Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army (12 page)

Poor Bea Cherbourg.

Poor Bea.

I was suddenly hit with the fact that a small part of me, most likely a very small part of me, but a part nonetheless, was in love with what was left of Bea Cherbourg. Which, of course, was nothing but people's memories of her. I had no idea who the Bea of her parent's memories was. Mike's memories were idealized and, as charming as they were, they were of a woman Bea herself would probably not much have liked. Sara Hutton's memories were distorted, I was quite sure, through a lens with a massive flaw in it. My memories were not extensive. Yet they were sharp with the clarity of a smile that supported two sad eyes. I sat back from myself and wondered about this small part of me suddenly in love with a smile supporting two sad eyes. It was curious. I had never been aware of this part of me before. Possibly, when this love dies—it was so fragile, I assumed this was to be its fate—possibly then I will lose all future awareness of it. For now, though, it begged to be considered.

There was a memory missing. Not one I could share, but one I could be informed of. I needed that information.

“Roee?” I called him over the intercom system. He answered from the kitchen. “I want to take a little trip to New Haven, Connecticut. To Yale University. I will want to speak with a teacher or professor named Sam or Samuel. I don't have a last name. He's probably with their film program. Make the arrangements, would you.”

“Of course. Now would you like breakfast?”

“Yes, something hot and nourishing. Something that would make me feel happy on a cold, miserable winter's morning.”

~ * ~

“His name is Samuel Farber, called Sam by all, and he teaches, among others, a course on film analysis in the Film Studies Program,” Roee walking into the library later that day and, dispensing with any former greeting, reported to me. “Now I don't know the syllabus for this course, but I assume it has something to do with investigating and delineating clearly the multifaceted layers of film's various emotional problems, and suggesting a cure or cures for them, or, at least, controlling them through some form of drug therapy.”

I looked up from the computer screen, where I was going over some detailed, and normally secret, financial information regarding Olympic Pictures. “Roee, are you sure your mother was not once near mortally frightened by a mad and homicidal film projectionist in a movie theater in downtown Tel Aviv?”

“My mother was not that kind of woman,” Roee stated with some umbrage.

“To attract the mad and homicidal?”

“To go to a movie.”

“I see. All right, well let's contact Mr. Farber and set up an appointment.”

“With whom? Federal Agent Harrington?”

Federal Agent Harrington is one of 52 identities I can assume. Each one fully backed up by all the necessary documents. Some require make up. Some don't. Some are scary. Some aren't. One my mother would have recognized—but I'm not sure I would.

“No, I'm sure Mr. Farber is cut from that part of the college cloth that finds anything Federal suspect. That would not be conducive to getting him to open up. How about J. W. Crick?”

“The freelance reporter?”

“Yes, on assignment from Vanity Fair to investigate the death of Bea Cherbourg.”

“Bea Cherbourg was hardly famous. Why would Vanity Fair be interested?”

“True. Not Dunne at all. All right, a general snippy piece on Death in Hollywood—death of dreams, death of ambition, death of people, and, more importantly, for Mr. Farber's sake, death of Art. You know, the rot in the underbelly. That should attract him. Tell him the death of Bea is just serving as a metaphor for my larger purpose.”

“For tomorrow?”

“Yes, late afternoon. I'll take the redeye tonight.”

“Why the redeye? I can get you an earlier flight.”

“No, the redeye will be fine. It will help make me naturally disheveled. There is, after all, I assume, some romance left in journalism.”

~ * ~

The next day, after a flight as disheveling as one can imagine—Roee, in the spirit of the enterprise, booked me into coach—I met Samuel Farber at the Film Studies Center of Yale, located in a building on Crown Street, which is, essentially, the southwest border of the campus proper. So 305 Crown Street faces out to reality, if one wanted to think of it that way, instead of in to ivory towers, which Yale claims not to have any of anyway.

Farber greeted me in his small office, desk facing the wall, bookcases filled haphazardly, books and papers taking up space on the guest chairs and small guest couch, the graying computer on the desk clothed comfortably in a thick cloth of dust.

Farber was a tall man of maybe forty-five who obviously jogged every morning to keep him fitting into traditional cut jeans, instead of the loose fit ones that were his right by age. They did look good, though. Especially coupled with close fitting T-shirts, like the one he was now wearing which featured the key art poster for the Polish release of Bonnie and Clyde. He had a head of hair so generous and thick you just knew that somewhere in the world there were at least ten men who suffered congenital baldness to compensate for the fact. He was, without a doubt, handsome, all could agree on that, male and female, the old and the young, those with 20/20 vision and even the blind.

“So,” Farber said with a smile that seemed like a hug from a buddy wearing a cashmere sweater, “you're from Vanity Fair?”

“I'm a freelancer on assignment for them. I don't normally cover things Hollywood, but Graydon thought I could bring a fresh perspective to an old story.”

“The death of Art in Hollywood?”

“Yeah.”

“And the death of Bea.”

“Were you shocked to learn of it?”

“Of course. I've never lost a student before.”

“You lost her?”

