Clark was drinking Champagne like everyone else, and it was all becoming a golden blur. Men who tossed back their heads and showed their perfect teeth to laugh. Women so invariably thin and blonde that they seemed likely to dissolve into pure aura. Under the chandeliers, within the mirrors and caught in all the silver trays and the melting iceberg sculptures and the shimmering crystal meadows of cut glass, everything was magnified and multiplied, and yet it all seemed so inescapably real that it was like a dream made of something more solid than mere flesh and effort and money, or even life itself.
“This is the place, eh?” Timmy Townsend was saying. “This is all that I’ve been telling you about! Herbert’s just had this ruined castle moved over from Scotland and put up in the grounds stone by stone. Tonight at midnight, we all get to see it—I’ve heard there’s even a genuine, verified, old-fashioned ghost. I’ve been nagging my secretary about getting this tartan suit made for weeks. I sure am glad I did—I mean, who wants to look an oaf?”
A bagpipe band was playing somewhere. A jazz band was playing somewhere else. If you stood mid-way between the two, you could hear them both. Timmy’s main quest in hauling Clark through the swirls and intersections of the party was Herbert Kisberg himself, but the guy was elusive. Everyone had seen him. Everyone had spoken to him, or claimed to have spoken to someone who had. But he was never quite there.
Clark noticed that there really wasn’t much talk of politics by these people for all the near-swooning that went on at the mention of Kisberg’s name. FDR might be “that cripple” and they struggled to even remember who the new Republican candidate was, but the idea of that they were actually supporting the Liberty League’s ideals by wearing these pins on their bosoms and lapels, or by casually tossing hundred dollar bills into the silver campaign support buckets which the servants were carrying around, seemed to be beyond them. After all, Herbert was a player, he was one of them. He’d made—financed, anyway—all those lovely feelies which everyone remembered so fondly, and he was in charge of California and his face was up on the billboards, and he was so, so good looking, and he’d invited them to this spectacular party and he knew them by name, or at least they wished he did. Above all, he was rich and he was famous, wasn’t he? And that was as good as being good. Nah, it was better. Clark could foresee the time when even one of those muscle-building, grunt-syllabled goons out in the car lot could easily make it as far as State Governor when Kisberg stood down. Maybe further still.
Timmy finally reached a smaller room with little more than a few antique Persian carpets and Ming vases to decorate its walls. A few men sat smoking cigars and talking in large leather chairs. A few others stood. A similar number of women had arranged themselves as further ornaments between the vases.
Clark thought for a moment that they’d reached some outer edge of tonight’s celebrations. But the way the men murmured to each other, and the measured way they turned to look at him, made him realize he was wrong.
One man in particular stood talking with a calm animation which seemed to hold the attention of the room. Even without that billboard outside the Senserama studios, Clark would have recognized the face. There was something about that kingly smile, those young-wise eyes, the almost boyish shock of dark blonde hair.
“Herbert, Herbert…” Timmy stammered in a flurry of gestures as Kisberg finished what he’d been saying and turned their way. “Here’s someone I want you to meet.”
“Of course.” It was hard not to feel privileged when you were taken in by that gaze.
“This is Daniel Lamotte. We’ve just bought his script for a Lars Bechmeir biopic.”
“Dan, how are you doing?” Kisberg shifted his tumbler of whisky and shook Clark’s hand. “Without The Virgin Queen, the feelies wouldn’t be what they are today.”
“Thanks, Mr Kisberg. And thanks for buying my new script.”
“You must call be Herbert. I wish I could be more involved in the creative process, but nowadays I have to let Tim here and his colleagues do all the hard work.”
Timmy snickered. If he was a dog, he’d have rolled over to show his belly.
“I do truly thank you for coming tonight. Especially in light of your recent tragedy. But I believe it’s better to get on with things, and I know that work can be a great comfort, especially in difficult times.”
