I approached the car. After several attempts the starting handle finally kicked in my sweating hand and the motor was running. Astrid climbed in. Her face was whiter than the moon, which now, huge in a clear, black sky, framed her head like the halo on the ikons of our old Kiev saints. She seemed genuinely terrified, but that might merely mean she feared my revenge, or the punishment of her employers. The waving hoods surrounded us. Flames took hold of the building. Her silk screens burned first, leaving black holes in the wooden frame. Red fire gasped, smoke poured into the sky and the moon grew dimmer. I had thought to see the last of the Klan. I swore I would remain in cities for the rest of my life. The countryside had never been my friend.
The man addressed as Sam wore flowing purple: a Grand Dragon. ‘We’re neither bullies nor cowards,’ he said evenly, ‘but honest, simple people fighting for what belongs to us. The Federal Government seeks to deliver our birthright into the hands of aliens. You go home, my friends, and tell your folks they know what they’re doing. Take them and all other Anglo-Saxon peoples this message: Wherever white protestants are threatened, the Knights of the Invisible Empire will strike and strike hard. You can sleep safely tonight, wherever you stay, and know you are protected. Have a safe journey, now, and come back soon, y’hear.’
Never, in that last phrase, had a tone so clearly contradicted the sentiments it expressed. I think he had warned me. I could not expect a third reprieve. I said little to Astrid as we drove away from the hissing blaze. She was full of indignation. She said we should contact the nearest police force. Then she subsided. ‘I guess they’re all part of it.’ She began to speak of contacting someone in Los Angeles, perhaps a Federal agency. ‘They had those girls. What were they going to do?’
‘I think you should try to forget it all.’ I remained distant, for this could easily be one of her best performances. ‘Everyone, from locals, like those people back there, to the President, has made it clear Japs aren’t welcome in America. If you report this you could be kicked out as some kind of political agitator.’
This allowed her to think before she said anything more. I was glad, after a miserable journey, to see the lights of Hollywood’s hillside palaces on the horizon. I dropped her off outside her 3rd Street apartment house. She said, ‘Don’t you want to come in for a while?’
‘No, thanks. You never know what you’re going to catch these days.’ I was still angry. I had been put through too much. I had been forced to draw on mental and spiritual resources properly reserved for my gas car and for Esmé. I had almost lost her, even before she arrived in New York. I had been made to cringe and lie in front of someone who might now be delighting in my discomfort, reporting the news to an envious, revengeful Jew or amused Catholic, even to Mrs Mawgan. Possibly they were scheming a new means of destroying me. Not content with her initial betrayal she might now wish to wipe out all past associates. How could I warn those Klansmen that they were being used to exploit the petty personal ambitions of greedy, corrupt men and women? It would be a blow to all they cherished. And if they already knew, one had to face the alarming implication: that America now no longer possessed any organised means of defending herself against those millions of secret enemies already scheming her destruction. Whether they were called IWW, Labour Unions, Anarchists, the Organisation of this ‘minority’ or that ‘racial group’, whether they had any specific name at all, they were all agents of Carthage. This was thoroughly proved, of course, in 1941. Then America, by rounding up the Japanese, narrowly avoided defeat from within. Zey veln komen. They will surely come again.
I drove on to Sycamore until I reached Venice Boulevard. Often I was the only car on the road. Venice Boulevard passed through forests and parkland. A few lights were visible from little settlements, office blocks and private houses set wide apart: a tribute to modern ideas of what twentieth-century civilisation could be, if carefully planned. By the time I reached Venice the amusement park and pier were shutting down for the night. A Yellow Car rattled by, the last trolley bearing tired fun-makers back to the more sedate suburbs. I turned inland a few blocks until I was on San Juan, where I had my little, unpretentious house, deeply glad to be close to the ordinary human bustle, the familiarity of a town. No matter how fantastic her surface, Venice was ordinarily lively and cosmopolitan, sufficiently like old Odessa to bring a measure of tranquillity to my troubled mind. Nonetheless, I was cautious when I opened my front door, and would have been unsurprised to see Callahan, Brodmann, or a fresh assembly of pointed hoods, waiting for me. I went straight to bed, determined to be at my best for Esmé, and for the tests which we were due to run on the car we called Pallenberg’s Experimental Type I.
