When the Angels Left the Old Country: Chapters 17–30

It was not, however, a natural talent at this, being accustomed to working small miracles without any thought, and the only name with which it was able to perform any act of creation was its own name, Uriel; using this, if it concentrated very hard, it could create a little spark in the palm of its hand, or warm up a cup of tea, or cause a golden glow to emanate from the posts of its bunk bed, which allowed it to read its human books in the gloom.

The last thing anyone wanted was to be turned back at Ellis Island for any of the diseases which the gatekeepers of America classified as “loathsome.”

The angel was very concerned that if it let Little Ash out of its sight again for even a moment, its name of Uriel Federman or his of Asher Klein would be called, and it would miss them in the cacophony of different languages that echoed off the high, vaulted ceiling of the hall.

This pamphlet purported to contain every detail she, as a young girl more or less on her own, would need to know in order to make it through customs and into America.

They had, in fact, been in closer physical proximity, for more of the time, than they used to be in their shtetl, when not so engrossed in their studies and arguments that they stayed in the shul for days on end.

It occurred to him belatedly that perhaps he had talked too much, and robbed the angel of its chance to prove it was a capable person, worthy of entering the great nation of the United States—not some sort of degenerate riffraff, as the newspapers back home had told him Americans considered many of the Eastern-European Jewish sort to be.

He took some money from his secret pocket, and a needle, and pinned the money to the inside of the angel’s vest, so that it shouldn’t be stopped again by any immigration officials without being able to at least show them it was not destitute.

But he had also told his sons that long ago demons grew their power by devouring angels, before God gave the covenant to humans, and angels and demons had to agree to curb their tempers with a covenant of their own.

“Which dangers are we speaking of?” said Rose.
“There are unscrupulous folks who look out for girls like you,” said the official.

The official gave her what she judged to be a rather condescending smile. “New York is very big, Miss Cohen.”

She was not sure on what pretext Little Ash had been stopped.

“I don’t know what happened to you,” said the demon, sullenly. “As for me, I’ve got the affect of a criminal.”

He’d read, with difficulty, what had been scribbled on his papers, and it said that his criminal affect and evidently poor physical development rendered him liable to become a public charge—his demon’s skill with languages stretched far enough to interpret this as a lot of words to say he was trouble.

The name was in Hebrew letters, with the added vowels of Yiddish, declaring it SHULMAN’S BOOKS, and in the window additional letters declared Shulman a purveyor of the finest Jewish things.

In America there was a job which would pay for Motl to leave the Pale and not be conscripted, and there was also Essie, whose sparkling eyes sometimes danced in Rose’s head unbidden.

As an angel, it told itself that its purpose now must be correction, the redressing of balance in the world, the repair of broken vessels.

It wasn’t used to knowing more than one language; it could hear that it spoke with an accent inflected by its familiarity with the Holy Tongue, but it was not sure how Little Ash managed the twisting of the mouth that made him speak like a native in whatever language he pleased.

Rest assured that the temple gives all it can to philanthropic causes in the Lower East Side, and Europe, and Palestine. I can give you a bit of money, if you like, to help your cousin along.

If our American Jewish community were to drown in poverty imported from abroad, who then would be a beacon of hope for the diaspora?

When it kissed the mezuzah, it sensed that this was a comforting place, overall, but had seen its fair share of strife also.

As it stepped over the threshold, a woman in a nurse’s apron stuck her head out from the room on the right and said, “May I help you? No unaccompanied young men upstairs, please.”

Little Ash had not intended for his plan to include Rose, but when he tried to slip unobtrusively out of the waiting room, she followed him.

At once he was met with a clamor of enthusiasm. All of the ghosts, not only the murdered ones, were excited to be spoken to, to be acknowledged.

He felt an unfamiliar, oppressive feeling weighing him down as he looked at the handful of ghosts who were left.

It bent down to help him to his feet with its hands under his arms, but the movement jostled his still-broken ribs, and he shoved it away with an inarticulate howl of pain.

Rose showed him the letters from Bluma and the Council of Jewish Women, and he read them over very slowly, looking from the letters to Rose’s own papers and back, checking each line against the others as if to root out any deception or inconsistency.

Her father couldn’t afford to go to Warsaw to find out what happened to her, so we went. And we found out that she was in America, but her letters back were being stopped, and someone called Fishl was extorting money from her.

Bluma had been in America for two years, during which time Rose had gone from a gangly fourteen-year-old to indeed a more settled image of herself, and besides, she was wearing the new dress she’d made on the ship, with Little Ash’s tweaks to the tailoring, which made her look particularly sophisticated.

Uriel, for its part, would very much have liked to answer all of Little Ash’s questions, and also to ask him what foolishness possessed him to go after the doctor by himself, but they were constrained by the rules of hospitality to enjoy their Shabbes dinner in the home of the Shulmans, so all it did was squeeze his hand before Malke’s husband came in and they had to go around introducing themselves again.

Their speculation was interrupted, at that moment, by Rose, who had not attended morning services but had decided to find her friends at Cafe Krakow once services were over.

She was determined that they should not leave her out of whatever plan they had to rescue the mysterious Essie, girl accountant, with the freckles that, from looking at the photograph again the night before, Rose had confirmed were very fetching.

It soon transpired that none of them had asked Essie many questions, or indeed given much thought to her at all since they’d seen her last, which could have been two weeks ago or could have been a month ago.

It was a gaudy, gilt-fronted building like a theater, with the sounds of cheerful talk and fiddle music spilling into the street.

“My father’s heart would tremble! Oh, how I wish Dinah could be here,” she added wistfully, speaking more to herself than her friends.

He’d forget the scrape of the Ellis Island doctor’s scrutiny on the surface of his soul.

Little Ash, if he had bothered to remember the palace of his father Ashmedai, might have recognized that this place was not really so gilded and decorated as that, but he was never one to judge a place for cheapness and gaudiness when he could see that it was full of people chasing, without restraint, after things that gave them pleasure.

The other man in the room was crawling with sins of violence, such that to a demon’s eyes his real face was almost obscured.

“Boaz owes someone money,” he explained under his breath as they followed their quarries north.

Mr. Boaz opened the front door to a spill of warm lamplight, and he seemed to argue for a minute with the man who’d come with him from the dance hall, pointing him away from the house. The surly man then went around the side, as if to use a servants’ entrance.

In a show of goodwill and charity toward the downtrodden Lower East Side greenhorns, Mr. Boaz was inviting a handful of immigrant girls to attend the event, girls to be selected by a representative from an uptown ladies’ charity who would visit the Council House on Tuesday morning to assess the suitability of any young ladies who showed up.