Youngblood hawke, p.64
Youngblood Hawke, page 64
Good news: the new book's rolling, and I think I'll have something for you to see soon. I feel wonderful, and Jeanne, April in England is an enchantment that does much to explain how Shakespeare came to exist. You walk down a green English lane on a sunny April morning after a shower, and you see the yellow flowers and hear the bird songs and you feel that if you rush straight home and do a solid afternoon's work you'll write Romeo and Juliet. It's a delusion, but only because you lack the powers. He had them, and he had this land to inspire him. I don't think the United States will ever inspire anything important but novels—at the high reach, slapdash bursts of greatness like Huckleberry Finn and An American Tragedy, things like that. We'll never have poetry; we're a prose civilization. Whitman merely wrote prose faked up into poetry. My housekeeper speaks more natural poetry in a day than any American ever wrote. You can tell Karl I said so. I like his satiric things, but the serious stuff that he and the other Americans are writing is jagged dry bony nonsense, because they can't draw any poetry out of the ground they're walking on. "Hog butcher to the world" indeed!
. . . the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not . . .
That's England.
. . . The revenooers are after me again. It seems that when Ferdie Lax sold Chain of Command to the movies, his lawyer wrote a very unfortunate clause into the contract which enabled me to collect all the installment payments in one year if I wanted to. He was only trying to protect me, his claim now is. The Feds say that means I really got the whole sum in 1949, and so I owe them some eighty thousand dollars, plus interest!
Adam is very gloomy about this, though he's going to fight it. Ferdie Lax came through here last week, on his way to try to get Thomas Mann to write a movie based on the Book of Esther. Mann's holed up in Switzerland, very sick, but of course Ferdie will get into the oxygen tent with him if the deal is big enough. Ferdie acknowledges that my contract was badly drawn and he's since gotten another lawyer. I'm not even surprised at this new plague, let alone upset. I believe flaws will eventually be found in everything I did before I met canny Gus A., and like Joe Louis I'll end up owing the government a staggering fortune, just one more country boy who stumbled into the big money overnight by using his fists or his pen, and piled up an obligation almost as big as a steel company's while still glorying in being able to own three suits. I guess they'll get around to protecting such innocents some day, but not in time to redeem my follies. All the more reason for me to go the way of Paumanok and Givney. But I'm still thinking about that . . .
I suppose the worst news from your point of view—and mine—is that Frieda Winter has risen from the past, and is most eager to rejoin me. She's coming to France on business, she says, in July, and can't we meet again, for old times' sake? Her approach is quite worthy of her. She says all she is now is a dried-up old woman, the emotions and tensions between us are burned out, and why shouldn't we be great friends? I can only tell you that the one thing that could force me to leave England tomorrow would be the prospect of seeing Frieda. I don't believe a word of what she says. If you suddenly hear that I've enlisted in the Navy again and gone to Korea—a plunge that tempts me on many a drizzly afternoon when I read over the pages I've written—you'll know it's because I decided there was no other sure way to dodge Mrs. Winter . . .
8
Jeanne was sitting up in bed having her breakfast, a bit of pampering to which she was no longer entitled, for her baby son was a month old. She was perfectly well; had in fact been going to the office for over a week. But she had gotten used to this luxury, and was determined not to forego it. It was a quarter past nine. The baby, Jim, gurgled and snorted idiotically in the bassinet near her bed, waving his arms and legs. Jeanne had gone through the mail—no letter from Hawke—had poured her first steaming cup of coffee, and was opening the New York News with relish to the spicy fourth page. The Times lay chastely beside the bed tray, with no headline wider than one column; no new international horror, then, to absorb with sick heart and short breath; she would in due course read the Times through, after coffee and eggs. On the whole Jeanne Fry was about as happy as she had ever been.
