Two Weeks in Another Town (45 page)

The telephone rang, but it was a wrong number, a drunken American voice asking for Marylou MacClain, and refusing to believe that Marylou MacClain was not there.

The telephone reminded him that he had promised to write to Hélène, explaining what was happening. He had sent her a telegram in the morning, but it had been brief and, he was sure, from her point of view, unsatisfactory. He got out some air-mail paper and started writing rapidly, trying (falsely) to put into comprehensible order the reasons why he had to stay in Rome. He had just written, All my love, Jack, when there was a knock on the door. Jack put the letter face down on the desk and went over and opened the door.

Bresach was standing there, bareheaded, hunched into his stiff coat, two scripts bulking under his arm. He came into the room without a word, threw the scripts onto the couch, and sank into an easy chair, his legs sprawled in front of him, his hands in his pockets. He looked exhausted and exhilarated. Jack closed the door and stood watching him. Bresach grunted, wearily.

“Can I have a drink?” he said.

“That’s a good idea,” Jack said. He poured drinks for both of them. He was surprised at the feeling of pleasure he had at seeing Bresach.

Bresach drank thirstily. He glanced at the newspapers stuffed into the wastebasket. “The poor bastard,” he said. “Despière. After going through so many wars…”

“If you keep at it long enough,” Jack said, carefully, not wishing to give vent to his emotions, “there’s always one war that’ll get you.”

“Algeria!” Bresach snorted. “I don’t know whom I pity more, Despière or the poor tortured fellagha who threw the grenade. I never liked Despière. In fact, I should’ve hated him. If it wasn’t for him, you’d never’ve met Veronica. But this…” He made a grimace.
“La gloire…”

“You didn’t really know him,” Jack said.

“The French give me a pain in the ass,” Bresach said.

“Do you know what he wrote about Algeria, just before he was killed?” Jack asked. “He wrote that it was all shit on both sides.”

“I said the French give me a pain in the ass,” Bresach said. “I don’t say they weren’t intelligent.”

“Drop it,” Jack said curtly. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Bresach noticed the tension in his voice. “Sorry,” he “said. “What the hell—people get killed. Tomorrow they’ll drop the bomb on you and me and my bowlegged Aunt Sally. If I had tears to spare, I’d shed one or two for the Frenchman. But I’m all cried-out. I wake myself up during the night, crying, reaching out in the bed for Veronica. I weep for the living. Old-fashioned, romantic poem.” He said it savagely. “I am full of self-loathing,” he said. “There will come a day when I will no longer forgive myself for not having committed suicide. Ah, Christ…” He took a long gulp of his whisky. “I didn’t come here to talk about that. I’ve been thinking about the picture. Are you interested in hearing what I’ve been thinking about the picture?”

“Yes.”

“We can never make it great,” Bresach said, “but we can make it non-vomitous.”

Jack laughed. Bresach looked at him suspiciously. “What the hell are you laughing about?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

The phone rang. “God damn it,” Bresach said, “can’t you tell them downstairs not to call you?”

It was Holt on the phone. “Jack,” said the soft, drawling, flat voice, “I’m going out to see Maurice at the hospital. They told me I could see him for two minutes, and I wanted to let you know what I’m going to tell him. I’m going to tell him how wonderfully you and that boy have taken over and how grateful we all are to you both…”

“Thanks, Sam,” Jack said, touched again by the unexpected gentleness and grace of Holt’s manners. “Bresach is here with me, working, and I’ll tell him what you said.”

“I want you to know,” Holt went on, “that if there’s anything you need, anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Don’t worry, Sam,” Jack said. “We’ll ask.”

“Well?” Bresach demanded, after Jack hung up. “What did he want?”

“He wanted to pin a medal on both of us and he did,” Jack said. “Now, what have you got to say about the picture?”

“All in due time,” Bresach said. “But I have to eat first I’ve been throwing up all day and I’m bleary from hunger Have you eaten yet?”

With surprise, Jack realized that he had forgotten to eat dinner. It was ten thirty. “No,” he said.

“I’ll treat you,” Bresach said. He finished his drink and stood up Now that I’m going to be a big famous movie director, he said sardonically, “I must learn to start picking up checks. And I couldn’t think of a better check to start on than yours.”

