by William Boyd
“I’m not American, though. I have to apply for a permit.”
“But if they let you in, surely they’ll let your wife in too. And your mother-in-law.”
I wanted to say that I’d already been married to a German and it had only lasted six months.
“Look,” I said. “I’m an old man. I’m forty-seven years old. Twenty-five years older than you. You can’t marry me. It would be a terrible mistake.”
“Oh, all right,” she said. “My mother said I should try. She likes you—much better than Major Arbogast.”
“Who the hell’s he?”
“He’s my other man who comes here.”
I felt hurt, then foolish. “You’ll be all right,” I said reassuringly. I’m sure she was.
I left the city on a mild June day; the usual cocktail of emotions bubbled in my brain. This was the city that had made my career and reputation. It had brought me Doon. It had also undone me, in a way, too. And now it was undone itself. I had a funny feeling I would be seeing it again, so I didn’t bother to look out of the window when the USAF DC-3 took off from Tempelhof. I was wrong. It was a shame. I never came back.
VILLA LUXE, June 28, 1972
A gorgeous, stifling, unbearably hot day. I wonder if I might try the path down to the beach today. I can get down there not too badly; it’s the coming back that does for me. There is a small row of stone sheds in the cove where the fishermen keep their boats. I watch these old codgers as they come back up the path after a day’s work. They certainly don’t stride, but their plod never falters. A couple of them look even older than me. How come they can do it and I can’t? Perhaps I should ask Ulrike to take me round by boat.…
It was a hot day in 1946 when Karl-Heinz and I traveled up by train to Scotland. We sat in the thick warm air of the compartment, looking at the English countryside bright in its summer clichés. We stopped, inexplicably, for two hours outside Doncaster—or was it Peterborough? I remember vaguely that Karl-Heinz and I talked about the war and its terrible consequences. I recall one thing he said. “Why did you let him, it, happen?” I had asked him. “Couldn’t you see?”
“Well, I tell you, John,” he said. “One thing about the German people—we’re very like the British in this—we have no social courage. That’s why we make good soldiers and bad citizens.”
“Haven’t you? Haven’t we?”
“No. Not really. Don’t you think it’s true? We never complain. Neither do you. It’s always a bad sign in a population.”
We spent a couple of days in Edinburgh in a hotel in Princes Street. I took Karl-Heinz to meet my father, an encounter I’d long relished the thought of. Innes—Dad—had sold his home and now lived in an old folks’ home in Peebles, twenty miles from Edinburgh in the Tweed Valley and not far from Minto Academy. My father was eighty-four. I can see him now, his big arthritic knuckles trembling ever so slightly on his two walking sticks. We took tea with him on the terrace of the rather grand house he lived in (it’s a hotel now) on a hill overlooking the town and the fresh green park beside the fast brown river. We talked about this and that.
“So, what’re you going to do now, John?”
“Well, I’m going back to America. Karl-Heinz and I are going to finish a film we started a while ago.”
“God Almighty!” He had grown more profane as he had aged. “Finish? When did you start it?”
“Nineteen twenty-six.”
He shook his head sadly.
“Your son is a great artist, Mr. Todd,” Karl-Heinz said. “Truly.”
My father looked at Karl-Heinz as if to say, “Him? That joker?”
“He is,” Karl-Heinz said.
“There’s no need to be polite on my account, Mr. Kornfeld. I know my son well enough. Full of daft schemes from the day he was born.” His face darkened a moment. I knew he was thinking about my mother—my birth and her death inseparable. “I knew he’d never amount to much.”
We laughed politely.
Then he took one of his hands off a stick and patted me on the knee. He left his hand there, lightly, light as a napkin.
“Not like his brother, now. Done very well for himself, has Thompson. Rich man, successful, lovely family. Grandmaster of the lodge.”
I wasn’t upset. I looked at the old man. He wouldn’t give an inch. Eighty-four and as intractable as ever.
“You’re a difficult bugger, aren’t you, Innes?” I said. “Here, have another cup of tea and shut up.”
