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the receiver so that she heard odd breathing and a gruff growl. Then a
voice:
"This is no phoney, Monroe. It can talk and it's a dead ringer for
McKinley. Mr. Horace Wickersham is with me here with a picture of McKinley
in his hand-"
Stahr listened patiently.
"We've got a chimp," he said after a minute. "He bit a chunk out of
John Gilbert last year.... All right, put him on again."
He spoke formally as if to a child.
"Hello Orang-outang."
His face changed and he turned to Kathleen.
"He said hello."
"Ask him his name," suggested Kathleen.
"Hello Orang-outang-God, what a thing to be!-Do you know your name?...
He doesn't seem to know his name.... Listen, Lew. We're not making anything
like 'King Kong' and there is no monkey in 'The Hairy Ape.'... Of course I'm
sure. I'm sorry, Lew, good bye. "
He was annoyed with Lew because he had thought it was the President and
changed his manner acting as if it were. He felt a little ridiculous but
Kathleen felt sorry and liked him better because it had been an
orang-outang.
Section 14 (2nd part)
They started back along the shore with the sun behind them. The house
seemed kindlier when they left it, as if warmed by their visit-the hard
glitter of the place was more endurable if they were not bound there like
people on the shiny surface of a moon. Looking back from a curve of the
shore, they saw the sky growing pink behind the indecisive structure and the
point of land seemed a friendly island, not without promise of fine hours on
a further day.
Past Malibu with its gaudy shacks and fishing barges they came into the
range of human kind again, the cars stacked and piled along the road, the
beaches like ant hills without a pattern, save for the dark drowned heads
that sprinkled the sea.
Goods from the city were increasing in sight-blankets, matting,
umbrellas, cookstoves, reticules full of clothing-the prisoners had laid out
their shackles beside them on this sand. It was Stahr's sea if he wanted it,
or knew what to do with it-only by sufferance did these others wet their
feet and fingers in the wild cool reservoirs of man's world.
Stahr turned off the road by the sea and up a canyon and along a hill
road and the people dropped away. The hill became the outskirts of the city.
Stopping for gasoline he stood beside the car.
"We could have dinner," he said almost anxiously.
"You have work you could do."
"No-I haven't planned anything. Couldn't we have dinner?"
He knew that she had nothing to do either-no planned evening or special
place to go.
She compromised.
"Do you want to get something in that drug store across the street?"
He looked at it tentatively.
"Is that really what you want?"
"I like to eat in American drug stores. It seems so queer and strange."
They sat on high stools and had tomato broth and hot sandwiches. It was
more intimate than anything they had done and they both felt a dangerous
sort of loneliness and felt it in each other. They shared in varied scents
of the drug store, bitter and sweet and sour, and the mystery of the
waitress with only the outer part of her hair dyed and black beneath, and
when it was over, the still life of their empty plates-a sliver of potato, a
sliced pickle and an olive stone.
It was dusk in the street, it seemed nothing to smile at him now when
they got into the car.
"Thank you so much. It's been a nice afternoon."
It was not far from her house. They felt the beginning of the hill and
the louder sound of the car in second was the beginning of the end. Lights
were on in the climbing bungalows-he turned on the headlights of the car.
Stahr felt heavy in the pit of his stomach.
"We'll go out again."
"No," she said quickly as if she had been expecting this. "I'll write
you a letter. I'm sorry I've been so mysterious-it was really a compliment
because I like you so much. You should try not to work so hard. You ought to
marry again."
"Oh, that isn't what you should say," he broke out protestingly. "This
has been you and me today. I may have meant nothing to you-it meant a lot to
me. I'd like time to tell you about it."
But if he were to take time it must be in her house for they were there
and she was shaking her head as the car drew up to the door.
"I must go now. I do have an engagement. I didn't tell you."
"That's not true. But it's all right."
He walked to the door with her and stood in his own footsteps of that
other night while she felt in her bag for the key.
"Have you got it?"
"I've got it," she said.
That was the moment to go in but she wanted to see him once more and
she leaned her head to the left, then to the right trying to catch his face
against the last twilight. She leaned too far and too long and it was
natural when his hand touched the back of her upper arm and shoulder and
pressed her forward into the darkness of his throat. She shut her eyes
feeling the bevel of the key in her tight clutched hand. She said "Oh" in an
expiring sigh and then "Oh" again as he pulled her in close and his chin
pushed her cheek around gently. They were both smiling just faintly and she
was frowning too as the inch between them melted into darkness.
When they were apart she shook her head still but more in wonder than
in denial. It came like this then, it was your own fault, how far back, when
was the moment. It came like this and every instant the burden of tearing
herself away from them together, from it, was heavier and more unimaginable.
He was exultant; she resented and could not blame him but she would not be
part of his exultation for it was a defeat. So far it was a defeat. And then
she thought that if she stopped it being a defeat, broke off and went
inside, it was still not a victory. Then it was just nothing.
"This was not my idea," she said. "Not at all my idea."
"Can I come in?"
"Oh no-no."
"Then let's jump in the car and drive somewhere."
With relief she caught at the exact phrasing-to get away from here
immediately, that was accomplishment or sounded like one-as if she were
fleeing from the spot of a crime. Then they were in the car going down hill
with the breeze cool in their faces and she came slowly to herself. Now it
was all clear in black and white.
"We'll go back to your house on the beach," she said.
"Back there?"
"Yes-we'll go back to your house. Don't let's talk. I just want to
ride."
Section 14 (Part iii)
When they got to the coast again the sky was grey and at Santa Monica a
sudden gust of rain bounced over them. Stahr halted beside the road, put on
a raincoat and lifted the canvas top. "We've got a roof," he said.
The windshield wiper ticked domestically as a grandfather clock. Sullen
cars were leaving the wet beaches and starting back into the city. Further
on they ran into fog-the road lost its boundaries on either side and the
lights of cars coming toward them were stationary until just before they
flared past.
They had left a part of themselves behind, and they felt light and free
in the car. Fog fizzed in at a chink and Kathleen took off the rose-and-blue
hat in a calm, slow way that made him watch tensely, and put it under a
strip of canvas in the back seat. She shook out her hair and, when she saw
that Stahr was looking at her, she smiled.
The trained seal's restaurant was only a sheen of light off toward the
ocean. Stahr cranked down a window and looked for landmarks but after a few
more miles the fog fell away and just ahead of them the road turned off that
led to his house. Out here a moon showed behind the clouds. There was still
a shifting light over the sea.
The house had dissolved a little back into its elements. They found the
dripping beams of a doorway and groped over mysterious waist-high obstacles
to the single finished room, odorous of sawdust and wet wood. When he took
her in his arms they could just see each other's eyes in the half darkness.
Presently his raincoat dropped to the floor.
"Wait," she said.
She needed a minute. She did not see how any good could come from this
and though this did not prevent her from being happy and desirous she needed
a minute to think how it was, to go back an hour and know how it had
happened. She waited in his arms, moving her head a little from side to side
as she had before, only more slowly, and never taking her eyes from his.
Then she discovered that he was trembling.
He discovered it at the same time and his arms relaxed. Immediately she
spoke to him coarsely and provocatively and pulled his face down to hers.
Then, with her knees she struggled out of something, still standing up and
holding him with one arm, and kicked it off beside the coat. He was not
trembling now and he held her again as they knelt down together and slid to
the raincoat on the floor.
Afterwards they lay without speaking and then he was full of such
tender love for her that he held her tight till a stitch tore in her dress.
The small sound brought them to reality.
"I'll help you up," he said, taking her hands.
"Not just yet. I was thinking of something."
She lay in the darkness thinking irrationally that it would be such a
bright, indefatigable baby, but presently she let him help her up.... When
she came back into the room, the room was lit from a single electric
fixture.
"A one-bulb lighting system," he said. "Shall I turn it off?"
"No. It's very nice. I want to see you."
They sat in the wooden frame of the window seat with the soles of shoes
touching.
"You seem far away," she said.
"So do you."
"Are you surprised?"
"At what?"
"That we're two people again. Don't you always think-hope that you'll
be one person and then find you're still two?"
"I feel very close to you."
"So do I to you," she said.
"Thank you."
"Thank you."
They laughed.
"Is this what you wanted?" she asked. "I mean last night."
"Not consciously."
