Prater Violet Read online

  First of all, I dreamed that I was in a courtroom. This, I knew, was a political trial. Some communists were being sentenced to death. The State Prosecutor was a hard-faced, middle-aged, blonde woman, with her hair twisted into a knot on the back of her head. She stood up, gripping one of the accused men by his coat collar, and marched him down the room toward the judge’s desk. As they advanced, she drew a revolver and shot the communist in the back. His knees sagged and his chin fell forward; but she dragged him on, until they faced the judge, and she cried, in a loud voice, “Look! Here is the traitor!”

  A girl was sitting beside me, among the spectators. In some way, I was aware that she was a hospital nurse by profession. As the prosecutor held up the dying man, she rose and ran out of the courtroom in tears. I followed her, down passages and flights of steps, into a cellar, where there were central-heating pipes. The cellar was fitted with bunks, like a barracks. The girl lay down on one of them, sobbing. And then several youths came in. I knew that they belonged to the Hitler Jugend; but, instead of uniforms, they wore bits of bear-skin, with belts, helmets and swords, shoddy and theatrical-looking, such as supers might wear in a performance of “The Ring.” Their partly naked bodies were covered with acne and skin rash, and they seemed tired and dispirited. They climbed into their bunks, without taking the least notice of the girl or of me.

  Then I was walking up a steep, very narrow street. A Jew came running down toward me, with his wrists thrust into his overcoat pockets. I knew that this was because his hands had been shot off. He had to hide his injuries. If anybody saw them, he would be recognized and lynched.

  At the top of the street, I found an old lady, dressed in a kind of uniform, French “horizon blue.” She was sniveling and cursing to herself. It was she who had shot off the Jew’s hands. She wanted to shoot him again; but her ammunition (which was, I noticed with surprise, only for a .22 rifle) lay scattered on the ground. She couldn’t collect it, because she was blind.

  Then I went into the British Embassy, where I was welcomed by a cheerful, fatuous, drawling young man, like Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster. He pointed out to me that the walls of the entrance hall were covered with post-impressionist and cubist paintings. “The Ambassador likes them,” he explained. “I mean to say, a bit of contrast, what?”

  Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to tell this dream to Bergmann. I wasn’t in the mood for one of his elaborate and perhaps disagreeably personal interpretations. Also, I had a curious suspicion that he had put the whole thing, telepathically, into my head.

  * * *

  ALL THESE MONTHS, there hadn’t been a single word from Chatsworth.

  His silence was magnificent. It seemed to express the most generous kind of confidence. He was giving us an absolutely free hand. Or perhaps he was so busy that he had forgotten about us altogether.

  I think he must have written Prater Violet on the first leaf of his 1934 calendar. For January had barely begun before we started to get telephone calls from the studio. How was the script coming along?

  Bergmann went down to Imperial Bulldog to see him, and came back in a state of considerable self-satisfaction. He gave me to understand that he had been exceedingly diplomatic. Chatsworth’s stock rose. He was no longer a vulgarian, but a man of culture and insight. “He appreciates,” said Bergmann, “how a director needs time to follow his ideas quietly and lovingly.” Bergmann had told the story, no doubt with a most lavish display of gesture and intonation, and Chatsworth had seemed very pleased.

  However, this didn’t alter the fact that our script was still a torso, or, at best, a living body with mechanical limbs. The final sequence, the whole episode of Toni’s revenge on Rudolf with its happy ending, was still wishfully vague. Neither of us really liked the idea of her masquerade, in a blonde wig, as the famous opera singer. Not all Bergmann’s histrionics, no amount of Freudian analysis or Marxian dialectic could make it anything but very silly.

  And perhaps Chatsworth hadn’t been so impressed, after all. Because now we started to have visits from Ashmeade. His approach was extremely tactful. It opened with what appeared to be a purely social call. “I happened to be passing,” he told us, “so I thought I’d look in. Are you and Isherwood still on speaking terms?”

  But Bergmann wasn’t deceived. “The Secret Police are on our footprints,” he said gloomily. “So … Now it begins.”

