TRAVEN/CROVES
Señor Traven has read your screenplay and is quite satisfied that you have made a proper understanding of his novel. He is experienced in these matters, having written several screenplays for films made here in Mexico. As I make clear, it is Señor Traven’s request that anything you wish to tell him you will tell me.
HUSTON finishes off his drink, then pours himself another.
HUSTON
Sure you won’t have a shot Mr. Croves? This is top-notch tequila, from Guerrero.
TRAVEN/CROVES waves his hand dismissively.
TRAVEN/CROVES
I don’t wish to appear impolite or ungrateful, Mr. Huston, but I must decline this aspect of your hospitality.
HUSTON
I like a man who drinks with me. It’s a good way to get to know him.
TRAVEN/CROVES
I have no reason to doubt that you are well-acquainted with many men who share your opinion.
HUSTON
Women, too. The trouble with women is that the better they hold their liquor, the better they lie.
TRAVEN/CROVES
Down.
HUSTON
What’s that?
TRAVEN/CROVES
Down. They lie down. Is that what you mean, Mr. Huston?
HUSTON laughs.
HUSTON
You’re clever, Croves. Is Traven as clever as you?
TRAVEN/CROVES
Señor Traven is a humanitarian. His desire is through his books to reveal the ultimate futility of greed and avarice so that the unnecessary suffering caused by exploitation of the common man shall be eradicated.
HUSTON
Are you sure you won’t imbibe, Mr. Croves? It makes the Wobbly credo go down better.
TRAVEN/CROVES shakes his head no.
HUSTON
Let’s talk about Treasure. The way I see it, it’s Howard, the old man, who’s at the center of things. He wants to get rich but he’s not greedy, nor is Curtin, though Curtin can be manipulated. Dobbs lacks character and the confidence that goes along with it, so he’s dangerous. Traven means Howard to keep the peace but only to a point. He’s seen enough to know that sometimes the only resolution to a sticky situation comes out of the barrel of a gun, like Goering said about culture. Either that, or to skedaddle while the skedaddling’s good.
TRAVEN/CROVES
You make no attempt to disguise your cynicism, Mr. Huston. I like that. And the precise words of Herr Goering, I believe, were, “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my Luger.”
HUSTON
Call me, John, please. My father—who, by the way, has agreed to play the role of old Howard, without his false teeth—told me when I was a boy that it was impolite when in civilized company for a man to wear a hat indoors.
TRAVEN/CROVES
Ah, my pith helmet annoys you, does it?
HUSTON
The helmet doesn’t annoy me, only your keeping it on while we talk.
TRAVEN/CROVES takes off the pith helmet and places it down on a chair next to his.
HUSTON
Traven’s a German, I understand.
TRAVEN/CROVES
He was born in Chicago and is of Norwegian parentage. He has been living in Mexico for many years.
HUSTON
Why?
TRAVEN/CROVES
Have you ever been in Chicago, Mr. Huston?
HUSTON
I have.
TRAVEN/CROVES
Then you know that it gets extremely cold there. Señor Traven prefers the climate in Mexico.
HUSTON
And you, Croves. You speak English with a German accent.
TRAVEN/CROVES
My parents were from a part of Poland that was taken over during the war. They were ethnic Teutons who spoke German in our house. German was my first language.
HUSTON
How did you and Traven become acquainted?
TRAVEN/CROVES
Quite by chance. But this is not the point of our meeting, Mr. Huston. Señor Traven wishes me to be present as an advisor during the filming. I believe this is stipulated in his contract with the Warner brothers. When are you scheduled to begin?
HUSTON
Next week. Most of the principal cast has arrived and we’re doing a run-through the day after tomorrow.
TRAVEN/CROVES
Señor Traven is pleased that Gabriel Figueroa will be the cinematographer. I’m sure you know that they have worked together and are close friends.
HUSTON
I do. Well, then, Croves.
(HUSTON stands up.)
I think we’re finished here. I’ll have my assistant contact you about the shooting schedule. Gabe and I are going to Tampico tonight.
TRAVEN/CROVES rises and shakes hands with HUSTON.
TRAVEN/CROVES
It has been a pleasure to meet you.
HUSTON
Same here. Give Traven my regards. He wrote a great book. I hope my movie will do it justice.
TRAVEN/CROVES leaves. Huston pours himself another shot of tequila but before he can drink it, there is a knock at the door.
HUSTON
Come in!
HUMPHREY BOGART enters, looks around.
BOGART
Croves gone?
HUSTON
Just now.
(He drinks the tequila, holds up his glass.)
You want one?
BOGART
Sure, so long as it doesn’t cost me anything.
HUSTON pours them both drinks. Hands one to Bogart.
HUSTON
You’re already in character.
BOGART
I like Dobbs. He can’t hide his real feelings.
HUSTON
The saints be with us.
(They drink.)
BOGART
So, John, what’s the score with Mr. Croves?
HUSTON
He’s a Kraut. He’s Traven.
BOGART
Yeah? Why the cover?
HUSTON
Maybe we’ll find out. He’s gonna be on the shoot with us.
BOGART
Oh, that’ll be peachy. What if he doesn’t like what he sees?
