Two Weeks in Another Town (17 page)

“Five minutes,” Delaney said. “Five minutes. Let’s get to work.” He signaled and the room faded into darkness and there was Stiles, mumbling once more on the screen.

“I’ve come back,” Stiles said. “It was too strong for me. I have been unhappy since the day I left you.”

Jack sighed.

“Save your criticisms,” Delaney said. “You just think about how to say the lines without making him sound like a godamn fool.”

The tone of his voice was abrupt and harsh, and Jack was grateful that his instinct had warned him the day before against being too candid in his conversation about the picture with Delaney. I will have to play this by ear, Jack thought, and seize the proper moment for honesty, when it comes. If it ever comes.

They worked on the same short scene for an hour, rehearsing, without registering anything. Even to Jack’s own ears, the sound of his voice going through the lines was flat and false. Delaney sat there, not helping, not suggesting any changes, merely grunting and signaling the projectionist to run the scene over again, and saying to Jack, “Now let’s try it once more.”

By the end of the hour nothing he was saying seemed to make any sense to Jack or to have any connection with the language that any living human being might possibly employ in any situation whatever. Abruptly, Delaney said, “All right, now we’ll try to put it on the track. And now, Jack, for the love of God, try to
think
of what you’re doing. It’s a big confession, it’s a confession of love, this feller has been dreaming about this girl for ten years, and now he sees her by accident for the first time. He can’t sound as though he’s saying, ‘I’ll have noodles for dinner.’”

“Wait a minute, Maurice,” Jack said. “Maybe this isn’t going to work. Maybe it’s been too long and I’ve lost the gift. If I ever had it.”

“You had it, you had it,” Delaney said impatiently.

“Anyway,” Jack said, “if you want to get somebody else, I’ll bow out right now. Before we waste any more of your time and my time. I’ll get on the afternoon plane to Paris and maybe everybody’ll be a lot happier.”

“Don’t be in such a godamn hurry to give up,” Delaney said. “After one hour. What the hell’s wrong with you? Where do you think I’d be today if I quit like that?”

“I just wanted to let you know that you’re not stuck with me, if you don’t want to be,” Jack said.

“Now, Jack…” Maurice smiled at him winningly, warmly. “You’re not going to turn sensitive on me, are you? Christ, you’re the only actor I ever made a friend of, just because you behaved like a man, not like a miserable…” He stopped and grinned at the secretary, sitting in the row behind them. “Excuse me, Hilda,” he said, “I was just going to say a dirty word. Derogatory to your sex. Extremely derrrogatorry.” He rolled the r’s of the last word in a sudden, exaggerated, comic brogue. “It’s a word, that has been used to describe sensitive and artistic actors for many centuries.” He patted Jack’s shoulder, companionably. “It’s not as bad as all that, Jack. It’ll come. It’ll come.”

“I hope so,” Jack said. “But even if it finally comes, will it make that much difference? After all it’s only one small part of the whole picture…” He stopped. This was still not the time to tell Delaney that he had been studying the script and the film that had already been shot and that there were many other things that offended him, that should be changed or cut altogether, and which were, in Jack’s opinion, more important than the mere substitution of his voice for that of Stiles, no matter how well the substitution worked out.

“It’s not only one small part of the picture,” Delaney said. “I told you before—it’s the keystone of the whole thing. And even if it
was
only a small part, it still might be the thing that made the difference between a work of art and a piece of crap. You know as well as I do, Jack, NOTHING IS UNIMPORTANT.” He spoke with fanatical emphasis, rooted in his belief. “One frame, the reading of one line, one movement at a crucial time, in a two-hour picture, can blow you to bits. Or it can rake in the whole pot. That’s the nature of a movie, Jack. Why do you think I work as hard as I do on every little detail…?”

“I know that theoretically it’s true,” Jack said, thinking, No wonder he still seems so young. Fanatics do not age. “But this time…”

“This time and every time, lad,” Delaney said, with finality. “Now let’s start all over again.”

They worked for half an hour more, Jack conscientiously trying to put some life into the lines, but without success. In the middle of a speech, Delaney held up his hand and the lights went up. “That’ll do for the day,” he said.

“It’s no good,” Jack said.

“Not much.” Delaney smiled good-naturedly. Then he peered closely at Jack. “You got something on your mind?”

