Inevitably, the night would end in her bedroom where I had to inspire myself with thoughts of Margaret in her younger years to be of any use to her. But it wasn’t so bad, at least not when Katharine was alive, at least then I had someone to brandish when Katharine’s not so secret relationship with my half-brother was discussed in one of our “earnest talks.” The earnest talks that I’d had with Katharine were meant to justify her infidelity to me in terms that I would accept. But they never did. In the beginning, they were full-fledged jealous wranglings but as the years went by and I didn’t have the nerve to leave Katharine, these talks had devolved into vacuous ramblings of useless jealousy. Meeting Margaret, then, and the placid and remunerative relationship I maintained with her, always served as a panacea to my persistent heartbreak.
BLUNT INSTRUMENTS
It had been my intention to drop by the gallery for just a few minutes but moments after I arrived the next morning, the front door opened and a little Frenchman entered with a notebook and a threatening smile.
He seemed to know me immediately, strode up to my side
and flashed his badge – from the Tahitian government. I wasn’t in the mood for this. I didn’t want to create more stories to avoid persecution. I wanted to be finished with it. I wanted to accept responsibility for a crime I didn’t commit; maybe I’d have a better time getting over Katharine’s suicide in a cell waiting for my own death.
“Noel DeColette,” he said, “I’m investigating the death of your brother.”
“My half-brother.”
“Your half-brother, then. I wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“Aren’t you thousands of miles out of your jurisdiction?”
The man pulled another paper from his coat, something from the State Department, something which gave him the right to question me in the United States.
“What do you want to know?”
“Is there a place we can talk?” I let Sabrina see my dismay, then started towards the back room with Mssr. DeColette.
“You must excuse our mess,” I said. “We’ve been doing some alterations for our new exhibit.”
DeColette was looking around. “Interesting works,” he said. And when we arrived in the back room, he asked me if I still represented my half-brother, Michel.
“Not since long before his death,” I reassured him. “He seemed more comfortable, living and painting in Tahiti, being in control of his own works.”
“Yes we heard he was comfortable down there,” DeColette observed, “until he had his brains smashed out of his head.”
I had enough guilt about Michel’s death that I was afraid I’d come out with a full confession, though it would be a false confession because I could never remember a thing about that welcome event, only the gruesome dreams I’d been having that labeled me as his killer. But then, I remembered something else, the French method of capital punishment. As I stood there, with a cigarette in my hand, I had a vision of a guillotine slicing off my head and the severed thing dancing around in its basket as my inhaled smoke exhaled while blood poured out, and my vision came to an end.
“Do you use the guillotine in Tahiti,” I asked him. He smiled as we both sat down.
“Sometimes, Mssr. Lumiere. If the crime warrants it.” Mssr. DeColette seemed amused by my fascination with the punishment for murder. “I’m here because I’m not quite clear of your whereabouts at the time of Michel’s death.”
What was I expected to tell him, that I was there and that I murdered my brother because my sense of guilt was too real to deny such an event?
“Look,” I said, “If you think I killed Michel, why don’t you just arrest me?”
“But I haven’t accused you of anything, Mssr. Lumiere. I just want to talk to you.”
“All right, talk to me.”
The rain continued to fall outside, teardrops splattered on my skylight, trying to force out a confession.
“On the night of your brother’s murder, you told my predecessors that you were already on a flight back home.”
“What of it?”
“We’ve placed you on that plane the following day, after his body was found.”
Maybe I did take the plane on the next day but that didn’t prove anything. I stood up sternly over Mssr. DeColette, trying to make things out as my blurry window, now awash in a steady, relentless rain, was fogging up my mind.
“Why did you lie to us about when you left Papeete?”
I sighed, rejoined with a comment about the relevance of this new bit of information and why it took so long to come forward with it.
“A man came to us.”
“What man?”
“Not one that you’d usually find strolling around a Tahitian police office.”
“All right, I give up. Who was it that enlightened you to when I really left?”
“A man we think you have good reason to know well. A native of Bora Bora, a man named Hitu.”
I tensed up. I knew Hitu. He was Michel’s man Friday. A quiet man, tall and good looking. And a one-time lover of my dead wife.
“You left a notebook at his home.”
“His home? Where, in the jungle?”
“In a little shack near the Bora Bora Hotel.”
“That’s not his home.”
“So, you know Hitu?”
“I haven’t seen him in fifteen years. And he doesn’t live in the gentrified part of Bora Bora. He lives in the isolated part of the island, in a native village, hidden from everything else.”
“Have you been there?”
“Nobody’s been there. You know that! They kill you if you try and enter the area.”
“All I know is that Hitu talked about a blunt instrument that belonged to you.”
“What blunt instrument?”
“An umbrella with a heavy iron handle.”
The thought of the umbrella behind the office door brought back images of Michel’s death, of his being bludgeoned by something, images that were reserved only for my nightmares.
“It’s enough of a link for us to want to question you.”
“All right, so you’ve questioned me. I never owned an umbrella with an iron handle. Are you satisfied?”
