Ocenite etot tekst:


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     F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Love of the Last Tycoon.
     N.Y., 1994.
     OCR: Proekt "TextShare.da.ru"
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Just  In  Case:  Privedennyj  anglijskij  tekst  i  tot,  s kotorogo delals,
dostupnyj (i edinstvennyj izvestnyj) nam russkij perevod,  ne  identichny.  V
1993  godu Matthew J. Broccoli predprinyal rekonstrukciyu original'nogo teksta
The Love of the Last Tychoon. On i priveden v kachestve anglijskogo teksta.

Esli    kogo-to    interesuyut    detali    etoj   rekonstrukcii   -   pishite
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     WESTERN





     Though I haven't ever been on the screen I  was brought up in pictures.
Rudolph  Valentino came to  my fifth birthday party-or  so I was told. I put
this down  only to indicate  that  even before the age of reason I was in  a
position to watch the wheels go round.
     I was going to write my memoirs once, "The Producer's Daughter," but at
eighteen you  never quite get around to anything  like  that.  It's just  as
well-it  would  have been as  flat as  an old column of Lolly  Parsons'.  My
father was  in  the picture business as  another man might be  in  cotton or
steel,  and I took it tranquilly. At the worst I accepted Hollywood with the
resignation  of a ghost  assigned to a  haunted house. I knew what  you were
supposed to think about it but I was obstinately unhorrified.
     This is easy to say, but harder to  make people understand. When I  was
at Bennington  some of the English teachers who pretended an indifference to
Hollywood or its  products  really hated  it. Hated it way down  deep  as  a
threat  to  their existence. Even before  that, when I was  in  a convent, a
sweet little nun  asked me to get her a script of a screen play so she could
"teach her class about movie writing" as she had taught them about the essay
and the short story. I got the script for her and I suppose she puzzled over
it  and puzzled over it but  it was never mentioned in class and she gave it
back to me with an air of offended surprise and not a single comment. That's
what I half expect to happen to this story.
     You can take Hollywood for  granted like  I did, or you  can dismiss it
with  the  contempt we  reserve for what  we  don't  understand.  It  can be
understood  too, but only dimly and in flashes. Not  half a  dozen men  have
ever been  able to keep the  whole equation of pictures in  their heads. And
perhaps the closest a woman can come to the set-up is to try and  understand
one of those men.

     The world from an airplane I knew. Father always had us travel back and
forth that way from  school and college. After my  sister died when I  was a
junior, I travelled to and fro alone and the journey always made me think of
her, made  me  somewhat solemn and  subdued. Sometimes  there  were  picture
people  I knew on board the plane, and  occasionally there was an attractive
college boy-but not often during the Depression. I seldom really fell asleep
during the  trip, what with thoughts of  Eleanor and the sense of that sharp
rip  between coast  and coast-at  least not till  we had left  those  lonely
little airports in Tennessee.
     This trip was so rough that the passengers divided early into those who
turned in right away and those who didn't want to turn in at all. There were
two of  these  latter right across from me and I was pretty sure  from their
fragmentary conversation  that they were from Hollywood-one of them  because
he looked  like it,  a middle-aged Jew who  alternately talked with  nervous
excitement or else crouched as if ready to  spring, in a harrowing  silence;
the other a pale, plain, stocky  man  of thirty, whom I  was sure I had seen
before. He had been to the house or something. But it might have been when I
was a little girl, and so I wasn't offended that he didn't recognize me.
     The stewardess-she  was tall, handsome  and flashing dark,  a type that
they seemed to run to-asked me if she could make up my berth.
     "-and, dear,  do you want an aspirin?" She perched on  the  side of the
seat and  rocked precariously  to and  fro with the  June  hurricane, "-or a
Nembutal?"
     "No."
     "I've been so busy with everyone else  that  I've had  no time  to  ask
you." She sat down beside me and buckled us both in. "Do you want some gum?"
     This  reminded me to get rid  of the piece that had  been boring me for
hours. I  wrapped it  in  a  piece of magazine and put it into the automatic
ash-holder.
     "I  can always  tell people are nice-" the  stewardess said approvingly
"-if they wrap their gum in paper before they put it in there."
     We sat for a while in the half-light of the swaying car. It was vaguely
like a  swanky restaurant at  that twilight time  between meals. We were all
lingering-and not  quite on purpose. Even the  stewardess,  I  think, had to
keep reminding herself why she was there.
     She and I talked about a young actress I knew,  whom she had flown west
with two years before. It was in the very lowest  time of the Depression and
the young actress kept staring out the window in such an intent way that the
stewardess was  afraid she was contemplating a leap. It appeared though that
she was not afraid of poverty, but only of revolution.
     "I know  what  Mother and  I  are  going to do,"  she  confided  to the
stewardess. "We're  coming  out  to the  Yellowstone and we're just going to
live simply till it all blows over.  Then we'll come  back. They don't  kill
artists-you know?"
     The proposition  pleased  me. It conjured up a  pretty  picture of  the
actress and her mother being fed by kind Tory  bears who brought them honey,
and by gentle  fawns who fetched extra milk  from the does and then lingered
near to make pillows for their heads at night. In turn I told the stewardess
about the lawyer  and the director  who told their plans to Father one night
in those brave days. If the bonus army conquered Washington the lawyer had a
boat  hidden in the Sacramento River, and he was going to row upstream for a
few  months and then come back "because  they always needed lawyers  after a
revolution to straighten out the legal side."
     The  director had  tended more  toward defeatism. He  had an  old suit,
shirt  and  shoes in waiting-he never  did say whether they  were his own or
whether he got them from  the prop department- and he was going to Disappear
into the Crowd. I remember Father saying: "But they'll  look  at your hands!
They'll know you haven't  done manual work  for  years. And they'll  ask for
your union  card." And  I remember  how the  director's  face  fell, and how
gloomy he  was while he ate his dessert, and how funny and puny they sounded
to me.
     "Is  your father an actor,  Miss  Brady?"  asked the stewardess.  "I've
certainly heard the name. "
     At  the   name  Brady  both  the  men  across  the   aisle  looked  up.
Sidewise-that  Hollywood look, that always seems thrown over  one  shoulder.
Then  the young, pale, stocky man unbuttoned his  safety strap and  stood in
the aisle beside us.
     "Are you Cecelia Brady?" he demanded accusingly, as if I'd been holding
out on him. "I thought I recognized you. I'm Wylie White."
     He could  have  omitted this-for at the  same moment a new  voice said,
"Watch your step,  Wylie!"  and  another man brushed by him in the aisle and
went forward  in  the direction of the cockpit.  Wylie White started, and  a
little too late called after him defiantly.
     "I only take orders from the pilot."
     I recognized the kind  of pleasantry that goes on between the powers in
Hollywood and their satellites.
     The  stewardess  reproved  him:  "Not  so  loud,   please-some  of  the
passengers are asleep."
     I saw now that the other man across the aisle, the middle-aged Jew, was
on  his feet  also, staring, with shameless  economic lechery, after the man
who  had just  gone by. Or  rather  at  the back  of the  man,  who gestured
sideways with his hand in a sort of farewell, as he went out of my sight.
     I asked the stewardess: "Is he the assistant pilot?"
     She was unbuckling our belt, about to abandon me to Wylie White.
     "No. That's  Mr. Smith.  He has the  private  compartment,  the 'bridal
suite'-only he has it alone. The assistant pilot is  always in uniform." She
stood up. "I want to find out if we're going to be grounded in Nashville."
     Wylie White was aghast.
     "Why?"
     "It's a storm coming up the Mississippi Valley."
     "Does that mean we'll have to stay here all night?"
     "If this keeps up!"
     A  sudden dip indicated that  it would. It tipped Wylie White into  the
seat opposite me, shunted the stewardess precipitately down in the direction
of the  cockpit, and plunked the Jewish man into a  sitting  position. After
the   studied,  unruffled   exclamations   of  distaste  that  befitted  the
air-minded, we settled down. There was an introduction.
     "Miss Brady-Mr. Schwartze," said Wylie  White.  "He's a great friend of
your father's too."
     Mr. Schwartze nodded so vehemently that I could almost hear him saying,
"It's true. As God is my judge, it's true!"
     He might have said this right out loud at one time  in his  life-but he
was obviously a man  to  whom something had happened.  Meeting him was  like
encountering a friend  who has been in a fist  fight or  collision,  and got
flattened. You stare at your friend and say: "What happened  to you?" And he
answers something unintelligible through  broken teeth and  swollen lips. He
can't even tell you about it.
     Mr. Schwartze was physically unmarked; the exaggerated Persian nose and
oblique eye-shadow were as congenital as the tip-tilted Irish redness around
my father's nostrils.
     "Nashville!"  cried Wylie White. "That means we go to a hotel. We don't
get  to the  coast till  tomorrow  night-if  then.  My  God! I was  born  in
Nashville."
     "I should think you'd like to see it again."
     "Never-I've  kept  away for fifteen years.  I hope I'll  never  see  it
again."
     But he would-for the  plane was unmistakably  going  down,  down, down,
like Alice  in the rabbit hole. Cupping my hand against the window I saw the
blur of the city far away on the left. The green sign  "Fasten your belts-No
smoking" had been on since we first rode into the storm.
     "Did you hear what she said?" said Mr.  Schwartze from one of his fiery
silences across the aisle.
     "Hear what?" asked Wylie.
     "Hear what he's calling himself," said Schwartze. "Mr. Smith}"
     "Why not?" asked Wylie.
     "Oh  nothing," said  Schwartze quickly. "I  just thought it  was funny.
Smith." I never heard a laugh with less mirth in it: "Smith!"
     I suppose there has  been nothing  like  the airports since the days of
the stage-stops-nothing quite as lonely, as somber-silent. The old red-brick
depots were built right into the towns they marked -people didn't get off at
those isolated  stations unless  they lived there. But airports lead you way
back in history like oases, like the  stops on the  great trade  routes. The
sight of  air travellers  strolling in ones  and twos into midnight airports
will draw a small crowd any night up to  two.  The young people look at  the
planes, the older ones look at the passengers  with a  watchful incredulity.
In  the big transcontinental planes  we  were the coastal rich, who casually
alighted from  our cloud  in mid-America. High  adventure might be among us,
disguised  as a movie  star. But  mostly  it  wasn't.  And I  always  wished
fervently that we looked more interesting than  we  did-just as I often have
at  premieres, when  the  fans look at  you  with scornful  reproach because
you're not a star.
     On  the ground Wylie  and I were suddenly friends,  because he held out
his arm  to steady me when I got out  of the plane. From then on, he made  a
dead  set  for me-and  I didn't mind. From the moment  we  walked  into  the
airport it had become plain that if we were stranded  here we were  stranded
here together. (It wasn't like the time I lost my boy-the time my boy played
the  piano with  that girl Reina  in a  little New England farm  house  near
Bennington, and I realized  at last I wasn't wanted. Guy Lombarde was on the
air playing  "Top Hat" and "Cheek to Cheek" and she taught him the melodies.
The keys falling like leaves and her hand splayed over his as she showed him
a black chord. I was a freshman then.)
     When we went  into the airport  Mr. Schwartze was along with us too but
he seemed  in a sort of dream. All the time  we were trying  to get accurate
information  at the desk he kept  staring at  the  door  that led out to the
landing field, as  if he were afraid the plane would leave without him. Then
I excused myself for a few minutes and something happened  that I didn't see
but when  I  came  back  he and  White  were standing close together.  White
talking and Schwartze looking twice as much as  if a  great  truck had  just
backed up  over him.  He didn't  stare  at the  door  to the  landing  field
anymore. I heard the end of Wylie White's remark....
     "-I told you to shut up. It serves you right."
     "I only said-"
     He broke off as I came up  and asked if there was any news. It was then
half past two in the morning.
     "A little," said Wylie White. "They don't think we'll be  able to start
for three hours anyhow, so some of the softies are going to a hotel. But I'd
like to take you out to The Hermitage, Home of Andrew Jackson."
     "How could we see it in the dark?" demanded Schwartze.
     "Hell, it'll be sunrise in two hours."
     "You two go," said Schwartze.
     "All right-you take the  bus to  the hotel. It's still  waiting-he's in
there." Wylie's voice had a taunt in it. "Maybe it'd be a good thing."
     "No, I'll go along with you," said Schwartze hastily.
     We took a  taxi in the sudden  country dark outside, and  he  seemed to
cheer up. He patted my kneecap encouragingly.
     "I should go along," he said. "I should be  chaperone. Once upon a time
when I was in the big money, I had a daughter-a beautiful daughter."
     He spoke as if she had been sold to creditors as a tangible asset.
     "You'll have  another," Wylie  assured  him. "You'll get it  all  back.
Another  turn of the wheel  and you'll be where Cecelia's papa is, won't he,
Cecelia?"
     "Where is this Hermitage?" asked  Schwartze presently. "Far away at the
end of nowhere? Will we miss the plane?"
     "Skip it," said Wylie. "We ought to've brought the stewardess along for
you. Didn't you admire the stewardess? I thought she was pretty cute."
     We drove for a long time over a bright  level countryside,  just a road
and a tree and a shack and a tree, and then suddenly along  a winding  twist
of  woodland.  I could  feel  even in the darkness  that  the  trees of  the
woodland were green-that it was  all different from the dusty olive-tint  of
California. Somewhere we passed a Negro driving three cows ahead of him, and
they mooed as he scatted them to the side  of the road. They were real cows,
with warm fresh, silky flanks and the Negro grew  gradually real  out of the
darkness with his big brown eyes staring  at  us  close to the car, as Wylie
gave  him a quarter. He  said "Thank you-thank you" and  stood there and the
cows mooed again into the night as we drove off.
     I thought of the first sheep I  ever  remember seeing-hundreds of them,
and how our car drove suddenly into them on  the back lot of the old Laemmie
studio. They were unhappy about  being in  pictures  but the men in  the car
with us kept saying:
     "Swell?"
     "Is that what you wanted, Dick?"
     "Isn't that swell?" And the man  named Dick kept standing up in the car
as if he were Cortez or Balboa, looking over that grey fleecy undulation. If
I ever knew what picture they were in I have long forgotten.
     We had driven  an hour. We  crossed  a  brook  over  an old rattly iron
bridge laid with  planks.  Now  there were roosters crowing  and  blue-green
shadows stirring every time we passed a farm house.
     "I  told you it'd  be  morning  soon,"  said  Wylie.  "I was  born near
here-the son  of  impoverished  southern paupers. The family  mansion is now
used as an outhouse. We had  four  servants-my father, my mother  and my two
sisters. I refused to join the guild, and so  I went to Memphis, to start my
career,  which  has now reached  a  dead  end."  He  put his  arm around me.
"Cecelia, will you marry me, so I can share the Brady fortune?"
     He was disarming enough so I let my head lie on his shoulder.
     "What do you do, Celia? Go to school?"
     "I go to Bennington. I'm a junior."
     "Oh, I  beg  your pardon.  I  should  have known  but  I  never had the
advantage  of college training. But a  junior-why  I read in  'Esquire' that
juniors have nothing to learn, Cecelia."
     "Why do people think that college girls-"
     "Don't apologize-knowledge is power."
     "You'd  know  from  the way  you  talk  that  we were  on  our  way  to
Hollywood," I said. "It's always years and years behind the time."
     He pretended to be shocked.
     "You mean girls in the East have no private lives?"
     "That's the  point. They have got private lives. You're  bothering  me,
let go."
     "I can't. It might wake Schwartze, and I think  this is the first sleep
he's had for weeks. Listen, Cecelia, I once had an affair with the wife of a
producer.  A  very  short  affair. When  it was  over  she said  to me in no
uncertain terms, she said: 'Don't you ever tell about this or

     ii
     I'll  have you  thrown  out  of  Hollywood. My  husband's  a much  more
important man than you.' "
     I liked him again now, and presently the taxi  turned down a long  lane
fragrant with  honeysuckle and  narcissus and stopped beside  the great grey
hulk of  the  Andrew Jackson house.  The  driver  turned around to  tell  us
something about it but  Wylie  shushed  him,  pointing at Schwartze,  and we
tiptoed out of the car.
     "You can't get into the Mansion now," the taxi man told us politely.
     Wylie and I went and sat against the wide pillars of the steps.
     "What about Mr. Schwartze?" I asked. "Who is he?"
     "To hell  with Schwartze.  He was  the head  of some combine once-First
National?  Paramount? United Artists?  Now he's down and  out.  But he'll be
back. You can't flunk out of pictures unless you're a dope or a drunk."
     "You don't like Hollywood," I suggested.
     "Yes I  do. Sure I  do.  Say! This isn't anything to talk about on  the
steps of Andrew Jackson's house-at dawn. "
     "I like Hollywood," I persisted.
     "It's all right.  It's  a  mining town in lotus land. Who  said that? I
did. It's a good place for toughies but I went there from Savannah, Georgia.
I went to  a garden party the first day. My host shook hands and left me. It
was  all  there-that  swimming pool,  green  moss at  two  dollars  an inch,
beautiful felines having drinks and fun -And nobody spoke to me. Not a soul.
I spoke to half a dozen people but they didn't answer. That continued for an
hour, two hours-then I got up from where I was  sitting and ran out at a dog
trot like a crazy man. I didn't feel I had any rightful identity until I got
back  to the hotel and the  clerk handed me a letter addressed to  me in  my
name."
     Naturally  I hadn't  ever had  such an experience, but  looking back on
parties I'd been to,  I realized that such  things could happen. We don't go
for strangers in Hollywood unless they wear a sign saying that their axe has
been thoroughly ground elsewhere, and that in any  case  it's  not going  to
fall  on our necks-in  other  words  unless they're a  celebrity. And they'd
better look out even then.
     "You  should have  risen above it,"  I said smugly. "It's not a slam at
you when people are rude-it's a slam at the people they've met before."
     "Such a pretty girl-to say such wise things."
     There was an eager to-do in the eastern  sky, and  Wylie  could see  me
plain-thin with good features and lots of style, and the  kicking fetus of a
mind. I  wonder what I looked like in  that dawn,  five  years ago. A little
rumpled  and  pale,  I  suppose, but at  that age,  when  one has the  young
illusion that most adventures are good, I needed only a bath and a change to
go on for hours.
     Wylie  stared  at  me  with  really  flattering  appreciation-and  then
suddenly we were not alone. Mr. Schwartze  wandered  apologetically into the
pretty scene.
     "I fell upon a large metal handle," he said, touching the corner of his
eye.
     Wylie jumped up.
     "Just in time,  Mr.  Schwartze," he  said.  "The tour is just starting.
Home of Old  Hickory-America's tenth president.  The victor  of New Orleans,
opponent of the National Bank, and inventor of the Spoils System."
     Schwartze looked toward me as toward a jury.
     "There's a writer for you," he said. "Knows  everything and at the same
time he knows nothing."
     "What's that?" said Wylie, indignant.
     It was  my  first  inkling that he was  a  writer.  And  while  I  like
writers-because if you ask a writer anything you usually get an answer-still
it belittled him in my  eyes. Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if  they're
any  good, they're a whole lot  of people trying  so hard to be  one person.
It's like actors, who try so pathetically not  to look in mirrors.  Who lean
backward trying-only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.
     "Ain't writers like that, Celia?" demanded  Schwartze. "I have no words
for them. I only know it's true."
     Wylie looked at him with slowly gathering indignation. "I've heard that
before," he said. "Look, Mannie, I'm a more practical man  than you any day!
I've  sat  in  an office and listened  to some mystic stalk up  and down for
hours spouting  tripe  that'd  land him on  a nut-farm anywhere  outside  of
California-and then at  the end  tell me how practical  he was,  and I was a
dreamer-and would I kindly go away and made sense out of what he'd said."
     Mr. Schwartze's  face fell into its more disintegrated  alignments. One
eye looked upward through the tall elms:  He raised his hand and bit without
interest at the cuticle  on his second finger. There was a bird flying about
the chimney of  the house  and  his  glance followed it. It  perched on  the
chimney pot like a raven and Mr. Schwartze's eyes remained  fixed upon it as
he said: "We  can't get in. And it's time  for  you two  to  go back  to the
plane."
     It was still not quite dawn. The Hermitage looked like a nice big white
box, but a  little  lonely,  and vacated still,  after a  hundred  years. We
walked back  to  the car-only after we had gotten in, and Mr. Schwartze  had
surprisingly shut the taxi door on us,  did we  realize  he didn't intend to
come along.
     "I'm not going to the Coast-I decided that when I woke up. So I'll stay
here, and afterwards the driver could  come back for me." "Going back East?"
said Wylie with surprise. "Just because-" "I have decided," said  Schwartze,
faintly  smiling. "Once I  used to be  a  regular man  of  decision-you'd be
surprised." He felt in his pocket, as the taxi driver  warmed up the engine.
"Will you give this note to Mr. Smith?"
     "Shall I come in two hours?" the  driver asked Schwartze. "Yes... sure.
I shall be glad  to entertain myself looking around." I kept thinking of him
all the way back to the airport-trying to fit him into  that early hour  and
into that  landscape. He had  come a long way  from some  ghetto  to present
himself at that raw shrine. Mannie Schwartze  and Andrew Jackson-it was hard
to say  them in the same sentence. It was  doubtful  if he knew  who  Andrew
Jackson was as he wandered around, but perhaps he figured that if people had
preserved his house Andrew Jackson  must have been someone who was large and
merciful, able to  understand. At both ends of life man needed nourishment-a
breast-a  shrine. Something to lay himself  beside when  no one  wanted  him
further, and shoot a bullet into his head.