  Two days later, Ashmeade returned. This time, he was more frankly inquisitive. He wanted to know all about the last sequence. Bergmann went into his act; he had never been better. Ashmeade looked politely dubious.

  Next morning, early, he was on the phone. “I’ve been thinking it over. I’ve just had an idea. Suppose Toni knew all the time that Rudolf was the Prince? I mean, right from the beginning.”

  “No, no, no!” cried Bergmann in despair. “Definitely not!”

  When their conversation was over, he was furious. “They have given me this fashionable cretin, this elegant dwarf to sit on my back! Have we not enough burdens already? Here we are, breaking our heads off fighting for Truth!”

  His anger, as always, subsided into philosophic doubt. He could never dismiss any suggestion, however fantastic, without hours of soul-searching. He groaned painfully. “Very well, let us see where this leads us. Wait. Wait. Let us see … How would it be if Toni…?”

  Another day was lost in speculation.

  Ashmeade was indefatigable. Either he telephoned, or he came to visit us, every day. He never minded being snubbed, and his ideas abounded. Bergmann began to entertain the blackest suspicions.

  “I see it all. This is a plot. It is a clear sabotage. This diplomatic Umbrella has his instructions. Chatsworth is playing with us. He has decided not to make the picture.”

  I was inclined to agree with him; and I couldn’t altogether blame Chatsworth, either. No doubt, Bergmann’s methods were leisurely. Perhaps they were conditioned by habits formed in the old silent days, when the director went into the studio and photographed everything within sight, finally revising his story in the cutting room by a process of selection and elimination. I was seriously afraid that Bergmann would soon reach a state of philosophic equilibrium, in which all possible solutions would seem equally attractive or unattractive, and that we should hang poised in potentiality, until the studio stopped sending us our checks.

  Then, one morning, the telephone rang. It was Chatsworth’s private secretary. (I recognized the voice which had introduced me to Prater Violet, on that last day of what I now looked back to as the pre-Bergmann period of my life.) Would we please both come to the studio as soon as possible, for a script conference?

  Bergmann was very grim as he heard the news.

  “So. Finally. Chatsworth assumes the black cap. This is the end. The criminals are dragged into court to hear the death sentence. Never mind. Good-bye, Dorothy, my darling. Come, my child. We shall march to the guillotine together.”

  * * *

  IN THOSE DAYS Imperial Bulldog was still down in Fulham. (They didn’t move out to the suburbs until the summer of 1935.) It was quite a long taxi ride. Bergmann’s spirits rose as we drove along.

  “You have never been inside a film studio before?”

  “Only once. Years ago.”

  “It will interest you, as a phenomenon. You see, the film studio of today is really the palace of the sixteenth century. There one sees what Shakespeare saw: the absolute power of the tyrant, the courtiers, the flatterers, the jesters, the cunningly ambitious intriguers. There are fantastically beautiful women, there are incompetent favorites. There are great men who are suddenly disgraced. There is the most insane extravagance, and unexpected parsimony over a few pence. There is enormous splendor, which is a sham; and also horrible squalor hidden behind the scenery. There are vast schemes, abandoned because of some caprice. There are secrets which everybody knows and no one speaks of. There are even two or three honest advisers. These are the court fools, who speak the deepest wisdom in puns, lest they should be taken s
eriously. They grimace, and tear their hair privately, and weep.”

  “You make it sound great fun.”

  “It is unspeakable,” said Bergmann, with relish. “But to us all this does not matter. We have honorably done our task. Now, like Socrates, we pay the penalty of those who tell the truth. We are thrown to the Bulldog to be devoured, and the Umbrella will weep a crocodile tear over our graves.”

  The outside of the studio was as uninteresting as any modern office building: a big frontage of concrete and glass. Bergmann strode up the steps to the swinging door with such impetus that I couldn’t follow him until it had stopped whirling around. He scowled, breathing ferociously, while the doorman took our names, and a clerk telephoned to announce our arrival. I caught his eye and grinned, but he wouldn’t smile back. He was obviously planning his final speech for the defense. I had no doubt that it would be a masterpiece.

