by Daniel Stern
Greeting them on the deck of the ship, as Jud saw it, was Captain John Brockhurst, mature, wise, responsible for his boat and crew. It was as if, in discovering this roster soon after his arrival in America, Jud had signed on, had marked his “x” in the appropriate place and was ready for whatever might come, until the ship landed at the dark and unknown port of St. Thomas.
Jud took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face and arms. “Well now, Captain Brockhurst,” he said. “Where now, eh, Captain?” It was an old private joke; Marianne knew of it, and called Captain Brockhurst Jud’s imaginary playmate.
Now the answer came quicker than usual, and in a strange form—in the image of the gates that had been the subject of dispute between the designer Michaels, Rovic, and Jud. He would demand that the gates frame the play. And the Captain’s silent reply was in the three words carved on the gates: Arbeit macht Frei. Work creates freedom. Over the curved gates of Auschwitz, some genius of the Nazi Party of the Third Reich had conceived this lie to calm the fears of the millions of people who would pass through the gates into a so-called “work camp.”
Jud lit a cigarette. He opened the Players’ Guide, setting his notebook beside it, started to work. It was important to find the right girl for the part. Nothing had changed, but things had developed. He could hardly wait to complete casting, to see the set take shape, and to plunge into rehearsals.
Jud worked on for over an hour, in the silent office, within the silent theater. Outside, in the snow-muffled city, the machinery of the night picked up a pulse and began its movement and sound.
THE JOURNAL OF CARL WALKOWITZ
Not enough. Never enough! Fire and claws—for a moment I had them, from the guts to the brain and the hands, I sang with them, but unsustained. Ah, God, to be able to use hate or anger like a sick person obsessed with his insides, the feel of his skin, taking his temperature a dozen times a day, never distracted from the contemplation of his pain.
Could I have killed Jud Kramer today? Did I even know if I wanted to, in that one intense moment? Wasn’t it I who provoked him to violence? Instead of finding his weakness, I revealed my own. It was only an hour ago, and nerves are still crawling on the surface of my skin. It’s changed even the way I feel about this little Gramercy Park hotel room with its bland, characterless blond wood furniture and abstract, characterless feeling which I have found so protective. Now it oppresses me.
And the bells which will ring the quarter hour in a few minutes, the bells which I’ve loved because bells are not of any one country or very much of this time—suggesting a sort of medieval regularity and peace—now, for some reason, I sit dreading their sound.
Why? I’ve found him and I’ll be working for him. The thread that bound us is growing stronger and stronger. But through what labyrinth, to what waiting Minotaur does it lead? Where are those damned bells? My watch must be slow.
In the cab, with his wife Marianne, I spoke directly and she replied just as straightforwardly.
“I stare at you,” I said, “because you remind me of two women I’ve loved.”
“I remember you said something about that,” she said. “But you only mentioned one woman.”
“I didn’t mention my wife.”
“Most men don’t.”
“Jud?”
“I said most men.”
“Both women killed themselves.”
She had the courage not to pause. “I’m very sorry for you,” she said.
“Not for them?”
“No. You’re still alive. Were they both in the camps?”
“Ruth, my wife, was. Josanne, the other girl, happened in Paris, three years ago.”
“Did you love her? Yes, you said you did. You know, I’m angry at you.”
“For fighting with Jud?”
“For doing your part. It’s not just you. It’s the play, the whole thing, and you.”
“You mean you’d forgotten where Jud was before you met him?”
“I was trying to help him forget.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think he’s one of the forgetters. Today he even called it a kind of dream. Isn’t it you who wants to know it, to feel it, through him?”
“I only know that Jud wants very much to do this play. It’s about a misery I can barely imagine. I just know what it must have done to him and I can’t stop him from reliving it through the play. But I think you’re helping that process. That’s why I said I was angry at you. But I think I can do two things. One, I can be here if he needs me. In fact, it might be a good idea to postpone my movie job so I can be with Jud, for now.”
