Evening in Byzantium

by Irwin Shaw

  “Get him out into the open air quick,” Craig whispered to Gail. “Anne and I have to stop and say hello to Sonia Murphy.”

  But when they came to the Murphy table, even though Gail kept tugging at Wadleigh’s sleeve to get him to move, he planted himself behind Murphy’s chair as Sonia greeted Craig and Anne and Klein introduced Miss Dullin, who said, with a lilting French accent, that she had long wanted to meet Monsieur Craig. While Sonia Murphy was telling Anne how happy she was to see her again after all these years and to make sure to come over and use their cabana at the Hotel du Cap any time, Wadleigh, rocking gently back and forth on the balls of his feet behind Murphy’s chair, began to hum loudly, “Hail to the Chief.”

  Klein, diplomatically, pretended to be amused. “I didn’t know you were so musical, Ian,” he said.

  “Among my many talents,” Wadleigh said. “Mr. Murphy is going to book me into La Scala next season, isn’t he, Mr. Murphy?”

  Murphy ignored him. “Give me a ring in the morning, Jess,” he said, and turned back to his dinner.

  “Come on, Ian,” Craig said.

  But Wadleigh refused to budge. “Mr. Murphy is a great little old booker, isn’t he, Mr. Murphy? All you have to do is have a number-one best seller for a year and a picture that has just grossed forty million dollars and Mr. Murphy is almost a sure thing to get you a job writing a Lassie picture or a television commercial for aspirin. Don’t you wish you were as successful a flesh-peddler as Mr. Murphy, Mr. Klein?”

  “Indeed I do, Ian,” Klein said soothingly. “And you can call me Walter.”

  “Cut it out, Ian,” Craig said sharply. Wadleigh was talking loudly, and the people at the surrounding tables had all stopped eating and were watching him.

  “I’ll give you a hint, Mr. Klein,” Wadleigh went on, still rocking gently and dangerously back and forth behind Murphy’s chair. “I’ll tell you the secret of Mr. Murphy’s great success. You, too, can be rich and famous and invite girls to your cabana any time. It’s not whom you represent that counts, it’s whom you drop. You have to learn how to drop the deadwood, Mr. Klein, and drop them fast, before anyone else even knows they’re droppable. One bad review and you drop. You’ll never get as expert at it as Mr. Murphy, Mr. Klein, because he’s got it in his blood, he’s the genius of the age for dropping, he lets nothing stand in the way of his craft, not friendship or loyalty or talent, he’s like the war-horse in the Bible, he sniffs failure from afar. The telephone rings, and he’s not in. See, that’s the secret. When the telephone rings and you know it’s me, you’re not in. The fact that you made thousands and thousands of dollars on me doesn’t make any difference. You’re not in, see. Remember that simple rule, Mr. Klein, and you’ll go far, very far. Won’t he, Mr. Murphy?”

  “Take him away, Jesse,” Murphy said.

  “Come on, Ian.” Craig tried to lead Wadleigh away. “Everybody gets the point.”

  But Wadleigh pushed away his hand. “I can’t get to talk to Mr. Murphy on the telephone,” he said, “so I talk to him in restaurants. I like to talk to Mr. Murphy about his profession—about all the jobs he could have suggested me for that he didn’t suggest me for …”

  Finally, Murphy turned around. “Don’t make me laugh, Wadleigh,” he said calmly. “With the way you’ve been going for the last ten years, I couldn’t sell you for dog meat.”

  Wadleigh stopped rocking. His lips twitched. The entire restaurant was silent. Sonia Murphy was sitting with her head bowed, staring down at her plate. Lucienne Dullin was smiling slightly, as though she were being amused. The chances were that she couldn’t follow Wadleigh’s drunken English and probably thought it was a friendly, if rather boisterous, conversation. Klein was playing with his glass, not looking at anybody. Anne was the only one who moved. With a gasp, she bolted out the door. Wadleigh took a step as though to follow her, then suddenly turned and hit Murphy. The blow was aimed at Murphy’s head but slid off and landed on Murphy’s shoulder. Murphy didn’t move as Craig threw his arms around Wadleigh and pinned his arms.

