“Why not?” I said. “You had lived in this country for almost a dozen years. You had married an American girl. Now, suddenly, America was at war. You felt the urge to legalize your status in your adopted home. The way we learned in English class Henry James did soon after the First World War broke out. He became a naturalized Englishman.”
Seb shook his head and took a sip of his drink. It was, of course, a martini. It occurred to me in another moment of irritated irrelevance that the character he played in his current play was probably a martini drinker.
“Henry James would never have become a naturalized Englishman if he’d been married to Lillian Waldbaum,” Sebastian Roon said. “She probably would have flogged poor Henry into coming back to Washington Square and writing propaganda leaflets for the U.S. war effort.”
“It was not a question of your loyalty to America?”
“Not a bit,” Seb said. “It was a question of Lillian’s loyalty to America. She dictated the course of action to me in no uncertain terms. You’ve had many years of experience with Lillian’s terms, uncertain and otherwise, beginning with your days together in the offices of Maurice Saltzman & Company. I’m sure you can imagine the decibels of sound on which these terms issued forth. She told me that while her country was at war she was not going to remain married to a foreigner.”
“And you agreed with her?” I said.
“Have you ever tried disagreeing with Lillian?” Seb said.
“No,” I said, “but she’s never tried to get me to change my citizenship. It makes a difference.”
“Not if you love someone,” Seb said.
That, I thought, is what comes to trying to argue with an actor. The words mean nothing. The day is carried by the sounds with which they surround the words. Who but an actor could utter a banality so impoverished as the remark Seb had just given to the world, and make it ring in the ears as though you were hearing Jefferson read his first draft of the Declaration of Independence from manuscript?
“That was thirty years ago,” I said. “It’s a hell of a long time to keep something like that from a friend.”
“I’m sorry, Benjamin,” Seb said. “Truly I am. But I couldn’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“I was ashamed of what I had done,” Sebastian Roon said.
I wondered suddenly, if, deep down, Henry James had been ashamed.
“Don’t let that get around on the floor of the next D.A.R. convention,” I said. “They’ll pass a resolution urging American women to find themselves a new British acting idol.”
“It was because I became an American citizen that they found me in the first place,” Seb said. “I don’t have to tell you, Benjamin. You were there. For the first years of my career in this country I was a bust. Lillian had to continue working so we could pay, or rather she could pay, the rent. Then came the war, and British actors working in America went scuttling back to England. I don’t believe many of them wanted to go. Certainly not the ones I knew. For British performers the pickings have always been more lush over here in Hollywood and on Broadway than they are in the West End. Most of them felt, however, that their careers would be ruined if they continued on here, living like dukes and tapping the money pots instead of going home to defend King and Country. So they went. Sebastian Roon stayed. I didn’t have to defend King and Country. I was an American citizen. And because I stayed, my stock went up. I’m not Beerbohm Tree, you know. But I soon began to look like him and some of those other blokes. It was a case of what Karl Marx is reputed to have said after he dismissed all British economists as incompetents, and some irritated chauvinist said what about John Stuart Mill? Marx replied with a sneer. I can reproduce but won’t. The eminence of John Stuart Mill, old Karl is alleged to have replied, is due to the flatness of the surrounding terrain.”
Seb laughed. Bitterly? I tried to think not.
“Yes,” he said. “Sebastian Roon remained here, and now look.” He tapped the briefcase in front of me. “Look at the bundle I almost had thrust into my pocket.”
“That’s what annoys me about the cancellation of the show,” I said. “You’ve earned the right to this bundle.”
“Would I have earned it if I had gone home in nineteen thirty-nine to pilot a Spitfire?” Seb said. “After all, I was only twenty-six years old.”
So was Benny Kramer. It didn’t seem possible. How had I come from twenty-six, only yesterday, to fifty-eight today?”
“I think there’s at least a good chance you might have,” I said. “Wars end. Ours did. You would have picked up your career. I wish you would pick up this knighthood.”
“I can’t,” Seb said. “It’s conditional on my completing this TV series, and as of this morning there’s no longer a TV series.”
