“Yes, he gets things done, I hear.”
“What do you think of his pictures?” David said. “I mean, I don’t mean to—I mean, I’ve been working with him a year and I’ve gotten a little confused. I’m beginning to believe they’re good.”
“Does it make any difference?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure. It must make some sort of difference.”
“Does it make any difference to you?” Rock said.
“No, I guess it doesn’t,” David said. “I’m supposed to be learning production. The trouble is there isn’t anything to learn. I mean, the most I can learn is to make more of these pictures that I know have got something the matter with them. I don’t know what it is, but I know something is the matter with them.”
“Are you trying to guess what to do about it?” Rock said.
“Yes, I am,” David said. “I admired my father very much.”
“I liked your father,” Rock said.
“I’ve always felt I’d like to do what he did,” David said. “Did he do what Sam’s doing?”
“Yes, he did,” Rock said, “but Sam isn’t the man your father was.”
“Did my father make bad pictures that he himself knew were bad?”
“Yes.”
“Did you make bad pictures that you knew were bad?”
“Yes,” Rock said.
“Why?” David said. “Why did my father do it? Why did you do it? I thought it was because of Sam.”
“No,” Rock said. “It’s not because of Sam the pictures Sam makes are bad.”
“Why are they bad, then?” David said. “Why did my father make them bad? Why did you?”
“We don’t know what we’re doing,” Rock said. “We do our best. It isn’t good enough. We do our best when we’re not working, too. We do it all the time. It isn’t good enough. It always seems as if it may turn out all right at last, and then it turns out bad again.”
“I can’t decide what to do,” David said.
“About what?”
“About having always felt that I’d like to do what my father did,” David said. “If he made pictures he knew were bad, what shall I do? I mean, I like fun and money and all the rest of it, the same as all the others do, but I thought my father tried to make good pictures. I believed the ones he did make were good. Sam tries to make bad pictures and he makes bad pictures.”
“They make more money than pictures that are less bad,” Rock said.
“Yes, they do,” David said.
“Your father tried to make good pictures,” Rock said. “He did try.”
“Didn’t he try hard enough?” David said.
“It’s not as simple as that,” Rock said. “The way it was was this, and that’s the way it is now, too. You had to try to make a picture that would make money and at the same time be a good picture. You never believe this can’t be done. You never want to believe it can’t be done.”
“Can it be done?” David said.
“It never has,” Rock said.
“What about Chaplin?”
“They’re very bad. All of them.”
“Why?”
“They put sleeping, weeping people into deeper, weeping sleep.”
“The last ones, too?”
“No,” Rock said. “The last ones try, they try for something, but they don’t make it. It’s not simple at all. It involves everything.”
“What about the English ones lately?” David said. “The Shakespeare pictures?”
“They’re bad.”
“Everybody seems to like them.”
“That happens. I don’t like them. Do you like them?”
“I thought I did,” David said.
“Then you did,” Rock said. “I was sure I didn’t. I’ll tell you why. Kings and their wives and brothers and sons and daughters bore me. Most other people do, too. After they’ve bathed and put on clean clothes and are comfortable and feel fine, they bore me. Before they do these things they fascinate me, and I think I love them. While they’re working, while they’re struggling to get to the bath, to the table, to comfort and well-being, they delight me, but once they get to where they believe they will finally be all right, they bore me, for they are nothing then. Kings are always supposed to be all right, and it is a shock to discover that they are nothing. You had to try to make a picture that would make money and at the same time be good. Your father tried. He tried every time.”
“What should I do?” David said.
“At the same time,” Rock said, “there’s another way of looking at it. It’s this. You decide they’re all good, and you observe that this one is better than that one. You let it go at that. It doesn’t make for the worst life in the world. You should do what you like, or what you must, or what’s most convenient at the time.”
“I thought my father was—well, a great man.”
“He was greater than most,” Rock said. “There are no men who are not great. You happen to like some men enough to believe they’re the ones who are great. You happen to dislike others enough to believe they’re the ones who aren’t, but actually any man who lives, any man who stays alive, is great. Having stayed alive demonstrates that he is. As to the ones who die, it’s hard to say. Most likely they were great as long as they lasted. Would you pour me another, please?”
“I thought my father was truly great,” David said.
“You knew him better than you knew the neighbor boy’s father,” Rock said. “A man’s father is always great. A man’s family is always great. How could there be any question about that? How many children has Sam Schwartz?”
“He isn’t married.”
“Well, as soon as he gets married and has children, his children will know he is great.”
“Maybe we don’t mean the same thing by great,” David said. “My father was a kind man.”
“He was as kind as he could be under the circumstances,” Rock said. “There’s no limit to greatness or kindness.”
“What’s anything mean, then?” David said.
“Not very much,” Rock said. “Your own animal health, mainly. Your own animal fun. Your own animal cleanliness.”
“Animal?” David said. “All animal?”
“Yes,” Rock said. “I’ll tell you what, David. I don’t sleep nights. I think I’d like to sleep now. Call me any time tomorrow and we’ll go sit down somewhere and talk. Thanks for coming by. Is Vida well?”
