The great liner in all the glory of her scintillating brass and chrome, her white, jet and scarlet livery, still quivering from her journey, now dwarfed even the three-storey embarkation sheds to which her gangplanks stood ready to carry the first flood of passengers. There was a general rattle and clatter, great thumps and clangs. Sailors and dockhands shouted to one another, hawsers and chains were flung in expert loops, the securing blocks slammed into place: the stink of oil and smoke mingled with the sharp ozone from the sea, and I knew that I was not too late. The passengers were only now coming off the ship. A line of customs and naval officers strolled down the main gangplank casually giving the signal for the ropes to be clipped back. The first passengers, hastily refreshed, peering down into the sheds for sight of their friends, began to emerge. With Jacob Mix in pursuit I ran to a door in the fence facing the main street and banged on it for some while until it was opened by a uniformed guard whose angry questions were couched as unpleasant rhetorical oaths. ‘What motherfucking son of a bitch bastard of a camel’s whore is making all that noise?’ I told him I was late and needed to go straight through to the ship. He laughed in my face. ‘Even the VIPs can’t do that without my say-so.’ He seemed to have spent the worst of his rage already. With some dignity I informed him that I was a man of considerable substance; my appearance was entirely due to unfortunate circumstances. He laughed again and asked in that case who Jacob Mix was.
I put a defensive arm around the negro and told the arrogant official that Mr Mix was my valet. At which point, no doubt shamed by his misreading of my status, the fool slammed the door rather than apologise. I accepted a pull from the bottle the negro handed me. ‘I ain’t your valet, Max,’ Mr Mix pointed out as I ran alongside the fence, turning the corner to the main entrance of the sheds where a large sign proclaimed ARRIVING PASSENGERS. But this entrance was also guarded by another corpulent individual in the company uniform who, below a purple nose, sported a moustache like a hunter’s trophy. He stepped forward as we made to enter. ‘And what would the likes of you gentlemen be wanting with the First-Class passengers?’
‘One of those passengers, my good man,’ I told the beefy mick, ‘is my future bride. It was my money which paid for her ticket. Do not be deceived by my appearance.’
‘It ain’t so much your appearance as your smell.’ Theatrically the cretin waved his hand in front of his nose. ‘On your way, boys. You won’t pick up a hand-out here. And there’s regular porters to carry people’s bags as wants them carried.’
‘My fiancée is on the ship,’ I said levelly.
‘And his, too?’ The guard indicated Jacob Mix. ‘This ship sailed out of Italy, not Cape Town. Go on away now, boys, and don’t give me a hard time, or I’ll have to get tough with you.’
‘You are uttering nonsense.’ I controlled my mounting hysteria. So little sleep and food, so much pain, so much ill fortune, had begun to affect my mind. ‘I warn you again—you’ll lose your job if you don’t let me through.’
‘More likely lose it if I do.’ He dismissed us. ‘I’ll take my chances.’
I could see the women in their brilliant silks and furs, the men in their beautifully cut Continental suits, laughing and calling as they descended to where the customs people gave respectful attention to the occasional valise. I sought my Esmé, but she was doubtless shyly hanging back, hoping to catch sight of me from the rail. My mind was filled with the image of a frightened, bewildered little girl, so desperate for one reassuring glimpse of her beloved. I pushed through the gate, towards the barrier where others awaited their arriving friends. Suddenly I was grabbed by my hair and coat, hauled backwards while Jacob Mix pleaded with the man to release me. ‘You can see the poor bastard’s had a hard time.’
But there was no pity in that officious oaf’s un-Christian heart. By now the first passengers were coming through, stepping into waiting private limousines. Others hailed eager taxis. My Esmé must certainly come through to the street. We should eventually at least be together, but until then I could imagine the anxiety, the uncertainty she might already be feeling.
I shall never cease to curse that fat commissar and his appalling arrogance. Had I known how his actions would change the whole course of my life, I think I might have risked arrest and murdered him. Ferbissener? Can I blame myself? Surely not. I was no schnorrer. I was a mere pisher. Come with me now, Esmé, there is still time.
