My Heart Laid Bare (26 page)

Of course, not all of Abraham Licht's enterprises were successful; and the comparative, or outright, failures, no less than his half dozen embarrassments with the law, rankled still.

For instance, at the tender age of fifteen he had been ill used by a kinsman named Nathaniel Liges, of the Onandaga Valley, who had hired him as a lottery ticket salesman—and failed to inform him when the news broke, rather suddenly, that the tickets were counterfeit; he had scarcely fared better, when, a few years later, now self-employed, he made the rounds of the Nautauga region as a Bible and patent medicine peddler—in the very wake, ironically, of a notorious Dutch peddler from downstate who offered the same general brand of goods, and resembled young Abraham as a father might resemble a son!

He confided in Elisha one day that, as a brash young man of thirty-two, he had agreed to run for state congress on the Republican ticket, in one of the sparsely populated mountain districts north of Muirkirk; but found the campaigning so loathsome an activity, and the prospect of a tame, respectable,
legal
employment so enervating, he soon lost all spirit for the contest, and quite outraged his backers. Moreover, his Democratic opponent was so clearly a self-promoting fool, it seemed an insult to Abraham Licht's dignity to trouble to compete with him. Like Shakespeare's Coriolanus, with whom he closely identified, he felt despoiled by the mere activity of seeking public acclaim in this ignominious way. Here, The Game was of a much lower mettle than he was accustomed to; the prospect of winning over an ignorant electorate excited him as would the prospect of seducing a woman who was both ugly and brain-damaged! So Abraham soon began to mock his opponent, and the oratorical style of campaigners in general (whether Republican, Democrat, Populist, or other); and finally betrayed his backers by dropping out of the race and disappearing from the region altogether a few weeks before the election.

Even so, he told Elisha that he would not rule out the possibility of a political career someday for
him.
“You are worth much more than a
mere backcountry congressional seat, of course; your superficial racial component—or attribute—or ‘talent,' whatever—cannot help but he an asset in the proper circumstances.”

Elisha was deeply struck by this remark; yet could not resist assuming a playful tone. “Shall I run for Governor of the state,” he asked, “or, perhaps, for President of the country? Might I be a fit candidate one day for the ‘White' House? It would allow my fellow Americans a display of democratic sentiment, to elect a ‘darky' to such an office!”

“Don't make light of my proposal,” Abraham Licht said severely. “The time is not now; but the time may come. ‘Covet where you wish; but never in vain.'”

AS WITH THE
women Abraham Licht had won, seemingly, and then lost—his “wives” as he eventually came to call them—so with the business ventures he had never entirely brought to fruition. They haunted; they rankled; they picked and stabbed at his very soul.

Among these was the “E. Auguste Napoléon Bonaparte” enterprise, first dreamt into being when Abraham Licht was a young man in his twenties, but, owing to limited resources, and exigencies of the moment, never satisfactorily launched. What appealed to Abraham in his maturity was the prospect, regarding the Society, of its
infinite possibility
: once a person came to believe that royal blood flowed in his veins, and he was a potential heir to a great fortune, how far could his credulity be tested? No sooner had the Society's roster of heirs fulfilled their obligations for one step of the lawsuit (allegedly being fought in the Court of Paris, behind closed doors, by a barrister of international reputation) than the Society would be forced to assess them still more, for there was a mare's nest of hidden fees, taxes, attorneys' retainers and so forth, with no end in sight. It seemed quite likely that a lawsuit of such complexity would drag on for years, as a consequence of French corruption. And in the early spring of '13 a new development
arose, forced upon the Society's president François-Leon Claudel by several of his associates who were gravely concerned that Claudel had by this time invested so much of his own money, nearly $700,000, while standing to realize as only one heir of Emanuel Auguste no more money than any other heir; so it was voted by the Society's board of governors that members should invest directly in the inheritance itself rather than merely underwriting the lawsuit. Which is to say, according to the prestigious firm of Dun & Company, auditors for the Society: if an individual invests $1 in the inheritance, he will realize at least $200 when the estate is settled; if an individual invests $1,000, he will realize $200,000. And so forth.

