The Laughter of Carthage

SEVENTEEN

THE CAUSE OF other people’s mirth is a subject which has frequently defeated me. Jimmy Rembrandt’s reaction to my dilemma remained a baffled note in my diary for some years. Even as I parted from him outside Plunkett’s Cafe he was still occasionally seized by an attack of snorts and grimaces. He wished me luck, ‘though I guess Roffy and Gilpin need it more’. Speechless once again he gave a shaky salute and walked rapidly up Monroe Street to vanish in the electric shadows.

I saw little humour then in my situation and none at all the next day when, coming empty-handed from the Western Union office, I saw Pandora Fairfax jump from her car with an agitated shout and run towards me. She asked me if I had seen either of my partners. It emerged both had disappeared, leaving rent unpaid on their own apartments and mine. They also owed considerable sums to various printers, designers, model-builders, researchers and advertising agencies in the city. She herself had been promised cash for the hire of her plane and in expectation of an agreed consultant’s fee had made a down payment on another aircraft. ‘There’s a rumour,’ she said, ‘that Boss Crump’s men have orders to bring them in dead or alive.’

By that evening I was in the extraordinary position of trying to explain why my partners had left no forwarding address. I believed they were based in Washington, I said. One of Boss Crump’s hard-faced lieutenants said he would check. He seemed angry and suspicious of me but his common sense must have made him realise I was telling the truth. Also he was aware of my standing with certain members of the community and it was obvious even to him that I was innocent of any fraud. Nonetheless I was taken to a little office over a dairy depot on Union Avenue and interviewed by E. H. Crump himself. He was quietly spoken and polite, taller than I had expected, and dressed in a pale blue suit. He had round, smooth features, manicured hands and wore horn-rimmed glasses. He, too, was quickly convinced that I knew nothing of my partners’ whereabouts and had not been aware of the amounts of money owed in the city. Of course, he now began to deny he had placed any trust in the two men and claimed never to have heard of the $450,000 warranty demanded of us. It would have been imprudent to tell him that if the demand had not been made, the bills would have been quickly paid and Memphis would have been richer in a dozen ways before the year was out.

In fairness to Roffy and Gilpin, I did not offer my own opinion, that my partners, convinced I had deliberately betrayed them, had fled in panic. Unable to raise the extra $150,000 they had taken their own money and abandoned the project. I am not one to lay the blame for my own misfortunes on others. I had let them believe I was wealthy. They had acted in good faith. If they had wanted revenge on me they could have revealed what they knew of my past. Thus I remained convinced of their basic integrity. Some of us are stronger than others. Whereas, in their shoes, I might have stood my ground and explained my predicament, they had lost their nerve. My main regret, of course, was that another far-sighted, bold and commercially viable project had been shelved. Boss Crump’s political machine had turned against anything to do with my plans. He made that clear. My association with Major Sinclair could have contributed to this, I now realise. Because of his misguided stand against the Ku Klux Klan, Crump never really succeeded in pushing Memphis to her full potential. This opposition, reflected in the prejudices expressed in the Catholic-dominated Commercial Appeal, was the single reason he never reached the high office for which his excellent judgment and character were suited. Perhaps he saw the Klan as a rival. An alliance would have given him national, rather than merely local, influence.

For a while I was also puzzled by the disappearance of Jimmy Rembrandt. I wondered if perhaps he feared my anger, believing he had let me, as well as Roffy and Gilpin, down in some way. Possibly he was still embarrassed over the $500 he owed me. Nervous of Roffy’s anger, he might also have decided not to risk involvement if by chance I was murdered. Presumably he had returned to New York.

My moral and practical problems were not eased by having to hear my friend Major Sinclair’s honest opinion that Roffy and Gilpin were ‘a pair of scallawags’ who had used me for their own ends. I could not see what they had gained from their association. There was no point now in explaining my own part in their predicament, but I assured him only the most terrible circumstances could have forced the two men to abandon me. I pointed out I had lost no cash in the affair. I was not responsible for the Aviation Company’s debts, nor my partners’ personal debts. In my wildest flights of speculation I wondered if alien interests, scheming the ruin of our great venture, had not kidnapped them or otherwise disposed of them. It has long been obvious to me that all major airship disasters of the 20s and 30s were the result of Zionist sabotage. Alternatively, my partners could easily have fallen into the clutches of Jewish or Italian moneylenders. Loan sharks were known to deal savagely with defaulting debtors unable to pay their exorbitant interest. That would also explain why Roffy and Gilpin seemed so desperately frightened towards the end, when I could not produce the money. I explained this theory to the police officers who called on me. They promised to explore the matter thoroughly. But they were Crump men through and through. Their conviction was that I and the city had been victims of ‘a pair of high-class con-artists’.

