The Pillow Fight (23 page)

At the table – and he occupied one entire
banquette
, while Jack and I sat opposite him, on mere four-legged chairs – he went straight into his act. His own personal bottle of whisky, which bore the extraordinary title ‘Colonel Wilberforce’s Entire Old Sour Mash,’ was brought out with a flourish, and sent away again with an even bigger one when he changed his mind about his particular mood-of-the-moment; he finally elected for a vodka martini with three drops – ‘No more, God damn it!’ – of Pernod.

Ordering lunch was an equally tremendous business; while I settled swiftly for grilled marrow bones and an odd, rather whiskery fish which I had enjoyed before, Erwin Orwin inspected dozens of dishes, from
bouillabaisse
to rack of venison, and consigned them all to outer hell before ordering a sixteen-ounce blood-red steak from a certain ranch in Texas where, he claimed, he had once worked as a chuck-wagon cook. (Too much TV, I thought; but it could have been true – he had the build, and the gall to match.) So it went, anyway; as well as the build, he now had money, crude showmanship, and current success; and there wasn’t a man, woman, child, or dog in the Court of the Sixteen Satraps who wasn’t made blindingly aware of all three facts.

I might have been embarrassed or angry at being mixed up with all this nonsense, but I was neither. Some children behave so outrageously that, as long as they do not hack one’s own shins, they are funny. This was one of them. Appalling as he was, I liked him.

He liked me. ‘Mr Steele, I want to make you a rich man,’ was his opening declaration, when the main uproar had subsided, the table-hopping by other extroverts dropped off, and we finally got down to business; and when I answered (feeling the need to put my own point of view) that I was a rich man already, he said: ‘And you deserve to be, God damn it! You’re a genius!’ in a voice that rang through the building. It was irresistible. I suppose it was meant to be, but I didn’t mind that, either.

Already he had lots of ideas about a musical version of
Ex Afrika
. ‘Let me tell you how I see it,’ was how he started the discussion, and I would as soon have interrupted Moses’ first
précis
of the Ten Commandments. But the principal surprise was how closely his ideas sat with my own.

I also had done a lot of thinking, in the past week; I had roughed out the shape of the thing, what we would have to lose, what we would have to spotlight, what we were trying to say – in short, what the author should do to the show, and what the show should do to the customer. Erwin Orwin, between gulps of raw meat and absurd commands to the waiters, produced a pattern remarkably like my own.

At one stage of this, he said solemnly: ‘It’s a work of art, of course, but I think we can lick it.’ That was the only moment when Jack Taggart, for the most part a silent witness of our exchange, looked anxiously in my direction. But I answered, with equal solemnity: ‘That’s the only way to stay in the ball park,’ and Erwin Orwin, after a brief flicker of a stare which showed that he knew he was being mocked, laughed with such all-embracing violence that a lamp over his head went out, shattered beyond repair.

It was a good match, in a lunatic sphere of endeavour, and for that single moment I didn’t mind whether I won or lost, and neither did he.

But such moments were not meant to last. With coffee and brandy, he asked suddenly: ‘What about money?’

‘As long as there’s plenty,’ I said, ‘I’ll leave all that to Jack.’

‘That’s what I like,’ said Erwin Orwin. ‘The artistic approach.’

Jack Taggart bent forward, entering, as I knew he would, exactly on cue.

‘Johnny agreed to my idea of a small advance,’ he said. ‘Against a percentage of the box office. I’ll work out the main details, and bring them along tomorrow.’

‘What’s a small advance?’ asked Erwin Orwin.

‘Thirty thousand. Half now, half on delivery.’

Erwin Orwin made a pretence of clutching his temples in agony. ‘My God!’ he said. ‘Brandy!’

Jack Taggart grinned. ‘Oh, come on, Erwin! It couldn’t very well be less, not at this level. For that, you get the name of the book and the name of the man.
And
all the work he’s going to do on it. Don’t forget, you said he was a genius.’

‘I didn’t know he was a genius at this … All right.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘It’s the percentages we’ll be arguing about, anyway.’

I drew on my cigar, aloof from this sordid chaffering. A woman, old, seamed, grey-blonde, with the death’s-head look of an abandoned whore and a mink coat which, in this context, had died in vain, approached our table, and was waved away by Erwin Orwin, with the brusque dismissal: ‘Not now, damn it!’ There could, in this wonderful world, be losers as well as winners … I said: ‘Who’s going to do the music and the lyrics?’

