Youngblood hawke, p.99
Youngblood Hawke, page 99
She said when he was gone, "He wanted your play to pry Irene Perry loose from Carmian. That's done. He can't wait to be off."
Hawke said wearily, with no trace of surprise or anger, leafing through the Times to the obituary page, "I guess so. Sainthood is in short supply these days, Jeanne. I settle for talent and honest workmanship. He's working hard—My God! Manuel Hauptmann drowned!"
"Who? Who drowned?" she said, startled.
"Manuel Hauptmann!" Hawke's glance was racing down the page. "You remember that sort of fat dark woman who came with me to Washington, Jeanne, Anne Karen's daughter, it's her husband. He drowned Skin-diving. In Tangiers, of all places!" After a moment he said with vexation, "This is a very vague and stupid story, they don't have any facts about what happened, but Christ, he's dead, all right. There was a French movie actress on the boat too. This is a hell of a mixed-up story for the New York Times."
"Is that the woman who wrote you the letters? And then was so nice to you in Europe?"
"Yes. They both were nice to me, Jeanne. This little Manuel had the manners of a prince, he was a small man but God, he was strong and courageous. How the devil could he drown? He swam like a porpoise. Poor Honor!"
"Do they have children?"
"Several. And millions of dollars. Really millions. Manuel's family is one of the tremendous landholders in Peru."
He reminisced sadly over his brandy about his adventures with the Hauptmanns in Italy and France. "And now Manuel's dead!" he kept saying. At one point he wrinkled his face like his mother, and said with a peculiar exhausted grin, "You know, it's queer that it never crossed my mind to try to borrow money from them. They're far and away the richest people I know, and I know them quite well."
"I doubt they'd have lent it to you. Rich people stay rich by hanging on to their money."
"Manuel might have lent seventy-five thousand dollars to me. Honor wouldn't. She's a frustrated business man, actually, with a grip on a dollar that even my mother would respect. Yet she could lend me seventy-five thousand with as much ease, and feel it as little, as the Chase Manhattan Bank, damned near."
"Yes, well don't go borrowing money from any woman. I speak as a woman."
"I'm not borrowing money from anybody."
"Let's go, Arthur, shall we? Gus is coming to see me early in the morning."
"What about?" Hawke said, instantly alert and annoyed.
"Oh, papers to sign about the estate, and this and that. He's not the most convenient lawyer to have, between the law school hours and his office routine. You have to see him when you can. But he's good."
"Damned good," Hawke said drily. He paid the check and took Jeanne home. She invited him to come up for a drink, but he refused. It was past his time to start writing, he said. She attributed his short manner to disappointment over the play, or perhaps to shock over Hauptmann's death; but it upset her.
6
There was no diminution of his drive, or of the clarity and fertility of his imagination, when he sat down to his nightly work on Boone County. He would read over the pages of the previous night, scarcely remembering them, with gratitude for this inspiration that was coming to him from a source apparently outside his tired, emptied self. He would hardly feel fatigue at the end of many hours of driving labor. But the moment he lay down in the broad daylight he would fall asleep, and sleep like a stone; thanks perhaps to the bourbon that he nipped on a carefully rationed schedule through the long dark hours.
He was scrawling away, oblivious to the grimy hotel room in which he sat, and the cacophonous noises and motley neon blaze of Broadway outside the window, when a knock at his door startled him. The watch beside his writing pad showed ten minutes to three.
"Who is it?"
"Jock Maas. Your goddamn telephone operator's asleep."
The producer walked in, dapper and fresh in gray tweed, with the friendly and yet somehow appalling lipless grin that curved up near his ears. "I trust I'm not interrupting anything important, Youngblood. I know you're a night bird like me."
"I work on my book at night, Jock."
Hawke tried his best to keep distaste out of his voice. One of the real drawbacks of this theatre venture, in Hawke's mind, was the presence of Jock Maas. He could not forget that Frieda Winter had come into his life on the arm of this man. The sight of the long, sallow, rather skull-like face, the mirthless smile, the slicked black hair, the sound of Maas's oddly weak, whispery voice, brought back unwelcome memories of his young days, and often gave Hawke the strong sensation of smelling Frieda's wildflower perfume.
