Lillian and Dash

by Sam Toperoff

  Make your case humanly and a correct understanding of the politics will follow. This draft has the process backward—politics first and not really enough room for the human tragedy, or even worse, the human tragedy is made to seem secondary.

  She knew he had it exactly right.

  How many times had this happened before? Hammett tells Hellman what is wrong and it is something she sensed already that would not let itself be known to her. “Oh Jesus. Of course.”

  “About the title. The Spanish soul rises from the land. Their land is who they are. Tell the story of how they will fight for their land, for their very souls, and you will have told your story well.”

  Hammett wasn’t quite done. “Who’s directing?”

  “Joris Ivens. He’s a Dutchman is all I know.”

  “I know his work. He makes beautiful films.” The word was intended pejoratively. “Seems to me you’ve got too many geniuses involved in this project. Good luck.”

  “You’re the only genius I want involved.”

  “I’ve got another Thin Man deadline,” he lied. Mayer had cut his work to the absolute minimum. “But just be careful that there are no insurmountable problems going into the project. Whatever comes along later, you’re equipped to handle.”

  “What do you mean, going into the project?”

  “I mean, who’ll be driving the bus?”

  “Which means?”

  “Will Ivens shoot what your story demands, or will you have to follow his camera? With documentary work in the field, the camera usually calls the tune. Just remember, you’re the better storyteller.

  Lilly stood up beside him and smoothed his hair until he looked up. She said, “Don’t you dare touch me.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it. But I would love a strong glass of cranberry juice.”

  “Ah, the cranberry juice. I think I left it in the bedroom.”

  HELLMAN HAD KNOWN from the outset that Hammett was a Marxist—it was part of his attraction—which meant mostly that he understood much personal and political behavior as economically motivated. It probably should have but did not occur to her that he might actually have been a member of the American Communist Party. He was already, but chose never to tell her. She did not know that six months earlier he had volunteered to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, composed of Americans who supported the Spanish Republicans. He was advised through Party channels—“ordered” would not be too strong a word—that he was considered far more useful to the cause in Hollywood.

  Lillian knew none of this partly because he did not want any of it to hurt her. As she had not told him of her commitment to this documentary project and her impending trip to Spain. Ironically, although most of her political enemies assumed she had been a member of the Party, she never was.

  Lillian and Dash watched the sun go down yet again. It revealed its splendor only briefly before falling away. The music in the room was Scarlatti. The champagne was still Canada Dry.

  “So where to?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Tonight. Celebrate at ‘21’?”

  “Why not? We can always start the Revolution tomorrow morning.”

  . 10 .

  Alone, Perhaps

  BEFORE LILLIAN LEFT they spoke almost exclusively about The Spanish Earth. Hammett’s main idea—a good one—was to find a representative village somewhere in or near Catalonia and tell the story of the war through the lives of the people there.

  “There are fishing villages along the Turia, great for your story if you decide to go that way. Find your village—you’ll know it when you see it—tell the story of the war through the lives of the people there.”

  “Let’s find the village together. I think I need you with me. Dash?”

  He paid no attention: “Don’t lose your point: War comes to a village and everything that was human in a simple, recognizable everyday way is made thoroughly grotesque. A simple before and after of images will suffice … that’s what cameras do best. Reenforce it with Hellman words—not too many—Señor Almadino has not had a delivery of flour for two weeks … so the people on Calle Colón do not have their bread … Doctor Vences can no longer treat his patients … Yesterday the town’s only pharmacy was destroyed in an air raid … The planes were Italian, the bombs were German.”

  “Please come with me, Dash. We’ll make our own film.”

  Her ship was the Rotterdam, a fair-sized Dutch liner, amenable but far from splendid, headed for—where else? Rotterdam. Hammett had urged Lilly to travel light, which for her meant an immense steamer trunk and two large suitcases. When the call to leave the ship was given, the two embraced tightly but did not kiss. They held the embrace. Hammett handed her a thick envelope. “Wait half an hour. Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “I mean it. Promise?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  Standing on the pier alone, Hammett felt the soft pleasure he always experienced when leaving or being left, an emotional exhalation that presaged a drink at the nearest bar. No one seeing him at that moment would have been impressed, a skinny man with a foolish mustache, tall but now slightly bent, wearing a worn camel hair coat and a fur hat he’d picked up in a secondhand shop on Broadway.

  Hammett stood in the freezing damp alongside the river and watched her ship being tugged away. He did not find a bar, or even look for one, but flagged down a cab and returned to the apartment. It was empty now in precisely the way a new page in a typewriter was empty. You filled it, you intended to fill it, or you walked out the door and stayed away. Hammett sat down and rolled a new page into her machine:

  My brother Richard—I called him Dickie—was younger than I by four years, which meant that when I was almost nine he was four and a half. Because my father was a danger to the family, I made myself Dickie’s protector when our father was home. My good mother and older sister were usually so busy filling the void Papa left, it fell to me quite often after chores, especially on summer days, to be responsible for the care of my little brother.

