City of God (18 page)

None of those worthy gentlemen were around at this hour. Let the women tell their beads if they wanted. It had grown dark while Eileen O’Connor was going about her dying. Not enough light now even to see the patients lying on pallets on the floor because the beds were full. Nothing in their bellies since midafternoon, when they’d been given what passed for dinner at Bellevue. The ministers, meanwhile, were home with a glass of ale and an ample supper of bread and cheese, and they would sleep on feather mattresses, secure in the knowledge that they were the elect.

“…pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.”

Finally the prayers finished, but the unnatural silence remained, as if the ward were holding its collective breath. Until finally another voice called out, “Is she gone yet? Is the little saint gone to God, bless her soul?”

“She has,” Manon said.

“Right, then I’ll be having her bed.” The speaker was struggling to get up from the floor.

“You will not! It’s me Eileen said as could have it. Promised she did!”

“She did nothing o’ the sort. Sure and didn’t the little saint say as—”

Manon saw the struggle as a ferocious dance of scrawny shadows on the floor at the far end of the ward. “Be quiet!” Her authority was born of her service. “Hush, all of you. Go back to your prayers. I’ll get her ready for burying, then we’ll arrange who moves up.” The O’Connor girl had been in a proper bed in a choice corner of the room, near a window. “You can draw straws to see who gets the bed.”

The pair involved in the scuffle quieted. A woman approached the bed carrying a basin and a sponge. “Sure and I’ll do it, Mrs. Turner.”

“No, Bridey. I shall. Leave the water and go back to your bed.”

“Remember what she said, Bridey,” a voice called from the shadows. “Sure and isn’t it exactly what the little saint predicted?”

Bridey set down the basin and disappeared into the shadows.

Manon had no notion what the prediction might have been. The wards were rife with conspiracies and intrigues she knew it best to
ignore. That said, she had no real idea why she hadn’t stepped aside and let Bridey prepare the body for burial, just as she didn’t know why she felt compelled to remain beside Eileen O’Connor’s bed while she died. The girl was an ordinary consumptive as far as Manon knew, one of the thousands of Irish who arrived and swarmed over the city, poor and ill and frequently dead before their time, beyond the reach of the tiny handful of priests and the town’s few Catholic churches.

There was no gaslight in the wards of Bellevue, and candles were in short supply. The women hoarded their little wax stubs as if they were gold, and they often served as items of barter for still more urgent necessities. Still, as the dark encroached, at least half a dozen of the patients lit whatever bit of candle they had. All at once the ward was full of flickering shadows.

Manon rolled back the blanket that had covered Eileen O’Connor’s wasted body. That she had such a luxury long after she was able to fight to preserve it was a mark of the esteem of the others.

Dear God.

There was a gaping wound in the palm of the girl’s hand. As if someone had driven a nail right through it. Why had no one ever bandaged it?

There was no sign of pus. Only blood, dark black-red and obviously fresh, as if the wound had opened minutes before. But she had been standing here for almost half an hour.

Dear God.

The shadows cast by the flames of the candles became longer and more erratic as the dark deepened beyond the windows. No one spoke. Manon had not heard the ward this silent for this long in all the years she had been coming here.

“Look at t’ other hand, Mrs. Turner. Eileen said as—”

“Shut your fracking gob! Told us not to say nothin’ didn’t she? Never.”

Manon ignored the bickering and leaned across the corpse. The other hand was wounded in exactly the same fashion. She touched the blood: slick and warm. Not a figment of her imagination.

What in heaven’s name…She felt dizzy and leaned against the
wall to steady herself. Of its own accord, it seemed, the blanket she had thrown back slipped to the floor, revealing Eileen O’Connor’s feet crossed at the ankles. She must have been in that position when she died. The nails were much in need of paring, and two of the toes were clubbed, probably since birth.

In the middle of the girl’s two feet was another bloody wound, as if a spike or a nail had been driven through both at the same time.

