What got to me at that moment was that I kept picturing Elizabeth at age nine (a physical image I had from her childhood photographs). There she was, filching a library book, running home, giddy and ashamed and all sorts of other things. Running like she was flying. I thought, Now Elizabeth’s life even before she met me is coming back.
The Art of War
“MR. ISTVAKSON ASKED me to deliver this gift,” Lily Svetgartot said. She held up a book. I looked at the title: The Art of War by Sun-tzu. “All movie directors and executives love this book. It’s their bible. Mr. Istvakson foists it on everybody. Proselytizes like he’s on the Crusades, not like he’s just directing a fucking movie. He gave me a copy for my birthday last week, for God’s sake! I threw it into the harbor. It’s so stupid, this book. I mean, for his personal little opera he’s got going in his head every minute. It’s so typical—about men and competition and combat. He thinks he’s fighting some heroic battle. He thinks he’s fighting Chinese armies two thousand years ago. Brrrr.” She shivered with disgust.
I gestured for her to come into the cottage. “I’ve never heard of this book,” I said.
She seemed quite agitated. She went right into my kitchen and put the book on the table. She opened the refrigerator, took out a package of coffee beans, shut the refrigerator door, ground the coffee in the grinder, emptied the coffee into the screen funnel of the coffeepot, poured three full glasses of water into the pot, then pressed the on button.
“Make yourself right at home,” I said.
Suddenly she took up the book, opened to a page seemingly at random, and said, “Listen to this: ‘The way of war is the way of deception. When able, feign inability. When deploying troops, appear not to be. When near, appear far. When far, appear near. Strike with chaos.’ Page after page of this stupid bullshit. Let’s face it, Peter Istvakson never appears far. He is always too near. I’m having a cup of coffee. Can I pour you one?”
“No thanks.”
She poured herself a cup, no milk, two teaspoons of sugar, and sat at the kitchen table. I stood in the kitchen doorway.
“Why I really came to visit this evening,” she said, “is because Emily Kalman wants to meet you and talk with you.”
“If you say ‘for the sake of authenticity’ again, I can’t promise I’ll be civil.”
She stood, took off her coat, and set it over the back of the chair. She sat back down. “No, let me say what I have to say. At the shoot, you haven’t watched a scene with Emily Kalman in it yet, am I right?”
“I haven’t, no.”
“I suggest you don’t. Because the way she looks, Mr. Lattimore, the way she looks might make you—”
“You drove all the way here to try and protect me from an actress?”
“Who now looks so much like your wife that you won’t believe it.”
“No one can look like Elizabeth. There may be superficial resemblances.”
“You don’t understand. She’s become—how do you say it?—a spitting image.”
“Did you bring any photographs of Miss Kalman in her role?”
“She herself is sitting in my car.”
I went out the door and walked to the end of the gravel drive where Lily Svetgartot’s car was parked. I heard the car radio and then heard it go silent. I walked up to the driver’s side and looked in through the window. Emily Kalman (I’d seen her in only one film; she was pretty good in it, but the film itself was useless), who sat in front on the passenger side, looked at me. I studied her face a moment, then returned to the cottage. In the kitchen, I said, “Are you both staying at Philip and Cynthia’s tonight?”
“My home away from home.”
“Emily Kalman looks nothing like Elizabeth. And why should she, anyway? The movie’s not about Elizabeth—you said as much yourself. It’s about Istvakson’s romance with a murdered woman. You yourself said that, remember? Not to worry, there, Miss Svetgartot. They’ve cast a decent actress, and I’ll never see this movie, but if I did, I wouldn’t be reminded of my wife. Not a chance.”
Lily Svetgartot said, “There’s no way you’ll speak with her, I take it.”
I took her coffee cup and emptied it into the sink. I held her coat open for her. She slipped into the coat and left my cottage. Through the window I watched her get into her car and drive across the road. I watched her and Emily Kalman go to Philip and Cynthia’s front door. I think I said, “My God, she looks so much like Lizzy.”
