Evening In Byzantium Part 28
"s.e.x is a big tangle, anyway, and you should be the first one to admit it." Craig nodded as he read this. But it was one thing to be forty-eight and come out with a truism like that, another to be twenty. "I know that I was mean to poor old Bayard, and I suppose he's got to you by now and has been crying on your shoulder. But that was just flesh ..."
Craig squinted at the word, stopped on it. Flesh. It was a strange word for Anne to use. He wondered for a moment if Wadleigh had helped her write the letter.
"And flesh isn't enough." The scrawl dashed on. "If you've talked to Bayard, you must know that was impossible. Anyway, I never asked him to come to Cannes. If I'd married him, as he kept asking me to do (I nearly screamed, he was so insistent), in the long run I'd have been his victim. And I don't want to be anybody's victim."
Some day, Craig thought, I am going to make up a list for her. One thousand easy ways to be a victim.
"Don't be down on poor Ian for our sliding out the way we did. He wanted to stay and tell you what we were doing. I had the hardest time convincing him not to. Not for his sake but mine. He's in something of a daze for the time being. A happy daze, he says. He thinks I'm something extra-special, and he says he fell in love with me that first day on the beach. He says I'm so absolutely different from all the other women he's known. And he says he never dreamed I'd even look at him. He hasn't touched a drink in two days. Even before we left Cannes. He says it's a world record for him. And I read the part of the book he's working on that he has finished, and it's just wonderful, and if he doesn't drink, it'll be the best thing he's ever done. I'm convinced. And don't worry about money. I'm going to get a job, and with the money from the trust fund we can get along all right until the book is finished."
Craig groaned. The African with the tribal scars looked over at him politely. Craig smiled at the man, to rea.s.sure him.
"I'm sorry if I'm causing you any pain," Anne went on, "but later on I'm sure you'll be happy for me. I'm happy for myself. And you have Gail. Although it's more complicated with Gail than you think."
That's what you think, Craig almost talked back aloud to the page.
"There's a long story about her mother," Anne wrote, "that she told me but I haven't the time to go into now. Anyway, she told me that she was going to explain everything to you. Whatever it is, I'm sure it can't do you any discredit, no matter how it looks on the surface. I really am sure, Daddy.
"I'm still cowardly enough, even now with Ian at my side, not to tell you where we're going. Just for the moment I couldn't bear the thought of seeing you and having you disapprove of me in that reasonable, austere way you have. But as soon as we're settled in the States, I'll get in touch with you, and you can come and visit us and see for yourself that all is well. Please love me, Daddy, as I love you, Anne.
"P.S. Ian sends his best regards."
Best regards. Out of consideration for the African couple Craig refrained from groaning again. He folded the letter neatly and put it in his pocket. It would bear rereading.
He thought of Ian Wadleigh in bed with his daughter. "Miss," he said to the stewardess who was walking down the aisle, "do you have any aspirin?"
BELINDA Ewen, his secretary, was waiting for him when he came through customs. He saw that she had not lost her disastrous taste for loud colors in her clothes since he had seen her last. She had been working for him twenty-three years, and it seemed to him that she had always been the same age. He kissed her on the cheek. She seemed happy to see him. He felt guilty because he hadn't answered her last two letters. If a woman has spent twenty-three years of her life working for you, how do you avoid feeling guilty when you see her?
"I have a limousine waiting for us," she said. She knew better than anyone that the money wasn't coming in as it had done for so long but would have been shocked if he suggested that a taxi would have done just as well. She had a fierce sense of their joint status. She screamed over the phone at agents when she discovered that scripts they had sent to the office had first been offered elsewhere.
It was a muggy, oppressive day, and it began to drizzle as they waited for the limousine to be brought around. He touched his hat grimly. The voices of the travelers piling into cars and taxis seemed harsh and angry to him. A child's screaming grated on his nerves. He felt tired, and the aspirin hadn't helped much.
Belinda peered at him anxiously, scrutinizing him. "You don't look well, Jesse," she said. He had been so young when he hired her that it had been impossible to ask her to call him Mr. Craig. "At least I thought you'd have a tan."
