The Anarchist (3 page)

Hyde considered the tip of his cigar. “Wrong. They are wrong.”

“Absolutely. And your worker is going to remain cold, hungry, and sick, no matter how many speeches Red Emma gives. These people, they don’t want to
earn
anything, they just want it
handed
to them. We’re really talking about taking responsibility for one’s own life, Hyde.
Then
freedom will follow. I believe that, and I think you do, too—that’s what you did when you ran away from that orphanage. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here now.” Norris cleared his throat. “I can give you five dollars a week to start.” He leaned back as though he himself were stunned by such a figure.

“That’s not enough,” Hyde said.

For the briefest moment, Norris’s eyes turned hard, and then he smiled. “What can you make working on the canal—four, five dollars a week? Listen, show me what you can do, and then we’ll see what you’re really worth.”

Hyde turned his head and stared out the window. The vendor who had been selling chickens was pushing his cart down Market Street, the wooden wheels leaving deep furrows in the mud.

“You know the Pinkerton motto?” Norris asked.

“‘The Eye Never Sleeps,’” Hyde said, still gazing out the window.

“Good. You can become a part of that, if you handle this for me.”

“The eye that never sleeps grows weary, tired.”

“Not if there’s enough of us looking—then we grow vigilant and strong.”

“We become a great nation.” Hyde finally turned to Norris.

“Very good,” Norris said. “You are a patient man, Hyde, and patience is a useful quality in this line of work. It keeps the mind clear, the eyes sharp.”

Hyde crushed his cigar out in his saucer. “So does hunger.”

THE air in the crowded hall was stifling hot, smelling of sweat and damp wool clothing, yet windows were kept closed for fear of alerting the police. The speaker, Johann Stefaniak, was a glassworker from Milwaukee whose forelock danced on his damp brow as he thumped the podium with his fist. People forgot their discomfort in the heat, raising their arms, cheering, and applauding as Stefaniak raged on about wages, eight-hour workdays, and better conditions in mills and factories. He might have been a preacher at Sunday meeting, the way he led the crowd like an orchestra, building it to a fevered pitch, only to bring it back down to absolute silence, so that when he whispered the name of J. P. Morgan there was a collective horrified gasp, as though he had spoken the name of Satan himself. When he was finished, everyone was standing as they shouted with fists raised—and then it was over, and, exhausted, they began to file out of the hall.

Leon Czolgosz remained seated on a wooden bench next to a window near the back of the hall. He liked to let the others leave first; something about the emptiness of the room appealed to him. Same thing on a train—he was often the last to leave.

He turned to Hyde and said, “Been listening to speeches like that since I was a boy.”

“This was a good one,” Hyde said. He sat with his arms folded as he stared toward the now empty stage.

“There used to be gatherings in the room above my family’s grocery store in Cleveland,” Czolgosz said. “The entire neighborhood would come to hear some socialist or communist. It wasn’t like the Catholic masses we attended—this was the true passion play.”

“At least the police didn’t break things up tonight.”

“If any blood would be drunk, it would be our own.”

They were alone now except for a few old women who swept the floor and collected discarded handbills. “Well, it makes me thirsty,” Hyde said as he got to his feet. “A speech like that makes you want a cigar, a beer, and whiskey—the good whiskey.”

“Right, top-shelf,” Czolgosz said. “Who has time for that five-cent stuff?”

“Ta hell with the temperance people.”

Czolgosz continued to stare at the podium. “He was good tonight, but he’s no Emma Goldman.” “So we’ll drink to her.”

Czolgosz turned toward the window next to him, and he could see himself dimly reflected in the glass. There was an unusual grace to the angle of his jaw. His hair, parted on the right in the reflection, was blond, and most disconcerting was how his lips appeared full and even curvaceously feminine. But it was the eyes, his pale blue eyes, that often seemed to transform people, as though he possessed some unique, perhaps even magical power over them. Standing up, he said, “Yes, a dram for Emma Goldman.”

The cool night air was a relief as they walked through Polonia. Mud caked their boots and there was the smell of horse manure, chimney smoke, stale beer, and cooked sausage, onions, cabbage. Voices burst from open saloon doors—places with names such as Mick Pickle’s Palace and the Erie Strutters’ Dance Hall, where English was seldom heard. The alleys were littered with pickpockets and prostitutes, lingering in the shadows.

“You know I heard Goldman speak in Cleveland last May,” Czolgosz said. “I’m telling you, she can set an audience on fire. She often causes riots and the police have to break them up.”

“She could make a man commit murder,” Hyde said. “She convinced Alexander Berkman to try to kill Carnegie’s manager, Henry Clay Frick.”

“What a botched job. Berkman gets into Frick’s office in Pittsburgh with a gun—but he can’t even shoot straight! Then he
pulls a knife and stabs the man, but still he lives. When workers struck at the Homestead mill, Frick sent in the scabs and hundreds of Pinkertons to protect them. And because he survived the assassination attempt, Frick became a hero. So how do you get close to them? Men like Frick are surrounded by guards all the time now.”

“With your light hair, you could almost pass for a Pinkerton.”

“Men like me, or you—we are not going to be mistaken for those bastards.”

“You really think so? Then how do you get close enough? You must have help.”

“Not necessarily. You blend in—you become Mr. Nobody,” Czolgosz said. “Nobody but Poles can pronounce my name, so I tell people my name is Fred C. Nieman. Then they don’t even see me. This is a war of ideas. Invisibility can be a weapon.”

“True,” Hyde said. “But be careful, Fred Nieman, or Emma Goldman will make a good weapon out of you.”

“I would like that,” Czolgosz said.

“Really?” “Really.”

