"Breathe deeply."
After a little while I started again. "T am reallv in eood condition. There is not an ounce of fat on my bodv. You can't imagine how I prepared myself for my work! Riding. Boxing. Tennis. Could I have another drink?"
This time she only poured a little into the elass.
"I hope you'll forgive me for behaving the way I did. I
simply lost my head. There is so much at stake. My first film in twenty years! Isn't that crazy? Isn*t that alone sufficient to drive a man to drink? At six years old. still a baby, I made my first film, then fourteen more films, one after the other, and then no more. Ouch!" She had dug her fingers into my right side below my ribs and piercing pain went through me.
"Did that hurt very much?"
"Well, yes."
"Your liver." Now she took a little patella hammer and tapped my knee for reflex action.
"Are your parents still alive?"
"No."
"What did they die of?"
"My father of uremia. My mother of cancer of the larynx." I became sentimental. "She had a hard life. . . . My father left us when I was two years old. He just went off with someone on the chorus line."
Natasha tapped my right knee; my leg jerked up. "Good reflexes, right? T tell you, organically I'm perfectly healthy . . . Yes, he just left us . . . without a penny. . . . Mother then developed a facial paralysis. It was too much for her, you understand. And she could not act any more. . . . Now I was.her only hope. We moved to Los Angeles. . . . Mother worked as a cleaning woman, as an usherette in movie theaters, and deliverine newspapers. For a time she washed corpses for a funeral parlor."
"You loved your mother very much, didn't you?"
"Yes. She did everything for me. I learned to dance and sing, tap dance and ride. Many times there was nothing to eat—but she always scraped the money together for instructions. She took in washing, sewed at night and even begged."
"Begged?"
"Outside of nightclubs. I caueht her twice doine it. When I was four years old there was not a studio in Hollywood where I was not known. Three years she dragged
me from studio to studio. ... If there were three hundred children waiting for one to be chosen for a two-day part ... I was among them. . . . My compulsive talking is pathological, isn't it? Do you know that I have not talked about all this in years?"
"I am very interested, Mr. Jordan. After I saw your film The Little Lord I ran a temperature of 104°. And I wanted to marry you. Does that hurt?" I was sitting up now and with the edge of her hand she had examined the area around my kidneys. "No . . . not at all. . . . The Little Lord! I was eleven then and already famous. . . . But the awful time before that! Every morning the same hope when we took the bus to the studios . . . every night the same despair. . . . My mother often cried when we returned home, tired and dusty, to our dirty street. . . . Exhausted, she would puU me along, tears staining the cheap powder on her harried face always hidden behind a black veil... I will never be able to forget that..."
A vision of my mother rose. There in the dark, damp kitchen of our apartment in the slums of Kingston Road: the peeling wallpaper, the wash hanging above the stove, the bleak yard outside, the room across the hall filled to overflowing with shoes. There a single lightbulb burned for the hunchbacked Polish shoemaker who hammered without ever looking up. I heard everything again: the blaring jazz from many radios, quarrelsome children and adults who beat each other, insulted each other in Polish, English, Czech and Genrian. I could smell everything, the dirt, the grease, the burnt cabbage.
Sighing, my mother dropped into the old rattan chair and I thought I heard her weak and yet indignant voice: "You should have gotten that part, Peter. You were the best-looking and most talented boy there. But that little fresh kid's mother was making eyes at the producer ... whispered something to him, the pretty, common tramp ... I can't do that with my horrible face . . ."
Natasha said, "Get up, please."
I got up, lost in thought of the past. In the storm outside the reflecting window I thought I saw my pale mother, her back bent, her hair dull. I massaged her swollen feet and seemed to hear her: "And still, one day they will discover you . . . and we'll be rich . . . and we'll be happy .. . and I'll never have to clean floors any more . .." —"Yes, mother," I had answered, then, in that damp kitchen, "and we'll find the best doctor, and your face will be again as beautiful as it was."
