Youngblood hawke, p.21
Youngblood Hawke, page 21
"Well, if so, it's thanks to you, Georges."
Frieda said, "Is this the play about the little boy who commits murders?"
Carmian said bleakly, "Oh, you've read my play?"
"When Jock Maas was considering it. Terribly funny things in it, but I wonder whether death is a subject for comedy."
"The greatest, Frieda," Feydal said, hauling himself out of the armchair and proceeding to drink the second martini. He stood with his feet planted far apart, his belly bulging, the maroon pajamas drooping around his ankles. "But it must be treated with unerring taste. Le Malade Imaginaire, or that marvellous Mikado of Gilbert, a comic oratorio about death two hours long, and maybe the only indestructible stage piece in English after Shakespeare. And Falstaff. 'Who hath honor? He who died o' Wednesday.' And Chaplin, Chaplin was greatly funny only about death. On the verge of starvation eating a shoe, or walking down a Klondike trail with death close behind in the shape of a bear—" All at once Feydal put down the martini, imitated a waddling bear, and then impersonated Chaplin hurrying along. Hawke did not know how Feydal achieved it, but first he could see the bear, and then it seemed that the fat man melted into Chaplin, baggy pants, cane and all, and then became himself again. It was something he did with his eyes, mouth and hands. "Pierce now has two acts of a wildly funny play."
"I'll have three acts in a couple of weeks," Carmian said, with a spiteful glance at Hawke—and this was, Hawke realized, the first and only notice Pierce Carmian had taken of him—"providing I can find a place to work." The playwright hitched himself off into the bedroom, and the typewriter began clacking again.
Feydal said comfortably, lifting whole small fish out of the tureen of bouillabaisse into a plate, and pouring the rich brown soup over them, "Pierce is annoyed about the apartment. He's a spoiled child. I feel much better about letting you have it," he said to Hawke. "I gather you really need decent surroundings. Pierce has a perfectly good little flat in the village."
"This apartment?" Hawke blurted. "Me? It's impossible. I can't pay for it." He looked at Frieda in amazement. She only smiled.
"It's paid for, alas, I lease it by the year," Feydal said, greedily attacking the bouillabaisse, dripping soup on his pajamas. "You like the place, eh? High, quiet, airy even in July, I promise you."
Hawke surveyed the room, seeing it now as a place for himself to live. Before he had had only a vague impression of comfort and wealth. But now he became aware of paintings which must be costly originals—mostly moderns, a Seurat and a black-and-white sketch by Picasso, but there were old things, a gold-haloed stiff saint on gray wood, a circular painting of a Madonna and child, somehow not incongruous—and every piece of furniture was handsome, none of it was bland hotel fittings. The view of Central Park, newly green, and its flanking tall buildings, was wonderful. "I can't possibly accept such a favor. If I could sub-lease a place like this I'd give an arm to be able to afford it, but—"
"But my dear Mr. Hawke I cannot sublease it. Nobody will lease an apartment in New York through the summer heat. Frieda tells me you need a place to lay your head for a month or two. My humble abode is yours. I expect a very high price. I expect a first exclusive look at the first play you write."
Hawke began to say, "I'm not planning any plays—" but Frieda struck in, speaking with a smile, but in a brisk tone. "Now Georges, none of that. That wasn't what we said on the telephone. You don't want this young man tying up a play he hasn't written yet."
Feydal bent over the bouillabaisse, his eyes winking sidewise at Hawke. "Tie it up? Curiosity, my darling, curiosity, based wholly on what I hear of his talents."
"You can have first look at any play I write whether I take your apartment or not," Hawke said, noticing that Frieda turned her Chinese frown on him but ignoring it. "I'd consider it an honor. But that's hardly compensation for the use of this palatial apartment."
The actor lunged out of his chair at him, making the bouillabaisse slosh on the white cloth as he jostled the table. "Done!" he said, holding out his small manicured hand, and Hawke shook it. "An honest bargain, I call that," Feydal said cheerfully to the frowning Frieda.
