‘Looking for work?’
I smile. He can see me reading the paper. ‘You too?’
He shakes his head, ‘Not me, no. I’m fixed up.’
‘Well, good for you,’ and I’m about to go back to my paper when he sits forward.
‘Stan.’ I should be surprised that he know my name, but somehow I’m not. He opens his matchbook and I see the clean rows inside, ‘How many job interviews you had, Stan?’
I don’t reply. I’ve got my pride.
‘You’ve enough money for eight more days before you’re on that train back home to Milwaukee. That’s the case, isn’t it?’
He’s done the math better than I can. I nod. I wonder if it’s going to rain for those eight days and then rain some more when I get home. I want him to put the matches away, but he just flicks one of them with his thumbnail before continuing, ‘I saw you this morning in your bathroom, shaving in front of the mirror. Nice the way you’ve set it up so the mirror’s opposite the window. To catch the light, I suppose. Makes it easy for us.’
Us. Who is he? Who are they? I fold my paper into quarters and make a neat cross with my pencil next to one of the adverts without reading it.
‘Back home to your family. Your family’s originally from Germany, isn’t that right?’
He has the quietest voice. I have to lean forward to hear him properly, and the whole time he speaks, his mouth barely moves.
I pull down the sleeves of my suit as far as they go, ‘It was a long time ago, way before –’
‘Of course, of course.’ His voice goes even softer.
‘It’s the Commies now, I thought –’
‘Yes Stan, it is the Commies now.’
The waitress pours me some more coffee. During the week that I’ve been coming to this café, it’s always been the same waitress with the same smile. I wonder if she peels it off and stashes it away with her nylons each night. I wonder if she’s waiting for something, too, the same way I am.
The man waits until she’s gone before continuing, ‘You speak German, Stan?’
I nod again, even more confused, ‘A little, with my folks. My dad, he’s not so hot at English.’
‘That’s going to be very useful.’
‘Useful? For what?’
And that’s how they get me. What choice do I have? They’re right, after all. I do only have enough money for eight more days before I have to get on a train and head back home to that dump of a town near Milwaukee. So I take it. It’s not so bad. It’s not all hanging round on street corners. Well some of it is. And the other guys, they’re alright. They’ll stand you a coffee.
They give me this job. I have to follow some German guy and get information about him for a committee hearing the Government is organising. I never heard of him before but they said I’m ideal for it. I ask them what information I’m supposed to be getting, but they’re vague. Anything, they said. Anything at all. The guy writes stuff for the movies, and his name is Brecht.
Brecht and Laughton decide to have a break from working and Brecht goes into his little kitchen to make tea for them both. They’ve been working hard, translating and updating Brecht’s play ‘Galileo’ into English in time for its run at the Coronet Theatre which will start in a few weeks. Laughton will play the title role.
They do not speak each other’s language very well, so work is slow and not terribly efficient. In spite of this they talk a lot to each other as they work. Everything depends on the words, according to Laughton. Brecht is not so sure, the physical gesture is just as important.
While he waits for the tea, Laughton puts on a record of ‘Die Dreigroschenoper’ and sings along to it.
‘For Heaven’s sakes, stop that noise!’ Brecht bellows from the kitchen.
‘Why? It’s one of your own, I thought you’d like it. A bit of your past.’
‘The way you sing does not remind me of my past, it just gives me a headache. And we need to make progress.’ Brecht appears in the living room with two small glasses of black tea.
‘Black again?’ Laughton mutters almost under his breath, ‘can’t we ever have milk in our tea?’
‘Disgusting English habit,’ Brecht sets the glasses down on the low coffee table, ‘and we cannot even agree about the ending to the play.’
Laughton wanders over to the window of the study and looks out at the garden, ‘Perhaps we’d do better working outside. A bit of fresh air and sunshine to stimulate our brains.’
Brecht purses his lips, ‘Surely it would distract you, dear Charles.’
