The Inquisitor's Apprentice

“IWW Headquarters is at number eighteen Hester Street. Your new apprentice can show you the way.”

CHAPTER EIGHT. Industrial Witches of the World Unite!

THE TRIP TO Hester Street took a year off Sacha’s life.

First, Lily had to ask him what Morgaunt had meant with his last wisecrack. And Sacha had to say he had no idea. And then there was a traffic jam. And then, as if things weren’t already bad enough, Wolf decided that what with all the traffic they might as well walk the last few blocks.

It was one of those golden fall afternoons when all of New York pours onto the sidewalks — and every out- of-work Yiddish actor and revolutionary on the Lower East Side was basking in the sun at the Cafe Metropole’s outdoor tables.

Sacha skulked past, doing his best to hide in Wolf’s long, skinny shadow. Even so, he could hear Uncle Mordechai waxing eloquent about the vital distinction between Hamiltonian Wicco-Federalism and Jeffersonian Popular Wiccanism. He shrank into his coat collar and prayed that his uncle was having too much fun planning the revolution to notice that his favorite nephew was aiding and abetting Big Magic right under his nose.

Wolf took forever to get there — mainly because he didn’t seem to be able to pass any beggar by without stopping to talk while he fished around in his pockets for coins to give him. But finally they made it down Hester Street and into Sacha’s building without anyone recognizing him.

Their tenement was a good one — anyway, a lot better than some of the places Sacha could remember living in. The Kesslers had a third-floor front apartment, with two windows opening onto Hester Street and a fire escape big enough to sleep the whole family on stifling summer nights. But seeing the building now, with Wolf and Lily beside him, Sacha realized it was desperately shabby. Maybe even worse than shabby.

For the first time in his life, he was glad there were no lights in the stairwell. It was so dark that his own mother could have tripped over him without recognizing him. As long as he kept his mouth shut and the neighbors kept their doors closed, he was safe. All he needed now was for his luck to hold until they made it past the third floor.

Meanwhile, Lily was peering around the windowless entryway. “Does anyone see a light switch?”

“I … uh … don’t think there are any—”

“Nonsense!” Lily interrupted. “I know for a fact that Commissioner Roosevelt passed a law requiring landlords to install lights at least two years ago!”

“Well, bully for him!” Sacha muttered.

“You needn’t laugh,” Lily huffed. “Some of us actually care about poor people!”

By the time they made it to the top floor, Wolf had knocked over two ash bins and narrowly missed stepping in a full chamber pot, while Lily had “rescued” a “lost” baby she found playing on the stairs and returned it to its parents — only to be told to mind her own business in language not suitable for a young lady’s ears. Finally, they gathered at the top of the stairs. Someone had propped open the door to the roof, so there was a dingy trickle of daylight. While Wolf took off his glasses and wiped his face on his sleeve, Sacha glanced at Lily to see how she was taking her first encounter with the tenements.

There was a large, sooty smear down the front of her white dress, and she was still catching her breath. But she seemed pretty calm, he thought.

Until she opened her mouth.

“How can people live like this?” she gasped. “They’re no better than animals! And those poor children! It’s enough to make you think the missionaries are right and they’d be better off in an orphanage!”

Sacha bit his tongue and turned away, thankful that the corridor was too dim for her to see the angry flush spreading across his face. “Let’s get this over with and get out of here,” he said. “Where are the stupid Wobblies anyway?”

“If you can’t figure that out,” Wolf drawled, “you might want to consider another line of work.”

And indeed, there was a huge banner strung over the last door on the left. The banner had been designed to be carried down the broad avenues of New York by a phalanx of demonstrating workers, not hung in a hallway barely wide enough for two people to squeeze past each other sideways. Bold purple letters marched across its face, spelling out one of Uncle Mordechai’s favorite rallying cries:

WITCHES OF THE

WORLD UNITE!

YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE

BUT YOUR CHAINS!

On the bright side, Sacha told himself as he trailed down the hallway after Wolf and Lily, things couldn’t possibly get any more ridiculous than this.

But of course things can always get more ridiculous — and usually do.

The boy who answered Wolf’s knock had carrot-colored hair that corkscrewed from his head like rusty springs popping out of a broken mattress. His bony wrists stuck out of his sleeves halfway up to the elbow, and his neck was so skinny that his tie looked like a hangman’s noose.

But worst of all was the expression on his face. It was eager, sweet, pathetically earnest. You knew as soon as you laid eyes on him that he was the kind of fellow who could be counted on to finish last every time, like the nice guy he was. Basically, he was the walking definition of a shlimazel. Or a shnook or a shmendrick or … well … there were a thousand pitying words in Yiddish to describe this kind of boy. And Sacha’s family could happily have spent a thousand years arguing over which word fit him best. But one thing they all would have agreed on the moment they laid eyes on him: this was one nice Jewish boy who should never, ever, ever be allowed out in public when there were goyim around.

“Greetings, comrades!” the young man cried before any of them had a chance to speak. “Long live the Revolution!”

“Umm … yes,” Wolf said. “Who’s in charge here?”

“I am.” He reached out to shake Wolf’s hand, and his coat sleeve rode up so far that Sacha could have sworn he saw an elbow. “Moishe Schlosky at your service!”

Sacha squinted at Moishe, trying to remember if he’d seen him before. Could this be the skinny redhead his father had been teasing Bekah about? But no, that was impossible. the very idea of plump, pretty, vivacious Bekah with this fellow was ridiculous. There were thousands of skinny redheads on the Lower East Side, and if Bekah was seeing one of them, it definitely wasn’t this one!

“Aren’t you a little … er … young?” Wolf asked.

“What’s young? I’ve been a presser at Pentacle since I was eleven. and most of the seamstresses are younger than me.” Moishe assumed a heroic stance — or, rather, a stance that would have been heroic if anyone else had assumed it. “The youth is our future!”

“Do you mind if we come in? This might take a while.”

“Say,” Moishe exclaimed as Sacha followed Wolf into the apartment, “aren’t you Bekah’s little bro—”

“No!”

“But—”

“I live uptown! Never been here in my life! You must be thinking of someone else!”

“Wha—?” Moishe said, his face frozen into a comical look of surprise. “Oh! right! Definitely!”

Moishe was a pathetically bad liar. Not that that was a surprise, Sacha thought sourly. He hoped the Pentacle workers weren’t depending on Moishe’s bargaining skills to end the strike. With that kind of talent on their side, they’d end up paying Morgaunt to let them go back to work.

Luckily, Wolf and Lily were too busy staring at the chaos inside the tenement to notice Moishe’s bad acting.

It was a regular Babel. people — girls, mostly — were running around yammering at each other in Yiddish