Two Weeks in Another Town (37 page)

“Yes.”

“Why?” Bresach asked.

“I was on my way skiing,” Jack said.

“Skiing.” Bresach grimaced. “You’re too godamn healthy for my taste. There are no exterior signs of rot. I can’t stand people like that.”

“Shut up.”

“Did anyone ever tell you you look like a Roman emperor?” Bresach asked. “I mean, women who wanted to flatter you, or artistic drunks at parties?”

“No,” Jack said.

“Well, you do. There’re a thousand busts in stone and bronze all over Rome that look as though they were made in your family. The big, powerful nose, the thick, brutal neck, the fleshy jaws, the sensual, self-confident mouth, the look of blank command. ‘All were skilled in religious discipline, expert in strategy, pitiless and rich.’” Bresach squinted behind his glasses, drawing on his memory with an obvious effort. “That’s from Flaubert,” he said. “He was describing the rulers of Carthage, I but it will do for the emperors of Rome, and for you, too. With a face like yours,” he said, “I’d be at least an army corps commander or the president of a steel company.”

“Well, I’m not,” Jack said. “I’m an under-secretary in an under-bureau.”

“Maybe you’re biding your time.” Bresach grinned provocatively. “Maybe next year you’ll blossom out and you’ll have forty thousand men under your orders. You’ll disappoint me if you don’t, Jack. ‘Expert in strategy, pitiless and rich…’” he repeated. “Do you think the American face is moving in your direction, Jack?”

“You’re just as American as I am,” Jack said. “Do you think the American face is moving in
your
direction?”

“No,” Bresach said. “I’m a reject. I’m off the main line. If they could do it by law, they would revoke my citizenship. I’m tortured, short-sighted, and skeptical. I’m the stuff that exiles are made of.”

“Bull.”

Bresach grinned again. “There’s something in what you say, Jack,” he said. The car swerved violently, to avoid a Vespa that came charging out of a side street, carrying a young man and a girl, both of them leaning far over to make the curve. Bresach shouted in Italian at them, angrily.

“What did you say then?” Jack asked.

“I said, ‘Why aren’t you in church?’” Bresach said. He was still angry. He took out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and lit one for himself. For the first time, Jack noticed that Bresach’s long fingers were yellowed from nicotine.

“Have you thought about what you want to tell Delaney?” Jack asked. He felt responsible for the interview and wanted it to go well, or at least decorously, and Bresach’s mood now was disquieting. He had taken Bresach into the projection room with him the day before to see the film that was already assembled. He had watched Bresach while the film was being run, but Bresach for once had sat quiet and expressionless for an hour and a half and had left without venturing any opinion on what he had seen.

“Are you afraid of what I’ll tell the great man?” Bresach demanded.

“No,” Jack said. “I just want it to stay within the bounds of normal human intercourse.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be reasonable,” Bresach said. “If it kills me. After all, I want the job.”

“What are you going to tell him about the picture?” Jack asked, curiously.

“I don’t know,” said Bresach. “I haven’t made my mind up yet.” He threw his cigarette away. “How big a town is Zurich?” he asked.

“Three, four hundred thousand,” Jack said. “Something like that.”

“Everybody says the Swiss police are great at finding people,” Bresach said. “They know in which bed everybody in Switzerland is sleeping each night. Is that true?”

“Approximately.”

“I think I’ll fly to Zurich tonight,” Bresach said. “Catch her yodeling by the side of the lake. Will you lend me the money for the plane?”

“No,” Jack said.

“You sound like my father,” said Bresach. With that insult he slid down into his corner, his head turned, and spoke no more until they reached the riding academy.

Delaney was taking two-foot brush jumps on a big, nervous roan. The horse hadn’t been nervous to begin with, but after fifteen minutes with Delaney, he was pulling at the bit, frothing, and backing and dancing sideways before each approach.

He has the same effect on actors, Jack thought sadly. Give him a quarter of an hour with any living thing and terror and mutiny raise their heads.