He laughed. Quite long and hard. Then he took his hand off my knee.
It was only after we left him that I realized his touch on my knee had been the only affectionate physical contact between us since I was a child. It brings tears to my eyes as I sit here and think about it now. That gesture carries a heavy cargo.
I never saw my father again. He died peacefully in his sleep one night in the winter of 1948.
19
The Hollywood One
I was back in Los Angeles when I got the news of my father’s death, wrangling with Eddie Simmonette over the start of preproduction on what I regarded as The Confessions: Part III—but which was known to everyone else as Father of Liberty. I was dreadfully upset by the news, much more than I had ever expected to be. In the midst of all the grief, the guilt and remorse for things unsaid and undone, one obsession came to dominate my mind—perhaps, I can now see, as a way of allowing myself to cope. What distressed me most was the sudden realization that my father might have died without ever seeing one of my films. I telegraphed Thompson immediately: DID FATHER EVER SEE MY FILMS STOP URGENT I KNOW SOONEST JOHN.
Thompson himself replied: YOUR QUESTION IN WORST POSSIBLE TASTE STOP SUGGEST YOU SEEK PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL ADVICE STOP THOMPSON TODD.
I wrote to Oonagh, then a very old lady living in Musselburgh, with the same inquiry, and received a shaky scrawl in reply, written by a neighbor.
Dear Johnny,
Terrible sad news about your father. He was a fine good man and we will all miss him “something dreadful.” I do not know if he ever saw your “films” (I have seen them many times), but I do remember him saying on frequent occasions that he “abominated the kinema.” But I am sure he would have changed his mind if only he had seen your own “pictures.” I do know he was very proud of those “photos” you took when you were a “wee laddie.” …
And so on for another breathless couple of pages clotted with arch “colloquialisms” all about the “funeral” and the “family.”
I think it was that finality in her message (I could hear quite clearly, as if from beyond the grave, the sound of his voice “abominating,” and could sense his intense pleasure in the archaic pronunciation of “cinema”). Even if he had been an avid cinemagoer I was sure that he would have contrived to ignore my own work. I told myself to forget it. Why was it so important that one cantankerous old man had seen my films? I felt ashamed of my abject filial needs—as if all sons worked only for paternal approbation. Grotesque idea!
Father of Liberty was on the surface little more than a conventional biopic of the sort manufactured by any Hollywood studio—usual subjects being kings and queens, philanthropists and bandleaders. You will be familiar with the genre. Eddie had insisted we follow this format if Lone Star were to finance it. Consequently I had rewritten the 1934 script with this stricture in mind. His second condition was that I must make the Jesse James Western afterwards. The Equalizer had been Lone Star’s top-grossing film of 1944 and ‘45. Eddie was hungry for more. There was also the now-pressing problem of Karl-Heinz’s age. I decided that convention would allow us to use him from the affair with Mme. de Warens onwards, although even that was straining credibility somewhat. I bent the truth slightly by allowing the implication to surface that the affair began later in his life than it really had. The much-vaunted verisimilitude of Part I was being compromised, but under the circumstances what else could I do? I expanded the adolescent and childhood years considerably. Then heavy makeup, a thick wig and careful lighting
should just about see us through, or so I argued to Eddie, who was keen not to employ Karl-Heinz.
Karl-Heinz looked much better than he had in Berlin. He enjoyed California. He sunbathed a lot and his tan smoothed out the shadows and taut angularities of his face. His health improved too: his ulcers—he had several, apparently—responded to treatment. The studio rented an apartment for him in the Hotel Cythera on the oceanfront at Santa Monica, not far from my house, and I used to look in on him most days. Getting him over from Scotland had proved straightforward. Father of Liberty was slated to start and Karl-Heinz was cast as the lead. His entry visa and resident’s permit were rubber-stamped by the relevant authorities.
