Every Night's a Bullfight

by John Gardner

  In the midst of her sorting and packing, Jennifer had come across her old Address and Telephone Number book, the edges of its leather binding beginning to wear and the gold lettering on the front looking patchy.

  The book, oblong, around eight by six inches, dated back to Jennifer’s pre-Douglas days: she smiled, flicking through the pages, memory grass-hoppering over days, months and years, gone like the last summer. Of its kind, the book was a biography, one of the few things which she retained from the time when she was a young sylph model girl: a patchwork of the threads which made up her life at that period and since. It also gave the lie to any idea that she was an organized person — a public image which she always tried to present, even to Douglas.

  The light blue frontpapers were alive with notes, drawings, jottings, names, all twisted about with swirling tendrils from which sprouted flowers, leaves or stick men. Names, long forgotten, grew from this unchecked vine which spread across two pages, as did dates and numbers to which she could now put no reason, name or face.

  The organized part of her life was most discernible in lists of numbers: thirty or so under A listing agencies, and, with a quirk of humour, a dozen photographers under F. Her brow creased as she came across a telephone number slashed on to the page in a brilliant purple. Jennifer could not recall ever possessing a purple pen. It amazed her also to see how often she had obliterated what must have been really important telephone numbers by elaborating them with stick men or neat twirled elongations.

  There were also the mindless mysteries: the name A Prothero, written neatly and with no note, certainly no memory, of who or what A Prothero was. She smiled also at her own small pomposities, such as listing people she liked under their christian names, while business numbers, and the people she had not cared for, were solidly planted under their surnames. In this there were special cases, those with whom, for one reason or another, she had become disenchanted, could be found listed twice, the first time under their christian name, then shifted into the surname category. There were whole pages like the front papers, with numbers barely discernible amidst the squirls and twirling flowers of doodles, while special males had particularly ornate decorations, sometimes incorporating advice to herself: Be intellectually aware or you will be physically undone. Do not drink champagne and brandy. Armour plating. Under the Ds there was Douglas’s old number and address, wreathed with strange bulbs and tubers, the meaning of which was only plain to her now, at a distance in time. It was the only number on the page, and next to his name Jennifer had written. Five Star de Luxe Glory. I shall marry this man. A. little lower down, in smaller, neater hand, 12th June 1968 Married him. Six Star.

  She rifled on through the pages, this time giving herself a tiny stab of pain: a number came spinning out of the past to set up aches around healed emotional scar tissue. The name did not matter, she saw his face more clearly than she had for a long time, and heard his voice: the man with whom she had been closely entangled when she first met Douglas: obsessed with him to the point of almost giving up her virginity. She shook her head, thinking, Christ, what horrible tortures and eruptions of pain we bring upon each other. She remembered how Douglas had wafted the beloved from her brain like a fresh wind blowing at mist; the sudden transference and the need for Douglas; the bright love for him giving her a hard ruthlessness which, in retrospect, she now even despised.

  Her mood changed, a natural continuation of her thoughts, which swiftly centred back on Douglas: amazing, in this day and age, and with her opportunities, her freedom, that she had gone to her bride bed a virgin. The thought pleased her, because she had been able to give something unique to Douglas, a romantic thought maybe, but it had worked, as a pair they were equally matched lovers, she always knew and had that thought: the one constant thing in their relationship was their coming together. There were patches, like the one at the moment, when it seemed as though retrogression had taken the place of progress and exploration; but that would pass and the wonderful natural voyage of discovery would take hold again. That was the wonder of being Douglas’s woman.

  She continued to flick through her book, past doctors, dentists, a couple of solicitors, girlfriends (not many of those, not for people like Jennifer Frost), car hire services, studio numbers, home catering services, plumbers, electricians (she could never mend fuses), handymen, boring people, happy people, sad and selfish people with their lives chock-a-block with what? Certainly not what she had with her, husband, father figure, joy, delight.

  As though on cue, she turned on the floor as Douglas came in, her mind barely taking in the fact that he looked flushed and would not hold her eyes in his. She closed her book tightly, making a gesture of partially hiding it under her body, it was so close and private a thing.