Jack and Bresach were leaning against the top rail of the fence that enclosed the big practice ring. Bresach had a slight, derisive smile on his face as he watched Delaney bump around on the roan. In contrast to the other riders, who were smartly dressed in whipcord breeches and boots and English tweed jackets, Delaney was wearing a worn pair of blue jeans, a red flannel shirt without a tie, and ankle-high suede shoes. The riding master, a small, sixty-year-old Italian, his boots brilliant, his flaring jacket faultlessly pressed, the stock around his thin neck tight and without creases, stood in the center of the ring, calling out patiently in English, “’eels down, Signor Delaney, ’eels
down!”
and, “Relax the grip on the reins, signore, if you please. Do not pull, if you please. The pressure always firm and even. Do not flap the ’eels. Do not confuse the animal, if you please.”

Bresach chuckled at Jack’s side. “Do not confuse the animal,” he whispered.

Delaney went over the jump again and lost a stirrup and pulled wildly on the reins and the roan skittered off to his left. Delaney nearly fell off and Bresach chuckled again.

“For the moment, Signor Delaney,” the riding master said, “maybe it is time to take a little rest. Let the animal breathe.”

A groom took the roan’s bridle and Delaney swung off, stiffly. “Next time,” he said to the riding master, “I’ll take that one.” He pointed at a rail jump, three and a half feet high.

The riding master shook his head. “I do not think,” he said, “that it is quite the…”

“I’ll take that one.” Delaney patted him on the shoulder and took off his gloves and came over to where Jack and Bresach were standing. He was grinning, enjoying himself, and he looked flushed and healthy from the exercise. He was sweating and vapor was rising from his forehead into the crisp, sunny air. Jack introduced him to Bresach, and Delaney said, shaking Bresach’s hand, “I’m glad to see you. I haven’t read your script yet, but Jack says you’re a bright boy.”

“Maurice,” Jack said, “what in the world are you doing learning how to jump horses at your age?”

“That’s exactly why,” Delaney said. “My age. It’s to keep from growing old. Each year I try to learn one new thing. To make up for the things I’m losing, the things I can’t do as well any more. I figure I can go on improving as a rider until I’m sixty-five. The whole idea of being young is that you can feel yourself getting better and better at things. Am I right?” He looked at Bresach.

“I’m getting worse and worse at everything,” Bresach said.

Delaney laughed good-naturedly. “At your age,” he said, “you can afford to say things like that.”

“What’re you going to take up next year?” Jack asked. “Parachuting?”

“French,” said Delaney. “I want to direct a picture in French before I’m sixty. They’ve got a couple of actors in Paris I want to get my hands on before I die.”

There was a pretty, dark girl in the ring now, on a tall, quiet bay. The girl didn’t look more than sixteen, small, serious-faced, erect and light in the saddle. She started making a circuit of the jumps, and all three men watched as she seemed to lift the horse effortlessly over the obstacles, a rapt, intent expression on her face.

“Look at her face,” Delaney said, his voice surprisingly harsh. “I want to feel like that before I’m through.”

“You’re liable to break your neck first,” Jack said.

“I doubt it.” Delaney watched the girl take the bay over a fence. At the moment when the horse cleared the top rail, its hind hooves bunched neatly high above the bar, Delaney made a little, clucking sound. Then he shook his head, dispelling some hopeless dream, and turned toward Bresach and Jack. “Jack,” he said, “I spoke to an old friend of yours last night.”

“Who was that?” Jack asked.

“Carlotta.” Delaney let the name drop carelessly, but he was watching Jack with a glint of curiosity and amusement in his eye.

“That’s a description of her,” Jack said. “An old friend. Don’t tell me she’s in Rome.”

“No,” Delaney said. “She’s in England.”

“Sowing discord and alarm, no doubt,” Jack said. “Did you tell her I was here?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t say anything. She sighed,” Delaney said. “Or anyway, it sounded like a sigh. It was a bad connection, it was hard to tell. She asked me if I thought she’d have fun in Rome.”

“What did you say?”

“I said no.” Delaney smiled at Bresach. “We’re talking about one of Jack’s many wives,” he said.

“I know,” Bresach said. “I’ve done my homework.”

“On me, too?” Delaney asked.

“Of course.”

“I’ve got some further information for you,” Delaney said. “My wife moved out on me last night, too.” He took out a big red handkerchief and wiped the cooling perspiration off his forehead.

“Is it serious?” Jack asked. It hadn’t been serious in the past. Clara had moved out several times before, in protest against other of her husband’s liaisons.