They talked about keys, and mail, and the maid service, and the delivery of newspapers—Hawke still only half-believing what was going on—and soon he was in the elevator with Frieda again, and Feydal was waving a roguish farewell through a partly opened door.
They were out on the street before Frieda spoke. Then she said, glaring at him from under her brows, "You're still full of fried squirrels."
"What's the matter?"
"A first look at a literary property is worth money. You don't just give it away to prove you're as debonair as Georges Feydal. You're not. You won't be if you live to be a hundred."
They were standing in bright sunlight on the street, and the lines in her face were plain, the two determined scores on either side of her mouth and the furrows on her forehead, but it didn't matter, she was lovely to him. "Frieda, he gave me his apartment. I'm a total stranger. I've never encountered such generosity."
"Oh, yes, it was generous of him, but I'd arranged all that on the telephone, and what becomes of his generosity if it turns into a literary transaction? However—" the cloud passed from her face. She took his hand. "We've got you out of that horrible hole on Twenty-eighth Street, anyway, haven't we? If you have to entertain a lady now you can do so, and she won't have to brush wet laundry aside to sit down. That's done." She glanced at her watch. "I have an appointment with Jock Maas. What do you say, shall we go to Georges's closing tomorrow night? There'll be a sad champagne party backstage, and he's flying to the coast at one in the morning, so you can take over the keys right there."
"Sure."
"Get yourself a haircut. Not too close, no college boy stuff, but you need one."
"Yes, Mrs. Winter."
"Go to hell," she said, touching his face with a gloved hand.
"Thanks for lunch."
"Oh, that. Write a bread-and-butter note to the Treasury, if you must. Bye." She stepped quickly into the first cab in the line outside the hotel.
4
At about a quarter past five that afternoon Jeanne was moiling through a difficult chapter of Hawke's book. The pages were scarred with changes and cuts in differently colored inks; the margins were choked with insertions written sideways, in little balloons at the end of long lines. The narrative itself contained time lapses that didn't add up and characters whose names had changed since the start of the story. She was drudging on while other girls in the office were closing their desks, because Chain of Command had the surge of a smash hit under its disorderly surface, and the work was continuously exciting. But it was a taxing job; her eyes ached, and her nerves were raw. The telephone, jangling unexpectedly, made her start. It was the mystery book editor down the hall, saying that Karl Fry had walked in half an hour ago, and was now coming to see her.
This was a surprise. Early in January Fry had had a heart attack, and after his discharge from the hospital he had gone to his home town, St. Louis, to recuperate. She had not seen him since the night he had taken her to dinner, the same night Hawke had called her from Kentucky; but she had had several funny and cheerful letters from him.
Jeanne worked in an unchanging fluorescent glare, in a large windowless room devoted to art work and publicity, where the stylists too had their cubicles. Through a couple of panels of partition glass she saw him coming. For a second or two she was not quite sure it was Fry. His clothes were different now. His manner of walking was different. The bizarre colors and the Bohemian shabbiness had given way to the correct grayish look of a college teacher or an editor. He even wore a vest, of the same stuff as his suit. His collar was white, his tie dull green, and nothing was new, but all was easy and neat. When he came into her cubicle she saw his shoes were freshly shined. The really astonishing thing was his smile. His teeth seemed whiter, the crookedness and the stains were gone, and a couple of black gaps had been filled. This improved his looks amazingly; made him indeed rather handsome.
He was brief with her. Would she have cocktails with him, and dinner? She shook off her surprise and declined dinner. She had a script session with Hawke that was supposed to begin at eight, though she did not tell this to Fry; cocktails, yes, with pleasure. "I'm not dressed for any place that's fancy," she said, stacking away her manuscript sheets and reference books. "You pick up a working girl without warning and you're stuck with a working girl."
"That's all right. Are you game for a merry-go-round ride? That's a working girl amusement . . . don't look so puzzled, Jeanie, I mean it. The carousel in the park. It's a warm, lovely, daylight-saving kind of June afternoon out there."
