The Merry Month of May

by James Jones

  “Oh,” Weintraub said dreamily. “Incidentally. She asked me if I had ever been up to Harry’s studio up under the roof. Said it was a lovely pad. I’ve never been up there. Have you?”

  “She said what!” I exclaimed.

  “Just that,” he said. “Apparently she, they, were up there in the afternoon.”

  “Great God!” I said. “He must be out of his mind to do something like that!”

  “Yeah,” Weintraub sighed, “I guess he’s hooked, all right.” The battered look came back over his face. “Christ, I wish I had some of his money.”

  “You’ve simply got to keep quiet about this, Dave,” I said. “You simply must.”

  “Oh, I’ll keep quiet,” he said. “Why should I not? Only, I’ve got to admit I’m hoping she don’t leave Paris too soon, and that there are more parades and meetings to keep Harry occupied nights.” He grinned at me. But it was a rueful battered grin.

  I left him sitting there, one moment dreamy-looking, the next looking battered, and went home by my round-about way feeling very distressed.

  I saw Harry the next day. There was no parade or big meeting of dissidents, and he was at home for the by now ritual meeting of Americans at his apartment. But so was Samantha there, also! And of course so was Weintraub.

  Sam came in by herself. And she acted absolutely correctly. There were no sighs, or long flirtatious glances, or double-entendre statements, from that one. She spent most of her time with Weintraub, talking quietly, and the rest of it she spent with Louisa. There was certainly no indication that she was Harry’s mistress. Perhaps mistress is the wrong word. Maybe paramour is better. I do not know what to call it, since there was no love involved at all between them. When she left Weintraub and went over to Louisa, she sat all curled up at Louisa’s feet like an adoring kitten. They talked a long time. I had heard Louisa ask her earlier when she first came in if she had just returned from a trip, but I do not think Louisa made the connection between Harry’s Cannes trip and Samantha’s absence. Sam could not have been nicer to her.

  Even so, it was all almost a little too much to stomach.

  Finally I got Harry off in a corner alone, behind the bar.

  “My God, Harry! What in the name of heaven do you mean bringing that girl in here like that?”

  He grinned at me. He actually grinned at me. “She was lonesome,” he said. “Said she wanted to be around some Americans. I didn’t see why she couldn’t come. She’s not going to make any gaff.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “But even so, Harry, my God!”

  “She likes Louisa,” he grinned. “She told me so herself in Cannes.”

  “Harry, look,” I said guardedly, after looking around to see there was no one near enough to hear us. “What are you now? Fifty? Almost. Do you know what in hell you’re doing? Have you lost your marbles?”

  He grinned at me narrowly, and those narrow eyes of his and his bald head suddenly looked eagle-ish. “Jack,” he said, quite carefully, but in a conversational tone, “have you ever reached a point in your life where you just don’t give a shit?”

  “No, I don’t think I ever have,” I said.

  “Well, I have,” he said quite calmly. “And as for being fifty, which you are right I almost am, it seems to me it’s time to move. Move. Move about what you want. Blink your eyes, Jack, and it’ll be ten years from now and I’ll be sixty. Blink again, and make it seventy. And where’ll I be then, hunh? If I aint dead already.”

  “Well then, for God’s sake, put her in an apartment somewhere. Set her up. You’ve got the money. But for God’s sake don’t bring her right here on the Island, and stash her in one of those little hotels. Everybody on the Island knows you, Harry. Get her an apartment in the Sixth.”

  “She wouldn’t stay,” he said, matter-of-factly. “She’s going to go to Israel. And she’ll go. I’m not at all sure, Jack, that I won’t go down there too, after her. I think I may.

  “You know about that, hey? The hotel,” he added. “Weintraub told me,” I said. “He also told me she told him what a fine studio you had here in the building up under the roof.”

  “Yeah, I took them up there. As a matter of fact, we made love up there, yesterday afternoon. I told you, Jack. I’ve reached a point where I don’t give a shit any more.”

