A Man Lies Dreaming (27 page)

‘But Gatsby dies!’ Wolf said, shocked.

‘Yes, yes,’ Leni said; a little impatiently. ‘But it’s Hollywood.’

‘So then, what does Warner want? You say it’s a … a sequel?’

‘In a way. You see, he’s offered Scott rather a lot of money for an original screenplay. Scott originally called it
Everybody Comes to Gatsby’s
. He was rather inspired by visiting Europe with his wife, Zelda – a lovely woman – and seeing the plight of the refugees fleeing the communist regime. In the screenplay, Gatsby survives his gun wound from the first book, and after several years travelling the world, working as a gun runner and revolutionary, ends up a jaded, cynical bar owner in Morocco. War breaks out but Gatsby maintains his solitary existence even as desperate refugees come to Morocco en route to Free Europe. He spends his time drinking and smoking and playing complex chess problems against himself. Until one day Daisy Buchanan walks through his door, and everything changes.’

‘Daisy? The woman he was so desperately in love with? But she left him, without a moment’s thought!’

‘Who knows the heart of a woman, Wolf,’ Leni said. ‘In any case, Jack didn’t like the title. He felt it was too long. So the picture is named after the town Gatsby’s is in. Tangier. We’re shooting some of it here in London. I’m in it, you see, Wolf. I’m the star!’

Wolf stared at her, for once open mouthed. ‘
You’re
Daisy Buchanan?’ he said.

‘And Humphrey Bogart is Gatsby,’ Leni said.

‘Who?’

‘He’s a great actor. Anyway, we’ve run into some problems with the production, so everyone’s a little tense right now. You know how it is in motion pictures. Nothing is ever certain.’

‘Like politics,’ Wolf said, darkly.

‘Yes. I suppose. It’s all politics, isn’t it, Wolf? Oh, Wolf, I wish things had been different!’ She clung to him, fiercely. ‘We’ll always have Nuremberg, won’t we, Wolf? We’ll always have that, at least?’

‘Leni,’ Wolf said, and then, in a different tone of voice, ‘Leni, who is that man?’

‘What man, Wolf?’

‘There is a man coming towards us, Leni. He seems to want your attention.’

Leni turned her head. A man was indeed coming towards them, yet he did not approach, but waited in the drizzle, his fedora cocked to one side, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He was young and not unattractive, with dark wavy hair. Wolf knew his face immediately; but he did not think the man would have caught sight of his, before.

‘Oh, it’s only Robert!’ Leni said, laughing. ‘For a moment there you seemed so intense, I was almost scared!’

‘Robert?’

‘Robert Bitker. He’s with the production crew. A Jew from Poland, but he’s in with that Warner lot. Why, do you know him, Wolf?’

‘I would like to know him better,’ Wolf said, but quietly.

‘I could introduce you!’

‘Better not. Can you tell me where he’s based?’

‘Where we all are. The Grosvenor Hotel, by Victoria Station. Why, what’s the matter, Wolf?’

‘It’s nothing, Leni. Leni, he seems to be trying to get your attention.’

‘It must be a message from Hal. Hal Wallis? He’s our producer. I think we’re expected elsewhere. Oh, Wolf! Can I see you again?’

‘I hope so. I would like that.’

‘Come see me at the Grosvenor!’ Leni said. ‘We’re here for another week. We were supposed to be shooting already but there’d been a problem with the studio, so we’re just doing publicity and the like. Party, party, party, Wolf.’

‘You seem to hang out with plenty of Jews, these days.’

‘Oh, Wolf! Don’t be like that. I don’t like it any more than you do. It’s just Hollywood.’

‘Yes,’ Wolf said. ‘Well, you better go, Leni. I will come for you, soon.’

‘Please do.’ She kissed him on both cheeks, held him again at arm’s length, marvelling. ‘You look
tough
, Wolf. You should have been an actor!’

Wolf laughed, the sound startled from his throat. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed. He was not a man much given to frivolity, but Leni had a way with her. She was not like other girls. And she had taken his little predilections as something entirely natural, not even worthy of comment. She had been very accommodating in that way. He kissed her on both cheeks and off she went, to that man Bitker. Wolf watched them together. Bitker touched the brim of his hat, briefly, in acknowledgement, then turned his back on Wolf. Could he have recognised him?

