Jerusalem Commands - [Between the Wars 03] Page 8

  ‘We need,’ he said gravely, ‘to show people how it is over there.’ He liked my basic plot and he thought he had just the man to direct it. ‘He’s Swedish as a matter of fact, but who’s counting?’ He chuckled at me and winked. ‘What does anybody know anyway?’ I found him a warming and engaging type, not unlike some of those who had inhabited Esau the Hairy’s, my old Odessa friends of the Slobodka. We were both nostalgic for pre-war Russia.

  Goldfish said my story had that ring of authority, had clearly come from personal experience. He asked a little about my part in the Civil War. I told him how I had actually ridden with the White Cossack Host, how I had been captured by Anarchists, how I had escaped to Istanbul. He seemed sympathetic but not greatly impressed. ‘With a lie like that you should be Roman Novaccio,’ he said. Doubtless he had heard many tall tales from newly-discovered relatives and countrymen who wanted a job. I was determined not to trade on my military career, although naturally I was anxious to demonstrate to him my thorough lack of anti-Semitism. This, too, he accepted naturally, as if there were no other civilised position. Indeed he seemed a trifle discomfited by my references to Benya the Accountant and all my other Hebrew pals in Odessa. No embarrassment resulted, however, for soon we gave our whole attention to the realisation of my tale which, though changing in detail as Goldfish suggested ways in which it might be better presented on the screen, remained essentially true to my original conception. More than once he remarked how my story gripped him to his soul. He asked me how I would visualise the scene where the commander of the Women’s Battalion of Death, Tatania (a Countess before the Revolution), sentences Prince Dimitri, the White leader, to the firing squad.

  I explained that I was by training a civil engineer and that it might be better if I drew the scene for him. He handed me a block of paper and I quickly sketched out the scene - the accusation, the verdict, the sentence. Goldfish was approving. ‘Not many of us have the right talent for pictures.’ Then, abruptly, the interview was terminated. A secretary who introduced herself as Sadie escorted me to the front gates. Goldfish would let me know if the studio could use the story. Meanwhile Sadie had an envelope for me which I should sign a receipt for. I walked a block or two until I was sure of not being seen by anyone from his office, and opened the envelope. It contained a cheque for $250.00 and a letter from Goldfish himself telling me that I was now officially retained by Samuel Goldwyn Productions to write a script based on my story. He would contact me as soon as he returned from Berlin.

  To celebrate this further upturn in my fortunes, I took Madge to Christmas dinner at the Cafe Alphonse and from there we went on to a nightclub for cocktails. It was not possible to get her into the Hollywood Hotel without inviting disapproving attention so instead we booked a room for the night at Madame France’s, where we spent a memorable Yule. Everywhere soon began to go to seed, however. Even in those days, downtown Los Angeles showed evidence of social decline and the hotels were almost all what we used to call ‘commercials’. Every one of them is that now, of course. Possibly inspired by her surroundings, Madge proved to be a woman of imagination and spirit. I had, I discovered, only sampled a soupçon of her outstanding sexual menu. It was impossible to believe that she had developed certain of her appetites and proclivities in rural Missouri. I concluded, discreetly, that she was no stranger to the cheap hotel and a nom-de-guerre in the register and possibly had worked at establishments like Madame France’s; yet I came to feel a strong attachment for her and soon decided to employ her regularly as my secretary as soon as I was in work again. Even after a night’s extravagance I was still in pocket to the tune of some $150 and might reasonably expect considerably more if Goldfish were as good as his word. The money in hand would take care of my bills for a month and give me time to find employment more suitable to my talents. I had already considered approaching William Randolf Hearst in his capacity as chief of a great engineering concern rather than a studio boss, and drafted letters to various other eminent tycoons, including Hughes and Dupont, offering them the opportunity to develop some of the inventions I had begun to see realised in Russia, Turkey and France before circumstances brought me to America. Madge would type them for me as soon as she had time.

