Stardust (19 page)

“I’ve never seen such a beautiful house,” she said, apparently meaning it.

“Well, it’s not my taste,” Paulette said. “I can’t even pronounce it. Louis Quinze?” she said to Liesl, saying it perfectly. “Liesl’s a translator, so she can be mine tonight. Quinze,” she said again, at Liesl’s nod. “I always think about
dusting
it. But Fay loves it. She always had a good
eye. I can’t tell one vase from another. But Bunny says the Sèvres is museum quality.” Again pronouncing it correctly. “So you see, she knows.” She turned, seeing Bunny coming over to them. “Isn’t that right?”

“Darling, I have to borrow you,” Bunny said, ignoring the question. “Come meet the congressman. He loved
Standing Room Only
.”

“God. And he got elected?”

“Nicey, nicey. Come on. You can talk to Ben at dinner. Rosemary, you know Irving Rapper’s here. I’m sure he’d love to meet you.” A firm do-yourself-some-good nudge, Liesl and Ben just table fillers.

“Now’s your chance,” Ben said to Liesl, nodding toward the woman at the window. “To join the wallflowers.”

“Who is she? She hasn’t talked to anyone.”

“Fay’s cousin. Has to be. I don’t think she has any English.”

“Then go rescue her. I’m going to the ladies’, find out what people are really saying.”

Fay’s cousin didn’t turn when he came up, her gaze still fixed out the window.

“Entschuldigung. Pani Markowitz?”

“Pani
? So you speak Polish?” she said in German, finally turning. Ben smiled. “No. A courtesy only. I was told you were Polish. I’m Ben Collier.”

“I was born there, yes,” she said, her voice flat.

It was then that he took in her eyes, the same faraway emptiness he’d seen in some of the others’, a blind person’s eyes, no longer needed, nothing more to see. Her collarbones stuck out, barely covered by the thin layer of skin.

“I thought I would die there, too, but no.” She half turned to the window. “And now look. So many lights.”

“You lived in Berlin?” Ben said, to say something. “I was there as a boy. A few years.”

“Yes, Berlin.”

“And you’re Fay’s cousin.”

“Her father and my mother—but he came here. A long time ago, before the first war.”

“Your mother stayed.”

“My father—he did very well. There was no reason for us to leave. It was a different time then. My mother always said Max left for the adventure. They thought he was a no-good. To leave your family, your country. So who was right?” She turned fully to the room, the rich end of Max’s gamble. “A daughter living like this. To think all this still exists.”

“You were in a camp.”

She raised her eyes, still not really looking. “We all were. My husband, my sister. Everyone.”

“Are they—?”

She shook her head. “Now only me.”

“I’m sorry.”

She wrinkled her forehead, as if the words were not just inadequate but puzzling, irrelevant.

“I don’t know why. I was not so strong. Leon was stronger, for the work. But they took him. To the gas. I don’t know why. No reason. You survive, no reason. Or you don’t.”

“I knew you’d find each other,” Lasner said in English, genial, putting his hand on Ben’s shoulder.

“You speak English?” Ben asked her.

“A few words only.”

“But now that you’re here, you have to try. I tell her, if she gets every other word, she’s at least halfway there, right? You tell her about the picture?”

“Not yet.” Ben switched to German. “We’re making a documentary for the Army, about the camps.”

“You want to put this in a film?”

“So people will know. A record. Eisenhower ordered them to film it when we got there. He said no one would believe it otherwise. A kind of proof.”

“A proof.”

“That it happened.” He looked at her. “We don’t have to talk about this, if you’d rather not.”

“Put her in the picture. You can tell your story,” Lasner said.

“What would I say? I don’t know the reason for any of it.” She reached down to the coffee table for another cigarette.

“You ought to go easy on those things.”

“I’m sorry. For me it’s a luxury. A whole cigarette.”

“I didn’t mean— I just meant for your health. Your life is a gift now.”

She stared at him, saying nothing until, slightly flustered, he changed the subject.

“You know who this is?” He nodded at Ben. “Otto Kohler’s kid.”

Now her eyes did move, suddenly alert, as if she’d heard another voice.

“Otto’s? But—”

“You knew my father?”