"Ah yes. Well, my boy, a play in rehearsal is a ship in a hurricane. Sometimes our little routines must give way. We have no show, you know. The run-through was a disaster. And now we're losing Georges in ten days. You know about that?"
"Yes."
Maas helped himself generously to Hawke's bourbon and took a cigar. "Why on earth are you staying in this dump? Can't you afford a decent hotel?"
"It's near the theatre. I want to simplify things. I'm trying to do two jobs at once."
Maas settled comfortably in an armchair, kicking off his shoes. "Yes, we're in real trouble. You must be prepared to tear your play to pieces."
"I'll be glad to discuss it with you in the morning."
"This play is important to some thirty-five people, Hawke, including backers who've put up a hundred thousand dollars, counting on the good faith of the playwright, among other things. You can't give us crumbs of your spare time ten days from the opening, even if you are Mr. Youngblood Hawke, the busy novelist."
Hawke wearily took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Very well. What's on your mind?"
"A change that's not hard to make, a change in approach that'll spark the whole comedy and transform the flop we've got right now into a solid smash hit. You can execute it in one honest day's work. I'll be glad to help you."
"Let's hear it." Hawke settled on the sofa, yawning.
Starting far back in the lives of the characters, Maas began to narrate a heavy, involved emotional chronicle behind the events of the farce. He jumped from his chair and walked the room in his stocking feet, mincing, prancing, thundering, whispering, giggling, popping his eyes, imitating all the actors one by one, and in effect doing a capsule one-man performance of the entire play, with his new material inserted. It was an interesting feat. The suggested change was more of the pseudo-Freudian reconstruction that Hawke heard all the time from the actors, delivered this time with the authority of an archbishop, as the sure way out of damnation into salvation.
"What do you think?" Maas said, pirouetting to a stop under the glaring dirty chandelier of the sitting room.
"Well, it adds a lot of new scenes for that tall blonde girl. I'm not sure what else it does."
"You're crazy. You have no conception of the theatre," snapped Maas. "This isn't a goddamn novel ten million pages long, Hawke, you desperately need an emotional line, I tell you, you must paint it in with bold deft strokes exactly as I've done. Otherwise the whole play's nothing, I assure you. It's an empty tissue of old-hat humor."
Hawke said mildly, "You're quite wrong. It's a great comedy and a sure smash hit just as it stands. Georges Feydal and Jock Maas told me so."
Maas looked astonished, then he began to squawk obscenities. Hawke got a little tired of it, stood, and suddenly roared out at Maas with some far rougher language from the Seabees and the Letchworth miners. The producer was quite taken aback. He shut up, and after a moment the weird grin slid up his cadaverous face.
"Why, that's pretty good, Youngblood. I thought you were one of these modest backwoods boys who never cussed."
Hawke picked up Maas's shoes and thrust them into his hands. "I'll see you tomorrow. If you ever break in on me again when I'm working on my book I'll punch the teeth out of your head."
"Bless me, what's happened to our gentle giant? I guess we're all a trifle edgy." Maas stepped into his shoes, and walked to the door. "Think it over, Youngblood. Unless you do exactly as I say, your play is doomed." He glared at Hawke like Death. Then the grin pulled up his features, and he left.
Hawke tried to get back to work. But Maas had dumped muck on the fire of his imagination; it was out. This angered and upset him more than the stupid conversation and the lost time. Writing through the night at so many pages per hour had become a compulsion. The discharge relieved his nerves, and enabled him to get through the next day. He knew well enough that he was on the edge of a breakdown. So far he had staved it off. He believed that if he held to his regime he would get past the magic date, the opening of The Lady from Letchworth in Philadelphia on the fifth of July. Adam had extracted an absolutely final postponement from Newton Leffer of his demands until that date. Beyond it lay deliverance, or disgrace, or—Hawke was past caring what lay beyond. That date represented the end of his effort and his strength. It was a black curtain in the calendar.
