by Hugh Hood
“Why did they bring him to you?”
“Well, he was pretty tired. But he couldn’t kill himself except by cheating, by taking a sudden irrevocable step. The cemeteries are full of people who had no genuine wish to kill themselves. A real honest drive towards self-destruction is extremely rare. Most of us haven’t thought the question through. And those who have decide against, in all but a very small minority of cases.”
“Have you ever had a case of the real thing?”
“Only once when the man was clearly sane.”
“Who?”
“This’ll make you laugh. He was a philosophy professor.”
“Not very glamourous.”
She saw that he didn’t want to talk about the case, and let it drop. “As long as you don’t think I’m a faker,” she said.
“You’re not a faker, and you’re in wonderful shape. Go home tomorrow and fall in love, so we can use this bed.”
“That’s an interesting slip,” she said. “Will you put through the discharge?”
“Done it already. And that was no slip.”
“I just get up and go?” She wondered if he was taking her entirely seriously, and then understood that he wasn’t, and why he wasn’t. “I’ll go quietly,” she said.
She did, very quietly, in a cab Tuesday at noon. Peggi had agreed to go by the motel and ask the proprietor to lock the suite she’d had and hold it for her a couple of days. She had told Peggi to offer him double the usual nightly rate, more if necessary, but Mr. Aspinall wouldn’t take it.
“My rates don’t vary,” he said. “How long does she want it for?” He knew whom he was talking to, and was pleased and flattered.
“Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday at the latest.”
“She must have made a quick recovery.”
“Oh, she’s fine, just fine.”
“I guess she was under a strain, huh, Miss Starr?”
“Oh, you know me?”
“Sure I do. I’ve seen you in plenty of movies. I’ll go into town with my wife in the middle of the week, nights when the clerk isn’t too busy. It’s funny, I’d have recognized you before I would Miss Leclair.”
“That sometimes happens.”
“She’s pretty all right, on the screen, but you don’t seem to remember how she looks. I didn’t recognize her when she checked in, but I knew right away who she was . . . after, that is. I guess she was under a strain.”
“She’s better now, and she’ll be along Tuesday or Wednesday. Should I pay you now?”
“That’s all right. When she’s ready to check out.” As Peggi turned to go he said excitedly, “Miss Starr, could you wait a second?” He left the desk and went into the office behind, coming back quickly with one of those photographs you can· get in the five-and-ten for half a buck, tinted to look like a colour shot. On it was written “Peggi Starr” and underneath “Appearing in Universal Pictures.” She held the shoddy gold-coloured tin frame in her hand and looked at it. She remembered the day in 1960 when it had been taken, when she had been at the very top among the younger featured players, when it had almost looked as if she might make it as a star, if only it hadn’t been for that rough-voiced dumb-blonde quality.”
She laughed. “Where did you find this?”
“When you phoned I drove into Wilton to the drugstore. I’d be glad to have it.”
“Sure. What would you like?”
“Well, my name, if that’s O.K.”
“What’s your wife’s name?”
“Dena. With an ‘E’.”
Peggi wrote: “To Lou and Dena with my very best wishes, April 30th, 1967.” She signed it in a big curly hand quite different from the facsimile printed on the photo. He compared the signatures.
“They don’t put your own writing on these, eh? I can see why.”
Peggi had never thought about it. “She’ll be in Tuesday,” she said.
“I’ll be right here waiting,” said Lou. “Goodbye, and thanks.” When Peggi left the office he began to look for a place to hang the picture. As he examined the inscription, he puffed out his chest with pleasure and pride. He called, “Deenie, Deenie, come and look at this,” looking around for a tack and a hammer. His wife came, and read the inscription. “Isn’t that something?” she said. She watched as he hung the picture.
“Over more to the right, Lou,” she said.
Rose got there around one o’clock. She left the cab before they were in sight of the motel. “This is far enough,” she told the driver, “I’ll walk from here.” He made a breathtaking U-turn and drove off down Route 7.
It was the second of May, and an absolutely perfect day, just the sort of day to be restored to life and the world. She walked slowly along the shoulder of the highway; twice cars stopped or slowed near her as if to offer a ride. Each time she angled her steps away from the road, and the cars drove on. Soon she came to the motel court and driveway, the big electric sign swinging slowly in the light breeze. CRESTA CORONA MOTEL: LOU ASPINALL PROP. it said cheerfully, in tones of green and brown. She paused in the driveway, took off a shoe, and emptied it. Her car was parked where she’d left it on Saturday night and there was somebody sitting in it. She saw a pair of male ankles propped in the window of the right front door. She hurried over and was delighted to find Jean-Pierre stretched out waiting for her wearing a grin of anticipation.
“I’m very very VERY glad you’re here at last. I’m dying of hunger and we have twenty miles to drive to a place I know, that is, if I can find it again. We’re going on a picnic.”
She saw a basket of food on the back seat, with two bottles of wine sticking out.