  ‘Hallo darling,’ she tried to sound winsome, the word actually came into her head, then she got lost trying to remember if it meant what she thought it meant. ‘I’m sorting things out.’ The forthright voice annexing the winsome.

  ‘So I see.’ Douglas could not help laughing; he knew too much about Jen’s sudden enthusiasms, her passions and quicksilver. Last night, when she had gone on about getting the flat organized, the truth had flared briefly and he remembered to make a quick silent prayer asking for the mood to last until she finished the job. The only thing about which Jennifer was consistently enthusiastic was her work, outside that, life was lived in sharp and radiant bursts which blossomed and faded like beautiful fireworks. Her intellect rose above it all, but Douglas always remembered Jennifer’s doting Mama showing him a school report which read, Jennifer’s passage through the fourth form has been paved with good intentions.

  Jennifer giggled, the sharing of their secret. ‘Well don’t you think I’m good? Look at the stuff I’ve cleared out already. Just look at it.’

  ‘Looks a good haul. What’re you hiding?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Lies.’

  ‘Only my old telephone book.’ Then quickly, ‘Harrods are picking up the things from here on Wednesday. Oh, and they’re putting the bed on as well. I bought it. Such a lovely bed, Doug.’

  ‘I remember. Ugly. Brass.’

  ‘With a very firm mattress my darling so that when all the plays are in performance and running smoothly you will be able to ride me on a soft, yet unyielding surface.’ He did not reply, so she added in a small voice, ‘or I can ride you on a soft, yet unyielding surface?’

  Silence.

  ‘All right, have it your own way.’

  They both laughed this time. Then she went solemn. ‘You really okay, love?’

  ‘Yes.’ Douglas nodded. ‘I’ve just dealt with one bit of casting that was looking dodgy. You want to come back to Shireston with me tonight?’

  ‘Have you got to go tonight?’

  ‘I really must get down to plotting first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Drive down early, hu?’

  Douglas capitulated.

  ‘By the way,’ Jen in bubbling mood again, ‘I telephoned your nice Mr. Brownhill today. If I let him have a list of the junk we want moved from the flat he’ll get it out by Wednesday lunchtime. Will you take a list down to him tomorrow?’

  ‘Anything you ask ma’am.’

  ‘I’ll make the flat super for you Doug. A real home; and I’ll be a real wife to you.’

  ‘You always have been, Jen.’

  She gave him a quick, pinched smile. ‘No. Not always, love. Me going away. It wasn’t good was it? I shouldn’t have gone.’

  ‘Jen, you...’

  ‘We’re together now.’ She saw that Douglas was not looking at her, and she did not even try to understand the way he held her when she arose and went to him. It was as though he was saying good-bye and hallo at the same time.

  With Jennifer seeing to the flat and very firm orders given to his executive staff, Douglas Silver was at last able to give some thought to the direction of the four plays.

  Tony Holt had provided models of the sets for Othello, The Merch
ant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet, but was still hung up on Richard III; this did not, however, hamper Douglas in his job. The first plays to go into rehearsal would be Othello and The Merchant on which he eagerly started.

  His method of preparation rarely varied; he would work quickly through the text of the play, simply getting the feel of how he wanted actors to move on the stage, making sharp notes of difficult points as he went. Douglas was a firm believer in the director as an audience, allowing the full development of the play to come from within the actors, but to do this, one had to provide them with a safe ground plan.

  Once he had plotted, Douglas would usually allow himself a little time to think about the play in its entirety, trying to find the keys to his own production, filling the skeleton ideas with flesh.

  He stared working alternately on Othello and The Merchant but after three days found himself strangely drawn and immersed in Othello. It was an odd sensation which he had not expected. He knew the play well enough and the plotting was quite easy, but one specific point began to weave into his mind. He always thought of the plot of Othello as a fairly straight road, a line drawn from the eloped marriage of Othello and Desdemona to their deaths, the road marked tragically by Iago and his complex plans to crack the Moor’s mind and fill it with mad jealousy. Certainly the characterization was difficult, but normally this was something which came when he was working with actors on stage. Yet at this point, Douglas was beginning to see the actors and the way in which they should naturally move. As he plotted, he could see Joe Thomas as the bewildered and passionate Othello; and he could see the tall, handsome Edward Crispin as Iago : the matador, as a lot of people thought of the character. Douglas thought of it now: Iago the matador running rings around Othello the bull; poisoning Othello’s mind with hot lies, corrupting him against the innocence of Desdemona; Iago with his vocal passes, his Veronicas, Quites, Naturals and Estatuarios, running Othello through a whole faena until they reached the estocada, the moment of truth.

