” he had spoken of. I will only mention one, which Barker called the “Tokyo come-along,” because it is a favorite of the police in that far-off city. As any schoolboy knows, a bully or ruffian often begins his attack by reaching out with the left hand either to seize the lapel in preparation for a blow with the right hand or to inflict a light jab. The defender seizes the attacker’s wrist with his left hand and steps back to the left, facing the other direction and pulling the attacker off balance. He snakes his right arm swiftly over and around the extended limb, anchoring his right hand high on his own lapel, or even the bicep of his other arm. Pressing down on the attacker’s wrist causes painful overextension of the braced elbow and allows the defender to make the attacker “come along” wherever he wishes, in this case to the local constabulary. It’s quite a neat little trick, I thought.

Within an hour we were all quite winded and perspiring, and Barker ended the class. He shook hands with various members of the police force, giving them encouragement and instruction, then we all returned to the locker room and changed back into our street clothes. The late March air, as we left the building, was very bracing compared to the stuffy heat of the gymnasium.

Even at this hour of the evening, there was generally a cab to be found in Whitehall. Barker and I hailed one. How adept I had become in the past four days at entering one, and how complacent over it all! We passed over Waterloo Bridge and took the route I had walked in the rain two days before. The chilling air soon dried me after my exertions in the gymnasium.

Barker had the cabman drop us at the garden gate. He was whistling to himself off-key. I wagered he still had at least one trick up his sleeve for the evening. He led me over the garden bridge and up to the larger of the two outbuildings. I noticed smoke rising from a small chimneypiece. Barker opened the door and motioned me in.

Inside it was stiflingly hot. Barker went over to a barrel, took a gourdful of water from it, and poured it slowly over a brazier of coals, which hissed and sputtered, and filled the small chamber with steam.

“Take off your clothes and hang them there,” Barker ordered. “There is a half barrel of water and some Pears soap in the corner, where you may wash.”

I did as I was told. Once I was covered in soap, Barker filled a bucket and poured it over my head. I felt like a drowned rat and somewhat embarrassed.

“What is the matter with you, man?” Barker growled. “If you are modest, put this on.” He handed me a strip of white cotton fabric with a string at each corner.

“What is it?”

“It’s what passes in half the world for undergarments. It’s called a
heko.
It ties at each hip. There is a heated bath behind me. Get in.”

The bath was perhaps eight foot square and deep enough to go over my head. It looked like it had once been a boiler. There were teak benches submerged on one side. I climbed down into it and soaked, while Barker splashed about in the half barrel. The bath was incredibly hot, almost unbearable. After my exertions, the heat was beginning to make me sleepy. There was a fluttering overhead and the bath suddenly erupted on all sides as Barker’s fifteen stone struck the water all at once. I was hurled into one of the underwater benches. Barker eventually surfaced.

“Aah!” he said, his voice echoing in the small room. “Aah! I’ve been waiting all day for this!” He paddled about, floating on the surface. I noticed that, for modesty’s sake, he’d donned one of the little swimming garments. As he reached for a towel to wipe his omnipresent spectacles, I noticed something more. His brawny arms and chest were a mass of scars, burns, brands, and tattoos. Who had seared that circular mark on his shoulder? What had caused the triangular scar on his collarbone, or the three parallel slashes along his ribs? What did the black Arabic-looking lettering on his upper arms mean, or the animal-shaped burns on his forearms? I hazarded a guess that Barker had joined every secret society from here to Kyoto and been in more than his share of battles.

“You’re welcome to use this bath any day you like,” Barker said. “Mac heats the water every evening at seven. This is the Japanese way of bathing. You wash off the daily grime in the foot bath there, then soak the internal impurities away in the bath. I daresay you’ll sleep well tonight. How often would you say the average Englishman bathes?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Once a week? Twice a month?”

“And how often does the average Japanese bathe?”

“I’m at a loss. I have no idea.”

“Twice a day. A day, mind! Now, which would you rather share an omnibus or cab with, someone who bathes twice a month or twice a day?”

The light dawned. What Barker in his not so subtle manner was trying to say was that I didn’t meet his standard of hygiene. I began to take offense. As far as I knew, I bathed as often as everyone else I’d ever met, until now. But then, I’m neither a dog nor a child. A nightly bath wouldn’t kill me, if my employer demanded it. Who would suppose a man as large and rough as Barker could be so fastidious?

