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

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Louie used to love publicity. He courted newspaper reporters and said to me, “Always be good to the men who write.” He was news in the Haverhill Gazette and now and then in a Boston paper, but he longed for the day when his name would light up New York newspapers, and the whole industry would know his name. Now he got his wish but backward.
    The whole industry knew his name: he was that idiot from New England who had tried to steal Anita Stewart from Vitagraph, the largest and most important movie studio in the country. If Anita Stewart could walk out of Vitagraph, then actors could walk out of every other studio too. Studio contracts would be meaningless. Didn’t that New England fool know this? Rumor said he went to Anita’s sick bed and tempted her while she was still too weak to make sound judgments.
    Metro Film Company, whose pictures we distributed, severed ties with us. Mr. Gordon turned his back on Louie. Gordon-Mayer Theatrical Company closed its doors, and I was out of a job. I had to say goodbye to Mrs. Mittenthal and Fanny.
    “You’ll stay here,” Maggie said. “My uncle’s cousin is in the guest room, but you can have the sofa in the front parlor until my aunt’s friend arrives. If she schleps her featherbed, we can put her in Edie’s room. Louie, tell him. Tell him he’ll stay here.”
    “Do what you want,” said Louie, the rash on his cheeks flaring. To buoy himself, he drove every day to Haverhill where he was still a big shot. His brother Jerry, now manager of the Colonial, threatened to quit and return to Canada if Louie didn’t stop his kibitzing.
    Louie convinced the mayor of Haverhill to let him film local boys setting off to war. We watched the footage in his living room in Brookline. “You see this?” Louie said as he threaded his new projector. “This is the Bell & Howell Filmo 75, the latest in home projection.”  We saw the boys assembling at city hall and marching to the armory. I knew some of them from the upper grades at school, and Louie knew them as customers at the Colonial. He filmed their mothers crying helplessly as the boys climbed into trucks that took them away. Maggie started crying, saying, “Oh, there’s poor Mrs. Rubin. You’ll take me with you tomorrow, Louis. I’ll bring her my coffee cake, even though it’s not so good with Karo syrup. I’ll be thankful when the government lets us use sugar again.”
    Louie’s was the first home movie I’d ever seen, and it taught me about editing and camerawork. I got bored watching some of the scenes and annoyed during other scenes. I kept wanting to point the camera at what was more important than the image on the screen. For instance, we had to endure frame after frame of truck wheels spinning in the mud when what we wanted to see was the boys looking back at their mothers. Was Louie bad at everything he did?
    I was jealous of those boys on the screen. They would go fight the Boche and make the world safe for democracy. They would go overseas and have adventures, visit Paris and see can-can girls dancing with no tops on. I wanted to fight the war that would end all wars. Patriotic songs filled the taverns, and Nikos voice on phonograph records flowed into the streets from open windows. “Over there, over there, send the word over there, that the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming…”
    The Army got Rudy. Newspapers carried photos of Anita sobbing at the train station in New York, and so the public learned that their perpetual young thing was actually a married woman.
    The Selective Service office in Boston said I was too young. If I could bring in a birth certificate proving I was eighteen, I’d be allowed to sign up, but of course, I couldn’t since I had just turned seventeen and had no idea where my birth certificate was anyway. Downhearted, I turned into the nearest movie theater and sat down just as the orchestra played a rousing march and the screen lit up with the words “Fox News, Mightiest of Them All.”
    First title: “Daredevils!” A man roller-skates on the edge of a high-rise building. Will he fall? Then men racing motorcycles leap from the cycles onto speeding cars. A man clinging to the wing of an airplane is photographed by a Fox cameraman also balancing on the airplanes wing.
“Women Over 30 Get the Vote in Britain.” All the women on the screen shaking hands with each other are unattractive and mannish. One of them ignores the crying child next to her until the little boy tugs at her skirt, and then she just pushes him away.
     “U.S. Post Office Torches Ulysses!” Several men in front of a post office building hold up copies of James Joyces book. They set fire to it and watch the pages burn while nodding approval.
 “Airmail Service Established Between New York City and Washington!” We see bags of mail loaded into an airplane. A handsome pilot shows us an airmail stamp that was just issued.
 “Daylight Saving Time Introduced in America!” Images flash onscreen of women shaking sleeping men and men setting their pocket watches.

