The Deer Park

by Norman Mailer

  Yet he knew his situation was a little unreal to him. That was true of all his life, all of it was unreal to him. Could there possibly have been a time when he had been so young as to break his nose trying out for the college football squad because he wished to demonstrate to himself he was not a coward? Had there been that other time in Spain when he had volunteered as a rifleman, and for three disastrous weeks had lived in a shelled village on the bank of a river with an exhausted Anarchist brigade, discovering that he was braver than he thought, for he had held himself together even after the front had collapsed, and it had been necessary to make a sad escape across the Pyrenees into France. Where had it all gone, the good along with the bad? It was not true, he would think, that as one grew older the past grew clearer. The past was a cancer, destroying memory, destroying the present, until emotion was eroded and the events in which one found oneself were always in danger of being as dead as the past.

  Still, the time had come to face himself, to take account, and go on into new work. Only Eitel could not think of other work to do. Most remarkable cancer! It not only erased the past and stunned the present but it ate into the future before he could create it. So for days after he stopped believing in his script, he continued to work at it, carrying a quiet depression to dull his work and even his effort and move him from one day into the next.

  Under such a burden, he was growing critical of Elena’s faults. He would wince as he watched her eat, for she waved her fork, her mouth often full as she spoke. He had tried to correct her. She would listen with sullen eyes these days, she would promise to try, and with her stubborn insight would never learn at all, as if she were saying to him, “If you really loved me, I would learn everything.”

  It was maddening to him. Didn’t she realize how much he wanted her to learn, did she desire no more than that the son of the junk dealer marry the daughter of the candy store keeper? His parents were dead now, but there had been years when he was young and had to fight his battles against them, against the bonds of his mother’s love and the force of his father’s contempt that he had a son who wasted time in the theater and was supported by his wife. So, all the while, he would suffer at her clumsiness.

  Since he had been in Desert D’Or, particularly since the party at the Laguna Room, the number of people who sent him invitations had become fewer and fewer. Socially, his life was now all but empty, and he found Elena and himself restricted to a small group whom he called the émigrés. They were writers and directors and actors and even a producer or two who had refused, as he had refused, to co-operate with the Subversive Committee. Years ago many of them had bought winter homes in Desert D’Or, and like Eitel they had come here now for refuge. The social life he was obliged to share with them, since they were invited nowhere else in Desert D’Or, was hardly satisfying to him, however, and he hated the thought of being classed with the émigrés.

  Elena liked them no better. “Boy, are they pompous,” she said to him once.

  “You’re right on the nose,” he smiled.

  “Pompous men are always full of self-pity.” she added now that he had encouraged her.

  Eitel agreed. Most of the émigrés he found dull, one or two were pleasant, but as a group they bored him. Eitel was always bored by people who could enter a discussion only so far, and then could go no farther, because to continue would mean that they would have to give up something they had decided in advance they would continue to believe in. Besides, he knew them so well; even years ago they had bored him when he had belonged to their committees. And these days he found them so eager to believe he was a great artist who refused to compromise with the vultures—exactly the modest picture they had of themselves.

  Of course in the years after he took his name off committees, they had been the first to pass ugly gossip about him, and so he could hardly be impressed with the adulation they gave him now. If anything, the women were more irritating to him than the men; since his first wife he had never been partial to women who were too directly political. Yet no matter how he disliked the émigrés and their wives, he found himself wishing that Elena was not so ignorant of everything they talked about.

  If the conversation was even medium clever Eitel knew the evening was ruined for her. Elena would be grim, she would sit among the others with a smile stitched to her face. When she tried to say something, and that was rare enough, he would feel that everybody was suffering. Someone, for example, might tell a joke, others would laugh, and Elena would repeat the last line and then explain it. “He didn’t really want to,” Elena would say, “isn’t that funny?” When they got home from such an evening, she would be in a bad mood. “No, don’t talk to me,” she would say as he would start a careful lecture. “It’s my fault, I know it is, I just don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Elena, you can’t hope to be smarter than everybody you know.”