Lord Jesus Christ have mercy. Do not take my mind. It is all I have that is of any value. Please do not take my mind.

She could not remain in this place. “Bridey. Are you still there?”

“Yes, Mrs. Turner. Right here.”

“Then you must finish preparing the body for burial. It is late and I must go.”

“Just as you say, Mrs. Turner.”

Manon started to step away but paused for one more look at Eileen O’Connor’s hands.

They were painfully thin, every vein and bone showing, an indication of a long illness as well as the near-starvation diet of abject poverty. She leaned forward, looking closely. They were unmarked. There was not even a trace of a scar.

After ten and the full harvest moon risen by the time Nick approached the Bellevue gate. Closed at this hour, naturally. He had walked from the new horse-drawn street railway that ran up and down Fourth Avenue on tracks set atop cinder blocks—the only transport he could find at the late hour when he left Sam Devrey’s peculiar second household on Cherry Street—and he was anxious for his bed. He tugged firmly on the bell hanging beside the locked gate. No one came. He rang again. This time the night porter appeared and let him in. He had taken only a few steps across the shadowy grounds when he heard a voice.

“Cousin Nicholas.”

“Cousin Manon! What are you doing here at this hour?”

“I am not sure.” She had been sitting on a bench well back in the
shadows of the trees since she left the women’s ward. She had very little idea why or why she had chosen to stand up and approach Nicholas as soon as she saw him striding up the path.

“My dear Manon, are you ill?”

She shook her head. “No. I am not ill.” She had determined that some time since. She was not ill. And despite her worst fears, she was not mad.

There was dried blood on the first two fingers of her right hand. It had not been there before she approached the bed of Eileen O’Connor, and she had tended no open wound while she waited for the girl to die. Except of course for the brief moment when she touched the holes in the girl’s palms.

She could see the dark red streaks clearly in the moonlight. Some extraordinary medical manifestation perhaps. A matter of science, as her husband or indeed his much younger and so clever cousin might have said.

Manon could not imagine discussing the phenomenon with Nicholas Turner. Superstitious Irish nonsense, he was bound to say. You have been in a hospital. You could have touched blood in any number of places. “I am tired, Cousin Nicholas. I was overcome as I was leaving and had to sit down.”

“Yes, well, I’m not surprised with all you do. Let me—”

He was opening his bag. Manon put out her clean hand to stop him. “I’m not ill, Nicholas. Truly. Only fatigued. You’re late back, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I had gone to the orphanage to see Sister Mary’s charges.” He could not tell her more. It would be a violation of his oath as well as his promise of confidence to Sam Devrey. But someone had told Devrey where to find him. “Did Cousin Samuel come here looking for me?”

She nodded. “I didn’t speak with him directly, but one of the porters had Cousin Samuel’s card and was making noises about something urgent. I told him to suggest St. Patrick’s Orphan Asylum. I hope that was not against your wishes.”

“Not at all. You did quite the right thing.” She would not ask more and he would not tell. “Come,” he said, “let’s see about getting you home.”

He insisted she must take a hansom, though they had to walk some way west to find one. Over her protests Nick slipped some coins into the cabby’s hand and started to tell him her destination, then realized he did not know. “Are you already moved from Wall Street, Cousin Manon?”

“I am, Cousin Nicholas. The wreckers have turned the old place to dust. I’m living in lodgings at number six Vandam Street with Miss Bellingham. You might remember meeting her at the reception for my Society for Aid to Poor Families.”

“How do you mean guilty?” Lilac was feeling quite lighthearted. Not only had Mr. Finney assured her she was now reborn in the spirit and her sins of no account since she had accepted Jesus, she was surrounded by brightness and gaiety. Beyond the large plateglass windows of the Crystal Pavilion at Niblo’s Pleasure Garden on Broadway there were red and green colored lanterns strung everywhere, and tonight a full harvest moon added to the gaiety of the scene. And since in the interest of frugality she and her new friend, Miss Addie Bellingham, had walked up the town from Mr. Finney’s church, she had been quite prepared to buy a ten-cent ticket of entrance for the Garden, as well as indulge in a two-penny glass of sweet and fizzy apple cider and not one but two four-penny slices of iced pound cake. Imagine Miss Bellingham looking so gloomy in the face of so many delights. “All our guilt is washed away in the spirit. That’s what Mr. Finney said.”