  “Get that bum out of here, Jesse,” Murphy said, “before I kill him.”

  “I’m going home,” Wadleigh said thickly. Cautiously, Craig released him. Wadleigh walked stiffly out the door.

  “I’ll get a taxi,” Gail said, “and take him to his hotel.” She hurried after Wadleigh.

  “I do like your friends,” Murphy said to Craig.

  “He’s drunk,” Craig said inanely.

  “So I gathered,” Murphy said.

  “I’m sorry for everything,” Craig said to the others.

  “It’s not your fault,” Sonia said. “It’s just too bad. He used to be such a nice man.”

  The noise in the restaurant was rising to its normal pitch as Craig went out into the street.

  WADLEIGH was on the quay puking into the harbor. Gail was standing near him, ready to grab him if he started to teeter toward the black water. Anne was a few yards away from Gail, making a point of not looking at Wadleigh. Drunk as he was, Wadleigh, Craig was sure, was not vomiting because of the wine he had downed.

  Watching Wadleigh bent over the harbor edge, his shoulders heaving convulsively, Craig felt his anger cool. He put his arm around Anne to comfort her. He felt her shiver minutely. “I’m sorry, Anne,” he said, “to have let you in for something like that. I think that’s the last dinner we’ll have with Mr. Wadleigh for some time.”

  “The poor, poor, desperate man,” Anne said. “Everybody is so hard on him.”

  “He asks for it,” Craig said.

  “I know,” she said. “But even so.”

  Wadleigh stood straight, turned around, dabbing with a handkerchief at his mouth. He tried to smile. “There goes a hundred-franc meal,” he said. “Well, it’s been a nice party. Worth every penny of it. All right, Jesse, say what’s on your mind.”

  “Nothing’s on my mind,” Craig said.

  Gail hailed a taxi that was making a U turn in front of the restaurant. “I’ll take you to your hotel, Ian,” she said gently.

  Docilely, Wadleigh allowed himself to be led to the taxi. The door closed behind him, and Gail and the taxi spurted off. No hints, no signals.

  “Well,” Craig said, “that’s that.”

  Then Anne began to cry, hard, wracking sobs. “There, there,” he said helplessly. “Just try to forget it. He’ll probably forget the whole thing by morning.”

  “He won’t forget it,” Anne said between sobs. “Not for his whole life. How can people be so ugly to each other?”

  “They manage it,” Craig said dryly. He didn’t want to show too much sympathy for fear of further tears. “Don’t take it so hard, darling. Wadleigh’s survived a lot worse things than tonight.”

  “You never imagine a man would behave like that,” Anne said wonderingly as the sobs subsided. “A man like that who can write so beautifully, who seems so sure of himself in his books …”

  “A book is one thing,” Craig said. “The man who writes it is another. More often than not a book is a disguise, not a description.”

  “When the telephone rings, and you know it’s me, you’re not in,” Anne said. The tears had stopped, and she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand like a little forlorn girl. “What a terrible thing to know about yourself. I hate the movie business, Daddy,” she said fiercely. “I just hate it.”

  Craig dropped his arm from her shoulders. “It’s no different from any other business,” he said. “It’s just a little more concentrated.”

  “Can’t anybody do anything for him? Mr. Murphy? You?”

  Craig was surprised into laughing. “After tonight …” he began.

  “Because of tonight,” Anne insisted. “On the beach today he told me what good friends you’d been, what great times you’d had together, how marvelous he thought you were …”

  “That was a long time ago,” Craig said. “The good times we had together. People wear away from each other. As for his thinking how marvelous I am—that comes a
s news to me. If you want to know the truth, I’m afraid it’s something of an inaccurate statement about your father.”

  “Don’t you run yourself down, too,” Anne said. “Why should it only be people like Mr. Murphy who are sure of themselves?”

