The Americans

by John Jakes

  “That’s right,” Leo answered.

  “Well, you better git ready to swim to the depot.”

  “What do you mean?” Leo said, while Eleanor hurried toward the building.

  “When it starts rainin’ this hard, most of the streets flood out.”

  Eleanor reached the porch by the stage door. It was kept almost completely dry by a projecting roof. She shook water off her parasol. Suddenly, down at the corner of the building, she thought she saw a man standing motionless, watching.

  No sooner had she seen him than the man stepped back out of sight. Almost immediately half a dozen people appeared at the same corner, complaining about the storm. Early arrivals at the theater. Surely the man she’d glimpsed had been part of that group—

  Or had he? She remembered the fat man at the Hulbert House. Remembered his threats. Had he come hunting them—?

  No, that was too far-fetched, especially on such a bad night.

  The storm certainly wasn’t inhibiting the cabman’s desire to talk. Hunched under his umbrella, he called down to Leo, “Happens dang near every spring. Most businesses have to close up for a few days. Looks like they may be doin’ it again. Lot of folks with two-story houses are already carryin’ their rugs and good furniture upstairs. Friend of mine told me the first shift at Cambria Iron might not work tomorrow. But if you’re headin’ out early, I expect you’ll miss the worst of the flooding. What’s your next stop?”

  “Altoona,” Leo told him. She heard the impatience in her husband’s voice. Rain dripped from the brim of his rakish crush hat.

  “Well, good luck to you. Give a good show an’ don’t think too poorly of Johnstown. It’s a mighty nice place when it’s dry—which is what I hope to be in half an hour. I’m callin’ it a night.”

  He raised his umbrella in a kind of salute and drove away. Leo ran to the porch and sneezed again. Eleanor said, “Why on earth did you stand there chattering with that man?”

  “I certainly didn’t want to. But he brought us here when he could have gone home. The decent people of this world ought to be encouraged. God knows there are enough of the other kind, and they don’t seem to need one damn bit of encouragement for what they do.”

  His smile was vivid white in the gloom. He took off his hat and shook water from it. In just a few seconds, the rain intensified so that it was hard to see more than a yard or so. Protected by the overhang, they watched the downpour.

  Suddenly Leo said, “ ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.’ The people of Johnstown may want Him to make a practical demonstration of that. If I lived here, I’d pray for a rowboat—especially since I can’t swim.”

  Eleanor laughed. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. What in the world made you think of a Bible verse?”

  “Do you suppose I’m just another one of those pagan actors, Mrs. Goldman? I know several Bible verses. In two languages! I didn’t skip all the sessions of Hebrew school when I was growing up. That verse is from a psalm that talks about bad weather. ‘Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed—though the waters thereof roar and be troubled—’ ”

  “That’s certainly appropriate. But we should go in. You’re sneezing so much, you’ll probably have influenza by the second act.”

  Leo didn’t move. There was still plenty of time for them to don makeup, and he seemed fascinated by the water cascading from the edge of the roof.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a worse storm. While I was hunting for the hack, the hotel porter told me the spring flooding could be moderated if the river channels were widened. But the Cambria Iron Company wants them narrow for a technical reason I completely fail to understand. In any case, the porter said that what Cambria Iron wants in this county, Cambria Iron gets.”

  “You mean they deliberately ignore the town’s welfare? That’s despicable.”

  “I agree. But as you’ve often remarked in other circumstances—it isn’t our fight. All we have to do is give a performance and stay afloat another ten or twelve hours. Then Johnstown will be just an unpleasant memory.” He started to sneeze, jerked out a handkerchief, and held it to his nose. He sneezed anyway.

  “We’d better go in before I blow my own head off.”

  Leo offered his arm. She was happy about the noticeable improvement in his mood; he always grew more cheerful and energetic as curtain time approached.