Privately, of course, I blamed myself for the whole unfortunate business and continued to defend my partners even at police headquarters where I was asked to make a formal statement and was afterwards interviewed by the press. But the next day’s headlines, needless to say, were not favourable to Roffy and Gilpin. I received some sympathy but ironically they were branded ‘villain’ just as I had been in France. I suppose Kolya defended my name as vociferously as I defended theirs, with equal lack of effect. Once the press makes a scapegoat it will not relent. The case in point was Adolf Hitler, of course. Nobody ever writes about the benefits he brought to Germany; they merely reiterate the bad things. Such injustices become all too familiar when one has lived as long and seen as much as I. They cease to be worthy of comment. The world falls into Chaos. Justice is a fantasy, soon to be forgotten, as the white race which invented it is forgotten. Anyone will tell you I am a man of feeling, of intellect, of unusual moral strength. I am prejudiced against no race or creed. But when me and mine are threatened by a blood drinking brute, what shall I do? Say nothing? Make no defence? In their moment of trial the two old men fled. If they had remained they might now be heroes, statues in Overton Park. Yet, as it was, their decision was to prove of considerable benefit to others, though they would never receive public recognition for it. They ran away from the devastated dream which had been so close to achieving enduring reality and left me with no choice but to accept at once the Imperial Wizard’s commission. I would fly to Atlanta and from there would take up my banner, marching side by side with noble knights in a mighty crusade whose aim was nothing less than to rescue sanity, justice, decency and freedom for the whole world. I reached my decision within a day of my partners’ disappearance. A certain element in Memphis seemed determined to cast doubt on my credentials, my sincerity, my very honour. Twice I was harassed in the street. Mr Baskin arrived to give me notice to quit my apartment. Even Mrs Trubbshaw, who I thought at first had come to offer me consolation, had some ludicrous claim that she had lent Mr Roffy $2,000 and insisted I had a ‘moral duty’ to pay it back to her on his behalf. Time alone would show who bore false witness and who, in fact, was the victim of deceit!

As ancient saints and heroes turned from selfish and material concerns upon receiving a sign from God, so I took all these events as a sign I should go forth into America, to spread our message across every square mile of that great and vital nation. Within a year I would become so famous the matter of one small factory and an insignificant municipal airport would seem a petty concern indeed. I had been given the opportunity to conquer the entire New World with my genius. A strong, scientifically advanced America would be the most powerful country on Earth. Once celebrated here, I would automatically come to influence the world. Then at last Russia, my old, spiritual Russia, could be rescued from the Bolshevik scavengers. The steppe would grow green and beautiful again; the wheat-lands would bloom, the forests retain their tranquil profundity and new golden cities would arise, the cities of reborn Byzantium.

I am not so vain as to claim God Himself created the circumstances driving poor Gilpin and Roffy from Memphis, releasing me to fulfil His work through the medium of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. However there is no doubt in my mind that what originally seemed a disaster actually set me on my proper path, to use my God-given powers of prophecy in direct service of the Christian faith. As Paul the Greek was chosen to become Christ’s envoy to Rome, so might it be said I, inheritor of the Greek ideal, was to be envoy to this New Rome. Having made my decision, I was at once suffused with joy. My confusion died away. I no longer waited desperately for news of Esmé, Kolya or Mrs Cornelius. I should see them again in the fullness of time. I knew, with every atom of my being, that I had at last found my true vocation.

I departed from Memphis the next day, into the sky above the old Park Field air training base. I left sad friends and scowling critics alike, amidst the noise of a great crowd which gathered to witness The Knight Hawk slip her moorings. We would ascend into a terrible sky, in which black clouds rolled and streamed against a ground of deep, greenish blue. A storm was coming. A storm was gathering in the South. A storm was coming to sweep the whole United States. And her prophets would stand on the decks of flying cities or the platforms of gigantic airships to cry their warnings, as if from Heaven itself: beware the heretic, the infidel, the pagan! wake up, america, to the perils which face ye. wake up to the vision of the alien sword which cuts you down as you sleep; the alien voice which seduces your children; the alien creed which robs you of your religion.’ wake up, america, in the name of christ, wake up to your peril and your salvation. The Storm carries God’s prophet on noisy wings; the thunder and the lightning herald his coming. Out of the South, out of Memphis, which was once in Egypt, he shall come as Moses came to lead the children of the New World towards a glorious future, their rightful scientific inheritance. From fertile Florida to frozen Alaska, where the Tsar once raised his standard, where the two-headed eagle cast his eyes upon the land and saw at last an ally with whom to build Christendom afresh, he shall be heard. Wake up, America! The ship of the prophet is seen in the sky and his sign is a fiery cross, the cross of Kyrios the Greek. Thus did the Greek give name and substance to His knights. Kuklos: a circle. Kuklos: the Circle of the Sun. The Circle and the Cross are One! Kyrie Eleison! Christ is risen! Christ is risen!

The Knight Hawk, free of her moorings, rose steadily into the air above the field. Strong winds hurled their power against her hull. She shuddered and slewed with every blow. I gripped the side of my cockpit, watching the crowd fall away from me. The winds were so strong I feared we must crash, but Major Sinclair had handled this type of ship many times since the War; he held fast to her wheel while operating height and trim levers with graceful expertise. The Rolls Royce engine whined to full power. We began to push forward until we were directly over the great river and her anchored steamboats. Memphis, with her steel and concrete centre, her brick and wood outer zones, her bridges and her railroad tracks, gradually lost identity, meaning no more or less than a dozen other urban settlements along the riverbanks. I leaned over the lip of the cockpit, studying Major Sinclair’s techniques with the controls. The wind slapped at my face, tugged my clothes, threatened to rip helmet and goggles from my head. Our gondola was vibrating so violently I thought the rivets must soon be shaken out of her. Everything aboard not absolutely rigid or completely flexible rattled vigorously, yet Major Sinclair was plainly not in the least alarmed. To him all this agitated commotion was so familiar I doubt if he was greatly conscious of it.

