“‘No,’ I say, ‘it’s a famous auction house in New York and London.’
“‘Is that supposed to mean something to me?’ she says.
“‘The thing is,’ I say, ‘the table is worth—one estimate is a hundred twenty-five thousand dollars American. I’m not saying it would go for that at auction. It’s just an estimate.’
“And then she just looked me over. She sort of took me full in. Then she said, ‘Whatever scheme is afoot, I’m already shut of it.’ I protested and even confessed that I knew the worth of the table before I bought it, and could we at least discuss a few options.
“But here’s the surprise, Sam. Here’s the surprise. Violet pushed right past me, walked over to the table, lifted it up, and set it back in the station wagon. She was a larger woman than I’d remembered. Then she got behind the wheel, turned the car so it was facing back toward the road. She got out, engine running, and said, ‘See, you’re on the straight and narrow now. Facing the right way home now. Look, I understand, you are not at peace with your actions. You brought your problems to me, but I do not want them. I don’t want your problems delivered to my porch. But I’m going to tell you something that might put your mind a little more at ease. I’m going to tell you something about that table. And this is not common knowledge, and God won’t go out of His way to bestow blessings if you go and wag your tongue with this information, eh? My own disreputable father, a charlatan, bought that table during the war, when he served in France. He bought the table in Paris. And that table resided in a Paris apartment, which my father shared with his second—unbeknownst to my mother—wife. Unbeknownst to my mother. My mother was his first wife. You can put two and two together, eh? My charlatan father lived with the French wife and had a daughter with her. That daughter and I have never met, but none of it’s her fault. Then one day my mother, may she rest, discovered a photograph of the French wife, the French daughter, and my father standing next to the godforsaken table in their Paris apartment. Big shouting quarrel, and my father went back to Paris, promising to settle things there and come back and try to right things with us. He left for Paris and did not come back. Why? Maybe because the French wife stabbed my father in the stomach. He’s in some cemetery or other in France, we didn’t bother to inquire. It may have been a foreigner’s pauper’s grave, we didn’t bother to inquire as to the details. France kept a lot of Canadian fathers in the ground after the war, but for more heroic reasons. Heroic didn’t apply to my father. See, the French daughter was now half orphaned—as was I—and the French wife was in prison. About a year later, out of the blue, mind you, four pieces of furniture arrived, and the table was one. We didn’t know it at the time, but my mother had just a few years left on this earth. We put the table in the cellar. I brought it upstairs for the estate sale. Now, I’ll admit I was very, very grateful you bought the table. Let’s leave it at that, shall we? I don’t care one bit if it’s worth a million dollars. Good riddance to that table.’”
Then Cynthia said, “I paraphrased there, Sam. I don’t have your memory. But that’s pretty much what Violet told me. Whew. And then she went back into her house and I drove the table back home.”
So, that is my friend Cynthia. The table is still in her studio.
The Sleepless Night of the Litigant
ISTVAKSON SENT LILY Svetgartot to give me a gift, a framed print of The Sleepless Night of the Litigant. I had never heard of this engraving. “I understand you have your new telephone number, now unlisted,” she said.
“That’s right.”
She was wearing jeans and that thick sweater again. She also wore a stylish black raincoat. It had started to rain.
“Hmmm, okay, Mr. Lattimore. Well, Mr. Istvakson has sent me, delivery lady, with this picture. Will you accept it?”
“I’m not going to watch the movie being made. No bribes. And contractually I got out of having to contribute any dialogue, so—”
“Mr. Istvakson wrote something for me to read to you. May I?”
“Go ahead.”
“On the porch here?”
“Yes, I’m busy.”
“I smell some cooking.”
“I’m busy with cooking. That’s what I’m busy with.”
“It’s a two-hour drive from Halifax. A truck almost killed me. My car slid in the rain.”
“Read what you have to read.”
