The Laughter of Carthage: Pyat Quartet Page 8

  At first I was frightened by the threatening letters in which mad people offered to kill or maim me in a hundred ways, but Mrs Mawgan laughed at them. This was, she said, ‘par for the course’, a sure sign I was ‘putting it across’. When a gun was fired from the back of a hall in Baltimore, the bullet chipping moulding in one of the stage’s pillars, covering my suit with plaster, she assured me it was for the publicity. The gun had been fired by a Klansman, to make sure the newspapers had a good story and thus reported my speech. I was hugely relieved. We laughed about the incident a great deal. When a similar shooting took place in Wichita, Kansas, I was able to brush it off easily, with a smile and a joke, and thus impress my audience with my cool nerve, even though the plan went slightly askew and the local woman who was introducing me received a minor shoulder wound.

  This unfortunate event, however, in comparison to the other fly in our otherwise idyllic ointment, was nothing. As well as malevolent fanatics, Bolsheviks and foreign born agitators who tried to disrupt certain meetings and were handled firmly by Mrs Mawgan’s people, I had to contend with Brodmann. I saw him the first time at Union Station in Chicago while I was changing trains, bound for Cincinnati. His hands in the pockets of a leather coat, his broad-brimmed hat hiding his eyes, he stood in the shadows of a stone archway, next to a tobacco kiosk. He stared at me but made no attempt to follow. I suppose it had been easy enough for him to pick up my trail from Paris. The Chekist seemed to be playing his own game. I was never to determine the exact rules. Perhaps he hoped to unnerve me. I did in fact become edgy, wondering how many agents he might have on the train. Happily Bessy Mawgan was always conscious of security and only staff entered our compartment. The second time I saw Brodmann was as we waited at a St Louis intersection. Suddenly his hatless, malevolent face was glaring from the window of a passing trolley car. Thereafter he kept himself better hidden or possibly lost the pursuit. Nonetheless I continued to feel I was being spied upon. At last I accepted the fact without letting it affect me too badly. My mission was more important than Brodmann’s ridiculous personal vendetta. We warned them and many heeded, but America as a whole had fallen asleep. By refusing to admit her interdependence with Europe she became euphoric. She ignored her role in international affairs; abstractions proliferated. The result was a disaster. America had taken me to herself, I shall not deny. She was generous in those days before the Zionist coup of ‘29. I did everything I could for her.

  I spoke in towns called Athens, Cairo, Rome and Sparta. I spoke in St Petersburg, Sevastopol and Odessa while behind me came efficient Klan recruiters, signing new members wherever I passed. I still wrote regular letters and postcards to Esmé and Kolya, but only Mrs Cornelius responded to my notes. She was in a successful theatre troupe. What they called ‘concert parties’, she said. She worked chiefly in the chorus, with the occasional chance to do little solos. The manager was a dear. He thought they should try American where English shows were catching on. There wasn’t much chance of that, but you never knew. She might yet be looking me up wherever I was. I wrote to say how pleased I was for her and asked if she would do what she could to trace Kolya and Esmé. I said my own ‘stage career’ was going well. In those months of 1922 it was easy to believe Chaos had been successfully contained. Everywhere the Klan flourished. Washington listened to us. President Harding extended the immigration restriction act. In Italy Mussolini gained prominence, standing firm against the Pope. But I suppose the signs were there to be read if I had wished to see them. Socialist Germany hobnobbed with Bolshevik Russia and Turks defeated Greeks at Smyrna, allowing Mustafa Kemal to declare himself ‘President’. Rome seemed to have the upper hand in the Irish Civil War. Harding, weak from poison, tried to make railroad strikes illegal and was ignored. Carthage came seeping in, for the dam had rotten foundations. Mrs Mawgan told me miners had beaten, shot and hanged twenty-nine strikebreakers in Illinois. This at least provided fuel for my oratory proving my prophecies. Still the Klan gathered strength, ever ready, with all its courage, to stem the flood. Klan-endorsed candidates won in the Texas primaries. Thousands of hooded members pledged allegiance at mass klonvocations, under fiery crosses a hundred feet high! Labour racketeers controlled Chicago. The Klan worked tirelessly, night and day, to destroy them. It struck decisively at bootleggers and vice-tsars. All evidence showed the battle was to be ours. In Major Sinclair’s airship I flew from Houston to Charleston, incognito because it was still thought unwise publicly to identify myself with the Klan. I flew in a variety of other machines, but never stopped planning for the day when my own gigantic passenger aircraft would mount the skies. Daily it seemed my opportunity drew nearer. Newspapers reported me nationwide. British Prof Predicts Great American Tomorrow, they would say, or Air Ace Warns Bolsheviks Imperil USA. With this recognition I had every reason to be optimistic. Soon I should have unlimited resources at my disposal. This great political power I would use for the common good. In New Mexico I became the target for an anarchist’s bullet as I rode to an outdoor meeting. The shot went hopelessly wide, killing some youth. In Texas came the privilege of a nightride with the Klan to a secret valley. Here, beneath a flaming cross, more than two thousand Klansmen applauded me. Wearing my splendid red robes, I was introduced as ‘our first and finest ambassador at large’. Then came the trial of two men. The white was accused of adultery. His sentence: KKK branded on his back, according to Klan Law. A negro who had insulted a white woman was whipped to death at the feet of the lady he had offended. (These were not the actions of cruel, mindless men. It was a display of the Klan’s remorseless justice. The papers, of course, blew the incidents out of proportion. I experienced far worse in Russia. Yet the reporters who defended Trotski were the same who accused the Klan. I need say no more.)

