by Jack Finney
“Jesus, Marion, he’s not seventeen now, he’s in his seventies!” I said pleadingly. “Probably retired, and long since out of pictures.”
“Maybe. And maybe not.”
“Okay, it doesn’t matter, because look: the longest you’ve ever possessed Jan is a few hours. It takes something, doesn’t it? Psychic energy or whatever you want to call it.” She didn’t answer, just looked sullen again. “And you run out of it, don’t you. Then you’ve got to let go, and Jan is back: right?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe, hell. You wouldn’t even get to Hollywood before Jan would take over again and come right back home. And if you did get there, she could do ten thousand things to wreck any comeback before it ever got started.”
For a good dozen seconds she sat glowering at the floor, then looked up. “She ought to let me go!” she burst out.
“Let you? Just hand over a . . . chunk of her life? To you? Why the hell would she!”
Marion muttered something, refusing to look at me.
“What?”
“I said I didn’t mean forever!”
“Oh? Just how long did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. Exactly.” She looked at me, head cocking shrewdly, like someone testing out an offer. “A few years maybe?”
I laughed, and she blew up.
“All right, one year, for crysake!” She jumped up from the chesterfield, arms folding tensely across her stomach, hands clasping elbows as though she were cold. And in her blond wig, artificial though it looked, in the black slacks and sweater Jan hardly ever wore, and in the fierce expression of her face as she began walking up and down the living room, she didn’t look like Jan at all. “I don’t know how long it’ll take!” she said. “What the hell does it matter anyway! What does she do with her punk little life? Nothing! Good night; she even plays bridge!”
I just shook my head. “Jesus. . . . You’re completely ruthless, aren’t you? Completely.”
“You don’t know your onions!” She flicked me a contemptuous glance. “I’m no more ruthless than anyone else would be. Who felt the way I do.” She walked over to stand facing me, leaning belligerently forward. “That’s what you don’t understand: the way I feel. You’ve thought about Jan. Thought about yourself. Think about me!” She stared at me for a moment longer, then turned away again, walking the room. “I lost everything,” she murmured, to herself as much as to me. “The most anyone could lose. Most of a life that would have been wonderful.” She turned to me again, pleading now. “I’m asking for a gift. Of just a little of it back. Make her do it, Nickie!”
After a moment—what else could I do?—I just shook my head helplessly, and she turned abruptly away. I sat watching her walk slowly around the room: absently touching a lampshade, feeling the material between thumb and forefinger; picking up an ashtray, glancing at the inscription on the bottom, setting it down; stopping to look at a picture; walking on. “Punk taste,” she muttered once. “Everything dull. Afraid of colors.”
She walked out to the hall and back. To the front windows, where she looked past me down at the street, then turned away again. “Pacing restlessly,” I said to myself, then realized that was only a phrase, and wasn’t true; she was calm enough. I’ve watched a zoo tiger glide endlessly around and around the limits of his cage, eyes no longer even seeing the curious changing crowd outside it. And realized that he’s not restless but everlastingly patient. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for. But when and if it finally happens he’ll recognize it: the latch left unfastened one day; the grating gradually weakened by unnoticed rust.
Marion was simply wandering the house waiting for whatever might happen next; we’d said all there was to say. I watched her; my wife’s face under the absurd blond wig, but not her. Not Jan but Marion Marsh, who might have become a star of the silents. She’d been down there! Actually been in Hollywood in the far-off, almost mythical days of the silents. I said “Marion, did you ever see any of the stars?”
She nodded. “Lon Chaney; once.”
“No kidding? Where?”
“On a studio street. At lunchtime. I was on my way to buy a box lunch at the canteen, and I cut through an alley between buildings.” She stopped before me, and I crossed my legs, looking up at her, listening. “And there he came around the corner walking right toward me. They were making a picture; he was in full make-up and looked absolutely horrible. He had a scar down across his left eyebrow, and his eye was dead white.”
“Singapore Joe! He was in his Singapore Joe make-up for Road to Mandalay!”
