Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  “It is difficult to determine the part least deserving condemnation.”

  “However, it must he admitted, that, discounting the ability to act, the Actors leave very little to be desired.”

  “The Play soars to ever new heights of carnage. The Author kills off his characters in incredible droves. If he applies himself steadfastly to the task, it is to be hoped that he runs out of characters before he runs out of audience. But this, I fear, appears unlikely at the present, due to the unusually high mortality rate of the latter.”

  “Real people, of course, could never act so stupidly. There is no development of plot, if there was any plot to begin with—At times, the whole thing—approaches a farce.”

  “Melodrama.”

  “One could scarcely insist that truth and justice always triumph; but to have it happen once or twice might hot, perhaps, be overdoing it.”

  “Confusion, inanity and folderol. We can scarcely see how the Author will attempt to tie in all the diverse elements at the conclusion—if he has time to try.”

  “It has now gone on for a good while, degenerating steadily in defiance of probability. We expect to be the last to leave but we are not packing a lunch.”

  “It leaves something to be desired.”

  “So you see, it’s desperate. Even the rotation mechanisms are off several seconds.”

  The Director looked at the Chief of the technical effects staff. He then looked at the backers of the Play.

  The backers shook their heads gravely. “This is very serious. We’re losing money every day.”

  “What has the Author got in mind?”

  “Yes, we’ve certainly got a right to know that.”

  “I really don’t know,” the Director said. “He’s supposed to be a genius.”

  “Well, why isn’t he here?”

  “If we could talk to him, maybe we could decide something.”

  “You know we hate to go over the Author’s head if we can help it. Maybe he knows how this thing is going to end.”

  “Maybe he’s got a way to start it making sense.”

  “Maybe he’s got an ending that’ll suck ’em in like a vacuum.”

  “I’m sure he has,” the Director said, “if you’ll just be patient. He’s a genius.”

  The Chief said: “I’ve still got to have more repair men.”

  “We’re back to that again.”

  “How can you ask us to sink more money into this rat hole unless we know what the Author’s got in mind? “Where is the Author, by the way?”

  “He,” the Director said, “is vacationing in the Play.”

  “Well—!”

  “Can you get him out here?”

  “The Critics won’t like it a bit,” the Chief said.

  “Who cares.”

  “Nobody reads them.”

  “Yes, we’ve got to have the Author. That’s all there is to it.”

  “In common fairness, we have to talk to him. I mean, we wouldn’t want to call in a Play-doctor without talking to him first.”

  “A . . . Play-doctor?” the Director said. “He won’t like that. He won’t like it a bit.”

  “Maybe we won’t have to, after all.”

  “Maybe he’s got an ending that’ll suck ’em in like a vacuum.”

  Rockwell Hartleib, III, scion of the Boston Hartleibs, awoke. He had been endowed with a curious constitution. Anyone else in the world would have had a hangover, had anyone else in the world been fool enough to consume as much—and as great a variety—alcoholic beverages as Rockwell Hartleib, III, had the previous evening. He, of course, had no hangover at all, and he, felt as fresh as a May morning.

  He yawned luxuriously, stretching his silk clad arms high above his head, fingering the distant bed post.

  He got up.

  He phoned Millicent.

  “Hello,” he said brightly.

  There was an answer of vowels, painfully vocalized.

  “I see you got home all right,” he said. “This is Rocky. Can I pick you up this afternoon? For a drive?”

  “Oh? It’s you, my dear boy,” came the answer. “What can you mean waking up decent people at this hour? What would your family say—if they were alive? I suggest that you take a cold shower and go right to bed. Phone me hack about six.”

  “But, Milly—”

  “Now, now, little man. You do what I said, or I shall he very nasty with you.”

  “Really, Milly, it’s such a beautiful day—”

  “Listen, hang up that phone so I can get me some sleep.”

  Being a gentleman, he hung up the phone.