“All right.” She took out a piece of paper from her raincoat pocket and read from it:
“‘Hello, Sam Lattimore, my author. My brilliant writer and, I hope someday, friend Sam Lattimore. Our start with the movie is going very well. We have often had miracle weather and the actors are doing brilliant work. They all would like to meet you. So, please, come meet. My assistant Lily Svetgartot delivers something I want you to keep as a gift, based on my admiration. It is called The Sleepless Night of the Litigant. It is an engraving from 1597. I had this facsimile sent from Amsterdam, an art dealer I befriended there. I had it framed in Halifax last week. The artist is named Hendrik Goltzius. It is an engraving from a series called The Abuses of the Law. I was once thinking of having a screenplay written based on this engraving and may someday. Look at the engraving! A man so guilty of something he cannot sleep, and demons visit him. I admit it is a familiar situation to me personally. I have a notebook full of ideas. If I do make that as a movie, maybe you would consider writing the novel based on the screenplay. They do that kind of thing in America and they are often successful books, I’m told. Look at this engraving closely, please, Sam Lattimore. Lily Svetgartot will unwrap the paper and kindly please closely look at it.’”
“All right, come in,” I said. “Let’s have a look at the engraving.”
I didn’t expect her to take off and hang up her raincoat on the silent butler (from the apartment in the Essex Hotel), near the front door, but that is what she did. “Could it be a bouillabaisse? Mmmm,” she said. “Such a dinner takes time. It takes patience. I have learned something about you.” She set the engraving down on the sofa and walked into the kitchen, lifted the top off the cooking pot on the stove, closed her eyes, and inhaled dramatically. Then she took up the wooden spoon from the counter, dipped it in the pot, and sampled the soup. “Sea bass, definitely, but a bouillabaisse needs two fish, usually. I can’t quite make out the other—”
“Simple cod,” I said. “All spiced to taste.”
She returned the lid to the pot, then retrieved The Sleepless Night of the Litigant, set it on the kitchen table, and carefully unwrapped the paper. I stepped closer to study it as she continued reading from Istvakson’s letter:
“‘The image shows two mythical figures disturbing the litigant’s rest: horrible Restlessness confronts him in his bed while another demon, Anxiety, hounds Sweet Sleep from the room. Do you know your scripture, Sam Lattimore? “For all his days are sorrows, and his travails grief; even in the night his heart does not rest.” This is from Ecclesiastes. Sweet Sleep runs away. The fat bourgeois burgher, the litigant, can’t sleep. His nights are haunted. What is the question he needs to have answered? What is the mystery he needs solved? He cannot speak directly to God with all that disturbance around him. That’s the real problem, I think.
“‘So from this gift I would like you to understand that I am awake much of the night litigating myself, judging my every decision that I make on my movie. Will it do justice to the life of Elizabeth and Samuel Lattimore and their young, tragic marriage? I will never experience sweet sleep during the making of this movie, and maybe never again. Come into Halifax, I am begging you. Give me guidance and direction. Look at even the few scenes we have shot already. My assistant can chauffeur you if you prefer. I mean no sanctimoniousness, only to relate to you, artist to artist, that if you look closely at what is depicted in the engraving, you are seeing my desperate state of mind. I need to speak with you.’”
Lily Svetgartot put the letter on the table.
“My God, how can you work with this man?” I said. “Self-litigation!”<
br />
“He wants to restore emotional fullness to the intellectual process of making a film.”
“That makes me want to throw up. Are you his ventriloquist’s dummy? He makes me want to vomit.”
“Go ahead. I’ll wait right here.”
“Here’s what I’d like. Please take this engraving across the road and give it to Philip, your new close friend. It is the perfect engraving for Philip. He’ll understand it right away. It belongs with him. He’ll really appreciate it.”
“Fine, I understand.” She picked up the engraving. At the door she took her raincoat from the silent butler and wrapped it around the engraving. The steady rain had become a downpour.
“Also, please tell Cynthia and Philip that dinner is ready. Have a nice drive back, Miss Svetgartot.”
When Philip and Cynthia arrived for the bouillabaisse dinner, Philip said, “Thanks for giving me the working title of my new book, Sam. The Sleepless Night of the Litigant. It’s perfect. I’ve hung the engraving on the wall behind my typewriter. By the way, Lily’s eating leftovers at the house. What with this weather, she’s staying in the guest room tonight. You can’t send a person out on the road in this mess.”
