by Ned Beauman
‘No,’ said Loeser in German. ‘No, no, no, no, no, no.’
‘Aren’t you happy to see me?’ said Rackenham, who was holding a martini and looked almost parodically tanned and healthy.
‘What the fuck are you doing in Los Angeles?’
‘I’m supposed to be finding Adele Hitler and persuading her to go back to Berlin. But I haven’t got very far. And what are you doing here? Don’t tell me you’ve come for Adele too? I can see by your face that you have. But I presume you’re not getting paid by her parents, like I am. Have you really come six thousand miles just to have sex with her?’
‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Not yet. Were you in Paris, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘What a pity we didn’t cross paths.’
‘What a pity. How did you end up at this party?’ The gathering reminded him of an evening at the Fraunhofens’ before anyone got drunk.
‘I know Mutton from the Hollywood Cricket Club. He’s the only Yank on the team but he bats so well we can hardly make an issue of it. We’re playing the Australians next month.’
‘You’re already in a cricket club? How long have you been out here?’
‘Two or three months. No, it hasn’t taken me too long to find my feet, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Where are you living?’ said Loeser, because that, after all, was the sort of thing people asked at parties.
‘I’m now the Sorceror of Venice Beach. What about you?’
‘The Chateau Marmont.’
‘I presume you don’t intend to live in a hotel indefinitely?’
‘I like it there,’ said Loeser, thinking of the women around the swimming pool, ‘and anyway, I’m not going to stay in Los Angeles long enough to need a house of my own. I’m just going to find Adele, seduce her, and take her back to Berlin with me.’
‘Well, when that plan fails, I can recommend Pasadena. It’s heavenly.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘East of Hollywood. It’s where the millionaires live. And, more importantly, their wives.’
‘Like Wilbur Gorge?’ said Loeser, remembering what Blimk had said earlier.
‘Yes. How do you know Gorge?’
‘I don’t. Do you mean to say you do?’
‘Yes. I have the sort of easy, genial relationship with the Colonel that you can only have with a man you’re vigorously cuckolding.’
‘Could you introduce me?’
‘Why?’
‘I just want to meet him,’ said Loeser. ‘It doesn’t matter why.’
‘I could get you an invitation to dinner, but what would I get out of it?’
‘I’ll owe you a favour. All right?’
‘I suppose so. By the way, you know Hecht’s here?’
‘In Los Angeles or in this house?’
‘Both. He’s got a contract with Paramount. You might see Drabsfarben, too. And Gugelhupf.’
‘I already knew about Gugelhupf. But the others? You can’t be serious.’
‘Half the Romanisches Café is here, Loeser. Or at least on its way.’
Loeser felt a heavy squelch of dismay. ‘But the only thing I like about this place is that I don’t have to see anyone I know!’
‘Nonetheless.’
‘Fucking hell, this is like going to the Alps for a tuberculosis cure and finding out everyone else in the sanatorium is determined to reinfect you. Well, as long as Brecht doesn’t turn up, I won’t have to jump into the ocean. Thank God I’m going home soon.’
‘Mr Loeser! I’m so glad you could come.’ Mutton’s wife was radiantly at his side. ‘I see you already know Mr Rackenham.’
‘Yes. Mrs Mutton, before I forget, I don’t have a car and I’m staying at the Chateau Marmont and I’m not quite sure how I’m going to get back to my hotel…’
‘Oh, don’t give it another thought, we’ll have the butler drive you. Now, you must meet Mr Gould. He’s a recent arrival from Berlin, like yourself.’
She led Loeser back out to the patio, where Gould turned out to be one of the men he’d passed on his way in. A tall fellow with a smile as big as an almond croissant, he was talking to Stent Mutton and two women. Dolores Mutton introduced Loeser to everyone. ‘Yes, Mr Loeser and I have already met,’ said her husband, raising an eyebrow.
One of the other women said, ‘Mr Gould was just telling us about how he got out of Berlin.’
