The Laughter of Carthage

FOURTEEN

A BEAUTIFUL MONSTER, a machine with a generous soul. New York cheerfully tolerates the horde of fools and rogues who seek the security of her deep canyons and cliff-like tenements. What was a virtue, however, is now displayed as a vice. Since the days of her Dutch founders she refused to fear those Catholic and Jewish elements who scrambled to her warmth, to suck her lifeblood and offer nothing in return. In 1921 she was still able to confine them to the Lower East Side, Harlem, Chinatown, the Bowery and Brooklyn, yet steadfastly refused to see how Carthage grew in the womb of the city all named New Babylon. Carthage devoured the kindly parent from within. It was this which D. W. Griffith attempted to show us in his much abused parable Intolerance. A subtle masterpiece, it was made a financial failure by the very Jews and Catholics it warned us against! Griffith’s company was ruined, his voice was effectively silenced and his own people turned a blind eye to his martyrdom. They had much, after all, to distract them: Tammany. Zion, the Vatican, Tatary were all scattering gold, erecting diversionary sideshows, setting up brothels and gambling casinos, providing every conceivable sensation designed not so much to exploit the poor as to seduce the rich: those old patrician families who had founded America’s wealth. Their sons and daughters were meanwhile lured to destruction by pretty baubles, negro jazz and bathtub gin.

Griffith created the greatest work of its kind. Every line and scene, no matter how splendid, drummed home the same urgent message:

beware the servants of rome and zion!!! follow only christ!!! ye shall find the enemy within your own walls! be wary of the priest and the rabbi - for one hand is extended in friendship while the other hides a knife!!! be forever alert! be deaf to false prophets and the temptations of lust, pride & greed!!! JUDA VERRECKE!! the day of thy judgement draws near! In the modern scenes we see a young man falsely accused, ruined by forces of international finance. We witness the treacherous betrayal and slaughter of the French Protestants by their Catholic Queen Catherine de Medici. We see the priests of Babylon destroying their own civilisation from within and opening their gates to the invading Persian tyrant! Also we have the spectacle of Jesus of Nazareth offering us both hope and the solution to all this terror. And they complained this was obscure! Obscure! Er macht die Tür auf! Lassen sie ihn hereinkommen! It is simply that they refused to see what was obvious. It did not suit them to let him in. It is the same old story. Ironically it is also Griffith’s own story, just as it is mine. I have sometimes wondered at the significance of the coincidence; his life and work frequently mirrored my own. I am sure it is not difficult for anyone, realising how much of my optimism and faith had become invested in Griffith and the America he represented, to imagine my horror when, almost as soon as I had passed the last immigration barrier and a porter was loading my trunks into a motor cab, I read in the New York Herald that the great director’s company must inevitably be declared bankrupt. This was a terrible blow, particularly since I had planned to offer my services to him as soon as my business in Washington was completed. Stunned, I climbed into my seat. I was borne off to the city’s heart, through densely crowded streets flanked by enormous skyscrapers and criss-crossed by the metal bands of an intricate elevated railway. At last, as my mind began to receive this profusion of new impressions, I tossed the paper aside, certain that Mr Griffith would find a means of resolving his difficulties. I had not been prepared for New York to remind me in the least of my Mother Country, yet somehow it was as if I had come home. It was all far grander and more highly concentrated, of course, but to me the city was nearer to being a blend of St Petersburg, Kiev and Odessa than it was of any European city I had visited. I had not, for instance, expected to be impressed by so much solid, old-fashioned good taste in buildings and decoration. As the cab at last drew up outside the Hotel Pennsylvania’s vast structure and the door was opened by a uniformed black man whose white glove saluted me in a most dignified manner, I almost thought to see my mother and Captain Brown waiting for me beyond the massive entrance. It made me long for them, for Esmé and for Kolya, to share this experience. Porters again took charge of my luggage. The interior of the Pennsylvania was even more impressive than the exterior. The lobby seemed more spacious than Notre Dame cathedral, with shops and restaurants around its edges. One restaurant alone boasted a full-size fountain. High overhead an elaborate balcony surrounded the lobby. Its columns and the richness of its materials gave it the appearance of a pagan Roman temple. If the staff had been wearing togas, rather than tasteful conventional suits, it would not have seemed incongruous. I was glad I had chosen my finest uniform. In it, I did not feel overwhelmed by the hotel’s magnificence. I made the long walk across mosaic and deep carpet to the reception desk. My reservation was confirmed by a polite, open-faced individual who softly told me his name was Cornihan, an under-manager. I must let him know if there was anything I needed or anything which did not suit me. Then, within an elevator so festooned with gilded wrought iron and carved oak it could have carried Zeus himself to Olympus, I was borne up to the eighteenth floor and escorted to a room which, in luxury and size, was the equal to the best I had known in Europe. Again, my Kolya had not let me down. I felt immediately secure, even though I had never been situated so high above the ground before. The porter was genuinely grateful for the tip. He said he was at my service. Here was another unexpected feature of this city: the good manners and cheerful helpfulness of her citizens. From my windows I could look down at the distant street to where a tiny Gothic church stood sandwiched between much taller buildings, its steps alive with miniature figures, constantly coming and going. This, I learned, was actually St Patrick’s Cathedral. I think it heartened me at the time to see this citadel of Papism so thoroughly overshadowed.

It was immediately obvious that New York was a city consciously and vigorously dedicated to the Future, impatient with anything or anyone threatening to stop her march forward, her constant experimenting, her willingness to tear down the old in order to replace it with something newer and better. That she still cherished tradition was obvious from many of her interiors, which paid wholehearted tribute to our common culture; nonetheless she was unafraid of progress, as most European cities were. As soon as I was unpacked, changed and rested, I followed my old habit and plunged straight into her streets, to explore for myself the mysteries and wonders of Manhattan. In 1921 the Empire State Building was merely a vague notion, while the Chrysler, most beautiful of all skyscrapers, was still being designed. It would be these which would completely outshine New York’s great rival, Chicago, so that she finally refused further competition. Knowing nothing of any of this, I was sufficiently amazed by the strange proportions of the twenty-storey Flatiron Building, the gigantic classical majesty of the Times Tower. I had sailed on Leviathan to a city of Behemoths, and though one element in me was daunted by the sheer hugeness of the place I was primarily delighted. No photograph could prepare a European for that kind of scale or offer any understanding of what the city really is: a truly modern, unselfconscious, aggressively unashamed urban massing of steel, stone and brick, insouciantly balanced on a tiny slab of rock in the shallows of the Atlantic Ocean. As for what she had become, since the Carthaginians overwhelmed her, I shall not speak. In 1921 she radiated a convincing aesthetic, an authentic, boundless confidence in scientific and social progress. In her were quintessentially combined all the other cities of the Earth; she was a metropolis conceived as nothing more or less than herself, when millions of people might live together and work for humanity’s triumph over Nature, the Past, our very origins. I lay awake on that first night and heard her heart pounding as violently as my own. I could believe, in some barely understood way, that she and I were the same entity, with an energetic, unsleeping mind, an active will to put a mark upon the world and leave it radically unchanged.

