2 THE BAKER

Anna Jelena Zemeckis, only child of Janis Zemeckis, a Latvian baker on New York's Lower East Side, went missing in Chicago some time between 1.35 p.m. September 7 1893 and 3.00 p.m. the same day. That was between the time she left Mrs Clark's Lunch Room at 145 Wabash Avenue and the time she was due to meet a friend at the World's Columbian Exposition at Jackson Park seven miles away on the city's South Side. An appointment she did not keep.
Anna was a modest girl, just twenty-one. She was gregarious, attractive and intelligent. Until only four months before she had been her father's mainstay in his small but well-respected and profitable bakery, responsible for keeping the accounts as well as having a part-time job in the Aguilar Free Library on East 5th Street.
Anna's departure for Chicago had come as a surprise; nobody in their little circle would have believed it possible that so loving and protective a father could let his daughter go to that monstrous city, of all places. Anna herself had often voiced her dislike of big city life and her desire to go and spend time on her aunt Inga's farm up beyond Winnipeg on Lac du Bonnet in Canada. But this Zemeckis had refused; the hardship of rural life endured by his dead wife's family in Latvia, and now in Canada, were what he had wanted to leave behind when he emigrated. He had repeatedly refused his sister-in-law's request to send Anna to stay with them. For he was a man mindful of the future, of business and enterprise and what the World's Fair might offer by way of modernizing his own modest, but growing business. Anna must go as his representative.
So it was that on Anna's twenty-first birthday in April 1893, Janis Zemeckis made an announcement to their Lutheran friends at church:
'I am sending Anna to Chicago,' he declared, with a look of pride and pleasure on his face. 'My brother-in-law Hendriks has written confirming that she can stay as long as she likes with him and his family and see everything there is at this great Fair. She will have time to discover new things and learn all she can, as well as working part-time for the Chicago Public Library, which has been arranged for her.'
'Someone from every family in America should go to this great event and as I cannot be spared from our business Anna must go in my place!'
Anna was as astonished as she was overjoyed. She burst into tears and she and Janis held each other tight. Janis was a hard worker and a good man but it was rare for him to make displays of affection and generosity in front of others.
Anna's uncle, Hendriks Markulis, was her mother's brother. While her aunt, Inga, had married into good stolid farming stock and gone to Canada, Hendriks had been more ambitious and found a wife from an enterprising German family on Chicago's North Side with whom he now ran their hardware store. He and his wife had visited the Zemeckises twice in New York and were good, prosperous people. Liesel Markulis was active in the woman's temperance movement and Janis was certain they would offer Anna a home from home and ensure that she would be chaperoned at all times.
'It's not a holiday,' warned Janis later, 'but work. This great Exposition will have much that is new which we should know about; many technical and educational things. You will go; I can manage without you for two or three months. Your job at the library in Chicago will pay your way; but most of all you will learn, learn, learn.'
If Anna wept as she hugged her father, it was for joy; if he smiled with pride it was because, after holding on to her so protectively for so long - too long perhaps - he felt he was doing the right thing in letting her go.
So it was that Anna Zemeckis, after being accompanied across to Jersey City on the ferry by her father, set off on the Columbian Express for Chicago one day in early May, preceded by a thousand instructions from Janis Zemeckis to the Markulises about when and where they were to meet her when she arrived at the Union Depot on Canal Street, twenty-six hours after leaving the East Coast.
All of which went perfectly, as did Anna's stay with the Markulises during the seventeen weeks that followed until, on September 8, Janis received a stark, heart-stopping telegraph from his brother-in-law:
'Anna went missing yesterday. Have you heard from her?'
Two days after that, September 10, Janis Zemeckis closed the doors of his bakery and took the first train to Chicago on which he had been able to get a seat. What he found when he got there and in the grim weeks that followed gave him every reason to believe she must be dead.
On arrival he began searching the city for Anna. He placed advertisements in the papers, he talked to the police who advised him to visit the morgue; he did so, daily, and saw terrible things there, but he did not find his daughter. He called on City Hall officials who advised him to check out the patients at the city hospitals. He did that too, and saw yet more terrible things, but he never found Anna.
He took the new Elevated Railroad from Congress Street to the site of the World's Fair at Jackson Park, his desperate eyes searching the crowds wherever he went. He never found her. Everywhere he went, he talked to people, and then more people, showing them Anna's picture. But all they could tell him was that people go missing in big cities, it happens every day, to young women especially.
Some disappear because they want to; some because they need to; some are abducted against their will, taken by men. It was terrible, truly terrible. But Janis Zemeckis refused to believe any of this of his Anna.
Nevertheless, he walked the red-light districts around the Levee asking questions. He got threatened every time, mugged twice and hospitalized once.
And then, two weeks later on September 26 and running out of funds, he reluctantly went back to New York.
He returned a week later, his business left in temporary hands. But when problems arose he was obliged to return once more to New York. He knew his business was beginning to die. He knew ten years of savings would run out. But he also knew that without Anna he had nothing, nothing at all.
