The Laughter of Carthage: Pyat Quartet

  The mob cannot reach the ship. Here we are purified. There is no security in those flying cylinders, packed end to end with people unable to walk or feed themselves, waiting passively for malodorous trays. No wonder they complain, grow angry, panic. This is the flying the mob deserves: anything better would be unappreciated. It offers nothing for people of refinement. That is why I never travel now. What is left on the Atlantic? A single great Cunarderon which they do not even, I hear, dress for dinner? One Polish tub; two pathetic Soviet hulks built in Germany, full of rats and leaky lifeboats, grotesquely aping the glories of their overthrown masters? A Dutch tramp? A couple of South American banana boats? A single container carrier? Meanwhile the skies, which could have been glorious with my aerial cities, are littered with smelly steel tubes, worse than tourist buses. Those golden cities fade and fall like autumn leaves. Squalid winter covers the world with impure white; the blood and the filth, soaked upwards, encrust the surface like a cancer. When this snow melts everything revealed is misshapen and the colour of mud. The grey planes land to disgorge dazed and shambling cattle. Loaded up again with identical cargo, they move it as speedily as possible to another patch of mud. Some of these creatures are ‘on business’, some ‘on holiday’. How can they tell? By painted signs? Red tsu der vant! Is that all that is left? Our prophets are reviled. Our children are slaves. Our cities are conquered and we are driven from them. O Carthage, thou hast triumphed by treachery alone! By thy stealth and thy cunning hast thou overwhelmed us. With poison and with calumnies. And we are without place or name. Our faces are hidden and our raiment torn. Thou hast taken our daughters in fornication and placed our gold upon thine altars. O Carthage, thou has spat upon our holy things, cast down our temples and scattered the ashes of our books upon the wind. We wept for thee, Carthage, and thou turnest our tears into weapons against us. We did not know the Greek when He spoke to us. We heeded Him not. We are banished to timeless night. We can no longer find the Greek. In the awful midden of modern Russia swine stare stupified at huge portraits of their masters; perhaps the Greek walks there, bringing compassion to those still calling for Him. Carthage has stolen our future. Our wings have shrivelled to stumps on our shoulders. They have torn out our eyes so we raise bloody sockets to the skies, seeking only for the sounds of our lost cities. Little by little we are forgetting our future. In shut arein! Soon we shall remember nothing. Carthage shall be secure in all her citadels. They will not let me fly. I refuse to accept their yiddishkeit. They put a piece of metal in my stomach. They tried to hold me but the doctors could find nothing wrong. I looked in Springfield for the Greek but He had gone to Los Angeles and I no longer have the means to follow Him. I will not travel in their filthy cylinders. Why become wadding in a bullet aimed at your own heart? I have known true wonder, walking on the glowing balconies of an aerial city, a mile above the clouds, while an invisible orchestra plays music. There are people dancing. I hear their laughing conversation. They are elegant and courteous, these new Mauretanians, lovers of beauty and intelligence. They do not need to find the Greek. He has come to them already. There is a surge like a great, steady wave, and the city shivers, her white towers shimmering under the haze of her huge protective dome. She mounts the air, floats upon cloud masses which are rolling surf against the peaks of the Himalayas. Then, with a monstrous thrust, she turns towards the wild blaze of the sun, heading for the West, riding as a ship might ride upon the water, her hull rolling and vibrating and her steam whistle, pitched two octaves below Middle A, sounding like a lament for her lost dreams, her vanishing future. They took my children, meine einiklach.

  The Mauretania’s four red-and-black funnels send plumes of smoke up into the blue pallor. The sea is calm, from horizon to horizon, and here we are secure until Liberty is sighted and Babylon’s terraces rise yellow, cream and orange in the setting sun. Until then I shall walk along her polished decks, nodding to acquaintances, lifting my hat, taking the air while a little light spray refreshes my face and Helen Roe seizes my arm and cries, pointing, ‘Can you see the dolphins?’ We are somewhere near the West Indies. Helen is certain she saw a gull yesterday. ‘Or at least some sort of bird.’ The decks stretch ahead of us like so many cloisters around which we stroll, talking softly, a chosen community. We give ourselves in gentle and unconscious celebration to the spirit of practical science which is represented by the vessel herself; thousands of cubic feet of man-made metal and machinery, kept alive and on the move by the sophisticated ingenuity of our engines. These alone, a hundred years ago, could not be imagined.

  History does not change, because people will always prefer the false comfort of repetition. In crisis they look for the familiar, they fall back on convention, no matter how unsuited it is to their situation. Neophobia is the great destructive disease of the human race; it is spread through hysterical gesture, anxious phrases, nervous tone: a smell.