Later, when he had reduced the power and there was a lull in the wind, the major shouted above the engine’s whine: ‘These smaller blimps don’t have enough power, so can’t keep their course as efficiently as the big ships. In decent weather they’re a lot easier to handle.’ The altimeter in my cockpit showed we were now a thousand feet up while my speedometer indicated forty-five knots. At first I had felt uneasy in my stomach but the sensation was forgotten as I peered through the windscreen at wide fields and strips of trees. Immediately below were the railroad tracks which, as was normal in those days of primitive instruments, Major Sinclair followed. Soon I was enjoying the spectacle of a long freight train moving like a fire-breathing snake across the brown and yellow ground. Occasionally there would be a tiny car or, more commonly, a horse-drawn buggy on a dirt road, a small farm, a collection of shacks, a mansion, still doubtless the core of some great plantation.

The sky remained lively, the sun was frequently obscured by garish, unstable cloud. Major Sinclair planned to put down in Little Rock for the night. There he could also refuel, complete his business in Arkansas, then head South East for Tuscaloosa and more benzine. From there, he said, it would almost certainly be a direct flight to Atlanta. He usually carried a rigger with him, but the man had been caught drunk by the police in Knoxville some nights ago and was in jail. (Major Sinclair no longer had any use for him. ‘He can let me down and I’ll give him a break. But I won’t let him drag the Klan under. He knew what would happen to him.’) Our job in Little Rock was chiefly to ‘show the flag’. We would advertise the newspaper by taking a few turns over the city, drop some leaflets, drive home the fact that the Klan was not the mob of disaffected farmhands and backward manual labourers people claimed. Then we would land just outside the city and take delivery of funds for the central treasury in Atlanta. Personally, I would be glad to be heading east again. At that moment we fought headwinds. If they remained constant they would help us when at last we turned towards Georgia. Major Sinclair constantly had to correct course while I, checking map and compass, acted as observer. Great stretches of land were virtually featureless to my unfamiliar eyes and I prayed I correctly identified the few rivers and small forests, the tracks and plantations which occasionally appeared below.

As we crossed deeper into Arkansas on the Western banks of the Mississippi I noticed less land under cultivation. There seemed to be more virgin forest. We had entered a country of smallholdings and cropsharers and consequently found still fewer features by which to steer. The wind gradually reached its former strength. Major Sinclair was forced to give his whole attention to controlling the ship while I desperately scanned the ground for landmarks even remotely resembling those on my map. Soon it began to rain and I could see little of the terrain. Eventually we were flying entirely by our compass. The rush of sleet and wind on the hull overhead, the roar of our engine, the whining suspension rigging made it impossible to hear anything else. My goggles streamed with water. It was difficult even to make out Major Sinclair’s head and shoulders in the forward cockpit. This extreme discomfort and uncertainty was frequently the most familiar aspect of the ‘romance of flying’ in those days.

Almost at the moment I had managed to adapt myself to all this, the wind suddenly hit us like waves. It pounded us with enormous force. Our gondola began to bounce dramatically in her cables. I was certain we must either be flung out of our cockpits or be wrenched piecemeal from the battered gasbag. I saw Major Sinclair shaking his head urgently and signalling with his hand. We were going down. I was convinced we were crashing. My shaking body at once became still. Calmly, I prepared myself for death.

The machine’s nose already dipped towards the ground; the gondola had begun to swing from side to side, like a crazy pendulum. As Major Sinclair valved out gas for a rapid descent, the engine’s noise was lost behind us. We had hardly been in the air for five hours. I thought it ironic that, with all my dreams of magnificent flying liners, I should die in this ramshackle government surplus antique. But then the ship eased out of her descent and I knew Major Sinclair had regained control. I hoped we were close to Little Rock. It was more likely my friend wished to get below the worst of the storm to check our bearings. The gusting rain continued to swing us from side to side and I was still fearful our hawsers must snap. Gradually I was recovering my nerve when without warning the engine cut out.

The ship was thrown helplessly backwards and sideways by the wind. I could understand nothing of Sinclair’s gesticulating yet it was plain we had no choice but to land. I had no idea how he planned to accomplish this. Normally there had to be people on the ground to take our mooring lines. My friend was probably hoping to find a small town or large farm able to supply a party of men large enough to pull us to earth. I was experiencing at first hand the real disadvantage of the small airship over the light aeroplane. Moreover, without wireless equipment The Knight Hawk had no means of requesting assistance.

