“Unless they’re Baptist,” Kelly muttered. “We still got a problem with the Baptists.”
Eager as a child wanting to please, B.B. leaned forward. “We’re riding the crest, Fritzi. California’s only the start. We need you.”
Snow from the bleak sky drifted past the window. She felt cold, and unhappy, because she hated to disappoint people she’d grown to like. B.B. was one.
“I appreciate it, I’m very grateful. But”—a deep breath—“I still want to make my career on the stage.”
“Ah, hell, I told you.” Kelly glowered at Fritzi. “So stay here. Just forget we were prepared to write a regular contract for your services. Hang around New York, sling hash, sell hankies. Who cares?”
“Now, now,” B.B. said, running over to grasp Fritzi’s hands. “Everybody calm down. Did you catch what Al said about a contract?”
“Yes, I—”
“What are you making now?”
“Six-fifty a day when I work.”
“That’s thirty-nine dollars if you work the regular six-day week. How does seventy a week sound? I mean, as a guaranteed salary. You draw it whether you’re playing or sitting on your tushie.”
A born salesman, B.B. brimmed with enthusiasm, chafing her hands and fairly dancing around her chair. “You’re not signing up to live the rest of your life in California. We’re just trying it for the winter. We’ll throw in some nice extras. Take care of your rail fare and moving expenses. Pay your rent for a month or two while you get settled. Say, and how about this? Do you know how to drive a motor car?”
Taken aback, she said, “What?”
Kelly snatched the cigar out of his mouth. “A car? For Christ’s sake, Benny, what is this? We didn’t discuss a car.”
“Al, you’re overwrought,” B.B. said. “Al takes the loss of equipment hard, Fritzi. What I’m talking about, Al, is a car available to be driven by all our important players, including this little gel. A Pal company car.”
“Yeah? On whose money?”
“Ours, Al. And that’s my final word, so do me a favor and shut up. If Fritzi goes to California, and I am down on my knees praying she does, she’s going in style.”
Kelly stomped to the window and glowered at the falling snow. B.B. lifted her from her chair, wrapped an arm around her waist, and guided her to the window.
“Look out there. Look at that mess. Oh, did you see that? That man there, he fell down in the slush, he’s ruined a fine fifty-dollar overcoat. You don’t have that in southern California. You enjoy beautiful weather. In your personal Pal auto. With the top lowered!”
He saw her hesitancy. “Isn’t that good enough? What else can we offer to persuade you?”
“Nothing, sir. The salary’s very attractive, and the car too. But it’s such a big step.”
“You can’t turn it down,” Kelly said, practically threatening her.
Fritzi gazed at the snow. She’d endured New York’s dark winters, chasing stage roles, and how many had she gotten? Of those few, how many had carried her to heights of success? Exactly none.
The steam pipes emitted strange whistles and pings. On the floor below someone banged their radiator, shouted for heat. Kelly sucked on his teeth, looked at her in a calculating way.
“Don’t forget Purvis. You know he got to Nix. Hired him to shoot up the camera and you too. I saw Nix aim for your legs.”
Pale, Fritzi could only nod and try to evade the memory. B.B. threw a protective arm around her shoulder. “Easy, Al. She’s been through plenty.”
“Then she ought to face facts. There’s no guarantee we won’t see Purvis in California, but it’s a damn long way out there. You stay in this town, sister, you’ll be dealing with him forever. He’s got some kind of crazy hate for you, didn’t you say so? Do you want to live with that?”
Fritzi started to shake. She fought it, kept her voice as level as she could. “I despise the idea of running, Mr. Kelly. I’ve always tried to be a strong person. Stand up to things.”
“Sure, sure, we understand,” B.B. said in a soothing way. “Nobody wants to be a coward, but we’re not talking about that. There’s no shame in taking care of yourself. This is no dime novel we’re in the middle of, no sir. This is real. Nix was shooting real bullets. If not to do away with you, then to hurt and maybe cripple you. Don’t take a swami to figure that out.”
She was surprised at the faintness of her voice when she said, “When will the company be leaving?”
“Before Christmas,” Kelly said.
“No, after,” B.B. said. “Sophie and I got to celebrate Hanukkah too.” Kelly’s response was a bored shrug.
“I’ll think about it, I really will. I’d like to discuss it with my friend Hobart, and with Eddie.”
B.B. patted her shoulder. “Take your time. Take a whole day. Two if you need it. Come back and we’ll ink the contract on the spot. You’ll be happy, Fritzi, I promise.”
Fritzi’s long face expressed considerable doubt.
She visited Eddie at the New York Hospital on lower Broadway. Approaching in the avenue of leafless trees leading to the building, she met Rita Hearn on her way out. She asked Rita about her reaction to California.
“Oh, we’re eager. I hate this climate. The children are excited about spending the winter where it’s warm.”
Eddie’s bed was one of many in a dark, gloomy hall whose painted floor resounded with every footstep. The hall reeked of carbolic and bed pans. Eddie’s leg was wrapped and elevated in a web of ropes and pulleys. It was the middle of the afternoon; many patients were asleep, but he was awake and alert. As she drew up the visitor’s chair, he told her that the Rumanian gentleman on his right was suffering a rupture, while the unmoving lump on his left was a bank president who’d attempted suicide.
Fritzi quickly sketched her dilemma. Eddie nodded. “I know all about it. Pelzer’s been here. He said you don’t want to go.”
“I realize it’s an opportunity—”
“And we’re only trying it for the winter, don’t forget.”
She scratched the back of her left hand. Her knuckles were red, her skin dry and cracked from the cold. In California you could forget about gloves, overcoats, overshoes, scarves, and similar burdens.
“I hate to give up serious acting.”
“You’re doing serious acting.”
