The sound stage
‘Folks around these parts said I was nuts . . .’ said Mrs Nita Danziger. She let the sentence tail away. She obviously wasn’t nuts, there was no need to say so. She’d been relating the story of returning alone to California from Berlin after the Wall Street crash had impoverished her. ‘Simon’s stockbroker advised me to do exactly the opposite. He said to sell my shares in the movie company and hold on to the house. My lawyers said the same thing. But I’d had enough of their advice by that time. From here on I play things my way, I told them, and . . .’
‘And you did,’ said Glenn Rensselaer. Like so many people talking to Nita Danziger, he felt the need to finish her sentences for her. ‘But you’re still living here,’ he said. He moved his shoulders to get some air on his body: his lightweight clothes were sticking to him. He’d never get used to this sort of weather. Her ‘ranch house’ was on a hill, but on windless days like this the thermometer soared.
She smiled and got up to close the flyscreen and wedge open the door so that there would be a movement of air. There were two large electric fans going, but her visitor was obviously uncomfortable. It was September, the first heavy rainstorms had come out of the Pacific Ocean and passed, leaving clear skies and hot sunshine. Nita Danziger seemed unaffected by the heat. She was dressed in a brown shirt and an English wool sweater with pearls. Her hair was perfectly arranged, as if she’d just come from the hairdresser. ‘Sure I bought the old place back again. I paid nearly double for it, but it was worth it. This house holds a million memories for me. Memories like that . . .’
For a few minutes they didn’t speak. They’d known each other a long time. Her late husband – Simon Danziger – had known Glenn’s father for ages, but for a very long time there had been an insurmountable barrier between them. The Danzigers had set their minds on Lottie’s marrying a Jewish boy. They blamed Glenn for encouraging the marriage with Peter Winter. Now Nita, although only a stepmother, and despite her affection for Peter, still felt bitter about the tragedy that had come of that marriage. Perhaps that’s why she persisted in calling him ‘Mr’.
‘Your hunch was right,’ said Glenn.
‘I’ve always been crazy about movies, Mr Rensselaer. And those young fellows at the studios were making the kind of movies I like. My lawyer called them “trashy” and maybe he was right but folks have a right to see trashy movies if they like them. And I like them.’
‘So you sold the house and bought more movie shares.’
‘They were so cheap. One of the partners took a beating in the crash, the way so many of us did. He preferred to sell his holding to me. . . .’
‘You did everything right, Mrs Danziger.’
‘There were some tough decisions. Remember that trip on the Graf Zeppelin? That day we sat talking? I’m glad I didn’t know what I was about to go through.’ She tried to pour coffee for him, but the pot was empty. ‘More coffee?’
‘No thanks, Mrs Danziger.’
‘I guess you didn’t visit with me to hear all this old family history. You came to see Peter.’
‘It’s good to see you again,’ said Glenn. He’d called on Mrs Danziger before going to see Peter. There was something he wanted to find out.
‘Like I told you on the phone, he’s settled down real well now, but it hasn’t been easy for him.’
‘It’s a year since he left Berlin.’
‘No one could have figured on little Helena’s being sick.’
‘Has the war made a difference to him?’ asked Glenn.
‘The war with England? Sure. It shook us all, didn’t it? But now that France has surrendered they say it will soon be possible to get to Germany via Portugal.’
‘The British navy have a blockade,’ said Glenn.
‘Peter went through all that with the German consul. He said it wasn’t something Peter should try along with a sick little girl.’
‘I’d say that’s good advice,’ said Glenn.
‘The German consul said he should wait until the British surrender, too.’
Glenn would not be drawn into that kind of speculation. He said, ‘I’m hoping that Peter will stay on here. Do you know his plans?’
‘He’s reconciled to staying here through Christmas. The doctor said Helena wouldn’t be fit to travel before then.’
‘You see,’ said Glenn, having decided to enlist Mrs Danziger’s aid. ‘I’m hoping he’ll stay longer than that. Lottie will be released from prison in 1942, and the American ambassador in Berlin has been told – unofficially – that she’ll certainly be deported. Where will that leave Peter? He’s a German citizen: I can’t imagine the Nazis will let him go with her. They might even draft him into the navy; he still has a reserve commission, I guess.’