     Of  course  we  did not know this for twenty hours. When we got to  the
airport we told the purser that Mr.  Schwartze  was not continuing, and then
forgot  about  him. The storm  had wandered  away into eastern Tennessee and
broken against the mountains, and we  were taking off  in less than an hour.
Sleepy-eyed travellers appeared from the hotel and I dozed a few  minutes on
one  of those  iron maidens they  use  for couches. Slowly  the  idea  of  a
perilous  journey  was recreated out of the debris  of our  failure:  a  new
stewardess, tall, handsome, flashing dark, exactly like the other except she
wore seersucker instead of Frenchy red-and-blue, went briskly past us with a
suitcase. Wylie sat beside me as we waited.
     "Did you give the note to Mr. Smith?" I asked, half asleep.
     "Yeah."
     "Who is Mr. Smith? I suspect he spoiled Mr. Schwartze's trip."
     "It was Schwartze's fault."
     "I'm prejudiced against steam-rollers," I said. "My father  tries to be
a steam-roller around the house, and I tell him to save it for the studio."
     I wondered if I  was being fair; words  are the palest counters at that
time in the  morning. "Still, he  steam-rollered me into Bennington and I've
always been grateful for that."
     "There would be quite a crash-" Wylie said, "-if steam-roller Brady met
steam-roller Smith. "
     "Is Mr. Smith a competitor of Father's?"
     "Not exactly.  I should say no. But if he was a competitor I know where
my money would be."
     "On Father?"
     "I'm afraid not."
     It was too early in the morning for family patriotism. The pilot was at
the  desk  with  the  purser and  he  shook  his  head  as they  regarded  a
prospective passenger who had put two nickels in the electric phonograph and
lay alcoholically  on  a bench fighting  off sleep. The  first  song  he had
chosen,  "Lost,"  thundered  through  the room,  followed,  after  a  slight
interval, by his other choice, "Gone," which was equally dogmatic and final.
The pilot shook his head emphatically and walked over to the passenger.
     "Afraid we're not going to be able to carry you this time, old man."
     "Wha?"
     The drunk sat up, awful  looking, yet discernibly attractive, and I was
sorry for him in spite of his passionately ill-chosen music.
     "Go back to  the hotel  and  get  some sleep. There'll be another plane
tonight."
     "Only going up in ee air."
     "Not this time, old man."
     In  his  disappointment the  drunk  fell off  the bench-and  above  the
phonograph,  a  loudspeaker  summoned us respectable people  outside. In the
corridor  of the plane I ran into  Monroe  Stahr and  fell  all over him, or
wanted  to. There  was a  man  any  girl  would  go  for,  with  or  without
encouragement. I was emphatically without it, but he liked me  and sat  down
opposite till the plane took off.
     "Let's all ask for our money back," he suggested. His dark eyes took me
in, and  I wondered what  they would look like if he fell in love. They were
kind,  aloof  and,  though  they  often  reasoned with  you gently, somewhat
superior.  It was no fault of theirs if they saw  so much.  He darted in and
out of the  role of "one  of the  boys"  with dexterity-but on  the  whole I
should  say he wasn't one of them.  But he knew how to shut up,  how to draw
into the background, how to listen. From  where he stood (and  though he was
not  a  tall man  it always  seemed high up) he  watched  the  multitudinous
practicalities of his world  like a proud young shepherd, to  whom night and
day  had never mattered. He was born sleepless  without a talent for rest or
the desire for it.
     We  sat in  unembarrassed  silence-I  had  known  him  since  he became
Father's  partner  a  dozen  years  ago, when  I  was seven  and  Stahr  was
twenty-two.  Wylie was across  the aisle and I didn't know whether or not to
introduce them, but Stahr kept turning his ring so abstractedly that he made
me feel young and invisible, and  I didn't dare.  I never  dared  look quite
away from him or quite at him, unless I had something important to say-and I
knew he affected many other people in the same manner.
     "I'll give you this ring, Cecelia."
     "I beg your pardon. I didn't realize that I was-"
     "I've got half a dozen like it."
     He handed it to me, a gold nugget with  the letter S in  bold relief. I
had been thinking how oddly its bulk contrasted with his fingers, which were
delicate  and slender  like the rest of his body, and  like his slender face
with  the  arched eyebrows and the dark curly  hair. He looked  spiritual at
times but he was a fighter-somebody out of his past knew him when he was one
of a gang of  kids in the Bronx, and gave me a description of how he  walked
always at the head of his gang, this rather frail boy, occasionally throwing
a command backward out of the corner of his mouth.
     Stahr folded my hand over the ring, stood up and addressed Wylie.
     "Come up to the bridal suite," he said. "See you later, Cecelia."
     Before they went out of hearing I heard Wylie's question, "Did you open
Schwartze's note?" And Stahr:
     "Not yet."
     I must be slow, for only then did I realize that Stahr was Mr. Smith.
     Afterwards  Wylie  told  me  what  was in  the  note.  Written  by  the
headlights of the taxi it was almost illegible.
     Dear Monro,  You  are the  best  of them all I have always admired your
mentality  so when you turn against me I know it's no use! I must be no good
and am not going to continue the journey let me warn you once again
     look out! I know.
     Your friend MANNIE
     Stahr read it twice, and  raised his hand to the morning stubble on his
chin.
     "He's  a  nervous  wreck,"  he  said.  "There's  nothing  to  be  done,
absolutely nothing. I'm sorry I was short with him-but I don't like a man to
approach me telling me it's for my sake."
     "Maybe it was," said Wylie.
     "It's poor technique."
     "I'd  fall  for it,"  said  Wylie.  "I'm vain  as  a woman. If  anybody
pretends to be interested in me I'll ask for more. I like advice."
     Stahr  shook his head distastefully. Wylie kept on  ribbing him-he  was
one of those to whom this privilege was permitted.
     "You fall for some kinds of flattery," he said.  "This 'little Napoleon
stuff.' "
     "It makes me sick," said Stahr, "but it's not as bad as some man trying
to help you."
     "If you don't like advice why do you pay we?"
     "That's a question of merchandise," said Stahr. "I'm a merchant. I want
to buy what's in your mind."
     "You're  no merchant,"  said Wylie. "I  knew a lot of them when I was a
publicity man and I agree with Charles Francis Adams."
     "What did he say?"
     "He  knew them all-Gould, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Astor-and he said there
wasn't  one he'd care  to  meet again  in  the hereafter. Well-they  haven't
improved since then, and that's why I say you're no merchant. "
     "Adams  was probably  a  sour belly," said Stahr. "He wanted to be head
man himself but he didn't have the judgement or else the character."
     "He had brains," said Wylie rather tartly.
     "It takes more than brains. You writers  and  artists  poop out and get
all mixed up and  somebody  has  to  come in  and  straighten  you  out." He
shrugged his  shoulders.  "You seem  to take  things  so personally,  hating
people    and   worshipping    them-always    thinking    people    are   so
important-especially yourselves. You just ask  to be  kicked around.  I like
people  and I like them to like  me but I wear my heart where God put  it-on
the inside. "
     He broke off.
     "What did I say to Schwartze in the airport? Do you remember -exactly?"
     "You said 'Whatever you're after, the answer is No.' "
     Stahr was silent.
     "He was sunk," said  Wylie, "but  I laughed him  out of it. We took Pat
Brady's daughter for a ride."
     Stahr rang for the stewardess.
     "That pilot,"  he said. "Would he mind if I sat up in  front  with  him
awhile?"
     "That's against the rules, Mr. Smith."
     "Ask him to step in here a minute when he's free."
     Stahr sat up  front all afternoon. While we slid off the endless desert
and over the table-lands, dyed with many colors like the white sands we dyed
with  colors when  I  was a child. Then  in  the late  afternoon,  the peaks
themselves-the Mountains of the Frozen  Saw-slid under our propellers and we
were close to home.
     When I wasn't dozing I was thinking that I wanted to marry  Stahr, that
I wanted to  make him love me. Oh, the conceit! What on earth did I have  to
offer? But  I didn't  think like  that then. I had the pride of young women,
which draws its strength  from such sublime thoughts  as "I'm as good as she
is." For my purposes I was just as beautiful as  the great beauties who must
have  inevitably  thrown  themselves  at  his  head.  My  little   spurt  of
intellectual interest was of course making me fit to be a brilliant ornament
of any salon.
     I know  now  it  was  absurd. Though Stahr's  education was founded  on
nothing more than  a night-school course in  stenography, he had a long time
ago run ahead through trackless wastes of perception into  fields where very
few men  were able to follow  him. But in  my reckless conceit  I matched my
grey  eyes  against  his  brown  ones for  guile,  my  young golf-and-tennis
heart-beats against  his,  which  must  be slowing  a little after  years of
over-work. And  I planned  and I contrived and I  plotted-any woman can tell
you-but it never  came  to anything, as you will see. I still like  to think
that if he'd been  a poor boy and nearer my age I could have managed it, but
of course the real  truth was that  I had nothing  to offer that  he  didn't
have;  some  of my more  romantic ideas actually stemmed from pictures-"42nd
Street," for example, had a  great influence on me. It's  more than possible
that some of the pictures which Stahr  himself conceived had shaped me  into
what I was.
     So it was rather hopeless. Emotionally,  at least, people can't live by
taking in each other's washing.
     But at that time it was different: Father  might  help,  the stewardess
might help. She might go up in  the cockpit and say to Stahr: "If I ever saw
love it's in that girl's eyes."
     The pilot might help: "Man are you blind? Why don't you go back there?"
     Wylie White might  help-instead of standing in  the aisle looking at me
doubtfully, wondering whether I was awake or asleep.
     "Sit down," I said. "What's new, where are we?"
     "Up in the air."
     "Oh,  so  that's it. Sit down." I tried to  show  a  cheerful interest.
"What are you writing?"
     "Heaven help me, I am writing about a Boy Scout-The Boy Scout."
     "Is it Stahr's idea?"
     "I don't know-he told  me  to look  into  it. He  may have ten  writers
working  ahead  of  me  or behind me,  a system  which  he  so  thoughtfully
invented. So you're in love with him?"
     "I should say not," I said indignantly. "I've known him all my life."
     "Desperate, eh? Well, I'll arrange  it if you'll use all your influence
to advance me. I want a unit of my own."
     I closed my eyes again  and drifted off. When I woke  up the stewardess
was putting a blanket over me.
     "Almost there," she said.
     Out  the window I could see  by  the sunset that  we were in  a greener
land.
     "I   just  heard  something  funny,"  she   volunteered.  "Up   in  the
cockpit-that Mr. Smith-or Mr. Stahr-I never remember seeing his name."
     "It's never on any pictures," I said.
     "Oh. Well, he's been  asking the pilots a lot about flying-I mean  he's
interested? You know?"
     "I know."
     "I mean one of them told me he bet he could teach Mr. Stahr solo flying
in ten minutes. He has such a fine mentality, that's what he said."
     I was getting impatient.
     "Well, what was so funny?"
     "Well,  finally  one of the  pilots asked Mr.  Smith  if  he  liked his
business and Mr. Smith said, 'Sure. Sure I like it. It's nice being the only
sound nut in a hatful of cracked ones.' "
     The stewardess doubled up with laughter-and I could have spit at her.
     "I  mean calling all those  people  a hatful  of  nuts. I  mean cracked
nuts." Her laughter  stopped  with unexpected  suddenness and  her face  was
grave as she stood up. "Well, I've got to finish my chart."
     "Good bye."
     Obviously Stahr had put the  pilots right up on the throne with him and
let them  rule with him  for  a while. Years later I  travelled with  one of
those same pilots and he told me one thing Stahr had said.
     He was looking down at the mountains.
     "Suppose  you were a railroad man," he  said. "You have to send a  tram
through there somewhere. Well, you get your surveyors' reports, and you find
there's three or four or half a  dozen gaps, and not one is better than  the
other.  You've  got  to  decide-on  what  basis? You  can't  test  the  best
way-except by doing it. So you just do it."
     The pilot thought he had missed something.
     "How do you mean?"
     "You  choose  some one way for no reason at all-because that mountain's
pink or the blueprint is a better blue. You see?"
     The pilot considered that this was very valuable advice. But he doubted
if he'd ever be in a position to apply it.
     "What I wanted to know," he told me ruefully, "is how he ever got to be
Mr. Stahr."
     I'm afraid Stahr could  never have answered that one, for the embryo is
not equipped  with a memory. But I could  answer a  little. He had  flown up
very high to see,  on strong wings when he  was  young. And while he was  up
there he  had  looked  on all the kingdoms, with the kind  of  eyes that can
stare  straight  into   the  sun.   Beating  his  wings  tenaciously-finally
frantically-and  keeping on  beating them he had stayed up there longer than
most of us, and then, remembering all he  had seen  from his great height of
how things were, he had settled gradually to earth.
     The  motors were  off  and  all  our  five  senses  began  to  readjust
themselves for landing.  I could  see  a line  of lights  for the Long Beach
Naval Station ahead and to the left,  and  on the right a twinkling blur for
Santa Monica. The California moon was out, huge and orange over the Pacific.
However I happened to feel about these things-and they were home after all-I
know that Stahr must have felt  much more. These were the things I had first
opened my eyes on, like the sheep on the back lot of the old Laemmle studio;
but this  was  where  Stahr  had  come  to  earth after  that  extraordinary
illuminating flight where he saw which way we were  going, and how we looked
doing it, and how much of it mattered. You  could say that this was where an
accidental wind blew him but I  don't think so. I would rather think that in
a "long shot" he saw a new  way  of measuring our  jerky hopes and  graceful
rogueries and awkward sorrows, and that he came here from choice to  be with
us to  the end.  Like the plane coming down  into the Glendale airport, into
the warm darkness.



     Episodes 4 and 5

     It was nine o'clock of a July night and there were still some extras in
the  drug  store  across  from the  studio-I could see  them  bent over  the
pin-games inside-as  I  parked my  car.  "Old"  Johnny Swanson stood on  the
corner in his semi-cowboy  clothes staring gloomily past the  moon. Once  he
had been as big in pictures as Tom Mix or Bill Hart-now  it was  too sad  to
speak to him and I hurried across the street and through the front gate.
     There  is never  a  time when a  studio  is absolutely  quiet. There is
always a night shift  of technicians in  the laboratories and dubbing  rooms
and people on  the maintenance staff dropping in at the commissary.  But the
sounds are all different-the padded hush of tires, the quiet tick of a motor
running  idle,  the  naked  cry  of  a  soprano  singing  into  a nightbound
microphone. Around a corner I came upon a man in rubber boots washing down a
car in a wonderful white light-a fountain among the dead industrial shadows.
I slowed  up as I saw Mr. Marcus being  hoisted into his car in front of the
Administration  Building,  because he took so long  to  say  anything,  even
goodnight-and while I waited I realized that the soprano was singing  "Come!
Come! I  love you only"  over  and  over; I remember  this because  she kept
singing  the  same line  during the earthquake.  That  didn't  come for five
minutes yet.
     Father's offices were in the old building  with  the long balconies and
iron rails with their suggestion of a perpetual tightrope. Father was on the
second floor with Stahr on one side and Mr. Marcus on the other-this evening
there  were  lights  all along  the row. My stomach dipped a  little  at the
proximity to Stahr but that was in pretty good control now-I'd seen him only
once in the month I'd been home.
     There were  a lot of strange things about Father's office but I'll make
it brief. In the outer part were  three poker-faced secretaries who  had sat
there  like  witches   ever  since  I  could  remember-Birdy  Peters,  Maude
something, and Rosemary Schmiel; I don't know whether this  was her name but
she was the Dean  of  the  trio, so to  speak,  and under her desk  was  the
kick-lock  that admitted  you to  Father's  throne room.  All three  of  the
secretaries were passionate capitalists and Birdy had invented the rule that
if typists  were seen eating together  more than once in  a single week they
were hauled up on the carpet. At that time the studio feared mob rule.
     I went on in. Nowadays all chief executives have huge drawing rooms but
my father's was the first. It was also the first to have oneway glass in the
big  French windows and I've  heard  a story  about a trap in the floor that
would drop unpleasant visitors to an oubliette below but believe it to be an
invention. There  was a big painting of Will  Rogers, hung conspicuously and
intended,  I  think,  to suggest Father's essential kinship with Hollywood's
St. Francis; there was a  signed  photograph  of  Minna  Davis, Stahr's dead
wife,  and photos  of  other studio  celebrities  and big chalk drawings  of
Mother  and me. Tonight the one-way French windows were open and a big moon,
rosy-gold with a haze around, was wedged helpless in one of them. Father and
Jaques La Borwits and  Rosemary Schmiel  were down at the end around  a  big
circular desk.
     What did Father look  like?  I couldn't describe him except for once in
New York  when I met him where I didn't expect to;  I was aware of  a bulky,
middle-aged  man who looked  a little ashamed of  himself and  I wished he'd
move  on-and  then  I saw he  was  Father. Afterward  I was  shocked  at  my
impression.  Father can be  very magnetic-he  has a tough jaw  and an  Irish
smile.
     But as for  Jaques La Borwits I shall spare you. Let me just say he was
an assistant producer which is something like a commissar, and let it go  at
that.  Where  Stahr picked up  such mental cadavers or had  them forced upon
him-or especially how he got any use out of them-has always amazed me, as it
amazed everyone fresh from the East who  slapped up against them. Jaques  La
Borwits had his points, no doubt, but  so have the sub-microscopic protozoa,
so has a dog prowling for a bitch and a bone. Jaques La-oh, my!
     From  their expressions I was sure  they had been talking  about Stahr.
Stahr had ordered something or  forbidden  something,  or  defied  Father or
junked one of La Borwits' pictures or  something  catastrophic and they were
sitting  there  in  protest  at  night  in  a  community  of  rebellion  and
helplessness.  Rosemary Schmiel sat pad  in hand  as if ready  to write down
their dejection.
     "I'm  to  drive  you home  dead or alive,"  I  told  Father. "All those
birthday presents rotting away in their packages!"
     "A birthday!" cried Jaques  in a  flurry of apology. "How old? I didn't
know."
     "Forty-three," said Father distinctly.
     He was older than that-four years-and Jaques knew it; I saw him note it
down in his account  book to use sometime.  Out here these account books are
carried open  in  the  hand.  One  can  see the entries  being  made without
recourse to lip reading  and Rosemary Schmiel was compelled in emulation  to
make a mark on her pad. As she rubbed it out the earth quaked under us.
     We didn't get the full shock like at Long Beach where the upper stories
of  shops  were  spewed  into the  streets  and  small hotels drifted out to
sea-but for  a full  minute  our  bowels  were  one with the bowels  of  the
earth-like some nightmare attempt to attach  our  navel cords again and jerk
us back to the womb of creation.
     Mother's picture fell off the  wall revealing a small safe-Rosemary and
I  grabbed frantically for  each other  and  did  a strange screaming  waltz
across the room. Jaques fainted or at least disappeared  and Father clung to
his desk and shouted "Are you all right?" Outside the window the singer came
to  the  climax of  "I love you only," held  it a  moment and then, I swear,
started it  all  over.  Or maybe they were playing  it back  to her from the
recording machine.
     The room stood still, shimmying a little. We made our  way to the door,
suddenly  including Jaques  who  had reappeared,  and  tottered  out dizzily
through the ante-room on to the iron balcony. Almost all the lights were out
and from here and there we could hear cries and calls. Momentarily we  stood
waiting  for a  second  shock-then  as with  a common  impulse we  went into
Stahr's entry and through to his office.
     The office was big but not as big as Father's. Stahr sat on the side of
his  couch  rubbing his eyes. When the quake came he had  been asleep and he
wasn't sure yet  whether he had dreamed it. When we convinced him he thought
it was all rather funny-until the telephones began to ring. I watched him as
unobtrusively as possible. He was grey with fatigue while he listened to the
phone and Dictograph  but as the reports came in, his eyes  began to pick up
shine.
     "A  couple  of water  mains have burst," he said to  Father,  "-they're
heading into the back lot."
     "Gray's shooting in the French Village," said Father.
     "It's flooded around the Station  too  and in the Jungle and  the  City
Corner, what the hell-nobody seems to be hurt." In passing he shook my hands
gravely. "Where've you been, Cecelia?"
     "You going out there, Monroe?" Father asked.
     "When all the news is in. One of the  power lines  is off too-I've sent
for Robinson."
     He made me  sit down with him  on the couch  and  tell about  the quake
again.
     "You look tired," I said, cute and motherly.
     "Yes," he agreed, "I've got no  place to  go in the evenings so I  just
work."
     "I'll arrange some evenings for you."
     "I used to play poker with a gang," he said thoughtfully. "Before I was
married. But they all drank themselves to death."
     Miss Doolan, his secretary, came in with fresh bad news.
     "Robby'll take care of everything when he comes," Stahr assured Father.
He   turned   to  me.   "Now  there's  a  man-that  Robinson.   He   was   a
trouble-shooter-fixed  the  telephone  wires in  Minnesota blizzards-nothing
stumps him. He'll be here in a minute-you'll like Robby."
     He said it  as  if it  had  been his life-long  intention  to  bring us
together, and he had arranged, the whole earthquake with just that in mind.
     "Yes,  you'll  like  Robby,"  he repeated.  "When  do  you  go back  to
college?"
     "I've just come home."
     "You get the whole summer?"
     "I'm sorry," I said. "I'll go back as soon as I can."
     I  was in a mist. It hadn't failed to cross my mind that  he might have
some intention about me but if it was so, it was in  an exasperatingly early
stage-I was merely "a good property." And the idea didn't seem so attractive
at  that moment-like  marrying a  doctor.  He seldom left  the studio before
eleven.
     "How long-"  he  asked my father, "-before  she graduates from college?
That's what I was trying to say."
     And I think I  was about to sing out eagerly that I needn't go  back at
all,  that I was quite educated already-when the  totally admirable Robinson
came in. He was a bowlegged young redhead, all ready to go.
     "This is Robby, Cecelia," said Stahr. "Come on, Robby."
     So I met Robby. I can't  say it seemed like fate-but it was. For it was
Robby who later told me how Stahr found his love that night.



     Episode 6

     Under the moon  the back lot  was thirty acres of fairyland-not because
the locations really looked  like African  jungles and  French chateaux  and
schooners at anchor and Broadway by night, but because they looked like  the
torn picture books of childhood, like  fragments  of  stories dancing  in an
open fire. I never  lived  in a house  with an attic but a back  lot must be
something like that and at night of course in an enchanted distorted way, it
all comes true.
     When  Stahr and Robby arrived clusters of lights had already picked out
the danger spots in the flood.
     "We'll pump it  out into the  swamp on Thirty-sixth Street," said Robby
after  a  moment. "It's city property-but isn't this an act of God? Say-look
there!"
     On top of a huge head of the god Siva, two women were floating down the
current of  an impromptu  river. The idol had come  unloosed from  a set  of
Burma and  it meandered  earnestly on its way, stopping sometimes to  waddle
and bump in the shallows with the other debris of the tide. The two refugees
had  found sanctuary along a scroll of curls on its bald forehead and seemed
at  first glance to be  sightseers on  an  interesting bus-ride through  the
scene of the flood.
     "Will you look at that, Monroe!" said Robby. "Look at those dames!"
     Dragging their legs through sudden bogs they made their way to the bank
of the  stream. Now  they  could see the women  looking a  little scared but
brightening at the prospect of rescue.
     "We  ought  to let  'em  drift  out  to  the  waste  pipe,"  said Robby
gallantly, "but De Mille needs that head next week."
     He wouldn't have hurt a fly though and presently he was hip deep in the
water fishing for them with a pole and  succeeding only in spinning it  in a
dizzy circle. Help arrived and the impression quickly got around that one of
them was very pretty and then that  they were people of importance. But they
were just  strays and Robby waited disgustedly to give  them hell  while the
thing was brought finally into control and beached.
     "Put  that  head back!"  he called  up  to  them.  "You  think  it's  a
souvenir?"
     One  of the women  came sliding smoothly down the cheek of the idol and
Robby caught and set her on solid  ground; the other one  hesitated and then
followed. Robby turned to Stahr for judgement.
     "What'll we do with them, chief?"
     Stahr  did not answer. Smiling faintly  at him  from not four feet away
was the face of his dead wife,  identical even to the expression. Across the
four feet of  moonlight the eyes he knew looked back at him, a  curl blew  a
little on a familiar forehead, the smile lingered changed a little according
to pattern, the lips parted-the  same. An  awful fear  went over  him and he
wanted to cry aloud. Back from the still sour room, the muffled glide of the
limousine hearse,  the falling concealing flowers, from  out  there  in  the
dark-here now  warm and glowing. The  river passed him in  a rush, the great
spotlights  swooped and blinked-and then  he heard  another voice speak that
was not Minna's voice.
     "We're sorry," said the voice. "We followed a truck in through a gate."
     A little  crowd had  gathered-electricians,  grips, truckers-and  Robby
began to nip at them like a sheep dog.
     "... get the big pumps  on the tanks on Stage  4... put a  cable around
this  head... raft it up on a couple of two-by-fours... get the water out of
the Jungle  first for Christ's sake... that big A pipe lay it down, all that
stuff is plastic...."
     Stahr stood watching the two women  as  they threaded their way after a
policeman  toward an exit gate. Then  he took a tentative step to see if the
weakness had gone  out of his knees. A loud tractor came bumping through the
slush  and men began  streaming  by him-every  second  one  glancing  at him
smiling  speaking  Hello Monroe... Hello Mr. Stahr... wet night Mr. Stahr...
Monroe... Monroe... Stahr... Stahr... Stahr.
     He spoke and  waved  back as  the  people streamed by in the  darkness,
looking I suppose a little like  the Emperor and the Old Guard. There is  no
world so but it has its heroes and Stahr was the hero. Most of these men had
been here a long time-through the beginnings and  the great upset when sound
came  and the three years of  Depression  he had seen that no  harm  came to
them.   The  old  loyalties   were   trembling  now-there   were  clay  feet
everywhere-but  still he was  their man, the last of  the princes. And their
greeting was a sort of low cheer as they went by.



