CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

WHEN Eitel finished telling the story, we continued to sit in the living room with the litter of a dozen half-filled cartons and several pieces of luggage. “Do you want me to help you pack?” I said at last.

He shook his head. “No, somehow I enjoy doing it myself. It’s the last opportunity I’ll have to be alone for some time.”

I guessed what he meant. “Everything’s been set for you to testify?”

Eitel shrugged. “You may as well know. You’ll be reading about it in the newspapers soon enough.”

“What will I read?”

He did not answer the question directly. “You see, after Elena left,” he said, “I couldn’t stand to stay here. Not for the first few days. I drove into the capital early that morning, and I went to see my lawyer. There’s no use giving you all the bits and pieces. I must have talked to a dozen people. The amazing thing is how complicated it is.”

“Then you’re going to have your secret session?”

“No.” Eitel looked away while he lit a cigarette. “They’re not letting me off that easy. You see, those people are artists. If you admit that you’re ready for a secret session, they know that you’ll testify in public session, too. They get down to bed-rock, don’t you see?” Eitel smiled pensively. “Oh, I gave them a bit of trouble. I walked out of a conference when they told me the session would have to be public, and I went to my lawyer’s office, and I raved, and I ranted, but all the time I knew I was going to give them what they wanted.” He took a careful swallow of his drink. “If I had had something to return to in Desert D’Or … well, in that case, I don’t know, I won’t look for excuses. The fact is I didn’t have anything. All I could do was admit how clever they are. They know you win an empire by asking for an acre at a time. After we’d agreed on a public session, there came the business of the names.” He gave a little laugh. “Oh, the names. You have no idea how many names there are. Of course I never belonged to that political party, and so it was obvious right along that I could never be the sort of witness who qualifies for Stool Of The Year. Still they knew ways to use me. I had several conferences with two detectives Crane uses for his investigations. They looked like All-American guard and tackle posing for a photograph. They knew so much more about me than I knew about them. I never realized how many papers a man could put his name to in ten years. Who asked me, they wanted to know, to sign the petition against the exploitation of child labor in the salt mines of Alabama? That sort of thing. A hundred, two hundred, four hundred signatures. I could just as well have been on a couch coughing up my childhood. A little word at this cocktail party with that dangerous political operator—some fool of a writer, mind you, who liked to think of himself as a liberal with muscles—he had given me a paper to sign.” Eitel felt his bald spot as though to learn how many hairs he had lost in the process. “I found it confusing for a while. There were certain people they wanted me to accuse, and there were others, particularly a couple of movie stars I know at Supreme and Magnum whom they were absolutely disinterested in. When I began to understand what sort of arrangement existed between the Committee and the studios we began to make progress. You see they had a list of fifty people prepared for me. Seven of those people I could swear I never met in my life but it seems I’m wrong. There were so many big parties after all, and my two football players knew all about them. ‘You were both in the same room on such and such a night at so-and-so’s party,’ they would let me know, and eventually I would produce the sort of political conversation that one might have had. Toward the end, they got friendly. One of them took the trouble to tell me he liked a picture I had made, and we even made a bet on a fight. Finally, it seemed to me as if I liked my detectives just as much as some of the people whose names I’m going to give. For that matter, half the names on my list have repulsive personalities.” Eitel smiled wearily. “The interrogation took two days. Then Crane was back and I went to see him. He was very pleased, but it seems there were still more things to be asked of me. I hadn’t done enough.”

“Not enough?” I said.

“There were still a few acres to be picked. Crane called my lawyer in, and they took the trouble to tell me that I ought to have a statement to release to the newspapers after I testified. Crane had written it for me. Of course I was free to use different wording, but he had thought, he said, to show me the sort of thing which was probably best. Later my lawyer gave another suggestion. Everybody seemed to think it would be practical to take out a paid advertisement in the trade papers to explain how proud I was to have testified, and how I hoped that others in my position would do their duty in the same way. Do you care to see the statement I’m giving to the newspapers next week?”

“I’d like to see it,” I said.

I glanced over a few lines:

“It goes about par for the course,” I said.

Eitel was off on other subjects. “You ought to know,” he remarked, “that Crane keeps his word. While I was in his office he called up people at different studios, and said a word or two for me. It was the one part of the process I found surprising. My mind’s too subtle. I didn’t expect he would pick up the phone in front of me.”

“What about your script?” I asked. I had a headache.

“That’s the funny part, Sergius. You know when I started to feel ashamed? It was at the idea of double-crossing Collie Munshin. I felt I ought to see him first, and I told Collie that I intended to sell the script as my own. He didn’t even get angry. I think he was expecting it. Collie just said he was glad I would be back, and he talked me into staying with him. Do you know, I realized that he does care about me, and I was very touched by that. We worked out a new contract. Collie and I will split evenly if he’s able to talk Teppis into letting me direct the film. Tomorrow, when I get in, everything will be settled. All I have to do is approve the galley-sheet on my advertisement.”

“Yes, but how do you feel?” I asked suddenly, not able to listen to him any more.

The ironic disciplined expression on his face gave way for an instant to something vulnerable behind it.

