I had not deceived myself. She was everything I had imagined, everything I remembered. ‘Esmé’ She was passing through the barrier to where the cars were drawn up. ‘Esmé. My darling. Here!’ She was going the wrong way. Jacob Mix made some ridiculous suggestion - that perhaps this was not the goddess I had described! I ignored him. ‘Esmé! I am here!’
She turned at last and I was sure she recognised me. Then her attention was taken by the crowd and I was shouting once more. ‘Here, my beloved!’
A shadow passed between myself and my wife-to-be (a great camel-hair overcoat, a wide panama, a cigar and a cane) and she was gone, spirited into a massive yellow and black Rolls Royce.
‘Esmé!’
‘I guess she’s found herself a new beau.’ Mr Mix tugged at my coat. I informed him coolly that white girls were not so promiscuous with their favours. In a sudden change of mood he left me. I saw him speak in a placatory tone to the guard. I was not interested in what he was saying. As the Rolls Royce turned into the main street, I began to run after it. My weariness caught up with me. I stumbled, fell forward, and lay soaking in an oily puddle as I watched the car bear my darling up towards the elevated road.
She must think herself deserted! She had turned to a stranger for help. What kind of stranger? A whoremaster? A gangster? Some unscrupulous Levantine ‘theatrical agent’? There were a thousand possibilities. My stomach churned and bile rose in my throat as I got to my feet to discover that Mr Mix, at any rate, had not deserted me. I apologised for my remarks. It is bad form for a white man to use his superior social position to insult a negro. I have always held to this. Yet that Cornelius girl still laughs at me and calls me a bigot. What must I do to convince her? Put on the boot polish and sing ‘Mammy’?
Mr Mix told me that my behaviour was understandable in the circumstances. Once he, too, had had a sweetheart whom he had last seen ‘loungin’ with her legs wide apart in the back seat of Paul the Pimp’s Doozie.’
I said, with mild astonishment, that my fiancée was scarcely the sort of girl to be found in such circumstances. Believing herself abandoned, Esmé had clearly turned to someone else for help.
The man owned a car. He was obviously rich. Somehow I would find out who he was and track him down. Suitable explanations would be made, I would be reunited with Esmé and all would return to normal.
‘His name’s Graham Meulemkaumpf the Third and that car was taking him across town to Grand Central.’
‘The station?’ I was aghast.
‘That’s her. This guy’s based in Chicago. He’s in cattle.’
‘A cowboy! My angel with a cowboy?’ What other horrors were in store for me? Even when Jacob Mix explained how the guard had told him that Meulemkaumpf owned the Rolls Royce and was one of the richest men in the Midwest, I could not rid myself of that terrible image.
Not two seconds upon the American shore and my sweetheart had been abducted by a buckaroo! It was everything a European most fears when he sees his relatives take ship for the United States. How could such a thing happen to me, who had worked so hard for his new country, who had identified himself entirely with its most idealistic causes? (God was testing me, but then in the arrogance of my youth, I did not understand that.) Me he perdido.
Unable to pursue the car, I determined to discover the address of its owner. First, however, I would need funds. I told Mr Mix to accompany me to the Western Union office at Pennsylvania Station. ‘What are you going to pay with, colonel?’ he asked me. ‘Red gold?’ Anxious to save breath to make the run over to Seventh Avenue as rapid as possible, I did not answer, but I had already determined that I would cable collect asking Mucker Hever to wire me a couple of hundred dollars. The busy traffic of downtown New York City was meat and drink to me, I breathed it as another might inhale the wild movements of the pine forest, but that morning, dazed by all my disasters, I was helplessly gripped by a nightmare. I do not recall how we reached the Western Union office and pushed through the smart glass doors to join the waiting line.
No doubt again I have Mr Mix to thank. Did ever a man deserve such noble loyalty?
As my turn arrived I produced a business card which had not received too much of a soaking and handed it to a Neanderthal clerk who eyed us with considerable distaste and asked us to wait at one side. Ah, how easily we fall when we lack access to a simple suit of well-cut clothes!
When he returned, his first question, almost inevitably, was ‘How do I know this is you?’ Patiently I explained that my servant and myself were set upon in the railroad yards of Wilmington, Delaware and robbed of everything. By use of our wits we had arrived at our destination, only to be thwarted by an officious know-nothing who had managed successfully to separate me from my betrothed. ‘Even now she is disappearing into the clouds of the upper elevated in some outlaw’s coupé!’ I was an inventor employed by Hever of Los Angeles. The card proved that much. I searched through the pockets of my waistcoat and trousers for proof of identity but could find only a half-ticket issued by Western Aviation Services. ‘Call the police in Wilmington. They know me. They arrested the pilot of this plane. I was travelling on it. There was some question of bootleg liquor.’
‘Nothing to do with Mr Petersen,’ said Jacob Mix from behind me.
‘I was innocent, of course.’ I realised as I spoke that if Mr Mix had been with me, he would have had to have ridden on the top wing. I tried to play down this unnecessary piece of confusion. ‘Had it not been for the fortunate arrival of my valet here, I should be dead in the freight yards by now. Simply cable to Mr Hever and ask him a question. He knows me.’
‘And who’ll pay for the cable?’ the anthropoid wished to know. Meanwhile others behind us, all with urgent business, were calling out for us to move on. At this, quite justifiably, I lost my temper. I raised my voice, I must admit. I began to curse the clerk and the company and all its customers. I always find myself speaking a mixture of Russian and Yiddish on such occasions, perhaps because I learned bad language first in Odessa, amongst the polygenetic young criminals of the Slobodka drinking dens where I had enjoyed my salad days. I had not learned then what I later learned of the perfidy and cunning of the Jew. I knew only his charming side in those days. I have always said that I was born without prejudice. What people choose to call prejudice is simply the very opposite. It is common experience. I mean no harm to any individual of any race. I am a man of infinite tolerance and sensitivity to the feelings of others. How could I not be? I have been in their position. I know what it is to have a mind and a heart yet to be treated as a beast. I am lucky enough to have brains and talent and good looks. These things have saved me from at least a permanent life of despair and poverty. Not all are so fortunate and it is our duty to care for them. But this does not mean setting them on pedestals or promoting them over better-qualified people! Society is a compact between millions of individuals. Lines have to be drawn somewhere. This is what they understand in South Africa.
At some point in my argument with those jacks-in-office Jacob Mix had disappeared. I could not have blamed him for making himself scarce. If they were prepared to humiliate a white man as badly as they humiliated me, there is no telling where he might not have finished; perhaps at the end of a rope. My faith in the decency of human nature was badly threatened by that terrible experience. I found myself outside the Western Union office in the company of two policemen warning me that if I made a further nuisance of myself I would be thrown into jail as a vagrant. I set off back towards the docks with the vague idea of picking up Esmé’s trail at the ships’ offices. A few moments later I was joined by Jacob Mix who grinned at me and, as casually as if we were passing acquaintances on the street, enquired where I was going. When I told him, he shook his head. ‘Why waste time? Her train’s just about to leave for Chicago.’ He had telephoned Meulemkaumpfs New York number and learned that the millionaire had already boarded the 20th Century Limited. The Pullman was due to leave within minutes. I remember my dash up the Avenue of the Americas as a blur. Mr Mix followed, panting. The cops, he said, were still on our tail. At last I ran into the sunbeams and shadows of the station, was sighted by the two policemen, sprinted towards the 20th Century’s wrought-iron boarding gates to be caught between this barrier and the cops in time to hear the confident gasps of the mighty silver locomotive as she began her journey West. He perdido mi rosa! He perdido mi hija.