The Laughter of Carthage (22 page)

'I thought you'd better know the Justice Department has frozen my assets for an indefinite period. If anyone's being blackmailed, it's me. I'm their key witness in a Klan knockover which could expose almost every secret supporter in the country. I'm not being melodramatic.'

'You know I'm expecting to be nominated for Governor next year?' He blinked vaguely into a threatened future.

'Yes. I just wanted you to rest assured. No matter how desperate I get, I shan't give the game away. But this is the ruin of my own career.'

‘You’re a brilliant actor, Mr Pallenberg.’

I chuckled bitterly as I picked up my hat and rose to my feet.

‘That’s the real irony, Mr Hever. It’s all I can do at present. Actually, if you remember that conversation at Klankrest, I’m a scientist. I told you about some of my ideas. You said you were impressed.’

For a moment he again became aware of a world which had existed before he had dined with Mrs Cornelius. ‘What a prune I am! Of course! You were the whiz who suggested roofing over Iowa! You must excuse me, Mr Pallenberg. I’m completely fogbound this morning.’ Smiles came and went across his face. He lumbered after me and my hand was shaken for the second time. ‘And you had some other ideas. I remember thinking you were the only intelligent person at that whole bust. How on earth did you get to be an actor? I thought you were in big with the KKK. Don’t tell me. I’m deeply ashamed. They had me completely bamboozled for a few months. I wish I could have got my money back. You came to warn me, is that it?’

‘We’re in the same boat, I’m afraid.’ I told him part of my story. He listened with deep, mindless sympathy. ‘Anyway,’ I concluded, ‘that’s how a first-rate scientist wound up becoming a third-rate actor. Whatever happens, Mr Hever, your name will never be drawn from me.’

Hever’s porcine lower lip was trembling. He grew sentimental. He said I was a white man. What specific help could he offer? What experiments had I been conducting when the Klan kidnapped me? I told him of my gas car, my new oil-refining process, my suction pump. He displayed enthusiasm. I unrolled the few rough plans I had brought, explaining I had been forced to change my name. The patents were chiefly registered to ‘Pyatnitski’. He studied them, exclaiming politely from time to time, asking the occasional pertinent question. I congratulated myself: we had reached an understanding.

Before I left Hever’s office I heard much more about Mrs Cornelius’s virtues, his own shortcomings, my genius; but he had bought a control in me. I had a draft contract with Golden State Engineering Developments (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Hever empire) and a cashier’s cheque for $2,500; my advance on a retainer of $10,000. I would draw a salary of $200 a week. My title, Chief Experimental Engineer, was in black and white on the contract. When my inventions were commercially produced I would earn 50% of the net profits. Life had begun again for me. Esmé was coming!

Ich kann ohne dich nicht leben.
I did no wrong! It was to mutual benefit.
Gold blinkte. Due wirst mich ruinieren, mein Schatz, meine Gelieble.
I could not help it.
Es ist zu spät. Ich kenhe mein Schicksal. Zu spät für den Seelenfrieden! Wir kämpfen nur, um ein gewisses Gleichgewicht aufrechzuerhalten.
I had found myself, like some engineer of the Renaissance, a powerful patron, that was all.

Mrs Cornelius was soon Hever’s regular consorte everywhere. Under her picture on the society pages she was described as ‘an English beauty’, ‘daughter of the eminent banker’. Within two weeks we formally handed over
Limeys in Limelight
to Ethel, Mabel and Harold Hope, together with all props, the van, and enough money to get the girls back to England if they chose. They now had legitimate visas. Both said they thought they would stay in California. If Mrs Cornelius had made it, Mabel told me, there might be a chance for her, ‘even if it’s only marrying a wealthy projectionist!’ Mrs Cornelius was due to take her first screen test at the Lasky Studios on Selma and Vine. She told me privately that Mucker was the tastiest millionaire she had met and a proper gent. She generously thanked me for insisting she go out with him. ‘You done us all a bit o’ good there. Ivan!’ She had forgiven me for ‘going behind her back’ to Hever. (She did not realise what she owed me for that action!) She said she was surprised he had agreed to my scheme. Normally he was slow and cautious in his business dealings.