Now, the race was on.

Abraham Licht was forced to hire a half dozen agents to deal with the increase in business. Families mortgaged their homes and property or sold them with imprudent haste; insurance policies were cashed in; a minister in Penns Neck, New Jersey, borrowed $6,500 from his church without informing them; one member of the Society, by the name of Rheinhardt, secretly took out an insurance policy on his wife for $100,000 with the intention, as he naively told Mr. Gaymead, of investing the entire sum in Emanuel Auguste “as soon as the old woman dies.” (Gaymead had the presence of mind to inform him on the spot that the board of governors, just the previous day, had passed a ruling to the effect that no member could invest more than $4,000—which after all would reap a magnificent $800,000.)

By February of 1913 post office inspectors for several cities suspected that something was afoot, yet as no one had complained to police, and members of the Society were scrupulous about sending their payments (preferably in cash, though checks were also accepted) by way of a messenger service, and never through the U.S. Mail, where was the harm? Members were cautioned repeatedly on this score, for the postmaster general of the United States was himself in the pay of the French, and prepared to open and destroy any of the Society's correspondence. (So strict was
this ruling, members were told that any letter sent by way of the U.S. Mail would not be opened, and the sender's membership would be revoked.) For purposes of security too the Society's address was frequently changed, being now on Broome Street in lower Manhattan; and now on East Forty-ninth Street; and now on the Upper West Side; then again, abruptly, in Teaneck, New Jersey; or Riverside, New York. In a single week in June 1913 such quantities of cash were received in denominations ranging from $5 to $100 that Abraham Licht and Elisha laughingly wearied of counting it, giving up after having reached $95,000; and sweeping it into a burlap sack with their gloved hands to be deposited, under an agent's name (Brisbane, O'Toole, Rodweller, St. Goar) in one or another Wall Street investment house (Knickerbocker Trust, American Savings & Trust, Lynch & Burr, Throckmorton & Co.) Abraham had chosen. He suspected that, by this time, a number of persons in the financial district were watching his activities closely, but in the bliss of triumph he cared not a whit.

He was Abraham Licht, after all—though not known by that name
here.

“If as Jonathan Swift believed mankind is to be divided into fools and knaves,” Abraham Licht told Elisha and Millicent, “—is there any greater delight than to be assured of a steady income by the former, as the latter look on in envy?”

Through the long summer of 1913 membership in the Society for the Reclamation & Restoration of E. Auguste Napoléon Bonaparte continued to grow, until by mid-August, shortly before the entire enterprise had to be abandoned, there were approximately seven thousand members in good standing—and an estimated fortune of $3 million. Both Elisha and Millie were dazed by their father's success, yet apprehensive as well, for were things not going too smoothly? . . . was there not an air, very nearly palpable at certain times, that they were being scrutinized on every side,
yet never approached? Owing to the rapid increase in business, Abraham Licht had had to hire twenty-odd employees—“solicitors,” “agents,” “messenger boys,” “accountants,” “stenographers.” These persons, though not in full possession of the facts regarding Emanuel Auguste, were yet experienced enough, and canny enough by instinct, to know that they must not disobey their employer's directives. (“One false step,” Abraham Licht cautioned each in turn, “—and the entire house of cards falls. And some of you may deeply regret that it does.”)

At this time the Lichts' principal residency was a luxurious eight-room suite at the Park Stuyvesant Hotel on Central Park East, though Abraham and Elisha were frequently away on business and Millie was enrolled as a student in Miss Thayer's Academy for Young Christian Ladies on East Eighty-fifth Street. (Of course, Millie didn't always attend classes faithfully at Miss Thayer's, caught up in the bustle of Manhattan and in the flattering attentions of young gentlemen admirers whom she treated with playful coquettish ease—since her heart, in secret, belonged to Elisha.) When things went smoothly and the Society's demands weren't distracting, Abraham Licht enjoyed nothing better than to treat his handsome children to a Sunday excursion on the town: an elegant brunch at the Plaza, a leisurely surrey ride through Central Park, afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on upper Fifth Avenue, high tea at the sumptuous Henry IV on Park Avenue. For the elder children Millie and Elisha, amid a small party of social acquaintances, there might be an evening of grand opera at the palatial Met—for, besides Shakespeare, Abraham Licht revered opera as the very music of the gods. (In a single heady season the Lichts attended performances of
The Magic Flute, Rigoletto, Madam Butterfly
and the American premiere of Strauss's
Der Rosenkavalier
during the course of which Abraham fell in love with Anna Case in the role of Sophie.) These lengthy evenings were often followed by suppers at the Park Avenue or Fifth Avenue homes of Abraham's new friends, or supper at Delmonico's, where Abraham, as a lavish spender, was known and admired.

