Youngblood hawke, p.18
Youngblood Hawke, page 18
"What?"
"Youngblood Hawke. He's calling from the lobby."
"It's impossible, dear. Roberto called the airlines and the railroad. There's no way he could have gotten here."
"He drove, mother. He rented a car and drove up from Kentucky. He's here," Honor Lesser said impatiently. "He's downstairs."
"Well, good God, he's another Lindbergh or something. Well, good God. Honor, call Roberto right away. And send Else in here. Tell her I want the green robe, I hope she hasn't packed it."
Hawke came into Anne Karen's suite like an ape let loose by a bored king in a French drawing room. His hair was wild and matted, black bristles stood on his face, his eyes were completely bloodshot, his trousers were out of press and his old duffle coat was grease-smeared. He said to Honor Lesser in a rasp—he had caught a fulminating cold and suspected his temperature was about a hundred and three—"I'm sorry, ma'am, I know I look like holy hell. I had to change two tires. It's a wonder they let me come up. I realize I'm a few hours late, but—"
"Mr. Hawke, it's amazing that you came at all. Hilda, bring some Scotch and glasses."
He fumbled the old leather toilet kit, a companion from navy days, in his big grease-blackened hands. "If I could shave and wash up a bit, ma'am—"
"Of course. But have a drink."
The whiskey went down his throat like warm water. He grinned in apology for tossing off such a large hooker. The young woman instantly poured him another, saying, "How on earth did you drive through that blizzard?"
"Well, it wasn't too bad, ma'am. You see I didn't go the short way through West Virginia, those mountains would be impassable in this weather. I just struck up along the Ohio Valley to U.S. 22. I knew the big trucks would keep the snow smashed on 22. Then it was straight across to New York, no strain, except I drove right through the night and I reckon I could use a little sleep." He grinned dolefully.
She said, "Good lord, I think you risked your life." Once more she refilled his glass. He was babbling a bit, but she could scarcely blame him.
"Oh, nothing like that. It just didn't seem right to disappoint a lady." They both laughed. "It was kind of interesting, you know, and beautiful. There wasn't much traffic. The accents of the disk jockeys keep changing every couple of hundred miles, it's something I never realized. But they all have the same feeble mind. Honestly, ma'am, you listen to the radio twenty hours straight in a car and you'll think this country's rotting into imbecility. I was right on the old track of the pioneers over the Alleghenies you know, the Ohio Valley and Route 22, only going the other way. I wonder what in hell the pioneers would make of the radio, and I swear to God, ma'am, I also wonder how we won two world wars. No, no more booze, thanks. That was just right, my blood's circulating again. Where can I wash?"
"Right in here. You know, I've managed to read about half your book, Mr. Hawke. I think it's a distinguished first novel, truly I do."
He smiled at her gratefully. "I sure look like a distinguished novelist, don't I? Just let me mess up a few Waldorf towels."
The daughter saw at once, coming into her mother's dressing room, that the actress was concerned about the meeting with Hawke. Nobody could be more slovenly than Anne Karen. She was incapable of looking really bad, even at fifty-one, and disorder often gave her a wonderful chance charm. But she was at her dressing table, polishing herself with care. "What is he like?"
"Sort of savage."
"Savage?"
"Well, he's huge, and hairy, and he's dressed like a truck driver. And I guess he hasn't shaved or slept for days. He looks frightful. Very young, and rather gentle."
The actress lifted one eyebrow. "Somehow you make him sound attractive."
"He has a pleasant smile. It's remarkable the way he got here."
"Thirty thousand dollars looks big to a young writer."
"He only agreed to come after you turned on the tears about going blind."
Anne Karen laughed. "I gave him a way to climb down off his high horse. Roberto offended him."
"Well, I don't know. He has a refreshing manner. Very genuine."
Anne Karen said with a slant glance at her daughter, "I'm sure he's genuine. He's new."
Hawke emerged from the bathroom looking remarkably better; indeed quite handsome in a brutish way, Honor Lesser thought. He had put off the queer duffle coat. He was wearing his brown tweed "novelist's suit," so the lack of press didn't matter much, and apparently he had had a new shirt somewhere on him, for his linen was very white. His eyes burned, and his face was ashen, but a ready smile of good humor and will power cancelled any sickly appearance. He had gulped several aspirins, and he was not feeling badly at all.