He paced the room trying to decide between a sleeping pill, a tremendous jolt of whiskey, or perhaps a foray to one of the all-night eating places on Broadway. He then bethought himself of Honor Hauptmann. Why not write a letter of condolence to her? The newspaper had mentioned that she was at her home in Peru. It wouldn't be hard, it was a kindly act, and the flow of words might start his brain functioning.
He wrote the letter. It was awkward at first to find words of condolence that weren't trite and stale. But he broke into a sympathetic recollection of Manuel's character and of the good times the three of them had shared in Europe, and soon he had covered five pages. He added another page of acid humor on his Broadway imbroglio, thinking it might cheer Honor a bit. When he read over the letter it was disconcertingly warm and intimate; too much so. But then he thought that she was a distraught widow, and a warm letter from a man she admired was true charity just now. It also occurred to him, but in a shadowy hinting way, that beyond the black curtain of July fifth Honor Hauptmann might somehow be a last resort, if all else foundered.
7
Jeanne was buying nothing for her trousseau. Her idea was that when the nightmare of the farce production came to an end in Philadelphia—whatever that end might be—she was going to force Hawke to enter a clinic. She was certain that, even if no serious damage were found, he would be ordered to a sanitarium. Had she dared, she would have made the fight for this step now, but she knew that there was no dealing with the careening author until the play went on and he finished Boone County. She usually found him at the theatre in his shirtsleeves, unshaven and hollow-eyed, making the endless little changes or arguing against them with the enduring plodding patience of a donkey slogging its way through a thunderstorm. Jeanne had come to hate, to hate deeply, the vague perfumed smell of a Broadway playhouse, and the gloomy rows of empty seats. She would not have gone to the theatre at all except that she worried about Hawke and wanted to watch over him. She resented Hawke's good-natured tolerance, his conscientious willingness to listen to long foolishness, his complaisant sitting at a typewriter over and over and over to write a few jokes or change a few sentences or write some new speeches, which like as not would be discarded the next day. It was plain to her that all this drudgery was to no avail. Nothing could change The Lady from Letchworth. It was what it was. The number would either come up red or black at the opening in Philadelphia. When she said all this to Hawke he agreed with a sad grin. "I will never do this again. I believed Feydal, and here I am, on a toboggan with a lot of people, halfway down a steep icy slide. It would be dirty play to jump off now. And who knows? I still think the goddamned thing will make money."
A couple of days before dress rehearsal, he had a late breakfast at her apartment and played with Jim on the floor for an hour, so absorbed in the little boy and so happy with him that Jeanne let it go on and on. When they arrived at the theatre the rehearsal was under way. They sat together in a back row. After a few minutes Hawke said, "What the hell? I never wrote those words." He strode down the aisle. "Hold it, please." As he vaulted on the stage, Maas rose from the front row and climbed over the footlights after him.
The new scenes, it developed, were the ones Maas had suggested to Hawke in his night visit. He had written them out and showed them to Irene Perry who thought they were worth trying. Feydal said placatingly to Hawke, "Just walking through them, dear fellow, pending your arrival. You were late getting here, you know. We're only four days from opening."
"I know. Sorry I was late." He turned to the tall blonde, who was a spectacular object in black tights and a bright green pullover. "May I see those scenes please?"
She handed him the pages. He tore them in half and let them fall fluttering to the dusty stage. "Sorry, Georges. There will be no words in the play that I haven't written. I think we'd better lock up now and do the play we've got." With this he walked to a table at the side of the stage where there was a jug of coffee, and poured himself a paper cup full. Maas directed a burst of loud abuse at the author's back. Jeanne was astounded at the language—several young actresses and the grand Irene Perry were looking on—but the ladies did not seem offended or surprised. The whole cast was watching the incident with lively pleasure.