‘Yes. As I said, the Nazis had tried to ban my latest book of poems. So, like a fool, I went to the police station to insert a complaint. They told me if I waited a few minutes I could see the police chief. So I sat down. Then, by luck, I overheard another policeman mention my name to one of his comrades. There was an order out to arrest me. But they did not realise yet that I had just walked right into their clutchings. So I waited until no one was watching and then I fled straight to the train station. I did not even go home to pack a bag, I just purchased a suitcase on the way and carried it, vacant, so I would look like a realistic tourist.’
‘You sound so calm about it all,’ said Dolores Mutton.
‘Actually, never have I been so frightened!’
‘Knowing that you can have everything taken from you just because you happen to be Jewish … I can hardly imagine what it must have been like, Mr Loeser.’
‘Sorry?’ His attention had wandered during Gould’s boring anecdote.
‘Tell me, how did you get out?’ said her husband. ‘Was it just as perilous?’
Loeser’s old rule against lying about himself to impress had not formally been repealed. So he was about to inform the woman that he was not Jewish; that he ‘got out’ on a tourist visa, which had taken him ten minutes to acquire; and that never, in Berlin, had he felt himself in jeopardy, nor had he detected that anyone else was. But then he remembered Scramsfield. What punishment had ever befallen Scramsfield for his almost hallucinant level of dupery? Why should Loeser come all the way to Hollywood, where half the population punched their time cards every morning at the ‘dream factory’, and still stubbornly persist in correcting every flattering little misapprehension, while right now Scramsfield, a man who had shot his fiancée dead during sex and got away with it, was probably cheating his rent out of some tipsy dowager? Scramsfield swam in his lies like a penguin. Loeser waddled around damp and pretended to be dry. No more. Also, Mrs Mutton was far too beautiful to disappoint, and he’d already decided he didn’t like Gould and didn’t want him to win. So: ‘Yes,’ said Loeser. ‘My escape was quite dramatic.’
‘Go on.’
‘They’d been tipped off that I was going to try to get across the border into France. But, you see, I’m a designer of theatrical effects. So I used an invention of mine called the Teleportation Device. From one side to the other as easily as an actor circling around from stage left to stage right without being seen.’
‘How did it work?’ said one of the women.
‘I’m afraid I can’t say anything about my invention while there is still a chance it may be in use. My first loyalty must be to my tribe.’
‘Oh, yes, of course.’
The butler came to tell Dolores Mutton she was needed inside.
‘So you were in the theatre?’ said Gould. ‘What was your last production before you left?’
‘Lavicini,’ said Loeser, even though it had never actually been performed.
‘Oh. I did not see that. Still, I knew a lot of theatre persons — we must have crossed roads at some point. Were you at Brogmann’s party with all the stolen brandy?’
‘No.’
‘What about when Vanel directed the nude ballet at the beach?’
‘No.’
‘I do not remember you coming on the big camping trip that Klein organised.’
‘No.’ Not only did Loeser not take part in any of these things, he didn’t even remember getting invited to any of them. Who was this prick and why did think he could make Loeser feel as if he’d missed out on all this fun back in Berlin?
&nb
sp; ‘How extraordinary that the two of you had to come all the way to the edge of another continent to meet for the first time,’ said Stent Mutton.
‘And now you are out here you will work for the movies, I assume, Herr Loeser?’ said Gould.
‘Why?’
‘You are a set designer.’
‘Yes. For the theatre. Not for the movies. I despise American movies.’
‘That does not mean you will not be slurped in,’ said Gould. ‘I do not know why but the studio bosses seem to have a lot of respect for Germans. Like it or not, there is no better way for us to earn some livings in California. Look on Hecht. He is working for Goatloft.’
‘Who’s Goatloft?’
‘He directed Scars of Desire. Very powerful. So Hecht is making five hundred dollars a week now. That is fifteen hundred marks, almost. He certainly has not been making that in Berlin.’
‘Is it hard there, for writers?’ said Stent Mutton.
‘Sometimes. Especially if you do not get an allowance from your parents and you do not like living on credit. I used to work as a waiter.’
How fucking self-righteous, thought Loeser. ‘Where?’ he said.