Bresach insisted upon going to Pasetto’s for dinner. He had never been there before, but he had heard that it was the best and probably one of the most expensive restaurants in Rome. “I have to worry about my position now,” he said, grinning, as they got into the taxi in front of the hotel. “I can’t afford to be seen in just any old joint.”

It turned out that Holt had taken him off to one side during the day and had given him an envelope with a hundred thousand lire in it. For incidental expenses, Holt had said tactfully.

“What he doesn’t know,” Bresach said, “is that I have only two incidental expenses—food and rent.”

When they sat down at a table in the crowded restaurant, Bresach looked around him critically, and said, “Have you noticed that when Romans want to make a place luxurious, they inevitably revert to the decor of the public bath?”

He was also critical of the clientele of the restaurant. “Italians,” he said, scanning the other tables with a cold eye, “are the most beautiful people in the world—until they get rich.”

“Be careful,” Jack said. “Now you’re started there’s a good chance you may be rich some day.”

“Never,” Bresach said. “I’ve already decided what I’ll do if I ever have any money. I’ll squander it. I’ll keep myself in lean and white-fanged poverty. Nobody ever did any good work with a fat bank account behind him.”

“Do you really believe that?” Jack asked.

Bresach grinned. “Partially,” he said.

Now Max came into the restaurant, chafing his hands and looking frozen and humbly out of place as he went down the center aisle between the diners searching for Bresach. He had on the same rough jacket he always wore, and the inevitable wool scarf. Bresach waved to him and he made his way among the waiters toward their table.

“You don’t mind if Max eats with us, do you?” Bresach said. “This is a ceremonial feast—the breaking of the long fast—and it wouldn’t be right if he wasn’t here.”

“It’s up to you,” Jack said.

Max smiled shyly and shook both their hands before sitting down. “Did you see that display of food at the entrance from the bar?” he said, wonderingly. “Do people eat like that every day?”

“From now on, Max,” Bresach said, “you will eat like that every day. You will get fat and disgusting.”

“I sincerely hope so,” Max said. “I am by nature a glutton.”

Bresach insisted upon doing the ordering for all of them, frowning at the menu while the headwaiter hovered over them. “I’m disappointed,” he said, “I thought everything would be more expensive.”

He ordered oysters, with white wine, and
fettucini
with fresh gray truffles scraped over them and pheasant cooked with grapes, and a bottle of Barolo. “You see,” he said to Jack, “I put my economic theories immediately into action.”

But when the food came, he only toyed with it, praising it, but eating very little of it. Max wolfed everything down with open pleasure. In the middle of the dinner, Bresach stood up. “Excuse me,” he said abruptly. “I’ll be right back.”

He strode purposefully toward the men’s room.

“He’s going to throw up again,” Max said, shaking his head worriedly. “He started last night after you came with the news and he’s been doing it all day. He told me, when he was a boy in school, every time there was an examination, he would do the same thing.”

“There was an examination today all right,” Jack said. “And he got damn good marks. He looked like the calmest man in Rome all day.”

“I told you before,” Max said, “he is an extraordinary boy. He has fantastic powers of control over himself.” He paused. “Most of the time.” He shrugged. “Until I met Robert I always thought Americans had nerves of steel.”

When Bresach came back he was very pale and sweat dewed his forehead in little drops, but he ordered coffee and French brandy and large cigars for all of them. “Tonight,” he said, “we skimp on nothing. Wasn’t it Bismarck who said a man shouldn’t die until he has smoked one hundred thousand good cigars? I still have a few to go.”

He leaned back against the upholstered banquette, the cigar seeming much too large for the thin, drawn, boyish face. “I am doing my best,” he said, “to look gross and self-satisfied, so, the waiter will be polite the next time I come. Now, Jack,” he said, “to business. How far are you willing to go to make this picture of Delaney’s respectable?”

“Pretty far,” Jack said. “If it came out well, it’d do Delaney a lot more good than all that oxygen he’s taking.”

“Exactly,” Bresach said. “Would you be willing to ask Holt and Tucino to. give us an extra week’s shooting with Stiles and Barzelli?”

“It’d cost an awful lot of money,” Jack said cautiously, “and they’re way over schedule as it is…There’d have to be some powerfully convincing reasons. What’re you thinking of?”

