A Simple Scale

by David Llewellyn

  “I know, but Mr Walsh is a very busy man.”

  “Oh, come on, Henderson. Everyone’s treating it like a b-picture, so what’s taking so long?”

  “From what I hear, Gold is busting the studio’s you-know-whats trying to get another half million, so it’s been delayed. But, listen. Conrad. I’ll call Janice, find out if Mr Walsh made a decision yet, and as soon as I know anything I’ll come a-knocking. How does that sound?”

  “Sure. Okay. I guess.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do? Ring him up and say, ‘Why haven’t you made up your gosh-darn mind yet?’ He’s a busy man, Conrad. A very busy man. Don’t tie yourself up in knots. Like I said, you’re the best name on the list. I can’t see him picking Jerome or any of the others.”

  “Others? I thought there were only three of us. Me, Jerome, Levine.”

  “And Steinman.”

  “You didn’t mention Steinman.”

  “I asked him after I asked you. Look, don’t sweat about it. Steinman was only half interested, and he’s chasing after some pirate movie right now.”

  “Okay. Well. Just keep me informed.”

  “I will. Was there anything else?”

  There is not, and so you leave the office. Angela is waiting for you in the corridor, eyebrows strained as if she’s been holding that expression the whole time you were in there.

  “Well?”

  “‘Mr Walsh is a very busy man’,” you tell her.

  “I thought the job was yours.”

  “Me too. Who takes three months to choose a composer for a boobs and bonnets picture?”

  “Boobs and bonnets. You just make that up?”

  “Well, that’s all those movies are. Take some highbrow book off the shelf, stick Jane Russell in a low-cut top, and if the MPAA complain, tell them it’s art. Boobs and bonnets.”

  You hear the click and clack of heels behind you, and a voice says, “Mr Conrad?”

  “Yes?”

  One of the girls from reception.

  “There’s a lady here to see you.”

  “Does she have a name?”

  “Wait. I wrote it down.” She flips through her notebook. “Bernard. Margaret Bernard.”

  Angie’s eyes almost pop out of their sockets. She knows you studied under Ron, even if she doesn’t know everything. She’ll have made the connection. Ronald Bernard’s wife, here at Capitol, asking to see you. She’s thinking this must be a good thing. You know it probably isn’t.

  Last time you saw her was Lawn Cemetery, East Hampton. Miles away from any place Ron considered home. It took you three hours to drive there, and another three to drive back.

  You follow the receptionist across the square to the place where visitors check in. Margaret Bernard is waiting for you in a low, black leather chair, her knees together and a handbag in her lap. Still remarkably handsome for a woman of fifty; she’s wearing a high-necked cream dress and has a lace-trimmed fascinator clipped or pinned into her auburn hair. As you enter the room she stands and holds out her hand, which you take, remembering the correct way to shake a lady’s hand. (Ron taught you that.) You ask what brings her to LA.

  “I’m visiting friends,” she says, her accent mid-Atlantic; Katherine Hepburn with an even higher register. “And my doctor recommended I spend a few days in the sun. This is your place of work?”

  You tell her it is.

  “And you write the scores?”

  “Some of them, yes.”

  “Ronald enjoyed the motion pictures. Never could stand them myself.” A pause. She’s waiting for you to jump in, tell her she’s wrong, but you say nothing. She goes on: “My car is waiting outside. Perhaps we might go somewhere for iced tea. That is if you have the time, of course.”

  It’s late afternoon. You spent much of today planning your trip to Henderson’s office, giving him hourly deadlines to tell you the job was yours. Extending the deadline each time he didn’t. If he knew you’d clocked off early, he’d probably bust a capillary, but fuck him.

  “Sure,” you say. “I have plenty of time.”

  There’s a white Packard waiting in the visitors’ parking lot near the DeMille building. A Negro driver in peaked cap and gloves stands beside it, holding open the door. You pass the journey across Hollywood in silence, and Margaret fills the limousine, not physically but with her presence and her perfume.

  She’s staying at the Chateau Marmont, and it’s the first time you’ve ever visited the hotel. You try not to look too impressed. Its high arches and vaulted ceilings are pitched somewhere between gothic and arabesque. Your footsteps echo crisply on the marble floors. From the saloon bar, you hear a pianist give a good account of Chopin’s Raindrop prelude.

  Margaret tells the receptionist you’ll be taking afternoon tea in the garden, and a member of staff leads you through to a secluded oasis of green. You sit beneath a parasol and Margaret orders iced tea for two without asking what you’d like, only speaking again as the waiter leaves with her order.

  “You’ve settled into the Los Angeles way of life?”

  She pronounces ‘Angeles’ with a hard ‘G’.

  “Very much so,” you tell her.

  “Different to New York, I imagine.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the Lower East Side in particular.”

  “Very.”

  “I hear you bought a house with the money Ronald left you.”

  “I did.”

  “Very sensible. Many young men would have squandered it in a month. Ronald would be pleased to know you spent it wisely.”

  Margaret seems content to let silences last. Silences are when the mask begins to slip. Yours, not hers. And which mask are you wearing today? Successful young composer? She would have seen through it the moment she entered the reception at Capitol. She could have guessed then the kind of shoebox office where they have you tucked away.

