by Dara Horn
“You have often seemed remarkably eager to betray the place where you lived your entire life,” Jacob said.
Philip glared at him, his eyes hard, unforgiving. “Jacob, surely by now you understand who I am,” he said, his voice even. “I am an American, a Jew, a businessman, and a father of daughters. For all of those reasons, my worst enemy is lawlessness.”
He removed a watch from his vest, glanced at it, and stood up. Jacob was surprised by how tall he seemed now, his stooped shoulders higher in the fading afternoon light. “Speak to my brother about the company,” he said quickly, in the efficient business voice Jacob remembered him using years ago, in a world that had since disappeared. “He will expect you at the office tomorrow morning. But I would prefer not to see you again until you’ve done what I’ve asked of you.”
He hadn’t forgiven him, of course. Philip coughed, then blinked, unable to continue looking at Jacob’s face. “I don’t care how you do it,” he said at last. “Find my daughters for me. Tell them that their father is waiting for them.”
Jacob would have shaken his hand, but Philip turned around more quickly than Jacob was able to stand up. Instead, he watched in awe as Philip walked away in the November afternoon shadows. And there Jacob saw what others claimed they saw when they looked at his own wounded body: devotion to a cause.
When he returned to New York later that week, Jacob reassured his father that Philip Mordecai Levy was an honorable man. Then he made some inquiries, and invented a reason to meet the actor Edwin Booth.
5.
AS A CHILD BEFORE THE WAR JACOB OFTEN WENT TO THE theater with his parents. His parents’ English was very good, but not perfect, and even as a boy he could see that Shakespeare was far beyond their ability. They went to the theater not to see the plays, but rather to be seated in a box just two balconies above the Astors and the Belmonts, to point out other people to Jacob and (they dearly hoped) to be pointed out by everyone else, to be part of a world that their own dead parents in their Jewish town in Bavaria could never have imagined. For Jacob’s parents, the play itself was irrelevant. They were not spectators but actors, appearing onstage before all of New York. Jacob had been an essential part of their performance. His role, carefully scripted, was to remain riveted to the action no matter how bored he might be—to sit on the edge of his seat, enthralled, to show all of New York that even though his parents spoke with accents, their child was being educated by the best English tutors and could recite all of the Shakespearean soliloquies even more perfectly than the actors themselves, regardless of how pointless such an education might ultimately prove to be for a destiny as the future owner of Rappaport Mercantile Import–Export. Jacob had played the role gladly for many years, until his escape. Now, crippled and hideous, he bought a ticket and went to the theater, for the very first time, alone. His ticket was for the opening night at the Arcadia Theater of Julius Caesar, featuring the actor Edwin Booth in the role of Brutus, the honorable man.
Edwin Booth was extremely attractive. After the war, Jacob read somewhere that he was said to have “the most perfect physical head in America.” From his seat just two rows back from the stage, Jacob could attest to it, particularly since his injury had left him with an acute awareness of the handsomeness of other men. Edwin Booth had deep brown eyes, a glamorous wave in his dark brown hair, perfectly unblemished and glowing skin, a profile worthy of a Roman god, and a stylish dark mustache that he must have refused to shave off for the role. The mustache left him looking like a modern stockbroker who had fallen through a trapdoor in time and landed in the Roman forum. Jacob listened as he declaimed his lines in a kind of deliberately vulgar vernacular, venting his hatred for Caesar as though he were spoiling for a fight in a saloon on the Bowery. As Jacob watched him outshine his more demure fellow actors onstage, he found the overall effect unnerving. It was as if Brutus were a man of modern times, invading the supposed glory of the past in order to shame and destroy it.
Julius Caesar had never been Jacob’s favorite of Shakespeare’s plays. Years earlier, when he first read them, he had loved Romeo and Juliet best, though now the thought of that particular drama disturbed him. But Caesar had always bored him. The assassination plot always seemed too obvious, the dramatic arc of honor, hypnotic evil, doubt, hesitation, conviction, sin, regret, dishonor, and retribution too predictable.
