A House of Tailors Read Online Free Page A

dinner in the Fifth Avenue Hotel like in the picture over our bed.”
    I could see her in a hat with ribbons blowing in the breeze. “I will go to America, too,” I had said.
    Oh, Katharina.
    Leaning against the railing now, I saw buildings on each side of the water. They weren’t nearly as grand as the ones that lined the river at home, I thought uneasily. There were no castles, no great bridges.
    I closed my eyes, remembering that storm that had come up out of nowhere on the trip.
    That Friday morning the waves had been flat, and it seemed we were skating across a huge pond. By afternoon, it was as if a madman stirred the ocean with a giant spoon, creating waves that were high enough to cover the ship.
    And the wind! That gigantic wind. Trunks slid and people screamed, but I couldn’t hear them, only saw their open mouths. It was the wind I heard, circling over us, around us, a hundred times louder than the train that thundered down the tracks along my river.
    With Papa’s Bible in both hands, I promised God that if I lived through this storm, if I ever put my two feet on land, I’d never eat a morsel of food or wet my mouth with a drop of water on Good Friday again. I would keep that promise; I knew I would, even if I lived to be an old woman.
    Now in back of me on the ferry was a family from Frankfurt. I caught bits of their conversation, their long wait on the stairs, shivering with cold and fear, to see the doctor at Castle Garden, the examination of their eyes when he rolled back the lids with a buttonhook.
    A buttonhook!
    I never wanted to think of that examination again. How the doctors had poked and prodded while I stood there, almost numb with embarrassment, wondering if they were going to chalk my coat with an X and send me straight back across the ocean.
    But I didn’t want to think about where I had come from, either, Mama standing in the doorway, one hand to her throat, tears streaming down her cheeks. The boys. Katharina. I felt a choking in my throat.
    I wiped my eyes with one hand, wondering why the thought of coming to America had so excited me in the first place.
    The ferry was close now, and people’s faces on the dock became distinct, some of them smiling, some looking anxious as they waved to us.
    I searched those faces, remembering the Uncle as I had seen him years before. But there were so many people packed together in a mass, and so much noise. Some of the voices spoke German. “Here, Glenda, look here!” “Peter. Darling . . . I’m over here.”
    The boat hit the dock with a screech and an enormous crash, and I nearly lost my balance. I straightened my hat . . . and there below me was the Uncle, looking older than I remembered. He was tall and straight, his hair gray now under his hat, his beard trimmed, his scarf blowing against his cheek.
    At that moment the gangplanks were lowered, and people began to stream off the ferry like the beans Mama funneled from their canvas bag into her pot.
    The Uncle motioned to me to wait.
    I could do that, couldn’t I? Wait for one minute while everyone else raced down to the dock, waving their arms, or pushing trunks and wicker baskets? I could wait to see this rich land, the Uncle’s beautiful house, Barbara, his wife.
    The Uncle had written Mama that he worked for a woman with so much money that when meat was ordered, the butcher stood on the scale with the side of beef and charged for both weights.
    Suddenly I was wild with excitement. I raised my hand to wave, thinking of the needles that had stabbed my fingers every day since I was four, the hours in front of that sewing machine, running up seams, turning collars, binding blankets and sheets.
    No more! I would never sew again. Well, a rip in the seam of my skirt or a hole in the toe of my stocking. I almost hugged myself with joy. Never mind the soldiers who looked for me, or my dear river, or the cathedral bells that tolled away the hours. I was