Melting the Snow on Hester Street. Daisy Waugh

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      14

      Last night, as she had been making her way home from the Greene Street picket line, Eleana had been approached – ambushed, rather – by Mr Blumenkranz, one of the supervisors at Triangle and someone who, when she wasn’t striking, she was forced to deal with on a daily basis. He was a small man, no taller than Eleana, in his late forties, with an unhappy wife at home. Mr Blumenkranz was standing in wait for her, hiding behind a stationary coal cart, because he sensed, quite rightly, that if Eleana had seen him she would have quickly turned and walked the other way. He fell into step as she bustled by, causing her to jump, and offering her no choice but to acknowledge his presence. She glanced about her, unhappy that anyone should spot her fraternizing with the management, and tried to walk on by. But he was quite determined.

      ‘Eleana!’ he said, panting slightly to keep pace, struggling for a foothold on the ice.

      ‘Good evening Mr Blumenkranz,’ she replied, cool but polite, not glancing at him, walking faster. Since when, she wondered, had he thought to call her Eleana?

      He rarely bothered to learn the machinists’ names – not first names or second names. Most came and went so fast, why would he bother? But there was generally one girl who caught his eye, whose name he always remembered. Eleana was the one. Everybody noticed it. All the girls. And Matz, too. Mr Blumenkranz’s crushes were a long-running joke at Triangle. Sometimes the girl he fixated upon simply left. Couldn’t cope with it. Sometimes, when they wouldn’t submit to his advances, he fired them. Sometimes they accepted his little gifts, his offers of money and stayed for a little while. Until they were fired. Sometimes, rumours circulated about a girl getting herself in trouble. One way or another, nothing good ever seemed to come of his crushes. To their recipients, it was generally deemed, they were less of a blessing than a curse.

      But Eleana was clever, in her quiet way. And somehow she had survived Blumenkranz’s cloying attention for longer than the rest, while still keeping him at bay. Her pleasant refusal to engage with him, her ability to slip so innocuously through his fingers, only left him panting for more. Mr Blumenkranz had taken to standing behind her as she bent over her sewing machine, which whirred from the same motor under the same floorboards and at the same speed as the machine beside her, and the machine beside that, and all two hundred machines on the factory’s eighth floor …

      ‘Ah, Miss Beekman!’ he would sigh, above all the racket of the whirring. ‘A born machinist, if ever there was one!’ As if that were any kind of compliment. And he would turn to the rest of the row, heads bowed, necks and backs twisted over their work: ‘If only all you girls could work as efficiently as the lovely Miss Beekman!’

      She corrected him once. ‘It’s Mrs Beekman, Mr Blumenkranz.’ Though, strictly speaking, it wasn’t. She was still Miss Kappelman. She and Matz weren’t yet married. It was something Eleana’s mother protested about from time to time. But somehow they had never quite got around to it. There was always something else more urgent to be done, some other more essential way to spend the time and money.

      Mr Blumenkranz knew perfectly well she lived with Matz Beekman the cutter – Union sympathist and nothing but trouble, as far as Blumenkranz was concerned. If he could have his way the man would be fired. But a good cutter was hard to find. And everyone knew, Matz was the best they had. So Blumenkranz ignored Eleana’s comment. He laid a plump, yearning hand on her thin shoulder. ‘Continue your work like this, Miss Beekman,’ he said to her, ‘and before long we shall make you head of the line!’

      Head of the line. Meant an extra $1 a week.

      ‘Head of the line, Miss Beekman! I don’t need to remind you – it’s another dollar a week!’

      She let his hand rest on her shoulder – glanced across at Matz briefly, at the far end of the same floor, where the cutters stood. But Matz was oblivious – busy with his knife, slashing away, muttering Marxist revolution into the ear of the cutter beside him. She let Blumenkranz’s finger touch the skin at the top of her neck. Felt nothing – not a shiver of revulsion, because after all, the moment would pass.

      When he finally wandered away, Dora, working beside Eleana, glowered at her closest friend.

      ‘Dershtikt zolstu vern!’ she said furiously. ‘You’re such a fool.’

      ‘You think so?’ Eleana giggled. ‘Why’s that? The stupid man is driving me crazy!’

      ‘“Miss” Beekman. “Mrs” Beekman. Who the hell cares? Not you! That’s for sure. Or you might have done something about it.’

      ‘Oh!’ Eleana tutted mildly. ‘For sure I care.’

      ‘Blumenkranz adores you, Miss Eleana Kappelman. You’re his One and Only.’

      ‘Nonsense! Shh!’

      Dora chortled. ‘For sure – you’re his Chosen One, Ellie! The Only Girl for Him.’

      ‘Shut up, Dora!’

      ‘He loves you better than his own life!’

      ‘You’ll have us both fired!’

      ‘Carry on treating him as you do, Eleana, and pretty soon you shall be out of a job. That’s for certain.’

      Eleana tipped her head to imply disagreement, but said nothing.

      ‘You want another a dollar a week? Or don’t you?’ her friend burst out impatiently.

      ‘Of course I want an extra dollar a week.’

      ‘Because if you don’t want it, “Mrs” Beekman, I surely do! Mr Blumenkranz can call me anything he likes! I’ll take an extra dollar for it, gladly.’

      ‘I’m sure you would, my friend,’ Eleana smiled.

      ‘You think I’m a kurve? Very well. Perhaps it’s so. I am a survivor. That’s what I am.’

      ‘And СКАЧАТЬ