The Genius (6 page)

The man shakes his head. “Silver Spoon,” he shouts.

Solomon waves his hands around, indicating
I’m lost
. The bartender walks him to the door and points down an alleyway. Solomon thanks him, unties his cart, and heads for the Silver Spoon.

The alley is dark, spilling onto another wide road. Cicadas fiddle. His limbs feel half connected to his trunk. Perhaps he should stop right here, go to sleep… It is tempting. How bad could it be? Then he steps in a pile of dung and, having regained his purpose, goes up the street one way, back down it along the other side. The wheels on his cart have begun to squeak; he should oil them. He finds nothing. Sighing, he heads back toward the alley. Three men approach, singing, their arms linked.

Solomon raises a hand. “Hello, friends.”

Like one body they veer toward him. They smell like a belch.

“Hello, friends,” says one of the men, and the other two begin to laugh.

Solomon doesn’t get the joke, but it would be impolite not to participate. He laughs. Then he asks about the Silver Spoon. The men start laughing again. One asks where Solomon is from.

“Here.”

“Heeeee-ah, huh?” says the same man. His imitation of Solomon’s accent is absurd but it strikes everyone as extremely funny. More laughter ensues.

Once they’ve finished, Solomon tries to repeat his question. But the man—the talking man, the man with the felt hat and the cheeks stubbled black, the one a great deal larger than the other two—interrupts again, asking more questions. While Solomon does his best to answer, he gets tangled up in the net of words, tripping and stuttering, eliciting hoots and howls and backslapping and bringing a purposeful smirk to the man’s face.

What happens next is unclear. It begins with a shove; it then becomes a wrestling match, no blows falling but a grunting stalemate, Solomon pinned against the cart, which rocks as the man holds his arms and presses against him, his embrace warm and boozy and almost intimate as he fills Solomon’s ears with incomprehensible threats.

Then Solomon dares to resist, and all three of them—like ten men, so many fists and feet they have—converge, stomping. They are too drunk to be methodical, and that is why he lives.

WHEN HE CAN WALK AGAIN, it is with a limp. He considers abandoning the cart and starting over, with a shop, one he doesn’t have to carry on his back. He could go back to Boston, back to Buffalo. Nobody bought, but at least they didn’t try to kill him.

But no. To begin with, they robbed him blind; how could he open a shop? If he’s very lucky, his suppliers will extend him credit; only a fool would loan money to a crippled immigrant with no tangible assets.

There is another reason not to quit: in less than a year, Adolph arrives. The physical damage—the limp, the divots on his face—that cannot be hidden. Spiritually, though, Solomon cannot show himself a broken man. Adolph will drop dead of fright, or else he will flee back to Germany on the first boat. That mustn’t happen. For his family’s sake, Solomon must show that America still has much to offer—a belief that he himself wants so badly to retain, one he longs for even as it oozes out of him.

He looks on the bright side. Three men beat him; but one man has taken him in, fed him, and healed him. That man reads to him from a Bible and, upon discovering that his patient is not a Christian, has spent hours sharing the wisdom of the Lord Savior. Solomon, understanding that this is the price of his recovery, listens politely, noting with interest that the Lord Savior indeed went through a fair amount of hardship. That doesn’t make him God, but it does make him a sympathetic character.

One idea that comes to Solomon while he lies in the bed—a real bed! Strange, how agony begets pleasure—listening to tales of the Lord Savior is that he needs to improve his English.
Silver Spoon
he had asked for, except that his Silver came out as
silber
and the Spoon as
shpoon
, clanging shibboleths. If he had been able to speak he could have talked his way to safety. And how much more business would he bring in if he sounded like an American?

As the healer speaks of the salt of the earth, Solomon devises a plan for self-improvement.

Four and a half weeks later he rises up from his bed and limps to the most American place he knows: smoky, impatient Pittsburgh, a town for the up-and-coming, the meshed cogs of industry. Smiling through pain, he peddles his wares to women doing the washing in their front yards. He peddles outside factories and saloons. He forces himself to talk, counting every complete conversation a victory, even if he sells nothing. He asks for help with his pronunciation; sometimes, he gets it. At the end of the day he walks along the riverbanks, reciting whatever new words he has learned that day, going until he feels too tired to continue, at which point he sits down and makes camp. Twice he flees to avoid arrest for trespassing. Though he has stopped putting on his tefillin, he takes a moment to thank God when he reaches safety.

