by Ned Beauman
Not entirely free, of course. The Eastern Aggregate camp could also be regarded as a planned economy, with Pennebaker as its chief planner. Coehorn regarded accountancy as a superstition and forward planning of almost any kind as an embrace of death. Pennebaker, on the other hand, had dreamed since he was a child of becoming a bookkeeper so he could frolic in credits and debits for the rest of his life. At the camp, it was always Pennebaker who reminded Coehorn that they needed to sell more ice to the Angelenos, or that they couldn’t be so generous with the reserves of bubble gum, or that they were devoting too much foraging time to obscure seasonings like pokeweed. And he was as pesteringly attentive to the welfare of the citizenry as he was to the welfare of the state, even though people hadn’t come all the way to the jungle just to be told to brush their teeth or get some rest or save some of that for later when they might be hungry again. It was intolerable. That he was always right simply made it worse. Even Irma agreed he had to go.
‘Well, Mr Coehorn,’ Pennebaker said, ‘I guess I’ll begin by getting everybody up to speed on the difference between fiat money and specie money in this particular context. We had the company scrip, but out here it didn’t really seem to have any value, because—’
‘Oh my God, Pennebaker, I’m already falling into a coma,’ exclaimed Coehorn, his head in his hands. ‘This is worse than a logistics meeting. I said one or two paragraphs! What was that? Six paragraphs already?’
‘No, Mr Coehorn, that was only … seventeen words so far.’
‘Eighteen words too many. Let’s just scratch the economics.’
‘If you’ll allow me, Mr Coehorn, I think my experience from the Mirror might come in handy here,’ said Trimble. ‘As a newsman, you learn pretty soon that if you want to tell a really contortuplicated story, you have to tell it through human beings, not facts and figures.’
Another reason Coehorn had no misgivings about sending Pennebaker away was that he got such good counsel from Trimble. It had emerged that the ratty little fellow could be quite astute, and although Trimble moved amphibiously between the two camps, Coehorn knew that deep down he was a New York man and he had New York interests at heart. Coehorn could only pity the Hearts in Darkness crew in that respect, because if there was anyone who had their interests at heart it certainly wasn’t their boy king Jervis Whelt. ‘Trimble’s right,’ he said. ‘Start with something interesting. I know the imminence of your reunion with your beloved funnel cakes may be clouding your judgment but do try to apply yourself to the problem.’
‘Just to be clear, Mr Coehorn, you want me to pass over ’38 and ’39 as fast as I can,’ said Pennebaker.
‘Yes.’
‘Then I slow down as we enter the early part of this decade.’
‘No, not necessarily. I don’t remember those years being very eventful either.’
* * *
26th [illegible]
Carrotwood [illegible]
[illegible] Samuell [illegible]
[illegible] TX
United [illegible]
My love,
Ever since [illegible] ran out [illegible] trying to invent [illegible] even when [illegible] experience making paper [illegible] type of trees [illegible] catty whompus [illegible] it hardly [illegible] & the pen goes right through [illegible]
o to hell with it
Virginia Droulhiole plays peek-a-boo with her son Colby … Elias Coehorn Jr. receives fellatio from croupier Carl Ivo … Irma Kittredge warms up her bathwater in a boiler made from one of the generators that used to power the floodlights before the fuel ran out … Jervis Whelt, kneeling on the upper terrace, where there was once a handsome peripteros until one half was disassembled and the remaining half collapsed during a storm, draws a map of the other encampment … Walter Pennebaker estimates the metabolic fuel value of jungle honey in calories per ounce … Leland Trimble comforts sobbing carpenter Dick Schwalbe … George Aldobrand plays cricket with a tapir-hide ball of his own construction … Gracie Calix wads up the letter to her niece and throws it away …
September 3rd, 1942
Carrotwood Hospital
5600 Samuell Boulevard
Dallas, TX
United States
My love,
So much to tell. I haven’t been able to write for a while because it took so long for the papermaking unit to learn how to mix the slurry so the paper doesn’t fall apart when you write on it & then for the first few months they were only making a few sheets a day so there was none for poor old Gracie. I didn’t like to write on the mushy paper because you couldn’t make out the words, which shouldn’t matter because Emmy my darling you’re never going to read these letters anyhow, so I could write on the rain with my finger for all the difference it makes, but I can’t help wanting to write real letters, so I guess in my heart of heart of heart of hearts I still think one day I’ll get these letters to you & maybe I’ll even be sitting there watching you read them. Somebody needs to knock some sense into me wouldn’t you say Emmy.
