I became adept at securing cheap lodgings and bargaining with the proprietors of carnivals, opera houses (saloons before prohibition) and ramshackle movie theatres. Our van proved a sound investment. It often served as shelter. The gypsy life was not unhealthy and indeed we all benefited. Though frequently tired and short of money we were rarely downhearted. A good climate makes an enormous difference to one’s spirits. Sunshine is an antidote to almost any ills. English people appreciate it almost as much as Russians. The other two girls were Mabel Church and Ethel Embsay. They were usually known as Gloria de Courcey and Constance Buckingham-Fairbank. Both were plain, cheerful creatures whose popularity had much to do with a fairly indiscriminate dispensation of off-stage favours. We acquired a drunken juggler-cum-comedian called Harold Hope: he drew more applause for his lack of dexterity than for any intrinsic skill with the Indian Clubs. For a while we also had a young black-face minstrel, Will Olsen. He left us outside Monterey after attempting to force himself on Mrs Cornelius. Next we employed Chief Buffalo Nose, a fire-eater from Brooklyn. His tribe was closer to the Plattfussindianern (as the joke went in Germany during the 30s) than it was to the Schwarzefussindianem. He rarely needed artificial help in lighting his breath. What always astonished me was how he kept his stomach from igniting.
These were idyllic days. I had women almost always to hand, friendship and common sense from Mrs Cornelius, little thought for the future and less for the past. The small California towns were generally welcoming. They also possessed an innocence missed by modern Americans. Here were settlements unsullied by coloured invaders; unthreatened by godless ideologies. The soda fountain, the drugstore and the barbershop were the local meeting-places and the saloon, when it existed, was as sombre and peaceful, as respectable, as any church. I have seen the Disneyland brochures. But you cannot create Main Street as a nostalgic sideshow in a fun fair run by Mormons dressed as cartoon mice. Devo tornare indietro?
America forfeited Main Street when she turned her back on Europe, leaving us to struggle alone against Carthage. She looked inward at the moment her power and idealism reached zenith. If she had looked outward, she would still have everything she yearns for now. I was there. America was euphorically taking the path to self-defeat. She suffered the perpetual delusion of the rich: that their wealth is the reward for some inherent moral superiority. I, who shared the benefits of California’s irresponsible youth, saw no better than did they the end to the privileged golden years, the gaiety and extravagance. But my time as an actor was not wasted. I learned much about ordinary people living on slender means, experiencing the daily realities of a world many Europeans still insist is wholly glamorous, naive or spoiled. My disappointment with America was to come later when I realised she refused her proper role of leader merely because she would rather be liked than respected. In the twenties she still had self-respect. That was why you could safely walk down Main Street, smelling sodas, malts, coffee and syrup in towns where only a generation or two earlier men had killed for a nugget of gold, a parcel of dirt.
We travelled in the footsteps of Lola Montez, who had danced her way through the lumber camps and tent towns seventy years before. From the wooden metropolises of Lost Hill to the new, brick-built dignity of Calaveras County, through the great deserts and redwood forests, over mountain ranges and between steep hills, from gold to silver to oil, we sang our songs and declaimed our lines. In cities whose boardwalks protected our feet from mud we could turn a corner and find a full-sized oil well erected in the middle of the street. The great Mother Lode, which had brought San Francisco one of her richest and wildest periods, was played out, yet the hills remained full of prospectors. We drove through the shimmering passes of the High Sierras and the vast San Joaquin Valley when the plum blossom was at its fullest, through fields of cotton, across irrigated plains with lines of eucalyptus as far as the eye could see. We rested and breathed the almost narcotic scent of orange groves, plucked fresh peaches from the tree, feasted on trout caught from cool rivers. We performed in barns, tents and the public rooms of dilapidated hotels. We travelled as far as Flagstaff, Arizona, and one night made camp close to the rim of the Grand Canyon. That primeval vastness can only be experienced, never conveyed by word or picture. We drove our old ambulance through the Painted Desert. In Monument Valley the Indians’ eyes stared upon the death of all dreams. Navajo children had the trancelike expressions I already knew from Galata and, before that, the steppe-shtetls of Ukraine. They had been born into a century which had no place for them. Their rituals and traditions had lost function and reason. Now, through no fault of their own, these Indians could never be anything but outcasts. They were parasites in their own land, like the conquered Armenians, the Palestinian Jews and Russian kulaks. They had become Musselmanisch, as they said in Buchenwald. They had, in essence, ceased to live, these exemplary citizens of Carthage.
Occasionally our tours would take us to larger cities, or at least their suburbs. It was in Auburn, a peaceful Northern Californian town, where the telegraph poles were still taller than most buildings, that I saw Brodmann again. I was crossing from a café called Rattlesnake Dick’s to the local post office. The only moving traffic on the wide steep street was a horse-buggy and two or three bicycles. The afternoon was sleepy and sunny. Auburn seemed to be enjoying a siesta. I had in my hand a note to Esmé and a postcard to Kolya. As usual I was begging for news, praying that soon one of my letters must reach them, wherever they were. I refused to consider the possibility they had been kidnapped back to Russia. Brodmann was standing on the wooden balcony of the old Freeman Hotel, at the very top of the hill. I could make out his figure clearly. Before disappearing back into the darkness of his room he waved once. I was fairly sure the gesture was simply a mocking one, but he might have been signalling to someone. I became very wary after that and insisted on leaving Auburn, to Mrs Cornelius’s annoyance since we had originally planned to spend the night there. For the next week I had difficulty playing my parts but saw no point in alarming anyone else with my knowledge. I still had no clear notion of Brodmann’s intentions. I was glad, however, when we began to move back towards the South.