Ragtime: A Novel

by E. L. Doctorow

  Once, years before, he had arranged a dinner party at his residence on Madison Avenue in which his guests were the dozen most powerful men in America besides himself. He was hoping the collected energy of their minds might buckle the walls of his home. Rockefeller startled him with the news that he was chronically constipated and did a lot of his thinking on the toilet. Carnegie dozed over his brandy. Harriman uttered inanities. Gathered in this one room the business elite could think of nothing to say. How they appalled him. How his heart quaked. He heard through his brain the electric winds of an empty universe. He ordered the servants to place garlands of laurel on every pate and crown. Without exception the dozen most powerful men in America looked like horse’s asses. But the pomposity that had accrued with their wealth persuaded them that perhaps these ridiculous vines held some significance. Not one of the women thought to laugh. They were hags. They sat on their large draped behinds, breasts drooping under their décolletage. Not an ounce of wit among them. Not a light in their eyes. They were the loyal wives of great men and the hard pull of rampant achievement had sucked the life out of their flesh. Revealing nothing of his feelings Morgan hid behind his fierce and doughty expression. A photographer was summoned to make a picture. There was a flash—the solemn moment was recorded.

  He fled to Europe, embarking on the White Star liner Oceanic. He had combined the White Star Line, the Red Star Line, the American, Dominion, Atlantic Transport and Leyland lines into one company numbering 120 oceangoing ships. He despised competition no less on the seas than on land. He stood at night by the ship’s rail, hearing the heavy sea, feeling its swell but not seeing it. The sea and the sky were black and indistinguishable. A bird, some sort of gull, appeared from the blackness and lighted on the rail a few feet from him. Perhaps it had been attracted by his nose. I have no peers, Morgan said to the bird. It seemed an indisputable truth. Somehow he had catapulted himself beyond the world’s value system. But this very fact lay upon him an awesome responsibility to maintain the illusions of other men. For his Episcopal brethren he would build a cathedral, St. John the Divine, on West 110th Street in New York. For his wife and grown children he would continue to provide an image of domestic stolidity. And for the sake of the country he would live in as grand a style as he could summon, dining with kings, or buying art in Rome and Paris, or consorting with beautiful companions at Aix-les-Bains.

  Morgan had kept his vows. He spent six months of every year in Europe, moving in majesty from one country to another. The holds of his ships were filled with collections of paintings, rare manuscripts, first editions, jades, bronzes, autographs, tapestries, crystal. He looked into the eyes of Rembrandt burghers and Greco prelates as if to find kingdoms of truth that would bring him to his knees. He fingered the illustrated texts of rare Bibles of the Middle Ages as if to pick up dust from the City of God. He felt if there was something more than he knew, it lay in the past rather than in the present, of whose total bankruptcy of existence he was confident. He was the present. He employed curators to find him art and scholars to teach him of ancient civilizations. He beat his way back through the Flemish tapestries. He fondled Roman statuary. He strode through the Acropolis kicking the loose stones. His desperate studies settled, inevitably, on the civilizations of ancient Egypt, wherein it was taught that the universe is changeless and that death is followed by the resumption of life. He was fascinated. His life took a new turn. He funded Egyptian archaeological expeditions of the Metropolitan Museum. He followed the reclamation from the dry sands of every new stele, amulet and canopic jar containing viscera. He went to the valley of the Nile where the sun never fails to rise nor the river to flood its banks. He studied the hieroglyphs. One evening he left his hotel in Cairo and rode seven miles on a special streetcar to the site of the Great Pyramid. In the clear blue light of the moon he heard from a native guide of the wisdom given to the great Osiris that there is a sacred tribe of heroes, a colony from the gods who are regularly born in every age to assist mankind. The idea stunned him. The more he thought about it the more palpably he felt it. It was upon his return to America that he began to think about Henry Ford. He had no illusions that Ford was a gentleman. He recognized him for a shrewd provincial, as uneducated as a piece of wood. But he thought he saw in Ford’s use of men a reincarnation of pharaohism. Not only that: he had studied photographs of the automobile manufacturer and had seen an extraordinary resemblance to Seti I, the father of the great Ramses and the best-preserved mummy to have been unearthed from the necropolis of Thebes in the Valley of the Kings.

  20

  Morgan’s residence in New York City was No. 219 Madison Avenue, in Murray Hill, a stately brownstone on the northeast corner of 36th Street. Adjoining it was the white marble Morgan Library, which he had built to receive the thousands of books and art objects collected on his travels. It had been designed in the Italian Renaissance style by Charles McKim, a partner of Stanford White’s. The marble blocks were fitted without mortar. A snowfall darker than the stones of the Library lay on the streets the day Henry Ford arrived for lunch. All the sounds of the city were muffled by the snow. A city policeman was stationed at the door of the residence. Across the street and on every corner of 36th and Madison small groups of men with their coat collars turned up stood staring at the great man’s home.

