Esmé continued to beg me to get her a part in one of my pictures and I promised I would try, not having the heart to tell her how I had been turned down by Colony, Monogram and Universal so far. These were lean times for actors. She said that Meulemkaumpf was growing ‘moody’ and suspicious and Mix confided that the sausage king had offered him a handsome bonus to spy on her and report her movements in detail. I did my best to find work for her through my continuing role as designer and writer, but was informed by everyone that pretty foreign girls were a dime a dozen in Hollywood. To get work they must have exceptional talent of some kind. I knew that this was not the whole truth of it, even if the footage of Esmé’s several tests did not reveal my girl to be a natural actress. Things came to a head one afternoon, however. Esmé, dressed in her special frock, was squatting on the carpet and I had my trousers ready when we were interrupted by an urgent Jacob Mix rapping on the bedroom door and whispering as loudly as he dared that we were discovered. Then the flat vulgar tones of a Mid-Western industrialist all but drowned him. ‘You’re fired, Mix. And that floozy in there had better not trouble to come back either. I’ve cancelled her contract.’
I was never to meet Meulemkaumpf. By the time I pulled up my trousers and stormed into the living-room the tycoon had gone, driving one car and with the detective he had hired following in the other. Mix, still in his smart chauffeur’s uniform, stood there grinning at me. ‘Well, now, boss,’ he said, ‘it looks like you have yourself a couple of new dependants.’
‘My clothes!’ Esmé was in despair. ‘How will I get my clothes?’
‘Missy,’ said Mr Mix with an expression of humorous sympathy on his broad, honest face, ‘you’ve got your clothes. You’re standing in them.’
With a deep sigh of resignation, my darling returned to our bed and did not rise for almost two days. The emotional shock had proven too much for her. The following morning I read in the Los Angeles Times that Mucker Hever was back from Europe where he had married an Austrian aristocrat and had bought himself a house near Versailles. By the Wednesday of the next week I received a call at MGM, where I was working on the Beverly of Graustark sets, designed as a Marion Davies vehicle, and Hever’s familiar, faltering voice, no longer friendly, asked me to meet him at his office the following morning. I told him that I would be busy until the afternoon (when I had a further screen-test with First National). He said that three o’clock would suit him. Believing that he had seen the stupidity of cutting off his nose to hurt his face and that he wanted to resurrect our steam car, and in spite of being told by First that nobody needed ‘a Russian cowboy’, I was in good spirits when I called on Hever.
He had lost weight but he wore the same suits. They made him look like an elephant with a wasting disease. His lugubrious eyes regarded me across the familiar desk with what I mistook for a knowing amiability. He told me that he had been in Paris, that he had met some acquaintances of mine. Grinning, he opened a folder and showed me a series of press cuttings concerning my ill-fated airship venture. I was viciously and untruthfully characterised by the French newspapers as a rogue, a confidence man, a cheat. I dismissed the reports. ‘My friend Esmé Loukianoff will tell you that they are lies. And Count Nikolai Petroff can also vouch for me.’
‘Petroff? He’s as crooked as you are.’
Then my friend’s name, too, was now blackened! ‘The allegations were part of a plot. They were always nonsense.’
‘As nonsensical as my involvement with the Ku Klux Klan?’ He planned to blackmail me! But what did he want? ‘You and your fancy woman suckered me good, Max, I’ll say that. But I won’t let you do it to anyone else in this town.’
I was astonished by the man’s pettiness, and said so. It was not I, after all, who had taken up with a Swede.
‘I’m giving you a month,’ he said. ‘And if you and your damned accomplice aren’t out of LA by Thanksgiving Day, this stuff, and a whole lot of other stuff too, goes to Callahan at the Justice Department. Remember Callahan, Mr Pallenberg?’ He gloated like a von Stroheim travesty, almost drooling with the taste of his triumph.
‘Who offered you all this rubbish?’ I was beside myself. Scarcely able to think, somehow I saw Brodmann’s hand in this chain of events. He, clearly, was hampering my progress. The Chekist had dogged me all the way from Ukraine. I could still see his knowing eyes, the only witness to my humiliation. My buttocks burned with painful reminiscence.
‘You’ve made more enemies than friends out there, Max.’ He shrugged. ‘Does it matter now?’
‘Brodmann is here! You are being deceived by a Bolshevik, I promise you. You have been misinformed. It is their way. They will go to any lengths. Look at the Zinoviev letter if you want proof such things are done!’
He stared at me for a moment as if he was going to answer, then he shook his head and shrugged. ‘Get out of my office, Max.’
