(1969) The Seven Minutes (56 page)

‘Christian Leroux.’

‘Spell the last name.’

‘L-e-r-o-u-x.’

From the bench, Judge Upshaw called down, ‘You may be seated now, Mr Leroux.’

During the swearing in, Mike Barrett had been studying Elmo Duncan’s co-star in the prosecution’s elaborate production. Still influenced by Quandt’s description of the French publisher, Barrett had expected a person seedy and rundown, yet clinging to some shred of dignity from better days, like an exiled Czarist nobleman who had become a waiter or a doorman. However, there was no air of defeat, no visible signs of poverty, in the publisher’s bearing and dress. He was as much a dandy as any aristocratic peacock who had stepped out of the pages of Proust. His recent return to affluence showed.

Except for something furtive and cunning in his manner, battle scars common to many men who have known hard times and survived to their mid-sixties, Christian Leroux was impressive. He must have been taller once, Barrett thought, but his bearing was still grand, which gave an illusion of height. His hair had been dyed and was wavy, with not a strand out of place. The eyes were small, faded blue, darting. The aquiline nose had with age become a veiny bill. The weak chin showed a razor cut. He wore an ultramarine chalk-striped suit with flat pockets, and the jacket was short and tight in the French fashion. There was a neat bow tie and there were jade cuff links and tasseled shoes. In replying to the court clerk, his English had a Mayfair slur punctuated by a sibilant French accent, slight but enough to remind one this was a visitor from Paris.

Observing him take his seat in the witness box, Barrett detected a quality at once unctuous and pretentious, something canting, perhaps a Parisian Pecksniff. If this quality existed, it might not be revealed in the People’s examination. Perhaps, Barrett thought, he could find it and expose it in his crossexamination. If it was there. As matters stood, he distrusted Leroux’s honesty, oath or no oath. The Frenchman had been ready to say one thing for the defense, and now he had agreed to say another thing for the prosecution. He had been for sale to the highest bidder. That might make him twice as difficult to dissect, Barrett suspected. There is no morality as high-purposed, nor any integrity as staunch, as that possessed by a reformed whore. Well, Barrett decided, he would watch for the sign of cracks, and if possible he would pry them open to reveal the real Christian Leroux.

‘Okay,’ he heard Zelkin whisper, ‘the assassination of J J Jadway beginneth.’

Elmo Duncan, arriving at the witness stand, had greeted his distinguished Gallic visitor with a respectful bow.

‘Mr Leroux, sir, where is your present residence or home?’

‘I am a citizen of France, and I have always made Paris my home. I have an apartment in an old and quiet section of the Left Bank in Paris.’

‘What is your present occupation?’

‘I am a publisher of books.’

‘In Paris?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you have a place of business?’

‘I do. I have my offices in the Rue Sebastien Bottin. This is nearby the distinguished house of the Editions Gallimard.’

At his table, Barrett was amused. The old pornographer was shoring up his own respectability by association. Barrett wondered whether he was this clever or whether this had been Duncan’s doing

‘Mr Leroux, briefly, what is your educational background ? Are you a college graduate?’

T graduated from the Sorbonne in Paris. My specialty was in seventeenth-century French literature, the period of Racine, La Fontaine, La Rochefoucauld, Jean Poquelin - known to most as Moliere.’

Not only pretentious, Barrett thought, but a small snob as well. Good, very good.

Apparently Duncan had been worried about this condescension, too, for he quickly asked, ‘But you also studied more popular writers -I mean, like -‘

Barrett was on his feet instantly. ‘Objection, Your Honor. Counsel is leading the witness.’

‘Objection sustained,’ said Judge Upshaw.

Duncan cast Barrett an irritated glance. He turned to the witness once more. ‘Mr Leroux, have you kept abreast of the writings of more popular writers?’

‘Definitely. I have always read everything. As Valery has said, one reads well only when one reads with some quite personal goal in mind. As a publisher, I have read well, because it has been my goal to learn about writing, so that I might be able to recognize new authors who deserved to be heard and thus enlighten the reading public’

‘Mr Leroux, you have told us your present occupation is that of publisher. Have you had any other occupations?’

‘No. I have always been in this field, either employed by others or self-employed, that is to say a proprietor.’

‘When did you first become a publisher on your own ?’

‘In 1933.1 was very young. I was still in my early thirties. My father had died, and I had a modest inheritance. So I established

my own publishing house.’