As summer comes to a boil, he improves. With enough effort he will soon sound no different from the men who attacked him. By the time Adolph arrives, they will be unable to communicate! The idea makes Solomon laugh.

One morning he spots a poster announcing the arrival of a new theatrical enterprise specializing in the most dramatic and comedic and thrilling, etc., etc. Normally, he would never waste money on such stuff, but then he considers the educational benefit: in the theater, people do nothing but talk. He can sit and take in the words. He copies down the information on the poster. The Merritt Players open that evening, at seven o’clock, at the Water Street Theater.

THE MERRITT PLAYERS turn out to consist of a single massive fellow draped in a velveteen cape. His beard looks like a horde of skunks has burrowed halfway into his chin, tails wagging as he bellows his lines and wiggles his sausage fingers, sweeping and stabbing for emphasis. His trousers could hold two Solomons, one in each leg.

He performs selections from Shakespeare at a rapid clip, pausing now and then to savor a particular phrase. Try as he might, Solomon cannot keep up. Moreover, he senses that this fellow’s diction does not match what one hears on the street. In other words, the show completely fails as a learning tool.

Nevertheless Solomon remains in his seat. He’s paid for his ticket, and he intends to get his money’s worth.

Over the next hour, against his will, an unexpected thing happens: he falls under the actor’s spell. The man has a voice that could stop a train, yes, but he can also sound beguiling and innocent. Though Solomon cannot understand all the words, he hears perfectly the emotions behind them. The man’s pain evokes Solomon’s own pain; their longings and joys and fears merge, making him feel, momentarily, that he has a friend.

The show finishes and the scant audience gets up to leave, but Solomon remains, unwilling to move for fear of shattering the magical sense of peace and belonging and companionship that he has been so long without—the humanity missing in his lonely, lonely life—remains sunk down in his chair so that the top of his head is invisible to the manager, who closes up without further ado, locking him inside.

When the lights go off and he discovers his predicament, he does not panic. At worst he’ll spend the night indoors. Then he remembers his cart tied up outside, and he sets about looking for a way out, groping around in the near dark. All the exits are bolted shut, as is the stairwell to the second floor. Nonplussed, he climbs onto the stage, wanders into the wings. A single shaft of moonlight aids his search, not enough to prevent him from tripping over a pile of sandbags and banging his head against a chunk of scenery, causing it to tip over and nearly crush him. In leaping to safety he accidentally pushes open an unseen door, revealing a stairwell that descends to a dim corridor. There are many doors, all of them locked except the last. Relieved, he opens it and steps facefirst into the actor himself: naked to the waist, pouring sweat, beard unkempt, filthy, a ham hock in long johns.

“By God!” he shouts. “Who’s this!” He lifts Solomon by the lapels. “Eh? You? You! By God, man, you’d better say something or I’ll snap you like a twig! What! What’s that! Eh? Man! Speak up! Cat got your tongue?” The man drags him, not unkindly, to a chair, and seats him with two firm hands on Solomon’s shoulders. “Now, what. What, man, what! What’s your name!”

“Solomon Mueller.”

“Did you say Solomon Mueller?”

“Yes.”

“Well, well. Well, good, Solomon Mueller! Tell me something, Solomon Mueller: do we know each other?”

Solomon shakes his head.

“Then how is it you’re in my dressing room! Mary Ann!”

A fleshy woman in a gingham dress pokes her head through a rack of costumes. “Who’s that?”

“Solomon Mueller!” says the actor.

“Who’s Solomon Mueller?”

“Please—” says Solomon.

“Who are you?” asks Mary Ann.

Helplessly, Solomon indicates the stage above them.

“You were here for the show? Yes? Yes? I see! And? Yes? Did you
enjoy
the show?” He takes Solomon by the shoulders, gives him a friendly shake. “Yes?
Yes
?”

Solomon smiles as best he can.

“You did!” cries the actor. “Good boy! Did you hear that, Mary Ann? He enjoyed the show!” He begins to shake with laughter, his stomach bouncing and his breasts jiggling.