I demanded he hand over all my papers, especially my designs. He claimed he had burned them. ‘A pile of ash is all that’s left of that whole damned stupid scam.’ His voice was a disgusted whisper.
I was helpless. I was furious. Yet I attempted to reason with him, not for my own skin but for my friend’s. ‘For pity’s sake, Hever, save your spite for me if you will - but spare that honourable lady. Try to rise above your petty jealousy. Is it her fault she found another fellow more attractive? Besides,’ I added, ‘we are both men of the world, both gentlemen. We can neither of us afford a scandal.’ I hoped he would take my meaning.
But he merely laughed in my face and brandished the file. ‘I’m giving you a break, Max. I have the goods on you now. When I show this to the papers, who the hell is going to believe anything you say? Sure I don’t want a scandal. Not a whole heap, anyway. That’s why I’m giving you time to move on. But if this blows to the papers and Hays gets hold of it - as he inevitably will - believe me, you’ll never work in this town again. And if you want a taste of what I mean, check back with FBO and Universal to see if they’ll give you a contract.’ His voice had become a threatening bleat.
It was my turn to smile. I admitted that he had me by the boules d’amour, as they say in France. ‘Hollywood, Hever and Hays might turn against me, my elephantine friend, but History will remember you only as a foolish hulk; nothing more than a hazard on the highway of Genius!’
(I should have demanded those plans. Of course he had not burned them! He and his companies have been living off my inventions ever since. But I was still confused when I walked proudly from his office, my future in ruins.)
My first act was to call Cosmopolitan and make an appointment for the promised job; my second was to call Miss Davies, but in spite of our professional closeness she said she had never heard of me. Mr Hearst similarly had never heard of me. His secretary added that Mr Hearst was used to fantastic attempts to blackmail him, especially since Mr Ince’s heart attack had created so many baseless rumours, and that such people were dealt with by due processes of law. Even I, innocent of guile as I was, understood the threat. Thus I was betrayed and abandoned in the same day!
* * * *
SIX
I AGREE THERE ARE more demeaning fates than exile into Egypt, even through the agency of a feigling like Hever; but that Turk-sick nation could never be my first choice of destinations. I gladly acknowledge Egypt’s history, her ancient glories, her inventions and her other somewhat less practical achievements. I doubt however that Rameses II, returning to modern Luxor, would find much to please him. I had to go. I was no longer welcome in Gower Gulch and Seaman’s enthusiasm had sold Goldfish on the notion of an Egyptian picture ‘shot where it actually happened, in the tomb of Tutenkhamun and his ancestors!’ The publicity would be considerable, especially if we were to claim, for instance, that members of our party had died under mysterious circumstances. What was more, I could be certain, from his attitude, that Goldfish knew nothing of the threatened scandal. He had only recently married. What was also an advantage was that Ronald Wilson, Goldfish’s famous public
ity chief, saw the idea’s potential. Mrs Cornelius assured me that she too was prepared to face down Hever, but on the other hand the Egyptian picture would be her most important role - as Queen Tiy, widow of the boy king (we would open with his death scene) and lover of the High Priest. Goldfish had bought her contract from FBO and was calling her a second Madge Norman. Rumour had it that this displeased Frances Farmer (Mrs Goldfish) who knew her husband’s famous passion for the drug-ruined star and was giving him trouble about it. For my part I had sketched so much of this story, almost frame by frame, that I could already visualise Gloria Cornish astonishing the audience as she moved like a freed lioness towards the great window, hung with barbaric drapery, and reached a lovely hand towards the risen sun as if to take it for her diadem. We had all become extraordinarily keen on the photoplay, even Esmé and Mr Mix. I think they both saw work for themselves. I was supporting all three of us now. Jacob Mix in particular was of an independent disposition, often a rather unnecessary or unsuitable one, but I put it down to the chip on the shoulder exhibited by even the best of his kind. Generally speaking he remained good-humoured and his clear-sighted observations might have fallen from the lips of the most well-educated white man. I regarded him in many ways as an equal. In our spare moments we continued with my dance lessons.
Esmé became especially seductive around the subject of the Egyptian film. ‘Let me be the beautiful slave girl, Max! Imagine me in those wonderful costumes!’
I admitted that while this did indeed excite me, I had emotional difficulties about sharing that excitement with several million other men.