“Otto,” she said, the flat tone now a little agitated. “There was a boy, yes. But I don’t understand. You’re not—”

“My brother. I was in England.”

“Your brother. Taller,” she said, measuring. “What happened to him?”

“He’s dead.”

She drew on the cigarette and looked down. “Yes. Of course he would be dead.” Her voice flat again. When she looked back up at him her eyes had retreated behind their blank wall. “So now this,” she said aloud, but to herself. “Otto’s son.”

“I knew you two would have lots to talk about,” Lasner said in English.

She turned to him, hesitating, translating in her head, then looked back at Ben, an almost wry expression on her lips.

“Yes, much to talk about,” she said and then, suddenly skittish, “Excuse me.”

She left before either of them could say anything. Lasner raised his eyebrows.

“So I was wrong?”

“She’s grateful to you, you know,” Ben said, an instinctive peacemaker.
“It’s just maybe too much for her.” He opened his hand to the party. “So soon.”

“You know what I think? Honest to God? I think Hitler won that one. I don’t think she’s here anymore.”

“How did she know my father?”

“She was in pictures over there. They all knew each other. By that time, there’s only one studio.” He paused, taking a puff on his cigar. “She was a looker when she was young. What the hell, Fay’s cousin.” He looked down at the cigar. “Not now. To do that to someone—” He broke off, looking up at Ben. “Well, see if you can get her to talk a little. So she doesn’t just sit there at dinner. Picking. Ask her about Otto.”

“You think they were—”

“Christ, I don’t know. I never thought. Otto? I wouldn’t be surprised. You think that’s what spooked her with you? Like seeing the kid walk in on you when you’re— Oh, there goes Jack. Watch, he’s going to take on Congress.”

Ben followed him, intending to split off and not intrude, but the loose group around Minot seemed open to anyone passing by. Both Minot and Warner were used to audiences—even talking to each other, they were playing to the cluster around them, a public conversation. Ben noticed that they were already “Ken” and “Jack.”

“I’ll tell you what I see,” Jack said. “I see the goddam unions at my throat and now this thing hanging over my head. Ready to chop. Consent decree. Whatever the hell that actually means. Except trouble. I look around, I see trouble. Here we are, knocking our brains out trying to make pictures and everybody wants a piece.”

“Jack,” Minot said smiling, “you’re on top of the world. Top of the world.” A soap box voice, resonant, his chest swelling. “The industry and this city grew up together.” He gestured toward the lights outside the picture window. “Thirty years ago, that was bean fields. Now look at it. With lots more to come. This year the industry’s revenues are going to hit one billion dollars. One billion.”

“Revenues, not profits.”

“Profits, estimate sixty-three million.” He nodded again to the window. “It’s not lima beans anymore.”

“You just happen to have those numbers in your pocket.”

“You like to come prepared,” Minot said, almost winking. “Industry estimates, Jack, not some office in Washington doesn’t know what it’s talking about. Industry estimates. You’re on top of the world.”

“With a sword over my head.”

“Jack’s a worrier,” Lasner said.

“Of course I can’t predict what the Justice Department is going to do,” Minot said. “With them you need a crystal ball. But I can tell you there’re a lot of people in Washington grateful for all the fine work this industry did during the war.”

“While they were earning those profits,” someone said, a left jab.

“I don’t begrudge profits. I’m not a socialist.” He laughed, a stage chuckle. “Not even close. People buy your product, you ought to make a profit. And keep it. Not have the government reaching into your pocket every five minutes. But I’m not here to talk politics. All I’m saying,” he said, looking directly at Jack, “is you treat your friends right and they’ll treat you right. That’s the way it works in Washington.”

“That’s the way it works here, too. Trick is knowing who your friends are.”

“My job is to protect your interests. You do well, the district does well.” Minot smiled. “And you know what I think? I think you’re just getting started. The industry. Look what’s ahead. No more war restrictions. No more price controls. Everybody wants what you make. You’re just going to grow and grow. With this district, with California. You know why? Because it’s our time. Right now. America’s time. All through the war I kept thinking, win this thing and there’s no stopping us. And we did win it. It’s our time.”

Lifted directly from a campaign speech, Ben thought, the rhetoric building, even Jack Warner listening now with full attention.