  He slipped on a dressing gown and lit a long cigarette after first carefully inserting it in a long, black cigarette holder. He sat down.

  The smoke was unusually good. But, in the mornings, it was always unusually good. He blew lazy clouds at the ceiling.

  After a while, he rang for the butler.

  “James,” he told the man, “I shall need the car at ten o’clock. For breakfast, I think I’ll have two eggs, half a dozen rashers of bacon, a pot of thick, black coffee, three slices of light toast, marmalade. Strawberries and cream. Let’s see. The eggs about two and one half minutes, I think. I guess that’ll be all—Oh, yes! Bring me in the Transcript, will you?”

  Settled comfortably with last night’s paper, he turned immediately to the comics—completely ignoring the news, in fact, being indifferent to it at all times, and the market reports, being, in fact, independent of them at all times, he chuckled happily at the comics. He was not notorious for his sense of humor, but, with some discernment, he always pointed out, “At least I’m happy with it.”

  Midway through the comic section, he suddenly became aware that something was standing behind his back. Lazily, he rolled over.

  “Come along,” the repair man said.

  “Come along? Nonsense, my man. I’m perfectly content right here. It is fantastic to think that I should for one moment consider going anywhere with you for any reason whatsoever.”

  “Dear me,” the repair man said, and reached out with his hooks.

  Rockwell Hartleib, III, put up quite a fight.

  “The audience,” the repair man pleaded, between pants, “remember the audience.”

  When James returned with the breakfast tray, his handsome young master was no where in evidence.

  The Author came through the memory blackout. He was in the Director’s office. He shook off the repair man’s hooks and found himself still wearing the body of Rockwell Hartleib, III. He looked around the office, saw the assembly.

  “Well, get me out of here.”

  Obligingly, the repair man cracked him behind the ears with a hammer, and Rockwell Hartleib, III, slumped to the floor as dead as a mackerel. The Author stepped out of the body.

  “Now, gentlemen, I assume some dire event—one of the uttermost of consequences—some calamity, in short—has caused you to interrupt my vacation. I’ll be glad to take care of it right. away, and then I really must rush off to bed. I find myself strangely fatigued.”

  “Well,” the Director said, “you see, there is—”

  “Ah, sir, we merely desire—”

  “That is, ah . . . some of our best steady-goers have already quit us. They say, frankly, it’s nonsense, the Play, and you’ve got in deeper than you intended, and you can’t possibly get out or make sense of it.”

  “Oh, yes, the gate is falling off astonishingly.”

  “And we thought, if you’d kindly tell us the climax—”

  “You see, the setting is coming apart, and before we . . . ah . . . invest more money—”

  “The climax, gentlemen? Why, gladly. But gentlemen—is it to be conceived that you lack faith? You don’t think—surely you don’t think—that I don’t know where my own Play is going?”

  “Well,” the Director said, “they do say it lacks any dramatic . . . ah . . . cohesiveness, and every time you get stuck, you just have another war.”

  “War
s,” the Author said, drawing up to his full height, “illustrate my thesis!”

  “Oh?”

  “And that thesis?”

  “Yes, what is that?”

  “Can you gentlemen—of strong minds, I dare say, and sound bodies—think for one single little instant that I have none?” His voice fell craftily. “Do your minds entertain the absurd notion that I am merely parlaying my Play along? Stretching it out, prostituting Art for financial gain? Living off you like a conscienceless parasite? Hoping for an inspiration? Hoping to snatch both thesis and climax out of the air when you have stood all of my procrastination that you intend to stand? Do you really think that?” His voice had sighed to an emotion heavy whisper.

  “Dear me, no.”

  “Of course not.”

  “But really we must know the climax.”

