The Laughter of Carthage (50 page)

* * * *

SIXTEEN

THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER, as heavily used and as vast as the Volga, as important to American history as the Dniepr to our own, wide and shallow and winding through gentle hills, brought a frisson of recognition. It was as if I had never left Russia at all. As I raised myself in my bunk, peering through the gap in the blind, I could easily believe myself on a train bound for Kiev. All my experiences since 1917 might have been no more than a prolonged hallucinatory fever. Then the billboards and signs in English appeared and we shifted course in a scintillant dawn for the outskirts of Memphis: Little rows of miserable, unpainted shacks, sudden clearings in which stood grandiose Victorian houses whose carved wood imitated Gothic churches and French chateaux, all under a threadbare covering of snow. The impression of pre-Revolutionary Ukraine continued to persist. These suburban streets were low and wide. Tram cars in smart liveries of brass and primary paint moved decorously along avenues of bare trees. The brightly painted gables and shutters seemed those of a well to do small town rather than real city, even as the higher buildings of the centre emerged from a haze of sunrise. As the train took a bend I glimpsed rows of tall sternwheel and sidewheel paddle steamers moored to wharves on which stood piles of cargo. I might have been in Nizhni Novgorod, save for sharp Baptist steeples taking the place of our Orthodox onion domes. There was also far more motor traffic than was ever found in a Russian town. Consequently there were more metalled roads.

A little dark smoke drifted in the mist. The stillness gradually gave way to sounds of a busy trading port preparing for the day. Then the illusion of familiarity was further distorted by the sight of a gang of negroes who puffed short-stemmed pipes and joked amongst themselves as they walked up towards the levee from the railroad tracks. I was by now used to black faces, but sometimes they still materialised in unexpected contexts. All servants were black in the South, from the conductor on the train to the well groomed coachman who had been sent to take me from the station to my rooms. His name, he said, was Gibson. He wore an old-fashioned brass-buttoned uniform, brown top coat and white gloves. He spoke in a low, cultured voice, a surprising contrast to the whining sing-song of the porters, paperboys and other urchins who moved everywhere with that ground-watching, half bestial lope. This was largely absent in the niggers of the North East, whom I assumed to be of different stock. The carriage took me along Main Street, through a city far more modern than I had expected, with construction going on everywhere. Although not reaching the vast heights of New York’s, some of her skyscrapers were at least fourteen storeys. Her trolley cars, overhead electric lighting, illuminated signs, automobiles, department stores, as well as her plentiful restaurants, created that reassuring blend I had missed so desperately in Washington and found at its finest in New York. Relatively small, Memphis was still a real city. The carriage stopped outside the Adler Apartments on Linden Street. To one side of the entrance was a Western Union office, which I was glad to see. Here my bags were transferred to two porters while a white manager welcomed me and showed me to my suite on the second floor. Mr Baskin wore a dark gabardine suit. He carried a hat and overcoat, explaining he had an appointment to keep. He showed me the amenities, wished me a pleasant stay in Memphis and courteously told me he was at my service if I needed anything further. By noon a maid had put away my clothes and I was able to bathe, change and lock my blueprints safely in a drawer. I decided to have some lunch.

Lacking the vibrant texture of New York or the self-conscious grandeur of Washington, Memphis had an attractive atmosphere of her own which I found welcome after the unreality of my past months in the capital. Turning out of Linden Street onto Main I strolled past cinemas, a theatre, large stores and public buildings, all of which comforted me, as did the network of signs and billboards advertising everything from tobacco to paint, drugs and electrical goods. In a pleasant, middle-class restaurant with a German name I ate peculiar local dishes which were not at all European. It was my first experience of blackeyed peas and cornbread, which seemed compulsory. A sweetish thick white ‘gravy’ was poured liberally over my chicken and potatoes. Having eaten, I felt like a ship which had taken on concrete ballast. Moving with some shortness of breath I made my way back to the Adler to be saluted by the doorman who already addressed me as ‘Colonel Peterson’. The efficiency, conscientiousness and eagerness to please of these coloured servants was remarkable. The unkindest thing anyone ever did was to make them discontented (as Griffith showed in
Birth of a Nation).
The status quo worked excellently for all concerned. Moreover, I experienced no prejudice from the Memphians. I had had no trouble in the restaurant, though my accent was not readily identifiable to them. Old-fashioned Southern courtesy still existed here. In the coming weeks I would find the people quite prepared to accept my accent as regional English or French and while I received occasional badinage, being told for instance that I sounded as if I held an egg in my mouth, I experienced little of the suspicion allegedly extended to foreigners in the South. They shared with other Americans an open curiosity never offended if you reply there are some questions you would rather not answer. Mainly I was happy to answer, however, even if my replies were not always strictly to the letter of the truth. I was forced to support Jimmy and Lucius in their perhaps mistaken effort to invent a more acceptable identity for me. I did not want them embarrassed.