But Wolf didn’t think so. So the man he had been seeking and thought lost was there all along! A movie man, of all things. It made sense. Hollywood was full of Jews, Bitker must have been their appointed go-between, their bagman to the London cells: the American Jews sponsoring terror attacks on the Fascist leader carried out by their brethren in Britain.

But now Wolf knew where Bitker was. And he would not lose him a second time. And Bitker, in turn, would lead him to Judith. He was sure of it.

He went back inside. The party was picking up volume as drunken authors, poets, artists and their various editors, agents, copy editors and sales reps were polishing off Allen & Unwin’s discretionary wine supply. ‘Wolf?’ It was Isabella, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining with a mixture of alcohol and excitement. ‘I have just met the most fascinating man, a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. John Tolkien? Apparently he has a novel with Allen & Unwin. Have you heard of him?’

‘I’ve read his book,’ Wolf said, grudgingly, though he had enjoyed it awfully. ‘It is a trifle, a fantasy for toddlers, as all fantasy literature is inherently for children.’

‘You’re in a bad mood,’ Isabella said, and there was a flash in her eyes, something dangerous and promising at the same time. She pressed close to him; her fingers closed hard on his crotch. ‘Do you need to be punished?’ she whispered, close in his ear. Her breath smelled of wine.

‘Get away from me, you whore!’

Conversation quietened abruptly. People turned, watching them. A trim, energetic-looking gentleman in his fifties approached them. ‘Is there a problem?’ he said.

Isabella was pale. ‘How dare you,’ she said. ‘How
dare
you!’

‘Stay out of this,’ Wolf said to the man. Isabella’s hand rose to slap Wolf. He grabbed her wrist, his face burning in fury, his words coming out in spittle that hit her face. ‘Whore! Foul, disgusting
whore
!’

Suddenly and terribly, Isabella laughed. ‘And you like it!’ she shouted. She pulled back her hand. Her smile was cruel. She pulled out a wad of notes from her handbag and tossed the money in Wolf’s face. The money fluttered in the air, falling down gently around Wolf, settling between their feet. ‘Who is the whore now, Mr Wolf?’ Isabella said. Her beautiful young face was split by an ugly leer. ‘You know where to find me, when you need more.’

She turned and stalked off.

‘What do you want?’ Wolf screamed, into the dapper gentleman’s startled face.

The face hardened. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,’ he said.

‘And who the hell are you!’

‘I am Stanley Unwin, sir. I am the owner of this office, and the host of this party. And … I don’t believe that you were invited?’

‘You’re Stanley Unwin?’ Wolf said. ‘
You’re
Unwin?’

‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure?’

‘You rejected my
book
!’ Wolf said. The man looked blank. ‘I did? We receive so many books here at Allen & Unwin, it really is quite impossible for us to publish them all—’

‘
My
book!
My Struggle
! I wrote it in
prison
! Do you know what I had to go through, the years of suffering, Vienna, the War,
imprisonment
, and you, you … you uppity God damned
Englishman
, you had the
gall
to
reject
it?’

‘Like I said, it really is impossible to—’

‘
It wasn’t even a
personal
rejection!
’

‘Sir, I must insist that you –
sir
! I must ask you to leave the premises immediately.’

‘You damned Jew-lover! Don’t you know who I am? And him’ – Wolf was pointing wildly at the awkward, genial pipe smoker standing by the makeshift bar – ‘you publish
him
? This … this
Tolkien
? With tales of … of
hobbits
? I would have changed the world! My book
mattered
!’

‘Sir!’

Two of the more burly authors present had materialised beside Unwin and were moving on Wolf, who backed away, his face red with anger, spittle dribbling from his lips in his passion. ‘Damn you, Unwin! No one rejects
my
manuscript!’

‘Get
out
!’

He wasn’t, afterwards, sure who the men who threw him out were: Leslie Charteris and Evelyn Waugh, perhaps, as unlikely as that pairing may have seemed. They dragged him, still screaming and cursing, outside. They didn’t let go until they reached the end of Museum Street and there they threw him bodily to the ground. Wolf landed in a puddle, cold rain soaking his coat. The two men stood panting above him, and one of them lit a cigarette while coughing. ‘Forget it, man,’ he said. ‘It’s just a God damned party.’