I tried once more. ‘Please, sir, will you listen! I am a man of substance. Do not be deceived by outside appearances. I can explain how I came to this. The story begins in Hollywood, California—’
‘You said it, Jerusalem!’ sneered the swaggering kocheleffel. And produced a monstrously phallic club from within his costume.
Then I saw her! O, Esmé, meyn naches. I am coming! The vision in my heart was suddenly a reality. She glowed with an unreal radiance like some ambassadress from the Land of Dreams. Her hair, short against her head in the latest fashion, shone like black fire. And she moved naturally with exquisite lively grace.
I had not deceived myself. She was everything I had imagined, everything I remembered. ‘Esmé!’ She was passing through the barrier to where the cars were drawn up. ‘Esmé. My darling. Here!’ She was going the wrong way. Jacob Mix made some ridiculous suggestion—that perhaps this was not the goddess I had described! I ignored him. ‘Esmé! I am here!’
She turned at last and I was sure she recognised me. Then her attention was taken by the crowd and I was shouting once more. ‘Here, my beloved!’
A shadow passed between myself and my wife-to-be (a great camel-hair overcoat, a wide panama, a cigar and a cane) and she was gone, spirited into a massive yellow and black Rolls-Royce.
‘Esmé!’
‘I guess she’s found herself a new beau.’ Mr Mix tugged at my coat. I informed him coolly that white girls were not so promiscuous with their favours. In a sudden change of mood he left me. I saw him speak in a placatory tone to the guard. I was not interested in what he was saying. As the Rolls-Royce turned into the main street, I began to run after it. My weariness caught up with me. I stumbled, fell forward, and lay soaking in an oily puddle as I watched the car bear my darling up towards the elevated road.
She must think herself deserted! She had turned to a stranger for help. What kind of stranger? A whoremaster? A gangster? Some unscrupulous Levantine ‘theatrical agent’? There were a thousand possibilities. My stomach churned and bile rose in my throat as I got to my feet to discover that Mr Mix, at any rate, had not deserted me. I apologised for my remarks. It is bad form for a white man to use his superior social position to insult a negro. I have always held to this. Yet that Cornelius girl still laughs at me and calls me a bigot. What must I do to convince her? Put on the boot polish and sing ‘Mammy’?
Mr Mix told me that my behaviour was understandable in the circumstances. Once he, too, had had a sweetheart whom he had last seen ‘loungin’ with her legs wide apart in the back seat of Paul the Pimp’s Doozie.’
I said, with mild astonishment, that my fiancée was scarcely the sort of girl to be found in such circumstances. Believing herself abandoned, Esmé had clearly turned to someone else for help.
The man owned a car. He was obviously rich. Somehow I would find out who he was and track him down. Suitable explanations would be made, I would be reunited with Esmé and all would return to normal.
‘His name’s Graham Meulemkaumpf the Third and that car was taking him across town to Grand Central.’
‘The station?’ I was aghast.
‘That’s her. This guy’s based in Chicago. He’s in cattle.’
‘A cowboy! My angel with a cowboy?’ What other horrors were in store for me? Even when Jacob Mix explained how the guard had told him that Meulemkaumpf owned the Rolls-Royce and was one of the richest men in the Midwest, I could not rid myself of that terrible image.
Not two seconds upon the American shore and my sweetheart had been abducted by a buckaroo! It was everything a European mo
st fears when he sees his relatives take ship for the United States. How could such a thing happen to me, who had worked so hard for his new country, who had identified himself entirely with its most idealistic causes? (God was testing me, but then in the arrogance of my youth, I did not understand that.) Me he perdido.