Here was the sum of six million humans beings’ optimistic hopes for a better world. Here, mankind’s technology could defeat those ancient demons which enslaved its forefathers for uncountable generations. Here were fortunes greater than all previous fortunes, ambitions higher than any earlier ambitions, possibilities which until now had never been conceived. It was no longer any surprise that provincial minds, rural minds, the minds of small people, might draw back from this and brand it evil because it was so dramatically unfamiliar. Many Americans refused even to stand on the far side of a New York bridge to look upon this wonder from a distance. To them not only was she the new Babylon, she was Sodom and Gomorrah, Rome and Jerusalem all rolled in together. I was not to know that my mockery of their fears would one day prove foolish, that they understood something I, in those days, did not. New York was a mighty machine. Like any machine she had no morality. Her goodness or her evil depended entirely on the motives of who controlled her.

She was a sensitive and highly complex machine. All she lacked was the capacity to move from place to place and one day, I thought, she might even have that. The astonishing geometry of fire escapes, water towers, elevated railroads, streetcar wires, baroque ironwork, telephone lines, power cables, bridges, lamp posts, illuminated signs and arches in combination with the buildings themselves formed a profoundly complex grammar of its own; the infinite variety of curves and angles made up the characters of a mysterious and scarcely decipherable alphabet. As many-levelled as the human brain itself, New York appeared to possess the same limitless potential for creativity and intricacy. Her traffic was unceasing, flowing like blood through a maze of veins and arteries, most of it motor-driven, though there were still a good many horses. Constantly moving, these trams, cabs, buses, cars and wagons possessed the boisterous momentum of logs in a torrent. The great avenues and cross streets, conduits of this vast machine, steamed and hissed from a thousand vents and grills; yet no one could claim her citizens were grey-faced automata, designed only to serve her, as Lang claimed in his film Metropolis. New York was then firmly under the control of her citizens, who were still primarily true born Americans or English-speaking settlers. They had made her, now they used her. For their own convenience. This was evident in the postures they struck in the streets, their easy familiarity with modern innovation. I had never seen fresh ideas treated with such amiably casual interest as in New York and I never would again. All the inventions pouring from the factories of Edison, Ford, Tesla and America’s other twentieth-century wizard-heroes, all the gadgets and marvels of our machine age, were taken by New Yorkers as available to them by right. Here every family appeared to own a motor car, a phonograph, a vacuum cleaner, an electric iron, a power wringer, while telephones, refrigerators and automatic washing machines were the property of quite ordinary people. Only the degenerate immigrants, the uneducated, jealous, desperately greedy sons and daughters of European gutters, of Asiatic opium addicts and African savages did not have these things (in such quantities at least) and this of course was largely because they had neither the intelligence nor the background to understand them: indeed, many developed deep superstitious terror of, for instance, washing machines, and would not allow them into their dens, even when they were offered.

The city dazzled me with brilliant signs picked out in thousands of tiny coloured bulbs. Everywhere I heard the slamming of metal upon metal, the humming of motors, the clicking of cogs, the whirring of dials and indicators, while from the network of railroads, big and small, overground and underground, came a squealing of wheels on tracks, of warning horns, escaping steam and efficient airbrakes. To me this was a symphony whose themes emerged gradually, as in Wagner, forming a unity when sometimes one least expected resolution. Back and forth in the streets ran ragamuffins. They sold newspapers, soft drinks, ice creams, candy. They yelled impossibly garbled phrases; words I could not even begin to interpret. Moreover, this unceasing vitality flourished in a climate of pressing, almost tangible heat, making me sweat so badly I was soaked from top to bottom before I had walked a few hundred yards from the hotel.

On my first morning I went nowhere in particular. I merely strolled from block to block, taking stock of my surroundings as I always did. I enjoyed the bustle and the anonymity. Somewhere around East 19th Street I stepped into a little café and ordered a cup of coffee. New Yorkers, generally thought ill-mannered by other Americans, seemed elaborately polite compared, say, to Parisians. When I had finished my coffee, I made enquiries and was directed to a large pawnbroking house only a block or two away. Here I was able to change a gold ring, inscribed and given to me by M. de Grion as a Christmas present, into a moderately good-sized sum. Next I walked on a little further until I reached Sixth Avenue and soon discovered a reasonably decent gentleman’s outfitters who provided me, within two hours, with a white linen suit, white spats and gloves, a Panama. I was now better equipped for the weather, if not for the dust and dirt. I had the feeling, on the question of style, however, that it would not have mattered much what I wore. Aside from Constantinople, I had never seen such a huge variety of racial types and national costumes. Some were strange, such as the Hassids or pigtailed Chinese, but others displayed their cultural origins more subtly, in Bavarian hats, Russian boots, Turin-cut trousers. What was most cheering for me was that I had been led to believe I should see swarthy aliens crowding every sidewalk but this was far from the case. There were no more of these in the ordinary parts of New York than in any cosmopolitan city. New York was in this respect little different from Odessa.

That afternoon I walked down Seventh Avenue to the secluded tree lined squares and eighteenth-century houses of Greenwich Village. These relatively low apartment blocks and ordinary shops reminded me in their general respectability of my boyhood Kiev, though at that time, because the area was pleasant and cheap, increasing numbers of artists were moving in, giving the neighbourhood something of the quality of the Left Bank. Here and there it was possible for me to imagine myself suddenly transported to the country. The abundance of flowers and foliage pleased my senses as, sitting for a while in Washington Square, I watched children playing familiar games. These quasi-rural areas are required in any real city, I think. The tranquillity one finds in them is somehow more positive than anything discovered in the country itself. Here I used to visit the roof garden of Derry and Tom’s Department Store. I would go there two or three times a week in the summer, for this same sense of peace. The traffic could be heard, but it was in another world, so distant. On a fine day, listening to the fountains and seeing pink flamingoes wade from pool to pool, one could experience few greater pleasures. But presently of course Derry’s is sold to a Russian Jewess who refuses the consolation of her roof garden to lonely old men and women and makes it the exclusive territory of the fashionable and wealthy. Who cares if I have nowhere to sit now; no birds to feed; nowhere to throw a penny and make a wish?

In New York, more than anywhere else, I developed an immediate sense of competency; the kind of security which comes from an instinctive understanding of one’s environment. The more complex a city, the better I felt. The country dweller retreats in confusion from the city’s images and noise, baffled by its millions of intersecting segments of information. To him it seems all contradictions, mystery, threat. As in Constantinople, I immediately relax. Dangers in the city are easily recognised or anticipated. In the country I am helpless. What does the crack of a twig, the angle of a leaf, the way a plant has been pressed down underfoot mean to me? If New York was, as many said, a jungle, then I was a beast naturally bred for that jungle. Within a few days of strolling aimlessly around and absorbing images, sounds, scents, I knew virtually all I needed to survive and, if necessary, conquer. Helen Roe saw me once or twice, but she was anxious to leave for Florida. She said New York was a filthy city and the people in it were scum. Our shipboard romance died immediately she reached land. Now that more familiar young men were available to her, cajoling her to speakeasies and nightclubs, she no longer had use for me. I was relieved, for I too was reluctant to continue the affair. I had written to Esmé, describing my arrival, the hotel and so on. I had written to Kolya and sent a postcard to Mrs Cornelius, mentioning William Browne, the film producer. I longed for all of them to be with me, particularly Esmé. She would have delighted in the city’s variety as much as I.

