FRANCESCA CHARLOTTE BORN EIGHT TEN LONDON TIME ALL WELL YOUR WIFE EAGER FOR YOU TO SEE YOUR DAUGHTER FOLLETT
“Is it the baby?” Sammy asked, peering over his shoulder.
Paul looked at him with a strange, stricken expression.
“She’s fine. Julie’s fine.”
But the world wasn’t fine. It was dark and cold as the windy autumn night. Though proud in many respects to be German, Paul had no illusions about what it meant. Dark streams of poison ran in German blood. There was a fury in the German makeup stoked by national paranoia and heightened by arrogance born of exceptional past accomplishments in science and literature, music and education—the whole Kultur about which Germans could be so overbearing. The worst of German character was reflected in the high command, the Prussian Junkers. They wanted war and one way or another, he was convinced, they would bring it. This was the world his little newborn daughter had entered tonight.
47. In the Subway
With the decision made, Fritzi felt more at ease, though she found herself supremely careful whenever she was abroad on the crowded city streets. She scrutinized faces closely and looked behind her often, especially if something kept her out after dark.
Harry Poland telephoned three times, leaving messages. Twice she ignored them, but the third time, feeling sorry for him, she called the Hotel Mandrake. He asked for one more chance to see her, to make amends—prove that he could be a complete gentleman.
Fritzi hesitated. To go out with a married man a second time really wasn’t proper. On the other hand, she’d enjoyed Harry’s company until the moment of the illicit kiss, and even that had not been without its guilty pleasure. So long as she kept everything within bounds, would it hurt? Harry’s wife was totally incapacitated, and he sounded overwhelmed with guilt.
“All right, yes—supper on Saturday. I’ll tell you about my plans for the new year.”
New York sparkled with colored lights as the stores decorated for the Christmas season. A warm wind from the south raised temperatures into the fifties. Harry called for her in a taxi, told the driver to take them to a restaurant called Bankers, on Liberty Street, just off lower Broadway a few blocks above Wall. As he helped her out of the cab, she saw headlights veer to the curb behind them on Broadway. Someone clambered out of another taxi and faded into the shadow of a darkened building. She felt an odd tingle of alarm.
Bankers was small, swanky, and expensive. Their dinner conversation was lively and polite, with no references to what had happened last time, though she did catch Harry gazing at her soulfully a couple of times. She told him about Pal’s move to California for the winter.
“How grand for you, Fritzi—all that warm weather. One of these days I want to see the Pacific coast for myself. I’d be out there in a shot if you invited me.”
“Harry,” she said, raising her eyebrows.
“Sorry. You have that effect on me.”
She smiled; she couldn’t be angry. He was an attractive companion—charming, cultivated, yet still with a certain air of Old World innocence.
When they stepped outside, Fritzi reveled in the mild air, the sweep of stars above the skyscrapers of the financial district. Full of good food and wine, she’d quite forgotten her earlier anxiety. Harry asked if she’d like to walk a bit, and she readily agreed, taking his arm. They turned north on Broadway toward City Hall.
After two blocks he said, “Would you like to finish the evening in style?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Riding the subway.”
“The subway?” she repeated, astonished. “You enjoy that?”
“Immensely. The New York subway is one of the wonders of the age. I ride it whenever I have a chance. The financier August Belmont was behind it, you know. The original line to 145th Street opened in 1904. ‘Fifteen minutes to Harlem,’ that was the slogan. You see all kinds of people on the subway, socialites to shop girls. The cars are clean, the air underground is fresh and cool—all for a nickel! Shall we?”
“All right, why not?”
“There’s a stop at Twenty-third Street,” he said, rushing ahead toward a familiar structure of wrought iron and glass that was common to all IRT entrances. “Aren’t the kiosks something to see? Did you know they’re modeled after Turkish summer houses?”
Although it was nearly ten, there were still large numbers of people entering and leaving the station. At the ticket plaza Harry paid their fares and handed the pasteboard tickets to a uniformed guard who dropped them into a box. A rush of air and noise signaled the departure of a train.