Next day was Sunday. I would rather have spent time in Long Beach, seeing how work was progressing, but had agreed to escort Mrs Cornelius to the pictures. She still had not received a result of her screen test. Hever had said it sometimes took a week or two. The studio was particularly busy. She was sure however she would not be offered a contract by Lasky. Hever was already making a further appointment with MGM. There, he was confident, she would ‘knock them all out’ immediately. He had suggested Lasky first, I suspect, because he did not want his friend Goldfish to think he was merely trying to find work for some ‘bimbo’. The tycoon remained very sensitive to such suggestions and could become surprisingly angry if Mrs Cornelius’s talents were ever questioned. His investment in her was by no means merely financial. We saw Orpheus of the Storm. As I watched, my longing for Esmé became physically painful.
On 25th July 1924 we wheeled the PXI out of her shed. To all appearances she had narrowly survived a wreck, for her paint was chipped and body work battered. Underneath her hood however was my powerful experimental engine. Gas cylinders filled the spaces where the trunk and fuel tank had been; there were extra gauges on the dash. None of these were marked, but we knew they measured pressure and flow, while a bank of switches operated individual cylinders and valves. Mrs Cornelius had been persuaded to come with Mucker Hever. She seemed a trifle unhappy, as if suspecting we would all be blown up. I reassured her. The PXI was safer than a conventional car, and far more efficient. She got in, sitting on the edge of the back seat, looking around her at nothing in particular, occasionally whistling a few bars of a favourite melody, trying to remember not to smoke. Hever loomed over me, nodding as I explained the controls and instruments. Willy Ross, my young foreman, stood leaning casually with his backside against the hood, chatting to the other mechanics and enjoying the warmth of the early-morning sunshine. A mist was lifting from the sluggish waters of Long Beach harbour. Ships moaned. A few gulls strutted up and down the concrete like Pigalle hookers, as if to be admired, possibly approached with a proposition. Here and there you could catch the occasional sound of doors being opened, electric motors beginning to turn as our fellow optimists got down to working on their own future hopes: motorcycles, seaplanes, engineering machinery, boats, domestic appliances. It appeared that the whole of America, or at least her western shores, was labouring toward the technological salvation of mankind.
Under Hever’s mild but curious eyes and Mrs Cornelius’s agitated glare, I switched the automatic ignition to on. I waited for the red light to blink, then engaged the engine. It was wonderful to hear it wailing into life, shaking the whole chassis, then become a growling, urgent beast. I let go the brakes and put her into gear. Willy and our mechanics cheered. With a triumphant wave, I moved forward at speed, so elated that the car was doing everything I had expected that I forgot briefly to check for other drivers. I narrowly missed a truck and a Packard, recovered control of my roaring machine, and headed North. We sped along Roosevelt Highway with the wide Pacific Ocean on our left. The constantly growing organism of Greater Los Angeles was on our right. White towers thrust themselves from thick stands of greenery, handsome houses, set back from the road in smooth lawns, had apparently come into existence overnight; hotels and apartment blocks glittered in the soft morning sunshine. All I missed was Esmé besid
e me to share my glory and my happiness. There could be no experience more transforming than this. The ponderous Pacific, blue and white, rolled against perfect beaches of yellow sand. In the sky a small biplane circled lazily down towards Burbank and a flock of seabirds rose over Palos Verdes, turning and banking almost as one above the dignified grandeur of her piles. The colours of the morning were more vivid than ever before. The vast, untroubled city, so confident in her riches and her cultural predominance, was the finest of all possible worlds. The PXI shouted my joy. I had succeeded at last. I was vindicated. I was, within the space of half an hour, compensated for every minute, every year of my suffering and misfortune. Beside me Mucker Hever was laughing like a boy as he clung to the leather strap. The wind brought a flush to his features. His eyes were bright with dawning understanding of the car’s potential. When he glanced at me I knew he realised he had been granted one of the greatest honours known to man: that of serving Genius. We passed Venice and Santa Monica. Only as we thundered inland from Pacific Palisades, heading for the San Fernando Valley, did Hever notice, with a little less concern than usual, that Mrs Cornelius lay back across her seat, rolling her eyes. Concentrating on keeping a rein on my monster I could do nothing save smile reassuringly over my shoulder. Her skin had turned pale green. I shouted above the noise, trying to tell her it would be folly to stop the car now, so far from base. At the first opportunity, just as the blue light flashed a warning to switch to my next tank, I took the steep, twisting road which led me at last onto Sunset Boulevard. Climbing steadily between grassy hills and landscaped woods, miniature lakes and vast private lawns, we passed a dozen princely houses all in various stages of construction. I at last eased my car to a halt outside the Beverly Hills Hotel. True to form, Mrs Cornelius had thrown up on the floor. ‘Sorry, Ivan,’ she mumbered as Hever helped her out. ‘I never knew it’d go so bleedin’ farst. Shouldn’t o’ ’ad ther bleedin’ kipper, should I?’