‘What was the name of this firm?’

The Etoile Press. It was so called because my location was at 18 Rue de Berri, which is off the Champs Elysees, only a short distance from the Etoile and the Arc de Triomphe.’

‘The Etoile Press,’ repeated Duncan. ‘Is this the same press, the same imprint, that brought out a work of fiction in 1935 entitled The Seven Minutes, by J J Jadway?’

‘The same,’ said Christian Leroux.

At last, Barrett told himself. He leaned forward on the table and listened intently.

‘Mr Leroux, I have seen your original edition of this book. I noted that it was printed in English. Since it was published in Paris, why was it not in the French language?’

‘The French government would not permit its publication in French.’

‘Why not?’

“The French censorship bureau determined it was obscene.’

‘Obscene? I see, yes. Well, now, was The Seven Minutes ever published in any other country, in any other language?’

‘No. Absolutely no nation on earth would pass on it or accept it. Everywhere it was considered too obscene. Many critics, of many countries, have regarded it as the most obscene and depraved book ever published in the history of literature.’

‘Then how were you able to bring out an edition in English, in Paris?’

‘Ah, precisely because it was in English, and the average French reader could not read English and be disturbed by it. At the same time, the French government has, until recent years, always been liberal in its regard of books, especially books in a language foreign to France. I need only point out that it was in Paris that James Joyce’s Ulysses was first published in English, though it could not be printed in Great Britain or America. It was in Paris that Radclyffe Hall found her publisher for The Well of Loneliness and Wallace Smith found his publisher for Bessie Cotter. The French authorities did not mind. They looked the other way, since those books were in English and could not corrupt the French. They could only corrupt the tourists, and that did not matter, that was amusing.’

‘So under those circumstances,’ said Duncan, ‘you were able to circumvent the censors and undertake publishing the book that has been called the filthiest book in the history of publishing?’

‘Objection, Your Honor,’ Barrett protested, ‘on the grounds of hearsay evidence.’

Judge Upshaw cleared his throat and addressed the District Attorney. ‘Mr Duncan, no proper foundation has been laid. The objection is sustained.’

Duncan was apologetic. ‘Very well, Your Honor.’ He returned

to the witness. ‘Mr Leroux, did you always publish mainly pornography?’

Christian Leroux appeared mildly offended. ‘No, that is not so. In the first few years, my list consisted mainly of very acceptable and scholarly literature. There were histories, biographies, art books, classical fiction.’

‘But soon your list was comprised, for the most part, of books that were obscene or pornographic in content?’

‘Yes, I regret to say.’

‘Why did you turn largely to this sort of publishing?’

Leroux gave the court a Gallic shrug. ‘Because we are often victims of life and the world. Let me put it another way. Sans argent l’honneur n’est qu’une maladie. You understand? It is from Jean-Baptiste Racine. Honor, without money, is a mere malady. True, a malady. And I wished to be well and healthy. Yet there is more. Permit me to elaborate -‘

‘Please go ahead.’

‘I was inspired to change the character and product of the Etoile Press by the overnight success of another publisher, the publisher of the Obelisk Press in Paris. It was this way. The owner of the Obelisk Press was a gentleman named Jack Kahane, a businessman from Manchester, England, a most colorful and tasteful gentleman. Mr Kahane had served in the Bengal Lancers. Also in the French Foreign Legion. In business, he was not successful. He was a failure. So he emigrated to France and in 1931 he founded the Obelisk Press to publish books that were not allowed to be published in England. He did so not only to rehabilitate his fortune, but to combat censorship and prudery. Mr Kahane, prior to his death in 1939, had dared to be the first to publish My Life and Loves, by Frank Harris, and Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller, of which Ezra Pound said, “At last an unprintable book that is fit to read.” It was Mr Kahane’s success, I repeat, that encouraged me to concentrate fully on pornography and obscenity. My motives were the same as Mr Kahane’s. To make a livelihood, for one thing. But perhaps more important, to see that the best literature that suffered suppression would see the light of day.’

‘Let me be sure that I understand you fully, Mr Leroux. Are you saying that all of the books you published were worthwhile literature and deserved to be published?’

