‘I don’t follow you,’ he said, genuinely puzzled, because she had seemed to show a flash of contempt. ‘Fiftieth —?’
‘Anniversary of the War,’ she said. ‘We’ve had a considerable flurry of memoirs, books, TV, films — 1989, you see — ’ She lifted her eyes to his, and they glinted behind the round glasses. ‘Of course, for you it’s a different anniversary, isn’t it? It started in 1939 for us. Rather later for you.’
Anger lifted in him again. ‘No,’ he said and his voice was very level. ‘Rather earlier. In 1936 for me. That was when my parents were picked up by the Gestapo and put into a labour camp for the first time. And I didn’t have anniversaries in mind when I planned this movie.’
There was a little silence and then she said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be offensive.’
‘No?’ he said. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘So, a film about the Holocaust?’
He didn’t see why he should explain any further. The woman had been very offensive, in that snotty way only Brits could be, and he remembered all the Manhattan dinner parties he’d sat through, listening to Broadway people bad-mouthing these people and how he’d argued on the Brits’ behalf, saying that they were good at the business of plays, they really were — no good pretending they weren’t; and wished he hadn’t. But that was stupid, childish even, and he looked at the woman and said flatly, ‘No.’
‘Not about the Holocaust? But you said — ’
‘After the Holocaust. About what happened when they came out and got married and had kids. About living happily ever after. Do I look the sort of movie-maker who’s into exploitation? You’ve seen my other work? Where do you get off thinking I’d make a film that used and abused the people who’d — ’
‘Look, I’m sorry, Mr Wiseman, if I seem to offend you. I really don’t intend it. I’m just trying to get the — I mean, you mentioned the Holocaust, I didn’t.’
He calmed down at that. ‘Well, OK. But try letting me explain, hey, instead of jumping in on me? The film’s about — I’m interested in the left-over life they had. I’m concerned about the children, and the grandchildren too. What has it been like to grow up in the shadow of that? Not something in the history books, not something in scratchy old film clips, but people you know, people who are part of you, and you look at them and you think — he was there, he went through that. And here am I, and it’s not like that for me. Why isn’t it? That’s the film I want to make.’
She was scribbling hard, and he sat and watched her for quite a while, angry with himself yet again for letting so much out. If he’d known it would be like this, he’d have said no, made her wait to ask her questions with everyone else after the screening; and then his belly tightened into ice with sudden fear. He had to go on to that stage, to sit there and have questions thrown at him and answer them. Would they be like those she’d asked here in this cluttered smelly little office? Would the people in the theatre be as cold and confusing as she had been? He wanted to get to his feet and run out and leave them to show his film without him; and he had tightened his thigh muscles almost ready to get to his feet when the office door opened, and the girl Amanda poked her head round it.
‘I really think we ought to — I mean it’s almost five to — please, would you mind, Miss — ah — and the photographer’s here and wants some shots and I thought on stage, perhaps? There’s a really nice audience here already, a good little crowd, really very good in fact, and we should be moving…’
He let her cluck him out of the office and on down a corridor lined with more stills and posters, leaving the woman with the glasses and the expressionless face behind. He was glad to be rid of her. She’d probably write something godawful in her lousy magazine and that would be the end of it. The whole damned trip would turn out to be a waste of time, and he’d have to go home and start over. A new idea, a new plan, something that’d bring the backers in from the West Coast. What did he need with these lousy Britishers and their choked voices and their arrogance? God knows what they’d be like after this showing; well, he’d show them. And he pulled his shoulders back as the girl Amanda, with one last despairing word flung back at him over her shoulder, opened the door to the side of the stage and pulled him in. He’d show them and then he’d go home and forget all about it.
Two
‘No,’ Abner said. ‘It wasn’t bad at all.’ He smiled then. ‘In fact, I kind of enjoyed it.’
‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ The girl Amanda was now flushed and excited, as relaxed and happy as he was that it was all over. She stood beside him in the lobby watching the last of the audience drift away and then grinned up at him so widely that he could see the fillings in her teeth at the back. ‘I told you it’d be all right, didn’t I? A big audience, after all — ’
‘Hardly big,’ he said. ‘How many does the place hold? A hundred and sixty, or so? If that. For a national film theatre it isn’t what you’d call — ’
‘Oh, that wasn’t the main theatre we used! That one’s much bigger! We used the more — well — intimate one for you.’
‘The one that makes ninety-three people look like a crowd?’ He laughed at the look on her face. ‘Sure I counted. I sat there while that guy talked and I counted. What else could I do?’
‘Well, it’s pretty good for a Monday night in winter, believe me,’ the girl said. ‘I’ve known nights here where we’ve barely filled half a dozen rows. They liked you, they really did. And it’s not as though you weren’t a specialist type, is it? You are — not like the Losey season we’ve got in the big theatre — that really pulls them in. But then they’re different sorts of films, aren’t they?’
‘They’re feature movies. So are mine,’ he said, enjoying seeing her squirm. Why didn’t she just shrug him off? He hadn’t been forced to come, he’d only agreed because he had his own reasons for being here and getting a free air ticket had charm; she didn’t owe him any apologies.
