by John Jakes
“Why?”
“Because I love shows. Any kind. Jugglers tossing Indian clubs. A darkie choir clapping and swaying this way, swaying that way. Our new battleships, white as your ma’s wedding dress, sailing into New York Harbor with every flag flying. Shows!”
He drank again. “A line of eight blond ponies high-kicking in a variety hall, that’s a show. Big girls with fuck-me eyes, legs this thick around, red stockings, black fringe cut low to show plenty of tit. A show!” He banged the table.
“Or how about a President of the U.S. of A., standing up to swear his oath? A show! Some poor sucker climbing the steps of a gallows for carving his sweetheart into eight pieces—a show! An orphanage burning down—fire horses and wagons to the rescue—a show! A Sioux war dance—a show! Buffalo Bill on his big white horse, blasting blue balls out of the air, bang, boom, bam, a show! Earthquakes! Typhoons! Brigades of Chink soldiers marching at the Great Wall, a show! Dear old Queen Victoria waving a hanky to ten thousand subjects, hello there lovey, bend over and kiss my tiara—the whole world’s a fucking extravaganza, and I’m the man to bring it home and show it to every poor bastard who’ll never see it for himself. Another little drink?”
Paul shook his head. He felt like the snake charmer who couldn’t look away from his cobra. Hypnotisiert! Mesmerized.
“I’m dead serious, Dutch. The flickers can fill halls as big as the Chicago Auditorium, I know it. And a camera—my camera—can go anywhere for scenery, oddities, big events. I’m going to film disasters, elections, coronations. Why, I’ll film a fucking Turkish harem by paying off the eunuchs! I’ll come out with the world’s hottest pictures! Ninety-eight Turkish delights, photographed while the sultan’s off putting the old sausage to wife number ninety-nine! I’ll tell you something else I’ll film, Dutch. War. Yessir, the bloody fields—the courage and the carnage! I’ll film right up front, where the bullets buzz, I won’t be hanging around the tents of sissy officers five miles in the rear.”
Despite the slurred words, the ranting that reminded him a little of Rhukov, Paul was excited. How often he’d touched places on the wooden globe old Frau Flüsser gave him in Berlin. Touched them, wondered about them, yearned to see them, knowing he probably never could. Here was the way.
Shadow poured another full glass of whiskey. “I can do it, kid. I have a feeling for audiences—what they like and what they’ll choke on. You know that songwriter from Terre Haute, Dresser? Writes those big hits that sell thousands of copies? I read something he said. ‘I write for the masses, not the classes.’ Well, I’m going to make flickers for the masses, not the classes. Bring on those wars! Nothing’ll race the heart and click the turnstiles like some good old American boys larruping a bunch of fucking heathens with dark skins.”
He leaped up, making Paul gasp. From the seat of the chair Shadow jumped to the kitchen table, waving his glass so forcefully, the remaining whiskey flew all over.
“Hail Columbia, here’s to Uncle Sam! The red, white, and blue! We’re coming to get you, world! With the greatest invention of modern man! The rage of the age! If you don’t think so, kiss my ass!”
Paul burst out laughing, and clapped. Shadow swayed, dangerously close to stepping off the table.
“You understand, kid, I can tell. Lew and that other dummy—nuh-uh.” He swayed more violently; shot out a hand. “Help me down before I fall down, f’Christ’s sake.”
Paul helped him. The man was incredible. He was greedy, he had a foul mouth, he had no scruples. But he had a vision. A magnificent vision Paul could see, understand, embrace, because it spoke to everything he’d ever longed for, every fool’s dream he’d thought impossible. Creating pictures. Seeing the world. Fitting into life. Knowing your purpose, your place. Belonging …
And here it was, all of it, here in a cheap, malodorous kitchen in a scabrous, rundown flat above an arcade that showed filthy pictures in one of the lewdest districts of America or, probably, the universe.
Hurrah!
With Paul’s help, Shadow relaxed in his chair. His head immediately lolled forward on his chest. Somewhere in the streets, a brass band struck up “Auld Lang Syne.”