“That’s not your fault,” I said. “Besides, there’s your long career. Nobody can cancel that. I’m sure with a little prodding Sir Nolan Branch can be induced to recommend that they give you the knighthood for what you’ve already done rather than for something you were about to do. As your lawyer, I’ll be happy to do the prodding.”
“It won’t work, Benjamin,” Seb said. “I’ve just explained to you why I cannot except Her Majesty’s offer.”
“Forty years ago you got me into N.Y.U. Law School,” I said. “Now I’m going to get you into Burke’s Peerage. I happen to know something about England that some of her expatriate native sons obviously don’t know because they’re too damn lazy to find out. Lawyers, however, cannot afford to be lazy. So they pick up the information for a fee that their clients could have picked up with a phone call to any British consulate in the country. Especially if they have clients with numbered bank accounts in Switzerland and the desire to get the hell out of this country and settle somewhere beyond the reach of the Internal Revenue Service.”
“Scoundrels,” Seb said.
“Not legally,” I said. “Quite a few native-born sons of bitches are now living regally in the stately homes of Surrey and Kent because they paid Benny Kramer, formerly of East Fourth Street and Tiffany Street, to look into the British naturalization laws.”
“You mean—?”
“Don’t give me that damn you-mean-question-mark dialogue out of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray,” I said. “I know exactly what I mean. The British naturalization laws are childishly simple and they apply to everybody, including former British subjects who for a long time have been subjects of some other country. Sir Nolan Branch could have told you, if you’d had the brains to ask, or if you were really interested, in the honor Her Majesty was offering you. I suspect you were not interested, although I can’t imagine why. Unless after all these years you’ve suddenly had a bad attack of stupidity. All you have to do is go back to England, which you told me you’ve already decided to do anyway, then declare your intention to become a British subject, exactly as though you were in fact a native-born American. Then, in five years, I am sure you won’t have much difficulty passing those simple-minded citizenship tests. Even Pakistani busboys in Soho are now passing those tests every day to become loyal and better paid subjects of Her Gracious Majesty. Sir Nolan Branch will be happy to see to it that Her Gracious Majesty keeps your knighthood warming on the back of the stove until you have the legal right to pick it up and convert Lillian into Lady Roon.”
Seb looked at me for several moments. I could tell from his small frown that he liked the picture I had sketched but was troubled by the fact that I had left something out. I knew what that something was.
“Are you sure it will work?” he said.
“I’ve made it work for scoundrels,” I said. “How can I miss with an incipient knight of the British Empire?”
“There’s just one thing,” Seb said.
There always was.
“I know,” I said.
“You can’t possibly know,” Seb said.
“After forty years?” I said. “Cut it out. What’s missing in the plan, the one thing that troubles you, is that it won’t be happening out
on a stage.”
Seb looked startled, worked up a baleful glare, then laughed.
“You son of a bitch,” he said. “You’re quite right, Benjamin. I will miss the applause.”
“Lillian won’t,” I said.
“No,” Seb said, “I daresay she won’t.” He laughed again. “What an extraordinary thing. For a Bronx girl, I mean. Lady Roon. Why, it’s as though a girl from Blackpool were to become Mrs. President.” The laughter drained away. Quietly, Seb said, “Lillian and I have been fortunate in our friendships.”
Benny Kramer had always thought the same about himself. But what good was friendship? If the friends went out of your life?
“I think I’d better clear up one point,” I said. Benny Kramer had learned another thing from Miss Bongiorno. Never take credit you have not earned. “I’m delighted that Lillian will have this,” I said. “But she’s not the only one involved.”
“Do please clarify that,” Seb said.
I hesitated. But not for long. He was more than Benny Kramer’s friend. Seb had been part of the beginning.
“You remember Hannah Halpern,” I said.
“Couldn’t we get through this day without raking up old unpleasantnesses?” Seb said.
“I don’t consider Hannah an unpleasantness,” I said. “You remember how she died.”
“Of course,” Seb said irritably. “In my mother’s house. On Islington Crescent. With her husband who was my brother. During an air raid. While you were visiting them. Why bring up that gory business now?”
Because I could suddenly hear that terrifying crunch crunch crunch which had not been terrifying when I first heard it in the back room of Abe Lebenbaum’s candy store on Avenue D.