The rain gradually became lighter and the air much calmer by the time we had drifted low enough to make out a dismal panorama of waterlogged fields, a scattering of thin trees. In the grey light it seemed the whole world had been turned into a wasteland of yellowish excrement. For a moment I thought we were already dead, condemned to Limbo. Then Sinclair shouted and stabbed his left finger at the starboard horizon. Emerging from the mud, almost like a natural formation, were buildings little different in colour to their surroundings. Again the major concentrated on his engine, cursing to himself, forced to stop every few moments as he shook water from his arm or wiped his face. Then, shuddering in its frame, the engine spat rapidly, let out a series of unhealthy coughs, and came to life. Sinclair was yelling to me; the propeller spun, we lumbered forward. I could not hear him. Urgently he signalled for me to lift our grappling hook out of the spare cockpit to my right. With this, as he had earlier explained, he hoped to effect a temporary mooring. Once I understood, I leaned over to obey him; whereupon the gondola swayed sickeningly. I was only able to save myself from being pitched out by driving my knees into the side of my compartment. Busy with his control vanes, Major Sinclair could not help me. The rope was curled on top of my surviving suitcases. Sweating and close to panic I finally grasped an end, drawing it in towards me as the gondola resumed a relatively normal angle. For a second or two I sat back, taking enormous breaths, then I prepared the grappling hook in my right hand, ready to drop it over the side.

With a glance back to make sure I was ready, Sinclair tilted the ship even more radically, driving it down like a monstrous artillery shell at the shacks ahead. The light was fading so rapidly I was afraid I would be unable to see to aim our anchor. ‘Get a tree!’ Sinclair shouted. ‘Or a hedge. A fence is no good!’

He reduced speed, holding the ship almost stationary against the blustering wind which still caused the gondola to sway horribly. Twice, as I squinted through the gloom, I missed the chance to hook a stunted tree. By now it was twilight. Finally, in desperation, I hurled the thing at random into a field. It stuck into something but we continued to drag for yards until, to my enormous relief, the machine halted with a jerk. Major Sinclair switched off the engine, steadying the craft as best he could. We peered into the semi-darkness below. We were less than fifty feet from the swampy ground. Sinclair reached behind him and pulled back the cover from the little winch. We each took a handle and, by careful calculation, gradually got The Knight Hawk down.

Our good spirits recovered, we grinned like fools at each other. The winch was secured. Major Sinclair shouted to me to put my rope ladder over the side and get down to check that the anchor was firmly planted. The wind was still high; our gasbag boomed and rippled; the hawsers creaked. I was still cheerful as I climbed down the swaying ladder and, after about ten feet, felt my flying boots sink into mud. I followed the grappling line to where it had dug itself behind a rock, called up for some slack, then wound the rope around a small oak. Our machine was safe for the night.

We should now, of course, have to wait until morning before continuing our journey. This was normal practice in those days when bad weather would bring any kind of aircraft to an unexpected stop. That was why aviation experts like myself were struggling to produce machines unaffected by sudden storms, which would be able to fly at night. My own ideas were far in advance of Sinclair’s ship, which was of a type first built in 1914, but design had not altered much in eight years. Airships were more costly to develop and maintain than small aeroplanes.

Although inconvenienced, neither of us was surprised by this turn of events. A flyer tended to congratulate himself if he completed a journey without coming down at least once. By the time Major Sinclair stood beside me in the field, it was very dark. He shook his head and shrugged. He had been over-optimistic, he said. He had expected the north-easter to subside. We now had no choice but to request hospitality from the nearby buildings. I asked if it was prudent to leave the ship unguarded. He laughed, taking me by the arm. ‘You think some nigger’ll steal her! Let’s go, colonel. We’ll see if we can get a bite of hot food.’

We struggled through the mud towards the dim, yellowish lights of oil lamps. Overhead, clouds moved swiftly in the sky. From time to time the moon revealed buildings ahead: rough, unpainted shacks repaired with patches of rusting metal and miscellaneous lengths of timber. As we approached, a figure appeared in the light of an entrance, staring out of its lean-to for a few seconds. Then, suddenly, the door was slammed. In another unglazed window several small black faces observed us from cover. I began to feel uncomfortable. Major Sinclair chuckled. ‘They’re just nigger shacks, colonel. There should be something else further on.’ We made our way through this decrepit shtetl, hearing the clucking of chickens, strange, stealthy sounds, the creak of a shutter, until at last we reached a dirt road. A little further on we found a group of houses on either side of the road. These were in almost as bad condition as the others. However, Major Sinclair seemed confident we should do better there. Advising me to imitate him, he removed his helmet and goggles. ‘Folks here are a little wary and more than a mite superstitious. We don’t want some fool taking a shot at us because he thinks we’re robbers or spooks.’ While I waited at a broken-down gate, he selected one of the nearby houses and walked up the yard calling out, ‘Hi, there! Is anybody home?’ He knocked at the frame of a ragged screen door. I saw a candle flicker on the other side. Major Sinclair began to tell someone we did not need to speak to the man of the house. We were passing through and wanted a place to stay for the night. ‘Thank you kindly, ma’am.’ he said. He returned to me, shaking his head and smiling. ‘They aren’t much brighter than the niggers. None of the men are back from the fields yet and she won’t open her door to strangers. There’s a preacher down the road about half a mile. Let’s hope he’s more helpful.’

