The Laughter of Carthage: Pyat Quartet

  ‘He’d kill me?’

  ‘Maybe not Roffy personally. But he has friends who aren’t squeamish.’

  I believed him. I was already sweating. I could hardly breathe for the terror which suddenly struck me. Familiarity with the threat of death made it no easier to accept. Something seemed to press hard on my chest. ‘Can’t you appeal to him? Tell him I’m doing my best?’

  ‘Max, just give Roffy his kick-back. What if he does doublecross you? It’s a small enough slice of your pie. The papers said you took twenty million. They always bullshit, I know. I’d guess at ten. You can afford it.’

  ‘Jimmy, I told you the papers lied!’ I was by now soaking in my own juices.

  ‘Five, then?’

  ‘I stole nothing. I arrived in New York almost penniless. I’ve been living off Roffy and Gilpin here. In New York I sold some jewellery, but I haven’t a cent now!’ My whisper became almost a shriek. I tried to lower my voice again. I was hoarse. I had at least admitted the truth to someone. I felt the burden lifting from me. But a worse one was settling and I had completely lost control of my tongue. ‘A patent in Washington went for a pittance. That’s how I could lend you the five hundred. If I’d told them I was broke they wouldn’t have trusted me. You said yourself you had to pretend to be rich for people to take you seriously, no matter how good your ideas. I listened to your advice, Jimmy!’

  Rembrandt’s face lost all colour. He lit a cigarette and he looked at me through careful eyes. ‘Max, you’re caught in a snowstorm. How can I know this is the m’coy?’

  ‘Cocaine doesn’t affect me that way.’

  ‘You’re telling me you’re actually innocent? The Frogs really did set you up? You’re down to the cotton?’

  I nodded. ‘You believed me before.’

  ‘You can’t even raise a couple hundred bucks?’

  ‘If I pawn my clothes, maybe.’

  Jimmy swore under his breath. ‘But every damned paper agreed you were the big shill, Max. The gyp of the century!’ He looked at me like a stricken child. ‘Jesus Christ.’

  I felt obscurely guilty. ‘Someone benefited, I suppose. It was not I.’

  In an expression of incredulity he blew smoke through pursed lips. ‘So you’re the friggin’ yap! Setup for the gum job. Freighted out of the country before you knew what was happening. Perfect! Well it sure makes us look like boobs!’ He shook his head. ‘So Christmas has been cancelled,’ he added, as if to the restaurant at large.

  ‘If you’re suggesting Kolya betrayed me you’re wrong. I suspect de Grion. My friend is a prince of the royal blood. He saved me, Jimmy. He’d save me now if he could. I don’t have his latest address. However, a friend in Italy -’

  ‘What a beautiful scam!’ Jimmy was hardly listening to me. I found it odd he reacted as he did. It was as if he was admiring the criminals who betrayed me while also laughing at himself. Yet only minutes before he had warned me my life was in danger. Possibly ironic amusement was his way of disguising his own fear, but it disturbed me. A smile began to form, then he frowned. ‘And what a bunch of suckers we turned out to be. Conned by a Michigan roll! All those months of planning. The outlay. We blew every dime on this. It was me got Lucius to talk those old pros into it! Oh, Christ.’

  Though many of his remarks remained obscure I could tell he was genuinely upset. ‘I assure you, Jimmy, I’m heart and soul behind the scheme. I never meant to deceive anyone, least of all you and Major Mortimer. I offered my services, my patents, my skills, my brains. There’s nothing wrong with any of them. If I had the cash I’d give it to Mr Roffy immediately! I’ve as much stake as he has. I don’t want our scheme to collapse.’

  He was plainly bitter. He had vouched for me to his friends and I had let him down badly. I could not stop babbling. I leant across to take his arm. He was unaware of my touch. Jimmy had lost all concentration. He stared vacantly up at the gas-globes overhead, grinning to himself. Had we both gone mad? I could not then see any reason for his reaction.

