by George Baxt
“It’s your own?”
“My very own. Just these few bars. I have no idea how it will develop, if it will develop. This may be all there is.”
“Well, I think it’s exquisite. Oh, dear. Here’s your daughter frowning in our direction.”
There was a slight trace of a smile on Wagner’s lips. “Rosie is very much her mother’s child. Her mother was always frowning. She frowned when I asked her to marry me. She frowned on our wedding night. She frowned when Rosie was born, and she died with a frown on her face last winter.”
“I’m so sorry to hear she’s dead.”
“I’m not. She was an absolute bore. I only miss her frowns. Rosie’s frowns aren’t as inventive as my wife’s frowns were. My wife had a frown for every occasion, and no two frowns were alike. Rosie’s frowns are lazy frowns. Rosie disapproves of me. She is only seventeen years of age…”
“Really? I thought she was much older.”
“That’s because she is so dough-faced and pudgy and her hair is so stringy and brown. Rosie disapproved of me from birth. Her birth, not my birth.”
“Is she an only child?”
“Gott, yes. After Rosie, all further procreation was discouraged. When I was away in the war and I heard Munich was bombed, I had this wonderful fantasy that my wife and Rosie had disappeared. No such luck. I came home, every house on the street was in devastating ruins. But not ours. There it stood, with my wife and Rosie in the doorway, frowning.” Alma laughed. “Shall I tell you why Rosie is frowning now? I don’t even have to turn and look at her. I can tell you what she is doing. She is holding her pad and pencil trying to look less unimportant; she doesn’t like being a script girl’s assistant. Rosie does not like unimportance. So she doesn’t like me. I am unimportant. I play atmosphere music for actresses who could use a lot of atmosphere, instead of being a world-famous musician and composer. Rosie once said to me when she was still a child and I couldn’t find a job, ‘Better your hands should have been blown off in the war than to waste your talent as a lowly pianist.’”
“How awful!” Alma hoped Rosie couldn’t overhear her father.
“Oh, she’s very awful. Just this morning she was crossing the street ahead of me and she didn’t see a truck bearing down on her. For the first time in weeks, I smiled. Then some damn fool shouted at her and she leapt out of the truck’s path and now she stands behind me frowning. She’s also a virgin.”
Rosie joined them. “Must you keep repeating this melody over and over again, Father?”
“It’s such a lovely melody,” remonstrated Alma.
“You do not find it boring that he repeats it over and over again?” Rosie stared at Alma as though she had just arrived from outer space.
“Not at all. I’ve memorized it.” She la-la-la’d along with Wagner, who was immensely pleased, not noticing the strange expression on Rosie’s face. It was no longer a frown; it looked more like a suspicion.
“Alma!” Hitchcock sounded annoyed.
“My master’s voice,” said Alma, and left them to join Hitch, who seemed to be in the midst of a problem with the camera operator.
“Miss Reville is very pretty.” Coming from Rosie’s mouth, the statement sounded like a death sentence.
“Very,” agreed her father, now having switched to a Viennese waltz.
“You fancy her?”
“She’s not so fancy. She’s quite down to earth.”
“You know what I mean. You would like to sleep with her.”
His hands crashed down on the keyboard. Heads turned, and he quickly resumed playing the waltz. “Go away, Rosie. I see enough of you at home”
They were joined by Anna Grieban, the script girl.
“Rosie, I have some changes for Miss Valli.” She held out a sheet of paper to the girl. “Would you please give them to her?” Rosie took the paper and began reading it. Anna said to Wagner, “What was that lovely melody you were playing a few minutes ago? It’s enchanting.” Smiling, Wagner returned to his original composition. Frowning, Rosie went in search of Virginia Valli.
“Rosie doesn’t like this melody,” Wagner told Anna.
“There isn’t very much that Rosie seems to like.” She began to hum along with Wagner. “How lovely. How really lovely. “
“Miss Reville likes it too. She memorized it.”
“Has she really.”
“Yes.”