‘The Schwanneke,’ said Gould.
To the assembled witnesses, what then happened was that somehow Loeser tripped over from a stable standing position. What actually happened, as only some sort of careful Muybridgean analysis could have made clear, was that he tried to thump Gould in the nose and instead threw a punch so inept that even its intended recipient could not confidently identify it as such. The problem was his legs, which were just beginning their slow transmutation into the elongated pine cones that can be found glued to the pelvis of anyone with Loeser’s desultory level of physical fitness who wakes up the morning after a four-hour hike, and were therefore in no condition to perform a sudden vengeful charge. Neither, really, was Loeser himself, who hadn’t had any warning that he was about to make an assault on Gould — he just heard ‘Schwanneke’ and without a word of internal debate he was forward, lunging, off balance, hand barely reconstituted into a viable fist. Scramsfield at Zelli’s was Max Schmeling in comparison. And what would have been really regrettable for Loeser here was if he’d fallen into the nearby swimming pool as a result of his botched left hook. But he didn’t, because Gould grabbed his shoulder to steady him. Then Loeser, confused, embarrassed, not wanting Gould’s help, tried to push him away, overcompensated, slipped on a slice of lime that had defected from someone’s gin and tonic, and fell into the swimming pool as a result of that instead. He hadn’t even had a drink yet.
After he’d climbed out, Mutton suggested he go to the bedroom for a change of clothes. ‘Take anything you want.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘At least borrow a shirt.’
Loeser went dripping into the house, trying to ignore the stares and chuckles, and through into the main bedroom, where he selected a shirt and slacks from Mutton’s enormous wardrobe. Just as in Blumstein’s house, there was a bathroom off the main bedroom, and he decided to go in there to change so he could lock the door behind him. As he dried his hair with a towel, he noticed a pair of expensive pistachio-green French knickers lying on the floor next to the bath, and with all their lace and frills and bows they looked comically out of place, a pathogenic gland transplanted into this functionalist cuboid, ready to infect the whole structure with blisters of purposeless ornamentation unless it was annihilated first by some swift Loosian immune response. Loeser, who dearly loved underclothes with lace and frills and especially bows, and sometimes came close to tears when he saw some on a washing line because of the way they made his sexual longing twinge like an old bone fracture, found himself mesmerised for a while by the thought that this silk had only recently been soured and sweetened by the loins of a woman as ravishing as Dolores Mutton, and because of this unavoidable delay he was still buttoning his collar when he heard that same woman’s voice through the door.
‘No. You’re asking too much this time. He’s still my husband. What if he found out? I know you think he won’t, but he’s smarter than you’d like to believe. He might. He easily damn well might. And I’m not going to put him through that. It would finish him. I know you don’t care, but what if he divorced me? Where the hell would we be then? You don’t want that any more than I do. I’m not saying we have to stop this, of course I’m not, I know better than that, but there have to be limits. It’s no good making threats, Jascha. I just can’t. I’m sorry.’
‘Jascha’! Could it really be Drabsfarben? Loeser pressed his ear to the door, but if there was a reply, it was too low to hear.
‘Well, you picked a fine time to tell me that,’ said Dolores Mutton after a while. ‘It’s crazy that we’re even talking like this. You’re always saying I need to be more discreet. Come here on Thursday morning, Stent’s going to be out at the Herald offices most of the day. Now go. I’ll follow you in a few minutes.’
Loeser heard the bedroom door open and close. Then the handle of the bathroom door turned until it clicked against the lock. ‘Is somebody in there? Hello?’ Loeser considered waiting until she went away, but that might turn into a siege. He unlocked the door. ‘Oh, hello, Mr Loeser,’ said Dolores Mutton. There was enough ice in her voice for a serviceable daiquiri. ‘Perhaps I should have mentioned that we prefer our guests to use the other bathroom.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Mutton, I was just changing my shirt.’