“One thing I’m thinking of is having Stiles dub himself,” Bresach said. “After what he showed today…Look, Jack, I think I can talk honestly to you. You’re afflicted with many faults, but vanity doesn’t seem to be one of them…”

“Cut the flowers,” Jack said. “What’s on your mind?”

“This evening,” Bresach said, “I listened to all the scenes you dubbed for Stiles, Jack. It’s not bad, but it’s not good enough. I’m not trying to offend you,” he added quickly. “You understand that, don’t you?”

“I understand,” Jack said. “I’m not offended.”

“You’re not an actor any more,” Bresach went on. “You’re an intelligent, hard-working man with a good voice who always seems to be on the verge of being an actor and never quite moves over the line. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough,” Jack said.

“And even if you were an actor, you’re not Stiles. You’re better than Stiles, of course, in what Stiles has done up to now—but that’s because he’s been so awful. Delaney froze the poor drunken bastard so badly, he never got a word out straight.”

“What do you propose we do?”

“I propose we unfreeze him,” Bresach said calmly, blowing out a huge cloud of cigar smoke. “De-alcoholize him and unfreeze him in one operation.”

“How do you think we’re going to be able to do that?” Jack asked.

“I read Sugarman’s script tonight,” Bresach said, seeming to ignore Jack’s question. He touched the bound scripts that were lying on the chair beside him. “I got Hilda to dig it up for me. I wanted to see what the story was like before Delaney walked all over it. I thought maybe I could find a little scene or two that could help Stiles…”

“Well, what did you find?”

“Corruption, naturally,” Bresach said. “That’s what I found. In Sugarman’s script it’s the man’s story, but Delaney fell in love with Barzelli and switched it all around. Only the story won’t stand it. So we have all those dreary scenes with Barzelli at the center of them, doing nothing, just combing her hair or looking soulfully out of the window or getting undressed and showing her pretty legs, killing the picture. And all Delaney could think of for Stiles to do was sleepwalk through the picture like a melancholy St. Bernard, yearning, saying, ‘I love you. I am sad. I love you…’” Bresach made a sound of disgust. “I found a lot more than a little scene in Sugarman’s script. He had the man drunk half the time and making fun of himself and saying the opposite of what he meant and treating the girl horribly and hating her a good deal more than he loved her. It’s a good part and Stiles can play it marvelously.”

“If he stays sober. Maybe,” Jack said.

“Did you know that for the first two weeks of shooting Stiles didn’t take a drink?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Jack said.

“Well, he didn’t. Then he saw what Delaney was doing to him and he gave up,” Bresach said. “Well, if he did it the first two weeks, he can do it the last two. If he’s convinced that he’s going to get something out of it.”

“How are we going to convince him?”

“By putting in as many of the old scenes as possible—or shooting wild lines and close-ups and fitting them in wherever we can. And even the scenes that we can’t change, we can redub with Barzelli and Stiles, but with a completely different adjustment. Drunken, self-mocking, bitter…And wherever we can’t get away from the old lines and they’re just too awful to be borne, we can have music or the noise of trains or any godamn thing in the background, so that the worst of it’ll be drowned out. We’ll prove to Stiles that we mean what we say, that we’re working for him, working to keep him in the movie business, that we’re trusting him and that we think he can do it…”

Even as he listened, keeping his face blank and noncommittal, Jack felt himself being caught up by the boy’s eagerness, his astuteness, his nervous, almost intuitive sense of what was wrong with the picture and how it could be made right, his fierce desire to do their work well. Suddenly, Jack felt exhilarated, tireless, happily swept up in a flood of ideas for improving the picture. The last time he had felt anything like that, he realized, had been in the old days before the war, when he and Delaney had sat up night after night, arguing, roaring, laughing, excited, as they worked together. “All right,” he said, indicating the two scripts lying on the chair, “show me what you think we can do.”

Bresach put the two scripts on the table with shaking hands. “We start…” He stood up. “Excuse me. I have to throw up again.”

He hurried through the restaurant toward the men’s room.

“Poor boy,” Max said sorrowfully. “All this good food.”

When Bresach came back, he was pallid, but calmer. He sat down next to Jack, and they started going through the two scripts, page by page. It was past one o’clock when they had finished, and the lights in the other parts of the restaurant had been dimmed and their waiter was standing against a post, sleeping on his feet.