“That was a local,” Harry said, peering along the crowded platform. “There’s an express every six minutes until midnight, with the locals between.” Fritzi hadn’t ridden the subway in a while. She’d forgotten how bright and attractive the stations were. There wasn’t a straight line in the design of City Hall station, which was actually part of a loop on which trains traveled to reverse their direction. The edge of the platform formed a gentle curve. Terra-cotta arches inlaid with white and colored tiles created a pleasing, airy effect above it.
Fritzi heard another train on its way from the station to the north, Brooklyn Bridge. Harry said something, but Fritzi missed it because of the noise. Someone bumped her, pushing her near the edge. She caught her breath as Harry took her arm to steady her.
He glared at someone behind her. “You needn’t stand so close, there’s plenty of room.”
Fritzi’s eyes grew round. She heard strident breathing, watched as Harry turned with another annoyed look at the boorish passenger. I know who it is. He’s followed us…
Urgently she gripped Harry’s arm. “Harry, let’s leave.” With her head turned slightly, she saw him from the edge of her vision—the strange gold-flecked eyes, that damnable grin. A little cry of fear escaped her, unheard as the train came roaring along the tunnel.
Harry said something strong to the passenger, who grabbed him by the lapels and flung him aside. Pearly grabbed Fritzi’s wrists, shoved her toward the edge as the train thundered closer. Fritzi never remembered reacting quickly, but she did. As one foot slipped off the platform she twisted her hand, savagely dug her nails into Pearly’s wrist. He cursed and she pulled free, teetering.
Harry made a wild lunge to save her, shooting out his hand. She caught it and hung on; if she hadn’t, she’d have fallen off. Pearly reached for his pistol under his jacket. People along the platform were yelling, screaming, retreating from the struggle.
Harry leaped at Pearly and shoved. Pearly swung the pistol to club him. The eight-car express hurtled from the tunnel, its poppy red paint reflecting the station lights. Fritzi grabbed Pearly’s arm, yanked. He stumbled, flailed in the air as he fell over the tracks, and dropped.
A woman thrust her little girl against her and screamed like a banshee—or was that the howling and sparking of the braking train? If Pearly cried out when the first car crushed him, no one heard.
The train ground to a stop. Frightened passengers and the motorman stuck their heads out of open windows. The ticket guard was frantically ringing an alarm gong. In the gap between the platform and the door of the second car, Fritzi saw something grisly and red.
Harry pulled her against his chest. “Don’t look. He didn’t stand a chance. Some crazy man—”
“Trying to kill me. It wasn’t chance, Harry. I know him.”
“Good God,” he said with a look of horror. He pulled her close again, enfolding her in his strong arms while she trembled with fright and shock. It didn’t matter that he was married; she wanted his arms around her.
At police headquarters, Harry stayed with her while detectives questioned her. Fritzi identified the dead man for them. When she was told that he was all but unrecognizable, vomit rose in her throat.
Pulled out of bed, B.B. arrived wearing an overcoat over his pajama bottoms. He quickly corroborated Fritzi’s story of threats and harassment from the patents detective. She was released a little before one in
the morning, without being charged.
B.B. drove her to her flat on Twenty-second with Harry riding along. “Poor defenseless gel,” B.B. kept saying. “What quick thinking. You too, mister.”
Harry saw her up to her door, gravely shook her hand, urged her to telephone if he could do anything at all. She knew he couldn’t. She was responsible for a man’s death. Her parents had taught her reverence for human life, even in its most despicable forms. The effects of what she’d done would be with her for days, years—maybe forever.
But she thanked him, then hurried inside, hoping she’d feel safer, calmer, in her own bedroom.
She didn’t. She lay awake, arms crossed protectively on her breast, eyes wide, seeing those few seconds in the station again and again. An inch one way or another and she’d have been under the train instead of Pearly. He would never threaten her any longer. She felt different about California now. She urgently wanted to flee there, start anew, put the terrible night behind her—
As if she ever could.
