Bride of the Rat God

by Barbara Hambly

  “Apple, he say.” Mikos Hraldy flung up his hands in despair. “As if it is small matter to alter symbolism upon which entire scene is fulcrum! Apple! He is Philistine, that Brown! Philistine!”

  Christine, with Black Jasmine’s childlike face poking out below hers from the swaddling ocean of chinchilla, frowned. “Are the Philistines in this movie, too?” The big saloon rocked as it turned off Santa Monica Boulevard and onto Vermont, the first of a little procession of studio cars wending their way through the gathering dusk. “And I don’t see what’s wrong with using an apple instead of those messy old pomegranates. Look, I got juice all over my hands and it’s stained everything in sight. It would have stained the costume if there’d been more costume to stain.”

  “After all,” Norah pointed out good-humoredly, “Eve tempted Adam with an apple.”

  “Bah!” Hraldy swept back his three long strands of top-cover hair. Buttercreme, already hiding in the folds of Norah’s cardigan, shrank back still farther in profoundest disapproval. “It is pomegranate, not apple, is metaphysical symbol of woman’s power over man! Ask any translator what is fruit of knowledge of good and evil.” He turned a dissatisfied brown gaze out the window, contemplating the luminous windows of the bungalows perched high on the hills above them. Except for the ubiquitous palm trees, this stretch of Vermont Avenue, rising steeply into the more exclusive precincts of Edendale, could have been lifted wholesale from some small midwestern town. The palm trees; and the HOLLYWOODLAND sign that blazed behind them in the blue dimming of the light like some garish Great Wall of China.

  “But is typical,” he went on bitterly. “That Brown, he has soul of... of producer!”

  Christine, leaning to readjust her makeup over the driver’s shoulder in the rearview mirror, regarded the director with surprise. “But Frank is a producer,” she pointed out.

  “Hélas!” Hraldy retorted, and turned back to Norah, in whose relative silence he read sympathy for his woes. “Listen to me, Madame Blackstone. I make greatest biblical epic ever produce in this country, in any country. Not some shallow and facile love tale of indiscretions of kings, but story of all spectacle of Intolerance, couple with deepest, most moving of all stories. I pour my heart, my soul into it, I make it as it should be make, as surely ancient prophets would make. Twenty-six reels Trials of Job was, six and a half hours of greatest, most moving, most heroic story of human passion and human struggle ever wrote. It is story which encompass deepest question of human life, most pro-found search of foundation of man’s relation with Almighty, and what does your Mr. Brown do to it?”

  “Cut it, I hope!” exclaimed Christine, lipstick in hand.

  “You see!” Hraldy made a gesture that nearly put his hand through the roof of the car. “Philistine!”

  “I thought it says in the script Vashti is a Persian. In fact I’m sure it does.” She dug around for her script in the carpetbag of cosmetics that inevitably accompanied her to the set, while Black Jasmine licked her chin.

  “Eighty-five minutes!” mourned the director. “Eighty-five minutes he cut it to! Six and a half hours of pathos, of struggle! Scenes with Job’s sons at wedding of their sister, and when Job bid them farewell on their sea voyage, he cut—only did he leave in shipwreck in which they are devoured by the Leviathan, when no one has any small idea who these two men are!”

  “I don’t remember a shipwreck in Job,” Norah commented, unheard.

  “Job mourning upon his dung heap, covered in sores, while his worthless friends mock at and scorn him, his long wrestlings of soul, his conversations with Satan and with God... gone! Only scene where evil woman whom once he love come in zebra-drawn chariot to sneer at him... bien sur! And what does he give me instead?” He caught the edge of the seat in front of him as the car turned up the steep hills of Edendale, carefully negotiating the narrow, erratic streets. “A marital squabble, a domestic spat.”

  “With battles,” Norah pointed out helpfully.

  “Pah!”

  “There!” Christine looked up in triumph from her script. “‘Oh, my little dove of Persia.’ Asu-What’s-His-Name says that, and he’s her husband, so he ought to know. She wasn’t a Philistine, after all... Unless the Philistines were Persians?”

  “Is this the place?” Norah craned her neck to look up the steep hillside as the little procession drew to a stop. All she could gather was an impression of overgrown greenery draping the shoulders of rock for some twenty-five feet, surmounted by a stucco wall.

