Chance set an absolute deadline for delivery of a first draft of the photoplay. I’ve been working day and night for two weeks, surviving on sandwiches, coffee, cigarettes, and nerves. Fifteen years ago a scenario was a bare-bones sketch, often written in a day, a crutch which director and actors used as a guide to improvise a picture. Photoplays have become more detailed, but they’re still expected to be quickly written, rough-hewn scenes, a blueprint for a shoot. Maybe I’ve got too close to the material. It’s tough to convey the feeling of McAdoo’s story without dialogue, because I keep hearing his voice, the way he told it. I’m fighting to capture his emotions in images which will foreshadow the last scene, the awful conclusion to the picture. And while I’m doing this I have to keep in mind Will Hays, remember that what happens to the girl can’t actually be shown, has to be suggested in some way which won’t offend the proprieties of the censors but conveys to the audience the stark horror of her fate. Some scenes I’ve rewritten five or six times, trying to get a slow build to the fire, a suggestion of stealthily crackling flames which finally burst up in a raging conflagration. But instead, the writing feels like a forced march through a bog, every step forward sinking me deeper in a mire of confusion and uncertainty. Maybe Rachel is right. Maybe I am nothing but a blank-filler, a title-writer. After fourteen days of floundering I need help so badly I call her at home.
“Rachel?”
“My Little Truth Seeker! To what do I owe the honour of this call?”
Her pronunciation is a little eroded around the edges, liquor having rubbed away enough clarity for me to know she’s been hitting the bottle heavily. And it’s only seven o’clock.
“I need help.”
“What kind of help?”
“Help with a script.”
“You need help? I’m the one who needs help with a script. Bloody Gibson. You know what he’s got me working on now? Do you?”
“No.”
“Another Identical-Twins-Separated-at-Birth Saga. A real doozy,” she proclaims. I can hear the sound of a glass clinking faintly against the telephone receiver as she pauses to take a drink. “It’s based on a novel written by the spinster daughter of an English vicar. What else is new?” She takes a deep breath as preface. “Anyway, diabolical aristocratic parents give birth to identical twins. So as not to complicate inheritance and title, noble parents decide one is a keeper and the reject is set out in swaddling clothes to perish in the forest. Sherwood presumably. Disposable son is found by cretinous peasants who rear Boy Scout in uniform of swineherd – deeply attached to simple life, his hogs, and the Village Virgin whom he hopes some day to deflower within the bounds of holy matrimony. Then, one day, pig boy stumbles upon noble brother slaying deer in the forest. ‘What is this I see, as in a glass darkly?’ exclaims the Dispossessed One, smeared in pig shit presumably, but nonetheless smelling sweet as any rose. You know the rest. Evil brother plots swineherd’s murder. Caretaker of pigs overcomes all odds, gains title. Huge wedding in white in castle.”
“Who are they thinking of for the swineherd?”
“Fairbanks.”
“Village Virgin?”
“Pickford.”
“Sounds like a piece of cake.”
“Yes and no. After writing a hundred of these, mounting self-revulsion can cramp your style. Besides, our glorious story editor has decreed one fundamental change in this anodyne numskullery. He’s ordered me to make Douglas Fairbanks a shepherd rather than a swineherd. According to Jack, sheep are more sympathetic than pigs. It’s a well-known fact. Especially lambs. Everybody loves lambs. He feels the English spinster’s dark vision of life needs tempering with plenty of shots of gambolling, fleecy lambs. I told him, ‘No fucking chance, Jack. It’s got to be hogs or nothing. My artistic integrity is hanging in the balance.’ ”
“What did Jack say?”
“He said he’d put somebody else on the project. I said you were the only person innocent and naive enough to write this picture with all the mindless conviction it deserves. Harry Vincent, Little Truth Seeker. But, unfortunately, you aren’t available. You have a higher purpose. Since it falls on my shoulders, drastic action may be called for.”
“Such as?”
“There’s a new operation for scenarists. They suck out half your brains and then you can write again.”
“Surgery’s a serious business. Don’t make a decision under the influence of alcohol.”
“Is that a criticism or a witticism, Harry?”
“Just a warning.”
“Oh, fuck warnings.”
“Maybe I better let you get back to what you were doing.”
“Harry,” she says, “please come back to work. I miss how your freshly scrubbed and shining brow furrows with serious purpose and concentration each and every time you read another English spinster’s novel for Rachel.”