“You’ve mentioned this before, that it’s your duty,” Hyde said, “and sometimes I think you’re—”

“It is my duty,” Czolgosz said. “We defeated Spain in Cuba and the Philippines, and now America’s preparing to conquer the world. But look around us! To walk through these neighborhoods it appears that the world has sent its defeated to Buffalo. And it’s the same in Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago—they’re importing a whole new slave class. Industry thrives on our cheap labor.”

“This is true, and this is why the socialist and—”

“A few more pennies per hour is not the solution. Socialism, communism—they don’t …” Czolgosz stopped walking. “Do you know what historians will make of 1901? They’ll say Americans were a hardworking, industrious people. They’ll remember
men in boiled white shirts and stiff collars, and women in satin gowns with their hair tied up under a big hat with a plume. They’ll remember Anna Held and Gibson girls. They’ll hardly mention the conditions in the factories, children working all day instead of going to school. The socialists and communists, they’re just talk, they’re just speeches and handbills. The anarchists—they’re something else, and they’re not talking about a few more pennies.”

“I work for pennies,” Hyde said. “And right now I just want to think about a strawberry blonde—not so much on the plump side. But still, you know, with nice high ones, and hips like this—” He carved the figure of a woman with both hands. “Sometimes you should concentrate on something else, Leon—a glass of whiskey or maybe a girl’s hips.”

“Perhaps.”

“It’s not exactly free love.”

“No—more women should practice free love.” Czolgosz seemed baffled, embarrassed, but then he blurted, “There is no such thing as ‘free love.’ You’re talking about a decent woman, you’re talking about marriage. That’s neither free nor love. It’s just procreation, making a bunch of babies who will grow up and go to work for you—listen, I come from a family of eight, and there would have been more except that my mother died at forty when she was giving birth to my sister Victoria. The family as a capitalist unit—create your own workforce. That’s the only way to survive.”

“Then maybe it’s better to simply pay for it.” Hyde seemed to be smiling, though it was difficult to tell with his full mustache. “What do you say?”

“Do you—pay for it?”

“Sometimes,” Hyde said, and he nodded toward the clapboard house at the end of the block. “It’s run by Big Maud, and it’s certainly not free. But it’s honest—at least until all women are like Emma.”

BIG Maud’s house had a bowl of fruit—peaches, grapes, oranges, and an enormous banana—crudely painted on the clapboards above the front door. As they stood on the front stoop, Hyde could sense Czolgosz’s reluctance. But then the door was opened by Mr. Varney, the bouncer, and Big Maud welcomed them in the vestibule; she wore a bustle and seemed to drift across the floor without actually taking steps. In the parlor “Hello, Central, Give Me Heaven” was being hammered out on the player piano, which was in need of tuning. The room was smoky, and the heavy, tasseled drapes suggested a hint of pageantry. Hyde and Czolgosz ordered whiskey at the bar and within minutes the available girls hovered around. They concentrated on Czolgosz, knowing that Hyde was interested only in the strawberry blonde named Motka Ascher. By the time Hyde finished his whiskey, Czolgosz had been maneuvered to a stuffed chair next to a large potted fern. A stout redhead with a creased neck sat on the armrest talking in his ear, but he didn’t seem to be listening; instead, he stared at the carpet and held his glass as though he could crush it in his fist.

Motka came down the stairs, carrying the bottom of her long green dress in one hand, and entered the parlor. She had enormous blue eyes, wasn’t too plump, and had what was called good carriage. Without saying anything, she took Hyde’s hand and led him up the stairs. They climbed all the way to the third floor, passing closed doors. There were the sounds of bedsprings, of coughing, of giggles and laughter, of a headboard knocking on the wall. The top floor was quieter, though the music from the parlor echoed up the stairwell. They entered her room, which was small, with a sloped ceiling. She lit candles, and then sat on the chair next to the bureau. She undid his trousers and, using a fresh cloth and warm water, washed him gently. When she was done, they undressed and got into bed. Overhead rain began to fall on the roof, and it was soon pouring—drumming on the shingles
so hard that the protests from Motka’s bedsprings were nearly drowned out.

When they were finished, she said, “I have cigarette, mind? Big Maud does not let us smoke in the parlor. Only the men.”

“You go ahead.”

She got up, opened the bureau drawer, and came back with a pack of cigarettes, matches, and a flask. “Your friend, he does not come here before,” she said, climbing back under the sheets. “What’s his name?”

“Fred Nieman.”

“He is a nice-looking boy, but I bet you a dollar—he does not leave the parlor the whole time.” Motka liked to make little bets and she usually won. She opened the flask and took a sip, and then handed it to him. Compared to her warm skin, the silver flask seemed absurdly smooth and hard.

“You really think so?”

She lit her cigarette and exhaled slowly. “He will be right there sitting by that plant—ignoring every girl that talk to him. Big Maud even sit with him a spell, try to make him relax.” Shaking her head, she said, “He just look holes into the carpet.”

“You could see that?”

“Moment I saw him.”

“But not me?”

“You?” She laughed as she placed a hand over him. “You could knock on front door with this stick of wood.”

“Why do you suppose Fred is that way?”

“You the kind that think a lot. He the kind that think too much. Or maybe he has too much Catholic.”

“Not anymore,” Hyde said. He drank some more whiskey before giving her the flask. She took it with the hand that held the cigarette, while her other hand continued to fondle him. Motka was a three-dollar girl, the most expensive in the house, other than Bella Donna, who had been there the longest. Ordinarily you were given a half hour for three dollars; and if you could go
more than once in that time, it was an extra dollar for Motka. “How long you been in America?” he asked.