“We’ll pick up your things and get out of here,” he said decisively. They went into the office and were greeted, none too effusively, by Mrs. Aspinall. She let them into the motel room, found Rose’s bag, and added up the bill at a very modest daily rate.
Rose said apologetically, “I asked Mr. Aspinall to add on something for the trouble.”
“He doesn’t want to. He says it’s O.K.” She conveyed by her attitude what the charge would have been if left to her. Rose paid the bill and they left. Nobody asked for an autographed picture.
As they drove out of the parking lot, Jean-Pierre put the top down, and at no point did he drive fast enough to ruffle Rose’s hair. “In France I drive fast,” he said, “but I’m a stranger here.” He took the car expertly along Route 7 and in a few minutes jogged left on a narrow local road, displaying complete familiarity with the district. In a few minutes more they crossed the state line and came into Westchester County and the beginning of hills and lakes. They turned first left, then right, and drew to a stop beside a pretty and almost countrified little lake, where there were picnic tables.
He walked around the car to help her out, and then leaned into the back seat and caught the handle of the lunch basket. “We’re here,” he said.
They were certainly ambiguously located.
“Are we in Connecticut or New York?” Rose asked. “I’m lost.”
“I didn’t think I could find this place. I think it’s just about on the borderline.”
“Aha.”
He lugged the food along to the picnic table he’d chosen—the one nearest the water. There was a green oil drum next to it, for refuse disposal. The view from the table was extremely pleasing.
“I’m impressed by these arrangements, this care for the public convenience.” It wasn’t really a very sequestered spot; there was nothing special about it, but it was pretty and quiet. There weren’t any other picnickers around, perhaps because it was the middle of the week, or because it was almost two o’clock, a little late for lunch. Rose noticed that she felt very calm and very hungry. The sight of the sunlight on the water had for her an oddly soothing, almost soporific effect.
“How do you know about this place?”
&nbs
p; He pointed with precision. “I’ve been staying with people just outside Redding, about half an hour’s drive from here. We came here last weekend. I like it even better this time.”
“People in the business?”
“I’m afraid so. Finance people. I would sooner eat than talk.” As soon as they’d left the car, he’d opened a small cooler and shoved the bottle of white wine well down into cracked ice. “There’s no question of its being really chilled,” he said regretfully, “but it will be drinkable. I couldn’t get it into the cooler when it was closed.” They drew the cork and killed twenty minutes putting out paper plates and some red and white checked napkins, and eventually the wine—an inexpensive Pouilly-Fuissé—was cool, though not cold.
“Next time I’ll do it right,” he said, “and the red is excellent at this temperature.” They ate cold fowl and supermarket salad, olives and pickles and slightly messy Roquefort, and other junk, drinking the pleasant wine in friendly silence. When she had had three glasses Rose suddenly noticed that she hadn’t thought about her weight. It was a long, self-indulgent; delicious meal. Feeling as though she’d just gotten out of jail, she said, “What about the other bottle?”
“I thought we might sit by the shore and drink it there.”
This seemed an excellent notion. They threw their garbage in the oil drum, wiped their glasses, grabbed the Beaujolais, and sauntered down a winding path to the shore, where they sat in the sand, stretched their legs out in front of them and deliberately passed the bottle back and forth: For a cheap wine, it was a sensational success. “This was a very good idea,’’ she said solemnly. She screwed the stem of her glass into the sand and leaned back, supporting herself on her palms. While he watched with intense pleasure she pushed her palms deep into the warm sand, brushed them off briskly and passed them through the heavy warm mass of her hair, lifting it and tossing it over her hands. She had much nicer hair than Charity. He watched her closely; she could hear his slow breathing.
For once she wasn’t hungry, she wasn’t alone, and she was very slightly drunk She took a long breath, looking at the sky.
“Oh God,” she said, “it’s good to be alive.”
They finished the wine in silence, then went for a stroll along the shore of the miniature lake. She had no idea where he had taken her, or how far, but in a few minutes she grasped his hand, walking along silently beside him. They went to the end of the beach, getting plenty of sand in their shoes, turned and walked the length of the beach in the other direction, passing the bottle of Beaujolais and their empty glasses, stuck upright in the sand.
“That would make a good shot,” said Jean-Pierre, breaking the silence.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’re here for?”
He had been deep in reflection, and blinked once or twice. “I came over first about a year ago, to see about distribution. I own six films which have had no North American distribution outside of Quebec, or virtually none. Two of them have had short runs in the New York area, on a trial basis, and that’s all. These films have already earned back their costs in Europe, and if I could get them shown widely in America and reviewed, one after the other, I might make a lot of money.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I like to have as much money as possible, but I’m using that as a figure of speech. Most of my profits have always gone into my next picture; that’s how I’ve been able to make the films I’ve wanted without interference.”
“No Horler? No Lenehan?”
