I
KNOW A STORY
"I
know a story," said Trick the Dwarf, and the rest of them leaned
in close: Nanook the Esquimau, and Ota Benga the Pygmy, and Yolanda
the Wild Queen of the Amazon.
"What
kind of story?"
Yolanda's
eyes bulged suspiciously, and it occurred to him again how she
alone might actually be as advertised: tiny, leather-skinned woman
with a mock feather headdress, betel nut juice dribbling out through
the stumps of her teeth. A mulatto from Caracas, or a Negro Seminole
woman from deep in the Okefenokee, at least.
"What kind of a story?"
He
swiped at the last swathes of greasepaint around his neck and
ears, and looked down the pier of the ruined park to the west
before replying. All gone now, even the brilliant white tower
festooned with eagles, its beacon reaching twenty miles out to
sea. Gone, gone.
It
was evening, and the lights were just going up along Surf Avenue:
a million electric bulbs spinning a soft, yellow gauze over the
beach and parks. The night crowd was already arriving, pouring
off the New York & Sea Beach line in white trousers and dresses,
white jackets and skirts and straw hats all quickly absorbed by
the glowing lights.
The
City of Fire was coming to life.
He
could hear the muffled fart of a tuba from the German oompah band
warming up in Feltman's beer garden. Beyond the garden was the
Ziz coaster, hissing and undulating through the threes lay the
peculiar sound that gave it its name. Beyond that was the high
glass trellises of Steeplechase Park, with its ubiquitous idiots
face and slogan, repeated over and over STEEPLECHASEFUNNY PLACE
STEEPLECHASEFUNNY PLACE beyond that ocean, where a single, low-slung
freighter was making for Seagate ahead of the night. He could
see even further. He could see into the past where Piet Cronje's
little Boer cottage had stood, or the Rough Riders coaster, before
some fool sailed it right off the rails, sixty feet into the air
over Surf Avenue. Where a whole city had stood, back beyond the
ruined pier Meet me tonight in Dreamland Under the silvery moon
Soon,
he knew, the soft yellow lights would be honed by the darkness
into something sharper. They would become hard and clear: fierce
little pearls of fire, obliterating everything else with their
brightness. None of them now on the pier would se it, not Yolanda
or Ota Benga or Nanook the Esquimau. They would be working by
then, in their booths and sideshows. They would not see the lights
again until they were on their way home, in the early morning;
would see them only as they shut down, already faded into a fraudulent,
rose hue by the sun rising over the ocean. Meet me tonight in
Dreamland Where loves sweet roses bloom Come with the lovelight
gleaming In your dear eyes of blue Meet me in Dreamland Sweet
dreamy Dreamland There let my dreams come true.
They
liked to sit out on the ruined pier during the dinner hour, between
the heavy action of the day and the night shows. They slumped
on the rotted pilings, where once a hundred excursion boasts a
day had tied up, to smoke and eat, and spit and smoke and tell
their stories: Ota Benga, spindly and humpbacked, no real pygmy
but tubercular piano player from Kansas City, exotic moniker lifted
from an old carny sensation of the past.
In
the City everything was passed down, even the names of the freaks
and the gangsters.
Nanook
the Massive, Nanook the Implacable, slit-eyed hero of the north
who was in fact a woman from some extinguished Plains tribe, signed
on after her old man had tried to force her into whoring at the
Tin Elephant hotel along Brighton Beach.
And
then were was Yolanda. Immense frog eyes still staring up at him,
curved beak of a nose, skin the color and texture of a well-used
saddle. "It's a love story," Trick told her. "it's a story about
love, and jealousy, and betrayal. A story about a young man, the
young woman who loved him, and a terrible villain a story about
death, and destruction, and fire. It is a story about thieves
and cutthroats, and one mans vision, and the poor man's burden,
and the rich mans condescension.
"It
is a story about Kid Twist, the gangster, and Gyp the Blood, who
was a killer, and Big Tim the politicians, and poor Beansy Rosenthal,
who couldn't keep his mouth shut. It is a story about Said the
whore, and the brave Esther, and the mad Carlotta, and the last
summer they all came together in the great park.
"It
is a story about the Great head Doctors from Vienna, and the rampages
of beasts, and the wonders of the Modern Age. It is a story about
a great city, and a little city, and a land of dreams. And always,
above all, it is a story about fire." "Ah, said Yolanda, satisfied
now, leaning back and lighting up her pipe.
"Ah.
The usual."
ON
THE BOARDWALK
Esther
met him at the main gate of Dreamland by the angel of the Creation
its great wings spanning the whole width of the entrance arch,
perfectly formed breasts pointing the way to the future. He was
waiting for her at its foot, in a white summer suit with a kelly-green
vest that looked as cool and elegant as an ice cream sherbet gazing
up at the angels exquisite teats.