She recognized Hawke's picture at once, but it was such a shock to see it on that fatal page that she blinked stupidly for several seconds before her mind took in the headline underneath:
PULITZER PRIZE NOVELIST
ARRESTED IN VENICE
The picture was a standard Hodge Hathaway publicity photo. The story, she noticed with dismay, came from a wire service.
Arthur Youngblood Hawke, 32, famous author of the Pulitzer Prize novel Chain of Command, as well as the current controversial best seller Will Horne and other works, was arrested by the Venice police late last night on a charge of disturbing the peace and wilfully damaging property.
The complaint was lodged against the novelist by William Quint, American proprietor of the Expatriates Bar, a popular café frequented by American tourists. Quint charged that Hawke created a violent scene that drove patrons from his bar. According to Quint, the six-foot-two author, a native of eastern Kentucky, broke several articles of furniture and a large mirror, threatened the proprietor and a Negro pianist appearing at the café with bodily harm, and threw two lightweight pianos into the canal.
Hawke admitted the charges and declared to the police that he was willing to pay for the damages he had caused. He offered no explanation for his disorderly conduct. The police record indicated that Mr. Hawke was sober when arrested. He was released without bail when surety for his appearance in court was given over the telephone by a prominent Venetian official who was not publicly identified. The author then returned to the Royal Danieli hotel, where he refused to speak to reporters, and cut off his telephone.
Inquiry among patrons of the bar brought out conflicting stories. One version was that an altercation had arisen between Hawke and the pianist over a woman, but this could not be confirmed.
Youngblood Hawke blazed to prominence five years ago with his first novel, Alms for Oblivion, a long turbulent book written in his early twenties while he was a Seabee in the Pacific during World War II. His dramatization of this novel, which is due to open in two weeks in New York, has been enjoying a triumphal road tour. At the same time his latest novel—
The telephone rang. It was Ross Hodge; he had just come to his office and found the clipping on his desk, and he wanted to know if Jeanne had any further information. They decided to put a call through to Hawke immediately. Hodge asked Jeanne to do this and report back to him.
Jeanne was only half dressed when the long insistent rings of the overseas operator brought her scampering from the bathroom, and also unluckily roused up the dozing Jim, who decided he was hungry again and began roaring. Jeanne could not hear a word on the phone until the nurse hurriedly hauled Jim off to Karl's room and shut the door. The muffled cries continued.
Hawke's voice was clear and loud. "I'm asking you who's calling me from overseas?"
An Italian operator gabbled in broken English. Jeanne struck in and shouted, "Arthur, it's me, it's Jeanne."
"Jeanie! Hi! All right, operator, I'll take the call, get off the line please . . . Jeanie, how are you, darling? To what do I owe this honor?"
"Arthur, are you all right?"
"All right? Why, I'm fine. You never saw such a disciplined artist. I'm sitting here scrawling silly yellow pages, the sun's getting low over the lagoon outside and all the tourists are sliding by in gondolas. What makes you think I'm not all right?"
"That bar fight you got into, the police—"
She heard him burst out laughing. "Ye gods, how do you know about that? That was nothing, it happened night before last, it's all forgotten."
Jeanne could not help marvelling at the clarity of his voice. The beginnings and ends of his sentences were chopped off by some telephonic process, otherwise he might have been at his house on Seventy-third Street. She said, "You're all over the New York newspapers this morning. Probably all over the country. The Associated Press got the story."
"Oh, Christ. That must have been the big red-headed woman who kept bothering me. Why, the whole thing was dropped, Jeanie. These Venetians are charming people, it was just that silly American faggot who ran the bar, he made such a soprano fuss, and my Italian is so bad, that the police ran me in before I could tell them who I was or get word to di Strozzi—that's my Italian publisher, he's here in Venice with me. As soon as he talked to the police it was all over. I never said a word to this horse-faced woman reporter who showed up, I knew better than that—Jeanie, how are you? How's Jim?"
"I'm fine. Jim's a monster, all he does is eat, sleep, yell, and throw up."
"Who does he look like?"