For the first week, however, I will admit I gave less thought to my dear ones than usual and neither did I do much in the way of furthering my career. I lived a dream of excited discovery. I ate steaks, lobsters and hot dogs, Russian dishes as fine and as elaborate as any in Odessa. I tried Italian, French and Chinese restaurants. I visited cinemas to watch the latest films and I went to the vaudeville. I rode on streetcars, buses and trains. During that period I was content with my own company and any escort would have been a distraction. I was swimming in waters at once strange and deeply familiar, modern yet full of nostalgia. Here were soda-fountains which were fantastic extensions of cafés I had known in Kiev, smelling of syrups and candies, vast tiers of carved mahogany and oak, of brass and chrome and decorated mirrors; restaurants in which small forests appeared to be growing, picture palaces which might have been transported stone by stone from ancient Assyria, mansions grand enough to be the seats of European Emperors. Standing at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street I watched black clouds of a thunderstorm come rolling towards me, abolishing the sun, block by block, before at last it reached me, a wild hissing of rain, roaring and flashing, driving me into a doorway. I walked almost the whole length of Broadway at night, visited the Zoo, bought sweet potatoes from a vendor in Central Park, purchased for next to nothing the favours of pretty prostitutes (some of whom spoke even less English than those in Constantinople), chatted with strangers in an easy way I found impossible in Europe. I told them how wonderful their city was. The true New Yorker believes there is no world but his; questions are rarely asked about your country of origin: he merely wishes to hear if you approve of New York. This was perfectly agreeable to me for it maintained anonymity while affording sociability. I still had plenty of good cocaine and more could easily be purchased through the girls I patronised. I cheerfully drank grape juice or Coca-Cola when no spirits were readily available to me. Alcohol, of course, was an abiding and somewhat tiresome topic everywhere. The newspapers thrived on rum-running tales. Prohibition and its consequences were the national obsession. But it meant little to me. I was a child on vacation. All I wanted was to be able to go down to the waterfront, watch the liners come and go, enjoy with fascination a sea plane exhibition provided by ex-War airmen. America (though falsely believing herself the first to fly) had taken to the aeroplane as readily as she took to her native Model T. The paradoxes of a culture able to accept technological innovation so readily while allowing the antiquated morals of religious extremists to be imposed on the entire nation had not become apparent to me. Careless of the rest of the sub-continent’s opinions, New York City, in the days of her glory, functioned as an independent City State. Financiers were called Morgan and Carnegie. The power of the Orient was limited to the corner drapery shop. New York fell resoundingly to Carthage in 1929; she was their greatest conquest amongst the world’s cities. As Constantinople, the centre of Christendom, was made the Ottoman capital, so New York became the capital of Carthage. Mastering her, they mastered America. Eventually, inevitably, this would lead to mastery of the world.

Innocent of future disaster, I followed the marching bands into Brooklyn and Queens and went to see George M. Cohan, that quintessential American, in his latest musical. I ate baked clams and fresh oysters at Sheepshead Bay. I sat at a lunch counter near Grand Central Station reading a New York Times which made all the troubles of Europe seem remote, unimportant, even mildly irritating. My own interest, indeed, was in the doings of scientists and how they were honoured in America. President Harding, I read, gave Madame Curie a radium capsule worth a hundred thousand dollars as a gift from American women. After a slump, Henry Ford’s cars were selling well again. I also learned that the Edison company had given a questionnaire to all prospective employees. To my despair (for I had planned at a pinch to offer my services there) I could scarcely answer a single question. One asked ‘Which American city leads in the manufacture of washing machines?’ Edison was, I found from the newspaper, utterly baffled by the results of these tests. He decided university people were horribly ignorant. Perhaps it was as well I did not have to endure the frustration of working for a fool.

In a very short time the discovery of an illicit whisky-still in the heart of the Bronx became more exciting than a report on Warren Harding’s adamant refusal to join the League of Nations. My only reaction to an editorial denouncing the British Trade Agreement with Soviet Russia was the vague hope I might now in a letter to my mother tell her how stimulating America was. Perhaps she would be allowed to join me here. Most of us were then led to believe that now, with the Civil War over and foreign governments resuming relations with her, Russia would become increasingly moderate. The fate of my mother and Captain Brown aside, I felt this was no longer of immediate importance (besides. I was officially a Frenchman). Neither did the defeat of the Spanish Army by Abd el Krim in Morocco seem significant. By far the best news was the American Government’s willingness to fund domestic aviation development. It spurred me to take stock of my limited resources and begin arranging my affairs. My vacation in New York was coming to an end. Soon it would be time to set off for Washington.

Some three weeks after my arrival in New York I bought stocks of linen paper, all the engineer’s necessary drawing paraphernalia, confined myself to my suite with a large amount of cocaine, coffee and the occasional room-service meal, and began carefully to copy out designs and specifications of my already patented inventions. These I set aside in a large folder. Next I prepared the unpatented designs. These included my transatlantic aeroplane staging platforms, hospital airships capable of being sited wherever they were immediately needed, intercontinental tunnels, a cheap method for extracting aluminium from clay, a means of producing synthetic rubber, a long-distance aerodyne and a rocket-propelled airship. All would go for registration to the U.S. Patent Office. The others I would send directly to the Secretary of the Interior, whom I understood to be in charge of scientific projects. I also included copies of various press reports, although these were mainly in French. The ship’s newspaper had done a little piece in English about me and my work and this, too, was enclosed.