  They turned toward the door. The man Eleanor had seen lurking was forgotten. But he wasn’t gone. He stepped from behind the corner of the building and watched the Goldmans disappear through the stage door. Then, taking a step backward, he settled down to wait—not happily, but at least he was getting paid for the night’s work. It would be two or three hours before it was over.

  iii

  Inside the Opera House, Leo immediately seemed to be his old self. He took a long, deep breath, inhaling the odors that were so familiar to all actors. Smells of lumber and backstage dust; the stale tang of old gas fixtures and the quite different smell of the new, hot electric lights that were revolutionizing the theater. He stretched, tossed his hat in the air, and caught it.

  “I think it’s going to be a damn good show tonight. Everyone will want to please those few hardy souls brave enough to come—and those who show up will want to demonstrate to one another that it was worth the effort.”

  He was right. Both Goldmans had a strong intuitive grasp of what lay behind an audience’s reaction. A fine performance was not solely due to the actors; the audience also played a part, and that was especially true in comedy. Good response early in the play spurred the cast to a greater effort. Tonight, as if in defiance of the storm savaging the city, players and audience were quickly joined in perfect interaction.

  A Night Off consisted of four acts. Before the first act was even half through, Eleanor had the exciting feeling that she was witnessing and helping to create a performance as nearly flawless as any in which she and Leo had ever appeared. Contrary to their expectations, the nine-hundred-seat Opera House was filled almost to capacity. And the men, women, and children out front recognized the extra effort the actors were putting into their roles, and the perfection with which even the smallest part was being played.

  The audience rewarded the cast with loud and frequent laughter. Lines or bits of business that never even drew a chuckle on a bad night produced a roar of mirth, and even applause. The clapping after each curtain was increasingly longer and louder. Eleanor had never known the first three acts to fly by so fast.

  She played Nisbe, one of Professor Babbit’s daughters; it was a choice role. By the middle of the last act, Nisbe was about ready to succumb—with all due propriety—to Jack Mulberry, the young British actor with whom the convoluted plot had romantically involved her. Mulberry was a favorite of producer Snap, because he was the only leading man Snap had ever employed who owned eight suits of clothes—thus making it possible for Snap to stage “society plays.”

  Snap’s career was in ruins by this point in the comedy. But thanks to a convenient coincidence, he found a new post as manager of a London theater which just happened to be owned by Mulberry’s long-lost father—with whom he was of course reunited before the final curtain.

  It was a complicated and nonsensical play, but well written, and the audience loved it. Snap’s dialogue in the fourth act gave Leo a chance for a bravura performance. Tonight he took maximum advantage of that, drawing spontaneous applause when he made a flamboyant exit just minutes before the end of the show.

  He caught an admiring glance from Eleanor as he swept offstage. The stage manager squeezed his arm. “Grand, Leo. Just grand.”

  “Thanks very much,” he whispered. On the other side of the flats representing Babbit’s study, dialogue produced another explosion of laughter. Leo pulled out his handkerchief and carefully dabbed his warm forehead; he didn’t want to wipe off greasepaint.

  Rather than wait in the wings for his final entrance, he decided to catch a breath of air on the
protected porch. He tiptoed away in the dark, ignoring the stage manager’s anxious glance. Leo knew he had plenty of time. About five pages of dialogue had to be played before he came onstage for the last time.

  He stepped outside and immediately regretted it. Wind drove the rain into his face with unexpected force. He turned, reaching for the doorknob. Just as he did so, there was a sudden movement in the shadows a few feet beyond the porch.

  “Someone there?”

  Almost as he said it, he saw the man. He wore a slicker and a slouch hat and came striding out of the dark along the side of the building. Leo was surprised but not alarmed—not until the man jumped to the porch. Leo backed away quickly, trying to see the man’s face beneath the hat brim.

  In a rough voice the man said, “Didn’t expect you to come out so soon, sheeny. You stayed in Johnstown one night too many.”

  Astounded, Leo could only think, The fat man hired someone. He actually hired someone—

  Then there was no more time for thought. The other man yanked something from under his slicker.

