Sweet Smell of Success

by Ernest Lehman

  “You?” He took the cigar from his mouth.

  “The sketches for tonight’s show,” I said.

  “What about them?”

  “They’re not mine,” I said quietly. “They’re not mine and they’re not yours, but you’re going to have to use them just the same because it’s too late now to do anything about it. I stole them, Sammy. I didn’t have it any more, so I stole them from a guy named Davey Farber who was killed in the war.”

  He set the cigar down and came at me slowly, lips trembling, eyes wide with stunned disbelief. “You steal?” he cried. “You steal and give it to me and take this chance of ruining me? You do this to me?”

  “ I had the only copies in existence and they’re torn up now … destroyed. No one will ever know.” My voice faltered. “Only Lester …”

  “Only Lester!” he shrieked in panic. “Only Lester! You’re through, you hear me? Right now! As of this minute! Washed up! Finished! Through!”

  “No, Sammy,” I said, smiling coldly at the twitching face. “I was through months ago. Only you didn’t know it.”

  “Get out!” he shouted.

  I held out my hand. “My watch, please?”

  He hurled it to the floor with an angry snarl. “Without you …” He crushed it viciously beneath his heel. “Even without you Sammy is a smash!”

  I turned and walked out.

  He slammed the door behind me.

  I kept on walking.

  Out of his life.

  It was over now—the chase, the rat-race, the back-breaking struggle for the success I had never deserved. And I should have been feeling awful about it. I should have been feeling something I could understand … not this exhausted calm, this utter peace, this wonderful feeling of absolution and release.

  I went out front to the auditorium. I wanted to be there to see it through to the very end, come what may … a sketch-writer who would never again juggle with words, returning to the crime of his scenes. …

  I looked now at the faces, and knew what they were waiting for. I knew what they would get, and out of what it had come. I, more than anyone, I knew, and was thankful that I would not be a part of it again. I saw Julie in an aisle seat way in the back, hiding her worried eyes behind the screen of smoked glasses, and when she spied me, I shook my head and silently framed the words: “Not yet.”

  No sign of Lester yet.

  In what bar … on what lonely park bench … was he seeking the answer, the final solution?

  Inexorably, the moving red hand of the clock above the control-room window swept the buzzing, chattering throng toward its rendezvous with laughter, and across the nation, the millions shifted restlessly in their chairs, waiting.

  Five minutes to go now.

  A hush fell over the great auditorium.

  I saw the ushers closing the doors.

  Eyes turned to stare at the closed red curtains that hid the stage.

  The three cameramen out front, shirts stained with sweat, earphones clamped on their heads for the directions that would come from the control-room, swung the giant mechanisms in their hands in a final tryout to make sure that these cameras, these eyes through which outside millions would be present here, were fluid and mobile and ready to shift with the wild, swift movements and the sometimes unexpected acrobatics of a Sammy Hogarth harlequinade.

  In the sponsor’s booth behind their screen of glass, I saw the men from the tobacco company—solemn faced, waiting to be shown, unwilling yet to smile, waiting to find out if the laughter of an audience could be louder than the whisper of scandal that had been growing in volume ever since noon of that day.

  In their seats near the exit, as though prepared for quick flight, I saw Jake Pitz and Phil Kane and Sonny Carmichael, pale and sick with the fear that their laugh-bombs would fail to go off. And right beside them, Connie, whose eyes met mine, and seeing my face, were kind enough to look away.

  I sank into my seat down front beside the television monitor screen, hearing the vast silence, feeling the breathless tension building up behind me as the second-hand of the clock swept forward.

  Once more around.

  Then zero.

  The red light flashed.

  And suddenly the silence blew up in the booming of kettle drums.

  VIII

  This was it, then.

  Beginning now with the crashing chords of musical introduction and the exuberant cry of an announcer and the sliding credit-cards to spell out the words to the cameras:

  The Sammy Hogarth Show.

  Through the combined facilities of three great networks and the continent-spanning magic of microwaves.

  This was what it had all been for.

