It was obvious as the new term got under way that her status at Hunter was changing. Popular girls who had shown no interest in her before were smiling at her, even stopping to chat with her in the corridors. At lunch time she tended to become the center of the conversation circle. A couple of scouts from the formidable Helen Johannsen clique became friendly with her. One day she found herself at lunch with a group that included Helen herself, the sharply clever, beautiful blond senior who was editor of the school paper, leader of the Sing, and exalted general boss of Hunter politics. After lunch Helen took her arm and walked out with her in the sunshine, drawing her on to talk about herself. Marjorie, dazzled and flattered, talked freely. When she shyly disclosed that she wanted to be an actress, Helen advised her to try out at once for the dramatic society’s production of The Mikado; there wasn’t a doubt in the world, Helen said, that she would get a leading part. Then she startled Marjorie by remarking, “I hear you know my old friend, Sandy Goldstone.”
“Do you know Sandy?”
With a little curving smile Helen said, “I’ve modelled a bit at Lamm’s, off and on… Dear, I’m no competition for you, don’t look so alarmed. I’m a little old for Sandy. Anyway, you don’t suppose he’d ever be serious about a Christian girl, do you?” She glanced at Marjorie, a good-humored approving inspection. “I believe you’ll do all right.”
Marjorie, blushing and feeling all arms and legs, said, “My Lord, I barely know him.”
“Sure, dear,” Helen said, and they both laughed. Marjorie saw nearby girls, after-lunch strollers like themselves, stare admiringly at the sophomore laughing arm in arm with Helen Johannsen.
Marjorie accepted the jealous stirrings she felt as a sign that she might be in love with Sandy, after all.
Chapter 6. MARSHA ZELENKO
She tried out for The Mikado, and to her astonishment landed the title part without any trouble.
From the day rehearsals began the rest of the world became vague to her. She sat in class with the other badly made-up girls in skirts and sweaters, scribbling in her notebook as always; but it was a kind of reflex between her ears and her hand, by-passing her brain. At the end of many an hour she could not have said whether the lecturer had been droning about fruit flies or Anatole France. Sometimes her pen would slow and stop; her eyes would drift to the gray window, to the autumn gale blowing slant streaks of rain on the glass, to the reflected yellow lights that seemed to hang magically in the air over the purplish street; the tune of My Object All Sublime would start running in her mind, and she would fall in a trance of imaginary play-acting, adding new comic business to her role. The rehearsal period after classes was like a birthday party that came every day. In a word, she was stage-struck.
One evening rehearsals stopped early for costume fitting. The players came up one by one, giggling and squealing, to be measured under a bright light in the center of the stage, supervised by a fat girl with thick braided black hair. Marjorie had been wondering for days who this girl was. She had seen her sitting by herself in a back row of the auditorium, coming and going as she pleased at these closed rehearsals, sometimes strolling forward to whisper to the director, Miss Kimble, who always listened carefully. Miss Kimble in her youth had sung in the chorus of a real Shubert road company of Blossom Time; so although she was now just a skittish old maid in baggy tweeds, teaching music at Hunter, Marjorie was inclined to respect anyone she respected.
When Miss Kimble called, “All right, the Mikado next, please,” Marjorie came up the steps of the stage to the stout girl with mixed curiosity and shyness.
“Ah, the star herself.” The girl’s voice was husky and grown-up. She wore a flaring maroon skirt, a blouse of coarse brown linen with garish embroidery, and a wide tooled-leather belt spiked with copper ornaments. She said to her assistant, a spindly girl with a tape measure, “Chest and hips, that’s all. We’ll have to hire her costume from Brooks.”
Miss Kimble said, or rather whined, “Marsha, we’re over the budget already—”
“You can fake a lot with cheesecloth and crepe paper, Dora,” said the stout girl, “and I’m doing what I can, but you can’t fake a Mikado.”
“Well, if you’re sure you can’t—”
“Thanks,” Marjorie muttered in the girl’s ear.
Marsha turned her back on Miss Kimble, and said in a tone too low even for the spindly girl to hear, “Don’t mention it. You are the star, you know, dear.” Thereafter she ignored Marjorie.