Clark nodded. He was trying hard to remember the vigilantes, the goons, the burly nurses with their rubber hoses back at the Met, and all the dark things which had happened to him and so many others in the sunlit blackness of this strange new world. April Lamotte’s dead body on the Gurney. The names Barbara Eshel had shown him on that list.
“I’ve read Wake Up and Dream,” Kisberg continued, “and I want to tell you it’s the kind of work that makes me proud to be a part of this business. You’ve captured those times so well. I’m certain that the finished product will be a work of brilliance.”
“Well, thanks again. Although I’ve been wondering, Mr Kisberg, why Senserama felt now was the right time to do a feelie about Lars Bechmeir. I mean, the subject’s so obvious, there must have been other treatments and submissions over the years.”
“But there are times when something simply seems right. You, as the writer, must have felt the same.”
“Yeah. And there’s some people I’ve been trying to speak to. A woman called Penny Losovic, for instance. I imagine you know her?”
“Of course. Penny does a great deal of largely unrewarded work for the Bechmeir Trust. Without her, it wouldn’t be the organization it is, and a lot of people would be the poorer.”
“Not around tonight, though, is she?”
“I don’t believe so.” With those steely eyes, it was hard to tell what Herbert Kisberg was thinking. “Penny’s a private person. But if you’re finding her hard to get hold of, I’ll see what I can do…” He turned to Timmy, who was already nodding. “… or maybe you, Tim?”
“And there’s Howard Hughes,” Clark pushed on. “Truth is, that scene where Lars Bechmeir goes to the Hughes Corporation offices with his prototype device is one that I’m finding hard to sit right.”
“Howard was a dear friend.” Others were watching. Without raising his voice, Kisberg’s smooth tone easily filled the room. “He still is, or at least a fond memory. We wouldn’t be where we are without him. Not one of us.”
“But the whole business of anyone believing in Lars Bechmeir’s idea. The guy was a nobody, and the invention must have sounded like the work of a crank. Speaking personally, Mr Kisberg, what was it that made you go to the premiere of Broken Looking Glass?”
Kisberg took a slow sip of his whisky. “Maybe we were all a little younger and more foolish than we are now.” He smiled a boyish smile. “A little foolishness—a preparedness to take a risk. Maybe that’s something we should all try to keep in our lives?” There were solemn nods, and Clark supposed their conversation was at an end, but then Kisberg put down his whisky and leaned so close to him that Clark could smell the floral sweetness of the man’s cologne. “I do understand your wanting to get to the heart of what happened, Dan,” he murmured so close to Clark’s ear that it felt like the breath of a Bechmeir field. “And I think I can help.”
“How do you find my house, Dan? Over-large and over-ostentatious, I imagine. But one must put on a show. It’s an obligation of power, just as it has always been. I imagine monarchs of the old days such as Queen Elizabeth in that marvelous feelie pic you wrote would have felt the same.”
Clark Gable and Herbert Kisberg were walking red carpeted corridors lined with fine paintings and frail pieces of furniture, which Kisberg paused to explain with the vague air of someone who doesn’t wish to disclose how much they really know.
“I don’t fool myself into assuming that you’re a Liberty League supporter,” he muttered after pointing out the exquisite detail of a small dog in a painting by Vermeer.
“I don’t usually vote, Mr Kisberg. Although you’re right. I don’t support your party and
I never would.”
“Is there a reason?” He glanced almost shyly up at Clark through blonde lashes.
“A few things. Timmy Townsend tells me that you’re doing a deal with the Nazis to supply feelie tracks for Hitler’s rallies, for example.”
“Oh, that. Tim’s an oaf, as you’ve doubtless noticed. But he means well, and he has a good eye for certain things—maybe even a successful feelie. Let’s hope so, anyway. As soon as I heard that one of Senserama’s executives had made that ill-advised approach to the Germans, I put a stop to it. The whole point of the Liberty League is that we don’t—and I mean absolutely don’t—support the Nazis. But we must leave Europe to deal with itself, and counteract the real threat which lies beyond.”
“Which is?”