“Extradition to Tahiti is difficult but it’s already in the works. If you come back with me now, I’m sure the authorities would be easier on you when it comes time to sentence.”
“Sentence,” I yelled. “For a crime I didn’t commit?” I spoke the words but I didn’t believe them. The dreams and the desire to kill Michel were battered into my head just as Michel’s killer had battered something into Michel’s head.
I took the inspector’s arm and led him out of my office, past a curious Sabrina, and out of my gallery. “Now, why don’t you just go on your way, Mssr. Inspector?”
The Tahitian investigator left without another word and I returned to the gallery and spoke with Sabrina.
“Still on their list, I see,” Sabrina said.
“I didn’t do anything.”
Sabrina eyed me suspiciously. “How can you prove that?”
“I could use you as an alibi.”
“Why not try using Katharine,” she asked with a cynical look.
“Sabrina, that’s not amusing.”
“But it might work.”
“I just can’t remember anything about that trip.”
“You went there to please your dying father.”
“I know why I went there but I don’t remember anything about Michel’s death.”
“Try.”
“How?”
“Come and get a drink with me and we can talk about it.” Sabrina pulled one of her Balkan Sobranie cigarettes out of an elegant case. She bounced the golden tip of the cigarette on the case before lighting and inhaling.
It had been a year since Katharine killed herself but Sabrina’s easy virtue was something I didn’t want to take advantage of. In ways, she reminded me of Katharine. She was just enough of a slut, spending days away with
rich art patrons that came to the gallery.
“What would we talk about?”
Sabrina smiled sardonically and exhaled the smoke away from me. “Something that you can remember.”
“I make a habit of forgetting,” I said.
“I can always hypnotize you.”
And she could, that’s what was keeping me away from her.
“I have a psychiatrist for that and it hasn’t worked. I just can’t remember…”
“All right,” she said, “then we’ll work on it together.” Sabrina blew the smoke in my face this time. I grimaced and she giggled like a little girl, like a little seductive girl.
I stood up. I had to leave the gallery I explained. I had to go to my other job.
ON LOCATION
The construction crew wasn't finished building the interior of Norma Desmond’s mansion on the sound stage. That day, production was at the Bel-Air Country Club. We were shooting a scene where Gillis asks his agent for $300 while the well dressed, self-satisfied man is golfing. He swings his club and sends the ball into the hole, walks over to the hole, picks out his ball and bounces it in his hand while he’s talking to Gillis.
“So you need three hundred dollars. Of course, I could give you three hundred dollars,” he tells Gillis, “Although I’m not going to.”
“No?”
“Gillis, get this through your head. I’m not just your agent. It’s not the ten percent. I’m your friend.”
“You are?”
“Don’t you know the finest things in the world have been written on an empty stomach? Once a talent like you gets into that Mocambo-Romanoff rut, you’re through.”
“Oh, forget Romanoff’s, it’s a car I’m talking about. If I lose my car, it’s like having my legs cut off.”
“Greatest thing that could happen to you. Now you’ll have to sit behind the typewriter. Now you’ll have to write.”
Gillis grabs the bouncing golf ball from his agent’s hand.
“Whatya think I’ve been doing? I need three hundred dollars.”
“Sweetheart, maybe what you need is another agent.”
Gillis tosses the ball back and walks off. His sadistic agent continues to bounce his ball as he’s walking down the golf course.
When we finished location for the day, we still had enough time back at the studio to shoot a scene in a producer’s office, a one-time employer of Gillis who liked his writing.
In this scene with the producer, a story analyst comes in and trashes Gillis’s work before realizing that the writer is in the room. Gillis shares some frank words with her and the first spark of a writing collaboration is ignited through the fact that she heard that Gillis was good – but you wouldn’t know it during the scene they shot. Gillis was about to strangle Miss Schaefer, the story analyst, for dynamiting his chance to get a gig.
William Holden was the last of a long list of actors that had been offered the part but almost turned it down, fearing the cynicism of the project, worried about attacking the establishment of dear old Hollywood. As it turned out, Bill Holden was perfect in that role. He had the sullied good looks of someone with an adventurous past that was catching up with him.
As the crew shot the scene, I took my pictures documenting the event for publicity and for a record of the passing parade of make believe that seemed more like reality every day I was on the job.
When production ended on this last weekday in the shoot, Billy was in good spirits. They were actually running on schedule and under budget, something that would change later, but right then it was something to celebrate. Billy went out for a drink with me and we talked about the old times at UFA, about Murnau’s troubles with “Tabu,” including his post-release death that we both regretted tremendously. Billy had a lot of work to do but was sympathetic about my loss of Katharine. So, he stayed and talked for a while longer, adding drink after drink to our alcoholic evening.
I started reminiscing about UFA, about the last week of the twenties when I was supposed to be at work but was flat in bed with some kind of German bug that was going around.
During what was a disease of the mind as much as of the body, I was elevated to a perspective where I could see a panorama of my life, all the little absurd details of growing up, going out into the world and then seeing the future murder I would designate to my memory of the South Seas. I kept the murder to myself and kept Billy entertained by recollecting some of our drinking parties, some of the frauleins we were fortunate enough to get to know better as the nights grew late.
