Sirius (6 page)

The following day, John Clark’s career began.

A few years have passed since then, and by now one can safely say that John Clark has done pretty well on dry land. He has conquered Hollywood, he is a star. But above all, it’s his nocturnal activities with which he’s really made a name for himself.

“When does John Clark sleep?” read a recent headline in the
Hollywood Reporter
.

Hedda Hopper, the
Reporter
’s famous gossip columnist, is hot on his heels. She follows while he, Humphrey Bogart and a few friends throw so many Martinis down their necks in the Formosa that they exhaust even the bartender. Then they’re off to the Trocadero, where a volcano called John Clark erupts on the dance floor. At dawn, the Polo Lounge is opened especially for him, because he has a craving for caviar. The blonde with whom he eventually disappears into his suite doesn’t, however. She has a hankering for vodka instead, which results in the guests in the neighbouring room complaining about the “sound of furniture shattering.” Nonetheless, just a short while later John Clark appears in the studio, fresh and cheerful – filming can begin. He is on top form. That’s how the story goes, night after night, day after day.

And yet John Clark is married. He has a wife and kids. And not just any wife, but Gloria Hayson. She was a Hollywood star herself, but she sacrificed her career for a family life and is now growing increasingly lonely in their palace.

Hedda Hopper is already dropping hints that Gloria is an alcoholic, and a suicidal one at that. A scandal is looming.

Jack Warner summons John Clark into his office.

“I made you,” he says wistfully.

The words sound as though God is speaking to one of his creatures, moved by the memory of the day when it learned to walk upright and became a human being.

And that’s exactly how it is. In Hollywood, Jack Warner is God.

“I fished you out of the water,” he continued. “And I can throw you back in anytime. Don’t forget that.”

John Clark nods reverently. For a while, they sit there silently across from one another, the white-haired film mogul and the man he plucked from obscurity.

“Little fish,” murmurs the mogul. “What was your name again?”

“Giovanni Clarizzo,” answers the little fish.

He had emigrated from Sicily only a few months before he became a lifeguard in the Garden of Allah hotel.

“I gave you the name John Clark,” says the mogul. “Live up to it.”

Another long silence.

The secretary enters the room and points at the clock. The next appointment is waiting.

Jack Warner is already on his way to the door when he says, seemingly as a casual aside: “Go back to your family, John.”

John wants to say something in response, but he can’t get the words out.

“What you need now is some peace and quiet,” smiles Warner. “That’s all you need. Herr Liliencron will take care of it.”

John hesitates. “Herr Liliencron?”

“A friend of some friends,” replies Warner. “I helped with his entry papers. Now he needs a job. You are his job. He will be your new chauffeur, your guardian angel.” He spreads his arms out wide. “Make him feel welcome in Hollywood! He’s from Berlin. Doesn’t speak a word of English, so he’s very tight-lipped. Doesn’t know a soul, so he’s discrete. He won’t even notice that the young woman fooling around on the back seat with you is Rita Hayworth.”

Warner lays his fingers on his lips as a sign of discretion.

*

Carl Liliencron is sitting for the first time in the brand-new silver Chevrolet the studio have provided for the guardian angel. On this beautiful morning, he is driving down Sunset Boulevard. The tall palm trees which line the street stretch themselves out towards the sun. Now it’s finally clear where the sun is when it’s absent in Berlin – in Hollywood. And it isn’t just making a guest appearance in the sky, but is under permanent contract, a dependable spotlight which consistently provides the same fairy-tale light.

No wonder, really, that Jack Warner picked this corner of the earth for his dream factory.

Liliencron turns into Rexford Drive. He still needs to use a street map to orientate himself. Laurel Way should be somewhere around here.

The magnificent villas are concealed behind immense hedges from which hosts of gardeners hang, trying to give the foliage as quadratic a form as possible. That’s how it has to be.

John Clark lives in a palace. It effortlessly outshines even the ones which were erected along the banks of the Loire in the Renaissance.

The gate opens as though by an invisible hand, and Liliencron glides up the driveway in the Chevrolet, wide-eyed in wonderment. A servant in a tailcoat is already awaiting him.