“Really? I thought you had Mr. DeShane to provide amusement.”
There’s a pause on the line which alerts me I’ve made a mistake. “Fuck you, too, Harry,” she says, a slight catch in her voice.
“What’s up?”
“I’m not seeing him any more. Not since the accident.” She’s trying hard to recover her sprightly air.
“What accident?”
“We had a car crash.”
“God, Rachel, you’re not hurt, are you?”
“No. Not a scratch.”
“And DeShane?”
“Mr. DeShane hit the windshield. His nose got broken. He didn’t take it well. He thinks it was his best feature. He blames me because I was driving. Somebody had to. We were both drunk and I won the toss.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“That’s the trouble with pretty men. They put too much store in their looks.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, I should know better, shouldn’t I? So much for a thing of beauty is a joy forever. Joy with DeShane only lasted weeks.”
“Is that the reason for your condition?”
She avoids answering the question. “You really ought to come back to the office, Harry. You cheer me up. We’re the only ones who prefer Thomas Hardy to Scott Fitzgerald. When you’re living the jazz age why would you want to read about it, too? But nobody else gets my point.”
“You better get some sleep, Rachel.”
“Maybe. But you had a reason for calling. Something about help?”
Now is not the time. “It can wait.”
“Come on, Harry. Shyness is one of your endearing traits but you can overplay it.”
Then I recall the book Chance gave me. He even marked passages with a red pen. Georges Sorel’s Réflexions sur la violence. The only problem is I can’t read French.
“Look,” I say, “Chance gave me a book to read while I work on the script. But my menu French isn’t up to deciphering it. From the number of times the words prolétariat and socialisme crop up in it, I thought it might be up your alley. If I sent it over, do you think you could give me a précis?”
“I could give it a whirl.”
“All right, then. Thanks.”
“Come back to the office, Harry.”
“Soon,” I tell her.
I am not entirely satisfied with my photoplay, but I’ve got close, and the deadline for the script is tonight, nine o’clock. Rather dramatic in its precision, but that’s Chance. However, I fear some mistake has been made. The driveway is filled with vehicles parked bumper to bumper and the house is lit up like I’ve never seen it before, brash yellow light streaming from every window on every floor, and the tinny, nasal sound of gramophone jazz trumpeting inside. Lately, Chance’s nerves have been badly frayed. A mix-up over still photographs of prospective shooting locations earned Fitz the dressing-down of his life. I can still see the big Irish moron standing on the carpet, head hanging down like an illustration from a Sunday-school paper – the boy caught pinching nickels from Mother’s handbag. Maybe in the midst of all the planning for the picture, the deadline has slipped Chance’s mind.
Nothing slips Chance’s mind.
Feeling uneasy, I decide to ring the bell, hand the envelope to Yukio, and get the hell out of here. However, in a brightly lit window I see three women with cocktail glasses in their hands – Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, Pola Negri. Change of plan, I’ll go around to the back. To dance attendance upon such a big party of celebrities, he’ll have hired caterers. I’ll give the envelope to the kitchen staff and avoid encountering any of his classy guests.
I begin to fumble my way to the rear, brushing past rosebushes emitting a thick, heady fragrance, hugging the darkness like a housebreaker, dodging the splashes of light on lawn and shrubbery where the shadows of Chance’s guests dart, fishes in a pond. From the house, laughter spills, mingled with mirthless shrieks. Blindly feeling my way among the flower-beds I sneak glances at the lighted windows, catch glimpses of revellers inside. Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, Barbara La Marr.
Turning the corner of the house, a constellation of Japanese paper lanterns blazing against the night sky surprises me. Yukio teeters on a stepladder while Chance stands on the lawn directing the positioning of lanterns on a cord strung between two palms. An intruder, I instinctively freeze to the spot.
“Now the red one,” says Chance, “next to the green.”
In the warm glow of the lanterns, Yukio’s face shines like rubbed brass. Beyond the two men, the swimming pool gleams intensely green in a blanket of soft light, liquid jade. A woman is swimming in the pool, sinuous water rolling smoothly over her shoulders, the surface of the pool undulating faintly behind her as she plies the breast-stroke. Completing a length, she turns without a splash, glides back. Chance pays her absolutely no attention; face raised and forehead lined with attention, he studies the lanterns dangling like coloured concertinas drying on a clothesline.
I clear my throat and he wheels around, peers hard to where I stand one foot in the shadows, one in the light.