“She misses my father,” David said. “She still misses him. I’ll call between two and three if it’s all right.”
“That’ll be fine,” Rock said.
He stretched back on the bed and began to go over everything again, the half-words and half-acts left in half-places at half-times, for whatever the time of him, a man is his own proud stranger, and the luckiest one that ever was born.
A man lives his life in ignorance. He lives his entire life alone, out of touch with a secret, an instantaneous thing forever longing to be in touch with the secret, which he believes is in his woman. But his woman is not his woman, and the secret is not in her. His son is not his son, and the secret is not in him. His daughter is not his daughter, and the secret is not in her. Each of these is also alone, and out of touch. Each is a man’s own sad achievement, his own sad failure, his own instantaneous self, but they are not his own, as he himself knows.
During the February afternoon sleep Rock Wagram drew close to the secret. When he awoke his soul wept. His sleep had been without action, without thought, but in it he had gone closer to the secret than ever before in his life.
What is it? What is the secret?
Her lawyer telephoned and said, “I just had a talk with Ann. If you want to see the children, she wants you to know you’re welcome.”
“I’ll go right over,” Rock said. “I haven’t seen them in a month.”
“It’s the nurse’s day off,” the lawyer said. “Ann’s taking care of them.”
“Then I’ll go tomorrow,” Rock said. “Are th
ey well?”
“Ann said they’re fine,” the lawyer said. “She asked me to call you. You can go tonight or any other time.”
“I’ll go tomorrow,” Rock said. “Thanks for calling.”
What is it? What is the secret?
He began to move swiftly, for deep inside something had stopped, and he knew something would have to be done about it.
What had stopped he did not know. What he was to do about it he did now know.
He shaved, showered, put on fresh clothes, and went out into the snow. It was night now, but not yet five o’clock. He got into a taxi and went to his lawyer’s.
“I saw Ann’s lawyer last night,” Rock said. “There’s to be no legal fight for the children. She is to do what she pleases. I am to see them whenever I like, but for reasons of my own only when she’s not there. She’s there now and asked her lawyer to phone me to say that I could see them tonight. I’ll see them tomorrow.”
“What made you change your mind?” Rock’s lawyer said. “We were to file the papers tomorrow.”
“Night before last my mother telephoned,” Rock said. “We talked an hour. There’s to be no fight for the children. She loves Ann. She understands Ann.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Rock said. “I’m going to a party Myra Clewes is giving John Flannery at 21 tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to work. I’ll take anything. I’ve got to have money.”
“Something seems to be the matter,” the lawyer said. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Rock said. “I took a nap a little while ago. I guess I’m still half-asleep, that’s all.”
“Do you want to come to early dinner?”
“No. I want to read the play, so I can talk to Myra and the playwright about it.”
“Everything’s off, then?” the lawyer said.
“Yes.”
“If it’s what you want, Rock, I’m glad.”
“I want the kids,” Rock said, “but that’s silly. My mother told me so in Armenian. I want Ann, too, but that’s sillier still. There is no marriage, she said. There is no divorce. There is Ann, there is Rock, there is Haig, there is Lula. There is change. Each is each. Each is alive. Let each live, she said. Let Ann live as she pleases. My grandmother used to say the same thing. She loved Ann more than she loved anybody else in the world, except her dead husband. Ann went to my grandmother’s funeral in Fresno. Women understand and love one another. Women married to Vagramians do, I mean. Have I got time to read this play outside in the waiting room?”
“Of course,” the lawyer said. “Stay as long as you like. I’m leaving in a moment, but you stay. Stay where you are.”
He was an hour reading the play. It was bad, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter any more. He would do it.
What had happened? What was it that had stopped?
He dropped the play on the leather sofa and left the office. It was one of those plays he could read once and remember forever, for there was nothing in it he needed to make a point of remembering. He walked up Fifth Avenue, turned left at 52nd, and went to 21, to the bar, to drink alone until he saw somebody he knew.
He hadn’t finished his first drink when he saw Myra herself. They sat down and Rock said, “I just read it. Do you want to do it?”
“Do you, Rock?” Myra said.
“Yes.”
“Is it good?”
“No,” Rock said. “I want to work. I want to go to work the way any working-man goes to work, to get his pay. I need money. Do you want to do it?”
“Of course,” Myra said. “It’s better than we think. Besides, he’ll be on hand to work on it as we go along. I’m delighted. What happened?”
“I took a nap this afternoon,” Rock said.
“So what?” Myra said.
“When I woke up my whole life inside me wept.”
“Why? Do you know?”
“No,” Rock said. “Something stopped. I don’t know what it is.”
“This party tonight will do you good,” Myra said. “Do you know a girl called Eve Ellis?”
“No. Why?”
“She’s going to be at the party,” Myra said. “I think you’ll like her. I mean, why not look at another girl? You’ve been separated a year. It isn’t the end of the world, Rock. There are other girls. This one’s a beauty. I’m having her sit at your table. Will you meet with me and Flannery at lunch here tomorrow to talk about the play?”
