Ragtime Part 5

The young man was in the lavatory behind the entrance hall. He was wiping the burnt cork from his face. He glanced at Father in the mirror. Father said I myself require nothing from you. But don't you feel your sister deserves an explanation? If she thinks about me, Younger Brother said, she will have her explanation. I could not transmit it through you. You are a complacent man with no thought of history. You pay your employees poorly and are insensitive to their needs. I see, Father said. The fact that you think of yourself as a gentleman in all your dealings, Younger Brother said, is the simple self-delusion of all those who oppress humanity. You have lived under my roof and worked in my business, Father said. Your generosity, Younger Brother said, was what you felt you could afford. Besides, he added, I have repaid that debt, as you will discover. Younger Brother washed his face with soap and hot water. He used a vigorous motion, his head over the basin. He dried himself with a hand towel embroidered with the initials JPM. He threw the towel on the floor, put on his s.h.i.+rt, dug in his pockets for cuff links, b.u.t.tons, placed his collar over the s.h.i.+rt, tied his tie, raised his suspenders. You have traveled everywhere and learned nothing, he said. You think it's a crime to come into this building belonging to another man and to threaten his property. In fact this is the nest of a vulture. The den of a jackal. He put on his coat, ran his palms over his shaved head, placed his derby on his head and glanced at himself in the mirror. Goodbye, he said. You won't see me again. You may tell my sister that she will always be in my thoughts. For a moment he gazed at the floor. He had to clear his throat. You may tell her I have always loved her and admired her.

The band met in the entrance hall. They were dressed now in their Coalhouse uniforms of suit and tie and derby. Coalhouse told them they should pull their brims down and turn up the collars of their jackets to avoid identification. Their means of safe conduct was the Model T. He explained how to set the spark and throttle and how to turn the crank. You will ring the telephone when you're free, he said. Father said Am I not to go? Here is the hostage, Coalhouse said, indicating Younger Brother. One white face looks just like another. They all laughed. Coalhouse embraced each of them before the great bra.s.s doors. He embraced Younger Brother with the same fervor he accorded the others. He looked at his pocket watch. At this moment the floodlights in the street went out. He took his place in the alcove at the back of the hall, straddling the white marble bench with his hands on the dynamite detonation box. There is slack in the plunger to a point halfway down, Younger Brother called to him. All right, Coalhouse said. Go on now. One of the young men unbolted the doors and with no further ceremony they filed out. Then the doors closed. Bolt them, please, Coalhouse commanded. Father did so. He put his ear to the doors. All he heard was his own heavy and frightened breathing. Then after what seemed a torturously long interval, in which almost all his hope for his own life flowed from him, he heard the sibilant cough and sputter of a Model T engine. A few moments later the gears were engaged and he heard the car drive off. There was a thump thump as it went over the planks laid over the crater. He ran to the back of the hall. They're gone, he said to Coalhouse Walker Jr. The black man was staring at his hands poised on the plunger of the box. Father sat down on the floor with his back to the marble wall. He raised his knees and rested his head. They sat like that, neither of them moving. After a while Coalhouse asked Father to tell him about his son. He wanted to know about his walking, whether his appet.i.te was good, whether he'd said any words yet, and every detail he could think of.

IV.

40.

About two hours later Coalhouse Walker Jr. came down the stairs of the Library with his arms raised and started to walk across 36th Street to the brownstone. This was according to the negotiated agreement. The street had been cleared of all observers. Facing him on the opposite sidewalk was a squad of New York's Finest armed with carbines. Lined up from one sidewalk to the other were two troops of mounted police facing each other at a distance of thirty yards, the horses shoulder to shoulder, so that a kind of corridor was formed. Coalhouse was therefore not visible to anyone looking on from the intersections at Madison Avenue or, more remotely, Park Avenue. The generators on the corner made a fearsome roar. In the bright floodlit street the black man was said by the police to have made a dash for freedom. More probably he knew that all he must do in order to end his life was to turn his head abruptly or lower his hands or smile. Inside the Library, Father heard the coordinated volley of a firing squad. He screamed. He ran to the window. The body jerked about the street in a sequence of att.i.tudes as if it were trying to mop up its own blood. The policemen were firing at will. The horses snorted and s.h.i.+ed.

