The Berlin Connection (18 page)

of me, swung away, and focused on a script I had brushed off a table before my death. The camera lingered on it. Come Back, This shot was to be the last frame of the completed movie.

"Break for lunch!" called an assistant director.

Kostasch and Seaton came to me.

"Great," said Kostasch.

"Well, I don't know," I said.

"No, really," said Kostasch. "Your expression was great. Am I right Thornton?"

"Perfectly," said my director. "You were first class, Peter. I can't remember when I last had such a beautiful corpse!"

"That's very nice of you," I said. Seaton had been one of Holl)rwood's greatest directors. He had one serious weakness: young boys. As young as they were, they had blackmailed him. In 1949 there had been a scandal; Seaton's arrest and trial. His lawyers had in turn blackmailed the boys and their parents. The verdict was favorable to him but, after the trial, women's organizations were vociferous in their disapproval. No studio dared employ Seaton for the next nine years. He had had lean years writing scripts under a pseudonym or working as a cutter for television. Hopeless about his future as a director, he was suddenly rehabilitated when engaged to direct Come Back, He was known as a superb director—and he was now available for a relatively low fee.

For this man, now past sixty, our film was as desperately important as it was for me. This was his last chance too. All his energies were focused on what had to be a triumph.

But Kostasch was worried. He had mentioned to me that Seaton had been seen in nightclubs with his young German assistant, blond Hans, positively cute with his bright blue eyes and silky lashes.

I left the studio quickly and drove to the dilapidated barn where Schauberg was waiting.

After lunch we went through the rest of the sequence we had been shooting. Wallace knew that I had deceived him with his wife. I declared that I hated him, always had, and why. The scene began calmly, intensified, and climaxed with the murder.

Everything went well, I made no mistakes. It astonished me that I was so confident before the camera. If Miss King's close-ups had been shot we would have been finished for the day. Now two hours remained. An earlier scene which I had not expected to play until the following day was to be shot. For me, what followed then was disastrous.

19

About halfway through a rather long scene, I shouted at Wallace, "You think with your goddamn money you can buy everybody!"

We were rehearsing when I saw Albrecht whisper to Kostasch. Kostasch whispered to Seaton who then called Wallace and me to one side. It seemed "goddamn" was frowned on by the American movie code.

"You know how it is," said Seaton. "We'll have to change the word later if we don't do it now. You'll say 'miserable' instead of 'goddamn,' Peter. Okay?"

"Okay."

We rehearsed it once. In the take everything went well until I came to the altered sentence. I yelled, "You think with your goddamn misery—"

"Cut," said Seaton.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"It doesn't matter. We'll do it once more."

This time I cried, "You think with your money you can buy all miserable—"

"Cut."

"I'm terribly sorry. It will be all right next time."

"Well, of course!" said Seaton.

The next time I spoke the line correctly but fluffed the next sentence.

"Cut."

I began to perspire.

The make-up man dabbed my face and Seaton said amiably, "Just keep calm. It doesn't matter even if we have to do that take ten times!"

20

After I had ruined the tenth take most of those on the set avoided looking directly at me. A few did smile encouragingly in the manner of hospital nurses comforting a very sick man. I had gone through the dialogue with only minor slips but, in the last three takes, I had ruined the end of each scene. Nervous concentration on my role had exhausted me, left me quivering.

Preparing for the eleventh take Wallace was whistling. Albrecht was cleaning his fingernails.

Seaton asked me, "Perhaps we should leave the 'goddamn'; would that help? Then we'll have to synchronize the word later on."

"That won't make any difference now," I said and looked at Albrecht. He smiled.

"Peter boy, even if you ruin three kilometers of film— doesn't matter! I've never seen anyone perform the way you do!" cried Kostasch. I did not notice then how often he praised me.

"I swear, next time there'll be no slip!"

1 kept that promise.

Then Henry Wallace slipped up.

At each new take he had been waiting for the moment

when I would make a mistake. In his malicious eagerness he had missed his own cue.

Scene 421 for the twelfth time, the thirteenth, the fourteenth. Now we took turns making mistakes.

Albrecht said to Kostasch, "May I remind you that in ten minutes we'll be through for the day?"