  Morgan had ordered a light lunch. They did not say much as they dined without other company on Chincoteagues, bisque of terrapin, a Montrachet, rack of lamb, a Château Latour, fresh tomatoes and endives, rhubarb pie in heavy cream, and coffee. The service was magical, two of Morgan’s house staff making dishes appear and disappear with such self-effacement as to suggest no human agency. Ford ate well but he did not touch the wine. He finished before his host. He gazed frankly at the Morgan nose. He found a crumb on the tablecloth and deposited it in the saucer of his coffee cup. His fingers idly rubbed the gold plate.

  At the conclusion of lunch Morgan indicated to Ford that he would like him to come to the Library. They walked out of the dining room and through a kind of dark public parlor where sat three or four men hoping to secure a few moments of Pierpont Morgan’s time. These were his lawyers. They were there to advise him on his forthcoming appearance before the House Committee on Banking and Finance then sitting in Washington for the purpose of inquiring into the possibility that a money trust existed in the United States. Morgan waved the lawyers away as they rose upon sight of him. There was also in attendance an art dealer in a morning coat who had traveled from Rome expressly to see him. The dealer rose only to bow.

  None of this display was lost on Ford. He was a man of homespun tastes but was not at all put off by what he recognized as an empire different only in style from his own. Morgan brought him to the great West Room of the Library. Here they took chairs on opposite sides of a fireplace that was as tall as a man. It was a good day for a fire, Morgan said. Ford agreed. Cigars were offered. Ford refused. He noticed the ceiling was gilded. The walls were covered in red silk damask. There were fancy paintings hanging behind glass in heavy frames—pictures of yellowish soulful-looking people with golden haloes. He guessed nobody had their pictures made in those days who wasn’t a saint. There was a madonna and child. He ran his fingers along the arm of his chair of red plush.

  Morgan let him take it all in. He puffed on his cigar. Finally he spoke. Ford, he said gruffly, I have no interest in acquiring your business or in sharing its profits. Nor am I associated with any of your competitors. Ford nodded. I have to allow that is good news, he said, giving off a sly glance. Nevertheless, his host continued, I admire what you have done, and while I must have qualms about a motorcar in the hands of every mongoloid who happens to have a few hundred dollars to spend, I recognize that the future is yours. You’re still a young man—fifty years or thereabouts?—and perhaps you understand as I cannot the need to separately mobilize the masses of men. I have spent my life in the coordination of capital resources and the harmonic combination of industries, but I have never considered th
e possibility that the employment of labor is in itself a harmonically unifying process apart from the enterprise in which it is enlisted. Let me ask you a question. Has it occurred to you that your assembly line is not merely a stroke of industrial genius but a projection of organic truth? After all, the interchangeability of parts is a rule of nature. Individuals participate in their species and in their genus. All mammals reproduce in the same way and share the same designs of self-nourishment, with digestive and circulatory systems that are recognizably the same, and they enjoy the same senses. Obviously this is not to say all mammals have interchangeable parts, as your automobiles. But shared design is what allows taxonomists to classify mammals as mammals. And within a species—man, for example—the rules of nature operate so that our individual differences occur on the basis of our similarity. So that individuation may be compared to a pyramid in that it is only achieved by the placement of the top stone.

  Ford pondered this. Exceptin the Jews, he muttered. Morgan didn’t think he had heard correctly. I beg your pardon, he said. The Jews, Ford said. They ain’t like anyone else I know. There goes your theory up shits creek. He smiled.

  Morgan was silent for some minutes. He smoked his cigar. The fire crackled. Gusts of snow blown by the wind gently spattered the Library windows. Morgan spoke again. From time to time, he said, I have retained scholars and scientists to assist me in my philosophical investigations in hopes of reaching some conclusions about this life that are not within the reach of the masses of men. I am proposing to share the fruits of my study. I do not think you can be so insolent as to believe your achievements are the result only of your own effort. Did you attribute your success in this manner, I would warn you, sir, of the terrible price to be paid. You would find yourself stranded on the edge of the world and see as no other man the emptiness of the firmament. Do you believe in God? That’s my business, Ford said. Well and good, Morgan said, I would not expect any man of your intelligence to embrace such a common idea. You may need me more than you think. Suppose I could prove to you that there are universal patterns of order and repetition that give meaning to the activity of this planet. Suppose I could demonstrate that you yourself are an instrumentation in our modern age of trends in human identity that affirm the oldest wisdom in the world.

  Abruptly Morgan stood and left the room. Ford turned in his chair and looked after him. In a moment the old man was in the doorway and beckoning to him with a vehement gesture. Ford followed him through the central hall of the Library to the East Room, whose high walls were covered with bookshelves. There were two upper tiers with promenades of frosted glass and polished brass balustrades so that any book could be easily removed from its place no matter how high. Morgan walked up to the far wall, pressed the spine of a certain book, and part of the shelving swung away to reveal a passageway through which a man could pass. If you please, he said to Ford, and following him into a small chamber he pressed a button that closed the door behind them.