"I didn't go to Cannes to lie on the beach," he said. The limousine drove up, and he sank gratefully onto the back seat. Standing had been an effort. He was sweating, and he had to mop his face with a handkerchief. "Has it been as warm as this all along?" he asked.
"It's not so warm," Belinda said. "Now will you tell me why in the name of heaven you asked me to put you into the Manhattan Hotel? On Eighth Avenue, of all places!" He usually stayed at a quiet, expensive hotel on the East Side, and he could tell that in Belinda's eyes the change represented a demeaning attempt at economy. "I thought it would be more convenient," he said, "to be closer to the office."
"You're lucky if you're not mugged every time you go out the front door," Belinda said. "You don't know what Eighth Avenue is like these days." She had a sharp, aggressive voice. She had always had a sharp, aggressive voice, and for a while he had toyed with the idea of suggesting to her that she might go to a speech teacher. He had never quite had the courage. Now, of course, it was too late. He didn't tell her he had decided to go to the Manhattan only at the last moment, as he was writing out the cable to her in the Nice airport. The Manhattan was a bra.s.sy commercial hotel that he would ordinarily avoid, but he had suddenly remembered that he had lived there while he was putting on Edward Brenner's first play. With Edward Brenner. Now no longer writing plays. It had been called the Hotel Lincoln then. Presidents everywhere were being downgraded. He had been lucky at the Hotel Lincoln. He wished he could remember the number of the room. But he couldn't tell any of that to Belinda. She was too sensible a woman to pamper her employer's superst.i.tions.
"You certainly didn't give me much warning," she said, aggrieved. "I just got your cable three hours ago."
"Something came up suddenly," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Anyway-" she smiled forgivingly. She had sharp little teeth, like a puppy's. "-anyway, I'm glad to have you back. The office has been like a morgue. I've been going mad with boredom. I even have taken to keeping a bottle of rum in my desk. I nip at it in the afternoons to keep sane. Don't tell me you've finally condescended to go to work again."
"In a way," he said.
"Hallelujah," she said. "What do you mean, in a way?"
"Bruce Thomas wants to do a script I own."
"Bruce Thomas," she said, impressed. "Oo, la, la." This was the year when everybody spoke the name of Bruce Thomas in a certain tone of voice, he noticed. He didn't know whether he was pleased or jealous.
"What script?" Belinda asked suspiciously. "I haven't sent you anything in three months."
"It's something I found in Europe," he said. "In fact, I wrote it myself."
"It's about time," she said. "It's got to be better than the junk we've been getting. You might have let me know," she said. She was hurt. "You might even have sent me a copy."
"Forgive me," he said. He reached over and patted her hand.
"Your hand is icy cold," she said. "Are you all right?"
"Of course," he said shortly.
"When do we start?" she asked.
"I'll know better after I see Thomas," he said. "There's no deal yet." He looked out the window of the car at the heavy clouds weighing on the flat landscape. "Oh," he said, "I wanted to ask you something. Do you remember a woman by the name of Gloria Talbot? I think she worked for us."
"Just in the beginning, for a couple of months," Belinda said. She remembered everything. "Absolutely incompetent."
"Was she pretty?"
"I suppose men thought she was pretty. My G.o.d, it was nearly twenty-five years ago. What made you think of her?"
"She sent me a message," Craig said. "Indirectly."
"She's probably on her fifth marriage," Belinda said primly. "I spotted the type right off. What did she want?"
"It was hard to say. I imagine she just wanted to communicate," he said. Talking, somehow, was a great effort. "If you don't mind, Belinda," he said, "I'm going to try to nap a little. I'm absolutely bushed."
"You travel too much," she said. "You're not a baby anymore."
"I guess you might say that." He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the cushions.
His room was on the twenty-sixth floor. It was misty outside, and drops of rain slid down the windowpanes. The towers of the city were glints of gla.s.s, dim tiers of light in the wispy late-afternoon grayness. The room was hygienic and impersonal and had not been furnished for Russian n.o.bility. He could hear horns from the Hudson River a few blocks away. There was nothing in the room to remind him of the lucky time with Brenner's play. It occurred to him that he ought to find out where Brenner was buried and lay a flower on the grave. Unpacking was an effort. The light clothes he had worn in Cannes seemed incongruous in the rainy city. There were many people whom he should call, but he decided to put it off to another day. Still, there was one call he had to make, to Bruce Thomas, who was expecting him.