“Nothing like that at all, no fraud, no misrepresentation, and no slavery. Did you know that when Truffaut made Jules et Jim his star did the cooking for the crew when they were on location in Germany?”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not. And I’ll tell you another story, how I got into films. When I passed my bac I enrolled at the university but spent most of my time seeing movies. I wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma. I knew Bazin, and I was an assistant editor on the review for years. My criticisms were always harsh, and all the directors used to challenge me to support my theories by making a film. None of them in the 1950s believed in cinema; they betrayed it, all but those of us who practiced the politique des auteurs.”
“What’s that?”
“Well in sum it’s the idea that the director should take all responsibility for the film, should sign it, and leave the mark of his ideas everywhere in it, just as a painter does. Director’s cinema. In the early spring of 1957 I inherited some money from my aunt, not much, but in effect her life’s savings.”
“And you put it into a film.”
“Into Feu James Dean. That was the year of Ascenseur pour l’echafaud and Le beau Serge and, I think, Les quatre cents coups. Or let’s see, no, I think that was a year or so later. But this was the beginning of la nouvelle vague, Truffaut, Chabrol, De Broca, Louis Malle and me. Jean-Luc didn’t make a feature for a year or two after that. A bout de souffle was 1960. I simply took my inheritance and hired a professional crew, and some good young actors whom I knew—two of them are now stars—and made up the shooting schedule, and shot the film in four weeks. I made it in the country around my aunt’s farm as a memorial, country I knew well from childhood though I was born in Paris. I wrote it, shot it, directed it, edited it, helped with the dialogue, arranged for distribution, and paid for it. Many people called it the best European film of that year. I think Le beau Serge was better, but who am I to disagree?”
“Paradise,” said Rose.
“I’ve made six, all the same way. Each one has done a little better than the last. Now I would like to have international distribution, particularly in North America, and the money that goes with it.”
“Why the money?”
“I don’t want money for power, but for value, for use, and it’s the same with sex. If I had that money, I could use international stars and wide-screen technique, although I’m not sure about wide-screen yet. I could experiment with colour like Antonioni and Godard.”
“Value, not power?”
“That’s right.” “You ought to use my car,” Rose said. “You haven’t got one here, have you?”
“No.”
“If you’re trying to get around Connecticut on weekends, you should have a car. Why not drive me back into the city and take the car out to Redding with you? Use it as much as you like.”
They picked up the bottle and wine glasses. “I’ll do that,” he said. “I can take you for rides when you aren’t busy.”
“I won’t be busy. I’m taking the summer off, on the doctor’s advice. He claims I’ve been working too hard, but that isn’t what’s the matter with me.” She followed Jean-Pierre towards the car. “There’s nothing the matter with me.”
“Evidently not.”
They threw the Beaujolais bottle away, got in the car and drove off south and east. In five minutes they crossed the state line, back into Connecticut. They had been poised exactly on the border.
After that, through June and July, they made a series of forays into the Connecticut countryside. They formed the habit of zipping up the Parkway to Route 7 and following that tortuous highway north and west, close to the New York border. As the summer came on they found themselves going deeper and deeper into real country.
The last of these excursions, before they got down to serious matters, turned into one of those gorgeously dreamlike occasions that lodge in the imagination, around which one’s most precious recollections may coalesce for the rest of a lifetime. They had come up the highway past many familiar crossroads and turnoffs, past the Cresta Corona Motel, further and further, and with every turn of the road and every mile traversed they felt themselves more certainly lovers, though nothing was said and no embrace achieved at that stage. They were halfway across Connecticut when they stopped to eat at a little Italian steakhouse at the side of the highway. The owner told them that the Appalachian Trail pass
ed along the other side of the highway, crossing it and going into highlands farther south. Where they were, it followed the river.
“What river?”
The owner looked scornful. “The Housatonic, what else?”
They were interested and amused, and after lunch they drove another half mile towards Cornwall Bridge, parked on the river side of the road, and went down a rather steep incline through brush and across rocks till they came to the river. Here the Housatonic isn’t a great river like the Saint Lawrence, but it’s more than a stream, maybe fifty yards across, shallow but swift, not dammed and sedgy but fresh, enlivening and sweet, no little lost creek but a real strengthening river with rich vegetation along its banks. They were really into the country and the pastoral life, hearing nothing but the calls of wildfowl and the sound of water. They came along marshy banks, stepping carefully on spongy footing, and soon picked up the trail markings. Jean-Pierre told Rose what they were, how the trail ran from New England to Georgia, cleared and marked for friendship’s sake by people all along the route.
“Where did you hear about this stuff?”
“I’m a camper,” he said, starting to laugh. “Not camp—camping, the real thing.” He’d been all over Europe on a scooter in the summers with a companion and a small tent. She didn’t ask the sex of the companion.
They moved along slowly in the warm sun. Suddenly there was violent motion in the riverbank grass, a whir of strong wings, and a great bird rose up before them, alarmed at their approach, spiralled into the air and crossed the river to settle peacefully on the other bank. The bird was brown with gray markings and a broad striped tail.