Mitla Pass (9 page)

Occasionally someone wrote a smart-assed heartless note: “This is perhaps the worst manuscript ever produced in the English language,” or “Try a nice trade, like plumbing.”

I got sick of seeing Gideon being beaten like this. He became too numbed for tears, but I didn’t. Our lives were being savaged by nameless, faceless bastards. Well ... enough winters and springs and summers and autumns pass and somewhere along the line, if you are persistent, you pick up a friend or two. The West Coast editor of Summerfield House, Donald Howard, thought enough of the book to send it to New York with the recommendation, “I know it needs a lot of work but I have a hunch about this writer and would like to spend the time helping him clean up this manuscript.”

To which the publisher answered, “Forget it. It would take two years to straighten up his grammar and spelling. You’ve got better things to do.” Obviously Howard didn’t have clout, but he did have mercy and called Gideon to his office.

Gideon was down. I mean really down. His eyes showed constant pain and sorrow.

“I think I can show you a few things that will help this manuscript,” Donald Howard told him. So Gideon squandered our vacation to go over to San Francisco every day for an hour or so and he and Donald went through the manuscript sentence by sentence. It was filled with overwriting, loose ends, failed characterizations, bad construction. The manuscript began to look like a herd of elephants had crapped on it. But Howard insisted the good far outweighed the bad. Gideon had an inborn, God-given talent for dialogue, for power and drive, and a sense of rhythm and timing and mostly—an enormous love of humanity.

“The question is,” Howard said, “do you have the balls to write it over, one more time?”

And so he climbed the stairs to the attic, kissed the girls, ate at the typewriter, and was put to bed by me.

And then came the rejections again ... six more of them ...

W
HEN
G
IDEON
got off the bus and saw my face, he knew instantly.

“There’s been an accident. Penelope is in the hospital.”

Mom held us together. Our little girl lay in a coma for two weeks, fighting for her life. I cannot write, or even think about it. There is no pain to compare, no fear to equal. We were tough and brave for each other ... but Mom held us together ... and my guilt nearly drove me insane.

Days and nights ran together ... that awful hospital corridor ... the grim face of the doctor ... all those tubes and bandages and monitors ... her beautiful little face one huge bruise no flutter of recognition ... oh God, Penny, speak to Mommy, just once ... please ... nightmares of her running into the street ... “Penny! The bus!”

Another midnight ... I staggered to the coffee machine numbed, another setback. Across the hall was the chapel and the door was ajar. I sat down on the rear bench ...

Gideon was near the altar, unaware of my presence ... I’d never seen him in a church or a synagogue ... he didn’t think much of religion ...

“God!” he said with a voice so anguished I could scarcely recognize it. “I don’t know if you’re there. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there ... I was told when I was a kid not to ask for favors from God ... only to ask for strength and wisdom. ... I’ve got no strength left ... look, man, you listen to me, fucker—I never asked to come out alive at Guadalcanal or Tarawa, did I? I wanted to ask you to let Pedro live, but I didn’t ... but ... but ... God ... I can’t handle this ... I know, man, you don’t make any deals but there has only been one thing in my life I really wanted, to be a writer ... if you don’t take her, God ... I’ll work at that fucking newspaper the rest of my life and I won’t complain, okay? I swear I’ll never complain about not becoming a writer ... man, that’s all I can give you. Please don’t take my baby ...”

I
T TOOK
a long, long time and many nights of tears and dread, but Penelope fought through it. She was her father’s daughter. One day, almost to the year, Penny and Roxy and I waited for Gideon at the bus stop. Penny handed him a telegram,
FORGIVE DELAY, WE ARE MAKING AN OFFER FOR YOUR BOOK TO BE PUBLISHED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. LETTER FOLLOWS. SIGNED J. BASCOMB III, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, REAVES BROTHERS PUBLISHERS.

W
E WERE SUDDENLY
in a new world with stunning fury. Gideon coped with it all quite easily, like an old friend he’d been waiting for. He quit the newspaper with a lovely touch of understated dignity. The fellows at work were terribly proud to see one of their own leave by the front door and not have to be carried out feet first. They gave him a beautiful suitcase, a dictionary, and (so I heard) a raunchy stag party.