"I wonder when it was settled," she brooded. "There's a moment when you
needn't and then there's another moment when you know nothing in the world
could keep it from happening."
This had an experienced ring and to his surprise he liked her even
more. In his mood which was passionately to repeat yet not recapitulate the
past it was right that it should be that way.
"I am rather a trollop," she said following his thoughts. "I suppose
that's why I didn't get on to Edna."
"Who is Edna?"
"The girl you thought was me. The one you phoned to-who lived across
the road. She's moved to Santa Barbara."
"You mean she was a tart?"
"So it seems. She went to what you call call-houses."
"That's funny."
"If she had been English I'd have known right away. But she seemed like
everyone else. She only told me just before she went away."
He saw her shiver and got up, putting the raincoat around her
shoulders. He opened a closet and a pile of pillows and beach mattresses
fell out on the floor. There was a box of candles and he lit them around the
room, attaching the electric heater where the bulb had been.
"Why was Edna afraid of me?" he asked suddenly.
"Because you were a producer. She had some awful experience or a friend
of hers did. Also I think she was extremely stupid."
"How did you happen to know her?"
"She came over. Maybe she thought I was a fallen sister. She seemed
quite pleasant. She said 'Call me Edna' all the time. 'Please call me
Edna'-so finally I called her Edna and we were friends."
She got off the window seat so he could lay pillows along it and behind
her.
"What can I do?" she said. "I'm a parasite."
"No, you're not." He put his arms around her. "Be still. Get warm."
They sat for a while quiet.
"I know why you liked me at first," she said. "Edna told me."
"What did she tell you?"
"That I looked like-Minna Davis. Several people have told me that."
He leaned away from her and nodded.
"It's here," she said, putting her hands on her cheekbones and
distorting her cheeks slightly. "Here and here."
"Yes," said Stahr. "It was very strange. You look more like she
actually looked than how she was on the screen."
She got up, changing the subject with her gesture as if she were afraid
of it.
"I'm warm now," she said. She went to the closet and peered in, came
back wearing a little apron with a crystalline pattern like a snowfall. She
stared around critically.
"Of course we've just moved in," she said, "-and there's a sort of
echo."
She opened the door of the verandah and pulled in two wicker chairs,
drying them off. He watched her move, intently yet half afraid that her body
would fail somewhere and break the spell. He had watched women in screen
tests and seen their beauty vanish second by second as if a lovely statue
had begun to walk with meagre joints of a paper doll. But Kathleen was
ruggedly set on the balls of her feet-the fragility was, as it should be, an
illusion.
"It's stopped raining," she said. "It rained the day I came. Such an
awful rain-so loud-like horses weeing."
He laughed.
"You'll like it. Especially if you've got to stay here. Are you going
to stay here? Can't you tell me now? What's the mystery?"
She shook her head.
"Not now-it's not worth telling."
"Come here then."
She came over and stood near him and he pressed his cheek against the
cool fabric of the apron.
"You're a tired man," she said putting her hand in his hair.
"Not that way."
"I didn't mean that way," she said hastily. "I meant you'll work
yourself sick."
"Don't be a mother," he said.
"All right. What shall I be?"
Be a trollop, he thought. He wanted the pattern of his life broken. If
he was going to die soon, like the two doctors said, he wanted to stop being
Stahr for a while and hunt for love like men who had no gifts to give, like
young nameless men who looked along the streets in the dark.
"You've taken off my apron," she said gently.
"Yes."
"Would anyone be passing along the beach? Shall we put out the
candles?"
"No, don't put out the candles."
Afterwards she lay half on a white cushion and smiled up at him.
"I feel like Venus on the half shell," she said.
"What made you think of that?"
"Look at me. Isn't it Botticelli?"
"I don't know," he said smiling. "It is if you say so."
She yawned.
"I've had such a good time. And I'm very fond of you."
"You know a lot, don't you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, from little things you've said. Or perhaps the way you say them."
She deliberated.
"Not much," she said. "I never went to a university if that's what you
mean. But the man I told you about knew everything and he had a passion for
educating me. He made out schedules and made me take courses at the Sorbonne
and go to museums. I picked up a little."
"What was he?"
"He was a painter of sorts and a hell-cat. And a lot besides. He wanted
me to read Spengler-everything was for that. All the history and philosphy
and harmony was all so I could read Spengler and then I left him before we
got to Spengler. At the end I think that was the chief reason he didn't want
me to go."
"Who was Spengler?"
"I tell you we didn't get to him," she laughed. "And now I'm forgetting
everything very patiently because it isn't likely I'll ever meet anyone like
him again."
"Oh, but you shouldn't forget it," said Stahr shocked. He had an
intense respect for learning, a racial memory of the old shuls. "You
shouldn't forget."
"It was just in place of babies."
"You could teach your babies," he said.
"Could I?"
"Sure you could. You could give it to them while they were young. When
I want to know anything I've got to ask some drunken writer. Don't throw it
away."
"All right," she said getting up, "I'll tell it to my children. But
it's so endless-the more you know the more there is just beyond and it keeps
on coming. This man could have been anything if he hadn't been a coward and
a fool."
"But you were in love with him."
"Oh yes-with all my heart." She looked through the window, shading her
eyes. "It's light out there. Let's go down to the beach."
He jumped up exclaiming:
"Why, I think it's the grunion!"
"What?"
"It's tonight. It's in all the papers." He hurried out the door and she
heard him open the door of the car. Presently he returned with a newspaper.
"It's at ten-sixteen. That's five minutes."
"An eclipse or something?"
"Very punctual fish," he said. "Leave your shoes and stockings and come
with me."
It was a fine blue night. The tide was at the turn and the little
silver fish rocked off shore waiting for 10: 16. A few seconds after the
time they came swarming in with the tide and Stahr and Kathleen stepped over
them barefoot as they flicked slip-slop in the sand. A Negro man came along
the shore toward them collecting the grunion quickly like twigs into two
pails. They came in twos and threes and platoons and companies, relentless
and exalted and scornful around the great bare feet of the intruders, as
they had come before Sir Francis Drake had nailed his plaque to the boulder
on the shore.
"I wish for another pail," the Negro man said, resting a moment.
"You've come a long way out," said Stahr.
"I used to go to Malibu but they don't like it those moving picture
people. "
A wave came in and forced them back, receded swiftly leaving the sand
alive again.
"Is it worth the trip?" Stahr asked.
"I don't figure it that way. I really come out to read some Emerson.
Have you ever read him?"
"I have," said Kathleen. "Some."
"I've got him inside my shirt. I got some Rosicrucian literature with
me too but I'm fed up with them."
The wind had changed a little-the waves were stronger further down and
they walked along the foaming edge of the water.
"What's your work?" the Negro asked Stahr.
"I work for the pictures."
"Oh." After a moment he added, "I never go to movies."
"Why not?" asked Stahr sharply.
"There's no profit. I never let my children go."
Stahr watched him and Kathleen watched Stahr protectively.
"Some of them are good," she said, against a wave of spray, but he did
not hear her. She felt she could contradict him and said it again and this
time he looked at her indifferently.
"Are the Rosicrucian brotherhood against pictures?" asked Stahr.
"Seems as if they don't know what they are for. One week they for one
thing and next week for another."
Only the little fish were certain. Half an hour had gone and still they
came. The Negro's two pails were full and finally he went off over the beach
toward the road, unaware that he had rocked an industry.
Stahr and Kathleen walked back to the house and she thought how to
drive his momentary blues away.
"Poor old Sambo," she said.
"What?"
"Don't you call them poor old Sambo?"
"We don't call them anything especially." After a moment he said, "They
have pictures of their own."
In the house she drew on her shoes and stockings before the heater.
"I like California better," she said deliberately. "I think I was a bit
sex-starved."
"That wasn't quite all was it?"
"You know it wasn't."
"It's nice to be near you."
She gave a little sigh as she stood up so small that he did not notice
it.
"I don't want to lose you now," he said. "I don't know what you think
of me or whether you think of me at all. As you've probably guessed my
heart's in the grave-" He hesitated, wondering if this was quite true, "-but
you're the most attractive woman I've met since I don't know when. I can't
stop looking at you. I don't know now exactly the color of your eyes but
they make me sorry for everyone in the world-"
"Stop it, stop it!" she cried laughing. "You'll have me looking in the
mirror for weeks. My eyes aren't any color-they're just eyes to see with and
I'm just as ordinary as I can be. I have nice teeth for an English girl-"
"You have beautiful teeth."
