Ten Days in the Hills

by Jane Smiley

  “We get up early every morning. Paul keeps a strict sched—”

  “Oh, the liver and stuff. Did you guys eat that yet?”

  “Paul did.”

  “That’s so nasty! My idea of a good breakfast is a liter of Diet Coke and a big bowl of Froot Loops.”

  “I won’t tell your mom.”

  “She knows, but she doesn’t accept.” He hiked up the waist of his jeans and said, “All I can find is multigrain bread and four kinds of hummus. And this French butter. That looks okay. But I can see that my stash got thrown away since I left only a week ago.”

  “Your stash?”

  “Well, the aforementioned Froot Loops, plus some nice Milano cookies, the orange-chocolate kind, my Cadbury caramel eggs, the sour-cream-and-onion original Lays potato chips, the Sour Patch Kids, and that Ghirardelli dark chocolate that I use for medicinal purposes. I kept the pork rinds in my room, but I finished those in the middle of the night. I see I am going to have to go out.”

  She put her hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear, and he looked at her and said, “Bacon?”

  She nodded.

  “You buying?”

  She nodded again. “Yes!” he exclaimed. He put the excessively nutritious items back in the refrigerator. Zoe said, “You’re going right now?”

  “I think Gelson’s is open.”

  “Let me get some money.”

  He followed her out onto the deck and then down the steps. The early-morning sunshine lit up the potted citrus trees, and Simon happily stuck his nose in amongst the fragrant, star-shaped white flowers. “Wow,” he said, sniffing excitedly upward, the way you would if you were taking a drug. Zoe laughed. Simon had a frisky way about him and a ready smile. While she powered straight down the forty-eight steps, he seemed to bounce around her, looking at this, glancing at that. It energized her after her interval with Charlie. She took a few deep breaths herself, just to take in his energy.

  He said, “I love this garden. Last summer, I worked on the grounds crew at school, and we maintained the horticulture garden. I might do that this summer, but I’m supposed to graduate.” She said, “When do you start filming?”

  “You mean, when do I start my new career? We have to go over and set up the scene today. They got some sort of big room in West Hollywood, and they even found some old bar from this secondhand restaurant-supply house. We get to have the place for two days, so after breakfast I’m supposed to go over there and help set up the tables and all that stuff. We have to take it down and get everything back to the restaurant-supply house by Friday morning.”

  “How many actors did they get?”

  “Well, five girls and six guys, I guess. Two girls at the tables, two parading around, and one behind the bar. She doesn’t wear a fur coat, though. She has a breast costume.”

  “What does that look like?”

  “Well, there was some discussion about that, and I guess they decided that it would be most offensive if the bartender were a black girl and she had about ten pendulous breasts coming out all over her, so I don’t know who’s making that, but I guess they found some clothing-design and fabric-arts majors. They’re using the kind of material they use in wetsuits—what is that?”

  “Neoprene?”

  “Yeah, black neoprene with bright-pink nipples everywhere! Don’t you think that’s cool?”

  “Sure,” she said, “I do. But offensive, of course.” And maybe she did. It was easy to agree with someone like Simon.

  He took a deep, satisfied breath. “That’s the point!”

  At the bottom of the steps, the Japanese garden was still in shadow, and at the far end, Zoe could see Paul between the lily pond and the cypress trees. He was in the “standing separate-leg stretch” pose—his feet were wide apart and he was bent double at the hips, with his hands around his heels, his elbows bent, and the top of his head nearly touching the mat he had laid out. Zoe looked at her watch. He would be about half an hour in at this point. She touched Simon on the elbow and turned him toward the door of her room. Simon said, “Look at that! Wow! You know, I bet he can suck his own dick. We should put that in the movie!”

  Zoe laughed in spite of herself.

  “No! We should! Every college kid in America would like to suck his own dick.”