“How happy we are! And how simple it is to be happy!”—so Millie whispered as if in wonder, giving Elisha a hasty kiss when they were alone together; and Elisha, the more agitated of the two of them, tried to see how this could be so, within a year of their brother Thurston's disappearance. Regarding Millie's bright, feverish face and shining eyes, Elisha couldn't have said if he was “happy”—if indeed Millie was “happy”—or if Abraham Licht, despite the current success of his business ventures, was “happy”—or what, in fact, “happiness” meant. When Millie was gay, irrepressibly gay as an ingenue in a Broadway operetta, Elisha believed he should try to be gay in return; yet, when Millie was gay, perhaps she was testing him to gauge whether such gaiety was, after all, appropriate?

All Millie knew of Thurston's disappearance was that, when Abraham and Elisha went to rescue him from a Trenton funeral parlor where his “remains” had been delivered from the prison, her brother was gone. He'd left, he'd walked away, he'd vanished—without a trace. And no message left behind. “But how could Thurston have done such a thing?” Millie asked, incredulous and hurt, and Abraham Licht told her tersely, “We will not speak of the ingrate—a ‘Christian convert' it seems. He has gone over to the camp of the enemy and good riddance.” Millie protested, “But, Father—” and Abraham said, “I have told you, Millie: we will not speak of the ingrate ever again.”

And so it was. For Abraham Licht was not to be disobeyed.

The tale told generally within the family was that Thurston and Harwood had each ventured forth to seek their fortunes. Thurston was in Brazil exploring possibilities in the “rubber trade” and Harwood was in the West exploring possibilities in “the mining of precious metals.” The younger children had no interest in Harwood but begged their father to make a journey to South America so that they could visit with Thurston soon. “At Christmastime, Father! Thurston will be lonely without us.”

Abraham laughed briefly, surprised; but said, in that tone of voice
that indicated a subject was finished, and would not be revived, “Your brother is accustomed by now to ‘loneliness,' I am sure.”

(“And was there really no note, no message to explain, or to apologize, even to say good-bye?” Millie asked Elisha, in secret; and Elisha lifted his hands in a gesture of bafflement, assuring her, as gravely as their father had done, “No, Millie. As Father said, there was
not.
”)

Strange, the careening happiness of that swift season in Manhattan. Affecting Abraham Licht in contradictory ways.

For instance, how frequently he expressed a vague yearning for Muirkirk—“For peace.” Yet of course he dared not leave New York until things were more stabilized. He didn't trust his hired employees—what employer, in such times of turmoil, did? He complained half seriously to Elisha and Millie that he would have no trouble building a financial empire to rival the Carnegies and the Harrimans if he could only staff his office with blood relatives. (His kin, the Barracloughs, the Sternlichts, the Ligeses, had, it seemed, proved untrustworthy. So Elisha had reason to believe. And why did Abraham never mention Harwood? Were they in communication at all?)

Then again, perhaps the Society was growing too quickly? Perhaps it would be prudent to limit membership? Even to introduce a new development . . . things being so snarled in Paris, the French courts so mired in corruption, a mistrial had been called and an entirely new case would have to be prepared . . . for presentation in, say, January 1914. This was entirely convincing; and met with strong approval (and relief) on Elisha's part; for Abraham Licht was by this point in his career several times a millionaire, as O'Toole, Brisbane, Rodweller and St. Goar, and could afford to relax. His fortune was in safe hands in the most reputable Wall Street investment houses and would eventually double, or triple, if the economy continued to thrive.