  “You sure have,” was all I could come back with.

  “I have.”

  I was aghast. “You must be out of your mind,” I said, feebly. “You’ve got to have some responsibilities. Do you remember that your own son is, or was, her lover and is crazy in love with her?”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “For how long?”

  “Well, a week. Or maybe ten days. But you know as well as I do that that is long enough. Time doesn’t matter in a thing like that.”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “Him. Him, and those loudly spouted philosophies of his about free love.” He grinned again, with that eagle-ish look. “It seems to be turning out that I’m more of a radical than he is. “Incidentally, Jack. I know they spent most of last night with Weintraub. She told me. And I don’t give a damn. What do you think about that?” There was not anything that I could do. We had been there alone at the corner of the bar too long now already. Both of us had raised our voices at least once. I thought it was time to back off. I knew it was. “Make me another drink, Harry,” I said, “and I’ll circulate a little.”

  “With pleasure,” he grinned.

  I took my new drink and walked down the length of the long room, saying a word here and a hello there, and wound up where Louisa and Samantha were.

  “Well, Mr. Hartley,” Sam said immediately, from her seat on the carpeted floor. “Hello, Mr. Hartley. How are you, Mr. Hartley? You’re looking good. It’s nice to see that kind, decent face of yours again, Mr. Hartley.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Thank you. I hear you’ve been on a trip.”

  “I have,” she said. “But now I’m back.”

  I just nodded.

  “And do you want to know who I’ve missed the most while I was away?” Sam said. “I’ve missed you, Mr. Hartley. But most of all I’ve missed Louisa here. She’s the one I missed most of all.” Louisa was beginning to blush.

  “Hey, Harry!” Samantha called down the length of the long room. “I’m still really crazy in love with your wife! Crazy!”

  Everyone laughed. At the bar Harry merely grinned and nodded, with that eagle-like look I had never seen on him before. Louisa was now blushing completely.

  “You’re incorrigible,” she said. But I had hardly ever seen her looking happier. “Really incorrigible. Your mother should have spanked you more.”

  “Oh, she did,” Sam smiled up at her, “she did. She spanked just about everybody. Including my father, and most of her girlfriends.”

  Forcing myself to grin an appreciative acknowledgment, I went over to Weintraub and left them. He stared at me dreamily, with that dreamy look of last night. After a while, after a proper amount of time, I got my hat and umbrella and left. Since Harry was back, I had no obligation to keep Louisa company, and I did not want to think about them, any of them. I dined alone.

  Later on that night Harry showed up over at the Odéon. Weintraub and I were both there. So was Hill. Samantha did not appear.

  Harry had come to see what they had decided about his proposition. He had been given a Laissez-Passer card by the Chairman Daniel when there before. So he just appeared in the doorway, his always new, starched trenchcoat billowing with the collar up around his ears, a cigarette dangling from his jaw. He and Hill only nodded stiffly at each other. Then he asked Daniel what their decision was.

  Daniel, always the Chairman, gave a long spiel about how they had discussed it and had voted, in the proper democratic way, which was the essence of the Revolution, and they had decided to accept Harry’s offer. The two principals he had chosen would be ready any time he wanted them. They would put themselves at his disposal, for the good of the Revolution, but he would have to instruct them.
Neither of them was a trained actor.

  Harry accepted graciously. He would instruct them, all right. And he would bring his own camera, his own cameraman, a guy he had worked with, and he would buy his own film. What he wanted was the proper backgrounds for the scenes he would shoot. The whole thing would key in on a love affair between Terri and Anne-Marie, which would take place during the Revolution. He would shoot all that. Then they would mix it all up with the film the students had already shot to get the proper ambiance. But he wanted to get one thing clear. Once they had accepted, he was the boss—the dictator. There would be no democratic discussions and votings while he was the boss of the film. Otherwise, it would never get done. That was his only stipulation. Once they had accepted the idea, and he started shooting, they would have to accept that too: that he was the absolute boss. Was that all right?

