The Deer Park, Page 3

  I think he was the first person in Desert D’Or to mention the name of Charles Francis Eitel. After that, it seemed as if everybody was always ready to tell some new story about the man. Eitel was a famous film director who was staying at the resort in the off-season, and he was one friend of Marion’s who never came to The Hangover. Until I came to understand it better, I often thought that Marion kept the friendship just to provoke Dorothea, for Eitel had been in the news in the last year. I heard that he walked off a set one day in the middle of shooting a picture, and two days later he was called a hostile witness by an investigating committee of Congress. Dorothea was livid about Eitel. As a gossip columnist she had never grown to be nationally big, and finally had been bored by the work, but in the last year or two before she retired, the head of her column always featured the American flag next to her photograph, and her copy was filled with shadows of subversion in the movie industry. Even now she was very patriotic, and like most patriots she felt strongly and thought weakly, and so it was not easy to argue with her. I never tried, and I was careful not to mention Eitel unless I had to. Soon after I met him, I came to think of Eitel as my best friend at the resort, and I stopped her once in the middle of one of her tirades, said that he was my friend and I did not want to talk about him, and for a moment I thought she would tear into a rage. She came close, she came very close, her face flushed dark red, and she let fly at me. “You’re the lousiest snob I ever met,” Dorothea shouted.

  “That’s right,” I answered her, and I didn’t dislike Dorothea for the truth of it. “I am a snob.”

  “Well, swill in it,” she said under her breath, but Pelley was there passing a drink, and we didn’t discuss Eitel.

  “Just cause you’re a rich man’s son, and phony up to the ears,” Dorothea said, “don’t think you know all the answers.”

  “All right. That’s enough,” I muttered in my turn, and we let it lay.

  But I was feeling satisfied. Dorothea’s boasts were built on the considerable ground of her experience, and since she was always saying that she could tell on what side of the tracks a man was born, I had the thought that I wasn’t too poor an impersonator.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I NEVER KNEW my mother for she died too early, and my father, who gave me the princely name of Sergius O’Shaugnessy, stopped taking care of me when I was five years old, and surrendered himself to traveling from job to job. He was not a bad man in his own way, and the few times he visited the orphanage were events I remembered a long time. He would bring me a present, he would listen with sad eyes when I would ask him to take me with him, he would promise to return soon, and then he would disappear for another few years. It was not until I grew older that I realized he could never keep his word.

  When I was twelve, I found out my last name was not O’Shaugnessy but something which sounded close in Slovene. It turned out the old man was mongrel sailor blood—Welsh-English from his mother, Russian and Slovene from his father, and all of it low. There is nothing in the world like being a false Irishman. Or maybe my mother was Irish. Once my father made that confession to me, he could never bring himself to add another detail. A workingman all his life, he wanted to be an actor, and O’Shaugnessy was his fling. Before he was through, he played a number of places. He did the Merchant Marine, and he took his mouth organ on more than one freight train, and he even ran some rum until his luck ran out and they railed him into the state pen. When they let him out, he was good for washing dishes. I can say that he passed some of his character on to me. I was the biggest boy in the home for my age, but I was not what they call forward. At least, not then. When he died, however, I began to look for a new character. At fourteen you don’t wear a name like Sergius easily—I had hidden it under a dozen nicknames, I had been Gus and Spike and Mac and Slim and I could name some others—but once he was dead, once I knew, and it took a long time to learn, that there were going to be no more visits and I was all alone, I began to call myself Sergius again. Naturally, I paid for it with a dozen fights, and for the first time in my life I was wild enough to win a thing or two. I had always been one of those boys for whom losing came naturally, but I was also rare enough to learn from winning. I liked boxing. I didn’t know it then but it was the first thing I had found which was good for my nervous system. In the space of fourth months I lost three fights and then won all the others. I even won a boxing tournament the Police Department held. After that I’d earned my name. They called me Sergius.