And that’s just the overture. The actual opera begins after the walk through the hall out onto the terrace, where the eye sweeps across a landscape reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands: lakes on which little ships pitch and toss, meadows with ponies galloping around, pavilions, fountains, even a fairground carousel for the children.

Liliencron can’t believe his eyes. Has he, without noticing it, shuffled off his mortal coil, and this is paradise? Is he in the curvature of space-time that Einstein always spoke about?

He looks for signs of human life. Then John Clark comes towards him. Completely unsuspecting that he has just become associated with the theory of relativity.

“Welcome to Hollywood!” says John Clark, shaking his hand.

“Thank you!” says Liliencron.

John Clark explains cheerfully to his visitor how he recently acquired the adjoining piece of land from James Stewart, for the sole purpose of tearing down his house and erecting a chimpanzee enclosure in its place.

“My name is Carl Liliencron,” replies Liliencron.

Clark pauses. Then he remembers Jack Warner telling him that the man was from Berlin, that he doesn’t speak a word of English, and that he doesn’t even know who Rita Hayworth is.

“Rita Hayworth?” asks Clark, just to make sure.

Liliencron shakes his head in confusion.

So Warner wasn’t exaggerating, for a change.

The oddball from Berlin looks like a civil servant, thinks Clark. If he’d had any say in it, his guardian angel would have looked quite different.

“Okay, let’s go,” decides John Clark.

He waves at his wife and the children, who are off in the distance feeding the flamingos.

“Family,” he sighs, sinking into the back seat of the car.

“Yes,” replies Liliencron.

“Do you have family?” asks Clark.

“Yes,” replies Liliencron.

Other than that, their journey is a silent one.

“Warner Brothers Pictures” is spelt out in large letters over the entrance gate of the studio city. Gigantic billboards of current box office smashes are plastered over the facade.
Robin Hood
starring Errol Flynn,
Dark Victory
with Bette Davis,
Angels with Dirty Faces
with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart.

The porter eyes the new silver Chevrolet warily. Only when he recognises John Clark does he salute and open the barrier.

He instructs the chauffeur to hold the official studio badge up to the windscreen.

“My name is Carl Liliencron,” replies Liliencron.

It happens all of a sudden. The Chevrolet catches fire and blazes fiercely. Men with iron bars jump onto the bonnet and smash the windscreen. Glass, nothing but glass everywhere. The caretaker, Zinke, is handing out the petrol canisters. The porter roars: “Down with the Jews!”

Liliencron wrenches the steering wheel around and speeds into Klamtstrasse. Home! He has to save Sirius!

The Chevrolet skids across the studio grounds and comes to a standstill just seconds before colliding with the main building.

“Hey, man!” cries Clark. “What a drive!” He wipes the sweat from his brow. “That’s Hitler style!”

Liliencron laughs hysterically. Then he falls unconscious.

John Clark isn’t quite sure why, but he likes his new chauffeur.

*

Every Friday is payday. That’s the norm in Hollywood. Even movie stars get paid on a weekly basis.

A chauffeur’s salary is roughly equivalent to the amount the Clark family spends on flamingo feed each month.

When Carl puts the few notes down on the table each payday, he always comments drily: “Hardly a noteworthy amount.”

This new life in the new world often plunges him into existential-philosophical moods. What he once was, he is no more. So who is he? The nagging questions arise especially when he puts on his chauffeur’s cap in the mornings. And in the evenings, too, when he comes home. His existence has shrunk to the smallest of spaces: a bungalow, in which a suitcase stands. One of those wooden shacks that are being knocked up day after day in Hollywood so that even the minor employees can have a roof over their heads.

Carl stares into nothingness. The naked walls. The bare rooms. The silent days. The empty nights, nothing but black holes.

Only the suitcase is full of memories. When they awake, they haunt Liliencron. He is exhausted.

“What’s the point of surviving if you’re not living?”

“Oh, Carl,” says Rahel. “We are living.”

“My name is Carl Liliencron. That’s all I can say.”

Rahel takes her husband in her arms and comforts him.

“You can say
yes
too. Try to say
yes
more often.”

In this respect, Sirius is having an easier time of it. He can communicate without any problems in the new homeland. He likes it in Hollywood.