Up in their Harlem hideout the Coalhouse band could reason what the outcome would be. They were all there but the man they had followed. The rooms seemed empty. Nothing mattered. They could barely bring themselves to talk. All but Younger Brother thought they would remain in New York. The Model T was hidden in an adjoining alley. They a.s.sumed it had been marked. Since Younger Brother wanted to leave town he was awarded the car. He drove that night to the waterfront at 125th Street and took the ferry to New Jersey. He drove south. Apparently he had some money although it is not known how or where he got it. He drove to Philadelphia. He drove to Baltimore. He drove deep into the country where Negroes stood up in the fields to watch him pa.s.s. His car left a trail of dust in the sky. He drove through small towns in Georgia where in the scant shade of the trees in the squares citizens spoke of hanging the Jew Leo Frank for what he had done to a fourteen-year-old Christian girl, Mary Phagan. They spit in the dirt. Younger Brother raced freight trains and clumped his car through the cool darkness of covered bridges. He used no maps. He slept in the fields. He drove from gasoline pump to gasoline pump. He collected in the back seat an a.s.sortment of tools, tire tubes, gascans, oilcans, clamps, wires and engine parts. He kept going. The trees became more scattered. Eventually they disappeared. There was rock and sagebrush. Beautiful sunsets lured him through valleys of hardened sun-cracked clay. When the Ford broke down and he couldn't fix it he was pulled by children sitting up on wagons drawn by mules.

In Taos, New Mexico, he came upon a community of bohemians who painted desert scenes and wore serapes. They were from Greenwich Village in New York. They were attracted by his exhaustion. He was pa.s.sionately sullen, even when drinking. He replenished himself here for several days. He enjoyed a brief affair with an older woman.

By now Younger Brother's thinning hair was just long enough to fall flat on his crown. He wore a blond beard. His fair skin peeled constantly and he squinted from the sun. He drove on into Texas. His clothes had worn away. He wore bib overalls and moccasins and an Indian blanket. At the border town of Presidio he sold the Ford to a storekeeper and, taking with him only the desert water bag that he had hung from the radiator cap, he waded across the Rio Grande to Ojinaga, Mexico. This was a town that had seen successive occupations of federal troops and insurgents. The adobe houses of Ojinaga lacked roofs. There were holes in the church walls made by field guns. The villagers lived behind the walls of their yards. The streets were white dust. Here were billeted some of the forces of Francisco Villa's Division of the North. He attached himself to them and was accepted as a companero companero.

When Villa did his march south to Torreon, two hundred miles along the destroyed tracks of the central railroad, Younger Brother was in the throng. They rode across the great Mexican desert of barrel cactus and Spanish bayonet. They encamped at ranchos and in the coolness of the castellated abbeys smoked macuche macuche wrapped in cornhusks. There was little food. Women with dark shawls carried water jars on their heads. wrapped in cornhusks. There was little food. Women with dark shawls carried water jars on their heads.

After the victory at Torreon, Younger Brother wore the cartridge belts crisscrossed over his chest. He was a villista villista but dreamed of going on and finding Zapata. The army rode on the tops of railroad freight cars. With the troops went their families. They lived on the tops of the trains with guns and bedding and baskets with their food. There were camp followers and babies at the breast. They rode through the desert with the cinders and smoke of the engine coming back to sting their eyes and burn their throats. They put up umbrellas against the sun. but dreamed of going on and finding Zapata. The army rode on the tops of railroad freight cars. With the troops went their families. They lived on the tops of the trains with guns and bedding and baskets with their food. There were camp followers and babies at the breast. They rode through the desert with the cinders and smoke of the engine coming back to sting their eyes and burn their throats. They put up umbrellas against the sun.

