12

WILLA WANTED to visit friends, so the next day they drove south to the vicinity of Tannenberg. Dix tried to sleep but was peppered with questions about the hunt. What happened in the forest? Nothing happened in the forest. Reinhold said something happened in the forest and that you were responsible. That’s right, I was. No harm done. That wasn’t what Reinhold said. Reinhold said you insisted on killing a wounded boar. He said there was an argument and he gave you the shotgun, and you refused to tell him what happened—

Your uncle Reinhold spent too many years in the war, Dix said.

He was never in the war, Willa said.

Then where did he get the shakes?

Schnapps, Willa said. He got the shakes from schnapps.

Did you really kill a boar? Anya asked.

No, Dix said. I didn’t.

Reinhold was so upset—

I don’t know why you think Reinhold was in the war, Willa said. Hunch, Dix said.

You must understand that we are not all Nazis, Karen said.

 

They were late for lunch. Willa’s friends spoke no English so the meal was an agony of translation and mistranslation until Willa finally gave it up, leaving Dix happily silent, eating sausages and reading the Herald Tribune, the artillery rumble of the German language in the background. Later, when Willa apologized for the inconvenience, he told her about the actress who traveled to Oslo at her own expense to attend productions of Ibsen’s plays, two dozen of them in a single fortnight. She spoke no Norwegian but she knew the plays so well—her portrayal of Rebecca in Rosmersholm was considered definitive in English—she followed them with little difficulty. That is foolish, Willa said, what was the point? Sound, Dix said. The sound of the Norwegian language, the way the syllables fell, and the pace of the long lines as opposed to the short, and the gestures that went with them. She wanted to hear the sound of Norwegian laughter, though there was little enough of that in Ibsen. When the cycle was complete, she booked passage on a boat that visited the fjords, and by the time she returned she had a passing knowledge of Norwegian, and Ibsen’s achievement seemed all the greater. She had visited him at home.

Why are you telling me this? Willa asked.

I like the sound of German, Dix answered.

After lunch, they turned north for Berlin and it was not until late in the evening that he deposited Willa and Karen at the Zoo station, then motored through Grunewald to Wannsee, the streets there deserted, the suburb quiet at midnight. Charlotte’s was open but when Dix suggested a nightcap, Anya said, No thanks. She had to call her father in Rügen.

Papa has been ominously silent, she said.

Anya said good night and hurried inside Mommsen House but Dix lingered. A light snow was falling and the big house and its floodlit lawn looked like any North Shore stockbroker’s million-dollar white elephant. He had begun to think of the villa as home; in any case, it was where he returned to. Dix remained in the cold for a while, watching the snow fall on the fountain and the iron sundial nearby, thinking of snowflakes as a procession of seconds, time advancing in the silent German night, accumulating on the fountain and the blank sundial, anonymous and without premonition, merely a snowy evening in a glass paperweight. Time was never lost, only reserved. And it did not advance, it retreated. This was the winter retreat. The boar came to his mind and went away. He scanned the floodlit lawn and realized that only yesterday the actual streets were crowded with retreating infantry, their disorganization, their shouts and the clump of their boots the announcement of the chaos to come. Snow continued to fall, heavier now, dry flakes that flew like dust, whirling around the fountain and the sundial. He thought of Reinhold’s brother and his comrades, the brother fifteen years old with a SIG 710 on his shoulder, grateful to be asked to serve, without remorse. There were hundreds of them at the end of the war, roaming the German countryside. The Allies called them wolfpacks, teenage boys armed to the teeth with nothing to lose and a nation’s honor to avenge. How delicious it was to be so outnumbered yet so feared by the armies of occupation. American soldiers were terrified of them, the war almost over and the Wehrmacht defeated, except these boys hadn’t heard that news. They lived outside of time. They were in love with night. They were without fear and determined to kill any enemy soldier they saw. They lived in the wild like animals, emerging in the dark to kill someone, anyone—a sentry or a careless truck driver, an infantryman asleep in his tent or the sympathetic lieutenant who rummaged in his pack for a Hershey bar or a stick of gum. Cigarettes were what they craved. The war ended but the wolfpacks remained, disbanding eventually and returning to wherever they chose to return, inventing some story or not bothering to invent any story. Reinhold had not mentioned his brother’s name, nor whether he was older or younger. No doubt he died as Reinhold said he did. Reinhold did speak with a certain pride along with sadness. Dix supposed it was sadness. As he said, you could replace a wife but not a brother.

