When Jacob T. Mix lit a tiny pocket oil-lamp the car was suddenly illuminated by a wonderful radiance which turned every blade of straw to gold, every strand of wire to silver, made the walls glow like the warm, old wood of a comfortable cabin, while everything swayed gently, a huge, reassuring cradle, with Mr Mix’s enormous, scarred, kindly face peering down at me, enquiring with rough good will if I was sure I would not take a pull on his bottle and try to get some sleep.
‘How long will it be before we reach New York?’ I asked him.
‘Five or six hours, I’d reckon. She’s slow, this old train, but she’s steady. Then we have to look out for the bulls. In that early light they can stay hidden until they’re right up on you. But stick with me, Max. I’ll get you to your boat. Your girl promised to you, is she? From the old country?’
In essence he was right so I did not correct him. While Mr Mix began to tell some story of a Nigerian sailor he had once known and the stories of Africa the Nigerian had told him, I drifted into a half-sleep where I consoled myself with a vision of Esmé and myself, a prince and princess of Hollywood, driving through the hills and valleys of California, the harbingers and personification of an inevitable and glorious Future.
How cautious they were, those fools! Was ist Originalität? asks Nietzsche. I can tell him. It is what the majority would instinctively destroy. And how they have tried to destroy me! Yet I survived. I still survive! They cannot bear that.
Even then, I knew that I could not perish. Mrs Cornelius told me this, only a week or two ago, when she came into my shop in search of a new jumper for her boy. ‘Yore bloody indestructible, Ivan!’ Perhaps that is why I have always had this particular relationship with her. We have in common the not unenviable achievement of surviving the greater part of the twentieth century.
Adjusting the wick of his miniature lamp so that it should offer only the minimum necessary light, Mr Mix opened a book, remarking with some surprise at my stoicism and my powers of recovery. ‘You don’t complain much for a white boy.’
‘We Petersens,’ I told him, ‘are a hardy breed.’
TWO
THESE CATTLE CARS have always depressed me. They smell and look much the same in Russia, America, North Africa or Germany and it is demoralising, whatever the circumstance, to travel in them. Inevitably, there will always be at least one bully-boy to terrorise you, even when you are on board and moving. Jacob Mix and myself were spared the sound, that night at least, of steel-shod boots pausing with invisible menace on the roof overhead. How they loved to piss on us! And we were grateful if that was all they did. Those who mourn the passing of the Age of Steam mourn a romantic myth, not the squalid reality so many experienced.
Mr Mix proved to be a fellow of some intellectual ambition. He had educated himself in a rough and ready manner and, as such, proved a far more enjoyable companion than I had expected.
The good-hearted, self-improving negro is the best type in the world. What he lacks in the more sophisticated intellectual functions he more than makes up for with his virtues of loyalty and integrity. He has time neither for black loafers nor ‘white trash’. Thus, unable to sleep and anxious to divert myself from anxieties concerning Esmé, I was more than happy to engage Jacob Mix in conversation. He had been born in Alabama, he said, but had come North, to Philadelphia, to work in the mills during the War. The War over, the white men had wanted their old jobs back. He did what menial work he could to stay alive and had just today made up his mind to put all that behind him and see if he could get work on a ship out of New York. I was delighted by the coincidence. ‘So all along we were heading in the same direction!’
‘I guess so,’ said Mr Mix and again grinned his indescribable and savage grin. I had found a friend and a guide in the urban jungle, a beast finely tuned to modern-day survival. It was only fair that I should let him know what sort of man he had befriended. As briefly as possible I told him a little of my own life and my plans. I do not remember falling asleep.
A great shudder shook the train and I awoke feeling horribly chilled. Still asleep, Jacob Mix rolled a little until his face was in line with mine, then he opened his eyes and winked at me.
‘We should be in Jersey City.’ He peered through the slats at the grey, pre-dawn sky then climbed to his feet, brushing straw from his aged flannels and adjusting the shirt beneath his waistcoat. When he teased the door open I saw only cloud and a few gulls but the sound of an early-morning port was unmistakable. I knew it from Odessa and from Constantinople. It made my heart beat with fresh optimism. We were at the docks! Now all we had to do was find the Icosium’s assigned pier. I wanted to burst through the doors and run towards the water. I could smell the salt, the motor oil, the sea-wind. Esmé, meyn bubeleh. Es tut mir leyd. Esmé! Esmé! I looked at my watch. If on time, the ship had already docked, but would not yet be disembarking. I had forgotten the pier number, but some official was bound to help me.
‘Okay, colonel.’ Suddenly Mr Mix opened the door and beckoned me through. ‘Make for that stack of crates straight ahead. And go fast, man!’ I jumped easily to the concrete of a busy marshalling yard, surrounded by cranes, great locomotives and goods wagons of every description, quickly reaching the crates and a small gap created by careless stacking. Mr Mix joined me almost at once. ‘You can run good, too,’ he said. ‘You’ve had about as much practice as me, right?’ (I remember these questions because they struck me as so mysterious. I have never fathomed them. Sometimes I believe my companion was doing nothing but parrot phrases he had heard or read, without any real sense of meaning.) He took hold of my left foot and inspected it. There were some blisters, and the sock was a ruined mass of blood and cotton. Mr Mix said something about seeing to my foot before continuing, but I was anxious to reach the Icosium. ‘How are you going to do that, without no dough?’ he asked quietly.
‘I don’t need money to approach a ship’s pier, my dear fellow.’
‘But you need three cents to get on the ferry.’ Mix pointed across a stretch of dirty water in which every description of garbage floated. ‘That’s the Hudson, man. I guess the Cunarders dock over there, on the Manhattan side.’
I had imagined the train would take me directly to the docks, as it would have done in Odessa! Foolishly I had made a too obvious assumption. I had no money. And all my papers were in my stolen wallet. But at least I had a companion who knew where we were. ‘I shall have to pawn my watch,’ I said. ‘We had best get out of here and seek the necessary Jew.’
‘It’ll take too long and it’ll be too risky.’ Jacob Mix dug his hand along the back of his trousers and removed something wrapped in the tail of his shirt. It proved to be a ten-dollar bill which he brandished at me as if he had discovered the Koh-i-Noor diamond. ‘I’ll take the watch as a pledge.’
I argued that I would get far more in a pawn shop. ‘Maybe, but you ain’t in a pawn shop and you ain’t got time to find one.’ Mr Mix added, ‘Besides, I’m sticking with you for a while. I’ll get my ten bucks back, I know.’