‘Same as for
Josephine
,’ answered Erwin Orwin. ‘Teller and Wallace. OK?’

‘Very much so.’ I was beginning to like all of this, and now it didn’t matter if I showed it. ‘I’ll have to get together with them, before too long.’

He nodded. ‘They’ll be ready. I want this thing to get rolling as soon as it can. My idea is, you work out your part of it – doesn’t matter how rough it is – so as to give them something to build on, then you can meet up for the real working sessions. Might be a good idea if you all came to stay at my place.’

I said: ‘Yes,’ not too enthusiastically. I had heard about his place, a vast, split-level, ranch-type hideaway up in the Catskills, with a barn converted into a fifty-seat cinema, and bathrooms labelled ‘Guys’ and ‘Dolls’. ‘Yes, that’s a good idea.’

‘You could bring your wife, too. I hear she’s very beautiful.’

I shook my head, Chinese-like. ‘She has some pretensions to good looks.’

‘That’s not the way I heard it.’ But he wasn’t really interested in anyone else’s world, good or bad. ‘We’ve got to find a name for this thing,’ he said. ‘That’s going to be very important.’

‘Something with Africa in it,’ I said. ‘
African Song
.
Song of Africa
. Something like that.’

‘I thought of
X is for Africa
,’ said Erwin Orwin.

‘Or a word with African connotations,’ I said, shying away speedily. ‘Spoor. Jungle. Safari. Drums.’

‘
Safari Song
,’ said Jack.

‘
Notes from the Jungle
.’

‘
Jungle Drums
.’

‘
Jungle Bells
.’

‘
Black and White Notes
.’

‘
Black Melody
.’

‘
Black Tracks
.’

‘
Black Safari
.’

It didn’t matter which one of us was speaking; we were gradually losing ground. The process of just thinking aloud was reaching its usual murky depths. Presently Erwin Orwin, a man of practice at such sessions, looked at his watch.

‘Well, back to the salt-mines,’ he declared. He levered himself up, quickly enough for so vast a man; when it was time to move, he moved. ‘Mr Steele, I’ll be waiting to hear from you. Jack, call me tomorrow morning. We can probably do this by phone.’

Jack smiled. ‘I would doubt that.’

‘Well, we can try on a few hats.’

We left the Sixteen Satraps on a swirling tide of other people’s goodwill. The Head Shah bowed to us – or rather, he bowed to Erwin Orwin, gave me a distinct if distant nod, and ignored Jack Taggart, an anonymous man who doubtless had hardly any money at all. In the foyer, the Persian Lambs closed in, coats and all else at the ready. Largesse was distributed like oversize confetti. Erwin Orwin, laughing loudly once more, was whisked away in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce which had the word ‘his’ embossed on the nearside door; and Jack Taggart and I were ushered into a taxi by the Turkish-style doorman, who bowed, touched his fingertips to his forehead, flourished his scimitar in formal farewell, and said: ‘Come back real soon.’

Riding back up town with Jack Taggart, whom I was to drop off at his office in Rockefeller Centre, I was well content. Lunch had been excellent, the drinks very adequate, the company just right for the occasion; if all lunches were as good, with a cash bonus of $30,000 at the end, this would be a happy life indeed for the dedicated man of letters … I threw away the last of my cigar, and gave the credit for all this where it really belonged.

‘Thanks, Jack. Another win for the old pro … I liked Orwin, in spite of all the snow. He ought to be an easy man to get along with.’

‘Don’t fool yourself. When he gets exactly what he wants, he’s as sweet as pie. Otherwise–’ he gestured, ‘–a heart as big as all indoors. He can be the toughest man in this fair city.’

‘Will there be much wrestling about that box office percentage?’

‘No.’

‘It didn’t sound that way.’

Jack Taggart smiled. ‘Oh, that’s just part of the act. I know what he’ll give, he knows what I’ll take. The figures happen to coincide. End of drama.’

I sighed. ‘Thank God I don’t understand any of this.’

‘Now don’t go into
your
act … That was good news about Teller and Wallace. They’re right at the top of their form now. It must have cost Erwin a fortune to get them. Which means that he’s really serious about this.’

‘How will they be to work with?’

‘Strictly professional. You’ll have to run to keep up. It’s Erwin who takes his own sweet time.’

‘How so?’