"-but I couldn't hold a candle to these girls I see here-" "You stop
it," he said. "What I said is true and I'm a cautious man."
She stood motionless a moment-thinking. She looked at him, then she
looked back into herself, then at him again-then she gave up her thought.
"We must go," she said.
Now they were different people as they started back. Four times they
had driven along the shore road today, each time a different pair.
Curiosity, sadness and desire were behind them now; this was a true
returning-to themselves and all their past and future and the encroaching
presence of tomorrow. He asked her to sit close in the car and she did but
they did not seem close because for that you have to seem to be growing
closer. Nothing stands still. It was on his tongue to ask her to come to the
house he rented and sleep there tonight-but he felt that it would make him
sound lonely. As the car climbed the hill to her house Kathleen looked for
something behind the seat cushion. "What have you lost?"
"It might have fallen out," she said, feeling through her purse in the
darkness. "What was it?" "An envelope." "Was it important?" "No."
But when they got to her house and Stahr turned on the dashboard light
she helped take the cushions out and look again.
"It doesn't matter," she said as they walked to the door. "What's your
address where you really live?" "Just Bel-Air. There's no number. " "Where
is Bel-Air?"
"It's a sort of development near Santa Monica. But you'd better call me
at the studio."
"All right... good night, Mr. Stahr." " Mister Stahr," he repeated,
astonished. She corrected herself gently. "Well then, good night, Stahr. Is
that better?" He felt as though he had been pushed away a little. "As you
like," he said. He refused to let the aloofness communicate itself. He kept
looking at her and moved his head from side to side in her own gesture,
saying without words "you know what's happened to me." She sighed. Then she
came into his arms and for a moment was his again completely. Before
anything could change Stahr whispered good night and turned away and went to
his car.
Winding down the hill he listened inside himself as if something by an
unknown composer, powerful and strange and strong, was about to be played
for the first time. The theme would be stated presently but because the
composer was always new, he would not recognize it as the theme right away.
It would come in some such guise as the auto-horns from the technicolor
boulevards below or be barely audible, a tattoo on the muffled drum of the
moon. He strained to hear it, knowing only that music was beginning, new
music that he liked and did not understand. It was hard to react to what one
could entirely compass-this was new and confusing, nothing one could shut
off in the middle and supply the rest from an old score.
Also, and persistently, and bound up with the other, there was the
Negro on the sand. He was waiting at home for Stahr with his pails of silver
fish, and he would be waiting at the studio in the morning. He had said that
he did not allow his children to listen to Stahr's story. He was prejudiced
and wrong and he must be shown somehow, some way. A picture, many pictures,
a decade of pictures, must be made to show him he was wrong. Since he had
spoken, Stahr had thrown four pictures out of his plans-one that was going
into production this week. They were borderline pictures in point of
interest but at least he submitted the borderline pictures to the Negro and
found them trash. And he put back on his list a difficult picture that he
had tossed to the wolves, to Brady and Marcus and the rest, to get his way
on something else. He rescued it for the Negro man.
When he drove up to his door the porch lights went on and his Filipino
came down the steps to put away the car. In the library Stahr found a list
of phone calls.
La Borwits
Marcus
Harlow
Rienmund
Fairbanks
Brady
Colman
Skouras
Flieshacker
The Filipino came into the room with a letter. "This fell out of the
car," he said.
"Thanks," said Stahr, "I was looking for it."
"Will you be running a picture tonight, Mr. Stahr?"
"No thanks-you can go to bed."
The letter, to his surprise, was addressed to Monroe Stahr, Esq. He
started to open it-then it occurred to him that she had wanted to recapture
it, and possibly to withdraw it. If she had had a phone he would have called
her for permission before opening it. He held it for a moment. It had been
written before they met-it was odd to think that whatever it said was now
invalidated; it possessed the interest of a souvenir by representing a mood
that was gone.
Still he did not like to read it without asking her. He put it down
beside a pile of scripts and sat down with the top script in his lap. He was
proud of resisting his first impulse to open the letter. It seemed to prove
that he was not "losing his head." He had never lost his head about Minna
even in the beginning-it had been the most appropriate and regal match
imaginable. She had loved him always and just before she died all unwilling
and surprised his tenderness had burst and surged toward her and he had been
in love with her. In love with Minna and death together-with the world into
which she looked so alone that he wanted to go with her there.
But "falling for dames" had never been an obsession-his brother had
gone to pieces over a dame, or rather over dame after dame after dame. But
Stahr, in his younger days, had them once and never more than once-like one
drink. He had quite another sort of adventure reserved for his
mind-something better than a series of emotional sprees. Like many brilliant
men he had grown up dead cold. Beginning at about twelve probably with the
total rejection common to those of extraordinary mental powers, the "see
here-this is all wrong-a mess-all a lie-and a sham-" he swept it all away,
everything, as men of his type do and then instead of being a son-of-a-bitch
as most of them are he looked around at the barrenness that was left and
said to himself "This will never do." And so he had learned tolerance,
kindness, forbearance, and even affection like lessons.
The Filipino boy brought in a carafe of water and bowls of nuts and
fruit and said good night. Stahr opened the first script and began to read.
He read for three hours-stopping from time to time, editing without a
pencil. Sometimes he looked up, warm from some vague happy thought that was
not in the script, and it took him a minute each time to remember what it
was. Then he knew it was Kathleen and looked at the letter-it was nice to
have a letter.
It was three o'clock when a vein began to bump in the back of his hand
signalling that it was time to quit. Kathleen was really far away now with
the waning night-the different aspects of her telescoped into the memory of
a single thrilling stranger bound to him only by a few slender hours. It
seemed perfectly all right to open the letter.
Dear Mr. Stahr:
In half an hour I will be keeping my date with you. When we say good
bye I will hand you this letter. It is to tell you that I am to be married
soon and that I won't be able to see you after today.
I should have told you last night but it didn't seem to concern you.
And it would seem silly to spend this beautiful afternoon telling you about
it and watching your interest fade. Let it fade all at once-now. I will have
told you enough to convince you that I am Nobody's Prize Potato. (I have]
just learned that expression-from my hostess of last night who called and
stayed an hour. She seems to believe that everyone is Nobody's Prize
Potato-except you. I think I am supposed to tell you she thinks this, so
give her a job if you can.)
I am very flattered that anyone who sees so many lovely women I can't
finish this sentence but you know what I mean. And I will be late if I don't
go to meet you right now.
With All Good Wishes Kathleen Moore.
Stahr's first feeling was like fear; his first thought was that the
letter was invalidated-she had even tried to retrieve it. But then he
remembered "Mister Stahr" just at the end, and that she had asked him his
address-she had probably already written him another letter, which would
also say good bye. Illogically he was shocked by the letter's indifference
to what had happened later. He read it again realizing that it foresaw
nothing. Yet in front of the house she had decided to let it stand,
belittling everything that had happened, curving her mind away from the fact
that there had been no other man in her consciousness that afternoon. But he
could not even believe this now and the whole adventure began to peel away
even as he recapitulated it searchingly to himself. The car, the hill, the
hat, the music, the letter itself blew off like the scraps of tar paper from
the rubble of his house. And Kathleen departed, packing up her remembered
gestures, her softly moving head, her sturdy eager body, her bare feet in
the wet swirling sand. The skies paled and faded-the wind and rain turned
dreary, washing the silver fish back to sea. It was only one more day, and
nothing was left except the pile of scripts upon the table.
He went upstairs. Minna died again on the first landing and he forgot
her lingeringly and miserably again, step by step to the top. The empty
floor stretched around him-the doors with no one sleeping behind. In his
room Stahr took off his tie, untied his shoes and sat on the side of his
bed. It was all closed out except for something that he could not remember;
then he remembered, her car was still down in the parking lot of the hotel.
He set his clock to give him six hours' sleep.
Section 15 (first part)
This is Cecelia taking up the story. I think it would be most
interesting to follow my own movements at this point, as this is a time in
my life that I am ashamed of. What people are ashamed of usually makes a
good story.