He gave Thomas's number to the operator. The brisk, cheerful American voice of the operator was welcome after the shrill, hara.s.sed voices of the standardistes of Cannes. Thomas was cordial when he came to the phone. "Well, now," he said, "that was a surprise, your writing a script like that. A pleasant surprise." Klein had spoken to him. "I don't know exactly what we can work out, but we'll work out something. Are you busy now? Do you want to come over?"
Thomas lived on East Seventieth Street. The thought of trying to traverse the city was fatiguing. "Let's do it tomorrow, if you don't mind," Craig said. "The jet lag's got me."
"Sure," Thomas said. "How about ten in the morning?"
"I'll be there," Craig said. "By the way, do you happen to have Ian Wadleigh's telephone number in London?"
He could sense Thomas hesitating. "You know," Thomas said, "I suggested Wadleigh before I knew you'd written the script."
"I know," Craig said. "Have you talked to him yet?"
"No," Thomas said. "Naturally, I wanted to find out what you thought about it. But after Klein told me you didn't mind discussing it, I tried to get in touch with him. He's not in Cannes, and there's no answer at his London address. I've sent him a cable asking him to call me here. Wait a minute, I'll give you his number."
When he came back to the phone and gave Craig the number, Thomas said, "If you do find him, will you tell him I've been trying to reach him? And would you mind if I sent him a script? I've had some copies Xeroxed. There's no sense in his coming over here if for some reason or another he doesn't want to work on it."
"I think I heard somewhere that he's planning to come back to the States to live, anyway," Craig said. Somewhere. Flying over France, heading toward the English Channel, the brave New World. Dear Daddy.
"That's interesting," Thomas said. "Good for him. See you in the morning. Have a good night." He was a nice man, Thomas, polite, thoughtful, with delicate manners.
Craig asked the operator for the London number and lay down on the bed to wait for the call. When he moved his head on the pillow, he felt dizzy, and the room seemed to shift slowly around him. "You travel too much," Belinda had said. Wise woman. Twenty-three years in the service. He was terribly thirsty, but he couldn't make himself get up and go into the bathroom for, a gla.s.s of water.
The phone rang, and he sat up, having to move slowly to keep the room from spinning around him. The operator said that there was no answer at the London number and asked him if he wanted her to try again in an hour. "No," he said, "cancel the call."
He sat on the edge of the bed until the room steadied, then went into the bathroom and drank two gla.s.ses of water. But he was still thirsty. He was cold now, too, from the air conditioning. He tried to open a window, but it was nailed shut. He looked at his watch. It was six-thirty. Twelve-thirty tomorrow morning in Cannes. He had been up a long time, journeyed a great distance. He didn't remember ever having been so thirsty. An ice-cold gla.s.s of beer would do wonders for him. Maybe two. The next time he crossed the ocean, he decided, he would go by boat. America should be approached cautiously, in slow stages.
He went downstairs to the grill room, which was decorated with posters from plays. I am in a familiar arena, he thought. He remembered horns, the color of the sand in Saint Sebastian. He sat at the bar and ordered a bottle of beer, drank half the first gla.s.s in one gulp. The ache at the back of his throat subsided. He knew he should eat something, but all he wanted was more beer. He ordered another bottle, treasuring it, drinking slowly. By the end of the second bottle he felt pleasantly lightheaded. The grill room was filling up now, and he balanced the possibility of running into someone he knew and having to talk to him against the joy of one more bottle of beer. He decided to take the risk and ordered a third bottle.
It was nearly eight o'clock by the time he got back to his room. He hadn't had to talk to anybody. It was his lucky hotel. He undressed, put on pajamas, got into bed, and turned out the light. He lay there listening to the muted hum of the city far below him. A siren screaming past reminded him that he was in his native city. Ah, he thought regretfully as he slipped off to sleep, there will be no knock on my door tonight.