Natasha stood before me now. "Put one foot close to the other. Closer. Toe next to toe, heel to heel. Close your eyes." I hesitated. "Don't be afraid, I'll catch you if you should become dizzy. That's good. I'll count to ten now. One . .. two . . . three . . ."
There I stood with tightly closed eyes. I had the sensation of weightlessness as if I were floating, flying, weightless. And again I heard my mother's voice and saw her standing in the burning hot sand, in the burning sun of the studio grounds. "Nothing again! And nothing again! And tomorrow we have to get out of our apartment!" She sighed deeply. "It's your fault! Only yours! You were sullen at the studio! You glared at Mr. Stevens."
"That is not true!"
"And j^ou talk back to me?" She had slapped my face then in 1930, right, left, right, and today, in 1960 I sensed again the burning sting of those thirty-year-old slaps. "There . . . and there . . . and there ... I" Only seconds later to press me sobbing close to her thin body, covered by her sweat-dampened dress. "Oh, God, what did I do? Forgive me, Peter, please forgive me, I am so despondent!"
Now I became dizzy. I swayed. And once more I saw my mother. The best surgeons in America had treated her. Now the skin of her face was smooth and natural— as long as she did not laugh. She had not laughed in a long time. Her body seemed to have shrunk, her head seemed tiny on the large, white hospital pillow. And once
more I heard the terrible, almost unintelligible whisper which came from the cancer-ridden throat. "Those crooks, they have made millions from your films . . . now you are too tall for them . .. too adult .. . but wait ... just wait, they'll come for you again ... you'll be famous again ... I know it.. . I've always known ..."
". . . seven . . . eight. . . nine . . ."
I did not sway any more; now I fell into Natasha's arms. I clung to her and cried out, "Hold me! I'm falling."
Natasha held me. I could smell the fragrance of her hair, her perfume, I was conscious of her body. We were like lovers, the way we clung to one another, I with my naked chest, she in her green, tightly fitted suit.
I opened my eyes.
"You are very ill. You cannot make your film, Mr. Jordan."
I closed my eyes again.
11
Have you had the same experiences, dear Professor Pontevivo: You hear the noise of a car driving away; you see a plane ready for take-off, a young girl descending some old stairs; you make a certain gesture . . . and since your senses register these facts, impressions, feelings, Since your consciousness is now aware and recognizes them, your memory is being awakened by a sound, a smell, a fragrance, a gesture. You close your eyes for a moment—^you find yourself back in a different time, a different country, among people. Your past, suddenly present, has displayed the present. In the opening and closing of your eyelids, in a second so much of yesterday rises up in you. ... ^
I held Natasha in my arms, she held me. I closed my eyes. Suddenly I was not in Hamburg any more, but in
Pacific Palisades where I held another woman in my arms.
We clung to one another, lovers in reality, passionate, heedless and desperate.
"Your mother . . . She might be back any moment.. ."
Shirley's body was slim but feminine. She had a slim waist and smooth hips. Her legs were long and well-shaped. Her skin, firm and young. The thick ponytail of her brown-red hair, which she always wore forward over one shoulder, had come untied and I felt the flood of hair warm and exciting on my chest. She held my head with both hands, her teeth dug into my lips and she moaned. I could not stand it any longer. Fourteen days we couldn't emb
race, not touch each other ... We did not see each ether for fourteen days.
I had stood by the window in my bungalow, looking down at the ocean before she came. The bungalow, built on a steep hill thickly overgrown with gorse and prickly hibiscus, stood far apart from the main house. Only one path, bordered by orange trees, palms, and yucca trees with fan-shaped fronds hanging limply in the burning heat of this calm day in July, led up to the bungalow.
At the foot of the hill were grounds where sprinklers were forever watering the lawns, creating rainbows, with flowerbeds, gravel paths and the swimming pool at the end of the property. Immediately behind a rose-studded hedge, a thirty-yard cliff dropped so steeply that the beach below was not visible, only the deep blue Pacific.