  It was shock, of course. I had to make notes, puzzling over that meeting many times before I realised why, quite suddenly, he began to laugh. I stared at him in amazement.

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ He was helpless. ‘We’ve sweet-lined our own asses!’

  He had no reason to take the whole blame. Part of the moral responsibility was mine.

  I have never been one to deceive myself in such matters.

  Biddena natla’ ila barra. Mashi yesma’.

  * * * *

  SEVENTEEN

  THE CAUSE OF other people’s mirth is a subject which has frequently defeated me. Jimmy Rembrandt’s reaction to my dilemma remained a baffled note in my diary for some years. Even as I parted from him outside Plunkett’s Cafe he was still occasionally seized by an attack of snorts and grimaces. He wished me luck, ‘though I guess Roffy and Gilpin need it more’. Speechless once again he gave a shaky salute and walked rapidly up Monroe Street to vanish in the electric shadows.

  I saw little humour then in my situation and none at all the next day when, coming empty-handed from the Western Union office, I saw Pandora Fairfax jump from her car with an agitated shout and run towards me. She asked me if I had seen either of my partners. It emerged both had disappeared, leaving rent unpaid on their own apartments and mine. They also owed considerable sums to various printers, designers, model-builders, researchers and advertising agencies in the city. She herself had been promised cash for the hire of her plane and in expectation of an agreed consultant’s fee had made a down payment on another aircraft. ‘There’s a rumour,’ she said, ‘that Boss Crump’s men have orders to bring them in dead or alive.’

  By that evening I was in the extraordinary position of trying to explain why my partners had left no forwarding address. I believed they were based in Washington, I said. One of Boss Crump’s hard-faced lieutenants said he would check. He seemed angry and suspicious of me but his common sense must have made him realise I was telling the truth. Also he was aware of my standing with certain members of the community and it was obvious even to him that I was innocent of any fraud. Nonetheless I was taken to a little office over a dairy depot on Union Avenue and interviewed by E. H. Crump himself. He was quietly spoken and polite, taller than I had expected, and dressed in a pale blue suit. He had round, smooth features, manicured hands and wore horn-rimmed glasses. He, too, was quickly convinced that I knew nothing of my partners’ whereabouts and had not been aware of the amounts of money owed in the city. Of course, he now began to deny he had placed any trust in the two men and claimed never to have heard of the $450,000 warranty demanded of us. It would have been imprudent to tell him that if the demand had not been made, the bills would have been quickly paid and Memphis would have been richer in a dozen ways before the year was out.

  In fairness to Roffy and Gilpin, I did not offer my own opinion, that my partners, convinced I had deliberately betrayed them, had fled in panic. Unable to raise the extra $150,000 they had taken their own money and abandoned the project. I am not one to lay the blame for my own misfortunes on others. I had let them believe I was wealthy. They had acted in good faith. If they had wanted revenge on me they could have revealed what they knew of my past. Thus I remained convinced of their basic integrity. Some of us are stronger than others. Whereas, in their shoes, I might have stood my ground and explained my predicament, they had lost their nerve. My main regret, of course, was that another far-sighted, bold and commercially viable project had been shelved. Boss Crump’s political machine had turned against anything to do with my plans. He made that clear. My association with Major Sinclair could have contributed to this, I now realise. Because of his misguided stand against the Ku Klux Klan, Crump never really succeeded in pushing Memphis to her full potential. This opposition, reflected in the prejudices expressed in the Catholic-dominated Commercial Appeal, was the single reason he never reached the high office for which his excellent judgment and character were suited. Perhaps he saw the Klan as a rival. An alliance
would have given him national, rather than merely local, influence.

  For a while I was also puzzled by the disappearance of Jimmy Rembrandt. I wondered if perhaps he feared my anger, believing he had let me, as well as Roffy and Gilpin, down in some way. Possibly he was still embarrassed over the $500 he owed me. Nervous of Roffy’s anger, he might also have decided not to risk involvement if by chance I was murdered. Presumably he had returned to New York.

