Contango (Ill Wind) (16 page)

“But you’re still talking about niggers. …”

It was no use arguing, however. She left quite convinced that she could
expect no support from any of the well-known producing companies. She was too
scornful of their attitude to feel defeat; indeed, her scorn fed fuel to her
keenness. Yet, if what Vox had said were true, the outlook did not appear
very hopeful. Only gradually did she accept the notion that she must
undertake the task herself. At first, this would have seemed preposterous,
for she, of all persons, knew the immense technical difficulties of
picture-making on a large scale. The cost, too, and the big risk of financial
failure, made the project seem particularly mad; it was too huge a stake to
play for, after all her Wall Street losses. And yet, when she continued to
think about it, it was those Wall Street losses that finally urged her on; so
much of her money had melted away into nothing, surely she could adventure a
fraction of the residue in something, in something that was both big and
real? Almost without awareness that she had already made the decision, she
began to look about for possible colleagues in the enterprise; and her final
misgivings disappeared when, to her great surprise, she found Statler
sympathetic. Not only that; he offered to join her financially in the venture
on a fifty-fifty basis. The fact that the film-companies wouldn’t touch
it didn’t disturb him in the least. “I’ve made my pile by
doing just what the other guy doesn’t do,” he said. “And
I’ve found out another thing, too—that there ain’t no
fools like those that think they know their own business best.”

As for Nicky, he was sheerly delighted with the prospect of such new and
exciting activities. He read books about the Indians, took flying visits into
Arizona and New Mexico in search of good locations, and absorbed all the
colour and tradition he could get hold of. He also practised before the
camera and microphone, and was successful enough to enjoy himself very
thoroughly. Sylvia was equally busy, engaging camera-men,
production-managers, art-directors, dialogue-writers, and all the hordes of
miscellaneous camp-followers required for such a job. These preparations were
complete by the end of August, and the actual filming began a fortnight later
at Sabinal, New Mexico.

“Amerind,” as Sylvia decided to call the picture, was in many
ways a unique production. Not wholly original in treatment (it owed obvious
debts to the great Griffiths canvases and also to the more recent all-negro
“Hallelujah”), it nevertheless broke as much new ground as could be
expected from a single work. It cost money, and there was no stinting, but
for size and scope it was probably one of the cheapest films ever made.
Sylvia and Nicky drew salaries which, by Hollywood standards, were quite
small, and the producer was a young Russian of genius, but not yet of
reputation, who was glad enough to take his chance for less than the pay of a
swell gangster. Except for Sylvia, nobody had a name already well-known to
the world. There was about the entire enterprise, indeed, a prevalent
atmosphere of youth and eager ambition; the whole company were aware,
intuitively even if they did not think it out, that they were engaged in a
pioneer adventure, something different in character from the conventional
Hollywood job.

But “Amerind’s” greatest triumph, of course, was Nicky.
As soon as the first few scenes had been shot, Sylvia was aware that he would
prove to be all that she had hoped, and more. Not only was his acting superb,
but he had an extraordinary success with the real Indians of the locality. He
seemed to make them realise that the picture was intended to dignify and not
travesty their race; he conquered their shyness, induced them to share in the
general zest and excitement, and made a few of them into quite excellent
actors. None of the big scenes—the fight with the settlers, the Indian
dance, the trek to the reserved territory—would have been half so
effective without his guidances and persuasions. It was noticeable that the
Indians accepted him as one of themselves as they did no other; in the native
village he strolled in and out of the small adobe huts as unceremoniously as
(Sylvia reflected) he was liable to stroll in and out of her own and
doubtless anyone else’s bedroom. He was like that. She felt it was
probably his most successful pose, that of having no pose at all.