  I needed it, and I paid for it. My father left me a bum’s inheritance; underneath his drunks and his last disappointed jobs and his shy hello for me, in all those boardinghouse rooms where he watched the wallpaper curl and the years go down in one hash-house after another, he kept his little idea. There was something special about him, he had always thought, someday, somewhere …

  Everybody has that, but my father had it more than most, and he slipped it on to me. I would never admit it to a soul, but I always thought there was going to be an extra destiny coming my direction; I knew I was more gifted than others. Even in the orphanage I had a lot of talents. They always gave me the lead in the Christmas play, and when I was sixteen I won a local photography contest with a borrowed camera. But I was never sure of myself, I never felt as if I came from any particular place, or that I was like other people. Maybe that is one of the reasons I have always felt like a spy or a fake.

  Of course I had been faking all my life. At the children’s home, I remember we used to go to a parochial school, and during class hours we were treated like everybody else. But the lunch period was a torture. They used to bring us sandwiches from the orphanage, and we were supposed to eat together in a corner of the lunchroom while the others looked at us. That didn’t make it easy to become friends, and I remember one term when I did without lunch. On the first day I got to know a boy who lived down the street from the school in a two-family house. Today, I couldn’t give his name, but for all those months I was sick he might discover I was from the home. Later, I realized he must have known all the time, but he was nice enough never to let me guess.

  There are enough stories I could tell of those years, but it would be a mistake. I would go on forever about the orphanage, and how none of the Sisters were like one another, for some were cruel and some were peculiar, and two or three were very good. There was a nun named Sister Rose, and when I was a child I loved her exactly like a hungry child. She took special interest in me, and, with it all, since she came from a wealthy family, she spoke in a very clear way, and I used to have dreams at six and seven that when I grew up I would pay her family a visit and they would appreciate how good my manners were. She used to teach me Catechism in every way she could, and when I learned to read she would give me the lives of the saints and the martyrs. But I do not know how well that took, for my father gave me another catechism, and in his acquired brogue he would tell me to ask her about the life of Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and he would talk for hours about the martyrdom in Boston and how religion was for women and anarchism for men. He was a philosopher, my father, and afraid of Sister Rose, but he was the only one I ever knew who was nice to the hunchbacked boy who slept next to me, and that was a poor boy. He was ugly and he had body odor, and we used to kick him. The Sisters would always have to make him take a bath. Even Sister Rose could barely tolerate him, for nuggets would drip from his nose, but my father had pity on the cripple and used to bring him presents too. The last I heard of the hunchback, he was in prison; a feeble-minded boy, trapped while shoplifting.

  It was quite a life in the orphanage, and after my father died I ran away from the home five times in three years. Once I stayed away for four months before they caught me and brought me back. Yet I would not even be telling a fact, for the fact would have to include what I learned and that would take too long. It’s a trap to spend time writing about your childhood. Self-pity comes into the voice.

  I would rather mention what I learned. I came out of the home when I was seventeen with
one ambition. I had read a great many books, whichever ones I could, I read constantly when I was a boy—I would leave the lives of the martyrs and sneak away to the public library where I would read about English gentlemen, and knights, and adventure stories, and about brave men and Robin Hood. It all seemed very true to me. So I had the ambition that someday I would be a brave writer.

  I do not know if this can explain why Charles Francis Eitel was my best friend for almost all the time I stayed in Desert D’Or. But then, who can explain friendship? the explanations cover everything but the necessity. Yet one thing I believe can be said. I had the notion that there were few kind and honest men in the world, and the world always took care to put them down. For most of the time I knew Eitel, I suppose I saw him in this way.

  Days before I met him I had already heard his name with its odd pronunciation, “eye-TELL.” As I have said, he was a subject for gossip in Desert D’Or. I even had a clue to explain Dorothea’s state. It seemed that years ago she had an affair with him, and in some way it must have hurt. I gathered that the affair had meant something to her and very little to Eitel, but this isn’t definite, and they had each had so many affairs. In all the time I knew them both I never heard them mention the few weeks or the few months when they had been together, and I would guess that its history was important now to nobody but Marion.

  One night when I wandered over to have a drink at his house, he mentioned the director. “There’s a case,” he said. “When I was a kid, I used to think”—and Faye laughed harshly—“that Eitel was a god and devil all in one.”

