by Jane Smiley
“It doesn’t have any appeal at all!” exclaimed Stoney.
“I talked to Madonna about it,” said Max. “She seemed very interested, interested enough to do it for scale, and she suggested Gabriel Byrne for the lead. He can be very sexy. Or Liam Neeson, but I think Neeson’s too tall–”
“Are we talking about the same Madonna who is married to Guy Ritchie and studying the Kabbalah and writing children’s books? She wants to be naked with Gabriel Byrne talking for two hours?”
“She said she thought it would be a good intellectual challenge for her, and stretch her acting skills. I wouldn’t mind working with her. Her body is iconic. That would be an interesting aspect of the material that I hadn’t considered before.”
Stoney sensed that Max was joking, but he wasn’t sure, so he played along. “There are those who would say that she has no acting skills.”
“Well, I didn’t commit to her.”
“Oh, good,” said Stoney. How, he thought, would Jerry stem this tide? He glanced furtively at the three Russian men. He was sure they were thinking that, yes, Max was old. They hadn’t realized before how old Max was, but now they did, and right behind this thought was the natural next thought, Why bother with this old man? If there was anything Hollywood had plenty of, it was young men.
But Mike said, “Madonna?” Just like that, just suddenly alert. “I have always seen something of myself in Madonna. She is one woman I would like to meet.”
Stoney pondered this.
Max said, “Perhaps I could arrange—”
“For myself,” said Al, “I have always wanted to meet Harold Pinter.”
“And I,” said Sergei, “have often imagined myself having lunch at The Ivy with Vanessa Redgrave.”
“Vanessa Redgrave is old enough to be your mother,” said Stoney.
“I am content with a fantasy,” said Sergei.
Just then, the door of the My Fair Lady study opened; Simon put his head inside and said, “Hey, what’s going on in here? Mom’s car is gone. I think she went on a secret mission to buy newspapers, or at least find an Internet café.”
Stoney said, “We’ve been in here all morning, so—” And then Joe Blow appeared behind Simon, and they stepped into the room together. Joe Blow made what Stoney could only call a very slight bow in the direction of Mike, Al, and Sergei, then said to himself, Stoney, “Mr. Whipple, I have Mademoiselle Isabel on the line, and she says, do you have a spare set of car keys at your house, and if so, where might she find them?”
“Where are the ones I gave her?”
“They have been flushed, through an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances, down the WC in a Starbucks on Sunset Boulevard. They are beyond retrieval and must be replaced. Mademoiselle Isabel and Madame Elena are at Mr. Maxwell’s house in Pacific Palisades, and would like to go to your house and get the spare key.”
Stoney said, “But my house key is on the same ring as the car key.”
“No shit!” said Simon.
“No shit,” said Stoney.
“I can see,” said Joe Blow smoothly, “that there are more difficulties here than meet the eye. Please go on with your conference. I will take care of the problem.” He walked, seeming to tiptoe, out of the room.
Simon came over to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. He looked around with a big smile on his face, and said to Mike, “You must be Mike. This would be your house. I like it. It’s really cool. Are you talking about that movie idea, from the old book? I had a thought about that myself the other day. I’m thinking that these characters are not that old. The boys are coming home from some school, so they are, say, sixteen and seventeen, and so Taras himself is in his late thirties, and the wife, who is supposed to be this old crone, she is only thirty-five or less, and the girl the one kid falls for, she is maybe fifteen. Nobody is old in this movie, because in those days nobody had a chance to get old. Fifty was way, way old. I think it would be startling, and it would also look good on the screen, if these were young-looking people but already wrecked, you know, from living such a hard life. That’s my idea.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Max.
“Do you have movie experience?” said Mike.
