I do not expect to live much longer. I have been too outspoken, for all my warnings were useless. Mrs Cornelius says I waste my breath. It is a mistake to give your real name. We went to the cinema last night. We saw Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines. It is all a joke to them now, our achievements. The slack mouths bellow, the empty heads are thrown back. The aeroplanes are merely props for a clown’s comic disasters. Then I was a true luftmensch. It is raining on the roof. The electric light is flickering in the rafters. My engines need attention. I must connect them properly. All I ever asked was for a pupil to whom I could pass my ideas, but they sent no one. In the forties and fifties I used to see more intelligent people. They inhabited the wine bars and drinking clubs of Soho and Chelsea. Dylan Thomas told me I was a pure, bloody genius. He wore a suit some sizes too big for him, but responded to my words as poets always have. I hear he is making records now. A superstar. There was some talk, in The Mandrake, of writing a play together. The poet has ears which can listen to the voice of God. Thomas drank because he heard too much. But what he is doing on the radio now is sheer noise. He deafened himself completely. Henry Williams, the otter trainer and successful novelist, said my political ideas were the soundest he had ever encountered. He had the beard and hair of Jehovah; a great healthy face. His girlfriends dyed their hair blonde for him. By the sixties, however, I was in Springfield. It was a different age. The same people who praised me as a brilliant scientist ahead of his time now referred to chemical imbalances in my brain and made me incoherent on largactyl and tranxene. C’ a trappo rumore. These drugs originate in Switzerland. They were developed to suppress individuality. This is the main mission of the Swiss. They devote most of their time to it. They are frightened by thought. They expelled Mussolini. They would have expelled me. Instead they sell drugs to Carthage, profiting from all Europe’s misfortunes. I had plans for a city to cover the Alps but nothing came of it. Mauretania is a nation at peace. I should like to be a permanent citizen. Captain Rembrandt says he has crossed the Atlantic almost twenty times. ‘But you can’t beat the good old Mauretania.’ Her speed record has never been matched. Rembrandt won his money back at cards but I chose to pass too often for his taste. He complained it made for a dull game. I apologised saying I was short of ready cash. Rather than play cards with me, he and his inseparable partner Mortimer bought me drinks and asked about my patents. They were high-spirited, enthusiastic young men, very neat and trim, typical products of Harvard or Yale, with those lather well scrubbed good looks of their type. They said my ideas would be infinitely commercial. I should have no difficulty selling them once I reached New York. Investors would be ‘waiting in line’. However, if I needed help, they would be delighted to put themselves at my service. They gave me a post office box in New York where they could be reached. They tended, they said, to be on the move quite a bit.
I sauntered through arcades of Mauretanian shops with Helen Roe, inspecting glass display windows full of dresses, coats and perfume, mink, jade and gold. The best of everything was available. I bought Helen a monstrous box of French chocolate. She kissed me on the cheek. She said I was a sweetie. With the calmer sea, the ship hardly seemed to be moving, yet we were actually making the fastest time of the entire voyage. Her coal burning turbines were a match for any oil-fuelled vessel afloat. Later that year, when she caught fire, she would herself be converted to oil and continue to hold the Blue Riband for another eight years, longer than the entire lifespan of some rival liners. I recently read Cunard financed the experiments of a young man with an enthusiasm for modern airship development. I was relieved the dream was not dead, although the person selling the idea sounded something of a charlatan. Nonetheless I wrote to his company and offered my services. I received no reply. Of course I have read nothing since. Such people discredit the ideas of genuine visionaries. Nit gefidlt.
As the Mauretania slowly approached the harbour, Tom Cadwallader offered me one of his Havana cigars and said that much as he had enjoyed the voyage he would be glad to get off the ship. ‘The worst part of the journey is crossing New York to the railroad station.’ He hoped we would berth at a reasonable hour since he would hate to spend a night in ‘Synagogue City’. I asked him if he was familiar with New York and what was his opinion of the Hotel Pennsylvania. He had heard it recommended. ‘I’ve never spent more than eight hours at a time in the city. And most of that was in a friend’s apartment. I don’t know New York and never wish to. There are almost no Americans there.’ He believed he had made a blunder and added, ‘Not that I have anything against people from abroad. New York is bad Irish and worse Jew. When it isn’t either, it’s the sweepings of Naples, peasants from the poorest parts of Sicily. It’s the chief breeding ground of Anarchy. And it believes itself superior to the rest of the country. New York, Colonel Pyat, is not America. You should never confuse one with the other. Come to Atlanta if you want to know the real America.’ I already had his address. I thanked him. I would try to visit him after I had decided on my itinerary. My main intention was still to visit Washington. Mr Cadwallader understood I had no plans to make a permanent home in America and this made him I think all the more affable. He had already convinced me that the legislation limiting immigrants was the best new piece of Law since the War. But, as usual, the tolerant Christian is too late. The Jew is already past the gates and settling down to his business. He says he wants only to live and work and do no harm. Ikh kikel zikh fun gelekhter!
The great city slows to half speed. Twice she sounds her long operatic greeting. Outside is the angry crash of water displaced by tremendous screws; officers shout to their working parties; the jangle of signals from the wheelhouse makes it impossible to understand a dozen voices already distorted by speaking tubes. Her wood panelling dances on her inner bulkheads; her smoke grows dim. She is held in check now, pulsing and panting, as the captain awaits his orders. Just beyond the horizon lies New York. We move forward, hundreds of us, some with binoculars, wishing to be the first to glimpse our destination, but it is not yet possible. A steward advises us to take lunch. He assures us it will be several hours before we enter the Hudson.
A mood of impatient excitement spreads throughout the huge vessel. People are suddenly more animated as they eat. They order caviare, they drink champagne; already they are celebrating their departure. These women are so beautiful in their marvellous clothes, in silk and ermine, the men so confidently elegant. With my back straight, I stand on the upper boat deck, proudly wearing my own white uniform, an uprooted Son of the Don, smoking a cigarette as I watch the crew rapidly making ropes fast, preparing our anchors and lines. I am alone for the moment. I am filled with a sense of well-being. The ozone is good in my nostrils. The cocaine works at its best to clear my head and sharpen my senses. I am completely alive and without fear. I have been accepted by the aristocracy of the Anglo-Saxon world, by great men and women whose ancestors, holding a fundamental belief in the rule of Law, spread their language, their customs and religion across half the planet and continue, even now, to spread them further still. The horizon darkens. A slender line. The whole ship murmurs. It is land. Steadily, mile by mile, we move into a wide harbour until there, directly ahead, are the unbelievable towers rising taller and taller from the ocean itself. It is unique. It is Manhattan: a city without a past. A city with only a future. A dream.