"Shut up," Kostasch repHed. And to Wallace and me, "Will you try one more time?"

I nodded. Wallace, his smile blinding, said, "But as often as you like, dear Mr. Kostasch! I've been in the business long enough to know how patient one has to be with child stars!"

"You dirty son-of-a-bitch," I said to him.

21

Kostasch and Seaton exchanged glances. I knew then we would have to repeat 421 until midnight if necessary. The action called for Wallace and me to hate each other. Now we really did. Our dialogue would sound very convincing.

There had never been any love lost between us. In America his reputation was lofty. He had received two -Oscars, ardently pursued James Joyce research, collected early Indian art, corresponded with Jean Cocteau and Bernard Buffet, and was the author of a book on atonal music.

He would never have become my acting partner, never would have played opposite me in a movie, had it not been to his advantage to come to Europe for a year in an effort to straighten out his tax problems.

Disagreeable. Arrogant. An intellectual snob. Yet a most accomplished actor.

"It is now five to seven," Albrecht said.

"I told you to shut up! If we don't finish 421 today

167 •

we'll be behind on the first day and tomorrow's schedule will be upset."

"That's hardly my fault, Mr. Kostasch!"

"We'll try it again," said Seaton. I swallowed the two red pills Schauberg had given me. We did the sequence again. And again. I had fluffed the line.

A buzzer sounded.,It was seven o'clock, the end of a workday.

"Overtime!" called Kostasch.

"It's not my money, thank goodness," said Albrecht, smiling at me.

Half an hour later I was bathed in sweat. Black spots, fiery wheels before my eyes. I overheard the stagehands making bets.

"Make-up softening," reported the man who made me up.

"Ten-minute break!" called Seaton.

In his room he quickly restored the facial work, talking to me while his deft fingers moved. Yet I heard nothing: something was stirring the pit of my stomach.

The fist.

I just made it to my dressing room. I abruptly ordered out the man assigned to help me. Now I was staggering; I could hardly walk. Bells reverberated in my ears. My hands shook as I struggled to open my black bag.

I did not bother to lock the door or close the rattling window; the storm had returned during the past night. I pulled the cork with my teeth and drank from the bottle. I drank and drank, and then slumped into a chair, the bottle in one hand, the other pressed to my abdomen in an attempt to keep that fist from reaching my heart.

The whisky restrained the fist. Whisky. alleviated my fear but not my desperation. Twenty-three times for number 421. If we were to go forty-six takes—I could not do it. And if I could, what, after all, did that signify? Today was only the first day of the forty-three days scheduled for the movie. The work was too demanding. I would not be able to keep it up. Never. Shirley was coming. Joan was coming. Shirley was expecting a child.

The child. The movie. Another forty-two days. In a hotel together with Joan. The child. The doctor. Shirley. It was too much.

Whisky.

I drank leaning back, my face to the window. Startled I spilled some whisky and sat rooted to the chair.

An elephant was coming toward me.

It was huge. Its ears flapping in the storm. It walked slowly up the road leading to my dressing room. It came closer, grew larger step by step.

From the light of the streetlamps I could see its fissured hide. Its small, black, shiny, cunning eyes were looking directly at me.

I knew those eyes. Fear gripped me. They were the eyes of the dead seagull I had seen on the balcony of my hotel suite, the morning of my first attack. The gull which had vanished when I had wanted to show it to Natasha.

23

Closer and closer came the huge animal. I couldn't escape its eyes. Gull's eyes staring at me. How can they?

169

I'm sitting here in this brightly lit room. How can those eyes look at me?

But they do. I can see them.

Closer. Closer. Closer.

No one is outside. Only the animal. The trunk swings. The ears flap. The elephant leaves the road and steps on the lawn outside my dressing room. A wall. A gray wall. There is no way out any more. I'm closed in. I'm going to suffocate. I'm going to die here. Just as it happened once before.

Drink.

The gray wall moves, wrinkles. The elephant bends down and his left eye looks into my room. The eye. The all-knowing eye. The pitiless eye of the gull which seems to say: Blasphemer. Liar. Scoundrel.