"More Scotch?" she said.
"Well, yes, ma'am. Although this story I'll tell may not resemble the book I wrote very much if I keep slugging down the firewater."
"Nonsense. It's just what you need."
Roberto Luzzatto arrived and enfolded Hawke in a bearhug, and said if Hollywood writers had half his gumption, making movies would be simple. Then the bedroom door opened and out sailed Anne Karen in a loose green silk robe, her black hair falling to her shoulders, her great blue eyes sparkling like ice in sunshine. She apologized for her appearance, for her delay in coming out, for the horrid mess in the suite, and all the time Hawke stared at her as though the Mona Lisa had walked out of its frame and started talking. The daughter was not bad-looking, though much too plump; she had the actress's hair and a faint echo of her charm. But he felt sorry for any woman who had to live within range of Anne Karen. The actress was supernaturally beautiful. She did not seem more than thirty.
When he began to tell the story she slid off the sofa to the floor, and curled there with one arm on her daughter's knee, in a pose of delicious balance and charm. "I'm sorry, this is the only way I can think. I do all my reading on the floor—that is when my poor eyes are working." Sitting so, she somehow pulled all the lines in the room to converge on her. The brilliant green of her robe was like a jewel in the gold, pink, and cream of the room. Her beauty distracted Hawke like a blazing naked lamp, and he found it hard to get going in his tale. Anne Karen fiddled with the cord of her robe as he talked, and she seemed disappointed and bored, though she kept smiling sweetly.
But then he took hold of them. Hawke was himself not without some of the equipment of an actor—magnetic vitality, almost maniacal bursts of self-confidence, and natural expressive gesture. He had what the actors lack, and this lack makes them dumb prisoners until a script frees them to shine—command of words. He could not only write them, he could at moments like these pour them from his tongue. Anne Karen took her elbow from her daughter's knee. She sat up straight, hugging her knees, her lovely face hardening. She lit one cigarette and another, staring off to the wall, looking at him only now and then. Hawke's story took new possession of him, as he saw it beginning to grip his three listeners. Feverish thrills ran along his spine as he worked up to the climax; he knew he was quite sick, but it didn't matter. He paced as he talked. His voice faded to a scraping whisper. He finished the story, and sank in an armchair. It had taken him twenty minutes to tell it. He knew he had left out all the subtleties and some of the best scenes, but he also knew he had impressed these people. He took the whiskey that Honor Lesser thrust in his hand and drank it down.
With a heavy sigh, Anne Karen turned to Luzzatto. "Roberto, come inside for a moment. Thank you, Mr. Hawke." They disappeared into the bedroom, the actress beckoning to her daughter.
Honor Lesser said to Hawke, "You told that story remarkably, but you look as though you have a fever, and good heavens, your voice!"
"Few hours sleep all I need," Hawke croaked. She left him.
His eyes dropped shut almost at once, and he was back at the wheel of the rented Plymouth, ploughing along a snowy highway that swooped back and forth before him in the dark and he was roaring past trucks on slippery upgrades, taking his life in his hands, and trucks were booming at him and past him with headlights that hurt his eyes, and he was bawling at the top of his lungs all the obscene songs from navy days that he could think of, to keep himself awake, and figuring over and over what twenty-five percent of five thousand dollars was, or ten thousand, or fifteen, it wouldn't do to gamble all of it at first—then he heard a door open and he snapped out of it, shivering, shocked for an instant to find himself in the ornate hot hotel room. Luzzatto and the actress were approaching. The actress said, "Mr. Hawke, can we talk about your wonderful, wonderful story for just a minute or two? Then I'll let you go, I know you're exhausted."
"All you want," Hawke grated. "I feel fine."