“Did you see it?”
“No, I’d sell my soul for a print; I’ve only read about it. His eye was covered with the skin from an egg.”
“How do you know?”
“I collect old films, not that I have much: The Mark of Zorro, Broken Blossoms. A couple serial chapters. Some early newsreel footage. But I know a lot about them, and they say that egg skin permanently injured Chaney’s sight.”
“Well, it looked just awful, Nickie.” She sat down beside me. “He saw I was a little scared, just the two of us alone in that narrow alley. And as he came close, he deliberately closed his other eye so there was only that one white eye just staring at me! I let out a little shriek, and he grinned, closed the white eye, and just as we passed he winked at me with the good one. He was really a very nice man, you know; everyone said so. Actually kind of good-looking, in a tough kind of way.”
“Lord; to have actually seen Lon Chaney. In his makeup for Road to Mandalay.” I was smiling, shaking my head. “Who else did you see?”
“Oh . . . Laura La Plante.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. She was filming on the set next to ours. And when they didn’t need me on our set I’d go next door and watch.”
I nodded; in silent-film days, noise didn’t matter, and they often filmed pictures side by side on adjoining sets. “What was the picture?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember!”
“No.” She glanced at me curiously.
“Well, what were some of the scenes? I might recognize it from that.”
“Oh, Nickie, what’s the diff! She was in a kitchen fixing dinner or something. It was Laura La Plante I wanted to see.”
“Well, how was she?”
She shrugged. “Okay. But I was better.” She saw me smile, and smiled, too. “I know. It sounds conceited. And is. But it’s also true: I was far better. Still am. And still will be.”
“You ever know any stars?”
“Yes. Well, not really, not very well. But I did get to know Valentino a little; he was on a set next to mine once, too, and we talked a little, two, three times.”
“My God: Valentino. What did you talk about?”
“Oh . . .” She frowned, looking down at the floor. Then she looked up. “About how proud the people of his village were of him, some Italian village. I think he was really a very simple man. And a very nice one. To me, anyway.”
I sat shaking my head. “You actually knew Valentino. I can’t get over it. There’s a picture of his playing now at the Olympic. The Four Horsemen. I’ve seen it twice”.
“You really are a movie nut, aren’t you. I knew a man at Paramount who collected films, too. Stole them, actually.”
“What?”
“Yeah. He worked in whatever you’d call it—the distribution department. He was just a shipping clerk, actually; he’d pack prints of the new films and ship them to distributors. A dozen to New York maybe, half a dozen to Chicago, a couple to Milwaukee, and so on. It was a punk job, and didn’t pay much, but he was a movie nut, too. So was I. So were most of us. We were all crazy about movies; being in them, being connected with them. One time—”
“Wait a second: what about this guy who collected films?”
“I told you. He was crazy about movies, but he knew he couldn’t ever be in them; he had a snub nose, turned way up. I didn’t really like looking at him
, though he was nice, and liked me a lot. Pictures he liked, he’d keep, that’s all; just order an extra print and take it home with him.”
I was slowly standing, turning to face her. I could feel the excitement welling up and tried to stop it: it seemed to me I had to be very careful somehow, or everything I was hearing would break up and fade away like a dream you can’t recall any more. “Marion. Listen. What kind of films did he like?”
She shrugged, then turned away, thinking. “Oh . . .” She looked at me again. “Griffith’s, for one. You know; the director? D. W. Gr—”
“Yes! I know.”
“Well, he had all his films, I remember; all the features.”
“All?” I said softly. I felt my knees go momentarily weak and fluid. “All of D. W. Griffith’s features? Oh, Jesus. Do you know that several of them are gone now? Lost! Not a copy known to exist anywhere in the world! And he had them . . . all?”
“Yes.” She sat looking up at me wonderingly.
“What else? Marion, what else did he have?”
“Nickie, I don’t know. Lots of pictures. He traded prints with friends in the same job at other studios.”
“Oh, my God.” I sat down beside her, then stood right up again. “Where, for example?”