Lying back on propped-up pillows in bed, I thought hard about why, exactly, anyone from the movie company would need to speak with me. I mean, speak with me for any reason. Lily Svetgartot had said, “Mr. Istvakson’s not happy with the ending. He’s rewritten it twenty times. Thirty. He can’t finish.” It occurred to me with alarm that he wanted to know how Elizabeth died. Not the fact that she was shot; everyone knew that. No, no, no, he wanted to know what only Elizabeth knew. He wanted that for his ending. Otherwise, he’d have to make it up—his research couldn’t touch that. Dark, confused thoughts came in an eddy.
I moved to the kitchen table, took out my notebook (not the one Nissensen gave me) and a pencil, and wrote two new sentences for my novel. Then I crossed out one sentence and half the words in the other sentence. I poured a shot glass of whiskey, held the glass out at arm’s length, toasted, “To a very successful three minutes of writing!” and tossed back the drink. Then I put on my coat and walked across the road. At the beach, I looked back at Philip and Cynthia’s house. I saw Cynthia and Lily Svetgartot standing in the kitchen talking. I saw Philip at his desk in the second-floor study. I turned back to the beach and saw Elizabeth standing there.
Something was different. She wasn’t holding any books; she had no books to line up on the beach. I said, “Did you return the books to the library, Lizzy?”
As she walked toward me, she said, “Mr. Lattimore, it’s me, Emily. Emily Kalman. I was just getting some air.”
I immediately turned around, went back to the cottage, haphazardly packed my old-style suitcase, securing its straps and buckles, got in my truck, and drove to Halifax. I checked into the Haliburton House Inn—plenty of vacancies—and stayed there on Sunday and Monday night, until it was time to see Dr. Nissensen.
You and Your Husband Are Word People, Right?
WHILE IN HALIFAX for those three days, I went to the shoot on six different occasions, sometimes just hours apart. Obviously, I had no better judgment to work against. On my final visit, the crew was filming a scene in an inexpensive restaurant in which the character of Alfonse Padgett purchases a gun in a clandestine fashion from a bellman employed at a different hotel. I jotted down in my notebook, “The scene suggested murderous collusion among bellmen in the city of Halifax.” The two actors were wearing bellmen’s uniforms, implying they were both on break from their duties in their respective hotel lobbies. Quick exchange of words; they agree on financial terms. A revolver is passed from hand to hand beneath the table, in a paper bag printed with the name of a local pharmacy. When the other bellman then asked, “Why do you need a revolver anyway, Alfonse?” the reply he gets is “I’ve been spurned in love.” The other bellman laughs and shrugs. “So, you’re going to do yourself in, is that it?” he says. “‘Unrequited Love Drives Bellman Padgett to Drastic Measures,’ that’ll be the headline, eh?” Actor-Padgett fairly hisses, “No, she’s already done me in.” The actors went through twenty-two takes of this scene. When Istvakson said, “Still not perfect,” the cinematographer, Akutagawa, lost it.
Quite apart from anything else, the dramatic sufferings of Akutagawa were interesting to witness. I’d had some history on this fellow from the newspaper and from Lily Svetgartot, via Philip and Cynthia. One article in the Chronicle-Herald referred to him as “neurasthenic.” So I knew some things. He was fifty-five years of age. He had been an assistant cinematographer to the great Japanese director Kurosawa on one picture. He had been the chief cinematographer on five pictures to date, including one called To the City, written and
directed by Istvakson; the two men had first met at a film festival in Oslo. To the City was a variation on a basic trope of Chekhov’s plays: people in the countryside endlessly debating whether to go to the city.
Istvakson’s version is set in Sweden. The characters, living together in dilapidated and cramped quarters, drink heavily and argue over whether to go to Stockholm to rob a bank or to fall back on the menial jobs they are sick and tired of and which make them feel useless and humiliated. I’d seen that movie. The dialogue is superficially Chekhovian. Plot-wise, the robbery is completely botched; one character dies in a spray of police bullets, the others are hauled off to prison. One critical accolade—or at least comment—about Akutagawa’s work on that film was “Never has claustrophobia been filmed with such nocturnal strangeness.” Indeed, most of the scenes leading up to the attempted bank heist take place at night, the result, I read, of Akutagawa’s creative insistence. According to Lily Svetgartot, Istvakson and Akutagawa had a grudging respect for, and yet basically hated, each other. A few months before the filming in Halifax began, Akutagawa was rumored to be “somewhere on the Sea of Japan, vacationing and thinking,” a journalistic euphemism, according to Lily Svetgartot, for confinement in a rest hospital.