  I took her with me to enjoy the rest of the season with Mrs Cornelius, her beau and their friends, who were mostly established movie people. Mrs Cornelius displayed considerably less jealousy towards Madge than she did towards Esmé. She confided to me that she thought Madge a ‘decent sort’ and advised me to stick with her. I pointed out that I remained betrothed to another. I was in no position to give Madge more than a temporary commitment. Moreover there were other young ladies available. I am, I hope, a gentleman, and would not take advantage of a young girl from Missouri. Although, as I pointed out, she was no shrinking virgin when we met.

  ‘An’ she’s not th’ only one!’ Mrs C. was emphatic, but whether in reference to herself or someone else was not clear.

  Since we were alone together in the drawing-room I used the chance to ask if she had managed to discover anything more about Esmé. All she knew was that Meulemkaumpf, a notorious avoider of publicity, was at present unusually assiduous in pursuing privacy. ‘That could ‘ave somefink ter do wiv ‘is wife, I shouldn’t wonder, Ivan.’

  I took her meaning. The Press would be bound to read the worst into Meulemkaumpf’s offer of protection to my darling. Now, knowing more about the man, I no longer suspected him of bearing her away to have his will with her at some lonely ranch. I realised that Esmé, believing herself deserted, had appealed instinctively to a native American gentleman. I longed for the chance, I told Mrs Cornelius, to explain what had happened. She offered the opinion that it was possible we both had some explaining to do, but before she could elaborate we were joined by Buck Buchmeister and a couple of his louder technician friends who were discussing a set they had just constructed for J.M. Schenk’s Graustark.

  Buchmeister had had some hand in directing the picture, I gathered, under a pseudonym. It was not particularly uncommon in those days for people to ‘moonlight’ for rival studios sometimes for the extra money, sometimes to help out a friend, or to fly, as it were, under flags of convenience. It is safe to say that in Hollywood not more than one person in three retained anything like their original name. This fashion was started by the Jews who, of course, had every possible motive for encouraging the habit, since it helped so many of them to assimilate into American society. Not that these particular Jews were illiterate or uneducated. I have nothing against the better type of Jew. They contribute a good deal to our society and are frequently very charitable. My only reservation is the common one, that it is not healthy or sane to have one minority race, with all its inherited traditions, many of which are at odds with our own, dominating our culture. It is not surprising that certain alien ideas crept into the cinema in those years. I need only mention The Enemy, Name the Man, He Who Gets Slapped, The Case of Lena Smith, or Man, Woman and Sin, most of which were set abroad and dealt with subjects in ways that scarcely married with the ideals of the American people. Not that I had anything against Jeanne Eagels, whom I admired in all her films, but it was no surprise to me when I learned of her tragic death. There is a certain strain accompanying the kind of role she had to play in, say, Jealousy and The Letter. And, inevitably, Communism had eaten into Hollywood’s great heart by the 40s when it became necessary to cauterise the wound by methods some found crude and brutal, even cruel, but which many of us knew to be all too kind. The proof of this was that the communists did go to other countries to continue to propagate their messages while others, as in the case of the infamous ‘Kubrick’, simply changed their names and did not stop for a second! And we now see the results, day after day, on BBC and ITV which are nothing but a catalogue of every disease ever carried by word of mouth. Tolerant and easy-going as I am, sometimes I think my ‘live and let live’ attitude was inappropriate, especially during my Hollywood glory days.

  For all that my thought
s were constantly turning to Esmé and speculation as to how she was spending her first holiday in America, that Christmas at Buchmeister’s was happy enough. I got to talk to several of the set-technicians and to discuss solutions to their problems. It seemed they thought I had a natural talent for their discipline and one of them, Van Nest Poldark (a Cornish buccaneer, as he styled himself, descended from a long line of novelists, smugglers and wreckers), told me I should be working in the technical department of a major studio. I laughed and pointed out that I was an engineer by profession and vocation. He argued that this was all the more reason I should try my hand at film designing. ‘It requires the knowledge of an Isaac Newton coupled with the aesthetic eye of a Michelangelo,’ he said. I thought he, in the manner of so many members of the kinema fraternity, was exaggerating somewhat, but then he gave me his card and suggested I come to see him at Paramount, which he had just himself joined. I did not throw the card away. As I told Madge later, if I could not see my inventions come to life in the real world, at least I might have the pleasure of seeing them realised on the movie screen. Thus, too, I might acclimatise the public to, as it were, my cerebral vision. I have never disdained nor, I hope, abandoned the popular arts. Fired by this vision of how I might popularise some of my ideas, I began to consider Poldark’s offer.