“Harry!” he exclaims. He comes forward eagerly, pointing to the manila envelope tucked under my arm. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
He checks his watch. “Punctual to a fault,” he says, taking the envelope. The girl in the pool begins another lap. The water flows around her thickly like heavy green syrup. A burst of laughter rings out from the house, followed by the sound of breaking glass. Chance ignores it, or doesn’t hear.
“Let’s go in,” he says.
“No, really, I don’t want to crash your party.”
Chance puts a hand on my shoulder. “But the party is for you, too. A little treat for working so hard.”
“I’d feel out of place among such a distinguished crowd.”
Chance throws back his head and laughs. “That’s right. Don’t spoil it. I get your meaning.” He steers me to the rear entrance. Over my shoulder I peek at the woman in the water. It is as I thought; she’s stark naked.
He leads me through the kitchen, past a number of rented waiters in dinner jackets toiling over trays of canapés, and down a passageway which delivers us into one of Chance’s empty, blank rooms. A very odd setting for a party, just a few ladder-backed chairs marooned on a parquet floor. A waiter is serving drinks to two women; a man’s muffled shouting can be heard further back in the house. The two women are Gloria Swanson and Clara Bow.
“It’s a very small affair,” explains Chance, completely ignoring two of Hollywood’s greatest stars. “By coincidence some of Fitz’s boon companions from New York are in town and I indulged him by inviting them along. Fitz is like a boy with a new train set; he wants to show it off.” He taps the envelope. “I’ll take this up to the study and give it a look. It’s quieter there. Until I need you, consider yourself to have been given the keys to the city. Miss Lillian Gish is dying to meet you.” With that cryptic comment he exits the room. As soon as he leaves, Gloria Swanson and Clara Bow advance on me, heels clicking like castanets on the hardwood. It’s now I become aware that Gloria’s sequinned dress, skeins of pearls, and beauty mark are right, but her chin isn’t. It’s pronounced, but not pronounced enough. Seen up close, Clara Bow, the “It” girl, isn’t It either. The eyes are set too close together and the eyelids don’t droop the way the Jazz Baby’s do in the pictures.
I laugh with pure relief.
“Is it a man, or a hyena,” snarls Gloria.
“Be nice,” cautions Clara.
“The rest are hyenas, why’d he be any different.” Gloria tips her glass and drains it.
“So what is this? You girls doubles? Stand-ins?”
“That’s rich – stand-ins. We don’t do much standing.” Gloria consults her companion. “More like lay-downs, wouldn’t you say?”
“Lay-downs,” giggles Clara and then covers her mouth coyly with her hand. Some of her teeth are rotten.
“What is it with this Chance?” asks Gloria, gloomily surveying the barren room. “He run out of money before he got the decorators in?”
“You’re a card, honey,” says Clara. “A regular card.” She appeals to me. “Isn’t she a card?”
“How come nobody’s interested in La Swanson?” demands Gloria, sullenly angry. “My stock falling with the movie-going public?” She turns on me. “What about you, sport? You interested in a little movie magic?”
“Just have another drinkie and relax,” Clara advises.
Gloria wants nothing to do with relaxation; she’s obviously spoiling for a fight. “Come on, big spender,” she says. “Don’t just stand there. Show us a parlour trick.”
“What kind of parlour trick?” I ask pleasantly, a feeble ploy to smooth her ruffled feathers.
“Parlour trick. Parlour trick,” she rasps. “The big palooka in the other room showed us how he could balance three silver dollars on his cock. Be a sport. Go for four.”
Just then Fitz crashes into the room, dragging a cringing Lillian Gish by the wrist.
“Speak of the devil!” shouts Gloria. “Here’s Mr. Show-off now!”
“Shut the fuck up,” says Fitz, “or I’ll fucking shut you up.”
Gloria looks like she is going to answer him, then thinks better of it. Fitz is sweating, his face puce. “Harry Vincent, guest of honour,” he says introducing me to Lillian Gish. “Treat him right, he earned it, Mr. Chance says.” He shoves the girl at me. “Here’s your fucking treat, Vincent. Suck on this little candy cane, you’re so special.”
“Hey,” says Gloria, “we seen him first.”
“I told you to close your cake-hole. Miss Gish is compliments of Mr. Chance. Keep your nose out of it.” The girl is rubbing her wrist. “Miss Gish is Harry’s favourite actress. Mr. Chance remembers stuff like that. Don’t he, Harry?”
