The New Confessions

by William Boyd

  Farrier was a junior partner in a firm that did a lot of business with Lone Star. He was a young man, in his late twenties, and his looks inspired confidence. He was big, over six feet, with a strong bulging jaw and thick curly hair that he forced into a parting. He wore bow ties, something I approve of in professional men: it hints at human qualities—vanity, self-esteem—behind the impassive expertise. But, after talking to him for half an hour, I found him less reassuring. He was soft-voiced and diffident, with mobile eyes that met your gaze only for split seconds. He gave me one of the worst pieces of advice I’ve ever received.

  “I think you should take the Fifth.”

  “The fifth what?”

  “The Fifth Amendment to the American Constitution.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It means that you can’t be asked to bear witness against yourself. If you’re asked a question that might incriminate you, you can refuse to answer it—on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment.”

  “But I haven’t done anything.”

  “I would take it just in case, Mr. Todd, It’s safer than taking the First; you get cited for contempt of Congress. That could mean jail.”

  “Jesus.… Right. But when do I take it?”

  “Whenever it seems like something you’ll say will incriminate you.”

  “Fine. You’ll tip me the wink if it looks like a tricky question.”

  “Ah … I won’t be there, I’m sorry to say.”

  “But you’re my bloody lawyer!”

  Page colored. He took a pen out of his jacket pocket and replaced it carefully.

  “Mr. Todd, may I be frank with you?”

  “Please.”

  “Ordinarily, I’d really prefer not to be associated with your case. I’m only a junior partner. But because of the Lone Star connection I’ve been told—been assigned to it.” He gave me a weak smile. “I’m sorry. We don’t even have your name on a file in the office.” I seemed to feel a sort of transparency invade my body, as if I were halfway to disappearing. I was around, here, but fewer and fewer people were acknowledging my presence. Page cleared his throat and touched the tips of his bow tie.

  “May I ask you a personal question, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you in point of fact a Communist? In the party?”

  “I’ll take the Fifth.… No, of course not. I’m a film director.”

  He beamed with relief. “God, that’s good news.” He lowered his voice. “I’m sort of a liberal-minded person but I don’t think my conscience could let me represent a real Communist. If my fiancée found out …” He swallowed. “Holy shit.”

  “Your conscience can rest easy. Listen, do you want a drink?” We were in my house.

  “No … no sir, thank you. I’ve got to run. Is there a back way out of here?”

  Three days later I walked along the corridor of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel towards Room 1121. I knocked. It was opened by the man who had served the subpoena on me. I was shown in.

  Room 1121 was a suite. The sitting room had been cleared and a long desk set up at one end with three chairs behind it. Another solitary chair was set opposite some six feet away in the middle of the room. Another man, in a pale-blue suit, was standing by the window smoking a cigarette. He came out and shook my hand.

  “Mr. Todd? I’m an investigator for the committee. Paul Seager. This is Investigator Bonty.”

  Seager had a fat kind face with thin brown hair. Bonty—the man with the subpoena—was dark and sallow with a harelip scar like MacKanness, the bantam who’d threatened to kill me.

  “Congressman Brayfield will be with us in a moment.”

  From the bedroom I could hear the buzz of an electric razor. We stood around in awkward silence. Our roles were about to be defined; until then we didn’t know whether to be pleasant or formal.

  “Some fog today,” Bonty offered.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “We get bad fog in Washington,” Seager said.

  “Really?”

  Brayfield came in, pulling on his jacket. Representative Byron Brayfield was a fat man who thought tight three-piece suits might disguise this condition. Naturally, it had the opposite effect, as well as making him needlessly hot and uncomfortable. His waistcoat was tight as a corset, a small fan of creases, like crow’s-feet, on either side of the row of buttons. He had a pale fleshy face, with an eave of fat overhanging his collar all round, small alert eyes and thinning crinkly black hair combed straight back. He did not offer to shake my hand. We took our places. I felt a sudden urge to go to the lavatory. Seager made a telephone call and a minute later a stenographer came in. She sat down behind me.