     Episode 7

     Between the night I got back and the quake I'd made many observations.
     About Father, for example. I  loved Father-in a sort of irregular graph
with many low swoops-but I began to see that his strong will didn't fill him
out  as a passable man. Most of  what he accomplished boiled down to shrewd.
He  had  acquired with luck and shrewdness a quarter  interest  in a booming
circus-together with young Stahr.  That was his life's effort-all  the  rest
was an instinct to hang on. Of  course he talked that  double  talk  to Wall
Street about  how mysterious it was to make a picture but Father didn't know
the ABC's of dubbing or even cutting. Nor had he learned much about the feel
of America as  a  bar boy  in  Ballyhegan nor have any more than a drummer's
sense of  a  story. On the other hand he didn't have  concealed paresis like
----; he came to the studio before noon, and with a suspiciousness developed
like a muscle it was hard to put anything over on him.
     Stahr had been his luck-and  Stahr was something else  again.  He was a
marker in industry like Edison and  Lumiere and Griffith and Chaplin. He led
pictures way up past the range and power  of the theatre, reaching a sort of
golden age before the censorship  in 1933. Proof of  his leadership  was the
spying that went  on around him-not just for inside  information or patented
process secrets-but spying on his scent  for a trend in taste,  his guess as
how things  were going to be. Too much of his vitality was taken by the mere
parrying of these attempts. It made his work secret in part, often  devious,
slow-and hard to describe as the plans of a general-where  the psychological
factors become too tenuous and we end by merely  adding up the successes and
failures. But  I have  determined to give you a glimpse of him  functioning,
which is my excuse for what follows. It is drawn partly from a paper I wrote
in college on "A Producer's Day" and partly from my imagination.  More often
I  have blocked  in the ordinary events  myself, while the stranger ones are
true.

     In the early morning after the flood, a  man walked up  to the  outside
balcony  of  the  Administration  Building.  He  lingered  there  some  time
according to an eyewitness, then  mounted  to the iron railing and dove head
first to the pavement below. Breakage-one arm.
     Miss Doolan, Stahr's  secretary, told him about  it when  he buzzed for
her at nine. He had slept in his office without hearing the small commotion.
     "Pete Zavras!" Stahr exclaimed, "-the camera man?"
     "They took him to a doctor's office. It won't be in the paper."
     "Hell of  a thing," he said, "I  knew he'd gone to pot-but I don't know
why.  He was all right when we  used him two  years  ago-why  should he come
here? How did he get in?"
     "He bluffed  it with his old  studio  pass," said Catherine Doolan. She
was a  dry hawk, the wife  of an assistant  director. "Perhaps the quake had
something to do with it."
     "He was the best camera man in  town," Stahr said. When he had heard of
the thousands dead  at  Long Beach  he  was  still haunted by  the  abortive
suicide at dawn. He told Catherine Doolan to trace the matter down.
     The  first Dictograph messages blew in through the warm  morning. While
he shaved and had coffee  he talked  and listened. Robby had left a message:
"If  Mr. Stahr wants  me tell him  to hell with it I'm in bed." An actor was
sick or thought so; the Governor of California was  bringing a  party out; a
supervisor  had beaten up his wife for the prints and  must be "reduced to a
writer"-these three affairs  were  Father's  job-unless the actor  was under
personal contract to  Stahr. There was  early snow  on a location in  Canada
with the company already there-Stahr raced over the possibilities of salvage
reviewing the story of the picture. Nothing. Stahr called Catherine Doolan.
     "I want  to speak to  the  cop who  put two women off the back lot last
night. I think his name's Malone."
     "Yes, Mr. Stahr. I've got Joe Wyman-about the trousers."
     "Hello  Joe,"  said  Stahr. "Listen-two  people  at  the  sneak preview
complained that  Morgan's fly  was open for  half  the  picture... of course
they're exaggerating but even if it's only ten feet... no, we can't find the
people  but  I  want that  picture  run over  and  over  until you find that
footage. Get a lot of people in the projection room-somebody'll spot it."

     Tout passe.-L'art robuste
     Seul a l'eternite.

     "And  there's the Prince from  Denmark," said Catherine  Doolan.  "He's
very handsome." She was impelled to add pointlessly "-for a tall man."
     "Thanks," Stahr said. "Thank you, Catherine, I appreciate it  that I am
now the handsomest small man on the lot. Send the Prince out on the sets and
tell him we'll lunch at one."
     "And Mr. George Boxley-looking very angry in a British way."
     "I'll see him for ten minutes."
     As she went out he asked:
     "Did Robby phone in?"
     "No."
     "Call  Sound and if he's been heard from call him and ask him this. Ask
him this-did he hear that woman's name last night. Either of those women. Or
anything so they could be traced."
     "Anything else?"
     "No, but tell him  it's important while he still  remembers.  What were
they? I mean what kind of people-ask him that too. I mean were they-"
     She waited, scratching his words on her pad without looking.
     "-oh,  were they-questionable?  Were they theatrical?  Never  mind-skip
that. Just ask if he knows how they can be traced."
     The policeman,  Malone, had known nothing. Two dames and he had hustled
'em you betcha. One of them was sore. Which  one?  One of  them.  They had a
car,  a Chewy, he  thought of taking the license. Was it-the good looker who
was sore? It was one of them.
     Not which one-he had noticed nothing.  Even  on the lot  here Minna was
forgotten. In three years. So much for that then.



     Episode 8

     Stahr smiled at Mr. George Boxley. It was a kindly fatherly smile Stahr
had developed inversely when  he was  a young  man pushed into high  places.
Originally it had been a smile of respect toward his elders, then as his own
decisions grew rapidly to displace theirs, a smile  so that they should  not
feel  it-finally  emerging as what  it  was, a smile of kindness sometimes a
little hurried and tired but always there, toward anyone who had not angered
him within the hour. Or  anyone  he  did not intend to insult aggressive and
outright.
     Mr.  Boxley did  not smile  back.  He  came  in with  the air of  being
violently dragged though no one apparently had a  hand on him.  He stood  in
front of a chair and again  it was as if two invisible attendants seized his
arms and set him  down forcibly into it. He sat there morosely. Even when he
lit a cigarette on Stahr's invitation one felt that the match was held to it
by exterior forces he disdained to control.
     Stahr looked at him courteously.
     "Something not going well, Mr. Boxley?"
     The novelist looked back at him in thunderous silence.
     "I  read your letter,"  said  Stahr.  The tone  of  the pleasant  young
headmaster was  gone.  He  spoke as to  an equal but  with a faint two-edged
deference.
     "I can't get what I write on paper," broke out Boxley. "You've all been
very decent but it's a sort of conspiracy.  Those two hacks you've teamed me
with  listen to what I say but they spoil it-they  seem to have a vocabulary
of about a hundred words."
     "Why don't you write it yourself?" asked Stahr.
     "I have. I sent you some."
     "But it was just talk, back and forth," said Stahr mildly. "Interesting
talk but nothing more."
     Now  it was all the two ghostly  attendants could do to hold  Boxley in
the deep chair. He struggled to get up; he uttered a single quiet bark which
had some relation to laughter but none to amusement, and said:
     "I don't  think you people read  things. The men  are dueling  when the
conversation takes place. At the  end one of them falls into a  well and has
to be hauled up in a bucket."
     He barked again and subsided.
     "Would you write that in a book of your own, Mr. Boxley?"
     "What? Naturally not."
     "You'd consider it too cheap."
     "Movie standards are different," said Boxley hedging.
     "Do you ever go to them?"
     "No-almost never."
     "Isn't it because people are always dueling and falling down wells?"
     "Yes-and wearing strained facial expressions and talking incredible and
unnatural dialogue."
     "Skip the dialogue for a minute," said Stahr. "Granted your dialogue is
more graceful than  what these hacks can write-that's why we brought you out
here. But  let's imagine something that isn't either bad dialogue or jumping
down a well. Has your office got a stove in it that lights with a match?"
     "I think it has," said Boxley stiffly, "-but I never use it."
     "Suppose  you're in your office. You've  been fighting duels or writing
all  day  and you're  too  tired to  fight or write any more. You're sitting
there staring-dull, like  we  all get sometimes.  A pretty stenographer that
you've seen  before  comes into the room and you watch her-idly. She doesn't
see you though you're very close to her. She takes off her gloves, opens her
purse and dumps it out on a table-"
     Stahr stood up, tossing his key-ring on his desk.
     "She has two dimes  and a nickle-and a cardboard match box. She  leaves
the nickle on the desk, puts the two dimes back into her purse and takes her
black gloves to the stove, opens it and puts them inside. There is one match
in  the  match  box  and she  starts to light it kneeling by the stove.  You
notice that there's a stiff wind  blowing  in  the window-but just then your
telephone  rings.   The  girl  picks  it  up,  says  hello-listens-and  says
deliberately into the phone  'I've  never owned a pair of black gloves in my
life.' She hangs  up, kneels by the stove again, and  just as she lights the
match you glance around very suddenly and see  that  there's another man  in
the office, watching every move the girl makes-"
     Stahr paused. He picked up his keys and put them in his pocket.
     "Go on," said Boxley smiling. "What happens?"
     "I don't know," said Stahr. "I was just making pictures."
     Boxley felt he was being put in the wrong.
     "It's just melodrama," he said.
     "Not necessarily," said Stahr. "In any  case nobody has moved violently
or talked cheap dialogue or had any facial expression at all. There was only
one  bad  line,  and  a  writer  like  you could  improve it.  But you  were
interested."
     "What was the nickle for?" asked Boxley evasively.
     "I don't know," said Stahr. Suddenly he laughed, "Oh yes-the nickle was
for the movies."
     The two invisible attendants  seemed  to  release  Boxley. He  relaxed,
leaned back in his chair and laughed.
     "What in hell do you pay me for?" he demanded. "I  don't understand the
damn stuff."
     "You will," said Stahr grinning. "Or you wouldn't have asked  about the
nickle."

     A dark  saucer-eyed man was  waiting in the  outer office  as they came
out.
     "Mr.  Boxley,  this  is Mr.  Mike Van Dyke," Stahr  said.  "What is it,
Mike?"
     "Nothing," Mike said. "I just came up to see if you were real."
     "Why don't you go to  work?" Stahr said. "I haven't  had a laugh in the
rushes for days."
     "I'm afraid of a nervous breakdown."
     "You  ought to keep in form," Stahr  said. "Let's  see you peddle  your
stuff." He turned to Boxley. "Mike's a gag man-he was out here when I was in
the cradle. Mike, show Mr. Boxley a double wing, clutch, kick and scram."
     "Here?" asked Mike.
     "Here."
     "There isn't much room. I wanted to ask you about-"
     "There's lots of room. "
     "Well," he looked around tentatively. "You shoot the gun."
     Miss Doolan's assistant, Katie, took a paper bag, blew it open.
     "It was a routine," Mike said to Boxley-"back in the Keystone days." He
turned to Stahr. "Does he know what a routine is?"
     "It  means  an  act,"  Stahr  explained.  "Georgie  Jessel talks  about
'Lincoln's Gettysburg routine.' "
     Katie poised the neck of the blown up bag in her mouth. Mike stood with
his back to her.
     "Ready?"  Katie   asked.  She  brought  her  hand  down  on  the  side.
Immediately Mike grabbed his bottom with both hands, jumped in the air, slid
his feet  out on  the  floor one after the  other, remaining  in  place  and
flapping his arms twice like a bird "Double wing," said Stahr.
     -And  then ran-out the screen  door which  the office boy held open for
him and disappeared past the window of the balcony.
     "Mr. Stahr," said Miss Doolan,  "Mr. Hanson  is on  the phone from  New
York."
     Ten minutes later he clicked his Dictograph  and  Miss  Doolan came in.
There was a male  star waiting  to see  him  in the outer office Miss Doolan
said.
     "Tell him I went out by the balcony," Stahr advised her.
     "All right. He's been in four times this week. He seems very anxious."
     "Did he give you any hint of  what he wanted? Isn't it something he can
see Mr. Brady about?"
     "He didn't say. You have a conference  coming up.  Miss Meloney and Mr.
White are outside. Mr. Broaca is next door in Mr. Rienmund's office."
     "Send  ----- in,"  said  Stahr.  "Tell  him  I can  see him only  for a
minute."
     When the handsome actor came in Stahr remained standing.
     "What is it that can't wait?" he asked pleasantly.
     The actor waited carefully till Miss Doolan had gone out.
     "Monroe, I'm through," he said. "I had to see you."
     "Through!" said  Stahr. "Have you seen  'Variety'? Your  picture's held
over at Roxy's and did thirty-seven thousand in Chicago last week."
     "That's the worst of it. That's  the tragedy.  I get everything I  want
and now it means nothing."
     "Well, go on explain."
     "There's  nothing  between Esther and  me  anymore. There never can  be
again."
     "A row."
     "Oh, no-worse-I can't bear to mention it. My head's in a daze. I wander
around like a madman. I go through my part as if I was asleep."
     "I haven't  noticed  it," said Stahr.  "You were  great in your  rushes
yesterday."
     "Was I? That just shows you nobody ever guesses."
     "Are you trying to tell me that you and Esther are separating?"
     "I suppose it'll come to that. Yes-inevitably-it will."
     "What  was it?" demanded  Stahr impatiently.  "Did she come  in without
knocking?"
     "Oh, there's nobody else. It's just-me. I'm through."
     Stahr got it suddenly.
     "How do you know?"
     "It's been true for six weeks."
     "It's your imagination," said Stahr. "Have you been to a doctor?"
     The actor nodded.
     "I've tried everything. I even-one day in desperation I went down to-to
Claris. But it was hopeless. I'm washed up."
     Stahr had an  impish temptation  to tell him to  go to Brady  about it.
Brady  handled  all  matters  of  public  relations.  Or  was  this  private
relations. He turned away a moment, got his face in control, turned back.
     "I've been  to Pat Brady," said the star, as if  guessing  the thought.
"He gave  me a  lot of phoney advice and I  tried it all  but nothing doing.
Esther and I  sit opposite each  other at dinner  and I'm ashamed to look at
her. She's been  a good  sport about it but I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed all day
long. I think 'Rainy Day' grossed 25,000 in Des Moines and broke all records
in St. Louis and did 27,000 in Kansas City. My fan mail's way up and there I
am afraid to go home at night, afraid to go to bed."
     Stahr began to be faintly oppressed. When the actor first came in Stahr
had intended to  invite him to a cocktail party  but now  it scarcely seemed
appropriate. What would he want with a cocktail party with this hanging over
him. In his mind's eye he saw him wandering haunted from guest to guest with
a cocktail in his hand and his grosses up 28, 000.
     "So  I came to  you, Monroe. I never saw a  situation  where you didn't
know a way out. I said to myself even  if he advises  me to kill myself I'll
ask Monroe."
     The buzzer sounded on Stahr's  desk-he switched on  the  Dictograph and
heard Miss Doolan's voice.
     "Five minutes, Mr. Stahr."
     "I'm sorry," said Stahr, "I'll need a few minutes more."
     "Five  hundred  girls marched to my house from  the high  school,"  the
actor said gloomily.  "And I stood behind the  curtains  and watched them. I
couldn't go out."
     "You sit down,"  said Stahr.  "We'll take plenty of time and  talk this
over."
     In  the outer office two  members  of the conference  group had already
waited ten minutes-Wylie  White and Rose  Meloney. The latter was a dried up
little blonde of fifty about whom one could hear the fifty assorted opinions
of Hollywood-"a  sentimental  dope," "the best  writer  on  construction  in
Hollywood," "a veteran,"  "that old hack," "the smartest woman on  the lot,"
"the  cleverest  plagiarist  in  the  biz," and  of  course  in  addition  a
nymphomaniac, a virgin, a pushover, a  lesbian and a  faithful wife. Without
being an old maid she was like most self-made  women rather old maidish. She
had ulcers of the stomach and her salary was over a hundred thousand a year.
A complicated treatise  could  be  written on whether she was "worth it"  or
more than that or nothing at all. Her value lay  in such  ordinary assets as
the bare fact  that she was a woman and  adaptable, quick  and  trustworthy,
"knew the game" and was without egotism. She  had  been a  great  friend  of
Minna's and over a period of years he had managed to stifle what amounted to
a sharp physical revulsion.
     She and  Wylie waited  in silence-occasionally addressing  a remark  to
Miss  Doolan. Every few minutes Rienmund  the supervisor called up from  his
office  where he and  Broaca the  director were waiting. After  ten  minutes
Stahr's  button  went  on  and  Miss  Doolan  called  Rienmund  and  Broaca;
simultaneously  Stahr and the actor  came out of Stahr's  office  with Stahr
holding the  man's arm. He was  so wound up now that when  Wylie White asked
him how he was he opened his mouth and began to tell him then and there.
     "Oh, I've had an awful time," he said but Stahr interrupted sharply.
     "No you haven't. Now you go along and do the role the way I said."
     "Thank you, Monroe."
     Rose Meloney looked after him without speaking.
     "Somebody been catching flies on him?" she asked, a phrase for stealing
scenes.
     "I'm sorry I kept you waiting," Stahr said. "Come on in."



     Episode 9

     It was  noon already and the conferees were entitled to exactly an hour
of Stahr's time. No less, for such a conference could only be interrupted by
a director  who was held up in  his shooting; seldom much more because every
eight days  the company must release a production  as complex and costly  as
Reinhardt's "Miracle."
     Occasionally,  less  often than  five years  ago,  Stahr would work all
through the night on a single picture.  But after such  a spree he  felt bad
for days. If he could go from problem to problem there was a certain rebirth
of vitality with each change. And like those sleepers  who can wake whenever
they wish, he had set his psychological clock to run one hour.
     The cast  assembled included besides the  writers  Rienmund, one of the
most favored of the supervisors, and John Broaca, the picture's director.
     Broaca, on  the surface,  was  an  engineer-large and  without  nerves,
quietly resolute, popular. He  was an ignoramus and Stahr  often  caught him
making the  same  scenes over  and  over-one scene  about a rich young  girl
occurred in  all his pictures  with the same action,  the  same  business. A
bunch of  large dogs. entered the room and jumped around the girl. Later the
girl went to a stable  and slapped a horse on the rump.  The explanation was
probably not Freudian; more  likely that  at a drab moment in  youth  he had
looked through a fence and seen a beautiful girl with  dogs and horses. As a
trademark for glamor it was stamped on his brain forever.
     Rienmund  was  a  handsome  young  opportunist,  with  a   fairly  good
education. Originally a man of some  character he was being daily forced  by
his anomalous position into devious ways  of  acting and thinking. He was  a
bad  man now, as men go. At thirty  he  had none of the virtues which either
native  Americans or  Jews  are  taught to think admirable. But  he  got his
pictures out in  time and  by  manifesting an almost homosexual  fixation on
Stahr,   seemed  to  have  dulled  Stahr's  usual   acuteness.  Stahr  liked
him-considered him a good all around man.
     Wylie White,  of course, would have been recognizable in any country as
an  intellectual of the  second  order. He  was civilized and voluble,  both
simple  and  acute, half  dazed half saturnine. His jealousy of Stahr showed
only  in  unguarded  flashes,  and  was mingled  with  admiration  and  even
affection.
     "The production date for this picture is two weeks from Saturday," said
Stahr. "I think basically it's all right-much improved."
     Rienmund and the two writers exchanged a glance of congratulation.
     "Except for one thing," said Stahr,  thoughtfully. "I  don't see why it
should be produced at all and I've decided to put it away."
     There  was  a moment  of shocked silence-and then  murmurs of  protest,
stricken queries.
     "It's not your fault," Stahr said. "I thought there was something there
that wasn't  there-that  was  all."  He hesitated,  looking  regretfully  at
Rienmund. "It's too bad-it was a good play. We paid fifty thousand for it."
     "What's the matter with it, Monroe?" asked Broaca bluntly.
     "Well, it hardly seems worth while to go into it," said Stahr.
     Rienmund and Wylie White were both  thinking of the professional effect
on them. Rienmund had  two pictures to his account this year-but Wylie White
needed  a credit  to  start  his comeback  to  the scene.  Rose  Meloney was
watching Stahr closely from little skull-like eyes.
     "Couldn't you give us some clue?" Rienmund  asked. "This is a good deal
of a blow, Monroe."
     "I just  wouldn't  put Margaret Sullavan in it," said Stahr. "Or Colman
either. I wouldn't advise them to play it-"
     "Specifically, Monroe," begged Wylie White. "What didn't you like?  The
scenes? the dialogue? the humor? construction?"
     Stahr picked up the script from his desk, let it  fall  as  if it  were
physically too heavy to handle.
     "I don't like the people," he said.  "I wouldn't like to meet them-if I
knew they were going to be somewhere I'd go somewhere else. "
     Rienmund smiled but there was worry in his eyes.
     "Well, that's a damning criticism," he said. "I thought the people were
rather interesting. "
     "So did I," said Broaca. "I thought Em was very sympathetic."
     "Did you?" asked  Stahr sharply. "I could just  barely  believe she was
alive. And when I came to the end I said to myself 'So what?' "
     "There must be something to do," Rienmund said. "Naturally  we feel bad
about this. This is the structure we agreed on-"
     "But it's  not the story," said Stahr. "I've  told  you many times that
the  first thing I  decide is the kind  of story  I want. We change in every
other  regard  but once that is  set  we've got to work toward it with every
line  and movement. This is not  the kind  of a story I want. The  story  we
bought had shine  and glow-it  was a happy story. This is all full of  doubt
and  hesitation.  The   hero  and  heroine   stop  loving  each  other  over
trifles-then they  start up again over trifles. After the first sequence you
don't care if she never sees him again or he her."
     "That's my fault," said Wylie suddenly. "You see, Monroe, I don't think
stenographers have  the same dumb  admiration for their bosses  they had  in
1929. They've been laid off-they've seen their bosses jittery. The world has
moved on, that's all."
     Stahr looked at him impatiently, gave a short nod.
     "That's not under  discussion," he said. "The premise  of this story is
that the girl did have dumb  admiration for her boss if you want to  call it
that. And  there  wasn't any  evidence that he'd ever been jittery. When you
make her doubt him in  any way you have a different kind of story. Or rather
you  haven't   anything  at   all.  These  people  are  extraverts-get  that
straight-and  I want them to extravert all over the lot. When I want to do a
Eugene O'Neill play I'll buy one."
     Rose Meloney who had  never taken her eyes  off Stahr knew it was going
to be  all right now. If he had really been going  to abandon the picture he
wouldn't  have gone at it like this. She had been in this game  longer  than
any of  them except Broaca with whom she had  had a three day  affair twenty
years ago.
     Stahr turned to Rienmund.
     "You ought to have understood from the casting,  Rieny, what kind of  a
picture I wanted.  I started  marking  the lines that  Carroll and MacMurray
couldn't say  and got  tired  of it.  Remember  this in future-if I  order a
limousine I want that kind of car. And the fastest midget racer you ever saw
wouldn't do. Now-" He looked around. "Shall we go any farther? Now that I've
told  you I  don't even like  the kind of  picture  this is? Shall we go on?
We've got  two weeks. At the end of that time I'm  going to  put Carroll and
MacMurray into this or something else-is it worth while?"
     "Well naturally," said Rienmund, "I think it is. I feel bad about this.
I should have warned Wylie. I thought he had some good ideas."
     "Monroe's right," said Broaca bluntly. "I felt this was wrong  all  the
time but I couldn't put my finger on it."
     Wylie and Rose looked at him contemptuously and exchanged a glance.
     "Do you writers  think you can  get hot on it again?" asked Stahr,  not
unkindly. "Or shall I try somebody fresh?"
     "I'd like another shot," said Wylie.
     "How about you, Rose?"
     She nodded briefly.
     "What do you think of the girl?" asked Stahr.
     "Well-naturally I'm prejudiced in her favor."
     "You better  forget  it," said Stahr warningly. "Ten  million Americans
would put thumbs down on that girl if she walked on the screen. We've got an
hour and twenty-five minutes on the screen-you show a woman being unfaithful
to a  man for one-third of that time and  you've given  the impression  that
she's one-third whore."
     "Is that a big proportion?" asked Rose slyly, and they laughed.
     "It is for me," said  Stahr thoughtfully,  "even if it  wasn't  for the
Hays office.  If you want  to paint  a scarlet letter  on her  back it's all
right but that's  another story. Not  this  story. This is a future wife and
mother. However-however-"
     He pointed his pencil at Wylie White.
     "-this has as much passion as that Oscar on my desk."
     "What the hell!" said Wylie. "She's full of it. Why she goes to-"
     "She's loose enough,"  said Stahr, "-but that's all. There's one  scene
in the play better  than all this you cooked up and you've left it out. When
she's trying to make the time pass by changing her watch."
     "It didn't seem to fit," Wylie apologized.
     "Now," said  Stahr, "I've got about fifty ideas. I'm going to call Miss
Doolan." He pressed a button. "-and if there's anything you don't understand
speak up-"
     Miss  Doolan slid  in almost  imperceptibly.  Pacing the  floor swiftly
Stahr began. In the first place he wanted to tell them what  kind  of a girl
she was-what kind of a girl he approved of here. She was a perfect girl with
a few small faults as in the play but a perfect girl not because the  public
wanted her that way  but because  it was  the kind of girl  that he,  Stahr,
liked  to see in this sort of picture. Was  that clear? It was  no character
role. She stood for health, vitality,  ambition and love. What gave the play
its  importance was  entirely  a situation in  which she found herself.  She
became  possessed of  a secret that affected a great many lives. There was a
right thing and a wrong  thing to  do-at first it  was  not plain which  was
which but when it  was she went right away and did it. That was  the kind of
story this was-thin, clean and shining. No doubts.
     "She has never heard the  word labor troubles," he said  with  a  sigh.
"She might be living in 1929. Is it plain what kind of girl I want?"
     "It's very plain, Monroe."
     "Now about  the things  she  does," said Stahr.  "At all  times, at all
moments when she is on the screen in  our sight she wants  to sleep with Ken
Willard. Is that plain, Wylie?"
     "Passionately plain."
     "Whatever she does it is in place of  sleeping with Ken Willard. If she
walks down the street she is walking to sleep  with Ken Willard, if she eats
her food  it is to give  her strength to  sleep with Ken Willard.  But at no
time do you give the impression  that she would ever  consider sleeping with
Ken Willard  unless  they were properly sanctified. I'm ashamed of having to
tell  you these kindergarten  facts but they have somehow leaked out of  the
story."
     He opened the script and began to  go  through  it page  by  page. Miss
Doolan's notes would be  typed in quintuplicate and given  to them but  Rose
Meloney made notes of her  own. Broaca put his hand  up to  his half  closed
eyes-he could  remember  "when  a  director  was  something out here,"  when
writers  were gag men or eager and ashamed young reporters full of whiskey-a
director was all there was then. No supervisor-no Stahr.
     He started wide awake as he heard his name.
     "It would be nice, John, if you could put the boy on a pointed roof and
let  him walk around and  keep  the  camera  on him.  You might get  a  nice
feeling-not  danger, not  suspense, not  pointing for anything-a  kid on the
roof in the morning."
     Broaca brought himself back in the room.
     "All right," he said. "-just an element of danger."
     "Not exactly," said  Stahr.  "He  doesn't  start to fall off the  roof.
Break into the next scene with it."
     "Through the window," suggested Rose  Meloney.  "He could climb  in his
sister's window."
     "That's a good transition," said Stahr. "Right into the diary scene. "
     Broaca was wide awake now.
     "I'll shoot up at him," he said. "Let him go away from the camera. Just
a  fixed  shot from  quite a distance-let him go away from the camera. Don't
follow him.  Pick  him  up in  a  close shot and let  him go away  again. No
attention on him except against the whole roof and  the  sky." He liked  the
shot-it was a director's shot that didn't come up on every page any more. He
might use  a crane-it would be  cheaper in the end than building the roof on
the ground with a  process sky. That was one  thing about  Stahr-the literal
sky  was the limit. He had worked with Jews too long to believe legends that
they were small with money.
     "In the  third sequence  have him hit the priest," Stahr  said. "What!"
Wylie cried,  "-and have the Catholics on our  neck."  "I've  talked  to Joe
Breen. Priests have been hit. It doesn't reflect on them."
     His quiet voice  ran on-stopped abruptly as Miss  Doolan glanced at the
clock.
     "Is that too much to do before Monday?" he asked Wylie. Wylie looked at
Rose  and she looked back not even  bothering to nod. He  saw their week-end
melting away, but he was a different man from when he entered the room. When
you were paid fifteen  hundred  a week emergency work was one thing  you did
not skimp, nor when your  picture was threatened.  As a "free  lance" writer
Wylie  had failed from lack of caring but here was Stahr to care, for all of
them. The effect would not wear  off when he  left  the  office-not anywhere
within the walls of the lot. He  felt a great purposefulness. The mixture of
common sense, wise sensibility,  theatrical ingenuity,  and  a  certain half
naive conception of  the  common  weal which Stahr  had  just stated  aloud,
inspired him to do his part, to get his block of stone in place, even if the
effort were foredoomed, the result as dull as a pyramid.
     Out the  window Rose Meloney  watched the trickle streaming  toward the
commissary. She would have her lunch in her office and knit a few rows while
it came. The man was coming at  one-fifteen with the French perfume smuggled
over the Mexican border. That was no sin-it was like prohibition.
     Broaca  watched  as Rienmund fawned upon Stahr. He sensed that Rienmund
was on his  way up-not yet.  He received seven hundred and fifty  a week for
his  partial authority over directors,  writers and stars who got much more.
He wore a cheap English shoe he bought near  the Beverly Wilshire and Broaca
hoped they hurt his feet, but soon now he would order his  shoes from Peal's
and  put away  his little green alpine  hat with a feather. Broaca was years
ahead of  him. He had a fine  record in the war but he had  never felt quite
the  same with himself since he had let Ike Franklin  strike him in the face
with his open hand.
     There was smoke in the room and  behind it, behind his great desk Stahr
was withdrawing further and further,  in all courtesy, still giving Rienmund
an ear and Miss Doolan an ear. The conference was over.