When I sent Wylie White over to Martha Dodd's table he had no success
in finding out who the girl was, but it had suddenly become my chief
interest in life. Also I guessed-correctly-that it would be Martha Dodd's:
to have had at your table a girl who is admired by royalty, who may be
tagged for a coronet in our little feudal system-and not even know her name.
I had only a speaking acquaintance with Martha and it would be too
obvious to approach her directly, but I went out to the studio Monday and
dropped in on Rose Meloney.
Rose Meloney was quite a friend of mine. I thought of her rather as a
child thinks of a family dependent. I knew she was a writer but I grew up
thinking that writer and secretary were the same except that a writer
usually smelled of cocktails and came more often to meals. They were spoken
of the same way when they were not around-except for a species called
playwrights who came from the East. These were treated with respect if they
did not stay long-if they did they sank with the others into the white
collar class.
Rose's office was in the "old writers' building." There was one on
every lot, a row of iron maidens left over from silent days and still
resounding the dull moans of cloistered hacks and bums. There was the story
of the new producer who had gone down the line one day and then reported
excitedly to the head office.
"Who are those men?"
"They're supposed to be writers."
"I thought so. Well, I watched them for ten minutes and there were two
of them that didn't write a line."
Rose was at her typewriter about to break off for lunch. I told her
frankly that I had a rival.
"It's a dark horse," I said. "I can't even find out her name."
"Oh," said Rose. "Well, maybe I know something about that. I heard
something from somebody."
The somebody, of course, was her nephew Ned Sollinger, Stahr's office
boy. He had been her pride and hope. She had sent him through New York
University where he played on the football team. Then in his first year at
medical school after a girl turned him down he dissected out the least
publicized section of a lady corpse and sent it to the girl. Don't ask me
why. In disgrace with fortune and men's eyes he had begun life at the bottom
again, and was still there.
"What do you know?" I asked.
"It was the night of the earthquake. She fell into the lake on the back
lot and he dove in and saved her life. Someone else told me it was his
balcony she jumped off of and broke her arm."
"Who was she?"
"Well, that's funny too-"
Her phone rang and I waited restlessly during a long conversation she
had with Joe Rienmund. He seemed to be trying to find out over the phone how
good she was or whether she had ever written any pictures at all. And she
was reputed to have been on the set the day Griffith invented the close-up!
While he talked she groaned silently, writhed, made faces into the receiver,
held it all in her lap so that the voice reached her faintly-and kept up a
side chatter to me.
"What is he doing-killing time between appointments?... He's asked me
every one of these questions ten times... that's all on a memorandum I sent
him...."
And into the phone: "If this goes up to Monroe it won't be my doing. I
want to go right through to the end."
She shut her eyes in agony again.
"Now he's casting it... he's casting the minor characters... he's going
to have Buddy Ebsen.... My God he just hasn't anything to do... now he's on
Harry Davenport-he means Donald Crisp... he's got a big casting directory
open in his lap and I can hear him turn the pages... he's a big important
man this morning, a second Stahr, and for Christ sake I've got two scenes to
do before lunch."
Rienmund quit finally or was interrupted at his end. A waiter came in
from the commissary with Rose's luncheon and a Coca-Cola for me-I wasn't
lunching that summer. Rose wrote down one sentence on her typewriter before
she ate. It interested me the way she wrote. One day I was there when she
and a young man had just lifted a story out of "The Saturday Evening
Post"-changing the characters and all. Then they began to write it making
each line answer the line before it, and of course it sounded just like
people do in life when they're straining to be anything-funny or gentle or
brave. I always wanted to see that one on the screen but I missed it
somehow.
I found her as lovable as a cheap old toy. She made three thousand a
week, and her husbands all drank and beat her nearly to death. But today I
had an axe to grind.
"You don't know her name?" I persisted.
"Oh-" said Rose "-that. Well, he kept calling her up afterwards and he
told Katy Doolan it was the wrong name after all."
"I think he found her," I said. "Do you know Martha Dodd?"
"Hasn't that little girl had a tough break though!" she exclaimed
with ready theatrical sympathy.
"Could you possibly invite her to lunch tomorrow?"
"Oh, I think she gets enough to eat all right. There's a Mexican-"
I explained that my motives were not charitable. Rose agreed to
cooperate. She called Martha Dodd.
15 (second part)
We had lunch next day at the Bev Brown Derby, a languid restaurant
patronized for its food by clients who always look as if they'd like to lie
down. There is some animation at lunch where the women put on a show for the
first five minutes after they eat but we were a tepid threesome. I should
have come right out with my curiosity. Martha Dodd was an agricultural girl
who had never quite understood what had happened to her and had nothing to
show for it except a washed out look about the eyes. She still believed that
the life she had tasted was reality and this was only a long waiting.
"I had a beautiful place in 1928," she told us. "Thirty acres, with a
miniature golf course and a pool and a gorgeous view. All spring I was up to
my ass in daisies."
I ended by asking her to come over and meet Father. This was pure
penance for having had "a mixed motive" and being ashamed of it. One doesn't
mix motives in Hollywood-it is confusing. Everybody understands, and the
climate wears you down. A mixed motive is conspicuous waste.
Rose left us at the studio gate, disgusted by my cowardice. Martha had
worked up inside to a pitch about her career-not a very high pitch because
of seven years of neglect but a sort of nervous acquiescence and I was going
to speak strongly to Father. They never did anything for people like Martha
who had made them so much money at one time. They let them slip away into
misery eked out with extra work-it would have been kinder to ship them out
of town. And Father was being so proud of me this summer. I had to keep him
from telling everybody) just how I was brought up to produce such a perfect
jewel. And Bennington-oh what an exclusive-dear God my heart. I assured him
there was the usual proportion of natural born skivies and biddies
tastefully concealed by throw overs from Sex, Fifth Avenue; but Father had
worked himself up to practically an alumnus. "You've had everything," he
used to say happily. Everything included roughly the two years in Florence
where I managed against heavy odds to be the only virgin in school, and the
courtesy debut in Boston, Massachusetts. I was a veritable flower of the
fine old cost-and-gross aristocracy.
So I knew he would do something for Martha Dodd and as we went into his
office I had great dreams of doing something for Johnny Swanson the cowboy
too and Evelyn Brent and all sorts of discarded flowers. Father was a
charming and sympathetic man-except for that time I had seen him
unexpectedly in New York-and there was something touching about his being my
father. After all he was my father-he would do anything in the world for me.
Only Rosemary Schmiel was in the outer office and she was on Birdy
Peters' phone. She waved for me to sit down but I was full of my plans and
telling Martha to take it easy I pressed the clicker under Rosemary's desk
and went toward the opened door.
"Your father's in conference," Rosemary called. "Not in conference but
I ought to-"
By this time I was through the door and a little vestibule and another
door and caught Father in his shirt sleeves, very sweaty and trying to open
a window. It was a hot day but I hadn't realized it was that hot and thought
he was ill.
"No, I'm all right," he said. "What is it?"
I told him. I told him the whole theory of people like Martha Dodd,
walking up and down his office. How he could use them and guarantee them
regular employment. He seemed to take me up excitedly and kept nodding and
agreeing, and I felt closer to him than I had for a long time. I came close
and kissed him on his cheek. He was trembling and his shirt was soaked
through.
"You're not well," I said. "Or you're in some sort of stew."
"No, I'm not at all."
"What is it?"
"Oh it's Monroe," he said. "That God damn little Vine Street Jesus!
He's in my hair night and day!"
"What's happened?" I asked, very much cooler.
"Oh, he sits like a little God damn priest or rabbi and says what he'll
do and he won't do. I can't tell you now-I'm half crazy. Why don't you go
along."
"I won't have you like this."
"Go along I tell you!" I sniffed but he never drank.
"Go and brush your hair," I said. "I want you to see Martha Dodd."
"In here! I'd never get rid of her."
"Out there then. Go wash up first. Put on another shirt."
With an exaggerated gesture of despair he went into the little bathroom
adjoining. It was hot in the office as if it had been closed for hours and
maybe that was making him sick so I opened two more windows.
"You go along," Father called from behind the closed door of the
bathroom. "I'll be there presently."
"Be awfully nice to her," I said. "No charity."