Next evening she was at the rehearsal again. When it was over she came to Marjorie and made a couple of comments on her performance which were penetrating and useful, more so than any of Miss Kimble’s directions. “Let’s go out and have a cup of coffee and talk,” she said. As they walked arm in arm along Lexington Avenue, bending their heads before the cutting dank wind which swayed signs and flapped scraps of newspaper by, Marsha suddenly said, “Say, I’m starved. Let’s have dinner together. I know a wonderful place—”
“I’m expected home for dinner, I’m sorry—”
“Oh. Of course. Well, then, come and have coffee and watch me eat until you have to go home. Yes?”
They went to an old brownstone house on a side street, and up a flight of stairs to a doorway framed by a huge grinning gilt dragon mouth; Mi Fong’s Jade Garden, the sign over the dragon’s ears read. They passed through the fanged jaws into a crimson-lit room smelling of incense and strange cookery. Marjorie was very glad she had not committed herself to eat. She half believed that cats, dogs, and mice were cooked in Chinese restaurants. The pervading odor seemed more or less to confirm the idea. Here and there in the gloom a few diners with odd faces were eating odd-looking things out of oddly shaped dishes. Near the door one fat woman with a mustache was using chopsticks to lift a morsel of meat out of a tureen, from which there protruded a big horribly white bone. Marsha sniffed the air. “God, these places destroy my figure but I’m mad about them—Hi, Mi Fong. How’s your wife? Better?”
“Rittle better, thank you, Missa Masha.” A short Chinaman in a white coat bowed them to a latticed booth lit by red paper lanterns. “Same boot? Quiet, peaceful? Rittle drink first, maybe?”
“I guess so. Marjorie, how about trying a Singapore sling? Mi Fong makes the best slings in town.”
Marjorie faltered, “I don’t know if I want a drink. Coffee—”
“Oh, God, it’s a bitter night, you’ve got to warm your bones. Two, Mi Fong—He’s a marvelous person,” Marsha said as they hung up their coats. “His wife paints beautifully. They live in back. I have a screen she did. Gorgeous, and she practically gave it to me. The food is sublime, I tell you, and it costs next to nothing. If you have forty cents on you, you can have a feast. If you haven’t I’ll lend it to you—”
“Oh no, no, thanks anyway.”
With the drinks the Chinaman brought a plate full of fat brown curved things. Marjorie asked what they were, and Marsha exclaimed, “Darling, don’t tell me you’ve never eaten fried shrimps. I’ll die.”
“I’ve never eaten any kind of shrimps.”
“Bless my soul, haven’t you?” Marsha looked at her with a tinge of amusement. “Well—here’s to your glorious debut as the Mikado.”
Marjorie raised the tall glass, which looked black in the red light. The Singapore sling tasted cool, slightly sweet, not at all strong. She smiled and nodded.
“Nectar,” said Marsha. “Don’t have more than one, though. Once an evil old man who was trying to make me got me to drink three. Wow.”
“Did he make you?” said Marjorie, trying to be as devilish as her companion.
“What do you think?” said Marsha, with an arch air of being offended. She heaved a sigh. “Ah, well. He wasn’t really so old, but he sure was evil. Of course that was his chief charm. I’m still mad about him, to tell you the truth.” She picked up a plump shrimp and bit it in half with long white teeth. Her face lit up, the dark eyes gleaming. “Ah, Lord, they say it’s a vale of tears, Marjorie, and yet
there are such things as fried shrimps. Do have one.”
“No, thanks.”
“Well, you’re missing a bit of heaven on earth. But to business. Do you know how much talent you have?”
“Who, me? I’m not sure I have any.” Marjorie took a long pull at the Singapore sling. It went flickering down into her stomach and out along her nerves, it seemed, like little cool flames.
Marsha ate another shrimp, blinking luxuriously. “Well, modesty is becoming. But you’re an actress, dear. And I mean an actress. For you to do anything else with your life will be a crime.”
“Ko-Ko is ten times as good as I am—”
“My dear, Ko-Ko is a piece of wood. They’re all sticks, sticks, I tell you, absolute dummies, except you. Of course they should have given Ko-Ko to you, but Helen had you down for the Mikado. Poor Helen meant well. She likes you in her fashion. I’m afraid she doesn’t know her Gilbert and Sullivan. She thought the Mikado part must be the lead.”