“Very recent,” said Simon, with an impish look. “I played a dancing penis in the barroom scene of a student production on the theme of male-female relationships, but they’re in the editing stage now, so I’m letting my hair grow in again.” He ran his fingers over the shadow of hair he had grown over his head and reached for the coffeepot. He poured himself a cup, then settled into his chair. “It gave me a taste of moviemaking. I liked it. I liked building the set, I liked thinking about the costumes. I even liked the dancing. It turns out I am pretty bilateral on some of those dance steps, good to the left and good to the right. The whole thing was a lot more fun than molecular biology, and pretty much more fun than my photography thesis on the landscape of women’s hair.”
“What is that?” said Al.
“Oh, it’s just what it sounds like. I take extreme black-and-white close-ups of women’s heads, and if you manipulate the film in a certain way, it looks like these strange, unidentifiable scenes. One of them looks like a riverscape. Another one looks like a beach. Sometimes I style their hair, or braid it, or mousse it, or put little bits of stuff in it. The point is that when you look at one of the photographs, you are looking at something and thinking it is another thing. One girl had wildlife in her hair, I’m sorry to say, but it made a couple of interesting pictures. I wasn’t going to use that set of photos for my thesis, and then I decided I was, but now that I’ve done this movie, that all seems kind of boring and pretentious to me. I mean, I wish I could say that I have enough photographs for my thesis, because I really feel like I’ve gone beyond that now artistically, but I need at least ten more.”
Stoney said, “Elena is hoping that Simon will return to college tomorrow.”
“She is,” said Simon, “yes. She is hoping that. But I love this house so much, and I think I’ve talked Monique and Marya into letting me photograph their hair. On their own time, of course,” he said to Mike. “If I get some good ones of them, then maybe I can talk Isabel into something. She has very landscapy hair, especially along the back of her head.”
“Did you come in here for a reason?” said Stoney.
“I came in to offer my suggestion,” said Simon.
“Oh, right,” said Stoney, attempting to insert into his voice the idea that Simon now leave. That Madonna thing had been a gift, and Stoney had thought he could work with that, but now he was experiencing Simon as a stream might experience a rock. The way the men looked at Simon—Who is this kid, what’s he doing here?—and Simon looked at the men—This is cool, what can I make of this?—was causing eddies and backflows and a net loss of energy. Stoney cleared his throat. He said, “It’s not inconceivable that Madonna would favorably consider the Taras Bulba project, if she’s in the mood to go back to work.”
“She would play the old woman who leads Andrei to the beautiful princess,” said Simon. “I can see that.”
Max smiled. Then the door opened again, and this time it was Paul. He leaned in, said, “Is Zoe in here? I can’t find her. It doesn’t help that I still haven’t figured out which room is which.” But instead of turning around and walking out, he saw the Russians and walked right in, remarking to Al, “You must be Mike—”
Al gestured toward Mike.
“Oh,” said Paul, “sorry about that. I don’t mean to interrupt, but I just have to tell you how appreciative I am of your house here.” He dug his fingers into the giant beard and went on, “I mean, it’s very kind of you to let us stay here, but even more than that, I am amazed and thrilled by the degree of thought that’s gone into this place. It’s unbelievable—”
Simon said, “Paul has been all over the world. Last night he was telling me about climbing the seven holiest mountains in China. He’s seen a shit-load of stuff—”
“You are a conno
isseur, then,” said Mike, courteously.
“Of a few things,” said Paul. “Of a very few specialized things.” He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, then said, “As a matter of fact, I’ve made a little study of Russian Orthodox iconography. I am especially interested in representations of God and holiness, and in the theories of the godhead that the various methods imply.”
“You are an art historian?” said Sergei.
“Oh, no. I’m a teacher of meditation and yoga techniques, and I also do some counseling. Traveling to holy places is my avocation. Though I would say that I prefer ruins to functioning shrines. Tikal. The Pyramids. I would like to get to the Lascaux Cave this year. That’s my plan.”
“I didn’t know you could go in there,” said Al.
Paul smiled.
“Paul goes in everywhere,” said Simon. “If he’s standing outside, the priests come out and invite him in. It’s strange but true. Looking at him, you would never think—”
“I doubt,” said Paul “that any Cro-Magnon priests are going to emerge and invite me in.”