After several days I was totally exhausted, but the work was done. I took both envelopes to the post office, sending them by registered mail to their destinations. Afterwards I went to the German Cafe in Chambers Street for huge helpings of sausage, veal, sauerkraut and dumplings. With its carved marble and dark onyx, its pillars, its animal heads, its polished stone counters, the restaurant was a monument of reassurance. Afterwards, in the company of one of my young ladies, I went to see a musical and some movies at the Casino Theatre. By midnight I was back at her lodgings somewhere near 9th Avenue and 53rd Street, with a line of the elevated railway running only a few feet from her front windows and there I remained for two days, entertained by Mae and her little, bright-eyed friend Irma. When I eventually returned to the Pennsylvania there was a message for me. To my considerable delight I learned Lucius Mortimer had called. He was staying at the Hotel Astor. He wondered if I would like to join him there for dinner. The note had arrived that morning. There was still time to telephone the Astor and accept his invitation. I looked forward to enjoying the company of the personable young major. I spent the rest of the day bathing, resting and tidying up various papers. By seven I had dressed and because the evening was warm decided to save a cab fare by walking the few blocks to 44th and Broadway. I was now thoroughly familiar with central New York. The grid system, like so much in America, was rational enough to make life much easier once it was understood. Der Raster liegt fest, aber die Vielfalt der Bilder ist unendlich. New York ist eine Stadt der nah beieinanderliegenden Gegensätze. The air smelled of sweet oil and pungent smoke, of coffee, fried ham and sour cream; the wild turmoil of the daytime traffic had eased to a moderate, almost sedate, pace and I found myself wondering at my good fortune as I made my way, whistling, towards the best hotel in New York. The Astor was both opulent and dignified, but not as impressive, in my view, as the Pennsylvania. From outside it was restrained red brick, limestone, green slate and copper and inside had a somewhat hushed quality more suitable for a church or a museum which, in its solid murals and dark wood, it closely resembled. A graceful porter showed me, at length, through the Art Nouveau splendour, the marble and gold, past Ionic pilasters, painted panels, tapestries and trophies, to what he called ‘the bachelors’ quarters’ and a room crowded with huge hunting scenes where, at a table near the far wall, my friend awaited me. The blond-haired Mortimer like me was no longer in uniform and rose in evening dress to greet me, full of smiles and good cheer. ‘I’m so glad you’re still here, Colonel Peterson. I was afraid I’d have to follow you to Washington.’ As we ate he told me had crossed the Atlantic ‘once or twice’ since he last saw me. Now he had decided to give sea travel a rest for a while. Some people on his last trip had mentioned my name and he remembered his conversations with me. That, of course, had led him to try looking me up. Cutting his meat, he said how sorry he was to hear about the French scandal. I put down my knife and fork. I asked him what he meant and he became confused. Before he could explain, the waiter arrived and we ordered the next course. Then Mortimer reached into his jacket pocket to produce a substantial press cutting. ‘It’s from Le Monde,’ he said, passing it to me. It was almost a month old. ‘You haven’t gotten any of this over here? That must be a relief.’

As I read I become increasingly horrified. The headlines were clear enough. There were pictures of myself, M. de Grion, Kolya, in happier days. A fanciful sketch of my completed airship. The shut down hangars near St-Denis. Our Aviation Company had collapsed completely and fraud was alleged. According to police reports the Chief Engineer (myself) had fled France, taking crucial documents proving the honesty of his partners. M. de Grion’s son-in-law. Prince Nicholas Petroff, was quoted as being baffled. He had been completely duped by me. It seemed the majority of stock was mine. I had sold it at a profit and escaped with my fortune, perhaps back to Constantinople where it seemed I might be wanted by the British for aiding Mustafa Kemal’s rebels. My sister, still in Paris and desolate, had never guessed what I was planning.

‘This is meaningless,’ I told Mortimer. ‘Prince Petroff is my best friend. He’s obviously been misquoted. But it’s damned bad news for me. I had no idea!’

‘I doubt you can be extradited on the evidence they seem to have.’ Mortimer was deeply sympathetic. ‘Presumably you didn’t anticipate this sort of publicity?’

‘Petroff warned me there might be an attempt to make me the scapegoat for the company’s collapse. That’s why I came to America. But I hadn’t guessed how vicious the papers would be. What they say is nonsense. They’re plainly putting words in Kolya’s mouth. He’s my oldest, closest friend. M. de Grion must be giving them all that. He was never over fond of me. Esmé’s due here soon. I hope to God she doesn’t suffer!’

‘She’ll still come?’

‘No question of it. And Petroff, too.’

‘They have your address? Maybe it’s as well you’re going to Washington.’ He frowned at me almost suspiciously, as if he hardly believed I could be so innocent.

I was offended. ‘My dealings have been honest at all times, Major Mortimer. For your information, I’m not a wanted man in Turkey, either. I was instrumental in some arrests of nationalist rebels and spies. I left Constantinople entirely for personal reasons.’

‘By the looks of it, you’ve been poorly treated, colonel. If the scandal broke over here it could have some mighty unwelcome results. You know what the yellow press thinks of foreigners. They’re all anarchists and crooks trying to take over the country.’ He bent his body away from the table as the waiter set out fresh plates. Then Mortimer grinned suddenly. ‘Doesn’t it make you long for a drink?’

For the first time since I had arrived in America I desired a large vodka. I nodded vigorously and he winked at me. ‘We’ll finish here then go visit some friends of mine. They’ll accommodate us. What do you plan to do about this?’ He folded and replaced the cutting.

I was at a loss for an idea. There was no easy means of clearing my name. Only Kolya could help there. Esmé would agree to be a witness. But where and when could a trial be heard? I asked Mortimer.

‘In Paris. I’m damned sure of it. You’re safe enough in the States. The chances of a visa extension, however, might be a shade slim. You need friends in high places, old man!’ He looked critically at the cheeseboard, his knife hovering. Then, with a sigh, he impaled some Boston Blue.

‘There’s Mr Cadwallader in Atlanta.’

‘The lawyer? But it’s your word against theirs. I was thinking along slightly different lines. Who do you know in Washington?’

There was no one. Deep in thought. Major Mortimer abstractedly chewed his cheese. ‘I might be able to help. I know one or two people with good political connections. Would a letter of introduction be of use?’

‘You’re very kind.’ I doubt if I sounded enthusiastic. My future had again become uncertain. I could not go back to Europe. I might have to flee the United States. Was Esmé forever lost to me? I resisted panic. Desperately I tried to keep my mind in balance, but now things seemed blacker than ever before. I remember little of finishing the meal. At some stage Major Mortimer helped me to the sidewalk and hailed a taxi. Within a quarter of an hour we had entered the blue swing doors of one of New York’s many cellar bars. Inside was noisy jazz music, wild dancing, everything I had been glad to leave behind in Paris. Just then it was the last place I wanted to be, but Mortimer steered me through the crowd to a shadowy back room. He ordered drinks. They were not very strong cocktails, but I was glad of them and drank several. The speakeasy was patronised entirely by the well to do. It was no ordinary bohemian café. Lucius Mortimer was acquainted with many of the other clients and was obviously a regular and popular visitor. To them he spoke a patois almost impossible for me to follow. I had heard him and Jimmy Rembrandt using it between themselves on board ship. I grew rapidly drunk. By about one o’clock, as I continued to babble my problems to him, Lucius put a hand on my arm, looking me directly in the eyes. ‘Max,’ he said, ‘I think of myself as your pal and I’m going to try to help. Jimmy’s turning up here soon. We’ll talk to him. What if we went with you to Washington? I could introduce you to my friends. Do you have all your patents with you?’

I told him what I had done. My letters had said I should be in Washington shortly and would call to ensure the plans had arrived. I had been sensible, said Mortimer. I should relax and take another drink. Once I knew the right people my troubles would be over. ‘You can rely on me, I need hardly say, not to breathe a word of the airship scandal. But sooner or later it could hit our papers, then you’ll have to be completely prepared. Forewarned is forearmed. The press like nothing better than screaming for foreign blood these days. Only last week, in my hometown - in Ohio of all places - the Ku Klux Klan lynched two Italians. They were either anarchists or Catholics. People are even less fond of Russians, so you’d better make it clear you’re French and go on calling yourself Max Peterson. You could be half English. That should stop suspicion. I’ll cover you. We met during the War when you were flying with the Lafayette Squadron. Everybody loves the Lafayette.’

