The Prince of West End Avenue (18 page)

No, never mind the first hour. I shall turn directly to my concrete metaphor, the climax and, as it turned out, the disastrous/triumphant finale to the evening.

My costume for the occasion was, thanks to my mothers foresight in 1915, the last word in elegance. You would have thought me on my way to lunch with the Kaiser at the very least. I wore an immaculate black coat of formal cut over gray-striped trousers. A silk cravat, precisely knotted and pierced by a pin of black onyx, disappeared into my dove-gray waistcoat. Spats, identical in hue and tone to the waistcoat, protected my sparkling black shoes. I had even acquired a monocle, and this was screwed firmly in place. Even Aunt Manya would have

been awed, and my mother would have pinched my cheek in delight. And this aristocratic figure, as I supposed myself, walked on stage bearing an ordinary chair as if it were his sacred ancestral escutcheon.

The citizens grew quiet. Perhaps the civic authorities had in the interest of public order wisely decided to bring the "Extravaganza" to an end, and I was there to make the official announcement. A honking laugh from the back of the hall was met by an immediate and deferential "Ssh-ssh!" Ignoring the sensation I had already created, I went to the precise center of the stage and put down the chair, backed off and contemplated it for a moment, made a minute adjustment, and walked offstage. But before the wondering murmur could assert itself, I was back again, this time carrying in a fireman's lift a headless window dummy, a female mannequin. I lowered it to the chair. Anxious laughter from the citizens.

As I knelt to adjust the mannequin's position, the audience could now see that painted in neat black lettering over each wax breast was the syllable Mag, and that between these hillocks was a hyphen, thus: Mag-Mag. The nipples, in vivid carmine, peeped through the circles of the central as. The tension in the hall charged the silence. I glanced at the wings: Janco, grinning, gave me a thumbs-up sign; Huelsenbeck held his hand over his mouth; Tzara was hugging himself in ecstasy.

Onstage, I stood up and backed away from the chair. A single horrified gasp arose from the darkness, an intake of breath that united all elements of the audience. The legs of the mannequin were indecorously spread. But that was not all. (Even now I blush to record the rest; but the historian has his duty, and you may judge from what follows to what extremes the young Korner's passion and rage had led him.) In the area of the mons veneris and the sacrarium below it, I had

painted a Venus flytrap in grasshopper green, its marginal thorns open to reveal the red blush within. The citizens were mesmerized. From my admirable black coat I removed with a magician's flourish a squat British toothbrush, and this prosaic item I placed in the mannequins right hand. From my inner breast pocket I drew out a rubber douche complete with clyster pipes. Voila! The mannequin's left hand received the douche, the rubber pipes snaking to the floor. I turned to the wings and snapped my fingers; on cue, Ball threw me a bouquet of paper flowers. I bowed politely to the mannequin and offered her the bouquet. That there was no response is not surprising, but at the moment, so convincing must have been my performance, the audience sighed as if in sympathy for me. For a moment, perplexed, I rubbed my chin, and then, inspired, I placed the bouquet in the headless neck-hole. That was it! That was precisely what the mannequin had lacked! Sterile Mag-Mag, cold and cruel, sprouted spring blooms gaily; nevertheless, the Venus flytrap threatened, and neither hand held out much hope. I strode from the stage.

The silence was at first absolute, thick, sepulchral. Into the silence, assaulting it, seeking to pierce it, break it into fragments, pranced the Gang of Nihilists, myself among them, at last a paid-up member. Ball thumped out Offenbach on the piano, Janco banged the drum, Huelsenbeck and I kicked out a cancan, Emmy Hennings did cartwheels, Magda did the splits, Tzara wiggled his rump like the stomach of a belly-dancer, everyone was occupied. Then we stood in line on either side of Mag-Mag and demanded the right to piss in various colors.

This was what the good citizens of Zurich had been waiting for. Here at last was the event against which they had been hoarding their fury. The storm broke, at first mildly, with boos and catcalls. But very soon there were more voices, angry voices: "Swine!" "Filth!" "Anarchists!" "Christ-killers!" The

commotion in the auditorium of Waag Hall drowned us out. It was getting ugly. Janco said we should let down the curtain. Huelsenbeck agreed. But no, Tzara would have none of it. He exulted. The sweat glistened on his forehead. There was a sudden lull as the hall went quiet, as if gulping for fresh breath. Into the silence, Tzara bellowed, "And Calvin, too, if you think of it, was a shitless anal-retentive!" That was enough. That galvanized them. Pandemonium! There were scuffles, fights, the sounds of breaking glass, screams, police whistles. We brought down the curtain.