Laughton remains at the window, with his back to Brecht, ‘I never get fed up with the weather here. If you’d come from where I came from, you’d feel a thrill every time you saw the sun and the turquoise sea, and all these flowers and pretty girls in skimpy clothes…’
‘I thought you preferred staring at pretty boys.’
Laughton peers nervously around the room as if his wife is hiding there, ‘Ssh.’
‘I thought Elsa liked pretty boys too. I thought it was something the two of you had in common. Anyway, how is Elsa? We haven’t seen her lately.’
Laughton pauses before answering, ‘I think she’s fine.’
‘Why don’t you both come over to dinner tonight?’ Brecht spreads out his hands, ‘Helene will make some of her terrific dumplings and we can all imagine we are somewhere civilised.’
‘We’re usually busy in the evenings. Elsa goes out a lot. But thank you anyway.’
They sip their tea. Laughton is obviously trying not to wince at the bitterness and Brecht smiles to himself.
‘I think we should work at my house tomorrow,’ Laughton announces as he sets down his empty glass, ‘there is so much more space. And we have all the dictionaries there.’
Brecht shrugs. Laughton clearly needs his milk and sugar. And his boys. And maybe even his wife.
Laughton clambers out of the rickety armchair that made it to Los Angeles from Germany with Brecht and Helene, and stands as if he is on stage addressing an audience, ‘Alright, alright, let’s get on with it. The end of the play. We’re going to let the audience feel some sympathy for Galileo? After all, he’s old and broken, and up in front of the Inquisition.’
‘Sympathy destroys what we are trying to achieve, Charles. When those Nazi gangsters started snivelling at their trials in Nürnberg, did you feel sympathy?’
Laughton looks shocked, ‘Of course not. It’s hardly the same thing. But you’ve made the old man look like a coward.’
‘Perhaps it’s better to be a coward than a hero.’ As usual, Brecht has an answer for everything and he can’t resist replying to Laughton. ‘Cowards generally live while heroes die. But he should have spoken up for science and not given in. Those scientists who built the Bomb, they did exactly what Galileo did; they obeyed the authorities. Except this time, it’s even worse.’
The theatre is about half full, the audience scattered throughout the auditorium. Brecht peeps out at them through a hole in the curtain, from his position in the wings. Laughton is on stage and the play is coming to its end.
‘I taught you science and I denied the truth.’ As he speaks the lines, Laughton is bent over, his body remarkably twisted. The audience can believe that this is an old, blind man.
‘Very good,’ murmurs Brecht. ‘Show the old man’s self-loathing.’
‘Science’s sole aim must be to lighten the burden of human existence. If the scientists, brought to heel by self-interested rulers, limit themselves to piling up knowledge for knowledge’s sake, then science can be crippled and your new machines will lead to nothing but new impositions.’
One man in the audience has become increasingly agitated throughout the performance, writhing around in his seat and muttering under his breath, and the other audience members are glaring at him. Brecht has been watching him with amusement, hoping that he will eventually react. He doesn’t disappoint.
‘Nonsense!’ he finally cries out, but he seems ashamed of himself after t
his outburst and sinks back down into his seat. A man sitting behind him taps him on the shoulder.
‘Make them remember the horror, Charles. The horror of the Bombs.’ Brecht clenches the curtain.
‘As a scientist I had a unique opportunity. If one man had put up a fight it might have had tremendous repercussions. Had I stood firm the scientists could have developed something like the doctors’ Hippocratic Oath. As things are, the best that can be hoped for is a race of inventive dwarfs who can be hired for any purpose.’
‘Nonsense!’ the man in the audience cries out again. His face has gone red, which pleases Brecht. Their words have made this man think. He’ll remember this night out at the theatre.
When the play is over, Brecht goes to the front of house to watch the audience coming out into the cool night air, and lights a cigar. He wants to see their faces, to see if they’ve understood what he’s been trying to say. It’s mostly students who come to this theatre. Where are the workers in this town? The dockers? The street sweepers? The farmhands who pick the lemons in the vast orchards? He is not sure who his people are here, apart from the other exiled German writers, huddled together in smart bungalows at the top of one of the canyons.