‘I was told documentaries,’ she said, and looked at him doubtfully. ‘That’s what they said when — ’
‘Oh, it’s OK,’ he said, bored suddenly. ‘Believe me, it’s all OK. I’m just — take no notice. He was good, the guy in the chair. Talked a lot to start with but shut up after that.’
‘He’s very good,’ Amanda said stiffly. ‘He’s one of our best-known film critics.’
‘Then I’m sure he was great,’ Abner said solemnly. ‘Listen, do I go now? Or is there something else you want me to do?’
‘Well, you said you didn’t want to have dinner but — ’
‘I have a date,’ he said hurriedly. ‘At the hotel. I’m sorry.’ The mere idea of sitting down to dinner with his chairman, a man who had droned on in as dull a fashion as Abner could ever remember hearing from anyone, had given him the horrors — thank God, the guy had gone! — and it would be better to sit at the hotel on his own than sit and listen to more of this girl’s gush. She meant well, and what worse could you say? ‘Maybe a cab?’
‘I’ll arrange it,’ she said and went away a little huffily, and he thought — I’ve done it again. Said the wrong thing in the wrong way. I keep getting it wrong. It’s like being in a foreign country, the way I give — and get — the wrong messages all the time; and then was amused at himself. Of course, he was in a foreign country. It just seemed strange to think that way about England, where people spoke his own language — or an approximation of it — and where he had lived a large part of his secret inner life for so very long.
Because he had always been particularly fascinated by British movies, and now he drifted across to a section of wall where a display was mounted about a forthcoming attraction, a week of Ealing comedies, and remembered how very important two of those films had been to him once. When he had first discovered about Hyman and Frieda, after that evening when he’d stood there in the kitchen and made them tell him and had at last understood about the arguments that had been the constant backdrop to his growing-up years, he’d gone slamming out of the apartmen
t in a sick fury — sick at himself as much as at them — and gone to the little movie-house, six blocks down from the workshop where his father spent all the hours God sent, and seen The Ladykillers and The Lavender Hill Mob, part of their regular Alec Guinness hommage and felt better, much better. Watching those comfortable people in their comfortable Fifties world had made it possible for him to forgive his parents for their duplicity. For that evening at any rate.
Had this evening gone well enough? He made himself think about it; anything rather than let himself walk the treacherous path of long ago memory. He’d been doubtful at first, when they had introduced him briefly from the stage and then led him to a seat in the auditorium so that he could watch the film with the rest of them. He’d seen it too often, that was the trouble, and could see its flaws all too clearly. But this time wasn’t so bad; he hadn’t sat through the whole of it for over a year, come to think of it, and it offered him a freshness he’d quite forgotten. In fact, listening to those kids he’d railroaded into his movie all those years ago and made into startled once-only actors (kids who were now grown men and women — if they were alive at all, of course, which was doubtful for some of them), he’d become as enmeshed in their story as he had been when he’d made the movie as a fresh-faced twenty-five year old barely out of film school. Nine years ago; Christ, but time was dribbling away. He’d be forty next week at this rate. Not to be thought about. Think instead about the evening that lay just behind him. They’d shown him on to the stage after the film ended and fussed over him a bit, and then the dull voice of the chairman had introduced him with a few sharp comments about the ‘less mature’ aspects of the work mixed in with the careful praise; and then the questions had come, and he’d been first startled and then gratified.
When he’d spoken to movie clubs before at home there had always been one or two people who had a genuine understanding of the film-maker’s dilemmas and asked intelligent questions, but most of the queries were dull and predictable, coming from dull and predictable people with their perceptions warped by the liberal sprinkling of stardust in which they lived, movie stardust. At home people were in love with movies in a much less critical way; they were dazzled and delighted and not ashamed to admit it in their questions. But these people were different: knowledgeable, equally in love with the film as a medium but much more analytical about it, and he settled down to respond to their queries and comments with all the skill he could. It had been good. Like when the guy who had accused him of being a bleeding-heart liberal — because he had allowed the pusher in the Bronx to talk about himself in person, and explain why he was in the trade — had accepted his argument that the pusher was as much a victim of the system that allowed drug abuse to flourish in New York as any dead kid on a slab in Bellevue. It had got a bit uncomfortable there for a while after that, though, when they started asking questions about his next film, and he had been very grateful that the woman from Look and Listen wasn’t there; he didn’t want to talk about Postscripts too much. It could damage the whole project, dammit; and he had regretted bitterly at that moment telling her anything about it at all. It had been a dumb thing to do, the fault of his jet lag. He yawned jawcrackingly then turned as the girl Amanda came back and told him she had a cab waiting for him at the front of the building, on Upper Ground.
‘Upper Ground?’
‘That’s the street. If you’ll follow me.’ And she led him out again, along narrow corridors adorned with more movie posters and stills, until at last they came out into the darkness of the street; and he was startled again to find it quite so dark. He’d forgotten how long he’d been in this building. It seemed a long time since he’d left the plane this morning and been driven into the middle of London, gawping at everything like the greenest of tourists. Damnit, it was a long time.
‘Goodnight,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very kind. I truly have appreciated it, Amanda.’