“Well, yes, but he said we had to change our ways. Now that we’ve been reborn.”

“Oh, we must, Miss Bellingham, we clearly must. But I’m sure Mr. Finney wasn’t advising anything too drastic. I mean, there’s the virtue of prudence, as they call it. Are you going to eat that cake?”

Miss Bellingham had ordered only a single slice of pound cake with pink ratafia icing, and it sat ignored on her plate. “No, I don’t think so. I’ll take it home for her, though. Eats like a bird.”

“Who does?” Lilac watched while her companion folded the untouched cake into a handkerchief and put it in her bag.

“Lady I live with.” Then with sudden ferocity, “I’m not a servant, mind. It’s nothing like that.”

“Don’t get so excited. I never thought you were a servant.” Miss Bellingham was a frump in dark and ill-becoming clothes. Serving girls made it their business to wear bright and gay clothes when not in uniform. “Is she a relative then?” The pastry had now disappeared into the tightly closed drawstring bag hanging from Adelaide Bellingham’s wrist.

“Not exactly. A friend. Least, I thought she was, but…”

“But what?” A good story might be every bit as satisfactory as a third piece of ratafia iced pound cake.

“But she’s the one who—” Miss Bellingham was suddenly choked with tears. She reached into her bag for a handkerchief, then remembered. “Oh dear, the cake.”

“Here, take this.” Lilac offered her own handkerchief. Nice and clean it was with a proper tatted edge. Many of the women who came to her Christopher Street rooms were of a better class, and Lilac had a good eye for how they did things. “Go on, take it. And stop crying. This lady can’t be much of a friend if she makes you weep like that.”

“Oh but she is. I mean she was. After my poor dear mother died. I had no one, you see. Then I fell and broke my leg and—” Addie broke off. She couldn’t tell about losing her job as a seamstress’s assistant and finishing up in the workhouse when she couldn’t pay her rent. It was too humiliating. “Mrs. Turner’s been a good friend to me ever since. Except—”

“Except what? Let’s have another sweet cider, shall we? My treat.” Lilac raised her hand and summoned one of the white-aproned waiters and gave him her order. Then, when he had left, “Now, dear Miss Bellingham, as you were saying…”

“I was having a difficult patch. You understand.”

“Yes, of course I do. Happens to all of us sometimes.”

“Then Mrs. Turner came along and was ever so helpful.”

The harpies in the workhouse had fair to killed her. Robbed her of what little she possessed and would probably have had the skin off her
bones in the bargain if Mrs. Turner hadn’t seen how it was and invited her into her home. Gave her sewing to do at first. Then made her secretary of her new society at a dollar a week plus room and board. Not so nice now that the big house on Wall Street had been sold and they were in lodgings, but still a good deal better than the Bellevue workhouse. Only how could she go on working for Mrs. Turner’s society, now that she had learned from Mr. Finney (this October Wednesday was the sixth of his revival meetings she had attended, though the first when she’d actually found the courage to sit on the Anxious Bench) that the poor were as they were because of their immoral carrying-on and lack of frugality? If they only declared Jesus Christ their personal savior and heeded the words of the Bible and began living moral lives, they would find the strength to better themselves.

It all seemed quite clear to her, but how could she explain it to Mrs. Langton, who had been on the Anxious Bench beside her, but was it seemed not in the least unsettled by the conversion they had both undergone.

“Black with sin I am,” Miss Bellingham said with another burst of tears. “My soul is black with sin.”