“Because I think Hannah would like Lillian to have this,” I said finally.
Seb looked down into his glass for a long, long moment.
“Sorry I snapped at you,” he said. “Yes. Yes, of course. Lillian will understand that.”
“Losing this TV series,” I said. “Will it change your plans about going home to England?”
“Not at all,” Seb said. “All it will do is speed them up. We can go almost at once. Lillian and I have enough to get us there and settle in. I may not do extraordinarily well at the beginning, but I’ll build. I’m not Beerbohm Tree, as I think I just told you, but I’m a good actor.” The wintry smile sped across the handsome face. “And, of course,” Seb said, “my charm remains unimpaired.”
I could not, of course, say the same for Benny Kramer. Even if I could, it would not have helped. All the charm in the world could not have helped.
The series of Boing! that had exploded around me during the past few days suddenly felt like the sections of a stockade that had been hammered into place one by one. A sense of entrapment had closed in on me.
Returning from the Philadelphia chore for Shloymah Berel Schlisselberger I had been shocked to find myself asking Benny Kramer: Is this a way for a man to spend his life? Turning away from the unpleasant answer, I had run into the fists of the black man in front of Penn Station. While my head was still throbbing Sebastian Roon, by telling me he wanted to go back to England to die, had forced me to the realization that I had reached the age where it frightened me to lose people. I did not want my friends to go away from me, but they were going.
The death of my barber had made it brutally plain that it did not matter what anybody wanted, or achieved. Even happiness. Things happened without your consent. They were going to continue to happen. I was going to lose more people. Every day from now on. There was no way to stop the erosion of the brightness it had taken half a century of industrious myopia to put together. And Jack, the brightest part of the brightness, had made it plain that only to a boy from East Fourth Street was East Fourth Street an unshakably solid platform on which to build a life.
Time was running out, and Benny Kramer had found in the past few days that there was no turning away from inevitable questions and their unpleasant answers. What had I done with the time I’d had? The time that had seemed endless until the Boings of the last few days had driven home the savage truth that time always ran out. There was no way to make it go in the other direction. It never had. It never would. Not for anybody. Not for Benny Kramer.
“Benjamin,” Seb said. “Why don’t you and Elizabeth Ann come along to England? It will be like old times.”
His words brought into focus what I had been trying for days to avoid knowing. It was never going to be like old times. Never again.
“No,” I said. “Elizabeth Ann and I couldn’t do that.”
“I don’t understand why not,” Seb said. “You’re not a poor man, and there’s plenty of work for American lawyers with British firms, and Jack is perfectly safe for the next two years.” I didn’t answer. “Benjamin,” Seb said. “When Lillian and I go, you and Elizabeth Ann will be all alone.”
At least in one respect Benny Kramer’s luck had held. There were men he knew who didn’t have someone to be alone with.
“I know,” I said. “But we’ll have a lot to remember.”
“You can remember it with us,” Seb said. “In England.”
“It won’t be the same,” I said. “Elizabeth Ann and I can’t go. I don’t know why, Seb, but we can’t.”
“I know why,” Seb said.
He sounded angry. He turned to look out the window. So did I. Forty-eighth Street was exploding with the senseless noises that had become part of the city. The silhouette of a huge building crane swung slowly past the group at the big round table up front, where Professor Pfeiffer was telling the story of Somerset Maugham and the Internal Revenue Service.
“It’s a filthy mess,” Seb said. He turned back. I could see from his face that I’d had it wrong. He was not angry. He was bitter. “But to some poor trapped fools it’s the same damnable thing that Blackpool is to me,” he said. “Home, blast it. Home.”
I did not answer. Seb pushed my glass a couple of inches closer to me.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Gin is better than nothing.”
I took a sip. It tasted the way gin has always tasted to me. The way I felt now.
“Poor Benjamin,” Seb said. “‘He fought with none because none was worth his strife. Natures he loved, and after nature, art. He warmed both hands at the fire of life—’”
“And put it out,” poor Benjamin said.
“I wouldn’t be so hasty about writing him off,” Seb said. “You forget something crucial.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“The lad has oyach,” Sebastian Roon said.
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Copyright © 1974 by Jerome Weidman
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