The Laughter of Carthage (45 page)

The city dazzled me with brilliant signs picked out in thousands of tiny coloured bulbs. Everywhere I heard the slamming of metal upon metal, the humming of motors, the clicking of cogs, the whirring of dials and indicators, while from the network of railroads, big and small, overground and underground, came a squealing of wheels on tracks, of warning horns, escaping steam and efficient airbrakes. To me this was a symphony whose themes emerged gradually, as in Wagner, forming a unity when sometimes one least expected resolution. Back and forth in the streets ran ragamuffins. They sold newspapers, soft drinks, ice creams, candy. They yelled impossibly garbled phrases; words I could not even begin to interpret. Moreover, this unceasing vitality flourished in a climate of pressing, almost tangible heat, making me sweat so badly I was soaked from top to bottom before I had walked a few hundred yards from the hotel.

On my first morning I went nowhere in particular. I merely strolled from block to block, taking stock of my surroundings as I always did. I enjoyed the bustle and the anonymity. Somewhere around East 19th Street I stepped into a little café and ordered a cup of coffee. New Yorkers, generally thought ill-mannered by other Americans, seemed elaborately polite compared, say, to Parisians. When I had finished my coffee, I made enquiries and was directed to a large pawnbroking house only a block or two away. Here I was able to change a gold ring, inscribed and given to me by M. de Grion as a Christmas present, into a moderately good-sized sum. Next I walked on a little further until I reached Sixth Avenue and soon discovered a reasonably decent gentleman’s outfitters who provided me, within two hours, with a white linen suit, white spats and gloves, a Panama. I was now better equipped for the weather, if not for the dust and dirt. I had the feeling, on the question of style, however, that it would not have mattered much what I wore. Aside from Constantinople, I had never seen such a huge variety of racial types and national costumes. Some were strange, such as the Hassids or pigtailed Chinese, but others displayed their cultural origins more subtly, in Bavarian hats, Russian boots, Turin-cut trousers. What was most cheering for me was that I had been led to believe I should see swarthy aliens crowding every sidewalk but this was far from the case. There were no more of these in the ordinary parts of New York than in any cosmopolitan city. New York was in this respect little different from Odessa.

That afternoon I walked down Seventh Avenue to the secluded tree lined squares and eighteenth-century houses of Greenwich Village. These relatively low apartment blocks and ordinary shops reminded me in their general respectability of my boyhood Kiev, though at that time, because the area was pleasant and cheap, increasing numbers of artists were moving in, giving the neighbourhood something of the quality of the Left Bank. Here and there it was possible for me to imagine myself suddenly transported to the country. The abundance of flowers and foliage pleased my senses as, sitting for a while in Washington Square, I watched children playing familiar games. These quasi-rural areas are required in any real city, I think. The tranquillity one finds in them is somehow more positive than anything discovered in the country itself. Here I used to visit the roof garden of Derry and Tom’s Department Store. I would go there two or three times a week in the summer, for this same sense of peace. The traffic could be heard, but it was in another world, so distant. On a fine day, listening to the fountains and seeing pink flamingoes wade from pool to pool, one could experience few greater pleasures. But presently of course Derry’s is sold to a Russian Jewess who refuses the consolation of her roof garden to lonely old men and women and makes it the exclusive territory of the fashionable and wealthy. Who cares if I have nowhere to sit now; no birds to feed; nowhere to throw a penny and make a wish?

In New York, more than anywhere else, I developed an immediate sense of competency; the kind of security which comes from an instinctive understanding of one’s environment. The more complex a city, the better I felt. The country dweller retreats in confusion from the city’s images and noise, baffled by its millions of intersecting segments of information. To him it seems all contradictions, mystery, threat. As in Constantinople, I immediately relax. Dangers in the city are easily recognised or anticipated. In the country I am helpless. What does the crack of a twig, the angle of a leaf, the way a plant has been pressed down underfoot mean to me? If New York was, as many said, a jungle, then I was a beast naturally bred for that jungle. Within a few days of strolling aimlessly around and absorbing images, sounds, scents, I knew virtually all I needed to survive and, if necessary, conquer. Helen Roe saw me once or twice, but she was anxious to leave for Florida. She said New York was a filthy city and the people in it were scum. Our shipboard romance died immediately she reached land. Now that more familiar young men were available to her, cajoling her to speakeasies and nightclubs, she no longer had use for me. I was relieved, for I too was reluctant to continue the affair. I had written to Esmé, describing my arrival, the hotel and so on. I had written to Kolya and sent a postcard to Mrs Cornelius, mentioning William Browne, the film producer. I longed for all of them to be with me, particularly Esmé. She would have delighted in the city’s variety as much as I.

