Contango (Ill Wind)

by James Hilton

  He turned and walked towards her with slow, deliberate steps. “If you really want to know what I was doing, Sylvia, I was imagining myself an Indian, chased westward by the white man, and coming at last over the mountains to this terrific end of the world.”

  “But, Nicky, that’s amazing—you LOOKED like an Indian—you’re still looking like one! If only you had some feathers and a blanket…”

  Thus the idea was born. They talked about it all the rest of that day, and throughout the next, fanning each other’s enthusiasm till they both returned to Santa Katerina considerably on fire.

  Sylvia had always been fascinated by Indians. Racial problems of all kinds interested her; she had had many friendships with Japanese and Chinese, and even to negroes she felt much less than the physical repugnance she found it politic to assume. But of all the ethnic types in America, the native red man attracted her most and stirred her to the largest measure of sympathy; often, seeing them from the train-windows at Albuquerque, Espanola, and other stations on the Santa Fé railroad, she had sensed the tragedy of their survival into a machine-ridden age, and had wondered why the subject had not attracted more attention from writers. In the early days of her career she had once gone to New Mexico to make a cowboy film with real Indians in it, but they had been rather degenerate specimens, hard drinkers and bad actors. That was part of their fate; they were a dumb, stricken race, perishing by the bounty of the conqueror no less than formerly by his sword. As Sylvia pondered on the theme, it seemed to her that here she had something she had never had before—the seed of a possibly gigantic picture, one that would transcend the usual distinctions between lowbrow and highbrow in an appeal that might be universally American. Such a picture must present the whole pageant of conquest and subjection, not with any bitterness against the conquerors, but in the new spirit of national self-questioning that had been so rapidly engendered since 1929. She felt, intuitively, what she could not thoroughly expound—that the God’s-own-country type of American had withered under the shock of crumbling markets; and that the 1931 model was a charier being, more darkly sceptical and less eager to accept statistics of car- loadings as the final touchstone of civilisation.

  It gave Sylvia a keen pleasure to work out details of the picture. She decided it must be based on a simple framework—the story of an Indian family through several generations, beginning with warfare against the covered-waggoners and ending with the ignominious semi-captivity of the present. Nicky, of course, would take the part of a modern Indian youth, proud of his Chinookan or Seminole ancestry, yet toying with the civilisation of the invader, going to college, acquiring culture, falling in love with a city girl, and finally, to complete the cycle, returning to his own people unfitted for happiness in either their state or any other. For that last scene she had in mind a constant recollection of an Indian she had once seen at Silver City, waiting forlornly at the depot as her train halted—a tall, lonely figure with blue-black hair and hot, restless eyes, tragi-comic in a black suit, linen collar, and patent shoes. But behind the personal picture there must always be the background of the ever-westward thrust of skyscraper and railroad, the growth of little one-street townships into great cities, the absorption stage by stage of the last outposts of the Amerind.

  Nicky was no less taken with the idea than she was, but enthusiasm alone would not get them far; and as soon as they had settled the preliminary details they left Santa Katerina for Beverley Hills, to be nearer the scene of action. Sylvia in all this was a new woman, lovelier than ever in her eagerness, and she was really very lovely; there was no thought in her mind of retirement now; she would stage a magnificent “come-back” with by far the best thing she had ever done; the world would be at her feet again. She was sure that, as the American girl in love with the Indian, she could act as she had never acted before, quickened emotionally by the interest she felt in the problem behind the story. Nor did she now fear the day when her contract with Vox’s was due to expire. On the contrary, a week beforehand she drove up arrogantly in her ten-thousand-dollar Pierce-Arrow and interviewed Vox himself. He was a cultured Jew, clever, coldly polite, and rather deprecatory on principle. As soon as she had sketched out her idea he told her quite definitely that it would never do. Nor did her claim to have discovered a new male star rouse him to any degree of rapture. Good ideas and good actors, he indicated, were nearly at giving-away prices; what a film had to have, in the first place, was a reasonable chance of securing the dollar-support of the public. And hers hadn’t. The public, he declared, took no interest whatever in the Indian problem. It was true that Sylvia herself still had a name, but she would certainly sacrifice it all if she allowed herself to be featured as an American woman mixed up with a coloured man. People simply wouldn’t stand it; in fact, it might even lead to race-riots and be prohibited.

  “Didn’t Pocohontas marry a white man?” she interrupted.

  “Yes, and ‘Othello’s’ a story about a nigger and a white girl,” he retorted, “but you daren’t talk about it in the Carolinas.”

  “But that’s an entirely different matter. The Indian is as white as the Italian or the Spaniard. He’s as white as the Californian will be in a few more generations.”

  “I don’t dispute it, Miss Seydel,” answered Vox, with a shrug of the shoulders. “But I still tell you, quite candidly, that to appear in public in such a picture as you suggest is simply professional suicide for you.”

  “I don’t see that it need be. After all, why shouldn’t we be proud of the Indian traditions? They’re part of our country. And even by white standards, a great many Indians are fine-looking, don’t you think? As for sex-appeal, if the public wants something new in that direction, I can promise it from the young Roumanian I’ve got in mind to take the chief part.”