  “Let’s see how the audiences like your looks after this, Jew boy.”

  The man’s right hand streaked toward Leo’s face, fingers clasped around the broken neck of a bottle.

  iv

  Leo didn’t jerk his head back fast enough. The jagged glass missed his eye but raked the skin below. He grabbed his assailant’s wrist, smelling tobacco and liquor. The man lunged one way, then the other, shaking him off. Leo’s left shoe slipped on the slick porch. He almost fell. He twisted on his left heel as he righted himself. Pain shot from his ankle all the way up to midcalf. He held back a groan and rammed his right knee into the attacker’s midsection.

  The man bent over, gasping in pain. He dropped the neck of the bottle. Leo caught it and slashed upward. The man howled and clutched the underside of his chin. He stumbled off the porch and fell on hands and knees.

  The stage door opened suddenly. The doorkeeper stuck his head out. “Who the devil’s makin’ all the racket?”

  The man in the slicker was floundering in the mud. Leo started for him. But his injured left leg betrayed him. He would have pitched off the porch if he hadn’t grabbed one of the roof posts.

  The attacker regained his feet. Blood ran between his fingers as he held his chin and staggered toward the corner of the building where he’d first appeared. He vanished there, leaving Leo clinging to the post and taking out his frustration with loud profanity.

  He wanted to run after the man but he knew he couldn’t. He’d need all his strength just to finish the play. The stage manager appeared, pushing the doorkeeper out of the way. “Leo, where the devil have you got to? Your entrance is coming up—God above.” He gulped at the sight of blood leaking from the cut below Leo’s eye. “Are you all right?”

  “Splendid!” Leo snarled, trying to favor his left leg as he pressed his handkerchief against the gash. He hobbled back inside and in half a minute stepped onstage, dizzy with pain and sweating under the greasepaint that was now streaked and smeared.

  CHAPTER V

  STRANDED

  i

  LEO CAME ONSTAGE WITH the kerchief pressed to his bleeding cheek. His limp was clearly apparent to the audience. But his entrance and the final curtain were separated by just fifteen short speeches, and he kept the play’s momentum going by sheer will. He ignored glances of consternation from Eleanor while he announced that the disastrous premiere of Professor Babbit’s tragedy had been saved at the last moment by quick thinking on the part of Mrs. Snap, a character never seen in the comedy.

  “When she saw that your piece was irretrievably damned— ”

  He paused for a beat, just long enough to allow the professor and all the others onstage to register astonishment. Earlier in the act, Babbit had been misled into believing his play had turned out well after all.

  “In the second act, she—” Again Leo paused deliberately.

  “Well?” exclaimed the actor playing Babbit “Well?”

  “She dropped your tragedy altogether and substituted in its place—”

  “What?”

  Leo summoned all his energy for the curtain line. “A Night Off!”

  A cannon burst of laughter greeted the unexpected twist. The curtain came down to the beginning of applause. Leo heard voices all around him—Eleanor’s most clearly.

  “What in God’s name happened to—?”

  “Places, take your places!” the stage manager yelled from the wings. “Here we go with the call.”

  Up went the curtain. Leo fixed a smile on his face, joining the others in a line stretching across the stage. In unison, they bowed slowly into the blaze of the incandescent footlights.

  When he leaned over, he was afraid he’d fall. He clenched his teeth and came upright again. Pain was scorching the wrenched muscles of his left leg. But he managed five more calls before Regis Pemberton personally grabbed the ropes and lowered the curtain for the last time.

  Pemberton had been told about Leo’s injury while he was counting box office receipts in the office. Now he rushed to Leo’s side, joined by Eleanor and the others. They all wanted to know how he’d gotten hurt.

  “I made the mistake of going out for some air,” he said, his voice weak all at once. “One of the local Jew baiters was waiting with a piece of broken bottle.”

  “I thought I saw someone when we came in!” Eleanor said. “Here, darling, lean on me. You look dreadful.”