  “Okay,” he said. He took her elbow, and they started to walk slowly along the quay. “If there’s anything I can do for him, I’ll try to do it.”

  “You drink too much, too, you know,” Anne said, walking beside him.

  “I suppose I do,” he said.

  “Why do people over thirty try so deliberately to ruin themselves?”

  “Because they’re over thirty.”

  “Don’t make jokes,” she said sharply.

  “If you don’t have the answer to a question, Anne,” he said, “you’re liable to make a joke.”

  “Well, then, don’t make them in front of me,” she said.

  They walked in silence, her rebuke between them. “God,” she said, “I thought I was going to have such a wonderful time here. The Mediterranean, this great city, all these famous, talented people … Being with you.” She shook her head sadly. “I guess you shouldn’t expect anything in advance.”

  “It’s only one night, Anne,” he said. “It’s bound to get better.”

  “You’re leaving tomorrow,” she said. “You didn’t tell me.

  “It came up suddenly,” he said.

  “Can I come with you?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “I won’t ask why,” she said.

  “It’s only for a day or two,” he said uncomfortably.

  They walked in silence, listening to the lapping of the harbor water against the boats tied up along the quay.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice,” Anne said, “to get on one of these boats and just sail off?”

  “What have you got to run away from?”

  “Plenty,” she said quietly.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “When you come back,” she said.

  Women, at all ages, he thought, have the knack of making you feel you are deserting them even when you are only going down to the corner for ten minutes for a pack of cigarettes. “Anne,” he said, “I have an idea. While I’m gone, why don’t you move over to Cap d’Antibes? The swimming’s better, and you can use the Murphys’ cabana and …”

  “I don’t need any chaperone,” Anne said harshly.

  “I wasn’t thinking of chaperones,” Craig said, although he realized now that she had used the word that was exactly what had been at the back of his mind. “It was just that I thought you’d enjoy it more there, you’d have someone to talk to …”

  “I’ll find somebody to talk to right here,” she said. “Anyway, I want to see a lot of movies. It’s funny, I love to see movies. I just hate what it does to the people who make them.”

  A car with two women in it came up alongside the quai and slowed down. The woman nearest them smiled invitingly. Craig ignored her, and the car moved off.

  “They’re prostitutes,” Anne said, “aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the temples of ancient Greece,” Anne said, “they prostituted themselves to strangers before the altars.”

  “The altars have changed since then,” Craig said. Don’t walk alone at night, Gail had told Anne when they had met on the steps of the hotel. Don’t walk with your father, either, she should have added. Even whores, he thought angrily, should observe some rules.

  “Have you ever gone with one of them?” Anne asked.

  “No,” he lied.

  “If I were a man,” Anne said, “I think I’d be tempted to try.”

  “Why?”

  “Just once, to see what it was like,” she said. Craig remembered a book he had read when he was young, Jurgen, by James Branch Cabell. He had read it because it was supposed to be dirty. The hero kept saying, “My name is Jurgen, and I will taste any drink once.” Poor Cabell, who had been sure of his fame (“Tell the rabble/My name is Cabell,” he had announced from what he had considered his enduring and disdainful eminence), poor Cabell, dead, discounted, forgotten even before his death, might now find consolation in the fact that a whole generation so many years later was living by his hero’s disastrous slogan, was tasting any drink once, trying any drug once, any political position, any man or woman, once.

  “Maybe,” Anne said with a gesture of her head for the disappearing red lights of the whores’ car, “maybe it would help define things.”

  “What things?”

  “Love, maybe.”

  “Do you think that needs definition?”

  “Of course,” Anne said. “Don’t you?”

  “Not really.”

  “You’re lucky,” she said. “If you really believe that. Do you think they’re having an affair?”

  “Who?” Craig asked, although he knew whom she meant.

  “Gail and Ian Wadleigh.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The way they behave together. As though there’s something between them.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  Actually, he thought, I refuse to think so.

  “She’s a cool girl, isn’t she, Gail?” Anne said.

  “I don’t know what people mean by cool anymore,” he said.