Akutagawa was dressed in an expensive-looking black suit, a white shirt buttoned to the collar, and no tie, and he wore black high-top sneakers. He was about five feet six inches tall, very trim and well groomed, his considerably thick hair beautifully styled with a part on the left side. He seemed to move in staccato choreographies for even short distances—say, across a hotel lobby, quite arresting in itself. It occurred to me that he might suffer from chronic pain of some sort. Lily had told Philip, who told me, that Akutagawa was “never far away from his pharmacy.” Once, when she’d dropped off some script revisions, she counted no fewer than twelve vials of medications in his room at the Essex Hotel. She’d found the door slightly ajar, knocked, then went right in. “I even checked under the bed, but he wasn’t home,” Lily had said.
Now, after Istvakson expressed dissatisfaction with all the takes of that restaurant scene, Akutagawa cried out, “Istvakson, you are mad! Look at the takes, please. You will find an excellent one!” Istvakson said, “No, we need another take, now!” The two actor-bellmen got ready to do the scene again. But Akutagawa removed his suit jacket and began to tear at the sleeve with his teeth. “I bought you that suit!” Istvakson said, which sent a current of nervous laughter through the crew. Akutagawa then took a vial of pills from his trouser pocket, motioned to his assistant for a glass of water, emptied the vial into the palm of his hand, and shouted, “Twenty-two pills!” In other words, the number of takes of the scene was likely to kill him. He gulped down only one or two pills, however, and threw the rest at Istvakson. Akutagawa’s personal assistant, a film student at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design named Randolph Morse (Philip had mentioned his name at dinner one evening; he kept up with such things more than Cynthia did), dropped to his knees and searched for the pills. At this point Akutagawa said to the assistant cinematographer, a Japanese woman about his age, Michiko Zento, “Please film this—now! One take!” She moved in behind the camera—Istvakson, by the way, watching all of Akutagawa’s shenanigans with what appeared to be amused interest, did not intervene—focused, and nodded to Akutagawa, who then said, “This is the last will and testament of Akutagawa Matsuo. With sound mind and body, witnessed by Michiko Zento, assistant cinematographer. I begin by pointing a finger.” He pointed at Istvakson. “‘Listen to me! Listen! I’m telling you, the man is horrible. He’s a demon! Ah, I can’t bear it! Away with him!’ I have just quoted sentences composed by Dazai Osamu, my favorite writer. I acknowledge my debt here to Dazai Osamu.”
Akutagawa stepped into the restaurant scenery on set. Michiko Zento turned the camera toward him. “I have been driven to my death by Mr. Istvakson. Finally it has happened!” Akutagawa said, apparently continuing his last will and testament. “I leave my clothes to my nephew in Tokyo. I leave my journals and other writings to Michiko Zento. I leave my house to my sister. Whatever little money I have, I leave to my niece Kyoko, who lives in the city of Portland, Oregon, in America. Otherwise, I have nothing. I have only had my work. I am now leaving for home. I think I’ll go shipboard. There is much water, as you must have heard, to jump into between the country of Canada and the country of Japan.”
Istvakson applauded, but nobody else did.
Michiko Zento now helped Akutagawa to his hotel room. He stumbled along beside her. The scene was struck and the cast and crew scattered to their various rooms or off to cafés or restaurants or other night spots. Lily Svetgartot saw me and walked right up and said, “This has been a pretty awful day. What just happened was only part of it. Now I’m going to have to sit up with Akutagawa all night—how do you say it? I heard this phrase once and liked it—applying the balm. I’ll have to talk him into staying. Doctors will be summoned. All that, all that, all that. Good Christ.”