LATER WE SAT in the Cafe zum Weissen Bock and talked about the night's events. There had been some arrests, but of our number only Tauschnitz, like me a barely tolerated hanger-on, had been detained. He had been caught in a scuffle when some of the citizens tried to storm the stage. From the rest of us, the police had taken only names and addresses. Perhaps charges would be preferred, perhaps not: the sergeant was noncommittal. The manager of Waag Hall had been roused from his sleep to make an early assessment of the damages. Tsk-tsk. Profits would perhaps cover losses. "There you have the whole rotten system," said Tzara. Selinger, I was pleased to see, had a black eye, but as a consequence, with Magda draped over him all but swooning, was regarded as the hero of the hour, the only one of us tempered in the fire. Tauschnitz, needless to say, was forgotten. All pronounced the evening a thundering success. The Gang was now a force to be reckoned with.

I, however, was shunted to the sidelines. The table accommodated comfortably all chairs but mine, and so I sat outside the circle, behind and between Emmy Hennings and Richter, who made no attempt to let me in. Magda and I still contrived not to make eye contact. She was, in any case, fully occupied with her hero. I felt quite sick.

The Gang was trying to pinpoint the precise moment at which the citizens' hostility had first been provoked. Ball thought it was when Arp, in the costume of Wilhelm Tell, seemingly plucked an apple from the generous bottom of his "son," Sophie Tauber; Janco believed it was the scene in which he and Huelsenbeck, as a French and a German soldier, squatted, with trousers down, over a "field latrine" and discussed Swiss courage. But all agreed that the assertion of the "right to piss in various colors" had been the true turning point, and that Tzaras "brilliant" and "inspired" words on Calvin had capped the triumph. They laughed until they had tears in their eyes. And stupidly, I laughed with them. Ball, without embarrassment, loudly passed wind, a cause of fresh laughter. Hamburger would have felt right at home.

What utterly amazed me then, what amazes me still, was the fact that not one of them, not even the lady in question, recognized in the Mag-Mag painted over the bosom of the mannequin an allusion to Magda Damrosch. How could this be? I have long puzzled over it. The only explanation I can offer (and I confess that it does not wholly convince me) is that having been ideologically programmed to seek no meaning—the only significant point for them being pointlessness—they found none. My frustration was excruciating, my revenge a fiasco!

And now they set about stealing my coinage from me. "We are on the march," said Tzara, "and I am ready at this midnight hour to offer you, in all appropriate humility and solemnity, the long-looked-for name of our journal." He paused, tasting the moment. The monocle popped into his waiting hand. "Mag-Mag!" He looked around the table at the puzzled faces. "Wake up! Think of what we have here: Maga-zin, Magie, mager!"

What delight, then, what enthusiasm! These celebrators of unmeaning tumbled over themselves in the hunt for meaning. It became a game.

"Magma!"

"Magnet!"

"Magnidicus! Magnus! Magnificat!"

"Magot!"

"Magic!"

"Then we are agreed?" said Tzara.

It was intolerable. They had looked everywhere but at Magda Damrosch. What was I to do? My desire for revenge had turned sour in my stomach. To tell them now of my original intention, to explain what they should easily have understood, to spell it out now, with Magda openly caressing Egon Selinger, would be to reveal myself as the utter fool I undoubtedly was. I swallowed bile, but I could not remain silent. Perhaps obliquely the point could yet be made.

"Mag-Maghas a copyright," I said bitterly. "Try Da-Da."

There was an awed silence. They looked at one another. Tzara and Huelsenbeck screwed in their monocles in unison. Then Tzara lifted his glass of beer. "Little brothers and sisters," he said quietly, "we celebrate the absoluteness and purity of chaos cosmically ordered. I give you . . . Dada."

"Hurrah!" they cried. "Hip-hip-hooray!" They had caught not even a glimmering; to the contrary, in a fever of new excitement they began to discuss their first issue. I got up in disgust and left.

No one seemed to notice.

In THE MONTHS that followed, Magda and I avoided one another. The hurt still rankled; my pride still burned. She seemed indifferent.