“I don’t think so. She only went as far as the Grand.” Delaney grinned. “You have no idea how peaceful an apartment in Rome can be if your wife is in a room at the Grand Hotel.” He put the handkerchief back in the pocket of the soiled blue jeans. “Well, now,” he said briskly to Bresach, “I understand you want to be a director.”

“Yes,” Bresach said.

“Why?” Delaney asked.

“I only make that speech drunk,” Bresach said composedly. “I made it once already this week. To Andrus. Ask him.”

Delaney eyed Bresach speculatively, like a fighter sizing up an opponent in the opening seconds of the first round. “You saw my picture, didn’t you?” he said.

“I’ve seen a lot of your pictures,” Bresach said.

“I mean the one I’m doing now.”

“Yes,” Bresach said.

“What do you think?”

Bresach hesitated, looking around him at the riders in the ring, the dark girl patting the bay’s arched neck as she spoke quietly to the immaculate riding master, the groom standing at the roan’s head, a seven-year-old boy in a velvet cap walking a short, closely coupled chestnut slowly around the edge of the ring. “Do you think this is a good place to talk about a movie?”

“It’s a perfect place,” Delaney said. “Nobody else understands English and there’s a nice warm smell of horse manure in the air.”

“Well,” Bresach said. “What would you like—do you want me to flatter you or do you want me to tell the truth?”

Delaney grinned. “Flatter me first,” he said, “and tell me the truth after. That’s always a good system.”

“Well,” Bresach began, “nobody handles a camera better than you.”

“That’s okay,” Delaney said, nodding. “For openers.”

“Every shot you set up,” Bresach continued, “is crammed with information.”

“What do you mean by that?” Delaney was watching Bresach closely, skeptical but curious.

“What I mean is you’re not interested only in the story and the characters in the foreground,” Bresach went on rapidly, professorially, lecturing. “There’s always something happening on different levels on the screen. You’re always trying to tell us something about other people, the people in the background, at the same time, and making a comment on the scene, and telling us about the weather and the time of day or night, and working at the mood you want us to feel.”

“Oh, you got that?” Delaney sounded surprised and pleased.

“Yes,” Bresach said. “I got that. There aren’t many directors who can do that consistently, but you’re one of them. And you’re graceful and ingenious at leading us with the camera from one story point to another, so that there’s always a feeling of flow and connection in all your pictures. Of course, in this picture, as in all the pictures you’ve done in the last ten years, the feeling is phony…”

He stopped, waiting to see how Delaney would take this. Delaney was staring at the girl on the bay again, and all he did was nod and say, “Go on.”

“It used to be real,” Bresach said calmly, “in the beginning. Scenes slid one into the other because you felt they
had
to. Now, it’s all skillful embroidery. On top. Under it, it’s chaotic, accidental…Do you want to hear all this?”

“I’m charmed by it,” Delaney said, flatly. “Keep going.”

“I’ll tell you how I feel about your old pictures,” Bresach went on. “They gave me the feeling that they were made by a man who was obsessed by the idea of time running out, a man who had so much to say he had to cram everything in quick and under enormous pressure. Even some of the junky stories you picked…”

“And now?” Delaney said mildly. Jack was surprised to see that Delaney was smiling tolerantly.

“Now your pictures look and sound as if they were made by a vain and self-indulgent man, who’d throw away a whole character for an effect or for a gaudy scene,” Bresach said. His voice sounded angry. It was as if in arranging the list of criticisms, their full criminality was suddenly revealed to him and offended him. If Jack had not read Bresach’s script, he would have felt that what the boy was saying was impudent. But now Jack believed that Bresach was being just, and had earned the right to speak. And he was saying the things that Jack wanted to say, and would have been able to say to Delaney in the early, candid years of their friendship, and that Delaney would no longer accept from him. “For example,” Bresach went on, “in this picture—you have that silly flashback to the war, just because you wanted to have the tear-jerker scene in the ruins between the hero and the little Italian boy. Sure, the scene is effective—the tears are jerked—but you stop the picture for fifteen minutes, for that one moment…The pressure’s off. All that’s left is the embroidery…”

Delaney nodded again, smiling faintly, squinting out at the other riders. Then he turned and pinched Bresach’s cheek. “You’re a cute little feller, aren’t you, sonny?” he said. Then he strode out toward the riding master, shouting, “All right,
Commendatore,
I’m ready now. Let’s go.”