  Bonty uttered some preamble about the Brayfield Subcommittee of the House Committe on Un-American Activities being in executive session. Then proceedings were interrupted for a long moment as Brayfield blew his nose with astounding ferocity. His face went quite red and he examined his handkerchief diligently as if he expected to see particles of brain there. Eventually, Seager swore me in and the hearing began.

  BRAYFIELD: You understand, Mr. Todd, this is a special subcommittee of one instigated as a result of a confidential dossier we, ah, that came into our possession, alleging subversive activities undertaken by you over a number of years.

  TODD: May I know who supplied you with this dossier?

  BRAYFIELD: That is classified information. However, such was the seriousness of these allegations it was decided that this committee be set up.… You have lived and worked in Berlin, Germany, I believe?

  TODD: Yes. And in Scotland, England, France, Switzerland and the United States.

  BRAYFIELD: You are about to start production on a film called Father of Liberty?

  TODD: Yes.

  BRAYFIELD: And this film is about a [checking notes] man called Rousseau? A French Socialist?

  TODD: For heaven’s sake!

  BRAYFIELD: Who is producing this film?

  TODD: That is a matter of public record; I suggest you get Investigator Seager on to it.

  SEAGER: I would remind you, Mr. Todd, this is an official subcommittee. We have powers to cite you for contempt.

  TODD: Thank you for reminding me. I will not answer any of your questions until you tell me who gave you that dossier.

  BRAYFIELD: I’ve told you—

  TODD: Was it someone called Leo Druce?

  SEAGER: Who?

  BRAYFIELD: Seager!

  TODD: Courtney Young? Harold Faithfull? Alexander Mavrocordato? [Blank faces.]

  BRAYFIELD: Who are these people? Can we get back to business?… We believe, Mr. Todd, based on information we have in this dossier, that you may be well placed to inform the committee of known subversive and Communistic elements in the Hollywood film community. Any such information you provide us with will remain confidential, of course.… I would like to remind you we are in executive session. Ah, in the light of you providing us with names and information the committee will be predisposed to look favorably on any … any indescretions in the past that you may have, ah, that you may have done. Perpetrated.

  TODD: [gets up and takes newspaper from nearby table]: Why are you people wasting your time? Why? Catch some real criminals. Look, look, at random from today’s paper [quotes]: “Two men, Kemp P. Heald, twenty-five, and Coran Schlag, fifty-two, were today accused of breaking into Brewer Poultry Farm at Tujunga on the fourteenth of November and committing there acts of sexual indecency with fifty-four Christmas turkeys, leaving over twenty of the birds for dead.…” Good God! There are your criminals. Why aren’t you out catching them instead of wasting all our time and—

  BONTY: May I see that newspaper please?

  SEAGER: Mr. Todd, will you please resume your seat?

  BRAYFIELD: Can you establish that these two men are Soviet agents? Or members of the Communist party?

  TODD: What?

  BRAYFIELD: Only then are we empowered to act.

  BONTY: Five’ll get you ten they were Commies.

>   SEAGER: Who?

  BONTY: The men who boffed the turkeys. They do that sort of thing in Russia, I read about it. Yeah.

  BRAYFIELD: Mr. Bonty, please?

  BONTY: Sorry, sir.

  BRAYFIELD: Mr. Todd, are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?

  TODD: I’d like to plead the Fifth Amendment.* I will not answer that question on the grounds that I may incriminate myself—in your eyes.

  When I saw the smile momentarily expand in Brayfield’s eyes and across his plump cheeks I knew I had made a mistake. We wrangled over whether I was entitled to take the Fifth for a while, and Brayfield’s threats became more and more explicit. At one stage he shouted at me, “You are a resident alien! We can deport-scum like you!” All this was excised from the transcript. I realized later I should have taken Bertolt Brecht’s route: lie boldly and then run for it. If Brecht hadn’t followed that course of action, it would have been the Hollywood Eleven. But old Bert lit out. When he was asked in 1947 if he had ever applied to join the Communist party he said, and I quote, “No, no, no, no, no, never,” and left at once for France. As I sat in my sitting room later that afternoon waiting for Page Farrier to turn up, I felt foreboding infest the house like vermin. Had I done the right thing?