  “Perfectly—all right. Perfectly—capable of standing.” It wasn’t true. His head was clanging like a fire bell, his left leg was threatening to collapse again, and all at once he was sure he was hallucinating. The walls of Professor Babbit’s study were rippling and swaying—

  He realized it was only the scene shifters. They were already starting to strike the set.

  “I’ll get a doctor,” Pemberton said to Leo. “I’ll see that he comes right to your hotel. I’ll also get the police on the case. These small-town simpletons can’t mistreat a member of a Daly troupe and get away with it. Do you know the identity of the man who attacked you, Leo? Was it that fat German Eleanor told me about?”

  “Didn’t see the man’s face.” Leo limped upstage toward an upholstered chair. “I’ll bet it was someone the German hired. The man wasn’t expecting me outside until the play was over. I took him by surprise. Otherwise he might have done a better job.”

  He sank into the chair and took deep breaths. Pemberton growled another promise of swift action by the police. Leo shook his head, a glazed look in his eyes.

  “No use, Regis. The police won’t—find either of them. Not on—a night like this.”

  “Well, it’s a wretched piece of business, just wretched,” said the rather prissy young actor who played Jack Mulberry. “But you were splendid, Leo. A trump to the very last.”

  Eleanor knelt beside her husband. He was growing groggy. His right hand slipped off the chair arm. The crumpled handkerchief touched Eleanor’s white sleeve and stained it red. Unconcerned, she took the handkerchief and gently wiped blood from his cheek.

  No longer fully aware of what he was saying, Leo muttered to the young actor who’d complimented him, “Thanks, Tom. This audience—deserved—”

  Before he could finish, his head lolled over and he fainted.

  ii

  The custom of performing an afterpiece was nearly gone in the American theater. So when A Night Off rang down its final curtain at ten thirty-one—five minutes later than usual because of all the laughter—the show was over. It took half an hour for a police wagon to arrive. Leo was placed on a stretcher and moved to the Penn Hotel in the wagon. Eleanor rode with him.

  Pemberton conferred with a detective from the Johnstown force. As Leo had predicted, the effort was wasted. An hour’s investigation by the police revealed that the fat man had paid the Hulbert House the day rate and left with his sample cases shortly after six that evening. The hotel management knew little about the man. The register said his name
was Kleinerman, and that his home was Baltimore. He had told a dining room waiter that he was a traveler specializing in ladies’ and gents’ stockings.

  But there was nothing to prove he’d hired some local thug, the detective said to Pemberton when the two met again in the lobby of the Penn. Leo hadn’t gotten a clear look at the attacker, so that closed the matter. Pemberton was disgusted but could do nothing.

  The manager sat down to wait for Eleanor. The hotel’s elderly porter and the night clerk were rolling up the lobby carpet when she finally came downstairs a few minutes after midnight, followed by the doctor. He gave Eleanor a few last words of instruction, fastened his cape overcoat at the collar, picked up his satchel and vanished into the storm.

  Pemberton stood waiting. A damp, wrinkled Pennsylvania Railroad timetable stuck out of his pocket. Eleanor walked toward him in a dispirited way. She was exhausted.

  “How is he?” Pemberton asked.

  “Asleep again. He woke up when we put him in bed. The doctor gave him a draft that should help him rest till morning.”

  She sank down in an old chair. The lobby had an eerie air. The two men working silently to remove the carpet seemed like specters under the old-fashioned gas chandeliers.

  Eleanor’s dark eyes drifted to the front entrance. She frowned. An inch-wide stream of brown water was trickling between the door and the sill. The water carried bits of mud and refuse. It was already a foot into the lobby.

  “My God, Regis, look at that.”

  Pemberton turned, as did the young night clerk. As they watched, the stream widened and lengthened. Gaslight reflecting on its surface made it resemble some primitive form of life that kept changing shape, its growth out of control.

  The night clerk didn’t take the sight as seriously as his guest. “Don’t worry, ma’am. We get water in here most every springtime.”