  “I see. As long as there is not the least iota of suspicion—and if I thought there were, I should leave you flat, gentlemen: I have my pride. As long, I say, as you continue to trust me implicitly, as an Author must he trusted, T shall tell you the ending—But, gentlemen, it occurs to me, in fairness to all of us, so that you may better appreciate its full power, I believe I will draw up an outline for you. I think much better, late at night, gentlemen, and I assure you, in outline form my thoughts are always as beautifully lucid as a theorem in mathematics. I’ll bring it in, say, next week. How’ll that be, gentlemen?”

  “Ah . . . well—”

  “No, I’m afraid—”

  “We really must insist on it tomorrow.”

  The Author was taken aback. “Three days from now, gentlemen. That is the absolute earliest that T can have the summary of the final installments. The absolute earliest.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Yes, we must have it tomorrow.”

  “We want to call in a Play-doctor as soon as we can, if we have to.”

  “A—Gentlemen, did you say Play-doctor? Can you, my friends, realize the import of that noun on a playwright’s ears? Gentlemen: day after tomorrow.”

  “No!”

  “Tomorrow!”

  “Just a few scribbles—anything making some sense out of the Play.”

  “If I had more time—Please, gentlemen, consider—”

  “If it’s not here, we shall turn it all over to the Play-doctor.”

  “I told you so,” the Director said.

  “We’ve trusted you all along, haven’t we?”

  “We’re sure it’ll be a fine ending.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be an ending that’ll suck ’em in like a vacuum.”

  The Author sat down at his desk, pulled out his script digest, thumbed through it rapidly, and shook his head.

  “I am amazed,” he said, turning to his Secretary, “at the fecundity of my imagination. Surely such a mind, so rich, so fertile, should be able to make some sort of sense out of it.”

  “I should certainly think so, sir.”

  The Author stood up. “I do seem to have got just a bit involved. Perhaps I shouldn’t have tried to put so much in the Play. With a few less elements, I’m sure I could figure out something.”

  “It is very complex, sir,” she said, “what with all kinds of wars and all kinds of intellectual movements, and all kinds of philosophies, and all kinds of emotions and things. But it’s very powerful, sir, even if it isn’t going any place.”

  “True,” the Author said, “a masterpiece beyond a scruple of a doubt. A veritable treasure chest of significancies—if I could only understand them.”

  He toured the room, observing articles of furniture with a critical eye. At length he said, “My grandfather, on my mother’s side, was a willful man. One day, in a fit of pique, occasioned when his whiskers got into his soup while he was trying to drink it from a bowl, the old gentleman set fire to his beard. The beard being moist, it only sizzled and sputtered. Whereupon grandfather doused it into a can of highly inflammable liquid with the most lamentable results. On that unhappy day, my father said to me: ‘Let that be a lesson, son. When you grow a beard, never try to light it.’ ”

  “Yes, sir?” the Secretary said, hopefully.

  “I attempted to resist temptation by refusing to cultivate a beard. Now would you care to watch me burn this script?”

  “Of course, sir,” said she.

  “If you will just bring me some material that I can pour over it, which, upon the application of fire, will turn it into an incadescent heap, we shall proceed.”

  The Secretary complied.

  When the script was crackling merrily, the Author began to smile.

  The flames threw weird shadows on the walls; and stinging smoke billowed out, filling the room. A brief summary of a long Play turned brown and withered, and blackened and collapsed upon itself. A vagrant breeze, from one open window, stirred the ashes fretfully.

  “That,” the Author said with finality, “is that.”

  “But, sir, I don’t quite see how that helped you think up an ending.”

  “I was getting very tired of this particular Play,” he said, ignoring her, “and not very proud of it, either, to speak the facts. I never did think it was one of my better Plays.” tie crossed the room and sat down.

  “I was always weak on Science. One shouldn’t write about something one knows nothing of. I fear I shall never learn that, however. If I hadn’t made the whole system so absurd . . . oh, well—What’s past is, after all, past.”

  “You can think of something, sir.”

  “No, my dear girl, it is too late, now. I’ve only until tomorrow. I’m resigned. Making any sort of sense out of it would be impossible.”

