Jerusalem Commands - [Between the Wars 03] Read online

  I told him briefly what had befallen me and he listened with some sympathy. ‘But I came here to collect my car. The PXI. Where is it now, Willy?’

  He put awkward fingers to the back of his neck. ‘There’s not too much of her left, Mr P. I don’t know what you did to him or what he thought you did, but he came down here only a day or so after you’d gone to New York and told us to wheel that steamer out. Just there, on the quay. So we did. We wheeled her out. Then he went to his own car and got this forty-pound sledgehammer from the trunk and just started whanging away at her. Well, you know, he was the boss

  It would not take a half-crazed Viennese Jew to know what had set John Hever off. It appeared that his only reason for funding the project was to ingratiate himself with Mrs Cornelius. What contempt I suddenly felt for the man! It was clear that he had no vision - even clearer, he had not even sense to respect mine! I let Willy lead me to a metal dump, used by all the machine shops, and there amongst the discarded boilers and engine parts, amongst the ruined elements of every land, sea or air vessel ever made, the pathetic remnants of more than my own dream, I saw the great PXI, its Buick body dented and smashed, every piece of glass destroyed. The hood had fallen open to reveal a ruined mass of tubes, wires and boilers. My steam car was unsalvageable!

  At this point horror gave way to anger. What childish folly! Gevalt! What a fool I had been to trust such a chozzer! Mah nishtana! Me duele aqui. They put a piece of metal in my soul. ¡Estoy el corazon! Tak sie raz osiel dasaù! I could not stand any more. I left in some disorder shivering with anger and disappointment. ‘He went to Europe,’ Willy told me. ‘We were fired. But it’s not hard to get a job around here. I liked your car, Mr P. We all figured she’d do okay.’ He was wistful. ‘I told Bob we were on to something.’

  An understatement indeed! Imagine my despair! This was not the first time, even at such an age, I had been bitterly disappointed in my hopes. Is it the fate of all men of vision to be treated thus? I think so. One has good years and bad years. 1924 was, perhaps, not to be one of my better years.

  Taking a taxi back to Venice I located the landlord of my old San Juan house and, when he had extorted a vicious $50.00 from me, recovered my bags and bore them back to the hotel. Thankfully the Georgian pistols, all that I had left of my homeland, were still there, along with my plan cases, my clothes, some money and about four ounces of cocaine which I had placed in an air-tight tobacco tin and which was as fresh as when first distilled! The quality was much better than the version familiar to the lower classes, which I had grown used to, and so, save for dashing off a quick letter to Mucker Hever, which would not make his homecoming any more pleasant, I did nothing that evening but clean my goods and get them into order, luxuriating in newly-discovered ecstasy. I was glad to have my wardrobe restored to me and, determined not to brood on Hever’s appalling perfidy, dressed in formal elegance. Leaving the hotel, I was delivered by cab to the beachfront at Venice where fashionable bohemians mingled with actors and tycoons. I determined to order myself a magnificent meal at my favourite restaurant, The Doge’s Palace, and then enjoy a cigar and some brandy while I considered how best to approach a new backer for my inventions. The steam car had never been the only card up my sleeve. Afterwards I planned to patronise Madame France’s famous ‘maison’. Soon I would begin to build up another list of telephone numbers from the ‘baby stars’ who were always up for a good time and charged you nothing, save that you promised to help them in their careers if you ever got the chance. The Doge’s Palace remained undimmed in its fanciful glory, framed by tall palms, its forecourt lit by hidden yellow and orange lanterns and I was about to enter when an apparition in the livery of a 15th-century condottiere, its black face grinning like the sudden winner of some mighty sweepstake, bellowed from where it was frozen in motion, about to enter a local mogul’s massive Duesenberg: ‘By God! If it ain’t the Flying Dutchman himself!’

  Irritated by this insolence I had almost complained to an unsettled doorman when I recognised with dawning pleasure the features of the ‘parking valet’. It was my old railroad companion, my amanuensis, who had shared so many adventures, so much hardship, so many nights talking of books, philosophy and politics when, I like to think, I contributed to his education, encouraging his eagerness to learn and to make something of himself.