  “I don’t think Paul puts his yoga practice to that sort of use. Anyway, come back in ten minutes. He does this one where he squats down over the ball of his right foot and puts his left calf up over his right thigh. Then he balances there, with his back perfectly straight and his hands in prayer position in front of his breastbone. You want abs, that position gets you abs. He stays in that position for a pretty long time, too, sometimes left, sometimes right, but he’s not quite as strong on the left as the right.” Her handbag was right by the door. She handed him a fifty-dollar bill. “Besides bacon,” she said, “we are going to be needing those Popsicles that are made with frozen fruit. Paul will eat those. Get the pineapple, the mango, the red grapefruit, or the banana. Paul likes those.”

  “This is a lot of money for bacon and Popsicles.”

  “Just spend it all. Cookies. I liked your menu ideas. Think of yourself as a guerrilla insurgent, smuggling contraband sugar into the compound.”

  As they were running back up the steps, she could see Paul flow into that Eagle Pose. Supposedly there was nothing better for loosening all your joints. Simon ran up the steps ahead of her, distancing her by twenty years every ten steps. Though it was discouraging in a way, he did have that twenty-year-old-boy natural grace that she hadn’t dared to appreciate when she herself was twenty. Rarely had she had a relationship with a man less than ten—or was it twelve?—years older than she was. But now that she was forty-three, she could appreciate whatever she wanted to, and she appreciated Simon.

  By the time she got to the deck (huffing and puffing a bit, she had to admit), Simon had disappeared inside the house, and she could see through the sliders that others were up, too—Delphine, Elena, Cassie. Charlie was still in his corner—as she opened the slider and entered, he threw her a smile—and Simon was running out the front door, with Elena shouting, “What are you going to get? Get some—”

  But the door slammed.

  “Some what?” asked Delphine.

  “Some soy milk,” said Elena.

  “We’ll shop for that on our way home,” said Cassie. “We need to make a list.”

  Elena glanced at Charlie, who was still reading the paper, then she pursed her lips. Maybe, thought Zoe, things weren’t going to be as peaceful as at the monastery after all.

  Now Stoney appeared from downstairs, and he was dressed to go to the office. Zoe liked Stoney and was sorry that he was just coasting now. Dorothy was in despair over Stoney, and she and Zoe talked about him once in a while, but neither of them, or any of Dorothy’s other friends, could think what to do about him. In Hollywood, thirty-eight was a very dangerous age. Wherever you worked, unless on the technical side (where experience equaled reliability), at thirty-eight you had to prove that you could go on to the next stage. Zoe had proved it well enough by working her ass off that year—three movies, a CD of old punk-rock songs done in a blues style. She’d had a rumored romance with Russell Crowe, who had been her costar in High Pressure, but only to boost the picture. Probably her most important career move that year was getting on the cover of People magazine in a split picture with Russell. He was wearing a cowboy hat and standing by a horse, and she was wearing a black gown with a low-cut back, going into The Ivy, and the cover headline read, “Off Again.” She had also ostentatiously worn a ring, which was ostentatiously missing from her finger when she went to that party at The Ivy with Gabriel Byrne. Jerry Whipple had spent his thirty-eighth year consolidating his control of the agency and packaging Eddie Murphy. But Stoney was spending his thirty-eighth year grieving without even really knowing it, according to Delphine and Cassie. That happened when a death was so big to you that it became the centerpiece of your philosophical syste
m.

  Now Max came in from the deck. He was carrying a book. He paused in the doorway and looked around the room, then said, “Hey. How about everybody sit down, have another cup of coffee, and I will pitch you a movie. Okay, Stoney?”

  Stoney nodded.

  Cassie said, “Us, too?”

  “Absolutely. I just thought of this, out by the pool, reading the book. Okay? You, too, Chaz. You’re the control group. Sit down.”

  “What does the control group do?”

  “The control group keeps saying, ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’”

  “I can do that,” said Charlie. Zoe saw him glance at her, but when they gathered around the table, pulled out the chairs, and sat down, Zoe sat next to Cassie, around the corner from Elena, across from Max. Stoney sat between Max and Delphine. Charlie sat at the foot of the table. Elena said, “Oh, I wish Simon were here!”