Unable to pursue the car, I determined to discover the address of its owner. First, however, I would need funds. I told Mr Mix to accompany me to the Western Union office at Pennsylvania Station. ‘What are you going to pay with, colonel?’ he asked me. ‘Red gold?’ Anxious to save breath to make the run over to Seventh Avenue as rapid as possible, I did not answer, but I had already determined that I would cable collect asking Mucker Hever to wire me a couple of hundred dollars. The busy traffic of downtown New York City was meat and drink to me, I breathed it as another might inhale the wild movements of the pine forest, but that morning, dazed by all my disasters, I was helplessly gripped by a nightmare. I do not recall how we reached the Western Union office and pushed through the smart glass doors to join the waiting line.
No doubt again I have Mr Mix to thank. Did ever a man deserve such noble loyalty?
As my turn arrived I produced a business card which had not received too much of a soaking and handed it to a Neanderthal clerk who eyed us with considerable distaste and asked us to wait at one side. Ah, how easily we fall when we lack access to a simple suit of well-cut clothes!
When he returned, his first question, almost inevitably, was ‘How do I know this is you?’ Patiently I explained that my servant and myself were set upon in the railroad yards of Wilmington, Delaware and robbed of everything. By use of our wits we had arrived at our destination, only to be thwarted by an officious know-nothing who had managed successfully to separate me from my betrothed. ‘Even now she is disappearing into the clouds of the upper elevated in some outlaw’s coupé!’ I was an inventor employed by Hever of Los Angeles. The card proved that much. I searched through the pockets of my waistcoat and trousers for proof of identity but could find only a half-ticket issued by Western Aviation Services. ‘Call the police in Wilmington. They know me. They arrested the pilot of this plane. I was travelling on it. There was some question of bootleg liquor.’
‘Nothing to do with Mr Petersen,’ said Jacob Mix from behind me.
‘I was innocent, of course.’ I realised as I spoke that if Mr Mix had been with me, he would have had to have ridden on the top wing. I tried to play down this unnecessary piece of confusion. ‘Had it not been for the fortunate arrival of my valet here, I should be dead in the freight yards by now. Simply cable to Mr Hever and ask him a question. He knows me.’
‘And who’ll pay for the cable?’ the anthropoid wished to know. Meanwhile others behind us, all with urgent business, were calling out for us to move on. At this, quite justifiably, I lost my temper. I raised my voice, I must admit. I began to curse the clerk and the company and all its customers. I always find myself speaking a mixture of Russian and Yiddish on such occasions, perhaps because I learned bad language first in Odessa, amongst the polygenetic young criminals of the Slobodka drinking dens where I had enjoyed my salad days. I had not learned then what I later learned of the perfidy and cunning of the Jew. I knew only his charming side in those days. I have always said that I was born without prejudice. What people choose to call prejudice is simply the very opposite. It is common experience. I mean no harm to any individual of any race. I am a man of infinite tolerance and sensitivity to the feelings of others. How could I not be? I have been in their position. I know what it is to have a mind and a heart yet to be treated as a beast. I am lucky enough to have brains and talent and good looks. These things have saved me from at least a permanent life of despair and poverty. Not all are so fortunate and it is our duty to care for them. But this does not mean setting them on pedestals or promoting them over better-qualified people! Society is a compact between millions of individuals. Lines have to be drawn somewhere. This is what they understand in South Africa.
At some point in my argument with those jacks-in-office Jacob Mix had disappeared. I could not have blamed him for making himself scarce. If they were prepared to humiliate a white man as badly as they humiliated me, there is no telling where he might not have finished; perhaps at the end of a rope. My faith in the decency of human nature was badly threatened by that terrible experience. I found myself outside the Western Union office in the company of two policemen warning me that if I made a further nuisance of myself I would be thrown into jail as a vagrant. I set off back towards the docks with the vague idea of picking up Esmé’s trail at the ships’ offices. A few moments later I was joined by Jacob Mix who grinned at me and, as casually as if we were passing acquaintances on the street, enquired where I was going. When I told him, he shook his head. ‘Why waste time? Her train’s just about to leave for Chicago.’ He had telephoned Meulemkaumpf’s New York number and learned that the millionaire had already boarded the 20th Century Limited. The Pullman was due to leave within minutes. I remember my dash up the Avenue of the Americas as a blur. Mr Mix followed, panting. The cops, he said, were still on our tail. At last I ran into the sunbeams and shadows of the station, was sighted by the two policemen, sprinted towards the 20th Century’s wrought-iron boarding gates to be caught between this barrier and the cops in time to hear the confident gasps of the mighty silver locomotive as she began her journey West. He perdido mi rosa! He perdido mi hija.