     "Any messages?"
     "Mr.  Robinson called in,"  Miss  Doolan  said,  as he  started for the
commissary.  "One of  the women told  him her name but he's  forgotten it-he
thinks it was Smith or Brown or Jones."
     "That's a great help."
     "And he remembers she says she just moved to Los Angeles."
     "I remember she had  a silver belt," Stahr said, "with stars cut out of
it."
     "I'm still trying to find  out  more about Pete Zavras. I talked to his
wife."
     "What did she say?"
     "Oh, they've had an awful time-given up their house-she's been sick-"
     "Is the eye trouble hopeless?"
     "She didn't seem  to know anything about  the state  of his  eyes.  She
didn't even know he was going blind."
     "That's funny."
     He thought about  it on  the way to luncheon but it was as confusing as
the actor's trouble this morning. Troubles about people's health didn't seem
within  his range-he  gave no  thought  to his  own. In the lane beside  the
commissary he  stepped back  as an open electric truck crammed with girls in
the  bright costumes of the regency  came rolling in from the  back lot. The
dresses  were fluttering  in the wind, the young painted faces looked at him
curiously and he smiled as it went by.



     Episode 10

     Eleven  men  and their  guest Prince  Agge sat at lunch in the  private
dining room of the studio commissary.  They were the money men-they were the
rulers and unless  there was a guest  they ate in broken  silence, sometimes
asking   questions  about  each   other's   wives  and  children,  sometimes
discharging a single  absorption from the  forefront of their consciousness.
Eight out  of the ten were Jews-five of the ten were foreign born, including
a Greek and an Englishman-and they had all known each other for a long time:
there was a rating  in the group,  from old Marcus down  to old Leanbaum who
had bought the most fortunate block  of  stock in the business and never was
allowed to spend over a million a year producing.
     Old    Marcus    functioned    with   disquieting   resilience.    Some
never-atrophying  instinct  warned  him  of danger,  of gangings  up against
him-he  was  never  so  dangerous  himself  as  when others  considered  him
surrounded. His  grey face had attained such immobility that even  those who
were accustomed to watch the reflex  of the inner corner of his eye could no
longer see  it-nature had grown a little white  whisker there to conceal it;
his armor was complete.
     As he was the oldest,  Stahr was the  youngest of the group-not by many
years at this date, though he had first  sat with most of these men when  he
was a boy wonder of twenty-two. Then, more than now, he had been a money man
among money  men.  Then he had been able to figure costs in  his head with a
speed and  accuracy that  dazzled  them-for they were  not wizards  or  even
experts in that regard, despite the popular  conception of Jews  in finance.
Most of them owed their success to different and incompatible qualities. But
in a group a tradition carries along the less adept,  and they  were content
to look at Stahr for the  sublimated  auditing and experience a sort of glow
as if they had done it themselves like rooters at a football game.
     Stahr, as will presently be seen, had grown away  from  that particular
gift, though it was always there.
     Prince Agge sat between  Stahr  and Mort Flieshacker the company lawyer
and across from Joe Popolous the theatre owner. He was hostile to Jews  in a
vague general way  that he tried to  cure  himself of. As  a turbulent  man,
serving his time in the Foreign Legion, he thought that  Jews were too  fond
of their  own skins.  But  he  was  willing  to concede  that they might  be
different in America under different  circumstances, and certainly  he found
Stahr was much of a  man in every way. For the rest-he thought most business
men were  dull  dogs-for final  reference he reverted always to the blood of
Bernadotte in his veins.
     My father-I will call him Mr. Brady as Prince Agge  did when he told me
of this  luncheon-was  worried  about a picture  and  when Leanbaum went out
early he came up and took his chair opposite.
     "How about the South America picture idea, Monroe?" he asked.
     Prince Agge noticed a blink of attention toward them as  distinct as if
a dozen pair of eyelashes had made the sound of batting wings. Then  silence
again.
     "We're going ahead with it," said Stahr.
     "With that same budget?" Brady asked.
     Stahr nodded.
     "It's out  of proportion," said Brady. "There  won't be  any miracle in
these  bad times-no  'Hell's Angels' or 'Ben-Hur' when you throw it away and
get it back."
     Probably the attack was planned,  for Popolous, the Greek, took up  the
matter in a sort of double talk that  reminded Prince Agge of  Mike Van Dyke
except  that  it  tried to  be  and  succeeded  in  being  clear instead  of
confusing.
     "It's not adoptable, Monroe, in as we wish adopt to this times in as it
changes. It what could be done as we run the gamut of prosperity is scarcely
conceptuable now. "
     "What do you think, Mr. Marcus?" asked Stahr.
     All eyes followed  his  down the  table but as if forewarned Mr. Marcus
had already signalled his private waiter behind him that he wished  to rise,
and was even now in  a basket-like  position in the waiter's arms. He looked
at  them  with such  helplessness  that it  was hard to realize that in  the
evenings he sometimes went dancing with his young Canadian girl.
     "Monroe is our  production genius," he said.  "I count  upon Monroe and
lean heavily upon him. I have not seen the flood myself."
     There was a moment of silence as he moved from the room.
     "There's not  a  two million dollar  gross in  the country  now,"  said
Brady.
     "Is not," agreed  Popolous. "Even as  if so you could grab them by  the
head and push them by and in, is not."
     "Probably not," agreed  Stahr.  He paused as if to make  sure that  all
were  listening. "I think we can  count on a million and a quarter  from the
road-show. Perhaps  a  million  and a half  altogether. And  a quarter of  a
million abroad."
     Again there was silence-this time puzzled, a little confused.  Over his
shoulder  Stahr asked the waiter  to be  connected with  his office  on  the
phone.
     "But your budget?" said Flieshacker. "Your budget is  seventeen hundred
and fifty thousand, I understand. And your expectations  only add up to that
without profit."
     "Those  aren't  my expectations," said Stahr. "We're  not sure  of more
than a million and a half."
     The  room had grown so  motionless that Prince  Agge could hear  a grey
chunk of ash  fall from a cigar in midair. Flieshacker started to speak, his
face  fixed  with  amazement,  but  a  phone  had been  handed over  Stahr's
shoulder.
     "Your office, Mr. Stahr."
     "Oh yes-oh, hello Miss Doolan. I've  figured it  out about Zavras. It's
one of these lousy rumors-I'll bet my shirt  on it.... Oh, you did. Good....
Good. Now here's what to do-send him to my  oculist this afternoon, Dr. John
Kennedy, and have him get a report and have it photostated-you understand."
     He hung up-turned with a touch of passion to the table at large.
     "Did any of you ever hear a story that Pete Zavras was going blind?"
     There were a  couple  of  nods. But most of  those present were  poised
breathlessly on whether Stahr had slipped on his figures a minute before.
     "It's pure bunk. He  says he's never even been to an oculist-never knew
why the studios turned against  him," said Stahr. "Somebody didn't like  him
or somebody talked too much and he's been out of work for a year."
     There was a conventional murmur of sympathy. Stahr signed the check and
made as though to get up.
     "Excuse  me,  Monroe," said Flieshacker persistently, while  Brady  and
Popolous watched,  "I'm  fairly  new here and  perhaps I  fail to comprehend
implicitly  and  explicitly."  He was  talking  fast but the  veins  on  his
forehead bulged with pride at the big  words from N. Y. U. "Do I  understand
you to say you expect to gross a quarter million short of your budget?"
     "It's a quality picture," said Stahr with assumed innocence.
     It had dawned on  them all now but they still felt there was a trick in
it. Stahr really thought  it would make money. No one in his senses "For two
years we've  played safe,"  said Stahr. "It's time we made a picture that'll
lose some money. Write it off as good will-this'll bring in new customers."
     Some of them still thought he meant it  was a flyer and a favorable one
but he left them in no doubt.
     "It'll lose money," he said as  he stood up, his jaw just  slightly out
and his eyes smiling and shining. "It would be a bigger miracle than 'Hell's
Angels' if it broke  even. But  we have a  certain duty to the public as Pat
Brady says at Academy dinners. It's a good thing for the production schedule
to slip in a picture that'll lose money."
     He nodded at  Prince Agge. As the latter made his bows quickly he tried
to take  in with a last glance the general effect of what Stahr said, but he
could  tell  nothing.  The  eyes  not  so much  downcast  as  fixed  upon an
indefinite distance just  above the table were all blinking quickly  now but
there was not a whisper in the room.

     Coming  out of the private dining room they passed through a  corner of
the  commissary proper. Prince  Agge  drank it in-eagerly.  It was  gay with
gypsies and with citizens and soldiers with the  sideburns and braided coats
of  the First Empire.  From a little distance  they  were men who  lived and
walked a  hundred years ago and Agge wondered how he and the men of his time
would look as extras in some future costume picture.
     Then he saw Abraham  Lincoln and his whole feeling suddenly changed. He
had been brought up  in the dawn of  Scandanavian socialism  where Nicolay's
biography was much  read. He had been told Lincoln was  a  great man whom he
should admire and he had  hated him instead because he  was forced upon him.
But now seeing him sitting here, his legs crossed, his  kindly face fixed on
a  forty  cent dinner, including dessert, his shawl wrapped around him as if
to protect himself from the erratic air-cooling-now Prince Agge,  who was in
America at last, stared as a  tourist at the mummy of  Lenin in the Kremlin.
This then was Lincoln. Stahr had walked on far ahead of him, turned  waiting
for him-but still Agge stared.
     -This then, he thought, was what they all meant to be.
     Lincoln suddenly  raised a triangle of  pie and  jammed it in his mouth
and, a little frightened, Prince Agge hurried to join Stahr.
     "I hope  you're  getting what  you  want,"  said  Stahr feeling he  had
neglected him. "We'll have some rushes in half an hour  and then you can  go
on to as many sets as you want."
     "I should rather stay with you," said Prince Agge.
     "I'll  see  what there  is  for  me," said  Stahr.  "Then we'll  go  on
together."
     There was the Japanese consul on the release of a spy story which might
offend  the  national  sensibilities  of  Japan. There were  phone calls and
telegrams. There was some further information from Robby.
     "Now he remembers the name of the woman  was Smith,"  said Miss Doolan.
"He asked  her if she wanted to come on  the lot and get  some dry shoes and
she said no-so she can't sue."
     "That's pretty bad for a total recall-'Smith.' That's a great help." He
thought a  moment. "Ask the phone  company for  a list of  Smiths that  have
taken new phones here in the last month. Call them all."
     "All right."



     For Episode 11

     "How you, Monroe," said Red Ridingwood. "I'm glad you came down."
     Stahr walked past him, heading across the great stage toward a set that
would  be used  tomorrow. Director  Ridingwood  followed, realizing suddenly
that  Stahr walked a  step or two  ahead.  He recognized  the  indication of
displeasure-his own metier was largely the "delivery" of situations  through
mimetic  business.  He didn't know what  the trouble was  but  he was  a top
director  and  not  alarmed.  Goldwyn  had  once  interfered  with  him, and
Ridingwood  had led Goldwyn into  trying to act out  a pan in front of fifty
actors-with  the result  that  he anticipated.  His own  authority  had been
restored.
     Stahr reached the set and stared at it.
     "It's no good," said Ridingwood. "I don't care how you light it-"
     "Why did you call me about it?" Stahr asked standing close to him. "Why
didn't you take it up with Art?"
     "I didn't ask you to come down, Monroe."
     "You wanted to be your own supervisor."
     "I'm sorry, Monroe," said Ridingwood  patiently. "But I didn't  ask you
to come down."
     Stahr  turned suddenly  and walked  back toward  the camera set up. The
eyes and open  mouths  of  a group  of  visitors  moved momentarily off  the
heroine of the picture, took in Stahr  and then moved vacantly  back  to the
heroine again. They were Knights of Columbus. They had seen the Host carried
in procession but this was the dream made flesh.
     Stahr stopped beside her chair. She wore a low gown which displayed the
bright eczema of her chest  and back. Before each take the blemished surface
was plastered over with  an emollient, which  was removed immediately  after
the take. Her hair was of the color and viscosity of drying blood  but there
was starlight that actually photographed in her eyes.
     Before Stahr could speak he heard a helpful voice behind him:
     "She's radiunt. Absolutely radiunt."
     It was an assistant director and the intention was delicate compliment.
The actress was being  complimented so that she did not have  to strain  her
poor  skin  to bend and hear. Stahr  was  being  complimented for having her
under contract. Ridingwood was being remotely complimented.
     "Everything all right?" Stahr asked her pleasantly.
     "Oh, it's fine," she agreed, "-except for the --ing publicity men."
     He winked at her gently.
     "We'll keep them away," he said.
     Her  name  had become currently synonymous with the expression "bitch."
Presumably she had modelled  herself after one of those queens in the Tarzan
comics who rule mysteriously over  a nation of blacks. She regarded the rest
of  the world  as black.  She was a  necessary evil, borrowed  for  a single
picture.
     Ridingwood walked with Stahr toward the door of the stage.
     "Everything's all right," the director said. "She's as good as she  can
be."
     They were out of hearing range and Stahr stopped suddenly and looked at
Red with blazing eyes.
     "You've been  photographing crap," he  said.  "Do  you  know  what  she
reminds me of in the rushes-'Miss Foodstuffs.' "
     "I'm trying to get the best performance-"
     "Come along with me," said Stahr abruptly.
     "With you? Shall I tell them to rest?"
     "Leave it as it is," said Stahr, pushing the padded outer door.
     His car and chauffeur waited outside. Minutes were precious most days.
     "Get in," said Stahr.
     Red knew now  it  was  serious. He even  knew all at once what  was the
matter. The girl had  got the whip hand  on him the first day with  her cold
lashing tongue. He  was  a peace-loving man and he had let her  walk through
her part cold rather than cause trouble.
     Stahr spoke into his thoughts.
     "You  can't handle her," he said.  "I told you  what I wanted. I wanted
her mean-and she  comes  out  bored.  I'm afraid we'll  have to call it off,
Red."
     "The picture?"
     "No. I'm putting Harley on it."
     "All right, Monroe."
     "I'm sorry, Red. We'll try something else another time."
     The car drew up in front of Stahr's office.
     "Shall I finish this take?" said Red.
     "It's being done now," said Stahr grimly. "Harley's in there."
     "What the hell-"
     "He went in when we came out. I had him read the script last night."
     "Now listen, Monroe-"
     "It's my busy  day, Red," said  Stahr tersely. "You lost interest about
three days ago."
     It was a sorry mess Ridingwood thought. It  meant  he would have to  do
the next  picture he  was offered whether  he  liked  it or not.  It meant a
slight, very  slight loss of position-it probably  meant that  he could  not
have  a third wife  just  now  as he  had  planned. There  wasn't  even  the
satisfaction in  raising a row about it-if you disagreed with Stahr  you did
not advertise it. Stahr was his world's great customer who was always-almost
always right.
     "How about my  coat?" he asked suddenly. "I left it over a chair on the
set."
     "I know you did," said Stahr. "Here it is."
     He was trying so hard to be charitable about Ridingwood's lapse that he
had forgotten that he had it in his hand.