She was on the floor again, in a pool of green silk, leaning against an armchair, looking up at him. She said it was a splendid film story, and she was fascinated by the idea of playing the old aunt, a tremendous part, almost a female King Lear. "I have faced it long ago, Mr. Hawke, my days of playing silly love stories are over, these are the parts I must look for." It was five years since she had made a picture, and if ever she was to make one again Alms for Oblivion was the perfect vehicle. She talked so fluently that he had nothing to do but nod now and then. The dark burly producer sat on the edge of the sofa, biting his nails. Anne Karen was talking about the aunt, analyzing her character. Her comments were intelligent though flowery, and too much laced with Freudian cant. She spoke of the aunt's youth as she imagined it, of the love affairs that might have turned her into the queer tough spinster of the book. He nodded and nodded. What the woman was driving at soon became clear. She wanted scenes in the film of the aunt's youth, and a new subplot about her tragic first love. "It may be horribly presumptuous of me, Mr. Hawke. But films are a different medium, and I feel this would give the part a density, a range, it doesn't have now. The part would become one any actress would give her life to play. I don't think it would do violence to your book, on the contrary don't you think it might make the story—purely from an audience standpoint—more emotional, more understandable?"
Hawke said, "I'm sure it would. Probably the novel would have been better if I'd thought of doing it that way in the first place."
"You really think that? You truly do?" The actress looked at Luzzatto, her eyes lighting.
"Oh yes."
"You wouldn't object to such an approach in the screenplay?"
"Not at all."
The actress stood, and both the men did too. "Talk to this wonderful young man for a while," the actress said to Luzzatto. "I want to call Roy."
When the bedroom door closed and the two men were alone together, Luzzatto charged at Hawke and pounded his back. "She's calling her agent. We are in, you brilliant bastard. We are in. We make the picture."
"I hope so." Hawke poured himself Scotch. It was not having the slightest effect on him except to keep him going.
"You are a goddamn salesman, not only a writer," Luzzatto said. "The novel would be better if I'd thought of doing it that way in the first place! Do you realize what that did to her ego? That was inspired. You closed the deal right there."
"Well, I meant it," Hawke said. "There are a hundred ways to tell a story."
Luzzatto's eyelids dropped lazily over his eyes, and he squinted at Hawke in silence. Then he too took Scotch.
A bottle of iced champagne arrived at the suite in a few minutes. The actress with her daughter reappeared from the bedroom, flushed and laughing, to drink toasts to Alms for Oblivion. Hawke felt no elation, only a slight relief. That barrier was crossed. He sensed that his own reactions were abnormal, that an unknown mountain boy who had just sold a novel to motion pictures should be in an ecstasy of pride and delight. But his last energy was waning, and all he wanted was a good excuse to get out of the suite. Luzzatto rescued him; they had a little business to discuss, he said, before he put this young man to bed. Honor Lesser brought out the dilapidated duffle coat.
He said hoarsely as he took it, "Sorry I drank up all your whiskey. I guess I'll be able to buy myself an overcoat now."
"Oh, don't," she said. "Anybody can wear an overcoat. I'll never forget how you looked when you burst in here."
Then one of the maids carried in the five battered boxes of manuscript, and Hawke took them. Anne Karen accompanied him to the elevator, transfixing with astonishment a couple of guests in the corridor. She said goodbye to him as though it were the end of a love scene.
Luzzatto sat him at a table in the wood-panelled men's bar. "Well, Hawke, this was one hell of a day's work. How about closing it with a golden fastener, hm? Want to write the screenplay, too? I want to get going. Nobody knows this book better than you."
"I don't know, Mr. Luzzatto. Let me think about it. I'm pretty well played out."
Luzzatto took a check book from an inside pocket. "I make a deal with you for the screenplay right here in this bar. You know how long a movie script is? About ten thousand words. What do you say I give you a five thousand advance now, on top of the thirty you've got coming, and ten thousand more when you finish? Forty-five thousand instead of thirty. Why should some mediocrity in Hollywood get paid for writing your story over again, hm?"
An obscure alarm was sounding in Hawke's fevered mind. "It sounds good. We'll talk about it."
Luzzatto shrugged. "Well, meantime I owe you thirty." He began to write a check, then stopped. "Should I write this to Ferdie Lax? He made the deal or at least the contact. I suppose he gets ten percent."
"I don't know," Hawke said in confusion. "I guess I have to thrash that out with him."
