Yet she was happy to be in Atlantic City. Here Sarah’s child was protected. For the first time since Sarah’s death she could think of her without weeping. She enjoyed being viewed in public, as in the dining room at the hotel or on the veranda in the evening, or strolling on the boardwalk down to the pavilions and piers and shops. Sometimes they hired a chair in which she and Father sat side by side and were slowly pushed along by a porter. They made lazy examination of the occupants of chairs going in the opposite direction, or glanced discreetly at other riders they happened to pass. Father tipped his straw. The chairs were wicker, with fringed canvas tops that reminded her of the surreys of her childhood. The two side wheels were large, as on a safety bicycle; the small wheel in front swiveled and sometimes squeaked. Her son loved these chairs. They could be hired too without a man, and he loved that best of all, for then he pushed the chair with his mother and father seated in it and he could direct it as he would, at whatever speed, without their feeling the need of instructing him. The great hotels stood behind the boardwalk, one next to the other, their awnings flapping in the sea wind, their immaculately painted porches lined with rocking chairs and white wicker settees. Nautical flags flew from the cupolas and at night they were lighted by rows of incandescent bulbs strung along their roof lines.
One night the family stopped at a pavilion where a brass band of Negroes stoutly played a rag, she didn’t know which one, that she remembered ringing from her piano at home under the fine hands of Mr. Coalhouse Walker. She had for days lived not in forgetfulness of the tragedy but in relief from it, as if in this resort city by the sea painful thoughts were blown off by the prevailing breezes as soon as they formed. Now she was almost overcome by the music which was associated in her mind also with Younger Brother. And immediately her love for her brother, a wave of passionate admiration, broke over her. She felt she had neglected him. An image of his lean moody impetuous being flashed in her mind, somewhat reproachful, somewhat disgusted. It was the way he had looked at her over the dining table at home as Father cleaned his pistol. She felt a slight vertigo, and looking into the lights of the pavilion where the indomitable musicians sat in red and blue uniforms with their shiny trumpets and cornets, tubas and saxophones, she thought she saw under each trim military cap the solemn face of Coalhouse.
After that evening Mother’s joy in the seashore was more tenuous. She had to concentrate on each day as it came. She attempted by sheer resolve to make it serene. She was affectionate to her son, her husband, her invalid father; she was affectionate to her Negro woman and most of all to the still-unchristened and beautiful son of Sarah, who was thriving here and seemed to be growing visibly. She began to consider the attentions that were being paid her by various of the hotel guests. They hovered on the edges of her consciousness, waiting for some recognition from her. For simple occupation she was now prepared to bestow this. There were several impressive Europeans at the hotel. One was a German military attaché to his embassy who wore a monocle and always saluted her with discreet gallantry. He was tall and wore that cropped hair they affected and came to dinner in his formal uniform of white, with a black bow tie. He made a great show of ordering wines and then rejecting them. There were no women in his party but three or four men, somewhat coarser-looking, whose rank was apparently inferior to his. Father said he was a Captain von Papen and that he was an engineer. They saw him every day walking the beach and unrolling charts and pointing to sea and speaking to his aides. Usually there was at the time a small craft slowly traversing the horizon. It is some kind of engineering survey, Father said lying on the beach sand with his face to the sun. I can’t imagine why the South Jersey coast should interest Germans. Father was oblivious to the man’s speculative notice of his wife. Mother was amused by this. She knew from the first careless glance she returned to the officer that he presented to her only the most lascivious intentions focused, as it were, in the imperiousness of his monocled gaze. She decided to ignore him.
There was an elderly French couple with whom she learned to exchange pleasantries; she laughed to recall her schoolgirl French and they very generously complimented her accent. They never appeared in the sun except cocooned in endless swaths of linen and gauze topped with Panama hats. For good measure they carried parasols. The man, who was shorter than his wife and quite heavy, had liver spots on his face. He wore thick glasses. He had enormous pendent ear lobes. He carried a butterfly net and jar with a cork stopper and she a picnic hamper so heavy that she could not walk upright with it. Each morning she struggled after him over the dunes and they disappeared in the distant haze where there were no hotels, no boardwalk, only the gulls and sandpipers and the dune grasses, where sat the trembling wings for which he lusted. He was a retired history professor from Lyons.
Mother tried to interest Grandfather in the French couple on the basis of their academic background. The old man would have none of it. He was totally engrossed by his condition and too irritable to engage in civilized discourse. He defeated all the diversions she thought up for him—except one, a daily ride in a boardwalk chair in which he could sit and be wheeled without being thought infirm. But he carried a cane across his lap and whenever the pedestrian traffic did not move fast enough for him he lifted the cane and prodded women and men alike, who would turn and stare, outraged, as he sailed past them.