His newspaperboys cried openly. They chipped in and bought him a rather expensive butane cigarette lighter and told him they were sorry they didn’t have a nickel left over for the card. When he stopped smoking, he continued to carry the lighter with him, always.

Oh, he had a few blowouts, to be sure, and there were a couple of times I had to send the Marines out looking for him, but by and large I felt he would ease into his new status comfortably and certainly nothing was going to change between the two of us. Maybe I should have objected to his prolonged celebration, but the guy had worked so long and so hard for it, I decided to leave it alone. I talked it over with Mother, who’d had more than a little experience of her own. She’d come to love Gideon and didn’t think it was a good time to clip his wings. Anyhow, I knew Gideon would always find his way home.

I wasn’t entirely happy with the plans for his second novel. Gideon had become intrigued with the people who inhabited San Francisco’s tenderloin and had done a number of short character sketches which he wanted to build into a novel. He enjoyed hanging out in the crummiest bars, with the fight crowd, or getting into a little card game with the small-time hoods, and listening to the hookers’ tales of woe. It wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I decided to keep my peace and let him work it out with his editor.

I didn’t cotton to his idea of going over the Bay to the tenderloin to live while he finished his research, and pretty much decided that this would be where I would draw the line. Maybe, by the time he had to make a decision, he would have changed his mind.

As for me, Valerie Zadok wanted peace, a nicer home in the hills of Sausalito overlooking the Bay and San Francisco. Maybe we could afford a sailboat. We always had one when I was growing up in Coronado. And, up in the loft, Gideon would be pecking away at his typewriter. San Francisco venerated writers. We would be a big new part of the scene. What wonderful things lay ahead. Maybe I’d even pick up the paintbrush again and try my hand at a few canvases.

Well, so much for pipe dreams. The first rude awakening came a few months later when he received the galleys of his book from the publisher to make corrections.

Reaves Brothers Publishers was an old-line, medium-sized house which had been dominated for three decades by the powerful and “legendary” Martin Reaves. The old man was declining rapidly, losing his iron grip, and with no heir apparent the company broke up into warring factions.

The editor-in-chief, Jed Bascomb III, was a Boston type who had been brought in by the old man to fill the role as number one gofer. When the old man’s health deteriorated, J. Bascomb III got delusions of grandeur. However, he proved more of a manipulator than a man of any literary integrity. Gideon’s
Of Men in Battle
was apparently a major cog in Bascomb’s scheme to make a name for himself.

Gideon had written the novel in a breezy and whimsical style all his own. He inserted a first-person narrator who jumped in and out of the story at odd moments. It was quite out of the ordinary and also quite daring. J. III obviously didn’t want to take a chance and, without consulting Gideon, simply lifted the narrator out of the novel. The first Gideon knew about it was when the galleys arrived.

J. III
MUST
have felt pretty certain of his ground. He knew the book’s history of rejections and doubted if Gideon would give him any problems.

He had picked on the wrong Jew.

We were so starved for success and now we could taste it, feel it, smell it. I prayed Gideon wouldn’t upset the cart at this stage.

I don’t know who Gideon communicated with, but after two days of pondering without sleep, he came into the kitchen with blood in his eyes.

“It’s no use, Val. I can’t do it. I’m not going to release the galleys until they agree to change the book back to the way I wrote it.”

God! I thought I’d drop dead, right there, on the spot! I personally couldn’t see that it made that much difference. Moreover, the people in New York certainly had more experience in these matters than Gideon. Worst of all, what if they refused to publish? All the punch-drunk nights, all the rejections, all the years of struggle and fear, down the drain.

“I think we’d better let them have their way,” I said shakily.

“Not you too, Val.”

“Don’t make me a traitor, Gideon. Honey, they’re just trying to improve the book.”

“I don’t believe you, Val.”

“And I don’t believe you. You’re just looking for a fight.”

“If they’re too stupid to understand what I’m trying to do—”

“Shut up for once! There are other people involved in this. Maybe that’s why this damned thing has been rejected fifteen times. Maybe once, just once, they know better than you.”