  Our ship glides towards red and gold cupolas and spires: Moscow and the Kremlin. Formal salutations are offered to the Tsar, the constitutional ruler of this noble democracy. In turn his welcome is extended to us. The Great Powers are in peaceful balance. They have taken charge of the world again. The ship rocks like an old house in the wind. ‘They’ll put yer in an ‘ome, Ivan, if yer go on like that.’ Mrs Cornelius means well. Hers is a more ordinary human vision, perhaps, than mine. America should have accepted responsibility. It was no one else’s fault. We have seen some good times, she says. Remember L.A., do yer? She roars as she recalls an anecdote. Her memory is better on the little details. I can still see the huge white seaplane rising over Long Beach and banking towards Catalina Island. Water pours shining from her floats. She is obscured for a moment behind a clump of tall etiolated palms. Then she appears again, her engines yelling as she makes the tight turn and finally disappears. The sound fades; the surf remains. I am not sure I was meant for such brilliant and perpetual sunshine. I never accepted their injections. Perhaps I should have stayed on the horse. White faceless heads turn towards the Cross. Christ is remembered in fire and moonlight. In Tennessee Christ is revenged in blood and steel.

  Mrs Cornelius says in the long run everything usually turns out for the best. It is a tribute to her tolerance and optimism. Personally, I can no longer keep my spirits up. Too many have suffered. Too many have failed. The little girls sing their songs in the Church. Christ is Risen! We have trampled death with death and to those in the tombs we bring life! I see no evidence. All but a handful of us are left. The rest, we should face it, are all Judenknechte these days. On a Thursday afternoon I close my shop. I walk up towards the tranquil convents in the norther parts of Portobello Road. Here the scrap-metal merchants advertise what they will pay for lead, copper, zinc on greasy blackboards propped outside doorways hung with old coats and clean rags. There is an air of peace on Thursday afternoons, a stillness; a pause in the conflict. The sound of car engines becomes muted and distant, like bees in a summer garden. In July and August you see butterflies in the street, dancing over the waits of the monasteries. The children run up and down the kerbs and steps; they cry secret names from unwashed mouths, grimace with unwanted faces. The nuns smile without meaning. The litter of the morning waves and flaps. Nervous dogs with tucked-in tails sniff carefully from stack to stack and any prize is seized swiftly, then they run, forever guilty, anticipating attack. They snarl and huddle in the alleys and sidestreets. Buildings lean and sway under the burden of degenerate poverty; old women pick rotten fruit from the gutters, moving ponderously and bending painfully. Swaggering boys purse their lips at you, their hands in back pockets, and call like carrion to one another across the gaps in the city. Little painted girls ogle you from lascivious, contemptuous eyes. A bank of cloud rises above walls and roofs, blinding white with the sun behind it; a choir of angels and the Virgin Mary. To inhabit a city with a pulsing golden dome I should have to go back nearly fifty years. Then all this seemed capable of remedy. Mrs Cornelius’s sons call me a sleazy old fascist, but they say this to ev
eryone. I am a visionary, no more, no less. They could not understand how desperate things seemed. They have come to accept this horror as the norm. We hoped for better. In 1959 I wrote that our chances were almost all gone. What was left of the Empire? What of the Law? Does this make me a luftmentsh?

  In 1964 I wrote to Harold Wilson begging him in the name of sanity to consider the real problems of this country. He must have laughed as he crumpled up my letter and put his two hands firmly on the wheel, turning our ship towards the mirage. They said we had easy money. They said we were enjoying a new age of Liberty and Hope. I saw only Licence and Damnation. They said I was a complaining old Jew. They will say anything to diminish my warnings. Today some of them surely must understand how, on every level, they deceived themselves. Little creatures scuttle amongst the ruins, tittering and grinning, creeping from fissures, retreating under broken slabs. This is the inheritance of Carthage. Is the Socialist glad of his euphoria now? Did it achieve what we hoped? Khob’n in bod! These champions of the working class added a new dimension to property speculation; and sold the country lock, stock and barrel to the red-lipped brokers of Carthage.

  I do not expect to live much longer. I have been too outspoken, for all my warnings were useless. Mrs Cornelius says I waste my breath. It is a mistake to give your real name. We went to the cinema last night. We saw Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines. It is all a joke to them now, our achievements. The slack mouths bellow, the empty heads are thrown back. The aeroplanes are merely props for a clown’s comic disasters. Then I was a true luftmensch. It is raining on the roof. The electric light is flickering in the rafters. My engines need attention. I must connect them properly. All I ever asked was for a pupil to whom I could pass my ideas, but they sent no one. In the forties and fifties I used to see more intelligent people. They inhabited the wine bars and drinking clubs of Soho and Chelsea. Dylan Thomas told me I was a pure, bloody genius. He wore a suit some sizes too big for him, but responded to my words as poets always have. I hear he is making records now. A superstar. There was some talk, in The Mandrake, of writing a play together. The poet has ears which can listen to the voice of God. Thomas drank because he heard too much. But what he is doing on the radio now is sheer noise. He deafened himself completely. Henry Williams, the otter trainer and successful novelist, said my political ideas were the soundest he had ever encountered. He had the beard and hair of Jehovah; a great healthy face. His girlfriends dyed their hair blonde for him. By the sixties, however, I was in Springfield. It was a different age. The same people who praised me as a brilliant scientist ahead of his time now referred to chemical imbalances in my brain and made me incoherent on largactyl and tranxene. C’ a trappo rumore. These drugs originate in Switzerland. They were developed to suppress individuality. This is the main mission of the Swiss. They devote most of their time to it. They are frightened by thought. They expelled Mussolini. They would have expelled me. Instead they sell drugs to Carthage, profiting from all Europe’s misfortunes. I had plans for a city to cover the Alps but nothing came of it. Mauretania is a nation at peace. I should like to be a permanent citizen. Captain Rembrandt says he has crossed the Atlantic almost twenty times. ‘But you can’t beat the good old Mauretania.’ Her speed record has never been matched. Rembrandt won his money back at cards but I chose to pass too often for his taste. He complained it made for a dull game. I apologised saying I was short of ready cash. Rather than play cards with me, he and his inseparable partner Mortimer bought me drinks and asked about my patents. They were high-spirited, enthusiastic young men, very neat and trim, typical products of Harvard or Yale, with those lather well scrubbed good looks of their type. They said my ideas would be infinitely commercial. I should have no difficulty selling them once I reached New York. Investors would be ‘waiting in line’. However, if I needed help, they would be delighted to put themselves at my service. They gave me a post office box in New York where they could be reached. They tended, they said, to be on the move quite a bit.