  This was an ordinary-sized room modestly appointed with a round polished table, two spindle-back chairs, and a cabinet with a glass top for the display of manuscripts. Morgan turned on a table lamp with a green metal lampshade. Nobody has ever joined me in this room before, he said. He turned on a floor lamp arranged to light the display cabinet. Come over here, sir, he said. Ford looked through the glass and saw an ancient parchment covered with Latin calligraphy. That, Morgan said, is a folio of one of the first Rosicrucian texts, The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencrutz. Do you know who the original Rosicrucians were, Mr. Ford? They were Christian alchemists of the Rhenish palatinate whose elector was Frederick V. We are talking about the early seventeenth century, sir. These great and good men promulgated the idea of an ongoing, beneficent magic available to certain men of every age for the collective use of mankind. The Latin for this is prisca theologia, secret wisdom. The odd thing is that this belief in a secret wisdom is not the Rosicrucians’ alone. We know in London in the middle of the same century of the existence of a society called the Invisible College. Its members were reputed to be the very carriers of the beneficent magic I speak of. You of course do not know of the writings of Giordano Bruno, of which here is a specimen page in his own handwriting. My scholars have traced for me, like the best detectives, the existence of this idea and of various mysterious organizations to maintain it, in most of the Renaissance cultures, in medieval societies and in ancient Greece. I hope you are following this closely. The earliest recorded mention of special people born in each age to ease the sufferings of humankind with their prisca theologia comes to us through the Greek in the translated writings of the Egyptian priest Hermes Trismegistus. It is Hermes who gives the historical name to this occult knowledge. It is called the Hermetica. With his thick index finger Morgan thumped the glass above the last display piece in the cabinet, a fragment of pink stone upon which geometric scratchings were faintly visible. That, sir, may be a specimen of Hermes in the original cuneiform. And now let me ask you a question. Why do you suppose an idea which had currency in every age and civilization of mankind disappears in modern times? Because only in the age of science have these men and their wisdom dropped from view. I’ll tell you why: The rise of mechanistic science, of Newton and Descartes, was a great conspiracy, a great devilish conspiracy to destroy our apprehension of reality and our awareness of the transcendentally gifted among us. But they are with us today nevertheless. They are with us in every age. They come back, you see? They come back!

  Morgan was now florid with excitement. He directed Ford’s attention to the furthermost corner of the room where in the shadow stood yet another furnishing, something rectangular that was covered with a gold velvet cloth. Morgan gripped the corner of the cloth in his fist, and staring with fierce proprietary triumph at his guest he pulled it away and dropped it to the floor. Ford inspected the item. It was a glass case sealed with lead. Within the case was a sarcophagus. He heard the old man’s harsh panting breath. It was the only sound in the room. The sarcophagus was of alabaster. Topping it was a wooden effigy of the fellow who lay within. The effigy was painted in gold leaf, red ochre and blue. This, sir, said Morgan in a hoarse voice, is the coffin of a great Pharaoh. The Egyptian government and the entire archaeological community believe it resides in Cairo. Were my possession of it known, there would be an international uproar. It is literally beyond value. My private staff of Egyptologists has taken every scientific precaution to preserve it from the ravages of the air. Under the mask that you see is the mummy of the great Pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty, Seti the First, recovered from the Temple of Karnak where it lay for over three thousand years. I will show it to you in due course. Let me now say only that I guarantee the visage of the great king will be of considerable interest to you.

  Morgan had to recover his composure. He pulled back one of the chairs and sat down at the table. Slowly his breathing returned to normal. Ford had sat down across from him, and understanding the old man’s physical difficulties, remained quiet and stared at his own shoes. The shoes, brown lace-ups, he had bought from the catalogue of L. L. Bean. They were good comfortable shoes. Mr. Ford, Pierpont Morgan said, I want you to be my guest on an expedition to Egypt. That is very much the place, sir. That is where it all begins. I have commissioned a steamer designed expressly for sailing the Nile. When she’s ready I want you to come with me. Will you do that? It will require no investment on your part. We must go to Luxor and Karnak. We must go to the Great Pyramid at Giza. There are so few of us, sir. My money has brought me to the door of certain crypts, the deciphering of sacred hieroglyphs. Why should we not satisfy ourselves of the truth of who we are and the eternal beneficent force which we incarnate?

  Ford sat slightly hunched. His long hands lay over the wooden arms of his chair as if broken at the wrists. He considered everything that had been said. He looked at the sarcophagus. When he had satisfied himself that he understood, he nodded his head solemnly and replied as follows: If I understand you right, Mr. Morgan, you ar
e talking about reincarnation. Well, let me tell you about that. As a youth I was faced with an awful crisis in my mental life when it came over me that I had no call to know what I knew. I had grit, all right, but I was an ordinary country boy who had suffered his McGuffey like the rest of them. Yet I knew how everything worked. I could look at something and tell you how it worked and probably show you how to make it work better. But I was no intellectual, you see, and I had no patience with the two-dollar words.