Kid
Twist grinned, and squeezed her hand when she came up, and she
couldn't help but grin back at him.
"I'm
glad you came."
"Didn't
you think I would?" she mocked him.
Inside,
the park was just gearing up for the day, looking almost wholesome
in the morning light. The pavement was pristine, the coasters
making their first tentative whooshes around the tracks. A long
line of the Dreamland cash girls filed by in the immaculate white
academic caps and gowns, marching like so many novitiates to their
registers.
"We
have the whole day," he said, and pulled her along.
They
rode on the Alpine railway, past tiny Swiss chalets and frozen
waterfalls, and pink snowy peaks. The little open cars shaped
like sleighs, with bells that tinkled as they careened around
the curves, climbed laborously up the Starnbergersee. They plunged
over and a long, delighted cry rose from the women and children
filling the cars ahead.
They
rose in the back, the only couple on the train, squeezed into
the childlike seats of their car. His hand was around her waist,
dangling over her hip, brushing her waist and thighs.
They
sped into a tunnel with a sign inscribed gratuitously NO KISSING
ALLOWED IN THIS TUNNEL. As soon as they were in the dark she felt
his hands on her, pulling her to him. He smelled like fine bay
run, and peppermints, and she wanted to laugh to think of her
first kiss with the cockroach boss, grappling in this room of
coats. She shut her eyes and kissed him back, ignoring the women
and children shifting and giggling all around them.
They
pulled out of the tunnel, the other passengers laughing and pointing
at them, but to her surprise she found she didn't care at all.
She turned her head away, smiling, staring dreamily down at the
matrix of toy trains below her, whizzing in and out of their snowy
little tunnels and caves.
In
the streets of Cairo, men in turbans and caftans led their camels
and elephants along the midway. A raven-haired woman undulated
before a plaster mosque-its dome chipping sky-blue paint.
"The
warmest spectacle on earth! She her dance the Hootchy-Kootchy!
The danse du ventre if ya know whatta mean!" She danced out on
the boards in stars and bangles: one forelock slicked down in
the shape of a crescent moon, eyes painted into mysterious slits
above her veil, a paste sapphire mounted in her navel. Her bare,
rounded belly wriggled like nothing Ester had ever seen, suggesting
whole new worlds.
"Anywhere
else but in the ocean breezes of Coney Island she would be consumed
by her own fire!"
She
jiggled and shook slowly around, back toward the sky-blue mosque.
A small knot of men, grinning sheepishly, shambled after her into
the plaster mosque.
Later,
when it got dark, he took her dancing out at the end of the Old
Iron Pier. They shuffled slowly around, listening to the waves
below them and singing along softly with the old favorites: My
evening star I wonder who you are Set up so high like a diamond
in the sky No matter what I do I cant go up to you So come down
from there my evening star.
She
had him request "After the Ball is Over," which you could barely
go a quarter of an hour at Coney without hearing, but none of
the other dancers seemed to mind: After the ball is over After
the break of morn.
It
was late, and everyone was tired. The dancers slumped around the
floor together, smelling each others rank, pleasurable scents
of salt water, and sun, and fried food After the ball is over
After the break of morn After the dancers leaving After the stars
are gone Many a heart is aching If you could read them all Many
the hopes that have vanished After the ball
It
was late by the time he walked her to the train station. The fireworks
were already going off, the last trains pulling out.
"Stay
with me," he told her meaning this time, really trying to convince
her this time.
"No.
I got work."
She
looked up at him and smiled, to show him how much she wanted to
say.
"My
little dove. Stay..."
"No."
He
helped her push through the crowds to her train. On board, everyone
was exhausted, the children already asleep in their mothers laps.
She threaded her way into the car, and stood looking back at him
through the open door.
"My
sweet. My little crown."
"No"
The
warning bell sounded and he stepped across the threshold, into
the train. Her eyes widened, not sure of what he could be doing,
clutching onto the handrails. No one else cared but he had her
in his arms by the door, as if they were married. Both of them
staring at themselves in the darkened windows as they sped back
through the ash pits and the coal yards.
They
moved up through the sleeping neighborhoods of Park Slope, and
Boerum Hill, and over the bridge into Manhattan, the train stopping
more frequently now. Everyone exhausted, everyone too tired even
to make any noise, the dozing families somehow intuiting when
it was their stop, trudging off the train. Half the car cleared
off when they reached Delancey and it was her stop, too, but she
didn't budge.
She
stayed by the door with him, holding him. They could have had
a seat now, but they stayed by the door, holding each other and
looking gravely back at their own reflections. Soon the car was
all but empty, just two or three single men who had missed their
stops snoozing in the corners. They rushed up along the elevated
tracks, tenements and new, block-long apartment houses sweeping
by. So close they could peer right into their windows and homes
and lives men and women reading or eating, comforting babies or
making love, or just sitting under a dim light, having a smoke.