“Apparently.”
Fitz prods the girl forward with his thumb. “Take the golden boy Vincent upstairs.”
“Maybe I don’t want to go upstairs,” I say.
“I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth if I was you,” says Fitz.
The girl snatches at my arm like it’s a life raft and she is drowning; she’s hardly bigger than a child. “Please,” she whispers, “do like he says.” Her plea unmasks a terror so naked, so compelling, it would be cruelty to refuse. She pulls me from the room, fingers biting my forearm; my last glimpse of Fitz he’s clumsily fingering Gloria’s pearls with one hand, a breast with the other.
Upstairs, the girl drags me into a bedroom and locks the door. Something tells me it is Fitz’s. There’s an unmade bed, a dresser with a bottle of bay rum on top of it, pictures of Gentleman Jim Corbett and Kentucky Derby winner Man o’ War on the wall.
The girl offers a smile meant to be provocative but isn’t. It’s a grimace – whistling in the dark. “My name is Miss Lillian Gish. How do you do?”
In some respects it is true. She succeeds as Miss Lillian Gish in a way that the tawdry Gloria Swanson and Clara Bow fall short of their models. The resemblance is astonishing. She has the wrought fragility of the original, the delicate bird-like bones, the cupid mouth, the large eyes, the fine tousled hair which now, with the light of a lamp behind her, blazes like a heaven-sent aura. Unlike the others she isn’t dressed in glamorous party clothes – just the opposite – she’s wearing a paisley shawl and a long dress with a conspicuous patch on the skirt.
“You girls – just who are you?”
She smiles shyly, a real Lillian Gish smile this time, and makes a stab at resuming her performance, “My name is Miss Lillian -”
I interrupt. “What the hell’s going on here?”
She says, “The greatest gift it is in an innocent, pure girl’s power to give is yours for the asking.” It sounds like a recitation at the Christmas concert.
I drop down in a chair; she remains standing uncertainly in the middle of the floor. After a moment’s hesitation, she begins to unbutton her dress.
“Stop,” I say.
Her hands slowly open the dress front, cup her breasts and hold them on timid display. They are exquisite.
“Why are you doing this?”
Consternation and confusion struggle in her face. “I’m supposed to do this,” she complains.
She begins to toy with her nipples; voyeuristically I watch them stiffen. An uneasy, violent lust ripples in me.
“Don’t do that.”
“You don’t like that? What would you like me to do?”
“I want you to answer my questions. Who said you were supposed to do this?”
She bites her lip, throws a nervous glance to the locked door. “Him.”
“Fitz? The man who dragged you into the room downstairs?”
“He came to Mrs. Kirkland’s and hired us all. For the night.”
“Mrs. Kirkland’s?”
“You haven’t heard of Mrs. Kirkland’s?” She can scarcely believe my ignorance. “It’s the deluxest establishment in the city. Mrs. Kirkland says everybody dreams of making love to a movie star. I thought everybody had heard of Mrs. Kirkland’s.”
“Sit down.”
“Very deluxe,” she repeats, still standing. “We have a splendid piano player, you should come just to hear him. He plays all the latest tunes. Daddy would die if he knew – the piano player’s a Negro.”
“How the hell old are you?”
My question pleases her. “How old do you think I am?”
“You look fifteen.”
“Just like Miss Gish,” she says proudly. “She played a fifteen-year-old girl in Broken Blossoms. That’s where I got the idea for my costume, from Broken Blossoms.” She touches her skirt. “Do you like it?”
I say nothing. She falls back on the bed in an artless, maladroit pose of abandon. “Are you ready?”
“No.”
She sits up, a picture of concern. “Why? Because of your leg? I saw you limping. Does your leg hurt?”
“Not because of my leg. That was hurt a long time ago.”
“Poor baby, how did you hurt it?”
I don’t explain.
“It wouldn’t hurt if I sat on your knee, would it? Let me sit on your knee.”
“Please don’t.”
She is standing over me. With one deft movement she hikes her skirts, straddles one of my thighs. There is nothing to her, it is as if a cat bounded up and settled down on my leg. She throws her arms around my neck. I try to pry her off but her arms tighten, she lowers her face to mine, the tiny lips part slightly. With solemn fervour, she says, “Miss Lillian isn’t wearing underpants tonight.” She slides back and forth against my leg, rubbing like a cat. “That feels nice. Ever so nice.” Large eyes dizzy me. She lifts her hips, takes my hand and slips it between her legs. “When you’re fifteen you’d like somebody to touch it – but that’s wicked. You’d like to show it to somebody – but that’s even wickeder. Shall I show it to you?” she whispers, breath warm on my throat.