It was a pummeling windblown rain, which was the only reason, after Philip and Cynthia went home, about nine-thirty, I didn’t go down to the beach; Elizabeth never appeared in the rain. “I think she doesn’t want her books to suffer any water damage” is what I had said to Dr. Nissensen.
Kiss Me Upward from My Knees
“SAM, YOU NEED some employment,” Elizabeth said. This was a few days after her first lesson in the intermediate lindy. We were down to $320 in our bank account.
“I’m working on my novel every day.”
“I know,” she said. “If I know anything, I know that. Can’t we take turns being the practical one? I’ll go first. I saw this advertisement and think it would be great for you. The CBC has an interesting thing going and they’re looking for writers. You could write for radio. Listen, I’ve got the clipping right here: ‘CBC radio is undertaking an ambitious re-creation of the cultural atmosphere of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, featuring the most popular radio entertainments of those decades.’”
“Okay, I admit it does sound interesting.”
“You Can’t Do Business with Hitler, that’s one program they’re hiring writers for. The Shadow of Fu Manchu, that’s another. But there’s one I thought you’d be perfect for, Sam, and I even remember hearing it on the radio when I was a little girl. It’s called Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons. Melodramas about a detective named—”
“Let me guess. Mr. Keen.”
“I typed up and sent your résumé last week. Including a copy of your first novel.”
“You already went and did that?”
“Yes I did.”
“And did I get a response yet?”
“In fact, they called this morning when you were out. You have an interview. Darling, my fellowship money is dwindling fast. I can waitress—I don’t mind. I’d apply for the radio work myself, but my brain doesn’t work that way. I couldn’t make up dialogue and all that. Besides, Marghanita Laski would be too jealous a mistress. I have to stick with her.”
“The interview—”
“Four P.M. tomorrow, the CBC office on Cogswell Street.”
The interview went well, and the CBC gave me four cassettes of episodes of Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, parts 1 through 4 of “The Case of the Author Who Lost His Soul,” which originally ran on the NBC Blue network. For my audition, I was asked to write a fifth episode, “to extend the story line,” even though in the original broadcasts the story had been fully concluded. I went right back to the hotel and listened to the cassettes. Part 1 (December 27, 1938, 7:15–7:30 P.M.) synopsis: “Jane Merrill asks Keen to locate her ex, Stephen Giddings, a struggling author. An unpublished novel he wrote years ago is now in demand. Giddings left Jane to wed affluent Rita Sandford.” Part 2 (December 28, 1938, 7:15–7:30 P.M.) synopsis: “Rita could support Giddings’s writing lifestyle. Jane still loves him and wants to see the book succeed. Keen finds the Giddingses living in Bermuda, and flies down to urge Stephen to return to writing.” Part 3 (December 29, 1938, 7:15–7:30 P.M.) synopsis: “Giddings has changed. He and Rita live wasted, lazy existences. He hasn’t written in years. Disillusioned, he’s fed up with his marriage. Keen reports this to Jane.” Part 4 (January 3, 1939, 7:15–7:30 P.M.) synopsis: “Mr. Keen takes Giddings, a beaten failure, back to his first wife, Jane. Giddings realizes that all his achievements sprang from the devotion and encouragement of this woman.”
I played the episodes for Elizabeth that night. “Oh, this’ll be a piece of cake for you,” she said.
“I’m not sure I like that response, seeing that the title is ‘The Author Who Lost His Soul.’”
“It’s fiction. Just pretend to be someone else.”
I wrote the episode and got the job. To celebrate my becoming employed, Elizabeth made salade Niçoise, with crème brûlée for dessert. At the kitchen table I was typing away at my first paid assignment, to extend the episodes of “The Case of Lucy Daire’s Real Family,” originally broadcast in 1939. Elizabeth was wearing only a denim work shirt, a few sizes too big for her, held together by a single button at the navel. “Making your favorite aphrodisiac salad for you, Sam. I bought an expensive bottle of Chablis, too. Way too expensive. I couldn’t be happier.”