Back at the Adler, I stretched myself on my bed and read the local
Memphis Commercial Appeal,
most of which I found at that stage bewildering. I was interested to discover, however, that there was already talk of the city’s need for a permanent aerodrome. I was not quite sure what I was doing in Memphis, but decided it would be best to wait until I heard from either Mr Roffy or Mr Gilpin. The apartment was comfortable enough, though a little old-fashioned by New York standards. I had a bedroom, a sitting-room, a bathroom and a dressing-room. It had limited services, but self-catering facilities were provided. This was the first time I had experienced the phenomenon. It suited me well enough, though I was not very experienced at making tea, coffee and the like for myself. Being above all adaptable I would learn reasonably quickly. The maid, Mr Baskin had assured me, would be willing to prepare me breakfast for ‘a small consideration’.

Now that the first excitement was gone, my spirits began to decline again. Thoughts of Esmé, Kolya, my mother and Captain Brown returned. By way of consoling myself, I began to write letters describing my journey via Knoxville to Memphis, my first view of ‘Huckleberry Finn’s own river’ and my impression of Southerners, which was good. I had written several such letters when I heard a knock on my door. I got up from the desk to answer it. Charlie Roffy stood there, full of enthusiasm and apologies, his belly rising and falling, his face red from climbing the stairs, ‘I’m real sorry we couldn’t meet you at the station, colonel. You must think us the worst kind of ill-mannered rogues. Dick and I were travelling in from Jackson and were held up. I do hope everything is to your liking.’

I told him I was perfectly comfortable. I thought I might have a few minor difficulties adjusting to the flat and might need a few words of advice later, but was sure I would feel like a native in a day or two.

‘Of course you will, sir. We’ll get a boy for you, if you like. Is there anything else you need? Cash?’

‘I’ve adequate means at present.’ I hesitated. ‘I take it you’ll be able to direct me to a source of female company.’

He was amused. ‘We’re not as backward as some people choose to think. One has to be discreet, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. The smaller the city the more eyes it has, eh? But certainly all that can be arranged. Now, tell me, have you brought your designs with you?’

‘They are in this drawer.’

‘Splendid!’ Charlie Roffy drew his chin back into his neck, a quizzical rooster, and looked sideways at me from his sharp, grey-blue eyes. His rosebud mouth curved in a smile. ‘I’m real pleased, sir, that we met when we did. It was most fortunate. It was fate. Memphis is about to boom again. She’s eager to move into the future as rapidly as possible. We could not have come together at a better time. Tell me, sir, would you care to dine with Dick Gilpin and myself later?’

I told him it would be a pleasure. I found myself echoing the older man’s elaborate courtesy. Again his style was frustratingly reminiscent of my own past. Southern etiquette is persuasive; often, in a strange way, aggressive. It indicates a culture and institutions carefully preserved and maintained. It challenges the outsider while seeming to do the very opposite. As I discovered, a Southerner could frequently decry his own uncouth ways in direct proportion to his genuine arrogance. It was the habit of a beleaguered culture and immediately familiar to me. Since the Southerner shared our Russian taste for racy speech and colourful sayings I was often more at ease than anywhere else in America. I rarely had to offer an opinion; they had the trick of always assuming my agreement, and this of course proved particularly convenient. (As it emerged, there was little conflict of opinion in any case.)