‘He worries about Lottie. He worries about her all the time.’
‘He must stay here in America,’ said Glenn. ‘Even if Peter goes back to Berlin, he won’t be with Lottie.’
‘That’s easy to say, Mr Rensselaer. But it’s only natural that Peter should want to be near her. He loves her to distraction. It’s pitiful to see him sometimes. It’s only work that’s helped him through the last few months.’
‘I need to know if he expresses any opinion about the Nazis. Don’t think I’m snooping on him. But if I’m to help him I need to know his state of mind. Does he feel he should be back in Germany fighting the British? That’s what I need to know.’
‘He doesn’t like Hitler and the Nazis. That’s something I am sure about.’
‘Are you, Mrs Danziger?’
‘Yes, I am sure.’ He’d never heard her so resolute. She stood up to adjust the fan. ‘I’m a Jew, Mr Rensselaer. I’ll do anything you suggest that might prevent my little Helena from going back to Nazi Germany.’
Glenn Rensselaer looked at his watch. ‘Peter is giving me a tour of the studio so I mustn’t be late.’
‘Peter Winter is a fine man, Mr Rensselaer.’
‘I know.’ He indicated the parcel he’d been carrying. ‘I brought a little gift for Helena. She probably has enough dolls already, but . . .’
‘No little girls have enough dolls,’ said Nita Danziger. ‘I’ll get her.’
While Mrs Danziger went to get Peter’s daughter, Glenn looked round the room. It never changed. After buying the house for a second time, she’d restored it to exactly what it had been like before. There was a certain absurdity in such dedication, for the house had never been tastefully arranged or even very comfortable. It was a gloomy place, built for a silent-movie star back in the days when any Hollywood star living out here in Ventura County was considered an eccentric recluse. The house had a Western motif: leather bar-stools, like saddles, arranged down a long counter that was said to have come from an authentic cowboy bar in Deadwood City, or some such remote place that the movies had invested with a mythological significance. On the walls were paintings depicting scenes from the Old West and half a dozen dusty decapitated heads of longhorn steers. They glowered myopically across the room, as if resenting the prospect of being castrated and cut into steaks.
‘You remember your uncle Glenn,’ Mrs Danziger prompted.
Helena was almost fourteen years old, a shy little girl with Peter’s pale-blue Rensselaer eyes and her mother’s wavy jet-black hair. ‘Of course I do,’ said Helena confidently. She came to him and kissed him sedately.
‘I brought you a doll. Do you still play with dolls?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘I hear you’ve been sick.’
‘I’m going to school again now,’ she said. She had the careful almost accentless voice of the language student, and her phrases seemed to have been adopted whole from the speech of the grownups around her.
‘Well, that’s great,’ said Glenn.
‘Just three mornings a week,’ said Nita Danziger. ‘Next month maybe she’ll start dancing class.’
‘Do you like dancing?’ said Glenn.
‘I want to be a dancer,’ said Helena.
Glenn smiled. Nita Danziger had been a dancer in her younger days. He suspected that the motivation came from her. He gave Helena the doll. It wasn’t much of a present: a blank-faced ballerina he’d bought hurriedly in a downtown department store. And it was obvious that she considered herself too old for such things.
‘It’s perfectly lovely,’ she said politely and cuddled the doll.
‘Your English is wonderful,’ said Glenn.
‘My accent is swell, but my grammar needs working on.’
‘She studies very hard at it,’ said Mrs Danziger approvingly.
‘Have you been to Europe lately?’ Helena asked.
‘Yup!’
‘Did you see my mommy?’
‘Maybe next time,’ said Glenn awkwardly.
‘She’s serving a sentence in prison,’ said Helena.
‘That’s a kind of misunderstanding,’ said Glenn.
‘She’s a victim of the Nazis,’ said Helena. ‘That’s what I told the girls at school.’
‘What did they say?’ said Glenn.