The bungalow had been built in 1954. When my wife and I began to draw apart, a year and a half ago, I had had some of my books and records transferred to the bungalow. Then, when Joan was not well, or when we quarreled, I slept there. This is where Shirley came to see me.
It had happened here, in this bungalow, for the first time, half a year ago. And since then again and again, in the bedroom, here on the carpet, on the oversized couch
by the fireplace. We would embrace fiercely whenever there had been an opportunity: at night, early mornings, afternoon, whenever Joan went into town, when the servants were away, during violent thunderstorms, at high or low tide.
From the windows of the bungalow the path leading to it was plainly visible. No one could have reached the bungalow through the surrounding thorny thicket. It would have ripped clothing, lacerated skin. It had become my habit to stare at the narrow path between that undergrowth when lit by the sun or by the floodlights, and always when Shirley was in my arms.
"Your mother ... she might be back any moment..." I said it but still my hands were caressing her warm suntanned body covered only by a ridiculously tiny bikini. I wore shorts and sandals. It was inhumanly hot on this day but cool inside the bungalow.
"We have to wait... wait until it is night..."
"I can't wait, I've been away for such a long time...." Shirley was then learning to be a film cutter. She had spent the last two weeks in studios in Culver City. There had been too much work for her to return home each night. "I didn't sleep one wink in those fourteen days...."
"Nor did I, Shirley, nor did I. . ."
Our lips met. Her green eyes closed. But I, from habit, looked through the window down to where my wife Joan was, by the side of the pool. She was lying there motionless in a black bathing suit, while I was caressing her daughter, whose tongue slid through my teeth, while—
Unsuspecting?
I felt hot and then cold, I released Shirley's lips.
"Where does she believe you are? With me?"
Her nostrils trembled whenever she was excited. "She sent me here. I am to keep you company while you are waiting for this telephone call." Without mockery but with increasing animosity she imitated my wife's voice, "I
will not have you living here unless you are going to be a little more pleasant to Paddy! I mean it! I am not going to have my marriage destroyed just because my daughter doesn't happen to like my husband! She thinks we hate each other! She still thinks that . . . she thinks that is why her marriage is breaking up . . ." She grabbed my arms. "Those men down there on the patio . . . she says they are going to sign the contract?"
I looked down to the patio where, beneath palm trees, the Wilson brothers and the muscular Herbert Kostasch were arguing. "Everything depends on the telephone call I'm expecting."
"When the contract is signed—then will you tell her?"
"No."
"You promised! You swore—"
"First comes the film. Then I'll tell your mother."
"Don't always call her my mother! She was never a mother to me! All her life she only thought of herself! My father was hardly dead; then the men came! Always new men! All her life she only did what she wanted to do, nothing else! And I? Governesses! Nurses! Maids!"
"Stop it."
But she did not stop. "I was in a home when I was only four years old! That's nice for a child, isn't it? A luxurious home for millionaires' children! And then boarding schools! Always more beautiful boarding schools! Naturally I could only go home for the holidays. You were already irritable after the first week!"
"That is not true!"
"I knov/ it is! I eavesdropped! You sent me away, because I was in your way! I grew up with strangers! Mother? That's supposed to be my mother?" Her voice broke, she almost cried. "It's her fault, it's all her fault!" She touched her forehead. "No, it's my fault. She is still my mother, in spite of it all!"
"Shirley!"
"I'm just a wreck! I can't eat, can't drive, can't talk any more. I can only think of you . .. you .. . and of ..."
"Shirley!"
"I blush! I stutter! I drop things!"
"Pull yourself together!"
"It's easy for you! You are adult! You can tell more convincing lies! But I ... I become dizzy if she just looks at me . . . Do I talk in my sleep? Can she teU by my face?"
"Now stop that, damn it! You are hysterical!"
"You forbade me to go to confession! Father Horace says—"
"I don't want to know what Father Horace says!"
"You are a louse! You Ued to me . .."
"That's not true!"
"You swore you would talk to her as soon as you had the contract!"
"I swore that when the film was finished I would! First I have to make that film!"
"Why?" Now she was screaming. Up here she could scream. No one could hear us.