She was surpassingly happy during those crowded, hard-working weeks at
Sabinal. They were something like a miracle to her, bringing back what she
had believed entirely lost, the glamour of her early film-days. There were
the same cries and shoutings, the same smells of dust and horses and
camp-fire cooking, the same flaunted landscape-colours. Impossible to capture
these directly for the film, but they were somehow imposed, she hoped, on
every cadence and movement of those who were there amongst them the flaming
ocotillo and lemon- yellow cactus, the ash-grey sage-brush against that
background of pale mauve desert and violet horizon. Those September dawns
when they all set out early, in cars as far as the road took them, then on
horseback trails into the mountains, cast a spell over memory; made vivid all
that she had ever had of happiness or excitement, and blacked out every qualm
and trouble of more recent years. At that mile-high altitude, under the
copper sky as the sun rose, one could sniff the future, one felt alive in the
morning of the world. This was America, she felt, in a sense that might mean
more to Americans if ever some day their skyscraper civilisation should fall
away. She herself throve in it; her body freshened and grew taut with new
ardours. Once, when Nicky kissed her, she returned his caress with a passion
that overwhelmed them both, but him only with a curious wayward ecstasy. She
had never met anyone the least like him before, and was sure she never would
again. She was by no means confident that he was entirely sane. Certainly he
was the only man she had ever known whose genius took in everything that he
WAS as well as a few things that he HAD. The warm and sombre dignity of his
Indian characterisation touched her as she felt sure millions of others would
be touched; and it was perhaps natural that after his sublimities before the
camera he should fly to the quaintest extremes when off duty. But on duty or
off, he seemed alive to her in a sense in which most other people were dead;
even his created self, the Indian of the film, lived more than all her
far-away acquaintances of club-house and studio.

She had very few acting scenes at Sabinal; most of hers were interiors to
be shot later on in Hollywood. In these she was to take the part of the
modern New York girl enamoured of the Indian, meeting him in drawing-rooms,
yet seeing behind his tamed elegance the splendour of the untameable. It was
a part that she looked forward to throughout those long, burning days in the
desert; yet when at last the camp broke up and she waved farewell to the
Indians from the window of the Los Angeles express there came over her a
feeling of simple misery, as for a child’s party that was over.

The month that followed of studio-work, cutting, and final arrangement,
might have been anti-climax but for her growing consciousness of success. Her
acting surprised herself; when she compared it with that in her last film, it
was as though she had grown into someone else. The love-scenes with Nicky
were quite perfect, and his brooding tenderness set the key for what she felt
sure would sound a new motif in screen-passion. Scores of men had made love
to her, both before the camera and otherwise, but not one had impressed with
such flawlessness of technique. Yet she found herself entirely incapable of
judging whether this flawlessness in Nicky were due mainly to instinct or to
experience. As a critic of love, she was puzzled; but as an exhibitionist she
could not but admire the virtuosity of a performance which gave her own
talents such full and confident scope. Never, indeed, had celluloid recorded
her in better form.

When the last shot had been taken (one morning in October) she had
everyone she could think of called up on the telephone and invited to an
impromptu party at her house that same evening. She felt recklessly
triumphant, and took vast delight in the excitements and complications of
such large-scale planning at short notice—the servants clearing the
big rooms for dancing, hired waiters unpacking crockery, the armies of
electricians festooning coloured lights from the eucalyptus trees in the
garden. She gave her bootlegger the largest private order he had had for
months, and told the leader of a jazz-band over the San Francisco telephone
that he could fly his men across at any expense; she wanted the best
saxophones on the Pacific slope that night and was prepared to pay for them.
All this kind of thing was reminiscent of more profligate days, but there was
an intention in her mind that made profligacy appear worth while: it was a
gesture to announce that Sylvia Seydel was still rich, just as later her
picture could do its own announcing that she was not only still great but
greater than ever.