This was the vision he had conjured from the snow. Now Dix took a deep breath and walked toward the bright cone of light on the porch. His head was down and he was otherwise preoccupied but he did not fail to notice that on the second floor the curtains of Anya’s bedroom window parted, Anya on the telephone. He watched her hand rise and fall, a gesture of frustration or despair. She stared from the window into the courtyard, and when Dix made a gesture of encouragement, she gave no sign of recognition.

 

Claire’s message was on the answering machine. Her voice had the breathless timbre of a golf announcer describing the doomsday putt on eighteen, the undulations of the green, the spike marks around the cup, the weather at dusk, the odds against. Claire was describing betrayal, betrayals everywhere, producers’ betrayals, betrayals of agents, publicists, the costar and her wretched husband, the cinematographer, others too numerous to mention. What was there about the set that brought out the worst in everyone, when rumor piled upon rumor, and all rumors were believed. Things collapsed in a wreckage of incompetence. The commissary was incapable of supplying a hot lunch. The hairdresser was drinking before breakfast. The company was more conspired against than Hamlet, with the result that “they”—and here she paused, and when she resumed her voice had acquired a sudden excitement, putt made—had decided to take well-deserved French leave, destination Maui, to give the producers a little something to think about, and half the crew is down with a virus anyhow. Howard’s triple pissed, Dix.

So. Someone had an airplane.

They were meant to leave yesterday, but when the pilot checked the weather he discovered an El Niño—related storm—actually, the word he used was “hurricane”—and so they decided to fly much farther west, she didn’t know exactly where. But they intended to refuel at Guam and check the weather in the South Pacific. Java, Borneo, the Celebes, one of those sultry destinations. And they’d take their sweet time and not be in any hurry to let Los Angeles know where they were, what they were up to, and for how long.

She said, You have no idea how awful they’re being, the demands they’re making and the interference. Howard calls them baby-faced hoods. Howard’s fed up and so am I. We’re not being allowed to do our work as professionals. Howard’s lost confidence, and he’s not the only one. Everyone’s in a bad temper. We’re in a coal mine and the canaries are dying. Soooo. That’s the story so far. We’ve decided to play hooky in the South Pacific.

Tell me this, Dix.

Are things more serious in Berlin?

He rolled his eyes at that.

So, she said, things are on hold until the creative issues are worked out.

Money, Dix said aloud. When they said “creative issues,” what they meant was money. He broke ice cubes into a glass and quickly filled the glass with vodka and drank half of it. Now her voice had lost its lilt, the words coming between long pauses. Her voice was false, leaking around the edges, unfamiliar to him. In the background he heard an electrical hiss.

That’s where I am now, she said. High above the Pacific. The sun is shining but I can see yellow clouds below. Do you know how I feel? I feel marooned. We’re three hours out and it’s a smooth ride and everyone is playing cards in the salon. Except me. I’m talking to you in nasty Berlin and feeling marooned on an airplane. Did you have a nice day? A good dinner? How’s the weather? You’re never there when I call. Why are you always out? Your message is so impersonal. Dixon Greenwood, leave your number. So inhospitable. So gruff. So—not wanting to hear from anyone. Leave your number, I dare you.

Oh, honey, she said, things have gone to pieces.

Claire, he said aloud, wheeling to face the machine, hearing only the electrical hiss. She had never called him honey in her life. Honey was the word she used for colleagues, or the children. He was suddenly at a loss, alone in a foreign apartment on the other side of the world, his drink frigid in his hand.

Marooned, she said again.

It isn’t good anymore, she said. She didn’t want to continue. She used to love acting, now she hated it. She used to love the set, indoors or out, soft clothes, rough clothes, barefoot or slippered, dressed up or dressed down. She loved learning her lines, pulling on a new face, any face they wanted, cruel, naive, haughty, naughty. She loved the tension and the rivalries, the tricks, the scene-stealing, the unexpected gesture or bit of business, even of drudgery, the stuff that in its mindlessness resembled calisthenics. And she always loved the crew, so sarcastic in their comments, and the takes, one take after another.

Try it this way, Claire.

Try it that way.

Try it slowly.

Claire, try lowering your voice when you call him darling.

She loved making something new, even the unsuccessful film had one thing to admire, a line of dialogue or an unexpected glance. She loved the paraphernalia, the microphones and cameras, the heavy lights overhead. She loved making out, certainly loving it more with some men than with others, the sticky makeup and whispers in his ear, the times when the director said Cut! but said it softly, too softly for her to hear, and she and her screen lover ground on and on, as if they were teenagers at a drive-in. Now she loathed all of it. Her heart turned hard overnight. She was like a gardener who had fallen out of love with flowers. One fine morning she walked into her garden and destroyed the rose bushes branch by branch. She could not stand the sight of them, so shapely, blood red or pink or cowardly yellow or shroud white, the feeding, the pruning, the weeding, the caring. Young roses turned into old roses, the vines as thick as your wrist, gnarled arthritic vines, tough as crowbars. And then the blight set in. They are beyond me, she said. I am in one place and they are in another, so I can no longer tend my garden. I have lost my desire. I have lost my will. I can’t pull on the new face or try it this way or lower my voice when I call him darling. I am sitting in an airplane six miles above the earth, thinking of the years I loved the camera, and the years when it loved me back. It happened overnight.