The whiskey glass dropped from Shadow’s hand and rolled noisily over the cracked linoleum. He snored. Paul threw his arms over his head in silent joy. Seeing the vision.
Paul lay awake long past midnight, fingers laced beneath his head. It was more than three years since he’d come to Chicago. Three years in December. So much had happened. So many changes. Uncle Joe and Aunt Ilsa, Cousin Joe, the brewery bombing and Benno’s death. Most of all Julie, whom he couldn’t, wouldn’t surrender now that the whole world was opening to him.
He knew she still loved him. Being seen in society with a rich man must be something her parents forced on her. She’d admitted she wasn’t strong when they played on her sense of family duty, on the guilt they’d nurtured in her since she was small.
Come spring, when he was on his feet, he’d find a way to reestablish their relationship. He’d declare his love again. Take her back, make her his, forever.
72
Rosie
PAUL DRESSER WAS BESOTTED with her. He moved her into the Gilsey House, insisting she didn’t have to work, at least not for a while. He bought her new clothes at the Broadway stores, chiefly Lord and Taylor’s; most of his wardrobe came from a fine Broadway emporium for men, Brooks Brothers. At Park and Tilford’s grocery he bought wicker hampers full of wines and cheeses for wild naked picnics in and out of bed in his suite.
She learned a lot about him fairly quickly. That his real name was Johann Paul Dreiser, Jr. That he’d been born into a large and devout Catholic family in Terre Haute. “I turned out to be the wild roving one. I do have one brother, Thee—that’s short for Theo—who bangs around a lot writing for newspapers.”
He told her this while they were nestled in his huge soft bed with tall carved bedposts. They fell into the habit of drinking champagne and talking in bed late at night, between what Paul called going to the races. He had an enormous appetite for the races. He always knew what he wanted, this little trick, that little specialty. He was conscious of his bulk. They seldom made love in the missionary position; he was a considerate man.
When Paul was fifteen, his father, whom he bleakly described as a religious fanatic, sent him to St. Meinrad’s Seminary in southern Indiana. The school prepared young men for the priesthood. “I spent more time in the local variety house than I did in class. I lasted two years. I was already singing for my friends, playing the piano or pipe organ, telling jokes, taking pratfalls. So I joined up with the Lemon Brothers, a minstrel troupe. I developed my act and I went to the races with at least one young lady in every town we hit. I wrote my first song when I was with the Primrose Minstrels. ‘Where the Orange Blossoms Grow.’ Very forgettable, I assure you.”
Terre Haute was his base until 1880, when he left for good at age 23. But he still listed it as his place of residence. There was a big wide sentimental streak in this fat man who loved drinking and womanizing.
Rosie learned plenty about New York from Paul; far more than Buck Stopes had been able to teach her. Paul really was a king on Broadway, at least that part of it involving entertainment, Fourteenth Street to Forty-second, which was all that interested her. When the winter weather allowed, she’d tuck her gloved hands into the expensive fur muff he’d bought her and they’d stroll his favorite street. He pointed out great homes, like the Goelet mansion at Nineteenth—“You’ll see peacocks in the old lady’s garden when it’s warm.” They dined in top hotels like the Bartholdi and the Broadway Central. He showed her the important theaters: Keith and Proctor’s, Koster and Bial’s Music Hall, the fabled Tony Pastor’s on Fourteenth—yes, he’d played there, several times.
From the comfort of a hansom cab he showed her Miner’s New Theater on the Bowery, where he’d made his debut on the New York stage in ’91. “I was billed as Paul Dresser, eccentric comedian and vocalist. I knocked around a lot of thea
ters, singing, dancing, doing straight parts in farces. During the day I composed. ‘I Told Her the Same Old Story.’ ‘Just Take a Seat, Old Lady.’ Songs you never heard of. I laid siege to this town for four years until I finally broke down the walls. It’s a tough town, but if you are tough, and stick to it, you’ll break through.”
“Where do I start?”
“Miner’s has a pretty good amateur night every Friday. We might practice a couple of numbers and try you there—something wrong?”
“I was living with a man on the Bowery when I met you. I moved out and didn’t tell him. What if he shows up?”