There was a meeting in Mexico City of the insurgent chiefs from the various regions. It was another moment when the revolution had to be defined. After the despised tyrant Diaz had been overthrown a reformist, Madero, had taken power. Madero had fallen to a General Huerta, an Aztec. Now Huerta was gone and a moderate, Carranza, was trying to a.s.sume control. The capital seethed with proliferating factions, thieving bureaucrats and foreign businessmen and spies. Into this chaos rode Zapata's peasant army of the south. The city was hushed by their arrival. Their reputation was so fierce that the urban Mexicans feared them. Younger Brother stood quietly with the villistas villistas and watched them ride in. Then the Mexicans began to laugh. The fearsome warriors of the south could not speak properly. Many of them were children. Their eyes went wide when they saw the palace of Chapultepee. They wore rags. They would not step on the sidewalks of the Paseo de la Reforma, a boulevard of mansions and trees and outdoor restaurants, but walked instead in the street, through the horse droppings. The electric streetcars of the city frightened them. They fired their rifles at fire engines. And the great Zapata himself, sitting for photographs in the palace, let Villa take the President's chair. and watched them ride in. Then the Mexicans began to laugh. The fearsome warriors of the south could not speak properly. Many of them were children. Their eyes went wide when they saw the palace of Chapultepee. They wore rags. They would not step on the sidewalks of the Paseo de la Reforma, a boulevard of mansions and trees and outdoor restaurants, but walked instead in the street, through the horse droppings. The electric streetcars of the city frightened them. They fired their rifles at fire engines. And the great Zapata himself, sitting for photographs in the palace, let Villa take the President's chair.

The campesinos campesinos of the south did not like either Mexico City or the revolution of the moderates. When they left, Younger Brother went with them. He had never revealed his special knowledge to the officers of Villa. But to Emiliano Zapata he said I can make bombs and repair guns and rifles. I know how to blow things up. In the desert a demonstration was given. Younger Brother filled four dry gourds with the sand at his feet. He added pinches of a black powder. He rolled corn silk into fuses. He lit the fuses and methodically threw a gourd to each of the four points of the compa.s.s. The explosions made holes in the desert ten feet wide. Over the next year Younger Brother led guerrilla raids on oil fields, smelters and federal garrisons. He was respected by the of the south did not like either Mexico City or the revolution of the moderates. When they left, Younger Brother went with them. He had never revealed his special knowledge to the officers of Villa. But to Emiliano Zapata he said I can make bombs and repair guns and rifles. I know how to blow things up. In the desert a demonstration was given. Younger Brother filled four dry gourds with the sand at his feet. He added pinches of a black powder. He rolled corn silk into fuses. He lit the fuses and methodically threw a gourd to each of the four points of the compa.s.s. The explosions made holes in the desert ten feet wide. Over the next year Younger Brother led guerrilla raids on oil fields, smelters and federal garrisons. He was respected by the Zapatistas Zapatistas but was thought also to be reckless. On one of his bombing forays his hearing was damaged. Eventually he grew deaf. He watched his explosions but could not hear them. Spindly mountain railroad trestles crumpled silently into deep gorges. Tin-roofed factories collapsed in the white dust. We are not sure of the exact circ.u.mstances of his death, but it appears to have come in a skirmish with government troops near the Chinameca plantation in Morelos, the same place where several years later Zapata himself was to be gunned down in ambush. but was thought also to be reckless. On one of his bombing forays his hearing was damaged. Eventually he grew deaf. He watched his explosions but could not hear them. Spindly mountain railroad trestles crumpled silently into deep gorges. Tin-roofed factories collapsed in the white dust. We are not sure of the exact circ.u.mstances of his death, but it appears to have come in a skirmish with government troops near the Chinameca plantation in Morelos, the same place where several years later Zapata himself was to be gunned down in ambush.

