“We were just talking about an actress Shifcart sent out West a few years ago,” said Goldstone bringing his long, bony, hairy hand to the back of his head. “Wanda Waters.”
“Persevalli is the one that makes them,” Shifcart said. “He’s a great showman.”
“But you picked the girl.”
“I didn’t know she was your discovery, Jack,” said Har-kavy.
“Yes, I saw her singing with a band one night.”
“You don’t say.”
“At the shore in New Jersey. I was on vacation.”
“She’s very appealing,” said Goldstone.
“You might not like her much, in person.”
“Why, she certainly looks like a gingery piece in the pictures,” said Harkavy.
“Yes, she has magnetic eyes. But you’d pass her on the street any day and not notice her.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Harkavy said. “You have a professional attitude in this, seeing so many beauties. I’m still unspoiled. I suppose you can do a lot with paint and cameras, but there has to be something to start with. You can’t fake those gorgeous sex machines, can you? Or is it the gullible public again? They look genuine to me.”
“Some really are. And if the rest take you in, that’s what they’re supposed to do.”
“It must be quite a knack to pick them,” Goldstone remarked.
“It isn’t all guesswork. You can’t go and run a screen test for every girl you see. But I myself, personally, don’t care for some of the best successes I sent into Hollywood.”
“Which do you like?” asked Goldstone.
“Oh,” he said slowly, thinking, “there’s Nola Hook.”
“You don’t mean it,” said Schlossberg. “A little cactus plant… skinny, dry…”
“I think she has a kind of charm. Or what’s the matter with Livia Hall?”
“Such a discovery!”
“She is. I’ll stand up for her.”
“Oh, a firebrand.” The old man’s countenance was too large for fine degrees of irony. Only Shifcart, his lips open to begin his reply, did not join in the laughter.
“What’s the matter; hasn’t she got anything?”
“She’s got!” Schlossberg waved him down. “God made her a woman, so who are we to say? But she isn’t an actress. I saw your firebrand last week in a picture. What is it? She poisons her husband.”
“In The Tigress.”
“What a lameness!”
“I don’t know what your standards are. A perfect piece of casting. Who else could have done it?”
“Wood, so help me. She poisons her husband and she watches him die. She wants the insurance money. He loses his voice and he tries to appeal to her she should help him. You don’t hear any words. What is she supposed to show in her face? Fear, hate, a hard heart, cruelness, fascination.” He shut his eyes tightly and proudly for a moment, and they saw the veins in his lids. Then he slowly raised them, turning his face away, and a tremor went through his cheeks as he posed.
“Oh, say, that’s fine!” Harkavy cried, smiling.
“That’s the old Russian style,” said Shifcart. “That doesn’t go any more.”
“No? Where’s the improvement? What does she do? She sucks in her cheeks and stares. A man is dying at her feet and all she can do is pop out her eyes.”
“I think she was marvelous in that show,” said Shifcart. “Nobody could have been better.”
“She is not an actress because she is not a woman, and she is not a woman because a man doesn’t mean anything to her. I don’t know what she is. Don’t ask me. I saw once Nazimova in The Three Sisters. She’s the one whose soldier gets killed in a duel over a nothing, foolishness. They tell her about it. She looks away from the audience and just with her head and neck — what a force! But this girl..!”
“Terrible, ah?” Shifcart said sardonically.
“No, isn’t it? And this is a success? This is your success, these days. You said you could pass this Waters on the street and not recognize her. Imagine!” the old man said, making them all feel his weighty astonishment. “Not to recognize an actress, or that a man shouldn’t notice a beautiful woman. It used to be an actress was a woman. She had a mouth, she had flesh on her, she carried herself. When she whispered tears came in your eyes, and when she said a word your legs melted. And it didn’t make any difference; on the stage or off the stage you knew she was an actress.”
He stopped. They considered his words gravely.
“Say,” began Harkavy. “My father used to tell a story about Lily Langtry, the English actress, when she was presented at court by Edward the Seventh. Old Victoria was still alive, and he was the Prince of Wales.”
“That’s the one they call the Jersey Lily, isn’t it?” said Shifcart.
“I’ve heard this.” Goldstone got up and took Leventhal’s tray. “Does anyone want coffee? I’m going to the counter.”
“Is it good, Monty?”
“My late father-in-law’s favorite.” He strode off to the steam table.
“Pop told me this one after I was old enough to vote. He saved up all his best stories till I was of age. Before that… But of course you pick up everything yourself and they know it. It’s only off the record. Well, you know that Edward was a sport. And when he fell in love with Langtry he wanted to present her at court. They say people in love want to be seen together in public. Proud to have it known. I suppose it has a dangerous outcome, sometimes. Well, he wanted to present her. Everybody was scandalized. What was Lily going to say to the old woman, and wouldn’t Victoria be angry at having her son’s mistress in St James or Windsor or wherever? All the reporters were waiting after the ceremony. She came out, and they asked her, ‘ Lily, what did you say to Her Majesty?’ ‘I was worried that I would say the wrong thing,’ said Lily. ‘But the last moment the right one came to me. I kissed the hem of her dress and said, “Ich dien”!’“
A smile went around the table. Goldstone, carrying the tray, pulled his chair aside with his foot.
“The motto of the King of Bohemia in the Hundred Years War,” Harkavy explained, his round eyes shining at them. “They found it on his helmet after the Battle of Poitiers.”
“I doubt very much if she would kiss the queen’s dress,” said Leventhal. “Is that a part of the ceremony?”
“Curtsy,” Goldstone laughed, pulling his napkin open to demonstrate.”
“All right, I tell it as my father did. I haven’t changed a word.”
“The old woman being a German, she figured she’d understand her,” Schlossberg said.
“What? No, that’s the Hanoverian motto,” Goldstone said.
“That was a deal. A German queen, a British Empire, and an Italian Jew for prime minister.”
“Disraeli an Italian?” said Goldstone. “Wasn’t he English born?”
“But his father.”
“Not even his father. His grandfather. He was an authentic Englishman, if citizenship stands for anything.”
“He wasn’t an Englishman to the English,” Leventhal said,