Jerusalem Commands Read online

  If I needed confirmation her wonderful, trilling laugh filled the great lobby. ‘Maxim! Now it is Emily Dane. Like you, I am at last an American.’ She opened her arms to embrace me. Though this was what I had longed for, again I hesitated. I could smell the stink of the past sixteen hours on my body. Madge’s perfume was still in my moustache. ‘I am filthy,’ I said. ‘I have been working all night. Sit here and let me get clean. I can be back in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘But Maxim, I only have fifteen minutes! The car is waiting.’ She made a gesture of desperate, apologetic impatience.

  ‘The car?’ Stupefied, I gaped at this vision of my bride-to-be. Here at last in the flesh was the child I had rescued from the most vicious slums of Istanbul. My boyhood sweetheart, she had been fucked so much there were calluses on her cunt but this reincarnated Esmé was Esmé purified, my own sweet little angel, my little sister, my restored betrothed! And she said she was leaving? ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I have to meet Willie. It’s so awful. He’s, you know, moody. I’ve been longing to see you. This is the first chance I’ve had, my darling!’ She writhed with helpless desires. I began to reach towards her, then halted the gesture.

  ‘You forgive me?’ Tears were starting in my eyes. I held them back.

  ‘For what?’ she said. ‘Kolya explained you had to do what you did. And when you weren’t at the ship, I simply assumed you were still in hiding and would contact me in Los Angeles. Willie was so kind. He had a train of his own which was going to the Coast from Chicago and offered me a lift. Now he’s putting me up. Well, you know how it is, darling. I have to be diplomatic. But here we are, together at last anyway, no harm done. There’s a strong chance I’ll have a part in a picture soon! Won’t you be proud of me?’

  ‘I’m already proud of you, my angel. I have so much to tell you, to explain. I am probably going to be working for the movies myself.’

  ‘Oh, darling! You’re already a film-star!’

  ‘Not exactly. I shall probably be directing the film I am currently writing. As to an acting rôle, well I have certainly had the experience. We shall see.’

  ‘I have read all your letters and your little notes and everything, Maxim.’ She was a distant bloom, a dream of heaven in white flowered silk and fur, her little heart-shaped face framed by a sculpted helmet of newly blonde hair, her blue eyes glowing dark against all that fairness. I had never seen her so beautiful, even on that first occasion when I had suddenly noticed her, my resurrected muse, at La Rotonde. Ma soeur! Meyn shvester! Moja rozy! Dans la Grande Rue, lallah … Hiya maride. Ma anish råyih … Qui bi’l’haqq, ma tikdibsh! Awhashtena! Awhashtena! Samotny, Esmé. Samotny! So lonely, Esmé. So lonely. Oh, I have longed for you down all those empty ages. They took you, my muse, my ideal, my reason for living, and they made a whore of you. Was it not a sign, I now wonder, of God’s eternal grace, that you should come back to me, time after time, as if in confirmation that real beauty, real love, real altruism, is imperishable, no matter to what depths we think the world has sunk and that these imperishable values should never be rejected or forgotten? And here you were, speaking rapidly of Meulemkaumpf’s kindness, and your situation in which you were now somewhat compromised, not having told Meulemkaumpf every exact detail of your story. ‘He thinks my brother was to meet me and was probably killed in the gangster-fights.’

  How could I blame her for a white lie or two? I had told them myself, in exactly similar circumstances, and while they rarely do any harm, they can sometimes prove a shade embarrassing or produce unexpected complications, which is why I long since gave them up. ‘When can you get away to see me?’ I asked.

  ‘Very soon. We’re going north for a couple of days, to visit Hearst at his ranch, and should be back by the end of the week. Maybe you could speak to someone about a part for me?’ This last was begged with that disarming, humorous sweetness I could never forget. ‘Of course. But we must talk more soon.’ Even though her innocent mention of Hearst had produced an unwelcome frisson, I was far more terrified that she should leave me again and we should be parted for another eternity! I drank in her beauty. She had hardly changed. Rather more sophisticated than when I had last seen her, of course, because in Paris she had begun to learn the manners and demeanour of a well-bred lady and doubtless Kolya and his wife had helped her. Her marvellous poise could rival Theda Bara’s. I mentioned that Mrs Cornelius was now making a great success of her movie career and Esmé murmured a remark in Turkish which I did not catch. Nor was there time for her to repeat it. She dropped her voice and asked in French if I had some ‘neige’ I might spare her. She had run out and Willie Meulemkaumpf was disapproving of both drugs and alcohol, so was no help. ‘It’s what he and Hearst have in common apart from their millions.’ I was glad merely to be of service to my sweetheart.