By this time of course the President in the United States was Woodrow Wilson. He had been elected by the people for his qualities as a warrior. The people's instinct escaped Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt accused Wilson of finding war abhorrent. He thought Wilson had the prim renunciatory mouth of someone who had eaten fish with bones in it. But the new President was giving the Marines practice by having them land at Vera Cruz. He was giving the army practice by sending it across the border to chase Pancho Villa. He wore rimless gla.s.ses and held moral views. When the Great War came he would wage it with the fury of the affronted. Neither Theodore Roosevelt's son Quentin, who was to die in a dogfight over France, nor the old Bull Moose himself, who was to die in grief not long thereafter, would survive Wilson's abhorrence of war.

The signs of the coming conflagration were everywhere. In Europe the Peace Palace was opened at The Hague and forty-two nations sent representatives to the ceremonies. A conference of socialists in Vienna resolved that the international working cla.s.s would never again fight the battles of imperialist powers. The painters in Paris were doing portraits with two eyes on one side of the head. A Jewish professor in Zurich had published a paper proving that the universe was curved. None of this escaped Pierpont Morgan. He debarked at Cherbourg, the incident of the mad black man in his Library quite forgotten, and made his customary way across the Continent, going from country to country in his private train and dining with bankers, premiers and kings. Of this latter group he noted a marked deterioration in spirit. If the royal families were not melancholic they were hysterical. They overturned winegla.s.ses or stuttered or screamed at servants. He watched. The conviction came over him that they were obsolete. They were all related, from one country to the next. They had been marrying one another for so many centuries that they had bred into themselves just the qualities, ignorance and idiocy, they could least afford. At the funeral of Edward VII in London they had pushed and shoved and elbowed each other like children for places in the cortege.

Morgan went to Rome and took his usual floor at the Grand Hotel. Very quickly the butler's silver plate filled with cards. For several weeks Morgan received counts and dukes and other aristocrats. They arrived with pieces that had been in their families for generations. Some of them were impoverished, others merely wished to convert their a.s.sets. But they all seemed to want to leave Europe as quickly as possible. Morgan sat in a straight chair with his hands folded upon the cane between his knees and viewed canvases, majolica, porcelain, faience, bra.s.ses, bas-reliefs and missals. He nodded or shook his head. Slowly the rooms filled with objects. He was offered a beautiful golden crucifix that pulled apart to become a stiletto. He nodded. Through the lobby of the hotel and out the doors and around the block stretched a line of aristocrats. They wore morning coats, top hats, spats. They held walking sticks. They carried bundles wrapped in brown paper. Some of the more intemperate of them offered their wives or their children. Beautiful young women with pale skin and the most mournful of eyes. Delicate young men. One individual brought in twins, a boy and girl, done up in gray velvet and lace. He undressed them and turned them in every direction.

Morgan remained in Europe until his agents advised him that his Nile steamer was waiting in Alexandria, outfitted and ready to sail. Before departing he attempted for the last time to persuade Henry Ford to come to Egypt. He composed a lengthy cable. The reply came back from Ford that he could not leave Michigan because he had entered into the most sensitive stage of negotiations with an inventor fellow who was able to power a motorcar's engine with a green pill. Morgan ordered his bags packed. After giving instructions in the crating and s.h.i.+pping of his acquisitions, he set off. It was the autumn of the year. When he reached Alexandria he came up to his boat, a paddle steamer built of steel, and without more than a glance from the pier he went aboard and ordered the captain to cast off.

Morgan's intention in Egypt was to journey down the Nile and choose a site for his pyramid. He stowed in the safe in his stateroom the plans for this structure secretly designed for him by the firm of McKim and White. He expected that with modern construction techniques, the use of precut stones, steam shovels, cranes, and so forth, a serviceable pyramid could be put up in less than three years. The prospect thrilled him as nothing ever had. There was to be a False King's Chamber as well as a True King's Chamber, an impregnable Treasure Room, a Grand Gallery, a Descending Corridor, an Ascending Corridor. There was to be a Causeway to the banks of the Nile.