  “Yes,” Page said. “Without doubt.”

  “Oh yes” said Eddie Simmonette. This was two days after the hearing. We were sitting in what used to be Lori’s diner. It was now called Chauncy’s after her eldest son. I hadn’t been the same since I had returned from Berlin. News of Lori’s death had distressed me greatly and I couldn’t imagine the diner without her. In fact, few memories lingered. Chauncy had redone everything in plasti-pine and melamine—it was altogether more nasty looking, cheaper and dirtier. But when Page had telephoned to say that Eddie wanted a rendezvous “somewhere very discreet,” Chauncy’s had seemed the most convenient.

  Eddie wore dark glasses and a snap-brim hat. Page kept looking over his shoulder.

  “Look, would you mind relaxing?” I said angrily. “Nobody’s going to know you here.… Have you heard anything? Are they going to cite me for contempt?”

  Page told me he thought I would be all right, at least until the Supreme Court had heard the Hollywood Ten appeal.

  “Well, thank God for that.”

  “Ah, unfortunately, Mr. Todd, you’re on two more lists.”

  “Jesus. But I haven’t done anything. Whose lists?”

  “The American Legion Magazine and the AMPOPAWL list.”

  “The what?”

  “The American Motion Picture Organization for the Preservation of the American Way of Life.”

  “But at least you’re not on the MPAPAI list,” Eddie said. “Thank the Lord.”

  “?”

  “The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.”

  “Great. Wonderful.”

  The waitress came over to our table. Eddie and Page ordered coffee. I looked up. “Nothing for me,” I said. She was a dark, faintly Oriental girl with a grubby apron on over a checked dress. Slim and pretty in an acceptably sleazy way.

  “Hey, John,” she said. “God, how are you?” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Nora Lee,” she said. “Nora Lee Madrazon.”

  “Good God. Of course.” I’d last seen her four years ago, a sulky lanky teenager with cropped hair and braces on her teeth.

  “Catch you later,” she said. “Great to see you again.”

  “You know her?” Page said, his voice high with incredulous WASP lust.

  “I knew her mother.”

  “Page, would you leave us for a moment? I need to talk with John.”

  Page left for another booth. Nora Lee delivered Eddie’s coffee. As he stirred it we sat in silence. I looked out of the window at the beach and the Pacific. There had been some rain that morning and the roads were shiny. The ocean looked cold.

  “John, that’s three lists you’re on now: Red Connections, the Legion and AMPOPAWL.”

  “Someone sent a dossier on me to that committee. That’s the only reason this fucking … farce is happening at all. Someone’s setting me up. I’m being informed on. Framed.”

  “Who?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Which still leaves us with our problem.”

  “What problem?”

  Eddie took a sip of coffee and made a disgusted face.

  “Jesus! This stuff would make a billy goat puke!” He pushed it aside. He sighed, inhaled, touched his nose, tugged at an earlobe.

  “After the Ten were cited for contempt of Congress last year, there was a meeting in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria of the MPAA … the Motion Picture Association of America—”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Fifty of us. All the top executives. I was there. We said, we agreed, that no Communists or subversives would knowingly be employed in the film industry.”

  “So?”

  “You heard Brayfield. He thinks you’re a subversive, he thinks Father of Liberty is a subversive film. We’ve had calls from the Legion, the Catholic War Veterans, Red Connections, ODCAD—you name it. They think you and Rousseau are a couple of foreign Bolsheviks.”

  “You’re not going to worry about what that arsehole Brayfield says?”

  “John … I’m party to the MPAA decision. Don’t you see? I can’t afford not to.”

  It was at this moment that any residual humor—of the black ironical variety—left the discussion.

  “So what are you saying?”

  “The film’s off. Until this blows over.”

  “Wonderful.” I felt the tears squeeze into my eyes. “Well, I’ll do Jesse James then, fill in some time.”

  “I’m sorry, John.”

  “Come on.”