I was reluctant to involve myself in lies. However, I accepted Mortimer must have a better sense of the situation’s realities, so I agreed he should decide what was to be told to people. I would back him up in anything he said. I remained impressed by the American’s open-hearted generosity. What European near stranger would have done so much? I was almost tearfully grateful by the time Jimmy Rembrandt arrived, with two young women, actresses from a nearby show, and embraced me as warmly as any Russian. He slapped me on the back, announcing how much he had missed my company since the ship. A bottle of outrageously dubious champagne was ordered. This he chiefly fed to the ladies who, clucking and preening in their pink and blue feathers and silks, soon took on the appearance of confounded chickens. ‘Sounds like a great adventure!’ Rembrandt was in an ebulliently reassuring mood. ‘We’ll get the train to Washington tomorrow. Can you leave that soon, Max?’

We toasted our good fortune, our mutual destinies, the happy chance of our Mauretanian meeting. With such splendid companions I should have no difficulties when I came to confront and win over the American capital. Jokingly, they encouraged me to ‘remember’ my English mother, my father, the distinguished French soldier, and his father, who had fought for the South in the Civil War. We even considered an ancestor who had raised a volunteer regiment for the War of Independence. By the time we left the ‘speakeasy’ I was cheerful again, already half believing my new identity. They had struck exactly the right compromise, particularly in view of our destination. Their friends were Southerners to whom the only acceptable foreigners were those who had supported the Confederate cause sixty years before. Jimmy Rembrandt’s own mother, he told me, was from Louisiana and his Pennsylvanian father had been in Democratic politics until a riding accident just before the War. In the small hours we took a taxi back to my hotel while they lifted imaginary glasses to ‘Max Peterson, Gentleman of France’ and attempted to teach me how to whistle Dixie. The tune was important, they told me gravely, but the ability to remember all the words would prove crucial if I was to endear myself to their friends. As to my political views, they said, these were hardly in need of improvement at all.

With friendly good humour they helped me to an elevator before continuing on to the Astor, promising to collect me in the lobby next morning. Our association was going to be of enormous mutual benefit. It would make my French aviation schemes, they said, look like a cardboard model of the real thing. I reached my room and tried to pack, but unexpectedly the melancholy returned in full force once I was alone. I lay on my bed and wept for Esmé. How long must it be before I could be reunited with her? What crime had I committed in the eyes of God, to be so severely punished while the cynical rich and ruthlessly powerful went scot-free?

I would be wise to leave New York. Those same forces were lying in wait for me there, though I hardly guessed it then. In my wanderings I had seen the dark emissaries of Carthage scurrying about their destructive work. Here and there the signs were still up, but they would not stay there for long. In those parts of Harlem occupied by decent German families, threatened on all sides by blacks and orientals, I had seen the placards in the windows: Keine Juden, und keine Hunde. But it would be no more than a year or two before they were removed. Then the families themselves would be driven from the city and grinning negroes would turn those comfortable houses into squalid slums. New York would try to accept them: it was a question of pride. But New York was wrong to let it go so far. It tolerated monumental heresies: these black messiahs and philosemitic quasi-prophets abounding there today. Christians are taught to tolerate everything and so we do - but we cannot and should not tolerate evil, nor should hypocrisy and theft go unpunished. Those Sephardic Jews, they claimed to be Dons of Spain, as if that were something to boast of. The Spanish Empire was financed by Carthaginian gold, advanced by Catholic ruthlessness, informed by a pagan lust for destruction. Americans had already driven them back in a series of heroic wars. Now they are returning in a thousand guises. They cannot be stopped. And their Einiklach gloat in their massive towers, their steel and concrete fortresses, riding in Rolls Royces up and down Wall Street, controlling the destinies of all the world’s nations, while the Dons of Little Italy, of Brooklyn, the Bronx and Spanish Harlem, are richer than any Morgan or Carnegie, yet leave no charities, no foundations, no libraries behind them: only ruin.

I cannot blame myself for what became of New York. The rot, if I had chosen to look, was already there. I was blinded by the fabulous potential of the city, its grandiosity, its beauty. And for me it remains the most beautiful city on Earth. When the warm morning sun shone on those grey and yellow towers, or when it set, brilliant scarlet over Brooklyn Bridge, I would gasp in wonder, no matter how many times I had seen it before. I have heard they are demolishing more and more of it, replacing the old skyscrapers with things of black glass and featureless stone, that they have torn down almost everything and what they have not torn down they have gutted and spoiled. The Pennsylvania Hotel is now a grey, uncomfortable warren, without style or taste, taken over by the Hilton firm: a machine for processing travellers when they step out of those flying cylinders. And all done in the noble cause of democracy. This is egalitarianism corrupted. The dreams of New York’s great builders, of the murdered architect Stanford White, become wretched nightmares. The ghost of the old city hovers over the new. White was murdered in the roof garden of Madison Square, across the street from where my hotel stood. He built the set for his own destruction. And now that is demolished, too. He brought the best of Europe to America and he created architecture which was purely, confidently American in style and proportions. They mock all that now. Everywhere in the world the forces of Carthage are dynamiting our culture, our memories, our aesthetic monuments, replacing them with buildings indistinguishable one from the other, or from one country to another. They are wiping out our heritage; they are driving away our memories. Our very identities are therefore threatened. In 1906 White’s enemies conspired to kill him. The assassin was a Jew named Thaw who alleged White had seduced his wife. It was significant, however, that Thaw was eventually found ‘not guilty because insane’ and so avoided the consequences of his crime. Another shot fired for Carthage which went unpunished. Ich vil geyn mayn aveyres shiteln, indeed!

By eight the next morning, having pulled myself together with the help of cocaine and packed my trunks, I called for a porter, following him down to the echoing lobby. As I paid the balance of my bill (which took an alarming bite from my remaining funds) Jimmy Rembrandt approached me. He was smiling and full of energy, shaking my hand and saying I looked one hundred percent. Mortimer, he said, felt ill and could hardly speak, but would be with us on the train. We began to cross from the entrance hall to the Pennsylvania Station, immediately over the street, my bags on a trolley behind us. ‘Luce is afraid he has the ‘flu. But we know what’s caused his symptoms, don’t we, Max.’ Entering the Doric arcade with its rows of elegant shops and shafts of dusty sunlight, we saw Mortimer waiting for us near the Grand Stairway. He was as smartly dressed as Rembrandt, but did look pale and sorry for himself. He tried to smile at me. ‘Ah, Colonel Peterson, the famous French aviator.’