“World communism, of course. If we choose to fight the current German expansion, all we do is play into Soviet Russia’s hands. Say we did go to war against the Germans, which is the way in which FDR’s policies are inevitably leading. Say we did draft our young men into the army and waste our great nation’s resources on building battleships and warplanes, all so that American blood could be spilled again in the fields of France—do you think that the Russians would simply stand by? And do you think the Japanese would either? I know about war, Dan. I fought as a captain in the trenches and I saw just how terrible it was. I don’t believe in illusions or half-measures. We must understand where our interests lie. Which is here at home. I want a prosperous and peaceful nation where people understand what it means to be an American.” He shrugged. ”That’s all my party has ever stood for.”
“And what about the guys you see on the streets? The ones who dress up like blackshirts? The fools who want the Jews to wear badges and are calling for the blacks to be put in reservations like the Indians?”
“They are fools. But they’re American fools, and they truly believe in their country and they feel a genuine sense of wrong. They’ve lost their jobs, their homes, their businesses, in these last difficult ten years. These are real Americans—they didn’t arrive here ten minutes ago—and they want their lives and their self-respect back. Sure, they have their prejudices. But don’t we all? It’s only if we leave them out in the cold and ignore their voice, Dan, that they become dangerous. If we welcome them in and put a stop to foreign influence and immigration and embrace the truth of what this country really is about…”
In one direction lay the golden glint of some big, wall-consuming treasure—perhaps the altar of some Italian chapel; it was hard to tell. The other led toward a small and dimly-lit room.
Inside, there was a bed, and a radiogram, which was softly playing something probably classical and symphonic, although the sound was too low to be sure. There was also a portable lavatory concealed behind a railed curtain, and a trolley racked this high with expensive drugs. The purpose of the room was clearly medical but there were barely any of the usual signals to set Clark’s teeth on edge. Apart, that was, from a dim aura of suppressed pain. There were several pictures on wall, but they were cheap reproductions. You could have got the painted plaster ornaments which were set above the unlit fireplace with a few lucky shots at the fair. After all he’d seen, it was the sheer blandness of this room which was shocking to him even before he’d fully taken in what was here.
There were two nurses, both wearing the sort of uniforms which showed off their figures so well you wondered about their other qualifications for the job. One of them was sitting reading a mail order fashion catalogue. The other was smoking as she peered out through a gap in the drawn curtains at whatever there was to see of the party outside. They both turned as Clark and Kisberg entered, touching their hairdos and adjusting the bored droop of their mouths into smiles.
“How is he?” Kisberg asked.
“Oh…” The nurse who’d been smoking popped her cigarette into a flip-top chrome ashtray, whilst the one who’d been sitting reading stood up and smoothed the rucks in her uniform across her thighs. “… he’s fine…” They were so alike in makeup and hairdo that it was hard to tell which was speaking. “… been asleep…” “… for the last half hour or so…” They could have been twins.
The long bed which filled the middle of the room was of the gray metal-frame sort, with raised bars on either side to stop people falling out, which you also saw in hospitals, but it was empty and one of the sides had been put down. The man they were all now looking down at was seated in the wheelchair beside the bed, his small body hunched piles of plaid blankets, from which a single brown rubber pipe ran out toward some kind of jar beneath the bed. The toes of slippers protruded, along with a glimpse of bare and bony, blue-mottled ankle. Above the blankets, he was wearing a collar shirt and cardigan, both buttoned wrongly. His mouth had lolled and his chin had been down inside his skewed collar when Clark and Kisberg first entered the room. He’d stirred at the sound of voices, slowly stretching his stringy neck, blinking his eyes and opening and closing his mouth, for all the world like a tortoise peeping out of its shell at the end of a winter’s hibernation.