  My moral and practical problems were not eased by having to hear my friend Major Sinclair’s honest opinion that Roffy and Gilpin were ‘a pair of scallawags’ who had used me for their own ends. I could not see what they had gained from their association. There was no point now in explaining my own part in their predicament, but I assured him only the most terrible circumstances could have forced the two men to abandon me. I pointed out I had lost no cash in the affair. I was not responsible for the Aviation Company’s debts, nor my partners’ personal debts. In my wildest flights of speculation I wondered if alien interests, scheming the ruin of our great venture, had not kidnapped them or otherwise disposed of them. It has long been obvious to me that all major airship disasters of the 20s and 30s were the result of Zionist sabotage. Alternatively, my partners could easily have fallen into the clutches of Jewish or Italian moneylenders. Loan sharks were known to deal savagely with defaulting debtors unable to pay their exorbitant interest. That would also explain why Roffy and Gilpin seemed so desperately frightened towards the end, when I could not produce the money. I explained this theory to the police officers who called on me. They promised to explore the matter thoroughly. But they were Crump men through and through. Their conviction was that I and the city had been victims of ‘a pair of high-class con-artists’.

  Privately, of course, I blamed myself for the whole unfortunate business and continued to defend my partners even at police headquarters where I was asked to make a formal statement and was afterwards interviewed by the press. But the next day’s headlines, needless to say, were not favourable to Roffy and Gilpin. I received some sympathy but ironically they were branded ‘villain’ just as I had been in France. I suppose Kolya defended my name as vociferously as I defended theirs, with equal lack of effect. Once the press makes a scapegoat it will not relent. The case in point was Adolf Hitler, of course. Nobody ever writes about the benefits he brought to Germany; they merely reiterate the bad things. Such injustices become all too familiar when one has lived as long and seen as much as I. They cease to be worthy of comment. The world falls into Chaos. Justice is a fantasy, soon to be forgotten, as the white race which invented it is forgotten. Anyone will tell you I am a man of feeling, of intellect, of unusual moral strength. I am prejudiced against no race or creed. But when me and mine are threatened by a blood drinking brute, what shall I do? Say nothing? Make no defence? In their moment of trial the two old men fled. If they had remained they might now be heroes, statues in Overton Park. Yet, as it was, their decision was to prove of considerable benefit to others, though they would never receive public recognition for it. They ran away from the devastated dream which had been so close to achieving enduring reality and left me with no choice but to accept at once the Imperial Wizard’s commission. I would fly to Atlanta and from there would take up my banner, marching side by side with noble knights in a mighty crusade whose aim was nothing less than to rescue sanity, justice, decency and freedom for the whole world. I reached my decision within a day of my partners’ disappearance. A certain element in Memphis seemed determined to cast doubt on my credentials, my sincerity, my very honour. Twice I was harassed in the street. Mr Baskin arrived to give me notice to quit my apartment. Even Mrs Trubbshaw, who I thought at first had come to offer me consolation, had some ludicrous claim that she had lent Mr Roffy $2,000 and insisted I had a ‘moral duty’ to pay it back to her on his behalf. Time alone would show who bore false witness and who, in fact, was the victim of deceit!

  As ancient saints and heroes turned from selfish and material concerns upon receiving a sign from God, so I took all these events as a sign I should go forth into America, to spread our message across every square mile of that great and vital nation. Within a year I would become so famous the matter of one small factory and an insignificant municipal airport would seem a petty concern indeed. I had been given the opportunity to conquer the entire New World with my genius. A strong, scientifically advanced America would be the most powerful country on Earth. Once celebrated here, I would automatically come to influence the world. Then at last Russia, my old, spiritual Russia, could be rescued from the Bolshevik scavengers. The steppe would grow green and beautiful again; the wheat-lands would bloom, the forests retain their tranquil profundity and new golden cities would arise, the cities of reborn Byzantium.

