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 centres. 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.
I dined that evening with those generous elders, Roffy and Gilpin, at a restaurant called Jansenn’s, not far from my apartment. The food was unremarkable, but it was wholesome and seemed to the taste of my hosts. They had brought a young woman with them and I thought at first, with some delight, she was to be my companion. Pandora Fairfax was a bright-eyed, dark-haired little thing with a pert, bold manner who reminded me a little of Zoyea, the gypsy girl. To my astonishment I learned she was an aviatrix. She had recently come to Memphis to give flying displays. She was now thinking of settling. She and her husband were both flyers. ‘We’ve been barnstorming all over,’ she said, ‘but we think it’s time to quit.’
Charlie Roffy beamed. ‘Your teeth are bound to get too loose after a while.’ He explained genially: ‘Miss Pandora’s most famous trick is to hang by her teeth from a trapeze fixed to her husband’s plane. She also does wing-walking and parachute jumps.’
I was extremely impressed. Miss Fairfax was attractive and entertaining. She was eager to hear my own flying stories. Where had I flown, in what type of machines? I answered as best I could. She said she envied me the Oertz (‘for all it’s supposed to be a pig’). I was welcome to take up their De Havilland DH4 if I felt like it. Touched by her generosity I said I would clamber into that cockpit in a flash if the opportunity ever came. Gilpin had already told her about the new airport and aircraft I had designed. She wanted to see my plans. ‘You may study them whenever you wish,’ I said. She and her husband were in the process of trying to establish a private airfield, but our plans were complementary. ‘The more of us the merrier at this stage,’ she said. She left early. Shaking hands with me she smiled warmly. ‘I hope we’re able to help each other out, Colonel Peterson.’
When she had gone Dick Gilpin spoke of her admiringly. She was famous all over this part of the country. She had begun adult life as a typist but had learned to fly after only a few days of office work. ‘She proved a natural. Her husband’s a War ace. You might even have met him.’ I said I could recall nobody named Fairfax. ‘A fine man’ said Charlie Roffy, offering me a large cigar. ‘And with more downright common sense than most of his breed.’
Dick Gilpin told me that, unless I objected, they had arranged for me to be interviewed for the Commercial Appeal. The paper was the best in Memphis. It might also wish to run a photograph of me, perhaps in uniform. I readily agreed. Charlie Roffy said it would help their case considerably. He asked if he could call on me at around nine the following morning. I was at his disposal. ‘I am here as your guest,’ I said. ‘And I wish only to do what will best serve our mutual interests.’
My friends dropped me off at the Adler Apartments before going their separate ways. For the first time in many months I went directly to bed and fell into a deep sleep. I dreamed of Memphis rising above the river on a silver cloud and I was the captain, steering a course over the prairies of Kansas and Dakota. Old Shatterhand, the buffalo hunter, was at my side, dressed in deerskins, his long gun crooked in his arm. The prairies will belong to the nomad cities of America again and death shall be abandoned. I could not have seen Brodmann in Memphis and mistaken him for Hernikof. Hernikof was murdered and his body desecrated on the cobbled wharves of Batoum. Why should Brodmann follow me? He was a Jew and a Communist. They would never have allowed him through. The city dips and wheels as I direct her towards the sun. I am blinded by too many reflections. What did I find in the City of Dogs that Brodmann desired so greedily? The horizon re-emerges. Saatkactir? Jego widzialem, ale ciebie nie widzialem. The dream shifts always to the West, always just a little out of reach. Surely it must stop at the sea. I am a man of courage. I can pilot the ship. I am in control. But what is this pursuit? I must concentrate. We are falling. I feel sick. Ich will nicht Soldat werden! What could Brodmann do to me? They think a piece of metal makes me their slave? I would not become a Mussulman. I am an enemy of the Sultans. Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt im Abendsonnenschein. Gibt es etwas Neues? I shall not go to Berlin.