  “You’ve said, yourself, sir, that you’re always doing the impossible,” she reminded him.

  “Quite true. But I’ve also said that it takes until day after tomorrow. Well, would you care to have dinner with me?”

  “I’d rather not, tonight, sir. I can see one of your nasty moods coming on.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, there. But we Artists are continually set upon by Worries. It’s enough to make us nasty. Imagine being forced to understand your own work! That, as any fool knows, is the job of the Critic.”

  “You’ve always come up with something, sir. Every time.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Yes, my dear, your insight is acute: I’m starting to feel positively vile.”

  He left the room.

  Once out of the house, he went directly to his club where, among others, writers were wont to assemble.

  “Hello, old man,” said a writer, rushing to the door to greet him with outstretched hand and bland smile. “I hear they’re about to call in a Play-doctor on you. Tsch-tsch. I know how you feel. Happened to me when I was just starting out. Couldn’t write a line for the longest time afterwards.”

  “I’ll have an ending,” the Author snapped. “In fact, I’ve got an ending, right now.”

  “Oh—” the writer said, his smile evaporating. “That’s fine. That’s just fine. There’s nothing I like to see better than another writer’s success.”

  “That’s what I like about this profession,” the Author said. “Our esteem for our colleagues’ success.”

  He went to his table and sat down. He ordered a drink.

  Over the drink, he shook his head sadly at no one. He sat for a long time.

  Suddenly he jumped up, kicking over his chair. “I knew I wouldn’t fail me,” he said aloud. He rushed into the foyer.

  He buttonholed the first person he saw.

  “I’ve got it!” he said. “It came to me in a—” Then, remembering himself, he said: “That is to say, I would sincerely desire your reaction to an ending I intend to use in my Play. I’ve been mulling it over for some time and I want an honest opinion from a neutral observer.”

  Then the Author began to talk rapidly and excitedly. In the presence of ideas, he discarded syntax.

  “Look! You heard they said my Play was chaos? Well, I admit it. Sure it is. That’s the point! And my science is all scr
ewy? That’s the whole point, don’t you see? Naturally, if it weren’t, I wouldn’t of wrote it that way.

  “Look! You know how it runs . . . the whole thesis is . . . the mind introduced into a hostile environment, an environment that demands contradictory things . . . that creates ideals and then destroys them. Don’t you see? Well! I show that even there the mind triumphs. I show how it triumphs through sheer perseverance. How, out of utter absurdity, it will eventually come to overlay some sort of system of physical laws that will actually work!

  “And then . . . then I show how the mind realizes that there can be an overlay of social laws that will work even in a hostile environment . . . that will work! I don’t pretend they’re right, but they work. And then they really look for those laws and find them, just like they found the physical laws. And how they ignore precedent and orient themselves by them!”

  He paused for breath.

  “And the past ties in—that’s the beauty of it! Plow, for them, evil was really necessary before good could be. How evil gives insight and creates need, out of which—in answer to which—good arises! How, since evil and chaos are indissolubly united, good can only come from an awareness of order, and how that awareness can come only after trying first one thing and then another, in a long, heartbreaking search!

  “Look! Can’t you see the ending? They rise above their whole history to find truth and justice where there really is none. They look back on the horrors of their past, and they know that tomorrow will finally be different!

  “I can see them singing and laughing and happy. I can see their smiling faces and hear their songs ringing clear and joyous. It’s beautiful music; and there is a golden sunrise—The birds are singing, too . . . everything is singing. The Actors have tears in their eyes out of the sheer joy of living. And slowly, as the curtains falls, comes sweet perfumes of spring—universal spring-creeping out to the audience! I can see the audience weeping in sympathy.”

  “I can’t, Buster,” the man said. “I don’t know you. I never heard of your Play. T think you’re nuts. I never go to the Theater.”

  “. . . The ultimate triumph of perseverance!” The Author smiled, having completed his reading to the backers and to the Director.