  Daniel fidgeted and turned a little red. Well, they should discuss that and vote on it before they finally decided. However, for himself, he was more than willing to go along with that. He understood and accepted that a director had to have full authority. Then he gravely told Harry about the 50 cans of missing film lost in Italy.

  “I think you ought to know about that, before we begin,” Daniel said.

  Harry made a sour face. That was bad luck, he said. But they would have to do with what they had. It might mean his having to shoot more background stuff. But they could do that.

  I was very tired. I had been working very hard the last two days with Terri, trying to frame and flesh out the two articles that I had promised them were to go into my Review. We had worked very hard at my place—in anticipation of this arrival of Harry’s which would take Terri away from me for an unknown number of days; and I had got my framing all down. But I was beat. So I sat in a hot corner of the office yawning while the scene went on.

  True to the old Revolutionary principle, Daniel called a meeting and got out his gavel, one of the girls took stenographic minutes for the record, and Daniel opened the floor for debate. Harry stood by the door listening, his cigarette still hanging. Nobody had any objections apparently. A couple of youngsters spoke shortly, saying the same thing practically, which was that as directorial students of Cinema themselves they understood the director had to have full authority. Then Hill stepped out front and asked for the floor.

  Well, I had listened to Weintraub’s description of his wild emotional speeches of a few days before, and Hill did exactly the same thing again. He did not wave his arms or gnash his teeth, this time, as Weintraub said he had done before. But the rest of it was the same: overwrought, far too high-keyed, much too lurid and with much too much hyperbole. He made a complete ass of himself. In the student jargon of Anarchism, which was not really all that different from the old-time Communist jargon, he accused Harry of just about everything except stealing the kitchen sink.

  Harry simply stood by the door, his hands in his trenchcoat pockets, a little smile on his mouth, his eyes narrowed, occasionally puffing at the cigarette between his lips.

  In his summation Hill used that ringing old French phrase of Zola from the Dreyfus Affair “J’accuse,” and pointed a finger dramatically at his father. “I accuse this man of being a paid lackey of the very Establishment we are trying, to bring down. I accuse him of having no moral precepts whatever with regard to our Revolution. I accuse him of just about every kind of revisionism and revisionist thinking that exist in our messed-up horrible world. True, he is a member of the Film Directors’ Union. But what did any of those unions do, about anything, before we students started this Revolution? You all know that. Absolutely nothing. True, he went down to Cannes to strike his own film, but only after the Cannes Festival had been disrupted and abandoned and he could climb up on the bandwagon safely. I accuse him of using commercial, revisionist methods of the Establishment to impose on, and ruin, our own film of our own Revolution. A love story! He writes marvelous commercial love stories for the Film Industry Establishment, and makes a great deal of money at it, and all of them are full of commercial shit and untruths. I submit that he should not be allowed to touch or work on our Revolutionary film at all.” Finally he dropped his arm and stepped back.

  Daniel rapped his gavel. “Okay?” he said. “Okay. Now I suggest we vote. For myself, before we vote, I would like to add that I personally think that any methods that we use to get our film and our story out before the world are justified and therefore morally usable.”

  This time no one voted with Hill. Not even Terri and Bernard did. When the call came for the nay votes to the proposition, he stepped forward and gave his single nay staunchly and loudly and all alone.

  “Okay,” Daniel said. “That settles that.” He rapped his gavel. “You have our vote and our support, M. Gallagher,” he said from behind those cold steel-rimmed glasses. “And I, for one, think your idea an excellent one. We will give you everything we have within our limited resources.”