The fact is, Padgett had declared his sordid intentions to Elizabeth on several occasions outside the ballroom. The first was about two months before he murdered her. At that time, he’d seen her leaving the public library on Spring Garden and, after following her for a few blocks, stepped up to her and said, “Mrs. Lattimore, out for a stroll, I see.” Elizabeth said, “I’ve been working, Mr. Padgett. And now I’m going to meet my husband at home.” To which Padgett replied, “Oh, I’ve tied him up to that antique sofa of yours. That gives you and me lots of time to have an old-fashioned heart-to-heart. What do you say?” “You’d have to have a heart for that,” Elizabeth said, and crossed the street. Padgett apparently was stung by this remark. He soon caught up with her. Elizabeth stopped, looked around at how crowded the shopping area along Spring Garden Road was, and felt less vulnerable for all of that. “Fuck off, Mr. Padgett,” she said. It struck Elizabeth that having said this was an incitement to him, because he said, “You have a certain way with words.” Then he said, “I get women. I can get all the women I want. Whenever I want a woman, I get one. I’ve even got them in the very hotel where I’m employed. The very same hotel you live in.” “Mr. Padgett,” Elizabeth said, “I’ll see that you get fired. You’re a creep. You’re a menace. Now fuck off.” “Hey, it so happens I’m on my way back to the hotel too,” he said. “My shift begins in ten minutes. What’s the harm in me escorting you? Afraid hubby will get jealous and try to do something about it?” “You think you’re in a movie,” Elizabeth said. “But really you’re in your own sick head.” She shoved him hard and he stumbled into the road, barely avoiding being hit by a car. Padgett looked around, shrugged, and said loudly to passersby, “Lover’s quarrel.”
Later, when Elizabeth walked into our apartment, she immediately poured herself a whiskey and sat me down at the kitchen table to tell me all of this. Then we registered yet another complaint with Derek Budnick, who replied with a note in our mail slot: “Incident duly noted. However, it took place outside of hotel jurisdiction. Please contact the police and make an official statement. I will speak with Mr. Isherwood again. Rest assured I have my eye on bellman Padgett.”
The next morning, we went to the police station. There we had the attention of Detective Frederick Levy, who said that given the history with Padgett (“I have no doubt whatsoever about the authenticity of everything you’ve told me”), under most circumstances a case could be made for a restraining order that would not allow Padgett within three hundred meters of Elizabeth. Yet considering the fact that he was employed in the hotel where we lived, such an order could hardly be imposed. Detective Levy suggested that we move. “Get away from this freak of nature,” he said. “Though from what you’ve told me, said freak of nature might be the type to take his behaviors for a walk right behind you down the street again.” (At Padgett’s trial, Detective Levy testified that Derek Budnick had come to the police station and was told to keep him, Detective Levy, closely apprised of everything pertaining to Alfonse Padgett.)
The second incident occurred on Lower Water Street, near Historic Properties, about a week after the first. “This time things got even more creepy, Sam,” Elizabeth said later. “I’m going back to Detective Levy.” She was quite shaken.
What happened was, Elizabeth was sitting in the library, in her favorite carrel, when suddenly Padgett pulled up a chair next to her. He spoke in a whisper, as if following library rules. “You and your husband are word people, right? You write a lot of words. You think about which correct words to use in which situation. You both get paid for that, right?” Elizabeth didn’t know whether to leave her chair and get help, or just wait it out, or what to do, really. Padgett more or less had her cornered. “Well, I found a word you might like to use. I heard it first in a pub on Water Street and tried to look it up in Webster’s, eh? But it wasn’t in the dictionary. It’s now popular with me, if not in popular usage. I love this word; it slips so smoothly off the tongue. Want to know what word I’m referring to, Mrs. Lattimore? Want it to slip off my tongue?”
But at this point in the telling, Elizabeth had to stop. Shaking her head back and forth, she said, “No, I’m not going to say it. It’s so disgusting, Samuel. If I say it, it’d make me sick. I don’t want it to be a word you ever heard me speak, okay?”
“Yeah, I had designs on the lady and wanted to fulfill my designs,” Padgett had said in court, according to Derek Budnick. “She said a big no, and what happened, happened. I had to fulfill a different design. I partly consider it her fault. I mean, she had a choice in the matter.”
Fairness
With Dr. Nissensen, June 20, 1973:
Next Life Might Be Kinder Page 16