48. Further Westward Ho
On her way to Chicago, Fritzi vowed to say nothing about her involvement with Earl Purvis, and the man’s horrible end. Telling her parents would only confirm their fears about acting and the environment in which it was carried on. She really didn’t want to speak about Purvis to anyone. He was gone, no longer a threat, but she would be a long time getting over the memory of him.
When she arrived, rather than hiring a taxi to deliver her to the Crown mansion, Fritzi checked in at the Sherman House. She felt sad about the decision but considered it prudent. She telephoned her mother the moment the bellhop deposited her luggage.
“Mama? I’m here overnight. I’m on my way to California to make more pictures.”
“Why didn’t you telegraph, for heaven’s sake?”
“I didn’t know how I’d be received.”
“Oh, liebchen.” It carried a sad unspoken admission that she had reason for concern.
“I want to see you.”
“I’ll leave now, take a taxi,” Ilsa said.
“You mean I can’t come to the house? I’d like to talk to Papa.”
“Not such a good idea. Of course, you’re free to do as you please, but I wouldn’t advise it. Your father, I am sorry to tell you, is still angry.”
“With me?”
“With you, with me—the world.”
“But I’ve actually had some success. He predicted I wouldn’t.”
“All the more reason he’s angry. You proved him wrong.”
After a moment of pained silence Fritzi said, “Call the taxi, Mama. I’ll reserve a table in the dining room.”
A strolling string player serenaded the candlelit room with romantic favorites. “A Girl in Central Park,” usually a sure bet to dampen Fritzi’s eyes, didn’t touch her; she was still exercised.
“Mama, what in heaven’s name is the trouble with my father? What reason does he have to be angry?”
“Shall I make a list? Number one, he’s a man. He’s growing old, can do nothing about it, and resents it bitterly. He’s driven wild by the prohibition crowd. He’s also, you know, a German. They are champion grudge holders, surely you remember.”
“On Thursday, Mama, I had a birthday—”
“Oh, that’s right. Congratulations. I sent a package to New York, did you get it?”
“Not yet. Never mind.”
“Child, I’m a little forgetful. How old are you now? Twenty-nine?”
“Thirty, Mama. Thirty years old. Do you know what that means? It means I’m an old maid. But it also means I’m old enough to have my father respect what I choose to do with my life.”
“Oh, liebchen, he does.”
“That isn’t true. You’re just trying to make me feel good. But he will before I’m through.” Fritzi pounded the table so hard the silver danced.
“I promised you, he will.”
Ilsa fanned herself with a handkerchief and said in a bewildered way, “I must find out what became of your present.”
Though the meal was sumptuous, and the meeting with her beloved mother comforting, Fritzi was emotionally devastated by the banishment which Ilsa thought necessary. She boarded the westbound train next morning in a mood of deep melancholy.
The steel-colored sky over the frozen Illinois prairie did nothing to relieve her gloom. Before the express reached the Mississippi, a blizzard struck. The engineer took the train across the river at three miles an hour, in howling wind that shook the trestles and terrified the passengers. On the Iowa side they waited out the storm for six hours, then chugged west behind a snowplow engine.
What am I doing here? Fritzi wondered. Why can’t I live a normal life? What’s wrong with me?
She pictured her silver-haired father’s curled lip and scornful pointing finger.
“Du bist eine Schauspielerin.”
“You’re an actress.”
It sounded like some debilitating chronic disease.
In western Iowa the snow disappeared, which wasn’t entirely a benefit, since it might have prettied up the dismal scenery observed from the Pullman window—jerry-built towns beside the railway, hog pens and privies and, farther on, small creatures she took to be prairie dogs sitting up on their hind legs.
Unexpected warmth out of the south brought a winter thaw. The Pullman car stoves overheated as the landscape changed. Flat grasslands rolled by, here and there relieved by stunted trees or parched watercourses with a vein of yellow-brown sludge in the center. Forlorn cattle with their ribs showing posed for the passing travelers. Fritzi’s spirits sank lower.