  ‘Jacob Mix!’ I exclaimed in delight. ‘You are in California? How? Why?’

  ‘Looking for you.’ His grin was self-mocking. Then he became serious. ‘I figured you’d surely make it back here sooner or later. With your luck, it was only a question of waiting till you just naturally came by.’ He spoke without irony, with absolute certainty. For him this meeting had been inevitable.

  Laughing happily, I clapped him on the shoulder and reassured the doorman. ‘This gentleman and I are old friends!’ I told Mr Mix I would see him again as soon as I had dined. He continued to offer me his delighted beam. ‘Oh, things are going to get a whole lot better now!’ He spoke almost to himself.

  Just as the restaurant door was opened for me by the flunkey, Mr Mix added, ‘I guess I’ve seen that fiancée of yours around town. But maybe you’ve caught up with her by now. Or wised up.’ All thoughts of food driven from my mind, I whirled round. But Jacob Mix had started the Duesenberg and was driving it to the rear of the restaurant. I heard the doorman’s startled shout as I ran in frantic pursuit of that black Cassandra, the scent of a fresh spoor suddenly in my nostrils. Esmé.

  Meyn shwester. Meyn trail buddy.

  * * * *

  FOUR

  YOU THINK YOU ARE without blame? Well, as we used to say in Kiev, there is always room on the tram for one more saint. We were fair judges of people, Jew or Gentile, in the old days before that pseudonymous Red trio saturated the map of Russia in blood and called the result ‘Progress’.

  I am not here however to plough up old graves. I myself was once a great believer in the future. You could argue that my convictions were my weakness as well as my strength. Also I trusted others too much, for in that I was always my own worst enemy. I admit it. I continue as best I can to lift high the Torch of Christian Civilisation against the Darkness of the Beast. What better torch indeed! Yet I too have known the burden of guilt and moral ambivalence, the most painfully, the most unbearably, when I have betrayed a fellow human soul! By giving a machine priority over a person and by not arriving in New York earlier to make all appropriate arrangements for transport and hotels, I had betrayed the trust Esmé had placed in me. I had come to understand how it was entirely my fault and no surprise that, in her grief and terror at my presumed betrayal, she had blotted me, her rescuer, her passionate, loving husband, almost entirely from her consciousness.

  I was soon to become well aware of her state of mind when I telephoned her at the number Carmelita Geraghty, a well-known ‘baby-star’, gave me.

  The hotel agreed she was registered but, every time I called, said she was not available. It was a small but very sophisticated palm-shaded private hotel on Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, in its own grounds. When I presented myself the concierge was polite, accepted my messages, but was otherwise extremely close-mouthed and rather haughty. I understood that this was his habit. I explained some of the tragic events leading to the misunderstanding between us, but nothing I tried would get him to tell me when Esmé was expected back.

  My pain was admittedly no more than a dull persistent ache now and I was able to go about my ordinary business without too much effort of will while Carmelita Geraghty, Hazel Keener, Lucille Rickson and Blanche McHaffey helped me forget my heartache. My attempts to contact Esmé became a matter of routine. Every day I left a message. I was a great optimist then. The future seemed infinite and could only improve. It is different now. There are no rules, no boundaries to Time. I grew to maturity and old age in a world that sought to give new shape, even a new meaning, to the universe. What was I to do? Like some ancient mariner cast adrift in an open boat, I made my best effort to chart a safe course
for myself across an alien sea beneath an alien sky. The schwartzes swagger into my shop. They say this is their territory now. I am sure it is, I say. It is what things have come to.