“Marsha, Miss Kimble did the casting—”
“Dora Kimble, dear, is only the director. Helen Johannsen is business manager of the show, and what’s more she’ll write the review in the paper. If Miss Kimble wants a show next year she’s not going to do anything to offend Helen. The dramatic society is Miss Kimble’s one reason for living. She’s substituted it for having a man. So she damn well jigs to Helen’s tune.”
It astounded Marjorie to hear that political influence could touch so sacred a process as the casting of a play. “Is that really how I got the part? I can hardly believe it—”
“Dear, listen, in this school Helen Johannsen can do anything.” She began to talk about Hunter politics, amazing Marjorie with revelations of the interlocking agreements between the Christian and Jewish sororities, the rigid apportioning of the plums of honor and money.
“Why, it’s crooked, it’s like Tammany,” Marjorie exclaimed.
“Marjorie, really! That’s just the way things are, everywhere in the world. School’s no different. The girls who do the work are entitled to a little gravy.”
“How do you know all this? You make me feel like a blind fool.”
“You’re just not interested, dear, and I am. I’m ambitious. I tried to buck the system in freshman year. Ran for class president, tried to organize the great unwashed, the non-sorority girls. We outnumber them four to one at Hunter, God knows. Only one trouble. It turns out that the unwashed worship the washed. I got one vote to Helen Johannsen’s six. Ah, well.” She popped a shrimp into her mouth and drank. “There’s something so damn wide-eyed about you. How old are you?”
“I’ll be eighteen next month.”
“Lawks a mercy me, a child, and an upper sophomore! You’re a mental prodigy too. It’s too much.”
“Prodigy! I barely scrape through every term. It was easy to skip in the Bronx where I grew up, that’s all, and I gained a year—”
“You’re from the Bronx?”
“Lived there all my life until a year and a half ago. Why?”
Marsha squinted at her, the red light making black lines around her eyes. “Well, dear, you can act. I’d have taken you for a born and bred Central Park West babe.”
“How old are you, Marsha?”
“Dear, I’m a hag. An ancient battered used-up twenty-one.”
Marjorie laughed. The drink was taking hold. She was finding Marsha more and more charming, and the Chinese surroundings no longer scared her. “Marsha, will you tell me one thing, and be absolutely honest? It’s terribly important to me. What makes you think I have any acting ability? Just from seeing me rehearse a few times—”
Marsha grinned. “Come on, have dinner with me. Call up your folks and tell them you’re busy with the show. It’s true enough, I have a million things to tell you about your performance.”
“Well—look, can you—can you order something for me without pork? I don’t eat it.”
Marsha smiled. “I can order a whole banquet without pork. Simplicity itself.”
Mrs. Morgenstern made no difficulty over the phone, merely asking when Marjorie would be home, and warning her not to work too hard. When she returned to the table Mi Fong was there, ducking his head and smiling. Marsha was saying, “And jasmine tea, of course, and rice cookies and—oh, yes, remember now, no pork. Absolutely no pork.”
The Chinaman giggled, glancing at Marjorie. “No polk. Sure thing. Polk too spensive, sure? No polk, missa. Hokay.” He went off, laughing.
“Mama says it’s all right,” Marjorie said, adding, with a rueful look after the Chinaman, “She doesn’t know I’m in a chop suey joint.”
“You’re kosher, aren’t you?” said Marsha kindly.
“Well, hardly. My folks are. But pork or shellfish—it’s just the idea, it makes no sense—”
“Dear, don’t apologize. The power of conditioning is fabulous. Fortunately I’ve never had the problem.”
“Aren’t you Jewish?”
“Well now, strangely enough, I don’t rightly know. My father’s a crusading atheist. My mother doesn’t know what she is, she grew up in France as an orphan. I guess Hitler would call me a Jew, all right. But Zelenko, if you don’t know it, is the name of one of the noblest old Russian families. How our family comes by it my father doesn’t know, or won’t say. Maybe my great-grandfather was a noble bastard. For all I know I’m a Russian princess, isn’t that a sobering thought?”