  “I’m going to have to let you go. I have to be seen to fire you. You’re graylisted now.”

  “Looks pretty black to me.”

  He leaned forward. “I’ve just signed a fifteen-million-dollar, twenty-picture deal with Loews. I can’t jeopardize the company for you and Father of Liberty. What would you do in my place? The same, I know. I’ve got to distance myself from you. But I’ll stick by you, John. You won’t go without.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “All I ask from you is your discretion. Just don’t name me. Don’t ever mention what you mentioned the other day.”

  “Well, after all you’re doing for me, how can I refuse?”

  “For the sake of our friendship. You’ll be all right.”

  “I can go somewhere else.”

  “You can try.… But they’ve got you, John. They’ve got us. By the balls. Sit it out.”

  “Thanks, Eddie.”

  “Don’t be cynical, John. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “You sound like my father.”

  “Don’t call me at the office or at home, whatever you do. I’ll keep in touch through Page.”

  “Why not?”

  “Your phone is probably tapped.”

  “Christ!…”

  He leaned over and kissed me on both cheeks, the Armenian in him surfacing briefly, and then said something like “Cesaretini toplamak” I found this phrase later in Lori’s Turkish-English dictionary. It meant “Take courage.”

  I sat on alone in the diner for a while after Page and Eddie had left. I felt a kind of draining of my spirit, as when a runner knows he’s used up his last reserves of stamina. I felt like sobbing with self-pity and frustration, but two competing trains of thought prevented a wholehearted surrender. First, I marveled at Eddie’s utterly decent ruthlessness. I suppose it was the same attitude that had got Duric Lodokian through pogroms and revolutions and now it was coming to the aid of his son. I wanted to rail at him and accuse him of treachery and disloyalty, but I could not fault his logic.… I even rather respected him for it.

  The other pressing question was to do with the identity of the informer. Who? Why? I knew who my enemies were, but I found it hard to credit them with something
so thoroughgoing. There was a fanatic diligence about this plan that seemed to speak of vast resources of perversity—all committed to bring me down. Faithfull? Druce?… It seemed farfetched.

  I sighed, contemplating once more the ruin of The Confessions. How many scripts had been written, how many false starts and premature conclusions had there been? The concept, the work, seemed almost alive, animallike in its capacity to live on, evolve and adapt itself to the multitude of obstacles the century placed in its way. The Confessions had a life of sorts, that was true. It had been born, grown up, suffered setbacks, struggled on, changed, adapted itself.… I felt urgently that I needed to round it off, let it mature and die. I had hoped that Father of Liberty would have been that final hybrid. How long would I have to wait? Sit it out, Eddie had said. Be patient.

  I got up, planning to wander along the beach and tell Karl-Heinz the bad news. Nora Lee came over. I saw she was a tall girl wearing flat shoes like dancing pumps. I thought suddenly, painfully, of Doon.

  “Do you want to come upstairs for a moment, John? We kept some things of Mom’s. Maybe you’d like to have something, like a sort of souvenir. No, I don’t mean that. What’s the word?”

  “Memento.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’d like that.”

  We went upstairs to the apartment. I chose Lori’s Turkish-English dictionary.

  I sat it out for five years. For four years I waited for things to blow over. It may sound strange to you, it may even sound unlikely, but it was during those years that I missed my children the most. I have not spoken to them, but I had not forgotten them. I missed them keenly, desperately—or rather, I missed a private fanciful version of them. I used to think about them often—Vincent and the twins, a young man and two young women now, total strangers to me and vice versa. I had corresponded with them, dutifully, desultorily, but their letters were banal and disappointing—and I daresay mine were too. It was the change of surname that distressed and distanced me: this Vincent Devize didn’t seem to be my son anymore (it can happen so easily, believe me). At times I was wracked with the loss of Hereford. Hereford, dead all these years, was closer and more real to me than my three children living. I had an ideal platonic love for them of sorts, but its concrete manifestations were mere tokens, mutual obligations halfheartedly and effortfully fulfilled. My life bottomed out, as they say, until 1953—when it got worse. But let me take you through this unsatisfactory interlude.