  Do they delude themselves that I have any time for their zoot and jives, that I envy them their acid society held together by soporifics? I was born into a world of work and pain, where pleasure was earned and paid for, where Nature was not to be Nurtured and Sentimentalised but Tamed, and where crime was punished. There is a piece of metal in my womb. They placed a white-hot iron upon my spirit and my agony filled the galaxy, destroying stars, but I survived even that. I was strengthened by it. I died and came alive. I survived a holocaust. I survived the humiliation and the despair. And even now, living this life of a tradesman, buying and selling the discarded costumes and uniforms of the 20th century, I at least have my voice, my memory, our history; and I have survived to tell the truth of it. To these children the powerful personalities who created their world have become mythic ogres and demigods. I have seen the realities of an entire planet undergoing profound and unprecedented agonies, the most momentous changes she has ever experienced in this Age of Man. I have seen the reality of individuals dying in abject terror and spiritual agony, one by one, to make - death by death - first one million, then two million, then ten million: million by million they died, and one by one, in ditches and in woods, in trains and in camps, in churches and barns, flats and huts, in snow and rain or perfect sunshine. Shot, buried or drowned, tormented, dehumanised, corrupted, robbed of self-respect, they died one by one, children and old people; people of every age. Million upon million they watched their loved ones killed. In the name of progress they died for a future that turned to ash even as they themselves perished. That ashen future still clings here and there in those parts of the world most susceptible to temporal cancers. Once those cancers take hold they are almost impossible to eradicate, even with the subtlest, most radical surgery. Not that anyone will listen to those of us who are capable of performing such an operation. This is scarcely an era of bold and unselfish decisions. Greed is now a respectable Virtue and Envy a fine spur to ‘ambition’, or the lust for power. The Lie is commonplace. The old Virtues are mocked and reviled. They roar with laughter at the noblest sentiments and aspirations. It is why I stopped going to watch for glimpses of myself and Mrs Cornelius at the National Film Theatre. The Roads to Yesterday and other great moral fables of our time were the subject of scarcely suppressed mirth. Now occasionally on TV I get to see a 20s movie not entirely murdered by the introduction of a mocking soundtrack. In those days the cinema was worth visiting. It had moral responsibility; it recognised its influence on the public - it offered a new morality, sometimes, too - to lift them above the level of the greedy herd - a level of aspiration. The Roads to Yesterday with Hopalong Cassidy and Vera Reynolds (whom I met years later in the flesh and was able to congratulate on her performance) showed us the world of the past and illuminated the world of today. On the same day I saw a last lyrical tribute to an older West by William S. Hart who had been superseded by the glamorous daredevil Tom Mix in Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Range with Charlie Chan. I enjoyed Ricardo Cortez and Betty Carney in The Pony Express. I was astounded by The Lost World, which I had read as a Strand serial, with Wallace Beery and Bessie Love - it captured my imagination that year until I saw We Moderns, that great moral fable for our time with its powerful climax as the jazz-babies dance obliviously on the deck of the great airship unaware of the plane about to crash into the hull! Certainly, it was based on Zangwill’s book. I have never said that all Jews were immoral! I also saw She with Betty Blythe, Lord Jim and The Wizard of Oz, but We Moderns made the lasting impression and I would have gone to see it more times if I had not begun to realise I was running short of money.

  By now I also had the company of some of those ‘jazz-babies’ I watched on the screen. Joan Crawford, Clara Bow and Alberta Vaughan were all ladies who found me attractive enough to spend a little time with and through them, of course, I could obtain good-quality cocaine. The excellent cocaine helped me get a better grip on the truth of my situation. The remaining money in my bank account, together with the assets I had brought with me, would keep me for little more than a month (especially with regular visits to Madame France’s) and I had no wish to borrow money from Mrs Cornelius. She had of course made her generous purse available to me. I was anxious to avoid association with Hearst for a while. I recalled my meeting with Mucker Hever’s erstwhile partner, Goldfish. He had suggested I send him my synopsis of White Knight and Red Queen. As always, rather than mourn a ruined opportunity, I concentrated on reviewing my immediate resources. I had no intention of becoming a full-time script-writer, but I had to earn some money quickly and this was the only way in which I might do that. I would, of course, continue to seek for my inventions a backer with more vision than Hever, an ‘angel’ whose interest in my work was moved by something more substantial than an ‘inflatable conscience’. Equally, I was determined not to take advantage of Mrs Cornelius’s offers to have her boyfriend employ me: I had learned my lesson in that area, at least for the moment!