Groups of girls wander past and he smiles absent-mindedly at them. A young man hangs around the foyer watching them and furtively making notes with a pencil he keeps having to lick. He seems to be watching Brecht too. Perhaps he is a – Brecht gropes for the word – a spook?
Then – ‘How dare you!’
‘Excuse me?’
It is the agitated man, the man who shouted out. Brecht wants to thank him for his participation, his reaction, but the man is still clearly agitated. Indeed, he is angry.
‘“A race of inventive dwarfs?” Is that it? Is that your verdict on scientists? On the whole of science?’
‘Excuse me? Who are you? What is your profession?’ Brecht would really like to know the type of person who is interested in this play.
‘I’m one of your dwarfs. And I can punch pretty hard for a dwarf!’ He swings at Brecht and makes contact with his jaw. Brecht stumbles backwards and his cigar goes flying.
‘Ah, so you are a scientist,’ he feels his jaw while he speaks. Painful, but not broken. Worse has happened to him, usually but not always, as a result of women. The rest of the audience has disappeared, hardly anyone else has noticed this audience member shouting at, and then hitting, a small man dressed in an odd, foreign-looking leather coat.
‘Damn right I am! I worked on the Manhattan Project!’ The man is jabbing his finger at Brecht but does not look like he will hit him again. Brecht can usually judge these things fairly well. The first punch took him by surprise though, he’ll admit that.
‘Ah... then you know what I am talking about in this play. Selling your soul and so on.’
‘I know what you’re talking about. But do you know what scientists talk about? Night and day we worked to develop the Bomb, because we thought it would save lives! That’s what we talked about. Hell, the war would still be going now if it wasn’t for the Bomb!’ The man seems to find it easier to express himself, now that he’s no longer confined to being part of the audience.
‘I am glad you had such interesting discussions whilst you prostituted yourselves to the authorities and worked to destroy thousands of people. It must make you feel so much better now, the memories of those discussions.’
‘I tell you what makes me feel better, and that’s the thought of my fist hitting your face!’ Perhaps Brecht has not judged this right after all, because the man looks murderous. Where is Charles, for heaven’s sakes? Charles wouldn’t be able to hit anyone but he is at least a big man. He appears imposing.
A young woman hurries over, ‘Leave Mr Brecht alone!’
‘Leave me alone, you mad woman!’ Although she is a small girl, she clearly knows how to slap a man. Brecht smiles gratefully at her as the scientist sidles out of the building, muttering to himself. Time to find Charles, and have a celebratory drink.
‘Mr Brecht!’ the woman follows him, ‘please wait! Can I talk to you for a moment?’
Brecht sighs. He would like to drink a large brandy. But the woman really is very pretty. Slim, dark, oriental. He smiles at her again.
Brecht is meeting Laughton at his house. Even though the play has already opened, they still want to work on it. Particularly the ending. The troublesome ending.
Laughton is in his garden, wearing shorts and trimming some sort of flowering plant. Brecht doesn’t know the name for it in German, never mind in English. And it is pointless to learn, now. He does not feel terribly motivated to learn more English words.
Laughton grins at him, ‘Pretty good, Bertie boy.’
‘Pretty good, Charles.’ But he doesn’t grin back. May as well get to the point, ‘Why do you keep playing it differently to the way I tell you to?’
Laughton pauses, shears hanging from one hand, ‘Because you’re not actually the director, Bertie, even though you like to tell everyone what to do. You’re not even an actor. You’re just the writer, and here in Hollywood that doesn’t count for much.’ There is an edge of steel in his voice that hasn’t been there in their previous discussions and rehearsals.
‘But you didn’t speak the line where Galileo acknowledges he was not in any real danger!’
‘It’s better without it. If Galileo genuinely thinks he’s under threat of the Inquisition’s torture instruments, then it makes it more dramatic. He’s a more interesting person, more three-dimensional. You want to make it all black and white but there’s no point in acting such a cardboard character, the audience would get bored and so would I. I thought you wanted to educate people through theatre, but if you just shout at them and hector them, they’ll fall sleep. You’ve got to be more subtle.’