     Episode 11

     "Mr. Stahr's Projection Room" was a miniature picture theatre with four
rows of overstuffed chairs. In front of the  front  row ran long tables with
dim  lamps, buzzers and  telephones. Against the wall  was an upright piano,
left there since the early days of  sound. The room had been redecorated and
reupholstered only a year before but already it  was ragged  again with work
and hours.
     Here  Stahr sat at  two-thirty  and again at  six-thirty  watching  the
lengths of film taken during the day. There was often a savage tensity about
the occasion-he was dealing with faits accomplis-the net result of months of
buying,  planning, writing and  rewriting, casting, constructing,  lighting,
rehearsing and shooting-the  fruit alike of brilliant hunches or counsels of
despair,  of lethargy, conspiracy and  sweat.  At this  point  the  tortuous
manoeuvre  was  staged   and  in  suspension-these  were  reports  from  the
battle-line.
     Besides Stahr there were  present the representatives of all  technical
departments together with the supervisors and unit managers of the  pictures
concerned. The directors did not appear at these showings-officially because
their work was considered done-actually because few punches were pulled here
as  money ran  out  in silver  spools. There had evolved  a delicate staying
away.
     The  staff  was already assembled. Stahr  came in  and  took his  place
quickly  and  the murmur of conversation  died away. As he sat back and drew
his thin knee  up beside  him in the chair the lights in  the room went out.
There was the flare of a match in the back row-then silence.
     On the screen  a troop of French  Canadians pushed  their  canoes up  a
rapids. The scene had been photographed  in a studio tank and  at the end of
each take after the director's voice could be heard saying "Cut," the actors
on  the  screen  relaxed   and  wiped  their  brows  and  sometimes  laughed
hilariously-and  the  water in  the  tank  stopped  flowing and the illusion
ceased. Except to name his choice from each set of  takes and to remark that
it was "a good process," Stahr made no comment.
     The  next scene,  still in the rapids, called for  dialogue between the
Canadian girl (Claudette Colbert)  and the  coureur du  bois (Ronald Colman)
with her  looking down at him  from a canoe.  After  a  few strips  had  run
through Stahr spoke up suddenly.
     "Has the tank been dismantled?"
     "Yes, sir."
     "Monroe-they needed it for-"
     Stahr cut in peremptorily.
     "Have it set up again right away. Let's have that second take again."
     The lights went on momentarily. One of the unit managers left his chair
and came and stood in front of Stahr.
     "A  beautifully  acted  scene  thrown away," raged  Stahr  quietly. "It
wasn't  centered. The camera  was  set up  so it caught the beautiful top of
Claudette's  head  all the  time she was talking. That's) just what we want,
isn't it? That's) just what  people go to see-the top of  a beautiful girl's
head. Tell Tim he could have saved wear and tear by using her stand-in."
     The lights went  out again. The unit manager  squatted by Stahr's chair
to be out of the way. The take was run again.
     "Do you see now?" asked Stahr. "And there's a hair in the picture-there
on the right, see it? Find out if it's in the projector or the film."
     At the very end of  the take  Claudette  Colbert slowly lifted her head
revealing her great liquid eyes.
     "That's what  we should have  had all the way," said Stahr. "She gave a
fine  performance  too.  See if  you  can fit  it in tomorrow  or late  this
afternoon."
     -Pete  Zavras would not have  made a slip like that. There were not six
camera men in the industry you could entirely trust.
     The lights  went on; the  supervisor and unit manager  for that picture
went out.
     "Monroe,  this stuff was  shot  yesterday-it  came  through  late  last
night."
     The room darkened. On the screen appeared the head of Siva, immense and
imperturbable, oblivious to the fact that in a few hours it was to be washed
away in a flood. Around it milled a crowd of the faithful.
     "When you take that scene again," said Stahr suddenly, "put a couple of
little kids up  on top. You better check about whether it's reverent or  not
but I think it's all right. Kids'll do anything."
     "Yes, Monroe."
     A silver belt  with stars cut out of it.... Smith, Jones  or  Brown....
Personal-will the woman with the silver belt who-?
     With another  picture the scene shifted  to New York, a gangster story,
and suddenly Stahr became restive.
     "That scene's trash," he called suddenly  in the darkness.  "It's badly
written,  it's miscast, it  accomplishes nothing. Those types  aren't tough.
They  look like a lot  of dressed up lollypops-what the  hell is the matter.
Mort?"
     "The scene was written on the set this morning," said Mort Flieshacker.
"Burton wanted to get all the stuff on Stage 6."
     "Well-it's trash.  And so is this one.  There's  no use  printing stuff
like that. She doesn't  believe what she's saying-neither does Cary. 'I love
you'  in  a close-up-they'll  cluck  you out  of  the  house! And the girl's
overdressed."
     In the darkness a  signal was given, the  projector stopped, the lights
went on. The room waited in utter silence. Stahr's face was expressionless.
     "Who wrote the scene?" he asked after a minute.
     "Wylie White."
     "Is he sober?"
     "Sure he is."
     Stahr considered.
     "Put about four writers on that scene tonight," he said. "See who we've
got. Is Sidney Howard here yet?"
     "He got in this morning."
     "Talk to him about it. Explain to him what I want there. The girl is in
deadly  terror-she's stalling. It's  as  simple as that.  People don't  have
three emotions at once. And Kapper-"
     The art director leaned his head forward out of the second row.
     "Yeah."
     "There's something the matter with that set."
     There were little glances exchanged all over the room.
     "What is it, Monroe?"
     "You tell me,"  said Stahr.  "It's  crowded. It  doesn't carry your eye
out. It looks cheap."
     "It wasn't."
     "I know it wasn't. There's  not much the matter  but there's something.
Go  over and take a look tonight. It may be too  much furniture-or the wrong
kind. Perhaps a  window  would help. Couldn't  you  force the perspective in
that hall a little more?"
     "I'll see what I can do." Kapper  edged his way out of the row  looking
at his watch.
     "I'll have to get  at  it  right away," he said. "I'll work tonight and
we'll put it up in the morning."
     "All right. Mort, you can shoot around those scenes, can't you?"
     "I think so, Monroe."
     "I take the blame for this. Have you got the fight stuff?"
     "Coming up now."
     Stahr nodded. Kapper hurried out and  the room went dark  again. On the
screen four men staged a terrific socking match in a cellar. Stahr laughed.
     "Look at  Tracy," he said.  "Look at him  go down after that guy. I bet
he's been in a few."
     The men fought  over and over. Always the same fight. Always at the end
they faced each other smiling, sometimes touching the opponent in a friendly
gesture on the shoulder. The only one in danger was the stunt man, a pug who
could have  murdered the other three.  He was  in danger  only if they swung
wild  and didn't follow the  blows he  had taught them. Even so the youngest
actor was afraid for his face and the director had covered his flinches with
ingenious angles and interpositions.
     And then two men  met  endlessly in  a door, recognized each other  and
went on. They met, they started, they went on. They did it wrong. Again they
met, they started, they went on.
     Then  a little girl read underneath a tree with a boy reading on a limb
of the tree above. The little girl was bored and wanted to talk to  the boy.
He would pay no attention. The core of  the apple he was  eating fell on the
little girl's head.
     A voice spoke up out of the darkness:
     "It's pretty long, isn't it, Monroe?"
     "Not a bit," said Stahr. "It's nice. It has nice feeling."
     "I just thought it was long."
     "Sometimes ten feet can  be too long-sometimes a scene two hundred feet
long can be too  short. I want to speak to the cutter before he touches this
scene-this is something that'll be remembered in the picture."
     The oracle  had spoken. There  was nothing to  question or argue. Stahr
must  be  right  always, not most of the time, but  always-or the  structure
would melt down like gradual butter.
     Another hour passed.  Dreams hung in fragments at the  far end  of  the
room, suffered analysis, passed-to be dreamed  in crowds, or else discarded.
The end  was signalled  by two tests,  a character man and a girl. After the
rushes, which had  a tense  rhythm of their  own, the tests were smooth  and
finished-the observers settled  in their chairs-Stahr's foot slipped to  the
floor.  Opinions were welcome. One of the technical men let it be known that
he would willingly cohabit with the girl-the rest were indifferent.
     "Somebody sent up  a  test  of  that girl  two  years  ago. She must be
getting  around-but she isn't getting any better. But the man's  good. Can't
we use him as the old Russian Prince in 'Steppes'?"
     "He is  an old  Russian Prince,"  said the casting  director. "But he's
ashamed of it. He's a Red. And that's one part he says he wouldn't play."
     "It's the only part he could play," said Stahr.
     The lights went on. Stahr rolled his gum into its wrapper and put it in
an ash-tray. He turned questionmgly to his secretary.
     "The processes on Stage 2," she said.
     He  looked in briefly at the processes, moving pictures taken against a
background  of  other moving  pictures  by an ingenious device. There  was a
meeting in Marcus' office on  the subject of "Manon" with a happy ending and
Stahr had his say on  that as he had before-it had been making money without
a happy ending for a century and a half. He was obdurate-at this time in the
afternoon he was at his  most fluent and the  opposition faded into  another
subject-they would lend a dozen stars to the benefit for those the quake had
made homeless at Long Beach. In a sudden burst of giving five of them all at
once made up a purse of twenty-five thousand dollars. They gave well but not
as poor men give. It was not charity.
     At his office  there was word from the oculist to whom he had sent Pete
Zavras that the camera  man's eyes were 20/19, approximately perfect. He had
written a letter that Zavras was having photostated. Stahr walked around his
office cockily while Miss Doolan admired him. Prince Agge  had dropped in to
thank him for his afternoon on the sets and while they talked a cryptic word
came from a  supervisor that some writers named Marquand had "found out" and
were about to quit.
     "These are good writers," Stahr explained to Prince Agge. "And we don't
have good writers out here."
     "Why you can hire anyone!" exclaimed his visitor in surprise.
     "Oh we hire them but when they get out here they're not good writers-so
we have to work with the material we have."
     "Like what?"
     "Anybody  that'll accept the system and stay decently sober-we have all
sorts  of people-disappointed  poets,  one-hit playwrights, college girls-we
put them on  an idea  in pairs and if it  slows down we put two more writers
working behind them. I've had  as many as three  pairs working independently
on the same idea."
     "Do they like that?"
     "Not  if they know  about it. They're not geniuses-none  of  them could
make as much any other  way. But these Marquands are a husband and wife team
from the East-pretty  good playwrights.  They've just  found out they're not
alone on the story and it shocks them-shocks their sense of unity-that's the
word they'll use."
     "But what does make the-the unity?"
     Stahr hesitated-his face was grim except that his eyes twinkled.
     "I'm the unity," he said. "Come and see us again."

     He saw the Marquands. He told them he liked their work, looking at Mrs.
Marquand as if he could read her handwriting through the typescript. He told
them  kindly that he was taking them  from  the  picture and putting them on
another where there was less pressure, more  time.  As he  had half expected
they begged to  stay on  the  first  picture, seeing  a  quicker credit even
though it  was shared  with  others. The system  was  a shame,  he admitted-
gross, commercial, to be deplored. He had originated it-a fact that  he  did
not mention.
     When they had gone Miss Doolan came in triumphant.
     "Mr. Stahr, the lady with the belt is on the phone."
     Stahr walked  in to his office alone  and sat down behind his desk  and
picked up the phone with a great  sinking  of  his stomach. He  did not know
what he wanted. He had not thought about the matter as he had thought of the
matter of  Pete Zavras.  At  first he had only  wanted to know if  they were
"professional" people, if the woman was an actress who had got herself up to
look like Minna as he had once had  a young actress made up  like  Claudette
Colbert and photographed her from the same angles.
     "Hello," he said.
     "Hello."
     As he searched the short, rather surprised word for a vibration of
     last night, the feeling of terror began to steal over him and he choked
it off with an effort of will.
     "Well-you were  hard to  find,"  he said.  "Smith-and  you  moved  here
recently. That was all we had. And a silver belt."
     "Oh yes," the  voice  said, still  uneasy, unpoised, "I had on a silver
belt last night."
     Now, where from here?
     "Who  are you?" the  voice said, with  a  touch of  flurried  bourgeois
dignity.
     "My name is Monroe Stahr," he said.
     A pause. It was a name that never appeared on the screen and she seemed
to have trouble placing it.
     "Oh yes-yes. You were the husband of Minna Davis."
     "Yes."
     Was it a trick? As the  whole vision of last night came back to him-the
very skin with  that peculiar  radiance as if  phosphorus had touched it, he
thought if it were a  trick to  reach  him from somewhere. Not Minna and yet
Minna. The curtains blew suddenly into the room, the papers whispered on his
desk and his heart cringed faintly at the intense reality of the day outside
his  window. If he could go out now this way what would happen if he saw her
again-the starry veiled expression, the mouth strongly formed for poor brave
human laughter.
     "I'd like to see you. Would you like to come to the studio?"
     Again the hesitancy-then a blank refusal.
     "Oh, I don't think I ought to. I'm awfully sorry."
     This  last  was purely  formal,  a brush  off,  a final  axe.  Ordinary
skin-deep vanity came to Stahr's aid, adding persuasion to his urgency.
     "I'd like to see you," he said. "There's a reason."
     "Well-I'm afraid that-"
     "Could I come and see you?"
     A pause again not from hesitation, he felt, but to assemble her answer.
     "There's something you don't know," she said finally.
     "Oh, you're  probably married." He was impatient. "It has nothing to do
with that. I asked you  to  come here openly, bring your husband if you have
one."
     "It's-it's quite impossible."
     "Why?"
     "I feel silly even talking to you but your secretary insisted-I thought
I'd dropped something in the flood last night and you'd found it."
     "I want very much to see you for five minutes."
     "To put me in the movies."
     "That wasn't my idea."
     There was such a long pause that he thought he had offended her.
     "Where could I meet you?" she asked unexpectedly.
     "Here? At your house?"
     "No-somewhere outside."
     Suddenly  Stahr could think  of no place. His  own  house-a restaurant.
Where did people meet-a house of assignation, a cocktail bar?
     "I'll meet you somewhere at nine o'clock," she said.
     "That's impossible, I'm afraid."
     "Then never mind."
     "All right then nine  o'clock, but can we make  it near here? There's a
drug store on Wilshire-"

     It  was quarter to six.  There were two men  outside who had come every
day at this time only to be postponed. This was an hour of fatigue-the men's
business was not so  important that it must be seen to, nor so insignificant
that it could be ignored. So he postponed it again and sat motionless at his
desk for  a moment thinking about  Russia. Not so much about Russia as about
the picture about Russia which would consume a hopeless half hour presently.
He knew  there were many stories about Russia, not to mention The Story, and
he had employed a  squad of writers and research men for over a year but all
the stories involved  had the  wrong feel. He felt it could be told in terms
of  the American thirteen states but it  kept coming  out different,  in new
terms that opened  unpleasant possibilities and  problems.  He considered he
was  very fair to Russia-he had no desire to make anything but a sympathetic
picture but it kept turning into a headache.
     "Mr.  Stahr-Mr. Drummon's  outside and  Mr.  Kirstoff and Mrs. Cornhill
about the Russian picture." "All right-send them in."

     Afterwards from six-thirty  to  seven-thirty  he watched the  afternoon
rushes.  Except  for his engagement with  the  girl he would ordinarily have
spent  the early  evening in the projection  room or the dubbing room but it
had been a late night  with the earthquake and  he decided to go  to dinner.
Coming in through  his front office he found Pete Zavras waiting, his arm in
a sling.
     "You are  the Aeschylus and the  Diogenes  of the moving picture," said
Zavras simply. "Also the Asclepius and the Menander."
     He bowed.
     "Who are they?" asked Stahr smiling.
     "They are my countrymen. "
     "I didn't know you made pictures in Greece."
     "You're joking with me, Monroe," said Zavras. "I want to say you are as
dandy a fellow as they come. You have saved me one hundred percent."
     "You feel all right now?"
     "My arm is nothing. It feels like someone kisses me there. It was worth
doing what I did if this is the outcome. "
     "How did you happen to do it here?" Stahr asked curiously.
     "Before the oracle," said Zavras. "The  solver of Eleusinian mysteries.
I wish I had my hands on the son-of-a-bitch who started the story."
     "You make me sorry I didn't get an education," said Stahr.
     "It  isn't  worth a  damn,"  said  Pete. "I took  my  baccalaureate  in
Salonika and look how I ended up."
     "Not quite," said Stahr.
     "If you want anybody's throat cut anytime day or night,"  said  Zavras,
"my number is in the book."
     Stahr  closed  his eyes  and opened them again. Zavras' silhouette  had
blurred a little  against  the sun. He hung on to the  table behind  him and
said in an ordinary voice:
     "Good luck, Pete."
     The room was almost black but he made his feet move following a pattern
into his office and waited till the door clicked shut before he felt for the
pills. The water decanter clattered against the table; the glass clacked. He
sat down in a big chair waiting for the  benzedrine to take effect before he
went to dinner.



     Episode 12

     As  Stahr  walked back from the commissary a hand waved at him from  an
open roadster. From the heads  showing  over the back he recognized a  young
actor and his girl, and watched them disappear through the gate already part
of the summer twilight. Little by little  he was  losing the  feel  of  such
things, until it seemed that  Minna had taken their poignancy with her;  his
apprehension of splendor was fading so that presently the luxury of  eternal
mourning would  depart. A childish association of  Minna  with the  material
heavens made him, when he reached his office, order out his roadster for the
first  time  this  year.  The  big  limousine  seemed heavy  with remembered
conferences or exhausted sleep.
     Leaving  the studio he  was still tense  but  the open  car pulled  the
summer  evening up  close and he looked at it.  There was a moon down at the
end of the boulevard and it was a good illusion that it was a different moon
every evening, every  year. Other  lights shone in  Hollywood since  Minna's
death: in  the open markets lemons and grapefruit and green apples slanted a
misty  glare into the street. Ahead of him the stop-signal  of  a car winked
violet  and  at  another  crossing  he  watched  it  wink  again. Everywhere
floodlights raked the  sky. On an empty  corner  two  mysterious men moved a
gleaming drum in pointless arcs over the heavens.
     In  the drug store a woman  stood by  the candy counter.  She was tall,
almost as tall as Stahr, and embarrassed. Obviously it was  a situation  for
her and  if Stahr  had not looked as he did-most considerate and  polite-she
would not have gone through with it. They  said hello and walked out without
another word, scarcely  a  glance-  yet before they reached the  curb  Stahr
knew:  this was just  exactly a pretty  American woman  and nothing  more-no
beauty like Minna.

     "Where are  we going?"  she asked. "I thought  there'd be  a chauffeur.
Never mind-I'm a good boxer."
     "Boxer?"
     "That  didn't  sound  very polite." She forced a smile. "But you people
are supposed to be such horrors."
     The  conception of himself  as sinister  amused Stahr-then  suddenly it
failed to amuse him.
     "Why did you want to see me?" she asked as she got in.
     He stood motionless, wanting to tell her get  out immediately. But  she
had relaxed  in the car and he knew the unfortunate situation was of his own
making-he shut his teeth and walked around to get in.  The street lamp  fell
full upon her face and it was difficult to believe that this was the girl of
last night. He saw no resemblance to Minna at all.
     "I'll run you home," he said. "Where do you live?"
     "Run  me  home?"  She was startled. "There's  no  hurry-I'm sorry if  I
offended you."
     "No. It was  nice of you to come. I've been stupid. Last night I had an
idea that you were an exact double for someone  I knew. It was  dark and the
light was in my eyes."
     She was  offended-he had  reproached her  for not looking  like someone
else.
     "It was just that!" she said. "That's funny."
     They rode in silence for a minute.
     "You were  married to Minna Davis, weren't you?" she said with a  flash
of intuition. "Excuse me for referring to it."
     He was driving as fast as he could without making it conspicuous.
     "I'm quite a different type from Minna Davis,"  she  said, "-if  that's
who you meant.  You might have  referred  to the girl  who was with  me. She
looks more like Minna Davis than I do."
     That was  of no interest now. The thing was  to get this over quick and
forget it.
     "Could it have been her?" she asked. "She lives next door."
     "Not possibly," he said. "I remember the silver belt you wore."
     "That was me all right."
     They were northwest  of Sunset, climbing one of the canyons through the
hills.  Lighted bungalows  rose  along  the  winding road and  the  electric
current that animated them sweated into the evening air as radio sound.
     "You see that last highest light-Kathleen lives there. I live just over
the top of the hill."
     A moment later she said, "Stop here."
     "I thought you said over the top."
     "I want to stop at Kathleen's."
     "I'm afraid I'm-"
     "I want to get out here myself," she said impatiently.
     Stahr slid out after her. She  started toward a new little house almost
roofed over by a single willow tree, and  automatically he  followed  her to
the steps. She rang a bell and turned to say good night.
     "I'm sorry you were disappointed," she said.
     He was sorry for her now-sorry for them both.
     "It was my fault. Good night."
     A  wedge of light  came out the opening  door  and  as  a  girl's voice
inquired "Who is it?" Stahr looked up.
     There she was-face and form and smile against the light from inside. It
was Minna's  face-the  skin with its peculiar radiance as if phosphorus  had
touched it, the mouth  with its warm line that  never counted costs-and over
all the haunting jollity that had fascinated a generation.
     With a leap his heart  went out of him as it had the night before, only
this time it stayed out there with a vast beneficence.
     "Oh Edna you can't come in," the girl said. "I've been cleaning and the
house is full of ammonia smell."
     Edna began to laugh, bold and loud. "I believe it  was you he wanted to
see, Kathleen," she said.
     Stahr's  eyes and  Kathleen's met and tangled. For an instant they made
love as  no one ever dares to  do  after. Their  glance  was  closer than an
embrace, more urgent than a call.
     "He   telephoned  me,"   said  Edna.  "It  seems  he   thought-"  Stahr
interrupted, stepping forward into the light.
     "I was afraid we were rude at the studio, yesterday evening."
     But there were no words for what he really said. She listened

     closely without shame. Life flared  high in them both-Edna seemed at  a
distance and in darkness.
     "You  weren't rude,"  said Kathleen. A cool  wind blew the brown  curls
around her forehead. "We had no business there."
     "I  hope you'll  both-," Stahr said,  "-come and  make  a tour  of  the
studio."
     "Who are you? Somebody important?"
     "He was Minna Davis' husband, he's a producer," said Edna as if it were
a rare joke, "-and this isn't at all what he just told  me. I think he has a
crush on you."
     "Shut up, Edna," said Kathleen sharply.
     As  if  suddenly realizing  her offensiveness Edna said "Phone me, will
you?" and  stalked away  toward the road. But she  earned  their secret with
her-she had seen a spark pass between them in the darkness.
     "I  remember  you,"  Kathleen  said to  Stahr. "You got us  out  of the
flood."
     -Now  what? The other  woman was more missed in her absence. They  were
alone  and on  too slim a basis for what  had passed already.  They  existed
nowhere. His world seemed far away-she had no world at all except the idol's
head, the half open door.
     "You're Irish," he said, trying to build one for her.
     She nodded.
     "I've lived in London a long time-I didn't think you could tell."
     The wild green eyes of a  bus sped up the road  in  the darkness.  They
were silent until it went by.
     "Your  friend Edna didn't like me," he  said. "I think it was the  word
Producer."
     "She's  just  come out  here too.  She's  a silly creature who means no
harm. I shouldn't be afraid of you."
     She searched his  face.  She  thought, like  everyone, that  he  seemed
tired-then she forgot it at the impression he gave of a brazier out of doors
on a cool night.
     "I suppose the girls are all after you to put them on the screen."
     "They've given up," he said.
     This was an understatement-they were all there,  he knew, just over his
threshold, but they had been there so long that their clamoring voices  were
no  more than  the sound of  the  traffic in  the street.  But  his position
remained more than royal-a king could make only one queen-Stahr, at least so
they supposed, could make many.
     "I'm thinking  that  it  would  turn  you into a cynic," she said. "You
didn't want to put me in the pictures."
     "No."
     "That's good. I'm no actress. Once in London a man came up to me in the
Carlton and asked  me to make a  test  but I thought  awhile and  finally  I
didn't go."
     They  had  been standing nearly motionless, as if in a moment he  would
leave and she would go in. Stahr laughed suddenly.
     "I feel as if I had my foot in the door-like a collector."
     She laughed too.
     "I'm sorry I can't ask you in. Shall I get my reefer and sit outside?"
     "No." He  scarcely knew why he felt it was time to go. He might see her
again-he might not. It was just as well this way.
     "You'll come to  the studio?" he said.  "I  can't promise to  go around
with you, but if you come you must be sure to send word to my office."
     A frown, the shadow of a hair in breadth, appeared between her eyes.
     "I'm not sure," she said. "But I'm very much obliged."
     He knew that, for some reason, she would not come-in an instant she had
slipped away from him. They both sensed that the moment was  played  out. He
must go,  even though  he  went nowhere and left with nothing.  Practically,
vulgarly, he  did not have  her  telephone number-or  even her name, but  it
seemed impossible to ask for them now.
     She  walked with him to the  car, her glowing beauty and her unexplored
novelty pressing up against him, but there  was a foot  of moonlight between
them when they came out of the shadow.
     "Is this all?" he said spontaneously.
     He saw  regret  in  her face-but  there  was a flick of the lip also, a
bending of  the  smile toward  some  indirection,  a  momentary dropping and
lifting of a curtain over a forbidden passage.
     "I do hope we'll meet again," she said almost formally.
     "I'd be sorry if we didn't."
     They were  distant for  a moment. But as he turned  his car in the next
drive and came back with her still waiting,  and waved and drove on he  felt
exalted and happy. He was glad that there was beauty in the world that would
not be weighed in the scales of the casting department.
     But at  home he felt a curious loneliness as his butler made him tea in
the samovar. It was the old  hurt come back,  heavy and delightful. When  he
took up the first of two scripts that were his evening stint, that presently
he would visualize line by line on the screen, he  waited a moment, thinking
of Minna. He explained  to her that it was really nothing, that no one could
ever be like she was, that he was sorry.

     That  was substantially  a  day  of  Stahr's.  I don't know  about  the
illness,  when it started, etc., because he  was secretive  but  I  know  he
fainted a couple of times that month because Father told me. Prince  Agge is
my authority for the  luncheon in the commissary  where  he told them he was
going  to  make  a  picture  that  would lose  money-  which  was  something
considering the  men  he had to deal with and  that  he held a  big block of
stock and had a profit sharing contract.
     And Wylie  White  told me a lot which  I believed because he felt Stahr
intensely with a  mixture of jealousy and admiration. As for  me  I was head
over heels in love  with him then  and you can take what I say for what it's
worth.