‘They said she was a spy.’
‘What did you tell them.’
‘I said yes, she was,’ said Helena and in a sophisticated aside added. ‘It was better to say that. The girls at school thought that was exciting.’
‘Well, keep working on the English,’ said Glenn, looking at his watch again. ‘I have to go and see your father now.’
‘Thank you for the doll, Uncle Glenn. It was very thoughtful of you.’ She gave a stately bow.
‘Sure,’ said Glenn.
To anyone who’d not seen a movie studio before it was all quite staggering. Right in the centre of the San Fernando Valley, amid orange groves that seemed to reach as far as the San Gabriel Mountains, there were these three great buildings, each as high as a city block and almost as extensive. These were the sound stages, and each had cost half a million dollars. Behind them were almost a hundred acres of land: ponds, hills, a Western street and the derelict rear half of a gigantic Spanish galleon complete with sails that were now shredded and stained. On the back lot, the filming that had been abandoned because of the rain was now resumed, and a posse of bandits galloped through the street there for the mute camera.
The big red lights on the wall went out, and two men emerged from the building upon which the words ‘Stage Two’ had been painted in huge letters. Despite the arc-lit stage from which they’d come, the two men were blinking in the even brighter sunlight. Glenn Rensselaer had not changed much over the years, but a year in the United States had completely transformed his nephew Peter. He’d spent a couple of weeks with Cy Rensselaer and Dot, but it was when he got to California that he felt reborn. Forty-four years old, he looked at least ten years younger. His hair was short, trimmed close to the skull the way the local college boys liked it these days, with a short-sleeved open-neck white shirt and bright-blue-and-white-striped trousers with white canvas shoes. Peter’s face and arms were tanned, and he no longer seemed so self-conscious about his crippled hand.
‘I certainly am glad you showed me around, Peter. I’ve never seen a movie being shot before.’
‘This will be the studio’s first large-scale Technicolor musical,’ said Peter. ‘It’s a big investment and we don’t want too many people in the industry knowing exactly what we’re doing.’ He looked at his uncle. He’d guessed that Glenn was bringing news about Lottie, but he didn’t press him. Glenn had this strange need to get himself prepared for important conversations, and Peter knew that.
‘You already talk like a movie executive,’ said Glenn.
‘That’s what I am,’ said Peter. ‘Thanks to my father-in-law. I wish I’d known poor Simon Danziger better. He must have had an amazing business brain.’
‘Really?’ said Glenn.
‘He sold these orange groves to the movie company, and kept a large piece of the equity. How many people saw what profits were going to come from movie-making? And that was back in the days of silent films. What foresight! Mrs Danziger is a very rich woman now.’
Glenn looked at his nephew and decided that there was nothing to be gained from telling him how his father-in-law’s fiscal recklessness had led to despair and suicide, that his ownership of the stock in the movie company was due only to the buyer’s lack of liquidity. ‘Yeah,’ said Glenn. ‘It worked out real well for her.’
A small electric tractor went buzzing past them, towing a train containing racks filled with eighteenth-century costumes: crinolines, naval uniforms and other gorgeous garments of doubtful historical accuracy. ‘Some of the studios are switching to war movies,’ said Peter, ‘but we’re sticking to what they call “escapism” here.’ He laughed at the strange word.
‘So I see.’
‘When they asked me to become a vice president, I knew it was only because of Mrs Danziger’s holdings,’ said Peter. ‘But since then I’ve saved them from some bad mistakes. They were going to sell the old studio in Culver City, but I persuaded them to lease it to a company that will build offices there. We did very well on the lease. I believe that real-estate values in the Los Angeles region will soar in value one day. And I went into the contract department and found that no one working there speaks any foreign languages. No one! So I sorted out their European distribution contracts. Can you believe that when the war began they were talking about cutting their losses and withdrawing from the European market? In fact, of course, the war has meant more and more people going to the movies. Soldiers, factory workers, refugees and evacuated people – the movies are their only entertainment. And the Rensselaer brothers have been wonderful. Having the support of the bank made me indispensable.’ Peter smiled.