“I can’t believe that you don’t understand!”

“I understand, Gideon. I understand. I peeled your clothing off every night. For your sainted information, we have just about spent the thousand-dollar advance and you’ve quit your job against everyone’s advice. I have something to say about this book. My blood is in it too.”

“Strange! Strange! You went through all this with me and you haven’t got idea one what a writer is supposed to be.”

“Take that lily-white banner and shove it up your ass,” I screamed. “We can’t eat ideals ...Look ... look ... let’s cool down. Honey, nobody’s going to know if they change it.”

“I’ll know,” he cried, poking his thumb into his chest. “They’ve put me at the crossroads. They want me to go left, I want to go right.”

“But don’t you see—when you’re stronger, when you’re established, you can retrace your steps and go any way you want.”

“Val, you’re crazy, baby. Once you compromise, you can never get it back. You’ve got to put your foot down and make your fight when you’re hungry. Once you’re fat, you’ll always do as they say.”

“Oh God ... Oh God ... all those God-damned nights ...” I just bawled. “Oh shit ... shit, shit, shit.” I felt his hand on my shoulder. “Please, honey.”

“I can’t, Val,” he said. “I—uh—uh—I’ll go down to the union next week and see about getting back on one of the newspapers. Don’t ... don’t worry about me ... I’ve got to walk it off for a few days ... I’ll be back. I wish I could explain what being a writer means to me.”

Gideon didn’t have to explain. We’d live it out, bloody battle by bloody battle. He sent Bascomb a telegram refusing to release the galleys, left the house, and disappeared for three days.

“M
OMMY
! Daddy’s back!”

Lord, he looked like he’d been in a flophouse on skid row. I don’t know how I felt at that moment. Like throwing my arms about him. Like hitting him over the head with a chair.

“Union’s going to put me on the
Chronicle,
” he said. “I’ll be driving a truck temporarily. No problem getting back on. Just lose a little seniority.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “The publisher has agreed to your demands.”

M
ARTIN
R
EAVES
died before
Of Men in Battle
was published. The house was ripped to pieces. J. Bascomb III replaced publishing skill with cunning, candor with deceit. Without a program, no one knew who was talking to whom.

Gideon really needed someone now, to guide him through the coming months and give him some direction for his second novel.

Of Men in Battle
had built a sizable advance sale to the booksellers and was to become the first novel in history to be sold with a money-back guarantee. Gideon had left the newspaper with an understanding we would get six hundred dollars a month from the publisher in advances, so he could begin the tenderloin novel and we could stay afloat until regular royalty checks caught up with us.

The money failed to come in, even though the book went back for a third printing before publication. So here was Gideon with a book about to go onto the bestseller list and we had to take a second mortgage on the house.

When a Hollywood sale and screenplay were offered by Pacific Studios, we grabbed it in order not to sink.

I don’t know the answer. If his publisher had kept his word, Gideon might have passed up the screenplay job and started
The Tenderloin.
I didn’t know and neither did he. It had become a matter of survival and the studio salary of seven hundred dollars a week seemed like the end of the rainbow.

For me, my dream of tranquility was shattered, forever. I was locked in with a warrior.

GIDEON

San Francisco Bay Area, 1953

F
ROM THE TIME
I was a little guy I rehearsed the moments of future glory a thousand and one times. When it did happen, I, Gideon Zadok, would be ready. During the dark years, the fantasy of reaching the top had become an overwhelming driving force that kept me going.

Now, it began to happen. Dream after dream came true. Val enjoyed some of it—the TV shows, the newspaper articles, the good reviews, the recognition and attention. For the first time, I saw a completely different side of her. She was very uncomfortable with the spotlight on her. She wasn’t getting the kicks I was getting.

For years, when I was working on the newspaper and writing in the attic in Mill Valley, I would get to a radio every day and listen to the Mary Margaret McBride show. She was a pleasant little fat lady who broadcast from her flat on Central Park South in New York and interviewed an author a day who was having a new book published. When I was summoned to her show,
I was ready.