  The driver got out and opened the door. Christine stepped grandly forth, the dogs bounding happily before her and rushing off to sniff everything in sight. “Up there,” she said as Norah and Hraldy climbed out on her heels. “All the studios rent it because it’s got the most gorgeous courtyard, straight out of the Arabian Nights. In fact, I thought Frank ought to use it for a movie about the Arabian Nights. I mean, after Robin Hood, he could make a big picture about the Arabian Knights meeting the Knights of the Round Table...”

  She drew her furs more closely about her, though the evening, by Manchester standards, was mild.

  “Isn’t that terribly inconvenient for the owners?” asked Norah, going back to the second car and taking the awkward bundle of light stands Alec handed out to her. Blake Fallon, likewise bundled in fur, had already disembarked and now went to catch up with Christine on the long stone stairway, followed by Zena Franklin, Christine’s autocratic hairdresser. Hraldy and Mary DeNoux, the wardrobe mistress, each took a magazine of spare film; the flute and cello players—the celloist had switched from piano—handed their instruments to Alice, the violinist, and lent a hand with the reflectors. Mindlebaum himself carried his camera as if it were a fragile and cranky baby, which was exactly what it was.

  “The owners are glad to get money for it,” he said as they climbed innumerable steps to the squat gate at the top. “They can’t rent it and won’t live in it. It’s supposed to be haunted.”

  “Rubbish,” Hraldy declared. “We film here for Job, film wedding feast of his daughter—which your Mr. Brown cut out also—and where is ghost, eh? Show the ghost on film, and I will believe ghost.”

  Chang Ming, after solemnly balancing on three short legs to baptize the base of the steps, bounded after the procession. Over the walls, Norah could see lights and hear the faint exchange of voices from those who had been sent ahead to properly deck the set with chrysanthemums and hangings suitable to the queen of Babylon’s gardens. Black Jasmine, dashing back from an investigation of another driveway, added his mite to Chang Ming’s efforts, then tried unsuccessfully to follow the party up the stairs. Norah deposited her burden beside the gate and went down to get him.

  “There may not be a ghost,” remarked Alec, who waited for her at the top, “but every time I shoot here—and I’ve shot seven pictures in this courtyard—I make sure I get at least five extra takes, because something’s going to go wrong with at least half of what I do. Other cameramen say the same. I know two major stars who refuse to film here at all, and at least six stuntmen.”

  “Why?”

  The gate was opened from within. As the lights from the house fell upon it, Norah gasped, realizing that what she had thought was wood was in fact solid bronze, embossed with intricate arabesques. Beyond, instead of the Grand Guignol of cobwebs and horror called to mind by the talk of ghosts and haunting, the courtyard lay like a dream of Omar Khayam’s, its tiles embossed with flowers and its walls decorated with exquisite bas-reliefs of bulls and winged gods, priests and maidens bearing tribute, all half-hidden behind stands of bamboo and banana, trailing roses and bougainvillea. Every vine and tree in sight, of course, sported the ubiquitous chrysanthemums, and the tall stands of the lights with their trailing cables running back into the house somewhat marred the magic of the place. Still, Norah could see why every epic of ancient passion was filmed here.

  Beyond the door—a scaled-down replica of one in the British Museum’s Persian collection—she could hear Christine’s voice. “My Go
d, can’t we get some heat in here? I swear if I put on all thirty of my costumes for this film one on top of the other, I’d still freeze to death....Oh, Butterpie, Mama’s going to take care of you, don’t be nervous, princess...” Buttercreme, Norah deduced, had as usual made a beeline for Christine’s chinchilla the moment her mistress had shed it and would stay in its familiar-smelling safety until filming was done. Chang Ming and Black Jasmine, by contrast, trotted busily around the court, clearly intent on assisting and supervising, respectively, with the lights. In a corner the musicians set up, the pianist/cellist muttering to his brother about the effect of cold on the strings.

  Truly, thought Norah, gazing around her, like the intrepid Dorothy Gale, she had managed to stumble into another world.