“Stranger things have happened,” said Simon.
“Have they?” put in Stoney. “I think we—”
But Mike leaned forward, looking right at Paul. “What do you think about our movie project?”
“Well, I can’t say that I’ve studied the book at all. Other than Max’s synopsis the other day, I’ve only read it once, and that was years ago. And of course in translation, so I’m sure the subtleties of the whole story escape me. But on the surface, it’s very dramatic. The themes, of course, are slightly at odds with the story. I see Taras as a kind of wounded god figure. As I remember, at the end, his presence on the steppe takes on a quality of omnipresence. Notions of good and evil entirely disappear, as if they are too rudimentary to fully encompass the power of Taras’ grief. Am I mistaken here? When we weep for Taras, and I do think we are meant to weep for him, the whole notion of men as fallen, and of God as fallen in their fall, is offered as an idea. What do we feel when we think of God weeping for us? Is our own divinity, or potential divinity, enhanced thereby?”
“Gogol was much preoccupied with divinity,” said Al. “He made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and he did burn much of his work before he died.”
“Well,” said Sergei, “he destroyed the second half of Dead Souls under the direction of his priest.”
“I don’t think the priest actually told him to destroy it,” said Al. “I think it was his own sacrifice.”
“When they dug up his grave to rebury him in the Soviet period, he was facedown,” said Mike.
There was a moment of silence in the room, then Al said, “It was felt by many that he had been buried alive. In a way, I believe that would have been a fitting end for Gogol, one that even he might have appreciated.”
“Ugh,” said Simon.
Mike turned to Paul and said, “I like this idea you have about the ending of the book, that Taras is a failed God. It suggests that he exercises his power but is confused about what his power is for. I find that this controversy about God is a constant one. Have you seen—”
“The Reformation and Counter-Reformation Suite?” said Paul. “I went into there about an hour ago. It is a very striking set of rooms.” He turned to Max. “One room is full of Northern European art of the sixteenth century, and then there’s a bathroom, and then the other room is full of Southern European art of the sixteenth century, Spanish at one end and Italian at the other. But I could not imagine sleeping in there.”
“It also has a very elaborate bed from a palazzo in Venice,” said Mike, “but it is too short for most modern people. When I have studied religious history, I have found that this idea of God as all-powerful leads to many other ideas that seem very cruel. By comparison to the notion that the destiny of most men is to burn eternally in hell no matter what they do in life, which I believe was a notion of John Calvin, this idea you propose for Gogol that God is so distraught at the mess he has helped create that he exerts his power irresponsibly, or, perhaps I might say, in a state of confusion for a time, this notion seems to imply that God can make errors and then correct them and make amends for the damage he has done. I like this.” He turned to Max and said, “I believe it would be a good idea to attach Paul to this project. He has illuminated something for me. I believe he is a man of exceptional insight.”
“We don’t have a project,” said Max. “We’re just chatting.”
“We don’t have a project yet,” said Stoney.
“That idea, of course, has some interesting theological implications,” said Paul. “For one thing, the idea of a wounded God the Father occurs frequently in non–Judeo-Christian myths. The Father has to be saved by the children, as, for example, King Arthur must be saved by the Knights of the Round Table or the land is blighted and sterile. It’s an idea that presupposes a nice reciprocity between divinity and humanity. Or think of this—if God makes errors, and then feels remorse and redeems himself, then it is possible for people to do the same thing. And you might also say that if God makes errors and is all-powerful, then he can correct every error even as he is making it. The errors he makes in this universe are not being made in another universe, a universe that is brushing against or bumping into the universe we are experiencing. In the book we have, for example, Taras is so upset by the death of Ostap that he inspires many massacres, but in another book by the same name, written at the same time, Nikolai Gogol rewrites that passage. He decides that Taras has had enough—he does not become a man of peace, that would be implausible for his temperament and his time, but when the moment comes to call for more war, he remains silent, and the warfare diminishes for a time. I see him at his desk—Gogol, that is—with his lamp and his papers and his pen. He is reading over this passage he has written, I think I remember that it is only a few lines, something about the ensuing furious battles all over the region, and he simply draws a line through that and adds in something else, some little thing, about how when the Cossacks regrouped Taras did not add his voice to the clamor for revenge. He doesn’t say why not, or that he could not. He simply writes ‘did not.’” Paul shrugged. Mike nodded his head slowly and took a meditative sip of tea, as if this made perfect sense to him. Simon nodded, too. He was sitting there in comfort.