He awoke in pain. His stomach was contracting spasmodically. The bed was soaked in sweat. The pains came and went, sharp and stabbing. Christ, he thought, this must be something like what women go through in childbirth. He had to go to the bathroom. He put on the light, swung his legs carefully over the side of the bed, walked slowly into the bathroom, sat on the toilet. He could feel what seemed like gallons of hot liquid gushing out of him. The pain went down, but he wasn't sure he would be strong enough to get back to bed. When he finally stood up, he had to hold onto the shelf over the basin for support. The liquid in the toilet bowl was black. He pulled the chain. He felt a hot wetness dripping down the inside of his legs. It was blood, blackish red. There was no way in which he could control it. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. He knew he should be afraid, but all he felt was disgust at his body's betrayal. He got a towel and stuffed it up between his legs. Leaving his stained pajama bottoms on the bathroom floor, he made his way back to the bed and dropped on it. He felt weak, but there was no pain. For a moment he thought that he had dreamt it all. He looked at his watch. It was four-thirty in the morning. New York time, he remembered. Zone of blood. It was no hour to wake anyone. If he was still bleeding by eight o'clock, he would call a doctor. Then he realized that he didn't know the names of any doctors in New York. The penalty of health. He would figure it out in the morning. He put out the light and closed his eyes and tried to sleep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul ... Childhood formulas.
Anne's psychology professor had seen something in his handwriting. Had he seen this night in New York?
Then he fell asleep. He slept without dreaming.
He was bone-tired when he awoke, marrow-tired. But there was no more bleeding. It was almost nine o'clock. There was pale, smog-diluted sunlight outside the window. The city shimmered in a haze of heat.
He took the towel out from between his legs. He had obviously bled for a while during his sleep, but by now the blood was caked and dry on the towel. Old, unsolved, interior murders. He moved with care, showered for a long time but did not have the courage to turn the water cold. As he dressed, his body felt broken, as though he had fallen from a great distance.
He went downstairs and had breakfast among the tourists and traveling salesmen in the coffee shop. The factory taste of frozen orange juice. No Mediterranean outside the window, no daughter, no mistress across the table, no leer from the waitress. The coffee of his homeland was like dishwater. He made himself eat two pieces of toast for strength. No croissants, no brioches. Had he come to the wrong country?
He read The New York Times. The casualty count was down in Vietnam. The vice-president had made a provocative, alliterative speech. A plane had fallen. He was not the only one who traveled too much. A critic he had never heard of scolded a novelist he had never read. Teams that had not been created when he still went to baseball games had won and lost. A pitcher who was nearly as old as he still made a living throwing the knuckle ball. The men and women who had died the day before were people he had not known. Informed now, he faced the day.
He went from the world of air conditioning out into the climate of New York. He winced on the sidewalk. Remembering his secretary's warning, he was wary of muggers. If he announced, I have bled this night, would a boy scout find him a taxi? He had no quarter for the doorman, so he gave him a dollar bill. He remembered when doormen were grateful for dimes.
Getting into the taxi was like climbing a cliff. He gave the address on East Seventieth Street. The taxi driver was an old man with a greenish complexion who looked as though he were dying. From the permit on the back of the driver's seat, Craig saw that the man had a Russian name. Did the driver regret that he, or his father before him, had left Odessa?
The taxi inched, spurted, braked, missed other cars by inches on its way across town. Near death, the driver had nothing to lose. Forty-fourth Street, going East was his Indianapolis. He was high in the year's standings for the Grand Prix. If he survived the season, his fortune would be made.
Bruce Thomas lived in a brownstone with newly painted window frames. There was a little plaque near the front door that announced that the house was protected by a private patrol service. Craig had been there several times before, to big parties. He remembered having enjoyed himself. He had wandered once into Bruce's study on the second floor. The shelves of the study had been laden with statues, plaques, scrolls, that Thomas had won for his movies. Craig had won some statues, scrolls, and plaques himself, but he didn't know where they were now.
He rang the bell. Thomas opened the door himself, dressed in corduroy slacks and an open-necked polo shirt. He was a neat, graceful, slight man with a warm smile.
"Bruce," Craig said as he went into the hallway, "I think you'd better get me a doctor."
He sat down on a chair in the hall because he couldn't walk any farther.