As if it were Martha speaking for herself a long low moan came from
somewhere in the room. I was startled-then transfixed as it came again not
from the bathroom where Father was, not from outside but from a closet in
voice:
"This is no phoney, Monroe. It can talk and it's a dead ringer for
McKinley. Mr. Horace Wickersham is with me here with a picture of McKinley
in his hand-"
Stahr listened patiently.
"We've got a chimp," he said after a minute. "He bit a chunk out of
John Gilbert last year.... All right, put him on again."
He spoke formally as if to a child.
"Hello Orang-outang."
His face changed and he turned to Kathleen.
"He said hello."
"Ask him his name," suggested Kathleen.
"Hello Orang-outang-God, what a thing to be!-Do you know your name?...
He doesn't seem to know his name.... Listen, Lew. We're not making anything
like 'King Kong' and there is no monkey in 'The Hairy Ape.'... Of course I'm
sure. I'm sorry, Lew, good bye. "
He was annoyed with Lew because he had thought it was the President and
changed his manner acting as if it were. He felt a little ridiculous but
Kathleen felt sorry and liked him better because it had been an
orang-outang.
Section 14 (2nd part)
They started back along the shore with the sun behind them. The house
seemed kindlier when they left it, as if warmed by their visit-the hard
glitter of the place was more endurable if they were not bound there like
people on the shiny surface of a moon. Looking back from a curve of the
shore, they saw the sky growing pink behind the indecisive structure and the
point of land seemed a friendly island, not without promise of fine hours on
a further day.
Past Malibu with its gaudy shacks and fishing barges they came into the
range of human kind again, the cars stacked and piled along the road, the
beaches like ant hills without a pattern, save for the dark drowned heads
that sprinkled the sea.
Goods from the city were increasing in sight-blankets, matting,
umbrellas, cookstoves, reticules full of clothing-the prisoners had laid out
their shackles beside them on this sand. It was Stahr's sea if he wanted it,
or knew what to do with it-only by sufferance did these others wet their
feet and fingers in the wild cool reservoirs of man's world.
Stahr turned off the road by the sea and up a canyon and along a hill
road and the people dropped away. The hill became the outskirts of the city.
Stopping for gasoline he stood beside the car.
"We could have dinner," he said almost anxiously.
"You have work you could do."
"No-I haven't planned anything. Couldn't we have dinner?"
He knew that she had nothing to do either-no planned evening or special
place to go.
She compromised.
"Do you want to get something in that drug store across the street?"
He looked at it tentatively.
"Is that really what you want?"
"I like to eat in American drug stores. It seems so queer and strange."
They sat on high stools and had tomato broth and hot sandwiches. It was
more intimate than anything they had done and they both felt a dangerous
sort of loneliness and felt it in each other. They shared in varied scents
of the drug store, bitter and sweet and sour, and the mystery of the
waitress with only the outer part of her hair dyed and black beneath, and
when it was over, the still life of their empty plates-a sliver of potato, a
sliced pickle and an olive stone.
It was dusk in the street, it seemed nothing to smile at him now when
they got into the car.
"Thank you so much. It's been a nice afternoon."
It was not far from her house. They felt the beginning of the hill and
the louder sound of the car in second was the beginning of the end. Lights
were on in the climbing bungalows-he turned on the headlights of the car.
Stahr felt heavy in the pit of his stomach.
"We'll go out again."
"No," she said quickly as if she had been expecting this. "I'll write
you a letter. I'm sorry I've been so mysterious-it was really a compliment
because I like you so much. You should try not to work so hard. You ought to
marry again."
"Oh, that isn't what you should say," he broke out protestingly. "This
has been you and me today. I may have meant nothing to you-it meant a lot to
me. I'd like time to tell you about it."
But if he were to take time it must be in her house for they were there
and she was shaking her head as the car drew up to the door.
"I must go now. I do have an engagement. I didn't tell you."
"That's not true. But it's all right."
He walked to the door with her and stood in his own footsteps of that
other night while she felt in her bag for the key.
"Have you got it?"
"I've got it," she said.
That was the moment to go in but she wanted to see him once more and
she leaned her head to the left, then to the right trying to catch his face
against the last twilight. She leaned too far and too long and it was
natural when his hand touched the back of her upper arm and shoulder and
pressed her forward into the darkness of his throat. She shut her eyes
feeling the bevel of the key in her tight clutched hand. She said "Oh" in an
expiring sigh and then "Oh" again as he pulled her in close and his chin
pushed her cheek around gently. They were both smiling just faintly and she
was frowning too as the inch between them melted into darkness.
When they were apart she shook her head still but more in wonder than
in denial. It came like this then, it was your own fault, how far back, when
was the moment. It came like this and every instant the burden of tearing
herself away from them together, from it, was heavier and more unimaginable.
He was exultant; she resented and could not blame him but she would not be
part of his exultation for it was a defeat. So far it was a defeat. And then
she thought that if she stopped it being a defeat, broke off and went
inside, it was still not a victory. Then it was just nothing.
"This was not my idea," she said. "Not at all my idea."
"Can I come in?"
"Oh no-no."
"Then let's jump in the car and drive somewhere."
With relief she caught at the exact phrasing-to get away from here
immediately, that was accomplishment or sounded like one-as if she were
fleeing from the spot of a crime. Then they were in the car going down hill
with the breeze cool in their faces and she came slowly to herself. Now it
was all clear in black and white.
"We'll go back to your house on the beach," she said.
"Back there?"
"Yes-we'll go back to your house. Don't let's talk. I just want to
ride."
Section 14 (Part iii)
When they got to the coast again the sky was grey and at Santa Monica a
sudden gust of rain bounced over them. Stahr halted beside the road, put on
a raincoat and lifted the canvas top. "We've got a roof," he said.
The windshield wiper ticked domestically as a grandfather clock. Sullen
cars were leaving the wet beaches and starting back into the city. Further
on they ran into fog-the road lost its boundaries on either side and the
lights of cars coming toward them were stationary until just before they
flared past.
They had left a part of themselves behind, and they felt light and free
in the car. Fog fizzed in at a chink and Kathleen took off the rose-and-blue
hat in a calm, slow way that made him watch tensely, and put it under a
strip of canvas in the back seat. She shook out her hair and, when she saw
that Stahr was looking at her, she smiled.
The trained seal's restaurant was only a sheen of light off toward the
ocean. Stahr cranked down a window and looked for landmarks but after a few
more miles the fog fell away and just ahead of them the road turned off that
led to his house. Out here a moon showed behind the clouds. There was still
a shifting light over the sea.
The house had dissolved a little back into its elements. They found the
dripping beams of a doorway and groped over mysterious waist-high obstacles
to the single finished room, odorous of sawdust and wet wood. When he took
her in his arms they could just see each other's eyes in the half darkness.
Presently his raincoat dropped to the floor.
"Wait," she said.
She needed a minute. She did not see how any good could come from this
and though this did not prevent her from being happy and desirous she needed
a minute to think how it was, to go back an hour and know how it had
happened. She waited in his arms, moving her head a little from side to side
as she had before, only more slowly, and never taking her eyes from his.
Then she discovered that he was trembling.
He discovered it at the same time and his arms relaxed. Immediately she
spoke to him coarsely and provocatively and pulled his face down to hers.
Then, with her knees she struggled out of something, still standing up and
holding him with one arm, and kicked it off beside the coat. He was not
trembling now and he held her again as they knelt down together and slid to
the raincoat on the floor.
Afterwards they lay without speaking and then he was full of such
tender love for her that he held her tight till a stitch tore in her dress.
The small sound brought them to reality.
"I'll help you up," he said, taking her hands.
"Not just yet. I was thinking of something."
She lay in the darkness thinking irrationally that it would be such a
bright, indefatigable baby, but presently she let him help her up.... When
she came back into the room, the room was lit from a single electric
fixture.
"A one-bulb lighting system," he said. "Shall I turn it off?"
"No. It's very nice. I want to see you."
They sat in the wooden frame of the window seat with the soles of shoes
touching.
"You seem far away," she said.
"So do you."
"Are you surprised?"
"At what?"
"That we're two people again. Don't you always think-hope that you'll
be one person and then find you're still two?"
"I feel very close to you."
"So do I to you," she said.
"Thank you."
"Thank you."
They laughed.
"Is this what you wanted?" she asked. "I mean last night."
"Not consciously."