“Odette,” Billy reminded me, “Her name was Odette.” He put a cigar in his mouth and started laughing. “She almost killed you.”
Yes, Odette, an extra on several of the productions who was eager to climb the ladder, but no one told her that sleeping with a set painter and photographer was not the way to do it. Back in the day, I took advantage of every opportunity to enjoy myself. Since we were working so hard on other people’s entertainment, we had to find our own with whatever hungry girl there was at hand.
And there were plenty.
We talked about seeing the Weimar Republic crash and National Socialism rise. Billy and I could tell how the Nazis would be destroying the future of Germany but it was difficult for so many people to avoid supporting the madness that led to the Holocaust, where families were torn about, where practically limb by limb, an entire culture was decimated. And we spoke about Leni Riefenstahl, the rare independent woman who established herself so comfortably with the forces of darkness.
“You know,” I told Billy, “Leni was going to hire me to shoot stills on The Blue Light.”
Billy remembered that but he also brought up the woman who saved me – Marlene Dietrich. Because she liked my work and took me under her wings, I was able to travel to Hollywood with her and the director, Josef von Sternberg. And that’s where I met the other side of filmmaking, the industry that was churning out pabulum for the public, the putrid screen adventures full of sound and sex and signifying nothing. That’s one of the things I loved about Billy’s project, I told him, an opportunity to show the real heart of darkness, the ruin you discover when you row yourself up the Hollywood stream until you find out that there’s no water, no relief at the top, just a dry and cruel environment that withers people.
Billy was one of the few people in town that I was close enough to confide in when I was brought down by my mental illness, my feeling that my father’s spirit was watching over me and judging me, condemning me to a life where the light will go out.
I talked about that weird time at Paramount, when I was watching the rushes of Sternberg and Dietrich’s “Morocco” and my father appeared to me - or his spirit did.
In a scene where Dietrich’s character stands aboard a ship and her eyes fill with tears, I was suffused with a strong desire to turn and look back at the projecting light – and when I did, my being went into the light. It was not a dream and certainly not a reality, it was something in-between. My father was standing at the helm of a sailboat. He was vituperiously angry and raged at me for my callousness. I didn’t know what I had done, not until I saw Michel laying on the polished deck of the sailboat. As he lay there, blood pouring from his head, my father told me that he wanted to have nothing to do with me anymore. I was older in this vision. I had been on a sailboat voyage with this dead man, had hit him and killed him. All of this entered my mind in an instant as I conversed with my father in a nonverbal language. It was a waking dream, filled with reflections of a life passing before me that I had not yet lived. There was something about Michel that was traitorous, something about him that I had to vanquish. I began to see images of our short trip out at sea. Michel sneered at me. He had wealth and artistic success. He was a painter who won awards and commanded great prices for his work. And his work was surreal – like Dali, like something I dreamed of painting but didn’t yet have the ability to accomplish – really, something I’d never have the ability to accomplish.
“And then, Marlen
e saved me,” I told Billy.
“’Alexander,’ she said softly, putting a hand on my shoulder in the empty theatre. ‘What are you watching? The rushes are over.’”
“I shrugged off my hallucinations, kept them to myself of course, and went out for a drink with Marlene and Josef. I got the drink…but I wasn’t in their reality,” I told Billy. “There I was, living a life to be envied but there was someone watching me, at least someone watching my thoughts, someone who knew what I wanted to do.”
“When you were batty back then,” Billy asked, “Why didn’t you come to me, why didn’t you let me in on your mind’s flop?”
I smiled at Billy and said “I was too busy with trying to prove myself on canvas. And, of course, I was frightened that no one could accept the kind of mind that I had.”
“Your mind’s no crazier than mine, Alex, you just believe in your nightmares. I always buried them in dialog or tormented my characters.” Billy laughed. “Look at you,” he said, “it’s like you’re still a kid, still trying to get forgiveness for your wacky behavior.”
“But your mother wasn’t a whore, Billy.”
“I learned to survive, you mean. My mother’s love had nothing to do with my staying alive. If anyone let his mother down it was me. I let her stay in Vienna. I never pushed hard enough to keep her out of the camp trains. I just left everything and kept writing to keep my mind off my guilt. Couldn’t you have done that with your painting?”
“Yeah, but you have the talent of a Billy Wilder. I only had the talent to become a gigolo like your Gillis character.”
COLD, DEAD LIPS
The real Sunset Boulevard was closed down near the Bel-Air entrance for the following day’s shoot. Joe Gillis was at a stoplight, thinking of a way out of his dream and nightmare, his failed attempt to break into Hollywood in a big way (or anyway at all). The way out appeared before him, from the other side of the street when the repo men caught sight of him in his contraband car and, when the light changed, made a U-Turn to chase him. As Gillis’s car raced down Sunset Blvd, his Chrysler had a blowout. I was across the street, in the bushes, waiting for the opportunity to catch the sound of a blowout on celluloid.
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