They sped uptown, all the flickering, inscrutable little dramas
running together, and he held his arms around her waist and began
to kiss her. He kissed her neck, as he had on the Steeplechase,
and she leaned her head back, and kissed him full on the mouth,
and held her arms around his head. She broke it off, then kissed
him again for a long time, and leaned back against him, both of
them staring out the window at all the houses going by, the men
and women leaning on their windowsills in the hot, still night,
staring dully back at the train rushing past them.
THE
GREAT HEAD DOCTORS FROM VIENNA
The
funny little man flickered across the glasses of Sigmund Freud.
Running, falling, eating, waddling forward with his odd little
walk, dabbing at the black smudge of moustache just below his
nose. He seemed to exist in a state of constant, frenetic turmoil:
his black bowler hat bobbing along the tide of humanity that engulfed
him whenever he stepped out of the door the same tide they had
taken refuge from up on the roof garden.
Before
the little tramp, up on the screen, there had been another frantic
comedy about a gang of incompetent policemen who went charging
around after a fire engine, wrecking everything. Before that some
sort of kitchen drama from the ghetto with everyone, right down
to the humble mother in her apron, throwing their arms about with
the gestures of grand opera stars. It was the first time any of
them had seen a moving picture. Freud had to admit they were innately
engrossing, creating a world of their own on a two-dimensional
screen. What kind of psyche would it create in the future, he
wondered, once they perfected the process, and people were sure
that they could see all of life?
Ferenczi
especially seemed to love it, laughing out loud and clapping his
hands like a little boy. Freud himself only smiled quietly, content
to sip his beer and puff on his cigars while Jung, to his annoyance,
was even more enigmatic, peering out at the screen through his
large pince-nez like a biologist examining a rare bug.
"Herr
Doktor," the clinic is closed," Freud called over to him, still
smiling, noting to this further displeasure that Jung had returned
to his abstemious ways. Since they had been in America he drank
nothing but seltzer water, or a bilious tonic called celery soda,
which the Americans claimed aided the digestion but which tasted
to Freud like old socks.
"In
our profession, the clinic is never closed," Jung smiled back
at him. "That's the joy of it we never have to stop working."
"Yes,
I know," Freud said quickly, but Jung cut him off, waving an arm
to indicate the roof garden all around them.
"Take
this place, for instance." Think of how much is hidden here, between
the palms."
Freud
gritted his teeth, and turned back to the movie. In fact, to his
further chagrin, Jung was right. The roof garden seemed very strange
to him indeed another thoroughly disconcerting American place.
It as up in one of the newer districts of the city, on a street
brimming with theatres yet just a couple of blocks from a slum;
where everyone gleefully, even proudly warned them not to walk.
The theatre itself was another mass of contradictions, a spectacular
art nouveau palace called the New Amsterdam. Up on the roof garden,
next to the whole louche scene the tuxedoed businessmen, fat as
pigeons; the glittering, jaded women; hungry young gigolos prowling
through the potted palms was a homey little recreation of the
old New Amsterdam: complete with miniature windmills, and gabled
Dutch houses, a real cow and a buxom set of milkmaids who sashayed
around the tables, selling buckets of their warm, fresh milk to
the customers.
"They
are like children, these Americans, with their insistence on innocence,"
Freud sniffed, faintly annoyed by Ferenczi still giggling like
a schoolboy next to him.
There
had been dinner, and dancing to a small orchestra, everyone around
them laughing and talking so loudly they could barely hear each
other. Then, out of nowhere, the great blank, white screen had
been put up. The droning, clattering projector was pulled out,
overruling everything else; everyone turning their full attention
to the screen.
The
whole trip had been just as strange and unsettling, from the moment
they pulled out of Bremerhaven. He had grown close gain with Jung
on the boat over. He had been Carl the crown prince, the good
student, once more even proposing to give his own lecture about
childhood sexuality first,, to break the ice for Freud by citing
the case of his daughter, Agathli, and her anxiety over his wife's
pregnancy. Freud had been grateful. He thought it was a sacrifice
worthy of the Torah, for Jung to offer up his own daughter. Agathli
would need serve as an ideal battering ram, as it were, softening
up their audience at Clark for the shocking idea that sexuality
began before puberty.
Yet
there was a price: Jung, he was aware, still wanted to psychoanalyze
the Master. Freud had put him off. He had no intention of being
stuck on the George Washington with a triumphant Jung, smugly
confident that he had uncovered some part of Freud he had not
previously suspected in himself. Perhaps not even telling him
what it was.