Yet this time he was startled when an ancient-looking Cassius announced, to the painfully modern Edwin Booth, that “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” And when Edwin Booth took the stage for his soliloquy, Jacob listened to his barroom drawl with rapt attention:
“Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar,
I have not slept.
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.”
The space behind Jacob’s missing eye throbbed as the words washed through his brain. The past three years, from the moment he first slipped into the barrel that brought him to New Orleans, had been a hideous dream, his entire being suffering from the nature of an internal insurrection. Jacob was surprised by how relieved he was when Brutus died. He was even more surprised at how emboldened he was when the play finally ended, when he rushed backstage to meet him.
BACKSTAGE, WHERE HE had been directed after telling one of the stagehands that he had an appointment, Jacob wandered through a series of firetraps, tiny rooms and hallways crammed with costumes and wigs that were heaped up to within inches of the lamps mounted along the walls. The little corridors were crowded with the actors he had just seen onstage, smoking and laughing while still wearing their togas. It was odd to see these Roman senators taking up their pipes—even in the presence of Caesar’s wife, whom Jacob saw laughing at something one of them had said, her dark hair flowing beautifully down her back for the role—and to watch as they stopped to stare at him when he appeared with his cane and his eye patch, invading their glamorous domain. He didn’t care. He was fascinated by everything he saw, intoxicated by a thought that wouldn’t leave him: once, a lifetime ago, this had been Jeannie’s world. Surely she had stood just like this backstage, costumed and laughing, chatting boldly with her fellow performers, charming the men with whom real life would be impossible, thriving in a world that was nothing but illusion.
At last someone directed him to a narrow door, adorned with a wooden star. For a moment, standing before that door, he hesitated, a phantom image of William Williams the Third rising before him. He gathered his courage, and knocked.
“Mr. Booth?” he called.
He expected a servant or stagehand to open the door, but instead he heard a man’s voice sing out, with great cheer, “Come in, come in, the door is unlocked!” Balancing one hand on his cane and the other on the doorknob, Jacob opened the door and entered Edwin Booth’s private dressing room.
The actor was seated on a low stool in front of a mirror, the most perfect physical head in America scrutinizing itself above a dressing table littered with combs and bottles of cologne. Two tall gas lamps mounted on either side of the mirror illuminated his handsome face. Unlike his friends, Romans, and countrymen in the common areas outside, he was already wearing a very smart suit, as though preparing for a late evening party. His toga and laurels from the production were draped over a clothes tree to his left. When Jacob entered the room, the actor didn’t turn around. Instead, he continued grinning at himself in the mirror, untying and retying his cravat.
“You’re that chap Rappaport, aren’t you, here to discuss something about the firm?” he asked. His eyes were still fixed on his reflection. He picked up an ivory comb from the dressing table and began running it through his perfect hair.
�
��Yes, I am,” Jacob said. “I do so appreciate your meeting me here, Mr. Booth.” He worked hard to sound ingratiating, sufficiently awed. “Your secretary informed me that this was the only way to see you this week before you depart for Cincinnati. I cannot thank you enough for your graciousness in accommodating me.” He took a few steps into the room, trying his best to control the thumping of his cane against the floor.
“Not at all, not at all,” Edwin Booth replied, his voice absurdly gallant. He was still speaking to his own reflection. He gave himself a smile and a wink, as though his reflection were a pretty young lady seeking his affections. At last he turned around toward Jacob, correcting his expression into a hardier, more manly grin. Then he noticed Jacob’s cane, his eye patch, and his scars, and flinched.
“Oh, my—my apologies, Mr.—Mr. Rappaport,” he stammered. People often apologized to him now, Jacob noticed, perhaps for their own two eyes and working legs. Edwin Booth had jumped up and was hiding his flinch with a rapid bow, gesturing toward the stool where he had been sitting. “Do have a seat.”