24

I screamed.

I jumped up and threw the whisky bottle at this eye which quickly moved and disappeared. Glass from the broken bottle and window fell on the grass outside.

The view was clear again. I felt hot. I felt cold. I staggered to the window, looked out. The animal had disappeared. Had it ever been here?

"Mr. Jordan?" A knock at the door.

I must pull myself together.

"Come in!"

My dresser entered. "Now, if we—" He broke off. "Don't you feel well, Mr. Jordan?"

"I'm all right. I just had a fright."

"The window—"

"Yes. The ... the storm ripped it open. And slammed it shut. It broke the glass . . ." The whisky was working. I had drunk a lot.

The whisky. Damn, I have no more whisky. Idiot. Why hadn't I thrown a book, a shoe, a brush? No more whisky. I had thrown away my best friend. Idiot!

My man finished helping me dress just as the loudspeaker announced, "Mr. Jordan! Will Mr. Jordan come to the studio, please."

I asked. "What other movie are they shooting here— what is your name?"

"Harry, Mr. Jordan. Old Harry."

"What else are they shooting here, Harry?"

"Only a war movie. In Studio Two."

"No circus movie?"

"What makes you think that?"

"I've read it somewhere."

"That's right too. There was a circus here. Tigers, lions, elephants!"

So there. Of course. Naturally.

"But they finished shooting two weeks ago. Good God, Mr. Jordan, are you sure you are all right?"

25

"Four twenty-one. Take twenty-four."

Wallace and I finished the scene without one mistake.

"How was it?" asked Kostasch.

"Okay," said Seaton.

"Sound okay!"

The camera man was silent.

"Well!" said Kostasch to the young man who blushed, got up, and cried despairingly, "It's my fault! Only my fault. I didn't watch the footage!"

"Do you mean to say," Kostasch almost whispered, "that you ran out of film during the scene?"

The young man nodded.

Wallace laughed hysterically.

I sank down on a box and pressed my hands to my face. Behind me, bets were made and accepted on another failure. But they lost those bets. The twenty-fifth take was perfect.

One scene of four hundred and thirty-three scenes of a movie miles long. We had used three hundred and thirteen meters of film for a scene hardly thirteen meters long...

"That's all for today!" yelled the assistant director.

"It was worth it, Peter boy!" said Kostasch. "I'm happy. Very happy. You were— '*

I left him standing there. If I did not see Schauberg quickly I would break down in the studio.

Ten minutes later the man with the beret was sitting next to me in the Mercedes parked behind the old bam. A storm was raging. I had not stopped to change or take off the make-up. Shaking, I sat behind the wheel. Tears of exhaustion messed up my make-up. Schauberg was silent. He pulled off my jacket, pushed up my sleeve, and gave me an injection. Then he said, "I'm giving you what I gave you in the camp. Do you remember?"

I nodded and wanted to reply but the moment the needle punctured my skin I collapsed and everything went dark. I heard him talk, but did not understand; I heard myself talk unintelligibly. Then I heard no more and an overpowering feeling of peace, warmth, and contentment came over me.

I opened my eyes. Schauberg was there, smoking. I felt as good and strong as I had when he injected me the first time in his camp.

"Did I faint?"

"Just for a second." He smiled. "Nothing of any consequence. Your blood pressure drops easily. After all you are an artist. An artist lives the sensations of his body. August Strindberg made a will every time he had the flu."

"Did I say anything?"

"Yes."

"What? About Shirley? The child? Joan?

"It was rather confused," said Schauberg. "It had something to do with God. He's tormenting you, is He?"

"One can't be tormented by an entity one does not believe in."

"I see," he said in a tone of satisfaction.

"What do you mean: I see? Do you believe in Him?"

"You feel fine again, right?"

"Answer me."

"I like to give good value for good money. Don't be afraid, we'll pull you through."

"I want you to answer me!"

"Well, Mr. Jordan, I believe in nothing at all. I think. Few people think. If they can't think or won't, they have to believe. Or they can't function. God: for all of them, belief is the remedy, as many different concepts as there are different people, without any sense—and naturally animals too. Elephants, for instance, surely have their own elephant God."