Jack hesitated. “No,” he said, “I’ve got nothing on my mind.”

“Lucky man,” Delaney said. “Lunch?”

Again Jack hesitated. “Let me call my hotel first. I had a tentative appointment.”

Jack telephoned the hotel. There was a message for him. Signorina Rienzi was lunching at Ernesto’s, Piazza dei Santissimi Apostoli. She would be there at one, and she would be pleased if Signor Andrus could join her.

“Thank you,” Jack said over the phone and hung up. “I’m busy for lunch,” he told Delaney.

Delaney regarded him shrewdly for a moment and Jack wondered what his face had revealed, what pleasure, what anticipation, what fears, as he had talked on the phone.

Delaney grunted, gathered his papers, and they went out into a light drizzle, where the two cars were waiting, parked alongside the projection-room building. “Jack,” Delaney said, “did Holt talk to you last night?”

“A little,” Jack said.

“Can you help him?”

“I’ll call a couple of people,” Jack said.

Delaney nodded, pleased. “He’s okay, Holt,” Delaney said. “It’d be nice if we could help the poor bastard.”

Jack didn’t mention the three-picture deal. “I’ll do my best,” he said. He put the collar of his topcoat up. The drizzle was cold.

“Thanks,” Delaney said. “He likes you a lot, he told me. He told me you had a warm heart when he came back to the table last night.”

“That’s me,” Jack said. “Warm-hearted.”

“They’re giving a cocktail party at their place tonight,” said Delaney. “They asked me especially to get you to come.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Not like last night, Jack,” Delaney said warningly. “Show up this time.”

“Not like last night,” said Jack, thinking, I hope not like last night.

“Guido knows the address.” Delaney got into the car and he and Hilda drove off.

In the car going toward the Piazza dei Santissimi Apostoli, Jack found out that Guido could speak French and they each had a cigarette to celebrate the discovery that now they could communicate with each other. Their first exchanges were general and noncommittal. Guido said that he’d learned French when he’d been stationed, in the Italian Army, near Toulon, during the war, and Jack used the gift of the common language to explain that the traffic in Paris was worse than in Rome, and the weather in general grayer. Still, a new and gratifying flavor of humanity now permeated the green Fiat, and Jack was happy to notice that when Guido had an opportunity to talk he drove more slowly and risked death less frequently. Finally, Jack thought, it may turn out that the French language has saved my life.

She was sitting in the back room, against a white wall, facing the door. She was wearing the same clothes that she had worn the day before and she was staring boldly at a party of three men who were seated across the room from her. As Jack approached her, just before she turned her head to greet him, he thought, Wherever she is, whatever else she is doing, she is in constant communication with the male sex. She smiled at him, and he was disturbed by the overt animal brilliance of her smile. Conscious that the three men were watching him, he experienced some of the same embarrassment he had felt as a young man when he had gone out with girls who were too blond, or too flamboyantly shaped or dressed. At such times, he would think, There’s only one reason I’m out with this girl, and everybody here knows it.

He slid into the chair next to hers and touched her hand and said, “I’m crazy about a girl who didn’t leave her address or telephone number. Have you any idea where I can find her?”

It was only when they had finished their meal and were sitting over their coffee, now the only guests left in the restaurant, that Jack said, “You moved yesterday. Where to?”

“What’s that?” Veronica asked, surprised.

“Yesterday evening,” Jack said soberly, “when you left me, when I was sleeping in the hotel, you went back to the place you were living and you packed your bags and you moved. Where are you now?”

Veronica looked at him, startled. “How do you know all this?” she asked.

Then he told her about Bresach’s visit, leaving out nothing, describing the knife, the tears, the raving in the bedroom. As he talked, Veronica’s face became harder, pitiless, full of scorn.

“
Il cafone,”
she said.

“What does that mean?”

She shrugged. “Many bad things all mixed up,” she said. “Stupid, cowardly…”

“How did he know about me?” Jack asked.

“I told him,” Veronica said. “Why? Do you object?”