  “It’s hard to think of you feeling that way about anybody,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Eitel would talk to me when he was dating Dorothea. I was such a freak of a kid. Even after he broke up with my mother, he used to invite me over once in a while.” Faye smiled at the hint of feeling in what he said.

  “What do you think about him now?” I asked.

  “He’d be all right,” Marion said, “if he weren’t so middle-class. Very nineteenth century, you know.” With a blank expression, he left me for a minute to search through the drawer of his aluminum and blond-wood desk. “Here,” he said, coming back, “take a look. Read this.”

  He handed me a printed transcript of the testimony taken at the hearings of a Congressional investigating committee. It was a heavy pamphlet, and as I looked at it, Marion said, “Eitel’s dialogue starts on page eighty-three.”

  “You sent away for this?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I wanted to have it.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, that’s just a little item,” Marion said. “Someday I’ll tell you about the artist in me.”

  I read it through. The testimony of the director came to twenty pages, but it was my introduction to Eitel, and I think I ought to give a page or two which is typical of the rest. In fact, I read it aloud many times. I had brought a tape recorder with me to Desert D’Or, and I would study my speech and try to improve it. Eitel’s dialogue was an opportunity for me, and although I cared little enough about politics, considering them a luxury like gentleman’s ethics which I could not yet afford, I would always have a reaction from his words. It is not very neat to say, but I felt as if I were speaking my own words, or at least the way I would have liked to say them into the eye of somebody who knew I had broken a regulation. So the testimony was not boring to me, and I took the idea while I read, that I had a lot to learn from Eitel:

  CONGRESSMAN RICHARD SELWYN CRANE: … are you now or have you ever been, I want you to be specific, a member of the Party?

  EITEL: I should think my answer would be obvious.

  CHAIRMAN AARON ALLAN NORTON: Do you refuse to answer?

  EITEL: May I say that I answer with reluctance and under duress. I have never been a member of any political party.

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: There is no duress here. Let’s get on with the thing.

  CRANE: Did you ever know Mr.——?

  EITEL: I probably met him at a party or two.

  CRANE: Did you know he was an agent of the Party?

  EITEL: I didn’t know.

  CRANE: Mr. Eitel, you seem to delight in presenting yourself as stupid.

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: We’re wasting time. Eitel, I’ll ask you a simple question. Do you love your country?

  EITEL: Well, sir, I’ve been married three times, and I’ve always thought of love in connection with women. (Laughter.)

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: We’ll have you up for contempt if you don’t stop this.

  EITEL: I wouldn’t want to be in contempt.

  CRANE: Mr. Eitel, you say you met the agent in question?

  EITEL: I can’t be sure. My memory is weak.

  CRANE: A film director has to have a good memory, I should think. If your memory is as bad as you claim, how did you make your pictures?

  EITEL: That’s a good question, sir. Now that you’ve pointed it out, I wonder how I did make them. (Laughter.)

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: Very clever. Maybe you won’t remember something we have on record here. It says you fought in Spain. Want to hear the dates?

  EITEL: I went over to fight. I ended up as a messenger boy.

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: But you didn’t belong to the Party?

  EITEL: No, sir.

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: You must have had friends among them. Who incited you to go over?

  EITEL: If I did remember, I don’t know that I would tell it to you, sir.

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: We’ll have you up for perjury if you don’t watch out.

  CRANE: To return to a point of questioning. I’m curious, Mr. Eitel. In the event of war, would you fight for this country?

  EITEL: If I were drafted, I wouldn’t have much choice, would I? May I say that?

  CRANE: You would fight without enthusiasm?

  EITEL: Without enthusiasm.

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: But if you were fighting for a certain enemy, that would be a different story, wouldn’t it?

  EITEL: I would fight for them with even less enthusiasm.

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: That’s what you say now. Eitel, here’s something we have in our files on you. “Patriotism is for pigs.” Do you remember saying that?

  EITEL: I suppose I did.