For the first week, however, I will admit I gave less thought to my dear ones than usual and neither did I do much in the way of furthering my career. I lived a dream of excited discovery. I ate steaks, lobsters and hot dogs, Russian dishes as fine and as elaborate as any in Odessa. I tried Italian, French and Chinese restaurants. I visited cinemas to watch the latest films and I went to the vaudeville. I rode on streetcars, buses and trains. During that period I was content with my own company and any escort would have been a distraction. I was swimming in waters at once strange and deeply familiar, modern yet full of nostalgia. Here were soda-fountains which were fantastic extensions of cafés I had known in Kiev, smelling of syrups and candies, vast tiers of carved mahogany and oak, of brass and chrome and decorated mirrors; restaurants in which small forests appeared to be growing, picture palaces which might have been transported stone by stone from ancient Assyria, mansions grand enough to be the seats of European Emperors. Standing at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street I watched black clouds of a thunderstorm come rolling towards me, abolishing the sun, block by block, before at last it reached me, a wild hissing of rain, roaring and flashing, driving me into a doorway. I walked almost the whole length of Broadway at night, visited the Zoo, bought sweet potatoes from a vendor in Central Park, purchased for next to nothing the favours of pretty prostitutes (some of whom spoke even less English than those in Constantinople), chatted with strangers in an easy way I found impossible in Europe. I told them how wonderful their city was. The true New Yorker believes there is no world but his; questions are rarely asked about your country of origin: he merely wishes to hear if you approve of New York. This was perfectly agreeable to me for it maintained anonymity while affording sociability. I still had plenty of good cocaine and more could easily be purchased through the girls I patronised. I cheerfully drank grape juice or Coca-Cola when no spirits were readily available to me. Alcohol, of course, was an abiding and somewhat tiresome topic everywhere. The newspapers thrived on rum-running tales. Prohibition and its consequences were the national obsession. But it meant little to me. I was a child on vacation. All I wanted was to be able to go down to the waterfront, watch the liners come and go, enjoy with fascination a sea plane exhibition provided by ex-War airmen. America (though falsely believing herself the first to fly) had taken to the aeroplane as readily as she took to her native Model T. The paradoxes of a culture able to accept technological innovation so readily while allowing the antiquated morals of religious extremists to be imposed on the entire nation had not become apparent to me. Careless of the rest of the sub-continent’s opinions, New York City, in the days of her glory, functioned as an independent City State. Financiers were called Morgan and Carnegie. The power of the Orient was limited to the corner drapery shop. New York fell resoundingly to Carthage in 1929; she was their greatest conquest amongst the world’s cities. As Constantinople, the centre of Christendom, was made the Ottoman capital, so New York became the capital of Carthage. Mastering her, they mastered America. Eventually, inevitably, this would lead to mastery of the world.

Innocent of future disaster, I followed the marching bands into Brooklyn and Queens and went to see George M. Cohan, that quintessential American, in his latest musical. I ate baked clams and fresh oysters at Sheepshead Bay. I sat at a lunch counter near Grand Central Station reading a
New York Times
which made all the troubles of Europe seem remote, unimportant, even mildly irritating. My own interest, indeed, was in the doings of scientists and how they were honoured in America. President Harding, I read, gave Madame Curie a radium capsule worth a hundred thousand dollars as a gift from American women. After a slump, Henry Ford’s cars were selling well again. I also learned that the Edison company had given a questionnaire to all prospective employees. To my despair (for I had planned at a pinch to offer my services there) I could scarcely answer a single question. One asked ‘Which American city leads in the manufacture of washing machines?’ Edison was, I found from the newspaper, utterly baffled by the results of these tests. He decided university people were horribly ignorant. Perhaps it was as well I did not have to endure the frustration of working for a fool.

