That evening, before we went on for our final performance, Mrs Cornelius remained in high spirits. She appreciated the effort I had made. She told me I could be a wonder when I wanted to be. She hoped I would stop making a fool of myself and maybe have a try at the East Coast theatres again. We could start in Atlantic City. I reminded her I might soon be sitting behind an engineer’s desk but I promised not to leave the company without fair notice. We heard our music beginning and virtually danced out onto the stage with oui opening number (The Devil Came To Russia And The Devil Waved A Flag to the tune of The Animals Went In Two By Two). Again we had the audience captivated. We knew we were, as they say, ‘flying’. It was not until Ethel at the piano struck up our finale The Hammer And The Sickle Can’t Crush Or Tear Our Hearts to Marching Through Georgia) that I looked for ‘Mucker’ Hever and saw instead, with arms folded across their chests, five hooded Klansmen at the back of the hall. My mouth became instantly dry. I could scarcely croak out the remaining verse. My legs were weak; my stomach felt as if a knife had pierced it. Mrs Cornelius was alarmed. ‘Wot ther bloody ‘ell’s ther matter?’ she whispered. Then, as the audience whistled, stamped and applauded, the five Klansmen began to clap. They clapped regularly, at a slightly slower beat than the rest of the crowd and they continued to clap, increasing the beat slightly, until one of them raised a clenched gauntlet above his head. ‘Death to the Three Jays! Death to Jew, Jap and Jesuit! Death to the Alien Creed!’ I had expected them to rush the stage and attempt to carry me off. My first thought was that Callahan had betrayed me. Now, unless they were playing a cat-and-mouse game with me, I believed those five sincere, Klansmen of the Alte Kämpfer who still clung to the original ideals of the Umzikhtbar Imperye. We took two curtain calls, which we had never done before. We bowed and waved. I grinned like a puppeteer’s idiot doll. When we came to take the third call, the Knights of the Invisible Empire had vanished and the audience was filing from the little hall. ‘I ‘ope them bastards don’t make a reg’lar fing o’ this.’ Mrs Cornelius released my hand. ‘They could bleedin’ lose us ‘arf the ‘ouse.’ I had my own reasons for wishing them gone. In the dressing-room she made me drink a tumbler of noxious Mexican brandy. ‘Yore sweatin’ like a pig! Wot scared ya this time? Them silly buggers in their nighties? Jes’ a bunch o’ overgrown kids muckin’ abart.’ She chuckled. ‘Didn’t fink they wos real ghosts, did yer?’ She poured me another dark brown slug.
Beginning in the dressing-room we both got rather drunk, as we had on the Rio Cruz so long ago, singing the Cockney songs which were her real favourites but most of which were never appreciated in America. She revealed she had been ‘almost sorry’ when Lenin died, ‘I wosn’t surprised ‘e croaked so sudden. ‘E wos a maniac fer work.’ She laughed. ‘Anyfink ter stop worryin’ abart real people. I must admit, my Leon’s ther same, but I fink e’ll do a better job, if they give ‘im ther chance. Not likely though, is it, ‘im being’ a yid?’ Her prediction was surprisingly accurate. Within ten years, Stalin had cleansed his ruling committee of every single Jew. A Georgian returns always to his simple roots. We cannot be seduced as easily as your Moscow intellectual. I reminded Mrs Cornelius I had no personal or sentimental attachments to Bolsheviks. They were all bloody handed mass murderers. Drug-besotted lunatics. She nodded her acquiescence, as if this was a fact everyone took for granted. ‘Yeah.’ She seemed to wait for me to enlarge on my theme, but I had said all there was to say. ‘Oh, they’re that orl right,’ she said.
She sprawled against her tiny dressing-table, still in khaki and jackboots, nostalgically remembering how she and I first met in an Odessan dentist’s surgery. Because of the drink she could not recall when she had next seen me. She was with Trotski’s Red Army, I said. She had saved my life in Kiev. Put me on the train which, by chance, led me to Esmé. She smiled and patted my cheek. ‘Wot a funny ol’ pair’ of bedfellows we are, eh?’
‘Never quite,’ I said.
This made her laugh.
Die Rosen wachsen nicht in den Himmel. Esmé, mayn fli umgenoyenist. Bu vest komen. Hob nisht moyre. Vifl a zeyger fort op der shif keyn Nyu-York? Vifl is der zeyger? S’iz heys. ikh red nit keyn Yiddish! ikh red nit keyn Yiddish! Blaybn lebn . . . Mayn snop likht in beyn-hashmoshes . . . Es tut mir leyd. Esmé! Es tut mir leyd!
Nekhtn in ovnt . . . Next day I once again gave my best as a performer. In our own eyes at least we had become a perfect stage union, the kind of romantic duet one now saw regularly on the screen. White Knight and Red Queen was almost real to us. The illusion was shared by our audience (ordinary people can, whatever cynics say, appreciate serious emotional drama) and it also served to decrease my by now habitual worrying about Esmé. I became, as a result, almost addicted to the part: looking forward to our shows as I never had before. A telegram from Tivoli told me the choice of ship was unimportant. The only problem was the fare. She loved me and was eager to see me again. Was I sure I wanted her there? Ikh farshtey nit. Firt mikh tsu, ikh bet aykh. tsu di Heim. Khazart iber, zayt azoy gut. I don’t understand. I replied by return that the fare was on its way and I counted the hours until we were reunited.
It was at that evening show I noticed with dismay John ‘Mucker’ Hever back in his usual seat close to the stage, all but drooling in his infatuation for Mrs Cornelius. Yet I was in a way comforted to see him. Our performance was perfect. He must have given himself blisters on his palms, he clapped so hard. Like clockwork, Mr Hever arrived at the stage door in time to be blocked by me. Ritually, I accepted his expensive red and white roses and his ivory card. He was an eager, dewy-eyed boy, keener than ever, promising anything for an introduction to my co-star. She had never acted more brilliantly. She was an English Bernhardt. She was perfection itself. ‘Please understand, sir, that I have never done this sort of thing before. I’m no stagedoor johnny. I’m in love, sir.’ A thought came to him (rather late, in my view) ‘My God! You’re not her husband?’
I ran my thumb over the card’s embossed lettering. ‘Mrs Cornelius is a widow.’ She was a little hazy on this herself.
I remembered how we had spent most of our time together talking about the cinema. He had shown great familiarity with Continental films. He was speaking with tearful enthusiasm of how she was fated to be recognised by the world of the silver screen. I told him I would pass on the wishes and the roses. He apologised for missing our earlier shows. ‘I have just acquired an interest in a movie business. If it is of any use to you, I will put everything at your disposal.’ It was ironic that this was the ‘angel’ I had prayed for only a few weeks earlier. Now, in that City of Angels, not one engineering firm had answered my letters. It came into my mind that I should easily demand a bribe for taking him to Mrs Cornelius’s dressing-room. How else, short of direct theft, was I to keep my word to Esmé? But only a fool would carry the price of a first-class boat ticket on his person. I had the impression that, no matter how besotted he was, Mr Hever possessed a profound sense of the value of money. I brightened, however, for it had been bothering me how Mrs Cornelius would survive without my management. I did not know if his interest was a share in the local flea pit or fifty percent of Fox, but I was not impolite as I turned him away. I could feel a certain sympathy for a man in the grip of an obsession. I told him to return after our matinee tomorrow, when I hoped to have an answer for him. He was disgusting in his gratitude.