La-la-la-la… la-la-la…
Fifteen minutes later, Hitchcock was ready for his first setup. The camera was placed exactly where he wanted it, and Virginia Valli and Carmelita Geraghty were summoned to the set. Though neither was a major film star, both had enviable reputations for beauty and acting ability, Virginia Valli being especially gifted. In their chorus-girl costumes, they were provocatively sexy. They greeted everyone with a warm friendliness, and Hitchcock was grateful the ladies were liked by the crew and the other members of the acting company. Hitchcock embraced both women and then began to explain the action. He led them onto The Pleasure Garden stage where, with the choreographer, he began to line them up and illustrate where the camera would follow the simple dance routine devised for them.
As Hitch dealt with his principals and the chorus line, the assistant director gave instructions to the extras and supporting players at the tables portraying music-hall patrons. Many were smoking, and the air was growing heavy with cigar and cigarette smoke. Alma began to wonder if their meager film budget could cover the cost of a gas mask. She asked one of the assistants if it was possible to find an electric fan, and as he went off in search of one, she heard Rosie Wagner say to her, “You think my father has talent for composing melodies?”
“He does. And you shouldn’t be so pessimistic about him. He’s a very nice and a very gifted man.”
“You think this, yes?”
“I think this, yes.”
“That is why you memorize his melody?”
“Is there something wrong with wanting to learn it by heart?” She hummed it. “I wish it had words.”
“Perhaps it has words.” They heard Anna Grieban shouting for Rosie, who, before leaving Alma, favored her with an enigmatic expression.
What a strange, unattractive, po-faced little creature she is, thought Alma. Then her face lit up. Rudolf Wagner was playing his composition again. Alma turned toward the trio and saw Hitch’s MacGuffin half concealed behind a scenery flat just past where the trio was situated. She hurried to Hitchcock.
“Hitch, he’s here on the stage.”
Hitch was not in the mood to be interrupted. “Not now, Alma. This is a very difficult shot.…” He added under his breath, “… considering that none of these ladies knows the first thing about chorus dancing.”
“Your MacGuffin is here.”
Hitch turned to her. “That face? Here? Where?”
She pointed past the trio. “Over there, just behind…” He wasn’t there. “He’s gone.”
“Yes, dear. Of course, dear.” He returned to the problem of filming the movie.
“I saw him,” said Alma to no one in particular, and would remember the chill that suddenly overtook her in the smoke-filled and overheated stage.
Two
In her sadly furnished bedroom in Frau Schumann’s guest house, Alma sat at the dressing table staring at her image in the mirror. The face was attractive, but it was also pale and troubled. Her mind was as overcast as the skies had been all day, and she did not like this feeling of uneasiness that had enveloped her like a dark shroud at the studio that morning and continued to worry her. She could not stop thinking about the man with the strange face, the mutual hatred of Rudolf Wagner and his odd daughter, Rosie, or the lovely melody Wagner had presumably composed that morning and kept playing and playing throughout the day. She was now humming it under her breath and wished she could stop, but it had captured and possessed her.
“Alma!” Hitchcock was banging on their communal wall. “We’ll be late!”
“Almost ready!” shouted Al
ma as she hastily rouged her lips lightly and then dusted her face with powder. She heard him leave his bedroom and lock the door. He tapped lightly on her door. When she told him it was open, he came in, shut the door, and leaned against it with his arms folded. La-la-la-la… la-la-la…
“Oh, for God’s sake, Alma, have done with it! That tune’s becoming as boring as ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas!”
“I fell in love with it this morning, but falling out of love with it is twice as difficult.” She was examining the contents of her handbag. “It is pretty, though, isn’t it? He should be composing film scores and operettas, don’t you think?”
“I think we’re going to be late for dinner with the Langs if you don’t stop ferreting about in that handbag. “
She snapped the bag shut, stood up. “Ready.”
“What’s troubling you?”
“Oh, dear, is it all that obvious?”
“You’re whistling between your teeth. That always sets me on edge. That means Miss Alma Reville is on edge. Did something happen today to upset the balance of your usually admirable equanimity?”