“Yes.”
“One o’clock?”
“I’d like to get away around two,” Rock said.
“What’s the hurry?”
“Make it twelve to two, then,” Rock said. “Paul Key’s son David came by this afternoon. He seemed troubled and wanted to talk, but I got sleepy. This sleep wanted to happen, I guess. This isn’t silly. I don’t understand it, but I know it isn’t silly. I told David to call tomorrow and we’d meet somewhere and talk. He said he’d call between two and three.”
“What sort of a boy is he?” Myra said.
“He doesn’t look like Paul, but he’s in trouble about Paul,” Rock said. “He’s beginning to suspect his father wasn’t the man he thought he was. Does he know about Paul’s writing?”
“Paul had only one play produced,” Myra said. “I produced it, you appeared in it. It played two weeks to empty houses. I don’t know whether he knows or not. I don’t even know if Vida knows. Surely they must by now. They must have come across the manuscripts.”
“They came across the manuscripts of hundreds of writers,” Rock said. “How would they know Patrick Kerry was Paul Key?”
“You think you ought to tell David Key about his father. Is that it?” Myra said.
“I don’t know what the other things he wrote are like,” Rock said, “but I know he wrote a great play.”
“Was it great, Rock?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did the critics attack it? Why did the audiences resent it?”
“It broke a habit,” Rock said, “and habits are cherished. It broke the habit of thinking the particular is great. It achieved a new greatness. It said something never before said.”
“What did it say?”
“It said all is art, all is great, because all is indestructible.”
“This party’ll do you good,” Myra said. “I’m sure you’re going to like Eve Ellis.”
“I’ll tell him,” Rock said. “I think he ought to know. He can go through the manuscripts if they haven’t been thrown away and pick out the plays by Patrick Kerry and examine them for himself. I don’t think I ought to let it go.”
“Do you like Richard in the play?” Myra said.
“Not at all,” Rock said, “but I’ll do it. He’ll be all right.”
“You’ll help me with Flannery, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Shall we go upstairs?”
They went upstairs. The party was already in progress, with eight or nine men and as many women having cocktails.
“There’ll be about a hundred,” Myra said. “That’s Eve over there.”
“She looks a little like Ann.”
“Oh, Rock!”
He stood at the bar with Eve Ellis and talked. More and more people arrived, all of them people he knew. The girl was light, as Ann was, smaller, and finally not at all like Ann. She said she would like him to hear something by Mozart that she believed was the most exciting music ever composed. He said he would like to hear the music.
He knew her feet wouldn’t be Ann’s, nor anything else of hers anything at all like Ann’s. Still, it would do. He talked swiftly with almost everybody at the party, wandering around with a glass in his hand, and he knew this would do, too. He told a half dozen people two jokes he hadn’t told since he had tended bar at Fat Aram’s, and he heard them laugh. He knew this would do, too, for he was trying to forget the thing that had stopped.
The main course was being served when a waiter came to whisper in his ear, and the forgotten t
hing was instantly remembered.
“Telephone, Mr. Wagram,” the waiter whispered.
It was his lawyer.
“San Francisco’s trying to reach you,” the lawyer said. “It’s operator 76.”
“Thanks.”
It was his sister in San Francisco.
“What is it?” Rock said.
“It’s Mama, Rock,” his sister said. “She’s at the St. Francis Hospital.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I went over early this morning,” his sister said. “She was still in bed. All of a sudden Mama said, ‘Vava, please get a doctor, I’m dying.’ You know how Mama hates doctors.”
“What’s happened to Mama?”
“She’s had a cerebral hemorrhage.”
“I’ll take the next plane.”
“I’ve been with Mama every minute,” his sister said. “This morning the doctor told me not to call you. A few minutes ago he told me to call you.”
“I’ll take the next plane,” Rock said.
He hung up and asked a waiter to tell Myra that he had had to go. He hurried down the steps, out of the place, and to his room, where he telephoned and learned that the next plane would leave in ten minutes. He reserved a place on the one following, which left at eight in the morning.
He packed, went back to the party, sat down beside Eve Ellis, and began to drink again. He took the girl home at two, got back to his room at six, showered, dressed, checked out, and went to the Waldorf for his ticket. He wired his sister and asked her to have her son Joe drive his car to the airport and meet him. He wired Myra. He wired David Key.
When the plane took off he went to sleep and slept all the way to Chicago.
There was twenty minutes in Chicago, so he telephoned the Armenian doctor he had met in London when they had both been in the Army.
“What do they do for cerebral hemorrhage?” Rock said.
“Nothing, Rock,” the doctor said.
“What do the best men do, the ones who know what they’re doing?”
“Nothing, Rock.”
“Who’s the best man in San Francisco?”
“They’re all the same, Rock.”
His friend spoke in English at first, then in Armenian, explaining how it was.
He got back on the plane and slept or half-slept most of the way to San Francisco.
Rock Wagram Page 16