  Recollecting the details of the evening, she would cry out, “But, I’m stupider,” and fling herself on a couch to stare at the wall. “It’s you,” she would say bitterly five minutes later, “don’t put the blame on me. If you like those women so much, go get one of them. You’re not stuck with me.” Sometimes she would begin to cry.

  One night, in contrast to the usual drama with which she announced she would leave him, Elena said quietly that it would be better if they broke up. “I could live with an ordinary man. I could be happy with somebody else,” she said.

  “Of course you could,” he soothed her.

  “Even some of those pompous friends of yours.”

  But he began to laugh, and gave one of his imitations. “Years from now,” he said in the voice of a public speaker, “when credit is given the struggle for peace in this country, they won’t forget the courageous stand which individual statements of principle—no matter how uncoordinated like Charley Eitel’s here—made on the consciousness of the American people, who let us not forget are under their collective hysteria, a deeply peace-loving and progressive nation.”

  “Oh, sure they’re silly,” Elena said, “and they’re all afraid of their wives, but a couple of them are real men, maybe.”

  “Yes,” he drawled, “they have the strength of big-breasted women.”

  She laughed unhappily. “I’m going to leave you some day, Charley. I mean it.”

  “I know you do, but I need you.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I wish I could be better,” she said.

  Finally, he came to restrict himself to seeing the few people with whom Elena felt comfortable. I was one of them, and on those nights when Lulu and I were fighting, I would visit Eitel and Elena. With me, Elena could be gay, she could be silly. We spent evenings, the three of us, listening for the most part to Eitel’s stories which he told with happy flourishes. On those evenings he would seem content with her, and she would glow with love for him. It was all fine until the morning; then work began again and his depression with it. At such moments, deep in the frustration of writing his film, Elena seemed a poor companion with whom to take in the Coronation. “Hello, your duchess,” he could hear her stammer.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ABOUT THIS TIME Collie Munshin flew up to Desert D’Or and spent his first evening in the resort with Eitel and Elena. Collie’s explanation that he had come for a week’s vacation to think about a picture he was going to produce did not sound very convincing to Eitel, but in any case, whatever Collie’s reasons, he repeated the visit on the following evening. The next day Collie was over for late afternoon drinks. In my absence—Lulu and I had gone on a gambling binge to one of the towns across the state line—Munshin became the friend of the family.

  They were cosy, the three of them. Now that Munshin had lost Elena, everything Elena did delighted him. In the middle of talking to Eitel about productions and budgets and temperaments and rivalries, at exactly those moments when Elena would begin to feel most excluded, Munshin would beam at her and say, “Doll, you’re ravishing.”

  But these were only preliminar
ies. It took Collie less than an hour to become personal. “I hate civilization,” he said after the first silence.

  “Why?” asked Eitel obediently.

  “Because here we are with the most involved and intricate relationships, and what do we do? We talk about trivia.”

  “What else is there to talk about?” Elena asked.

  He turned to her. “Elena, you can’t know the emptiness you’ve left in the way I live. I don’t exist for you any more.” He took a swallow of his drink. “There’s a savage core to women. I’m convinced of it.” His voice became resonant, and Eitel had an idea of the rhetoric to come. “You women forget things the way a man never could,” Collie declared. “I can imagine what you’ve said about me, Elena, and it’s true, it’s all true no doubt, you’re a sensitive person, but did either of you ever think it was painful to me, and that it’s me who remembers the good things, not you, Elena, the solid things that existed between us, yes, even the passion, the passion, do you hear, Eitel?”

  “Collie,” Eitel asked, “do you really think you can brag in this house?”

  “Treat me like a human being,” Munshin roared, and added in a tiny voice, “I’m bleeding.”

  “You can afford to,” Eitel said. “You have lots of blood.”

  He knew however that Collie had been successful. What woman could not forgive an old lover who claimed to suffer? Once Collie had made his speech, Elena became vivacious, she started to tease Collie with a sharp little malice Eitel had never noticed before. Elena began to chat, she laughed her merry laugh, she put little questions to Collie. “I read in the papers,” Elena would say, “that your wife won a prize for the dogs.”