“Well, he had a buddy at Universal he traded w—”
“Universal! NO! Listen, there was a fire at Universal! After your time. Hundreds of absolutely priceless films lost! Fabulous films! Mythical films now!” I stood blank-faced for a moment, staring down at her. “And he had some of them. To think he once had them. Listen, when was this?”
“Nineteen-twenty-six.”
“And how old was he then?”
“Oh . . . thirty.”
I did the arithmetic, then shook my head. “Be dead by now. Maybe not, though; maybe not. What was his name?” I swung around, ran to the bookshelves, grabbed up the three Los Angeles books, and hurried back to the window seat. “What was his name, Marion? He just might be alive, just might be in here!” I sat down, the three books in my lap, BEVERLY HILLS On top.
“You know, when I was down there, there was only one phone book, and it wasn’t any bigger—”
“Marion!” She shut up. “What . . . was . . . his . . . name?”
“I can’t remember.”
“YOU CAN, TOO, REMEMBER!”
“Well, wait a second! Good night, Nurse! It was an unusual last name. And a short first name. Dick? No, not Dick—he was that tall electrician—but something like that.” She sat frowning. “Norman? No, that was that dark young carpenter. And Ned Berman was a cameraman . . .”
“Didn’t you know any women, for crysake!”
“I don’t remember them as well. I’ll think of this in a minute; quit interrupting.”
I sat trying to wait, but I was so excited I had to jump up and go to the bathroom, but I hurried back. She was still frowning, staring at the floor, lower lip between her teeth. “Did you think of it?” I stopped before her.
“No, not yet. What’s all the excitement, Nick? I know you’re interested in movies, but so am I, and I don’t get all—”
“ ‘Interested’?” I had to laugh at the word. “Oh, boy. If you’d ever collected anything—You never did, did you?”
“Just men.” She was smiling up at me, pleased as always at any excitement. “Why?”
I couldn’t stand still. Hands jamming into my back pockets, I began walking up and down before her, fast. “Listen, if you’re a collector, you always have your—what?—your Holy Grail. A manuscript collector probably pictures himself in the back of some run-down, out-of-the-way secondhand bookstore. Finding a bundle of old papers at the back of a bottom shelf in a dark corner behind some books, where it’s been for years. He unties it and looks through old paper after useless old paper. And then—down in the middle of the bundle—there it is. His hands start shaking because there under his eyes at last is the tiny handwriting he has so often studied in reproductions of the man’s signature. Just his signature, the only specimen of that handwriting ever before found. Kept under glass and permanent guard in the British Museum. Worth a million dollars, they think, if it were ever sold. Yet now”—I was listening to myself, enjoying my own eloquence, and Marion sat grinning—“now here is page after page of that tiny, rusty-inked handwriting. With notes in the margins! And then, then . . . far into this long handwritten script, he finds a speech. The first words have been crossed out, but he can read them. And they say”—I stood thinking—“they say ‘To exist or die is my dilemma,’ and there’s a pen stroke through them. And just above them in even smaller letters is written for the first time in the world, in the author’s own handwriting . . . To be or not to be: that is—’ ”
She burst out laughing, and I grinned. “All right. Okay. I went too far, it’s ridiculous. Only not quite, Marion. Just barely not quite. The unknown Rembrandt hanging on the wall of a Goodwill Thrift Shop marked four and a half bucks has been found. So was a secondhand metal teapot marked seventy-five cents, and also marked on the bottom in lettering so small and tarnished that everyone else missed it . . . P. Revere, Silversmith. A little book was picked up out of a ten-cent sidewalk bin. Printed in Boston in 1827, according to the title page, which also read, Tamerlane and Other Poems, by Edgar A. Poe.’ The almost impossible dream is why you collect. And you want to know what mine is?”
She nodded, smiling.
“All the reels . . . all forty-two incredible reels of Erich von Stroheim’s lost masterpiece . . . Greed.”