His first stop was at Giza. He wanted to feel in advance the eternal energies he would exemplify when he died and rose on the rays of the sun in order to be born again. When the boat docked it was nighttime, and he could see from the starboard deck the pyramid field silhouetted against a blue night sky of stars. He went down the ramp and was met by several men in the Arab burnoose. He was installed on the back of a camel and taken in this ancient way up to the north face, to the entrance of the Great Pyramid itself. Against all advice he was determined to spend the night inside. He hoped to learn if he could the disposition by Osiris of his ka, or soul, and his ba, or physical vitality. He followed his guides down the entrance corridor. The light of a torch threw great bounding shadows against the stone-block walls and ceiling. After many turns and twists, some difficult climbs up ramped pa.s.sageways, and several occasions requiring that he crawl on all fours to squeeze through an aperture, he found himself in the heart of the pyramid. He paid his guides half of the agreed-upon price so that they would come back for him for the balance; and receiving their wishes for a good night's rest he was left suddenly alone in the dark chamber, the only light a dim glimmer of a star or two from the top of a narrow air shaft.

Morgan would not sleep that night. This was the King's Chamber, long since emptied of its furnis.h.i.+ngs. The earth was so damp that its chill permeated the wool blanket he had brought to sit upon. He had his monogramed gold box of safety matches but refused as a matter of principle to light one. Nor did he drink from his brandy flask. He listened to the dark and stared at the dark and waited for whatever signs Osiris would deign to bring him. After some hours he dozed. He dreamed of an ancient life in which he squatted in the bazaars, a peddler exchanging good-natured curses with the dragomans. This dream so disturbed him that he awoke. He became aware of being crawled upon. He stood up. Places all over his body itched. He decided to light one match. In its small light he saw on his blanket the unmistakable pincered bedbug, in community. After the match went out he continued to stand. He then paced the chamber, holding his hand out before him so as not to b.u.mp into the stone walls. He paced from the west to the east, from the north to the south, though he didn't know which was which. He decided one must in such circ.u.mstances make a distinction between false signs and true signs. The dream of the peddler in the bazaar was a false sign. The bedbugs were a false sign. A true sign would be the glorious sight of small red birds with human heads flying lazily in the chamber, lighting it with their own incandescence. These would be ba birds, which he had seen portrayed in Egyptian wall paintings. But as the night wore on, the ba birds failed to materialize. Eventually he saw up through the long narrow air shaft that the stars had faded and the rhomboid of night sky had grown gray. He permitted himself a drink of brandy. His limbs were stiff, his back ached and he had caught a chill.

Morgan's aides came along with the Arab guides and he was helped back to the outside world. Surprisingly, the morning was well-advanced. He was placed on his camel and slowly led down from the pyramid. The sky was bright blue and the rock of the pyramid field was pink. As he pa.s.sed the Great Sphinx and looked back he saw men swarming all over her, like vermin. They were festooned in the claws and sat in the holes of the face, they perched on the shoulders and they waved from the heights of the headdress. Morgan started. The desecrators were wearing baseball suits. Photographers on the ground stood by their tripods with their heads poked under black cloth. What in G.o.d's name is going on, Morgan said. His guides had stopped and were calling back and forth to other Arabs and camel drivers. There was great excitement. An aide of Morgan's came back with the intelligence that this was the New York Giants baseball team that had won the pennant and was on a world exhibition tour. The pennant? Morgan said. The pennant? Running toward him was a squat ugly man in pin-striped knee pants and a ribbed unders.h.i.+rt. His hand was outstretched. An absurd beanie was on his head. A cigar b.u.t.t was in his mouth. His cleated shoes rang on the ancient stones. The manager, Mr. McGraw, to pay his respects, Morgan's aide said. Without a word the old man kicked at the sides of his camel and, knocking over his Arab guide, fled to his boat.