Hawke drank up the coffee, then turned and walked toward Maas, who was still berating him. Maas stood his ground, quivering with anger, his long sallow face drawn up in a grinning scowl. Hawke came close and halted. He was a head taller than the producer, and twice as broad. Maas glared up at him and shrilled, "All right, big as you are, let's see you start something, you unreasonable !" It was the dirtiest epithet that current English affords. It brought a horrid hush, and pained glances among the actresses. Hawke looked down at Maas for a long moment or two. With a sudden swoop of a long arm he placed his empty coffee cup upside down on the producer's slicked head; then he walked away, leaped the footlights, and strode back up the aisle to Jeanne.
Maas stood transfixed with surprise, the little red paper cup balanced on his head, dregs of coffee trickling down. His face was all wrinkled, and he looked something like a startled organ grinder's monkey. After a moment there was an explosion of laughter from the players. The guffawing Feydal, with old theatre generalship, started a round of handclapping in which the entire cast joined except the tall blonde. Maas shook off the cup and darted into the wings through the laughter and applause, shouting something indistinguishable.
Hawke said as he came back to Jeanne, "I didn't know what else to do. He's too small to hit."
Jeanne said, "That was inspired. You're in better shape than I thought."
This coup de théâtre of Hawke's cleared the air in the company. There had been much bickering and nerves over the continuing alterations, and a rising quarrelsomeness that came from a sense that Feydal would soon be leaving them in the hands of Maas. But the coffee cup had snuffed Maas out like a candle. He did not appear again at the theatre until the dress rehearsal, when he conspicuously ignored Hawke and Feydal, glowering from a rear row.
The incident also reassured Jeanne about Hawke. It was such a solid display of self-command that she wondered whether her vigilance might not be, not only misplaced, but annoying to this man she loved. He had been treating her with a curiously remote affection all through this period, irreproachable in any detail, but mystifying and distressing to her. She decided to stop watching him so closely; to stay away from the theatre, and let him get through the mess in his own way.
Jeanne was not the first person to be deceived by someone in bad mental condition. When Hawke put down Maas so neatly, he was far gone. Standing over the little producer on the stage, he had heard the epithet shouted at him as from the bottom of a well; and Maas himself had appeared tiny, as though seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Putting the cup on Maas's head was a dreamy, slightly mad action that occurred to him instead of the natural response of knocking the producer down. It was probably a misfortune that it happened to be so successful.
The dress rehearsal gave no new indication of the play's chances. The production itself was beautiful. Whatever Maas's drawbacks, he did know how to mount a play. The setting of an improbable penthouse on the East River was a glittering bitter joke about New York taste. The costumes added to the grotesque caricature of Manhattan, being overdone to a point just this side of absurdity. Hawke thought the production showed Broadway's best face, the dedicated attention to detail, the gleaming technical polish. But his concern about the outcome was fading into a hazy euphoria. All through the dress rehearsal, sitting between Adam and Jeanne, Hawke kept fondling a secret thought, as a child in a classroom will fondle the dime that means an ice cream soda once school lets out. It was the thought of Honor Hauptmann, the widow with millions in Peru. He had in his breast pocket a thick airmail letter which she had shot back to him, much longer than his own, an outpouring of confidences and indiscretions in the warmest possible language. She was unable to mourn for Manuel though she wanted to. He had wrecked her life. The French actress who had been on the boat with Manuel had been his mistress in a blatant public liaison. Honor's surroundings had become horrible to her. She was being bedevilled by the family and its lawyers. She could hardly bear to hear Spanish or to speak it any more, and she grew angry at her children and struck them if they forgot to talk English in her presence. She had to flee Peru, she intended never to return, but she was in the grip of a terrible inertia. She badly needed a rescuer. Did he know any knights with white horses? She wrote a biting page about his folly in stumbling into the Broadway mire. He deserved everything that was happening to him. How could he need money that badly, after all his grandiose success? And if he had encountered some dismal luck why hadn't he called on his friends?