I would visit her at her new suite in the Beverly Hills Hotel. Sometimes I would take her for drives in the lovely wooded roads behind the hotel. I had a serviceable green and gold Peugeot 163. This de luxe Torpedo had been presented to me when I signed my final contract. I liked to luxuriate in the clouds of pink and pale blue which filled the rooms in that Spanish palace. Dressed in new clothes (jodhpurs, riding-boots and ascot, then acceptable motoring wear, became my favourites) I would lounge across her sofas, passing an hour or two with her before Hever called. My own pleasant little house was in the seaside suburb of Venice, close to the Grand Canal. I especially enjoyed Hollywood’s extravagances. Where else might one find this translated notion of a European city, with rococo wood and brick representing the stones of the original? Hollywood, even then, had begun to influence the whole of Southern California. She was the spiritual and cultural core of Los Angeles. For miles around there were growing whole townships which, were it not for the skills and imagination of movie set-designers, could never have existed. In a region where rain was rare, elaborate architectural fantasies could be created cheaply and rapidly. In Hollywood it was possible to ape the rich and succeed. Hollywood created the world’s first true democracy. For different reasons, both Mrs Cornelius and I were euphoric.

On the morning I bought Esmé’s ticket, I called on her in her suite to tell her the news. She had advised me not to cable Esmé cash. Cash could always be stolen again. I had sent my girl a non-returnable one-way first-class ticket on the
Icosium
which sailed from Genoa on July 21st. ‘Registered and Special Delivery,’ I told her. ‘I paid cash. It’s wonderful to have money in my pocket again!’

‘Yore a jammy littel bugger.’ she said affectionately. She was trying on various accessories before the wall-length mirror. ‘I reckon we’re birds of a fewer, you an’ me, Ive. Thass why it’d orlways be a mistake ter you-know-what.’ I smiled at this, not completely in agreement. ‘We wouldn’t be ‘ere nar,’ she pointed out, ‘if we’d’ve bin up ter a bit o’ the how’s-yer-fahver.’ She put down the long scarf she had been winding round her cami-knickered waist. The scarf was scarlet, her underwear pale green satin. ‘So thass why yore orl antsy t’day.’ She kissed me on the forehead as she reached behind me for a headdress of bright blue ostrich feathers. ‘Ah, well. Somebody’s gotta ‘elp yer spend it, eh?’ In the course of her love affair with Hever she had grown, as people will, more tolerant of what she still called my infatuation.

It was true I was trembling with excitement. By the end of the following month I should be reunited, after all those painful years, with my darling Esmé. My entire body had quickened and come to life in anticipation of our meeting. This ecstasy transcended fleshly sensation. I experienced it so forcefully, I think, because I was at once confident, relaxed and unthreatened.
Wann sehe ich Sie wider? Ich habe lange geschlafen. Die Zeit vergeht. Sie hat ihr Tat selbst zu verantworten.
It had been three years.
Seit 1921. Wo sind wir? Drei jahre! Ich habe geschlafen. Der Traum is eybik. Der Traum wird morgen nicht kommen. Hat sie mein Trait m missdeutet? Mit Esmé Ich. . .

Every day I visited my new domain, my little factory. At Hever’s suggestion we had taken over the workshops of a bankrupt firm (it had hoped to build a funicular railway system between the various ranges of Los Angeles hills). In the unremarkable area of the Long Beach docks several small engineering firms had their headquarters. During the day the local air was a hullabaloo of saws and rivet guns, gouting furnaces and pounding hammers, like some gnomish nether region. It looked out directly over the harbour. Grey warships would stand there for weeks, apparently deserted by all save a handful of men, then suddenly weigh anchor and be gone. I watched seaplanes coming and going. Some of the early Curtiss prototypes were taking shape. As I got to know him, I would offer advice to Curtiss and his people. It was astonishing how many of my suggestions they accepted, how many became standard procedural and production features. Naturally, I never received payment or acknowledgement. I did not worry about such things. I merely delighted in the thump of floats striking water, the shrill early notes of an approaching machine, the wheeling and climbing of the beautiful little craft.

I had only so much to do to our own adapted Buick tourer. Chiefly my duties consisted of overseeing the mechanics. There were three of them, all excellent, and an apprentice. Having exchanged petroleum tanks for compressed-gas cylinders we were experimenting with means of feeding the gas to the engine. I studied several types of steam car, including the excellent Stanley, which had ceased production in 1920. What we learned from these, we attempted to apply to our own prototype. I was lucky in my team of enthusiastic young men; my band of brothers, sworn to secrecy. Sometimes, when a particularly difficult problem arose, we would all work through the night. Again I had that life-giving powder to thank for her benevolent help. With such wages, I could afford it.
Es ken nisht shatn.
Thus the gas car gradually took shape. I continued to experience that thrill of anticipation, for the day when Esmé would place her dainty feet upon the soil of America.