  “You must be wondering why I called on you in particular?” she asks. “Well. I suppose working out here you will have heard about that list which appeared in some god-awful magazine some months back.”

  “I heard something about it.”

  “So you know my husband’s name was on that list?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ridiculous, of course. How much harm do they think he can do now? That’s assuming, of course, he could have done any harm while he was alive.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I worry, Mr Conrad, that this nonsense will damage his reputation. I’m not talking about his reputation as a man, or as a ‘patriotic American’, whatever that’s supposed to mean. I’m talking about his music. Great music survives when it is played and listened to. I remember Ronald telling me – he must have been working on Jason and Medea at the time – but I remember him telling me how Aristotle makes no mention of Euripides, whose plays are still performed today, but he does talk about Agathon, whose entire body of work is now lost. Now what does this tell us? Well, first it tells us that perhaps Aristotle preferred Agathon to Euripides. But it also tells us that great works, revered works, can be forgotten and lost. The artists who slip into obscurity do so because people stop discussing them. Aristotle may have held a flame for Agathon, but the generations to follow felt differently. I wouldn’t want that to happen with Ronald.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I worry that in this ridiculous climate my husband’s work may become taboo; that mediocrities will take his place while he’s forgotten.”

  “I hardly think that’s likely.”

  “Tell that to poor Agathon. No. I don’t want that to happen with Ronald’s work. His work is all I have of him now.”

  She smiles insipidly.

  “It was all I had of him a long time before he died.”

  Where you grew up, a woman in Margaret’s shoes would have opened all the windows and cursed your name out loud for all to hear. She would have come to your apartment the minute she knew what was happening between you and her husband, and rung the buzzer, and screa
med and bawled till everyone was listening. She wouldn’t have stopped until the pair of you had been tarred and feathered. Margaret Bernard is not one of those women.

  “If people stop playing him,” you tell her, “they’ll just stop playing. If people want to stop listening, they’ll just stop. We can’t force them.”

  “Perhaps not. But we can remind them of what he achieved. A concert. His major works, performed in a single evening. Preferably in New York, though it could be repeated elsewhere. I was thinking perhaps Mill Neck, Giudecca. Perhaps the overture from Jason and Medea.”

  “All great pieces.”

  “And you to conduct.”

  “Me?” She has to be joking. This has to be a game.

  “Why not?”

  “Because there must be a hundred conductors who’d bite off an arm to conduct Ron’s… Ronald’s music. Koussevitzky. Bernstein. Leinsdorf.”

  “Bernstein? With all that thrashing about and perspiring? Oh, good grief, no. I wouldn’t ask him. And Koussevitzky has become very frail lately. Besides, if these others bit off their arms they wouldn’t be much use, now, would they? You knew my husband how long?”

  “Thirteen years.”

  “And is there a piece of music he wrote that you haven’t heard?”

  “I’ve heard everything. Read everything. Played most of it.”

  “You studied conducting under Stoessel, yes?”

  “I did.”

  “Then it’s settled. I would like you to conduct.”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because this is Hollywood. This is where I work. I can’t risk that. I wish I could, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  You’re out of there before the iced tea arrives. Back through the lobby and out onto Sunset. A vanishing point of billboards and palm trees. Down Sunset, down Fairfax and Santa Monica Boulevard.

  Why would she ask a thing like that? And why would you say no? All those times when people, Ron’s friends, hardly noticed you were there. They would have noticed you now. But you said no.

  You’re walking back to Capitol. You could have left the car there overnight, got a cab back to Laurel Canyon, but that was unthinkable, and so you’re walking, and you can feel the heat of the sidewalk through the soles of your shoes, and the city’s grid makes every street seem infinite.

  What made you say no?

  It could have been a trick. She must know what the climate is like here, what it would mean if you conducted a concert of her husband’s music. Blackballed, maybe fired. The whole thing could be a set-up, a test. But would she really go to such lengths for revenge? That’s the stuff of opera, not real life. And that isn’t why you said no. You said no because you can’t fail out here. Whatever it takes, you have to make this work.

  The Capitol car lot is almost empty by the time you get there; yours one of the few cars remaining. Without even thinking, you check its rear bumper. No white rag. That’s something, at least.

  You drive out onto Melrose and take a right, flicking down the visor to shield your eyes from the sun. Billboards and telephone wires and palm trees stretch on and on until they merge. Along the way you stop at a liquor store on North Fairfax. These places always make you feel like a hop-head, looking for a fix. The formal ritual of it. The brown paper bag. The sooner you can get out of this one the better, but there’s a queue. From a radio behind the counter, a news report. There’s been a train crash somewhere in Ohio. Multiple fatalities. The queue inches forward. You’re close enough to feel the breeze from a small desk fan next to the cash register. You ask for a bottle of Johnnie Walker, pay for it and leave.

  As you park up in your driveway there’s movement in one of Mary’s windows, the slightest twitch of a curtain. You haven’t seen her in weeks. You could always ring the doorbell, hop over the fence. Share the whisky and put the world to rights. It’s been a while since the agents in the Buick showed up. Why is she hiding away in there?