And now—I can’t do it anymore.

I abandoned the set, she said.

I have never done that. You know I haven’t. It’s against the rules, and not only the rules that are written down. A professional owes something to the product. That’s what you always said. Loyalty to the material, you lived by that rule. And I agreed. We always agreed about professional things. We agreed that even among whores there was a code of conduct, some one thing that was inviolable.

Something personal, she said after a moment’s pause.

Then I lost my desire. I’m afraid I have turned from the world. I lost my desire. And we are not together.

Greenwood had moved up close to the machine, looking at it as if it were a human being showing the first signs of breakdown. Claire was remorseless. Her voice was not her own. Now he closed his eyes and tried to picture her marooned in her airplane in the clouds, the slap of playing cards in the salon, wild laughter, someone crying Gin! and the rattle of ice cubes in a glass. She would be sitting with her feet pulled up, compact as a cat, staring out the window at the gathering storm below, the leading edge of the hurricane, talking into the telephone in her distressed stream of consciousness, holding on six miles above the Pacific Ocean. He waited for her to continue, staring blindly at the wretched machine, willing it back to life. The electrical hiss seemed to grow, then a scratch of static and he knew the connection was broken.

 

First he called Howard Goodman in Palm Springs but the telephone rang and rang, no one at home, no servants, no “people.” Then he called his lawyer, whose secretary said he was in Vegas, unreachable until the morning. The lawyer’s partner was fishing, due back the following day, weather permitting. Claire’s agent was located on the seventeenth green at Bel-Air. Between putts, Herb Risser expressed dismay that Claire had left the film and was in an airplane bound for Asia. And you say Howard’s with her? And who else? All this was news to him. He had no idea. She had told him nothing, not a hint, honest injun. He knew there was trouble on the set but hadn’t taken the news seriously because there was always trouble on Howard Goodman’s sets. He couldn’t work without trouble. Trouble was Howard’s oxygen. Some sexual anarchy, he had heard, nothing out of the ordinary; nothing involving Claire, he added quickly. And perhaps the stimulants had gotten out of hand. That girl with the green eyes? She’s been vacationing in Cambodia. The producers were pricks but Howard knew that going in. So did Claire. They weren’t born yesterday, so they knew they were in bed with pricks. Howard thought he could handle them. He assured me when I asked him on Claire’s behalf. Due diligence, Dix. He said the young one had trained on Wall Street and was brilliant, just brilliant, the sort of boy you’d be proud to have as a son-in-law or even a son. He was a sweetheart, Howard said. Can you hold on just a sec, Dix?

Jesus Christ, Herb Risser said a moment later. Three putts. I took three putts from nine feet. He said, I don’t think you’ve cause for worry. You know how things are, the Hollywood pissing match.

Dix said, What do you know that I don’t know, Herb?

Nothing. Honest injun.

The agent agreed to check around, learn what he could, and call back. Berlin, isn’t it, Dix? Are you getting on all right? I worry about you over there, Germans aren’t your type of people. Something’s wrong with them. God, they’re cold. They’re the coldest people I know.

Dix replaced the receiver, trying to identify the lie. Maybe it was all lies, even the three putts from nine feet. He picked up the telephone to call Billy Jeidels, then decided not to. Billy wasn’t in Claire’s loop. And a blizzard of telephone calls would indicate panic, and with panic came the rumors, and after the rumors the newspapers, and after the newspapers the lawyers. There would be no end to it. But Claire sounded terrible.

He prepared another drink, his third, and sat in the chair by the window overlooking the lake. The time was now well past midnight, no lights anywhere. He heard the rumble of the train to Potsdam, then silence. He tried to recollect the starlet with the green eyes, she had a name like Gwladys or Fiona, but everyone called her Madcap. Her father was an MP. Her mother was French. She was a high-spirited girl, gorgeous to look at. Everyone liked to have her around because of her looks and good humor, and now suddenly she wasn’t so good-humored. He and Claire had talked many times of the atmosphere on sets, a complex chemistry, a mirror image of life as it was actually, perhaps life as one wished it to be. All unhappy sets were alike. The main element was the director, his confidence, his sense of himself, his concentration, his enthusiasm for the picture. No one knew beforehand how the personalities would mesh, so many egos, so little oxygen. So the director had to have some actor in him. He had to know how to play his own scenes, and this was as true for a cast of veterans as it was for youngsters. Howard Goodman was an overactor, never one word where three would do. And he misread people, although Claire was one of his favorites.