‘If there’s anything else you need while you’re here, do let me know,’ she said, holding the cab door open and not looking at him. ‘You can get me here any time. Well, most of the time.’
‘Oh, I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Just fine,’ and got into the cab.
‘You’ll be going back home now, then?’ she said. ‘Or staying a bit to do some sightseeing?’
‘Sightseeing, sure. But more than that. I might stay to work a little.’ He grinned at her, placatory now. He’d not been as friendly as he might and she’d tried, after all, tried very hard to take care of him. ‘It’s not for everyone to know, but I do have some work of my own to deal with while I’m here.’
‘Then I’m glad you were able to get to us,’ she said with a moment of spite. ‘It was convenient for you that we brought you over.’
‘It was,’ he said. ‘And I do appreciate it. Well, so long then.’
‘Goodbye,’ she said, and closed the cab door on him firmly and he sat back against the leather padding and sighed as the cab driver leaned back and called over his shoulder, ‘Where to, squire?’
‘Squire,’ Abner said, amused. Ealing again.
The cab driver twisted round more in his seat and winked at him. ‘She said you was a Yank, and I like to give value for money. All-purpose label. Beats guv’, doesn’t it? Where to?’
He laughed. ‘The West Park. In Leinster Terrace.’
‘Blimey, they got themselves on the itineraries, ’ave they? Comin’ up in the world. Not exactly the ’ilton, is it?’ He let in the clutch a little noisily and turned the cab neatly in a full circle and headed westwards. ‘Lookin’ after you all right, are they?’
‘It’s fine,’ Abner said. ‘Just fine.’ And sat and stared out at the passing scene as the cab wheeled left and went up on to the bridge. It was still misty, and the river shone on each side as though he were seeing it through a mesh over a lens; and he shook his head as the simile came to him. He wasn’t in a movie-house now, for God’s sake! This was real life. That really was the Houses of Parliament away on his left and that really was the dome of St Paul’s shimmering on his right. He was here in London. He was thirty-four years old and for the first time in his entire life he was in Europe. Where, if the world hadn’t gone mad sixty-odd years ago, he should have been born.
Piecing together the story of who he was and why he was where he was had — it had seemed to him, walking home from the Alec Guinness movies the night he had found out — taken all his life. When does a child know his world is different from that of other children? You grow up thinking everyone in the world, everywhere, eats corned beef for dinner on Sundays, always has chicken on Friday nights and gets to eat an ice-cream on walks in the park once in a while — a very few whiles — and you think that’s normal. And then you find out, slowly, that it isn’t. That in other houses they eat food you never even heard of, and that some kids get ice-cream every day. That in other houses parents talk to each other and laugh, and sometimes bawl and shout, but don’t spend long swathes of the days in total silence. That other people’s parents speak as you do yourself, American, not foreign with a thick sound at the back of the throat that makes you think they want to cough. Some people have parents who talk that way, and some have parents who talk different ways, but most have American speaking parents. That this is a very strange thing to discover when you’re six years old and never knew it before.
At first it hadn’t mattered. There was school and there were other kids and sometimes other adults from the Shoah Club his parents went to, though they never took him there. Once or twice in a year — and no more than that — there would be strangers in the apartment, sitting in the living room at the big round table with the red plush cover and drinking tea out of glasses like his parents did. They didn’t talk to him a lot either. They talked about him, of course — all the adults did that — but mostly he was sent away, out to play, sent to be anywhere but with them, when visitors came. And that didn’t happen in other people’s houses, he learned painfully. Other people stayed around and didn’t get sent out of the room
all the time. It didn’t happen to other people. Only to him.
I’m seventeen, he’d thought that evening as he had walked the long blocks back to the apartment, his head still half dazzled by the joy of the movies he had seen, his ears full of those creamy English voices. I’m seventeen and I’ve only just found out where I come from. They robbed me, all those years they robbed me. When they talked at school of the Holocaust I sat there and listened as other people talked of it; I sat there and felt sick and angry and a million miles away. I listened to Joey Stein crying when he talked about it, and heard Amy Greener saying what happened to her grandma and it was like listening to the teacher talk about the Civil War. Important and never to be forgotten, but nothing to do with me, none of my business.
Only, of course, it was. It always had been, and he hadn’t known. They should have told me. To leave me to find out the way I did, to have to sit and hear that drooling old man going on and on about it, telling me what happened to them both, and not have them tell me. To have him speak of the babies they had had that had died, to have him explain how precious a child Abner was to his parents, and never have heard it from them? It was an obscenity, that was what it was.
As he had walked past the A & P supermarket, past Kresge’s and Woolworths’ five-and-dime, he had seen that old man in his memory silhouetted against everything he looked at, heard his thin voice grating in his ear above the rattle of the traffic.
‘They never told you? Hyman and Frieda, always a funny pair those two, always like that to us, but to you you’d think they’d be different? Three babies they lost — my old woman, she knew, worked at the hospital so she knew, and she said it was three — and then you and you’d think they’d tell you — ’ And he’d hawked and swallowed convulsively and then sniffed thickly and Abner, seventeen-year-old Abner, had almost thrown up.
Postscripts Page 2