‘Congratulations.’ Hever was distracted, trying to gather Mrs Cornelius’s limp body with his flailing arms, like someone with palsy carrying china. ‘You’ve struck a spouter there, Pallenberg. I’ll send someone out to clean the car. You must excuse me.’ The pair moved unsteadily towards the main entrance; two tired apes attempting to perform some primitive ritual dance across the blazing limestone of the patio. The car was attended to in a few minutes. I had a little trouble starting her up again on the almost empty No. 2 tank, but I had anticipated minor problems of that kind. I was soon alone with my dream, speeding past a procession of historical and geographical styles. My PXI continued to perform admirably. She took me from Old English to German Gothic and Scandinavian Gingerbread carrying me beside ordinary-sized houses built to look like medieval castles while castles were disguised as French cottages. Here in Hollywood and her immediate provinces was a combination of every city I had ever known. At one moment I could be back in my Kievan childhood, at another in Odessa or St Petersburg. I could glance from one hill to the next, where cypresses and palms and a white cupola recalled Constantinople or drive a little further down the canyons to find Sans Souci transported in quarter scale from Montmartre. Here was Ancient Rome; there Florence or, of course, Venice, and modern Milan. Otranto, Ankara, Alexandrovskaya were equally to hand. Elsewhere I could find Peking, Moscow, London and, always, Barcelona or Madrid. Berlin and Hannover and the castles of the Rhine; Arabia, India, and, suddenly, New York. Chicago, Washington and Memphis. My entire past was represented in this single city, just as my future was apparent in her wealth, tranquillity and grandeur, beneath a sun which scarcely knew a cloud. At night, under powerful stars and an overblown moon, you could smell her sweetness, her pines and blossoming shrubs, her cedarwood closets, her spice-filled pantries. All the perfumes of the world were carried in on gentle breezes; the salt of the sea, the musk of beautiful women, the glorious odours of tropical flowers. And yet, lying in a bed first built for some ruined despot, with your window open on those comforting hills, you could still sometimes hear the howling of wolves. The coyote had skulked in the rear of the Mexican expansion, establishing himself wherever a Catholic Mission was erected to the glory of the Pope. Now he loped through the little valleys and woods, drinking from Japanese water-gardens and Dutch wishing-wells, scavenging the half-eaten pheasants or jars of caviare, imported cheeses, rare delicacies borne to Hollywood in electrically cooled holds by liners from Hong Kong, Hamburg and Capetown.
Daily Hollywood created and exported fresh wonders. In return she received all the world’s riches, all her traditional marvels, all her escapes. The flow of wealth to and from this storehouse of our deepest longings was impossible to check. I luxuriated in Hollywood’s supernatural radiance; I was bathed by her healing, indescribable tides. I could again look for immortality and expect to find it. In Hollywood’s imaginative opulence, in an ambience of infinite pleasure, infinite possibility, I had grown whole again. All I lacked was Esmé. Esmé was the final missing fragment of my resurrected being. She was my soul, my muse, mayn glantsik tsil. Esmé was myself and I was she. Oh, my rose! Separated we are perpetually crippled. Together we are an angel. Und nu du komst!
TWENTY-TWO
NOW YOU COME, Esmé! Soon you shall be real again. Her engines drumming steadily, a magnificent city bears you beneath the grey Atlantic’s unquiet skies. Far below her hull are mountain peaks taller than the Himalayas, in whose inky valleys prowl dark old titans, immense and eternally hungry. These beasts are bound, by virtue of their size and gravity, to exist through lightless millennia (perhaps as many as mankind has known). These are the gods to whom Carthage would make sacrifice: the melancholy totems of an undead slavery. But the floating cities are safe, sailing high above that gloomy territory: so high as to be neither heard nor scented; beyond the imaginings of Carthage’s monstrosities.