“No,” I say, choking on the lie.
She nestles her head into the hollow of my neck and shoulder. “Let me take you out,” she says. “Please. I feel so wicked.”
When her hand fumbles at my fly I catch her wrist and twist it away. Her face writhes. “You’re hurting me,” she says.
“This is over. Get off me. Now.”
“Please,” she says, “you have to let me do it. He paid.”
“I buy my own whores.”
She shudders, the porcelain face cracks, I feel the doll’s body go limp. “Why do you want to get me in trouble? Can’t you be nice? He warned me. He said if I didn’t, too bad for me. I know he means it. Look what he did already.” She holds up her arm. There are bruises left by Fitz’s fingers. “I had to let him take a pair of nail scissors and trim me. So I’d look fifteen, he said. He laughed, the son of a bitch. Couldn’t you feel how he trimmed me?” She clutches at me desperately, begins to squirm in a mechanically provocative way. It feels like despair.
I shake her. “Stop it!”
She freezes, fine hair fallen loose about her shoulders.
There’s a sharp rap at the door. “Harry! Harry!” It’s Chance. I shove Miss Gish off my lap. She staggers backward, eyes running wildly round the room, rabbit seeking a bolt-hole. “Get on the bed,” I hiss. “On the bed. Throw up your skirts.” She clambers up on the bed and does as she is told. I get a glimpse of Fitz’s handiwork before facing the door and calling out, “Just a minute, Mr. Chance.” I unbuckle, my belt and then unlock the door. Chance peers impassively over my shoulder into the room as I ostentatiously do myself up.
“Satisfactory?”
“Yes,” I say, stepping into the hallway and pulling the door closed on Miss Gish.
“I wish I could say the same of this. I went directly to the ending and skimmed it – it’s an abomination. Dreadful.” His tone is aggrieved, hurt.
“Well,” I say, taken aback, stumbling, “it’s only a first draft, Mr. Chance. A rough approximation -”
He cuts my explanation short. “I thought you were a man worthy of opening my mind to, a man with the intelligence to understand what is at stake in this enterprise. And then you give me this -” He breaks off. “The girl,” he says sharply, “the business with the girl just won’t do. It misses the point completely.”
What is the point? “But I wrote it exactly as McAdoo described it – at least as much of it as the audience could stomach and we could get past Hays’s people. I assumed it wasn’t possible to go any further.”
“Yes, you wrote it exactly as McAdoo described it. But where is the artistic intuition? You’ve assembled the facts like a stock boy stacking cans on a shelf. You must reach beyond that. The last scene, the most important scene in the picture, is all wrong. Disastrously wrong,” he pronounces contemptuously.
I scramble to apologize. “I realize it isn’t as good as it should be. I want to make it better. Please, just tell me what’s wrong and I’ll do my best, make every effort to fix it.”
“Wrong?” His eyebrows lift. “The psychology is all wrong. Absolutely wrong.”
This only confuses me more. “Psychology?”
“I want the girl to start the fire,” he states. “Surely you see she must start the fire.”
“The girl?” I say, stupidly.
His severity relents a little in the face of my obvious bewilderment. Assuming the manner of a kindly, patient teacher he begins to lead me through the lesson, step by step. “What the picture must convey, Harry, is the psychology of the defeated. And what is this psychology? A diseased resentment,” he says implacably. “The sick hate the healthy. The defeated hate the victor. The inferior always resent the superior. They sicken with resentment, they brood, fantasize revenge, plot. They attempt to turn everything on its head; try to impose feelings of guilt on the healthy and the strong. But our film will not fall into that trap. Our film will be a celebration of spiritual and physical strength.”
My mind, confused, clumsy, doesn’t really believe it can be following what he means to say.
Chance smiles persuasively. “The resentment of the weak is a terrible thing, Harry. The inferior always refuse the judgements of nature and history. They are a danger to the strong and to themselves. Resentment blinds them to reality, blinds them even to their own self-interest.”
“Self-interest? I don’t know what you mean.”