The muddy track took us between broken fences, collections of unidentifiable detritus, thin, bare trees, hen coops and pig pens. We passed the occasional silent, wide-eyed unhealthy child or ragged, thin-faced woman. Nobody spoke to us. In the moonlight the whole miserable settlement was eery and menacing, stinking of hopeless poverty. I had never expected to experience again those weeks when I had the misfortune in, 1919, to be stranded on the Ukrainian steppe. Yet here, in America were everyone was supposed to be so much richer, people of European descent plainly endured the same burden of unspoken, habitual despair; villagers so starved of food or mental stimulus they lived out their entire lives in a helpless trance. I could not tell if their general appearance of idiocy was a result of circumstance or interbreeding, but I had seen the same expressions in Russia, in the slums of Constantinople. I was glad to reach the clapboard church with the preacher’s shabby house beside it, a collection of youngsters, scarcely any more articulate or better fed than the rest, playing in the yard. A woman in a cheap print dress came out to the porch door. She grunted a question. She had light grey eyes, a cancerous skin and was not more than forty, though her hands had the stained, blotchy look of the very old. Returning a cautious, tired smile in answer to Sinclair’s courteous question, she said her husband was over at the other church holding the Wednesday prayer meeting. He would be back around nine. Major Sinclair explained our problem. The preacher’s wife said we should go back down the road a piece, to Miss Bedlow’s. She rented rooms. My friend saluted and said we were much obliged. Again I was reminded of the wretched shtetl synagogues, the ramshackle churches of Ukrainian peasants, their priests often as ignorant as the communities they served. I said nothing of this to Sinclair, however, for in a dim way I thought I might offend him.

Eventually we made out a sign we had missed on the way to the church. Miss Bedlow’s house had once been painted green. Someone had attempted to cultivate the front yard and the porch seemed in reasonable repair. Major Sinclair advanced up the few wooden steps. Again he knocked. This time I could clearly see the man who answered, for the light was brighter. He was fat. He had red, weather-beaten features, a bullet head, pale hair, almost no eyebrows. He wore a pink undershirt and overalls which he had loosened at the top. Something he was chewing stained the corners of his mouth. Though he did not seem greatly suspicious he made no attempt to disguise his curiosity, staring from me to Major Sinclair and back again. My friend explained our predicament. The fat man slowly became impressed until he almost stopped chewing altogether. ‘You boys flyers?’ I could hardly understand him. The words had actually sounded to my ears like ‘Y’baahs flahars’ but with extra vowels. I am famous for my quick ear and ability to reproduce accents and vocabularies. This came close to defeating me. The man went back into the house, calling for Miss Bedlow who emerged, a well scrubbed colourless woman in an old-fashioned woollen dress. She had one room she could rent us, she said, but we would have to share a bed. The charge was a dollar each, plus twenty-five cents apiece if we wanted breakfast. She could fix us supper now. Pork and greens would be another thirty cents. Gravely Major Sinclair told her the terms were reasonable (I think the woman was asking the most she dared) and she relaxed, inviting us in. The house smelled of mould and boiled food. The fabric of furniture, curtains and carpets was threadbare but clean and save for some differences of decoration was what one might find in the home of a Ukrainian moujik in similar circumstances. This was my first real experience of the American peasant and it depressed me. I had expected more, I suppose, of the United States. We went up the creaking staircase to our room, stripped off our flying gear, washed in the basin provided and went down again to be introduced to the other guests. Two elderly widows, the fat man, a grim farmhand and a young half-wit all showed comical astonishment at my accent. When Major Sinclair told them I was from England it created no specific change in their expressions.

The fat man spoke first. He had served in France for over a year. He had heard England was pretty. Was it anything like France? In some ways, I said. In others it was more like Maryland. He had never been to Maryland. He heard it was pretty there, too. He frowned for a while, then offered his view that France could also be mighty pretty, though it was a terrible thing what those Boshees had done to her. Shrugging, he added: ‘But I reckon she’s more cleaned up now than she was.’ I said her wounds were healing.

Seeing the difficulty we were both under Major Sinclair took over the bulk of the conversations, since I could follow them scarcely any easier than they could me. He explained where we were bound, why we had come down. He also managed to say a little about the Ku Klux Klan, the problems of whites undercut by black labour. The fat man said they never had trouble with their niggers, except once some buck got drunk on moonshine and the Sheriff over in Carthage had to come out.

‘Did you say Carthage?’ I thought I had misheard.

‘Sure did,’ said the fat man, wondering at my obvious curiosity. He waited politely for me to say more.

‘There’s Carthages all over,’ Sinclair said with a smile. ‘And Londons and Parises and St Petersburgs.’ He returned his attention to the fat man. ‘Then we’re not too far off course.’ He unfolded our map. ‘Here’s Pine Bluff. And this here’s Little Rock. Yes, now I see.’ He was pleased. ‘We’ll be there by tomorrow noon for sure,’ he said to me.

Like me, Major Sinclair ate sparingly of the abominable mess of grease and pulped vegetable served us. Then there was nothing else to do but say goodnight and return to our room where we slept uncomfortably, back to back in our clothes, until dawn. When I looked out of the narrow window at bare trees and broken rooftops, I was relieved to see the wind had dropped. The grey cloud had lifted; an early morning sun rose into a sky full of heavy cumulus promising dry weather.