“Out of the tub now, lad,” Barker said briskly. Half asleep, I dried off with a nubby towel. As I sat for a moment on the bare wooden floor, drying my limbs, he suddenly seized my head in his large hands and began twisting it like a cork in a wine bottle until there was a cracking sound in my neck.

“That’s better,” he said. “It’s good to get the kinks out, now and then.”

Things got hazy after that. I vaguely remember his pulling back my arms and working his foot along my spine until all the vertebrae popped in a row. Then I have a fuzzy memory of Barker and Maccabee helping me up the stairs to my room. I believe I was singing “Men of Harlech,” an old Welsh folk song, a trifle too loudly. After that, oblivion. Sweet oblivion.

I
AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING FEELING ABSOLUTELY
sensational. Birds twittered in the trees. I could smell the first blooms from the tulips, which had recently burst from the ground. The brook chuckled joyfully in its course, and somewhere, far, far away, as though in another world, I heard the clatter of hooves and the bustle of commerce.

I fairly leaped from my bed and began to dress. Somehow, I noticed, I had acquired a nightshirt. I pictured Barker and Mac trying to stuff my slack limbs into the shirt, and I laughed out loud. Then my thoughts turned to the business at hand.
Trot them in,
I thought to myself.
The whole Anti-Semite League. I’ll teach them a thing or two.
I tried a move or two that Barker had shown me the night before. There was a cough behind me. I was posturing in front of the butler.

“I trust you slept well,” he said, his voice heavy with irony.

“Never better.”

“I’ve brought you a brioche and some coffee, at Mr. Dummolard’s request. I’m not certain what you said to him yesterday, but I believe you’ve helped settle one of his feuds. Very temperamental, these artistic types.”

“It must be hard having to serve up one of Dummolard’s creations when he is in absentia. He leaves you to take the blame.”

“Oh, Mr. Barker does not blame me for the cooking, sir. He never shows that he finds the food improper. Nevertheless, I believe he knows the difference. Therefore, I must…thank you.” It was hard for him to say it, I could see. He’d rather give up a tooth than a word of thanks.

“Not at all,” I responded formally. Maccabee nodded and withdrew.

In the hall, I found Harm by the door, waiting to go out into the garden. I felt so good, I chucked the little beast under the chin and let him out. Perhaps he was too surprised to bite. He trotted out and plopped down in a small bed of thyme, rolling over on his back, with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.

Barker was there in the garden. He was, well, he was doing
something.
I didn’t quite know what to call it. It involved moving about in a kind of slow dance, with elaborate steps and movements. They looked like some of the defense moves he had made in the gymnasium, except that these were very slow and more flowing.

“Internal exercises,” Barker said, in answer to my unasked question. He did not break stride, but continued his little movements. “Good for the circulation and general well-being. Do you know what the Asian races think of us? They think we don’t eat well, we don’t stand well, we don’t even breathe well. We never take time to appreciate beauty. We don’t value what’s important. What do you say to that?”

“I say there’s some truth to it, I suppose.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“I did, sir, thank you. And you?”

“Me?” he asked, as if I’d made a joke. “I always sleep well.” He finished his little dance, took a lungful of air, and slowly blew it out. Then he walked past me. “You coming, lad?”

Racket’s cab was not out front this morning, so we hailed a hansom in Elephant and Castle. Our destination, Barker told me, was the Jews’ Free School in Spitalfields, just around the corner from the Lane. We had an appointment there for a tour.

“Mr. Pokrzywa has been a cipher for too long,” he said. “Today is the day we unmask him.”

Sir Moses had paved the way for our entrance, and we were to be given a tour of the place by one of the teachers. I was expecting another stern patriarch to lead us around but was relieved to find the teacher about my own age, not much older than his pupils. His was a comical face, with a shock of thick, black curls, and a profile that was mostly nose and very little chin. He was a thin, scholarly, casual fellow, the kind that has a hard time keeping his clothes in order, and when he wasn’t waving his long, sensitive hands in the air like palm fronds, he was stuffing them in his pockets.

“Israel Zangwill, gentlemen,” he said to us, shaking our hands in succession. “Welcome to the largest and best school in Europe. I’m so glad you’ve come. If you hadn’t, I would have been forced to endure first-period gymnastics, which is too much like Bethlehem Asylum for my taste. Come this way.” He set a brisk pace down the hall.

