Youngblood hawke, p.42
Youngblood Hawke, page 42
At the publisher's offices he was caught up in the excitement, happily accepted the congratulations from telephone operators, receptionists, swarming secretaries and sub-editors, threw his arms around Ross Hodge, and then around Karl Fry, hugged and kissed Jeanne (doing his best to ignore the image of Jean Stevenson which she called up), and he even bellowed and capered for a bit. He called his mother from Ross's calm, gloomy oak-panelled office. While he sat chatting with Ross, waiting for the call to go through, Jeanne Fry brought in proofs of an advertisement proclaiming that Chain of Command was the prize novel. "This is how sure I was," she said. "I had this ad dummied up last week. It'll pop out all over the country tomorrow."
Hawke looked at his own picture on the proofs, at the still unbelievable announcement, and then at Jeanne. She wore a dress he had not seen before, a form-fitting dark blue silk, not at all a costume for an ordinary business day; her hair was coiffed as though she were fresh from the beauty parlor; she had really gotten herself up for a great day, with sublime confidence. He said, "Jeanie, those juries can do anything. They missed Main Street, An American Tragedy, Look Homeward, Angel, The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, The Sound and the Fury, in fact you name it in recent literature and they missed it."
"I know," she said. "I'm not saying this will be your best book, maybe it wasn't quite good enough for them to miss. I just knew they had no choice this year but Youngblood Hawke." She had the fresh glow of a bride on a honeymoon.
Ross Hodge said, "Yours was by far the best novel of the year and let nobody kid you about that. Sales, if you're interested, just passed a hundred and sixty thousand. We're going back to press with another fifty."
The long-distance operator rang. Hawke took the phone and told his mother the news. She did not know what the Pulitzer Prize was, and asked how much money it meant. When Hawke told her five hundred dollars she sounded disappointed, but then he heard the excited voices of Nancy and her husband in the background, and Mrs. Hawke said, "Well, I declare Nancy and John are dancing around like a pair of crazy people, and her pregnant as a cow. Nancy, you stop that! I guess it's a great honor, son. I'm right proud of you. Don't you think you ought to come home and celebrate? Nancy's due any day—Nancy, you stop cutting up, you'll have that baby right on my parlor rug—"
Hawke said, "Well, we'll see, mama. I just wanted you to know about the prize."
"Art, we go to court on June 18th. You've got to be here for that. You're a plaintiff."
"Not me, mama. That's your little pleasure, that lawsuit. You can have it all. Goodbye, mama. Love to Nancy and John."
"Now look, Art, you come home. I just know you look awful again, you haven't been home for a year. You sound tired."
"Mama, let me know when Nancy goes to the hospital. I'll try to fly down."
Then he called Frieda's office. Jeanne leaned against the window, arms folded, a slight acid smile on her face, as Hawke broke the news to his mistress. The upshot of Frieda's hosannahs was an improvised dinner party—the Frys, the Hodges, the Winters, and Hawke—after which they went to the hit musical show of the moment. Frieda knew the stars, and got house seats, of course. It was a bright entertainment, but Hawke sat glum through it, still on the seesaw, his unstable mood intensified by the rare experience—actually, the first since the California debacle—of being with Frieda and Jeanne at the same time. Each looked lovely in her way—Frieda smarter and more glamorous, perhaps, in a mauve Paris dress, but seeming a bit more wrinkled around the eyes than usual, Hawke thought—and each beside her husband, with Hawke sandwiched between the two couples. His spirits were not helped when in the lobby during the intermission he chanced on Jean Stevenson, accompanied by a handsome charming young Negro. While Jeanne and Frieda listened, he had to force small talk with this girl who had been copulating with him a few hours before. Her amiable remoteness made him grateful and ashamed, and he was pointlessly angry at the cordial Negro, whom she identified as a sculptor. All in all, considering that Hawke had just won the Pulitzer Prize, he was not having much fun that night.
