Electric City: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

and cried out in dreams. The sea of humanity astonished him. And here they all were, making way for a new land, carrying what they could on their backs.
    “Look out there, you!”
    “Move up, and stay in line!”
    Directives in his new language flew all around him. He felt the press of those eager to reach solid land, while trunks and crates and baskets and satchels were hoisted onto shoulders and carts. There was altogether too much to absorb: light bouncing off the surface of the seawater; children wailing from hunger and weariness; smells of damp wool and unwashed bodies mingling with the stench of the harbor. And within shouting distance, Steinmetz could see several other steamships with their equivalent load of human cargo, waiting for the brutally slow processing to be completed.
    The arrival building rose impressively at the dock’s edge, its rococo style reminding him of Bavaria and yet also suggesting a reinvention, more modern, certainly cleaner and less ravaged by soot and weather. Two eagles sculpted in granite posed above the grand entrance, a symbol of this brave world. Not to mention the graceful countenance of the green lady in the harbor, her arm stretched toward heaven with a gilded torch. “I lift my lamp beside your golden door...” Something like that.
    His peripheral vision again took in the masses of people pulsing against him. How many would be turned away for carrying visible signsof disease, not to mention for reasons of insanity (“caused by conditions on the ship,” Steinmetz muttered to no one). How many like himself would be grilled in a vocabulary they didn’t yet possess, asked to prove their capability for earning a living, told to name someone in the States who was willing to sponsor them, help them settle. Were they expecting to be penniless or did they vow to work hard like good Americans?
    Like plenty of others, no doubt, he was significantly weakened from the journey—terrible food, little enough fresh water, overcrowded sleeping compartments, and whimpering youngsters at every turn—but he allowed himself a palpable thrill at being so very close now to the true beginning of the rest of his life. It seemed clearer than ever from this vantage point that neither Vienna nor Zurich could have made suitable refuge for a Socialist such as himself; the political constraints he had fled from in Breslau met him there. His fellow mathematics student and friend Oscar Asmussen, a Danish American, had been the one to persuade Steinmetz to join him on this cross-Atlantic voyage. No matter that all he could afford was steerage class, while Asmussen would take his place on an upper deck.
    “Would you prefer to end up in some Bavarian prison? Or dead?” Such were the simple equations declared by his friend, and Steinmetz had been unable to refute their logic.
    Europe, for him, was over. He was about to step onto an unfamiliar shore, with its promises of renewal and freedom, and adopt it as home.

    Inside the vast entrance hall, Steinmetz gazed upward to the curving ceiling and saw a pair of red, white, and blue American flags hanginglimp in the hot air. Having been exhorted to leave behind all cases and bundles, trudging up a wide staircase along with his fellow passengers, he noted the team of medical evaluators peering down over the balcony, studying all of them for obvious signs of infirmity. Steinmetz imagined how pathetic he must look from their viewpoint, no way to hide his compressed frame, his uneven legs. But at least he wouldn’t be seen straining for oxygen or raggedly wheezing like so many on the stairs above and below him.
    On this second floor, with doctors scanning each individual in a matter of seconds, scribbling with chalk on dark coat sleeves and lapels, Steinmetz tried to present himself with as much dignity as possible under the circumstances. To be publicly examined by strangers was to be the finale of the humiliations, he hoped.
    Just ahead of him, a powdery B and P were