HE was still alive after three days. He was in a bright room in a good hospital, and Bruce Thomas had found him a soft-voiced old doctor who was soothing and taciturn. The chief surgeon of the hospital, a cheerful round man, kept dropping in as though he just wanted to chat with Craig about the movies and the theatre, but Craig knew that he was watching him closely, looking for symptoms that would mean that an emergency operation might be necessary at any moment. When Craig asked him what the chances were after an operation like that, the surgeon said flatly, without hesitation, "Fifty-fifty." If Craig had had any relatives the doctor could talk to, the doctor would probably have told them instead of the patient, but the only people who had come to his room so far were Thomas and Belinda.
He was under light sedation and suffering from no real pain except for the bruised places on his arms where the needles had been placed for five transfusions and for the varying intravenous feedings of glucose and salt. For some reason the tubes kept clogging, and the needles kept falling out. The veins in his arms had become increasingly difficult to find, and finally the hospital expert, a lovely Scandinavian girl, had been called in to see what she could do. She had cleared the room, even shutting the door on his private day nurse, a tough old ex-captain in the Nursing Corps, a veteran of Korea. "I can't stand an audience," the expert had said. Talent, in a hospital as elsewhere, Craig saw, had its imperious prerogatives. The Scandinavian girl had pushed and prodded, shaking her neat blonde head, and then with one deft stroke had inserted the needle painlessly into a vein on the back of his right hand and adjusted the flow of solution to it. He never saw her again. He was sorry about that. She reminded him of the young Danish mother by the side of the pool in Antibes. Fifty-fifty, he marveled, and that's what a man thinks of.
The worst thing was the headaches that came after the transfusions. That was normal, he was told. Naturally, in a hospital, pain must seem normal to the people who work there.
Thomas had been perfect. He visited the room twice a day, not overdoing his concern. "There's a good chance," he said on the third day, "that you'll be out of here in less than two weeks, and then we can get to work." He had not wasted any time. He had secured an O.K. from United Artists, and they were talking of a budget of a million and a half dollars for the picture. Thomas had already found a great old mansion in Sands Point where they could shoot on location. He took it for granted that Craig would be the co-producer. If he had heard the surgeon's fifty-fifty estimate, he gave no hint of it.
He was in the room on the third day when the door swung open and Murphy strode in. "What the h.e.l.l is going on, Jesse?" Murphy asked loudly.
"What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?" Craig said. "I thought you were in Rome."
"I'm not in Rome," Murphy said. "Hi, Bruce. Are you two guys fighting already?"
"Yes," Thomas said, smiling. "Art is long and ulcers fleeting."
Craig was too tired to inquire how Murphy had found out that he was in the hospital. But he was happy to see him there. Murphy would arrange everything. He himself could just drift into his doped and not unpleasant dreams in which night and day blended, pain and pleasure were impersonal abstractions. Knowing that all was now in safe hands, he could concentrate merely on dominating the rebellion of his blood.
"They told me I could only stay five minutes," Murphy said. "I just wanted to see if you were still alive. Do you want me to fly in my guy from Beverly Hills? He's supposed to be the best in the country."
Everything that Murphy touched was the best in the country. "No need, Murph," Craig said. "The men I have here are fine."
"Well, you just don't worry about anything but getting better," Murphy said. "By the time you get out of here, I'll have a contract ready for you to sign that'll have United Artists screaming in anguish. Come on, Bruce. We have things to discuss that are not for invalids' ears." Murphy patted Craig's shoulder roughly. "You mustn't scare your old friends like this," he said very gently. "Sonia sends her love. All right, Nurse, all right, I'm going." The ex-captain in the Nursing Corps was glowering blackly at him and looking dramatically at her watch.
The two men went out. The nurse fussed a little with a pillow. "Business," she said, "kills more men than bullets."
For a man who has begun his working life in the theatre, Craig thought, a hospital room is a fitting place to end it. It is like a stage. The hero is in the center with all the lights upon him. The doctor is the director, although he doubles by playing one of the parts. He watches mostly from the wings, preparing to intervene when necessary, whispering to the other actors that they can go on now, that they must enter smiling, that they are not to prolong their scenes unduly. The nurses, like stagehands, move the props around-hurry on with thermometers, trays, bed-pans, syringes, instruments for the taking or infusion of blood.
