AS I SAW IT IN AMERICA (2) Looking for a

Saviour

SALLY VINCENT

Devils abound in Manhattan. Every New Yorker knows the place is falling apart at the seams, breaking up, stinking hot, foully humid, smothered in soot and wrapped in a mist of filth. But what the hell, where else can a body go to pick up a small fortune in a hurry? Along with a bad case of paranoia and the dry heaves? Who to blame? The rich, the poor, the mayor, the taxi drivers, the weather, the blacks, the women, the spiks, the wops, the wasps, the kikes, the polacks. Who is to blame is who you are not, and if only he would stand up still for a moment you could mow him down and all would be well. Well, Mr Victor Gottbaum, seeking a modest pension in their old age for his fellow municipal workers, stood up still for a moment last week and nearly got hissed to death on the Frost Show, he and his mates having gone on strike for a couple of days. They control the drawbridges that connect moated Manhattan Island with the rest of America, and the pipes that take its sewage to purifying plants before discharging it into the moat. Anyone can see they have the city by the sphincter, or should be able to see. But apparently nobody noticed, des- pite Mr Gottbaum's annual pleas for a little bit of money for his old age sewage and bridge men, until he pulled up the ladder

`That's it, man, you've got the sound—now work in a good lyric about society, loneliness, pot, alienation . .

and turned off the pipes. My, how the city screamed as millions of working persons were kept at bay, honking their horns in vain on the wrong side of the bridges. And my, bow the city held its breath as seven hundred million gallons of 'untreated raw sewage' was discharged into the Hudson and East rivers. Even the luckless molluscs of Sandy Hook Bay, resenting a diet of pure shit, were reported aggrieved at Mr Gottbaum.

However, even a worm can turn, and the citizens who gather daily to feast on our own Young David are pretty flexible them- selves. Mr Gottbaum came in on cloven hooves, but by the time he left everybody loved him. 'This city', he said, and you could Bell he was sincere because he looked straight

at the camera, 'has got to find a way of coming to terms with its citizens.' He who

seeks the scapegoat, as I probably just said

to anyone who would listen, is also on the look-out for a saviour, and you can never be too careful about the moment when the

one turns into the other. And for a moment there, Mr Gottbaum was the Good Shepherd. Embodiments of him are thick on the pavement. Most of the young men and a

goodly proportion of girls, too, resemble pictures of gentle Jesus suffering all and sundry to come unto him. It goes deeper, no doubt, even than the face of Christ on the cover of Time might indicate to the truly consciousness-raised, but perhaps the fact that open auditions are currently being held to assemble a full, non-star cast for a rock musical lovingly entitled Jesus Christ Super- star has something to do with it. Not only can any mother's son become President of the United States, he can also become Jesus Christ in the Broadway production of the same name. There's opportunity for you. You don't even have to be a member of Equity.

Each morning they line up outside the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on 45th Street where they take turns on the nightmare slope of the stage with nothing but a break for the casting director's lunch until the six o'clock traffic jams. Anybody who wants to be famous or hasn't got anything better to do, is free to present himself and sing a song in conflict with a pianist to a dark and empty theatre in which, unseen but for the top of his head and two sullen eyes, lurks the director who will make a superstar of the Jesus of his choice.

There are serious Jesuses and non-serious Jesuses. The serious ones have not only grown their beards already (unless they hap pen to be girls) but have learned to sing a Jesus song from the Jesus record in the privacy of their own homes. The non-serious ones are more interested in being Gordon Macrae or Howard Keel than the son of God. They come on flexing their thighs and sing terrible songs about Oh what a Beauti- ful Morning and The Impossible Dream and they wear blazers with silver buttons and boom 'Hi' to the casting man who keeps blowing his nose and trying to be kind.

He is, in fact, always scrupulously kind to the Mary Magdalenes, particularly the ones who have gone to the trouble of wearing huge red wigs and gipsy dresses in order to make five false starts to a tone-deaf 'Tea for Two'. He asks them how tall they are and if they can dance so that they can go home still convinced that if only they were a bit shorter or a shade taller their flat, cracked, pitiable little voices and their under- • whelming personalities would fill Broadway and they would live happily ever after sign- ing autographs in the vicinity of Sardis. The twenty-fourth Jesus is small and plump and black and he walks about on the stage as though he's waiting for a friend. Meanwhile, he is muttering something to his knees. The casting director leans forward and puts away his handkerchief. The direc- tor slithers up a few rows and sits to atten- tion. We all strain our ears, Yes, yes, he's making a sound. Not only that, but if you've really got your wits about you, you wouldn't be surprised if the sound has something a little to do with a man who is stone deaf singing 'On a Clear Day'. 'Thank you', says the casting man. 'Thank you very much.' But he doesn't ask his height.

Round about the forty-seventh Jesus, a lad creates a faint ripple of excitement by playing his guitar and singing a song in a foreign language, only it isn't a foreign lan- guage. As the alien ear grows accustomed, phrases like 'A jis wan yer kisses' and 'death to all eternity' come through as indications of a fine piece of modern lyricism. They like him. He's touching, they say, and what's more he looks like David Bailey. They invite him down to the piano to sing a song from the show and he leaps off the stage with a bone-shattering crack. 'Breaks both feet', titters the director's friend, 'he'll have to play one of the cripples.' Evei ybody feels

'These damn temperamental artists! We com- missioned them to do a cowl'

much better and the casting man sniffs in- stead of blows so as not to miss the potential talent. They give him a sheet of music hear- ing no less than the hieroglyphics for the crucifixion song. Now we'll find out. Well, anyway, he's better than the resident piano player and I for one can actually hear words coming over, like 'I doan wan yer poison' and 'Take this cup away from me-he' and 'Ah godda know mah lor'. Yes, he's good. Think how moving he'll look with Peter. This could be the man. This really could be the man. Or if not, there's always another day at the Lunt-Fontanne and another fifty or so Jesuses to go through.

Anyway, there was a bit of joy out of the day's work. The director permits himself a small smile and we've got a name and an address and someone on whom to pin our hopes. I didn't like to mention the fact that I saw Jesus Christ on the downtown bus only twenty-four hours previously. He wasn't just someone who looked like him. He was white and waxen with a softly curling beard and hair, and he was him. The temperature was in the high eighties and he wore an over- coat buttoned up to his neck and as he waited for his stop he read a book on mac- robiotic food. The Puerto-Rican ladies shar- ing the bus looked away as soon as they registered him because they have pictures of him in their kitchens and they knew as well as I did who he was. In case anyone wants to know, he got off on Ninety-fourth Street and walked away with a slight limp,