You’re too hard on him, Dix. Cut the man some slack.

Really, she went on, he’s a professional. It’s only that he likes to make mischief. He’s a mischief maker, and that’s what keeps him going. And he loves the bedroom scenes, particularly when the lovers don’t like each other. When they detest each other, in fact, and desire only to make the other look bad. The scenes when hatred governed but the audience was in the dark. The acid test of direction, according to Howard Goodman.

Dix remembered laughing and referring to Howard Goodman as the Tolstoy of the Higher Hackery, and watching as Claire’s smile turned into something very like a smirk, though she denied it when he accused her. He only rarely heard her talk about her own lovemaking scenes in that way, a rush so headlong that she did not hear the word “cut.” She talked about it when she had had drinks and somewhere in her mind was remembering her bohemian parents, who had made a life for themselves in the ski country of Vermont, long before it was fashionable. They were as voluble and indiscreet as Harry Greenwood, but voluble and indiscreet about their private lives; they retailed their own adventures, not the adventures of others. Other people’s adventures were tedious while their own were hilarious, filled as they were with late-night après-ski anarchy, drinks before the fire, a lively wine-drenched dinner, and sauna mischief later. Dix heard her mother’s voice in Claire’s, something sly and insinuating along with apprehension. Claire was a long way from Mad River Glen, but she remembered her family’s ski lodge as vividly as Dix remembered summer dances at the country club overlooking the lake. Lucky childhoods, uninhibited by the standards of the time; if you wanted something badly enough, you were entitled to take it. You were limited only by the reach of your ambition, and equally by the ambition of your adversary.

They had both become bewitched on movie sets, it was part of the fun. You lost yourself in the role and before you knew it, you were cheating. You wore so many faces it was hard to remember which was the home face and which the away face, which the smile and which the smirk. Usually the affair wrapped when the movie did. Everyone went home or across town or across the country to make another movie. These affairs rarely flourished after the lights went out because the lights were part of it, as the new-car smell signaled the new car. The lights, the camera, the makeup, the action, and always the potential for something inspired. The affair was as natural as the clothes you wore and the directions you gave. If you didn’t have an affair it meant you were missing out, with no specific regrets except the glum thought that an awful lot of genuine affection was wasted. Or not wasted. Misplaced.

Dix went to the sink and threw away the dregs of the vodka.

Those days were in the past.

Claire may have had a thing at one time with Howard Goodman. Howard definitely had a thing for her.

But wouldn’t that be unlikely now?

Not necessarily, he said aloud.

Claire loved high-stress atmospheres, and the truth was this: a set romance was like a romance in wartime, sharing the danger and the uncertainty. Falling in love on the set or on the battlefield was a great dose of good luck, and good luck meant staying alive. Luck was an essential ingredient of the set and the battlefield. You believed you were invulnerable because people were watching, and the work was so fine. Some of the wartime romances succeeded wonderfully, so long as neither party went to another war. Another war meant another romance because each war created its own high-stress atmosphere, different objectives, different combatants. But he had rarely heard her details and he did not like hearing them now. He did not like hearing them over a cell phone in someone’s airplane bound for Java, Borneo, or the Celebes, destinations that promised bad news. Something would break that would be hard to fix.

Years ago she told him that her father always offered a reward for the first girl to undress in front of the fire, and another reward for any girl who wanted to follow up. Claire watched from her room on the second floor, leaning over the inside balcony that looked down on the rec room with its stone fireplace. She laughed and laughed at the antics, then when she was older did not laugh so much. Still, everyone was having such a good time, pleasantly relaxed after a day on the slopes. She could not fail to notice that they were not having such a good time the next morning, the breakfast table silent and everyone getting an early start home or to the slopes. Her father and mother were always laughing when the room was empty at last. They would sit across the breakfast table from each other and have coffee together, trading stories from the night before and deciding themselves to take a run off-piste on Super Paradise, a little later in the day when the chores were done.

Dix washed the glass and put it away. He turned out the lights and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. What had she said? She said she was in a coal mine and the canaries were dying. The children were rampaging in the sandbox and—Are things more serious in Berlin, Dix? He felt like the infantryman rummaging in his pack for a Hershey bar or a stick of gum. But there was nothing for him to do but wait for the next telephone call, and hope that she was not as troubled as she sounded.