“Marsha, did Gertrude Lawrence really come to dinner at your house?” Marjorie said. The stout girl had casually thrown out this startling fact during their conversation at rehearsal.
“Dear, Gertrude Lawrence has loved my mother for years. But then, everybody does. I don’t think there’s anybody in the theatre she doesn’t know. Damn few I haven’t met, in fact. Not that I pretend they’re my buddies or anything, it’s just through Mama.”
Marsha proceeded to tumble out anecdotes about well-known people, all magic names to Marjorie. She knew the funny things Noel Coward did at parties, and where Margaret Sullavan bought her clothes, and which famous actors were conducting adulterous affairs, and with whom, and which celebrated writers and composers were homosexual, and what plays were going to be hits next season, and which producers Marjorie could expect to be assaulted by. She was rattling on in this vein, with Marjorie listening hypnotized, when Mi Fong brought the first course.
As nearly as Marjorie could make out in the crimson gloom, it was a white soup—dirty white. She had an ingrained dislike of white soup. There were things floating in it, some gelatinous, some shredded, some fleshy-looking. She glanced at Mi Fong, who grinned, “No polk, missa.”
“Fall to, it’s ambrosia,” said Marsha, plunging her little china spoon into it greedily.
Marjorie took a few spoonfuls, straining the liquid. The taste was very spicy, not bad. But when she found herself chewing what seemed to be a couple of rubber bands, or possibly worms, she emptied her mouth and pushed away the dish. Then she was ashamed, and afraid she had offended Marsha; but the other girl spooned up her soup obliviously, talking on about the theatre. Marjorie reminded her of Margaret Sullavan, she said, “Not in technique, of course. You couldn’t be more raw or awkward, you haven’t an atom of experience and it’s perfectly obvious you haven’t. I’m talking about star quality, about inner magnetism. You walk on stage, Margie, even in a stale old part like the Mikado, and somehow you’re alive, and inside the part, and yet you’re projecting a peculiar note, your own. That’s it, kid, believe me. Everything else is peripheral, it can be learned, it can be taught, it can be bought. That, you’ve either got or you haven’t. You’ve got it.”
“Good Lord, I hope you’re right—” Marjorie broke off because a steaming heap of food appeared under her nose: a great bed of white rice, and piled on it a number of greasy objects, some vegetable, some animal.
“No polk, missa,” said the Chinaman. “Assolutely.” Marjorie, however, had smelled pork in restaurants and cafeterias very often. This was pork: if there was such an ani
mal as a pig in the world, this was the remains of a pig.
Marsha said, “You’ll love it. It’s his masterpiece. Moo yak with almonds.” Marjorie nodded and smiled, casting about wildly in her mind for an excuse not to eat it. “They make it with pork in most places,” Marsha went on. “Mi Fong makes it with lamb, though.” She began shovelling it into her mouth.
“Oh you betcha ram,” said Mi Fong, his teeth gleaming redly at Marjorie. “Sure ’nough ram.”
“Isn’t that meat sort of white for lamb?” said Marjorie, screwing up her eyes and her nose at the dish.
“Assright, missa. White. Chinese ram. Chinese ram alla time white.” He poured the tea, which smelled like boiled perfume, in fragile cups, and went away chuckling.
Not wanting to insult Marsha by seeming to call her a liar, Marjorie made a hearty show of enjoying the dish, whatever it was; she scooped the rice from under the meat and ate that. But the light was dim and her instruments greasy for such delicate work. She soon found herself chewing a large piece of rubbery meat. She went into a coughing fit, got rid of it in her handkerchief, and pushed the food around on her plate without eating any more. Partly to distract Marsha from what she was doing, and partly out of the general stimulation of the Singapore sling and Marsha’s flattery, Marjorie disclosed to her—for the first time to anybody—the stage name she had invented for herself. Marsha stopped eating, staring at her for several seconds. “Mar-jorie Mor-ningstar, eh?” She lingered over the syllables. “That’s you, all right. A silver gleam in the pink sky of dawn. It’s an inspiration. It’s perfect.”