  I was glad to keep active. I was troubled at receiving no news from Esmé. A busy man does not brood. I despise this fashion for self-analysis. It goes hand in hand with narcissism. If one keeps one’s mind busy it becomes impossible to harbour a grudge or hold on to pain for long. Real pain, a friend once said, never lasts more than five minutes. The rest is picked scabs. In useless speculation lies hysteria and mental illness. Ideas are useless unless they can be acted upon. But I do not ignore reality. The incident of Mr Roffy is a case in point. In Warsaw, Indiana, where I had already lectured once, I had been asked to speak again. The State was ‘solid Klan’ and must soon elect a governor. As usual, Mrs Mawgan and I were wined and dined handsomely by local members and we returned late to Paxton’s Hotel to our own more private and lustier celebration. I was awakened next morning by a porter. Closing the door on the bedroom and the still sleeping Mrs Mawgan, I asked what he wanted. ‘The gentleman says, sir, that it’s mighty urgent. He’s downstairs now.’ He handed me a note.

  Clarence Roffy had written it. He had news of immediate interest to me. Assuming this to be Charlie’s brother I was only too pleased to ask him up, thinking he might have news of Roffy’s wish to revive our aerodrome scheme. I told the porter to give us half an hour, then have breakfast served when the gentleman arrived. Mrs Mawgan was ill-tempered, blinking as she sat up. I explained what was happening and sent her back to her own room, suggesting she reappear at breakfast and meet Roffy’s brother.

  I was groomed and ready by the time Clarence Roffy knocked. When he entered my first response was to utter a good-humoured laugh. I thought myself the victim of a mild joke. It was Charlie Roffy, of course, looking rather down at heel, carrying a soft felt hat and wearing a pin-stripe suit which had seen better days. His florid features were swollen, his skin lacked its old glow of health. He took the seat I offered him and said he would be glad of a bite of breakfast. I shook him warmly by the hand, anxious to show I bore him no ill will. His hand was limp, clammy. The poor devil was ill. ‘Why are you calling yourself Clarence?’ I asked. ‘It’s not much of an alias!’

  He frowned. ‘I meant Charlie,’ he said.

  ‘I’m so glad to see you. I feel badly about letting you down. If you h
adn’t left Memphis so quickly everything would have been all right. I suppose Boss Crump’s murderous thugs were too much of a threat, eh? Was it borrowing got you into the scrape? How’s Mr Gilpin? And Jimmy Rembrandt? Have you heard anything of Major Mortimer?’

  He had lost touch with them. His tone was strained. Nothing I could say put him at his ease. Eventually he pulled from his pocket some hand-copied papers bearing translations from the French journals which had attacked me. He also showed me my dog-eared note of hand for $150,000. ‘You’ve seen all this stuff before, I know. I have the originals.’