  This was really not such a good idea because I was a very selfish boy and either wanted to be alone or to be playing baseball with my friends. Alone, I loved to read—adventure stories mostly; I could play baseball real well too. Either way I didn’t want to be encumbered by having to care for a four-year-old who made either pleasure impossible. Did I resent my role? Indeed. Did I resent Dickie? I did. Sometimes. I loved my brother, as I loved my mother and sister Reba, but it is always hard for me to admit of love, hard even to put the word on the page. Even though we live in the dawning Age of Psychology, do not expect me here to engage in any glib self-analysis as to why. Even the admission of so private a matter as lone would

  Oh my, how Dr. Freud would howl—I just misspelled the word love as lone! Hammett scoured the page and discovered he had made another typo in his text, so he rolled the page out of the machine, put a clean sheet in its place, and began to retype. The look of a page so mattered to him—even in a working draft—that he allowed himself no more than one mistake per page. And sometimes even that single error bothered him so much he simply had to retype. Lillian knew never to tease him about this idiosyncrasy.

  Hammett picked up the story of Dickie at the swimming hole one summer afternoon in Hopewell, Maryland:

  You see, at the pond I could be alone and supervise Dickie at the same time. We could fish a bit. We could swim bare-ass, although Dickie could really only splash around. And then I could read. Miss Gaffer at the library gave me a Huck Finn when school let out, an oversized edition with illustrations. I didn’t know what abridged meant but it was written on the cover and I could sound the word out. I could sound out and understand almost any word. I was a lot like Huck that day, sitting on the low pier with my line in the water hoping to catch something my mom could cook up tonight. A catfish was our best bet.

  Dickie said he wanted to swim, which meant splash around. I wanted to read, especially after I discovered in that book that Huck wanted to get awa
y from his own Pap as bad as I wanted my father to get away from me.

  The Rotterdam had not yet edged into the river, although the gangplank had long been pulled away. The anchor had not yet been fully hoisted. Lillian opened Hammett’s envelope as soon as he had left her cabin. Its bulk was caused by brand-new thousand-peseta notes, freshly minted and bound by a rubber band. Tucked in with the bills was an automobile map of Catalonia, with Valencia circled in red at its southern border. Then she pulled out a typed page folded perfectly in thirds. Within its folds was a small photograph. A thin dark man, boyish but undoubtedly a young man, in a white suit with a bow tie, sat on steps before an imposing building, one that was familiar to her. The man was not familiar, but she felt as though she knew him. The building came to her before the man because she had frequented it—the NYU University Library. Turning the photo over, she saw the inscription, in a tiny hand, in English: Courage, of course. Federico Lorca.

  Lorca. But how?

  Federico García Lorca was dead, assassinated one year before in a great Falangist killing and torture spree after the war first broke out. How then this photo? This inscription? She held the photograph up and turned it over and then over again. The ship lurched. She was leaving a safe place where she was Lillian Hellman and everybody knew that. It occurred to her that his letter might explain the extraordinary gift.

  Dear dearest Loollia—

  You promised to wait half an hour and you did not. So, because you have been a naughty girl I will not tell you how the enclosed photograph and dedication—your deserved gift—came into my hands. Yes, obedience will be a painful lesson for you to learn but believe me, dear girl, it is for your own good.

  Now, about the money. These are the largest denomination of Spanish currency presently available, even though each bill is worth only about fifty bucks. Where you are going, however, cash in any denomination will be king, especially for bribes, of which there will certainly be many required, or to help buy your way out of tight squeezes, of which there will also certainly be many. Use the cash judiciously—buy someone decent a can of sardines, peaches, some chicory, a liter of milk. Bargain well. This I don’t need to say because I’ve seen you at work at the farmers’ market. Be sure you keep the money in a safe private place. I’d suggest pinned inside your bra where only a handful of men will have access.

  (I still have not had a drink since you’ve left, which might explain why the punctuation in this farewell note is so slipshod.)

  You have chosen to love me—only your enigmatic God could possibly know why—and so you attribute qualities to me that I do not possess. I have a talent, it’s true, but it is a small one, an ability to entertain, “a talent to amuse,” as the song goes. Nevertheless, in your absence I shall endeavor mightily to be the man you think I am, and if not that at least a writer worthy of your respect.

  Do your best work there, dear girl, as I shall try to do mine here. Please stay alive because I want to order Hamm and Leggs when you get back. Oooof. Socko. Boffo. No, that’s not the right way to go out, is it? This is. Hammett: I hate myself. Hellman: I hate you more.

  Muchas Mierdas—Dash

  There was nothing about the Lorca photograph.

  I did not notice at first Dickie was no longer with me. He wasn’t splashing around or trying to get his line into the water from the pier. He wasn’t anywhere. And no, absorbed as I might have been, I would not have let my little brother drown. I shouted his name and shouted it again. It echoed. In the summer silence I heard bird sounds come back, the breeze whipping the overhanging trees.

  Hammett stopped typing and took the pleasure of visualizing his memory. Then came the thought—What had he felt then with his little brother missing? Fear? Worry? Irritation? All three or nothing at all? Hammett couldn’t remember, so he did not say.

  I left my book face down, marking my page, and, still calling his name, began to make my way around the pond. I expected to see him behind every large tree as I approached, struggling to get the line into the shallow water, but I was disappointed each time. I really did begin to worry.