‘Everybody gets rejected, sometimes,’ the other said. They stood there breathing heavily and watched him; until Wolf picked himself up and dusted himself down, and without another word walked away.

Wolf’s Diary, 16th November 1939 –
contd
.

When I had arrived at the hospital in Pasewalk, in 1918, I was scared – terrified. I won’t deny it, won’t lie. I was a ghost of the man I had been, a shadow. I moved in the dark, in a place into which no light was allowed to penetrate. I was frantic with fear.

The hospital was cool and calm and the nurses abrupt but not unkind. I remember being led down a corridor, trying to picture my environment using my other senses – smell and touch and sound. It was terrifying, the noises I could hear from the rooms we passed, the screams and the groans and the mutters of the inmates. I had been plucked off the battlefield and placed in an insane asylum. But I was not mad!

I was the sanest man I ever knew.

That first day, and the smell of disinfectant, of cabbage boiled too long, of the nurses’ uniforms, that smell of clean washing. The nurse helped me to my room, to the narrow bed beneath a window out of which I could not see. I was blind! For hours I lay on my back, staring into absolute dark. I was clean, washed, scrubbed. There was no mud, no sound of shells whistling overhead, no cries of the dying, of my people, my people. Germany suffered, and I suffered with her. At that time, perhaps, though it is hazy to me now, I still believed I would be an artist. But how could an artist work who could not see the canvas? I was no longer one thing, but not yet another. I was myself an empty canvas, waiting to be filled with light.

It was only the next day that I met him. The nurse led me to his office and helped me sit down. Before me was his desk; I felt its edges, holding the thick board of wood between thumb and fingers, as though to reassure myself of its reality. I knew him only as a voice then. It was his voice that haunted my sleep, his voice that shaped me.

He said, ‘My name is Dr Forster.’

I gave him my name and my rank. He began to question me, noting down my answers with a scratch of his pen on the paper. His voice was gruff, his manners equally so. I felt he was quizzing me, pushing me. He was challenging me, calling me a deserter from the front, a coward, telling me I was shirking my duty! I protested, spoke of my desire to go back to the front, to fight for the Fatherland. I felt him become puzzled as the time went by. I got the impression, never spoken aloud, that many of the inmates at this hospital were just of the nature he accused me of being: faking injuries and mental states to escape the trenches and the war. But I was not like that! And my injury was real: I had been blinded by the gas!

‘You must help me!’ I said. ‘Is there nothing you can do?’ and then, when he said nothing, ‘Why was I brought here? These people are crazy! Do you say my blindness is not real? That I too am faking it?’ My voice rose in pitch and fever. ‘You must help me, doctor! I must see again!’

His silence lengthened. At last he promised to speak with me again, later, but I could sense that he was puzzled. I was not what he had expected. I was led back to my room and once again stretched out on the bed. I whiled away hours in this manner, thinking furiously, blaming God though I did not believe in him, blaming my father, blaming the British and even my own leaders, for failing to secure us a victory.

I was then but a boy, a child. I had seen death and destruction of the most terrible kind, but I did not yet appreciate the larger shape of the war, of the world. I cried, I blamed others.

But Dr Forster cured me.

The next day I was called in to his office. We sat in silence. At last he began to speak. His voice was low, gentle, hypnotising. He was a neuropsychologist, I learned later; a decorated, veteran medical officer, and a German patriot. He spoke of his other patients: malingerers, hysterics. The day before he had examined my eyes. Now he told me the worst: what I had suspected was true. I was blind, my eyes irreparably damaged by the gas. I would never see again!

Perhaps I burst out crying. I am no longer sure. His voice kept speaking to me, gently, authoritatively. ‘You are not like the others, Lance-Corporal,’ he told me. ‘You are special. In you I see something of the past glory of Germany. A Siegfried, an Attila, a Wotan!’

‘I am blind!’ I wailed. ‘I am nothing, I am dirt.’

He slapped me. My cheek burned. My pity was replaced with rage. I rose, I swore at him, I kicked away the chair. I stumbled blind and cursing in the dark. ‘Yes, yes!’ he said. ‘You are angry! Passionate! Do not whine like a dog who has been hit! There is a chance yet, Lance-Corporal. Yes! I must tell you, there is one chance.’