Evening in Byzantium

by Irwin Shaw

  Was it a sign of age that he was unconvinced, that he believed these reckless calls to action could only lead to worse abuses than the ones they sought to correct?

  If he were twenty, like Anne, or twenty-two, like Gail, would he be encouraged to revolt, would he not glory in plotting the destruction of cities?

  He remembered Murray Sloan’s tumbrels, Versailles the night before the fall of the Bastille. Whose side would he be on the day the tumbrels rolled down his street? Where would Anne be riding? Constance? Gail McKinnon? His wife?

  The Italian film was a bad one for a man to see just after he had told his daughter he was hooked on making films. It was stillborn from the beginning, worthless or evil as art, finally boring. It didn’t even have the true tragic advantage of reducing his own predicament to scale, of making his own small, private concerns, his entanglements with women, his professional drifting, seem picayune or comfortingly inconsequential.

  He left before the end, and as he went out of the theatre to restore himself, he tried to remember, frame by frame, the films of Buñuel and Bergman he had seen that week.

  The sun was still high over the horizon, and on the chance that Anne hadn’t gone in yet, he went down the steps to the Carlton beach to look for her. She was at a table near the bar in the briefest of bikinis, broad-shouldered and opulently shaped. A father, he would have preferred a less revealing costume. Seated next to her was Ian Wadleigh in swimming trunks. Across the table from the two of them was Gail McKinnon, wearing the scant, pink, two-piece bathing suit she had worn at the Murphys’ cabana. Craig felt guilty for allowing Anne to go off on her own, not providing her with other company.

  Wadleigh had obviously not been wasting his time seeing too many films. He was as brown as the two girls. In his ill-fitting clothes he had seemed ungracefully shaped, almost tumescent, but stripped for the beach as he was now, his flesh was solid, and he looked powerful and dominating. He was laughing and gesturing with a glass he held in his hand. None of the three noticed Craig for the moment, and he half-resolved to turn and walk away. There was something too reminiscent in the group for him, it was too much like the Italian actor on the beach showing his teeth in a smile, the two girls listening to him.

  But he fought down the impulse as bad-tempered and childish and went up to the table. Gail was fiddling with her tape recorder, and for a second Craig was seized by the uneasy thought that she had been interviewing Anne. He had neglected to warn Anne to keep her mouth shut. But as he came up to the table, he heard Gail saying, “Thanks, Ian. I’m sure they’ll like it back in the States. I’m not so sure that you’ll ever be allowed back in Cannes again, though.”

  “Down with double talk,” Ian said. “Screw politesse. Name the whores and their works, that’s my motto.”

  Oh, Christ, Craig thought, he’s still on that kick. “Good evening, folks,” he said.

  “Hi, Jess,” Ian boomed out, his voice as imperial as his bronze body. With an audience of two pretty girls, he was transformed. “I was just instructing these charming young women on the inner workings of film festivals,” Wadleigh said. “Who sells what, who buys whom, in what sweat and slime Golden Palms are traded across secret counters. Sit down, Father. What’ll you have? Waiter. Garçon!”

  “Nothing, thank you,” Craig said. Wadleigh’s “Father” had a derisive ring to it. He sat down next to Gail, facing Anne. “What are you drinking?” he asked Anne.

  “Gin and tonic,” she said.

  He had never seen her drink before. When he had offered her wine at meals, she had refused, saying she didn’t like the taste. Gin, perhaps, was more suitable to youthful palates.

  “It’s awfully good of you, Father,” Wadleigh said, “to import admirers, at great personal expense, across continents and oceans.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Craig asked.

  “I read his novels,” Anne said. “They were assigned in a Modern Lit course.”

  “Hear that,” Wadleigh said, “I am a fixture in Modern Literature. Nubile scholars from coast to coast burn the midnight oil in honor of Ian Wadleigh. Imagine, on the bleak and desperate shingle of Cannes, I have found a reader.”

  “I’ve read a couple of them, too,” Gail said.

  “Praise them, dear, praise them,” Wadleigh said.

  “They’re okay,” Gail said.

  “My poor girl,” Wadleigh said jovially, “I’m afraid you’ve flunked the course.”

  Wadleigh was being obnoxious, but Craig couldn’t help being offended by Gail’s offhand dismissal of a man’s life’s work. “I think perhaps you ought to reread his books, Gail,” Craig said. “When you grow up.” For once he could take advantage of the difference in their ages. “Perhaps you’ll make a more enthusiastic judgment.”

  “Thanks,” Wadleigh said. “A man needs all the protection he can get from the young.”

  Gail smiled. “I didn’t know you were such close friends, you two,” she said. “Now, Jesse, there’re a couple or so more questions I have to put to the maestro, and then you can have him all to yourself …”

  “I’m sorry,” Craig said, standing. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just came down looking for Anne. You ought to go in now,” he said to Anne. “It’s beginning to get cold.”

  “I’d like to listen to the end,” Anne said. “I’m not cold.”