  I tacked threats onto my shouts: “Richard, if you don’t answer me, I’ll smack you senseless.” That’s what my father used to say whenever he threatened. Now I looked into the dark water more carefully even though in most places it was so shallow you couldn’t drown even if you wanted to. Not even a four-year-old. Still …

  I’d made my way about halfway around. I was on the Wayland side when I stepped out of the shade into blinding sunlight. I called out again and saw a flickering movement come from behind an oak tree near a horse corral that belonged to the Freeman Farm. The flickering was my fishing pole appearing and disappearing behind the trunk of the tree.

  I really intended to smack some sense into Dickie now. As I rounded the tree, I noticed that my brother held the pole from the bottom as high as he could—that’s what made it wave wildly—trying to reach a pair of shoes hanging down. When I got closer, I saw feet in boots and then legs. A man was hanging from a rope.

  I thought it was my father.

  I felt neither shock nor sorrow.

  The head was cocked severely sidewise where the noose wrapped its neck.

  Dickie stood wide-eyed looking straight up into the face. Somehow he’d made his way here, spotted the body, and remained transfixed below. When he touched the foot lightly with the pole, the entire body swayed.

  I took the pole from him and made him look away. I turned the body with the pole. It was not my father. It was Mr. Freeman, not the old Mr. Freeman, his son. I told Dickie to hurry home and fetch Ma. Tell her not to worry, nothing is wrong, but she has to come. Can you say that back to me? He said it back perfectly. Before he left he said, “Mr. Freeman has to get cut down, right?”

  “Go get Ma.”

  Hammett looked over and down at the Hudson flowing, so perfect in shallow sunlight. Why was there no satisfaction in what he was writing? Who in the world now could care about him, his brother Richard, or Mr. Freeman’s suicide? He scanned the page in the typewriter. Mere scratch marks and loops, hatchings on a page—none of this meant anything to anyone. He was unable to make it mean anything. He did not have that particular talent. That was Lillian’s domain. So why even bother to continue?

  I waited in the shade of the pond watching Mr. Freeman’s legs for a long time before a police car came down the road. Mama was in it. She had known what to do. She always knew what to do. The policemen got out and circled underneath the body, which was swaying in the breeze.

  One policeman stood on top of the car and tried to get a knife up to the rope. Then the other policeman climbed up too. No matter how they pushed or pulled, the body flopped around. It was pretty funny, I have to say, though I knew it was wrong to laugh. So I walked up to them and said if they needed help I could cut Mr. Freeman down. Mama said for me to be quiet and the first cop said he could do everything himself. Except that Mr. Freeman came down with a crash and then slid off the top of the car and got himself stuck in the rear bumper. His eyes stared right at me all the while I walked around him. That’s when Mama took me home.

  Before going to sleep that night I asked my mother why a man would want to do something like that to himself. Didn’t it hurt to get your neck snapped that way? God doesn’t want us to do harm to ourselves, she said. Then why does God let it happen, Mama? Because he’s busy watching over so many other things, sometimes other things just slip his mind.

  Just a few years ago Dickie and I had dinner at a good restaurant in Chicago and I asked him what he remembered about that day. He told me he just picked up the fishing pole and wandered off into the woods around the pond. He peed right in the pond although he knew he shouldn’t have. Then he saw a man riding horseback on a large chestnut. He followed the horse but stayed in the woods.

  The man rode up alongside the corral fence and, leaning against the tree, stood up on the horse’s back and then the fence, a coil of rope in his hand. He smacked his horse with the rope and wh
istled; the horse bucked and dashed away. Then he moved from fence to lower limb and to higher limbs almost out of sight in the tree. Dickie watched all this silently. He had moved, he estimated, to within thirty feet of the tree, stopped, and then began to edge closer still. He called, “Mister.” No response. Then again, “Mister.”

  Mr. Freeman plummeted down out of the tree. Dickie heard the gasp—he called it a wail and a crack—and saw the legs trying to climb back up in the air. He watched silently as the gasping and flailing ran down and Mr. Freeman finally hung as dead weight.

  I asked my brother if the experience had made his life any different, deflected it in some knowable way.

  Dickie said, “Nope, that’s just what happened. God only knows what it all meant.”

  Hammett liked to type “End” when he finished a story or a chapter. It gave him the feeling that something had been done. He typed “End” and the phone rang.

  “It’s me. Been trying to get through for days.”

  He had no idea who me was, only that it wasn’t Lillian. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  “It’s three in the morning.” He’d be damned if he’d ask who me was.

  “I can’t believe he’s done it, Dash. The scoundrel.” It took about twenty seconds more to determine me was Myra Ewbank and the scoundrel was her husband, Phil Edmunds. It took a while longer for Myra Ewbank to elaborate on what the scoundrel had done. The scoundrel list included “a rabbi—who knows what he paid the guy?—who persuaded the Waxman family to forgo the postmortem because Jewish tradition would be compromised by an autopsy. Waxman’s sister turns out to be a religious nut who bought the whole deal and convinced the rest of the family that—”