After a breakfast of bacon and grits we paid Miss Bedlow. She told us who she thought would be able to help us with our ship. Two or three houses back down the dirt road, in a yard full of old tyre rims and rusting metal, we approached two wiry young men who lounged outside on a porch so rotten half the boards had fallen in completely. These were Bobby and Jackie Joe Dally. Major Sinclair quickly struck a bargain with them and the four of us set off to where we had moored the ship. By now word had evidently spread throughout the settlement. We were the centre of attention. First the white children, then the women, then the old people fell in behind us. By the time we could see The Knight Hawk’s swaying gasbag we had come to the negro section. Scores of blacks, keeping their distance from the whites, crept in a staring mass at the rear as our procession entered the field.

I was becoming alarmed by their numbers and by their silence, which seemed to have a sinister quality to it. Those hungry, unhealthy features might have belonged to cannibals. They made me feel sick. Black or white, there seemed little difference to me. They pressed around us in their torn, patched rags, with thin ungainly limbs, rolling, vacant eyes, red mouths, stinking of sweat. I could feel my hysteria building. I longed for some cocaine to steady my nerves but that was still in my luggage. Major Sinclair seemed unperturbed. I said nothing of my fears, yet I became convinced these people would never allow us to leave the ground, that they would jump us at any second, strip us of all we owned, tear the very flesh from our bones, and feast off it. I sensed a tremor in my legs as more and more of those ill-fed bodies touched mine. Sinclair was smiling. He was joking with them. Could he not see what I saw? This was Carthage indeed! The degenerate dregs of humanity greedy for everything I had worked for; the ignorant, hopeless, unconscious enemies of civilisation, as unable to imagine or create a better world as the wretches I had left behind in Kiev, as the Jews I escaped in Alexandrovskaya villages or the subhuman tribespeople of the Anatolian hinterland. Only by a massive effort of will could I make myself move forward. My mouth grew dry, my knees weak; my heart beat at terrifying speed. Sinclair would have thought me utterly irrational; this poverty did not for a moment threaten him. But I knew if we did not reach the ship as soon as possible we could be submerged by this mob. It wanted what we carried in our ship. It hated us for what the ship represented. It was jealous because I had managed to make something of myself. It loathed all that was different. Innovation threatened change, threatened the hideous familiarity of their lives. They would protect this familiarity at all costs. The metal shifted in my stomach. I was dizzy. I could not run. Desidero un antisettico! They stank of disease. The mass swelled, the pressure increased. I could not breathe. They were skeletons with huge, yearning eyes, reaching out their ragged claws for something they could not even name. I refused to join them in the camps, though they said I was a brother. That is how they recruit you. I never became a Mussulman. Seductive Carthage was resisted. I fought against her with wits and courage. I know her tricks. I know her ingratiating whine, her beggar’s pretence at poverty, her pleading attempts to win sympathy, her cajoling murmur. They would do anything to drag me back. They call you the same, but you are not. An accident with a knife and they say you are one of them! A misguided decision of my father and I am denied my fame. My future is stolen, together with my true place in the world. Carthage crowds in like poison gas. Brodmann leered out of the cloud. My stomach churned. I could hardly climb the ladder into the cockpit. I stared down at those awful eyes. The blacks yelled wordless exclamations and began to caper. Some of the children tittered. Others wept. Major Sinclair was speaking to me as he slid his body into the forward compartment but I could not hear him. My breathing was erratic. They could still drag us down into that yellow mud. I put my goggles over my eyes so they should not see my tears. Major Sinclair waved. He was confident and relaxed. The wretches had our ropes and were towing us across the field. The whole crowd had begun to run. They cried out: strange, bestial ululations. Major Sinclair was shouting at me. ‘Winch in the mooring line, man!’ I needed water. I could not reply. Still shaking, I obeyed. I could see those voracious mouths twisting to display rotting teeth, those greedy hands clutching at my very substance. I owe nothing to Carthage. I am a true Slav. I was not of their blood. I had no debt of pity or charity or brotherhood. Poverty stank on their breath. They were my enemies. It reeked in their rags, in the food they ate, in their huts and their fields. I screamed down at them to release me, to let go of the rope. They were running like a single wave escaped from a dam; a flood of human flotsam. Scarecrow boys still swung on the mooring line, refusing to relinquish it. Their shrieking voices filled my head.

I had not sought any of this. I had been ill-prepared for it. They are the wretched servants of despair, the enemies of optimism, the willing slaves of Bolshevism. Carthage rose again, not merely in Arkansas, or Missouri, or Louisiana, but in every part of the United States, like the warning signs of cancer. In Europe, too. In the East it already conquered the entire organism. Everywhere was ignorance, hunger, fatalism, corrupted blood, blind hunger. It had been dormant in the shtetls until the great drums began to beat and the brazen trumpets rang, when Carthage shook herself from sleep and reached with a red grin for her spear and shield. She licked her thick lips and looked with confident envy upon the fruits of our labours: our harvest of civilisation. Her hot black eyes glared and there was a deep growl in her throat as she stretched and tested her limbs, her heart filling with anger against those who had sought to destroy her, who had, through their superior morality and courage, meanwhile enriched themselves. And her swarthy hands curled in anticipation. Her hungry, stinking breath is heard in the alleys of the city, the shadows and shacks and shelters, the tents and camps of the countryside, until the sound threatens to drown all others. It drowns the hymns and prayers of true Christians. Our beautiful songs and our poetry, our pure-voiced little girls, our sacrament is extinguished by the roar. Carthage stands laughing on the ruins of our just dreams; our blood runs down her chin; our monuments are ashes beneath her sandalled feet. The beast has conquered! The mindless mob rules on Earth. Chaos becomes the sole condition of Man. This I predicted. And we who were given signs (like the sign God sent when He brought the airship to rest) took heed. It became our duty to warn anyone who will listen. The fight is not completely over, though we have lost so many battles. They never made me a Mussulman. I do not stumble. I keep my back straight. I will not be seduced by the comforts of the trance. I will survive even the most terrible mistakes. Gehorsam nicht folgn. Ich bin baamter! Bafeln! A mol, ich bin andersh. Can’t they see? I do not know their language. Podol is nothing. One must work where one can.