  “Well,” Harry said from the door. “Fine. Okay.” He stepped forward to the desk and turned to address the group. He really looked very romantic with his starched trenchcoat and a new cigarette in his mouth. “Tomorrow, Wednesday, there will be a big march by the Communist-led CGT Confederation. I want to photograph that march, with my principals in it. I realize that the Students’ Unions are not taking part in that march. But my own, affiliated union is, and my two actors can march with that group. I’ll have my own cameraman, and we will be moving in the parade in an open car. I have already set up this contingency, in case you people voted as you have. That’s all set. But I also want two of your crews out there shooting the march from different angles. I want the two best crews you’ve got, but I don’t know who they are or how good. Except for him there,” he said, indicating Hill. “I want him to head one of the crews. You must pick the other one yourself. But it is important right now to get as much excellent footage as possible, especially with this apparent loss of shot film that you’ve had. I’ll meet all of you here at around one o’clock tomorrow afternoon and we will set up the details here before we leave.” He turned to Daniel. “Is that okay by you?”

  “That is fine,” Daniel said. “We will have your two crews and everything set up as best we can for you.”

  “My group are donating their services,” Harry said. “Nobody wants to be paid. I will pay for my own film. But it’s important that we all use the same film, you understand.”

  “We will fix all that,” Daniel said. “We will have everything ready.”

  “Not quite everything,” Hill Gallagher said from the back of the room, and moved forward again.

  He had drifted back into the crowd of kids after the vote, and was standing almost against the wall into the “sleeping” quarters of the Committee, where I had seen him humping Samantha on that greasy mat that one night. I myself, in spite of all Hill’s violent emotions floating over the place, was half asleep on the bench in the steaming crowded little room.

  “I refuse the assignment,” Hill said, moving forward to the desk.

  Daniel tapped his gavel. “You can’t refuse,” he said.

  “But I do,” Hill said.

  Daniel tapped again. “All right,” he said from behind the steel-rimmed spectacles, “but I must then provisionally suspend you from this Committee. This is too serious a matter to vote on now, and we must wait until we have everybody here. But as Chairman I provisionally suspend you from the Committee until such time as a vote of approval or disapproval can be taken by all the members.”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Harry said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “M. Gallagher,” Daniel said crisply. “I do not know what kind of family matter is involved here between you and your son. But that is a personal matter, and has nothing at all to do with this Committee. We are concerned only about making the Revolution and we all took an oath of discipline when we became members of the Committee. Therefore, I have to rule that Hill is suspended, provisionally, until we can take a full vote on the matter.” He banged his gavel
.

  “You won’t have to take a vote!” Hill said. “I tender my resignation from this Committee as of right now!” And he was out the door, slamming it behind him. Harry, after fumbling with the door, was right after him.

  I was groggy, and exhausted, and very nearly asleep. So I was slower. They were standing arguing about ten yards down the dingy, ill-lit corridor as I came through the door.

  “You’re an ass, Hill,” Hairy was saying as I came up.

  “I may be an ass, but I am an idealistic ass,” Hill said. “And these ideals are no longer quite up to my standards.”

  “When I selected you,” Harry said patiently, “I only wanted to—”

  “You’ve taken Samantha,” Hill said. He glared at his father, his fists clenched against his thighs. “And now you’ve taken the film. And the Cinema Committee. And in the end, you’ll take the Revolution itself, all of you. And turn it back into the same shit that we’ve always had.”

  “Look, Hill,” Harry said. “Samantha would never have stayed with you. She’ll never stay with me, either. Samantha’s got no more morals than a snake, Hill. That’s just the way she is. The way the world is. She’ll never love anybody.”

  “She could have had,” Hill said. “Don’t touch me!” he said. “If you lay one finger on me I swear I’ll swing on you.”

  “Come on, fellows,” I said. I did not know what else to say.

  “I won’t touch you, boy,” Harry said.

  “Then go and fuck yourself,” Hill said. “And the film. And the Committee. And the God damned Revolution. I’m through. And you better not try to stop me.” He turned and stalked off down the dim, interminable corridor.