  ‘Jimmy told me that. Have you come to warn me? Am I in some kind of danger?’

  His eyes widened at this. His manner grew more hysterical. ‘Mr Pyatnitski, it would ruin you if the public learned you’re a Russian Jew whose only familiarity with science was a highly scientific gum-game in Paris a year ago.’

  ‘If they believed such a thing, I agree. Captain Rembrandt expressed the same fears in Memphis. It’s not true, of course, so I’m not greatly worried.’ I placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. ‘What are you trying to tell me? Have my political enemies found the stories?’

  Roffy cleared his throat, scarcely able to speak. He nodded emphatically. ‘There’s some danger of that happening, sir.’ He drew a breath, squared his shoulders and looked curiously into my face. ‘Because of you, sir, I’m destitute and on the fly. I can’t go back to Washington where I’ve worked for years. Now everyone knows I’m a paper layer. You owe me something, my friend. So I’m prepared to sell you all this stuff and call it quits. What do you say?’

  I was horrified a gentleman of his stock could fall so low. I spoke with compassion. ‘You don’t need to sell me anything, Mr Roffy. I have always respected your reputation. You have only to ask for help. I was, as you say, in part responsible. How much do you need?’

  ‘Ten grand.’ He shrugged and looked towards the window. I smiled sadly.

  ‘You still have an exaggerated notion of my wealth. Mr Roffy, for old time’s sake, I can let you have a single grand.’

  He was considering this when Mrs Mawgan, fresh and blooming in red velvet, walked in. She frowned as I made the introductions. Evidently my visitor’s shabby appearance offended her. She asked him sharply if she had met him somewhere before. I explained Roffy was an old business colleague in need of help.

  He rose nervously, speaking swiftly and softly to me. ‘Okay,’ he said. ’I’ll settle for the thousand.’

  ‘You’re hungry. You should stay for breakfast.’ But I was embarrassing him. I wrote out the cheque. He handed me the envelope.

  ‘You’re a blackmailer, then, Mr Roffy?’ Mrs Mawgan was her most devastatingly sweet. I recognised her humour, but she angered Roffy.

  ‘That’s none of your damned business.’ He picked up his hat and pushed past the waiter entering with our breakfast trolley.

  Mrs Mawgan frowned. ‘You’d better put me in the picture.’ We sat down to eat. ‘And don’t be afraid to spill it all. You know I won’t tip you up. The Klan already has the goods on you, more than you know.’

  So I retailed the whole sorry story from beginning to end, explaining how I could not condemn Roffy. The least I could do was let him have a little money. Mrs Mawgan sat over untasted bacon shaking her head and sighing. Then she got up quickly, put down her napkin and said she was going down to the lobby. She had to make a phone call. I would be okay. When the Klan said it looked after its friends, it meant just that. She was back within ten minutes. With an expression of satisfaction she bent to pat my face. ‘Scandal around you is bad for everybody. I already know what it’s like to suffer from the press. Cancel that cheque as soon as you like.’

  ‘The Klan is paying Mr Roffy?’

  Her smile confirmed my guess. This was generosity indeed!

  That evening, as I stepped upon the stage to give a packed house Bolsheviks, Bloodshed and the Coming Battle for America, I was never more confident in the security of my future. With my debt to Mr Roffy cleared, I also forgot that pernicious doppelgänger. Brodmann had longed for my soul ever since he witnessed my humiliation at the hands of Grishenko.