“T
HINK OF THE
patient,” Dr. Turner was always telling them. “Be aware of the science of your treatment but remember that the point of the whole enterprise is the person you are treating. And above all, do no harm.”

Benjamin Klein—a student at the brand-new medical school of the only slightly less new University of the City of New York and an assistant at, (
Hashem
permit he should survive in such a place), Bellevue Hospital—understood what Dr. Turner meant. Actions have consequences. Sometimes enormously far-reaching. For instance, here he was sitting on the narrow wooden bench of the Ashkenazic synagogue called B’nai Jeshurun, not in the town’s other synagogue, the Sephardic Shearith Israel.

Because, as Benjamin knew, most of the original Jewish population of New York were descended from Jews expelled from the sun-kissed lands of Spain and Portugal. They were known as Sephardim, while those from Germany, Galicia, and Poland were known as Ashkenazim. And over the centuries the two groups had developed a few differences in the manner of prayer and observance.

Then, around 1825, the Ashkenazim became the majority of the Jews of New York—never a large number according to Papa, who was a silversmith but studied such things. Some six hundred families out of nearly two hundred fifty thousand people in the city. The Ashkenazim wanted the synagogue rites to be those with which they were familiar, but the elders of Shearith Israel refused to change from the Sephardic prayer book. So the Ashkenazim left.

The breakaways banded together and bought what had been the First Colored Presbyterian Church, run by a free-born black man from Delaware named Samuel Cornish who had gotten himself into all sorts of trouble about abolition and such controversial ideas, so he sold his building to those he called with exaggerated politeness Hebrews as if calling them Jews might insult them.

It was a good building, brick, built to last. Even more important, it was on Elm Street, near where these days a lot of Jewish families like Benjamin’s own—not rich enough to live over on the west side of the town or poor enough,
Hashem
help them, to have to live on Centre Street or Pearl Street or White Street, where they were practically in the dreaded Five Points—could walk to services on the Sabbath, when riding was forbidden. Near enough so Papa could drag him here for this Thursday
shachris
, the daily morning service. Because, Papa said, Ben was required to complete a
minyan
, the quorum of ten Jewish men necessary for a prayer service. And that was a
mitzvah
, a commandment to righteousness, that even a not-so-observant Jew like Ben Klein could not ignore. Never mind that Dr. Turner expected him at Bellevue early this morning and had said they had something special to discuss.

Nothing to worry about, Papa insisted. Even though the Thursday
shachris
was one of the two long weekday services when in addition to the ordinary daily prayers a portion of the holy
Torah
was read, it would take only an hour or so. Dr. Turner, Papa said, was no doubt a very good man since Benjy thought so highly of him, but he was a
goy
. He did not have the same obligations.

The shachris was almost over. Rabbi Schiff had reached the point in the proceedings where he cradled the scroll in his arms, came down
from the
bimah
, the platform, and paraded around the room, so the men could all for a moment see up close the
Torah,
this most precious gift of
Hashem
. Ben and the others rose to their feet in respect, and as a sign of devotion when the sacred scroll passed, touched it with the fringe of their
talaysim
, their prayer shawls. All the while continuing to
daven
, chant their prayers while they rocked back and forth, as their ancestors had done since the days when the tribes of Israel first entered the land of milk and honey. At least that’s what the rabbis, the learned teachers, all said.

Fine. Everything was fine. The sun was just coming through the windows on the right side of the synagogue. This time of year, November, that meant not yet quarter past eight. If he got to the hospital by nine, he would still be on the early side. Dr. Turner would not feel that his student had ignored his request.

Rabbi Schiff finished his circuit, placed the sacred text on the lectern, and since there was no cantor to do it, chanted the name of the first man who was to come forward and read the holy words. “Benjamin
ben
Jacob
ben
Abraham.” Papa had to elbow Ben in the ribs before he realized the
aliyah
, the honor to be called, was his.

“It is called the stigmata,” Mother Louise said. “A replication of the wounds the crucifixion made in the hands and feet of our Blessed Lord.”

