The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel Read Free Page A

to fix, something to trade. Unlike most of the men from Vishnev, he wore his beard clipped close to his face, his hat pushed back rakishly.
    Now, stretching, he surveyed the chaos of the detention center—with its crying babies and scolding women—and let out a long, low whistle.
    “ Kindeleh ,” he said, not to me but to the air above my head, “what do you say you and I, we take a walk?”
    He held out his hand. Its calluses were smooth, like peeled almonds. “Let’s go explore, yes?” To my great delight, he winked.
    We set out together, my father and I: he in his black coat and the dark saucer of his hat, I tiny beside him, a small child dressed the way all children dressed in those days—like miniature adults—in a long frayed skirt, a little hand-crocheted shawl, my horrid gray coat.
    Together we stepped into the leafy streets of what was then a jewel of the German Empire, the third-largest port in the world.
    Hamburg was laced with canals and ornate lakeside cafés. Its delicate spires pierced the sky like hatpins. Half-timbered houses stood four stories high, crimson geraniums cascading from their rippled windows. Oh, what a beautiful waste!
    We happened upon a square, a garden fenced with wrought-iron lace, a fountain bedecked with angels, arcaded buildings. Of course I had never, ever seen anything remotely like this before. For all his travels, neither had Papa. Until we arrived in Hamburg, no one in our family had so much as seen an indoor toilet, a streetcar, an electric light. Even the synagogue back in our shtetl had been lit only with candles and lanterns.
    Papa and I stood in the middle of Hamburg’s Neustadt quarter. “That’s something, eh?” he said, staring up at the tower of the Rathaus.
    Using the tower as a sort of compass needle, he led us from Strasse to Strasse . “Papa, look.” We marveled before the windows of the Konditorei and Bäckerei ; at shops selling fabrics, soaps, ointments; at shelves of porcelain dishes filled with peppermints and glazed fruits. My world, suddenly, had gone to color. On a wide boulevard stood a magnificent entranceway. Bright pictures hung on either side. Papa stopped and pushed his hat back on his head.
    “Who builds a thing like this?” he wondered. Of course, we could not understand the signs or the language above the marquee. But Papa and I, we grasped their enticement, the visual invitation, the temptation they presented. It was late in the afternoon. A windowed booth stood stationed beneath the marquee, yet it was unmanned. Beside it, a door was propped open with a bit of brick. “Can I?” I whispered.
    Guiding me by the shoulders, Papa pushed me inside.
    We found ourselves in a grand red velvet foyer. From behind a tall curtain came music. There was an implicit hush. I took a tentative step through the slice of velvet. We were at the back of a hall as dark as a tunnel, filled with lazy white curlicues of smoke. On the wall opposite, two people were dancing in jiggly, lint-flecked black and white; they were alive but not alive—the culmination of a long, bright beam of dust. I was just old enough to know that what I was seeing was a picture but not a picture. It was wholly animated with light and velocity. I squeezed Papa’s hand. A vast new world within a world flickered before us. I stood in astonishment as two strangers in the most dazzling, unusual clothes waltzed through drawing rooms full of armchairs with antimacassars, curvaceous electric lamps, a voluptuous grand piano. A sylphlike lady with dark lips and a glittering gown swooned on a couch. Instantly, I wanted to be her.
    A strange, heavy palm landed on my shoulder just then, and a man began whispering to Papa in a hiss of anger. Whatever he was saying needed no translation. “Pfft!” My father laughed dismissively. But he grabbed my hand and pulled me quickly back out onto the street. “Dirty scheygitz ,” he swore, tossing the end of his cigarette into the gutter. Until that