  The drug had already become a bond, a way of remaining in touch until such time as she was able to save Meulemkaumpf’s feelings and return to me. I had heard it was possible to get married in Nevada without producing too much in the way of identity papers and tried to communicate all this to her as I returned with the little paper packet and pressed it into her warm, childish hand. How extraordinarily beautiful she was! Louise Brooks was to model herself on my Esmé and make a fortune in Germany. But that, as I know too well, is the price one pays for being ahead of one’s time. Not only do you receive no credit, but you rarely receive the kind of money made by your imitators. And then I moved to kiss her, but thought better of it. In an explosion of silver, she had sped to the waiting Mercedes, flung herself into the cavernous upholstery and waved her negro chauffeur on, for all the world as if instructing a coachman to whip up his horses.

  Only when she had disappeared did it come to me that her uniformed driver was also familiar. It had been none other than Jacob Mix himself. Perhaps I had him to thank for Esmé’s change of mood?

  Me duele. Tengo hambre. Me duele. Me duele.

  FIVE

  I AM NOT ESPECIALLY PROUD of the ways in which I earned my living in 1925. There was little honour in it. Yet I do not think I knew a time since my childhood when I felt more light-hearted or thoroughly fulfilled. Spending so much of the year in a state of near-perfect euphoria, I almost forgot I was born to suffer for science and humanity, destined to build my great flying cities, not create the baroque palaces and Gothick villages, mediaeval castles and Futurist ballrooms that Fantasy demanded. Yet, during that year in Hollywood it seemed possible to realise every single dream I had ever entertained and to do so easily. I could have been happy there and lived out my life there, with Esmé, my wife, my children; an honoured illusionist as famous as Walt Disney or von Stroheim and probably richer. With his wealth ‘Uncle Dizzy’ created a Land populated by his petit-bourgeois dreams of a prosaic future. I should have built Pyatnitskiland! Each part of my world would have demonstrated an invention of my own—the solid-hulled, turbo-powered aerial cruiser, the Atlantic aeroplane refuelling platforms, the radio oven, the space-rocket, the radio satellite relay, the desert liner, the television, the dynamite engine and the super-rapid ocean-clipper—and would have realised my greatest vision. Uncle Dizzy and Uncle Joe had that dream in common: they longed for a world populated entirely by programmable robots. Ultimate predictability as a guard against death. However, I dreamed of ultimate freedom. My great cities of the skies would at last release humanity forever from its chains, from the sucking hampering mud of its origins. Almost single-handedly I could have built a glorious future, transforming the planet in a thousand ways, harnessing all the bountiful resources of the American continent. There would have been no Second World War, no triumph of Bolshevism. Indeed, Bolshevism would have crumbled under the weight of its own delusions. Russia and America would have formed a noble alliance, a united Christian nation. I should have been content to have been recognised merely as the architect of all this. I have never desired political power, certainly not for its own sake. But circumstances would alter my life radically. Another future wo
uld be built: its proudest achievements a man-sized, incoherent duck and a monstrous mechanical ape.

  This god is Set, who is also Sekhet, the goddess. Sekhet is called ‘the Eye of Ra’ and is the instrument of mankind’s destruction.

  Sometimes I go to the Polish Club in Exhibition Road, just up from the Science Museum. It is still possible to get a good, cheap meal there and meet a few like-minded souls. They know I am not really Polish, but are prepared to turn a blind eye. They recognise suffering. All Slavs are welcome. The rooms of the club are tall and cool, even in summer, and there is a garden. I once took Mrs Cornelius with me as my guest. Nobody was rude to her. That cannot be said for everywhere one goes in London today. She found the atmosphere a little depressing, I think.

