by Steve Tesich
He is an enlightened man. Cultured, well-bred. Well-read. Civilized. But evil. He is evil neither for lack of enlightenment nor because of it. He is evil in addition to it.
7
“This,” he says, alluding to the yellow manila envelope to my left and his right, “is a real tragedy. It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then a project comes along that’s close to my heart and when it doesn’t work out, it hurts in a way that a heartbreak hurts.”
He’s lying to me, of course. But he’s doing it in his own way. He wants me to know that he’s lying. He wants me to know that every single word he’s telling me is a blatant lie. I sit across from him, feeling hopelessly old-fashioned, out of touch with current trends. When I lie, I still try to deceive others that I’m telling the truth. When Cromwell lies, he asserts that there is no truth.
The waiter has cleared away our lunch debris and brought the coffee we ordered. I drink mine and light another cigarette as Cromwell goes on.
“I not only produced this film,” he alludes again to the yellow manila envelope, “I financed it with my own money. I almost never do that, but this was a special case and a special film. This was, after all, not just any film by any director, but a film by Arthur Houseman.”
He pauses, as if out of reverence for the name he has just uttered. Looking right at me. Reading me. Gauging my response. I congratulate myself for having guessed right the content of the envelope and raise an eyebrow in mock surprise at Cromwell’s revelation.
“The Arthur Houseman,” I say.
“The one and only.” Cromwell sighs. “The Old Man himself. The last living giant in our line of work. If I can’t invest my own money in one of his films, then what’s the point of calling myself a producer? The man’s not only a genius, he is a seminal genius. I’m not a religious man, Saul. I don’t believe in God, but I believed in Arthur Houseman.”
(Maybe it’s the light in the restaurant, or the absence of any other bright color to compete with it, because the yellow of that yellow manila envelope seems yellower than any manila envelope I have ever seen. It’s as yellow as a highway warning sign illuminated by headlights in the dead of night.)
“But,” Cromwell goes on, “I had to protect myself. The Old Man’s age. His health. He was a little shaky even before the shoot began. The deal we made was meant to be a mere formality. Something to satisfy the insurance boys. As you well know, every film has to be insured against unforeseen contingencies. So we signed a document stating that should the unforeseen occur and should he be either physically or mentally incapable of delivering a satisfactory first cut of the film, the ownership of the film would revert to me and then I, as a producer, would do with it whatever, in my opinion, was best for the film.”
He pauses. He shakes his head.
“Did I ever dream that such a thing could happen? No. Do I now enjoy being in this painful position of having to take away a film from a man I revere? You know the answer to that, Doc. It’s tearing me apart. It’s literally tearing me apart.”
He sips his coffee. I sip mine.
“But what can I do?” He goes on. “This thing—” he gestures with his hand toward the manila envelope “—this chaotic thing he calls his final cut, not his first cut, mind you, but his very final cut, is not even a respectable assemblage. It’s like confetti, Doc. I swear to you, that’s what it’s like. Celluloid confetti strung together at random. I tried talking to him, but there’s no talking to the Old Man anymore. The combination of old age and disease, I don’t know. The only thing I do know is that he’s lost it, I’m afraid, but please, not a word about this to anyone.”
I nod, signaling my pledge of silence. And then, as if in eulogy for the Old Man who’s lost it, a respectful and full moment of silence follows. And then Cromwell goes on again.
“Like I told you, I’ve put up my own money to make this film, but you know me, Doc. You know me probably as well as anyone and you must know that I don’t give a damn about money. I’ve lost money before and I’ll lose it again. It’s not a question of money. This man”—he points with his index finger at the yellow manila envelope—“was one of my idols. He’s the reason I’m in this business in the first place. I grew up, as so many of us did, on his films, and now I feel like the guardian of his name and his reputation and his place in history. This will be his last film. He doesn’t have much longer to live. Six months to a year tops. I just can’t let him go out like this. He deserves better. It’s a case where we have to save him from himself.
“I don’t want to kid you, Doc. This is not just another easy fix. For all I know, and God knows I’m not an artist like you, but for all I know, the film may be unfixable. But if there’s anyone who can salvage this great man’s last work and let him enter the Pantheon in peace, it’s you. You have an uncanny facility with celluloid and a genius for the spine, the story line. Yes, you do. You know you do, so spare me your modesty. If there is a story in all this confetti, only you can find it and bring it to life. It’s not much of a plot …”
He tells me a little about the plot of the film, but I’m only pretending to listen. I’m so far ahead of him that I know that there are always two plots in any project with which Cromwell is associated. There is the plot of the movie itself and then there is the plot of Cromwell’s motives and maneuvers as a producer of that movie. If I accept the assignment, I will work on one plot. The other plot will work on me.
I am way ahead of him, but being way ahead of him is a problem in itself. I am mesmerized by my own foresight. Everything that is happening conforms with my predictions and my seerlike ability to foresee it all.
