by Ned Beauman
Except he soon found that it wasn’t.
In a state of overflowing panic not unlike the one that had accompanied his loss of Adele Hitler at the corset factory all that time ago, he flung item after item out of the suitcase until there was nothing left to fling, and then he started clawing idiotically at the suitcase’s inner corners. It was gone. But he was sure he’d packed the book that last afternoon in his steamship cabin. And he was sure he hadn’t taken it out of the suitcase since then. The only time he’d lost sight of his travelling companion was when he was going through customs at New York Harbour, just before asserting in a questionnaire that he was not insane, leprous or syphilitic, that he did not live by prostitution, and that he had no intention of assassinating the President of the United States.
They’d stolen it. The custom officers had rooted through his luggage like organ harvesters through a torso, just as they were entitled to do, and found the book, and then instead of reporting it as contraband, they’d stashed it in a locker, to take home or sell on. He should have bribed someone. And now it was too late.
Loeser had owned Midnight at the Nursing Academy for nearly seven years. He’d had a far longer relationship with the delightful women in that book than he’d ever had with any human female. He knew, by heart, like a poem, every beckoning expression, every obliging pose. He often felt he owed it his sanity. The loss of it was unthinkable, somewhere on the scale between a wedding ring and a first-born child. He would definitely be willing to assassinate the President of the United States over this. Or at least forcibly infect him with syphilis.
Trying to stay calm, he smoked a cigarette, got dressed, and left the hotel. Outside, on Sunset Boulevard, a bungalow sat in the middle of the road. At first, Loeser couldn’t work out what he was seeing, and then he realised that the house had been jacked up on to a steel frame and attached to a flatbed lorry. As the lorry turned a corner, one corner of the house’s beige tiled roof had snagged on a telephone pole, and now two men in overalls stood beside it, arguing about what to do, as a queue of cars built up behind the surreal blockage. What were the penalties, Loeser wondered, for being drunk in charge of a family home?
Even in this part of Hollywood, where exhaust fumes hung thickly around the palm trees, Los Angeles smelled unnaturally good. Loeser didn’t understand it. The whole city felt like an apartment for sale, which the estate agent had sprayed with perfume just prior to a viewing. The sun here was strange, too. You found yourself locked in a staring contest with the daylight, waiting for it to blink, but it never did. Meanwhile, there was both a remarkable clamour of signs and advertisements on every building and a remarkable proportion of pedestrians mumbling to themselves as they went past, as if nothing in this nation was capable of holding its peace.
Cut-Rate Books
In rebellion against its habitat, the shop was gloomy, malodorous, and almost as disordered with books as Picquart’s apartment in Paris. A short-wave radio hummed jazz as if it had forgotten the tune. By the door was a rack of magazines: Broadway Brevities, Smokehouse Monthly, Police Gazette, Captain Billy’s Whiz-Bang, Artists and Models, Spicy Romances, Jazza-Ka-Jazza, Hot Dog, Paris Nights. Loeser picked up a paperback at random from a pile: An Encyclopedia of the Carnal Relations Between Human Beings and Animals by Gaston Dubois-Desaulle. He picked up another: Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence.
‘You looking for anything in particular?’
Loeser looked up. The man behind the counter had a strong jaw like an actor but also a mesh of acne scars on both cheeks. He wore glasses with thick black frames and a wool tie. ‘Yes. A book called Midnight at the Nursing Academy.’
‘Publisher?’
‘I can’t remember,’ said Loeser, realising that this was like knowing someone for years and never bothering to ask where they grew up. ‘It’s French. Hardcover. Twenty-eight photographs.’
‘Never came across that one.’
‘Where do you think I could get it, then? I’ll pay anything.’
The man took a sip from a cracked mug of coffee. ‘You might have some trouble. Stores like this can’t carry books like that. Anything “deemed flagitious by general consent”, you got to take your chances with the international mail. Might be a few copies in private collections but that’s probably about all.’
‘Private collections?’