He recently met a dog who works in the movie business. As an extra. It was a very interesting encounter. The dog told him that his dream is to work for Disney, as a dubbing voice for Goofy. But, as he knows very well, talent alone isn’t enough – it’s all about who you know.

Hollywood is a hard place. Sirius discovered that when his paws hurt after particularly long walks. There are hardly any paths with grass. It’s all concrete.

He thinks back to Berlin. Is his tree still standing? Is the yellow ball still in the garden? In his haste, he forgot to take it with him. That rankles with him at times.

Rahel is in the process of teaching him a new trick. Yowling chansons. “The French are very good at it,” she says.

She puts a record on, and Sirius tries to yowl the melody. He does a pretty good job of it with Maurice Chevalier. The song
Y’a d’la joie
is about how the Eiffel Tower is bored.

If even the Eiffel Tower is bored, then how must Rahel feel? She’s still looking for something to do with her time. The children have left home.

Georg has received a scholarship. His dream is coming true; he is studying medicine. He lives on the university campus in West Hollywood.

Else has taken on a post as a nanny in the house of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The composer left Vienna five years ago and followed Max Reinhardt to Hollywood. Now he’s contracted with Warner Brothers, and in February he got his first Oscar for the film score to
Robin Hood
. Else is surrounded all day long by the sound of his piano playing.

Good old Jack Warner. He helps countless Jews to escape from Germany, he pulls strings in the White House, he takes the new arrivals under his wing and directs their journey from suffering to happiness, called destiny. He is a one-man dream factory.

Poor old Carl Liliencron. He is still having nightmares. In his heart, he’s still the bearer of the golden Cothenius Medal. His eyes need to adjust, from plankton, which is tinier than four thousandths of a millimetre, to Sunset Boulevard which spans 35 kilometres. Hollywood is reaching for the stars, while Liliencron can’t even fly yet.

But that will soon change. After all, he’s a guardian angel now.

*

Peter Lorre celebrates his birthday with a party. The Liliencrons arrive at eight o’clock on the dot.

They are the first to arrive. And the only ones there. In Hollywood, people arrive late to prove how important they are. The later the hour, the more important. The rule applies to the unimportant people too. Someone who is unimportant comes later than someone who is even more unimportant.

A short man with a hat perched askew turns up relatively early. He seems to be familiar with the house and the garden, for he walks purposefully over to the barbecue and gets himself a bratwurst. Then he fetches a beer from the icebox.

“Billy Wilder,” he says, introducing himself.

He claims to be one of Peter Lorre’s closest friends. It wasn’t so long ago that the two of them were sharing a room.

“One room!” emphasises Wilder. “It was clear that at least one of us had to make it. Peter was the first, he became
Mr Moto
. I wrote the screenplay for
Ninotchka
for Ernst Lubitsch, which wasn’t bad either. A Mexican cleaning woman has been living in the room ever since.”

Liliencron laughs. For the first time since he stepped onto American soil, Rahel sees her husband roar with laughter.

“He’s laughing!” she cries.

“That’s my job,” replies Wilder. “I sincerely hope your husband won’t be the only one.”

“It’s wonderful to speak German again,” says Liliencron.

“Is that your dog?” asks Wilder, pointing at Sirius, who is snuffling around the barbecue and wagging his tail. “What language does your dog speak?”

Liliencron is baffled. What language
does
Sirius speak?

“Look,” says Wilder. “He wants a piece of sausage. He’s wagging his tail. He wants to be happy. A sausage is a sausage, regardless of language. There’s a universal language of happiness, you know.”

The garden fills up. Erich von Stroheim, Vicky Baum, Otto Preminger, Marlene Dietrich, Robert Siodmak, Fritz Lang, everyone is there. Everyone who had to leave their homeland. Hollywood has suddenly become a neighbourhood of Berlin.

Fanfare. Peter Lorre steps out onto the terrace. He greets his guests, and the small band play
Lili Marleen
. Everyone dances, and tears flow.

“It’s my fault,” calls Lorre, as he walks over to the Liliencrons.

He frames the word “fault” by gesticulating speech marks with his fingers, intended to illustrate his sarcasm.