When Jacob had first learned to walk again, he had made a point of never taking seats when they were offered. But a year and a half of physical torture had transformed him into a delicate lady, at the mercy of the chivalrous. “Thank you,” he said, and lowered himself onto the stool. Edwin meanwhile jumped to a corner to retrieve an empty crate, seating himself on it across from Jacob. It was difficult for Jacob to look at his handsome face. There were mirrors on every wall, and lamps lit beside each one. Jacob glanced around the room and saw his scars multiplied thousands of times in every direction, his hideousness extending into eternity.
“You do know, good fellow, that I don’t usually like to sully myself with financial matters, any more than is absolutely necessary,” Edwin sang. He had turned away from Jacob’s ugly face again, looking back in the mirror above the dressing table and dabbing cologne behind his ears. “The firm is half mine, of course, but as you can see, acting is my true métier.” He said this with flourish, though he pronounced it “meatier.”
Jacob glanced around at the thousand perfect physical heads in the mirrors around him and thought for an instant of the immense talent of Junius Booth, Edwin’s father. A bastard is a man who forever has something to prove. “Indeed,” Jacob said.
“So what sort of opportunity do you have for me?” Edwin asked. He stretched a hand past Jacob’s shoulder to set the cologne down carefully on the dressing table, winked at himself one more time, and at last turned to his visitor again. Now he leaned toward Jacob, his hands on his knees. A thousand duplicated Edwin Booths leaned forward with him, their infinite handsomeness challenging Jacob’s infinite ugliness to a duel.
Jacob thought of Jeannie in the alley behind the jail, how she had told him that he was a terrible actor. He looked at the mirrors around the room, at the endless scars and eye patches. Terrible acting was the best he had to offer now, and his future depended on it. “An opportunity to serve the cause of liberty,” he said, summoning his actor’s voice. He reached into his pocket and held up the ring.
Edwin Booth peered at the ring, and then took it between his thumb and index finger. He leaned back, the dark mustache on his upper lip twitching as he examined the inscription inside. Jacob watched as every last drop of pretense evaporated from the actor’s handsome face.
“You got this from John, didn’t you,” Edwin Booth finally said, his voice low.
John Clarke, Jacob assumed. He had decided in advance to say as little as possible, to listen, to take the utmost care in determining the best approach. “Yes, from John,” he replied. He no longer had to worry about concealing his expression; his scars and his eye patch did that for him.
Edwin Booth breathed in, a long, deep breath, and glanced at his own reflection in the mirrors around the room. Suddenly, he jumped to his feet and threw the ring to the floor. Jacob watched, startled, as it rolled on the ground, striking the end of his cane and landing beside it.
“Listen, my friend,” Edwin hissed, in a fierce stage whisper. His whisper managed to inflict all the power and fury of a scream. Jacob winced, curling back against the dressing table behind him. Now Edwin was pacing the room, waving his arms in the air as though he were onstage. “I don’t know what sorts of rumors you have heard, but I am not part of the Order, and I never was. I may have catered to your people before, but that was merely as a favor to my brother.” His brother-in-law, he must have meant; clearly John Clarke was the one with the ring. His tone was rising, slowly approaching a roar. “And I won’t do it anymore. I refuse. The fact that my brother has become an irreconcilable fanatic has absolutely nothing to do with me. I have indulged him in the past, I know. But I shall no longer bear responsibility for any idiocy on my brother’s part.”
Now he was enraged, his glamorous face burning bright red, his furious snarl closing in on Jacob from every angle in the room’s thousands of reflections. He approached Jacob, thrusting his hands toward Jacob’s face as he ranted. Jacob ducked.
“You want me to take your gold again? Send it along to Toronto for you, first-class courier, discount rate, no commission, no questions asked? Just one more time, is that it? Just one more goddamned time, like it was for the past three times?” he sneered. “Well, I won’t do it. I won’t take any more of it. I am a free man, and I refuse. I am out of this chain of imbeciles. Out!
“Go talk to my brother and tell him I’m finished,” Edwin Booth raved. “I’ve told him myself, but he won’t listen. Clearly he prefers to continue sending along new cronies like you.” He paused for a moment, his brows pinched together, ready to explode. “No, don’t bother even telling my brother,” he said. “Tell Benjamin directly. Tell him to stop sending it. I’m finished.”