  Max opened his book and set it on the table, adjusting his head so he could see the print. He ran his finger down the page for a second, then began to read aloud. “‘In the evening, a great change came over the steppe. All its many-hued expanse caught the sun’s last flaming reflection, and darkened gradually, so that the dusk could be seen closing over it, painting it dark green. The vapors thickened: every flower, every herb breathed forth its scent, and the whole steppe was redolent. The freshest and most enchanting of breezes barely stirred the surface of the grass, gentle as sea waves, and softly touched the cheek. The music that had filled the day died away and gave place to another—’”

  “That would be birds rather than balalaikas,” said Cassie.

  “Shh!” said Delphine.

  Max smiled, then went on: “‘The speckled gophers crept out of their holes, sat on their hind legs, and made the steppe resound with their whistle. The chirp of grasshoppers grew louder. A swan’s cry was wafted, ringing silvery in the air, from some secluded lake.’”

  “Is this some kind of National Geographic thing?” said Charlie. “‘Asia’s Vast Hinterlands’ or something like that?”

  “It’s a movie of this book.” Max lifted the book, but Zoe couldn’t tell what the book was, because the cover had been concealed in a wrapper, probably by Max, who wouldn’t want them to form any preconceptions. “Imagine that steppe that I was just reading about. On it is an encampment, more like a town or a tent village, with a ramshackle, temporary air. Horses, men in beards and boots, wagons, people running around. Lots of weapons—swords and daggers, axes, pikes. No guns. A man, a Cossack, has brought his two sons to the encampment for training as warriors.”

  Max turned a few pages. “‘A messenger comes galloping into the encampment with news from far away, and the news is bad. He says, “Such times are upon us that not even our holy churches are our own!”

  “‘“How not our own?” shouts someone.

  “‘“They have been leased to the Jews! If the Jew is not paid in advance, there can be no service…and if the damned dog of a Jew does not put his mark on our holy Easter-bread with his unclean hands, it cannot be consecrated!”’”

  Isabel said, “They call that the ‘blood-libel.’”

  Zoe glanced around the table. She was a little surprised that Max would be reading something so anti-Semitic, but Max was mysterious. Way more mysterious than Paul, actually. Max went on, “The next guy says, ‘He lies, gentlemen brothers!’”

  Isabel smiled a bit, in apparent relief, but then Max read, “‘It cannot be that an unclean Jew puts his mark on the holy Easter-bread! Jewesses are already making themselves petticoats out of our priests’ vestments. And our chief now lies roasted in a copper pot in Warsaw! The heads and hands of our colonels are being carted from fair to fair for everyone to see!’”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” said Charlie.

  “You’ve got to be kidding that you’re interested in this,” said Cassie.

  “Who are these people again?” said Zoe at last.

  “Russians,” said Max, “Cossacks. It’s a remake of Taras Bulba.”

  “Nineteen sixty-two,” said Stoney. “It had Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis. They were huge then.”

  “I remember it,” said Cassie, “but I never saw it. It seems like they put Tony Curtis in everything in those days. What was his name, Bernie Schwartz, and he looked exactly like what he was, which was a nice Jewish boy, and here you saw him in Spartacus and this movie and in some movie about an American Indian. And The Vikings! Bernie Schwartz as a Viking! And then he was that Italian guy in that circus movie. I’m surprised they didn’t put him in Camelot.”

  There was a period of silence. Then Max said, “Anyway”—he looked back at the book—“Taras is a Cossack. His sons are named Ostap and Andrei. The time is the 1560s. Wars and skirmishes are constant all over the steppe. The Cossacks are stirred up. They go lay siege to a Polish town. Andrei, let’s say he’s the Brad Pitt character, fights in his first battle, and afterward now, here he is, walking around, looking at the other Cossacks, who are sleeping off their drunken revels.” Max lowered his voice to a mellifluous rumble and read, “‘He could not sleep and gazed at the sky. The air was pure and limpid, the thicket of the stars forming the Milky Way and girding the heavens was flooded with light. A strange human face seemed to flit before his eyes. Thinking it to be an illusion of sleep, which would at once vanish, he opened his eyes wider and saw that a withered, emaciated face was actually bent over him, its eyes looking into his.’” Max turned a page, skipping down a bit, then he said, “This is an old woman, an envoy from a beautiful princess inside the besieged city—”

  “Probably about forty,” said Cassie. “Zoe can play her.” Everyone laughed.