  “Yeah, Lottie took it again.”

  “I bet you got a big kick out of it,” Elena said.

  Collie loved it. Each time Elena attacked him, the moist sheepish look would appear in his eyes. “I deserve it,” he would seem to say. “Don’t think I don’t know.”

  At night when they went to sleep, Elena kept saying, “I feel so good tonight, Charley.”

  She could not keep her mood however. As they were turning over in bed, she said thoughtfully to Eitel, “You know, Collie doesn’t care about me. It’s you he’s interested in.”

  Drunk with the admiration of another man for her, Eitel did not want his moment spoiled. “You’re silly,” he said.

  “No,” she said almost sadly, “now that it’s over, Collie likes to talk about what he lost.” She surprised him by what she said next. “Charley, if he should start telling you things about me, don’t believe them. You know how Collie gets carried away when he tells a story.”

  “What could he possibly tell me about you that I don’t know?”

  “Nothing,” Elena said quickly, “but you know how he is. He lies. I don’t trust him.”

  Still, Munshin’s daily visits became something they waited for. After the depression of working, it was pleasant to spend a few hours this way, the three of them married in the most agreeable fiction: Eitel and Elena ten years together and Collie the bachelor friend. It was so agreeable that for the first time in all the years he had known Munshin, Eitel decided that he liked him. He had almost come to the conclusion that Collie was changing. At the very least he was the only executive at Supreme who had the courage to see him regularly. It was hard to resist this sort of attention.

  Yet Eitel was still suspicious; he could not understand why Munshin had come to Desert D’Or. Therefore, it was to Eitel’s surprise that he found himself telling Collie the story of his movie. It was on the fourth visit the producer made, and they stayed up late. After Elena had gone to bed, Collie began to talk about his own problems. It was part of the technique Collie used to borrow ideas, but Eitel did not resent it this time. Collie was being frank and even confessed he was in trouble on a picture and asked Eitel’s advice.

  Finally, it was Eitel’s turn. Munshin sighed, he squirmed his heavy bulk in the chair and said, “I don’t suppose you want to tell me, Charley, but I was wondering how things are going with your script.” His high-pitched voice was gentle.

  Eitel thought of lying. Instead, he answered, “It’s going very badly.”

  “I figured it that way,” Munshin said. “Charley, you’re used to working with people. If you want to tell me about it, maybe I can make a contribution.”

  “Or steal my story.”

  Collie smiled. “I got an idea I couldn’t steal this one even if I wanted to.”

  Eitel was wondering why he felt tempted. Collie could not possibly like his story and yet it might prove fruitful. Perhaps in Munshin’s reaction he might find new ideas. Eitel did not really know why. “You’re trying to kill it,” he said to himself.

  To tell a story was a talent he had discovered years ago, and this time he told his story well, too well indeed; he felt even as he was talking that if the story were as important to him as he had believed, he should not be able to offer it so easily. It took a sort of life as he continued to speak, it was better than anything he had written for it, and all the while Collie provided a fine audience. Munshin was known for the way he could listen to a story; he would exhale his breath heavily, he would cluck his tongue, he would nod his head, he would smile in sympathy; Collie could always leave the impression that he had never listened to a better story. From experience, Eitel knew how little this meant.

  When he was done, Munshin sat back and blew his nose. “It’s a powerhouse,” he said.

  “You really like it?”

  “Extraordinary.”

  All this meant little. Collie’s criticism would come later. “I believe,” he went on, “that this can make the greatest picture in the last ten years.”

  “Not with the script I have.”

  “You can’t have a script for this. You need a poem.” Munshin fingered his belly. “That’s the one weakness,” he sighed. “I don’t say I’m sure, Charley. If anybody can surprise me, it’s you, but can you put poetry on the screen?”

  Eitel did not know if he was satisfied or disappointed. “Collie, why don’t you say what you really think?”