  “You stay, too, Jess,” Wadleigh said. “I’m at my most eloquent before my peers.”

  Unwilling, for no sensible reason, to leave Anne there with Gail McKinnon, Craig said, “Thanks for the invitation,” and sat down again. “As long as I’m here,” he said, “I’ll take a whisky.”

  “Two more,” Wadleigh said, holding up his glass to a passing waiter. Then to Gail McKinnon, “Shoot.”

  Gail turned her machine on. “Mr. Wadleigh,” she said, “earlier in this interview you said that the position of the writer for films is being steadily eroded. Would you care to enlarge on that?”

  Craig was conscious of Anne’s close, admiring attention to Gail as she worked. He had to admit that her manner was professional, her voice pleasant and unaffected.

  “Well,” Wadleigh was saying, “in one way, the writer for films is more powerful than ever. I’m speaking of the writer who directs his own stuff and because of that controls the final result, the man who gets the critical attention and reaps the financial rewards. On the other side of the coin, however, the writer who is only a writer is lost in the shuffle.” He was speaking seriously now, not trying to amuse or play the great man before the two girls. “For example—at this Festival—there are rewards for actors, directors, composers, cameramen, etc., but not one for writers. This is a recent development, and it’s been brought about largely by the critical acceptance of the auteurist theory of film making.”

  Now Craig was sure Wadleigh had written all this before, probably for an article that had been turned down by a dozen magazines.

  Gail flicked off the machine. “Remember, Ian,” she said, “this is for American listeners. You’d better explain, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Wadleigh said. He took a gulp of the fresh whisky the waiter had put down in front of him.

  “I’ll ask you the question,” Gail said. She started the machine again. “Would you like to describe that theory for us, Mr. Wadleigh?”

  “The auteurist theory of film making,” he said, “is very simple. It rests on the conviction that a film is the work of one man—the director. That in the final analysis the man behind the camera is the real author of the work, that the film, in essence, is written with the camera.”

  “Do you agree with that theory?”

  It’s like a charade, Craig thought, little girl wearing Mummy’s dress, or in this case, Mummy’s bikini, and going down to Daddy’s office and sitting at his desk and talking into the intercom.

  “No,” Wadleigh said. “Of course, there are directors who are in fact the authors of their films, but all that means is that as well as being d
irectors, they are also writers. If they deserve a prize for their work, they deserve two prizes—one for the script and one for the direction. But the truth is that in America, at any rate, there are only five or six men who are really both. Of course, directors being the self-deluding beasts they are, there are plenty of them who think they are writers and impose their written efforts on the audience.”

  The same old whine, Craig thought.

  “We are fortunate enough,” Gail said calmly into the microphone, “to have Mr. Jesse Craig, the eminent film producer with us here on the beach in Cannes. I wonder if I could ask you, Mr. Craig, if you agree with Mr. Wadleigh. Or if you disagree, why?”

  Craig’s hand tightened on his glass. “Cut out the jokes, Gail,” he said.

  “Oh, Daddy,” Anne said, “go ahead. You were talking to me for half an hour about the movies in the car. Don’t be sticky.”

  “Shut the damn machine off, Gail,” Craig said.

  Gail didn’t move. “There’s no harm done. I splice together what I want later and throw out the junk. Maybe,” she said, smiling agreeably, “if I can’t have you, I’ll put Anne on the air. The confidences of the daughter of the abdicated king, the Life and Loves of the one after the last Tycoon, as seen through the clear young eyes of his nearest and dearest.”

  “Any time you say,” Anne said.

  “I’m sure your listeners in Peoria,” Craig said, making an effort to keep his temper and sound offhand at the same time, “are waiting with bated breath for just that program.” I’m going to wipe that dancing smile off your face, lady, he thought. For the first time in his life he understood those writers who regarded the penis as an instrument of revenge.

  “We’ll just keep it in mind, Anne,” Gail said. “Won’t we? And now Mr. Wadleigh—” She resumed her professional voice. “In a conversation with Mr. Craig some days ago on the same subject, when I asked him why he had not directed any of the films he had produced, he replied that he didn’t think he was good enough, that there were perhaps fifty men in Hollywood who were better at the job than he thought he could be. Similarly,” she went on, staring coolly at Craig as she spoke so that it was evident to him, if not to the others, that she was maliciously playing with him, using their presence to ensure that he suffered in silence, “similarly, is it an equally admirable modesty on your part that prevents you from working behind the camera?”

  “Shit,” Craig said. “Shit, shit. Send that out to the homes of America.”

  “Daddy!” Anne said, shocked. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. I don’t like to be trapped, that’s all. When I want to give an interview, I’ll give it. Not before.” He remembered the title Gail had said she was going to use on the piece about him, “The Once and Future Has Been,” but he couldn’t tell that to Anne. He also couldn’t tell Anne that he had slept with that cool, smiling girl in the pink bathing suit the night before and that if he could, he would sleep with her in the night to come.