  “My dear Miss Seydel, if it were all a matter of only that, I could produce at least a dozen niggers that have more of it than any white man I know. And there are plenty of women who’d be thrilled by ’em easily enough in the safety of a dollar-seat at the movies. The trouble is that we don’t want certain things to happen in real life, and that’s why we have to keep them off the stage and screen.”

  “But you’re still talking about niggers. …”

  It was no use arguing, however. She left quite convinced that she could expect no support from any of the well-known producing companies. She was too scornful of their attitude to feel defeat; indeed, her scorn fed fuel to her keenness. Yet, if what Vox had said were true, the outlook did not appear very hopeful. Only gradually did she accept the notion that she must undertake the task herself. At first, this would have seemed preposterous, for she, of all persons, knew the immense technical difficulties of picture-making on a large scale. The cost, too, and the big risk of financial failure, made the project seem particularly mad; it was too huge a stake to play for, after all her Wall Street losses. And yet, when she continued to think about it, it was those Wall Street losses that finally urged her on; so much of her money had melted away into nothing, surely she could adventure a fraction of the residue in something, in something that was both big and real? Almost without awareness that she had already made the decision, she began to look about for possible colleagues in the enterprise; and her final misgivings disappeared when, to her great surprise, she found Statler sympathetic. Not only that; he offered to join her financially in the venture on a fifty-fifty basis. The fact that the film-companies wouldn’t touch it didn’t disturb him in the least. “I’ve made my pile by doing just what the other guy doesn’t do,” he said. “And I’ve found out another thing, too—that there ain’t no fools like those that think they know their own business best.”

  As for Nicky, he was sheerly delighted with the prospect of such new and exciting activities. He read books about the Indians, took flying visits into Arizona and New Mexico in search of good locations, and absorbed all the colour and tradition he could get hold of. He also practised before the camera and microphone, and was successful enough to enjoy
himself very thoroughly. Sylvia was equally busy, engaging camera-men, production-managers, art-directors, dialogue-writers, and all the hordes of miscellaneous camp-followers required for such a job. These preparations were complete by the end of August, and the actual filming began a fortnight later at Sabinal, New Mexico.

  “Amerind,” as Sylvia decided to call the picture, was in many ways a unique production. Not wholly original in treatment (it owed obvious debts to the great Griffiths canvases and also to the more recent all-negro “Hallelujah”), it nevertheless broke as much new ground as could be expected from a single work. It cost money, and there was no stinting, but for size and scope it was probably one of the cheapest films ever made. Sylvia and Nicky drew salaries which, by Hollywood standards, were quite small, and the producer was a young Russian of genius, but not yet of reputation, who was glad enough to take his chance for less than the pay of a swell gangster. Except for Sylvia, nobody had a name already well-known to the world. There was about the entire enterprise, indeed, a prevalent atmosphere of youth and eager ambition; the whole company were aware, intuitively even if they did not think it out, that they were engaged in a pioneer adventure, something different in character from the conventional Hollywood job.

  But “Amerind’s” greatest triumph, of course, was Nicky. As soon as the first few scenes had been shot, Sylvia was aware that he would prove to be all that she had hoped, and more. Not only was his acting superb, but he had an extraordinary success with the real Indians of the locality. He seemed to make them realise that the picture was intended to dignify and not travesty their race; he conquered their shyness, induced them to share in the general zest and excitement, and made a few of them into quite excellent actors. None of the big scenes—the fight with the settlers, the Indian dance, the trek to the reserved territory—would have been half so effective without his guidances and persuasions. It was noticeable that the Indians accepted him as one of themselves as they did no other; in the native village he strolled in and out of the small adobe huts as unceremoniously as (Sylvia reflected) he was liable to stroll in and out of her own and doubtless anyone else’s bedroom. He was like that. She felt it was probably his most successful pose, that of having no pose at all.

  She was surpassingly happy during those crowded, hard-working weeks at Sabinal. They were something like a miracle to her, bringing back what she had believed entirely lost, the glamour of her early film-days. There were the same cries and shoutings, the same smells of dust and horses and camp-fire cooking, the same flaunted landscape-colours. Impossible to capture these directly for the film, but they were somehow imposed, she hoped, on every cadence and movement of those who were there amongst them the flaming ocotillo and lemon- yellow cactus, the ash-grey sage-brush against that background of pale mauve desert and violet horizon. Those September dawns when they all set out early, in cars as far as the road took them, then on horseback trails into the mountains, cast a spell over memory; made vivid all that she had ever had of happiness or excitement, and blacked out every qualm and trouble of more recent years. At that mile-high altitude, under the copper sky as the sun rose, one could sniff the future, one felt alive in the morning of the world. This was America, she felt, in a sense that might mean more to Americans if ever some day their skyscraper civilisation should fall away. She herself throve in it; her body freshened and grew taut with new ardours. Once, when Nicky kissed her, she returned his caress with a passion that overwhelmed them both, but him only with a curious wayward ecstasy. She had never met anyone the least like him before, and was sure she never would again. She was by no means confident that he was entirely sane. Certainly he was the only man she had ever known whose genius took in everything that he WAS as well as a few things that he HAD. The warm and sombre dignity of his Indian characterisation touched her as she felt sure millions of others would be touched; and it was perhaps natural that after his sublimities before the camera he should fly to the quaintest extremes when off duty. But on duty or off, he seemed alive to her in a sense in which most other people were dead; even his created self, the Indian of the film, lived more than all her far-away acquaintances of club-house and studio.