Brecht is taken aback. ‘I thought we wanted people to realise that what he did was wrong. And it’s something people should be thinking about now. Did you know Oppenheimer is about to be given some sort of award for his work on the Bomb?’
‘Galileo and Oppenheimer don’t have anything in common, Bertie. Galileo underwent a show trial and made a forced confession. Oppenheimer chose to do what he did.’ Laughton snips off a dead rose. Brecht cannot tell what colour it once was before it falls into the long grass and is lost.
‘Galileo was the first modern scientist. There is a direct link between him and Oppenheimer. He had a unique opportunity to stand up for truth.’
‘You’re just like a scientist yourself! You set up your little experiment, you get people to watch it and you expect them to think what you think. But proper scientists are open minded about the results and I think you’ve tried to rig your experiment.’
‘Rig? Like a lighting rig?’
Laughton sighs, ‘Not quite, Bertie boy. Not quite.’
I’m back in the same café, trying not to stare at the legs of the same waitress.
It’s just across the street from my apartment. The first time I came here, I thought it was a fancy neighbourhood because the fronts of the buildings on the street are magnificent, all painted and carved wood. But the actual buildings crouch behind them as if ashamed to be seen. And all I have is a room with a hotplate and a shared bathroom down the corridor. I heat up frankfurters on the hotplate and eat them standing at the window looking out at the scenery. There’s not much else to look at in the room itself. From where I stand I can see a little bit of ocean, about the size of my thumbnail. It’s funny to think that this is the same ocean we fought in, thousands of miles away. The same water slopping over dead bodies.
A girl enters the café, slim, dark, Oriental. She’s clutching a pile of books to her chest and looking around for a place to sit. There’s a free chair opposite me.
‘Mind if I –’ she says, but it’s just for show and she sinks into it before I can reply. I sip my coffee and try not to look at her. She’s too pretty to look at directly. She’s one of those girls you have to take sideways glances at, in case you get
burned, so I can only catch glimpses of her straight black hair, and delicate pink lips.
She’s perusing the menu, and I’m making my coffee last longer than it normally does. I should be out of there, tailing Brecht.
The waitress appears, ‘What’ll it be?’
‘One egg sunny side up and a rasher of bacon, and hash fries, and a link sausage. Oh, and two pieces of toast. White, with jelly. No butter.’ She’s got a big appetite for such a little girl, and for some reason that cheers me up. The waitress cocks an eyebrow at me.
‘Just a refill of coffee. Please.’
After the waitress has gone I say to the girl, ‘I’ve seen you before.’
She sighs and looks out the window, so I have the opportunity to see her profile.
‘No, no, I really have,’ I think about it for a moment. ‘At the theatre,’ I say finally, ‘you were the girl who slapped that man.’
She lays her hands flat on the table, which is still sticky from having been wiped by the waitress and grins at me, ‘He deserved it!’
‘Do you often hit men?’ I try to make it sound funny and flirtatious but she takes me seriously.
‘I hit him because he hadn’t listened to the play. He’d actually worked on the Bomb!’
‘So that’s where you’re from? Japan.’
I can’t keep that note from my voice, the hard note. And this is clearly the wrong thing to ask her, because her voice is also hard now, ‘I was born here.’
‘Ok, you got me,’ after all I wasn’t born here, and so I spread my hands out and smile my loser’s smile at her. But she doesn’t smile back which is a pity because I want her to, I want to see her face tipped up to mine, breathless, waiting. I watch an awful lot of bad movies. Perhaps that’s the only way I can understand the world around me, in terms of scenery and acting, and false words and looks.
She does at least carry on talking to me, ‘Anyway he started it. He was going for Mr Brecht!’
‘Brecht? You know him?’
‘Of course I know him! He’s a famous playwright!’ I am being told off by a butterfly, a lotus flower.
The Need for Better Regulation of Outer Space Page 6