‘I’ll pick you up here at around six,’ said Charlie Roffy as he left. ‘Meantime you might like to see the sights. There’s a hack outside now.’ Again I was impressed by his Southern thoughtfulness. I would leave the rest of my correspondence until later.

Like many towns founded on river trade, Memphis’s ‘centre’ was her quaysides. Fronting the river were warehouses, then came exchanges and offices, next shops, hotels, services, public buildings. Finally the residential areas shaded through a spectrum from black poor to white rich. I found the run-down prospect of Beale Street and its neighbours, with their pawnshops, miserable cafés and second hand clothing stores, without attraction for me. A glimpse of shambling black figures, the sound of some howling babies were more than enough to deter me. I could not (and still cannot) share in a sentimental admiration for singers of jungle chants and slave laments who lived lives of licence and immorality in disgusting streets. Even in the nineteen-forties I would meet people who wanted eagerly to know if I had met Memphis Minnie or W. C. Handy. I told them: I never spoke to, and neither had I ever listened to, these or any other caterwauling negroes. Only a generation sated on every possible sensation could make heroes and heroines of wretched drug fiends and alcoholics, most of whom died deservedly early deaths. And as for their white imitators, they were traitors to their heritage. Now I see they have put a statue of some Blind Melon in a public square and named a street after the effeminate dervish Presley. When I was in Memphis she represented the best of the South. Now, apparently, she honours the worst. Where white apes black, there Carthage has entirely conquered.

Is modern Memphis drowned now beneath a weight of Oriental
shmaltz
? Has she gone the way of the others? Have they substituted false fronts of plastic and plaster in celebration of some nostalgic never-never world where once stood impressive stone and rich marble? Those great brick structures spoke of dignified success and old wealth, of civic pride and social ambition. Her central arteries carried telephone wires, electrical current cross-hatching the sky wherever one looked. Her trolleys sang like the bells of Notre Dame and from the river her great steamers called out a lament to a departing past. Her cotton and her lifeblood were threatened by chemical silk. Once she had fed the dockers of Liverpool and the mill workers of Manchester and they in turn rewarded her. She had christened her greatest hotel after the English philanthropist Peabody whose name can still be seen on London’s Peabody Buildings. She was no provincial settlement to be destroyed by a single shift in the economic wind. She had known one great period of prosperity and now prepared for another. She would build the first municipal airport and eventually, by a mysterious historical and geographical process, would become the medical capital of the South, the home of dozens of hospitals, nurses’ colleges, clinics and research centers. A guide book might say that where her chief industry had been based on cotton now it was based on disease. My own theory concerns the curative properties of the Mississippi mud and its similarity to that found in the old Odessa limans before the Revolution. Sometimes I imagine Memphis transmogrified into a thousand featureless white skyscrapers surrounding a few acres of an idealised nigger town encased in preservative where tourists come to listen to darkies play banjoes, wailing of their miseries for a hundred dollars a day. At other times I dream nothing has changed, that I ride down Main Street just as I rode the first time. She is jammed with traffic. Horns are blaring, horses rearing, trams and omnibuses clatter and clank while frantic policemen fight to control the flow of automobiles and goods wagons.

I remember how my cabby reined in his horse with a fatalistic shrug. He said such congestion was unusual but it could never be anticipated. He suggested I walk the few blocks back to my apartment if I was in a hurry. It would soon be six. Since the cab had already been paid for, I gave him a good tip and wished him luck. I enjoyed making my way through that busy city thoroughfare. Unlike Washington, Memphis was a natural city. She had grown up spontaneously, out of the need to trade. If New York was the future, then Memphis was the familiar present. I moved amongst yelling drivers and dancing pedestrians, smiling with sheer pleasure. For too long I had known only capitals. Here at last was a city still chiefly characterised not by her ancient power, her monuments, but by her inhabitants. I did not feel overwhelmed by her. Indeed, it seemed possible to impress her. Perhaps here I could find a new starting point, as Kiev had been my first. I had been born in a city owing her existence to a river. Therefore I might easily flourish in Memphis.