“He had them.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“I do too! I remember that picture; everyone in San Francisco was talking about it! They filmed it here, and I watched some of it! Finally Von Stroheim finished it, and it was dozens and dozens of reels long; and they cut it way down. That was at . . . M-G-M!”
I nodded, barely breathing the word—“Yes. They cut it to only ten reels. And even some of those are lost now. Marion”—I squatted down before her, looking up at her face, almost whispering—“are you sure you remember? That he had all forty-two reels?”
“Of course; he talked about it. He’d had to trade three Paramount features to get them all. But he got them.”
I got up, sat down beside her, and took her hand between mine, looking into her eyes. “Then, Marion,” I said gently, “do you understand now? Do you understand why you have got to remember his name?”
She nodded. “Yes. I understand. How you feel.” She yanked her hand away and jumped up. “Why don’t you understand how I feel!” She stood glaring down at me, then her expression changed. “Listen, the theater, whatever it is, where they’re showing The Four Horsemen . . .”
“The Olympic; it’s an old movie house.”
“Do they have matinees?”
“Today; Saturday? Yeah, every weekend.”
“Take me to see it.” I started to say something, and she almost screamed at me. “Nickie, don’t argue! I’m sick of it! Just do it!”
“I was going to say yes.”
I gave Al a couple of bone-shaped dog biscuits, the kind he doesn’t much like to eat but loves to bury, and gave his tail a little yank. Then I drove Marion to the Olympic.
It’s a fine old theater. I think it must date from the Twenties itself, and they run a complete old-time program, including organ accompaniment. They get good sharp prints, and the pictures are taken seriously. We bought popcorn, which they sell in old-fashioned candy-striped bags, and sat down. There was a pretty good house for a matinee, but we found two together at the side.
The lights went down, the organ began, the old red-velvet curtains parted and rolled squeakily back, and a Pathé News came on, a rooster crowing soundlessly before the trade-mark. To appropriate organ music, we watched a forgotten horse race. We saw an equally forgotten senator from Oklahoma waving from the back of a train; a caption told us that he’d just come out foursquare and courageously against repeal of the Volstead Act. And we wat
ched a chimp on a bicycle.
A sing-along next, the words of “Rose Marie” sliding up from the bottom of the screen line by line, the organ playing the tune as a moving white ball touched each word or syllable as it was to be sung. Not many people joined in, but Marion did, loud and clear, and of course I had to join her, sliding down in my seat a little. But then eight or ten others came in, and some more after that. And after a half dozen lines of “Rose-ma Reeee, yiii luh vue . . . Rose-ma Reeee, mide ear” it turned into fun, both of us belting out those fine poetic lyrics, and I was a little sorry when it ended.
Title and credits for The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse came on, and we settled down to watch it. I was a little bored at first—I’d seen it twice before—but pretty soon it caught me, and I was enjoying it again. The Four Horsemen is the Valentino with the famous tango sequence, a big scene and a fine one. At tables surrounding the dance floor of an Argentinian cafe, dozens of spectators sit watching Rudolph Valentino, in gaucho costume as Julio, dance with Helena Domingues in a Spanish outfit, including a long-fringed shawl.
Valentino holds her romantically close, bending her far back, leaning over her to gaze deep into her eyes, and you can watch it for laughs or you can enjoy it. I sat enjoying it; I get bored with the idiots at silent-film showings who demonstrate their deep sophistication to the rest of the audience with constant guffaws. The old acting conventions and the stories can be foolish, but look past them and you can often see a lot worth watching.
This was worth watching. It’s a great dance scene—Valentino was a professional before he got into pictures—and the organist was really fine, as he generally is at the Olympic, his tango perfectly synched with their movements, as good as sound-on-film.
It seems strange to me yet that I instantly recognized what began happening to me then, though it wasn’t really strange: more than once I’d sat listening to Jan hunting for words to describe it. This was almost a physical sensation as though—if you can possibly imagine a sensation like this—someone had sat down in the same seat with me, pushing steadily toward me yet somehow without crowding. So that suddenly we were occupying the same space. All in one swift, smooth gliding motion I was taken over: literally “possessed.”