“How do I feel?” Eitel asked. “Oh, nothing so extraordinary, Sergius. You see, after a while, I knew they had me on my knees, and that if I wasn’t ready to take an overdose of sleeping pills, I would have to let myself slide through the experience, and not try to resist it. So for the first time in my life I had the sensation of being a complete and total whore in the world, and I accepted every blow, every kick, and every gratuitous kindness with the inner gratitude that it could have been a good deal worse. And now I just feel tired, and if the truth be told, pleased with myself, because believe me, Sergius, it was dirty work.” He lit a cigarette and held it away from his mouth. “In the end that’s the only kind of self-respect you have. To be able to say to yourself that you’re disgusting.” He put his cigarette in his mouth and took it out again. “By the way,” he murmured, and he looked a bit apologetic, “I’ve been thinking that it was a trifle presumptuous for me to tell you to turn down that offer from Supreme.”

“I’m not sorry,” I said not altogether truthfully.

“Are you sure?” He rotated his glass in his fingers. “Sergius, I’ve been entertaining the idea of inviting you to be my assistant.”

Suddenly I was angry. “Did they put you up to it?” I asked. “Are they still thinking of making my movie?”

He was hurt. “You go too far, Sergius.”

“Maybe I do,” I said. “But what if I hadn’t come over tonight? Would you have thought of making your offer then?”

“No,” Eitel said, “I have to admit I didn’t think of it until this minute. But that shouldn’t matter so much. You can’t keep polishing knives and forks all your life.”

There was a minute when I was tempted again. But there came into my mind the thought of seeing Lulu at the studio and how she would say hello to me as Eitel’s assistant. So I folded his offer into that mental file we carry with us of those jobs we have turned away, and I said, “Forget it,” to him, and looked at my watch.

As I got up to go, I said abruptly, “Do you want me to keep an eye on Elena?”

There was something forlorn about Eitel in the middle of his packing cases. “Elena?” he asked, “well, I don’t know. Suppose you do what you want to do.”

“Have you heard from her?”

He seemed about to say no, and then nodded. “I got a letter from her. A long letter. It was forwarded to me while I was in the city.”

“Are you going to answer her?”

“No, I just wouldn’t know how to do that,” he said.

Eitel came to the door to say good-bye. As I was walking down the drive he called to wait, and came out his door. “I’ll mail you her letter,” he said. “I don’t want to keep it, and I don’t want to tear it up.”

“Should I write to you after I read it?”

This, too, he considered. “I don’t think so,” he said carefully. “You see, I get the feeling that if I allowed myself, I would miss her very much.”

“Well, good-bye.”

For a moment he gave his charming smile. “Please forgive me, Sergius, for that offer as my assistant.”

“I guess you meant it well,” I said.

He nodded. He was about to say something, he changed his mind, and then just as I was ready to turn away, he mentioned it after all. “You know, I don’t want to worry you,” he said, “but those detectives asked a lot of questions about you.”

Deep in me, I suppose I was not as surprised as I should have been. “Well,” I said, and my voice was small, “what did you tell them?”

“I told them nothing. That is, I gave them a few details of your life, I thought it would sound suspicious not to, but I think I succeeded in convincing them that there was no need to bother you.”

“Only you’re not sure,” I said.

“No,” Eitel admitted, “they may come around to pay you a visit.”

“Well, thanks for telling me,” I said coldly.

Then he looked me directly in the eyes for the first time, and in a low voice, he said simply, “Sergius, why are you so hard on me? I’ve always been as honest with you as I could.”

I nodded. There was a moment when my voice thickened just a little, and I had to hurry over my words. I could not help it, I still cared about Eitel, and so I lied just a little and said, “I’m sorry, maybe you were a little too honest for me today.” His eyes brightened for an instant, and then despite myself, not knowing if I were cruel or if it was more important to be honest, I had to try to hurt him again. “I suppose,” I said, “that it wasn’t fair to build you up into more than you are.”

He was ready for that, however. “Yes,” he said, “you’re old enough now to do without heroes,” and he touched me on the shoulder and turned back to his house.

I did not receive the letter until the end of the week. In the meantime I had the opportunity to hear enough about Eitel; each night in my furnished room I would read some item about his fortunes. For the week after he testified the gossip columnists wrote about him as if he were the hero of a sermon, and when that had worn itself down I saw only a few more items. There was an announcement by Supreme Pictures that they had bought an original screenplay entitled Saints and Lovers, written by Charles Francis Eitel and Carlyle Munshin, to be directed by Eitel and produced by Munshin. If anyone had curiosity to wonder how Munshin could have collaborated with Eitel, it was explained in most of the gossip columns that Munshin and Teppis had convinced Eitel of his duty to testify before the Committee. It was the sort of story which could not be probed too carefully, but for that matter it never was, and Eitel slipped out of the news for a while. He was busy casting his picture I would see by a line in the papers every now and again.

Long before this he sent me Elena’s letter, and I read it through, stumbling through page after page of her handwriting. She wrote with blots and smudges, crossing out words, writing uphill and downhill, adding notes and parentheses and arrows in the margin, and her letter seemed a distance from the conversation I had with Eitel in his living room.