  Thus, from the plethora of pretty, talented and sexually experienced young girls who in those days flooded the market, I found a competent typist and had her write out the plot of the play Mrs Cornelius and I had given up and down the State. In essence I performed the whole thing for her, scene by scene, while she took notes. She was able to help a little with my English spelling, which was not perfect in those days, and before long we had produced some dozen pages ready to send to the famous maverick producer, hero and victim of two great film companies, who by this time had changed his name to Goldwyn and was again starting up as a patron of quality films. ‘Rubbish,’ he often argued, ‘has no long-term shelflife. With your quality you have an investment, a high profit margin which will last you for years.’ It was this belief in quality as a matter of commercial good sense which was to win me to him and offer us both a somewhat radically different place in cinema history. My one regret is that Mrs Cornelius and I were cut from von Stroheim’s Greed. The pirate Meyer took it over and cut forty-two reels to ten! It was a travesty of what all who saw the first version agreed was the greatest movie ever made. It was a masterpiece of epic realism. I would even be prepared to say it eclipsed Birth of a Nation, but von Stroheim was never the professional Griffith was.

  Madge Puddephet, my secretary, a pretty girl from Missouri, was impressed by my casual familiarity with the personalities of the screen world. She herself was a great admirer of Mrs Cornelius and, soft-hearted as I was, I promised to get her my friend’s autograph. (Madge later became famous as Vivienne Prentiss, with a particularly large following in France. Drink ruined her but when I knew her she was a smart little jazz-baby who was amazed I should even have heard of Hannibal, let alone spent time there. I did not see any point in explaining the circumstances.) She came to my hotel twice a day and of course it was not long before our natural attraction took us, almost without realising it, to bed. Those were the years before Hollywood succumbed completely to the bourgeois ideal, the notion of the ‘normal’, and Madge provided the consolation I needed. She had been trained, like so many of these girls, by her father.

  Poor, martyred Arbuckle, whom I came to know quite well, and Hays between them sent the American movie down a road which ultimately put middle-class slacks on Mickey Mouse and replaced Pearl White and Theda Bara with Blondie and Kiss Me, Hardy. When this happened, they said America had ‘grown up’. But we had a code and a wisdom of our own and might have looked after our own had not Big Business and International Zion conspired to attack that love of liberty and tolerance which made the film community what it was in those early, innocent years when sexual liberation was something less reverent and more pleasurable than it seems nowadays. The final victory over Art came when we at last had a chance to speak, to give our own interpretations to our roles - whereupon every artist of integrity and individuality was systematically replac
ed by the Nice American Guy and the Ail-American Girl. Clara Bow, with whom I last corresponded in 1953, knew all about the conspiracy, as did Mrs Cornelius and Norma Talmadge. Louise Brooks wrote about it. John Gilbert was destroyed by it, as was John Barrymore. Clara married. She tried to be a good girl. But it drove her mad. Her nature was free as mine. Freedom is a threat to easy profits. It is the first thing the Corporations eradicate. They substitute a range of choices and call that Freedom. But we knew what real freedom was in 1924.

  Madge herself took my manuscript to Goldfish’s office but she was only able to hand it in to a flunkey, so we were both thoroughly surprised when a telephone call the next day ordered me to visit Goldfish at four o’clock that afternoon. These were the days when he had already severed his partnership with Metropolitan and with Meyer (whose fortune, ironically, was founded on Ham). He was again an approachable eccentric aristocrat rather than one of the Hollywood kings. Samuel Goldwyn Productions had already made some highly successful and critically acclaimed films like Tarnish, In Hollywood With Potash and Perlmutter and many others. He was a typically flamboyant Warsaw Jew. Out of politeness I addressed him in Yiddish, but he insisted on English until he grew more relaxed, and returned to Yiddish in which he was more fluent. He was impressed by my story. He had been looking for something like it.