It was so evident that when they were all sitting around a big circular table in the bar room of Number One and Ross Hodge was ordering up champagne and caviar, Mrs. Hodge remarked on the author's quiet, sober air. "Who would guess what had happened to you today?" she said. She was a handsome graying woman, of an excellent Boston family, and so distant from her husband's publishing trade that it was a thrill for her to be out with a successful author.
Jeanne, still sparkling from the news of the prize, and from the musical show at which she had laughed like a fool—and also, Hawke suspected, from a sense that she showed to advantage tonight against Frieda, Paris dress or no Paris dress—Jeanne observed with a smile that Hawke's demeanor merely showed conceit, the most overweening possible conceit, a conceit so vast that it could swallow a tribute like the prize without being appeased or even given pause.
Oddly enough, Frieda took sides with her. She said, "Oh, him. He's got his eye on the Nobel Prize, nothing less. When he gets it he'll probably be sore because they didn't award it to him ten years sooner. Why, he's capable of turning it down out of sheer pique at the delay."
"Look, I'm happy. What shall I do, walk around on my hands tonight to prove it? I finished Chain of Command two years ago. It's work performed."
Jeanne said, "And you haven't even got your million dollars in tax-free securities."
Hodge said, "He ought to be getting there one of these days, if he doesn't build another house."
Karl Fry said, "It's that great unwritten epic that's on his mind. The American Iliad, or whatever."
"You're all being rather hard on Arthur," Paul Winter said, lighting a long cigar with measured gestures. "A young man unspoiled by success is a rarity, and here you are baiting him. He's right. What would you have him do?"
"Act impressed," Jeanne said a little sharply. "It's not easy to win the Pulitzer Prize."
"I hope I've acted grateful, Jeanne," Hawke said. "I don't think I'd have the prize if you hadn't borne down on me. With what you chopped away here and there, we cut a full-length novel out of the manuscript. That made the difference between a readable story and an overstuffed botch."
"Oh, who knows?" Jeanne said. "Maybe you had War and Peace in the first draft and I made you gut it to a slick best-seller."
Hodge said, "Maybe we ought to publish that novel you cut out."
"Nobody will ever see a word I discarded," Hawke said. "Only Jeanne knows how badly I can write."
"I have an idea," Fry said. "I saw Oblivion in rough draft. I think Jeanne would stab me if I peeked at those yellow pages she brings home, but I don't understand why. I'm a pretty good editor."
A fat heavy hand fell on Hawke's shoulder. "My dear fellow! How fortunate that I can congratulate you on your night of triumph!"
Georges Feydal stood over him, his enormous pink face shining from a fresh removal of stage makeup, his jowls trembling as he nodded gaily. "Yes, dear Hawke, and it's only the beginning! You have the theatre still to conquer, and you will conquer it, too. . . . Dear Frieda!"
Frieda introduced the actor to the party. The publisher's wife went into a flutter and insisted that the great Frenchman join them for supper. He did not need to be pressed. Making room for his bulk, which seemed to have doubled in a year, occasioned much shifting and sliding and scraping of chairs. Waiters descended to help this process, captains began to reset the table, and the commotion occasioned a general stare of all the rich and noted chatterers in the bar, which Feydal took as calmly as a president of the United States.
"How did it go tonight?" Frieda asked as he settled himself into a chair.
"Beautifully. Cheers at the curtain. Half a house, though." He kept settling as he talked, his flesh draping under the stress of gravity around the rim of the chair in folds of blue serge. He shrugged and pursed his lips. "Monday night is always hard on Shakespeare. I'm not at all sure it was wise to revive Timon of Athens. It's not a play, you know. It's a monologue two hours long calling the audience dogs, liars, whores, whoremasters, and idiots. All quite true. But what words, what words. . . . So!" He turned to Hawke. "What a night of news for you! You win the grand prize for Chain of Command, and Alms for Oblivion is in the clear at last to become a play. All at once!" The actor glanced from Hawke to Frieda, and his cheery look dissolved with marvellous slow modulation into a large mask of tragedy. "Surely you know about poor Anne Karen?" They both shook their heads. "Dead, poor woman. Died on the set in India, where she was making some White Cargo kind of thing. A stroke, I think. I heard it in my dressing room on the radio during intermission."