  My enthusiasm for this was quickly replaced, however, by an altogether different diversion. Madge and I, availing ourselves of the festive confusion, were actually able to slip back into my bedroom where, to help her sustain her pleasure, I introduced her to the benefits of that much-maligned substance its original discoverers called el nevada and which has proved such a peculiarly apt servant to 20th-century Man. By the following afternoon we were both exhausted, having attempted almost every sexual variation possible for two athletic young people to enjoy in the confines of a small hotel room on a bed four feet by six. I loved the musty stink of a creamy dark skin which suggested that long ago there had been a lick of the tar brush in Madge’s family. It has been my experience that women of the octoroon or mulatto persuasion make the most passionate lovers, particularly if there is also Jewish blood in the mixture. One need hardly speculate as to why Moorish women are still very highly prized in the harems of North Africa and the Middle East, but I will come to that later. (It was Madge, needless to say, who first raised the notion of extending our number to three.)

  I told Madge to report for work the next day. I would rest and prepare further notes for the proposed script. She said that she would have to come in the late morning rather than the afternoon as she had an appointment at four, an audition for a movie at last. I wished her luck but warned her not to get too involved with the idea. For every hundred girls in Hollywood perhaps one or two ever got legitimate movie work.

  Informing me that she, better than anyone, knew how to keep her head screwed on, my spirited little floozy kissed me on the nose and left. Half-an-hour later the telephone rang. The concierge told me a young lady had arrived and was asking for me. Conscious of the exaggerated morality of the place, I told him I would come down to the lobby. Doubtless Madge had forgotten to clarify something and since she had no easy access to a telephone she had simply turned in her tracks and come back. I dressed quickly, aware that while I did not look at my best, neither did Madge, and descended yielding Turkey and red plush to the lobby where, all in white, like the angel I knew her to be, her hair in a fashionable bob so that anyone might easily have mistaken her for Ruth Taylor, my darling had come to me at last! With joy I advanced towards her and then, conscious of my lack of sleep, I paused. ‘Esmé?’

  If I needed confirmation her wonderful, trilling laugh filled the great lobby. ‘Maxim! Now it is Emily Dane. Like you, I am at last an American.’ She opened her arms to embrace me. Though this was what I had longed for, again I hesitated. I could smell the stink of the past sixteen hours on my body. Madge’s perfume was still in my moustache. ‘I am filthy,’ I said. ‘I have been working all night. Sit here and let me get clean. I can be back in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘But Maxim, I only have fifteen minutes! The car is waiting.’ She made a gesture of desperate, apologetic impatience.

  ‘The car?’ Stupefied, I gaped at this vision of my bride-to-be. Here at last in the flesh was the child I had rescued from the most vicious slums of Istanbul. My boyhood sweetheart, she had been fucked so much there were calluses on her cunt but this reincarnated Esmé was Esmé purified, my own sweet little angel, my little sister, my restored betrothed! And she said she was leaving? ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I have to meet Willie. It’s so awful. He’s, you know, moody. I’ve been longing to see you. This is the first chance I’ve had, my darling!’ She writhed with helpless desires. I began to reach towards her, then halted the gesture.

  ‘You forgive me?’ Tears were starting in my eyes. I held them back.