There were other guests, of course, who were not Europeans: a gigantic stockbroker from New York with a huge wife and three immense children, who spoke not a word when they dined; several family groups from Philadelphia, who could be placed quickly by the nasalities of their speech. But Mother found that the persons who interested her were invariably foreigners. They were not a substantial number but seemed to beam more life than her countrymen. The most fascinating of all was a small, limber man who wore jodhpurs and a white silk shirt open at the neck and a flat white linen cap with a button. He was a flamboyant, excited person whose eyes darted here and there, like a child’s, afraid of what they might miss. He carried on a chain around his neck a rectangular glass framed in metal which he often held up to his face as if to compose for a mental photograph what it was that had captured his attention. One cloudy morning on the hotel porch it turned out to be Mother. Caught in the act he came over and in a thick foreign accent made profuse apologies. He was, he said, the Baron Ashkenazy. He was in the moving-picture business and the glass rectangle was a tool of the trade which he could not forbear using even when on vacation. He laughed sheepishly and Mother was charmed. He had shining black hair and his hands were delicate and small. She saw him next on the beach leaping about some distance away, entertaining a child at the edge of the sea, picking up things, running this way and that, and holding up his peculiar rectangular glass. With the sun behind him he was no more than a silhouette. But she immediately recognized his energetic figure, even at that distance, and she smiled.
The Baron Ashkenazy was the first guest to join Mother and Father at their table. He arrived with a beautiful little girl whom he introduced as his daughter. She was astonishingly lovely, about the same age as the boy. Mother had immediate hopes that they would become friends. Of course they sat there and said nothing and didn’t look at one another. But she was a remarkable creature, with the darkest eyes and thick black hair like her father’s and a Mediterranean complexion. She wore a fine white lace dress with a satin bodice shaped by the smallest suggestion of a bosom. Father could not take his eyes off the girl. Through dinner she said nothing, nor did she smile. But the explanation was soon forthcoming, after the appetizer, in fact, when the Baron in a lowered voice, his hand going out to touch his daughter’s hand, explained that her mother had died some years before although he did not say of what. He had never remarried. A moment later he was again his ebullient self. He talked incessantly in his European accent, with malapropisms he himself recognized and laughed over. Life excited him. He dwelled on his own sensations and liked to talk about them: the taste of the wine or the way the candle flames multiplie
d in the crystal chandeliers. His simple delight in everything was infectious and soon Mother and Father wore constant smiles on their faces. They had forgotten themselves. It was enormously pleasurable to see the world as the Baron did, alive to every moment. He held his rectangular glass aloft, framing Mother and Father, the two children, the waiter walking toward the table and, at the far end of the dining room, a pianist and a fiddler who played for the patrons on a small platform decorated with potted palms. In the movie films, he said, we only look at what is there already. Life shines on the shadow screen, as from the darkness of one’s mind. It is a big business. People want to know what is happening to them. For a few pennies they sit and see their selves in movement, running, racing in motorcars, fighting and, forgive me, embracing one another. This is most important today, in this country, where everybody is so new. There is such a need to understand. The Baron lifted his wineglass. He looked at the wine and tasted it. You have of course seen His First Mistake. No? A Daughter’s Innocence. No? He laughed. Don’t embarrass! They are my first two picture plays. One-reelers. I made them for under five hundred dollars and each has brought ten thousand dollars in receipt. Yes, he said laughing, it is true! Father had coughed and turned red at the mention of specific sums. Misunderstanding, the Baron insisted on explaining to him how this was a good profit but not unusual. The film business was at this time booming and anyone could make money. Now, the Baron said, I have become myself a company in partnership with the Pathé exchange for a story fifteen reels long! And each reel will be shown, one a week for fifteen weeks, and the customer will come back every week to see what next happens. With a mischievous look he took a shiny coin from his pocket and flipped it into the air. It went nearly as high as the ceiling. Everyone watched it. The Baron caught the coin and flattened his hand on the table with a loud smack. The silver jumped. The water shook in the glasses. He lifted his hand, revealing one of the popular new five-cent pieces, a buffalo nickel. Father couldn’t understand why he was doing this. How I named myself, the Baron said with delight. I am the Buffalo Nickel Photoplay, Incorporated!
As the Baron went on talking, Mother looked across the table at the two children sitting next to each other. The idea of examining through a frame what was ordinarily seen by the eye intrigued her. She composed them by her attention, just as if she had been holding the preposterous frame. Her son’s hair was combed back from his forehead for the occasion and he wore a large white collar with his little-man suit and flowing tie. His blue eyes, flecked with yellow and green, looked up at her. All the beautiful child next to him needed in her white lace and satin dress was a veil. Her eyes were raised now and she returned Mother’s gaze with a directness that verged on defiance. Mother saw them as the bride and groom in a characteristic grade-school exercise of the era, the Tom Thumb wedding.
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And so the two families met. The sun spread over the sea each morning and the children sought one another down the wide corridors of the hotel. When they rushed outside the sea air struck their lungs and their feet were chilled by the beach sand. Awnings and pennants snapped in the wind.