“Oh, stop being so pompous!” She sat down again. He sat on her bed, which was uncomfortable and lumpy. “My uneasiness is absolutely unexplainable, but it’s there and I’m not quite sure how to cope with it. Maybe after a glass or two of wine…”
“You’ll still be uneasy, and in addition tipsy, and then ill. Was it the man with the face? The fact that he wasn’t there when you insisted he was there?”
“Oh, he was there all right. I don’t hallucinate. Half hidden behind a piece of scenery, staring at Rudolf Wagner at the piano repeating that lovely melody. Tin sure he noticed me trying to draw your attention to him and did his flit.”
Hitchcock shrugged. “Well, so what? It isn’t as though we’re in the midst of some spy melodrama, you know.”
“Then there’s Wagner’s daughter, Rosie. She said something very strange to me.”
“Rosie is a very strange child.”
“Her father detests her.”
“Full marks for Wagner. She’s perfectly detestable. She looks like an unbaked pudding.”
Alma told him about her conversation with Wagner, his detestation of both wife and daughter. “And then later, when Rosie heard me humming Wagner’s melody, she challenged me.”
“To a duel?”
“Can we skip the asides, Hitch, and let me get on with it?” He looked as though he was about to fall asleep, which he wished he could do instead of going out to dinner with Fritz Lang, the director, and his wife, Thea von Harbou, a talented scriptwriter. He heard Alma say, “Rosie asked me if I thought the melody was all that good, and I said of course I did and it was too bad it didn’t have words. And then she said the strangest thing. She said, ‘Perhaps it has words.’ Then she gave me a very strange look and then Anna Grieban called her away and—oh, the hell with it—let’s not keep the Langs waiting.” She was standing and stealing one last look at herself in the mirror. Hitchcock was at the door holding it open.
“And all this is what’s been disturbing you?” She motioned him to precede her out the room so she could lock the door.
“It isn’t so much disturbing as nagging, you know what I mean?”
He took her arm and led her to the staircase. “Of course I do.”
A wicked smile appeared. “Somewhere in all that there lies a MacGuffin.”
“Oh, Hitch, for crying out loud, you and your bloody MacGuffins!”
Anybody who was anybody in films and theater in Munich frequented the Altes Hackerhaus on Sendlinger Strasse, one of the oldest restaurants in the city. Hitchcock loved it for its generous servings of its heavy German cuisine. Alma liked it because the string quartet had a large repertoire of American and British popular songs. The Langs were already sitting at the table when Hitchcock and Alma arrived.
“Sorry we’re late,” said Alma, as the maitre d’ assisted her onto her chair. “It’s been one of those days.” Hitchcock ordered a bottle of wine and felt Thea von Harbou’s penetrating eyes.
Hitch looked at Thea, “Yes?”
“Something about you puzzles me, Alfred.” She was jamming a cigarette into a holder, and Lang held a match which he was poised to strike the moment his wife was ready to light up. Alma studied Thea’s almost attractive face and waited for the verbal shells to explode. She didn’t like the woman and hadn’t liked her from the moment they had met a few weeks earlier at a studio cocktail party to welcome the visiting company. At the party she and Hitchcock had been subjected to von Harbou’s perorations on the political and economic future of Germany, which she believed lay in the hands of the burgeoning National Socialist party under the leadership of someone named Adolf Hitler. Alma hadn’t liked the sound of any of it then and hoped they weren’t in for more of the same at dinner.
“What puzzles you?” asked Hitchcock with his perennially benign expression.
“Your lack of political commitment.” Alma groaned inwardly. Lang heard it and smiled as he struck the match to ignite his wife’s cigarette.
“Oh, but I am politically committed.”
“Ah so?” With her head cocked, von Harbou looked more like an inquisitive sparrow rather than a menacing vulture.
“Oh, yes. In England, I always vote for the monarchy.” The wine steward arrived and held the bottle under Hitchcock’s face for his approval. Hitchcock studied the label while von Harbou blew a smoke ring and composed herself. Hitchcock approved the wine, which the steward proceeded to uncork and decant.