  In the American wilderness I experienced too many memories. Her plains took me back to the steppe; her great forests to the forests of the Russian heartland. In the Rockies and the Blue Ridge Mountains I could frequently be free of Brodmann, Yermeloff and Esmé. Those massive peaks brought me unexpected tranquillity whenever our crossing and recrossing of the country took us into them. In the big modern, most typically American, cities I was released from memory, from the agony of my last months in Russia. They had raped you. They stole your soul and your heart. Your very identity was taken from you. In Akron, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Kansas City the grids could swallow me; they offered anonymity. In New Orleans and San Francisco too much was familiar; there certain warrens, configurations of wrought-iron, arrangements of brick and plaster brought my mother with them. Only a fool submits to pain. Pain has no justification, brings no benefits, whatever the Catholic tells you. For a while I found Chicago the most beautiful city in America, her massive, elegant towers glittering monuments to human skill and optimism. America in 1922 sought restlessly for new paths to the future. If her enthusiasm was sometimes excessive it remained a healthy contrast to Europe’s drained cynicism, Russia’s grim decline, the Orient’s chaotic decadence. Emerging from small-town complacency the American citizen was realising his power. Perhaps naturally he balked in those days at his international responsibilities. I was reminded of the Falstaff story in which Henry resists his divine role, rallying only at the last possible moment to defeat the weight of French chivalry as it gallops down upon his ‘happy few’. Of course he did not have the Jews to contend with.

  Short skirts, wine, certain drugs and most things offensive to the majority of my audiences were not to me obvious signs of degeneration or imminent social revolt. Those who spent their lives pursuing prostitutes, bootleggers and gamblers might have served their country better by attacking the ‘big wheels’ exploiting and controlling their ordinary daily needs, their food, clothing, housing and transportation. By making pleasures into crimes puritans place power directly into criminal hands. The puritan cries ‘It should not exist, therefore it does not exist!’ They allow the vice-king to say ‘It does exist therefore someone might as well make a profit’. Moderation is not achieved by Law, but by example. If supply becomes unreliable a commodity gains higher value in the marketplace. This was once true of travel, of trains, ships, aircraft, even cars. It was in Detroit, at a party given by Major Sinclair for people in the aviation business, that I met, as it happened, young Lindbergh and fired him with the notion of flying the Atlantic single-handed. A plane should be almost all fuel tank, I told him, using every possible area, even the wings. But he was still obsessed with the South American routes. He never joined the Klan, though in later years he took my role, using his aeronautical reputation to back the fight against alienism. Many engineers, scientists, soldiers and aviators share an understanding of the world. We can break down social complexities, describing them with a clarity denied philosophers and artists. Thus we are able to solve the problems. The running of America should have been left to Henry Ford and Colonel Lindbergh. We might be looking at a very different country today.

  All that year the power of the Klan grew. My tours became increasingly elaborate and well publicised. Entering town in an open car I might be accompanied by a marching band, my head and shoulders covered in streamers and confetti. Preachers gave sermons, choirs would sing before I spoke. Local politicians were photographed with me. I lent my name to advertisements and newspaper columns. While I never let them or myself forget I was primarily a scientist - it did no harm to promote my real interests in this way. I had learned to value the American art of the ‘bally-hoo’. Thus, ironically, despite the temporary dashing of my technological hopes, I became a celebratory. It is hard to say exactly how much I influenced the social and scientific thinking
of my own and future generations. Ideas which I threw off quite casually were later claimed by others: the nuclear power plant, the television and the rocket ship. Important magazines such as Popular Mechanics, Radio World and Air Aces seized on my prophecies while the imitators of Verne and Wells translated them into fiction. Sometimes whole books of factual speculation appeared between 1925 and 1940 which were borrowed from me in their entirety! I did not care, then, how my visions were disseminated. I had a profusion of them and readily shared them with the whole human race. Even today I do not regret my generosity, but I feel a little wounded when I receive no recognition. I should have been glad of a small place in history. Perhaps it was a mistake to come to England. She always looked with suspicion upon the new and strange. Lately, to her own wretched tomb, with complacency and self-congratulation as always, her Union Jack the standard of broken promises, rejected ideals, she conducts herself, as if she has something to be proud of. The tourists come from May to September, staring at the beefeaters, the old stones, the royal carriages, utterly deceived by the British illusion. But in Notting Hill and Brixton, in Mill Wall and Tottenham, the houses collapse inwards, the jerry-built towers lean and tremble in the lightest wind, the pavements crack, the alleys fill with sinister shadows: for this desolation is what maintains the imperial facade. We are the victims of a wicked lie. The English have lost their pride, forgotten their honour, refused self-knowledge. In a rich nation, these would not necessarily be vices; in a poor one, they are a ludicrous disaster.