Every morning Tateh worked on the scenario of his fifteen-chapter photoplay, dictating his ideas to the hotel stenographer and reading the typewritten pages of the previous day’s work. When he was alone he reflected on his audacity. Sometimes he suffered periods of trembling in which he sat alone in his room smoking his cigarettes without a holder, slumped and bent over in defeat like the old Tateh. But his new existence thrilled him. His whole personality had turned outward and he had become a voluble and energetic man full of the future. He felt he deserved his happiness. He’d constructed it without help. He had produced dozens of movie books for the Franklin Novelty Company. Then he had designed a magic lantern apparatus on which paper strips printed with his silhouettes turned on a wheel. A wooden shuttle passed back and forth in front of an incandescent lamp like a loom. The apparatus was accepted for mail-order distribution by Sears, Roebuck and Company, and the owners of Franklin Novelty offered to make Tateh a partner. In the meantime he had discovered that others were doing animated drawings like his except for projection on celluloid film. From this he became interested in film itself. The images did not have to be drawn. He sold his interests and went into the movie business. Anyone with enough self-assurance could get backing. The film exchanges in New York were desperate for footage. Film companies were forming overnight, re-forming, merging, going to court, attempting to monopolize distribution, taking out patents on technical processes and in all ways exemplifying the anarchic flash and fireworks of a new industry.
There were commonly in America at this time titled European immigrants, mostly impoverished, who had come here years before hoping to marry their titles to the daughters of the nouveaux riches. So he invented a baronry for himself. It got him around in a Christian world. Instead of having to erase his thick Yiddish accent he need only roll it off his tongue with a flourish. He dyed his hair and beard to their original black. He was a new man. He pointed a camera. His child was dressed as beautifully as a princess. He wanted to drive from her memory every tenement stench and filthy immigrant street. He would buy her light and sun and clean wind of the ocean for the rest of her life. She played on the beach with a well-bred comely boy. She lay between soft white sheets in a room that looked into an endless sky.
The two friends every morning went to the deserted stretches of beach where the dunes and grasses blocked the hotel from their sight. They dug tunnels and channels for the sea water, walls and bastions and stepped dwellings. They made cities and rivers and canals. The sun rose over their bent backs as they scooped the wet sand. At noon they cooled themselves in the surf and raced back to the hotel. In the afternoons they played in sight of the beach umbrellas, collecting sticks of wood and shells, walking slowly with the little brown boy splashing after them in the ebb tide. Later the adults retired to the hotel and left them alone. Slowly, with the first blue shadows reappearing in the sand, they followed the tide line beyond the dunes and lay down for their most serious pleasure, a burial game. First, with his arm, he made a hollow for her body in the damp sand. She lay in this on her back. He positioned himself at her feet and slowly covered her with sand, her feet, her legs, her belly and small breasts and shoulders and arms. He used wet sand and shaped it in exaggerated projections of her form. Her feet were magnified. Her knees grew round, her thighs were dunes and on her chest he constructed large nippled bosoms. As he worked, her dark eyes never left his face. He lifted her head gently and raised a pillow of sand under it. He lowered her head. From her forehead he built lappets of sand that spread out to her shoulders.
No sooner was the elaborate sculpture completed than she began to destroy it, moving her fingers gently, wiggling her toes. The encrustation slowly crumbled. She raised one knee and then the other, then burst forth altogether and ran down to the water to wash off the crust of sand on her back and the back of her legs. He followed. They bathed in the sea. They held hands and squatted and let the surf break over them. They went back to the beach and now it was his turn to be buried. She built the same elaborate casing for his body. She enlarged the feet, the legs. The small prominence in his bathing suit she built up with cuppings of sand. She built out his narrow chest and widened his shoulders and gave him the lappeted headdress he had designed for her. When the work was done he slowly broke it to pieces, cracking it carefully, as a shell, and breaking out then for the run to the water.
In the evenings, sometimes, their parents took them to the amusements on the boardwalk. They would hear the band concert or see the road show. They saw Around the World in 80 Days. Clouds floated through the theatre. They saw Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But the real excitement was in the attractions the adults would not dream of patronizing: the freak shows, the penny arcades, the tableaux vivants. They were too shrewd to express their desires. Then after a few visits downtown, when the trip seemed not so formidable, they persuaded the adults they were capable of m
aking it by themselves. And fortified with fifty cents they ran along the boardwalk in the dusk. They stood looking into the lights of the mechanical fortuneteller’s glass case. They put in a penny. The turbaned figure, its mouth clacking open on shining teeth, turned its head right and left and raised its hand in a jerking way; a ticket was extruded and the entire apparatus lurched to a halt in mid-smile. I am the great He-She, the ticket said. They put money in the claw machine, directing it by means of wheels to drop the steel claw where it would clutch the treasure they wanted and release it into the chute. In this way they received a necklace of shells, a small mirror of polished metal, a tiny cat of glass. They viewed the freaks. They walked quietly among the exhibition stalls of the Bearded Lady, the Siamese Twins, the Wild Man from Borneo, the Cardiff Giant, the Alligator Man, the Six-Hundred-Pound Woman. It was this behemoth who stirred on her stool and quivered as the children came before her. She was seized with an irrepressible emotion and rose on her tiny feet and came toward them mountainously. The great gardens of her flesh closed and opened, going out and in, out and in, as she spread her arms in oscillations of sentiment. They moved on. Behind each fence the watchful normal eyes of the creatures tracked their odyssey. From the Giant they bought a ring from his finger which went around their wrists; from the Siamese twins, a signed photo. They ran out.