"I wonder when it was settled," she brooded. "There's a moment when you
needn't and then there's another moment when you know nothing in the world
could keep it from happening."
This had an experienced ring and to his surprise he liked her even
more. In his mood which was passionately to repeat yet not recapitulate the
past it was right that it should be that way.
"I am rather a trollop," she said following his thoughts. "I suppose
that's why I didn't get on to Edna."
"Who is Edna?"
"The girl you thought was me. The one you phoned to-who lived across
the road. She's moved to Santa Barbara."
"You mean she was a tart?"
"So it seems. She went to what you call call-houses."
"That's funny."
"If she had been English I'd have known right away. But she seemed like
everyone else. She only told me just before she went away."
He saw her shiver and got up, putting the raincoat around her
shoulders. He opened a closet and a pile of pillows and beach mattresses
fell out on the floor. There was a box of candles and he lit them around the
room, attaching the electric heater where the bulb had been.
"Why was Edna afraid of me?" he asked suddenly.
"Because you were a producer. She had some awful experience or a friend
of hers did. Also I think she was extremely stupid."
"How did you happen to know her?"
"She came over. Maybe she thought I was a fallen sister. She seemed
quite pleasant. She said 'Call me Edna' all the time. 'Please call me
Edna'-so finally I called her Edna and we were friends."
She got off the window seat so he could lay pillows along it and behind
her.
"What can I do?" she said. "I'm a parasite."
"No, you're not." He put his arms around her. "Be still. Get warm."
They sat for a while quiet.
"I know why you liked me at first," she said. "Edna told me."
"What did she tell you?"
"That I looked like-Minna Davis. Several people have told me that."
He leaned away from her and nodded.
"It's here," she said, putting her hands on her cheekbones and
distorting her cheeks slightly. "Here and here."
"Yes," said Stahr. "It was very strange. You look more like she
actually looked than how she was on the screen."
She got up, changing the subject with her gesture as if she were afraid
of it.
"I'm warm now," she said. She went to the closet and peered in, came
back wearing a little apron with a crystalline pattern like a snowfall. She
stared around critically.
"Of course we've just moved in," she said, "-and there's a sort of
echo."
She opened the door of the verandah and pulled in two wicker chairs,
drying them off. He watched her move, intently yet half afraid that her body
would fail somewhere and break the spell. He had watched women in screen
tests and seen their beauty vanish second by second as if a lovely statue
had begun to walk with meagre joints of a paper doll. But Kathleen was
ruggedly set on the balls of her feet-the fragility was, as it should be, an
illusion.
"It's stopped raining," she said. "It rained the day I came. Such an
awful rain-so loud-like horses weeing."
He laughed.
"You'll like it. Especially if you've got to stay here. Are you going
to stay here? Can't you tell me now? What's the mystery?"
She shook her head.
"Not now-it's not worth telling."
"Come here then."
She came over and stood near him and he pressed his cheek against the
cool fabric of the apron.
"You're a tired man," she said putting her hand in his hair.
"Not that way."
"I didn't mean that way," she said hastily. "I meant you'll work
yourself sick."
"Don't be a mother," he said.
"All right. What shall I be?"
Be a trollop, he thought. He wanted the pattern of his life broken. If
he was going to die soon, like the two doctors said, he wanted to stop being
Stahr for a while and hunt for love like men who had no gifts to give, like
young nameless men who looked along the streets in the dark.
"You've taken off my apron," she said gently.
"Yes."
"Would anyone be passing along the beach? Shall we put out the
candles?"
"No, don't put out the candles."
Afterwards she lay half on a white cushion and smiled up at him.
"I feel like Venus on the half shell," she said.
"What made you think of that?"
"Look at me. Isn't it Botticelli?"
"I don't know," he said smiling. "It is if you say so."
She yawned.
"I've had such a good time. And I'm very fond of you."
"You know a lot, don't you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, from little things you've said. Or perhaps the way you say them."
She deliberated.
"Not much," she said. "I never went to a university if that's what you
mean. But the man I told you about knew everything and he had a passion for
educating me. He made out schedules and made me take courses at the Sorbonne
and go to museums. I picked up a little."
"What was he?"
"He was a painter of sorts and a hell-cat. And a lot besides. He wanted
me to read Spengler-everything was for that. All the history and philosphy
and harmony was all so I could read Spengler and then I left him before we
got to Spengler. At the end I think that was the chief reason he didn't want
me to go."
"Who was Spengler?"
"I tell you we didn't get to him," she laughed. "And now I'm forgetting
everything very patiently because it isn't likely I'll ever meet anyone like
him again."
"Oh, but you shouldn't forget it," said Stahr shocked. He had an
intense respect for learning, a racial memory of the old shuls. "You
shouldn't forget."
"It was just in place of babies."
"You could teach your babies," he said.
"Could I?"
"Sure you could. You could give it to them while they were young. When
I want to know anything I've got to ask some drunken writer. Don't throw it
away."
"All right," she said getting up, "I'll tell it to my children. But
it's so endless-the more you know the more there is just beyond and it keeps
on coming. This man could have been anything if he hadn't been a coward and
a fool."
"But you were in love with him."
"Oh yes-with all my heart." She looked through the window, shading her
eyes. "It's light out there. Let's go down to the beach."
He jumped up exclaiming:
"Why, I think it's the grunion!"
"What?"
"It's tonight. It's in all the papers." He hurried out the door and she
heard him open the door of the car. Presently he returned with a newspaper.
"It's at ten-sixteen. That's five minutes."
"An eclipse or something?"
"Very punctual fish," he said. "Leave your shoes and stockings and come
with me."
It was a fine blue night. The tide was at the turn and the little
silver fish rocked off shore waiting for 10: 16. A few seconds after the
time they came swarming in with the tide and Stahr and Kathleen stepped over
them barefoot as they flicked slip-slop in the sand. A Negro man came along
the shore toward them collecting the grunion quickly like twigs into two
pails. They came in twos and threes and platoons and companies, relentless
and exalted and scornful around the great bare feet of the intruders, as
they had come before Sir Francis Drake had nailed his plaque to the boulder
on the shore.
"I wish for another pail," the Negro man said, resting a moment.
"You've come a long way out," said Stahr.
"I used to go to Malibu but they don't like it those moving picture
people. "
A wave came in and forced them back, receded swiftly leaving the sand
alive again.
"Is it worth the trip?" Stahr asked.
"I don't figure it that way. I really come out to read some Emerson.
Have you ever read him?"
"I have," said Kathleen. "Some."
"I've got him inside my shirt. I got some Rosicrucian literature with
me too but I'm fed up with them."
The wind had changed a little-the waves were stronger further down and
they walked along the foaming edge of the water.
"What's your work?" the Negro asked Stahr.
"I work for the pictures."
"Oh." After a moment he added, "I never go to movies."
"Why not?" asked Stahr sharply.
"There's no profit. I never let my children go."
Stahr watched him and Kathleen watched Stahr protectively.
"Some of them are good," she said, against a wave of spray, but he did
not hear her. She felt she could contradict him and said it again and this
time he looked at her indifferently.
"Are the Rosicrucian brotherhood against pictures?" asked Stahr.
"Seems as if they don't know what they are for. One week they for one
thing and next week for another."
Only the little fish were certain. Half an hour had gone and still they
came. The Negro's two pails were full and finally he went off over the beach
toward the road, unaware that he had rocked an industry.
Stahr and Kathleen walked back to the house and she thought how to
drive his momentary blues away.
"Poor old Sambo," she said.
"What?"
"Don't you call them poor old Sambo?"
"We don't call them anything especially." After a moment he said, "They
have pictures of their own."
In the house she drew on her shoes and stockings before the heater.
"I like California better," she said deliberately. "I think I was a bit
sex-starved."
"That wasn't quite all was it?"
"You know it wasn't."
"It's nice to be near you."
She gave a little sigh as she stood up so small that he did not notice
it.
"I don't want to lose you now," he said. "I don't know what you think
of me or whether you think of me at all. As you've probably guessed my
heart's in the grave-" He hesitated, wondering if this was quite true, "-but
you're the most attractive woman I've met since I don't know when. I can't
stop looking at you. I don't know now exactly the color of your eyes but
they make me sorry for everyone in the world-"
"Stop it, stop it!" she cried laughing. "You'll have me looking in the
mirror for weeks. My eyes aren't any color-they're just eyes to see with and
I'm just as ordinary as I can be. I have nice teeth for an English girl-"
"You have beautiful teeth."