‘Yeah. Plenty around. But people don’t tend to advertise them. There’s a few everybody knows about, like the Gorge library, but those ain’t a hell of a lot of use.’ He had one of the most brutally cacophonous American accents Loeser had ever heard; no one who spoke like this, surely, could ever have any success in life.
‘What’s the Gorge library?’ said Loeser.
‘Wilbur Gorge. The automobile-polish guy. His collection’s supposed to be the biggest in the country — maybe the biggest in the world. Up at his mansion in Pasadena. I don’t know anybody who’s ever seen it, though. Might be bullshit. But if anybody has your book, he probably has it.’
‘I see. Thank you for your help.’ Loeser was about to depart when he noticed a copy of Stifled Cry by the cash register. ‘You stock Stent Mutton?’
‘Very popular with our customers.’
‘What’s his latest?’
The man took down a title called Assembly Line.
‘What about Rupert Rackenham?’
‘Nothing by him, no.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ It wasn’t yet noon, but Loeser hadn’t had breakfast, so he said, ‘In addition, I want to try an American hamburger sandwich. Which is the best?’
‘The best in Hollywood or the best in Los Angeles?’
These two designations were not yet quite distinct in Loeser’s mind, but he had an idea that the latter was more comprehensive. ‘The best in Los Angeles.’ Should he have said the best in California?
‘For my money, that’s Nickel’s over in Pacific Palisades.’ The man took a business card out of his jacket pocket, wrote on the back with a pencil, and handed it to Loeser.
‘12203 Sunset Boulevard,’ Loeser read. ‘And I’m on Sunset Boulevard already. So it’s just further on west from here?’
‘Yeah, it’s a pleasant drive.’
Drive! Loeser had heard about this: the bizarre American hatred of travelling anywhere on foot. They would think nothing of getting in their car even if their destination was on the very same street. ‘I shall walk,’ he said.
‘Wouldn’t do that. It’s a long way.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m from the Old World. I’m used to walking.’ As he strolled whistling out of the shop, Loeser heard the proprietor shout something after him, but he ignored it. The business card was still in his hand, so he turned it over to read the other side: Wallace Blimk — Bookseller. Before he had lunch, he thought, he would work up a decent appetite. Four hours later, he collapsed by the side of the road.
Sunset Boulevard
As a result, no doubt, of some bureaucratic oversight, Sunset Boulevard had a beginning and a middle but no end. The coast was not far now, but Sunset Boulevard probably just rolled on down the beach and into the water and onward to Shanghai. Quite early on, Loeser had realised that the numbers he could see on the buildings were nowhere near 12203, but since they seemed to rise every block in random increments, that hadn’t, unfortunately, been enough to discourage him. So he had carried on, more determined with every step to eat the best hamburger in Los Angeles, and by the time he fainted, just next to a sign advertising a pet cemetery, he had already walked further than he’d ever walked in his life. For long stretches, there had been houses but no pavement, or not even houses, just orchards and an occasional petrol station or diner, and he’d trudged over grass or gravel, as cars zoomed mockingly past. The sun beat like a gin hangover, and on his right the mountains had caught the afternoon light, dandled it, and released it again. Who had designed this set and why had no one told them they were going much too far?
‘Are you all right?’ A spaniel-eyed woman in a gingham dress was tou
ching his shoulder. ‘Do you need a glass of water? My house is just here. I think you dropped your book.’
Embarrassed and unsteady, braised in his own brine, Loeser got to his feet, picked up Assembly Line, and followed the woman to her porch.
‘Where’s your car?’ she said when he was gratefully seated. As well as the glass of water, she’d brought him a chocolate chip cookie.
‘I don’t drive.’
‘You lost your licence?’
‘No. I never learned.’ She gave him a look of concern as if she were wondering whether he was defective or just poor, so he added, ‘I’m from Germany.’
‘Oh. How do you like America?’
‘It’s preposterous.’