  This, which was beginning now with ear-splitting applause as he came trotting out in the silly costume, wearing the invisible, undetectable mask of jolly good nature, and instantly sent them into shrieks of pent-up delight with his machine-gun patter.

  The setup, the payoff, the answering yell … faster and faster. …

  Look at me! This is your Sammy. Your lovable, likable, laughable Sammy. Look at me, listen, and answer me, please answer me. Let me hear you telling me, in the only language I can understand, that it isn’t true, this which I feel inside of me … unloved, unloving, hateful and hating. Tell me I’m like you, like him, like everyone, good as everyone, better than everyone. Tell it to me. Quick. There aren’t enough of them … Rita, Felicia, Rosemary, Julie. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t last. So tell me. Convince me. Let me hear you. Look at me. Listen. See? Hear that? This is your Sammy, your lovable, likable, laughable Sammy. Please! Quick! More! I need it!

  Louder!

  He dropped his trousers to the floor. The under-shorts were plaid. They screamed with delight, and he beamed at them gratefully. We love you, Sammy, they said with their hands as he skipped into the wings.

  It was a good beginning.

  And as the minutes fled by, it got even better.

  He came back and was funny with the humor of Jake Pitz; he did the Harry Truman parody at the piano and they roared their approval, believing Sammy Hogarth to be witty and clever, not knowing of Phil Kane’s blood and Sonny Carmichael’s sweat and tears. He sang the genius of Irving Berlin’s words and music, gave up the stage reluctantly for a commercial, then convulsed them for seven minutes, as I had known he would, in the barbershop sketch.

  You had it, Davey boy. A hundred grand a year if they had let you live long enough to feed your wit to the hungry monster called television …

  And then the throng relaxed to the ballet, and the boy singing words of love to a girl, because they knew that Sammy would return to them soon.

  Which he did, disguised as a magician.

  And again, in the Foreign Legion sketch, to the enormous sound of their laughter.

  And when he came out at the end of the skit, mopping Davey Farber’s sweat from his forehead, he walked down to the apron of the stage, and the curtains swept closed behind him. He looked out at the eager, expectant faces, his eyes shining in the lights with the gleam of satiety. They had answered his plea; he had heard them and believed them; they had enabled him to do his best. He was in, and he knew it, and there were only six minutes to go now. He looked down at them, and they knew what was coming, and he knew that they knew and he grinned at them, toyed with them. They held their breath, straining for release, waiting for his signal, and he just looked down at them and smiled, and then finally when they could stand it no longer, he gave it to them.

  “Lemme tell you,” he said, “about my brother Lester …”

  And they exploded, screaming.

  Let me tell you about the lazy jerk, the parasite, the All-American slob …

  I sat there with my hand shading my eyes, not watching, just listening. Listening was bad enough. Hearing them howl and yip at each brutal thrust was bad enough. It had to be funny. They had to laugh. This was their Sammy, their lovable, likable, laughable Sammy. If they could not respond to the shock of each stingi
ng barb with a laugh, it would suddenly not be funny. It would be cruel and malicious and destructive, and that could not be. That would be unbearable. This was Sammy. It had to be funny. This was all a big joke. For years, now, they had been partners with him in this great big wonderful, familiar, comfortable running gag, and they howled with unhesitating delight, because they knew he was only kidding.

  Lovable, likable, laughable Sammy.

  “‘Of course it’s a raise,’ I said to him. ‘Here I am on three networks and you gettin’ the same salary even though you’re three times as useless …’”

  They shrieked. Oh, it was a hell of a successful spot, all right.

  Some say it was the greatest thing that ever happened on television, probably greater than any single event that will ever be witnessed on the medium again.

  At first I didn’t know what they were tittering for, or why it grew so swiftly to a loud guffaw of recognition. And then I looked up at the burst of applause and saw him shuffling out onto the stage, and there was something about the drooping body, the way he walked, the expression on his face, that was so much the embodiment of all that Sammy had built up in the minds of the public—he looked so much like the ineffectual little nobody of Sammy’s endless portrait—that it just had to be him. It had to be Lester, it was Lester, and they yelled with pleased surprise. My heart skipped a beat when I saw him.