Jimmy laughed. ‘I hope you can learn to like the colour red, colonel.’ He was amused by my confusion. ‘They’ll be rolling out the carpet for you in Washington very soon now.’ Everywhere around us vast numbers of New Yorkers came and went about their business. The station actually lay below us and we descended steps forty feet wide (built in ‘Travertine’ stone after a Roman model) to the main waiting room which was also of the same mellow cream tinted stone and was meant, apparently, to resemble a Roman bath. For many years the original New Yorkers had seen themselves as following on from the traditions of Classical Rome. Today, of course, the armies of the Vatican have created on unexpected and unwelcome comparison with a more recent Rome. ‘Rely on us,’ Jimmy went on, ‘and within a week the whole of Washington will be eating out of our hands.’ Our luggage was stowed and we went to have breakfast at one of the station’s many lovely restaurants. By noon we were aboard a magnificent ‘limited’ train, a symphony of dignified steel pulled by a massive articulated locomotive. We slowly moved out of Pennsylvania Station. Only the old Tsarist trains could begin to match American luxury. She, like Russia, had been a country more dependent upon the railroad than any other kind of transport. Like Russia, she had lavished all her pride and creative artistry on these rolling citadels of comfort. We had reservations in the dining-car, but Major Mortimer did not feel like eating. He let Captain Rembrandt and I leave him to his misery and take our seats beside the wide window. Slowly New York’s skyscrapers gave way to single-storeyed suburbs and then to New Jersey’s rolling hills and forests. We crossed wide iron webs of bridges spanning rivers as broad as any I knew in Russia; we steamed along the ocean coast itself, then turned West through fields of corn which might have grown on my native Ukrainian steppe. Soon we passed the occasional factory or power station, flaring and belching against the shimmering summer sky, and I thought suddenly that all this timber, this cultivated farmland, these steel mills and generators, represented not merely enormous wealth, but tremendous optimism, too. The size of the country became apparent to me for the first time. It shared that sense of limitless space with Russia and it also shared the same richness of resources, the same will to expansion. The problems of Europe became as insignificant as their parochial ambitions. There was no need for me to fear little countries with little ideas. Here in America I should be able to grow as I had once hoped to grow in Ukraine. Eating lunch, I looked out at the plains and meadows of America, at her great, grey cities and her golden hills, and I spoke to Jimmy of the technological Utopia I envisioned. It would be fundamentally American, rejecting the old hampering traditions of Europe, concentrating on a future wholly ‘Made in U.S.A.’

Jimmy was delighted and at the same time seemed almost surprised by my fervour. ‘That’s the stuff,’ he kept saying. ‘That’s exactly the stuff.’ He was as convinced as I that my genius had been wasted on Europe. My talent was too big for them. The United States was large enough and confident enough to welcome what I could offer and pay me what I deserved. America was about to boom bigger than ever before. So much money was being generated there were not enough things to spend it on. He told me I should think of forming a company like Edison’s. I should employ staff, technicians, different experts, and I should have workshops built, ‘Invest in America, Max, and you will win all the hearts and minds you’ll ever need. This is the right time for it.’

The very rhythm of the train, steady, ebullient, increased my notion that Washington must provide me with the funds, prestige, resources I had always known were my due. The Parisian affair had been an unimportant diversion. It had taught me to be careful of those in whom I put my trust. I prayed Kolya would soon escape that dreadful web of greed and intrigue and, bringing Esmé with him, join me in the American capital.

‘France has neither the cash nor the nerve to go for anything really big,’ said Jimmy. We were crossing the Delaware. In the distance an alliance of tall pines, smokestacks, pylons, marched up both the river’s steep banks. ‘That was where you went wrong. Max. It doesn’t matter how good the scheme is. It has to have a true grounding in the realities of time and place.’

I said I still blamed the socialist trade unions, but he disagreed. ‘Unions strike one way or another because it pays them or their leaders to strike. They might have meant to get better wages. More likely someone was slipping them the dough.’ He paused significantly and looked at me, but I had no idea what he wanted to hear. He went on: ‘It could have been anyone. Your own directors. The Germans. The British.’

‘I still find it hard to believe people could be so devious.’

‘You have that in common with Americans, old man. We’re shocked by it. And that’s why we’re determined to have no more truck with Europe. Let them knife each other in the back. They won’t have a chance to get a crack at us.’

Having made sure Lucius was not seriously ill, we continued on to the deep plush chairs, the brass and mahogany fixtures, of the Club Car where we smoked cigars and drank root beer into which Jimmy had somehow introduced strong Scotch. The Limited now moved with stately, unhurried swiftness through wooded hills and valleys. It was supremely comfortable with its padded seats set in spacious carriages served by efficiently trained waiters capable of finding almost anything one desired. I wondered if, when she came to her senses, Russia could one day restore her rail service to the same standard. After all, Russia, like the USA, had an almost limitless supply of suitable raw materials. Here was the model we should seek to emulate. America had learned to deal with the Bolshevik threat. Unlike New York, the rest of the country recognised the danger, pursuing its Reds with a directness Europe should have imitated. The most lazily tolerant of all nations before the War, America, as a result, quickly found out the heavy price of such decency. Now when she closed her doors no one could blame her. She was anxious to quarantine herself from the social and mental diseases rife beyond the Atlantic. She would not discover until 1929, when Carthage struck, that she had acted too late. The whole country tottered and cried desperately for help. And who should turn up with smiling lips and helping hand, as if out of the blue? An apparent Samaritan calling himself by the name of a great American? Franklin D. Roosevelt. Bolshevik sympathiser and Mishling, stepped forward, took the helm and from then on the United States was doomed. She became the greatest single prize that ever fell to Carthage. But when I sat in the Pullman smoking Coronas with Rembrandt, the fight was still undecided. I was more than willing to join the struggle. I did my best along with so many noble Americans, but we were laughed at for our pains: we were hounded from power. And all the while the Orient was patiently biding her time. Nito tsu vemen isu reydn . . .

She put a Jew in the White House just as, a half century before, she put one in 10, Downing Street. Another ruled France. A committee of them ruled Germany. Of Spain, we need say nothing. Portugal? Denmark? Who knows? They would say Ver veyst? And the terrible thing is they would probably be right. Oriental fatalism seizes them. They sprawl on the public street, the opium pipes still in their hands. And they call me a fool? They are zombies, drugged by secret masters, then sent in a howling mass against the President. They are not killed. The police are humane. They know what corrupts these shambling, filthy creatures, the sons and daughters of respectable citizens. What can they do?

It was not long before the train began to near Washington and Jimmy led me back to where Lucius Mortimer lay curled in sleep across three seats. He woke up suddenly, glaring at Jimmy as if we had attacked him, then as he recognised us he began to smile. Upon our enquiring after his health, he said he felt much better. We prepared to disembark.