I ought to start from the beginning but I don’t even know where that is. Well here goes. The folks at Kingdom Pictures were expecting us back by Christmas ’38 with a few cans of film so they could start shooting the scenes at the beginning of the movie set in New York. Emmy did you know they always shoot movies out of order, I sure didn’t before I got into this business, & now for all you know I wrote the end of this letter before I wrote the salutation ha ha. But Christmas ’39 & Christmas ’40 had come & gone & Mr Whelt said he’s sure Mr Spindler will be understanding of the difficulties we’ve faced out here in Honduras but all the same it won’t be to the movie’s advantage to have fallen so far behind schedule. So what he wants to do is go back with the whole movie shot, so that all Mr Spindler has to do is put his seal on a final cut before they send it out to theaters.
We still can’t shoot the temple scenes because we still don’t have the whole temple. But Mr Whelt said there’s no reason why we can’t shoot the New York scenes with the Coutts family since they were only going to be shot on a sound stage anyway, we just have to build a few sets & props & such. The problem is there wasn’t much film left after all Mr Whelt’s test shots, not nearly enough to shoot even just these New York scenes. So what Mr Whelt invented is a little like those ‘tableaux vivants’ we used to see at county fairs you know the ones, except I remember the ladies weren’t [illegible] to move a muscle for reasons of decorum but Mr Whelt makes sure there’s half a dozen actors all moving around & talking like cattle auctioneers to get across as much in five or six seconds as they normally would in a half a reel.
Film isn’t the only thing we’re short of …
[section abridged]
About a month after that, when it seemed like things couldn’t get much worse, Mr Aldobrand had his face ripped off by a monkey. Yes you read that right. He was out foraging, his third trip out that day they said & no surprise knowing how hard he works for the rest of us, when this critter just jumps on him out of the trees for no reason at all & before they can get it off him it’s already taken his nose & his upper lip & most of his cheeks. He was so cheerful about it when Dr Zasa was working on him back at the camp, even though he must’ve known the doctor couldn’t do much more than put a bandage on it. Not to worry, my face is insured at Lloyd’s he says & I think he was joking though I guess it could be true because I heard Mary Pickford insured her hair. Mr Apinews who was with him when it happened wouldn’t quit talking about how sore he was the monkey got away before they could revenge themselves on the little so-and-so.
A few days ago Dr Zasa decided he should take the bandages off, not that I really believe he had any idea of the [illegible] time to take the bandages off an injury like that, he’s only a studio doctor not a surgeon. Oh Emmy it’s beyond my powers of description to tell you what Mr Aldobrand looks like now & I’m glad it is because just to write it down would be a kind of cruelty I think. We ought to be treating Mr Aldobrand the same way we treated him before but the truth is
if I just look straight at him for a second I have to run off on my own somewhere & sit down & shake for a few minutes.
If our high-tone Miss Thoisy had the same happen to her she’d wish the monkey had killed her instead because nothing means more to her than her looks, but Mr Aldobrand is so much the opposite that he goes around as if he couldn’t care less, which sounds sort of salutary for the rest of us but really we wish he’d show a little more of a reaction, cause it doesn’t feel right.