  Best leave her alone. Maybe she prefers it that way. And besides. If she’s still in trouble, Mary’s the last person you need to be talking to.

  **

  The needle touches down with a familiar crackle and you count the revolutions before it begins: The sudden strings, like an intake of breath; a heart frozen between beats. You’re in another place. The classroom at Juilliard. Ron telling you how the symphony, Shostakovich’s fifth, was meant to describe a journey from darkness to light, but even he had to admit that the brightness of its allegro was forced, too energetic to be taken on face value. And here, in its opening, there is simply too much raw sadness to be overcome by all that veneer-thin bombast.

  The doorbell rings and you almost spring out of your chair, spilling scotch onto the rug. You weren’t expecting anyone, so perhaps it’s Mary – she saw you, saw the bottle, thought she’d say ‘Hi’ – but the shape behind the reeded glass isn’t hers.

  Nick looks as if he hasn’t slept in a month; his hair a mess, dark bags beneath his eyes. Still young and arrogant enough for it to make him only more attractive.

  “Can I come in?”

  You reply with a question. “Are you alone?”

  Too easy to imagine him turning up with two or three friends, promising they’ll stay only a few nights, before nights turn into weeks and months. You’ve seen it before. Producers and casting agents with young men who turn up one night and don’t leave. The kind of boys who do little more than hang out by the pool, getting drunk or getting high.

  “Course I’m alone,” says Nick. “So can I come in?”

  In the lounge you offer him a drink, and he asks if you have bourbon.

  “I have scotch.”

  “Scotch’ll do just fine.”

  You pour the drinks and take him through to the lounge.

  “Are you okay?” you ask. “I just… I wasn’t expecting anyone. What happened?”

  “Got kicked out of the place where I was staying, had nowhere else to go, and…”

  He’s running out of breath. You tell him to sit. He takes a moment to settle and he continues.

  “So I was on Sunset, and I figured your place wasn’t too far. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” you say, hunching forward in the armchair, your glass held between both hands.

  “Say, what is this?” Nick asks, gesturing toward the record player with a nod.

  “Shostakovich.”

  “Shosta-who?”

  “Dmitry Shostakovich.”

  “Never heard of him. He sounds foreign. Or Polish or something.”

  “He’s Russian.”

  “Is he a Commie?”

  “I guess so.”

  “It sounds kinda sad.”

  “It’s meant to. Why did you come here?”

  “I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “But why here? Why me?”

  “If you want me to leave…”

  “No. It’s just… we hardly know one another. Don’t you have any friends?”

  “You lose friends quickly in this town,” says Nick. Then, with another tilt of his head: “Say, I kinda like this.”

  “I heard him play some of it, on the piano,” you tell him. “Last year. Madison Square Garden. Must have been fifteen, maybe twenty thousand people there.”

  “To hear one guy play a piano?”

  You both fall silent for a moment. The symphony has moved on to one of its passages of strained jollity; all timpani, snare drums and dizzying swagger. It doesn’t seem like the right kind of music for the moment, but to change the record would be too obvious. And what kind of music does a moment like this demand? Besides, it soon reaches the largo, the movement in which everything changes, its profound melancholy almost too much to bear. Everything here is so delicate, caught between the sweep and the chaos of the other movements.

  Nick stares into an upper corner of the room. His jaw trembles and his eyes glisten. He lowers his head with a
desperate laugh.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I guess I’m kinda tired.”

  Without acknowledging whatever it was that just passed between Nick and the music, you ask if he’s had any auditions lately.

  “Not one,” he says. “I thought it would be easy. So many studios, so many movies being made. But every busboy and bellboy wants to be in the movies.”

  “Everyone has rent to pay.”

  “Oh, I know that, but there are so many people like me. I got here thinking I’d be a movie star. But everyone looks like a star, and acts like a star. How does anyone stand out? How is anyone any different to anyone else?”

  “Sounds like you’re having an existential crisis.”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “Probably a good thing.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” You pause to take a mouthful of scotch. “You know, I saw you in Pershing Square a few months ago.”

  “Really?”

  “I hadn’t been there in a while. I was busy with work, and… I don’t know. Sometimes just going there, just gathering the strength to go there, makes me blue.”

  “How so?”

  “Do you ever stop and ask yourself what it is you’re looking for? When you’re in the square and you see another guy you like the look of. Do you ever think to yourself, ‘Why am I here?’”

  “Never.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Never. Why? You?”

  “Always. What am I doing here? What am I looking for? Is it love? Company? What?”

  “Maybe you just want a blow job.”

  You fall back into the chair, trying to put into words a thought, an idea that’s been hanging around your neck for weeks, maybe months, like a deadweight. The wretchedness and emptiness of mornings after, any morning of waking alone or with the prospect of saying goodbye to someone and never seeing them again. Or, worse still, of the liaisons that last minutes, not even hours. Pick-ups at the Richfield gas station. Dank restrooms. Shady parks.

  “It isn’t just that,” you tell him. “It can’t be just that. I hate it when people even talk that way.”

  “Why? It’s true, ain’t it?”

  “Well, if it’s true, it’s the saddest thing I ever heard.”