"He bears the most remarkable resemblance to Ross Hodge. I'm ashamed to have anyone up to look at him, and Karl's getting more irritable every day."
Hawke laughed. "God, it's wonderful to talk to you, Jeanne. Look, how important is this motherhood business? Could you get on a plane and come over here today or tomorrow, for instance? Just for a week or two?"
"Oh, Arthur, are you crazy? It's utterly impossible."
"Why? Venice is real interesting, Jeanne. It's a lot like Coney Island."
"Well, that sounds divine, but I can't leave Jim. He's howling his simple head off in the next room right now. He doesn't like anyone to feed him but me, and he eats about fourteen times a day."
"Are you breast-feeding him?"
"None of your goddamned business! Honestly! This is an idiotic conversation at twenty dollars a minute or whatever. Why did you wreck that bar? Did you really throw two pianos into the canal?"
"They were sort of miniature pianos. You could have done it, Jeanne. There was nothing to it."
"Why did you do it? What's been happening to you? Why are you in Venice, anyway? I thought you were still in Haworth."
"Didn't you get my letter from Paris?"
"I haven't had a letter in almost a month."
"Christ, I wrote you a twenty-page letter, Jeanne. I'm sure I mailed it . . . hey, you know what? I'll bet Frieda collared it. Nothing is beyond that woman, nothing."
"Frieda?" Jeanne said—feeling, after all the years, Jim or no Jim, the old old sick turning of her stomach. "Are you with Frieda Winter again, Arthur?"
"Not any more. I can't tell you the saga at twenty dollars a minute or whatever the price was you quoted. She's gone. The episode in the bar finished her, as I intended it should. We had a short wild and totally unsatisfactory reunion, or maybe I should say the stag and the hound briefly tangled and the stag got away again, somewhat mauled and bloody. The hound has got a few antler gashes, though. I'll tell you all about it. Please come over, Jeanne. I'm just finishing the book. I'll be through in three or four days."
"It's absolutely out of the question. Why don't you come to New York for the opening night of your play, Arthur? Bring the manuscript with you. I'm dying to see it."
"I'm not interested in the play. Anyway Frieda must be in New York by now."
"Send the book to me."
"I won't let it go out of my hands, not even to you. Have there been any more of those charming reviews of Horne? Any of the magazines that failed to blast me a month ago?"
"A few more."
"All just as bad?"
"Arthur, the reviews haven't been all bad, why do you talk like that? Some of them were superb."
"Send the new ones to me."
"I won't. I shouldn't have sent you the others. You should be beyond reading reviews. You're grown up. The Times shows you number three next Sunday and the Tribune number two, but you know how slow they both are. You've been number one in the bookstores since a week before publication."
"I'm glad to hear it. Did you read Jerome Brann in the Midwestern Spectator, Jeanie? 'Anybody who buys a copy of a book by Youngblood Hawke performs an act of cultural sabotage equal to setting fire to a public library. The injury to American culture is identical.' "
"Oh, hell, Arthur, can't you let the Jerome Branns have their little tantrums in peace? How would you feel if you were Brann and saw one copy of your new book stuck off in a corner of any bookstore you walked into, and Will Hornes stacked in the windows and on the counters and on the floor like shells in an ammunition dump?"
"Does it never occur to you, Jeanne, that critics may have other motives than envy? That their criticism may be the plain truth? I've been reading over Horne and—" The quality of Hawke's voice changed, it became cracked and shrill and the words lost definition. For a moment she thought he had flown into a hysterical rage, then she realized, as he faded, that the telephone connection had gone bad. In the short time that passed before she could understand him again, Jeanne had a vision of the vast span of ocean and land over which they had been talking, and the picture of Venice rose in her mind: the alluring, romantic city of crumbling marble palaces and dark canals, of the long sunset perspectives of Canaletto, the place where immortal art was as common as wallpaper. Of all the cities on earth she wanted to see, Venice stood first, and Arthur was there, at the other end of this tenuous telephone connection! The receiver popped painfully in her ear and Hawke was talking again. "Jeanne? Jeanne? Goddammit, can't you hear me?"