Hawke said, astounded, "Are you quite sure? I had a letter from Luzzatto last week. He's set to start shooting in August."
Feydal said, "Boy!" Three elderly waiters and two busboys sprang at him, and he desired them to fetch a morning paper. A Herald Tribune came in a moment. He displayed the front page at Hawke with a beaming grin, pointing at the Pulitzer Prize story: "There you are, my dear fellow," and then leafed through the paper, looking sad again. "Yes, here's poor Anne. Page five. You see what comes of not working. A few years ago she'd have made page one."
Hawke glanced through the obituary and stared at the lovely photograph of Anne Karen. It was impossible to imagine that this powerful, beautiful woman—whose voice on the telephone was the first he had heard from the peaks of fame, who had swept so regally into the Waldorf living room on the day of the snowstorm—that Anne Karen was lying a corpse in a foreign land. He said, "Is that her daughter's married name? Hauptmann? I thought she'd married a Peruvian."
Feydal said, "That young woman will be as rich as a rajah. Her father was Monroe Lesser, you know, the greatest of the great producers. Hollywood went dark for me when he died. All the time Monroe was a bachelor—and that was the first twelve years that he ran the studio—he lived like a college professor in a small house in Culver City, and put all his money in real estate. Land, land, nothing but land, he kept buying land, anything at all providing it was between Los Angeles and the ocean. Some of it is now producing oil. The rest is prime residential property. We all thought he was crazy. Good God, if I had listened to Monroe—he begged me to buy land out there—I wouldn't have to paint my face in my declining years and play the scaramouch on the Broadway stage."
"It's pathetic, isn't it?" Frieda said. "Any day now you may have to sell a half dozen or so of your Renoirs. Maybe even a Seurat."
Feydal blinked at her sidewise, his eyes creasing to slits. "I've bought paintings because I've loved them, Frieda. It's been foolish self-indulgence."
"Yes indeed. Bought them in the depths of the depression, at two cents on the dollar, and they've appreciated exactly like Beverly Hills real estate or better. You and Monroe Lesser were a pair."
"He was the only man of business who ever understood me," Feydal said. "He loved art."
Hawke said, "What will happen to the Oblivion movie?"
Feydal made a collapsing gesture with his two hands, and one could see a cathedral tumbling to dust in an earthquake. "But why?" Hawke said. "There are a dozen actresses who could play the part."
Feydal's shoulders heaved. "Movie financing has always been a Rosicrucian mystery to me, dear fellow. I asked Travis Jablock about this movie long ago, because as you well know I've been perishing to have you turn the last hundred pages of that book into a play. Just the death. He put me off with some esoteric jargon about Anne Karen going on the note to the bank for the financing. You see, Hawke, your book is not a conventional movie story. It's what they call off-beat, or down-beat, or some other very objectionable beat. Unless they find another multi-millionaire actress so eager to play the part that she'll in effect guarantee the studio against loss, that script will not be shot. Which puts you in a delicious position. You've collected your money for the movie rights. Yet behold, you can now write a play without fearing that a film will blot out your Broadway audience. It's a dream, and you can't possibly fail to have a smash hit and make another fortune."
"That's what Artie needs at this point," Karl Fry said. "A little success."
"He's in the middle of his new novel," Jeanne said to Feydal. "I don't think he should break off."
Feydal's heavy eyebrows rose at this severe statement from the young pretty woman, and his eyes shifted to Frieda. She said, "Mrs. Fry is Arthur's editor, Georges. Half her job is being a watchdog, and she's very good at it."
Jeanne said, "Thanks, Mrs. Winter. I try, though I've been caught asleep once or twice."
Frieda said to Hawke, "You might want to talk to Ferdie Lax about this."
"Just the death," Feydal said. "A Broadway smash hit for three weeks' work, most of it mere editing. Just the death."
