The Last Paradise
Antonio Garrido
1
Winter 1932
Brooklyn, New York
Jack Beilis ducked into the narrow streets of the Williamsburg neighborhood with the desperation of a cornered jackal. Now and then, the weak light from a streetlamp illuminated his gaunt face emaciated by hunger, his blue eyes showing no sparkle. As he walked on, he rummaged in his pockets for a crumb of stale bread, a vain gesture so often repeated. His stomach protested. In the year he’d spent in Brooklyn, his savings had enabled him to avoid the charity lines, but the Depression had eaten away at those funds just as it had eaten away at his body until he was down to his last ounce of fat. He cursed the Ford Motor Company and Bruce Tallman. Especially Tallman.
Harried by the rain, he escaped through a doorway and climbed the rickety staircase that led to his father’s apartment. He stopped on the fifth-floor landing. As he searched for the keys in his pants, he could taste helplessness at the back of his mouth.
He opened the door and hit the light switch without much confidence. Fortunately, the bulb flickered on. He shed his raincoat and traded it for the blanket he found on the couch. Then he walked through to what had been the dining room, before his father, Solomon, turned it into a dumping ground for old shoes, scraps of leather, and scattered awls. From the hall, he heard snoring. Entering the bedroom, he found his father asleep on the bed as if he’d simply collapsed onto it, fully dressed and giving off the pungent smell of alcohol. Beside him stood a near-empty bottle of bourbon. Jack covered the old man with the blanket and snatched the bottle. Back in the dining room, he lit the menorah, the seven-armed Jewish candelabrum that rose up from the table. When his father woke up, he’d be pleased to find it burning.
That night, it took Jack a while to get to sleep. His feet were swollen from so much walking, and he was numb with cold. Lying on his back on the threadbare couch, he longed for the days when he would arrive home from school and his mother would welcome him with freshly baked buns that melted in his mouth with their warm butter glaze. Days that would never return. He opened a drawer in a nearby side table and took out a picture faded by time. It was a photograph of his mother, Irina. He contemplated it nostalgically. He could almost feel her soft, delicate face, and see the deep, dark eyes that seemed to protect and advise him: Keep going, son. You have to look after yourself . . . and look after your father. He’d been trying to do that since he’d returned from Detroit.
But Solomon wasn’t cooperating. His only concern was to secure his daily ration of drink, as he’d been doing since the day Irina fell ill.
Jack grabbed the bottle and took a long draft. The liquor burned his throat but comforted him. For the first time in a long while, his stomach was filled with something warming. He closed his eyes to enjoy the feeling. The remaining gulps raised his spirits enough to give him a flicker of hope. Unlike his father, he was young and strong, with two skilled hands and an ardent determination to find a job that would save them from ruin. For a moment, he considered himself lucky, comparing himself to the thousands of destitute living in shantytowns across the city. At least he and his father still had a solid roof over their heads. For as long as Kowalski allowed it.
He looked at his mother’s portrait again. Five years ago, when times were still good, Solomon had moved his shoemaker’s store to a more central location on Broadway. But shortly after Solomon’s Shoe Works opened, the dreadful symptoms of disease began to appear. The cancer didn’t just end her life. It exhausted Solomon’s life savings, leaving him only debts. Jack was working in Dearborn. By the time they’d told him she was sick, it was too late. When he asked his father for an explanation at the funeral, Solomon was barely able to murmur that he’d merely fulfilled his wife’s wishes. Irina had not wanted her son to know of her illness and to suffer because of her.
The bourbon eased his sorrow, though he attributed his change of mood more to the medallion he wore around his neck, an ancient seal of Hebrew characters that his mother had given him for his tenth birthday. Since her death, he hadn’t removed it; it was all he had to remind him of that happy time in his life. Which was why he squeezed the medallion between his fingers before sleep overcame him.
The cold of dawn woke Jack as if he’d slept out in the open. He looked at the window. The wind had torn the newspapers that covered the broken panes, turning the room into an icebox. He loosened his muscles, went to the bathroom, and stood in front of the mirror, contemplating the cadaverous set of features his face had become. He took a deep breath before dunking his head in a basin of icy water, then dried himself with a ragged towel and used little pieces of soap to plug the cuts he’d made shaving. He looked at himself again. With each day, he found it more difficult to accept that the deep rings around those blue eyes belonged to the same young man who a year before had provoked sighs of admiration from the girls at the Dearborn Dance Society. But he had long ago stopped being the attractive Ford Motor Company supervisor who wore French jackets and frequented the best clubs in Detroit. And that reality ate away at him.
He preferred not to think about it. Lately, thinking only gave him stomach cramps. His most pressing concern was to find a job, or he and his father would be forced to wander the streets and sleep under cardboard boxes in Central Park, surrounded by beggars and criminals.
He opened the wardrobe and took out his only smart shirt, a classic-cut white cotton number. The garment still had the tag from the Abraham & Straus department store where he had purchased it. He delicately stroked the buttons with his fingers before slipping it onto his fibrous body. He put on a woolen vest, and on top of that, the worn raincoat his father had lent him—he’d traded his own the week before for a little lard and a pound of potatoes. He left the coat unbuttoned because it was small on him, and picked up his Bulova watch, which he’d tried to sell so many times; no one had offered him more than a bowl of soup for it. Before fastening the band, he looked at the engraving on the case back: Ford Motor Company Worker of the Year. He gave a bitter smile. Last, he donned his hat. He looked at himself in the mirror again. The shadow of the brim hid his drawn face so that nobody who saw him would know how bad things were. Numb with cold, he rubbed his hands, turned off the light, and exited the room.
He was about to leave the apartment when a soft voice stopped him.