"Here I am, Arthur. You faded out about a minute ago."
The nurse came tiptoeing into the room, carrying Jim, who was still sucking noisily at a bottle, his eyes closed. Jeanne gestured at the nurse to give her the baby; and she skillfully juggled baby, bottle and telephone receiver so that she missed none of Hawke's words while she settled Jim beside her, with a feeling of wondrous pleasure which had not yet dimmed at all.
Hawke was saying, "You missed all the most important things I had to tell you. Can't you possibly come over here, Jeanne? I need you right now, truly I do. I'd have called you in a day or two if you hadn't called me."
Jeanne cradled the baby against her side with one arm, and pitched her voice as low as she could. "Arthur, I can't leave Jim. You may not understand that, but he's the one person in the world who's more important to me than you." Jeanne realized as she said it that it was a slip to place Hawke second, but it was the truth, and she was past caring about these niceties; Karl's baby stood first, if Karl did not.
Hawke said, "Look, I understand. I'm the man who had to wipe off your wet silly face when you first saw my sister's baby. Okay, Jeanne. I'm glad about Jim."
"Arthur, please send me your book."
"Well, maybe. I'll think of something. Horne's really selling, though?"
"We just went back to press with fifty thousand."
"God, think of all the public libraries burning down. Why, I'm the greatest cultural scourge since Attila the Hun. Jeanne darling, are you okay? I mean, having Jim and all, how did you come through? How do you look?"
"Shapeless, with a face like a pie, thank you. I'm living on carrots and Ry-Krisp, I'll soon look human again. I came through fine. It was very painful. I'd like to have about seven more babies."
"That's okay, as long as you never retire as my editor."
"Not till you fire me."
"That's never. I think we've spent enough of Hodge Hathaway's money. I'll hang up and write you a letter about as long as Gulliver's Travels. Goodbye, darling."
"Goodbye, Arthur."
She heard the noise he made hanging up the receiver on the other side of the Atlantic, in the magic city where the sun was setting, while here it was ten in the morning. Jim stirred against her, and bubbles gurgled in the bottle. There was a traffic jam in the street outside her window; automobile horns were snarling at each other in a violent mounting din. She telephoned Ross Hodge.
Part Four
1951
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1
ONE of the striking rituals of North American life, in these middle years of our phantasmagoric twentieth century, is the Broadway first night. Like any truly living ritual, it does not seem strange to the people who take part in it. It seems a normal, indeed a privileged, way to behave; a colorful heightening of ordinary hours; a solemnity that calls for special dress, special manners, prescribed things to say; an event that gives all who are there a sense of partaking in a moment vibrant with life or death, with the urgency of first and last things.
Art is the one avenue to the supernatural, or at least to special grace, that most Western minds of the moment recognize; and since the theatre at its rare best is perhaps the highest art, the people who attend the bedizened ceremony of a Broadway first night, all complicated with the odor of money and the possible apotheosis or death of a reputation, are right to hope for a thrill they can get here and no where else, outside the houses of worship which for them are dead piles of stone. Once in a great while they do get the thrill they came for. Usually, as with most rituals, they go through the forms and the flame does not descend; but just the forms are exciting and pleasant.
Frieda Winter had attended as many first nights as anyone in New York over a period of twenty years. The excitement had never staled for her. She found each detail of a first night richly satisfying: the long beauty treatment beforehand, the new dress, the hurried early dinner, the laughing tense crowd of slickly groomed people in the theatre lobby, the nourishing sweep down the aisle into two of the best seats in the orchestra; the quick glances around at her celebrated friends in the rows before and behind, the hand waves and the light jokes of the insiders; perhaps the encounter with the pallid author or the falsely cheerful producer; these things, for Frieda, were ever-bubbling champagne.