“Is it so easy to do this?”
“No, my agent and the studio will be furious. But if I want to stay, I’ll stay. And two, I can see to it that you don’t bring him so close to what-it-was that he won’t be able to control it anymore …”
“I hope you stay, Marianne,” I said.
“Why?”
I shrugged. “No why. Just—I like you.”
“And I’m afraid of you,” she answered. “But I’m giving you notice now, I’m not going to kill myself.”
The cab stopped and she said, “Next time you’re at the house I’ll sew the hem on your jacket. It’s coming apart.”
I watched her long, elegant legs as she stepped out of the cab. And swiftly my heart and my body were set adrift and rocked in an ocean of sexual longing. Past the curving of her figure and the slenderness of her departing legs the blue-black evening seemed almost ready to fly into the sky, like a bird to its nest. As the cab drove on, the sexual pull I felt in my groin turned slowly into an angry feeling in the stomach and head. Because the look of Marianne’s stockinged legs was not too different from the way I saw Ruth’s legs as I was stumbling and hurrying to lift her into the truck before they sealed it and we would be separated, perhaps forever. And I remember how, as I grabbed her by the waist, lifted her, and almost threw her in ahead of me, her dress revealed the tender backs of the young, curved calves of her legs.
I had been told about the trucks, and I was concerned about getting her a seat near the bucket for drinking water and the bucket for excrement. I’d heard of people being killed trying to get to those buckets. And yet, in that second I could still feel a quick stirring of sexual response.
Is everything equal to everything else? Where is the equation that can include that glimpse of my wife’s body hoisted to the truck, the look of Marianne’s legs, yes, and even Josanne, so soft-looking in a light summer dress? After a certain time of living can anyone replace anyone? Is this what they mean by clichés like “Life must go on” and “No one is indispensable”? A world in which these things were true would be a world in which both God and Man deserve to be dead. Yet they are true. And so …?
The bells are ringing, finally—and instead of monks walking slowly, with folded arms, across the grass to Evensong services, the dowagers of Gramercy Park are hurrying home to their dinners. And I must prepare for the dinner party at Joe Lear’s, the king of the production, for whom I now work.
First I will set my watch by the bells; the valuable bells that remind me, always, that time has not yet ended.
6
JOE AND NANCY LEAR’S apartment was the entire top floor of a twenty-story building that almost touched the East River. It was near the Rovics’ home, but it was quite a different sort of place. This was an apartment of the unembarrassed rich—enormous, but broken up into many intimate sections that offset the size, furnished with pieces often both immense and fragile. A terrace ran around it completely, a snow-covered hand caressing the throat of the building.
“It’s no use,” Joe Lear said. “That’s the way things have always been and that’s the way they’ll go on being.” He poured Martinis from a pitcher into glasses and handed them to Paul Rovic, Larry Elgin, and Larry’s wife Jenny. “There have always been national feelings, and when t
hey’re not national they’re racial, and when they’re not racial they’re some other group usually based on geography.”
“But not always on geography,” Larry said. “Like the Jews, for example.”
“No, not always. But most often.”
“You’re not exactly an internationalist, are you, Joe?” Paul asked dryly.
From the wall opposite to the couch on which they sat a Monet landscape shed a false nineteenth-century spring into the room. Next to it, a Chagall rabbi brooded with a mysterious and impalpable humor.
“I’ll show you what I mean,” Lear continued. “I was in India on business last month. Now just think of it. Freed from England, with much of the old baloney about caste, etcetera, being wiped out, and even forgetting for a minute about the Pakistan-Indian dispute, for which there are at least boundaries—take the Sikhs.” He took great care to pronounce the word properly, saying “Seex,” Lear read Time magazine every week.
“Who are the Sikhs?” Jenny asked.
“Well, they want their own state, right in the middle of India. That’s what I mean. Group within group within group.”
