boîte was watching us.
Suddenly Emil stopped, scanned the onlookers, and said to me: "I smell Jew ."
I was stunned. I felt as if my face had been slapped. For a moment, I didn't know what to say.
"But, Emil," I said, "didn't you know I was Jewish?"
Now it was his turn to look shocked.
"You can't possibly be a Jewish cockroach," he said with a mixture of lust and loathing. Nevertheless he turned on his heel and walked away. He avoided me for the rest of the crossing. Oh, Thomas Wolfe is right that Atlantic crossings are filled with "the life, the hate, the love, the bitterness of six-day worlds!"
That was my first taste of the nastiness that was beginning to megaphone in Germany—not to mention my first inkling of what it meant to be a Jew away from Gotham. In New York, being Jewish is entirely unremarkable. Everywhere else, it is a source of shame. Or mad pride.
[This appears to be Salome's initial journal entry from her fabled first trip to Europe in 1929. She was not quite seventeen and a half—though she claims to be eighteen! Her story is told in letters and journals, which, like her mother's taped oral history, I have arranged chronologically so the reader can follow. Ed.]
2 June 1929
Dear Theda,
I'm finally in Paris! I have taken a flat—a room with a bidet really. (Do you know what a bidet is? Hint: it's not for washing socks!) It's on the top floor—seven flights up—of a dive on the Rue de la Harpe. Paris is everything it's cracked up to be and more. And how. You should definitely come over.
This city never sleeps. The cafés are swept at four in the morning and they reopen at six. I sit in the Dôme—where the artists are—every night and scribble all my ideas for the great American novel. In the book, I'm going to disguise you, don't worry. To protect the guilty. (Do you think, by the way, that you and I are best friends because of our names? I do.)
I absolutely haunt the cafés—the Rotonde, the Select—meeting everyone: artists, of course, and queens dressed in women's clothes, and artists' models like Kiki de Montparnasse, who drink real absinthe (the kind with the worms in it).
The first ones to discover you are the Sapphists, of course, just like in the Village. They all write cryptic poems and sign them with initials. They are often very beautiful, but a lot of them are wasting away from too much absinthe, not to mention opium. The Sapphists wear the most elegant clothes and some of them dress like dandies. Some of them prefer men's tailoring and some are so exquisitely feminine you can hardly tell what they are. Pale faces, arched eyebrows, marcelled bobs, filmy dresses, gallons of Arpège. I have written some cryptic poems too.
I am much more cryptic in Paris than I ever was in New York. Will you come over? You will never regret it if you do!
Love, Love, Love,
Salome
NOTEBOOK
13 June 1929
With Uncle Lee's money, I have decided to start a magazine—everyone starts a magazine here—called Innuendo . Access to the printing press gives power. And sex. (At least, that's what I'm hoping.)
Poets of all races and genders will flock to me because of my magazine. Already I am not unknown on the Left Bank and in Montparnasse. (That's too modest—I am seen as a figure if not quite yet a legend .) Mostly the medium of exchange is sex—chocolate boys who play the trumpet, piano, and clitoris; vanilla boys who claim to have been wounded in the war. I will sample them all! Quantity if not quality! I am also picking up paintings for a song: Pascin, both Delaunays, Picasso, Man Ray, Tanguy, Braque. (For my old age, if I ever have one—ha!)
1 July '29
Dear Theda,
What do you mean, your parents won't let you come?
Don't ask them. You can't cling to your parents forever. If they have their way, you'll wind up married to Artie Lefkowitz and making chopped chicken liver and brisket every Friday night. You'll wind up in Brooklyn, for God's sake. And then what will be the use of all
Suddenly Emil stopped, scanned the onlookers, and said to me: "I smell Jew ."
I was stunned. I felt as if my face had been slapped. For a moment, I didn't know what to say.
"But, Emil," I said, "didn't you know I was Jewish?"
Now it was his turn to look shocked.
"You can't possibly be a Jewish cockroach," he said with a mixture of lust and loathing. Nevertheless he turned on his heel and walked away. He avoided me for the rest of the crossing. Oh, Thomas Wolfe is right that Atlantic crossings are filled with "the life, the hate, the love, the bitterness of six-day worlds!"
That was my first taste of the nastiness that was beginning to megaphone in Germany—not to mention my first inkling of what it meant to be a Jew away from Gotham. In New York, being Jewish is entirely unremarkable. Everywhere else, it is a source of shame. Or mad pride.
[This appears to be Salome's initial journal entry from her fabled first trip to Europe in 1929. She was not quite seventeen and a half—though she claims to be eighteen! Her story is told in letters and journals, which, like her mother's taped oral history, I have arranged chronologically so the reader can follow. Ed.]
2 June 1929
Dear Theda,
I'm finally in Paris! I have taken a flat—a room with a bidet really. (Do you know what a bidet is? Hint: it's not for washing socks!) It's on the top floor—seven flights up—of a dive on the Rue de la Harpe. Paris is everything it's cracked up to be and more. And how. You should definitely come over.
This city never sleeps. The cafés are swept at four in the morning and they reopen at six. I sit in the Dôme—where the artists are—every night and scribble all my ideas for the great American novel. In the book, I'm going to disguise you, don't worry. To protect the guilty. (Do you think, by the way, that you and I are best friends because of our names? I do.)
I absolutely haunt the cafés—the Rotonde, the Select—meeting everyone: artists, of course, and queens dressed in women's clothes, and artists' models like Kiki de Montparnasse, who drink real absinthe (the kind with the worms in it).
The first ones to discover you are the Sapphists, of course, just like in the Village. They all write cryptic poems and sign them with initials. They are often very beautiful, but a lot of them are wasting away from too much absinthe, not to mention opium. The Sapphists wear the most elegant clothes and some of them dress like dandies. Some of them prefer men's tailoring and some are so exquisitely feminine you can hardly tell what they are. Pale faces, arched eyebrows, marcelled bobs, filmy dresses, gallons of Arpège. I have written some cryptic poems too.
I am much more cryptic in Paris than I ever was in New York. Will you come over? You will never regret it if you do!
Love, Love, Love,
Salome
NOTEBOOK
13 June 1929
With Uncle Lee's money, I have decided to start a magazine—everyone starts a magazine here—called Innuendo . Access to the printing press gives power. And sex. (At least, that's what I'm hoping.)
Poets of all races and genders will flock to me because of my magazine. Already I am not unknown on the Left Bank and in Montparnasse. (That's too modest—I am seen as a figure if not quite yet a legend .) Mostly the medium of exchange is sex—chocolate boys who play the trumpet, piano, and clitoris; vanilla boys who claim to have been wounded in the war. I will sample them all! Quantity if not quality! I am also picking up paintings for a song: Pascin, both Delaunays, Picasso, Man Ray, Tanguy, Braque. (For my old age, if I ever have one—ha!)
1 July '29
Dear Theda,
What do you mean, your parents won't let you come?
Don't ask them. You can't cling to your parents forever. If they have their way, you'll wind up married to Artie Lefkowitz and making chopped chicken liver and brisket every Friday night. You'll wind up in Brooklyn, for God's sake. And then what will be the use of all
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