The search came to its final and perhaps inevitable end in the second week of October with a telegraph from a Mr Freeman of the Cook County Hospital Morgue. It was the kind of message every parent dreads and none ever wants to receive.
A body had been brought in that appeared to match the physical description Zemeckis had left of his daughter. Could he arrange to put through a telephone call and help with the identification?
He did so.
Mr Freeman was kindly and diplomatic but the job had to be done. Was there anyone in Chicago who had known his daughter and might be willing to identify her?
Zemeckis named the Markulises.
Meanwhile ... did Anna have any distinguishing features?
Zemeckis could barely speak. His hand trembled as he held the telephone which crackled and hummed at his ear and he could hardly bring himself to murmur into the mouth piece.
'How did she die?' he asked.
'A streetcar accident. Now ...'
'She has ... She always wore a crucifix but no other jewellery. ... I wouldn't allow it.'
'Mr Zemeckis, I know this is hard. But could you describe the crucifix.'
'It was special to her. Nothing much. Grey metal, not real silver. It was her mother's and she ...'
Zemeckis broke down.
'Sir, I need a better description. Its size, any particular decoration ?'
Zemeckis did his best.
The silence that followed was the longest he had ever endured.
Then Mr Freeman came back on the line: 'I'm sorry, sir, but what you've described is pretty much the same as the crucifix this girl was wearing. But ... we better wait for Mrs Markulis to come. Maybe …?'
'If she's wearing that crucifix it's Anna,' said Zemeckis, his voice thin and bleak. 'I've never seen another one like it.'
They arranged for another call that evening.
When the connection came through it was Liesel Markulis. She was weeping.
'It's Anna, Janis, I'm sure of it,' she said and that was all she needed to say.
Janis Zemeckis travelled to Chicago a final, desolate time on October 14, exhausted and heartbroken.
Liesel Markulis accompanied him to the potter's field outside the city where Anna had had to be temporarily buried. They put a few flowers on the grave marked with a temporary wooden cross and a number, and said a prayer.
They were not the only ones in that grim place and others arrived as they left, searching for Chicago's lost, forgotten and unidentified dead.
They went next to the morgue and met Mr Freeman. The first thing they were shown was the dress the body had been wearing. Any lingering doubts Zemeckis might have had evaporated. Though it was torn and blood-stained he recognized it at once, just as Mrs Markulis had done. It had been made by Anna herself.
Holding it in his hands, Zemeckis wept. But when he was shown the crucifix he fell silent, head slumped. It had been bought as a gift for Anna's Catholic mother during a religious pilgrimage in Latvia when she was a girl; Janis had handed it down to Anna on her mother's death.
No further confirmation was needed for Janis Zemeckis but when the morgue asked that he formally identify his daughter from photographs of the corpse he numbly agreed, words failing him.
He said nothing then, or for hours afterwards. Nor did he discuss with his sister-in-law the obvious question - what Anna might have been doing during the five weeks between her disappearance from their home and her tragic death on Michigan Avenue. He retreated into silence and asked for only one thing more - that Anna's body be exhumed so she might have a proper burial back home in New York.
This was arranged for two weeks' time, Janis Zemeckis finally returned home on October 17, his search over. He felt and looked a broken man. Anna was never coming back and he knew that he had failed her. Almost overnight it seemed he had lost his reason for living.
For two days he did not sleep. Nor did he open up his shop. He felt he never would again. What made it all the worse for him was the fact that it now seemed certain that Anna's disappearance had been of her own volition. It was bad enough that she had left the Markulis household without an explanation, but to make no attempt to contact him was both selfish and cruel.
Very soon, however, his inward grief gave way to outward anger - at Anna and at Chicago, a city which had failed to protect her. His anger deepened and for a few hours he was incoherent with rage.
Then it gave way to a different emotion: pity, forgiveness of a kind and a desire to warn other parents of the perils of allowing their daughters to venture forth to distant cities.
On October 19, having had a notice placed in the Chicago newpapers announcing Anna's death Janis found himself in the Aguilar Free Library at 206 East Fifth Street, sitting, staring sightlessly at that day's copy of the New York World, doing nothing. He could not remember how he had got there and he saw he was not the only one. Cities have many casualties.
Unable to suffer his loss and pain, anger and shame any longer and hoping to forget it for a little while through activity, he impulsively wrote a letter and put it in the mailbox.
The letter was addressed to the proprietor of the New York World, Mr Joseph Pulitzer, the greatest newspaper man of the age.
What Janis Zemeckis sent was rather more than a letter. It was a prayer, an agonized cry to other parents and it was a warning. Don't let your daughters out of your sight. But if you must, never let them go to Chicago.
Naturally he had no hope his letter would ever be read or taken notice of. This was America and, angry and disillusioned as he had now become, he thought he knew what that meant: no-one would help, no-one would listen, no-one would offer comfort.
But Janis Zemeckis was wrong.
Someone did listen and someone did act.
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© William Horwood & Helen Rappaport