As he walked past her into the bedroom, she caught his arm, gripping hard. ‘I don’t know what you may have heard just now, but …’ She paused. Part of him was mindlessly excited that her warm skin was on his. ‘I don’t care for gossip, Mr Loeser, and neither does my husband. Not at our parties, not in our home. I hope you will think about that before you say anything you may come to regret.’ Then she released his arm, went into the bathroom, and slammed the door behind her. Loeser, shaken, decided to leave the party and walk down to the beach so he could think.
How could Jascha Drabsfarben have allowed himself to get tangled up with Dolores Mutton? In Berlin, a lot of girls had lusted after the composer, and, as far as Loeser could tell, it was because they knew that nothing they did could ever make him lust back. Hannah Czenowitz had once drunkenly confessed a fantasy in which she was on her knees sucking Drabsfarben’s cock while he was composing at a grand piano and he was so absorbed in some complex non-standard key signature that he didn’t even notice. There was some debate over whether he masturbated, and the consensus was that he probably did, about once a month, for reasons of psychological tidiness, but quickly, so he could get back to his music. Therefore occasional utilitarian intercourse didn’t seem out of the question — but a furtive affair with a married woman would be far too distracting. Drabsfarben would never tolerate the drain on his time.
Then again, Loeser had heard that a lot of foreign writers found themselves blocked when they came to Hollywood. So perhaps Drabsfarben had lost his inspiration out here too, and for the first time he was trying to use a woman as a muse. You could certainly write symphonies about Dolores Mutton; you could write at least a scherzo about her cleavage alone. And however implausible it all seemed, Loeser knew what he’d just heard. The real question was whether to tell Stent Mutton. Yes, the man was a loathsome fraud. He’d lied to Loeser, albeit in a way Loeser couldn’t really explain. But Loeser still loved his books. Knowing the truth about Mutton didn’t make Mutton’s characters feel any less real; in fact, maybe they seemed more real now, because if they couldn’t be understood as mere analogues of their creator, then they could only be spontaneous births with a sort of mystifying independent life. And there was no question about what a Stent Mutton hero would do about all this. He would just walk over. Say what had to be said. In very short sentences.
Loeser went back to the house and found Stent Mutton on the patio next to the big barbecue grill.
‘I see you found something to fit you all right.’
‘Yes. Look here, Mr Mutton, I ne
ed to talk to you in private.’
‘About what?’
‘It’s very important.’
Mutton followed him a short distance up the hill, away from the guests, into a forum of crickets.
‘Well?’
‘Just now, while I was changing, I overheard a conversation in your bedroom. It was between your wife and Jascha Drabsfarben, who’s an old friend of mine from Berlin. I think they’re having an affair.’
‘What?’
Loeser was already beginning to realise that this was going to cause even more trouble than the last time he’d eavesdropped on Drabsfarben, but it was too late to turn back. Also, there was something about a conversation of this kind that made him feel enjoyably authentic and masculine. ‘Your wife is being unfaithful to you with Drabsfarben,’ he said. ‘I heard enough to be sure and I thought you deserved to be told.’
‘Is this another comedy routine?’
‘No, Mr Mutton. I’m perfectly serious.’
Mutton sighed. ‘This is the trouble with marrying a girl like Dolores. Most men realise they wouldn’t know what to do if they had all that beauty to themselves, so they can’t believe I do, either. They think I must let her share it around a little. But actually, Mr Loeser, my wife is devoted to me. She’s not perfect and neither, goodness knows, am I. But we love each other as deeply today as we ever have. Nothing, and I mean nothing, could persuade her to betray me sexually with another man. If I know anything, I know that. You’re wrong. And I strongly suggest you leave this party before you do any more eavesdropping.’
Probably Wilbur Gorge was just as confident, thought Loeser, and meanwhile Rackenham was ploughing his wife. If life up to this point had taught him anything, it was that everyone else was having sex with anyone they wanted, all the time, and it was naive ever to hope otherwise. ‘If you’d heard what I heard—’
‘I don’t care what you think you heard. Please get off my property. I’m perfectly serious, too.’
Loeser hesitated.
‘What now?’ said Mutton.
‘It’s just that I don’t have a car and your wife said your butler could drive me back to the Chateau Marmont.’