  Max went on, “Her message is, ‘Go, tell the knight to come to me if he remembers me, and if he does not, let him give you a piece of bread for my old mother, for I would not see my mother die before my eyes. Beseech him, cling to his knees. He, too, has an old mother. He must give me bread for her sake!’ So Andrei, the younger son, remember, steals some bread from the Cossacks’ chow wagon and follows the old woman into the town through an underground passageway.”

  “What attitude are we supposed to be taking toward all of this?” said Elena.

  Max shrugged, but he smiled affectionately at her.

  “It’s a galaxy far, far away,” said Cassie. “I think we’re supposed to see it like that.”

  Max cleared his throat. “Everyone is starving. ‘Looking about him, Andrei saw two or three people lying motionless on the ground. He strained his eyes to see whether they were asleep or dead.’ Then he starts stumbling over corpses. One is a woman. ‘By her side lay a child, whose hand clutched convulsively at her lank breast…’”

  “You should show the breast,” said Cassie.

  “‘…and finding no milk there, twisted it with its fingers in vain anger. There was no longer crying or screaming, only the gentle heaving of its stomach showed that it had not yet drawn its last breath.’”

  “That’s like what people saw when Saddam gassed the Kurds,” said Charlie.

  Max went on: “The girl lives in a beautiful Italian-style villa. Remember, Andrei is just a nomad from the steppe. He’s seen big houses from a distance, but never been inside one. And he sees the girl. ‘Her uplifted eyes shone with matured feeling—feeling in all its fullness. The tears were not yet dry in them, and filmed down with a lustrous moisture that struck straight to his soul. Her bosom, neck, and shoulders had reached their full-developed beauty; her hair, which had formerly waved in light curls around her face, had now become a thick, luxurious mass, part of which was braided and pinned to her head, while the rest fell over her bosom in loose and lovely curls and reached to her fingertips.’ She eats the bread. He stays with her, abandoning his father, the Cossacks, his religion, for love of her.”

  “It’s very romantic,” said Zoe. “I can see it. CinemaScope, as they say.”

  Everyone sighed.

  Cassie said, “Of course, bad things happen in the second act.”

&nb
sp; “Yes. Because Andrei betrays them, the Cossacks are driven off. When Taras rallies them and they return to the fight, many are killed. In addition to that, since Andrei has betrayed the Cossacks, Taras is required to kill him, which he does. And it’s the Jews who tell him all about it. Ostap, the other son, is taken prisoner by the Poles. They lasso him and truss him up and drag him away.”

  “That’s a good visual,” said Stoney.

  “Is this relevant to modern American society?” said Charlie. “Maybe you could set it in corporate America somehow.”

  “You could set it in Hollywood, but people hate movies that are set in Hollywood,” said Cassie.

  “We liked Sunset Boulevard and A Star Is Born,” said Delphine.

  “But do people like this kind of thing?” said Elena. “It seems like The Ten Commandments to me. Very 1955.”

  “Nineteen sixty-two,” said Stoney, reminding them.

  “I always wondered why they made those movies,” said Cassie. “Remember Lawrence of Arabia? Delphine and I watched it a couple of months ago. It was like watching paint dry, it was so slow. We had to turn it off, because the music was tremendously loud and I just couldn’t stand the idea of this blond English guy schlepping through the desert without any sunblock. Anyway, maybe Taras Bulba was a vanity project for Yul Brynner, to repay him for being a spy.”

  “Lawrence of Arabia wore robes,” said Delphine. “But it was awfully slow.”

  “His face was exposed,” said Cassie. “It was like watching people drive their children around without car seats. Or worse, because you knew they were in the real desert. You know, Yul Brynner spoke not only Russian but also all the major Chinese dialects. After the war and all through the fifties, it was Yul Brynner who told the Pentagon what was really going on in both Russia and China. I can’t remember who told me that. I heard it at a party.”

  “Be that as it may, historically, Taras Bulba was a very interesting movie,” inserted Max. “It was written by Waldo Salt. It was his first project after he was blacklisted in 1950 because he wouldn’t testify before HUAC. He was one of the greatest screenwriters ever.”