  She still lives for the present. Though she is proud of her past and enjoys her memories she does not dwell on them. I became too morbid at the club, she said. I explained the difference between the spiritual contemplation of history and mere self-pity but she did not really listen. She, too, has had excessive pain in her life. Perhaps she, like me, cannot afford to dwell overmuch on certain aspects of the past. But she enjoys our reminiscences. Sometimes we sit together in her flat in Colville Terrace and talk. If the sound of the steel bands rehearsing and the prostitutes quarrelling with their pimps is not too loud we often continue well into the night. Mrs Cornelius recalls her successes, the times when she was a great star of the stage as well as the screen, but she has kept relatively little personal memorabilia. She reminds me of my own fame. Indeed, I have more recorded about her in my scrapbooks than I have of myself. She enjoys leafing through these glue-crusted heavy pages, screaming with laughter at her make-up, her dresses, her more outrageous stage-names. I suppose it is healthy, this response, but I find it a little disconcerting. My friend puts too little value on her talents. Always, she has done this. That is why I want to tell the world what she was. My own future was stolen from me but she, careless goddess that she was, threw hers away as casually as she tossed a cigarette over a ship’s rail. Yet she has never said she regretted it. Her regrets are of a different order, usually concerning some gentleman she failed to attract for a night’s passing pleasure. She has been loved by some of the greatest men in modern history, been the mistress of the most influential financiers and politicians, and if she were not discreet, she could fill the tabloids daily with her memories. Yet she seems to have little respect or nostalgia for them. ‘Blokes’re fer yer ‘olidays, like ice cream and drinkin’ yerself silly. Too much of ‘em and it makes yer sick.’ She has as much and as little to say about the Persian playboy who first took her out of Whitechapel and abandoned her in Odessa as she does about Trotsky, whose paramour she became. ‘They corl it I-ran now, an’ well named it is, too. ‘Oo fuckin’ wouldn’t run if they ‘ad the chance? But ‘e ‘ad some fuckin’ gelt, the bastard. An’ ‘e never whinged on like Leo, ‘oo couldn’t bloody stop. Especially after ‘e got ter France. Remember Cassis, Ivan?’

  E partito il treno? C’é tempo per scendere? Attraversiamo la frontiera? She was no yachna. And I live because of her. She is, I say, the actual keeper of my life. She laughs when I try to explain. She slaps my shoulder and calls me her sentimental little Russki. She has always been my friend.

  We travelled towards Fastov through avenues of lime trees with a red flag flying from the mast of our Mercedes. She smelled of summer, of the roses, though she was wrapped in the finest fur. Later, you could inhale the bloody stink of dead horses piled into ditches by the side of the road and sometimes there were festering human corpses among them, those poor ignorant followers of Petlyura. He said he would give them land, but he was a friend of the rich. He gave them snow. His promises were insubstantial and melted away with the spring sunshine. If he had listened, if he had genuinely loved our Ukraine, as I loved her, I would have saved him so easily! He abandoned my Violet Ray. They were all greedy for our wheat and steel, those Moscow Jews. They are greedy still. But she says I am morbid and lets me talk only of the good times, the best of which were in Hollywood when I became a prince, a star, a man of substance and influence to rival all the other great aristocrats of Hollywood whom I admired, especially Griffith. Once I was his peer I invited the great director to my home, but even then he had become reclusive and suspicious. I should have taken a lesson from him. You are a king in Hollywood only while your work is popular, while you obey the studio’s power. Take some action in the name of art, idealism or even social conscience and make money and you are still celebrated for your virtues. But follow your conscience and fail to make money and you are destroyed overnight. You become a villain. This was the bitter truth Griffith had learned. But I was happy, perhaps because the future faded and the past became less painful, no more than a record of my triumphs. I learned from the great myth-makers of Hollywood how to present my curriculum vitae in the best and most dramatic light. Tom Mix was from Peoria and Greta Garbo from Detroit, but the world was told otherwise, not because they were liars but because they knew this was the only means by which they could maintain their authority with the public and, ultimately, the studio. But the studio, of course, could create other, less beneficial myths if it felt so disposed, so one always had to be a myth or two ahead of them. I had accounts in stores. I had my car. I had my little house in Venice. I had admirers. My social standing rose so high that I was sought after at dinner-parties. Frequently I attended these with Mrs Cornelius, also a star, and occasionally I saw my Esmé!