“That’s a language grouping,” Rovic said. “They speak Punjabi, not Hindustani or any of the other Indian dialects, so they feel different. In the beginning was the Word.”
“I thought you believed actors are more important to the theater than writers.”
“That’s in the theater! Out in the world the word and the flesh become one.”
“Paul, you’re a Jesuit. You can twist an argument any which way and still have it come out your way.”
Paul laughed. “My students call me ‘The Rabbi’ behind my back, now you call me a Jesuit. All I am is a teacher.”
“Don’t forget you’re a producer now,” Larry said.
“Just the power behind Lear’s throne.”
They all laughed at the obvious reversal of the truth. Paul glanced at his wife and daughter, knowing what they were speaking of so intently and ashamed at being unable to care.
Louise and her daughter, whispering conspirators, were facing the wide windows that fronted the river.
“Fanny’s on our side,” Louise said.
“How do you mean?” Janet asked.
“She thinks the play needs a name to be a success.”
“Did she mention me, personally?”
“Yes. She said Janet Rovic, an ingénue the public knows, at least.”
Janet grimaced. “Fanny has such a fresh way of expressing herself.”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Fanny is an important ally.”
“Is it terribly cynical of me, Mother, not to care if the play is a real success or not? I really don’t. Oh, I know it’s an important theme and all that. But I’m important, too. Everybody thinks that about themselves but they won’t admit it. All I want is a chance to show what I can do in a real dramatic part. Do you think I’m cynical?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t be upset. I agreed with you. I didn’t say it was bad. In fact, one of the reasons I respect you as my daughter is because you’re really on your own side. Very few people are. Your father never was.”
The friendly, regretful tone passed quickly from her voice. “Stop drinking. That’s your second Martini. I don’t want Lear or Jud to think you can ever make a fool of yourself. And if you giggle or drop things at dinner, they will.”
“Yes, Mother. I’m on my own side. And I’m going to stay that way.”
Louise measured the determination in Janet’s voice, took in the stance of her slender body and the set of her pretty mouth. She was pleased. Some of the satisfactions of life that she’d never received from Paul might come to her through her daughter. She reached out and straightened the collar of Janet’s dress. Then they moved to the fringe of the main group around the couch.
The discussion had led to the subject everyone was most interested in—the theater in general and the play, At the Gates, in particular.
“These theater party agents,” Joe Lear was saying, apropos of Fanny and her colleagues, “they’re the new legs on which the American theater stands.”
“Yes,” Larry Elgin said, “rapidly replacing our seven friends on the aisle from the newspapers as the power that makes or breaks a play. If the reviews are fine, it doesn’t matter a damn about the Bellevue Scholarship Fund or the D.A.R. or the Scarsdale Ladies Auxiliary. But if you get mixed notices, especially with a serious play, then the destiny of several hundred thousand dollars, from ten to fifty people, and a noble, ancient art form depends on people like Fanny Lebow.”
Louise laughed. “I’ve never seen you so passionate in public.”
“Sit down, Larry,” his wife said, tugging at his sleeve.
“And actors certainly love to play for these theater parties,” Rovic said. “People who’ve paid thirty dollars for a ticket—tax-deductible of course—think they have a right to sit back and challenge any actor to be worth it.”
“Unless it’s a star they’ve seen or heard of,” Louise said.
“Yes, give them Lucille Ball or Laurence Olivier and it’s a different story,” Larry said.
Lear, who had not sat down since the first guest arrived, walked directly into the middle of the conversation group. He spoke with the authoritativeness of the businessman, abandoning, for the moment, the humility of the novice producer.
“You’re right about theater parties, but we need them and we have to make sure we get them.”
“I can’t argue with you about that, Joe,” Larry said. “We’re not going to be coming into New York with the smooth shine of the tour and all the improvements made. We open cold, right in New York. All we have are two weeks of previews to help us tighten the play and start word-of-mouth. We need all the help we can get.”