“You are pulling my leg,” announced von Harbou in a voice that belonged at the Munich Station announcing train departures.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, certainly not in your husband’s presence.”
“My wife,” said Lang, “is an incredibly good scriptwriter, but somehow I believe she has missed her true calling.” His wife was staring with narrowed eyes at her husband. “She belongs astride a white horse bearing a huge shield and a dangerous spear, the true Wagnerian heroine, bellowing her Yo-ho-te-os across the countryside to awaken it to a future of…
“Enough!” Von Harbou’s hand banged the table, and Hitchcock’s wine slopped over the edge of the glass. Alma didn’t miss his pained expression and contemplated fainting, but thought better of it when her rumbling stomach reminded her she was hungry.
“Why enough?” asked Lang as he placed a monocle in his right eye. “We are gathered here tonight as fellow artists, not as pamphleteers for a presumptuous little popinjay who thinks Germany would once again prosper if it was rid of its Jews.”
“What a lovely wine,” trilled Alma. “So dry and so natural!”
“I did not know you are a connoisseur,” commented Lang.
“She isn’t,” said Hitchcock with a wicked glint in his eye, “but she’s a past master at diverting troublesome conversations.”
Von Harbou held her hands up like a traffic policeman. “All right! All right! No politics! So tell me, my dears, what shall I give Fritz for his birthday?”
“His freedom,” suggested Hitchcock. Lang exploded with laughter. Von Harbou glared at Hitchcock, and Alma waited for a devastating reply, but none was forthcoming. Instead, von Harbou turned to Alma, putting her hand on Alma’s hand.
“So tell me my dear, how do you like Munich?”
“Oh, it’s quite lovely.”
“Have you seen the sights? Have you visited our wonderful gardens and St. Peter’s Church?”
“Well,” said Alma weakly, “we’ve been so busy with the film.”
“Were on a very tight budget,” said Hitchcock. “There’s not a moment to spare.”
“That’s one thing we film directors can understand,” said Lang, as he lit a small, narrow black cigar, “tight budgets. But now, on my latest film, Metropolis, I can be very expansive…”
“And very expensive/’ interjected his wife.
“That’s how you wrote it, my darling.” He explained to the others. “Metropolis is about t
he future, a very dark, very grim, very foreboding future where machines and robots rule the world and men and women are enslaved in underground warrens.…”
“Good God!” exclaimed Alma. “Are there any laughs?”
“Oh, no! Not in Thea’s future! There is no laughter in Thea’s future!” And Lang roared with laughter while Alma thought, and no laughs in Thea’s present either.
“I’m terrible hungry,” Hitchcock announced, “and I would like to see a menu. Isn’t anybody else hungry?”
Lang signaled the waiter for menus, and five minutes later, choices had been designated and the waiter bowed himself away to the kitchen. Lang was waving at a familiar face across the room.
“Isn’t that Conrad Veidt?” asked Hitchcock. “He’s such a good actor.”
“Connie is quite wonderful,” agreed Lang. “He’s leaving us for Hollywood.”
“Doesn’t everybody,” grumbled von Harbou.
Lang ignored her. “He’s been captured by Papa Laemmle at Universal Pictures. He takes with him his new wife, Lily.”
“She’s very pretty,” said Alma.
“She’s a Jew,” said von Harbou.
“She’s a very clever woman,” said Lang, glaring at his wife. “Connie found her in a tearoom where she was the hostess.”
“I find her terribly manipulative,” said von Harbou in a voice studded with nettles. “She has taken over Connie’s life completely. “
“For the better, I should say,” added Lang. “At least he no longer puts on lipstick and rouge and frequents decadent homosexual bars. Lily has changed all that.”
Hitchcock stirred. “I assume she accomplished that with her Lily Veidt hands.” Alma nudged him gently under the table with her leg.
“My, my, my,” said Lang with mock amusement, “just about everybody seems to be here tonight and it’s only Thursday. There’s Hans Albers with Lil Dagover. Perhaps you remember her from The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.”