Shortly after these adventures Pierpont Morgan suffered a sudden decline in health. He demanded to be taken back to Rome. But he was far from unhappy, having concluded that his physical deterioration was exactly the sign for which he had been waiting. He was so urgently needed again on earth that he was exempt from the usual entombment rituals. Members of his family met him in Rome. Don't be sad, he told them. War speeds things up. They didn't know what he was talking about. They were at his bedside when he died, not without antic.i.p.ation, at the age of seventy-six.

Now, it was not long after Morgan's death that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand rode into the city of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, to inspect the troops there. With him was his wife the Countess Sophie. The Archduke held his plumed helmet in the crook of his arm. All at once there was a loud noise and a good deal of smoke and shouting. Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Countess Sophie found themselves covered with chalk dust. Dust coated their faces, it was in their mouths and eyes and all over their clothing. Someone had thrown a bomb. The Mayor was aghast. The Archduke was furious. The day is ruined, he said, and terminating the ceremonies he ordered his chauffeur to leave Sarajevo. They were in a Daimler touring car. The chauffeur drove through the streets and made a wrong turn. He stopped, put the gears into reverse and twisted around in his seat preparatory to backing up. As it happened the car had stopped beside a young Serbian patriot who was one of the same group who had tried to kill the Archduke by bomb but who had despaired of another opportunity. The patriot jumped on the running board of the touring car, aimed his pistol at the Duke and pulled the trigger. Shots rang out. The Countess Sophie fell over between the Archduke's knees. Blood spurted from the Archduke's throat. There were shouts. The green feathers of the plumed helmet turned black with blood. Soldiers grabbed the a.s.sa.s.sin. They wrestled him to the ground. They dragged him off to jail.

In New York the papers carried the news as one of those acts of violence peculiar to the Balkan states. Few Americans could have had any particular feeling of sympathy for the slain heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. But the magician Harry Houdini, reading his paper at breakfast, felt the shock of the death of an acquaintance. Imagine that, he said to himself. Imagine that. He saw the moody and phlegmatic Duke staring at him from under his coif of flattened brush-cut hair. It seemed to him awesome that someone embodying the power and panoply of an entire empire could be so easily brought down.

It so happened that Houdini, on this very day, was scheduled to perform one of his spectacular outdoor feats. He was therefore unable to reflect on the Archduke's death to the extent he might have otherwise. He left his house, hailed a cab and rode downtown to Times Square. Here, an hour and a half later, with several thousands watching, he was put in a strait jacket and attached by the ankles to a steel cable and hauled feet first halfway up the side of the Times Tower. With each turn of the winch up on the roof he rose a few feet and swayed in the wind. The crowd cheered. It was a warm day and the sky was blue. The higher he rose the more distant the sounds of the street. He could see his own name upside down on the marquee of the Palace Theatre five blocks to the north. Automobiles honked and trolleys ganged together at Times Square as their drivers stopped to see the excitement. Police on horseback blew their whistles. Everything was upside down-the automobiles, the people, the sidewalks, the police on horseback, the buildings. The sky was at his feet. Houdini rose past the baseball scoreboard attached to the side of the building. He breathed deeply and found the calmness in danger that years of physical discipline had made possible. He had directed his a.s.sistants to hoist him approximately twelve stories above the street, truly well up in the air but not too high to be seen clearly. His plan was to wrestle himself out of the strait jacket, fling it away, jackknife his body upwards, like an aerialist, and grab the cable hooked to the chain around his ankles. He would then stand right side up, his feet planted in the curve of the great hook, and wave to the cheering crowd as he descended. Houdini had lately been feeling better about himself. His grief for his mother, his fears of losing his audience, his suspicions that his life was unimportant and his achievements laughable-all the weight of daily concern seemed easier to bear. He attributed this to his new pursuit, the unmasking of spirit fraud wherever he found it. Driven by his feeling for his sainted mother, he had broken up seances, revealed the shoddy practices of mediums and held up to public scorn the trappings and devices that charlatans used to gull the innocent. At every performance he offered ten thousand dollars to the medium who would produce a manifestation he, Houdini, could not duplicate using mechanical means. The press and the public loved this new element in his work, but that was incidental. It was as if, now that his mother was dead, heaven had to be defended. Embattled, he felt he would soon begin to distinguish the borders of the region where she dwelled. His private detectives visited occult parlors in every city in which he played. He himself went to seances disguised as a gray-haired widow in a veil. He would s.h.i.+ne a portable electric torch on the thin wire that caused the table to levitate. He tore the covering from the hidden Victrola. He plucked trumpets out of the air and grabbed by the scruff of the neck confederates hidden behind drapes. Then he stood up and dramatically cast off his wig of waved gray hair and announced who he was. He accrued lawsuits by the dozens.