“What I mean is, Bea is the first student, of all that I've taught, who's died.”

“You've been teaching...?”

“Twenty years.”

“And you know the whereabouts of all your past students, and their current states of health?”

“Well, I suppose I meant students who had been special.”

“Students who saw you as what? The master? A guru?”

He smiled and very slowly shook his head, as if in pity for this outsider who just didn't understand. “As a friend with a mind compatible to their own.”

“Just minds?”

“I have a suspicion what that question relates to, but maybe you should elaborate.”

“Did you have an affair with Bea Cherbourg?”

“Well, if I had, I truly apologize if it caused the death of Art in Hollywood.”

“Would you be sorry if it had caused Bea's death.”

He took a second to think—but only a second. “I doubt that very much.”

“How come you never went to Hollywood?”

“I have too much respect for film.”

“And you teach that respect to those students compatible with your mind?”

“I think that's probably an adequate description of my job.”

“Is film an art?”

“It can be.”

“A powerful medium?”

“Obviously. Whether it's an art or not.”

“What's your assessment of the state of Hollywood film making today?”

“My assessment is that the Hollywood film today has sunk into the cesspool of Multi-national-mega-corporation-think. That the art in the American film has not so much died, as that it has been put aside as irrelevant to the goals of the multi-national-mega-corporations. Product with shelf life is their concern, not human interactive communication regarding the shared human condition.”

He had obviously given the question some thought.

“‘Interactive communication regarding the shared human condition,'” I quoted back to him as I wrote it down in a notepad. “Is that your definition of Art?”

“You have a better one?”

“Yet, despite your opinion, you teach film studies.”

“Well, doctors study disease.”

“To find a cure?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Was Bea Cherbourg the first special student that you sent to Hollywood.”

“What makes you think I sent her to—”

“Sort of as a mole, to borrow a term from my usual journalistic beat. Except she wasn't so much a mole, which is a gatherer of information, you were probably hoping she would be more of an agent provocateur, a spreader of information designed to agitate.”

“A very melodramatic way to describe every teacher's hope to have been a positive influence.”

“Tell me about Bea Cherbourg.”

“A brilliant student. She had an innate understanding of the language of cinema. She was extremely well read. Shy, non-aggressive, but forceful of mind when it mattered.”

“A good lover?” All right, I was being a bit perverse here.

Farber looked at me, trying to make up his mind. “Off the record?”

“Certainly.”

“Yes, she was an exceptional lover. She had a lovely need to please.”

“Do you have affairs with all your female students?”

“No. I pick one a year. One of the special ones. Passion intensifies intellectual transference. It's a teaching technique.”

“You know the time will come when, despite your charm and passion, age will catch up with you and 18 to 22 year olds will no longer be attracted.”

“Yes, I'm aware of that.”

“What will you be left with then?”

“Just my memories.”

“Well, those and an active imagination ought to see you through, I suppose.”

“I'm counting on it.”

“You contacted Sara Hutton and recommended Bea, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“You taught Sara Hutton?”

“She was a student of mine. She couldn't be taught.”

“Tell me about her.”

“A privileged child.”

“Yes, of a clown.”

“Still privileged.”

“Do you think this affected her?”

“Well, when she came here as a freshman, her major was sociology.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, the cliché major of freshman girls.”

“She wanted to be of used to people.”

“Yes, to help them.”

“But she changed majors.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I think she discovered that she didn't much like people, or, at least, certain people. The certain people that make up what we are now referring to as the underclass.”

“Poor people.”

“Poor. Ignorant. Uncultured. Simple. In her view, at least.”

“So she became a film major?”

“No. She became a philosophy major.”

“A philosophy major?”

“Became somewhat enamored with
Plato's Republic
.”

“Society divided into natural classes.”

“You know, one of the great things about Yale is we are very community oriented. Especially through Dwight Hall. I would guess well over half our undergraduates take an active part in serving the community in efforts to fight poverty, hunger, homelessness. They help the elderly and disabled.”

“You have your share of all that here in New Haven?”

“More than. You may have noticed on the drive to the campus.”

“And Dwight Hall?”

“An independent service organization. Been helping people since 1886.”

“Yet you still have more than your share of the underclass.”

“Well, yes, but not way more than our share.”

“So Sara Hutton, first year sociology major, jumped right in and volunteered, through Dwight Hall, to single-handedly solve the ills of New Haven.”

“Yes she did, and then found the waters much too cold and jumped right out.”

“How did you wind up having her in your class? She took it as an easy-A elective?”

“Well, one, it's not an easy-A elective, and she took it, I understand, at the suggestion of Max.”

“Max who?”

“I never got his last name.”

“Another student?”

“No. She knew him from somewhere else. I think they flew together.”

“Flew?”

“In airplanes.”

“Yes, I assumed something mechanical was required.”

“She had learned when she was quite young. Ten, twelve, something like that. Probably meant this Max at the airstrip where she kept her plane. I never met him, but I understand he was a bit of a philosopher himself and quite charismatic. They were lovers, of course.”