The Laughter of Carthage (13 page)

NINETEEN

THEY TOOK ME TO the desert. Buzzards roosted in the
Totenburgen
and red dust clogged my throat, making my arguments unattractive. Brodmann was one of them, I know. I recognised his jubilant eyes as their whips shredded my expensive evening clothes. I could scarcely believe she had left me to them. Had she known? ‘Your fancy woman had the right idea. You should have gone with her.’ They would teach me a lesson, said the deep-voiced leader, and I had better remember it good. I was sick. They drove me to the wasteland among buttes like ruined citadels and I vomited on the sand. ‘Get his pants down. Let s check him out.’ Certainly that was the only evidence anyone required. My father should pay for every blow, every welt and bruise. The moon and stars were enormous and possessed a rare brightness. I was alone on a rock in the void while those spurious hoods waved over me and the white arms rose and fell. She was the Judas, not I. Women have no conscience. They will always betray you. I had been left to placate them while she escaped on the Northbound train. I held up my hand. I wanted to tell them the truth. The whip struck my knuckles. I watched the blood push its way through the dark swellings. It was all I could see, that
blut.
I know their infernal Inquisition. I understand their pacts. Even they are not always conscious of their interdependence. Had the Klan in its entirety been infiltrated by them? Was Evans the Pope’s own candidate? From then on, from 1923, the Klan’s power declined. It must have been a plot. The propaganda against Clarke became hideous.
Nito tsu remen tsu reydn! Yidden samen a Folk vos serstert. A narrisch Folk. Sie hat nicht geantwortet. Ich hahe das Buch gelesen und jene Leute sind verarmt. Wer Jude ist, bestimme Ich!

Wer Jude ist, bestimme Ich! Zol dos zayn factish. Fort tsurik. Vue iz mayn froy?
In their desert my blood and tears were absorbed under clear black skies. They stared with impassive cruelty from the shadows. I held on to my agony. I would not become a Mussulman. Carthage could kill me. Carthage could not conquer me. The metal in my womb makes me vomit but the dibbuk is mastered again. I am stronger, always, than him. In the deep prehistoric dawn I crawled towards my bagazh. It was unopened, they were so arrogant, and all my things were there. My wallet, passport, some money. Everything I had left in the
Philadelphia Grand.
I found some more cocaine. It gave me the strength to change my clothes but I could not remove the blood, which had congealed everywhere on my body. I dragged my bag through the scrub to the dirt road and soon comes a truck. It stopped. The boy at the wheel scratched beneath his overalls but otherwise exhibited no surprise. He accepted I had been attacked and my car stolen. He said for a dollar he could drive me to Carson City. Some Samaritan! It was for the gas, he said. I gave him his dollar. He threw in a little water from his bottle so I could wash the worst of the blood from my extremities. He let me off at the station. From Carson City I took the first train leaving. It was going to San Francisco. I needed to find real streets where I could hide. I was careful to make sure no one followed me on board. I knew I had to discover deep anonymity. Brodmann, the Federal agents, and now the Invisible Empire itself had revealed their animosity. It was a conspiracy of which, I suspect, only I was aware.
Diesmal wollte der Jude gans sicher gehen.
For a while at least I would have to find still another name.

