City of Slaughter by Cynthia Drew

Author:Cynthia Drew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, Jewish migration, New York, Russia, pogroms, child labor, historical fiction, millinery couture
ISBN: 978-1-56474-757-3
Publisher: Daniel & Daniel Publishers
Published: 2012-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

— 21 —

The RMS Carpathia, Cunard’s newest ship, set out on its maiden voyage in May of 1903, bound for Boston. Max Siegel quit his job at a rough Liverpool pub for a spot in the steerage compartment, where he sat on a wood crate or slept on the floor for most of the voyage. The floors had been painted, but little cargo accompanied him for the trip—few wanted to risk sending freight on a ship with no proven safety record. By halfway across the Atlantic, he had met a crewman who, for a hundred rubles, agreed to take Siegel through U.S. Customs at Boston with the Carpathia’s crew, and put him on a short-haul steamer bound for New York City.

——

On Saturday Carsie’s English lesson was in Conditionals—the ideas of time and probability, from “certain” to “impossible.” She understood the concepts, and the lesson went better. Fascinating language, she thought.

She stopped at a fishmonger’s to buy a whole cod on her way home from the Socialist Literary League. When she came into the flat, she laid the package of fish on the table next to a copy of the Daily Forward that had been folded back—a circle drawn on the editorial page. Inside the circle was her letter, with her name signed at the bottom.

Selig sat in the front room, in the dark, smoking a cigarette.

Carsie turned up the kerosene lamp on the table. “Sitting in the dark? Not reading?” she asked.

“Did you see? The Forward published your letter.”

She smiled. “Yes. I never thought they would—I just wanted to say something about, well, about the way things are.”

“You don’t decide what’s wrong with ‘the way things are,’ Carsie. That is not yours to decide.”

“It is as much mine to say as anyone’s, Selig. And if I think there are problems I will say so.”

“No, you won’t. There are boundaries to a woman thinking for herself—stepping over them will get you in trouble.”

“Why do you care so much whether the Forward published my letter? Did it embarrass you?”

Akselrod said nothing.

She snatched the newspaper off the table and studied her letter. The paper had published it exactly as she had written, and she still felt as angry about conditions in the ward as she had then. “It did embarrass you, didn’t it? Your friends didn’t like it that you plan to marry a woman who thinks like this, did they?”

He continued to smoke, silent.

“Did they?”

Nothing.

“Selig, I am asking—your friends didn’t like it that I spoke my mind, did they?”

“It’s time you knew what I do for money, Carsie,” he sighed. “My livelihood is made on the people of the Tenth Ward. I work for Monk Eastman, running numbers.”

“But he’s...”

“Eastman depends on these people living just as they do—if everyone started thinking for themselves we’d have no business at all down here. He called your letter treason. You’ve put me in an awful position—I had to agree with him or...”

“You agreed? Monk Eastman is a gangster and you agreed with him? That...bully?” She waited, staring at him.

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