Schotter Roni - Dreamland

DREAMLAND

A Novel

KEVIN BAKER

With love to Ellen
and the rest of the fabrente maydlakh

New York is a nine-day town.

I know a story.

This is how you kill an elephant.

Call me a dreamer.

It all started that night at the rat pit...

I hid them out at Coney...

I sat behind the left ear of Satan...

I have no trust, and fear the prudery...

Freud wasnt sure that he had...

They met on the beach at Coney.

It was hotter than ever by the time...

This life is too much for me.

That nightthe night of that first...

That cabbages thrive in dung...

Big Tim Sullivan sipped his coffee...

Esther met him at the main gate...

When the train would go no farther...

The trick to poisoning a horse was...

Gyp walked back over to the Lodz...

It is that we are never so...

Each of the great parks on Coney...

The great green ship lay before them...

She sat out on the stoop...

Girls in Their Nightgowns!

The funny little man flickered...

Dreams do not consist...

Their next afternoon, Kid took her...

He loitered ecstatically in the night.

In the factory Joseph followed...

Our city went up on a back lot of...

He walked uptown as the long...

By the middle of the morning...

Delancey Street was melting...

The Talkers Cafe was no more than...

There's always a certain number of...

Look out, you idiot!

He looked for Herman Rosenthal...

On Sunday, Kid took her over...

In Bostocks Circus the great cats...

They liked the elephant, and the circus...

Monk taught him everything...

Spanish Louie was tired of waiting.

He had the dream again.

Then I heard Siegfields horn sounding...

Freud had gone uptown in the morning...

Their gondolier poled them sullenly...

Where to now, Big Tim?

Her mother would say that she was...

The next Sunday, Sadie was waiting...

I didnt mind when that big fake...

Beansy Rosenthal waddled quickly...

The annual excursion chowder...

The ancient darkness would...

They sat hand in hand, watching...

Coming to meet her at Camps ice cream...

The strike broke out one morning...

At the Tombs they were hauled back...

Big Tim Sullivan hurried up Broadway...

There was a crowd to greet them...

They moved together, in one slow, sinuous motion.

The woman surprised him one afternoon...

Out on the streets, the tide was turning now.

Sadie faded back through the crowd...

Esther sat on the worn bedspread...

I saw her.

They stood before the rampaging fossils...

The night before the election was...

When the work of interpretation...

The greatest roller coaster ride of all time...

On their next-to-last day in New York...

Big Tim Sullivan stood by the waters...

She met Sadie at the settlement house...

Gyp waited until she came out...

They stood in the Hall of Life...

He heard the news about Charlie Becker...

The ships glided through the...

This is how you kill an elephant.

He heard the nightingales in their...

They sent Charlie Becker to the chair...

And that's all?

The evening after their visit to...

Esther Esse Abramowitz, a sewing machine operator from the Lower East Side of New York City.

Moshe and Sarah Abramowitz, her parents, a rabbi and his wife.

Lazar Abramowitz, a.k.a. Gyp the Blood, a gangster.

Josef Kolyika, a.k.a. Kid Twist, a rival gangster to Gyp.

Sadie Mendelssohn, Gyps whore.

Clara Lemlich, a seamstress and union activist.

Patrick Mahoney, Jr., a.k.a. Trick the Dwarf; a carnival performer.

The Mad Carlotta, his consort; Queen of the Little City.

Mr. Charles Murphy, the Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall.

Big Tim Dry Dollar Sullivan, an entrepreneur, politician, and the number two man at Tammany.

George B. McClellan, the Little Little Napoleon, figurehead mayor of New York.

Dr. Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology.

Dr. Carl Jung, his proteg.

Dr. Sandor Ferenczi, their friend and colleague.

Dr. Abraham A. Brill, their American host.

Lieutenant Charles Becker, commander of one of the Citys most active police strong-arm squads.

Herman Beansy Rosenthal, a talkative gambler.

Frances Perkins, a social worker.

Mary Dreier, a society lady.

Matthew Brinckerhoff, a genius and architect.

Elijah Poole, an electrical wizard.

Thomas Alva Edison, an inventor.

Samuel Bernstein, a garment factory general manager.

Wenke, a garment industry subcontractor.

Arnold Rothstein, a rising sportsman and gangster.

Monk Eastman, head of the Eastmans mob.

Paul Kelly, head of the Eastmans main rivals, the Five Pointers.

Spanish Louie, a gangster.

The Grabber, a gangster.

I know a story.

I know a story, said Trick the Dwarf, and the rest of them leaned in close: Nanook the Esquimau, and Ota Benga the Pygmy, and Yolanda the Wild Queen of the Amazon.

What kind of story?

Yolandas eyes bulged suspiciously, and it occurred to him again how she alone might actually be as advertised: tiny, leather-skinned woman with a mock feather headdress, betel nut juice dribbling out through the stumps of her teeth. A mulatto from Caracas, or a Negro Seminole woman from deep in the Okefenokee, at least.

What kind of a story?

He swiped at the last swathes of greasepaint around his neck and ears, and looked down the pier of the ruined park to the west before replying. All gone now, even the brilliant white tower festooned with eagles, its beacon reaching twenty miles out to sea. Gone, gone.

It was evening, and the lights were just going up along Surf Avenue: a million electric bulbs spinning a soft, yellow gauze over the beach and parks. The night crowd was already arriving, pouring off the New York & Sea Beach line in white trousers and dresses, white jackets and skirts and straw hatsall quickly absorbed by the glowing lights.

The City of Fire was coming to life.

He could hear the muffled fart of a tuba from the German oompah band warming up in Feltmans beer garden. Beyond the garden was the Ziz coaster, hissing and undulating through the trees with the peculiar sound that gave it its name. Beyond that was the high glass trellises of Steeplechase Park, with its ubiquitous idiots face and slogan, repeated over and overSTEEPLECHASEFUNNY PLACESTEEPLECHASEFUNNY PLACE. Beyond that the ocean, where a single, low-slung freighter was making for Seagate ahead of the night.