One of the nurses leaned over to wipe a bead of drool from the corner of his mouth. The man responded with a sharp mash of his lips, and a spasm of irritation which had him raising his bird-like hands. He then made a series of wet clicking noises. The other nurse nodded; she seemed to understand these sounds as words. When she reached to a side counter, opened the wire arms of a pair of round-rim glasses, and hooked them around his ears and across his snub little nose, it was as if something had snapped sharply into focus within the room. Suddenly, there was no doubting who this frail old man gazed blinkingly up at them was. The beard might have grayed and thinned, and the double-breasted kaki jacket might be absent, but this was Lars Bechmeir. Propped up on the counter from where the nurse had picked up those famous glasses, Clark could even see the trademark Meerschaum pipe.
Much in the way a young relative might when visiting an elderly uncle, Herbert Kisberg bent down and smilingly took hold of one of the trembling hands. “Sorry to wake you, old chap. Must save your energies. But I’ve brought someone I’d like you to meet. He’s a writer by the name of Daniel Lamotte…”
“…W… ?” Thin lips strung spittle.
“That’s right, Lars. He’s a writer. And he’s going to write the feelie that tells the story of your life.”
Lars Bechmeir was looking more directly at Clark now. His mouth was still working, and he seemed to be trying to say something. Or maybe he was just gasping for air.
“Hi there, Mr Bechmeir.” Clark heard himself mutter. “It’s a real pleasure.”
“Some other time, Lars old boy, when you’re better rested, we’ll set up an interview. Would that be alright… ?”
“Al… right… ?” It was the first definite word which Clark had heard Lars Bechmeir utter. And there was an increasing sense of sharpness, almost of agitation, to the gaze with which he found himself fixed. This guy, he thought, isn’t quite all gone yet. There’s still something in there, somewhere, that’s alive and sharp… And there was something else, as well, about the way he was looking at him. The flurry of his hands was increasing—so much so that Herbert Kisberg had to stand back up and make room for the nurses. Instantly, all crooning lips and pressed linen asses, they were wiping the drool from his mouth, and steadying his flurrying hands.
“All..? right … ?” But Lars Bechmeir still seemed agitated. As Clark and Kisberg left the room he was still staring in Clark’s direction.
“All the sightings are false, of course,” Kisberg sighed. “Those, anyway, that haven’t been of him in the ranch down in Orange County where he lives a quiet life with a few select aides like Adeline and Marie-Louise. I’m sure we’ll be able to arrange a proper interview, but we don’t want to tire him out. He’s agreed to make his first public appearance in years tomorrow evening at the Liberty League ball at the Biltmore. Who knows, we may even get him to say a few words.”
Lars Bechmeir backs the Liberty League! It would be the endorsement of the
century—like God saying he supported the Nicks, or preferred Avis to Hertz. Assuming, that was, that the little man was still actually capable of expressing anything at all.
“So you really are going to run for president?”
Herbert Kisberg gave another of his bashful smiles. “We’ll have to wait and see.” He checked his watch. “But you must excuse me, Dan. I have work to do, I’m afraid. Such a bore. But it’s near midnight, and I believe most of my guests will soon be heading outside…”
Music roared. Lights speared the sky. The rain was holding off, but a near-gale was blowing—spinning hats and toupees off into the darkness—although it was impossible to tell if it was due to the weather, or if the studio had brought in wind machines.
Clark had already heard several stories about the ghost which supposedly appeared at midnight on the battlements of the picturesque ruin of Castle Balaig, which had been brought stone by stone from the Scottish Highlands and cleverly re-erected in Herbert Kisberg’s grounds. A woman wronged, a husband stabbed, a monk immolated, a nun buried alive or drowned… But, underlit by colored spotlights through a haze of dry ice, the castle seemed dwarfed by the spectacle which surrounded it; like the megalithic relic of some Indian tribe briefly unearthed in the excavations for a new shopping mall.
Velvet ropes formed a path through to the ruins, and there were tartan-dressed stewards to pour out tots of Scotch malt and usher people along the way. Some cynical souls were wondering aloud as they ascended the re-mortared steps if ghosts were aware of time differences, or perhaps stuck to the hour of the country of their birth, or death? And what about daylight saving time?
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