After breakfast I found myself at the newspaper’s studios. The journalist who interviewed me said the story would be out next day. What did I think of Memphis? And the South? Both were beautiful, I said, and the people were very well-mannered. He asked me where I was from in England. Whitechapel, I told him (I almost believed I knew it, so often had Mrs Cornelius spoken of it). He asked if Whitechapel were anything like Memphis. I said it had quite remarkable similarities. The river, of course, and the numbers of darkies. The reporter wished me to elaborate. It was impossible to tell him much more than our darkies were decently behaved and worked chiefly in the docks and public conveniences, which proliferated everywhere in London: a fact frequently remarked upon by travellers. It was close enough to the truth, after all. My invention has often anticipated the actuality. The interview proved more exhausting than I had guessed and I was glad, that afternoon, to motor out with Pandora Fairfax to meet her husband. He was a tall, aquiline man whose good looks were unharmed by a couple of small scars on the right side of his face. Like many flying veterans he was not much of a talker and had a modest way with him which tended to add to his charm, as well as his authority. We agreed how terrible flying had been during the War. He had flown mainly English planes, as well as one or two French and American machines. He hoped I would stay for supper. That evening I said very little myself but drew Henry Fairfax out, or rather I asked him questions which frequently Pandora would answer on his behalf. He was from Minnesota and liked this part of the world better. The Memphians were very open-minded on the subject of flying. An air base had been sited nearby during the War and the local people had become familiar with all types of planes. He had been an instructor there briefly. I could do worse than to invest in Memphis. They were far more forward looking than was thought.
It would have been foolish to tell him I had nothing save my talent to invest. If Memphians thought I had come to put money into their city it would only make for improved
relations. The Fairfaxes asked how long I had known Messrs Gilpin and Roffy. I mentioned that we had met in Washington the previous year. Henry Fairfax was curious about my friends.
Mr Roffy had contacted them only recently. He wanted their support for the proposed airport. Some thought it could be based on Mud Island which lay out beyond the wharves. I knew nothing of this but was dubious. ‘I wonder if the island will be big enough. It makes the possibility of future expansion almost impossible.’ They agreed. ‘But land isn’t particularly cheap in Memphis,’ said Pandora. ‘There are plans for several big hotels and other buildings. You’ve probably seen some of them going up. Everyone’s saying Memphis will boom. So everyone’s speculating.’
‘We’re speculating ourselves in a way,’ said her husband.
She laughed. ‘I’d call that just taking a chance.’
Their little wooden house, on the outskirts of the Memphis suburbs, had an almost rural quality. They normally had electricity but the cable was down so they lit their rooms with oil lamps. It was a comfortable sensation to feel oneself back in the past, talking wonderfully about the future. After supper an acquaintance of theirs, another flyer, dropped by. His name was Major Alexander Sinclair. For all his honest, matter of fact manner, he was a little mysterious about the reasons for his visit. He had recently come from Atlanta. I asked him if he knew Tom Cadwallader. ‘Only by repute,’ he said. He was rather withdrawn, though evidently doing his best to be sociable. Later, after a tot of fairly good ‘moonshine’, he warmed to me. He was interested to learn I was a French airman. He was obviously relieved when the subject turned to the Catholic church and I expressed my view that the Pope had much to answer for. Only a very strong man, taking an anticlerical stand, could save Italy. He mentioned some of his own experiences in Europe and asked if I knew any of his surviving comrades. I told him the truth, that I had flown principally on the Eastern Front. I had been with the Allied Expeditionary force during the Russian Civil War. By now he had become deeply interested in my opinion of both Bolsheviks and Jews. I gave him my honest views at some length, apologising that he had ‘woken up the bee in my bonnet’. But he was enthusiastic. ‘You don’t have to hold back with me, colonel. You’re a man after my own heart.’ Had I ever thought of addressing a public meeting on the dangers of Catholicism and Bolshevism? I told him any warning I ever gave the American people would be heartfelt and based on solid experience. ‘But I am really a man of action more than a man of words, Major Sinclair.’ It was very late and I could see my hosts growing tired. He insisted on driving me back into Memphis, even though he was staying with the Fairfaxes, and I rather selfishly accepted his offer. We had taken to each other in that way people sometimes do, though culturally we had almost nothing in common. We were both, however, intellectuals who believed in ‘doing’ rather than ‘moaning’, as he put it. He dropped me off outside the Adler Apartments at two in the morning, noted my address and said he looked forward to seeing me again.
The Laughter of Carthage: The Second Volume of the Colonel Pyat Quartet (Colonel Pyat Quartet Series Book 2) Page 51