Houdini realized he was now raised to his a.s.signed height. The breeze up here was somewhat stronger. He felt himself revolving. He faced the windows of the Times Tower, then the open s.p.a.ces over Broadway and Seventh Avenue. Hey, Houdini, a voice called. The wind turned Houdini toward the building. A man was grinning at him, upside down, from a twelfth-floor window. Hey, Houdini, the man said, f.u.c.k you. Up yours, Jack, the magician replied. He could actually release himself from a strait jacket in less than a minute. But if he did it too quickly people would not believe he was legitimate. So he took longer. He appeared to struggle. He could hear the oohs and aahs rising from the street as he made the cable jerk and spin. Soon his entire upper half, including his head, was entangled in the restraint. Inside the thick duck of the strait jacket there was no light. He rested for a moment. He was upside down over Broadway, the year was 1914, and the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was reported to have been a.s.sa.s.sinated. It was at this moment that an image composed itself in Houdini's mind. The image was of a small boy looking at himself in the s.h.i.+ny bra.s.s headlamp of an automobile.

We have the account of this odd event from the magician's private, unpublished papers. Harry Houdini's career in show business gave him to overstatement, so we must not relinquish our own judgment in considering his claim that it was the one genuine mystical experience of his life. Be that as it may, the family archives show a calling card from Mr. Houdini dated just a week later. n.o.body was home to receive him. The family had by this time entered its period of dissolution. Mother, son and the brown child, who had been christened Coalhouse Walker III, were motoring upstate in a Packard touring car, Mother at the wheel. They were seeing the Howe Caverns, and their ultimate destination for the summer was the Maine sh.o.r.e at Prout's Neck, where the painter Winslow Homer had lived his last years. Mother and Father were now on the most correct and abbreviated speaking terms, the death of Younger Brother in Mexico having provided final impetus for their almost continuous separation. Grandfather had not survived the winter and resided now in the cemetery behind the First Congregational Church on North Avenue in New Roch.e.l.le. Father was in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. He had found upon his return to the flag and fireworks plant a drawerful of blueprints that was the repayment of his debt to which Younger Brother had referred, cryptically, in their last conversation at the Morgan Library. In the year and a half of his life before his emigration, Younger Brother invented seventeen ordnance devices, some of which were so advanced that they were not used by the United States until World War II. They included a recoilless rocket grenade launcher, a low-pressure land mine, sonar-directed depth charges, infrared illuminated rifle sights, tracer bullets, a repeater rifle, a lightweight machine gun, a shrapnel grenade, puttied nitroglycerine and a portable flame thrower. It was to arrange for adoption of certain of these weapons that Father had repaired to Was.h.i.+ngton and become a familiar of high-ranking officers of the United States Army and Navy. What with tests of prototype models, sales contract negotiations, conferences in the halls of the Congress and various expensive lobbying procedures, including lunches and dinners and weekend entertainments, Father had had to take an apartment at the Hay-Adams Hotel. His response to his personal unhappiness was to throw himself more avidly into his work than he had ever done. With the onset of the Great War in Europe he was one of those who feared Woodrow Wilson's lack of fighting spirit and was openly for preparedness before it became the official view of the Administration. There was great interest expressed by other governments than our own in the malign works of Younger Brother's genius, and under the advice of counselors in the State Department Father tended to recognize some of these at the expense of others. To the Germans he was quite rude, to the British friendly and conciliatory of terms. He was antic.i.p.ating just the final alignment of American sympathies with the Allies that in fact took place in 1917, but which began to be inevitable as early as 1915 when the British pa.s.senger liner Lusitania Lusitania was torpedoed by a U-boat off the southwest coast of Ireland. The was torpedoed by a U-boat off the southwest coast of Ireland. The Lusitania Lusitania, registered as an armed merchant s.h.i.+p, was secretly carrying a manifest of volatile war materiel in her holds. Twelve hundred men, women and children, many of whom were American, lost their lives, among them, Father, who was going to London with the first s.h.i.+pments for the War Office and the Admiralty of the grenades, depth charges and puttied nitro that undoubtedly contributed to the monstrous detonations in the s.h.i.+p that preceded its abrupt sinking.