Having used the train’s facilities and killed the worst of the pain with unusually large doses of cocaine, I was somewhat calmer by the time we neared Oakland. I had a broken rib, which I could strap up myself. Otherwise, it was merely a question of waiting for the flesh to heal. I was now prepared to try to take rational stock of my situation. I should logically assume the various factions showing me ill will were not in league, as such. I was in danger largely because I no longer had protection. This obviously made me more vulnerable than I had been to those who already threatened my life. Half-dead from my beating I was not in a good position to cope with further attacks. I knew my assailants could not be true Klansmen, yet I had no proof of that. I must assume the Order to be riddled with spies. Evans himself could be an infiltrator. The Klan had declared itself the enemy of Pope and Bolshevik, of Jew and Jap. Going to earth in San Francisco was tantamount to hiding in the lion’s den, of course. This had always been the East’s beachhead in America. Her huge natural harbour made her the perfect and most important Pacific port while gold and silver from inland mines had made her the richest. My own ancestors might well have settled on her steep hillsides, coming in sailing ships from Odessa and Port Arthur to trade first with the Indians and later with mountain men, trappers who brought their beaver, bear, buckskins and buffalo hides from as far as the Rockies. When San Francisco was still part of Mexican California the Russian envoy Razanov had fallen in love with the sister of Don Luis Antonio Aiguella, but the Catholic Church had played its usual destructive role and Consuella Aiguella had ended her life in a nunnery. Eventually Slav and Anglo-Saxon banded together and drove Rome back beyond San Diego, establishing the rule of law in a land first named Nova Albion by Sir Francis Drake. Pan-Slavism was never an Anglo-Saxon enemy; rather it was always a potential ally.

My train steamed slowly to a halt, almost on the very edge of the shore. I could see masts, blue ocean, a mixture of water traffic. We were at the Bay. The locomotive had stopped on a great mass of stone and concrete: the Oakland Mole. Passengers trooped down from the cars to file aboard Southern Pacific’s ferry, in those days the only means of crossing to San Francisco. I was glad to smell salt again, to lean on the ferry’s rail and watch gulls swarming overhead as we sailed steadily through deep turquoise waves towards the mountain and its towers which many called the finest city of the Pacific Shore, the New York of the West. With its misty greenery and sparkling stone it was reminiscent of Constantinople, yet also a contrast. On these hills had been built, since the Earthquake, a modern metropolis of offices and apartment blocks, buildings as elegant as Chicago’s. From a distance she was beautiful. And was a mere century of violent history any different, finally, to a millennium? Violence and human rapacity has a repetitious quality to it, after all.

Our boat docked at last against the quay dominated by what at first seemed to be a church steeple, the Ferry Building’s tower. We filed through shabby archways, then I carried my own suitcase out into a wide square full of automobiles, cabs and rumbling cable cars which began and ended their journeys here. I was still moving, kept on my feet, I suspect, solely by adrenalin, not daring to let myself stop, so I pulled my body aboard the nearest heavy red and gold cable car. It lurched forward, bell ringing, clanking and whirring, its window glass rattling, up Market Street which was crowded as always with people and traffic and every kind of shop. In my battered and confused condition it had not been my best choice of transport, this odd development of the ore wagon. I disembarked before it made another sickening hump. I had no clear idea where to go. I had thought of Russian Hill, which I gathered was an artists’ quarter, the area I usually sought out, but I was afraid now of being recognised. Intellectuals read newspapers and some of them were liberals. I took two or three streets, stumbling up and down impossible elevations which also rivalled Constantinople’s (though in the main lacking her stone stairways) and depressingly found myself back in Market Street with its four rows of cable tracks, its bustle and cosmopolitan clamour. I took another street, running off at an angle, and to my horror realised the emerald, crimson and gold carved wood possessed the forceful barbarity of Chinese handiwork. Unwittingly, I had stumbled into San Francisco’s notorious Chinatown, home of a score of warring Tongs. I could smell it, a mixture of spices, vinegar, old fragrances, strong food and opium. An alien nightmare.