“Disaster in Hong Kong! Jockey Club Racetrack Grandstand Collapses, 600 die!” Panicky people and horses rearing and charging.
“President Wilson Presides at League of Nations Meeting in Paris.” Shots of him sitting at a desk surrounded with dignitaries.
“Race Riots in Chicago! 38 People Dead! 537 injured!” Black people rush into stores and hurry away with clothing, phonographs, washing machines. White members of the state militia shoot rifles into the air, fires rage, white people beat black people, black people beat white people, and chaos reigns in the smoky streets.
“A.D. Juilliard Dies. Leaves $20 Million to Endow Juilliard School of Music, New York!” A young pianist tickles the ivories and audiences applaud.
“Babe Ruth Belts 587-foot Home Run!” The Boston Red Sox play the NY Giants at Tampa, Florida.
“Whos The Fairest of Them All?” Girls in bathing suits line up to be judged at a beauty pageant in Atlantic City. They walk slowly toward the camera wearing sashes across their bathing suits. We see one of the girls crowned and two cameramen standing in front of a car decorated with a banner Fox News, Around the World in Pictures. The younger one, wearing a black beret, takes a comical bow, and with a jolt, I recognized the boy I had met in Central Park, Kenny Anderson. In the same amount of time that it took me to lose my job and become stuck in the mud, he was flying forward and had become a cameraman at Fox News. Now was the time for me to make a change. Now was the time to remind William Fox that he’d promised to hire me.
        “You can’t go to New York, boychick,” Maggie said. “There’s flu there.”
       “There’s flu here too.”
           “My house ain’t good enough for you?” Louie said. “You need some place better to stay?”
       “Come on, Louie. I need a job.”
       “I told you. Come to Haverhill. You’ll work at the Colonial.”
       “I don’t want to work at the Colonial.”
       “The Colonial isn’t good enough for you all of a sudden?”
       “I don’t want to go back to Haverhill.”
       “What’s wrong with Haverhill? Go on. Tell me.”
       “I don’t know.”
       “So it’s settled. You’ll come with me in the morning.”  We were sitting in the living room in the Brookline house, Maggie darning socks, the girls sprawled on the floor doing their homework. “We don’t feed you enough? You need more food? The bed ain’t soft enough?”
        “What bed?”
         “Oh, so now you object to helping the relatives? So now you want to take the pillow out from under the head of Auntie Rivka?”
          About a week later, when I told Louie I had decided to move to New York, he blew up. “This is what you do to me? Me who taught you everything you know? This is how you treat me? This is what you do when things don’t go just right? Now you go, now that you’re old enough to be some use to me you go. What’s the matter? I ain’t good enough for you, you little pisher, you little piece of worthless crap! Go on. Go on. Let’s see you find anyone who would be so good to you. Go on. Let’s see you find someone like me, you, you, ingrate!”
          He knew the day I was leaving. I had told him, so it was on purpose that he wasn’t home, on purpose that he insisted Maggie and the girls go with him to Haverhill so there would be no one at the train station in Boston saying goodbye to me. Sitting on the train with my pathetic worldly possessions fitting in one knapsack, my savings in an envelope taped to my chest, not knowing where I’d sleep that night, I felt so lonely, I wished I could just cut my heart right out of my chest.
         At Grand Central Station in New York, I watched a grisly sight. Men wearing surgical masks over their noses and mouths unloaded coffins from the very train I’d been on, and grim-faced relatives, also wearing surgical masks, came forward from the crowd on the platform to claim their own. I thought maybe the coffins held flu victims, but then I noticed that each family got a folded-up American flag. I wondered who would come forward to claim me if I came home dead from the war.
          Knapsack bending me forward, I trudged on slush under a steady sprinkle of snow. When I needed to rest and dry off, I stopped in a barroom. There was no one in there except the bartender who said, Sorry, Johnny. Id like to serve you, but Id lose my license.” I was flattered that he thought I was a soldier come home. He gestured toward his supply of liquor bottles, then toward the empty stools at the bar. Can’t congregate in bars anymore. When the armistice was signed in November,” he said, wiping the counter out of habit, “the city went wild. You should have seen them whooping it up, marching down the streets banging tin plates, church bells clanging, people in office buildings throwing confetti out the windows, people torching effigies of the Kaiser strung up on lamp posts. The flu bug had an orgy, Johnny. Youve come marching home at a bad time. I can sell you a pitcher of beer to take home, if that will help any.
I walked across town past pedestrians with handkerchiefs tied over their mouths, policemen patrolling in surgical masks. Carriage horses, heads down, stood at the curb stamping their hooves, shaking their harness, the jingle of the reins a pleasant sound that mingled with taxis blasting their horns and ambulance sirens. Most of the people on the street were young men, soldiers home from war. The scene had a surreal quality, ghostly uniforms wandering around in the snow dwarfed by the tall buildings that lined the streets. An insurance company poster read Spanish Influenza! Can you afford sudden death?” I wrapped my scarf around my mouth and walk into midtown, closed theaters, marquees dark, black wreaths hung on apartment-building doors. A truck pulled up to a townhouse, and two orderlies in surgical masks hurried inside. I didn’t wait to see what they brought out but rushed away and turned onto another street. I paused to look into the window of a music store. The display was an artistic arrangement of the sheet music for Pack Up Your Troubles, a portrait of handsome Nick Meadows on the cover. At the bottom of the cover was written “The Victor Talking Machine Company, New Jersey.” I wondered where Niko was living. Maybe I could find him. Maybe he’d let me sleep at his house. Maybe he’d help me find a job. Here I was again, now almost eighteen instead of thirteen but in the same position, wandering around an unfamiliar city with my heart pounding with apprehension. Again, I emptied my mind of everything but what was necessary and said to myself, step one, find someplace to sleep before it gets dark.
The weather became steadily colder, and I walked under a blanket of falling snow, ducking my head against uncomfortable gusts of wind. At dusk I came upon a “Room for Rent” placard in the window of an antique tavern on Broadway.  A sign in front read “Filpot Tavern, Washington Slept Here.”  It was a half-timber cottage from the days of the Revolutionary War—wide floorboards, wooden beams, a fire blazing in a massive stone fireplace. I entered on a blast of cold air that made the flames all bend in one direction, and a fat man sitting in a rocking chair in front of the fire turned to see who had come in. A bottle of whiskey and a half-filled glass was on the wooden table next to him. I shut the door as fast as possible and stood there covered in snow.