  “If you recall my question, Mr. Wadleigh,” Gail said, “has it been due to modesty, as in the case of Mr. Craig, that you have not directed any of the scripts you have written for films?”

  “Hell, no,” Wadleigh said. “If I couldn’t do better than ninety-nine per cent of those bums out there, I’d shoot myself. It’s just that the bastards in the front offices won’t hire me.”

  “I think that brings us to the end of this program,” Gail said into the microphone. “Thank you very much, Mr. Wadleigh, for your frank and enlightening discussion of the problems of the writer for the motion pictures. I am sorry that Mr. Craig was unexpectedly called away so that we were denied the benefits of his long experience in the field. Perhaps we shall be lucky enough in the near future to have Mr. Craig, who is an extremely busy man, with us at greater length. This is Gail McKinnon, broadcasting from the Cannes Film Festival.”

  She flipped off the machine, smiled brightly and innocently. “Another day, another dollar.” She started to pack away the machine. “Isn’t Daddy the funny one?” she said to Anne.

  “I don’t understand you, Daddy,” Anne said. “I thought you and she were friends.”

  There’s a description, Craig thought.

  “I don’t see what harm it would do to say a few words,” Anne persisted.

  “What you don’t say can’t hurt you,” Craig said. “You’ll find that out eventually, too. Ian, what the hell good do you think you did yourself just now? Can you figure out why you did it?’”

  “Sure,” Ian said. “Vanity. A trait not to be taken lightly. Of course, I know you’re above such human failings.”

  “I’m not above anything,” Craig said. He wasn’t arguing for himself but for Anne, for Anne’s education. He didn’t want her to be taken in by the American craze for publicity, for self-congratulation, for flattery, for the random, glib chatter on television whose real, dead serious purpose was to sell automobiles, deodorants, detergents, politicians, remedies for indigestion and insomnia. “Ian,” he said, “I know why Gail goes through all this nonsense—”

  “Careful, careful,” Gail said mockingly.

  “She makes her living out of it, and maybe it’s no more discreditable than the way you and I make our living …”

  “Blessings on you, Daddy,” Gail said.

  I’m going to lock the door tonight, Craig thought, and stuff cotton in my ears. With a wrench he made himself look away from the lovely, teasing face and talk to Wadleigh. “What possible good did babbling away here this afternoon do you? I’m serious. I want to know. Maybe you can convince me.”

  “Well,” Ian said, “first of all, before you came, good old Gail plugged my books. Gallant little liar, she had a good word to say for all of them. Maybe her program’ll get one person to go into a bookstore to buy one of them or two or all of them. Or since they’re out of print, maybe it’ll get a publisher to bring out my collected works in paperback. Don’t be holy, Jess. When you make a picture, you want people to see it, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Craig admitted.

  “Well, how does that make you different from me?”

  “Do you want me to use the machine, Jesse?” Gail said. “It’ll only take a minute. We can start the interview right now.”

  “I’m not selling any pictures at the moment,” Craig said. “Leave the machine alone.”

  “Or some producer or director might happen to tune in on the program,” Wadleigh continued, “and say, ‘Hey, I thought that guy was dead. If he isn’t dead, he might be just the guy to write my next picture.’ We all depend on luck, you, I, Gail, even this beautiful young girl who has turned out to be your daughter. A switch of the dial on the radio might mean the difference in life or death for somebody like me.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Craig asked.

  “What do you think I believe in?” Wadleigh said bitterly. “Merit? Don’t make me laugh.”

  “I’m remembering all this,” Gail said. “I’m sure it’s going to be useful for something. For the piece I’m doing about you, Jesse, for example. The public figure who refuses the public role. Is it for real, I’ll ask my readers, or is it a clever play to titillate, to invite while seeming to reject? Is the veil more revealing than the face behind it?”

  “Mr. Wadleigh is right,” Anne broke in. “He’s written these wonderful books, and he’s being neglected. And I listened to the whole interview. He said a lot of things that people ought to hear.”

  “I’ve told Anne,” Gail said, “that you’re being difficult about cooperating.”

  “You two girls seem to have managed to cover a lot of ground in two hours,” Craig said sourly.

  “There was an instant bond of sympathy,” Gail said. “We bridged the generation gap between twenty and twenty-two in a flash.”

  “People your age, Daddy,” Anne said, “are constantly complaining the young don’t understand you. Well, here you have a perfect chance to get whatever it is you want to say to hordes of people of all ages, a
nd you turn the chance down.”

  “My medium is film,” Craig said, “not indecent public exposure.”

  “Sometimes, Mr. Craig,” Gail said with a straight face, “I get the feeling that you don’t approve of me.”

  Craig stood up. “I’m going in,” he said. He pulled some bills out of his pocket. “How many drinks did you have, Anne?”

  “Forget it.” Wadleigh waved grandly. “I have it.”

  “Thanks,” Craig said. On my three hundred dollars for Spain, he thought. “Coming, Anne?”

  “I’m going to have one last swim.”

  “Me, too,” Gail said. “It’s been hot work this afternoon.”