She made a face and hugged me and told me that in her heart I would always be her only real audience, no matter how she appeared on screen. I often attracted this kind of loyalty in women - in men, too, less frequently - but it is a great burden. I felt powerful responsibilities for my strange little family and was naturally honour-bound to fulfil them. They were my chief considerations when I left Hever’s office. I was not impoverished, of course, and as far as the moving-picture world was concerned I remained a man of creative energy and genius to rival the greater actor-painters of the Renaissance, a man of wealth, reputation and substance, but I was in no doubt how swiftly I could lose my power and reputation if Hever began to publish his distortions in the Los Angeles press. There was a lesson in the rapid fall of Fatty Arbuckle. The comedian had been completely exonerated by a jury which demanded it be made clear that Arbuckle was not guilty of the death of the girl and that he was the victim of a particularly vicious blackmail plot to rival the worst ever committed in a country where the arts of blackmail and kidnapping were brought to unprecedented heights, thanks to the expertise of certain Sicilians whom a tolerant nation allowed to prosper in the New York, San Francisco and Chicago slums. Expose a Catholic or a Jew to the liberties of a Protestant community and you can always be sure he will abuse, then threaten, the very institutions designed to benefit the abused and threatened. It is the same with Islam. There would be no chance for me in this new Hollywood determined to present herself as the very quintessence of middle-class respectability. Arbuckle had been a world star with a massive income and tremendous personal power. He had been destroyed in a matter of hours. If Hever did as he threatened there would be precious little chance for me. Mrs Cornelius and I would have plenty of time later to clear ourselves of any charges, especially if we meanwhile arranged visas and fresh passports abroad. Reconciled to a temporary strategic exile, I closed up my house and put dust-sheets on the furniture, explaining to my bank that I would be in Europe and the Middle East for a while. Fees due to me would be paid directly into my account. I certainly had no sense of committing myself to any permanent change, but I was grateful for the time I would gain. When Hever and I next came face to face it would be Major Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski of the Don Cossacks who would confront him. In my triumphant hand would be a sheaf of documents, all proving my innocence and the truth of everything I claimed. Hever would scowl, chew his lip, shrink away, defeated, and I would leave his office, opening a door into sunlight where my Esmé and my Mrs Cornelius awaited me, to embrace me as their hero and their saviour. I would be completely vindicated! Redeemed!
So thoroughly could I now create realities from my imagination that I was supremely confident of the situation’s ultimate outcome. While away from the country I would contact various friends, have them make testaments as to my character. I would find Kolya Petroff. We would vouch for each other. I had my diplomas, my Georgian pistols, my blueprints. I had funds and family in England. England ruled Egypt. Perhaps I could at last visit the country I most admired after my own. I began to see the many advantages. Fate had not dealt me an unfriendly blow. She had decided to rouse me from my pointless euphoria so that I might continue my mission. I thanked gratefully those Gods whom I substituted then for direct acknowledgement of God Himself. I know better now, but that cannot change the errors and follies of youth. Ir tut mir vey! Ma yelzim an te’mal da Uskut! Uskut! Ighsilu ayadikum . . . Still, it is generally bearable.
This was no cowardly flight away from my Promised Land, der Heim, but an expedition into new territory, to expand and deepen my wisdom. When we returned in triumph with enormous publicity, we should all be world-famous. We would be lauded as the makers of the first Egyptian picture actually filmed in Egypt. The enormity of such a venture, considering the equipment and people needing transport alone, was considerable, but Goldfish had a ready answer to that problem. He owned a steamship. The ship had been part of a bad debt, I gathered, incurred by Goldfish during an earlier period of independence. It represented security on a large number of movies taken to South America by some now-deposed president who had planned to grow rich as Goldfish’s main distributor in Latin America. Goldfish had owned the ship for some time and I had heard that his new gentile wife was embarrassed by the amount of scandal still attached to the vessel. Even I knew of the Hope Dempsey and her legendary rum-running exploits. Celebrated in rhyme and story, she was always barely a length ahead of the customs men, loaded to capacity with bootleg whiskey, Bacardi and gin from Panama, Cuba and Bermuda. I had heard famous film-stars apologising for the paucity of their bars and cellars because ‘The Hope Dempsey’s a day late in docking.’ Reputedly, Goldfish had been visited more than once by federal agents and his wife, knowing the cash-value of presenting a clean, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant image to an attentive world, was helping him to catch on at last to the real nature of their beast, the world’s most profitable industry. So while the old guard quarrelled over the reparations and disposition of battleships, the new immigrants, schooled in the subtle methods of the East, took hold of the real means to power. I have never failed to credit them with cunning and far-sightedness. They also knew, as Goldfish did, when to abandon a venture. My opinion would be confirmed by the ship’s skipper, Captain Quelch, who had commanded ironclads in the Great War, had taken part in the Battle of Jutland, came from a very well-known English family, and still bore the stamp of a gentleman.