“Well,” Jack said, mildly, “at this moment I don’t object. But there were a couple of seconds last night, when he was waving that knife around…”

“Well, if you must know…” There was a hint of a pout in the way she pursed her mouth. “That was the only way he would let me out of the house. Otherwise, he would have made a big scene, he would have followed me. He promised me if I told him whom I’d been with, the name of the man, just the name of the man, he would let me go. And he promised he would not bother whoever it was.”

“Maybe he thought putting a knife into a man’s ribs in the middle of the night doesn’t come under the heading of bothering him,” Jack said.

“Don’t joke,” Veronica said. “He is capable of doing it.” She laughed harshly. “And I thought, I am getting a nice American boy, I am getting away from all that crazy Italian jealousy.”

“Who is he?” Jack asked. “What’s he doing in Rome? What’s his connection with you?”

Veronica opened her mouth, then closed it, cutting off speech. She looked down at her hands. The pretty, insensitive face took on a look of slyness, cunning, as she turned over the questions in her mind and decided whether or not to tell the truth. “Why do you have to know all that?” she asked, postponing.

“If a man tried to kill you,” Jack said, “wouldn’t you like to know as much as possible about him?”

“He has been here in Rome nearly two years,” Veronica said. “He has some sort of small pension from the American Army. He tells me his family is very rich, but they don’t seem to send him very much money. He says he came here to learn about the movies. He’s crazy about the Italian movies. He wants to be a director or a producer or something. It’s account of him I went to see that movie you were in.” She smiled mischievously. “He said I had to see your performance. Well, I saw your performance, didn’t I?”

“Oh, God,” Jack said.

“He does translations from the Italian into English,” Veronica went on. “He makes some extra money that way.”

“Does he have any talent?” Jack asked curiously.

“He thinks so,” she said. “According to him he has more talent than anyone else in Rome.”

“Does anybody else think he has any talent?”

“Oh, he goes around with a whole group of starving young actors and writers and people like that, that have never been heard of, and they keep telling him he’s a genius.” She laughed scornfully. “They hate everybody else. The only people they like are other people like themselves that nobody has ever heard of, either. He’s written a script that he can’t get anybody to buy, but when his friends talk about it, they make it sound as though he’s just written
The Divine Comedy.”

“What do
you
think?”

“If that’s what geniuses are like,” she said, “let them find other women. Not me.”

“How long have you known him?”

“About a year,” Veronica said.

“How long have you been living with him?”

She hesitated, balancing once more, Jack could see, between truth and falsehood. “Only three months,” she said. “He kept after me and after me. He is very handsome,” she said, excusing herself.

“Yes, he is,” said Jack.

“I told him I did not love him,” Veronica said, her voice whining a little, unpleasantly, her eyes shifting uneasily and falsely, as though she weren’t talking to Jack now, but to her deserted lover, explaining herself, blaming him. “I told him I insisted on being free, going out with other men when I wanted to. He said, of course, but once he had me—” She shrugged. “Just like an Italian,” she said bitterly. “If I as much as said hello to a man on the street.
Tragedia.
No wonder he likes Rome, that one. He is an Italian at heart. And now this with the knife…” She made a scornful little hissing sound. “I would like to tell him a thing or two. What does he want me to do—sleep with him if I am in love with another man? And I thought Americans had pride.”

“Did you tell him you were in love with me?” Jack asked, disbelievingly.

“Of course I did.” Veronica’s soft, long, plump hands played erratically with the catch of her bag.

“What did he say to that?” Jack asked.

“The usual.” Again she made the scornful hissing sound. “He called me a whore. I’m telling you, they ought to make him an honorary Italian citizen.”

“Did he threaten you, too?”

“No. Not yet,” Veronica said carelessly. “That will come.”

“What’re you going to do?” Jack demanded. He had an unpleasant vision of Veronica lying in a pool of blood, and the newspapers, and the testimony at the trial. At least, he thought, with all this, I should be able to tell her I love her. At least a little bit.

“What am I going to do?” She shrugged. “Nothing. I won’t tell him where I live and he won’t find me.”

“He’ll go to the place you work,” Jack said.

“He’s already been there,” Veronica said. “This morning. They called me. I have a friend there and he called me. I will take a vacation. I will not work for the next two weeks.” She smiled softly at him. “I will devote myself to you. I need a vacation, anyway. It would be nice…” She covered his hand with hers and played softly with his fingers. “It would be nice if we could go away somewhere for two weeks.”