“The judgements of nature and history are impersonal,” Chance says calmly. “But the weak refuse to accept them. Think of all those quixotic lost causes of history. The Jews furnish a perfect example. All those futile, petulant rebellions against the Romans. A sick resentment drove them to become the authors of their own destruction.”
I stare at him dumfounded. Suddenly my face is hot, my belly cold.
“That is how we must present the girl,” he says. “I envision her as a sort of Indian Samson. To destroy his captors he pulled down the temple on his own head. If she were to set fire to the building, that would be entirely in keeping – psychologically speaking – with the point we must make.”
“Which is?” I can hear an undercurrent of challenge in my voice. The private falling back on what the army calls dumb insolence.
Chance doesn’t notice. He’s too absorbed in his lesson. “That the Indian tribes, like the Jewish tribes, would not face facts. Think of the Sioux uprising at Wounded Knee. No different than the suicidal Jews at Masada. But let us not be sentimental about what they brought down upon themselves. The weak wish the strong to be sentimental because they know it undermines their strength. But in the world we face at this moment, we must keep strong. Only the strong will survive.”
“But the girl didn’t set fire to the post,” I say stubbornly, clinging to the irrefutability of fact.
Chance’s mouth twists with impatience. “Don’t be wilfully obtuse,” he says angrily. “I have explained to you. This picture is about psychological truth, poetic truth. Poetic truth is not journalism.”
“But it’s not a lie either. It can’t be a -”
He cuts me off brutally. “This discussion is at an end.” And he walks away from me. Doesn’t let me finish. I start after him, determined to have my say. Down the hallway he strides, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“Mr. Chance!” I shout.
Down the staircase he goes, feet quick on the steps, nimble despite his stoutness, fleeing me as I clump awkwardly in pursuit. He rushes past the costumed girls and Fitz’s friends in garish suits who greet him with drunken familiarity. One room and another room and suddenly there is nowhere further for him to fly, we’ve washed up in the chamber with the French doors overlooking the garden, the room with the single hardback chair placed like an altar under a cut-glass electric chandelier. Chance halts under this fixture, stands bathed in harsh, stunning light which fractures his shadow into a spiky asterisk on the marble floor.
Now I have him cornered, everything I meant to say suddenly evaporates. The best I can manage is, “Mr. Chance, I did as you told me. I wrote the facts.”
This claim only agitates him. He begins to pace the marble floor, flexing and unflexing his fingers like an arthritic. “I spoke of the dangers we face and you refused to hear. In Italy, Europe brings forth a new man, with a new rallying cry. ‘Avanti.’ Advance! ‘Ne me frego.” I don’t give a damn! The artists, the Futurists, anticipate. They carry pistols. The poet D’Annunzio leads an occupation force into Trieste. And we sleep. I lived abroad, I read the foreigner’s books, I listened to his music, I ate his food. But not as a tourist, no, not as a tourist. As a spy. Like Attila the Hun did when he was held hostage in Rome, I put my time to good use, I studied the enemy. Like a Hun seer I read the future in the scorched bones. I saw the danger in the bones of Europe scorched by the last war. Look at the Bolsheviks in Russia, hard men every one of them. The Asiatic brutality of the face of Lenin. And the Germans? Do we expect the Germans to lie down with the lambs? Never.” He rattles on, unstoppable. “The war to end all wars was a sham, a lie. Eighteen million dead – only the beginning. The League of Nations offers Sunday-school morality while the hard men gather outside our door.” He quits his pacing to confront me. “And the danger is not only outside America, but inside also. Two years ago Congress adopted a new immigration policy. Each European nation is allowed a quota of three per cent of the number of its nationals living in our country. But what of the millions we have already let in?” He moves to my side. “The only solution, Harry, is conversion. Convert the strangers with lightning! The way Luther was converted in the thunderstorm! The lightning of pictures! American pictures! Make the Sicilian living in New York American. Make the Pole living in Detroit American. Convert all those who can be converted – damn the rest!”
He stares at me intently. I want to look away, but don’t have the guts. His fierceness hypnotizes. “That is my argument with the Laemmles, the Mayers, the Goldwyns, the Warners, the Zukors,” he says. “The Jews will not convert. They are too full of resentment. They remain Jews first and always. For two thousand years they refused every overture. Whatever society, whatever country they inhabit, the worst of it sticks to their coats like a burr. The Russian Bolsheviks are all Jews. Like Trotsky. Trotsky commands the Red Army, refines Russian brutality as only a Jew could. The Jew Laemmle carries Teutonic burrs to us on his dirty coat, German sentimentality and kitsch taken to new heights of vulgarity. And so on. The examples are endless.”