  She had very few acting scenes at Sabinal; most of hers were interiors to be shot later on in Hollywood. In these she was to take the part of the modern New York girl enamoured of the Indian, meeting him in drawing-rooms, yet seeing behind his tamed elegance the splendour of the untameable. It was a part that she looked forward to throughout those long, burning days in the desert; yet when at last the camp broke up and she waved farewell to the Indians from the window of the Los Angeles express there came over her a feeling of simple misery, as for a child’s party that was over.

  The month that followed of studio-work, cutting, and final arrangement, might have been anti-climax but for her growing consciousness of success. Her acting surprised herself; when she compared it with that in her last film, it was as though she had grown into someone else. The love-scenes with Nicky were quite perfect, and his brooding tenderness set the key for what she felt sure would sound a new motif in screen-passion. Scores of men had made love to her, both before the camera and otherwise, but not one had impressed with such flawlessness of technique. Yet she found herself entirely incapable of judging whether this flawlessness in Nicky were due mainly to instinct or to experience. As a critic of love, she was puzzled; but as an exhibitionist she could not but admire the virtuosity of a performance which gave her own talents such full and confident scope. Never, indeed, had celluloid recorded her in better form.

  When the last shot had been taken (one morning in October) she had everyone she could think of called up on the telephone and invited to an impromptu party at her house that same evening. She felt recklessly triumphant, and took vast delight in the excitements and complications of such large-scale planning at short notice—the servants clearing the big rooms for dancing, hired waiters unpacking crockery, the armies of electricians festooning coloured lights from the eucalyptus trees in the garden. She gave her bootlegger the largest private order he had had for months, and told the leader of a jazz-band over the San Francisco telephone that he could fly his men across at any expense; she wanted the best saxophones on the Pacific slope that night and was prepared to pay for them. All this kind of thing was reminiscent of more profligate days, but there was an intention in her mind that made profligacy appear worth while: it was a gesture to announce that Sylvia Seydel was still rich, just as later her picture could do its own announcing that she was not only still great but greater than ever.

  Between two and three hundred persons arrived, few of them personal friends, most mere acquaintances, some scarcely even that. She stirred to an inward contempt as she regally shook hands and accepted their chattering congratulations; but the contempt was in some sense a luxury to which she was treating herself as reward. She knew the mood of these people and the thoughts they had been exchanging about her ever since the disappointment (she could allow the word now) of her last picture. She knew that most of them thought that she had lost her head and was about to lose what was left of her money also; she knew that they had been laughing at her, reckoning her losses, scandalising her relationship with Nicky, whom they probably regarded as just the usual gigolo foreigner trading on his title and good looks—a queen’s favourite even if not already a prince-consort. Such knowledge gave her a cool and calculating arrogance; she would show these people the kind she really was and the kind Nicky really was. That he was attractive, witty, and clever, had been demonstrated often enough; but how much more was there that they would soon have to concede? She felt a stormy, half-proprietary pride in him as she caught over his shoulder fleeting stares of other dancers—their inquisitive, envious, slightly ill-wishing eyes. “They’d enjoy themselves like this at my funeral,” she whispered to Statler, during an interval, and he answered, in his softly cooing voice: “I guess they think this is your funeral, Miss Seydel.”

  Supper was taken in the huge panelled dining-ro
om which had been cleared of all furniture except long buffet-tables. For over an hour the roar of conversation and popping of corks gathered impetus; there were torrents of champagne, and a few of the guests soon began to get noisily tipsy. The bootlegger supplying the wines had sent also, as a friendly tribute to the movie-queen, the equipment of a new game of his own invention; it consisted of life-size rubber heads of gloomily-featured persons labelled “Depression,” “Unemployment,” “Stocks Slump,” and so on, and the game was to shy balls at these figures till they toppled over and rang a bell. But there were not enough balls to go round, and some of the crowd pelted the figures with apples, empty bottles, and ice out of the champagne buckets, till the floor and walls at that end of the room were splashed and littered with debris. Whenever the bell did ring pandemonium raged for minutes on end, amidst which the tipsier among the throwers aimed their missiles wildly. Minor casualties resulted from these commotions, and a man’s arm was badly gashed with broken glass; there also developed a noisy fight on the lawns between two hastily organised gangs, ending by the pushing of a garden-roller into an ornamental pond. Some rather valuable plants were destroyed and miscellaneous other items of damage done before the warriors of both sexes selected their partners, filled up their hip-flasks, and retired to amorous seclusion in the cars parked in the avenue. Indeed, there could be no doubt that the party was proving a thorough success.