In a very short time the discovery of an illicit whisky-still in the heart of the Bronx became more exciting than a report on Warren Harding’s adamant refusal to join the League of Nations. My only reaction to an editorial denouncing the British Trade Agreement with Soviet Russia was the vague hope I might now in a letter to my mother tell her how stimulating America was. Perhaps she would be allowed to join me here. Most of us were then led to believe that now, with the Civil War over and foreign governments resuming relations with her, Russia would become increasingly moderate. The fate of my mother and Captain Brown aside, I felt this was no longer of immediate importance (besides. I was officially a Frenchman). Neither did the defeat of the Spanish Army by Abd el Krim in Morocco seem significant. By far the best news was the American Government’s willingness to fund domestic aviation development. It spurred me to take stock of my limited resources and begin arranging my affairs. My vacation in New York was coming to an end. Soon it would be time to set off for Washington.

Some three weeks after my arrival in New York I bought stocks of linen paper, all the engineer’s necessary drawing paraphernalia, confined myself to my suite with a large amount of cocaine, coffee and the occasional room-service meal, and began carefully to copy out designs and specifications of my already patented inventions. These I set aside in a large folder. Next I prepared the unpatented designs. These included my transatlantic aeroplane staging platforms, hospital airships capable of being sited wherever they were immediately needed, intercontinental tunnels, a cheap method for extracting aluminium from clay, a means of producing synthetic rubber, a long-distance aerodyne and a rocket-propelled airship. All would go for registration to the U.S. Patent Office. The others I would send directly to the Secretary of the Interior, whom I understood to be in charge of scientific projects. I also included copies of various press reports, although these were mainly in French. The ship’s newspaper had done a little piece in English about me and my work and this, too, was enclosed.

After several days I was totally exhausted, but the work was done. I took both envelopes to the post office, sending them by registered mail to their destinations. Afterwards I went to the German Cafe in Chambers Street for huge helpings of sausage, veal, sauerkraut and dumplings. With its carved marble and dark onyx, its pillars, its animal heads, its polished stone counters, the restaurant was a monument of reassurance. Afterwards, in the company of one of my young ladies, I went to see a musical and some movies at the Casino Theatre. By midnight I was back at her lodgings somewhere near 9th Avenue and 53rd Street, with a line of the elevated railway running only a few feet from her front windows and there I remained for two days, entertained by Mae and her little, bright-eyed friend Irma. When I eventually returned to the Pennsylvania there was a message for me. To my considerable delight I learned Lucius Mortimer had called. He was staying at the Hotel Astor. He wondered if I would like to join him there for dinner. The note had arrived that morning. There was still time to telephone the Astor and accept his invitation. I looked forward to enjoying the company of the personable young major. I spent the rest of the day bathing, resting and tidying up various papers. By seven I had dressed and because the evening was warm decided to save a cab fare by walking the few blocks to 44th and Broadway. I was now thoroughly familiar with central New York. The grid system, like so much in America, was rational enough to make life much easier once it was understood.
Der Raster liegt fest, aber die Vielfalt der Bilder ist unendlich. New York ist eine Stadt der nah beieinanderliegenden Gegensätze.
The air smelled of sweet oil and pungent smoke, of coffee, fried ham and sour cream; the wild turmoil of the daytime traffic had eased to a moderate, almost sedate, pace and I found myself wondering at my good fortune as I made my way, whistling, towards the best hotel in New York. The Astor was both opulent and dignified, but not as impressive, in my view, as the Pennsylvania. From outside it was restrained red brick, limestone, green slate and copper and inside had a somewhat hushed quality more suitable for a church or a museum which, in its solid murals and dark wood, it closely resembled. A graceful porter showed me, at length, through the Art Nouveau splendour, the marble and gold, past Ionic pilasters, painted panels, tapestries and trophies, to what he called ‘the bachelors’ quarters’ and a room crowded with huge hunting scenes where, at a table near the far wall, my friend awaited me. The blond-haired Mortimer like me was no longer in uniform and rose in evening dress to greet me, full of smiles and good cheer. ‘I’m so glad you’re still here, Colonel Peterson. I was afraid I’d have to follow you to Washington.’ As we ate he told me had crossed the Atlantic ‘once or twice’ since he last saw me. Now he had decided to give sea travel a rest for a while. Some people on his last trip had mentioned my name and he remembered his conversations with me. That, of course, had led him to try looking me up. Cutting his meat, he said how sorry he was to hear about the French scandal. I put down my knife and fork. I asked him what he meant and he became confused. Before he could explain, the waiter arrived and we ordered the next course. Then Mortimer reached into his jacket pocket to produce a substantial press cutting. ‘It’s from
Le Monde
,’ he said, passing it to me. It was almost a month old. ‘You haven’t gotten any of this over here? That must be a relief.’