DUST OF NEW YORK
THERESA THE VAMP
New York is an orchestra playing a symphony. If you hear the part of only one instrument—first violin or oboe, 'cello or French horn—it is incongruous. To understand the symphony you must hear all the instruments playing together, each its own part, to the invisible baton of that great conductor, Father Time.
But the symphony is heard only very rarely. Most of the time New York is tuning up. Each voice is practising its part of the score—the little solos for the violins to please the superficial sentimentalists, and the twenty bars for the horn to satisfy the martial spirit in men.
But don't, oh sightseers, don't think you know New York because you have sauntered through a few streets and eaten hot tamales in a Mexican restaurant, or burnt your tongue with goulash in some "celebrated Hungarian palace." Only to very few privileged ones is it given to hear the symphony—and they have to pay dearly for it. But it is worth the price.
They called her the Vampire, or Vamp for short. Her name was Theresa, and she was born somewhere on Hungarian soil in Tokai, where flows the dark blue water of the Tisza, not far from the Herpad Mountains on which grows the grape for the luxurious Tokai wine.
Now, when and why Theresa came to New York nobody knew. But all were glad she was here ... here, at a little table in a corner of the "Imperial" on Second Avenue. When one met a friend on the street and asked: "Anybody at the 'Imperial?'" and the answer was "Nobody there to-night," it simply meant that the Vamp was not there. The other two hundred or more guests did not count.
She spoke very little. She smoked all the time, and her fiery dark eyes hid behind the thin smoke curtain from her cigarette. Young men had no chance at her table. They seldom came near her at all. They were afraid of her. Only married men dared approach her, relying on their experience to extricate themselves when in danger.
And yet there was no danger! At some hour after midnight Theresa brushed the ashes off her waist from the "last" cigarette, arranged her hair a bit, and announced to the company "I am going."
It always was irrevocable. A newcomer was known by the fact that he offered to see her home. The habitués would then answer in chorus, "I can find my way alone," and laugh and tease the unfortunate who did not know that Theresa went home alone.
After Theresa's departure her friends would scatter to different tables and take up cudgels for this or that or the other, always with the conscience that on the street the question would be: "Anybody there?" and the answer would be the inevitable "Nobody there." So most of them would leave the place soon after Theresa—dispersing over the city, each to his home, bringing there the secret emptiness that was in him.
"Ferenczy is here," a friend greeted me one day.
"Ferenczy who?" I asked.
"Ferenczy, the great painter, man!"
I did not know much about the great Hungarian artist, but my friend knew, and urged me to come and see him. I found him at the "Imperial."
Tall, thin, dark, passionate, the picture of the painter as portrayed in novels. He spoke about art like a true artist. Some of the ladies, usually placidly sipping their coffee, became very self-conscious as he declaimed a bit too loudly about beauty of line and harmony of color. Even the two fighting musical critics, old Newman and Dr. Feldys, forgot the nightly squabble over the merits of modern music, when Ferenczy talked.
In the midst of all appeared Theresa. She went straight to her table. From different sections of the café men rose, and after making their apologies to the other guests, walked up to where the Vamp was waiting for some one to help her take off her coat.
Ferenczy turned about to see who caused such a stir. A few minutes later he was sitting opposite her, the two oblivious of everybody else. He was her fellow countryman, was born at the foot of the same mountains, the Herpads.
And we were all surprised when she did not say "I can find my way alone," two hours after midnight, and allowed Ferenczy to see her home.
When Ferenczy entered the café the next evening there were two different camps. One hated him because he took the Vamp home, and one admired him because he had succeeded where everybody else had failed.