  ‘For what?’ she said. ‘Kolya explained you had to do what you did. And when you weren’t at the ship, I simply assumed you were still in hiding and would contact me in Los Angeles. Willie was so kind. He had a train of his own which was going to the Coast from Chicago and offered me a lift. Now he’s putting me up. Well, you know how it is, darling. I have to be diplomatic. But here we are, together at last anyway, no harm done. There’s a strong chance I’ll have a part in a picture soon! Won’t you be proud of me?’

  ‘I’m already proud of you, my angel. I have so much to tell you, to explain. I am probably going to be working for the movies myself.’

  ‘Oh, darling! You’re already a film-star!’

  ‘Not exactly. I shall probably be directing the film I am currently writing. As to an acting role, well I have certainly had the experience. We shall see.’

  ‘I have read all your letters and your little notes and everything, Maxim.’ She was a distant bloom, a dream of heaven in white flowered silk and fur, her little heart-shaped face framed by a sculpted helmet of newly blonde hair, her blue eyes glowing dark against all that fairness. I had never seen her so beautiful, even on that first occasion when I had suddenly noticed her, my resurrected muse, at La Rotonde. Ma soeur! Meyn shvester! Moja rozy! Dans la Grande Rue, lallah . . . Hiya maride. Ma anish råyih . . . Qui bi’l’haqq, ma tikdibsh! Awhashtena! Awhashtena! Samotny, Esmé. Samotny! So lonely, Esmé. So lonely. Oh, I have longed for you down all those empty ages. They took you, my muse, my ideal, my reason for living, and they made a whore of you. Was it not a sign, I now wonder, of God’s eternal grace, that you should come back to me, time after time, as if in confirmation that real beauty, real love, real altruism, is imperishable, no matter to what depths we think the world has sunk and that these imperishable values should never be rejected or forgotten? And here you were, speaking rapidly of Meulemkaumpf’s kindness, and your situation in which you were now somewhat compromised, not having told Meulemkaumpf every exact detail of your story. ‘He thinks my brother was to meet me and was probably killed in the gangster-fights.’

  How could I blame her for a white lie or two? I had told them myself, in exactly similar circumstances, and while they rarely do any harm, they can sometimes prove a shade embarrassing or produce unexpected complications, which is why I long since gave them up. ‘When can you get away to see me?’ I asked.

  ‘Very soon. We’re going north for a couple of days, to visit Hearst at his ranch, and should be back by the end of the week. Maybe you could speak to someone about a part for me?’ This last was begged with that disarming, humorous sweetness I could never forget. ‘Of course. But we must talk more soon.’ Even though her innocent mention of Hearst had produced an unwelcome frisson, I was far more terrified that she should leave me again and we should be parted for another eternity! I drank in her beauty. She had hardly changed. Rather more sophisticated than when I had last seen her, of course, because in Paris she had begun to learn the manners and demeanour of a well-bred lady and doubtless Kolya and his wife had helped her. Her marvellous poise could rival Theda Bara’s. I mentioned that Mrs Cornelius was n
ow making a great success of her movie career and Esmé murmured a remark in Turkish which I did not catch. Nor was there time for her to repeat it. She dropped her voice and asked in French if I had some ‘neige’ I might spare her. She had run out and Willie Meulemkaumpf was disapproving of both drugs and alcohol, so was no help. ‘It’s what he and Hearst have in common apart from their millions.’ I was glad merely to be of service to my sweetheart.

  The drug had already become a bond, a way of remaining in touch until such time as she was able to save Meulemkaumpf’s feelings and return to me. I had heard it was possible to get married in Nevada without producing too much in the way of identity papers and tried to communicate all this to her as I returned with the little paper packet and pressed it into her warm, childish hand. How extraordinarily beautiful she was! Louise Brooks was to model herself on my Esmé and make a fortune in Germany. But that, as I know too well, is the price one pays for being ahead of one’s time. Not only do you receive no credit, but you rarely receive the kind of money made by your imitators. And then I moved to kiss her, but thought better of it. In an explosion of silver, she had sped to the waiting Mercedes, flung herself into the cavernous upholstery and waved her negro chauffeur on, for all the world as if instructing a coachman to whip up his horses.