Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [133]
EPILOGUE
Few Are Chosen
It was the last night of 1940 and the snow was blowing two knots shy of a blizzard. Within the hour there wouldn’t be a car moving in all Manhattan. They’d be buried like boulders under the snow. But for now, they crawled along with the weary determination of wayward pioneers.
Eight of us had stumbled out of a dance at the University Club that we hadn’t been invited to in the first place. The party had been on the second floor under the great palazzo ceilings. A thirty-piece orchestra dressed in white was ushering in 1941 in the brand-new and already outmoded style of Guy Lombardo. Unbeknownst to us, the party had an ulterior motive—to raise money for refugees from Estonia. When a latter-day Carry Nation stood alongside a dispossessed ambassador to rattle her tin can, we made for the door.
On the way out, Bitsy had somehow come into possession of a trumpet and, as she was making a pretty impressive show of the scales, the rest of us huddled under a street lamp to plan a course of action. A quick look at the roads and we could tell a taxi wouldn’t be coming to the rescue. Carter Hill said he knew of a perfect hideaway just around the corner where we could find food and drink, so under his direction we set off westward through the snow. None of the girls were dressed for the weather, but I had the good fortune of being tucked under one wing of Harrison Harcourt’s fur-collared coat.
Midway down the block, a rival party coming in the other direction pelted us with snowballs. Bitsy sounded the charge and we counterattacked. Taking cover behind a newsstand and a mailbox, we drove them off hooting like Indians, but when Jack “mistakenly” toppled Bitsy into a snowbank, the girls turned on the boys. It was as if our New Year’s resolution was to act like we were ten.
The thing of it is—1939 may have brought the beginning of the war in Europe, but in America it brought the end of the Depression. While they were annexing and appeasing, we were stoking the steel plants, reassembling the assembly lines, and readying ourselves to meet a worldwide demand for arms and ammunition. In December 1940, with France already fallen and the Luftwaffe bombarding London, back in America Irving Berlin was observing how the treetops glistened and children listened to hear those sleigh bells in the snow. That’s how far away we were from the Second World War.
Carter’s nearby hideaway ended up being a ten-block slog. As we turned onto Broadway, the wind howled down from Harlem blowing the snow against our backs. I had Harry’s coat cloaked over my head and was letting myself be steered by an elbow. So when we got to the front of the restaurant I didn’t even see what it looked like. Harry ushered me down the steps, pulled back his coat, and voila, I was in a sizable midblock joint serving Italian food, Italian wine, and Italian jazz, whatever that was.
Midnight had come and gone so the floor was covered with confetti. Most of the revelers who had spent the countdown in the restaurant had come and gone too.
We didn’t wait for their plates to be cleared. We just stomped our shoes, shook off the snow, and commandeered a table for eight opposite the bar. I sat next to Bitsy. Carter slipped into the chair on my right, leaving Harry to find a seat across the table. Jack picked up a wine bottle left by the prior patrons and squinted to see if there were remnants.
—We need wine, he said.
—Indeed we do, said Carter, catching a waiter’s eye. Maestro! Three bottles of Chianti!
The waiter, who had the big eyebrows and big hands of Bela Lugosi, opened the bottles with glum attention.
—Not exactly the jovial sort, Carter observed.
But it was hard to tell. Like so many Italians in New York in 1940, maybe his normal joviality was overshadowed by the unfortunate allegiances of the old country.
Carter volunteered to order a few plates for the table, and then made a reasonable stab at launching a conversation by asking people what was the best thing they did in 1940. It made me