“I’ve transferred the film to a videocassette,” he says, and moves the yellow manila envelope to table center. “In addition to what’s on the cassette, there are thousands of feet of raw footage that the Old Man shot but never even bothered to edit. He wanted it destroyed when he found out what I was doing, but fortunately we managed to rescue it just in time. If and when you want to see any of it, just give Brad a call and he’ll take it from there. Meanwhile, take the cassette home and have a look. Maybe it is hopeless. Maybe even you won’t be able to fix this one. Think it over. There’s no rush. I’ll be in Europe for four to five weeks. We can talk when I come back or, if you want to reach me, just give Brad a buzz. He’ll know where to find me.”
He signals to the waiter for a check.
He winks at me while signing.
“That was some little girl you were with last night, you old goat,” he compliments me.
I shrug.
He smiles.
I smile.
He checks his watch and gestures that we still have a few minutes. No need to rush my coffee.
I light another cigarette. I sit there and wait for something to happen. For some act of man or God to keep me from forming another alliance with Cromwell. For something or someone to intercede.
If knowledge is power, then all the power is on my side. I know Cromwell so well that a fraction of the information I know about him should suffice to make me recoil from the offer on the table.
And yet nothing happens.
There is something about being fully informed that’s so satisfying that it becomes an end in itself. Instead of begetting a response, being informed precludes having a response.
We walk out together. I am carrying the yellow manila envelope in my hand.
We part in the lobby.
It’s a little after four o’clock when I walk out of the hotel. Park Avenue is jammed with cabs going in both directions. The yellow of the manila envelope in my hand is yellower than any cab I see.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1
FROM THE MOMENT I returned to my apartment Friday afternoon until I finally saw Arthur Houseman’s film Sunday evening, the videocassette, removed from the envelope and lying on top of it, remained on my dining room table.
They remained there the whole time, one on top of the other. A videocassette. A yellow manila envelope. Tw
o ordinary, mass-produced objects. As ordinary and as familiar as paper cups or disposable razors. There had to be hundreds of thousands if not millions of manila envelopes and videocassettes in circulation which were absolutely identical to the ones on my dining room table.
But after I had lived with them for two days, looking at them, picking them up and putting them down, their very mass-produced ordinariness began to invest them with a quality of foreboding. Not any specific foreboding but a kind of general mass-produced foreboding.
My own personal unease with videocassettes was something else entirely. Their submissive acceptance of all images and impressions to which they were exposed was a trait I also had. They came in various grades of quality, but as far as I knew there was no videocassette with a conscience that refused, on principle, to record some abomination or other. From the totally trivial to the truly sublime, it made no difference to any of them. Their reusability was particularly troubling. The way you could erase them by simply recording something else over them. What was there was suddenly there no more. Replaced by what was there now. I was uneasy because I had so much in common with these inanimate objects.
2
Sunday evening.
I unplugged the telephone so I wouldn’t be interrupted while watching the film. I took a clean ashtray and a pack of cigarettes and placed them on the end table next to the couch. Then I inserted the videocassette into my VCR.
There were no credits. No music. Nothing even to tell me what the film was called. The film simply began.
A man in his mid-thirties is at the wheel of a car. He’s driving slowly, both hands on the steering wheel. It’s a narrow, residential street lined with houses, lawns, and trees. Judging by the trees, it feels like a small town in the Midwest. Judging by the light, it’s early morning.
He stops for a stop sign and stays there a little too long. We’re tight on his face and he seems to be thinking thoughts he knows he should not be thinking.
The tempo of the film as it proceeds is controlled and deliberate, but as hypnotic and unassuming as a river flowing. It is the story of a love affair between a man and a woman, both of them married to somebody else.
About fifteen minutes into the film, the scene shifts for the first time, to a local restaurant.
Our would-be lovers, who are not lovers yet, go there for a cup of coffee.
They seem very eager to demonstrate to others, as well as to themselves, that by going to a public place together they have nothing to hide.
They sit down in a booth.
A waitress, played by an actress I have never seen before, watches from a distance. There is nothing particularly attractive or even particular about her, unless it is the unusual whiteness of her face. The face itself is as ordinary as the decor of that restaurant.
She watches them. She likes both of them. She walks up to their booth to take their order.
“Hi,” she says. “And how’s every little itsy-bitsy thing with the both of yous?” And without waiting for a reply, she inquires in a mock-sophisticated tone: “Do you want to hear our specials for today?”
She knew the couple. They knew her. It was the kind of town where almost everyone knew everyone else and there was nobody who didn’t know that there were no specials in this restaurant.
Having said her line, as if amused by it herself, the waitress laughed.
Everything stopped. The videocassette continued to roll, the scene in the restaurant continued to play, but I was deaf and blind to it all, undone and disoriented by the laughter I had heard.
I knew that woman. I had never seen her before, but I knew her. I didn’t know her name and she didn’t know mine, but I knew her.