     Episode 13

     Fresh  as the morning  I  went up to see  him  a  week later.  Or so  I
thought; when Wylie  called for me I had gotten into  riding clothes to give
the impression I'd been out in the dew since early morning.
     "I'm going  to throw  myself  under  the  wheel  of  Stahr's car,  this
morning," I said.
     "How  about  this  car," he suggested.  "It's one of the best cars Mort
Flieshacker ever sold second hand."
     "Not on your flowing veil," I answered like a book. "You have a wife in
the East."
     "She's  the  past," he said.  "You've got  one  great card,  Celia-your
valuation of yourself. Do you think anybody would look at you if you weren't
Pat Brady's daughter?"
     We don't take abuse like our mothers would have. Nothing-no remark from
a contemporary  means much. They tell you to be  smart they're  marrying you
for your money or you  tell them. Everything's simpler. Or is it? as we used
to say.
     But as I turned on the radio and the car raced up Laurel Canyon to "The
Thundering  Beat  of My Heart," I didn't  believe he was right.  I  had good
features except my  face  was too round  and a skin they seemed  to  love to
touch and good legs and I didn't have to wear a brassiere. I haven't a sweet
nature but who was Wylie to reproach me for that.
     "Don't you think I'm smart to go in the morning?" I asked.
     "Yeah. To  the busiest  man in  California.  He'll  appreciate  it. Why
didn't you wake him up at four?"
     "That's  just it. At night  he's tired. He's been looking at people all
day and some of them not bad. I come in in the morning and  start  a tram of
thought."
     "I don't like it. It's brazen."
     "What have you got to offer? And don't be rough."
     "I love you," he said  without much conviction. "I love you more than I
love your money  and  that's  plenty. Maybe your  father  would  make  me  a
supervisor."
     "I could marry  the  last man tapped  for Bones this year  and live  in
Southampton."
     I turned the dial and got either "Gone" or "Lost"-there were good songs
that  year. The music was  getting better again. When I was young during the
Depression it wasn't so hot and the best numbers were from the twenties like
Benny  Goodman  playing "Blue  Heaven"  or Paul  Whiteman with "When Day  Is
Done."  There were only  the bands to  listen  to.  But now I  liked  almost
everything except Father singing "Little Girl, You've Had a Busy Day" to try
to create a sentimental father-and-daughter feeling.
     "Lost" and "Gone" were the wrong mood so I turned again and
     got "Lovely To  Look At" which  was my kind of poetry. I looked back as
we crossed the crest  of the  foothills-with the air so clear you could  see
the  leaves on  Sunset  Mountain  two  miles away.  It's  startling  to  you
sometimes-just air, unobstructed, uncomplicated air.
     "Lovely to look at-de-lightful to know-w-w," I sang.
     "Are you  going to sing  for  Stahr?" Wylie said. "If you do, get  in a
line about my being a good supervisor."
     "Oh,  this'll be only Stahr and me," I said. "He's going  to look at me
and think 'I've never really seen her before.' "
     "We don't use that line this year," he said.
     "-Then  he'll  say  'Little  Celia'  like  he  did  the  night  of  the
earthquake. He'll say he never noticed I have become a woman."
     "You won't have to do a thing."
     "I'll stand there and bloom. After he kisses me as you would a child-"
     "That's all in my  script," complained Wylie. "And I've  got to show it
to him tomorrow."
     "-he'll sit down and put his face in his hands and say he never thought
of me like that."
     "You mean you get in a little fast work during the kiss."
     "I bloom, I told you. How often do I have to tell you I bloom."
     "It's beginning to  sound pretty randy  to me," said Wylie.  "How about
laying off-I've got to work this morning."
     "Then he says it seems as if he was always meant to be this way."
     "Right in the industry. Producer's blood." He pretended to shiver. "I'd
hate to have a transfusion of that."
     "Then he says-"
     "I know all his  lines," said  Wylie. "What I want to know is what  you
say."
     "Somebody comes in," I went on.
     "And you jump up quickly off the casting couch smoothing your skirts."
     "Do you want me to walk out and get home?"
     We  were in Beverly Hills, getting very  beautiful  now  with  the tall
Hawaiian pines. Hollywood is a perfectly zoned city so you know exactly what
kind of  people  economically  live  in  each  section from  executives  and
directors, through technicians in their bungalows right down to extras. This
was  the executive  section  and a very  fancy lot  of pastry. It  wasn't as
romantic as the dingiest village of  Virginia or New Hampshire but it looked
nice this morning.
     "They asked me how I knew," sang the radio, "-my true love was true."
     My heart was fire and smoke was in my eyes and everything but I figured
my  chance at about fifty-fifty. I  would walk right up to him as if  I  was
either going to walk through him  or kiss him in the mouth-and  stop a  bare
foot away and say Hello with disarming understatement.
     And I did-though of course it wasn't like I expected. Stahr's beautiful
dark eyes  looking back into  mine, knowing I  am dead sure everything I was
thinking-and not a bit embarrassed. I stood  there an hour, I think, without
moving and all he did was twitch the side  of his mouth and put his hands in
his pockets.
     "Will you go with me to the ball tonight?" I asked.
     "What ball?"
     "The screen-writers' ball down at the Ambassador."
     "Oh  yes." He considered. "I  can't go with  you.  I might just come in
late. We've got a sneak preview in Glendale."
     How different it all was than what you've planned. When  he sat down  I
went over and put my head among his telephones like a sort of desk appendage
and looked at him  and  his dark eyes  looked back so kind and  nothing. Men
don't often know those times when  a  girl could be had for  nothing.  All I
succeeded in putting into his head was:
     "Why don't you get married, Celia?"
     Maybe he'd bring up Robby again, try to make a match there.
     "What could I do to interest an interesting man?" I asked him.
     "Tell him you're in love with him."
     "Should I chase him?"
     "Yes," he said smiling.
     "I don't know. If it isn't there it isn't there."
     "I'd marry you,"  he said unexpectedly. "I'm lonesome as hell.  But I'm
too old and tired to undertake anything."
     I went around the desk and stood beside him.

     "Undertake me."
     He looked up  in surprise, understanding  for the first time that I was
in deadly earnest.
     "Oh no," he  said.  He looked almost miserable  for a minute. "Pictures
are my girl. I haven't got much time-" He corrected himself quickly, "I mean
any time. It'd be like marrying a doctor."
     "You couldn't love me."
     "It's  not  that," he  said  and-right out  of  my  dream  but  with  a
difference, "I never thought of you that way, Celia. I've known you so long.
Somebody told me you were going to marry Wylie White."
     "And you had-no reaction."
     "Yes, I did. I was going to speak to you about it. Wait till he's  been
sober for two years."
     "I'm not even considering it, Monroe."
     We were way  off the track, and just as in  my day-dream somebody  came
in-only I was quite sure Stahr had pressed a concealed button.
     I'll always  think  of that  moment, when I  felt Miss Doolan behind me
with her pad, as the end of childhood, the end of the time when  you cut out
pictures. What I was looking at wasn't Stahr but a picture of  him I cut out
over and  over: the eyes that flashed a  sophisticated understanding at  you
and  then  darted up too soon into his wide brow with its ten thousand plots
and  plans; the  face that was  ageing  from  within, so that there were  no
casual furrows of  worry  and vexation but a drawn asceticism as  if  from a
silent self-set  struggle-or a long illness. It was handsomer to me than all
the rosy tan from Coronado to Del Monte. He was my picture, as sure as if he
was  pasted on the  inside  of my old  locker in school. That's  what I told
Wylie  White and when a girl tells  the man  she likes second best about the
other one-then she's in love.



     13 (continued)

     I noticed the girl long before Stahr arrived at the dance. Not a pretty
girl, for there are  none of those in Los Angeles-one girl can be pretty but
a dozen are only a  chorus. Nor yet a professional  beauty-they do  all  the
breathing for everyone and finally even the men have to go outside  for air.
Just  a girl, with the skin of  one of Raphael's corner angels and  a  style
that made you look back twice to see if it were something she had on.
     I noticed her and forgot her.  She was sitting back behind  the pillars
at  a table  whose ornament was  a faded semi-star who,  in  hopes  of being
noticed  and  getting a  bit, rose and danced regularly with  some scarecrow
males. It  reminded  me shamefully of  my  first party where Mother  made me
dance  over  and  over  with the  same  boy to keep  in  the  spotlight. The
semi-star spoke to several people  at  our table but we were busy being Cafe
Society and she got nowhere at all.
     From our angle it appeared that they all wanted something.
     "You're  expected  to  fling  it around," said Wylie, "-like in the old
days. When  they find  out  you're hanging on  to it  they get  discouraged.
That's  what all  this brave gloom is about-the only way to  keep their self
respect is  to be Hemingway characters.  But underneath  they hate you  in a
mournful way and you know it."
     He was right-I knew that  since 1933 the rich could only be happy alone
together.
     I saw Stahr come into the half-light at the top  of the wide steps  and
stand there with his hands in his pockets looking  around. It was  late  and
the  lights seemed to have burned a little lower, though they were the same.
The floor show was finished except for a man who  still wore a placard which
said that at midnight in the Hollywood Bowl Sonja  Henie was going to  skate
on  hot soup. You could see  the sign  as he  danced  becoming less and less
funny on his back. A few  years before there would have been  drunks around.
The faded actress seemed to be looking for them hopefully over her partner's
shoulder. I followed her  with my eyes when she went back to her  table -and
there, to  my surprise, was Stahr  talking  to  the  other girl.  They  were
smiling at each other as if this was the beginning of the world.

     Stahr had expected nothing  like  this when he stood at the head of the
steps a few  minutes  earlier. The sneak  preview  had  disappointe  him and
afterwards he had had a  scene with Jaques La Borwits right in  front of the
theatre  for which  he was now sorry. He had  started toward the Brady party
when he saw Kathleen sitting in the middle of a long white table alone.
     Immediately things changed.  As he walked toward her the people  shrank
back  against  the  walls  till  they were  only  murals;  the  white  table
lengthened  and  became an  altar  where  the priestess sat  alone. Vitality
welled up in  him and he  could have stood a long time across the table from
her, looking and smiling.
     The  incumbents  of the  table  were  crawling back-Stahr and  Kathleen
danced.
     When  she came  close  his  several  visions  of  her  blurred; she was
momentarily unreal.  Usually  a  girl's skull  made  her  real but  not this
time-Stahr continued to be dazzled as they danced out along the floor-to the
last edge, where they stepped through  a mirror  into another dance with new
dancers whose faces were familiar  but nothing  more. In this new region  he
talked, fast and urgently.
     "What's your name?"
     "Kathleen Moore."
     "Kathleen Moore," he repeated.
     "I have no telephone, if that's what you're thinking."
     "When will you come to the studio?"
     "It's not possible. Truly."
     "Why isn't it? Are you married?"
     "No."
     "You're not married?"
     "No, nor never have been. But then I may be."
     "Someone there at the table."
     "No." She laughed. "What curiosity!"
     But  she  was  deep in it with him,  no matter what the words were. Her
eyes invited him to a romantic  communion  of unbelievable intensity.  As if
she realized this she said, frightened:
     "I must go back now. I promised this dance."
     "I don't want to lose you. Couldn't we have lunch or dinner?"
     "It's impossible." But  her expression helplessly amended the  words to
"It's just possible. The door is  still open by a chink if you could squeeze
past. But quickly-so little time."
     "I  must  go back,"  she repeated  aloud.  Then she dropped  her  arms,
stopped dancing and looked at him, a laughing wanton.
     "When I'm with you I don't breathe quite right," she said.
     She turned,  picked up her long  dress,  and  stepped back through  the
mirror. Stahr followed until she stopped near her table.
     "Thank you for the dance," she said. "And now really, good night."
     Then she nearly ran.
     Stahr went to the  table  where he  was expected  and sat down with the
Cafe Society group-from Wall Street, Grand Street,  Loudoun County Virginia,
and  Odessa Russia. They were all talking with enthusiasm about a horse that
had  run very  fast and  Mr. Marcus was the most enthusiastic of  all. Stahr
guessed that Jews had taken over the worship of horses as a super-symbol-for
years it had  been the Cossacks  mounted and the Jews on foot. Now  the Jews
had  horses and it gave them a sense of extraordinary  well-being and power.
Stahr sat pretending to listen and even nodding when something  was referred
to  him,  but all  the  time watching  the  table  behind  the  pillars.  If
everything had not  happened as  it had, even  to  his connecting the silver
belt  with the  wrong  girl, he  might  have thought it was  some  elaborate
frame-up. But the elusiveness was beyond suspicion. For there in a moment he
saw  that  she was escaping again-the pantomime at the table indicated  good
bye. She was leaving, she was gone.
     "There-" said Wylie  White with malice, "-goes Cinderella. Simply bring
the slipper to the Regal Shoe Co., 812 South Broadway. "
     Stahr overtook her in the long upper  lobby where middle-aged women sat
behind a roped-off space, watching the ballroom entrance.
     "Am I responsible for this?" he asked.
     "I was going anyhow." But she added almost resentfully, "They talked as
if I'd been  dancing with the Prince of Wales. They all stared at me. One of
the men wanted to draw my picture and another one wanted to see me tomorrow.
"
     "That's just what  I want," said  Stahr gently. "But I want  to see you
much more than he does."
     "You insist  so," she said wearily. "One reason I left England was that
men always wanted  their own way. I thought it was different here. Isn't  it
enough that I don't want to see you?"
     "Ordinarily," agreed Stahr. "Please believe me, I'm way out of my depth
already. I feel like a fool. But I must see you again and talk to you."
     She hesitated.
     "There's no reason for feeling like a fool," she said. "You're too good
a man to feel like a fool. But you should see this for what it is."
     "What is it?"
     "You've fallen for me-completely. You've got me in your dreams."
     "I'd  forgotten you," he declared,  "-till the moment I walked in  that
door."
     "Forgotten  me with your head perhaps. But I knew the first time  I saw
you that you were the kind that likes me-"
     She stopped  herself.  Near them a  man and  woman from  the party were
saying good  bye:  "Tell her  hello-tell her  I  love her dearly,"  said the
woman, "you both-all of  you-the children."  Stahr could not talk like that,
the way  everyone talked  now.  He could think of nothing  further to say as
they walked toward the elevator except:
     "I suppose you're perfectly right."
     "Oh, you admit it?"
     "No, I don't," he retracted. "It's just the whole way you're made. What
you say-how you walk-the way you look right this  minute-"  He  saw she  had
melted a little and his hopes rose.  "Tomorrow is Sunday and usually I  work
on  Sunday but if there's  anything you're curious  about in  Hollywood, any
person you want to meet or see, please let me arrange it."
     They were standing by the elevator. It opened but she let it go.
     "You're  very modest," she said. "You always talk  about showing me the
studio and taking me around. Don't you ever stay alone?"
     "Tomorrow I'll feel very much alone."
     "Oh, the poor  man-I could  weep  for him. He could  have all the stars
jumping around him and he chooses me."
     He smiled-he had laid himself open to that one.
     The elevator came again. She signalled for it to wait.
     "I'm a weak woman," she said. "If I meet you tomorrow will you leave me
in peace? No, you  won't. You'll  make it worse. It wouldn't do any good but
harm so I'll say no and thank you."
     She  got into the elevator. Stahr got  in  too and  they smiled as they
dropped two floors to the hall cross-sectioned with small shops. Down at the
end, held  back by police was the crowd, their heads  and shoulders  leaning
forward to look down the alley. Kathleen shivered.
     "They looked so  strange  when I came  in," she said, "-as if they were
furious at me for not being someone famous."
     "I know another way out," said Stahr.
     They went  through a drug  store, down an  alley and came out into  the
clear cool California night beside the car park.  He felt detached  from the
dance now and she did too.
     "A lot of  picture  people used to  live  down  here,"  he said.  "John
Barrymore and  Pola Negri in those bungalows.  And Connie Talmadge lived  in
that tall thin apartment house over the way."
     "Doesn't anybody live here now?"
     "The studios moved out into the country," he said. "What used to be the
country. I had some good times around here though."
     He did not mention that ten years ago Minna and her mother had lived in
another apartment over the way.
     "How old are you?" she asked suddenly.
     "I've lost track-almost thirty-five I think."
     "They said at the table you were the boy wonder."
     "I'll be  that  when  I'm sixty,"  he said grimly.  "You will  meet  me
tomorrow, won't you?"
     "I'll meet you," she said. "Where?"
     Suddenly there was no place to meet. She  would  not  go to  a party at
anyone's house,  nor to the country, nor swimming  though she hesitated, nor
to a well-known restaurant. She seemed hard to please but he knew  there was
some reason. He would find out in time. It occurred to him that she might be
the sister or daughter of someone well-known, who was pledged to keep in the
background. He suggested that he come for her and they could decide.
     "That wouldn't do," she said. "What about right here-the same
     spot."
     He nodded-pointing  up at  the arch under which  they stood. He put her
into her car which would have brought eighty dollars
     from any kindly dealer, and watched it rasp away. Down by the
     entrance a cheer went up as a favorite emerged, and Stahr wondered
     whether to show himself and say good night.

     This  is Cecelia taking up  the  narrative in person.  Stahr came  back
finally-it was about half past three-and asked me to dance.
     "How are you?" he asked  me, just as if he hadn't seen me that morning.
"I got involved in a long conversation with a man."
     It was secret too-he cared that much about it.
     "I took him to ride," he went on innocently. "I didn't realize how much
this part of Hollywood had changed."
     "Has it changed?"
     "Oh yes," he said. "Changed completely. Unrecognizable. I couldn't tell
you exactly but it's all changed-everything. It's like a new city." After  a
moment he amplified, "I had no idea how much it had changed."
     "Who was the man?" I ventured.
     "An old friend," he said vaguely. "Someone I knew a long time ago."
     I had made Wylie try to find  out quietly who she was. He had gone over
and the ex-star had  asked him excitedly to sit down. No-she didn't know who
the girl was-a friend  of a friend of someone-even the  man who had  brought
her didn't know.
     So  Stahr  and I danced to the beautiful  music of Glenn Miller playing
"I'm on a See-saw." It was good dancing now with plenty  of room. But it was
lonely-lonelier than before the girl had gone. For me, as well as for Stahr,
she took the evening with her, took along the stabbing  pain I had felt-left
the great ball-room empty and  without emotion. Now it was nothing and I was
dancing  with an  absent minded man who  told me  how much Los  Angeles  had
changed.



     Section 14

     They met, next afternoon, as  strangers  in an unfamiliar country. Last
night was gone, the girl  he had danced with was gone. A misty rose-and-blue
hat with a trifling veil came along the terrace to him and paused, searching
his face. Stahr was strange  too in a brown suit and  black tie that blocked
him out  more tangibly than a  formal  dinner coat, or  when he was simply a
face and voice in the darkness when they first met.
     He was the first to be sure it was the  same person as before-the upper
half  of  the  face  that was  Minna's,  luminous, with  creamy temples  and
opalescent  brow-the  coco-colored curly  hair. He  could  have  put his arm
around her and pulled her close with an almost family familiarity-already he
knew the down on  her neck, the very set of her backbone, the corners of her
eyes and  how she breathed-the  very texture  of the  clothes that she would
wear.
     "Did you  wait here all  night?"  she said, in a voice that  was like a
whisper.
     "I didn't move-didn't stir."
     Still a problem remained, the same  one-there was no  special place  to
go.
     "I'd like tea," she suggested, "-if it's some place you're not known."
     "That sounds as if one of us had a bad reputation."
     "Doesn't it?" she laughed.
     "We'll go to the shore," Stahr suggested. "There's a  place there where
I got out once and was chased by a trained seal."
     "Do you think the seal could make tea?"
     "Well-he's  trained.  And  I don't think he'll  talk-I don't  think his
training got that far. What in hell are you trying to hide?"
     After a moment she  said  lightly, "Perhaps the future," in a way  that
might mean anything or nothing at all.
     As they drove away she pointed at her jalopy in the parking lot.
     "Do you think it's safe?"
     "I doubt it. I noticed some black-bearded foreigners snooping around."
     Kathleen looked at him alarmed.
     "Really?" She saw he was smiling.  "I  believe everything you say," she
said. "You've got such a gentle way about you that  I don't  see why they're
all  so afraid of  you." She examined  him  with  approval-fretting a little
about his pallor, which  was  accentuated by the bright  afternoon.  "Do you
work very hard? Do you really always work on Sundays?"
     He responded to her interest-impersonal yet not perfunctory.
     "Not always. Once we had-we had a house with a pool and  all-and people
came on Sunday. I played tennis and swam. I don't swim any more."
     "Why not? It's good for you. I thought all Americans swam."
     "My  legs got  very thin-a  few years  ago and it embarrassed me. There
were other things I used to  do-lots of things. I used to play handball when
I was a kid, and sometimes out  here-I had a court that was washed away in a
storm."
     "You have a good build," she said  in formal  compliment,  meaning only
that he was made with thin grace.
     He rejected this with a shake of his head.
     "I enjoy working most," he said. "My work is very congenial."
     "Did you always want to be in movies?"
     "No. When  I was young I wanted  to be a chief clerk-the one  who  knew
where everything was."
     She smiled.
     "That's odd. And now you're much more than that."
     "No, I'm still a  chief clerk,"  Stahr said. "That's my gift, if I have
one. Only when I got  to be it  I found out that no  one knew where anything
was.  And I found out  that you  had  to  know why it was where it was,  and
whether it should be left there. They began throwing it all at me and it was
a very  complex office. Pretty  soon I had  all the keys.  And they wouldn't
have remembered what locks they fitted if I gave them back."
     They stopped  for a red light and a  newsboy  bleated at them: " Mickey
Mouse Murdered! Randolph Hearst declares war on China!"
     "We'll have to buy his paper," she said.
     As  they drove on she straightened her hat  and preened herself. Seeing
him looking at her she smiled.
     She  was  alert  and  calm-qualities that were currently at  a premium.
There  was  lassitude   in  plenty-California  was  filling  up  with  weary
desperadoes. And there were tense young men and women who lived back East in
spirit while they carried on a losing battle against the climate. But it was
everyone's secret that  sustained  effort was difficult  here-a secret  that
Stahr  scarcely admitted  to himself. But  he  knew that  people from  other
places spurted a pure rill of new energy for a while.
     They were very friendly now. She had  not made a move or a gesture that
was out of keeping with her beauty, that pressed it  out of its contour  one
way  or another. It  was  all proper to itself.  He judged her as he would a
shot in  a picture. She was not trash, she was not confused but clear-in his
special meaning of the word which  implied balance, delicacy and proportion,
she was "nice."
     They reached  Santa  Monica where there  were  the stately houses of  a
dozen picture stars, penned in the middle of a  crawling Coney Island.  They
turned  down hill into the wide  blue sky and  sea and went on along the sea
till the beach slid  out again from  under the  bathers  in  a  widening and
narrowing yellow strand.
     "I'm building a house  out here," Stahr said. "Much further on. I don't
know why I'm building it. "
     "Perhaps it's for me," she said.
     "Maybe it is."
     "I think it's splendid for you to build a big house for me without even
knowing what I looked like."
     "It isn't so big. And it  hasn't any  roof. I didn't  know what kind of
roof you wanted."
     "We don't want a roof. They told me it never rained here. It-"
     She stopped so suddenly that he knew she was reminded of something.
     "Just something that's past," she said.
     "What was it?" he demanded. "Another house without a roof?"
     "Yes. Another house without a roof."
     "Were you happy there?"
     "I lived with a man," she said. "A long, long time-too long. It was one
of those awful mistakes people make. I lived  with him a long  time after  I
wanted to get  out but he couldn't let me  go. He'd  try but he couldn't. So
finally I ran away."
     He was listening, weighing  but not  judging. Nothing changed under the
rose-and-blue hat. She was twenty-five  or so. It would have been a waste if
she had not loved and been loved.
     "We were too close," she said. "We should probably have had children-to
stand between us. But  you can't have children when  there's no  roof to the
house."
     All right,  he  knew something of her.  It would not be like last night
when something kept saying, as in a story conference: "We know nothing about
the girl. We don't have to know much-but we have to know something." A vague
background spread behind her, something more  tangible than the head of Siva
in the moonlight.
     They  came to the restaurant, forbidding  with many Sunday automobiles.
When  they got out the trained seal growled reminiscently  at Stahr. The man
who owned it said that the seal would never ride in the back seat of his car
but always climbed over the  back and up in front. It was plain that the man
was in bondage to  the  seal,  though  he had  not  yet  acknowledged  it to
himself.
     "I'd  like to see the  house you're  building," said Kathleen. "I don't
want tea-tea is the past."
     Kathleen drank a Coke instead and they drove on ten miles into a sun so
bright that he took out two pairs of cheaters from a compartment. Five miles
further on they turned down  a small promontory and came to the  fuselage of
Stahr's house.
     A headwind blowing out of the sun threw spray up the rocks and over the
car. Concrete mixers, raw  yellow wood and builders' rubble  waited, an open
wound in the  sea-scape,  for Sunday  to be over.  They walked around  front
where great boulders rose to what would be the terrace.
     She  looked at the feeble hills behind and winced faintly at the barren
glitter, and Stahr  saw  "No  use  looking  for  what's not  here," he  said
cheerfully. "Think of it as if you were standing on one of those globes with
a map on it-I always wanted one when I was a boy."
     "I understand," she said after a minute. "When you do that you can feel
the earth turn, can't you."
     He nodded.
     "Yes.  Otherwise it's  all just  manana-waiting for the morning  or the
moon. "
     They went in under the scaffolding. One room, which was to be the chief
salon, was  completed even to the built-in book shelves and the curtain rods
and the trap in the floor for the motion picture projection machine. And, to
her surprise, this opened out to a porch with cushioned chairs  in place and
a ping-pong table. There was another ping-pong table on  the newly laid turf
beyond.
     "Last week I gave a premature luncheon," he admitted. "I had some props
brought out-some grass and things. I wanted to see how the place felt."
     She laughed suddenly.
     "Isn't that real grass?"
     "Oh yes-it's grass."
     Beyond the strip of anticipatory lawn was the excavation for a swimming
pool, patronized now by a crowd of seagulls who saw them and took flight.
     "Are you  going  to live  here  all alone?"  she asked him.  "Not  even
dancing girls?"
     "Probably. I used to make plans but not any more. I  thought this would
be a nice place to read scripts. The studio is really home."
     "That's what I've heard about American business men."
     He caught a lilt of criticism in her voice.
     "You  do what you're born to do," he  said  gently. "About once a month
somebody tries to reform me, tells me what a barren old age I'll have when I
can't work any more. But it's not so simple."
     The wind  was rising. It was time  to go and he had his car keys out of
his pocket, absent mindedly jingling them in his hand. There was the silvery
"Hey!" of a telephone, coming from somewhere across the sunshine.
     It was not from  the  house  and they hurried here and there around the
garden like  children playing warmer and colder-closing in finally on a tool
shack by  the tennis  court.  The phone, irked with delay,  barked  at  them
suspiciously from the wall. Stahr hesitated.
     "Shall I let the damn thing ring?"
     "I couldn't. Unless I was sure who it was."
     "Either it's for somebody else or they've made a wild guess."
     He picked up the receiver.
     "Hello.... Long distance from where? Yes, this is Mr. Stahr."
     His manner changed perceptibly.  She saw what few people had seen for a
decade-Stahr impressed. It was not discordant because  he often pretended to
be impressed but it made him momentarily a little younger.
     "It's the President," he said to her, almost stiffly.
     "Of your company?"
     "No, of the United States."
     He was trying to be casual for her benefit but his voice was eager.
     "All right, I'll  wait," he said into the phone, and  then to Kathleen,
"I've talked to him before."
     She watched.  He smiled at her and winked  as an evidence that while he
must give this his best attention he had not forgotten her.
     "Hello," he said presently. He listened. Then he said "Hello" again. He
frowned.
     "Can you  talk a little louder,"  he said  politely, and then  "Who?...
What's that?"
     She saw a disgusted look come into his face.
     "I don't want to talk to him," he said. "No!"
     He turned to Kathleen.
     "Believe it or not, it's an orang-outang."
     He  waited  while  something  was explained  to him at length; then  he
repeated:
     "I don't want to talk  to it, Lew.  I haven't got anything to  say that
would interest an orang-outang."
     He beckoned to Kathleen  and when  she came  close to the phone he held
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
the  wall across from  me. How I was  brave  enough I  don't  know but I ran
across to it and opened it  and Father's secretary Birdy  Peters tumbled out
stark naked-just like  a corpse in the movies.  With  her  came  a  gust  of
stifling, stuffy  air. She flopped sideways  on the  floor with the one hand
still clutching some clothes and lay on  the  floor bathed in  sweat-just as
Father  came in from the bathroom. I could  feel him standing  behind me and
without turning  I knew exactly  how  he  looked,  for  I had surprised  him
before.
     "Cover her  up," I said, covering her  up myself with  a  rug from  the
couch. "Cover her up!"
     I  left the  office.  Rosemary Schmiel  saw my face  as I came  out and
responded with a terrified expression. I never saw her again or Birdy Peters
either. As Martha and I went out Martha asked "What's  the matter dear?"-and
when I didn't say  anything, "You did  your  best. Probably it was the wrong
time. I'll tell you what  I'll do. I'll take you to see  a very nice English
girl. Did you see the girl  that  Stahr  danced with at our table the  other
night?"
     So at the price of a little immersion in the family drains I had what I
wanted.