  IVAN FABNER (Counsel for the Witness): May I interrupt on behalf of my client to state that I believe he will rephrase his remarks?

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: That’s what I want to know. Eitel, what do you say about it now?

  EITEL: It sounds a little vulgar as you repeat it, Congressman. I would have put it differently if I had known some agent of your Committee was reporting what I said at a party.

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: “Patriotism is for pigs.” And you make your living from this country.

  EITEL: It’s the alliteration of the p’s which makes it vulgar.

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: Not responsive.

  CRANE: How would you put it today, Mr. Eitel?

  EITEL: If you ask me to go on, I’m afraid I’ll make a subversive remark.

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: I order you to go on. Just how, in what language, would you word it for the Committee today?

  EITEL: I suppose I’d say that patriotism asks you to be ready to leave your wife at a moment’s notice. Possibly that’s the secret of its appeal. (Laughter.)

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: Do you usually think with such noble sentiments?

  EITEL: I’m not accustomed to thinking on these lines. The act of making motion pictures has little to do with noble sentiments.

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: I’m pretty sure the motion pictures industry is going to give you plenty of time to think noble thoughts after this morning’s testimony. (Laughter.)

  FABNER: May I ask for a recess?

  CHAIRMAN NORTON: This is a subversive committee, not a forum for half-baked ideas. Eitel, you’re the most ridiculous witness we’ve ever had.

  When I finished reading, I looked up at Faye. “He must have lost his job in quick-time,” I said.

  “He certainly did,” Faye murmured.

  “Bu
t why is he staying in Desert D’Or?”

  Marion grinned out of his private humor. “You’re right, man. This is no place to stay when you’ve lost your loot.”

  “I thought Eitel was rich.”

  “He used to be. You don’t know how anything works,” Faye said dispassionately. “You see, along about this time they started looking at his income-tax returns. By the time they got done, Eitel had to strip himself to pay the back taxes. All that’s left is his house here. Mortgaged, of course.”

  “And he just stays here?” I asked. “He doesn’t do anything?”

  “You’ll get to meet him. You’ll see what I mean,” Faye told me. “Charley Eitel could be worse off. Maybe he needed a kick in the pants.”

  By the way Faye said this, I had a clue.

  “You like him,” I said again.

  “I don’t dislike him,” Faye said grudgingly.

  At the Yacht Club, a few days later, Marion introduced me to Eitel. By the end of a week, I suppose I was making a point of going to see him every day.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE OPEN-AIR CAFÉ of the Yacht Club wandered around the cabañas and the swimming pool, its peppermint-striped tables and chairs another throw of color against the hotel foliage and the mountains beyond Desert D’Or. Almost always, I could find Eitel seated at a table for the siesta, a paper-bound manuscript open before him. Yet it was hard to believe the script could be important. No sooner would I come by than he would close the pages, order a drink, and begin to talk.

  I was surprised when we were introduced. Although he was over forty, and had a big reputation as a film director, Eitel was better known in other ways. He had been married several times, he was said to have been the cause of more than one divorce, and these were the least of the rumors. At different times I heard he was an alcoholic, a drug addict, a satyr; some people even whispered he was an espionage agent. Considering all this, it was unexpected to meet a middle-sized man with a broken nose and a wide smile. He had a large face to match his broad body, and his head was half bald, crowned with a circle of strong curly hair. He had eyes you noticed. They were bright blue, and when he smiled, they were alive, and his broken nose gave him a humorous look. But only his voice gave a hint of his reputation. It was a voice which had a hundred things in it, and a girl told me once she thought it was “seductive.” He had a way of offering something and pulling it back; just when you thought he was laughing at you, he seemed to like you—about the time you decided things were going well, his voice would turn you away. I’ve taken a few punches on the head, but I still know voices, I’ve got a good ear, and Eitel’s voice had more than one accent. I could hear New York in it, and the theater, and once in a while if he was talking to somebody from those parts, a trace of the South or the Middle-West came into it, and with all of that it was a controlled voice—most of the time he sounded like society. With the way he had of laughing at himself, he told me once that he picked up the English accent last of all.