"I'd love a merry-go-round ride, thank you. It'll be a pleasant change from this tomb."
So they walked uptown to the park and strolled along the same path through the zoo that Hawke and Frieda had traversed a few hours earlier. Jeanne had been feeling like the very devil all day, for no reason she could define; as though some mortal calamity were breaking on her, somewhere beyond her sight. It was a symptom of gloom, of worn nerves, and she had had it often in New York, but seldom so strongly. The walk in the park cheered her up a little.
When they were on the turning merry-go-round, facing each other on two horses, Fry moving up as Jeanne went down, he shouted over the clang and and whoop of The Blue Danube, "How do you like my teeth?"
"Hey?"
"How do you like the job they did on my teeth in St. Louis? Caps."
"Fine. Makes you look years younger."
"Glad you think so, Jeanne."
There were sailors on the carousel, some with girls and some alone, and mothers with children, and a few young couples, and the music was loud and thumpy, and the cymbals clashed in waltz time. Jeanne would have loved to throw back her head as the carousel turned faster, and laugh, and teeter and show her legs a bit, as some of the girls were doing; it was the thing to do on a carousel. But Fry seemed so odd, and the whole excursion had such an outlandish feeling, that she could not do the happy flirting girl, and she just rode up and down on the painted wooden horse.
"Fun?" Fry said as they walked away.
"Wonderful idea. Spun off all my blue devils. Thanks, Karl."
"I did that on the first date I had with the girl who became my wife. Depths of the depression. Those two dimes loomed larger then than two fifty-dollar bills today. What do you say, one of the hotels for cocktails, or my place?"
This kind of decision Jeanne was used to, and the standard answer was not to go to "my place." "My place" too often meant wrestlings and arguments. A pretty girl's sexual charm generated continual trouble, like carrying around a few thousand dollars in cash; always precaution, always suspicion. Yet, like the possessor of the cash, she had to be glad she had it. "Oh, hell, Karl, your place," she said. Karl seemed all right. Capped teeth or not, he was past forty, and a skirt and blouse were terrible for a hotel.
He had a new apartment not far from hers, on a side street to the west of Third Avenue in one of the well-renovated buildings. His apartment, three small rooms, seemed all books; the furniture was new. He gave her a big cold martini, which she drank thirstily. As it turned out she was perfectly safe, Fry wanted to talk. Jeanne had a good instinct for knowing when only talk was in prospect. Youngblood Hawke was the world's most infernal talker, at least with her.
He talked of his illness with detached good humor. "Every man in his forties should spend a week on his back in an oxygen tent, Jeanie," Karl said, sipping ginger ale. "That is, if he makes it back to the sunlight. I guess most people nowadays need such a sharp arrest, people like myself who can't go to churches to stop and add up the score from time to time. I added it all up in the oxygen tent, Jeanie, I really did. When I got well I acted. Did you know that Hodge Hathaway's mystery editor was leaving them to join the story department at Metro?" Jeanne shook her head. "Well, he is. I heard about it shortly after I got out of the hospital and I called Ross Hodge long distance. I believe I'm going to get the job."
"Why, that's grand, Karl."
Jeanne had never had any particular feelings about Karl Fry, beyond a certain pity, in his derelict days—which certainly seemed over, or at least suspended—and some admiration for his intelligence. The fact that he was a communist had been enough to remove him from the range of normal people. She had known communists in college, in Washington, and in New York. Once she had been interested enough—when a very good-looking economist in the government who was paying court to her had fed her the usual books and pamphlets—to read up on Marxism. It had attracted her for a while with its vision of a perfect world realizable with a change in the laws of property. The idea of a worker's revolution led by a devoted band of brilliant insiders had been romantically exciting too. Still, she had never quite been able to picture Russia's October Revolution occurring in the United States of filling stations and Sears Roebuck catalogues and easy living. She had attended a few parlor meetings with the economist; it had been a novel kind of dating. But the people had repelled her. Jeanne had a candid eye, and she saw them for petty egotists, mostly of inferior ability and manners, seizing on the great dream to inflate their own importance; the cleverest ones, the leaders, had the ugly assurance of religious fanatics, peculiarly mixed with the bland toughness of professional politicians. The economist's shy charm and slender good looks had begun to dim when she saw him shrill and excited in arguments. At last when the note of clandestine planning had become clear to her, she had suddenly and finally decided that this business was not for her. Giving up the economist was not hard; he talked too much, after all, and she perceived that most of his brilliance was second-hand. Thereafter she had reacted to communists like someone who has been vaccinated.