When folks first saw his new face they were saying it’s finally time to send somebody back to America, we ought to send Mr Aldobrand to see the doctors who put Mr Spindler’s face back together after the airship accident. Mr Aldobrand wouldn’t hear of it of course. He wants to make the movie. But what nobody’s disposed to mention is how can we make our movie when our leading man looks like that. Mr Halloran wants to cast somebody else in the part but Mr Whelt says you can’t make a big change like that without Mr Spindler’s permission because they’ll already have mentioned Mr Aldobrand in the advance publicity materials. Instead he wants to put a new scene in the script where Mr Aldobrand’s character has his face ripped off by a monkey on the way to the temple, but I’m not sure that would pass the Hays Code & besides I think he’s forgetting that Mr Aldobrand’s character has to marry Miss Thoisy’s character at the end of the movie not float off dead down the Río Patuca like Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera oh why did I ever write that down I feel guilty already.
You can’t tell but I had to quit writing for a minute just now because Trimble came in. This is my confession, I told you a lie at the start of this letter, or no I didn’t tell you a lie but I left something out. The papermaking unit are making more paper than they used to but still hardly enough to go around. So I’m writing to you right now on paper Trimble brought me.
After the first time he did that I swore I’d never take anything from him ever again but I guess I couldn’t keep to it. Yes Emmy I made a deal with the devil so to speak, but it isn’t too serious. Sometimes Trimble asks me what I heard about something from somebody, or sometimes he gets me to tell somebody something about something else but pretend it wasn’t him I heard it from. That’s all. I still hate him like poison but I don’t fret about it much because it’s no injury to anybody it’s only gossip.
I do call it uncanny how Trimble always knows so much he’s got no business knowing, not just about us but about the New York folks too because he spends just as much time down there as he does up here, but he’s a born newspaper man I guess.
God almighty what I’d do for a cigarette.
Last night a few of us girls were sitting around the fire making arrows, I was sharpening a fishbone to make the type of arrowhead you need for bowfishing, when out of nowhere Miss Raye who plays one of the temple nightclub floozies just starts bawling fit to pop an eyeball. We ask her why & she won’t say right away but then a little later she says, When are they going to come for us, we’ve been out here so long it feels like we’re stuck here in purgatory, it doesn’t make sense, isn’t anybody wondering where we are, I’ve got friends back in Hollywood who must have gone to the authorities we’ve been missing for so long, why aren’t we in the newspapers, why aren’t they sending search parties, how could Kingdom Pictures abandon us out here, etc.
So we tell her, We’ll be home as soon as we finish the movie, they’re just waiting for us to get the movie in the can, which is what folks tend to say around here when anybody starts talking like Miss Raye was talking. But then a couple other girls admitted they’ve been nursing the same sentiments. & soon we’re all saying, Yes, yes, if only we could go home. But I only said it to fit in. Because the truth is I don’t want to go home. Miss Burlingame too, I didn’t hear much conviction in her voice. Maybe a lot of the girls there were only saying they wanted to go home because everyone else was saying it. You end up in Hollywood because you wanted to get away from something but you don’t have to be there long before there’s something there you want to get away from too. That’s how life is. I haven’t personally got anything against Hollywood yet but I really don’t care where I am if I can’t be with you the only star in my sky.
Yours forever,
Gracie
Joan Burlingame tries to coax Jervis Whelt into taking a nap … rigger Mick Ofshe ejaculates into a spider’s web to see what will happen … Colby Droulhiole sings a song his mother taught him … Elias Coehorn Jr., having vomited inside his cabin, endures the smell until somebody arrives to bury it for him, rather than demean his station by burying it himself … actor Amos Fleming, a compulsive reader who thought this trip would be a wonderful opportunity to spend a few weeks immersed in the Complete Works of Shakespeare and therefore brought no other book with him, starts it over for the fifth time, feeling a loathing for its author like none he has ever felt for a living human being … Carl Ivo guts a catfish … George Aldobrand uses a mirror to brush insects off the numb part of his face … Gracie Calix folds up the letter to her niece and puts it in her jewelry box …
* * *
There’s an apocryphal story about a certain CIA analyst who supposedly still works down in Foggy Bottom. (Of course, every story I’m going to set down here about the agency is apocryphal in the sense that it’s unverifiable, but this one in particular does not have the stench of truth to me. Then again, not much does any more; I think my nostrils are burned out.)