  There, with the little model of Tony Holt’s settings and the coloured counters he always used for plotting, Douglas became most aware of the way in which he could make the play work as a kind of vocal and physical corrida, a bullfight. His sub-conscious must have been nagging away at the production ever since he had hooked Joe Thomas, for the visual flashes came upon him in heavy detail, like the quick and carefully edited scenes one sees in trailers for movies.

  He saw Crispin’s Iago, constantly wearing a short scarlet-lined cloak which he swung and used as the muleta, the cape with which the matador makes the passes, bringing the bullfighting analogy right into focus. He saw Jennifer, cool and radiating virtue as Desdemona, heard her speaking her plea before the Senate, asking to go to Cyprus with her lord Othello—

  So that, dear lords, if I be left behind,

  A moth of peace, and he go to the war,

  The rites for which I love him are bereft me,

  And I a heavy interim shall support

  By his dear absence. Let me go with him.

  In hearing her voice, the scene seemed to set itself, the coloured counters taking up the most natural and dramatic positions under Douglas’s fingers.

  Then he began to hear more. Not Shakespeare’s words but the noises which enshrined the central moods and action of the play, so that the focal points began to express themselves in sounds which might well counterpoint the poetry of the play: the sound of muttering, growing and spinning a web on intrigue; giggles, two voices, their conversation indiscernible; whispering, kissing; the soothe of flesh against flesh; the noise which might depict the festering jealous thoughts taking root in Othello’s mind — the scream of a high-pitched violin, or was it the scream of a man as he plunged down some gaping crevasse opened within his own brain? The chink of money; flesh on flesh; the murmurings again; then the wild roar of a crowd; the bray of trumpets, tin-like, not the clear brass of an Elizabethan fanfare; and once again the whispers, the sighs and moans, the fleshly noises.

  Douglas heard all this and knew how to knit his production, how to start the company, how to spin Joe Thomas, Edward Crispin and Jennifer and all the others, into that incredible dance which sparks immortal theatrical magic and produces moments which are burned into the memories of those who watch and listen.

  On the third day, Douglas telephoned Raymond Leggat, whom he had commissioned to provide the incidental music for the three productions, most conscious that he should, long since, have held a productions’ meeting. Leggat agreed to come down towards the end of the week, so Douglas notified Art Drays, Tony Holt and Ronnie Gregor. Knowing that time was short, Douglas forced himself to shift quickly on to The Merchant so that at least he would have some basic outline about which he could talk to his productions’ team.

  Once more, looking at Tony’s Venetian settings for The Merchant, which had the same roots as those used in the Venetian scenes of Othello, Douglas found that his imagination was already well primed.

  The Merchant of Venice was a brilliant romantic comedy to the Elizabethans, and maybe to other generations since, but what was it to audiences of today? That was Douglas’s first question and to him the answer was obvious. In spite of its inherent romantic themes and comedy, The Merchant stank of romantic decadence. The central plot, of Shylock and Antonio, the loan and the percentaged pound of flesh were motivated by greed and racial despisal; each of the three love affairs had about them an unpleasant quality — the ludicrous choice of a husband for Portia hanging on the right man choosing the right casket; Jessica and Lorenzo have one beautiful poetic orgy, apart from that their orgies are of a different nature, showing complete contempt for Jessica’s father, Shylock; while the coupling of Nerissa and Gratiano is purely comic. The trial is blatantly rigged, though dramatically brilliant. In short, Douglas felt, there was not a single character in the play whom one could respect: all were motivated by gain of one kind or another.