  Chatsworth confronted us, as we entered, across a big desk. The first things I saw were the soles of his shoes and the smoke of his cigar. The shoes stood upright on their heels, elegantly brown and shiny, like a pair of ornaments, next to two bronze horses which were rubbing necks over an inkstand. Sitting apart from him, but still more or less behind the desk, were Ashmeade and a very fat man I didn’t know. Our chairs were ready for us, facing them, isolated in the middle of the room. It really looked like a tribunal. I drew nearer to Bergmann, defensively.

  “Hullo, you two!” Chatsworth greeted us, very genial. His head was tilted sideways, holding a telephone against his jaw, like a violin. “Be with you in a moment.” He spoke into the phone. “Sorry, Dave. Nothing doing. No. I’ve made up my mind.… Well, he may have told you that last week. I hadn’t seen it then. It stinks.… My dear fellow, I can’t help that. I didn’t know they’d do such a rotten job. It’s bloody awful.… Well, tell them anything you like.… I don’t care if their feelings are hurt. They damn well ought to be hurt.… No. Good-bye.”

  Ashmeade was smiling subtly. The fat man looked bored. Chatsworth took his feet off the desk. His big face came up into view.

  “I’ve got some bad news for you,” he told us.

  I glanced quickly across at Bergmann; but he was watching Chatsworth with the glare of a hypnotist.

  “We’ve just changed our schedule. You’ll have to start shooting in two weeks.”

  “Impossible!” Bergmann discharged the word like a gun.

  “Of course it’s impossible,” said Chatsworth, grinning. “We’re impossible people around here.… I don’t think you know Mr. Harris? He sat up all last night doing designs for your sets. I hope you’ll dislike them as much as I do.… Oh, another thing: we can’t get Rosemary Lee. She’s sailing for New York tomorrow. So I talked to Anita Hayden, and she’s interested. She’s a bitch, but she can sing. In a minute, I want you to come and listen to Pfeffer’s arrangement of the score. It’s as noisy as hell. I don’t mind it, though.… I’ve put Watts on to the lighting. He’s our best man. He knows how to catch the mood.”

  Bergmann grunted dubiously. I smiled. I liked Chatsworth that morning.

  “What about the script?” I asked.

  “Don’t you worry about that, my lad. Never let a script stand in our way, do we, Sandy? Matter of fact, I can lick that ending of yours. Thought about it this morning, while I was shaving. I have a great idea.”

  Chatsworth paused to relight his cigar.

  “I want you to stay with us,” he told me, “right through the picture. Just keep your ears and eyes open. Watch the details. Listen for the intonations. You can help a lot. Bergmann isn’t used to the language. Besides, there may be rewrites.… From now on, I’m giving you two an office here in the building, so I’ll have my eye on you. If you want anything, just call me. You’ll get all the co-operation you need.… Well, I think that takes care of everything. Come along, Doctor. Sandy, will you show Isherwood his new dungeon?”

  * * *

  THUS, as the result of ten minutes’ conversation, the whole rhythm of our lives was abruptly changed. For Bergmann, of course, this was nothing new. But I felt dazed. It was as though two hermits had been transported from their cave in the mountains into the middle of a modern railway station. There was no privacy any more. The process of wasting time, which hitherto had been orientally calm and philosophical, now became guilty and apprehensive.

  Our “dungeon” was a tiny room on the third floor, forlornly bare, with nothing in it but a desk, three chairs and a telephone. The telephone had a very loud bell. When it rang, we both jumped. The window commanded a view of sooty roofs and the gray winter sky. Outside, along the passage, people went back and forth, making what seemed a deliberately unnecessary amount of noise. Often, their bodies bumped against the door; or it opened, and a head was thrust in. “Where’s Joe?” a stranger would ask, somewhat reproachfully. Or else he would say, “Oh, sorry…” and vanish without explanation. These interruptions made Bergmann desperate. “It is the third degree,” he would groan. “They torture us, and we have nothing to confess.”

