After a while, though, although they don’t dare let the others see it, they really begin to like Sabu for himself, and then they start to outbid each other for his affection. They know he likes animals and there’s a scene where Edward Arnold sneaks out during the night and brings back a baby elephant for Sabu. When Eugene Pallette sees it the next morning all he can say is “Hmph, you call that an elephant?” and that night he goes out and brings back a bigger one. S. G. “Cuddles” gets it all mixed up and brings Sabu a beautiful pair of matched tigers. This bothers Sabu because of what tigers have done to his parents, but he doesn’t let on. As a matter of fact he gradually begins to forgive the tigers. Listen, why not? These old men can’t do enough for him. I’ve never seen anything like it. They turn on the love. They pour it all over him. What don’t they give that nut-brown orphan! Pajamas, robes, electric trains, radios! They have three different department stores to choose from! And at night Sackell sings Rumanian folk songs to him and Edward Arnold recites poetry. Even Eugene Pallette comes in and croaks out something at bedtime. They tuck him in all night long.
It’s marvelous — all those people breaking their necks for him, the economy of the City of New York contingent on Sabu’s happiness — all those daddies. He even has a kind of kid sister in Margaret O’Brien, who lives next door and comes in mornings to teach Sabu manners and how to be a good American. Actually, the only person not taken with Sabu is Margaret O’Brien’s cousin (and this I resented, seeing it as a deflection from the real meaning of the picture), played by Dickie Dobber. This was a snotty kid, a real curmudgeon. That sort of thing doesn’t look good on a child and I was glad when Sabu’s elephants turned on him.
Then comes the best part of alclass="underline" the scene where they give Sabu the marvelous birthday party on the day he’s legally adopted by the three magnates and becomes an American citizen. This is where José Iturbi (playing himself) is one of the entertainers and Carmen Miranda (playing Margaret O’Brien’s maid, but really more like Sabu’s aunt than hired help) tries to get him to play some snappy rumba. Everyone is shocked, of course, because José Iturbi is an irascible Latin genius and believes only in serious music, but in the middle of the concerto that he’s composed for Sabu’s birthday he gives a sly wink and goes into a jazzy riff that leads into the rumba. Dickie Dobber unbends and nods at Carmen Miranda as if to say, “Hey, José Iturbi’s all right!” but of course Carmen Miranda knew it all along. (After all, José Iturbi really is a Latin. Like Carmen Miranda herself.)
Well, it was marvelous, and pretty soon I had forgotten it was really Edward Arnold up there, and Eugene Pallette, and, oddly, even José Iturbi, but just then — just when Edward Arnold is starting to tap his foot to José Iturbi’s music and the elephants are beginning to sway their trunks — the film snapped. You could actually hear it tear and go around flap-flap on the reel. Everybody groaned.
In the darkness, before the lights came on, I heard a voice next to me.
“Damn it, it’s the best scene in this turkey. You know old Kuperman, what a stickler he is for realism? He had the property man use VO in Eugene’s glass. Well, you saw it yourself. When the barman pours Edward’s drinks it’s from the bottle to his left. Eugene’s shots come out of the one next to it.”
“You’re kidding,” someone on the other side said.
“You know old Kuperman.”
“Was Pallette really loaded?”
“Loaded? There were a dozen and a half takes, Elizabeth.”
I knew. Even before the lights came on, I knew. It was Sabu, the Elephant Boy! It was Elizabeth Languor, the film soprano!
A man runs and runs. He does his push-ups, lifts his weights, builds his body, wrestles his wrestlers, pins, is pinned. It’s the old one-two. The old give-and-take. He gives and gives; they take and take. It’s not like in the old days when there were guarantees. That wop Aeneas had a belt, a spear. As long as he wore the one and threw the other they couldn’t touch him. Even the gods couldn’t touch him. Me they can touch. I do my best. I go on a bus thirty-five miles out of my way to a town nobody ever heard of, to a “Chilanthica,” a place to raise kids, where it’s fun to be a citizen, where when you vote you come away feeling clean all over. I pick a picture nine years old — and look what happens.
Once I was waiting to buy rolls in a bakery when a man rushed in carrying a package. He was mad. “See here,” he screams, shoving this package onto the counter, opening it as one might open a newspaper full of garbage. “See here, damn it,” he yells at the old lady who owns the bakery. “I warned you about the nuts. My wife is a sick woman she can’t eat nuts it gives her gas. And what do I see? Nuts! Nuts! I particularly didn’t want nuts!” That’s right. I know how he feels. You get what you don’t ask for.
When the lights came up I glanced to my left. Not despondently to see if I was right, or even hopefully to see if I was wrong, but — here’s the sickness, you see; here’s me all over—instinctively, to see what they were wearing. Sabu had on white trousers, a rope belt, a tailored black shirt. Wound round his head was a turban with a glittering black jewel in the center. I was surprised to see that he wore glasses. My first thought was of this journal. “Sabu, the Elephant Boy and Hollywood star, has to wear glasses when he goes to the pictures.” I glanced hastily at Elizabeth Languor. Gold brocade slacks, a gold belt, a soft pale sweater over a tight black T-shirt. There was a scarf around her neck. Hmm, I thought, a scarf, maybe to protect that throat. They caught me staring at them — did they think they had been recognized? Did they expect me to ask for an autograph? — and I turned away.
What should I do? Leave? Change my seat? Ignore it?
I couldn’t leave. The picture had been ruined for me, but I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t change my seat. Indeed, had they changed theirs I would have followed. Ignore them? Hah!
Instantly, you see, I was off the wagon. I tried to rationalize. You’ve never done an elephant boy before, I told myself, conscious that I had used Herlitz’ word. After all, it’s not as if you went looking for it. It fell in your lap. My lap, indeed. The gods have laps, not men.
Then my struggle was over. I leaned toward Sabu and listened.
“Have you ever done anything else with Kuperman?” Elizabeth asked.
“Not yet. Irv Teller thinks I’m just right for the Arab who goes over to the Jewish side in Storm in the Desert. Koop starts shooting it in the fall, but I’m a little reluctant.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve never worked with camels,” he said.
Elizabeth and I laughed. Sabu looked at me severely.