Terrible denizens of an eternally sunless sphere they survive the heavy centuries experiencing neither love, nor dreams, nor fear; they are without sensation save their dull, perpetual greed. They cannot touch you, Esmé, in your powerful city, as inexorably she challenges shrieking elemental violence with tapered steel and carries your innocent courageous vitality, your beautiful, wondering vulnerability, home to where my arms can enfold you.
Our bodies shall soon know that specific ecstasy of two perfect souls, two halves of a single globe, conjoined at last and for eternity to burn with a silver, an all-illuminating flame; a flame containing the sum of the spectrum’s shades, the inviolable glare of diamonds and rubies blended. We shall unite, Esmé. We shall explore an infinity of facets; an abundance of sensuality, new artefacts, fresh cities and the glories of the natural world. Oh, Esmé, I lost you. They took me to the City of Sleeping Goats, where the warning fires of synagogues alerted me at last. I came to a City of Fearful Dogs, whose holy places were smeared with heathen excrement, and there I found you, restored to virgin mind. We travelled to the City of Whispering Priests, to the City of Painted Cadavers, and there I was again banished from you. Many other cities, Esmé, have informed me, seduced me, led me from virtue. But now I have found rest, here in this City of the Golden Dream, the Emperor City I thought destroyed. You will come to me in New York and I shall bear you back to the safety of these fantasies made real, where they have discovered a means of eternally banishing the nightmare. And in time, Esmé, we shall fly again. This city shall fly. Vifl iz der zeyger? Iber morgn? Eyernekhtn? Ikh farshtey nit. Ikh veys nit. Es tut mir leyd. Esmé! Es tut mir leyd! Es iz nakht. Morgn in der fri ikh vel kumen. Mayn Esmé. Ikh darf mayn bubeleh. Mayn muter.
In Anaheim the restaurant turned to black ash blowing across the endless furrows; then the concrete poured like lava over the old groves and from these ruined futures grew the antiseptic quasi-fantasy of a tran-quillised kulak class. Every year they put their pork-fed legs into Bermuda shorts and take the road to Main Street, U.S.A. Here the children and grandchildren of Klansmen earn their holiday dollars by exercising well-trained mouths and cleaned-up wholesome limbs in a ritual of p
ious good will which soon, the proprietor intends, shall be exuded by genuine robots. Twice a day, a marching band, in uniforms parodying those of Napoleonic Europe, blue, red, green or yellow, play the good old battle tunes and pink girls, sweating with the effort of their grins, grit teeth of perfect whiteness and fling ornamental staffs into the air, to catch them precisely as they fall, to spin them with terrifying skill, their legs pumping up and down, echoing the Teutonic rhythms and perhaps just a memory of unambiguous lust. They cannot fail. Thus, simplified, they shorten the odds against even the threat of failure. And Mickey Mouse, once the enfant terrible with a crooked, almost malevolent grin, now strolls through Fantasy Land in middle-aged slacks, as respectably removed from the sources of his fortune as any other exploiter of desperate slavery. There are signs, now, for Japanese visitors. And guidebooks in Japanese. And Mickey-Tees bearing ideograms in the language of that once forbidden nation. They walk on little loafer soles across the concrete to Main Street’s urinals where they piss on the buried ashes of ancestral relatives. In identical grey suits they file back aboard the buses, file from the buses to the planes, from the planes to the buses and finally home to the very latest electronic styles which fill their lives and bring twenty million babbling voices into their hearts. And for that they had a generation die? Why should I care? They flood the whole world with their hopeless instruments; they are the source of a sickness more destructive than any other form of fallout. I take the alleyways of this dirty place, this graveyard metropolis, and duck my head, cowed by stereophonic catcalls, the battle-cries of a consummate horde. Mist engulfs me. God save my mishling soul. Moyredik moyz, er has defeated me! Vu iz dos Alptraum? Vi heyst dos ort? Here is again the nightmare.
The Laughter of Carthage: The Second Volume of the Colonel Pyat Quartet (Colonel Pyat Quartet Series Book 2) Page 72