“Of course you’ve got somebody over there doesn’t like that at all, and we all know who that is. No profits there,” he said, nodding to
Warner. “No God, either. A country with no God. I think that says it all. You think the other guys were bad, the Japs, the Nazis, wait’ll you see this one. But at least this time we’re ready. The Commies want to fight, let them come. And all their helpers over here. Trying to bring this great country down. They don’t like to fight in the open. Like to hide. But we’ll find them, too. You know what a great job Jack Tenney’s been doing up in Sacramento.”

“I knew him when he wrote
Mexicali Rose
.”

“Well, he’s doing something a lot more important now. That state committee—they could use it as a model when they go national with this. And they will. A house has termites, you’ve got to get rid of them before the rot sets in. That’s just common sense. Unless you want to see it fall down. Jack’s been working this for years now. You know what he told me? How many files he’s got? Reds and their pals and people too dumb to know any better? Over fourteen thousand. Just waiting for when we need them.”

“Fourteen thousand subversives or fourteen thousand people he doesn’t like?” The same man who’d made the crack about profits.

“Well, let’s just say people he’s not sure of,” Minot said, deflecting this easily. “You’d want to be sure, something like this. When you’re under attack. Not with guns—not yet anyway. But ideas, too, the wrong ideas. Slip them in every chance you get until people are confused. That’s where you come in.” He nodded to Warner. “Make sure it doesn’t happen in pictures. There’s nothing more powerful if you want to reach people. Not even radio. Hitler understood that. The power of film. These people, too.”

“That’s why we have the Breen Office,” Jack said. “Try getting an idea past them.” He laughed, a signal to the others, who joined in. After a second of hesitation, Minot did, too, playing a man who appreciates a good wisecrack.

“Now, Jack, I said wrong ideas,” he said, still laughing.

“Congressman, you don’t have to worry about that,” Jack said seriously. “I’ve been in this business all my life and I don’t think you could find a more patriotic group of people. We love this country.”

“It gave us everything,” Lasner said.

Jack waited, a twinkle in his eye. “And we’re going to love it even more if you get this decree taken care of.” More smiles all around.

“Jack, they told me you were a kidder,” Minot said pleasantly. “They didn’t tell me you were a politician. Next thing you know, you’ll be running for my seat.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. I’m already running everything I want in Burbank. Sol, you going to give us something to eat tonight?” Cutting the scene before it ran too long, his point now made.

Minot’s instincts weren’t as sure—he missed Warner’s cue and kept talking about the future, now of the Valley, but since none of his listeners actually lived there they became less attentive, darting glances around the room. He was saved by a waiter at his elbow quietly announcing dinner. Not a gong after all, servants discreetly guiding people into the dining room, a piece of social choreography.

Some attempt had been made to place the few German speakers at Genia’s table, but, as her dinner partner, most of the caretaking still fell to Ben. Paul Henreid, no doubt another Warners draftee, was on her right but after a few pleasantries turned his attention, in English, to Rosemary. Liesl, an unexpected German speaker, was across the round table from them, too far for conversation. Paulette’s other partner was Mike Curtiz, who might have helped but, head close, monopolized Paulette instead with studio gossip. Genia didn’t seem to mind. She sat quietly, her own island, while the table talked around her. Since no one on either side was listening, when Ben spoke German to her it became oddly private, as if they were in another room, in no danger of being overheard. As Lasner predicted, she scarcely touched her food, moving pieces of the tournedos with her fork but not eating them.

“I can’t, you know,” she said, noticing his glance to her plate. “It’s too rich for me.”

Ben remembered the rescued inmates vomiting their first meal, their bodies no longer used to digesting anything but watery soup. He looked down at the deep burgundy glaze with its sliver of truffle.

“Such vegetables. This time of year.”

“California,” Ben said. “They grow all year round. Have you been able to get out? See anything?”

“The ocean. Fay took me for a drive. The rest, it’s all houses, no— buildings. Not like Berlin.”

“Liesl’s father says it’s still the first layer here. Before the Schinkels.”

He smiled but she seemed not to understand this, at a loss. She looked over at Liesl.

“She’s your wife?”

“No,” he said, looking across with her, so that Liesl smiled back.