"-but I couldn't hold a candle to these girls I see here-" "You stop
it," he said. "What I said is true and I'm a cautious man."
She stood motionless a moment-thinking. She looked at him, then she
looked back into herself, then at him again-then she gave up her thought.
"We must go," she said.
Now they were different people as they started back. Four times they
had driven along the shore road today, each time a different pair.
Curiosity, sadness and desire were behind them now; this was a true
returning-to themselves and all their past and future and the encroaching
presence of tomorrow. He asked her to sit close in the car and she did but
they did not seem close because for that you have to seem to be growing
closer. Nothing stands still. It was on his tongue to ask her to come to the
house he rented and sleep there tonight-but he felt that it would make him
sound lonely. As the car climbed the hill to her house Kathleen looked for
something behind the seat cushion. "What have you lost?"
"It might have fallen out," she said, feeling through her purse in the
darkness. "What was it?" "An envelope." "Was it important?" "No."
But when they got to her house and Stahr turned on the dashboard light
she helped take the cushions out and look again.
"It doesn't matter," she said as they walked to the door. "What's your
address where you really live?" "Just Bel-Air. There's no number. " "Where
is Bel-Air?"
"It's a sort of development near Santa Monica. But you'd better call me
at the studio."
"All right... good night, Mr. Stahr." " Mister Stahr," he repeated,
astonished. She corrected herself gently. "Well then, good night, Stahr. Is
that better?" He felt as though he had been pushed away a little. "As you
like," he said. He refused to let the aloofness communicate itself. He kept
looking at her and moved his head from side to side in her own gesture,
saying without words "you know what's happened to me." She sighed. Then she
came into his arms and for a moment was his again completely. Before
anything could change Stahr whispered good night and turned away and went to
his car.
Winding down the hill he listened inside himself as if something by an
unknown composer, powerful and strange and strong, was about to be played
for the first time. The theme would be stated presently but because the
composer was always new, he would not recognize it as the theme right away.
It would come in some such guise as the auto-horns from the technicolor
boulevards below or be barely audible, a tattoo on the muffled drum of the
moon. He strained to hear it, knowing only that music was beginning, new
music that he liked and did not understand. It was hard to react to what one
could entirely compass-this was new and confusing, nothing one could shut
off in the middle and supply the rest from an old score.
Also, and persistently, and bound up with the other, there was the
Negro on the sand. He was waiting at home for Stahr with his pails of silver
fish, and he would be waiting at the studio in the morning. He had said that
he did not allow his children to listen to Stahr's story. He was prejudiced
and wrong and he must be shown somehow, some way. A picture, many pictures,
a decade of pictures, must be made to show him he was wrong. Since he had
spoken, Stahr had thrown four pictures out of his plans-one that was going
into production this week. They were borderline pictures in point of
interest but at least he submitted the borderline pictures to the Negro and
found them trash. And he put back on his list a difficult picture that he
had tossed to the wolves, to Brady and Marcus and the rest, to get his way
on something else. He rescued it for the Negro man.
When he drove up to his door the porch lights went on and his Filipino
came down the steps to put away the car. In the library Stahr found a list
of phone calls.
La Borwits
Marcus
Harlow
Rienmund
Fairbanks
Brady
Colman
Skouras
Flieshacker
The Filipino came into the room with a letter. "This fell out of the
car," he said.
"Thanks," said Stahr, "I was looking for it."
"Will you be running a picture tonight, Mr. Stahr?"
"No thanks-you can go to bed."
The letter, to his surprise, was addressed to Monroe Stahr, Esq. He
started to open it-then it occurred to him that she had wanted to recapture
it, and possibly to withdraw it. If she had had a phone he would have called
her for permission before opening it. He held it for a moment. It had been
written before they met-it was odd to think that whatever it said was now
invalidated; it possessed the interest of a souvenir by representing a mood
that was gone.
Still he did not like to read it without asking her. He put it down
beside a pile of scripts and sat down with the top script in his lap. He was
proud of resisting his first impulse to open the letter. It seemed to prove
that he was not "losing his head." He had never lost his head about Minna
even in the beginning-it had been the most appropriate and regal match
imaginable. She had loved him always and just before she died all unwilling
and surprised his tenderness had burst and surged toward her and he had been
in love with her. In love with Minna and death together-with the world into
which she looked so alone that he wanted to go with her there.
But "falling for dames" had never been an obsession-his brother had
gone to pieces over a dame, or rather over dame after dame after dame. But
Stahr, in his younger days, had them once and never more than once-like one
drink. He had quite another sort of adventure reserved for his
mind-something better than a series of emotional sprees. Like many brilliant
men he had grown up dead cold. Beginning at about twelve probably with the
total rejection common to those of extraordinary mental powers, the "see
here-this is all wrong-a mess-all a lie-and a sham-" he swept it all away,
everything, as men of his type do and then instead of being a son-of-a-bitch
as most of them are he looked around at the barrenness that was left and
said to himself "This will never do." And so he had learned tolerance,
kindness, forbearance, and even affection like lessons.
The Filipino boy brought in a carafe of water and bowls of nuts and
fruit and said good night. Stahr opened the first script and began to read.
He read for three hours-stopping from time to time, editing without a
pencil. Sometimes he looked up, warm from some vague happy thought that was
not in the script, and it took him a minute each time to remember what it
was. Then he knew it was Kathleen and looked at the letter-it was nice to
have a letter.
It was three o'clock when a vein began to bump in the back of his hand
signalling that it was time to quit. Kathleen was really far away now with
the waning night-the different aspects of her telescoped into the memory of
a single thrilling stranger bound to him only by a few slender hours. It
seemed perfectly all right to open the letter.
Dear Mr. Stahr:
In half an hour I will be keeping my date with you. When we say good
bye I will hand you this letter. It is to tell you that I am to be married
soon and that I won't be able to see you after today.
I should have told you last night but it didn't seem to concern you.
And it would seem silly to spend this beautiful afternoon telling you about
it and watching your interest fade. Let it fade all at once-now. I will have
told you enough to convince you that I am Nobody's Prize Potato. (I have]
just learned that expression-from my hostess of last night who called and
stayed an hour. She seems to believe that everyone is Nobody's Prize
Potato-except you. I think I am supposed to tell you she thinks this, so
give her a job if you can.)
I am very flattered that anyone who sees so many lovely women I can't
finish this sentence but you know what I mean. And I will be late if I don't
go to meet you right now.
With All Good Wishes Kathleen Moore.
Stahr's first feeling was like fear; his first thought was that the
letter was invalidated-she had even tried to retrieve it. But then he
remembered "Mister Stahr" just at the end, and that she had asked him his
address-she had probably already written him another letter, which would
also say good bye. Illogically he was shocked by the letter's indifference
to what had happened later. He read it again realizing that it foresaw
nothing. Yet in front of the house she had decided to let it stand,
belittling everything that had happened, curving her mind away from the fact
that there had been no other man in her consciousness that afternoon. But he
could not even believe this now and the whole adventure began to peel away
even as he recapitulated it searchingly to himself. The car, the hill, the
hat, the music, the letter itself blew off like the scraps of tar paper from
the rubble of his house. And Kathleen departed, packing up her remembered
gestures, her softly moving head, her sturdy eager body, her bare feet in
the wet swirling sand. The skies paled and faded-the wind and rain turned
dreary, washing the silver fish back to sea. It was only one more day, and
nothing was left except the pile of scripts upon the table.
He went upstairs. Minna died again on the first landing and he forgot
her lingeringly and miserably again, step by step to the top. The empty
floor stretched around him-the doors with no one sleeping behind. In his
room Stahr took off his tie, untied his shoes and sat on the side of his
bed. It was all closed out except for something that he could not remember;
then he remembered, her car was still down in the parking lot of the hotel.
He set his clock to give him six hours' sleep.
Section 15 (first part)
This is Cecelia taking up the story. I think it would be most
interesting to follow my own movements at this point, as this is a time in
my life that I am ashamed of. What people are ashamed of usually makes a
good story.