“Then you have heard of such a thing?” Manon found some solace in that.

“Oh yes. There are stories. It has been noted among the saints, the holy men and women who are meant to serve as examples to us. St. Francis, I believe, had the stigmata. It is said that St. Clare tended his wounds.”

“Her name was Eileen O’Connor. The others called her the little saint. They are not given to speaking kindly about each other, and no sooner was she dead than they were squabbling over who would have her bed. But in her last moments they told their beads aloud with what sounded like true devotion. Out of respect, I thought.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. Real goodness is compelling even to the least noble spirit.”

The calmness of Mother Louise, her placid acceptance of the extraordinary tale, gave Manon courage. “There’s something else. I hesitate to say, but…” She was twisting her handkerchief into knots, acting like a guilty schoolgirl. Ridiculous. Equally so that it had taken every bit of courage she could summon to come and tell this story. As if, once she told it, she would have passed to the other side of an enormous chasm, one she found utterly terrifying but felt compelled to cross nonetheless. “Moments later, when I looked again at her hands and her feet…”

“Yes, my dear Mrs. Turner. Do go on.”

“The wounds were gone.”

“I see. And that disturbed you most of all, did it?”

“Yes. It made it seem as if I had imagined the entire incident. But I don’t believe I did. At least at the time I did not think so. Because I had bloodstains on these two fingers.” She held out the index and middle finger of her right hand. “They’re gone now, of course.”

“Of course. But you saw them. And knew that you had not imagined the stigmata.”

“I did then. Now sometimes I think…I suspect, Mother Louise, that…” She could not speak the words in her normal tone. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I suspect I am losing my mind.”

“What nonsense!” It was the first time the nun seemed agitated. “If you cannot believe the evidence of your own eyes, Mrs. Turner, what are you to believe?”

“I don’t know. And if I did see these…stigmata, what does it mean? Who was Eileen O’Connor that such a thing should happen to her?”

“Ah yes, an interesting speculation. A poor Irish girl, utterly ignorant in all probability, dies of consumption and is buried in a pauper’s grave, and the world goes on exactly as if she had never lived. Except that some of the women in the Almshouse Hospital, and you, my dear Mrs. Turner, are privileged to see that she was somehow very close to God and marked by Him with special favor. The question is not who was Eileen O’Connor, who I suspect needs nothing from us, not even our poor prayers, to have entered into glory. Why, we must ask, was her secret revealed to you? It is a special responsibility, is it not?”

“Oh no! Don’t say that, Mother Louise. You must not.” Another burden when she was already so unsure what to do about the one she had carried alone since Joyful’s death. “I’m only one person, a woman, I cannot be expected to decide about every—About such things.”

The nun smiled. “I’m not sure I know exactly what you mean, but you need not carry any burden alone. None of us need do so. Apparently you have been made privy to a great, and if I may say, a highly personal and private, mystery. Your duty now is simply to pray about it and hold yourself open to hear the voice of the Spirit when it speaks. I shall pray with you, dear Mrs. Turner. We shall storm heaven together.”

“Dr. Klein, a word if I may.”

Ben was just hurrying down the steps of the synagogue, about to wave goodbye to his father and head over towards Broadway, where he could get an omnibus that would take him up the town to Twenty-second Street. He’d have to walk—even run—the rest of the way, but he was sure he could get to the hospital by quarter past nine. Except that a well-dressed gentleman of some considerable years was blocking his way forward. “I can’t stop now. I’m sorry, sir. I’m already late and—”

“This is Mr. Samson Simson, Benjy. He is an important man.” Papa’s voice came from just behind Ben’s left shoulder, speaking right into his ear, as if he didn’t wish to be overheard by the other men leaving the service. “Mr. Simson wants to talk to you for a moment.”