  I sauntered through arcades of Mauretanian shops with Helen Roe, inspecting glass display windows full of dresses, coats and perfume, mink, jade and gold. The best of everything was available. I bought Helen a monstrous box of French chocolate. She kissed me on the cheek. She said I was a sweetie. With the calmer sea, the ship hardly seemed to be moving, yet we were actually making the fastest time of the entire voyage. Her coal burning turbines were a match for any oil-fuelled vessel afloat. Later that year, when she caught fire, she would herself be converted to oil and continue to hold the Blue Riband for another eight years, longer than the entire lifespan of some rival liners. I recently read Cunard financed the experiments of a young man with an enthusiasm for modern airship development. I was relieved the dream was not dead, although the person selling the idea sounded something of a charlatan. Nonetheless I wrote to his company and offered my services. I received no reply. Of course I have read nothing since. Such people discredit the ideas of genuine visionaries. Nit gefidlt.

  As the Mauretania slowly approached the harbour, Tom Cadwallader offered me one of his Havana cigars and said that much as he had enjoyed the voyage he would be glad to get off the ship. ‘The worst part of the journey is crossing New York to the railroad station.’ He hoped we would berth at a reasonable hour since he would hate to spend a night in ‘Synagogue City’. I asked him if he was familiar with New York and what was his opinion of the Hotel Pennsylvania. He had heard it recommended. ‘I’ve never spent more than eight hours at a time in the city. And most of that was in a friend’s apartment. I don’t know New York and never wish to. There are almost no Americans there.’ He believed he had made a blunder and added, ‘Not that I have anything against people from abroad. New York is bad Irish and worse Jew. When it isn’t either, it’s the sweepings of Naples, peasants from the poorest parts of Sicily. It’s the chief breeding ground of Anarchy. And it believes itself superior to the rest of the country. New York, Colonel Pyat, is not America. You should never confuse one with the other. Come to Atlanta if you want to know the real America.’ I already had his address. I thanked him. I would try to visit him after I had decided on my itinerary. My main intention was still to visit Washington. Mr Cadwallader understood I had no plans to make a permanent home in America and this made him I think all the more affable. He had already convinced me that the legislation limiting immigrants was the best new piece of Law since the War. But, as usual, the tolerant Christian is too late. The Jew is already past the gates and settling down to his business. He says he wants only to live and work and do no harm. Ikh kikel zikh fun gelekhter!

  The great city slows to half speed. Twice she sounds her long operatic greeting. Outside is the angry crash of water displaced by tremendous screws; officers shout to their working parties; the jangle of signals from the wheelhouse makes it impossible to understand a dozen voices already distorted by speaking tubes. Her wood panelling dances on her inner bulkheads; her smoke grows dim. She is held in check now, pulsing and panting, as the captain awaits his orders. Just beyond the horizon lies New York. We move forward, hundreds of us, some with binoculars, wishing to be the first to glimpse our destination, but it is not yet possible. A steward advises us to take lunch. He assures us it will be several hours before we enter the Hudson.

  A mood of impatient excitement spreads throughout the huge vessel. People are suddenly more animated as they eat. They order caviare, they drink champagne; already they are celebrating their departure. These women are so beautiful in their marvellous clothes, in silk and ermine, the men so confidently elegant. With my back straight, I stand on the upper boat deck, proudly wearing my own white uniform, an uprooted Son of the Don, smoking a cigarette as I watch the crew rapidly making ropes fast, preparing our anchors and lines. I am alone for the moment. I am filled with a sense of well-being. The ozone is good in my nostrils. The cocaine works at its best to clear my head and sharpen my senses. I am completely alive and without fear. I have been accepted by the aristocracy of the
Anglo-Saxon world, by great men and women whose ancestors, holding a fundamental belief in the rule of Law, spread their language, their customs and religion across half the planet and continue, even now, to spread them further still. The horizon darkens. A slender line. The whole ship murmurs. It is land. Steadily, mile by mile, we move into a wide harbour until there, directly ahead, are the unbelievable towers rising taller and taller from the ocean itself. It is unique. It is Manhattan: a city without a past. A city with only a future. A dream.