There
had been a disturbing incident, as well, a small thing, but one
that had bothered him all the way over. On their second day out,
they had run into another of the ships company after breakfast,
a certain professor Stern, from Breslau, on his way over to Clark
himself to give a lecture on the psychology of court testimony.
This
Stern had had the temerity to question The Interpretation of Dreams
in a review a few years ago, and Freud had neither forgotten nor
forgiven. He prided himself on being able to endure any and all
attacks on his person, but he would tolerate nothing against the
Cause. He cut the professor himself, but Stern had succeeded in
cornering Jung. While Freud waited a few feet away, impatiently
tapping his walking stick, the little ekel had gone on and on,
discussing theories of word association. He had finally felt obliged
to call out to Jung:
"Now,
Herr Doktor, when are you going to bring that conversation to
an end?"
Stern
had blushed then, and excused himself. Freud reclaimed his crown
prince, hooking their arms together and guiding him off down the
deck.
"Look
at the shabby little Jew go," Freud said with satisfaction, glaring
back over his shoulder at the retreating Stern. In New York harbor
he had stood by the rail, staring at the famous green statue of
Liberty, standing like a colossus over her brood. It was modelled
on the sculptors mother, he recalled from Ferenczis Baedeker.
"What
a thing for the Land of Rebellious Sons: a stern mother figure,
wielding a phallic symbol! But was its real purpose to substitute
for the mothers they had left behind or to warn off more bad boys?
He
left the question for later as their ship was towed through the
bustling harbor, and over to the Hoboken docks. Contemplating
the heroic statue, the soaring, vertical city awaiting him, he
felt like a conquistador again, invincible and roguish, capable
of anything. The mood lasted until the men from the American press
came aboard.
"Isn't
this all about sex, Herr Professor?" one of them shouted out and
the others had all laughed while he fumed and stammered, unable
to get out a quick answer in their promiscuous, careless language.
"What
are your lecture fees?"
"Do
you expect to get many society clients?"
"Are
any of you married, doctors?" this last query bringing another
great laugh, as Ferenczi and even Jung blushed red as schoolgirls.
They scribbled in their notebooks and popped their flash pictures
until the doctors were quite blind and still obviously convinced
their whole trip was no more than some kind of traveling con game,
the latest sensation for their front pages. Even worse. He noticed
the next day that his name had been universally misspelled as
Freund.
"Professor,
whattaya think of America so far?"
"Well,
we have only just got in the harbor," he hemmed, fighting down
the impulse to point out what an astonishingly stupid question
it was. Yet it was all the reporters really wanted to know.
"Professors,
are ya gonna take in a baseball game?"
"Are
you gonna visit the Grand Canyon?"
"Are
you gonna go up to the Statue of Liberty? How bout the subway?"
"Well,
whattaya think of the harbor so far?"
Dr.
Brill, from Columbias Psychiatric Clinic, had finally succeeded
in shooing the reporters away. Brill was an old friend; he had
done his practicum at the Burgholzli, and had been analyzed for
a time by Freud, and he took them in hand leading them off the
boat, down through the endless tunnels to a taxi, then a train
in the subway a deafening, terrifying experience and then finally
back up more tunnels and through the kitchen of their hotel.
"It
is a great world city now, New York," Brill informed them.
"I
will take you everywhere everywhere! You won't want to miss a
bit!" "I will be perfectly satisfied if I can just get to see
a porcupine," Freud tried his standard joke again, but actually,
as it happened, he would have been satisfied if he had been able
to keep anything down. The American cooking had proved unbearable,
and since landing they had all taken turns being laid up with
stomach maladies. At least it had given him a further excuse to
avoid Jung's demands to analyze him. Jung himself had recovered
first, and thrown himself enthusiastically into American culture:
jumping up on the rushing, clanging streetcars that swooped down
like birds of prey on anyone trying to cross the street. Running
out to buy the newspapers everyday. He was avidly following an
inquiry over which man, Peary or Cook, had made it to the North
Pole first.
"Can
you think of anything more crazily American?" Freud scoffed. "Two
men, risking their lives on such a race? And to where? Not even
a continent, but a drifting ice floe! How can anyone determine
a winner?"
"But
what finer example of the hero myth in action?" June had chided
him. "America is full of heroes or at least, people who think
they are. That's why it's the country for us!"
"A
whole country full of ubermenschen," Freud said darkly. "But tell,
me, please, what do such marvelous creatures need with us?"
"Surely,
Doktor, there is always a need for analysis, even of the healthiest
ego. When are you going to let me have a go at you?" Jung had
baited him.
"Soon,
soon," he had muttered, flustered and annoyed again.
Since
their arrival, he had analyzed Jung's and Ferenczi's dreams, but
it had been a one-way street; he was not prepared yet to let his
crown prince at his.
©
Copyright HarperCollins 2001