  Through that exquisite Sassanian door she could see a very long, empty room in which Mary laid out makeup and Zena unpacked costumes. Viewing them by the line of 100-watt bulbs jury-rigged from the solitary overhead fixture, Norah had to admit that her sister-in-law had a point Neither the fragile black serpent-pattern creation she was currently wearing nor the ensemble of gold tissue and peacock eyes to be donned later was designed to do anything but display the maximum of the wearer’s charms. An arch at the far end of the room revealed a stairway; two other arches showed only another room, long and dark and empty of furniture, breathing a cold, strange smell Norah put down to neglect.

  “You are on balcony, taking night air...”

  She stepped back outside at the sound of Mikos Hraldy’s light, prissy voice. Illuminated by the reflected glow of the courtyard arcs, he stood, prosaic in his knickerbockers and sweater, beside the enchanted form of Vashti, queen of Babylon. In the artificial lighting the strange, slightly greenish tint of camera makeup was far less obvious, creating only a kind of deathly pallor against which Christine’s dark eyes seemed enormous. She leaned on the railing and shook her hair down over the space below; Alec, moving about the courtyard like a good-natured brown djinni, aimed a baby spot into the waters of the fountain, and Christine was suddenly bathed in a moiré of reflections, as if seen through a jewel.

  Her necklace—the same one she had worn in Kiss of Darkness—actually looked more natural in this setting than it had with the sleek, modern evening dress she had worn to take her plunge over the cliff. Whatever Frank Brown had told Christine about it when he’d given it to her, Norah guessed that it was undoubtedly old, though whether it had actually been looted from the Forbidden City was a moot point. It was Chinese, which was what counted for Christine, and probably extremely valuable, which also counted: an intricately worked double strand of bronze leaves, vines, and chains in which small, Baroque freshwater pearls and cabochon garnets had been set as if they’d grown there like fruit. Two of the three round plaques that lay crosswise on the wearer’s breast were definitely opals. The center gem, the largest, Norah thought might be opal as well or some kind of jade, white and cold and shining now with a moony radiance in the flickering reflections from below.

  Hollywood, Norah thought again, watching Alec setting up reflectors on that fairy-tale balcony beside the exquisite queen. In the courtyard that might have belonged to Cyrus the Great, Blake Fallon in his charioteer’s tunic was rolling a golf ball for Chang Ming to chase, although Chang Ming, in typical Pekingese fashion, could not bring himself to actually give it up for another throw once he’d caught it. The clapper board rested against the base of the fountain. Ned the lesser, in his baggy corduroys and suspenders, made sure no cables showed within the camera lines.

  Nobody gave any sign that they’d already worked twelve hours that day and would probably be there till midnight. Norah was well aware that this wasn’t the first time—she’d watched Christine doing retakes until ten on several occasions during the filming of Sawdust Rose—and found it rather curious that film stars routinely worked hours that would have had factory hands striking in England.

  For six thousand dollars a week, she supposed one would do whatever the producer asked.

  Behind her, Norah heard Black Jasmine bark. There was no mistaking that flat little quack. She reentered the house, passed through the long makeup room, and looked into the chamber beyond.

  Black Jasmine and—surprisingly—Buttercreme were engaged in furious pursuit of something Norah couldn’t quite make out in the shadows. Probably a mouse or a stray golf ball from Mr. Fallon’s game with Chang Ming. Norah smiled, leaning in the doorway to watch them: ostrich-plume tails curled tightly up over their backs, fur flouncing in all directions like a couple of sixteenth-century children running about in farthingales and trains, they darted among the shadows of the far wall, eyes gleaming in the stray light that leaked through from the courtyard. Their toenails clattered on the terra-cotta tiles, and now and then one of them would bark, the curious barks of Pekingese, small and fierce and the farthest sound possible from the nervous yapping of most toy dogs. The noise echoed queerly in the low-raftered chamber.

  They filmed until after midnight. Part of this was due to Alec’s determination to shoot nearly twice as much film as usual, and part to Blake Fallon’s absolute inability to rise above the level of an extremely comely department store mannequin. Faced with the most gut-wrenching moral dilemma of his life in the garden of the queen, he paced up and down beneath her balcony with the brow-clutching hyperventilation of a high school production of Romeo and Juliet. In a later scene—for which Christine changed from shimmering and abbreviated black into shimmering and abbreviated gold—he received the news of his banishment from his cruel goddess’s favors with the spastic jerks of a string-activated wooden toy.

