Karl-Heinz looked much better than he had in Berlin. He enjoyed California. He sunbathed a lot and his tan smoothed out the shadows and taut angularities of his face. His health improved too: his ulcers — he had several, apparently — responded to treatment. The studio rented an apartment for him in the Hotel Cythera on the oceanfront at Santa Monica, not far from my house, and I used to look in on him most days. Getting him over from Scotland had proved straightforward. Father of Liberty was slated to start and Karl-Heinz was cast as the lead. His entry visa and resident’s permit were rubber-stamped by the relevant authorities.
Karl-Heinz’s attitude to life was now even more one of placid resignation. He accepted his transformation from troglodyte Kippensammler to Hollywood movie star with nothing more than a shrug and a faint smile. I recognized the condition: he had surrendered himself to the current. In Santa Monica he affected the dress style of a slightly down-on-his-luck artist — faded shirts, baggy trousers and neckerchiefs — and settled easily into the community as if he had only been away on vacation for a while. One day when we were strolling along the beach, a boy abandoned his surfboard and loped up to him calling, “Hey! Hey! Karl, man, how are you?” We were introduced (I forget this lad’s improbable name — Chet, Brett or Rhett, I think) and he and Karl-Heinz discussed where they would meet later that evening. We strolled on.
“Ah, the boys …” he said wistfully.
“Having fun?”
“I wish they all could be Californian.”
I stopped worrying about him after that.
Pause. Reflect. Consider. Here we are in November 1948. I am going to be fifty years old in a few months. I am about to start filming a medium-budget biopic on the life of Jean Jacques Rousseau for Lone Star Films called Father of Liberty. It will feature my oldest friend in the lead role and will be produced and financed by another old friend and longtime collaborator. I live alone in my own house in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California. I am not rich but I am by no means poor. Father of Liberty will be my eighteenth completed film. I have two ex-wives and three children. I have a few close friends: Karl-Heinz, Eddie, Hamish, Ramón, Monika, the Coopers, the Gasts, the Hitzigs (Lori Madrazon was killed in a car accident in 1945). I have a few enemies. I have survived two world wars and serious injury. I have one lung, a strong heart, a weak left leg and my right shoulder stiffens up easily. I am carrying a little too much weight, my hair is graying, but I am told I still possess a certain vital dark attractiveness that is unusual in a man of my age.
My disappointments are profound but not numerous. I was unreconciled with my father when he died. My brother will not speak to me. I am estranged from my children. My second son, whom I adored, died when a baby. Worst of all, the woman I truly loved, and who could have transformed my life, abandoned me.
My moment of greatest triumph came early in my career. I have known fame and great wealth, have suffered poverty, neglect, and obloquy. My most commercially successful films have not been my best. My best work, the true expression of my particular genius, is unknown or unrecognized.
This seems an honest, not unreasonable summary. A half century with more than enough excitements and disasters, you might say, to fill several lives. And now with a pleasing structural neatness I am about to embark on a project that will complete an endeavor begun twenty years previously. Yes indeed, you might judge — with all objectivity — all things considered, given the absurd capriciousness of fortune, ceteris paribus, John James Todd has been a fortunate man.
I thought so too. I thought so too.
Then one day I got a call from Eddie Simmonette. Would I meet him in a certain drugstore on La Cienega Boulevard. And would I please make sure I was not followed. What was he talking about? I demanded. He wouldn’t say. I assumed he was going to tell me he was getting divorced. Rumor had it he and Artemisia were no longer happy together. I braced myself for a bout of Eddie’s self-pity, a rare event but an enervating one. Of course I made no checks to see if I was being followed.
It was a fine day, I recall, with only a faint haze. I stopped and bought a bottle of Coke from a sidewalk dispenser and drank it as I drove to meet Eddie. I looked at the tall spindly palm trees, the neat houses and immaculate gardens, the big chrome-heavy cars. The Coke was sweet in my mouth. The long nightmare that was to be the rest of my life was about to begin.
* * *
It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon when I arrived at the drugstore. I could see no sign of Eddie’s car outside, but when I went in he was there, pretending to browse at a revolving stand of crime novels. We sat down in a booth. He took off his sunglasses and mopped his face with a handkerchief. We exchanged pleasantries. Eddie was trying to lose some weight. He had grown really quite fat in the last two years. The cleft on his chin was half an inch deeper.
“How’s the diet?” I said.
“Great, great,” he said. The waitress approached.
“You want something?” Eddie asked me.
“I’ll have a black tea with lemon.” My teeth felt furry, faintly neuralgic.
“I’ll have a cheeseburger with slaw. Banana milkshake. No fries.” He smiled at me. “No fries. No booze. Why do I live?”
“What’s this all about, Eddie?”
He became serious. “I think we have some problems.” He took a magazine out of his pocket and handed it over, open at a page. I looked at the cover. It was called Red Connections.
“Look at that list of names.”
My eyes ran down the list. I recognized most of them. Herbert Biberman, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, Jr., Dalton Trumbo, Humphrey Bogart, Danny Kaye, Eddie Cantor and many more.
“You know who they are?” Eddie asked.
“The Hollywood Ten. And the people who signed that petition.”
“Right.”
“What’s it got to do with me?”
“Keep reading.”
I went on down the list. Groucho Marx, Bertolt Brecht, Frank Sinatra, John James Todd …
“What the hell is this?” I looked at the list’s heading: “Joe Stalin’s Hollywood Buddies.” The magazine was cheap — bad color reproduction, poor-quality paper. I scrutinized the contents. There seem to be a lot of exclamation marks.
“What does this mean?”
“You’ve been listed.”
“I can see that, for Christ’s sake, but so what?”
“Did you sign that petition, any petition, for the Hollywood Ten?”
“No. I mean I would have if I’d been asked. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t here at the time. I was in New York meeting Karl-Heinz.”
“Thank Christ he’s not on it.”
“Why should he be? Why should I be?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
“I haven’t the faintest.”
“Must be some mistake, then.” He smiled. He was the old Eddie again, relaxed and in control of his destiny.
“I don’t know why, John, but this Red shit has really got me spooked. Those bastards — McCarthy, Parnell Thomas — they’ve really started something. Now everyone gets to hunt Reds.” He gestured at the magazine. “And now this garbage.” He sighed. “Why do we do this to ourselves?”
I liked the “we”—good old Aram Lodokian.
“I can see why you’re worried,” I said, guilelessly. “I mean, God, you were even born in Russia.”