‘Esmé!’ I was sure she would hear me somehow through the voices of the departing travellers, the squeal of the pistons and the clatter of the metal. ‘Esmé!’
A loud commotion from the other side of the station, a sudden yell from a stall-holder, made the policemen hesitate. I saw Mr Mix signalling to me from the far exit and I dashed towards him. How ironical, I reflected, that I, Colonel Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, late of the Don Cossacks, perhaps the last scion of an old and aristocratic Russian line, should find as his only friend in New York a humble darkie. I knew a little humility myself at that moment. God speaks to us in strange ways, sometimes, and sends us help in even stranger guises. If nothing else, this is what I have learned over the years.
‘How are we to get to Chicago, Mr Mix?’
‘There’s only one way I know,’ ironically responded my dusky comrade.
So, in Jacob Mix’s company, I plunged again into that seedy wilderness, that unmapped land of despair and hopelessness which is home to the railroad bum. Three nights later, as we neared Chicago, with my beard and my chills, a nose that would not stop running and no means of finding a little cocaine to take away the worst of the symptoms, I was not to be recognised as the gifted teenage genius whose final dissertation in Petersburg had brought an entire college to its feet applauding my precocious and sophisticated vision of an Earthly Paradise which, with a little sense and good will, could so easily have been made a reality. Instead, what is this? I have become a gendzl again. Gey vays . . .? Es dir oys s’harts. Es dir oys s’harts, Esmé. That meshuggeneh hint!
I am back in the cattle car!
THREE
HOW RICHLY IS CONFORMITY and mediocrity rewarded! I am reconciled now, but as a youth I was constantly shocked by examples of that truism. Reduced to nothing, I was again forced to rely on my wits. I am not ashamed of this. I have nothing to hide. This does not mean I never valued my privacy. Dame Gossip makes such capital of a few sensational speculations! Who can afford to offer her so much as a thimbleful more material? Only once, after we had reached Chicago and learned from a newspaper that, irony of ironies, Meulemkaumpf, and doubtless my darling, had already left for Los Angeles, did Jacob Mix ask what I considered to be an impertinent question about my fiancée. I was forced to silence him immediately. I was in no doubt that Esmé had prevailed upon Mr Meulemkaumpf to escort her to California, trying to find me at the address I had given her before she took ship. This irony did not outweigh the urgency of the situation. I had to get to her as soon as possible. What would they tell her? That they had last heard o
f me being arrested for bootlegging and that my bits and pieces had been discovered amongst the effects of a few vagrants? She might think me dead, run over by a freight train as I desperately sought to reach New York. What would she do in her grief? The thought was horrifying. I was reminded of what my other Esmé had done. Lost, believing herself betrayed, she had become the whore of anarchists too depraved to dignify by the noble name of Cossack. She had been fucked so many times, she said, she had calluses on her cunt. She had become the plaything of my worst enemies. I could not force from my mind the picture of my sweet child innocently seduced by the evil words of some neo-Klansman, the kind who had already sworn to be revenged on me. What sweeter revenge is there than to rape the victim’s most treasured possession? I already knew much of human evil. I had seen virtually every aspect of it, especially during the war against the Bolsheviks. I did not think my sanity would stand another experience of that kind.
Some of this I confided to Mr Mix, who seemed to suggest that the chances of a situation recurring so exactly were remote. ‘Because a brick once dropped on your head don’t mean you’re the kind of man who has bricks drop on his head.’ I must admit I found his simple wisdom calming, and perhaps my liking for the negro was based on the man’s peculiar ability to help me regain my reason when, as many highly strung creative people find, I temporarily lost control of myself.
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