When I sent Wylie White over to Martha Dodd's table he had no success
in finding out who the girl was, but it had suddenly become my chief
interest in life. Also I guessed-correctly-that it would be Martha Dodd's:
to have had at your table a girl who is admired by royalty, who may be
tagged for a coronet in our little feudal system-and not even know her name.
I had only a speaking acquaintance with Martha and it would be too
obvious to approach her directly, but I went out to the studio Monday and
dropped in on Rose Meloney.
Rose Meloney was quite a friend of mine. I thought of her rather as a
child thinks of a family dependent. I knew she was a writer but I grew up
thinking that writer and secretary were the same except that a writer
usually smelled of cocktails and came more often to meals. They were spoken
of the same way when they were not around-except for a species called
playwrights who came from the East. These were treated with respect if they
did not stay long-if they did they sank with the others into the white
collar class.
Rose's office was in the "old writers' building." There was one on
every lot, a row of iron maidens left over from silent days and still
resounding the dull moans of cloistered hacks and bums. There was the story
of the new producer who had gone down the line one day and then reported
excitedly to the head office.
"Who are those men?"
"They're supposed to be writers."
"I thought so. Well, I watched them for ten minutes and there were two
of them that didn't write a line."
Rose was at her typewriter about to break off for lunch. I told her
frankly that I had a rival.
"It's a dark horse," I said. "I can't even find out her name."
"Oh," said Rose. "Well, maybe I know something about that. I heard
something from somebody."
The somebody, of course, was her nephew Ned Sollinger, Stahr's office
boy. He had been her pride and hope. She had sent him through New York
University where he played on the football team. Then in his first year at
medical school after a girl turned him down he dissected out the least
publicized section of a lady corpse and sent it to the girl. Don't ask me
why. In disgrace with fortune and men's eyes he had begun life at the bottom
again, and was still there.
"What do you know?" I asked.
"It was the night of the earthquake. She fell into the lake on the back
lot and he dove in and saved her life. Someone else told me it was his
balcony she jumped off of and broke her arm."
"Who was she?"
"Well, that's funny too-"
Her phone rang and I waited restlessly during a long conversation she
had with Joe Rienmund. He seemed to be trying to find out over the phone how
good she was or whether she had ever written any pictures at all. And she
was reputed to have been on the set the day Griffith invented the close-up!
While he talked she groaned silently, writhed, made faces into the receiver,
held it all in her lap so that the voice reached her faintly-and kept up a
side chatter to me.
"What is he doing-killing time between appointments?... He's asked me
every one of these questions ten times... that's all on a memorandum I sent
him...."
And into the phone: "If this goes up to Monroe it won't be my doing. I
want to go right through to the end."
She shut her eyes in agony again.
"Now he's casting it... he's casting the minor characters... he's going
to have Buddy Ebsen.... My God he just hasn't anything to do... now he's on
Harry Davenport-he means Donald Crisp... he's got a big casting directory
open in his lap and I can hear him turn the pages... he's a big important
man this morning, a second Stahr, and for Christ sake I've got two scenes to
do before lunch."
Rienmund quit finally or was interrupted at his end. A waiter came in
from the commissary with Rose's luncheon and a Coca-Cola for me-I wasn't
lunching that summer. Rose wrote down one sentence on her typewriter before
she ate. It interested me the way she wrote. One day I was there when she
and a young man had just lifted a story out of "The Saturday Evening
Post"-changing the characters and all. Then they began to write it making
each line answer the line before it, and of course it sounded just like
people do in life when they're straining to be anything-funny or gentle or
brave. I always wanted to see that one on the screen but I missed it
somehow.
I found her as lovable as a cheap old toy. She made three thousand a
week, and her husbands all drank and beat her nearly to death. But today I
had an axe to grind.
"You don't know her name?" I persisted.
"Oh-" said Rose "-that. Well, he kept calling her up afterwards and he
told Katy Doolan it was the wrong name after all."
"I think he found her," I said. "Do you know Martha Dodd?"
"Hasn't that little girl had a tough break though!" she exclaimed
with ready theatrical sympathy.
"Could you possibly invite her to lunch tomorrow?"
"Oh, I think she gets enough to eat all right. There's a Mexican-"
I explained that my motives were not charitable. Rose agreed to
cooperate. She called Martha Dodd.
15 (second part)
We had lunch next day at the Bev Brown Derby, a languid restaurant
patronized for its food by clients who always look as if they'd like to lie
down. There is some animation at lunch where the women put on a show for the
first five minutes after they eat but we were a tepid threesome. I should
have come right out with my curiosity. Martha Dodd was an agricultural girl
who had never quite understood what had happened to her and had nothing to
show for it except a washed out look about the eyes. She still believed that
the life she had tasted was reality and this was only a long waiting.
"I had a beautiful place in 1928," she told us. "Thirty acres, with a
miniature golf course and a pool and a gorgeous view. All spring I was up to
my ass in daisies."
I ended by asking her to come over and meet Father. This was pure
penance for having had "a mixed motive" and being ashamed of it. One doesn't
mix motives in Hollywood-it is confusing. Everybody understands, and the
climate wears you down. A mixed motive is conspicuous waste.
Rose left us at the studio gate, disgusted by my cowardice. Martha had
worked up inside to a pitch about her career-not a very high pitch because
of seven years of neglect but a sort of nervous acquiescence and I was going
to speak strongly to Father. They never did anything for people like Martha
who had made them so much money at one time. They let them slip away into
misery eked out with extra work-it would have been kinder to ship them out
of town. And Father was being so proud of me this summer. I had to keep him
from telling everybody) just how I was brought up to produce such a perfect
jewel. And Bennington-oh what an exclusive-dear God my heart. I assured him
there was the usual proportion of natural born skivies and biddies
tastefully concealed by throw overs from Sex, Fifth Avenue; but Father had
worked himself up to practically an alumnus. "You've had everything," he
used to say happily. Everything included roughly the two years in Florence
where I managed against heavy odds to be the only virgin in school, and the
courtesy debut in Boston, Massachusetts. I was a veritable flower of the
fine old cost-and-gross aristocracy.
So I knew he would do something for Martha Dodd and as we went into his
office I had great dreams of doing something for Johnny Swanson the cowboy
too and Evelyn Brent and all sorts of discarded flowers. Father was a
charming and sympathetic man-except for that time I had seen him
unexpectedly in New York-and there was something touching about his being my
father. After all he was my father-he would do anything in the world for me.
Only Rosemary Schmiel was in the outer office and she was on Birdy
Peters' phone. She waved for me to sit down but I was full of my plans and
telling Martha to take it easy I pressed the clicker under Rosemary's desk
and went toward the opened door.
"Your father's in conference," Rosemary called. "Not in conference but
I ought to-"
By this time I was through the door and a little vestibule and another
door and caught Father in his shirt sleeves, very sweaty and trying to open
a window. It was a hot day but I hadn't realized it was that hot and thought
he was ill.
"No, I'm all right," he said. "What is it?"
I told him. I told him the whole theory of people like Martha Dodd,
walking up and down his office. How he could use them and guarantee them
regular employment. He seemed to take me up excitedly and kept nodding and
agreeing, and I felt closer to him than I had for a long time. I came close
and kissed him on his cheek. He was trembling and his shirt was soaked
through.
"You're not well," I said. "Or you're in some sort of stew."
"No, I'm not at all."
"What is it?"
"Oh it's Monroe," he said. "That God damn little Vine Street Jesus!
He's in my hair night and day!"
"What's happened?" I asked, very much cooler.
"Oh, he sits like a little God damn priest or rabbi and says what he'll
do and he won't do. I can't tell you now-I'm half crazy. Why don't you go
along."
"I won't have you like this."
"Go along I tell you!" I sniffed but he never drank.
"Go and brush your hair," I said. "I want you to see Martha Dodd."
"In here! I'd never get rid of her."
"Out there then. Go wash up first. Put on another shirt."
With an exaggerated gesture of despair he went into the little bathroom
adjoining. It was hot in the office as if it had been closed for hours and
maybe that was making him sick so I opened two more windows.
"You go along," Father called from behind the closed door of the
bathroom. "I'll be there presently."
"Be awfully nice to her," I said. "No charity."
As if it were Martha speaking for herself a long low moan came from
somewhere in the room. I was startled-then transfixed as it came again not
from the bathroom where Father was, not from outside but from a closet in