  On the screen it was a long shot, and the millions could not see the look in his eyes, and the color wasn’t that good that they could see the pallor of his face and the bloodless lips, drained of everything by the inner anxiety. And then Camera Two was coming in on Sammy for a closeup of his reaction, and I knew then that Byron Ford, the director, was not sure this was not a last-minute addition to the routine.

  I glanced up at the control-room window and met his questioning look, and I found myself raising my thumb and index finger in the circle of “okay,” and nodding my head.

  And then Sammy saw Lester coming, and his face quickly took on the mask of impish astonishment to cover the sickening dismay I could see in his eyes.

  “Whaddaya know? Here he is!” he shouted above the sound of their applause. “The kid himself … my brother Lester!”

  He reached out an arm to encircle Lester’s shoulders in greeting as he came, now, down to the apron where Sammy stood.

  “For him I would do anything. I would give him the shirt off my back, the suit off my body, the tie off my neck, the shoes off my feet …” He paused, grinning. “Look good on him, don’t they?”

  They laughed, and giggled again in a higher pitch as Lester suddenly raised up on his toes and slapped the grin off Sammy’s face. It was such a silly, ineffectual attempt at muscular action, like a parody of anger. And Sammy’s stunned, comical expression only added to the effect. Oh, it was wonderfully funny. Leave it to Sammy, they said to themselves. Leave it to Hogarth, the tobacco-men beamed in their glassed-in booth. Leave it to Sammy, they said up in the control-room and into the earphones of the cameramen. Leave it to Sammy to come up with a show-stopping surprise.

  You could hear the second slap like the crack of a whip, and Sammy winced at the sting, then forced a foolish giggle.

  “Could it be possible this late in the year I feel a mosquito?”

  He ducked, seeing the hand coming at him again, and quickly he grabbed Lester’s wrists and held on to them, looking past him to the wings but unable to show them back there with his eyes that they must do something. Someone must help him get rid of this flea.

  He turned to the audience. “Is there an exterminator in the house?”

  Still the laughter came.

  And then suddenly Lester burst from his grasp and stood there for a moment, swaying unsteadily, eyes wild and drunken, lips trembling. He whipped off the horn-rimmed glasses and tossed them, unheeding, into the orchestra pit. And for an instant I thought he would speak, cry out, say something … anything … it was in him. You could see it in him … the years of it trying desperately to get out, be heard, to hit, to smash. But it was just a pudgy fist and it caught Sammy in the soft of his stomach and he gasped with surprise and quickly screwed his face into a comical grimace to arouse their gale of laughter.

  And it came now, the laughter, but peculiar-sounding, almost hysterical, as though they were using an extra measure of effort to make it come forth and stay up there where they could hear it. And they looked desperately to Sammy for reassurance and saw him circling around Lester, hands up awkwardly in the mock stance of a John L. Sullivan, flicking at his own nose with a comical thumb to underline the joke of it all.

  Couldn’t they see this wasn’t part of the show?

  Up there behind the glass, out front behind the cameras, off-stage in the wings … couldn’t they sense that something was happening, drag him off, break it up, cut it off the air and replace what was happening here on the screen with a test pattern for forty million people to stare at in momentary wonderment? Or did they know, and knowing, still find themselves too stunned by the swiftness of it, the wonder of it, the excitement of it, pounding now in their own blood, too, as though this were dramatic spot news that had to be covered? Or was it something deeper down and perhaps even completely unknown to them, the secret wish come true, the inevitable result of years of working with Sammy, taking Sammy, enduring Sammy … was it this that kept all who might have intervened frozen at their posts?