And then came a late winter afternoon a hundred miles or more into eastern Colorado. The Union Pacific engineer stopped to take on water from a great roadside tank in a forlorn little place called Agate.
Passengers fled the hell-hot coaches. The January air, if not quite balmy, was surprisingly pleasant. The evening light was the color of melted butter, shading to dark amber in the east. The desolate upland shone like a sheet of gold. A tiny black shape moved along the northern skyline. An auto, Fritzi realized; perhaps a Model T, though it was so far away she couldn’t be sure. It dropped from sight under the horizon, leaving a vast yellow cyclorama lit by a single evening star. Fritzi shivered at the beauty, and something else. The primitive land wasn’t primitive any longer. She was reminded of the dizzying changes in her craft, and of the amazing century in which she lived.
“Look there,” said a frail gray-haired woman at her elbow. “Are my eyes tricking me?”
Fritzi followed the pointing hand gloved in gray. Westward, running along the horizon like a saw blade, mountains thrust upward. A few peaks crested with snow gleamed in the fading daylight.
“No, I believe we’ve come to the Rockies. It’s rather breathtaking, isn’t it?”
Beyond the mountains lay a new life. What would she find on the exotic sunlit shores of California—“America’s Mediterranean” as people called it? She couldn’t imagine.
California might be a lot better than she expected. Perhaps—dared she hope?—she might even meet an intelligent, steady, handsome, and desirable man.
You don’t have to stay forever, remember. Perhaps you’ll like it. Even if you don’t, make the best of it. You’re a trouper, aren’t you? You said you’d go, you’ve come this far, you’ve got to stick with it. If you didn’t learn anything else in all the years since Mortmain’s, surely you learned that much.
Long quiescent, Ellen Terry spoke.
I quite admire your spirit, my girl, if not your destination.
“Did you say something?” the frail woman asked.
With a smile and a toss of her blond curls Fritzi said, “I think we should get on board.” She took the woman’s arm to help her up the steps in the golden evening at Agate, Colorado.
PART FOUR
CALIFORNIA
How can an ex-huckster, ex-bellboy, ex-tailor, ex-advertising man, ex-bookmaker, know anything about picture quality? Hands that wo
uld be more properly employed with a pushcart on the lower East Side are responsible for directing stage plays and making pictures of them.
—MOVING PICTURE WORLD, 1910
There is nothing more absurd…nothing which destroys the art and beauty of the scene more than showing us greatly enlarged faces of the leading actors…. Many beautiful scenes are marred by showing these enlarged figures, with the head touching the very upper part of the frame, and the feet missing.
—MOVING PICTURE WORLD, 1911
The moving pictures may present figures greater than life size without loss of illusion…. Every change of expression is more clearly pictured than if they were truly before one, and one isn’t embarrassed drinking the effect in.
—MOVING PICTURE WORLD, 1912
49. Welcome to Los Angeles
Glendale. All out for Glendale.”
The Southern Pacific conductor sounded as tired as she felt. She stared out the window not with wonder but despair. Torrential rain hammered the glass, gushed off the red-tiled roof of the Spanish-Moorish depot. She’d changed to the S.P. at Sacramento, ridden south through the sunbaked Central Valley, eager for her first views of the mountains surrounding Los Angeles. At Bakersfield clouds had closed in, bringing the deluge. Now she could barely see beyond the station sign.
“Conductor, what happened to the sunshine?”
“Rainy season. This way out.”
She slipped and almost fell descending the metal steps. The wind would have torn her hat off but for the long pins. At the end of the platform four buggies and a muddy Pope-Toledo awaited the arriving passengers. She watched a young couple gratefully rush to the auto. Others from day coaches went to the buggies. Across a street that resembled a lake, two pathetic palm trees shook and rattled. The dispiriting scene was circumscribed by impenetrable gray murk. Where were the orange groves? Where were the suntanned natives?