On his forced march, Loeser had realised that the great advantage of living in this senselessly stretched-out place would be that you would never bump into anyone ever again. Years before, as an optimistic recent university graduate, he had thought that the best thing about Berlin was that you couldn’t so much as go out for a coffee without coming across half a dozen people you knew. Within a few months, he had concluded that this was actually the worst thing about Berlin. There, if you humiliated yourself trying to get someone to go to bed with you, you would then have to see them twice a week for the rest of your life — a welt on your world. Here, they would just vanish. Every ex-girlfriend, rival, creditor, parasite: avoiding them would only be a matter of not specifically seeking them out. It would be such a secure, logical way to live, fortified by dispersion against coincidence. He was proud enough of this observation that he had begun to compose a paragraph about it for his next postcard to Achleitner. Unfortunately, it was about to be ruined. ‘Is that a Stent Mutton you’ve got there, by the way?’ the woman said. ‘I’m nuts for Stent Mutton.’
‘Me too!’
‘My husband knows him a little. They met at the Athletic Club. I hear his wife is awfully pretty. Their house isn’t far from here.’
‘Really?’
‘Sure. Down there just this side of where the canyon meets the beach. You can’t miss it. Looks like a sort of greenhouse.’
Loeser didn’t know what he expected to find at Mutton’s house, but just visiting the holy site would be enough to justify the day’s ordeal. He drained his glass of water and looked out to sea.
The Mutton House
The sun was in Loeser’s eyes as he walked west, so it wasn’t until he was quite near by that he got a good look at his destination, and beheld an implausible snag in the ontology of this foreign land. There, on a rise that sloped affably down to the beach, was the Blumstein residence in Schlingesdorf — tugged all the way from Berlin, it seemed, by some tireless amphibious cousin of the lorry he’d seen stuck on Sunset Boulevard. In every dimension it was identical, and yet the weird light of this land had done something to it, parsed it as a homonym, the same structure with a different result: back in Berlin, even in summer, the house was a jar for pickling clouds, but here in the glare the glass walls looked aqueous, unsolid, a cage of refraction. On the patio, next to the swimming pool, a blonde woman sat at a redwood dining table writing a letter. She looked up as Loeser approached.
‘Is this Stent Mutton’s house?’ he said.
‘That’s right. I’m his wife.’
‘My name is Egon Loeser. I’m from Berlin. I’ve come to see Mr Mutton.’ Which was not quite a lie, thought Loeser, because he would very much have liked to meet the author, but was also not quite honest, because it rather implied he had an appointment, perhaps that he had crossed the Atlantic expressly for this long-scheduled colloquy.
‘You should have called ahead. I’m afraid he’s not seeing anyone today. He’s resting inside. We just got back last night and the journey was a horror.’
‘Got back?’
‘From Moscow.’ Mutton’s wife took off her sunglasses in an interrogative sort of gesture. When the woman in the gingham dress had said she was awfully pretty, that had been an almost slanderous understatement. And there was a sugary, heliotropic ripeness to her body that made her look as if she couldn’t have been cultivated in any other climate. ‘You’re from Berlin, you said? How long do you plan to stay in Los Angeles?’
‘No more than two weeks.’
‘You’re an artist of some sort. Or a writer, maybe.’
‘I work in the theatre. How did you know?’
‘You have that look. My husband and I know only a little about the situation in Germany, Mr Loeser, but we know it’s very difficult.’ What did she mean? Difficult to get laid unless you were Brecht? Was she about to invite him to pillage her quietly in the bushes? ‘I don’t know what kind of welcome you’ve had out here so far, but I can assure you we’re both very sympathetic to exiles. Especially those of you who simply want to continue your creative work in peace. I wonder if you’ve heard of an organisation called the Cultural Solidarity Committee of California?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ Loeser was feeling a bit insulted about being described as an exile.
‘My husband and I are founding patrons. And that’s not because we’re saints, by the way.’ She smiled. ‘We have ulterior motives. I can’t count how many fascinating men and women we’ve met through the Committee. As it happens, we’re having a small reception here this evening. Perhaps you’d like to join us. You could see my husband then. I’m sure we’d both love to hear about your escape. Each story we hear seems to be more exciting than the last.’
‘I’d be delighted,’ said Loeser. (Escape from what?)