With no photographs of my little girl, I had to make do with many of Lillian (and sometimes Dorothy) Gish. How much more wholesome they were than the likes of Clara Bow or Gloria Swanson. Somewhere in those few years we lost ‘the Nation’s Sweetheart’ and were given instead ‘the Hottest Jazz-Baby in Town’. I prayed my little
shvester, mayn meydl, mavn metsie,
would not have been coarsened or otherwise changed by her hardships. Her letters suggested she was the same delightful
Mädchen
of my dreams, my incorruptible daughter; sweet mistress of my
mazl.
Yet she had lived for long in the Vatican’s shade. I knew the Jesuit tricks. They would introduce sin into Eden if H. G. Wells would tell them how to build his
zeygermashin.
God help us if they become engineers. Then we shall see also their
zindmashin!
Maybe she was cynical. Who would not be after saving so long only to have the money snatched away at the very moment it is needed? I know some of these feelings. Yet I had fought cynicism, maintained my idealism against all odds. I was sure my sister, so much my
alter ego,
had protected her innocence equally well. Soon, together, we should be able to embark again upon that
zukhn
, that holy quest for the purity we had known in Kiev, for the tranquillity that once filled our hearts, for the
zilber
of clear thought.
Iber morgn du vest kumen.
I was confident, but I was not wholly confident, as they say. That is, I yearned for confirmation. Here were the sunshine years of my life, in California. I, who had always loved silver, learned the value of gold. There is a clarity in sunlight I never understood until Los Angeles. Though I know Carthage, terrified of silver, lurks in gold, I refuse to condemn the metal itself. I lusted for our union: my purity of intellect, her purity of flesh. The days began to manifest themselves as well-defined units.

When happy I always work best. What little pressure I had exerted on Mucker Hever was completely justified. We had an excellent design. The engine began to prove well. It would greatly increase Hever’s already monstrous fortune and by this means he would find his judgment confirmed. He and Mrs Cornelius occasionally visited the workshop, but were so involved with one another my descriptions were meaningless to them. This did not distress me. I prefer to work without supervision. Mrs Cornelius would never know I helped tip the balance in her favour, founding her assurances from Hever in something much more solid than momentary infatuation; she was to embark on her movie career very soon. I blamed myself for nothing.
Wer hat gewennen? Das Spiel war unent schieden.
Nobody was unhappy.

Und nun ist der Traum Wirklichkeit. Es ist höcliste Zeit, dass ich auf main Schiff zurükhehre. Karthago wird von einem glühenden Hass auf die Weissen verzehrt, die er als Wurzel alien Übels in der Welt betrachtet - obwohl ich andereseits wieder gehört habe, dass sinige weisse Wissenschaftler in seinen Diensten stehen. Seine Mittel wachsen folglich ständig. Gelt. . .
Golden cupolas rising in Atlanta, in Odessa, and in Sparta. These domes rise in Jackson and Jubilee; copper and pewter, as any in Kiev, they rise in St Petersburg Fla and Alabama’s redbrick metropoli; no longer the domes of Christ Arisen, these are the domes of Civil dignity and Law, just democracy. A clock chimes where the sun’s orb blazed; red, white and blue flapping on a polished staff where for my sense of congruity should be a Russian crucifix. And these sappherine skies, are they never silver? In Arcadia alligators crusted with antiquity wallow in metal tanks. Their heavy jaws clack shut on asymmetrical teeth; they haul themselves over each others’ backs, refusing even the notion of death, they have existed so long. Small cousins to the mile-deep Atlantic monsters, blind representatives of a Carthaginian future, they are now bred by men to make handbags for Beverly Hills housewives, boots for singing cowboys and belts to decorate the trousers of millionaire dentists. The Jew showed me kindness in Arcadia.
Wir steigen unter leichtem Schaukeln vom Bodenauf, wobei der Motor sin kaum varnehmbares Schnurren von sich gab.
In Arcadia I came unsuspectingly upon those old reptiles. They could not know they were bred for profit. The Jew gave me warmth and his food. With his hands he fed me; with his dry sardonic lips he offered realistic prophecy. Maybe I was wrong to trust him.
Der blut, der toyt, der kamf, der blitz, der synemmen, der oyfgeheybung!