3
Dianah and I met and married when we were quite young. I was at Columbia at the time. She was going to school across the street at Barnard College. We met at a party and fell in love at first sight, as we later described it to others. I was in graduate school. She was an undergrad. I was in comparative lit. She was in political science. She was blond and petite. I was on the dark and burly side. She was immaculate in her appearance. I was dressed in those days, not without affectation, like a tattered book jacket. Her parents lived in Santa Barbara, California, mine in Chicago, Illinois. Together, like a demographically correct presidential ticket, Dianah and I seemed to be in a position to have everything.
She graduated from Barnard at the same time that I got my PhD from Columbia. Shortly after that, we got married. Her parents were very rich. They were thrilled that their daughter was marrying a certified member of what they called “the intelligentsia.” They bought us a huge apartment on Central Park West and endowed us with enough money that neither of us had to work for a living. They were both quite old, and when they died, the wealth Dianah inherited was substantial.
And so there we were. We were young, she was beautiful, I was an intellectual, we were wealthy, we had everything except a baby.
Dianah wanted to have a baby right away. She didn’t want to be just a mother. She wanted to be a young mother. Her own parents had been quite old when she was born and she felt cheated that she had never known them as anything other than old her whole life. She didn’t want her child to have to repeat that kind of an experience.
She was going to be a young mother. She loved that image of herself.
“We’ll take our baby everywhere with us,” she kept telling me.
Freed by Dianah’s wealth from the necessity of pursuing an academic career, I was trying to write something of my own at the time. I soon discovered that although I was considered a witty and amusing conversationalist, a talent much admired in the social circles in which we moved, I really had nothing to say. Even my talent as a conversationalist was that of someone capable of responding to other people’s ideas rather than initiating any ideas of his own. It seemed that I lacked both the talent and the creative urge ever to become a writer.
To become a father, to create a baby, seemed at the time an artistic endeavor of which I was capable. I embraced the idea wholeheartedly. Dianah would be a young mother. I would be a youngish father. We would take our baby everywhere with us. We became passionate on this subject.
Passion produced pregnancy after pregnancy but no baby. One miscarriage followed another and was in turn followed first by a deep depression and than by a renewed and almost fanatical desire for a child.
After her fifth miscarriage, Dianah began to panic. We consulted several specialists, who all reassured her that there was nothing biologically wrong with her, that she was putting too much pressure on herself to have a baby and that if she just relaxed, waited a year or two before trying to have a child again, everything would probably turn out all right.
But Dianah couldn’t wait. She felt time slipping away. She saw herself repeating the pattern of her own parents and becoming a mother when she was long past her youth.
She wanted to be a young mother.
We decided to adopt a baby.
We quickly discovered, however, that if we wanted to adopt a baby through normal channels, it would take a long time. A few years perhaps. Every adoption agency we applied to had a long waiting list and Dianah just couldn’t wait.
There were, we learned, other ways of getting a baby and getting it quickly. There were lawyers who specialized in this field, and because they were certified by the New York State Bar and because they had diplomas from reputable Ivy League law schools hanging on the walls of their offices, it made it a lot easier to overlook the quasi-legal nature of their work.
We hired one of these lawyers. His fee was exorbitant but presented no problem to our resources.
In less than a month, he called to tell us the happy news.
I answered the phone in the living room, and once Dianah discovered the nature of the call, she ran to the phone in our bedroom and picked it up.
Our baby. Already it was ours. The lawyer kept referring to it as “your baby.” Our baby was not yet born. It was still in the womb of its mo
ther. The girl who was expected to deliver in a few days was only fourteen years old. She was from Charleston, South Carolina. Her boyfriend, the father of the child, was only seventeen. He had been killed in a car accident two months ago. Drunk driving. The girl’s parents were very poor but very religious and wouldn’t hear of an abortion.
Our lawyer kept on talking.
Confidentiality, he told us, was crucial in these matters. We would never know the name of the biological mother and she would never know ours. There were nasty legal ramifications and heartbreaking emotional costs when names were revealed. Therefore he, our lawyer, would be our representative. He would make the trip to Charleston. He would wait there until the baby was born. He would pick it up and he would bring it to us along with all the necessary paperwork.
We would have to pay the young girl’s hospital expenses, our lawyer’s travel expenses to and from Charleston, and any and all expenses he incurred while waiting there for the baby to be born, plus, upon delivery of the baby, the remainder of the mutually agreed-upon fee he charged for his services.
“Congratulations,” he told us.
I heard Dianah scream with joy on the extension phone. I ran from the living room toward her and she ran from the bedroom toward me. We met in the corridor and flew into each other’s arms.
She went on a mad shopping spree the next day. Every few hours it seemed, the door would open and she’d be standing there engulfed in packages of baby things. Toys. Blankets. Diapers. Baby bottles. Stuffed animals too big to wrap. And then out she went to shop some more. Delivery men brought a beautiful baby crib. Dianah hung mobiles above it. She was as happy as I had ever seen her.
Three days later our lawyer called again. Dianah was out shopping for more baby things.