Between two and three hundred persons arrived, few of them personal
friends, most mere acquaintances, some scarcely even that. She stirred to an
inward contempt as she regally shook hands and accepted their chattering
congratulations; but the contempt was in some sense a luxury to which she was
treating herself as reward. She knew the mood of these people and the
thoughts they had been exchanging about her ever since the disappointment
(she could allow the word now) of her last picture. She knew that most of
them thought that she had lost her head and was about to lose what was left
of her money also; she knew that they had been laughing at her, reckoning her
losses, scandalising her relationship with Nicky, whom they probably regarded
as just the usual gigolo foreigner trading on his title and good
looks—a queen’s favourite even if not already a prince-consort.
Such knowledge gave her a cool and calculating arrogance; she would show
these people the kind she really was and the kind Nicky really was. That he
was attractive, witty, and clever, had been demonstrated often enough; but
how much more was there that they would soon have to concede? She felt a
stormy, half-proprietary pride in him as she caught over his shoulder
fleeting stares of other dancers—their inquisitive, envious, slightly
ill-wishing eyes. “They’d enjoy themselves like this at my
funeral,” she whispered to Statler, during an interval, and he
answered, in his softly cooing voice: “I guess they think this is your
funeral, Miss Seydel.”

Supper was taken in the huge panelled dining-room which had been cleared
of all furniture except long buffet-tables. For over an hour the roar of
conversation and popping of corks gathered impetus; there were torrents of
champagne, and a few of the guests soon began to get noisily tipsy. The
bootlegger supplying the wines had sent also, as a friendly tribute to the
movie-queen, the equipment of a new game of his own invention; it consisted
of life-size rubber heads of gloomily-featured persons labelled
“Depression,” “Unemployment,” “Stocks
Slump,” and so on, and the game was to shy balls at these figures till
they toppled over and rang a bell. But there were not enough balls to go
round, and some of the crowd pelted the figures with apples, empty bottles,
and ice out of the champagne buckets, till the floor and walls at that end of
the room were splashed and littered with debris. Whenever the bell did ring
pandemonium raged for minutes on end, amidst which the tipsier among the
throwers aimed their missiles wildly. Minor casualties resulted from these
commotions, and a man’s arm was badly gashed with broken glass; there
also developed a noisy fight on the lawns between two hastily organised
gangs, ending by the pushing of a garden-roller into an ornamental pond. Some
rather valuable plants were destroyed and miscellaneous other items of damage
done before the warriors of both sexes selected their partners, filled up
their hip-flasks, and retired to amorous seclusion in the cars parked in the
avenue. Indeed, there could be no doubt that the party was proving a thorough
success.

Towards midnight the surviving merrymakers called for a speech from
Sylvia, who was still dancing with Nicky, and the cry was taken up so
boisterously that guests came rushing in from their various preoccupations in
other parts of the house and gardens. Sylvia, with her arm through
Nicky’s, mounted the dais amongst the jazz-players and skimmed a few
sentences serenely above the hubbub. She said very little about the new film,
except that it was finished, and that she was sure it was going to be a
success. But she praised Nicky and insisted that all the credit was due to
him rather than to her. At this there was some slightly mocking applause, to
which she responded by adding: “Well, anyhow, you’ll all be
seeing the picture, so you’ll soon have a chance of judging the kind of
person he really is.”

To her surprise, Nicky flushed and appeared put out by the remark.
“I don’t know that I particularly want all these people to know
the kind of person I really am,” he answered, in a tone that began with
lazy insolence and ended in a note of shrill rage. Then, in the excited hush
that followed, he gave a sudden laugh, shook himself free from Sylvia, and
pushed his way out of the room.

Four hours later Sylvia slowly undressed amidst the perfumed and unguented
luxury which had been photographed for so many art magazines and beauty-cream
advertisements. She had not seen Nicky since his abrupt departure from the
dance-room, and she was trying hard to feel that he had not meant to snub her
publicly, but had only been a little more capricious than usual after too
much champagne. Harder still, she tried to feel that it did not really matter
what his reason had been, since he had behaved rudely to her, and must be
left either to realise it for himself or not at all. It was by no means the
first squabble they had had, but it was the first time they had ever given a
public exhibition. She felt hurt, cross, and achingly tired after the stress
of the evening and the sharp deflation of her triumph. The house and gardens
were still full of sounds of the servants clearing things away, and one
always wondered at such a time if it had all been worth while. On the whole
she thought it had—at any rate, up to the scene with Nicky.
Fortunately, everybody had been more or less tight when that had happened.
Perhaps Nicky too, poor boy. She had better make up her mind, she reflected,
whether she was chiefly sorry or angry.