“Okay,” Lear said, still standing in the dominant position in the center of the group. “Then let’s raise heaven and hell to make sure we get the theater parties.”
“I didn’t want to mention this before Jud gets here,” Paul said, “but there are some rumors.” Rovic seemed reluctant to actually state the point. “Hendrix is involved. Even though it hasn’t been in the papers yet, you can figure it’s been spreading. Fanny Lebow knew of it.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Paul,” Lear burst out nervously, “don’t you think I’ve heard the stuff about Jud cashing in on sympathy for his career …”
“Don’t blow it up out of proportion,” Larry said.
“It turns my stomach,” Paul said. “But Larry’s right. Don’t get the idea that it’s anything crucial. Fanny tossed it in as an extra, after playing footsie with a commitment for an hour.”
“You didn’t get a yes or no.”
“I got a maybe, followed by three unsolicited remarks.”
“About the play?”
“Yes. Get a star for the girl or one of the male leads … put some more humor in the play. No, I’m serious, that’s what she said. And she finished off with the rumors about Jud being an ‘emotional opportunist.’”
“Those her exact words?” Larry asked.
“Exact. And I’ve known Fanny for years. They’re not in her lexicon. She’s quoting.”
Larry’s wife Jenny, a pale, unpretty girl whose shyness kept her quiet for the most part, suddenly spoke out. “How can you take remarks like that seriously? Emotional opportunist.’ Even if we didn’t all know the kind of man Jud is …”
Louise said, with a gentle condescension, “Of course we do, Jenny. Why do you think we’re doing the play with him?”
The chimes of the doorbell saved Jenny from the necessity of an immediate answer.
7
JUD AND MARIANNE WERE both feeling nerve-ragged by the time they were ready to leave for the dinner party. The phone had been ringing all afternoon and early evening: agents with actor-clients who would be perfect for At the Gates (none of them had read the play); Marianne’s agents from Hollywood calling about travel arrangements to the
Coast; Michaels, with the little body and the too-big smile, calling about a friend of his to do the lighting for the play. The lighting man’s name was Rolfe, and Jud was not too apprehensive because he knew and admired his work. He arranged to meet them at the theater the following day.
Everyone called except Dasha. She had not arrived, and Marianne, especially, grew more and more panicky as every hour passed and no call came. Jud dissuaded her from phoning the police by telling her that his cousin was an impetuous, willful girl. Any one of a thousand distractions could account for her absence. She might very well wake them by ringing the doorbell at four in the morning. He called the service and left a specific message for Dasha, and then gave Ginny and Mrs. Broderick, both, elaborate instructions in case she arrived while they were out.
On the way over, in the cab, Marianne said: “I’m thinking of not doing the picture.”
“Don’t start that again.”
“I just said thinking.”
They were driving through the park and she kept her eyes turned away from him, watching the dim tree shapes in the twilight blur.
“You know how worried I’ve been about your reaction to this play.”
“That’s just it, my darling. We can’t treat me like a patient in a hospital. We have to go on the assumption we always have—that I made it and I’m okay.”
“Yes, but that crazy fighting in the theater today—and Walkowitz. Even if I hadn’t seen you rolling around on the stage like a couple of wild animals, he upsets things, somehow.”
“Why? He’s not the first guy who’s shown up that I knew in the camps.”
“You mean you remember, now, that you knew him?”
“Not exactly, but you can’t figure that. Sometimes it gets clearer or dimmer than other times.” Jud paused, then said, “He was there, all right.”
“Maybe it’s the way he looks that bothers me so,” she said.
“He’s a damned good-looking man. You mean his injuries?”
“And the way he sort of wears them like a veteran’s badge.”
“Some injuries decide how they must be worn.” Jud’s tone was sharp enough to make Marianne turn and look at him. “Look, all I’ll say about the scuffle you saw is that it wasn’t personal.”