  The first key, for Douglas, was to ask Leggat for a straight score of almost rapacious link music, romantic melody gone wrong, debased. So by the time they gathered in his office for the first productions’ meeting, Douglas had managed to plot two-thirds of The Merchant and was able to give Leggat an indication of how much actual music was needed.

  ‘I want the production to speak of human corruption, even in its moments of high comedy, romance or drama,’ he told the composer, a short hunched bespectacled man who looked more fifty than his thirty-five years.

  Douglas’s voice boiled with enthusiasm. ‘We’ve got to drag the audience into the circle of the play as though it was against their will; and their laughter has to be made uneasy; they have to see man at his basic worst, hung up with greed and power and corruption and lust. You name it, this play’s got it. It has to appear brittle and witty on the surface, but we have to load it with contemporary suggestions: comment on contemporary values if you like.’

  They were sitting in Douglas’s office, the small model theatres which housed Tony’s settings for the plays ranged in a half-circle on the director’s desk. Leggat listened to Douglas, nodding from time to time, he had done enough composing for films and theatre to know what was required.

  Naturally, Art and Ronnie wanted a great deal more than this: they always needed to be passed technical information long before the director was ready. Douglas held them firmly at bay, telling them that, in this case, the production had to be developed in rehearsal. After all, they were dealing with a known quantity, Maurice Kapstein, who, whatever else, was a good old professional. The director then pointed out that he was more concerned, at this point, with Othello. Joe Thomas was a very different kind of pro’ and they had to be ready for him, if necessary even be prepared to catch him should he fall.

  The director centred the first setting for Othello on his desk and began. ‘I want to go through the production skeleton in some detail.’ He waved a hand towards the first set, an impression of houses cobbled on to each other, a street slicing through the dark mass of rooftops, drunken
windows and long balconies through which some giant machine had cut a path. Downstage was a paved open space and one definite structure (for Brabantio’s house) on the O.P. side.

  ‘Act One: Scene One,’ Douglas with a crisp tone. ‘It is night. Iago enters with Roderigo. Roderigo is dead narked because Desdemona has eloped with the Moor, and Rod had been out to lay her. Iago’s trying to cool him because he wants to get his hands on Roderigo’s bread. Iago tells Roderigo that he hates Othello’s guts because Othello’s made Cassio his Lieutenant. They reach Brabantio’s home and set up a clamour, wake the old man and tell him that his daughter’s being screwed by a spade. Brabantio’s mad and sends out a search party. Iago tips Roderigo that the lucky pair can be found at a local Hilton called the Sagittary and exits there so that Othello will think he’s a good mate — being with him when Brabantio’s party arrive with Rod. Okay?’

  Leggat cleared his throat. Art and Ronnie smiled.

  ‘The scene starts,’ continued Douglas, ‘with Iago fussing around Roderigo and it ends with Roderigo leading Brabantio and his men off to the Sagittary to find Othello and Desdemona. Now keep this premise in your minds. Iago is the matador. Roderigo is a little fighting bull; Othello a big and important fighting bull. On each occasion that Iago meets and makes intrigue with either Roderigo or Othello he is engaged in a faena.’

  ‘What the hell’s a faena?’ asked Art quietly, giving a puzzled look which lifted his eyebrows into a comical twist.

  Leggat answered him, a touch of disdain in his voice. ‘A bullfighting term. The faena is the series of passes made with the muleta.’

  ‘The muleta?’

  ‘The red flannel cape. You know.’ Leggat made a not inelegant gesture with his hands, as though moving the cape in a natural.

  Douglas looked from one to the other. ‘I’m sorry,’ he smiled, ‘anyone working in this production who’s unfamiliar with the terms of the corrida should rectify the matter as quickly as possible; that will be the first real note to the company. I see Iago physically making the classic passes at distinct moments in the text.’ He looked sharply towards Tony Holt. Will you make a note of that? You’ll have to alter Iago’s costume. I want subtle hint of the suit of lights. Nothing elaborate, just a touch, and if you plan changes for him he must always have something on him or nearby that he can use as the muleta. Okay?’ His manner was already changed, complete confidence, the style of a tycoon, a professional who knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it. This was the Douglas Silver that most of the acting profession knew: the rock hard activator with the quick tongue, yet quite approachable.