‘No, no, not all. I brought out perhaps a dozen new titles every year, and at least half of these were not worthy to be called literature. I must confess, many were commissioned by me, were written to order by hack authors. I had learned that Petronius had written his Satyricon to titillate the Emperor Nero. I reasoned I could arrange for other writers to titillate the tourists. Of course, some of these, the filthier books the ones totally without merit, they were not commissioned. They just came to me, to my desk. But voila, the dirty ones without literary merit, they were necessary to support

the better ones and to support me.’

‘Can you name some of these dirty ones that had no literary merit ?’

‘Let me remember. There was one called The Hundred Whips. There was another called The Sex Life of Anna Karenina. Then - of course, it is only my opinion that it belongs in the same category -there was The Seven Minutes.’

‘The Seven Minutes’ repeated Duncan, half facing the jury. ‘This is the same book, The Seven Minutes, by J J Jadway, that is being charged as obscene in this court?’ ‘It is the same one.’

‘This was not one of your pornographic books that you would classify as among the best of the literature that was being suppressed?’ ‘No, never.’

‘It was -and this is offered only asyourpersonal opinion-oneof your dirty books without literary merit, published merely to make money?’

‘Yes, exactly, that is true. I knew from the first it was a low-grade book, the most vile, but there is every kind of taste and I thought it might sell. For me it was business. Besides, the author needed money, and I was always sympathetic toward authors. So I published this filth in order to earn enough to allow me to publish Aubrey Beardsley’s Under the Hill, which was pornography but not obscenity.’

‘Mr Leroux, you’ve just said you wished to publish something that was pornography but not obscenity. Most dictionaries con-siderthe two words as synonymous. Pornography is often defined as obscene literature. In this trial we are using the words synonymously, interchangeably. Yet are you saying that, in your opinion, there is a difference?’

‘Definitely. Even though I may have employed the words as synonyms, there is a fine shade of difference between them, I believe. A pornographic book most often will depict sex naturally, healthily, realistically, and while it may arouse lustful thoughts and desires, its main purpose is to show a full picture of man’s nature and life. An obscene book, on the other hand, is an aphrodisiac and nothing else. It depicts only sex, no other side of life, just sex and more sex, with its entire purpose being to inflame a reader’s morbid interest through fantasized sex.’

‘Well, then, by your literary standards, The Seven Minutes was -wait, let me rephrase - Did you consider the Jadway book to be a work of honest pornography ?’

‘I did not. Casanova’s memoirs, Frank Harris’ autobiography, even one work by Mark Twain, were honest pornography. Jad-way’s book was not of that class. It was obscene and no more.’

‘Then you believe the Jadway book to be a totally obscene work, and nothing more?’

‘Yes. Obscene. Nothing more. A prose aphrodisiac. Nothing else. I have no doubt about that. The author knew it. His mistress, who was his agent, knew it. I knew it. It was a commercial enterprise for all of us, with no redeeming purpose. Today, looking back, I am ashamed of what I helped perpetuate. Today, by this confession of truth, perhaps I can make reparation and cleanse my soul.’

‘We understand and appreciate that, Mr Leroux.’

At the defense table, Zelkin had Barrett’s ear. ‘Our witness is a sanctimonious prick,’ he whispered, ‘and so is our D.A.’

Surprised at his partner’s blunt language, which revealed the depth of his anger, Barrett nodded his agreement, and unhappily turned his attention back to the witness box.

‘Mr Leroux,’ said Duncan, ‘can you now tell us, in your own words, sparing us nothing, how you came to publish The Seven Minutes and of your relationship with the author and his agent?’

‘Yes. I will relate only what I can recollect clearly and what is true.’ Leroux rubbed his veiny nose, squinted up at the ceiling, and then resumed speaking. ‘Late in the year 1934, an attractive young lady appeared in my office in the Rue de Berri and identified herself as Miss Cassie McGraw. She was an American girl of Irish descent. She had come to Paris several years earlier from the American Middle West, to be an artist, and she had lived in the St-Germain-desPres section of the Left Bank ever since. There she had met another American expatriate, and they had become friends. Later she admitted to me they were lovers. This other expatriate, her lover, was J J Jadway. He had rebelled against his father, who was an important Catholic, and against his New England strictness of upbringing, and, leaving his parents and two younger sisters behind, he had fled to Paris. He was determined to live as a bohemian, and to write, and as a writer to liberate not only himself but all of literature. Unfortunately, he was one of those writers so familiar to publishers who talk writing but do not write. Because he was weak and frustrated, he drank and took to drugs -‘