  I am not so vain as to claim God Himself created the circumstances driving poor Gilpin and Roffy from Memphis, releasing me to fulfil His work through the medium of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. However there is no doubt in my mind that what originally seemed a disaster actually set me on my proper path, to use my God-given powers of prophecy in direct service of the Christian faith. As Paul the Greek was chosen to become Christ’s envoy to Rome, so might it be said I, inheritor of the Greek ideal, was to be envoy to this New Rome. Having made my decision, I was at once suffused with joy. My confusion died away. I no longer waited desperately for news of Esmé, Kolya or Mrs Cornelius. I should see them again in the fullness of time. I knew, with every atom of my being, that I had at last found my true vocation.

  I departed from Memphis the next day, into the sky above the old Park Field air training base. I left sad friends and scowling critics alike, amidst the noise of a great crowd which gathered to witness The Knight Hawk slip her moorings. We would ascend into a terrible sky, in which black clouds rolled and streamed against a ground of deep, greenish blue. A storm was coming. A storm was gathering in the South. A storm was coming to sweep the whole United States. And her prophets would stand on the decks of flying cities or the platforms of gigantic airships to cry their warnings, as if from Heaven itself: beware the heretic, the infidel, the pagan! wake up, america, to the perils which face ye. wake up to the vision of the alien sword which cuts you down as you sleep; the alien voice which seduces your children; the alien creed which robs you of your religion.’ wake up, america, in the name of christ, wake up to your peril and your salvation. The Storm carries God’s prophet on noisy wings; the thunder and the lightning herald his coming. Out of the South, out of Memphis, which was once in Egypt, he shall come as Moses came to lead the children of the New World towards a glorious future, their rightful scientific inheritance. From fertile Florida to frozen Alaska, where the Tsar once raised his standard, where the two-headed eagle cast his eyes upon the land and saw at last an ally with whom to build Christendom afresh, he shall be heard. Wake up, America! The ship of the prophet is seen in the sky and his sign is a fiery cross, the cross of Kyrios the Greek. Thus did the Greek give name and substance to His knights. Kuklos: a circle. Kuklos: the Circle of the Sun. The Circle and the Cross are One! Kyrie Eleison! Christ is risen! Christ is risen!

  The Knight Hawk, free of her moorings, rose steadily into the air above the field. Strong winds hurled their power against her hull. She shuddered and slewed with every blow. I gripped the side of my cockpit, watching the crowd fall away from me. The winds were so strong I feared we must crash, but Major Sinclair had handled this type of ship many times since the War; he held fast to her wheel while operating height and trim levers with graceful expertise. The Rolls Royce engine whined to full power. We began to push forward until we were directly over the great river and her anchored steamboats. Memphis, with her steel and concrete centre, her brick and wood outer zones, her bridges and her railroad tracks, gradually lost identity, meaning no more or less than a dozen other urban settlements along the riverbanks. I leaned over the lip of the cockpit, studying Major Sinclair’s techniques with the controls. The wind slapped at my face, tugged my clothes, threatened to rip he
lmet and goggles from my head. Our gondola was vibrating so violently I thought the rivets must soon be shaken out of her. Everything aboard not absolutely rigid or completely flexible rattled vigorously, yet Major Sinclair was plainly not in the least alarmed. To him all this agitated commotion was so familiar I doubt if he was greatly conscious of it.

  Later, when he had reduced the power and there was a lull in the wind, the major shouted above the engine’s whine: ‘These smaller blimps don’t have enough power, so can’t keep their course as efficiently as the big ships. In decent weather they’re a lot easier to handle.’ The altimeter in my cockpit showed we were now a thousand feet up while my speedometer indicated forty-five knots. At first I had felt uneasy in my stomach but the sensation was forgotten as I peered through the windscreen at wide fields and strips of trees. Immediately below were the railroad tracks which, as was normal in those days of primitive instruments, Major Sinclair followed. Soon I was enjoying the spectacle of a long freight train moving like a fire-breathing snake across the brown and yellow ground. Occasionally there would be a tiny car or, more commonly, a horse-drawn buggy on a dirt road, a small farm, a collection of shacks, a mansion, still doubtless the core of some great plantation.