bits of straw. A low hatch in the wall of that stronghold led to a maze of sleeping machinery, a roller-coaster configuration of belts, sprockets, motors, and gears.
“That’s your chain hoist there above the water-cooled condensing unit,” I indicated somewhat pedagogically, “and your galvanized steel stacking bin with the pallet lift.…” I don’t know what had come over me that I suddenly felt compelled to introduce my companions to the apparatus of my father’s design. I had little interest in the machines myself, nor could I have explained their operation in any coherent fashion, but I was seized by an impulse to pay some last-ditch homage to Shmerl Karp’s ingenuity. The Worm interrupted me to complain about the onset of frostbite, while Pretty asserted through chattering teeth that it was time we warmed the place up a bit. Assured that nobody else was abroad, we cut short our tour of the premises and returned to the broad aisle we’d set out from.
Then I wondered what we were waiting for, until Morris spoke up: “You give the signal,” adding with caustic emphasis, “Boss.” I guessed that Naftali had charged them to see to it I took the initiative. So I nodded, that was all, just a slight tilt of the chin, which was sufficient to prompt my accomplices to light the rag wicks and lob their incendiary bombs. One struck a rafter nearly at the height of the cockloft, the other a six-inch locker door, both exploding with a muffled sound like the flap of a tablecloth being spread, and instantly blossomed into flame. The original bursts spawned others until a hanging garden of fire grew along either side of the arcade, its petals waving like serrated hankies. Flames climbed the walls as the garden ran riot, taking over every available surface of that tinderbox structure. Then it was my turn and, borrowing a match from Pinsky, I struck it on my heel and dropped it into the spilled turpentine. We watched the flame travel as if along a serpent’s spine, the snake undulating as it stretched to the opposite end of the building, where it disappeared around a corner and, having made its loop of the warehouse interior, returned to swallow its tail at our feet.
We beat it out the front doors and across the trolley tracks, ducking into the alley beside the Metzker landsmanschaft on the other side of Canal. We were headed back to the sanctuary of Simmie Tischler’s gin mill on Grand Street, where we would report the success of our mission and drink a health among fellow conspirators with Naf’s watery brew. But after the first block or so I slackened my pace before coming to an eventual halt. Turning around to see what had happened to me, Pretty and Morris also drew up short, Morris inquiring, “What’s your problem?” Unable to answer, I rested my hands on my knees as if trying to catch my breath. What I couldn’t tell them was that a memory, lost until now in unreality, had chosen this moment to reassert itself. During my time at Karp’s I had studiously avoided the compartment toward the rear of the plant that Papa liked to call the Castle’s Keep, having no desire to revisit what I regarded as a bad dream. Now I decided that, even if the thing did exist, my father was still out to lunch and the Castle better off going up in flames—which you could already see billowing above the rooftops from where we stood.
“I must’ve dropped my pocketwatch back at the icehouse,” I lied, slap-frisking myself as I spoke.
Pretty Pinsky squinted at me with a searching malevolence, while Morris shrugged and began tugging his crony forward by the lapel. “See you ‘round campus,” he called over his shoulder without a tinge of conviction, as if they’d anticipated my defection all along.
By the time I arrived back at Canal Street the icehouse was a furnace, flames groping through the open doors and curling from under the eaves, a pall of smoke and grease having overspread the vacant street. Soon the neighborhood would wake up, choking; alarms would sound, crowds gather, sirens lacerate the air. But, for now, the place seemed almost quiescent, as if a burning building on an arc-lit ghetto street were a natural feature of the early-morning cityscape. Even from the opposite sidewalk I could feel my cheeks flush from the blaze. Then what I was contemplating made me question if I was nuts, if in