The fat man regarded me for a minute before turning away to face the fire. Glasses are behind the bar, he said. He was about fifty, dressed in baggy clothes, his belt unbuckled for comfort. I sat in the armchair next to him, poured myself a glass of whiskey and prayed I wouldn’t choke as I usually did when I tried to get booze down. We sat there sipping and not talking, the logs crackling, the fire dancing up blue tips. I dared to peek at him and saw that he wore beat-up slippers rather than shoes, that his heels were crusty as peach cobbler and that his fingers were fat as sausages. If I sipped the stinging liquid slowly and waited patiently for it to burn a path down the middle of me, it produced a warm sensation that was very agreeable. My companion continued to make no attempt to be cordial. We sat without talking until we didn’t feel like sitting there anymore, which coincided with the bottle being empty. Then he gestured for me to follow him up a flight of worn wooden stairs. Here was a scene from slapstick: his elephantine rear end above me on the stairs, his hand grabbing the banister to steady himself, his intoxicated weaving, his leaning way back with backside looming, his regaining his balance until we reached the second floor, where I chose from all the empty rooms the one with a view of Broadway. Despite the flu epidemic, the lights of Times Square were dancing and blinking as if celebrating, a beautiful sight in the snow. Pedestrians throwing all caution to the wind, women wrapped in furs, men in storm coats walking under umbrellas, heads bowed against the cold.

I lay down under a crocheted blanket, a remainder of someone female? A tenant? Former wife? A dead person? When I woke up, the window was dark, and the room was dark. I couldn’t remember where I was. Orphanage? Stable tack room? Mrs. Mittenthal’s? Louie’s house in Brookline?  An ambulance siren screamed roy roy roy roy on the street outside. I pulled the chain on the ceiling light bulb, and a tide of loneliness washed over me. What was I thinking, coming to New York? I opened my knapsack and ate the cookies Maggie had given me, but I wanted something more substantial so I went downstairs to see if my host served food. I assumed we were alone so I didn’t bother putting on shoes or trousers and found myself standing at the foot of the stairs in my long winter underwear in front of a table full of men playing cards. They all lifted their heads to look at me from under green eyeshades. Then one of them, cigarette dangling from his lip, said, Go on, deal, deal, for Crissakes.
Another said, Who the hells this?
Hey! Now we got seven!
My host said, You play poker, Johnny?         
I dont have any pants on, I answered.
You dont need your pants, kid. You got any money?
Deal him in. Look at him. Shell-shocked. Its a mitzvah. Im telling you. Deal him in.
And what, may I ask, Mr. Generosity, said the one with the bushy mustache, is he going to use to ante?
Wait a minute, said another player. He dont got the grippe. Tell me he dont got the grippe, Filpot.

Filpot took a drink of whiskey and tapped his cigarette ash in a coffee can. Then he dealt the cards as if I was not there, and the men took their eyes off me.
Would you take an I.O.U? I asked. If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was to play poker. You couldn’t live in a room full of other boys without knowing how to play cards, and you couldn’t hang around backstage waiting for an interview without knowing how to pass the time.
They all looked up at me, discussing the pros and cons. Leave him alone, leave him alone, said the guy with the mustache. What hes seen should not be seen by anyone. Am I right, Johnny?
Harry, I said. Harry Sirkus. Im an excellent poker player, and I always pay my debts. They made room for me at the table. I started the game very sincerely, only playing the hands that were sure to win and folding most of the time. I came on spineless, so at the end, after a few hours, when I did bid high, they all assumed I had the cards. Every time I won, I acted amazed. By the end of the game, they all resented me and told Filpot there should be a new rule, no playing without your pants on. They cleared out after midnight, and Filpot and I sat drinking in front of the fire.
 Whatd you say your name was? Filpot asked keeping his eyes on the fire. I told him. Harry, my friend, Filpot said, now you can pay me your rent.