HUSTON
I can’t keep him away. It’s in his contract.
BOGART
Jack Warner’s a fool to allow it.
HUSTON
Don’t worry, Figueroa will handle him. And if he can’t, I’ll flash my pistola.
BOGART
Ann Sheridan just pulled in.
HUSTON
Where’d they put her?
BOGART
Here, in the Reforma. Across the hall from me.
HUSTON picks up the half-full bottle of tequila and heads for the door.
HUSTON
Let’s go welcome her.
BOGART
She never used to be that kind of girl, John.
HUSTON
How long since you’ve seen her?
BOGART
A couple of years.
HUSTON
Well, Bogey, a lot can happen to change a person in a couple of years.
BOGART
Just let me get out of there before you start waving your pistola around.
HUSTON opens the door and Bogart exits. Before Huston follows suit, something catches his eye: TRAVEN/CROVES’s pith helmet, left on the chair. HUSTON goes over, picks it up and places the helmet on his head. He goes out.
END
IXION IN EXILE
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Albert Camus, French writer, forty-six years old, author of The Stranger, well-known for his essa
y opposing capital punishment
Pixie, a young prostitute
SETTING
A hotel room in New York City, Summer 1959.
PIXIE is sitting on the edge of the bed, putting on her stockings. Other than that, she is naked. CAMUS is lying on the bed, also nude, smoking a cigarette.
PIXIE
I could, I’d pull the fuckin’ switch myself. Way that man treated me deserves be electrified twice.
CAMUS
Yes, Pixie, I understand how you feel. But it is the state that is the machinery carrying out the sentence.
PIXIE
You mean it’s okay I do it, then? Leave the state out?
CAMUS
No, Pixie. If in the heat of passion such a crime is committed, if in the course, say, of being beaten and in fear of losing one’s life, in self-defense a murder is committed, or if it occurs after a long history of such abuse, even psychological abuse, a legitimate case can be made to justify the act. But the state has no right to act as executioner.
PIXIE
(continues getting dressed)
I be happy scorch that motherfucker. I be happy whoever do it, long as Dorsey be dead.
CAMUS
It’s tonight he’s being executed?
PIXIE
Tonight at midnight.
(She looks at a clock on a bedside table.)
Thirty-two minutes from now. You ready again? Give you a blowjob twenty extra.
CAMUS
No, merci, Pixie. I am quite satisfied.
(He lights another cigarette from the old one.)
PIXIE is finished dressing. She stops at the door and looks over at CAMUS.
PIXIE
You a nice man, Mister Cam-yoo. All Frenchmen ain’t so nice, you know.
CAMUS
Thank you, Pixie. I will remember you with affection.
PIXIE
Bye now. Be careful while you in New York. Be rough you not pay attention.
CAMUS
I will. Good night.
PIXIE leaves. CAMUS smokes, then gets up, looks in the mirror over dresser.
CAMUS
(to his reflection in the mirror)
Who are you to tell anyone how to think or feel about anything? You lie to yourself all the time, not only to others. This is why you write your novels and essays, hiding behind Proust’s dictum that literature is the finest kind of lying. You cannot stop lying. For you, it is what makes living tolerable. You are foolish to presume to understand Pixie. To attempt to reason with someone you do not understand is not merely arrogant but absurd. This is the disease of Sartre. To go on lying is your only choice, so better to be good at it.
The telephone rings. CAMUS answers it.
CAMUS
Hello.
(pause)
No, he is not here. He never was, he does not exist. My name is Dorsey, will I do?
END
ALGREN’S INFERNO
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Nelson Algren, writer, author of The Man with the Golden Arm. He is forty-six years old, having the night before finished writing his novel, A Walk on the Wild Side.
Dolores Lonesome Sound, fifty-two years old, part African American, part Native American, formerly a drug addict and alcoholic, now pastor of God’s Paradise, a storefront church on West Madison Street, the city’s Skid Row.
SETTING
Chicago, 1955. Algren and Dolores Lonesome Sound are standing on West Madison in front of God’s Paradise. It is late on a winter afternoon; the sky darkens steadily as the pair converse.
NELSON
Dolores, you don’t mind, I hope, that I took the title for my new novel from something you said in one of your sermons.
DOLORES
No, child, ’course not. What was it I said?
NELSON
You were talking about your flock, taking in folks who’d been walking on the wild side and were now ready to enter God’s Paradise.
DOLORES
Oh, yes. Yes, Nelson, these are the ones got down so low no place left for ’em to go other than in the dirt. People like myself, the way I used to be, not yet gone but forgotten by everyone ’cept the Lord. You go on use the words do they serve a good purpose. Got any loose behavior in it?
NELSON
Not really. Only drinkin’, druggin’, whorin’, fightin’, in order to show how without a helping hand individuals come apart.
DOLORES
Adrift and bereft. How do you get those frightened souls down on paper?
NELSON
Pastor Lonesome Sound, I write about what I see, what most novelists ignore, writers who pick at scabs so small they’re not worth a whisper. I hear my characters crying in my sleep.
DOLORES
You are a righteous man, Nelson, and you own all the words.