Not knowing when I could get to my money, I was preserving my small store of cash. I resisted hailing a taxi. I put the yellow peril behind me by as many blocks as possible. By then I was utterly exhausted and running a fever. I decided I must try to find accommodation in the first low-priced hotel I came to. The district here was lively but somewhat squalid, a lower class restaurant and entertainment area, advertising cheap meals, burlesque shows, movies and dance halls. Many of the women already on the late afternoon streets were evidently harlots. I had no prejudice against them. Indeed I felt immediately comforted by their familiarity. In this district I could relax and recover myself. I climbed the dilapidated steps of a five-storey redbrick building called
Goldberg’s Hotel Berlin
on Kearny Street. The desk was at the far end of a short, unlit passage. I could hardly see the swarthy individual dozing on the other side. He grunted at me. They had rooms. I registered under the name of Michael Fitzgerald, sure that my accent would easily he taken for the rich, rolling brogue of the Emerald Isle. I went so far as to let the desk clerk know I had until recently been with a Catholic mission in Harben, China and what a pleasure it was to speak English again, after so many years. For the moment I felt safe. I had gained time to think and rest. I would remain in San Francisco as long as possible. At least there were ships here to take me to any part of the Pacific world or the great harbour cities of the continental American coast, South and North. I had heard that Argentina was a progressive nation, anxious to experiment. In Buenos Aires they had a branch of Harrods! My room was decorated from floor to ceiling in dull orange paint. The furniture was the same colour. Grey sheets and chipped washing facilities stood out in almost brilliant contrast. I put my suitcase under the bed and went to the nearest grocery to buy a few necessities, things I could easily drink and eat through swollen lips. My face had begun to throb as the effects of the cocaine wore off. The rest of my body was a single rising wave of pain. I bought a newspaper at the corner stand when I saw the headlines.

The paper was delirious with delight over the ‘
k-k-krack up!’,
the division in Klan ranks. A certain obscure Texas dentist, Hiram Evans, proclaimed himself, the paper said. Imperial Wizard, and announced his intention of ridding the Klan of its traitors, people of loose moral character, of doubtful loyalty. Minutes after the successful putsch Eddy Clarke had been indicted under both the Volsted and Mann acts for licentious and vicious behaviour, which they claimed had occurred some years earlier. Mrs Mawgan was described as a woman of doubtful virtue, mistress of a Jew speculator. Colonel Simmons was in open conflict with Evans. Major Sinclair was not mentioned. I wondered if he, like me, had been beaten up, or even killed. According to the reporter, Klankrest had become as sinister as Caligula’s court, with plotters and assassins skulking in every corridor. The entire Klan seemed on the point of falling apart. I took with a pinch of salt much of what I read (‘Knives Out For Klan Renegades’, ‘Death Threats For Clarke and Supporters’) but it was clear I had no friends left in Atlanta.

The Justice Department’s investigation of me could be part of a general attack on Klan members. Doubtless traitors within the ranks were giving information (much of it highly coloured or simply false) to the Federal men in the hope of charges being dropped. That was why Callahan was hounding me. And Brodmann, of course, posing as a White policeman, could be helping him while idling lies about me to the Klan. Things became clearer. Anyone associated with Clarke, Mawgan or even Simmons was ‘fair game’ for a witch hunt. The Klan itself, split by factions, could no longer help. Mrs Mawgan had been thrown to the wolves. She, in turn, had given them my hide. It would be sheer insanity to try to claim my money from where it had been deposited. If I were to cash a check, very likely Callahan would soon know and quickly trace me. If he was indeed working with Brodmann, my nemesis was bound to try to stir up further Klan hatred against me. Perhaps I should try to reach Canada, and from there head for England.

Meanwhile, as long as I was reasonably careful, San Francisco, in spite of her capacity to revive unwanted memories, was ideal for my needs. Her busy slopes were filled to extravagance with the nations of the world, with the very rich and the horribly poor, with eccentrics, madmen, cripples, beggars and every kind of criminal. Her slums lacked the worst miseries of Galata, her mansions were marginally less opulent than Stamboul’s, but she was otherwise that city’s equal in vulgar variety. I stayed in my room, bathing my wounds in witchhazel and antiseptic, waiting for the bruising to subside so I would be at least unremarkable, if not presentable. I decided to seek the help of Santucci’s cousin, Vince Potecci, at the
Ristorante Venezia.
I checked the map I had bought and found the address was not very far away on Taylor Street. I could get there easily by streetcar. Since Major Sinclair and
The Knight Hawk
had vanished (I learned some time ago he had escaped in his ship to Mexico and ended his life giving joy rides to dagoes) Mr Potecci was my only safe contact in America. I was willing, until matters settled a little, to return to my old trade of jobbing mechanic, but I hoped to be offered a loan. I would throw myself as much as I dared upon the mercy of Santucci’s cousin.