  We were seldom together for long. The telephone, or a messenger, would summon Bergmann away to confer with Chatsworth, or the casting director, or Mr. Harris, and I would be left with an unfinished scene and his pessimistic advice “to try and think of something.” Usually, I didn’t even try. I stared out of the window, or gossiped with Dorothy. We had a tacit understanding that, if anybody looked in, we would immediately pretend to be working. Sometimes Dorothy herself left me. She had plenty of friends in the studio, and would slip away for a chat when the coast seemed clear.

  Nevertheless, under the pressure of this crisis, we advanced. Bergmann was reckless, now. He was ready to pass even the weakest of my suggestions with little more than a sigh. Also, I myself was getting bolder. My conscience no longer bothered me. The dyer’s hand was subdued. There were days when I could write page after page with magical facility. It was really quite easy. Toni joked. The Baron made a pun. Toni’s father clowned. Some inner inhibition had been removed. This was simply a job. I was doing it as well as I could.

  In the meanwhile, whenever I got a chance, I went exploring. Imperial Bulldog had what was probably the oldest studio site in London. It dated back to early silent days, when directors yelled through megaphones to make themselves heard above the carpenters’ hammering; and great flocks of dazed, deafened, limping, hungry extras were driven hither and thither by aggressive young assistant-directors, who barked at them like sheep dogs. At the time of the panic, when Sound first came to England and nobody’s job was safe, Bulldog had carried through a hasty and rather hysterical reconstruction program. The whole place was torn down and rebuilt at top speed, most of it as cheaply as possible. No one knew what was coming next: Taste, perhaps, or Smell, or Stereoscopy, or some device that climbed right down out of the screen and ran around in the audience. Nothing seemed impossible. And, in the interim, it was unwise to spend much money on equipment which might be obsolete within a year.

  The result of the rebuilding was a maze of crooked stairways, claustrophobic passages, abrupt dangerous ramps and Alice-in-Wonderland doors. Most of the smaller rooms were overcrowded, underventilated, separated only by plywood partitions and lit by naked bulbs hanging from wires. Everything was provisional, and liable to electrocute you, fall on your head, or come apart in your hand. “Our motto,” said Lawrence Dwight, “is: ‘If it breaks, it’s Bulldog.’”

  Lawrence was the head cutter on our picture: a short, muscular, angry-looking young man of about my own age, whose face wore a frown of permanent disgust. We had made friends, chiefly because he had read a story of mine in a magazine, and growled crossly that he liked it. He limped so slightly that I might never have noticed; but, after a few minutes’ conversation, he told me abruptly that he had an artificial leg. This he referred to as “my stump.” The amputation had followed a motor accident, in which his wife had been killed a month after their marriage.

  “We’d just had time to find out that we couldn’t stand eac
h other,” he told me, angrily watching my face to see if I would be shocked. “I was driving. I suppose I really wanted to murder her.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you imagine you’re doing here,” he said, a little later. “Selling your soul, I suppose? All you writers have such a bloody romantic attitude. You think you’re too good for the movies. Don’t you believe it. The movies are too good for you. We don’t need any romantic nineteenth-century whores. We need technicians. Thank God, I’m a cutter. I know my job. As a matter of fact, I’m damned good at it. I don’t treat film as if it were a bit of my intestine. It’s all Chatsworth’s fault. He’s a romantic, too. He will hire people like you. Thinks he’s Lorenzo the Magnificent … I bet you despise mathematics? Well, let me tell you something. The movies aren’t drama, they aren’t literature—they’re pure mathematics. Of course, you’ll never understand that, as long as you live.”

  Lawrence took great pleasure in pointing out to me the many inefficiencies of the studio. For instance, there was no proper storage room for scenery. Sets had to be broken up as soon as they had been used; the waste of materials was appalling. And then, Bulldog carried so many passengers. “We could do a much better job with two-thirds of our present staff. All these assistant directors, fussing about and falling over each other … They even have what they call dialogue directors. Can you imagine? Some poor stooge who sits around on his fat behind and says ‘Yes’ whenever anybody looks at him.”