  “I can see why Mr. Brown teamed them up,” Norah remarked to Alec during one of Hraldy’s impassioned demonstrations of alternately spurning himself and falling at his own feet in despair. She hugged her cardigan closer about her; the night air was definitely turning cold.

  Alec nodded wisely. “He does make her look good, doesn’t he? Part of it’s the coke—that’s why he keeps flubbing. But even sober he comes in second to the scenery.”

  “Do they all dope?” demanded Norah, exasperated as much as horrified. “I know Christine does; I see Flindy McColl and Wilmer and Calderone...”

  “Christine’s not as bad as some, but she’s playing with fire,” Alec said bluntly. “Studio doctors prescribe it like cough drops; they have to if the stars are shooting fourteen, sixteen hours a day, six days a week sometimes. About a third of the crew uses it, too; I don’t, but I have a standing prescription for as much as I want. And the stars who don’t use it to stay awake use it to stay skinny. The camera puts about ten pounds on a person. And that,” he finished with a grim glitter in his eye, “is Hollywood, too.”

  At ten Frank Brown showed up, and Norah and the lesser Ned walked down to T’ang’s on Hollywood Boulevard for food for the crew. It was of a piece with the night, she thought, to sit in the royal gardens of Babylon watching Queen Vashti, her godlike young lover, and the two shining-muscled Nubian guardsmen downing fried rice and sweet and sour pork out of paper cartons.

  “I want you to keep an eye on her out in the desert,” said Brown, hunkering clumsily down at Norah’s side. Norah felt startled, gratified at this evidence of his care, until he added, “I don’t expect Hearst’ll get reporters out that far, but he might.”

  She looked across at the big man. The doughy face looked even heavier with fatigue, sleeplessness bloating the flesh around the cold celadon eyes. She recalled his arrival at Christine’s house the previous day, minutes before the reporters, and how he had remained, a traffic cop to the interview, until the last had gone. “So they’re not accepting your story?”

  The pale eyes flashed irritably. “Damn vultures don’t care for what’s true, only for their goddamn stories,” he snapped. “I drove Charlie Sandringham straight from my place to the train station, and that’s that. We both saw that barnstorming pansy drive off, and I was with Charlie every minute after that.”

  Norah was silent.

  Brown sighe
d and shook his leonine head. “Wolfman on the Trib tells me they got a call saying Sandringham was the kid’s sugar daddy. That’s what got them out there for seconds yesterday. It’s got to be Jesperson from Enterprise Studios. He knows if Midnight Cavalier goes under, not only do I not buy him out, he buys me.” He straightened up and looked down at Norah on her marble bench. “So you keep her clear of anyone you don’t know when you’re out there, okay?”

  With a fat man’s heavy roll he strode to the bench where Fallon and Christine sat. Fallon had been flirting earlier with Christine in a manner that reminded Norah strongly of Lawrence Pendergast’s self-confident attentions, but he moved aside quickly for the producer. At the sight of Brown, Christine fairly sparkled with animation and delight.

  After fifteen hours of hard work under the dehydrating blaze of the lights, it was pretty good. Watching her, Norah thought about what Alec had said. Between takes the crew at least had the option of looking tired and grumpy as they went about their chores. Christine didn’t, in the presence of the man who expected his mistress to be as vivacious as she always appeared on camera. Norah’s own exhaustion weighed like lead in her bones—she dreaded having to get up and catch the train in the morning—and she had only looked after the dogs, fetched and carried for Christine, and held the boards for test footage and shot headers.

  “We’re not doing badly tonight,” Alec remarked, coming over with steaming cups of coffee and tea in hand and Chang Ming trotting hopefully at his heels. Norah had issued strict orders to the entire crew not to feed the Pekes, and to her surprise they’d been obeyed, even by Fallon, whose idea of a roaring joke was to get the studio cat drunk on the contents of his flask. “Only two lights have gone out, and that rope Blake was climbing broke when he was only a foot or so above the pavement. Not bad for this place.”

  Norah lowered her chopsticks and regarded him curiously. “Do you really believe the place is haunted?”