Somebody is fiddling with the volume of a gramophone, jazz spurting and sinking like the jet of an erratic fountain. My mind is jerking and starting, like the music. Rachel, I think. Walk away, I think. But a chilled fascination roots me to the spot. And fear. I’m frightened now. Of this strange, eerie house. Of Fitz and his brutal friends, crashing about upstairs. Of Chance. Say something, I think. But I don’t. And this is the thing that frightens me most.
Chance’s gaze sweeps the room. “Do you know something, Harry?” he says, suddenly subdued. “This is my favourite room, the room where I think, imagine. Here I imagine myself on a train, a train which carries me to every corner of America. I imagine myself speaking from the back of it, at every whistle-stop, to the heart of America. Because when you speak from the heart to other hearts – even imagined hearts – the truth slowly dawns on you. Then the lightning crackles in your mind, pictures flash… something profound, something original is born. You see what is really there.” His voice has sunk to a whisper, but it is a hot whisper, coals settling in a grate. “Turn out the light,” he whispers, rapt.
For the moment, his puppet, I do. A little starlight and cloud-swaddled moon steals into immediate darkness through the French doors. Chance clambers up on the waiting chair, sways, corrects his equilibrium, rises erect under the baubles of the chandelier, pale grapes glistening in the pale moonlight. The gramophone falls silent, someone is changing a record. In that moment everything freezes. So do I. “What I have to say gives me no pleasure,” he states. His voice, low and confidential, spreads like a soft carpet over the cold marble to every corner of the room. “My friends, I wish I did not see so clearly. I tell you, the age of the hard men is upon us. That is the Zeitgeist. The Italian mimics the Roman centurion. The German worships blood and iron. The Bolshevik murders the Czar and his children. They leave us no choice but to be hard too. Remember the frontier – how savagery answered savagery? Picture the lonely cabin in the forest, the eyes watching from the trees, waiting for their opportunity. The lonely hunter on the plain, naked in his solitude. The children hatcheted in the corn patch, the mutilated man in the grass. The wife raped. The barn burning, the cattle slaughtered, the carrion crows descending. We did not fail that test.”
The gramophone starts again. People are dancing upstairs, the chandelier shivers in sympathy.
“But the strangers among us have no memory of this – the fired roof, the women taken captive, the lurking, painted nightmare. The unseen enemy everywhere, at the turn in the river, behind the bluff, hidden in the long prairie grass. They know nothing of that.”
Someone in the back of the house screams. It is followed by shrieks of laughter.
Chance pleads with the surrounding darkness. “If Mussolini exalts the spirit of the Roman legions, the German the Teutonic knight, the Russian the pitiless terrorist, surely we are entitled to do the same. The picture of the rawhide frontiersman is entitled to hang in the mind of every American. To hang illuminated by lightning – the cold eyes, the steady hand, the long rifle revealed in brightness. Europe returns to wilderness and returns us with it.” Seconds pass as I stare up at him. “A Frenchman noted that the profound contempt of the Greek for the barbarian is only matched by that of the Yankee for the foreign worker who makes no attempt to become truly American. So be it. Was the Jew there when our forefathers knelt by the window in fear for their lives, watching the woods? Was he with us when we rode out on the broad plains under the eyes of savages? Can he understand us? Argue our case to the world? I know what you are thinking, my friends. Do not insult the Jew, you think, he repays every insult with interest. He…” Chance trails off, holds himself perfectly still on his pedestal. “No matter. The lonely house must be protected. The wilderness encroaches on the fields we have cleared, the wilderness stirs abroad. It is coming. They are coming. I walked among them. One day soon a face will peer in your window, the face of a Blackshirt, or the face of a Bolshevik. They who resurrect the savage ghosts of their past must be challenged with the savage ghosts of our past. I will help, I will raise up our ghosts. Steel yourself. Meet strength with strength.” His neck turns stiffly like the turret of a tank, testing every corner of the room for opposition. He is done. “Help me down,” he says.
I take the groping hand. The palm is the hood of a mushroom, stickily moist. He steps down abruptly, clutching at me to keep from falling. He hangs on my shoulder. “You see, Harry?” he says, face close to mine. “Rewrite it. Change the girl. The enemy is never human.”