“It’d be a long coincidence, but what if he does? I’ll be there, I’ll look out for you.”
Gazing at his smiling, confident face, she believed him.
One night they dined at the posh Hotel Metropole, up at Forty-second. Over game hen and champagne, they discussed philosophies of love. Rosie found it easy to be open with Paul:
“I’ve had some bad times. Some bad men. It taught me things. Hurt them before they hurt you, that’s my motto.”
“Present company excepted, I hope.”
“Don’t tease,” she said, fondling his cheek.
“It’s a smart philosophy, if not the kindest I’ve ever heard,” he said. “I suppose I take the same approach with most women. Not you, you’re different. So’s another girl I’ve never mentioned. A girl back in Evansville who calls herself Sallie Walker.”
“It isn’t her real name?”
“No, Annie Brice. She thinks Sallie Walker is classier. Sal’s a real lady. A straight shooter. I’ve had hundreds, and she’s the one I can’t get out of my system. Fine thing for me to tell you, isn’t it?”
“No, Paul, the two of us—we understand each other. That’s why we’ll always be friends.”
He squeezed her leg under the table. “I’m feeling very friendly right now. Hurry up and finish your dinner.”
Paul was always busy because sheet music was a growing business. He explained to her that hundreds of selections were racked and sold in department stores and music shops for fifty cents apiece. Stock was changed almost daily.
He introduced her to his partners, Pat Howley and Fred Haviland, founders of the music firm of Howley, Haviland, which occupied several floors of an office building on West Twentieth near Broadway. Two blocks south was the headquarters of the distinguished Oliver Ditson Company; Paul said the district was rapidly becoming the capital of America’s sheet music industry. “Couple of blocks north of here, there’s a stretch my colleagues have started to call Tin Pan Alley. Listen to all the pianos going strong on a summer afternoon with the windows, open—you’ll know why.”
The Messrs. Howley and Haviland were drab, courteous men who looked more like bookkeepers than musicians. Flamboyant Paul was a special kind of silent partner. The outside man, they called him. In addition to writing songs for the firm, he hunted for new composers with promising material, wheedled and charmed variety hall artists into performing new H&H songs, even passed out money to the padrones of the Italian organ grinders to assure that important numbers would get repeated plays on important street corners.
About this and almost everything else in his life, he was ingenuously candid with Rosie. Yes, he’d had syphilis. He swore he was now cured. He continued to chase women, probably would never stop. This signaled Rosie that her time as his lover wouldn’t last forever, though maybe friendship would. And he would be a powerful friend to have.
Rosie honestly liked Paul Dresser, which was unusual; with few exceptions she loathed the men who gave her sex. Paul was exceedingly generous, always handing out small loans to this “old fellow” or that “old sport” along the Rialto. He was boisterous, jovial; a popular companion of men as well as women.
He wrote religious anthems, patriotic numbers, minstrel ballads—anything saleable by the firm. He was a hard worker when the mood was on him. Sometimes he stayed up all night in the hotel suite, composing on a small pump organ of oak veneer with fancy brass trimmings. The remarkable instrument was hinged to fold up, and slipped neatly into a box that resembled a large sample case. It weighed only twenty-eight pounds, easily portable.
He had a curious, private streak of sentimentality. The first time she came upon him working at one of his “heart songs,” bent over the organ keyboard, tears, real tears, were pouring down his cheeks. She retreated quietly, so as not to disturb him. Here was a man unlike any other, she thought, amazed.
Paul organized her debut at Miner’s on the first Friday in March 1896. She sang “Daisy Belle,” followed by “Just Tell Them That You Saw Me.” Paul personally wrote the piano arrangements, suiting them to her limited vocal range.
She was trembling and terrified as she huddled in the wings, waiting her turn—third on the bill of eight acts. She followed the Four Singing Newsboys and a blackface comic who proved unpopular. His feeble jokes drew no response—except a sudden outcry from the gallery. “The hook, give him the hook.” Dozens took up the cry, stomping as they yelled.
The hook resembled a long shepherd’s crook. Paul had warned her of it, saying some ill-tempered stage manager at Miner’s had originated it years ago. She saw it used right here. The stage manager ran out with it and actually pulled the hapless comic offstage by the neck.