They were laughing their mockery as they finally let go of the rope and our ship flew free. They had been playing with us, showing off their power. Arms, white and black, waved like sickly reeds. I fought to recover my self-control. Major Sinclair had still not realised how close I had been to losing consciousness. We were still climbing into a silvery sky. I was so glad to leave Carthage behind. Little Rock lay clear ahead. I could imagine no experience before us as terrifying as that which we had already escaped.

They put me in Springfield when the roses were in bloom. Oh, Esmé, my sister, you never came to see me. They removed me from your memory. I know now how they work. They told you I did not exist. They desired you for themselves. Carthage descended upon us and carried you away. They destroyed my mother. Mother, did they turn you into ash? Did your bones smoke in their hideous pits where starving soldiers floundered through smouldering human flesh, while machine guns chattered night and day and the voices of the damned echoed in the gorge where I and Esmé used to play? Were you with her, Esmé, or were you already dead, churned to fertiliser by the Steel Tsar’s implacable machines? Or had you sought the consolation of the Mussulman in a Carthaginian prison camp? I did not see you in Springfield, but Springfield is a dozen different places. The maps change and the locations move. My flying cities will know where to go. They tell me at the police station there is nothing they can do about the blacks. They sympathise, but their hands are tied. We are all afraid to speak our minds. The great movements have been suppressed; our heroes are dying in chains or already murdered. Only grey people are allowed to survive. They are the shadows left by Carthage to deceive us into believing our world still exists. But I am not deceived. I have not been dragged down. They shall not confine me in their camps, nor to their ghettoes, their nigger towns and stateless barbed wire pens. I shall not wear their pe’os. I am not the same as them. I deserve better. What right have they to call me mishling? Halbjuden? I was betrayed before I was born. Das Blutt gerinnt. Das Blutt gerinnt.

As Major Sinclair had promised, we were in Little Rock by noon. Our printed handbills fell into the neat furrows of her streets like seeds at springtime. A small crowd cheered us when we moored in a small park on the outskirts, took aboard the money we had come for, refuelled our tank and were quickly on our way again to Tuscaloosa. The illness which had seized me in Carthage seemed to disappear not long after we left Little Rock. As we sailed above the unremarkable rooftops of Tuscaloosa I was completely free of it. I began to think I had suffered food poisoning, for pork has never much agreed with me. With the wind behind us and clear skies ahead we set course for Atlanta, Emperor City of the South, core of a world once thought crushed and defeated but now growing into a golden, avenging phoenix. Atlanta, burned to the ground by ruthless enemies, raped and robbed and left for dead, rapidly gathered back her strength. Her great silver towers were rising from the wasteland. White, curving roads would sweep through her skies. I saw her in the distance and she was impressive. At her heart was a massive crown of gold. Major Sinclair was in excellent form now that the weather was clearer. Below the countryside steadily became more varied and pleasant. The city, seen above a line of dark green pines, had a clean, modern appearance which I had not expected. Before we reached the golden dome we turned north of Stone Mountain, heading for the extensive grounds of Klankrest mansion, seat of the Imperial Wizard, hub of the Invisible Empire.

We sailed in towards evening, flying over the brow of a hill towards a wide lawn surrounding an ornamental lake in which a fountain gushed. Orderly paths ran through the lawns. Above them was a great house so beautiful it would have been the envy of the Tsar himself. It was the epitome of fine Southern taste, with marble columns and lintels, a neo-Graecian mansion, solid and serene in the warmth of the late February sun. One could imagine some Georgian cavalier strolling in these grounds in the golden days before the Civil War. As Major Sinclair brought The Knight Hawk to a gentle halt over the lake, negro servants impeccable in red, white and blue uniforms of the Colonial style came running from the house to catch hold of our lines, securing us to a pair of special posts erected near the house, evidently for this very purpose. Next we were gradually winched to the ground and the ship was firmly anchored, enabling us to step easily from our cockpits to the grass. Major Sinclair, with his usual pleasant good manners, thanked the negroes and instructed them to take our luggage into the house. Looking up at the blue-veined marble and polished stone, the tall windows of Klankrest, I decided the Imperial Wizard’s chief residence already rivalled the White House which I had seen in Washington and found disappointing.