Paul Winter said, "You'll have to consider your tax situation, Arthur. Theatre royalties right now may consist wholly of what you call funny money, just disappearing numbers in your bank account."
Karl Fry stood. "There, Artie, is the theme of an important tragedy. Tantalus, or the struggling artist under capitalism. I must be in bed by twelve every night, my doctor says. I will therefore kick off one glass slipper and leave. Please don't let it disturb the party." Jeanne started to get up, but he put his hand on her shoulder. "You stay, darling, you may have to bark a bit more at Mr. Feydal."
"It's a very attractive bark," the actor said.
Paul Winter rose across the table. "I'll beg off, too, Ross. Delightful evening. Frieda only gets hungry at midnight. She'll stay, of course." The two husbands went off through the crowded smoky bar room.
Everybody but Feydal had steak sandwiches. The actor, explaining that he never dined before a performance and therefore was somewhat hungry, called for a double order of Little Neck clams, and onion soup, and sole Marguery, and Danish blue cheese and a bowl of fresh fruit. He quaffed a lot of champagne with this snack; and while he ate he described the play of the aunt's death. So clearly and brilliantly did he picture the drama, complete with act divisions and even curtain lines, that Frieda and the Hodges were soon blazing with enthusiasm. Feydal began by addressing Jeanne, saying, "I shall attempt to soothe the watchdog, and persuade her that I am really a friend of the family." He played the entire performance at Jeanne, and after a while Hawke could sense her disapproval melting away, though she said nothing. "I hope you'll agree, dear Cerberus," he said to Jeanne when he finished, "that there's something to what I say, and that I do not deserve to be bitten to death by your three heads—speaking in figures, since your one visible head is not at all doggy, but very human and extraordinarily nice."
Jeanne laughed, flushing a little, and said to Hawke, "I know nothing about the theatre, but I do think it sounds like a good play."
The publisher said, "Nobody's more anxious than I am to see your new novel finished, Arthur. But it would be wonderful if you struck into the theatre now with a success. We publish plays, you know. I think we might do damned well with one of yours."
Mrs. Hodge said, "I've never heard anything more exciting. Maybe you'll win the Pulitzer Prize for drama next year."
"The trouble is he probably will," Frieda said. "Georges, the whole thing is masterly. Of course you should direct it."
"I might play the old lawyer," Feydal said, blinking his heavy lids and tilting his head in a grand pantomime of modesty, "if the author agreed to the casting."
Hawke said, "Well, it won't take me but till next December or January to finish my book. Then, who knows? Maybe I will have a crack at this play."
"Next December or January," Feydal said, in the deep organ tones in which he had spoken of Anne Karen's death. An amazing change came over him. His face went white, his eyes rolled up in his head, the thick lids dropped over them, and his body seemed to settle further in the chair, a vast blue bag of meat without bones. He sat so in silence, his countenance as blank as an egg. Everybody in the party stared at him in alarm, except Mrs. Winter. She said, "Poor Georges. You're a bit tired, aren't you?"
Feydal said without opening his eyes, in a voice from outer space, "Next December or January."
Frieda said, "Well, all right, it means skipping a season, but what's the difference? The seasons fly by."
Feydal's eyes barely rolled open, like a medium's in a trance, and he said, "How many seasons have I left, Frieda? Missing a season! What is it to be next year? Again Shaw? Again Shakespeare? I need a play."
Hawke felt he had created a frightful emergency in the actor's life; he was completely convinced of it. He said, "I suppose it really wouldn't take me more than three weeks. Possibly less."
Feydal's eyes opened a little wider. He turned his head slowly and stiffly, as though it rested on a pillow in a death scene. "I swear to you that for a man of your fecund genius it will take less. Molière wrote original masterpieces in a week. You have a bare editing job to do. You've written the play already."
"Why don't you dramatize it?" Hawke said. "You have it so clearly in mind. I'd grant you permission."
"I should love to," Feydal said. "Alas, as soon as I take any kind of writing instrument in hand—typewriter, pen, pencil—I am stricken from head to foot with agonizing paralysis, as though I had touched an electric eel."