Since our carriages had been cooled by fans, I was not ready for the heat. It struck me the moment I stepped onto the platform. I had thought, since New York had been so warm, I was suitably dressed for Washington, but the humidity here was profound. One waded in it as if eye deep in a lake, constantly struggling for breath. I was aware of nothing else until we had entered the cab taking us to our hotel. I sank back, gasping, while Jimmy and Lucius laughed at my discomfort. They had known what to expect and were used to it. I asked what kind of person would site the centre of government in the middle of what was plainly a tropical swamp. For a moment, through the windows, I saw nothing but confirming greenery, but this gave way to lawns, brick and stone buildings spaced so far apart I felt almost uneasy, for I had become used to the dense concentration of New York. Indeed. I had a desire to pull down the cab’s blinds until we reached our hotel. It was close to dusk, yet the air was still hot and damp, and to me the city seemed virtually deserted; hardly a city at all. ‘You’ll either learn to take it easy here.’ Jimmy explained sympathetically, ‘or the weather’ll kill you.’ Now there were vague glimpses of wide, tree-lined streets, large white buildings, a few illuminated signs. The buildings came closer together and grew a little taller by the time we stopped, but I still felt uncomfortable, physically and psychically, as we entered the dim lobby of the old-fashioned hotel my friends had selected. It was called Wormley’s and was apparently very respectable. We seemed the youngest guests by twenty years. In contrast to the world outside, the hotel seemed unusually cramped and everything in it crowded together. My room was small. Its wallpaper displayed a succession of golden eagles. It had a large fan on the ceiling and this cooled the air enough for me to recover, wash, and dress for dinner. Jimmy and Lucius had already arranged to meet their political friends, so I wished to look my best.

By the time we went out again, the city was dark. The streets were well lit, though unnaturally wide, and the electrics glinted off the thick foliage of oaks, chestnuts and cherries. Washington gave the impression of being half town, half forest. Again I felt extremely uneasy, as if foolishly I had allowed myself to be lured out of an environment where I could trust my judgment and into one where it would be impossible for me to make well calculated decisions. There was something at once artificial and rural about the place. It was even less of a ‘natural’ capital than St Petersburg. Perhaps its only industry was politics? I suggested this to my companions and they were amused. ‘Its main products are hot air and niggers,’ said Jimmy, ‘and you can’t see much of either in the dark.’

Pennsylvania Avenue was as wide and tree-lined as the other streets I had so far seen. Set back from the road was the Colonial (what the English tend to call ‘Georgian’) neo-Graecian structure known as the Restaurant Pocock. Inside was all the atmosphere associated with the best sort of London club. Women were not allowed there and the main rooms were filled with well to do, self-confident men, most of whom evidently knew one another. Again, the three of us were the youngest guests. I assumed most of the restaurant’s clients were in politics. They carried themselves with the amiable assurance of men used to authority. There was a preponderance of grey hair and white whiskers, large cigars and quiet, private humour. I could not remember ever before visiting an establishment which had, down to the pattern on the carpet, such an impervious ambience. One could be certain that every single individual in the place was a true born American. I think this added to my own sense of relaxation. As our trio (‘the Three Musketeers’, Jimmy called us) entered we were greeted by a deferential negro who showed us to a table already occupied by two older men. The table was in an alcove made invisible from the street by lace curtains and heavy drapes. Arranged about the Restaurant Pocock’s walls glass cases contained old books, ornaments, a variety of bric-a-brac. All of these, Jimmy assured me, had historical importance. This was my first real encounter with the American obsession for honouring almost any artefact older than twenty years as an antique. He apologised for arranging the meeting at Pocock’s which he thought stuffy and ‘dry’. It was almost impossible to get a drink in Washington unless you were at someone’s private house. We should have to go through the dinner on grape juice and pop. I am still more amused than upset by this state of affairs, though wine had become commonplace to me, but it was a source of permanent anger to many Americans.

At the table I was introduced to Mr Charles Roffy and Mr Richard Gilpin who received me with exquisite and elaborate manners. They said they were glad to know me. ‘Delighted to welcome such a distinguished visitor to our capital,’ said Mr Roffy. I was to call them Charlie and Dick. I said I also was glad to know them and would be flattered if they would address me as Max. They smiled and laughed and patted my arm saying they were easy-going people down here and not given to a whole lot of formality. They were pleased I found their rough country ways acceptable. This self-deprecating style was, I knew, a feature of genuinely good breeding in America. Charlie Roffy was a tall man whose large, comfortable belly threatened the buttons of his waistcoat. He breathed heavily, as fat men sometimes do, and the redness of his face served to emphasise his slate-coloured eyes, a shock of fading sandy hair and greying moustache. He had heard my mother was English. His own ancestors were from Yorkshire. Did I know Yorkshire? I said I had rarely been North of the Border, save as a boy. This evidently satisfied Jimmy Rembrandt who glanced at Lucius Mortimer with the air of a teacher observing a favourite student. Dick Gilpin, older, with that stern, military face once identified with Victorian generals, a thick white walrus moustache and snow-white hair worn rather long, was the epitome of the distinguished statesman. He looked me over shrewdly even as he joked that his own forefathers had been somewhat more cautious in describing their exact origins. He believed some to have been cattle thieves in Kent. Quite possibly my ancestors had hanged some of his. This was another feature of the American aristocrat, they frequently claimed wild antecedents in a vaguely located past. I was a little confused by the statement. Later I would meet men who boasted romantically of their Indian blood while their grandfathers, who had been settlers, cheerfully described how they had almost single-handedly wiped out an entire aboriginal nation. Moreover nothing had really prepared me for the dry humour, subtlety and breeding of these two Southern diplomats. Russia had always identified Americans as rough, naive characters wearing shaggy buckskins or vulgar checks, eating raw buffalo meat, loudly bullying waiters with demands for ‘pie’. These called me ‘my dear sir’ and discussed with some regret the decline in the cuisine at Delmonico’s.

The two charming gentlemen won me over at once. They led me into a world I had never thought to experience, a fresh dream of Southern elegance and power, so potent it almost compensated me for my temporary loss of Esmé. Charlie Roffy told me they were both from Memphis. Their money was in cotton which was presently booming. They foresaw however an ultimate decline in the cotton trade. Memphis needed new money. That meant Memphis had to have industry. The river had always done well for the cotton trade; perhaps it would continue to do well for some other enterprises, but he and his partner were thinking in terms of speed. Since the War, he was convinced the future lay in aviation. Dick Gilpin agreed enthusiastically. Both men feared that unless investment were swiftly found for an indigenous Southern aviation industry, the North would, as he put it, once again beat them to the draw where commercial plane services were concerned. A completely Southern aircraft industry was needed, with its own brand of machines, its own aerodromes, its own power structure. Hundreds of flyers returning from Europe were Southerners. In that respect, at any rate, the expertise was available. He knew a number of politicians close to the Harding administration who were of like mind and could help push through government funds. ‘What we have to come up with first, Max, is a better plane, together with some solid designs for the ‘drome. Then we can discuss the various services we’ll provide. What’s most important is that the machines be built in Tennessee. Only solid manufacturing will make us secure. We have to stop thinking of ourselves as farmers. We must put our profits into factory plants while we still have profits. Money isn’t stocks and shares, it’s bricks and mortar. We hope you’ll be able to help us realise that dream, sir.’

I was pleased with his directness. I already had some experience running factories abroad, I said, and, of course, I had the most advanced designs available for aircraft, both of the lighter-than- and heavier-than-air varieties.