The story goes that about ten years ago two police detectives in New York or Chicago or some other City of the Plain were investigating a string of very clinical sex murders when a tip or a hunch or a lucky break led them to an apartment where they found a garrote or a hunting knife or a can of harrowing photographic negatives or some other indication of the occupant’s guilt. But they also found thousands of pages of typewritten notes about various scenarios for the escalation of the nuclear arms race. Even at a glance the detectives could perceive such professionalism and detail in these notes that they began to wonder if they might have stumbled across a senior KGB agent who’d been assassinating local blondes according to some esoteric Russian agenda. They handed the suspect over to the FBI and the FBI handed him over to CIA, but when CIA interviewed the suspect about his notes they discovered he didn’t know any state secrets, or at least none that he hadn’t deduced on his own. He was merely an enthusiast, a kind of gentleman scholar possessed of a tenacious and dissective intelligence. Analysts at the agency who received photostats of his notes tended to agree that never in their whole careers had they seen work of such high quality, and in the end it was decided that for the sake of the long-term security of the United States, the suspect should not be tried for his crimes but instead should discreetly be given a job. He now has his own basement office where he writes long reports to be summarised for the attention of the President, and the ‘mainframe computer’ that’s being built at Langley for processing data in bulk has been designed to simulate his mode of reasoning as closely as possible. Sometimes the story ends here, but sometimes it’s claimed that twice a year, on Christmas Eve and Independence Day, the analyst is escorted to a randomly selected town in the Midwest where he’s permitted to indulge his other hobby for an evening so he doesn’t get too pent up. Also, he’s right behind you. Boo!
I’ll believe it when I meet the guy. Still, that story always makes me think about the personalities that accomplish a lot in this business. Trimble, whether I want to admit it or not, would have been an asset to the agency. But if Frieda, my assistant at the warehouse, ever asks me about a permanent job, I won’t encourage it. Her heart’s too big. This morning, when I tried to call Winch McKellar to thank him for sending her, his girl wouldn’t even put me through. I understand he can’t admit he helped me out. I’m typhoid now. But it shows how the agency has changed in the last few years as a result of Branch 9’s ascendancy. An officer of McKellar’s seniority shouldn’t have to worry about who he talks to on the telephone. Regardless, I told Frieda I’d spoken to Mr McKellar, the man who organised her
security clearance, to assure him she was working hard for me – and, good grief, whenever she shows me that smile of hers, I can feel my sins sluicing off me like birdshit under a jet wash. The archangel Gabriel wouldn’t dare ask this girl out on a date because he’d feel like too much of a bum. In any case, she stays home almost every night to help her three little brothers with their schoolwork. So she’d be busy.
Trimble, in the years Gracie Calix describes in those letters, was like an avatar of the Central Intelligence Agency, not the actual government bureaucracy but the paranoiac’s vision of it as an immanence or supernatural law. Almost anything that happened at the temple, no matter how trivial: if Trimble wasn’t responsible for it, then at the very least he knew about it. Eastern Aggregate scrip was not yet in use among the Californians, so in theory there was no cross-border currency, but Trimble had established himself as the Federal Reserve in an economy of rumor. And although Coehorn and Whelt were both statesmen of sorts, there was no one else at the temple with Trimble’s totalising ambitions, so he was almost unopposed in his project.
My task here is a reckoning of that project’s magnitude, but given all of the above, the immediate question is not how Trimble did so much, it’s how he did so little. From his arrival in 1938, it took him until 1944 to acquire both the Hearts in Darkness crew’s Incipit portable printing press and a steady supply of paper, the two modest prizes towards which he’d been working almost that entire time. If Elias Coehorn Sr. had made such draggy progress, no one would ever have heard of Eastern Aggregate. But the population of 131 at the site wasn’t New York or even Hershey. They lived frugal lives, centrally administered, without much vice. Trimble could only be as dynamic as the system itself. It was as if he’d sat down at one of those old treadle-powered sewing machines to find that the crankshaft barely touched the flywheel and there was barely room to move his foot, so he just had to flex and wiggle for six years until by agonizing degrees he’d transferred enough energy into the machine to get it running.