We began to walk round the extensive marble veranda towards the front of the building. Just before we turned Mr Clarke himself appeared. For me, it was more thrilling seeing this unassuming, intelligent looking man, than if I had actually come face to face with Mr Harding himself. In his lightweight grey suit he approached us with easy grace. He and his family might always have inhabited the mansion. Retaining the mild, academic manner I had noted before, he confirmed my opinion: he was a natural gentleman, bearing himself with quiet dignity as he warmly shook hands with us, enquiring how the journey had been, saying how pleased he was I had decided to join the service of the Klan.

With some amusement, Major Sinclair told of our enforced stay in Carthage. ‘I’m not sure Colonel Peterson was too happy about the accommodations.’ He chuckled. ‘All niggers and poor white trash. Wasn’t that so, colonel?’

‘It’s a side of the South nobody’s greatly proud of, sir,’ said Mr Clarke soberly. ‘Not so bad, I suppose, as New York slums, but a living reminder of carpetbagging days. It will change in time, especially when the alien exploiters are finally driven out.’ He began to lead us towards the front entrance. ‘In those days, sir, as you may know, the Klan dealt harshly with thugs who took advantage of Reconstruction. More harshly than they do today.’

Birth of a Nation had shown me this graphically. I nodded in enthusiastic agreement.

‘It was an economic war, whatever Yankees pretended to the contrary. They were no more interested in the lot of the slaves than Simon Legree. The welfare of the negro was treated as a duty and an enduring responsibility in the South. When we were mined, those poor wretches were amongst the first to suffer. If we had been left in peace to found our Confederacy, this part of the world would be a paradise now, a model to the rest of America, to the whole world.’

We paused outside the glass and rococo-iron doors. Major Sinclair seemed singularly happy as he surveyed the tall hedges, the neatly raked gravel drive. ‘We’re too big and varied a country to be administered as a single nation. Each State knows where her best interests lie. It’s the Federal Government which always causes the trouble.’

We entered a spacious hall, also predominantly of marble, hung with old canvases, its alcoves containing alabaster urns trimmed in gold. ‘You’ll reduce the influence of government locally as well as nationally, I understand?’ I wished to impress him with my sophisticated grasp of U.S. politics. I rested my hand lightly on the polished wood of a full-size grand piano and raised my eyes to the sweeping staircase with its huge Klan banner, the Grand Klensign.

‘The rights of the individual are of paramount concern to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.’ Mr Clarke was about to expand on this when a tall, handsome raven-haired woman appeared on the stairs and began slowly to descend. ‘My dear! Colonel Peterson, this is my colleague, Mrs Mawgan. She has done as much as I to make this organisation the force it is today.’ Mrs Mawgan wore a formal black frock. Her jewellery was jet and silver. With her broad forehead and heavy jaw she had a manner more immediately striking than Mr Clarke’s own. I guessed at once she must be his mistress, even, to some degree, the power behind the throne. They were a splendidly well-matched couple. As she reached the bottom of the steps she extended her gloved hand, smiling pleasantly. ‘You’re the foreign gentleman who’ll help us drive our aliens back to where they came from.’

‘Now, Bessy, that’s not exactly right,’ began Mr Clarke chidingly, but I laughed heartily. She was a woman of considerable irony and I appreciated her wit.

‘Mrs Mawgan,’ I said with a bow, kissing her hand, ‘if I can stop America making the mistakes of Europe before I, myself, am driven out, I shall be more than satisfied.’

‘Oh, Colonel Peterson, you’re far too well-bred to overstay your welcome I’m sure. I appreciate your ideals. And it’s a good salary, too, I gather.’ With this she treated me to a ladylike wink to put me at my ease. In some ways she reminded me of my baroness. ‘You two boys must be tired out. What d’you want first? A drink? Or would you rather clean up?’

We chose the latter.

‘Wilson will show you to your rooms. We’ll meet down here before dinner.’ Mrs Mawgan acknowledged my subtle bow with a smile of equal delicacy and we parted.

Wilson, the butler, took us up to the second floor, along a carpeted marble tunnel, to our suites. Mine was more luxurious than any hotel’s. I had never been in anything of this size or richness. The sensation of genuine opulence which swept through me reminded me exactly of the feeling I received at my Uncle Semya’s house in Odessa when I realised I was actually to have a whole room to myself, that many people thought it quite natural not to sleep in the same room as the one in which they ate! It was all I could do to stop from running from place to place opening cupboards and inspecting the elaborate toilet fittings. The whole was tastefully designed in the same patriotic colours, with the addition of gold and silver where appropriate. The wallpaper at first seemed fairly plain until inspected closely. Its chief motif was of lozenge shapes containing the initials KKK. The main feature of the suite, however, was my huge four-poster bed in the Napoleonic style, its headboards painted with scenes recalling the great triumphs of America’s struggle for freedom and honour. Inset over the tallest point of the headboard was a stylised Klan hood on which, in beautiful Gothic script, had been imposed the motto Suppressio veri suggestio falsi. This reference to the methods of our enemies could not be too frequently reiterated. The french windows of my sitting-room opened onto a balcony directly overlooking the lawns and the lake. How I wish those fools who even now insist to me that the Klan was a gang of ill-bred ruffians could have visited Klankrest in the days of its glory. They, who would not even know which fork to use for fish, would have been speechless with amazement. It was the epitome of civilised and gracious living. Nobody there questioned my yichuss.