  I edged forward in my seat, feeling the wild beating of my heart, seeing them captured beautifully by the camera in the rectangle of the monitor screen. It was like fight night at the Garden, and the crowd was yelling now like a fight-crowd yells, and Lester was moving in slowly, trying to work past Sammy’s left, pawing at the air in feeble gestures, stumbling back, crying softly to himself, plodding in again, mouth working in a confused mumble of compulsive fear as he came closer and closer to the terror of Sammy’s fists, waiting there before him, feinting toward him now. I could see Sammy’s lips. I could read the frantic, “Beat it. Get off!” behind the mask of his strained smile.

  Lester swung jerkily and missed.

  Sammy pushed into him with his belly.

  The laughter of the crowd was hollow and desperate, breaking now, faltering, trying again, and coming out in confused shouts. A woman screamed. A little child began to cry.

  Sammy looked out over the lights, his face suddenly agonized.

  Please let me hear you. Please. This is your Sammy, your—

  Lester swarmed all over him.

  —Lovable, laughable—

  He shoved him off.

  “Attaboy, Lester!” a voice shouted from the crowd.

  Sammy moved in, the torture in his eyes, feeling it, seeing it, hearing it slipping away. Lester stepped back, watching … staring … moving back … circling away … mouth working silently beneath the shouting voices.

  I heard the uproar behind me rising in an hysterical crescendo.

  “What’sa matter, Sammy?”

  His lip curled. He moved.

  The cameras swept in.

  “Look out!”

  Lester ducked. Sammy’s right caught him high on the cheek. His head snapped back. Another right, and a left. He rubbed his face and moved in, swinging. I glanced at the screen, saw the struggling figures framed perfectly there. Lester was crying. Quietly, the quivering lips were spilling over into sobs as he moved in blindly and met the hard fist and the blood spurted sickeningly from his nose.

  I heard the hoarse shouting.

  I saw the clock.

  Two minutes to go.

  Sammy looked out as though pleading: Save me, save me … and shuddering, he took the stomach punch. Frantically he pushed and grappled and tried to hold on to the squirming, struggling body that was almost lost beneath the immensity of his own. Sobbing, Lester broke away and came back again, swinging wildly, came back to the fists, asking for more, asking for it as though it were something he wanted, had always wanted, and needed now … the fist and the punching bag … the slap and t
he cheek … as though this was what he had been moving toward, inexorably, all his life, this moment whose consummation might free him.

  Blindly, sobbing, he walked into the maelstrom.

  And suddenly the desperate fury erupted.

  With an angry snarl, Sammy seized him by the tie, swung him around so his back faced the audience, pulled him toward him, yanked the pathetic, beaten little body to an upright position and, kneeling, measured him for a final moment.

  “Sammy, wait!” The cry burst from my throat and was lost in the uproar.

  I saw it coming.

  I saw the camera moving in for the closeup.

  I saw it on the screen as the millions saw it, as every one saw it.

  The rectangle of glass filled by a hate-torn face.

  The maniacal look, the frightening eyes, the twisted mouth …

  “No!” people were shouting. “Don’t!” they screamed, unheard, unnoticed, forgotten in the blind, red fury of a lifetime exploding now with the cumulative force of the bitter years as Sammy tore into him with the big, hard fists, crunching into the soft, unpracticed body, faster and faster the welter of savage blows, snapping the head back, rocking the loose-hanging jaw and the blood-spurting face, moving in and down, following the sagging body down, pummeling the senseless, battered head, finishing it off with a final gasping crack and stepping back, at last, panting, the sweat pouring down his contorted face, to stare at the crumpled form lying there at his feet, white and still in the widening stain of blood.

  In the awful moment of deathlike silence, I saw the stagehands hurrying out to carry the senseless body into the wings, and I heard Julie’s cry as she ran down the aisle.

  And then, suddenly, Sammy looked up. Suddenly he remembered. Suddenly he was back, in a nightmare of recognition.

  Desperately he ran a hand through the disorder of his hair. Quickly his mouth opened, as though he would save it with a word, a joke perhaps.

  And then he saw the faces.

  He stood there in the terrible stillness of the house, looking out at them, trying to say something, anything, trying to joke, to smile, to slip the mask back on, but it would not come, it could not come. It was gone, the mask was gone, stripped off by his violent hands and destroyed forever.