Ben knew exactly who Samson Simson was. Every Jew in New York knew who he was. The Simson family had been here since the city was New Amsterdam, and Samson Simson was New York’s first Jewish attorney. As a young man Samson Simson had been admitted to study law at Columbia under no less a personage than Aaron Burr, who—however far he’d fallen since that dreadful duel and however quietly he lived now with, it was said, a wife who was a former prostitute—had been the third vice president of the United States. Without that first step taken by Mr. Samson Simson, would he, Benjamin Klein, have been
allowed to study medicine at the University of the City of New York? Probably not.

Both his father and Mr. Simson wore grave expressions and both were watching him intently. It was apparent that Papa knew Mr. Simson would be here. That’s why he’d insisted that Ben attend this particular
shachris,
and probably why he was given the honor of the first
aliyah.
Papa wanted to soften him up. Though he had no idea why or for what.

“Mr. Simson has been waiting for some time, Benjy. He wants to talk to you.”

Samson Simson was an elder of Shearith Israel, one of those wealthy Jews who had been here so much longer than the Kleins and their mostly German neighbors. Mr. Simson had not come to B’nai Jeshurun to pray. He had not attended the morning service at the synagogue of the Ashkenazim. He had waited out here in the cold to see Benjamin Klein. But why? If Samson Simson wanted medical advice, it wouldn’t be from him.

Jacob Klein’s small smithy and fine goods shop was also on Elm Street, three doors down from B’nai Jeshurun. He had been gently propelling his son and Mr. Simson in that direction since they began speaking. It did not surprise Ben to see his father produce the key to the shop door, open it wide, and step aside for Mr. Simson to precede him. “After you, sir. Come, Benjy.”

“Papa, Dr. Turner is waiting—”

The bell on the door jangled as Papa closed it behind them. “It is November, Benjy. Sensible people do not stand in the street and talk in the cold.”

“But I can’t stay and talk. I told Dr. Turner I—”

“I promise I will not keep you long, young Dr. Klein,” Mr. Simson said. “And this concerns Dr. Turner as well. In a manner of speaking.”

“It does?” Ben didn’t bother saying that he was not yet entitled to be called “doctor.” A small moral lapse only. “My Dr. Turner at Bellevue?”

“Indirectly, yes. Because he is, I believe, a cousin by marriage to the widow of Dr. Joyful Turner.”

“I don’t—Ah, yes. Mrs. Manon Turner. I’ve heard her and Dr. Turner address each other as cousin.”

“Exactly. I knew Mrs. Turner’s husband for a time. We had business together a few years before he died in the yellowing fever epidemic of 1816. Their two children died at the same time. A tragedy.”

“Terrible. But Dr. Nicholas Turner says that if we pay enough attention to science we can someday find out the cause of the worst diseases that plague us and learn to cure them. Yellowing fever, cholera, even the deadly croup. The other day he showed us—” Ben broke off. He had been about to describe the diseased bronchial tubes and trachea of a little girl who died of the croup. All the students knew they were not supposed to discuss the anatomies. “Dr. Turner is a wonderful man of science,” Ben finished, not quite looking Mr. Simson in the eye. “Wonderful. A man worthy of great respect.”

“I’m sure, Dr.—May I call you Ben?”

“Yes, please, sir. Of course. But I really have to go. I promised Dr. Turner.”

In the corner of the shop, where it could be seen by anyone who came through the door, was a tall clock, the workings of which had come from Switzerland, while the face and case were trimmed with intricate and very beautiful silver fretwork done by Jacob Klein. Papa’s clock kept excellent time, and now the silver hands pointed to twenty minutes before nine. If he left this very minute he couldn’t possibly be at the hospital before nine thirty. Dr. Turner would choose one of the other assistants to talk to about whatever it was he had wanted to discuss with Ben. “Papa, I—”

“I apologize for making you late, young man,” Simson said before Ben’s father could speak. “And I appreciate your concern about punctuality. It is an admirable trait. My carriage is waiting just around the corner, and my driver will take you directly to Bellevue as soon as we are done here. Will that make it easier?”