She took a small fillet of tuna from the refrigerator and seared it for a few minutes in a pan slicked with olive oil. She put two eggs on to boil. She took out a head of lettuce and washed it leaf by leaf under the spigot, pressing each on a paper towel to soak up the moisture before setting it in a big wooden bowl. She put two large red potatoes, cut in quarters, in a pot of water and lit a flame under it. She put a handful of green beans on to boil. She took out a bread board and cut three scallions into quarter-inch pieces and pushed them with the knife into a saucepan, where she sautéed them for a minute or two in olive oil. On a separate board she cut the tuna into quarter-inch pieces. She took out the potatoes, peeled the skins, and cut the pieces into neat rectangles. She took up the eggs with a spoon and ran each under cold water. Then she cracked and peeled their shells and sliced the eggs into the salad. She put in the potatoes and fish and scallions. She sprinkled in peppercorns, laid the green beans on top, and dropped in half a dozen or so sweet grape tomatoes. She emptied a can of white kidney beans in the bowl. She added an oil-and-vinegar dressing, tossed it all lightly—just twice—with long wooden spoons, and set the bowl on the table. She brought out two plates and forks and cloth napkins. She took a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator and poured us each a glass. I was famished and the salad looked so good. “Thank you for all this,” I said, and reached for the bowl and wooden spoons that lay crosswise on top.
But before she sat down, Elizabeth put an album by Marianne Macdonough, Winter Trees, on the phonograph and set the needle on the song called “Upward.” Fiddle, guitar, and flute accompaniment, with a voice straight from the Cape Breton highlands. The first stanza was:
It only takes one glass of wine
To do as I please.
The breeze gently unbuttons my blouse,
I comb your hair with my fingers,
You kiss me upward from my knees.
As the song continued, Elizabeth opened the button of her denim shirt.
Last night I was reading an Acadian romance,
All pounding hearts and rain,
And owls at prayer in the trees,
When, my sweet love, you set my book
Beside the pillow
And kissed me upward from my knees.
“Get the hint?” she said. She lay down on the Victorian chaise longue.
Elizabeth used to say, “I have certain defining impulses.”
I Put In the Fix with Arnie Moran
ALFONSE PADGETT WAS a psychopathic thug in a bellman’s uniform, but I could not see this at first. I saw only the bellman
’s etiquette, the practiced sense of deference. Like any bellman in any hotel lobby, he was part of a hierarchy: hotel manager, concierge, bellman. I did notice that he often acted put out, to the point of dramatically sighing in exasperation at normal requests. And I witnessed one incident that far exceeded feigned insult or petulance, when the hotel manager, Mr. Isherwood, asked him to unload six large suitcases from a limousine—a rare sight in Halifax, especially at the Essex Hotel, because wealthy people usually stayed at the Lord Nelson—and to “fetch them up to the Provincial Suite,” on the top floor, “as quickly as possible.” I happened to be in the lobby to buy a newspaper when I overheard the exchange. Padgett more or less snapped at Mr. Isherwood, “I’m going to take my coffee break first.” “No, after,” Mr. Isherwood said. “I don’t fetch luggage,” Padgett said. “I’m not a dog.” Then he walked out of the hotel and went next door to the Saint-Laurent Restaurant, which had a counter that all of the bellmen frequented. The chauffeur lined up the suitcases, and a trunk festooned with travel stickers, in the middle of the lobby, as if to reprimand the bellman for his negligence. Other guests had to walk around the luggage. I sat on a couch in order to see what might occur, I admit. It was a good twenty-five minutes before Padgett returned. Mr. Isherwood met him at the suitcases and said, “You are docked half a day’s pay.”
The morning of Elizabeth’s second lindy lesson, Padgett was on shift. Elizabeth had worked all morning at her desk, despite a headache. She had made a breakthrough in her understanding of The Victorian Chaise-Longue, the symbolic elements of a kind of time travel: the main character, Melanie, is tucked in by the nurse for restorative sleep, and when she wakes up, she finds herself imprisoned in the body of a woman in Victorian times. Elizabeth read me a couple of pages of her dissertation and then said, “I still don’t want you to read the thing until it’s done.”
Next Life Might Be Kinder Page 6