‘We need to convince government departments of that, you understand,’ said Dick Gilpin. ‘Look good as well as do good, if you follow me. We have plenty of competitors in this town, as you can guess.’

Hoping it was not untoward, I took the liberty of showing them some of my press cuttings. They were my affidavits, after all. I also produced my diploma from the St Petersburg Academy, various letters, and all the documents I had carefully brought out of Russia. Of course, they were in foreign languages, apart from the ship’s newspaper report, but the two men seemed satisfied. Only the Russian papers disturbed them. In my anxiety to impress I had made a stupid mistake. ‘What language would this be, son?’ asked Charlie Roffy, stroking his pepper and salt moustache.

It was Rembrandt who saved me. ‘That’s Greek. A whole lot of those European universities still write their diplomas in it, sir, as you know.’

Dick Gilpin was relieved. ‘So long as it ain’t Russian! I’d hate to discover you were a Bolshevist, boy!’

I could not avoid a serious response, ‘I am dedicated to the destruction of Bolshevism in any form.’

They in turn were comforted and approving. Dick Gilpin raised a hand, nodding rapidly, his chin on his chest, his lips thrust out. ‘You’ve been in Europe and seen what they can do to a country. Forgive our bad taste, sir.’

Jimmy Rembrandt said he would have the diplomas translated and a general list of my ‘credits’ typed up by tomorrow. Meanwhile, some of my plans were already before the Secretary of the Interior and at the Patent Office. This, too, enthused our hosts, though they were puzzled as to why I had sent patents to the Department of the Interior. I said I had believed it the best place for them. My inventions ranged, after all, from planes to ploughs.

‘We’ve plenty of good friends in that department.’ Dick Gilpin lit a cigar. ‘If we can be of use to you please let us know.’

We agreed to meet in a day or so. Then we might discuss future plans in greater detail. The older men regretted they had business commitments and could not spend the entire evening with us. They insisted on paying the whole bill before saying goodbye. They left us with our coffee. Captain Rembrandt was delighted. ‘You’ve made a hit,’ he said. ‘Those two codgers are amongst the cunningest old foxes in Washington. They know everybody and can get almost anything they want. They’ll be checking on you now, Max. But don’t worry, they won’t look in the foreign papers.’ I was a little surprised by this apparent cynicism, yet he spoke of Roffy and Gilpin most admiringly. He said it was not cynicism. ‘It’s realism. Max. This here’s a political city. They have to be as sure of you as they can be.’

‘I’m still not clear what it is they want.’

‘Expertise,’ said Lucius Mortimer. ‘Authenticity. They need at least one genuine scientist, a real authority to develop and project their plans, if they are to get government backing. They mean to have the first licences to operate commercial flights out of Memphis. Gilpin didn’t mention it, but his son was a pilot. The boy never made it back from France. He’d talk of a time when passenger planes would replace trains. That’s why Gilpin wants to get in early. Look at the fortunes made in railroads. And Ford with his automobiles. The next real killing must be in the air.’

I said it was rare to encounter such vision. But I could not determine why they should want a new plane.

‘Roffy believes the man who controls plane manufacturing also ultimately controls the air roads, Max.’ Mortimer warmed a fresh cigar. ‘J. P. Morgan didn’t just own the rolling stock. He bought the factories which made the locomotives. Roffy’s a man dedicated to pulling the South out of her industrial decline. You’ve spoke often of Birth of a Nation, so you know what I mean. While she remains mainly a crop economy, Dixie’ll never have the power to challenge the big Northern financial interests. Roffy gets a lot of resistance from the more old-fashioned people in Memphis, but he knows exactly what he’s about. His great-uncle was a steamboat owner in the days when Mississippi water could hardly be seen for river traffic all the way down to New Orleans. But Memphis has relied on the river and cotton too long. Gilpin sees it ending. Not in ten years, maybe. But twenty. In the meantime, you could say, they’re buying themselves insurance.’

‘You said he was cunning.’ I was cautious, not completely satisfied everything was as it should be. ‘I don’t want Gilpin to involve me in another swindle.’

‘This isn’t a swindle, old man, it’s a symphony,’ said Lucius Mortimer.

‘He means it’s an idealistic venture as much as a financial one. It will bring something good to everyone associated with it.’ Jimmy Rembrandt had noticed my puzzlement. I was never wholly able to master American slang, though my proficiency would, of course, increase, and when they spoke together they remained hard to follow.

Later that night we drove out of the city towards Arlington. Jimmy and Lucius said we should celebrate. Our rented car was one of the better types of Ford, though unremarkable compared to what I was used to. Steering by moonlight we eventually turned off the main road and tolled slowly up a wooded track, into the driveway of a large house. It resembled an old Southern mansion, with a stone verandah and marble pillars, though most of it was of red brick, with white shutters. Here, my two friends said, we would be able to get a decent drink.

The house turned out to be a kind of discreet club, evidently suited to the needs of the wealthy. Save for the foyer, there were no public rooms. We were ushered, by a conservatively dressed middle-aged lady, to a suite of chambers furnished in red velvet and dark pine. ‘It’s on the expenses,’ Jimmy told me mysteriously. ‘You can order whatever you like.’

Once again that evening I found myself embarrassed, having no clear idea of his meaning. The room was beautifully decorated in a style reminiscent of French Empire. There were two or three small anterooms leading off the main one, together with a marble bathroom and toilet. The windows were closed to the world outside so the whole atmosphere was hushed and still. I remained hesitant and baffled. It evidently suited my friends to keep the secret for a while, for I was sure they could tell my state of mind.

‘I think we should have some champagne.’ Lucius loosened his tie. ‘Even if it’s a little premature. What would you say to some peachy female company, Max? Only the best. We’re privileged to be here, you know. Normally you have to be at least sixty and a Senator or an Admiral to get through those doors.’

It dawned on me at last that the house was actually an exclusive bordello. I had heard that they existed in America; places where men of affairs could come without fear of interference or scandal. The discretion and sophistication of modern Americans continued to astonish me. There were subtleties to the culture which could never be guessed at unless one was exposed to them.

I spent my first night in the American capital sniffing excellent ‘snow’ and sharing a bottle of mediocre sparkling wine with a luscious flapper. She was a strawberry blonde in a green satin shift who called me ‘handsome’ and said I was ‘simply cute’. The girls of New York had been nothing more than ordinary harlots one found in any big city. These Washington whores were the playthings of generals and congressmen. They were on a higher level completely. An oysnam fun der velt! I have never enjoyed myself so thoroughly at a brothel. Next morning Jimmy Rembrandt asked me if I had been satisfied with the girls. Sind die Russen und Polen Freunde? I had tasted the rewards awaiting success in America. This helped relieve me of my burden of melancholy. I could scarcely bear to think of Esmé or the difficulties poor Kolya must be encountering in Paris where he must still desperately be working to clear my name. But no good could be served by brooding. The better the distraction the more effective I could be when the time came for our reuniting.

There is a price to be paid for this method of survival.

Ich habe es dreifach bezahlt.