The Museum of Extraordinary Things(25)

He crawled out of bed, pulled on his trousers, then took the stairs two at a time. As he opened the door there was a moment when he thought his father was before him. If this was a dream in which Joseph Cohen had come to bring him home, Eddie might have agreed. On this night, he might have given up his new life in exchange for erasing the vision of the bodies of the young girls at the morgue. But it was another man at the door. The visitor was Orthodox and wore a black coat and hat. His stooped posture made Eddie yearn for his father, for this stranger was clearly a tailor who had hunched over a sewing machine for many years.

“If you’re here to lease a carriage, I’m not your man,” Eddie remarked groggily. “There’s no one here till six.”

“I don’t want a carriage,” the caller said. “I’m looking for my daughter.”

The hour was so early that the horses were still asleep on their feet, their breath turning to clouds in the chilly predawn air.

“I can’t help you with that.” The only women Eddie knew were ones from the taverns, and he never brought them home. “You’ll have to leave.”

The older man squinted, his expression grave. Beneath his glasses he had pale rheumy eyes, hazed over with cataracts. “You’re the photographer?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re who I want to see.”

When the visitor started upstairs without an invitation, Eddie had little choice but to follow at his heels, doing his best to persuade his unwanted guest a mistake had been made. “I don’t have any women here. But look if you want. See for yourself. Then you can go.”

The visitor plainly intended to do so. He entered the loft and peered through the chaos. Eddie had been working nonstop, and the pitted wooden table was littered with prints, including the shining image of the trout. It had turned out better than he had expected. Enough to give him a glimmer of hope that he might one day be good enough to call himself a student of Moses Levy.

The visitor bumped into the bucket where the fish swam in a forlorn circle. “You sell fish?”

At this point all Eddie knew was that he kept the fish because he was alive and had as much right to a life as any other creature. He shrugged and felt a fool. “He’s a guest.”

“He’s a guest, but you didn’t want to let me inside?”

“Because you’re at the wrong address. Listen, there’s no one here you’d know or want.” It then struck Eddie that his caller might have another photographer in mind. “If you’re a friend of Moses Levy, you’re too late. He died five years ago.”

The visitor removed his wire-rimmed glasses and cleaned the lenses with a pocket handkerchief. “I’m a friend of your father’s. He sent me. That’s how I came to have your address.”

Eddie took a step back, confused. “That’s impossible. My father doesn’t know where I live.”

“He gave me your address. Therefore he knows something.” The visitor spied the photographs of the dead girls tacked to the wall. “Yes. I’m in the right place. You were there.” The older man crossed the room, his steps echoing on the wide-planked wooden floor. He wore heavy shoes, one heel built up with wooden filler to even out his gait, for his legs were mismatched in length. “You’re going to find my daughter.”

Eddie’s visitor was Samuel Weiss, a tailor and the father of two daughters, Ella and Hannah, both employed by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Ella was safely at home, but Hannah could not be found. Weiss had been to St. Vincent’s Hospital, established by the Sisters of Charity in 1849, then he’d gone on to Bellevue, and finally to the morgue on the pier. His beautiful daughter with the white-blond hair had not been among the wounded or the dead. No one in the neighborhood had seen her since Saturday, not even her closest friends. Now Weiss searched the images on Eddie’s wall, but again, Hannah could not be found. When he had gone through every photograph, he sat in a wooden chair, overwhelmed, his face streaming with tears, his eyes rimmed red. The light filtering through the skylight was a pale, creamy yellow. Between Weiss’s sobs Eddie could hear the horses in the stable below, restless in their stalls now that morning had risen, waiting for the liveryman and their breakfast of oats.

“Hannah worked on the ninth floor. Do you know what that means? No survivors. Or so they say. How do you believe a pack of liars? I for one don’t trust anything we’re told.”

“Mr. Weiss, I’m sorry. I truly am. There were no survivors.”

“I don’t need you to be sorry! Help me! That’s what I need. Your father said you could find her.”

His father, whom he had not seen or spoken to in twelve years, almost as much time as they had lived together, who knew nothing about what his son was capable of. Eddie often wondered if they would recognize each other if they passed on the street, or if they had become such strangers to one another they would merely keep on walking, having no idea that they shared the same flesh and blood, that they had once slept together under the same black overcoat in the forest, in shock and mourning.

“How is it possible that there’s no sign of her?” Weiss went on. “How many girls have hair so pale it’s the color of snow? How many come home every night right on time and are never late?” His voice was raspy. He had been searching through the debris on Greene Street and had breathed in cinders. “They found not a scrap of clothing, not her purse, not a bit of jewelry, nothing. She wore a gold locket that belonged to her mother. I gave it to her on her last birthday. She wept with tears of gratitude and swore she would never take it off. Gold does not burn, I know that much. It melts, but it doesn’t disappear. None of her friends saw her that morning. What do you think of that? I questioned everyone who survived, even her best friend, Rose, who’s still in St. Vincent’s Hospital, with both of her legs burned.” He glared at Eddie. “Don’t tell me nothing remains of a human being.”