  “She goes her own way,” Anne said, “she doesn’t depend on anyone. And she’s beautiful, and she doesn’t make anything of it. Of course, I only met her today, and I may be way off base, but she gives you the feeling that she makes people live up to the way she wants them to be.”

  “Do you think she wanted Wadleigh to end up the night puking his guts out because he behaved like a fool?”

  “Probably,” Anne said. “Indirectly. She cares for him, and she wanted him to see for himself what a dead end he’d reached.”

  “I think you’re giving her more credit than she deserves,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Anne admitted. “Still, I wish I could be like her. Cool, above things, knowing what she wants. And getting it. And getting it on her own terms.” She paused for a moment. “Are you having an affair with her?”

  “No,” he said. “Why would you think so?”

  “I just asked,” Anne said offhandedly. She shivered a little. “It’s getting cold, I’d like to go back to the hotel and go to bed. I’ve had a long day.”

  But when they got back to the hotel, she decided it was too early to go to bed and came up to his apartment with him for a nightcap. She also wanted to get a copy of his script, she said.

  If Gail knocked on the door while Anne was there, Craig thought ironically as he poured the whiskies and soda, they could have a nice little family get-together. He could start the evening off on the right foot by saying, “Gail, Anne has some interesting questions she’d like to ask you.” Gail would probably answer them, too. In detail.

  Anne was staring at the title page of the script when he brought her her drink. “Who’s Malcolm Harte?” she asked.

  “A man I knew during the war,” Craig said. “He’s dead.”

  “I thought you said you wrote the script yourself.”

  “I did.” He was sorry that he had been so careless on the trip back from the airport and had told her he had done the writing himself. Now he would be forced to explain.

  “Then what’s another man’s name doing on it?”

  “I guess you could call it my nom de plume,” he said.

  “What do you need a nom de plume for?”

  “Business reasons,” he said.

  She made a face. “Are you ashamed of it?” She tapped the script.

  “I don’t know. Yet,” he said.

  “I don’t like it,” she said. “There’s something shady about it.”

  “I think you’re being a little too fine.” He was embarrassed by the turn the conversation had taken. “It’s in an old and honorable tradition. After all, a pretty good writer by the name of Samuel Clemens signed his b
ooks Mark Twain.” He saw by the set of her lips that this had not convinced her. “I’ll tell you the truth,” he said. “It comes from uncertainty. Put it more bluntly. From fear. I’ve never written anything before, and I haven’t the faintest notion of how good or bad it is. Until I get some opinions on it, I feel safer hiding behind another man’s name. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  “I can understand it,” she said. “But it still strikes me as wrong.”

  “Let me be a judge of what’s right and what’s wrong, Anne,” he said with a firmness he didn’t feel. At this stage of his life he was not prepared to live up to the dictates of his twenty-year-old daughter’s stainless-steel conscience.

  “Okay,” Anne said, hurt, “if you don’t want me to say what I think, I’ll shut up.” She put the script down on the desk.

  “Anne, darling,” he said gently, “of course I want you to say what you think. And I want to say what I think. Fair enough?”

  She smiled. “You think I’m a brat, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I guess I am,” she said. She kissed his cheek. “Sometimes.” She raised her glass. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” he said.

  She took a long swallow of her whisky. “Mmmm,” she said appreciatively. He remembered watching her drink her milk before bedtime when she was a little girl. She looked around at the large room. “Isn’t this awfully expensive?”

  “Awfully,” he said.

  “Mummy says you’re going to wind up a pauper.”

  “Mummy is probably right.”

  “She says you’re wildly extravagant.”

  “She should know,” he said.

  “She keeps asking me if I take drugs.” Anne was obviously waiting for him to ask the same question.

  “I take it for granted, from all I see and hear,” he said, “that every student in every college in America has smoked pot at one time or another. I imagine that includes you.”

  “I imagine it does,” Anne said.

  “I also imagine that you’re too smart to fool around with anything else. And that takes care of that,” he said. “And now let’s call a moratorium on Mummy, shall we?”