  My success had come about largely through good fortune, through my natural gregariousness and through a certain talent for acting, part of which had been developed during my periods of hardship and captivity and which was, since one was so frequently in the power of those who did not speak your language, highly dependent on mime. By early 1925, while on the set assisting Poldark, I had been ‘roped in’ for Ben Hur both as a galley slave and as a Christian. This led to me serving for a while as a stand-in. There are parts of The Dark Angel, Beau Geste, The Master Singer and Tricks which owe their special vibrancy to the fact that my back and half-face were used in place of a star too drunk, drugged or hung-over to perform as his public expected. I was already appearing in small parts by April 1925 when Goldfish had returned and commissioned a draft script of White King, Red Queen with a view to putting me on the strength. I visited him at the new offices which he shared with Cecil B. De Mille—a great white marble ‘colonial’ mansion which stood on Washington Boulevard not far from MGM and was, by coincidence, the old Thomas Ince Studio, sold to settle the dead director’s debts. He was in a fatherly mood. ‘Pleasure is pleasure and business is business.’ He spoke the idiomatic Yiddish of the Warsaw gutter. ‘You’ve got to divide up professional and amateur. I used to be taught the rule—the amateur you screw, the professional you hire. Me, I preferred to screw the professionals and let the others waste their time with amateurs. Two birds in one bath. You are not, I believe, whatever else, an amateur, Max, I hope.’

  I assured him I was a pro’s pro of the old school.

  ‘Anyway I thought that was a better use of the time and time was money. Now, I’ve learned moderation. I married an amateur and now I don’t have to screw the professionals!’

  I found Goldfish’s confidences both baffling and irresistible.

  ‘As a man of the world, Max, you know what I mean?’

  I assured him I understood him most profoundly. His sentiments, I said, were an exact version, almost word for word, of my own. Only he had phrased it better. I congratulated him on his extraordinary literary turn of phrase. He said in all modesty that he was, by and large, a self-made man. ‘Reading is the answer. Travel, like I did, in gloves, and you get to reading a lot. And seeing movies, of course. Bit by bit you understand how ignorant you are. Bit by bit you start to remedy it. That’s me now, Max—remedied. Though they stole every idea, every property, every star and every hour of every hard-working day I put in for them—Art for Art’s sake remedied me. Quality, now, is what we do here. Small
but prodigious, like in gloves. That way you make more profit for less work, believe me.’

  I not only believed him, I said, I applauded him. We parted very cordially.

  Mrs C. was Gloria Cornish now, of course, and in some ways the instrument of my success (or diversion, if you like). While Goldfish had been impressed by my writing and had commissioned a draft script with a view to ‘putting me on the strength’, it was Lon Chaney, the great character actor, who saw my drawings one evening and suggested immediately that I should be designing whole storyboards. I had until then been working as a part-time apprentice to Poldark. Chaney introduced me to a pleasant Scot called Menzies, a student of the great Grot, who was primarily known for his delicate children’s illustrations. Menzies was at that time trying to work with Valentino’s wife, who claimed to be some sort of Russian aristocrat, a painter, stage-decorator and haute couturière whose ideas were so extravagant that even when the sets were built they could hardly be filmed. The colour of the sets was important, since they tended to show up in certain pronounced ways. In her designs for Monsieur Beaucaire she had ignored all considerations of cost or technical capability and produced Valentino’s first failure. The sophisticated comedy was scarcely appropriate material for that elevated lounge-lizard, who looked exactly like the Italian gigolo he had been in real life and whose taste and manners continued to reflect his origins. Later Bob Hope far eclipsed him in the rôle. Some of us Hollywooders were able to rise above our humble beginnings. Valentino sank beneath the weight of his own unfounded self-esteem. Mayn schvitz der spic gonif trenken!