"This film is my last chance. I have not waited twenty years for nothing!"
"I! I! I! Do you always think only of yourself?"
"Of me and you! We need money if I'm going to get a divorce!
"Money!"
"That's right, money!" My fist slapped into the open palm of the other hand. "If I may remind you, we are living on her money here! We have lived on her money for the past twenty years!" My wife, a ravishing Ziegfeld girl, had married an immensely rich Los Angeles realtor. Upon his death she became his sole heir.
"And your money? What happened to your money? You had millions!"
"Twenty years ago! You had not even been bora then!"
"Just the same! Where are they?"
The truth was: gambled away, squandered, lost in bad busmess deals. Stupidly and senselessly wasted. A drunk among drinkers. Always drunk. But that I did not tell Shirley. No, I lied to Shirley, "I lost my money in the depression .. . the terrible time you know nothing of . . ."
"I don't need money! We can both work! I'll live with you in poverty! Just let's get away from here! Let's tell Joan the truth'and leave, as quickly as possible."
I puUed her towards me by her long red hair. I must have hurt her because she stifled an angry cry. I spoke very softly, "I am not going to Uve in poverty, do you understand me?"
"Let me go!"
"Never again ... never..."
"Let go of me!"
"Poverty and want . . . those are just empty words to you, meaningless ... You have always Hved in affluence ... I didn't . .. when I was a child I had nothing to eat ... cold and hungry ... You have no conception of that! m never live like that again! That's why I have to make this film . . . only then will I be my own man . . . independent of your mother . . . and that is why you are going to pull yourself together ... and wait... and let me work ... so that we will be able to live in peace, you and I."
Her words then were to linger long in my memory.
"We'll never Hve in peace because we do nothing to end this sin. God does not forgive that."
"God! God! Do you always have to talk about Him?"
"It's easy for you, you don't beUeve in Him."
"You said if two people love each other He forgives them everything."
"Not if they don't repent..."
"Shu-ley!"
"God won't forgive us because He doesn't love us, He cannot love us .
.."
She had fought me, tried to pull away from me. The
contact of our bodies excited me, excited her. Her green eyes grew dark, smoky. She tried to fend me off but she also moaned.
"No..."
I unfastened the bra of her bathing suit; it fell to the floor.
"Don't!"
But there was desire in her eyes, her breasts were quivering, the tips hard and pointed.
"I don't want to . .. no . .."
But she did not resist any longer. Her legs gave way and she fell forward into my arms.
A formation of jets raced above us toward the Pacific. Their roar shook the sky and the ground. We sank on the couch. Now Shirley was clinging wildly to me, her body writhed, her mouth dug into mine. I remember the crazy idea which occurred to me while our hands were already moving in unison, while Shirley dropped her bikini and I slid from the couch to the carpet. Now I was kneeling before her, now she was completely nude. Then I thought: Horwein is going to call me in twenty minutes from Frankfurt. If he says yes, I can make this film. If he says no, everything is finished. Now we are going to love each other. God, whom Shirley loves, whom Shirley fears. Now show me if You are going to agree to our love. Show me now if You are going to forgive us. We are going to make love. So let Horwein say "no" now that I am mocking You, provoking You.
"God won't forgive us because he doesn't love us, he cannot love us..."
Another twenty minutes, then we will see. Show me, Shirley's God, what You think of us, of what we are doing here, that which happened so many times before and which always carries us close to oblivion.
Shirley moans while my lips are caressing her. If you exist, God, then You know why I love Shirley. If You exist, then it is You who formed her so that each year she
becomes more the image of another girl I shall never be able to forget. If You are, You are just as guilty of what is happening here as I am.
"Yes . . ." sighs Shirley. "Yes ... oh, yes . . ." Her auburn hair has spread wildly in a great silken covering over her body and mine. Her eyes, not almost black, close. But I keep mine open and through increasingly denser, purple veils I see the path, the ocean, surfers, ships, my wife by the poolside.
The Berlin Connection Page 4