Soon enough, it was appropriate for Stoney to go on with what he had been saying in the first place. He cleared his throat again, but not, he thought, in a demanding way, more in a winding-things-up way. “My sense, I don’t know about you, is that we’ve made a lot of progress today, and that many good ideas have come out of our meeting. I’ve been in other contract negotiations, lots of other ones, where the principals didn’t have anything interesting to say. It was only about money and points and perks and stuff, and no thoughts about the project were aired at all, because everyone thought they knew what the others were thinking, even though in fact no one really cared about the project for itself, because it wasn’t inherently interesting, just a remake of something else that everyone had seen a hundred times.” He turned to Mike. “You may not know this, pardon me if you do, but this is how Hollywood works. You’ve got the money and I’ve got the idea, and I come to you and I say, ‘I’ve got a great idea, we’ll make a movie about a woman lawyer who’s recovering from an alcohol addiction, and Nicole says she wants to do it, so it’ll be an updated version of The Verdict, but sexier and more upbeat, with a little comic twist, kind of like Twenty-eight Days, but with Nicole Kidman, but the early Nicole Kidman, so there’s a hint of To Die For, so, really, it has everything, don’t you think?’ And so they all agree that it does, but actually, they’re all only half listening, and going off thinking they’re going to make the movie each of them wants to make. The producer is going to add in a little of his favorite movie, which is Divorce—Italian Style, and the director is going to add in a little of his favorite movie, which is Pennies from Heaven, and Nicole herself is going to add in a little of her favorite movie, which is Clueless, and o
n down the line, and so what I’m saying is that, even though on the surface Max here seems resistant, really he’s offering us a golden opportunity to delve into the material. Don’t you agree, Max?” But, naturally, Stoney didn’t give Max a chance to answer this question. He quickly went on, “And I love that idea that Gogol was found facedown in his grave for some reason.” And he did. It was a truly, truly weird idea and perfectly in keeping with how he had felt in the middle of the night, waking up in that abyss they called the Amber Room. He wondered how he could fit someone being found facedown in his grave into a movie of Taras Bulba.
Now there was a general loosening of everyone’s demeanor, a clear sign that the meeting was over. Max said, “What was that about your car keys?”
“It sounded to me like Isabel flushed my car keys down the toilet somewhere in town, but I don’t get it, because I thought Simon said it was Elena who went after newspapers.” He looked at Simon. Simon shrugged and said, “I was just asking a question. Actually, I just got up. I was heading for the dining room, and I heard you all in here. I don’t know where Mom is or Zoe or anyone.”
Everyone pushed back his chair and unbuttoned something. Max unbuttoned the top button of his green polo shirt. Stoney unbuttoned his cuffs. Mike and Al unbuttoned their jackets. Sergei, who had a paunch, unbuttoned, surreptitiously, the button of his slacks. Simon unbuttoned his shirt altogether, revealing the hair on his chest, which curled in a very Adonis-like fashion. Simon was definitely, as Isabel had pointed out to Stoney more than once, suspiciously good-looking. Only Paul didn’t have anything to unbutton, since his clothes, made entirely of roughly woven cotton in shades of beige and white, were held together by strings. Though he didn’t unbutton or untie anything, Paul did get comfortable. He slipped his feet out of his thongs and then stretched and curled his toes. His toes, Stoney thought, were so long that he could probably manipulate tools with them. He and Mike continued to chat about the divine, which Stoney had an instinctive suspicion of, but if they wanted to introduce some aspect of divinity into this epic, why not?