“The Jews’ Free School was founded in 1732. We feel it is one of the most important educational institutions in Europe. Close to a third of all Jewish children in London have come through these doors, myself included. We are bursting at the seams at the moment. We have close to four thousand students.”

“Four thousand, you say?” I asked.

“Yes, and sometimes, it feels as if they were all in my class. Of course, many of them arrive here the first day not speaking a word of English, nor do their parents, and they have nothing but the shirts on their backs, which were handed down from their fathers or brothers. To use a Gentile term, we must ‘baptize’ them into English, immerse them so thoroughly that they are drowning in it. It is no help that they speak not a word of it at home. Normally, however, the children in these families are stair-stepped in age, and within a few years, the children are all speaking English to each other, and so it gets a foothold in their homes. Then they act as translators for the adults. That, coupled with the family’s constant need to fill out one government form or another, eventually produces a family that at least somewhat speaks English.”

“But that doesn’t help you now,” Barker stated. I noticed a smile peeking from under his mustache. This fellow amused him.

“Oy, are you telling me! Four thousand children, and none of them the same! We’ve got Chootes and Latvians, Poles and Spaniards, Estonians and Portuguese. This little fellow was expelled by the tsar a month ago, and Mr. Butter-doesn’t-melt-in-my-silver-spoon over there, his family came here from Lisbon in 1652. And we’re supposed to stamp ‘good Anglo-Jew’ on all their foreheads, teach them English and the basics of hygiene, and try to make good little law-abiding Englishmen out of them. And, of course, every one of these little monsters has a mother convinced he is the Messiah, and wouldn’t we please give him just a little bit more attention than that other boy, whom we all know is just a bit dull? Ah, here we are. The cafeteria. All kosher prepared, of course.”

He led us into a large, sunlit room full of tables. Hebrew children lined each one, elbow to elbow, eating quickly and quietly. Remarkably quietly, considering that there were more than a hundred pupils in the room. The children looked rather thin, as a rule, but none was barefoot, and all seemed very clean. I’d pictured a kind of Dickensian boarding school before I arrived, but I was very wrong. The food, though unrecognizable to me, smelled wholesome, and there was a lot of it. Meat patties of some sort, rolls, cauliflower, and even a cherry tart.

“Why are they eating so early in the day?” I asked. It was just barely nine.

“Your Christ, I believe, performed a miracle by feeding the four thousand. We must perform that miracle every day, and out of just one tiny kitchen. Unfortunately, this is the only meal some of them will have today. Their parents will save the few scraps they can collect for the other children in the family. Small wonder they try to claim their four-year-old is five, in order to get him on the roll. Now, if you will step this way, we will view the gymnasium, the bane of my existence.”

We passed down another corridor into the gymnasium. The room appeared to be very organized; three or four classes were going on simultaneously. Students in outfits not unlike sailor suits were tumbling on the mats in one area, tossing a medicine ball around a circle in another, and lined up to use the hanging rings on a third. The teacher, I noticed, looked rather harried.

“Organized chaos, I call it,” Zangwill remarked, running a hand through his impossible curls. “Again, I thank you for getting me out of this.”

“Have you been told the reason for our visit here today?” Cyrus Barker asked.

“Our headmaster is not very forthcoming, as a rule.”

“We are investigating the death of Mr. Pokrzywa. Did you know him?”

“Louis? Of course. Are you gentlemen detectives?”

Barker made a sour face. He did not like the word. “We are enquiry agents, yes. How well did you know him?”

“Rather well. We lived in the same boardinghouse. He hadn’t been in the country a great many years, but he was a wonder with languages. He taught Hebrew and Greek.”

“What kind of fellow was he?”

“He was quiet. Reserved. He was formal in his English, but if you spoke Yiddish to him, he’d open up a little. I knew him as well as anyone.”

“Did he have any enemies, or was he involved in anything dangerous?”

“Not at all. Far be it from him. I don’t know how this could have happened.”

“Did you or anyone notice his resemblance to, shall we say, the stereotypical version of Jesus Christ?”

“Oh, certainly, we chaffed him about it. Of course, there were dozens of fellows here in the East End who could pass that description, but he was close enough to receive comments. I’ve always wondered if he was a little vain about it. His hair was rather long by London standards, and I suspect the headmaster may have wanted him to cut it, aside from the side curls, of course. Louis was very orthodox, otherwise.”