One bitter day in February 1917, however, I was walking in Niederdorf, on Spiegelgasse, to be precise. A light snow had begun falling the previous night, and now the streets were covered. In Niederdorf the houses huddled together like tramps

in search of warmth. I was en route to a rendezvous with Herr Ephraims Minnie, in whose ample and perspiring body I found some solace for my misery. Walking toward me through the falling snow was Magda. I crossed the street. She crossed it, too, and stood before me.

"Otto," she said, "let us be friends again."

She wore no hat upon her head, no scarf. The snowdrops glistened on her hair. The glove that held my arm was worn and split. She was a graced palace in whose purlieus no slime adheres. Selinger, I knew, was a rival no longer. He had absconded, it was rumored, to Lausanne, with the bootblack from the Pension Bel-Air, a pale and bony youth whose black hair stood up in frighted spikes. I was suffused at once and once more with love for her.

"Magda, dear Magda," I said, "we will forget what happened, we will start again where we left off. Come with me, live with me. Let me take care of you."

She hesitated not even a moment. "No," she said, and placed a finger to my lips. "No, junger Mann, you must never forget. But you must never go back, either. March always to the horizon, keep your eyes on the future."

"But Magda—"

"No." She was firm. "Friends?"

"Friends."

I turned and watched her make her way through the snow. She paused briefly before Spiegelgasse 14, opened the door, and disappeared.

I never saw Magda again. When next I heard of her, it was to learn that she had left Zurich for good.

My OWN FIRST, MINUSCULE ROLE on the world-historical stage, Days of Darkness, Nights of Light and the article in the NFPhzd been quickly cut from the play in the interest of more

dramatic events: the guns of Europe boomed. My second, as we have just seen, was farcical, and like Polonius, I was hastily buried. But at least both roles were relatively harmless: I alone was the victim. My third appearance was to be a catastrophe that reverberates still, that gives me no peace, that causes me endless pain.

What questions is Kunstler asking about me?

prompter and thus can keep an eye on him, at least some of the time.) "Perhaps we should take a break."

"Thank you, Kunstler," I said icily. "When it's time to break, I'll know it."

"Fair's fair," he said.

"I've got to go to the little girls' room," whined La Da-widowicz. "You wouldn't want I should disgrace myself in front of everyone."

"Me too," said Wittkower.

"The little girls' room?" said Hamburger.

"You know what I mean, Benno," said Wittkower, aggrieved. "I've got to go real bad."

I threw up my hands.

DURING THE BREAK Kunstler came up to me.

"A man like Claudius deserves to my way of thinking a little understanding," he said.

"Please leave the actors to me."

"No, I don't mean Blum, I mean the real Claudius."

"That's what I've been trying to pound into Blum's thick head all morning."

"Of course, he is a murderer, there's no getting around that. But he's got to live with what he did, and naturally it's not easy for him. Probably he'd turn back the clock if he could, poor feller. Now he's trying to make the best of it. I guess we can't escape our past." He paused. "I like what you're trying to do here. You're serious, you show a good understanding."

Can one respond with rudeness to ostensible flattery? "Thank you," I said, and walked away.

Flattery, yes, but is there no offense in't? The man knows something.

I HAVE ADVISED MANDY DaTTNER, I hope wisely, to say nothing to Blum about his paternity—not yet, at any rate. What good could it do her to tell him? He would crow like Chanticleer, parade before us all in that squat, distasteful way that thrusts his sexual equipment forward, encased, I am convinced, in some kind of metallic jockstrap, a codpiece, that grants it special prominence. Blum in leotards already crowds our rehearsals with a giggling audience of ladies. Besides, its difficult enough to keep Blum's attention on the role; it would be sheer folly to invite distraction. Then, too, there are Miss Dattner's reputation and career to consider, at least in immediate prospect: I have not forgotten the suit that Hermione Perlmutter spoke of, which sparked her husband s rise from legal obscurity. The Kommandant is sensitive to publicity, especially since Lipschitz's mysterious accident and death. He is not above dismissing Miss Dattner for "immoral turpentine," for "interfering" with a resident, for who knows what, an innocent victim of sexual politics.

Needless to say, she is not anxious to tell her parents. "Oh, sure, they'd like that back in Shaker Heights, wouldn't they just. Like, come on home, Mandy, what's a little pregnancy? Mom would be real keen on filling in the girls at the temple, and as for Dad, jeez!"