Jacob held his palm against his jaw. Benjamin?
“And tell him he’s never going to hear from me again,” Edwin huffed, triumphant. “He can send me his card when he arrives in hell.”
The most perfect physical head in America glistened in the lamplight. The actor folded his arms across his chest, caught his breath, and looked at Jacob, waiting.
Jacob exhaled slowly, observing Edwin Booth as his confident pose faltered. The actor had begun tapping his foot. Jacob was glad to make him wait, and enjoyed watching him as he became more and more nervous. He was avoiding Jacob’s glance now, a bead of sweat rolling down one of his gorgeous cheeks. Jacob leaned back and took his time as he decided what to say.
“They are expecting your participation, Mr. Booth,” Jacob told him, his tone calm and controlled. “I need to give them the receipt.” Jacob had no idea what this meant, of course. But he was willing to hope that Edwin would.
Edwin did, it seemed. He cocked an eyebrow at Jacob, then tossed his head back, each perfect hair landing back in its perfect wave. “They may feel free to expect whatever they wish,” he retorted, his arms still crossed against his chest. “It’s of no concern to me.”
“It will be of concern to you if I turn you in,” Jacob said. “I doubt that the Union authorities will share your cavalier attitude about your contributions to the cause.”
Jacob was surprised by how much he enjoyed watching Edwin’s handsome face change color. His skin faded from red to a cold, pale white, draining into a death mask.
“You would never do that,” he breathed.
“I have turned in people much closer to me, when it has been necessary,” Jacob said, his voice utterly bland. “You cannot possibly imagine the sort of devotion I am capable of. Two years ago I assassinated my own uncle, and later I turned in my own wife.” Jacob watched as Edwin shrank before him, his confident posture slouching down toward Jacob’s crippled form. To Edwin, Jacob had become precisely what his disfigured face symbolized to everyone who saw him, the visceral element in his hideousness that made everyone flinch: pure evil. Jacob smiled. “You have to be careful with devoted men like me,” he said. “I owe you nothing.”
Edwin Booth’s glamorous lips contorted into
a sneer. “You disgust me,” he spat. “All of you disgust me.”
Jacob was quite accustomed to disgusting people. He laughed. “I have explicit instructions from Richmond to send everything through you,” Jacob said. A bolt of brilliance flashed through his mind, and he seized it. “Unless,” he added, “you are willing to appoint me as your substitute.”
Edwin Booth steadied himself and nodded. His nodding continued so long that it became ridiculous, like a manic puppy unable to control his bobbing head. “A substitute. Yes. Yes indeed,” he yelped. “That’s a capital idea. Capital.” He began pacing the room, waving his hands in the air again. “Tell them I’ve got consumption. Or yellow fever. Tell them I’ve had a stroke. Tell them I’ve gone mad. I don’t care what you tell them. I’m through.”
His ranting gave Jacob time to think. By the time Edwin had thrown his hands in the air for the last time, Jacob was ready. “I can’t simply send everything along myself,” Jacob told him. “There is a chain of command in place. Benjamin would need to be informed, and to approve it.”
Had he bet right? Edwin Booth nodded again. He had. “So send him a telegram,” Edwin said, with a wave of his hand.
Half of deception is condescension, making everyone assume that one’s wisdom is above reproach. Jacob snorted, insulted. “You know that’s impossible. And even if it weren’t, he would never trust any message unless it were delivered in person.”
Edwin Booth pulled at his own cravat, glancing again at the mirrors around the room. “Then go and tell him yourself,” he said. “Surely you have a way to go back down to Richmond.”
“Of course,” Jacob said. “But I shall need you to put your appointment of me in writing, for Benjamin. Then I shall bring it to him in person, and we shall reestablish the route to Toronto.” It was amazing how many assumptions were floating in the thick air between them, waiting to be pulled out and put to use. Meanwhile Jacob thought it through again. Could he be sure it was that Benjamin?