Karl-Heinz’s attitude to life was now even more one of placid resignation. He accepted his transformation from troglodyte Kippensammler to Hollywood movie star with nothing more than a shrug and a faint smile. I recognized the condition: he had surrendered himself to the current. In Santa Monica he affected the dress style of a slightly down-on-his-luck artist—faded shirts, baggy trousers and neckerchiefs—and settled easily into the community as if he had only been away on vacation for a while. One day when we were strolling along the beach, a boy abandoned his surfboard and loped up to him calling, “Hey! Hey! Karl, man, how are you?” We were introduced (I forget this lad’s improbable name—Chet, Brett or Rhett, I think) and he and Karl-Heinz discussed where they would meet later that evening. We strolled on.
“Ah, the boys …” he said wistfully.
“Having fun?”
“I wish they all could be Californian.”
I stopped worrying about him after that.
Pause. Reflect. Consider. Here we are in November 1948. I am going to be fifty years old in a few months. I am about to start filming a medium-budget biopic on the life of Jean Jacques Rousseau for Lone Star Films called Father of Liberty. It will feature my oldest friend in the lead role and will be produced and financed by another old friend and longtime collaborator. I live alone in my own house in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California. I am not rich but I am by no means poor. Father of Liberty will be my eighteenth completed film. I have two ex-wives and three children. I have a few close friends: Karl-Heinz, Eddie, Hamish, Ramón, Monika, the Coopers, the Gasts, the Hitzigs (Lori Madrazon was killed in a car accident in 1945). I have a few enemies. I have survived two world wars and serious injury. I have one lung, a strong heart, a weak left leg and my right shoulder stiffens up easily. I am carrying a little too much weight, my hair is graying, but I am told I still possess a certain vital dark attractiveness that is unusual in a man of my age.
My disappointments are profound but not numerous. I was unreconciled with my father when he died. My brother will not speak to me. I am estranged from my children. My second son, whom I adored, died when a baby. Worst of all, the woman I truly loved, and who could have transformed my life, abandoned me.
My moment of greatest triumph came early in my career. I have known fame and great wealth, have suffered poverty, neglect, and obloquy. My most commercially successful films have not been my best. My best work, the true expression of my particular genius, is unknown or unrecognized.
This seems an honest, not unreasonable summary. A half century with more than enough excitements and disasters, you might say, to fill several lives. And now with a pleasing structural neatness I am about to embark on a project that will complete an endeavor begun twenty years previously. Yes indeed, you might judge—with all objectivity—all things considered, given the absurd capriciousness of fortune, ceteris paribus, John James Todd has been a fortunate man.
I thought so too. I thought so too.
Then one day I got a call from Eddie Simmonette. Would I meet him in a certain drugstore on La Cienega Boulevard. And would I please make sure I was not followed. What was he talking about? I demanded. He wouldn’t say. I assumed he was going to tell me he was getting divorced. Rumor had it he and Artemisia were no longer happy together. I braced myself for a bout of Eddie’s self-pity, a rare event but an enervating one. Of course I made no checks to see if I was being followed.
It was a fine day, I recall, with only a faint haze. I stopped and bought a bottle of Coke from a sidewalk dispenser and drank it as I drove to meet Eddie. I looked at the tall spindly palm trees, the neat houses and immaculate gardens, the big chrome-heavy cars. The Coke was sweet in my mouth. The long nightmare that was to be the rest of my life was about to begin.
* * *
It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon when I arrived at the drugstore. I could see no sign of Eddie’s car outside, but when I went in he was there, pretending to browse at a revolving stand of crime novels. We sat down in a booth. He took off his sunglasses and mopped his face with a handkerchief. We exchanged pleasantries. Eddie was trying to lose some weight. He had grown really quite fat in the last two years. The cleft on his chin was half an inch deeper.
“How’s the diet?” I said.
“Great, great,” he said. The waitress approached.
“You want something?” Eddie asked me.
“I’ll have a black tea with lemon.” My teeth felt furry, faintly neuralgic.
“I’ll have a cheeseburger with slaw. Banana milkshake. No fries.” He smiled at me. “No fries. No booze. Why do I live?”
“What’s this all about, Eddie?”