     I  don't  remember  much  about  our call.  She wasn't  at home was one
reason. The screen door of her house was unlocked and Martha went in calling
"Kathleen" with bright familiarity. The room we saw was bare and formal as a
hotel; there were flowers  about  but they did not  look  like sent flowers.
Also Martha found a  note  on the table which  said, "Leave  the dress. Have
gone looking for a job. Will drop by tomorrow."
     Martha read it twice but it didn't seem to be for Stahr,  and we waited
five minutes. People's houses are very  still when they are gone. Not that I
expect them  to be jumping around but I leave the observation for what  it's
worth. Very  still. Prim almost with just  a fly  holding down the place and
paying no attention to you, and the corner of a curtain blowing.
     "I wonder  what kind of a  job,"  said  Martha. "Last Sunday  she  went
somewhere with Stahr. "
     But I was no longer interested. It seemed awful to  be here- producer's
blood, I thought in horror. And in  quick panic I  pulled her  out  into the
placid sunshine.  It  was no use-I felt just black and  awful.  I had always
been proud of my body-I had a way of thinking of it  as geometric which made
everything it did seem all  right  and there  was probably not any  kind  of
place, including  churches  and  offices and  shrines, where  people had not
embraced-but no one had ever stuffed me naked into a hole in the wall in the
middle of a business day.



     Episode 16, First Part

     "If  you  were in a drug  store,"  said  Stahr "-having a  prescription
filled-"
     "You mean a chemist?" Boxley asked.
     "If you were in  a  chemist's," conceded Stahr, "and you were getting a
prescription for some member of your family who was very sick-"
     "-Very ill?" queried Boxley.
     "Very ill.  Then  whatever caught  your  attention through  the window,
whatever  distracted  you  and  held  you would  probably  be  material  for
pictures."
     "A murder outside the window, you mean."
     "There  you go," said Stahr smiling. "It might  be a spider  working on
the pane."
     "Of course-I see."
     "I'm  afraid  you don't, Mr. Boxley. You see it for your medium but not
for ours. You keep  the spiders for yourself and you try to pin the  murders
on us."
     "I might as well leave,"  said Boxley.  "I'm no  good to you. I've been
here three  weeks and  I've accomplished nothing. I make suggestions  but no
one writes them down."
     "I  want  you to stay. Something in you doesn't like pictures,  doesn't
like telling a story this way-"
     "It's such a  damned bother," exploded Boxley. "You can't let  yourself
go-"
     He checked himself. He  knew that Stahr, the helmsman, was finding time
for him in the middle of a constant stiff blow-that they were talking in the
always  creaking rigging of a ship sailing in great  awkward tacks along  an
open sea.  Or else-it  seemed at times-they were in a huge quarry where even
the newly cut marble  bore  the tracery of old  pediments,  half obliterated
inscriptions of the past.
     "I  keep wishing you could  start  over,"  Boxley said. "It's this mass
production."
     "That's  the  condition,"  said  Stahr.   "There's  always  some  lousy
condition. We're making a life of Rubens-suppose I asked you to do portraits
of  rich dopes  like Pat Brady and me  and Gary  Cooper and Marcus when  you
wanted to paint Jesus  Christ! Wouldn't you feel  you  had a  condition? Our
condition  is that we have to take people's  own favorite folklore and dress
it up  and give it back to them. Anything beyond that is sugar. So won't you
give us some sugar, Mr. Boxley?"
     Boxley knew he could sit with Wylie White tonight at the Troc raging at
Stahr, but he had been reading Lord Charnwood and he  recognized that  Stahr
like  Lincoln was a  leader carrying  on a long  war  on many fronts; almost
single-handed he  had moved pictures sharply forward through a  decade, to a
point where the  content of the  "A  productions" was wider  and richer than
that of the stage.  Stahr was an artist only  as Mr. Lincoln  was a general,
perforce and as a layman.
     "Come  down to La Borwits' office with me," said Stahr. "They sure need
some sugar there."
     In  La  Borwits'  office  two writers,  a  shorthand  secretary  and  a
supervisor sat in a tense  smokey stalemate where  Stahr had left them three
hours before. He looked at the faces one after another and found nothing. La
Borwits spoke with awed reverence for his defeat.
     "We've just got too many  characters, Monroe."  Stahr snorted  affably.
"That's the principal idea of the  picture." He took some change  out of his
pocket, looked up at the suspended light and tossed up half a  dollar  which
clanked into the bowl. He looked at  the coins  in his hands and selected  a
quarter.
     La  Borwits watched  miserably;  he knew this was  a  favorite  idea of
Stahr's and he  saw the sands running out. At the moment everyone's back was
toward him.  Suddenly  he  brought  up his  hands from their placid position
under the desk  and threw them high in the air, so  high that they seemed to
leave  his  wrists-and  then  he caught them neatly as they were descending.
After that he felt better. He was in control.
     One of  the writers had taken  out some coins also and  presently rules
were defined. "You have to toss your coin through the chains without hitting
them. Whatever falls into the light is the kitty."
     They played for half an  hour-all except Boxley who  sat aside and  dug
into the script, and the secretary who kept  tally. She calculated  the cost
of the four men's time, arriving at a figure of sixteen hundred  dollars. At
the  end  La  Borwits  was  winner by $5.50  and  a  janitor  brought  in  a
step-ladder to take the money out of the light.
     Boxley spoke up suddenly.
     "You have the stuffings of a tuhkey here," he said.
     "What!"
     "It's not pictures."
     They looked at him in astonishment. Stahr concealed a smile.
     "So we've got a real picture man here!" exclaimed La Borwits.
     "A lot  of beautiful speeches," said Boxley boldly. "But no situations.
After  all,  you know, it's  not going to be a novel:  and it's  too long. I
can't exactly describe how I feel but it's not quite right. And it leaves me
cold."
     He was giving them back what had been handed him for three weeks. Stahr
turned away, watching the others out of he corner of his eye.
     "We  don't need less  characters," said Boxley. "We need more. As I see
it that's the idea."
     "That's the idea," said the writers.
     "Yes-that's the idea," said La Borwits.
     Boxley was inspired by the attention he had created.
     "Let each character  see himself in the other's  place," he  said. "The
policeman is  about to arrest the thief when he sees that the thief actually
has  his face. I mean show it that way. You could almost call the thing 'Put
Yourself in My Place.' "
     Suddenly  they were at work again-taking up this new theme in turn like
hepcats  in a swing band and going to town with it. They might  throw it out
again tomorrow but  life  had come back for a moment. Pitching the coins had
done it as much as Boxley. Stahr had recreated the  proper  atmosphere-never
consenting to be a driver  of the driven,  but feeling  like and acting like
and sometimes even looking like a small boy getting up a show.
     He left them,  touching  Boxley on the shoulder in passing-a deliberate
accolade-he didn't want them  to gang up on him  and break  his spirit in an
hour.



     Episode 16 (Part 2)

     Doctor Baer was waiting in his inner office. With him was a colored man
with a portable cardiograph like a  huge suitcase. Stahr  called it  the lie
detector. He stripped to the waist and the weekly examination began.
     "How've you been feeling?"
     "Oh-the usual," said Stahr.
     "Been hard at it? Getting any sleep?"
     "No-about five hours. If I go to bed early I just lie there."
     "Take the sleeping pills."
     "The yellow one gives me a hangover."
     "Take two red ones then."
     "That's a nightmare."
     "Take one of each-the yellow first."
     "All right-I'll try. How've you been?"
     "Say-I take care of myself, Monroe. I save myself."
     "The hell you do-you're up all night sometimes."
     "Then I sleep all next day."
     After ten minutes Baer said:
     "Seems O.K. The blood pressure's up five points."
     "Good," said Stahr. "That's good isn't it?"
     "That's good. I'll develop the cardiograms tonight. When are you coming
away with me?"
     "Oh, some time," said Stahr lightly. "In about six weeks things'll ease
up."
     Baer looked at him  with a genuine looking  that had grown  over  three
years.
     "You got better in  thirty-three when you laid  up," he said. "Even for
three weeks."
     "I will again."
     No  he wouldn't,  Baer thought. With Minna's help he had enforced a few
short rests years  ago  and lately he  had hinted around  trying to find who
Stahr considered his closest friends. Who could take  him away and  keep him
away. It  would  almost surely be useless. He was due  to die very soon now.
Within six months one  could  say definitely. What was the use of developing
the cardiograms? You couldn't persuade a man like Stahr to stop and lie down
and look  at the  sky for six  months.  He  would much  rather die. He  said
differently  but  what it  added  up to was  the definite  urge toward total
exhaustion that  he had run into before.  Fatigue was  a  drug as  well as a
poison and  Stahr apparently derived some rare almost physical pleasure from
working lightheaded with weariness. It was a perversion of the life force he
had seen before but  he had almost  stopped  trying to interfere with it. He
had cured a man or so-a hollow triumph of killing and preserving the shell.
     "You hold your own," he said.
     They exchanged a glance. Did Stahr know? Probably. But he did not  know
when-he did not know how soon now.
     "If I hold my own I can't ask more," said Stahr.
     The colored man had finished packing the apparatus.
     "Next week same time?"
     "O. K., Bill," said Stahr. "Good bye."
     As the door closed Stahr  switched open  the Dictograph. Miss  Doolan's
voice came through immediately.
     "Do you know a Miss Kathleen Moore?"
     "What do you mean?" he asked startled.
     "A Miss Kathleen Moore is on the line. She said you asked her to call."
     "Well, my  God!"  he exclaimed. He was swept with indignant rapture. It
had been five days-this would never do at all.
     "She's on now?"
     "Yes."
     "Well, all right then."
     In a moment he heard the voice up close to him.
     "Are you married?" he asked, low and surly.
     "No, not yet."
     His memory blocked out her face and form-as he sat down  she  seemed to
lean down to his desk keeping level with his eyes.
     "What's on your mind?" he asked in the same surly voice. It was hard to
talk that way.
     "You did find the letter?" she asked.
     "Yes. It turned up that night."

     ill
     "That's what I want to speak to you about."
     He found an attitude at length-he was outraged.
     "What is there to talk about?" he demanded.
     "I tried to write you another letter but it wouldn't write."
     "I know that too."
     There was a pause.
     "Oh cheer up!" she said  surprisingly. "This doesn't sound like you. It
is Stahr, isn't it? That very nice Mr. Stahr?"
     "I feel  a little outraged," he said almost pompously. "I don't see the
use of this. I had at least a pleasant memory of you."
     "I don't believe it's you," she said. "Next thing you'll wish me luck."
Suddenly she laughed. "Is this what you planned to say? I  know how awful it
gets when you plan to say anything-"
     "I never expected to hear from you again," he said with dignity; but it
was no use, she  laughed again-a woman's  laugh that is like a child's, just
one syllable, a crow and a cry of delight.
     "Do you  know how you make me feel?"  she demanded.  "Like one  day  in
London  during a caterpillar  plague  when a hot furry thing  dropped in  my
mouth."
     "I'm sorry."
     "Oh please wake up,"  she  begged. "I want to see you. I  can't explain
things on the phone. It was no fun for me either, you understand."
     "I'm very busy. There's a sneak preview in Glendale tonight."
     "Is that an invitation?"
     "George Boxley, the English writer,  is  going  with  me." He surprised
himself. "Do you want to come along?"
     "How could we talk?"
     She considered. "Why  don't you call for me afterwards," she suggested.
"We could ride around."
     Miss Doolan on  the  huge  Dictograph  was trying  to cut in a shooting
director-the  only interruption  ever permitted.  He flipped  the button and
called "wait" impatiently into the machine.
     "About eleven?"  Kathleen was saying confidently. The  idea  of "Riding
around" seemed  so unwise  that  if  he could have thought  of the  words to
refuse  her  he  would  have  spoken them  but  he  did  not  want to be the
caterpillar. Suddenly he had no attitude left except the sense that the day,
at least, was complete. It had an evening-a beginning, a middle and an end.

     He  rapped on the screen door, heard  her call from inside,  and  stood
waiting where  the level fell  away.  From below came  the  whir  of  a lawn
mower-a  man was cutting  his grass at midnight. The moon was so bright that
Stahr could see him plainly a hundred  feet off and  down as he  stopped and
rested on the handle  before pushing it back across his garden. There  was a
midsummer   restlessness  abroad-early  August  with  imprudent  loves   and
impulsive crimes. With little more to expect from summer one tried anxiously
to live in the present-or, if there was no present, to invent one.
     She  came at last. She was all different and delighted. She wore a suit
with a skirt that she kept hitching up as they walked down to the car with a
brave gay, stimulating reckless  air of "Tighten up your belt,  baby.  Let's
get going-to any pole." Stahr had  brought his limousine with the chauffeur,
and the  intimacy of the  four walls  whisking them along a new curve in the
dark took away any strangeness at once. In its way the little trip they made
was one  of the best times he had ever had in life. It was  certainly one of
the times when, if he knew he was going to die, it was not tonight.
     She  told him her  story. She sat beside him  cool and gleaming  for  a
while, spinning on excitedly, carrying him to far  places with her,  meeting
and  knowing the people she had  known. The story was  vague at first. "This
Man" was the one she had loved and  lived with. "This American" was the  one
who had rescued her when she was sinking into a quicksand.
     "Who is he-the American?"
     Oh, names-what did they  matter? No one important like Stahr, not rich.
He had lived in London and now they would live out here. She was going to be
a good wife, a real person. He was  getting a divorce-not just on account of
her-but that was the delay.
     "But the first man?" asked Stahr. "How did you get into that?"
     Oh, that was a blessing at first. From  sixteen to twenty-one the thing
was  to  eat.  The day  her  stepmother presented  her at Court they had one
shilling  to  eat  with so  as not to feel faint. Sixpence  apiece  but  the
stepmother watched while she ate. After a few months the stepmother died and
she would have sold out for that  shilling but she was too  weak  to go into
the streets. London can be harsh-oh quite.
     Was there nobody?
     There  were  friends in  Ireland  who  sent  butter. There was  a  soup
kitchen. There was a visit to an uncle who made advances to her when she had
a full stomach, and she  held out and got fifty pounds out  of  him for  not
telling his wife.
     "Couldn't you work?" Stahr asked.
     "I worked. I sold cars. Once I sold a car."
     "But couldn't you get a regular job?"
     "It's hard-it's  different. There was a  feeling that  people  like  me
forced other people out of jobs. A woman struck me when I tried to get a job
as chambermaid in a hotel."
     "But you were presented at Court?"
     "That was my stepmother who did that-on an off chance. I was nobody. My
father was shot  by the Black and Tans in twenty-two  when I was a child. He
wrote a book called 'Last Blessing.' Did you ever read it?"
     "I don't read."
     "I wish you'd buy it for the movies.  It's a good little book. I  still
get a royalty from it-ten shillings a year."
     Then she  met "The  Man" and  they  travelled the world around. She had
been to all the places that Stahr made movies of, and lived  in cities whose
names he had never heard. Then  The Man  went to seed, drinking and sleeping
with the  housemaids and trying to force  her off on his  friends.  They all
tried to make her  stick with him. They said she  had  saved him and  should
cleave to him longer now,  indefinitely,  to  the end. It was her duty. They
brought  enormous  pressure  to bear. But she had met The American,  and  so
finally she ran away.
     "You should have run away before."
     "Well, you see it was  difficult." She hesitated, and plunged. "You see
I ran away from a king."
     His  moralities  somehow  collapsed-she  had  managed  to  top  him.  A
confusion of  thoughts raced through his head-one of  them a faint old credo
that all royalty was diseased.
     "It wasn't the  King  of England," she said. "My king was out of job as
he used to say. There are lots  of kings  in London." She laughed-then added
almost  defiantly,  "He  was very attractive until  he  began  drinking  and
raising hell."
     "What was he king of?"
     She told him-and Stahr visualized the face out of old newsreels.
     "He was a very learned  man," she said. "He could have taught all sorts
of subjects. But he wasn't much like a king. Not nearly as much as you. None
of them were."
     This time Stahr laughed.
     "They were the standard article," he said.
     "You know what I mean. They all felt old fashioned. Most of them  tried
so hard  to keep  up with things. They were  always advised to  keep up with
things.  One was  a Syndicalist for instance. And one used to carry around a
couple  of  clippings   about  a  tennis  tournament  when  he  was  in  the
semi-finals. I saw those clippings a dozen times."
     They  rode through Griffith Park and  out  past  the  dark  studios  of
Burbank, past the airports and along the way to Pasadena past the neon signs
of roadside cabarets. Up in his head he wanted her but it was  late and just
the ride was an overwhelming joy. They held hands and once she came close in
to his arms saying, "Oh you're so  nice. I do like to be  with you." But her
mind was divided-this was not his  night as the  Sunday afternoon  had  been
his.  She was absorbed in herself,  stung into excitement  by telling of her
own adventures; he could not help  wondering if he was getting the story she
had saved up for The American.
     "How long have you known The American?" he asked.
     "Oh I knew him for several months. We used to meet. We  understand each
other. He used to say 'It looks like a cinch from now on.'"
     "Then why did you call me up?"
     She hesitated.
     "I  wanted to see you once more.  Then too-he was  supposed  to  arrive
today but last night he wired that he'd be another week. I wanted to talk to
a friend-after all you are my friend."
     He wanted her very much now but one  part of his mind was cold and kept
saying:  she wants to see if I'm  in love with her,  if I want to marry her.
Then she'd consider  whether  or  not to  throw  this  man over.  She  won't
consider it till I've committed myself. "Are you in love with The American?"
he asked. "Oh yes. It's absolutely arranged. He saved my life and my reason.
He's moving half way around the world for me. I insisted on that."
     "But are you in love with him?" "Oh yes, I'm in love with him."
     The "Oh  yes"  told him she was not-told him  to speak for himself-that
she would see. He  took  her in his  arms and kissed her deliberately on the
mouth and held her for a long time. It was so warm.
     "Not tonight," she whispered.
     "All right."
     They passed over suicide bridge with the high new wire.
     "I  know what it  is," she said, "but  how stupid. English people don't
kill themselves when they don't get what they want."
     They turned  around in the driveway of a hotel and started back. It was
a dark night with no  moon. The wave  of desire had passed and neither spoke
for a while. Her talk of kings had carried him oddly back  in flashes to the
pearly White  Way of Main Street in  Erie, Pennsylvania when he was fifteen.
There  was a  restaurant  with lobsters in the  window  and green  weeds and
bright light on a shell cavern and behind a red curtain the terribly strange
brooding  mystery of people and violin music. That was just  before he  left
for New York. This girl reminded him of the fresh iced  fish and lobsters in
the window. She was Beautiful Doll. Minna had never been Beautiful Doll.
     They  looked  at each  other and  her  eyes  asked  "Shall  I marry The
American?" He did not answer. After a while he said:
     "Let's go somewhere for the week-end."
     She considered.
     "Are you talking about tomorrow?"
     "I'm afraid I am."
     "Well, I'll tell you tomorrow," she said.
     "Tell me tonight. I'd be afraid-"
     "-find a note in the car?" she laughed. "No there's no note in the car.
You know almost everything now."
     "Almost everything."
     "Yes-almost. A few little things."
     He would have to know what they  were. She would  tell him tomorrow. He
doubted-or he  wanted  to doubt-if  there had been a  maze of philandering-a
fixation had  held her to The Man, the king, firmly and long. Three years of
a  highly  anomalous  position-one  foot  in  the  Palace  and  one  in  the
background. "You had to laugh a lot," she said. "I learned to laugh a lot."
     "He could have married you-like Mrs. Simpson," Stahr said in protest.
     "Oh, he was married. And he wasn't a romantic." She stopped herself.
     "Am I?"
     "Yes,"  she said unwillingly, as if she were laying down a trump. "Part
of you is. You're three or  four  different men but each  of them out in the
open. Like all Americans."
     "Don't start  trusting  Americans too  implicitly,"  he  said, smiling.
"They may be out in the open but they change very fast."
     She looked concerned.
     "Do they?"
     "Very fast and  all at once," he  said.  "And nothing ever changes them
back."
     "You  frighten  me.  I  always had  a  great  sense  of  security  with
Americans."
     She seemed suddenly so alone that he took her hand.
     "Where will we go tomorrow?" he said. "Maybe up in the  mountains. I've
got everything to do tomorrow but I won't do any of it. We can start at four
and get there by afternoon."
     "I'm not sure.  I seem to be a little mixed up. This doesn't seem to be
quite the girl who came out to California for a new life."
     He could have said it then, said "It is a new life" for he knew it was,
he knew he  could not let her go now, but something else said to sleep on it
as an adult, no  romantic.  And tell  her tomorrow. Still she was looking at
him  her  eyes  wandering from his  forehead to his chin and back again, and
then up and down once more with that odd slowly waving motion of her head.
     ... It is  your chance, Stahr.  Better take it now.  This is your girl.
She  can  save you, she  can worry you  back to  life. She will take looking
after and you will grow strong to do it. But take her now-tell  her and take
her away. Neither of you  knows it but far away over the night The  American
has  changed  his  plans.  At  this  moment  his train  is speeding  through
Albuquerque;  the schedule is  accurate.  The engineer is  on time.  In  the
morning he will be here.
     ...  The  chauffeur turned  up the hill to Kathleen's house.  It seemed
warm even in  darkness-wherever  he  had been  near her was by way  of being
enchanted place for Stahr: this limousine-the rising house at the beach, the
very distances they had already covered together over the sprawled city. The
hill  they climbed now  gave  forth a  sort of glow, a sustained  sound that
struck his soul alert with delight.
     As he said good bye  he felt again that it was impossible to leave her,
even for a few hours. There was only ten years between them but he felt that
madness about it akin to the love  of an ageing man for a young girl. It was
a deep and desperate time-need, a clock ticking with his heart, and it urged
him against the  whole  logic of his life to  walk past her  into the  house
now-and say "This is forever."
     Kathleen  waited, irresolute herself-pink and  silver  frost waiting to
melt with spring. She was a European, humble in the face of power, but there
was  a fierce self-respect that  would only  let her  go so  far. She had no
illusions about the considerations that swayed princes.
     "We'll  go  to the  mountains  tomorrow," said Stahr. Many thousands of
people depended on  his balanced judgement-you can suddenly blunt a  quality
you have lived by for twenty years.
     He  was very busy  the next morning,  Saturday.  At two o'clock when he
came from luncheon there was a stack of telegrams-a company ship was lost in
the Arctic,  a star was  in disgrace, a writer was  sueing  for  one million
dollars, Jews  were dead miserably beyond the sea. The last telegram  stared
up at him:
     I  WAS MARRIED AT NOON TODAY  GOODBYE,  and on a sticker attached  Send
your answer by Western Union Telegram.