The hero has a long part to play-the work is constructed around him, he never leaves the stage, he has a run-of-the-play contract. Ungratefully, he sometimes grumbles at his prominence, is quick to criticize the manner in which other actors play their scenes with him, would replace them or cut them if he could.
The first one he would have eliminated, if he could, was Belinda Ewen. By the fourth day in the hospital she had decided that he was going to recover and that his recovery would be speeded by forcing him to stop brooding, as she described it, and occupy himself with the business of everyday life. She reported that she had checked him out of the hotel and packed his things. His suitcases were now thriftily stored in the office. Mail and messages were to be forwarded. People had been notified. She had called the Times. When he protested weakly about this, she said, firm in her concept of orderly, civilized behavior, that friends and family and the public had a right to know. He refused to ask her what friends and family she had selected. The telephone in the office rang all day. He'd be surprised how many people were interested in him. With her efficiency it was likely that hundreds of well-wishers would soon be thronging through his room. He pleaded with the doctors for release, plotted escape.
In fact, by now he felt strong enough to see people. They had removed the needles from the battered veins, there were no more transfusions, he could sit up and take liquid nourishment. He had even shaved. His face in the mirror had shocked him. It had the same greenish pallor as the Russian taxi driver's. He resolved that until he left the hospital he would allow Miss Balissano, his military day nurse, who had offered to do so, to shave him.
The mail Belinda brought him included a bill from his wife's lawyer for five thousand dollars. On account. He had agreed to pay her lawyers in the first burst of generosity and relief when he had finally made the decision to get a divorce and realized that, with money, it was possible to obtain one.
A letter from his accountant reminded him that he had to make up his mind about what he wanted to do about the seventy thousand dollars that the Internal Revenue Service was demanding from him. They were becoming menacing, his lawyer wrote.
Belinda had found the copy of The Three Horizons in his hotel room and had read it. She was favorably impressed by it and brought over large casting books with the photographs of actors and actresses in Hollywood and New York for him to glance through and think about who might play which part. He fingered through the books languidly to please Belinda.
She had brought over his checkbook. There were bills to be paid. He had no Blue Cross or Health Insurance, and the hospital had asked her discreetly for an advance. She had made out a check for a thousand dollars. Obediently, he signed it. He signed checks for office rent, telephone and telegraph bills, the Diners' Club, the Air-Travel Card. Dead or alive, he must maintain his credit rating. He hoped Anne's psychology professor would never see his signature.
Now that he was back in business, Belinda said, she had brought over the scripts of two plays by prominent authors that had come into the office in the last week. She had read them and hadn't thought much of them, but the prominent authors would expect a personal note from him. She would bring her pad the next day, prepared to take dictation. He promised to read the plays by the prominent authors. She admired the flowers that the Murphys and the Thomases and Walt Klein had sent, all lavish displays from the most expensive florist on Fifth Avenue. She was shocked when he said, "They make me feel as though I'm on my own bier. Send them down to the children's ward."
She warned him darkly about Miss Balissano. The woman was callous, she said, and at the same time maniacally overprotective. She practically had to fight her way with physical force to get into his room each time she came. Fanatical overprotectiveness was dangerous. It was negative thinking. He promised to indulge in no negative thinking, to consider replacing Miss Balissano.
Miss Balissano came in at this point, and Belinda said, "I see my time is up," her tone suggesting that she had been struck across the face with a weapon. She left, and for the first time since Craig had met Miss Balissano, he was glad to see her.
Miss Balissano took one look at the ma.n.u.scripts and casting books piled on his bedside table and picked them up and put them on the floor out of sight. She had learned something in Korea.
He was lying in his bed with a thermometer in his mouth when Anne came in. It was a gray day, almost evening, and the room was dark. Anne opened the door tentatively, as though ready to flee at the first word from him. He waved a dumb greeting to her, indicating the tube in his mouth. She smiled uncertainly, came over to the bed, leaned over and gave him a little nervous peck on the forehead. He reached out his hand and held hers. "Oh Daddy," she said. She wept softly.
Miss Balissano came in, turned on the light, took the thermometer, made a notation on his chart. She always refused to tell him what his temperature was.