In New York, more than anywhere else, I developed an immediate sense of competency; the kind of security which comes from an instinctive understanding of one’s environment. The more complex a city, the better I felt. The country dweller retreats in confusion from the city’s images and noise, baffled by its millions of intersecting segments of information. To him it seems all contradictions, mystery, threat. As in Constantinople, I immediately relax. Dangers in the city are easily recognised or anticipated. In the country I am helpless. What does the crack of a twig, the angle of a leaf, the way a plant has been pressed down underfoot mean to me? If New York was, as many said, a jungle, then I was a beast naturally bred for that jungle. Within a few days of strolling aimlessly around and absorbing images, sounds, scents, I knew virtually all I needed to survive and, if necessary, conquer. Helen Roe saw me once or twice, but she was anxious to leave for Florida. She said New York was a filthy city and the people in it were scum. Our shipboard romance died immediately she reached land. Now that more familiar young men were available to her, cajoling her to speakeasies and nightclubs, she no longer had use for me. I was relieved, for I too was reluctant to continue the affair. I had written to Esmé, describing my arrival, the hotel and so on. I had written to Kolya and sent a postcard to Mrs Cornelius, mentioning William Browne, the film producer. I longed for all of them to be with me, particularly Esmé. She would have delighted in the city’s variety as much as I.
For the first week, however, I will admit I gave less thought to my dear ones than usual and neither did I do much in the way of furthering my career. I lived a dream of excited discovery. I ate steaks, lobsters and hot dogs, Russian dishes as fine and as elaborate as any in Odessa. I tried Italian, French and Chinese restaurants. I visited cinemas to watch the latest films and I went to the vaudeville. I rode on streetcars, buses and trains. During that period I was content with my own company and any escort would have been a distraction. I was swimming in waters at once strange and deeply familiar, modern yet full of nostalgia. Here were soda-fountains which were fantastic extensions of cafés I had known in Kiev, smelling of syrups and candies, vast tiers of carved mahogany and oak, of brass and chrome and decorated mirrors; restaurants in which small forests appeared to be growing, picture palaces which might have been transported stone by stone from ancient Assyria, mansions grand enough to be the seats of European Emperors. Standing at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street I watched black clouds of a thunderstorm come rolling towards me, abolishing the sun, block by block, before at last it reached me, a wild hissing of rain, roaring and flashing, driving me into a doorway. I walked almost the whole length of Broadway at night, visited the Zoo, bought sweet potatoes from a vendor in Central Park, purchased for next to nothing the favours of pretty prostitutes (some of whom spoke even less English than those in Constantinople), chatted with strangers in an easy way I found impossible in Europe. I told them how wonderful their city was. The true New Yorker believes there is no world but his; questions are rarely asked about your country of origin: he merely wishes to hear if you approve of New York. This was perfectly agreeable to me for it maintained anonymity while affording sociability. I still had plenty of good cocaine and more could easily be purchased through the girls I patronised. I cheerfully drank grape juice or Coca-Cola when no spirits were readily available to me. Alcohol, of course, was an abiding and somewhat tiresome topic everywhere. The newspapers thrived on rum-running tales. Prohibition and its consequences were the national obsession. But it meant little to me. I was a child on vacation. All I wanted was to be able to go down to the waterfront, watch the liners come and go, enjoy with fascination a sea plane exhibition provided by ex-War airmen. America (though falsely believing herself the first to fly) had taken to the aeroplane as readily as she took to her native Model T. The paradoxes of a culture able to accept technological innovation so readily while allowing the antiquated morals of religious extremists to be imposed on the entire nation had not become apparent to me. Careless of the rest of the sub-continent’s opinions, New York City, in the days of her glory, functioned as an independent City State. Financiers were called Morgan and Carnegie. The power of the Orient was limited to the corner drapery shop. New York fell resoundingly to Carthage in 1929; she was their greatest conquest amongst the world’s cities. As Constantinople, the centre of Christendom, was made the Ottoman capital, so New York became the capital of Carthage. Mastering her, they mastered America. Eventually, inevitably, this would lead to mastery of the world.
Innocent of future disaster, I followed the marching bands into Brooklyn and Queens and went to see George M. Cohan, that quintessential American, in his latest musical. I ate baked clams and fresh oysters at Sheepshead Bay. I sat at a lunch counter near Grand Central Station reading a New York Times which made all the troubles of Europe seem remote, unimportant, even mildly irritating. My own interest, indeed, was in the doings of scientists and how they were honoured in America. President Harding, I read, gave Madame Curie a radium capsule worth a hundred thousand dollars as a gift from American women. After a slump, Henry Ford’s cars were selling well again. I also learned that the Edison company had given a questionnaire to all prospective employees. To my despair (for I had planned at a pinch to offer my services there) I could scarcely answer a single question. One asked ‘Which American city leads in the manufacture of washing machines?’ Edison was, I found from the newspaper, utterly baffled by the results of these tests. He decided university people were horribly ignorant. Perhaps it was as well I did not have to endure the frustration of working for a fool.
In a very short time the discovery of an illicit whisky-still in the heart of the Bronx became more exciting than a report on Warren Harding’s adamant refusal to join the League of Nations. My only reaction to an editorial denouncing the British Trade Agreement with Soviet Russia was the vague hope I might now in a letter to my mother tell her how stimulating America was. Perhaps she would be allowed to join me here. Most of us were then led to believe that now, with the Civil War over and foreign governments resuming relations with her, Russia would become increasingly moderate. The fate of my mother and Captain Brown aside, I felt this was no longer of immediate importance (besides. I was officially a Frenchman). Neither did the defeat of the Spanish Army by Abd el Krim in Morocco seem significant. By far the best news was the American Government’s willingness to fund domestic aviation development. It spurred me to take stock of my limited resources and begin arranging my affairs. My vacation in New York was coming to an end. Soon it would be time to set off for Washington.
Some three weeks after my arrival in New York I bought stocks of linen paper, all the engineer’s necessary drawing paraphernalia, confined myself to my suite with a large amount of cocaine, coffee and the occasional room-service meal, and began carefully to copy out designs and specifications of my already patented inventions. These I set aside in a large folder. Next I prepared the unpatented designs. These included my transatlantic aeroplane staging platforms, hospital airships capable of being sited wherever they were immediately needed, intercontinental tunnels, a cheap method for extracting aluminium from clay, a means of producing synthetic rubber, a long-distance aerodyne and a rocket-propelled airship. All would go for registration to the U.S. Patent Office. The others I would send directly to the Secretary of the Interior, whom I understood to be in charge of scientific projects. I also included copies of various press reports, although these were mainly in French. The ship’s newspaper had done a little piece in English about me and my work and this, too, was enclosed.