‘He likes other people to work fast. Then he looks at the result, and tears it all apart, and sends it back for repairs, again and again. It’s the only thing he ever wastes money on, and he can afford to, with what he’s got going for him. He breaks all the rules. I’ve known him take a year producing a show.
Josephine
was nearly five months in rehearsal. But that doesn’t mean
you
can dawdle. Your rules aren’t breakable.’ Our taxi was slowing for the lights of 49th Street, and Jack Taggart leant forward. ‘I’ll get out here … How’s the book coming along?’

‘Oh, fine.’

‘Shouldn’t it be finished about now?’

‘It’s turning out longer than I expected.’

The taxi was stopped. ‘I don’t want to hurry you, Johnny, but Hobart Mackay shouldn’t have to wait forever.’

‘Has he said that?’

‘No. He would never press you. But it’s in the air, just the same.’ Jack decided not to get out, and the taxi moved on a block, caught in sluggish traffic. ‘It really is time for that third novel.’

It was now my turn to say: ‘Haven’t they made enough money out of me?’

‘I’m not arguing on that. But they did advance forty thousand, and that was two years ago.’

‘This musical will take care of the rent.’

‘I’m not arguing on that, either.’ The taxi was stopped again, between streets, and he opened the door, prepared to make the necessary suicidal dart for the sidewalk. ‘But we want to take care of you, too. You’re a writer, with books in your head. Remember?’

I sighed again, more genuinely. ‘You and Kate. You ought to set up as Authors Anonymous.’

He laughed. ‘Give her my love, and tell her I’ll sign up for that, any time.’ The door slammed, and he was lost to view, in the moving cars and thronging people of Fifth Avenue.

‘Your friend just fractured a city ordinance,’ said the cab driver, a nice young man, a spectacled Negro with a copy of the
Saturday Review
clipped to his sun-vizor. ‘But I see no evil. Where to, now?’

‘The Sherry-Netherland.’

I was not quite ready to meet the other charter-member of Authors Anonymous.

It was half-past five before I got back; one thing had led to another, and not by accident. I had not hurried home, because I had enjoyed the session at the Satraps, and did not want it spoiled too soon. I had not hurried home, because if there were lunch guests, as there usually were, I probably wouldn’t like them and preferred to have them out of the way. I had not hurried home, Immortal Bird, because hell! I had something of my own to celebrate.

It was nice and quiet upstairs, as I stepped out of the elevator and let myself into the apartment; quiet, private, un-invaded. Generally, we lived in crowds, Kate and I; they were not always of my choosing, and I suppose – to be fair – my own crowd was not always hers. She had retained ataste for two categories of people whom I had found a pathetic waste of time: for those very smart women of the kind who thronged the Colony at lunchtime, twittering like love-birds on the loose, all hat and no head; and for chic, elegant, pastel young men who kept her boredom at bay without introducing anything so crude as the battle of the sexes.

The women I could avoid, and did; the young gentlemen I was trying to freeze out, and it was a long process. (I had been reminded of this by a stop at an equivocal ‘Men’s Bar’ on the way home, where, at my entrance, a trio of emaciated fruits had paused in discussing their affairs, giving me long appraising stares, and gone back into committee again. I was only there because I had become thirsty on that particular street-corner, and I hoped they knew it.) But I was always likely to find a nest of such soft-skinned snakes at home, curled up on cushions at floor level, entertaining Kate with song and story.

At one time the invasion had been spearheaded (to use the term loosely) by a man I specially disliked, Bruno van Thaal, on a visit from South Africa. That had turned out to be a very long visit; indeed, there were moments when it seemed that he might infest us forever.

Kate loved having him there, for obvious reasons which I could understand; he was first-hand news from home, he was amusing in her own, not-too-generous fashion, he spoke that dialect of the language of South Africa which reminded her of warm sunlight, warm entanglements, warm words at superior social levels. He recalled to her, in a series of quick snapshots, spitefully focused, what she had ‘given up’ by marrying me; the aura of success, the pleasures of manipulation, the fun of being Kate Marais in a world small enough to fit a juggling hand.

He had brought a message from Johannesburg, which she had dearly loved, to New York, which she was beginning to find false, and perhaps daunting. Johannesburg and Cape Town had been just the right size for her conquerable size, made to measure for such slim fingers, speculative eyes, influential comment. She had had the inside track there. In New York, there was no such thing; not for a female stranger, anyway. The city was too big, too alien; it was not to be breached and therefore not to be loved.