NELSON
Righteous, perhaps, but never sanctimonious. I don’t hide from the horror.
DOLORES
No place to hide. You remember Mister Roland Walks Behind Himself, part Pottawotomi like me? He die night before last.
NELSON
Sure, I used to shoot pool with him at Benzinger’s.
DOLORES
Couple hoodlums jackrolled him, he fought back and one of ’em cracked open his skull, left him bleed to death in Losers Alley. Officer Muller tol’ me this mornin’. Was Miss Twisty discover the body takin’ a trick back there.
NELSON
That’s what gets me, Dolores, my writing about all the sadness and bad behavior doesn’t really do any good. It doesn’t change the way people treat each other or move the powers that be to improve lives of the have-nots. At least you give ’em a bowl of tomato soup.
DOLORES
And a friend in Jesus. You a good writer, Nelson?
NELSON
Some of the deep thinkers back East used to think I was pretty good. Nowadays they can’t seem to make use of me, so I’m sliding off the map.
DOLORES
Most everyone ’roun’ here never been on no map, no direction home and no home to go to even they got the bus fare. You want to come inside, get warm with some soup?
NELSON
No, thank you, Dolores, but my poker cronies are throwing me a little party to celebrate my finishing my novel.
DOLORES
God’s Paradise is for one an’ all, Nelson, believers and unbelievers both. You take care now.
DOLORES turns and goes inside God’s Paradise. The stage is now in almost total darkness. NELSON lights a cigarette.
NELSON
In New Orleans, I met a whore who had tattooed between her belly button and her pussy the words, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” She told me she had a degree in European literature from the University of Texas.
The stage goes dark. The last light we see is from the tip of NELSON’s cigarette.
END
THE LAST WORDS OF ARTHUR RIMBAUD
PLACE: The Hospital of the Immaculate Conception, Marseilles, France.
TIME: November 9, 1891. The day before Rimbaud’s death.
ARTHUR RIMBAUD, thirty-seven years old, the poet and adventurer, lies dying in a hospital bed. He drifts in and out of consciousness, delirious with pain. His right leg has been amputated due to a malignancy.
At his beside sits his sister, ISABELLE RIMBAUD, thirty-one years old. The bed is surrounded by candles, flickering in the otherwise darkened room.
ARTHUR
Tell them, tell them . . . say that I am entirely paralyzed, yes, and so I wish to embark early. Please let me know at what time I should be carried on board.
ISABELLE
My poor Arthur, it’s impossible for you to travel. You can’t be moved.
ARTHUR
> I’ll return to Harar, to Djami, he’ll be waiting. I’ll return with limbs of steel, dark skin and furious eyes. With this mask, people will think I am of a strong race.
ISABELLE
Forget Djami, forget him. I’m here, Isabelle, your sister. Think of me, of our mother, the ones who love you most.
ARTHUR
My name carved in stone at Luxor, only the wind and sand can erase it. Tell Djami I am coming, I will see him again soon. My one friend, my only friend.
ISABELLE
Djami cannot help you, Arthur. That boy is far from here, in Abyssinia. Probably dead.
ARTHUR
Send him money, three thousand francs. Tell him his master, who loves him, begs he make wise use of this sum, that he invest it prudently in an enterprise sure to realize a profit. Tell him not to be idle. His wife and child must prosper.
ISABELLE
Arthur, pray. Forget Africa.
ARTHUR
Djami and I . . . two ghosts . . . slipping through the subtle air. Sons of the sun.
ISABELLE
All the years away from France, broiling in the heat, your brain was affected.
ARTHUR
Capsule rifles, two thousand-forty at fifteen Marie Thérèse dollars each. Sixty thousand Remington cartridges at sixty dollars the thousand. Tools of various kinds valued at five thousand-eight hundred dollars. Total value of caravan forty thousand. Fifty days to Menelek, king to pay us on arrival. We leave from Tadjoura. Ivory, musk, gold. The Choans would have our testicles! French testicles. Harar to Antotto, twenty days. Avoid Dankalis, evil savages. Sixty thousand dollars, exchange at Aden, 4.3 francs, equals 258,000 francs. Coffee or slaves. Won’t take Egyptian piasters. Caravans form at Djibouti. Did I marry the Somali girl? She went back, Djami sent her away. Not my orders. Find Djami, quick! My leg, must rest my leg before meeting the Emir. Turks and cannons.
ISABELLE
(praying)
Oh Lord, I weep! Lord, soften his agony. Help him to bear his cross. Have pity on my brother, his poor soul that writhes on earth. Have pity and take him, oh Lord. You who are so good, so kind.
ARTHUR
The hyenas laugh at us. Their laughing keeps me awake. Smelling my wound. Poetry poured from the open wound, words spilled until there was nothing left. Emptied, I fled. Djami, your warmth. She is far off, master, to BarAbir. Far, far. Cannot go there with accounts due. The business. Cheated by Menelek, cunning, cunning. Le Bosphore Egyptien, my case. Ragged, dirty rags, no way for a French citizen. Dead before my time, the late Arthur Rimbaud. I have been bitten by life before and survived. Two terrible years and nothing to show.
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