In Theda Bara's Tent (as Reviewed by Publisher's Weekly)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Niko was replaced in the barn by a series of immigrant men whose wives delivered lunch in string bags while their many children, dressed in Old World clothes, waited in the alley. Mr. Levin knew I had outgrown my job and understood that it wasn’t so pleasant sleeping in the tack room with grown men who didn’t understand enough English for a conversation. When he delivered the checks on Friday he made sure to sit with me on a bale of hay and talk. Sometimes he arrived from a meeting with other philanthropists, and his conversation was full of the progress of his pet cause, establishing a Jewish hospital in Boston. “There are three hospitals in Boston,” he told me, “St. Elizabeth, Carney and Massachusetts General, all supported by the church. About ten percent of the patients are Jewish, but the wealthy Jews here dont contribute to the Christian charities that support those hospitals. They use the hospitals, but they don’t contribute to them financially.”

“So they’re mean to them there?”

“No. Not at all. Not intentionally anyway. Boston is home to hundreds of Jewish immigrants who sometimes get sick. When they go to the hospital, no one understands their Yiddish, and they can’t eat the food because it’s not kosher. They suffer not only from their ailment but from fear, so they usually rush to leave the hospital before being cured, and their minor problem turns into something chronic. Ah, but Im boring you. Thats the trouble with being in the grip of a cause. You turn into a big bore.

No, sir. I like it when you talk to me.

Most big cities already have Jewish hospitals. But here in Boston, its considered bad form to call attention to your Jewishness. Being an American and a citizen of Boston, the city of culture, is supposed to be enough. But slowly we’re convincing the community. We now have two hundred thirty-one members on the Beth Israel Hospital committee, and weve purchased an estate in Roxbury that can house twenty-five beds. He looked around the barn. You do a good job here, Harry. But the work is beneath you. I wish I could help you more.”

Like many people who are tired of their job, I started taking too much time off. My new stable partner, a father of six, scolded me in Armenian, his bushy eyebrows knitted together, his finger wagged in my face. He referred to me as a vochil, which I discovered meant maggot.

One day, lilacs blooming on the Boston Common, my attention was called away from ecstatic sniffing by the approaching sound of a parade, a slow crescendo of snare drums rat-a-tat-tatting, bass drums thumping, a majorettes shrill whistling and fifes screeching. I hurried to Tremont Street to watch the marchers, who carried signs: “Stop the War” and “No One Can Fight on an Empty Stomach.” A speakers platform set up on the Common was draped with American flags, and Mayor Curley was up there shouting, This American peace rally is one of the great events of the century! It is my opinion that the best and surest way to stop this war is for the American nation—North and South—to place an embargo on food products. Some people cheered; others hooted. No man can be a good soldier with an empty haversack. As Napoleon put it, the army travels on its belly. Sooner or later, wheat will be more valuable to our friends across the sea than cannon. If you should ask my advice, it would be that we adopt resolutions today favoring the appointment of a commission to work with President Wilson and Secretary of State Bryan to bring together the presidents of the South American republics in an agreement to establish an absolute embargo on every necessary of life while the war continues. The crowd cheered.

I could not envision the war in Europe. It was all about some Serbian who had shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, a city that annoyed me because it was not pronounced the way it was spelled. I didn’t know what an archduke was or why anyone except his own subjects cared if he was assassinated. I didn’t know what a Serbian was either.

The speaker after Mayor Curley was the president of the Boston Bar Association. Dressed in top hat and tails, he had a thick white handlebar mustache. I have called together this antiwar demonstration here on the Boston Common, he shouted, to show President Wilson how many of us there are who hate this war in Europe. The movement for peace will now become irresistible. The world will soon say, Lay down your arms!  Armaments must be limited and no longer a menace to the peace and comfort and progress of the world!