‘And now you’re writing tunes.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Nita Danziger. She showed me the publicity with your name on it.’
Peter smiled modestly. ‘They let me try my hand when they needed music urgently. One or two numbers have been popular.’
They looked up at the sound of aircraft engines. Overhead four brightly painted naval biplanes flew in a wobbly formation. ‘Trainers,’ said Glenn.
‘That’s why the sound stages were built,’ said Peter. ‘Planes didn’t matter in the old days of silent movies.’
‘I’d say you’ve become an American,’ said Glenn.
Peter answered literally, as he always did. ‘I am going to take out papers. Helena is at school. She has private English lessons and she manages the language very well. It has taken her a long time to learn that English has so few rules. One of the Rensselaers has a son born the same year as Helena, and they seem to like each other. When Lottie comes out of Germany we’ll live here. I haven’t said that to anyone but you, Glenn. But I have made up my mind.’ It was fitting that he should confide his secret first to Glenn Rensselaer. During the time they’d spent in Washington they’d become very close. Peter had been touched to discover how hard and how long his uncle had worked trying to get Lottie released.
‘But you’re happy?’
‘If Lottie was with me I’d be in paradise.’ He looked at Glenn. Now surely he would tell him what was happening about getting Lottie released.
‘The reason I’m asking you, Peter, is because I’d like you to come to Washington.’
‘What is the latest news about Lottie?’
‘This isn’t about Lottie exactly. Except that it’s about thousands of Lotties, I suppose.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You saw the newsreel of the German army’s victory march through Paris. The news agencies say a German invasion fleet is massing along the Channel coast. There are people in Washington, plenty of people, who are convinced that the British are not going to be able to last much longer.’
‘I know.’
‘How do you feel about that, Peter?’
‘Hitler will have to be stopped. He’s a madman.’
‘Stopped or defeated?’
‘What do you mean, Glenn?’
‘We all want to see Hitler stopped, but now it looks like the only way to stop him is to defeat him. That means defeating Germany: shooting bullets, dropping bombs, sinking ships and killing Germans. What I mean is, how far will you go in stopping him?’
‘I have already given your question a great deal of thought. I want Hitler stopped. You tell me that the only way to stop him is to defeat Germany. I think you are right. My poor Fatherland will have to suffer defeat all over again. I cry for them.’
‘There are people in Washington who think that the U.S. will have to fight, too. Soon, perhaps.’ They moved well aside for a truck delivering fully grown trees for the next sequences of the western being shot on the back lot.
‘Against Germany?’
‘Yes, against Germany. Our intelligence-collecting organization is more or less useless. We know nothing about Germany except what the embassy sends us, and that’s not much. The President has now authorized the formation of a secret intelligence outfit. Even Congress doesn’t know about us. Our state of ignorance is such that only by employing people like yourself, who’ve recently come from Germany, can we be ready to train our youngsters.’
‘And you want me to join?’ They’d arrived at Glenn’s car, a big V–8 Cadillac with air conditioning and all the extras that only Cadillacs have.
‘There’s not much money in it. No uniforms, badges, or medals. We’d probably be able to get your citizenship through more quickly – although even that I can’t promise – and I can offer you only the salary of a U.S. army major. But we are a rather informal group of warriors. If you wanted to take the American bar exams, I could get you tuition and time out. I might be able to arrange for you to come back here and dabble in your movie-making every few months. And we’d give you travel expenses: airplane, not that damned train.’
‘You Americans are a strange people, Glenn.’
‘Yeah, so I’ve heard.’ He got in the car and brought down the electric window so they could talk. Now he would tell him about Lottie. This was the way Uncle Glenn always did things.
Peter leaned down to him. ‘And I am very German. The idea of being an officer in an army run in such a fashion that its officers are civilians when they prefer it, is more than I can comprehend.’
‘So what do you say?’
‘I’ll try,’ said Peter.
Glenn let in the clutch so that the car started to move. It was only then that Peter finally realized there was as yet no news of her. He felt physically sick with disappointment.