by Ed Ifkovic
Horrible.
In the morning, exhausted, we crawled into our beds as the ship slid through calmer waters, headed to America. America! Later I found myself on deck, wrapped in a blanket, my face covered with a scarf, staring back toward Europe. Gone, all of it, I told myself. That crusty old world of the dying empire. The haughty nobility in their decorated gold carriages pulling up in front of Gerbeaud’s, the red carpet stretched out ceremoniously. Gone. The courtly manners, the exquisite protocol, the aristocratic snobbery, the dark world of privilege and dismissal. Gone, all of it. What would be left after the war? Europe picking itself up from debris and chaos and slaughter. Gone. Küss die Hand. The bowing. Gone. Would there be an Endre or Bertalan or Lajos left to remember? Gone, the world of Victoria and Franz Josef and Tsar Nicholas and Kaiser Wilhelm II. Gone.
Count Frederic von Erhlich.
Gone.
I turned to face what I imagined to be America. The sun was rising. I was going home. I thought of John Donne’s line: “O my America my new found land.” Home! No one would kiss my hand, but the cabbie in New York would snidely call out, “Hey, lady, you in or out? Make up your mind.” That made me smile. No bowing, but the hot dog vender on the corner of Michigan Avenue would drop cigarette ashes on the grilled wiener as he spread relish on it. The counter girl at Woolworth’s would ask me, “How’s tricks?” A fistfight would erupt at Wrigley Park over a baseball call. “Nuts! Attaboy!” A run of lovely American lingo. “B’gosh. Oh yeah? Get lost! Hey fella. So’s your old man. Hey, wisenheimer, pipe down!” It was the heartbeat of the pavement, the lively pulse humming from a landscape that stretched on and on. America! From the Atlantic to the Pacific.
I was going home.
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