Rosie trembled her way through her two numbers, watching the professor in the pit wince at several of her flat notes. But she drew sustained and enthusiastic applause, and a number of lewd invitations were shouted over the footlights. In the third row, wearing a feathered and wispy pink boa, Fanny Hawkins applauded wildly and whistled through his teeth. The response was a tribute to Rosie’s looks, not her singing voice. She didn’t win any of the prizes, not even a measly one dollar for third place.
Paul consoled her in bed at the Gilsey House. They were naked in the dark, warmly nested under two down comforters. Heavy drapes were drawn over the windows to shut out the lights of the Rialto, still shining at half past two in the morning.
“About tonight,” Paul said, touching her bare thigh. “Don’t be too down. Remember what I said about hanging in.”
“I do. I will.”
“That’s a girl. Ready to go to the races?”
She laughed. “Sure. I can’t get over you.” They’d gone to the races twice since eleven o’clock.
“More champagne first?”
“I better not. I love it, but it makes me dizzy.”
“Makes you chatter like a magpie, too,” he said, chuckling.
She giggled. “I know, but with you it don’t matter.”
“For God’s sake, girl. Keep on using bad grammar, you’ll never get where you want to go in this town.”
“Don’t be sore, Paul. I keep trying to talk right. A boy I liked a lot, he told me the same thing.”
“Smart boy.”
“He was rich. But there was no chance he’d marry me. I liked him.” She screwed up her courage. “I like you, too, Paul, I really do. We’re sure a lot alike, ain’t we?”
“No. I don’t say ain’t.” It was a gentle joke. He patted her cheek. “You want another drink?”
“No.”
Beneath the comforters he stroked her legs. “I’m going to be dead on the level with you. There’s another girl I’m seeing right now.”
She was hurt, but she hid it. “I guessed. You ain’t—haven’t been here so much at night lately.”
“I’m glad you’re understanding about it. You know I’m not a marrying man.”
“Oh, I know that, yeah.”
“We need to find you another place. I’ll help you out with cash till you’re on your feet. It wasn’t a very promising start at Miner’s, but I still think we can get you a singing job. I’ll throw in a lesson or two. Introduce you to some people. But before I do—pay attention, this is serious—you need to make a few improvements. First, start calling yourself Rose. Rose French. Rosie has a cheap sound.”
“Rose? Rose. Sure. From this minute on—absolutel
y. Oh, Paul—” She rolled against him, against the soft, lardy warmth of his paunch, his hairy legs. “You’re a good man. Have all the women you want.”
“As if I could stop.”
“We’re friends, ain’t—?”
“Aren’t.”
“Aren’t we?”
“Always.”
73
Paul
PAUL CAME TO THE flickers, the living pictures, at a watershed; a time of creative explosion. Peep show machines, whether built with film loops or flip-card drums, were losing their novelty. The Edison Kinetoscope Company had tried to boost sagging sales by introducing the Kinetophone, a cabinet with long flexible listening tubes and, inside, an Edison phonograph. Pictures were roughly synchronized to tinny music. The Kinetophone failed.
In New York, Philadelphia, Paris, London, inventors and promoters rushed to perfect a projection system for living pictures. One was announced almost weekly—the Kineopticon or the Panoptikon; the Phantoscope and the Eiodoloscope; the Animatograph, the Biograph. Paul was baffled by the names, and the differences, although Colonel Shadow seemed to have some grasp of them. At first Paul couldn’t guess how he managed it. Then he took notice of the size and content of the twice-daily mail deliveries. Into Shadow’s seedy establishment came string-tied bundles of overseas newspapers; letters from correspondents on the East Coast and abroad; cheaply printed technical journals; celluloid film stock from Rochester, New York, accompanied by explanatory notes from Mr. Eastman himself.
The colonel shared every new development, usually at supper. Mary listened with a kind of bemused politeness, Jimmy Daws listened because he had to, and Paul listened avidly, trying to glean kernels of understanding from the complicated technical talk Shadow spewed forth at dizzying speed.