‘Until tonight, then. A pleasure to meet you, Mr Loeser.’
‘Before I go: I’m curious about your house.’
‘Yes, aren’t we lucky? We’ve only just moved in. It was finished while we were in Russia. The architect is a compatriot of yours named Gugelhupf. We brought him to Los Angeles last year so that he could adapt the design precisely to the terrain and the climate. He’s very scientific.’
‘I see.’
‘And afterwards he decided to stay in America. We took that as a compliment! You may be able to meet him later.’
Instead of walking back up to Sunset Boulevard, Loeser decided to go for a stroll along the beach. The tide was going out and big spaghetti clods of yellow seaweed lay drying on the sand. After a while he came to a hotdog stand from which he bought three hotdogs and a bottle of Coca Cola, and then he took off his shoes and sat down just beyond the limit of the waves to read Assembly Line, salt foam snapping at his feet like a tethered animal.
Holidays to Moscow, cultural charities, afternoon naps in an auto-plagiaristic Bauhaus villa: Loeser had begun to worry that Mutton’s gorgeous wife might have neutered him. But he was reassured by this latest novel, which was Mutton’s most savage yet. His industrialists and aristocrats had never been so grotesque, nor his narrator so remorseless. Loeser read it through twice, by which time the sun had started to slump into the sea, and he spent the next hour watching the sky like an opera, hardly able to believe that he’d been reduced to slack-jawed tears by something as trite and self-congratulatory as a Pacific sunset.
By the time he’d recovered his composure it was nearly nine. He’d heard parties started early in America, so he walked back up to the luminescent fishtank. Sure enough, there were a handful of people standing on the patio, and as he approached he caught a few sentences of the nearest conversation. ‘… And I told the man, I don’t want synthetic violets in my cologne any more than I want synthetic lemon juice in my gin fizz! I don’t give a damn if it smells the same and I don’t give a damn if “everyone uses it”, I’m not spraying myself with something called methyl heptin carbonate, it sounds like poison gas. Then I gave him that line from Midsummer Night’s Dream — you know, “but earthlier happy is the rose distilled”, and so on — but he didn’t know what I was talking about. I don’t think I’ll be going to that store again.’ The man talking wore a powder-blue three-piece suit with pearl buttons; a white shirt with a collar pin; a bow tie, pocket handkerchief, and socks that were all red
with white polka dots; and black patent leather brogues with perforated uppers. He spoke in a professorial and mildly self-mocking drawl. When he caught sight of Loeser coming up the slope, he broke off and said, ‘Now, what do we have here? A beachcomber?’
‘I’m a guest of Mrs Mutton,’ said Loeser. ‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Oh, you’re one of my wife’s charming pet Europeans! I believe she’s in the kitchen.’
‘Actually I’m looking for Mr Mutton’s wife.’
‘Yes, as I say, Dolores is in the kitchen.’
‘I mean Stent Mutton, the writer.’
The man exchanged a bemused glance with the elderly Japanese fellow he’d been talking to. ‘Is this the start of a radio comedy routine? I am “Stent Mutton, the writer”. Who are you?’
‘I’m Egon Loeser. But you can’t be…’
‘I can’t be what?’
‘But where’s your knife?’ Loeser blurted.
‘If you want to cut a cigar there’s a guillotine in the drawing room.’
Stent Mutton was a scarred, hulking ex-criminal who only scratched out his raw narratives to exorcise the horrors through which he’d lived. Loeser knew this. But he was now trying to remember how he knew it. He was trying to remember whether he’d really read it somewhere, or whether he’d just promoted an assumption to fact.
‘I see you’ve brought one of my penny dreadfuls,’ said Mutton, pointing at the paperback that Loeser had forgotten he was still holding in his hand. ‘Did you want me to sign it?’
Loeser took a step back. He didn’t want this man defacing his book. A signature from the real Stent Mutton would have been marvellous. But not a signature from this impostorous dandy. He shook his head and hurried on into the house. Whereupon:
‘Egon! What an unexpected pleasure!’