  It took ten minutes for Munshin to come to the point. “I’ll tell you,” he said at last, “I like it. I like stories that are off-beat. But no one else would like this property because they couldn’t understand it.”

  “I disagree. I think it would be amazing how many people would like it.”

  “Charley, you don’t understand the story yourself. You’re a director, but you’re not thinking in terms of film. You’re concrete and this is mystical. I know why you’ve had trouble working. You’re trying to write a script which violates everything you know about film-making.”

  “Of course. You know what I think of film-making.”

  Munshin put his hand on Eitel’s arm. “I love this story,” he said, “and I know what it suffers from. At least I think I do.”

  “What?”

  “There’s no rooting interest.” This was the death sentence. “Charley, it’s too hip. It’s a whorehouse. Your hero is a creep. A character who’s making thousands of dollars a week on TV, and he decides to give it up. For what? To go out and help people? To end suffering? They’ll laugh your picture off the screen. You think an audience wants to pay money to be told this character is better than they are?”

  Eitel did not bother to argue. With each word Collie had been burying his hopes. The masterpiece was impossible, he felt suddenly. That must have been why he told it to Munshin, to learn it was impossible, something he had probably always known, but he needed someone to tell him. Perhaps, now, he would not waste his effort. Relief came over Eitel, an old relief; he was rid of a burden.

  “You know,” said Munshin, “I see a way to make this property successful. It needs a handle, that’s all.” One of Collie’s fat arms went up into the air. “Let me think about it a little.” But Collie would do his thinking aloud. “Eitel, I have it,” he said. “The solution is simple. You need a prologue to the picture. Let your hero start as a pr
iest.”

  “A priest!”

  “You haven’t been using your head. A priest takes you off the hook. I’m surprised you didn’t think of it yourself.” Collie was talking rapidly now, the story being teased by his producer’s mind, nimble as the fingers of a puppeteer. In the beginning Eitel’s hero ought to study to become a priest. Personality-wise, he would have everything, Munshin stated, charm, intelligence, poise—everything but the most important thing. “The guy’s too cocky,” Munshin said. “I see a terrific scene where the principal or the head monk or whatever they call him at a priest school, a kind of wise old priest-type Irishman, calls in Freddie”—one of Munshin’s habits when telling a story was to call the hero “Freddie”—“and tells the kid that it’s no go, he doesn’t think Freddie ought to become a priest, not yet. Scholastically, he says, the kid’s got everything. He’s tops in Church History, in Holy Water, in Bingo Management, he’s A plus in Confessional Psychology, but he doesn’t have the heart of a priest. ‘Get out in the world, son, and learn humility,’ the old priest says. Do you see it now?”

  Eitel saw it. He had no need to listen. “Let’s take it from Freddie’s point of view,” Munshin said with the pleasure of a man digesting a good meal. “If you want motivation for Freddie, you can present the priest as a sort of father-figure to him. The kid takes the advice like a rejection. He’s bitter. He feels unloved. So what does he do? He goes out from the priest school, and one way or another—we’ll work it out—he gets into television, a bitter kid, the kind who plays the angles. Yet at the same time we can drop hints that he’s feeling full of guilt for the slop he feeds people. And all the while his career is going up like a skyrocket.” Munshin interrupted himself, holding his hands forward expressively. “You build him up as a heel, and then you give the switch. Something happens to give him humility. I don’t know what we can find, but I wouldn’t even worry about it. Something with a crucifix or a cross. Show a Christ motif on the screen and who cares about motivation? The audience will buy it. Once Freddie starts his binge-sequence, we can give him a Wanderjahr, stumbling around bums with tears in his eyes, lots of business where he just loves everybody. I’m telling you even the kids will stop eating their popcorn. You get what I mean. I don’t even have to elaborate it. At the end …” Freddie didn’t have to die in the gutter, Collie explained; he could go back to the seminary and be accepted. An up-beat ending. “Something with angel’s voices in the background. Only not full of shit.”