“Isaac, it’s time to get dressed.”

Ignoring her, the actor kneels down and takes Solomon’s scuffed, sinewy hands in his own moist ones and says, “Tell me something, Solomon Mueller: you truly enjoyed the show, yes? Yes? Then let me ask you this: would you like to buy me dinner.”

THE ACTOR’S FULL NAME is Isaac Merritt Singer. As he explains over a meal of potatoes and sausage—which he consumes unaided—Mary Ann is his second wife. He had a first wife, but the show must go on. “Isn’t that so, Solomon!”

“Yes,” says Solomon, happy to agree with anything this strange man says. Isaac talks about Shakespeare, for whom he does not have enough superlatives.

“The Bard of Avon! The Pearl of Stratford! The Pride of England!”

Every so often Solomon makes an effort to insert a comment, but Isaac’s monologue ceases only when he pauses to swallow a length of sausage or to lift his mug. He seems thrilled to have a dining companion, especially when Solomon buys him a second plate of food and a third beer.

“Now,” says Isaac, wiping his moustache of sauce and crushing his hands together, “tell me something, Solomon Mueller: you’re not from around here, are you?”

Solomon shakes his head. Then he sees that Isaac is waiting; his chance to speak has arrived.

Briefly, he recounts his youth in Germany, the boat to America, the success of his business and tragedy of his assault. As he talks, Isaac knits his brows, scoffs, scowls, laughs. Even as a listener he never ceases performing, so that by the time Solomon concludes his tale, he feels as though he has composed a masterwork, akin to Homer.

And, as far as he can tell, he has done it accent-free.

“By God,” says Isaac Merritt Singer. “That is a fine story.”

Solomon smiles.

“I wouldn’t mind listening to a story like that again. I wouldn’t mind putting such a story
up on the stage
. I like a man who can tell a story. A man who has a story to tell is a man who’s a friend of mine. Eh? Ah! Well”— taking a huge draught of beer—“I’m glad we’ve met, Solomon. I think we might become dear friends. What do you say?”

THEY BECOME DEAR FRIENDS.

A friendship driven on the one side by Solomon’s loneliness, his desire for talk, and on the other side by Isaac Singer’s desire not to pay for dinner. Later, Solomon would estimate that during that summer he spent twenty-five to thirty percent of his income—money he could not afford to spend! Profligate!—on meals with Singer. Or loaning Singer money to patch his trousers, or for a new gewgaw for one of Singer’s many children, or for flowers for Mary Ann, or
for no reason at all
, simply
giving
Singer money,
giving it away
, because his friend asked.

Not with a mind toward getting rich does he do these favors. He does them because he needs to give something to someone, and Singer makes him feel unalone.

Nevertheless his generosity comes back to him a millionfold. In 1851, Singer moves to New York, taking with him his family and his wagon and some of the money that he has borrowed from Mueller. There he founds a company called the “Jenny Lind Sewing Machine Company,” a multilayered name. Lind is Singer’s favorite singer; naming his company for a singer puts a pun on his last name, hinting as well at his affection for Life in the Theater.

However meaningful, though, the name proves a touch unwieldy, and soon enough people have begun to refer to his machines simply as “Singers.”

Plenty of people in the United States make sewing machines; by the time Singer’s hit the stores, there are four other competing designs. But his is the best, and in a very short period of time, he becomes one of the wealthiest men in the United States—taking along with him Solomon Mueller.

Still, we may wonder
what if
. What if Solomon had never been beaten within an inch of his life; if he had gone back to Germany; if he had not enjoyed the show; if he had declined to pay for dinner. If he knew then—as he found out later—that Mary Ann Singer was not, in fact, Isaac Merritt Singer’s second wife, but his mistress; and that she would be the first of many, and that Singer’s philandering would eventually force him to leave the country. As a young man, Solomon Mueller had a priggish streak; perhaps he would have disassociated himself from Singer if he had known the truth. Many alternative realities stood between Solomon and the great fortune that became his. Might he have succeeded on his own?

He might have. He worked hard, and he had brains. What else do you need?

ONE OF THE LAST THINGS Isaac Merritt Singer said before he departed for Europe in shame was, “You remind me of my father.”