He became serious. “I think we have some problems.” He took a magazine out of his pocket and handed it over, open at a page. I looked at the cover. It was called Red Connections.
“Look at that list of names.”
My eyes ran down the list. I recognized most of them. Herbert Biberman, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, Jr., Dalton Trumbo, Humphrey Bogart, Danny Kaye, Eddie Cantor and many more.
“You know who they are?” Eddie asked.
“The Hollywood Ten. And the people who signed that petition.”
“Right.”
“What’s it got to do with me?”
“Keep reading.”
I went on down the list. Groucho Marx, Bertolt Brecht, Frank Sinatra, John James Todd …
“What the hell is this?” I looked at the list’s heading: “Joe Stalin’s Hollywood Buddies.” The magazine was cheap—bad color reproduction, poor-quality paper. I scrutinized the contents. There seem to be a lot of exclamation marks.
“What does this mean?”
“You’ve been listed.”
“I can see that, for Christ’s sake, but so what?”
“Did you sign that petition, any petition, for the Hollywood Ten?”
“No. I mean I would have if I’d been asked. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t here at the time. I was in New York meeting Karl-Heinz.”
“Thank Christ he’s not on it.”
“Why should he be? Why should I be?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
“I haven’t the faintest.”
“Must be some mistake, then.” He smiled. He was the old Eddie again, relaxed and in control of his destiny.
“I don’t know why, John, but this Red shit has really got me spooked. Those bastards—McCarthy, Parnell Thomas—they’ve really started something. Now everyone gets to hunt Reds.” He gestured at the magazine. “And now this garbage.” He sighed. “Why do we do this to ourselves?”
I liked the “we”—good old Aram Lodokian.
“I can see why you’re worried,” I said, guilelessly. “I mean, God, you were even born in Russia.”
He gripped my arm fiercely. “Never, never say that to anyone, John, ever again.”
“Christ! All right. Let go.… Don’t worry, Eddie. Jesus.…”
He relaxed again. I had never seen him like this. I watched him eat his hamburger. Like everyone else in Los Angeles I had heard of the Hollywood Ten, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It reminded me a little of Berlin in the twenties. I had paid it little heed; I was busy with Father of Liberty.
I drove home, somewhat perturbed. Edd
ie had told me that Red Connections was published by an organization called Alert Inc., which gave a mailing address on Sunset Boulevard. As I pulled up near my house I saw two men in dark suits standing on the sidewalk opposite. As I approached, one of them—who for some reason seemed vaguely familiar—jumped into a car and drove off. The other man stood his ground.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you John James Todd?”
Why did I hear the voice of Ian Orr? I wish I had had the presence of mind to say, “Who wants to know?” but I managed only a docile admission. He handed me a manila envelope and walked away.
I waited until I was inside before I opened it. I poured myself a beer from the fridge and switched on the air conditioning. I killed two flies in the kitchen. Then I turned to my envelope. There was something immediately unpleasant about the sheet of pink paper it contained. Something ironic about it too: that the House Committee on Un-American Activities should issue its subpoenas on paper of such a politically suspect shade. I, John James Todd, was to present myself before the Brayfield Subcommittee of HUAC (we’ll call it HUAC; everyone else did) at Room 1121 of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where I would be questioned in “executive session.”
I phoned Eddie.
“Oh no! Oh no, Jesus fuck no!” He went on in this vein for a while. “When is it?”
“Next week.”
“Sweet suffering Christ. Have you got a lawyer?”
“No.”
“I’ll get you one. There’s a young guy works for us—very sharp. Don’t worry, John, I’m sure it’s just some terrible mistake. But listen, you’d better stay home for a while. Work from home.”
“All right. But we were going to start casting.”
“Let’s get this hearing out of the way.”
I went along with what he said. I spoke confidentially with a few people, who reassured me. All HUAC activities, they said, were in theory suspended pending the appeal of the Hollywood Ten. No one could understand why this subcommittee had been instigated. Even my lawyer, Page Farrier, was mystified.