She said, "I'm a little surprised at Ross Hodge."
"Why?"
"Well, isn't he the original stuffed-shirt from Boston, Republican right through to his liver and all that?"
"I've left the party, Jeanne."
"Well! That's news."
"It made no headlines but it's so. I told it to Ross, and he took my word. Ross isn't a stuffed shirt. He's a gentleman. A vanishing sort of animal like the prairie dog, but there are some."
"You don't believe in communism any more?"
Fry rose. "I want more ginger ale. You know, I'm really getting to like the stuff. How's your martini?"
"Well, one refill."
She followed him to his kitchenette. He said, "Believe in what? In the party? In Marxism? Or in myself as a crusader? I still think Marxism is the truth that used to be called God's truth. You take God out of the world, Jeanne—and he evaporated in the nineteenth century, and can no more be recalled than yesterday's rain—and I think the one possible line for the continuation of human history is the principle that for one man to live by the sweat of another man's brow is wrong. Here's your drink—Cheers." He kept talking as they walked back into the sitting room, and now he sounded more like the old Fry, and there was the sarcastic sidewise twist to his mouth as the words poured out. "I probably would give a great deal to be talked out of Marxism. It's cost me a lot, it's damned near killed me. But I don't think there's any other answer. Marx was a prophet. Everything's going the way that that sick lonely old bearded man in the British Museum foresaw that it would, a hundred years ago. There have been just a few unimportant variations in detail and timing. The wars, the overthrows, the changes in art, in industry, and in ideas, have reeled themselves off like episodes in a movie which Marx wrote, directed, and produced." He drank, and grinned at her, making the huh-huh sound that was his only laughter. "I ought to stop talking, but this is the first chance I've had in some time, and you're a good listener. I don't mean to give you a short course on Marx-Leninism, and anyway I can't, it all rests on a granite basis of economic science that must be mastered. Nobody who has mastered it has ever been able to believe anything else. Just as nobody who saw Jupiter's moons through Galileo's telescope could ever again believe that the earth was the center of the universe, and that man was the center of creation. The American economists make vague anti-Marx noises, and wish things could go on forever as they did in George Washington's day. But America is a freak, darling, an unbelievable island of riches. While communism emerges all over the world we'll go on plundering and squandering our natural wealth and keeping up the old George Washington way of life for a while. But it's not a serious program, Jeanie. It's a binge. There is no room on earth for the self-indulgent individual living of the Virginia planter, not in the long range. Look, I'd like nothing better myself than to be carried back to old Virginny and hear them darkies singing in the moonlight while I sit on the veranda of my mansion sipping a mint julep, but that isn't the way the world is going to be. Not for anybody, not for long. Too many people, too little to go around. I think the communist party program is correct, Jeanie. I know everything that's wrong with it. There are horrible people in the movement and there are personal conflicts, inner conflicts, that tear you to pieces. But that's true of any activity of any magnitude. It's true of a publishing house, for Christ's sake."
Jeanne laughed. Karl grinned, grateful for the reaction. "What I've decided is that communism will probably not come in the United States in my lifetime, since we've got this mountainous wealth to burn away staving it off. I'm not going to give my remaining energy to making it come. I'm a dreadful flop as a member of a disciplined group. My sense of humor keeps breaking in. Three years ago they forced me to write a public recantation of a review in which I made wonderful fun, if I do say so, of a very lousy proletarian novel. That came closer to killing me than this heart attack. I did it, but something happened to me. In an obscure way my divorce stemmed from it. I haven't been worth a damn to the party since."