     Episode 17

     I knew nothing about  any of this. I went up to Lake  Louise and when I
came back didn't go  near the  studio. I think I would have started East  in
mid-August-if Stahr hadn't called me up one day at home.
     "I want you  to arrange something, Cecelia-I want  to meet a  Communist
Party member."
     "Which one?" I asked, somewhat startled.
     "Any one."
     "Haven't you got plenty out there?"
     "I mean one of their organizers-from New York."
     The  summer before  I  had  been all  politics-I  could  probably  have
arranged a meeting with Harry Bridges. But my boy had been killed in an auto
accident after  I  went  back to college and  I was out  of  touch with such
things. I had heard there was a man from "The New Masses" around somewhere.
     "Will you promise him immunity?" I asked, joking.
     "Oh yes," Stahr answered seriously. "I won't hurt him. Get one that can
talk-tell him to bring one of his books along."
     He spoke as if he wanted to meet a member of the "I AM" cult.
     "Do you want a blonde, or a brunette?"
     "Oh, get a man," he said hastily.
     Hearing Stahr's voice cheered me up-since  I barged in on Father it had
all seemed a paddling about in thin spittle. Stahr changed everything  about
it-changed the angle  from which I saw it, changed the very air. He was like
a brazier out of doors on a cool night.
     "I don't think your father ought to know," he said. "Can we pretend the
man is a Bulgarian musician or something?"
     "Oh, they don't dress up any more," I said.
     It was  harder to arrange than I  thought-Stahr's negotiations with the
Writers Guild, which had continued over a year, were approaching a dead end.
Perhaps  they were afraid of being corrupted,  and  I was asked what Stahr's
"proposition" was. Afterwards Stahr told me that he prepared for the meeting
by running off  the Russian  Revolutionary  Films that he  had  in  his film
library at home. He  also ran off "Doctor  Caligari" and Salvador Dali's "Un
Chien Andalou,"  possibly suspecting that  they had a bearing on the matter.
He had been startled by the  Russian Films back in the twenties and on Wylie
White's suggestion he had had the script department  get him  up  a two-page
"treatment" of the "Communist Manifesto."
     But his mind  was closed on the  subject. He was a rationalist who  did
his own reasoning without benefit  of books-and he had just managed to climb
out of a thousand  years of Jewry into the late eighteenth century. He could
not bear to see  it  melt away-he cherished the parvenu's passionate loyalty
to an imaginary past.
     The meeting took place in what I called the "processed leather room"-it
was one of  six done for  us by a decorator from Sloane's years ago, and the
term stuck in  my  head. It  was the most  decorator's  room-an angora  wool
carpet the color of dawn, the most delicate grey imaginable-you hardly dared
walk on it; and the silver panelling and leather tables  and creamy pictures
and slim fragilities looked  so easy to stain that we could not breathe hard
in there,  though it  was  wonderful to look into  from  the  door when  the
windows were open and the curtains whimpered querulously against the breeze.
It was a lineal descendant of the old American parlor that used to be closed
except on Sunday. But it  was exactly the room  for the occasion and I hoped
that whatever  happened would give it character and make  it henceforth part
of our house.
     Stahr arrived first. He was white and nervous and  troubled -except for
his  voice which was  always quiet and  full  of consideration. There was  a
brave personal quality in the way he would  meet you-he would walk right  up
to you and put aside something that was in the way, and grow to know you all
over as if he couldn't  help himself. I kissed him for some reason, and took
him into the processed leather room.
     "When do you go back to college?" he asked.
     We had been over this fascinating ground before.
     "Would  you like me if I were a little shorter?" I asked. "I could wear
low heels and plaster down my hair."
     "Let's have dinner tonight," he suggested. "People will think I'm  your
father but I don't mind."
     "I love old men,"  I assured  him. "Unless the man has a crutch  I feel
it's just a boy and girl affair."
     "Have you had many of those?"
     "Enough."
     "People fall in and out of love all the time, don't they."
     "Every three years so Fanny Brice says. I just read it in the paper."
     "I wonder how they manage it," he said. "I know it's true because I see
them. But  they look so convinced every time.  And then suddenly they  don't
look convinced. But they get convinced all over."
     "You've been making too many movies."
     "I wonder if they're as convinced the second time or the third time  or
the fourth time," he persisted.
     "More each time," I said. "Most of all the last time."
     He thought this over and seemed to agree.
     "I suppose so. Most of all the last time."
     I  didn't like the way he said  this  and I suddenly saw that under the
surface he was miserable.
     "It's a great nuisance," he said. "It'll be better when it's over."
     "Wait a minute! Perhaps pictures are in the wrong hands."
     Brimmer, the Party Member, was announced and going to  meet him I  slid
over to the  door on one  of those  gossamer throw-rugs and practically into
his arms.
     He was  a  nice-looking man,  this Brimmer-a  little  on  the  order of
Spencer Tracy  but  with a stronger  face and  a  wider  range  of reactions
written up in it. I couldn't help  thinking as he and Stahr smiled and shook
hands and squared off, that they  were two of the most alert men I  had ever
seen. They were  very conscious  of each other immediately-both as polite to
me  as  you please but with a softening of the  ends of their sentences when
they turned in my direction.
     "What  are you  people  trying to do?"  demanded Stahr. "You've got  my
young men all upset."
     "That keeps them awake, doesn't it?" said Brimmer.
     "First we let half a dozen Russians study the plant," said Stahr. "As a
model plant, you understand. And then  you try  to  break up  the unity that
makes it a model plant."
     "The unity?" Brimmer repeated. "Do you mean what's known as the company
spirit?"
     "Oh,  not that," said  Stahr,  impatiently. "It  seems  to be me you're
after.  Last  week a writer  came into my office-a  drunk-a man  who's  been
floating around  for years just  two  steps out  of  the bughouse-and  began
telling me my business."
     Brimmer smiled.
     "You don't look to  me like  a  man who could be told his business, Mr.
Stahr."
     They would both have tea. When I  came back Stahr  was telling a  story
about the Warner brothers and Brimmer was laughing with him.
     "I'll tell you another one," Stahr said. "Balanchine the Russian dancer
had  them mixed up with the Ritz Brothers. He didn't know which ones  he was
training and which ones he was working for. He used to go around  saying  'I
cannot train those Warner Brothers to dance.' "
     It looked like a quiet afternoon.  Brimmer  asked him why the producers
didn't back the Anti-Nazi League.
     "Because of you people," said Stahr. "It's your  way of getting at  the
writers.   In  the  long  view  you're  wasting   your  time.  Writers   are
children-even in normal times they can't keep their minds on their work."
     "They're the farmers  in this business," said Brimmer pleasantly. "They
grow the grain but  they're  not in at the feast. Their  feeling toward  the
producer is like the farmers' resentment of the city fellow."
     I was wondering  about Stahr's girl-whether it  was  all  over  between
them. Later when I heard the whole thing from Kathleen, standing in the rain
in a wretched road called Goldwyn Terrace, I figured out that this must have
been a week after she sent him the telegram. She couldn't help the telegram.
The man got off the train unexpectedly and walked her to the registry office
without  a flicker  of doubt that this was  what she wanted. It was eight in
the morning and Kathleen was in such a daze  that  she was chiefly concerned
in how to get  the  telegram to  Stahr.  In  theory you  could stop  and say
"Listen I forgot to tell you but I met a man." But  this track had been laid
down so  thoroughly, with such confidence,  such struggle, such  relief that
when it came along suddenly cutting across the other she found herself on it
like  a car on a closed switch.  He watched her  write the telegram, looking
directly  at it  across the  table, and  she  hoped he couldn't  read upside
down....
     When my mind  came  back into  the  room they  had destroyed  the  poor
writers-Brimmer had gone so far as to admit they were "unstable."
     "They  are  not  equipped  for  authority,"  said Stahr.  "There  is no
substitute for will. Sometimes you have to fake will when you don't feel  it
at all."
     "I've had that experience."
     "You have to say 'It's got to be like this-no other way'-even if you're
not sure. A dozen times a week that happens to me. Situations where there is
no real reason for anything. You pretend there is."
     "All  leaders  have  felt  that,"  said  Brimmer.  "Labor  leaders, and
certainly military leaders."
     "So I've had to  take  an attitude in this Guild matter. It looks to me
like a try for power and all I am going to give the writers is money."
     "You give some of them very little money. Thirty dollars a week."
     "Who gets that?" asked Stahr surprised.
     "The ones who are commodities and easy to replace."
     "Not on my lot," said Stahr.
     "Oh yes," said Brimmer. "Two  men in your  shorts department get thirty
dollars a week."
     "Who?"
     "Man named Ransome-man named O'Brien."
     Stahr and I smiled together.
     "Those are not  writers,"  said Stahr. "Those are cousins  of Cecelia's
father."
     "There are some in other studios," said Brimmer.
     Stahr took his teaspoon and poured himself some medicine from a  little
bottle.
     "What's a fink?" he asked suddenly.
     "A fink? That's a strike breaker or a Company Tec."
     "I thought so,"  said Stahr. "I've got a fifteen  hundred dollar writer
that every time he walks through the commissary keeps saying 'Fink!'  behind
other writers' chairs. If he didn't scare hell out of them it'd be funny."
     Brimmer laughed.
     "I'd like to see that," he said.
     "You wouldn't like to spend a day with me over there?" suggested Stahr.
     Brimmer laughed with genuine amusement.
     "No, Mr. Stahr. But I don't doubt but that I'd be impressed. I've heard
you're one of the hardest working and most efficient men in the entire West.
It'd be a privilege to watch you but I'm afraid I'll have to deny myself."
     Stahr looked at me.
     "I  like your friend," he said. "He's crazy but I  like him." He looked
closely at Brimmer. "Born on this side?"
     "Oh yes. Several generations."
     "Many of them like you?"
     "My father was a Baptist minister."
     "I mean are many of the Reds. I'd like to  meet this big Jew that tried
to blow over the Ford factory. What's his name-"
     "Frankensteen? "
     "That's the man. I guess some of you believe in it."
     "Quite a few," said Brimmer dryly.
     "Not you," said Stahr.
     A shade of annoyance floated across Brimmer's face.
     "Oh yes," he said.
     "Oh no," said Stahr. "Maybe you did once."
     Brimmer shrugged his shoulders.
     "Perhaps the boot's on the other foot," he said. "At the bottom of your
heart, Mr. Stahr, you know I'm right."
     "No," said Stahr, "I think it's a bunch of tripe."
     "-you think to yourself 'He's right' but you think the system will last
out your time."
     "You don't really think you're going to overthrow the government."
     "No, Mr. Stahr. But we think perhaps you are."
     They  were nicking at each other-little  pricking strokes like  men  do
sometimes. Women do it  too but it is a joined  battle then with no quarter,
but it is  not pleasant  to  watch  men do it  because you never know what's
next.  Certainly it wasn't improving the tonal associations of  the room for
me and I moved them out  the French window into our golden-yellow California
garden.
     It was midsummer but fresh water from the gasping  sprinklers  made the
lawn glitter like spring. I could see Brimmer look at it with a sigh  in his
glance-a  way  they have.  He  opened  up  big outside-inches taller  than I
thought  and broad-shouldered.  He reminded  me a little of Superman when he
takes off his spectacles.  I thought he was as  attractive as men can be who
don't  really  care  about women as such.  We  played a round  robin game of
ping-pong and he handled his bat well. I heard  Father come into  the  house
singing that damn "Little Man, You've Had a Busy Day" and  then breaking off
as if he remembered we weren't speaking  any more.  It was half past  six-my
car  was standing in the drive and I suggested we go  down to the  Trocadero
for dinner.
     Brimmer had that look that  Father O'Ney had that time in New York when
he turned his  collar  around  and  went  with Father and me to  the Russian
Ballet. He hadn't  quite ought to be here. When Bernie the photographer, who
was waiting there for some big game or other, came up to our table he looked
trapped-Stahr made Bernie go away, and I would like to have had the picture.
     Then, to  my  astonishment,  Stahr had three  cocktails  one after  the
other.
     "Now I know you've been disappointed in love," I said.
     "What makes you think that, Cecelia?"
     "Cocktails."
     "Oh, I never drink, Cecelia. I get dyspepsia-I never have been tight."
     I counted them. "-two-three."
     "I didn't realize. I couldn't taste them. I thought there was something
the matter."
     A silly glassy look darted into his eye-then passed away.
     "This is my first drink in a week," said Brimmer. "I did my drinking in
the navy."
     The look was back in Stahr's eye-he winked it fatuously at me and said:
     "This soapbox son-of-a-bitch has been working on the navy."
     Brimmer didn't know  quite how  to take  this. Evidently  he decided to
include it  with  the evening for  he  smiled faintly  and I  saw  Stahr was
smiling too. I was  relieved when I saw it was  safely in the great American
tradition and I tried to  take  hold of the  conversation but  Stahr  seemed
suddenly all right.
     "Here's my typical experience," he  said very succinctly and clearly to
Brimmer.  "The best director  in  Hollywood-a man I never interfere with-has
some  streak  in  him that wants  to  slip  a  pansy into  every  picture or
something on that order. Something  offensive. He stamps it in  deep  like a
watermark so I can't get it out. Every time he does it the Legion of Decency
moves a step forward and something  has  to be sacrificed out of some honest
film."
     "Typical organization trouble," agreed Brimmer.
     "Typical," said  Stahr. "It's an endless battle.  So now  this director
tells me  it's  all right  because he's got a  Directors  Guild  and I can't
oppress the poor. That's how you add to my troubles."
     "It's a  little remote from us,"  said Brimmer  smiling. "I don't think
we'd make much headway with the directors."
     "The directors used to be my pals," said Stahr proudly.
     It  was  like  Edward  the VII's  boast that  he had  moved in the best
society in Europe.
     "But some of them have never forgiven me," he continued, "-for bringing
out  stage directors when sound came  in. It put them on their toes and made
them  learn their jobs all  over but they never did really  forgive me. That
time  we imported a  whole new hogshead full of writers  and  I thought they
were great fellows till they all went Red."
     Gary Cooper  came in and sat down  in a corner with a bunch of men  who
breathed whenever he  did  and looked as if they lived off  him and  weren't
budging an inch. A woman across the room  looked around and turned out to be
Carole Lombard-I was glad that Brimmer was at least getting an eyeful.
     Stahr ordered a  whiskey and soda and, almost immediately,  another. He
ate nothing  but  a few spoonfuls of soup and he  said  all the awful things
about  everybody being lazy  so-and-so's  and  none of it  mattered  to  him
because he  had  lots of  money-it was the kind of talk  you heard  whenever
Father and his friends were together. I think Stahr realized that it sounded
pretty  ugly outside of  the proper company-maybe he had  never heard how it
sounded before. Anyhow  he shut up and drank  off a  cup of  black coffee. I
loved him and what he said didn't change that but  I hated Brimmer  to carry
off this impression. I wanted him  to  see Stahr as a sort  of technological
virtuoso and here Stahr had been playing the wicked overseer to a  point  he
would have called trash if he had watched it on the screen.
     "I'm a production man," he said as if to modify his  previous attitude.
"I  like writers-I think I understand them. I don't want to kick anybody out
if they do their work."
     "We don't want you to," said Brimmer pleasantly. "We'd like to take you
over as a going concern."
     Stahr nodded grimly.
     "I'd like to put you  in a  roomful  of my partners. They've  all got a
dozen reasons for having Fitts run you fellows out of town."
     "We  appreciate  your protection,"  said Brimmer with a certain  irony.
"Frankly we do  find you difficult,  Mr. Stahr-precisely because you  are  a
paternalistic employer and your influence is very great."
     Stahr was only half listening.
     "I never thought," he said, "-that I had more brains than a writer has.
But I always thought  that his brains belonged to me- because I  knew how to
use  them.  Like  the  Romans-I've heard that they never invented things but
they knew what to do with them. Do you see? I don't say it's right. But it's
the way I've always felt-since I was a boy."
     This interested Brimmer-the first thing that had  interested him for an
hour.
     "You know yourself very well, Mr. Stahr," he said.
     I  think he wanted to get away. He had been curious to see what kind of
man  Stahr  was and now he  thought he  knew. Still  hoping things would  be
different I rashly urged him to ride home with us but when Stahr  stopped by
the bar for another drink I knew I'd made a mistake.
     It was a gentle,  harmless, motionless evening with a lot  of  Saturday
cars. Stahr's hand lay along the back of the seat touching my hair. Suddenly
I wished it  had been about ten  years ago. I would have been  nine. Brimmer
about  eighteen  and  working his  way through some  mid-western college and
Stahr twenty-five just having inherited the world and full of confidence and
joy. We would both have looked up to Stahr so, without question. And here we
were  in an adult  conflict  to  which  there  was  no  peaceable  solution,
complicated now with exhaustion and drink.
     We turned in at our drive and I drove around to the garden again.
     "I must go along now," said Brimmer. "I've got to meet some people."
     "No,  stay,"  said  Stahr. "I never have said what I wanted. We'll play
ping-pong and have another drink and then we'll tear into each other."
     Brimmer  hesitated. Stahr  turned on the floodlight  and picked  up his
ping-pong bat and I  went into  the  house  for some whiskey-I wouldn't have
dared disobey him.
     When I came  back they  were not playing but  Stahr was batting a whole
box of new balls across to Brimmer who turned them aside. When I arrived  he
quit and took the bottle and retired to a chair just  out of the floodlight,
watching in dark  dangerous majesty. He was paie-he was so transparent  that
you could almost watch the alcohol mingle with the poison of his exhaustion.
     "Time to relax on Saturday night," he said.
     "You're not relaxing," I said.
     He  was   carrying  on  a  losing  battle  with  his  instinct   toward
schizophrenia.
     "I'm going to beat up Brimmer," he announced after a moment. "I'm going
to handle this thing personally."
     "Can't you pay somebody to do it?" asked Brimmer.
     I signalled him to keep quiet.
     "I do  my own  dirty work," said Stahr. "I'm going to  beat hell out of
you and put you on a train."
     He got up and came forward and I put my arms around him, gripping him.
     "Please stop this!" I said. "Oh, you're being so bad."
     "This  fellow has an influence over you," he said darkly. "Over all you
young people. You don't know what you're doing."
     "Please go home," I said to Brimmer.
     Stahr's  suit was made  of slippery  cloth and suddenly he slipped away
from me and went for  Brimmer. Brimmer retreated  backward around the table.
There was an  odd expression in his  face and afterwards I thought it looked
as if he were saying,  "Is  this all? This frail half sick person holding up
the whole thing."
     Then Stahr came close, his hands going up. It seemed to me that Brimmer
held him off with his  left  arm a minute and then I looked  away-I couldn't
bear to watch.
     When I looked back Stahr was out of sight below the level of  the table
and Brimmer was looking down at him.
     "Please go home," I said to Brimmer.
     "All right." He stood looking down at Stahr as I came around the table.
"I always wanted to hit ten  million dollars but I didn't  know  it would be
like this."
     Stahr lay motionless.
     "Please go," I said.
     "I'm sorry. Can I help-"
     "No. Please go. I understand."
     He looked again, a little awed at the depths of Stahr's repose which he
had created in a split second.  Then he went quickly away over the grass and
I  knelt down and  shook  Stahr. In a moment he came  awake with a  terrific
convulsion and bounced up on his feet.
     "Where is he?" he shouted.
     "Who?" I asked innocently.
     "That American. Why in hell did you have to marry him, you damn fool."
     "Monroe-he's gone. I didn't marry anybody."
     I pushed him down in a chair.
     "He's been gone half an hour," I lied.
     The  ping-pong balls  lay around in the grass  like a constellation  of
stars. I turned on a sprinkler  and came  back with a  wet handkerchief  but
there was no mark on Stahr-he must have been hit in the side of the head. He
went off behind  some trees and was  sick  and  I heard him  kicking up some
earth over it. After that  he seemed all right but  he wouldn't go into  the
house till I got him some  mouthwash so I took back  the whiskey  bottle and
got a mouthwash bottle.  His wretched essay  at getting drunk was over. I've
been out with college freshmen but for  sheer  ineptitude and absence of the
Bacchic  spirit it unquestionably took the cake. Every bad thing happened to
him but that was all.

     We  went  in  the  house;  the  cook  said  Father  and Mr. Marcus  and
Flieshacker  were on the verandah  so we stayed  in the  "processed  leather
room." We both sat down  in a couple  of places  and seemed to slide off and
finally I sat on a fur rug and Stahr on a footstool beside me.
     "Did I hit him?" he asked.
     "Oh, yes," I said. "Quite badly."
     "I don't believe it." After a  minute he added,  "I didn't want to hurt
him. I just wanted to chase him out. I guess he got scared and hit me."
     If this was his interpretation of  what had  happened it was all  right
with me.
     "Do you hold it against him?"
     "Oh no," he  said. "I was drunk." He looked around. "I've never been in
here before-who did this room-somebody from the studio?"
     "Somebody from New York."
     "Well, I'll have to get you out of here,"  he said in his  old pleasant
way. "How would you like to go out to Doug  Fairbanks' ranch  and spend  the
night? He asked me-I know he'd love to have you."
     That's how the two weeks started that he and I went around together. It
only took one of them for Louella to have us married.

Last-modified: Mon, 04 Dec 2000 17:44:57 GMT
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