Poor Father, I see his final exploration. He arrives at the new place, his hair risen in astonishment, his mouth and eyes dumb. His toe scuffs a soft storm of sand, he kneels and his arms spread in pantomimic celebration, the immigrant, as in every moment of his life, arriving eternally on the sh.o.r.e of his Self.

Mother wore black for a year. At the end of this time Tateh, having ascertained that his wife had died, proposed marriage. He said I am not a baron, of course. I am a Jewish socialist from Latvia. Mother accepted him without hesitation. She adored him, she loved to be with him. They each relished the traits of character in the other. They were married in a civil ceremony in a judge's chambers in New York City. They felt blessed. Their union was joyful though without issue. Tateh made a good deal of money producing preparedness serials-Slade of the Secret Service and and Shadows of the U-Boat Shadows of the U-Boat. But his great success was still to come. The family found tenants for the house in New Roch.e.l.le and moved out to California. They lived in a large white stucco house with arched windows and an orange tile roof. There were palm trees along the sidewalk and beds of bright red flowers in the front yard. One morning Tateh looked out the window of his study and saw the three children sitting on the lawn. Behind them on the sidewalk was a tricycle. They were talking and sunning themselves. His daughter, with dark hair, his tow-headed stepson and his legal responsibility, the schwartze child. He suddenly had an idea for a film. A bunch of children who were pals, white black, fat thin, rich poor, all kinds, mischievous little urchins who would have funny adventures in their own neighborhood, a society of ragam.u.f.fins, like all of us, a gang, getting into trouble and getting out again. Actually not one movie but several were made of this vision. And by that time the era of Ragtime had run out, with the heavy breath of the machine, as if history were no more than a tune on a player piano. We had fought and won the war. The anarchist Emma Goldman had been deported. The beautiful and pa.s.sionate Evelyn Nesbit had lost her looks and fallen into obscurity. And Harry K. Thaw, having obtained his release from the insane asylum, marched annually at Newport in the Armistice Day parade.

[image]E.L. DOCTOROW'S work has been published in thirty languages. His novels include City of G.o.d, Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World's Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks City of G.o.d, Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World's Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks, and The March The March. Among his honors are the National Book Award, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, three National Book Critics Circle awards, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. He lives in New York.

ALSO BY E. L. DOCTOROW

Welcome to Hard Times

Big as Life

The Book of Daniel

Drinks Before Dinner (play) (play)

Loon Lake

Lives of the Poets

World's Fair

Billy Bathgate

Jack London, Hemingway, and the Const.i.tution (essays) (essays)

The Waterworks

City of G.o.d

Sweet Land Stories

The March

Creationists: Selected Essays, 19932006