“Were there any women in his life?” Barker continued.

“He was a handsome fellow, and there were always intrigues around him. The matchmakers and prospective mothers-in-law were hounding his steps. He was asked to dinner by so many families, he was the best-fed man in the East End. I don’t know if he had a sweetheart, but I doubt he led a monk’s existence, if you’ll forgive the expression,
sholem aleichem.”

“Aleichem sholem,”
Barker responded automatically.

“You know your Yiddish, Mr. Barker. Anyway, I believe he was the sort of fellow to keep his private life private, which is generally a good idea, murders notwithstanding.”

“Where are his rooms?”

“Number forty-three, Wilkes Street. First floor, back.”

“Ah, yes. The
chevra
in Whitechapel. Not the best address.”

“You’re telling me. I was born in the area. For a Jew, ghettoes are the same everywhere.”

“What more can you tell us, Mr. Zangwill? We’re trying to understand what sort of fellow he was.”

Zangwill took in a deep breath and blew it out, his dark, expressive eyes searching for words. “Serious. He didn’t have much of a sense of humor. Mystical. He read the Kabala, and the Talmud, of course. He was a first-rate debater on points of law. He had a passion for Maimonides and quoted him often. He was not really one of the fellows, a bit of a stuffed shirt, if you’ll forgive the expression.”

“Did he talk about his youth and how he came to England?”

“Not a word. We knew about his impressive escape from the pogroms in Russia, but he didn’t like to talk about his personal affairs. He was something of a mystery. His own roommate, Ira Moskowitz, once told me he couldn’t make head nor tails of him.”

“Tell me more about the
chevra.”

“We met in a boardinghouse that used to be a private home. It is cheap, and Mrs. Silverman, the landlady, has been so far unsuccessful in killing us with her cooking.”

“It is not my intention to sully the reputation of any daughter of Zion,” Barker asked, “but could you possibly give me the names of some of the women Louis Pokrzywa knew, or some of the families he visited?”

Zangwill looked a little uncomfortable. “I don’t know…”

“We merely wish to speak with any young woman who knew Louis, to get a woman’s perspective.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt, but I only know the one,” the teacher said, reluctantly. “Her name is Rebecca Mocatta.”

“Is she Rabbi Mocatta’s daughter?”

“Yes, his younger.”

“Capital. We won’t take up any more of your time. Thank you for answering our questions.”

“Certainly. Come back any day you like, if you have more questions. But be sure it’s during first period!”

We came out into the hall just as every door in the place opened and spewed forth children, all determined to get to their next class immediately, and talking at the top of their lungs in the process. In the midst of the sea of children, like a lone island, Barker stood, rooted to the spot. It was the first time I’d seen him unsettled. His brows must have been a full inch above the top of his spectacles. Discomfort, almost panic, was written on his face. I deduced he was uncomfortable around children. He stood, immobile, as they poured around him on all sides, occasionally buffeting him. Within a few moments they were reduced to a trickle. Barker resettled his jacket and tie and shot his cuffs. He cleared his throat.

“Mmm. Yes, well. Shall we go, Mr. Llewelyn? What are you smiling about?”

“Nothing, sir. I’m ready to go.”

The boardinghouse was only a few blocks away. I was beginning to know the area better now. Just north of the school was the cemetery, and two streets east was the Romanian restaurant where we had met the rabbi.

By daylight, Whitechapel looked bedraggled. She was sooty, and the fine rain that was beginning to fall made the red brick look like glowing embers. Windows were boarded up, and conversely, fences were denuded of planks for firewood. I thought of the glory of Whitehall, and the comfortable urban prosperity of Newington. I doubted much money was spent by the mayor of London on repairs in this district.

At the door to the building, Barker put an arm out and began removing his shoes, according to
shiva
custom. It felt strange being out in a public street in one’s stockinged feet, but as we stepped in, we set our footwear down at the end of a long line of shoes.

Inside the house, to the left of the front door, was a sitting-room parlor. There was nothing initially to show that this was a boardinghouse for Jewish scholars. The furniture was overstuffed and dated in a style popular several decades before. In honor of the deceased, all mirrors had been covered, and the room was full of low stools. The students of the yeshiva were all there, sitting on the stools and talking; presumably they had been released from their studies by Jewish custom. Nobody, I noticed, sat in any of the normal chairs.