"And does your publisher participate? Sometimes they do, in first novels."
Like a bee sting, the words brought Hawke angrily alert. He had forgotten that too, utterly forgotten it; Prince got half! Rapidly he calculated; unless he was out of his mind he was going to get from Luzzatto not thirty thousand but something like eleven or twelve thousand! How could he have blacked the publisher and the agent out of his mind? How could he ever have consented to these vampire percentages? He would have to fight for his money, right away! "Mr. Luzzatto," he said thickly and unsteadily, "Give me that check. I'll handle it."
"Of course." Luzzatto completed the check, ripped it free, and handed it to Hawke. "You brought this off fabulously, Hawke. I'm excited about you. You're a big talent. Maybe you're the big talent we're all looking for. I'll talk to you tomorrow."
There was no telephone in his cold lair in the loft building. He called Frieda Winter from the telephone booth in the candy store at the corner, shivering despite the choking radiator heat that filled the little store. Here came another shock. The maid who answered said that Mrs. Winter was out of the country.
"Is she still in Jamaica?"
"Nossuh, she gone to Europe."
"Europe? Did she leave a message for me?" Then, stammering, "Uh, I mean—my name is Youngblood Hawke. I borrowed some valuable books of hers."
There was a tinge of amusement in the voice of the young Negress. "Nossuh. No message, I guess you better keep those books until she gets back, suh."
"When will that be?"
"Some time in February, suh."
But Jeanne Green was in. He talked to her briefly, then went up to his room, which surprised him with its barren squalor, its immense bare pipes along the ceiling, its grime-crusted windows, its streaky whitewashed walls. Quite a change from the Waldorf! Yet he felt safe and good, through his fever; the animal back in its hole. More aspirin, two scribbled notes, a long fiery gulp from a bottle of bourbon in his suitcase; then blackness.
Jeanne arrived half an hour later and climbed the twilit stairs. A note in Hawke's strong clear hand was taped to the dented rusty metal door. "Come in, Jeanie. It's on the desk." In the icy room a round electric heater gleamed coppery red on the floor, the only light. It enabled her to find and switch on the desk lamp. Hawke was breathing quickly and heavily on the mattress on the floor, covered with blankets, the duffle coat piled on top. Alms for Oblivion was stacked on the desk, with a note on it, "Sold, by God, as a starring vehicle for Anne Karen. So be careful with it, and thanks. What are you doing New Year's Eve?"
He was muttering in his sleep. She crouched beside him, slipped off a black glove, and put her cool hand on his hot, sweat-beaded forehead. He turned this way and that, opened his eyes, and smiled wearily. "Hi, Nancy," he said. He rolled over, his head pillowed on an arm. The girl sat in the chair at the desk, not moving, not taking off her coat, for an hour or so. Now and then she put her hand to his brow, but it did not disturb him. He became quieter, and began breathing more easily.
Jeanne Green took the manuscript, and staggered downstairs in the darkness with the heavy precious burden. She had written under his inquiry about New Year's Eve, "Nothing, Got any ideas?"
It was incredible to her that she had first met this strange man seven days ago. Her life seemed to have begun when he walked into the office of Waldo Fipps and found her reading his book; and that seemed to have happened in the far past.
Part Two
1947
CHAPTER FIVE
1
NO MAN can know what it is like to be a woman taking her firstborn in her arms for the first time; but a writer who holds a freshly printed copy of his first book must have a fair idea of what the woman feels. It lies rectangular and spotless in his hands, with his name on the jacket. It is his pass to the company of the great. Fielding, Stendhal, Melville, Tolstoy wrote books. Now he has written one. It does not matter that the dust lies brown and thick on millions of books in libraries everywhere, it does not matter that most new books fall dead, it does not matter that of the thousands of books published each year only a half dozen will survive the season. All that may be. Meantime he has written a book! The exaltation does not last. It cannot. It is too sharp. It is gone before he has drawn twenty breaths. But in those twenty breaths he has smelled the sweetest of all savors, the savor of total fulfillment. After that, no matter what success he may achieve, he is just another writer, with a writer's trials and pleasures. That joy never comes again in all its first purity.