“We can debate that point till judgment day. Suppose I stayed with Pal a year or two. What could I look forward to? I don’t want to be the queen of the prairies forever, and I’m sure that’s what B.B. and Kelly intend.”
“I’ll make a deal. If you go, I’ll do all I can to keep you from getting stuck playing the Lone Indian’s girlfriend till you’re ninety-five. We’ll figure something out, I promise. Let’s get away from Purvis and the Patents crowd first.”
The ruptured Rumanian rolled over and cried, “Nurse. I need the pan. Hurry.” A muscular woman in a starched uniform ran to his rescue.
Eddie reached out with his left hand, spilling trade newspapers on the floor as he grasped hers. She looked at him closely, saw the lines of a new maturity in his face. “I don’t want to make a wrong decision, Eddie.”
“Think of all you’d gain. A regular paycheck whether you work or not. Free rent for a while. That car B.B. offered. Don’t you want to learn to motor?”
“Of course, it’s the modern thing.”
“Think of the ocean. The mountains. Orange juice. Good-looking men with suntans. What do you say, Fritzi?”
To her astonishment, Hobart’s opinion was similar to Eddie’s. He encouraged the move. Not on artistic grounds, certainly, but for the sake of personal safety.
“Consider it temporary. Until that vicious man finds another target.”
She saw Purvis then—his strange yellow-specked eyes. Elephant Pearly, he said. I never forget.
“Perhaps you’re right. There’s no need for it to be permanent, is there?”
She wrote Eustacia Van Sant in England:
So it
’s California. Should I have said yes? Eustacia, I can’t be sure. Do we ever recognize the right decision until long after we’ve made the wrong one?
46. A Toast to War
The Imperial German Army staged its autumn maneuvers in the mountains and valleys around Würzberg, a charming old city on the River Main where feudal princes of the region had once had summer homes. For four long, tiring days—fortunately free of rain—Paul and Sammy photographed entrenchments, cavalry charges, mock battles with live artillery shells lobbed dangerously near skirmishing troops. The fiftyone-year-old Kaiser took active part, directing the games by field telephone from his command position on the heights. Paul filmed the emperor striding back and forth under the eagle and iron cross banner that proclaimed GOTT MIT UNS. Wilhelm II was happy and enthusiastic as a boy, although no boy playing soldier had ever dressed in mirror-bright jackboots, a long military overcoat bedecked with medals and ropes of braid, the burnished silver eagle helmet of the cuirassier regiment to which he belonged. The Kaiser was a loud, often bellicose man with a showy mustache whose upturned points he kept elaborately waxed. His gloved left hand usually rested on his hip or his sword pommel; the arm was withered, a relic of a childhood injury. In one of his more famous outbursts against his grandmother’s people, he once said the deformity was proof of English blood.
On the fourth night, the Kaiser, three of his six sons who were in the military, and almost three hundred officers gathered for a festive banquet. Rather than dining in the Residenz, one of the largest and loveliest Baroque palaces in Europe, the Kaiser ordered that the celebration be held in the great hall of Marienberg Fortress, a more warlike setting on the heights across the river. Two huge hearths lit the hall, along with some temporary electric lights on stands that cast a weird white glare and gave the celebrants a curious spectral appearance. The banquet featured boar, pheasant, and enough beer to explode the kidneys of a regiment.
Paul and Sammy circulated before dinner, Sammy wide eyed at so much gold braid and brass, so many plumes and decorations. The Kaiser admired members of the Prussian Junker class and collected them for his personal circle. A brigadier got down on hands and knees and imitated pigs and cows while the Kaiser’s sons, Prince Joachim, Prince Frederick, and Crown Prince William, whinnied like jackasses to add to the merriment. The Kaiser held his sides and laughed mightily.
A sharp-faced blond officer drew Paul aside with a nod at Sammy, who was unaware of being scrutinized. One word came out of the man’s slit-like mouth.
“Jude?”
“My helper? I don’t know.” It had never crossed Paul’s mind to wonder whether Sammy was a Jew. “Is it important?”
“Be discreet with your dinner companions. They might not care for his company,” the officer said, and walked off. Paul stared after him, stupefied. He knew that Europe was a seedbed of anti-Semitism, with no places worse than Germany and Austria. Sometimes, busy with things that made sense, he forgot.
Shortly, he saw the emperor and two aides bearing down. The Kaiser kept an enormous wardrobe of uniforms to acknowledge his membership in many regiments. Tonight he was splendidly turned out as a Jäger zu Pferde—mounted rifleman.
“Herr Crown, good evening. How goes it with you? Pictures satisfactory?”
Paul bowed. “Very satisfactory, Your Majesty.”
“We are eager for the world to see the armor and mail of the fatherland. Your former president Theodore Roosevelt was quite impressed with the military review I put on for him in Potsdam this spring. Splendid man, Roosevelt. We share many opinions, including the absolute necessity to watch for incursions of the yellow peril from Asia.” The Kaiser tended to speak in loud declarative sentences—pronouncements—allowing no room for disagreement or even comment.
“I have read your book,” the Kaiser said. “The life of a journalist is most interesting.”
“Hectic sometimes,” Paul said, smiling.
“Are you a student of military affairs? If so, I commend to your attention a work which will be published next year. I’ve just reviewed an advance text. It was written by our own General Friedrich von Bernhardi. His topic is the coming war.”
Paul’s scalp prickled. “Will there be one, Majesty?”
“One hopes not,” the Kaiser said with a dismissive shrug. “But many enemies surround the fatherland. Although I am a friend of England, the same can’t be said of my subjects.”
“What point is General Bernhardi making, may I ask?”
“He argues that war is a biological necessity, an inherent part of man’s nature. Therefore a warrior state such as Germany not only has the right but the absolute duty to strike a first blow, to assure victory and continuity of its rule.”
Now Paul’s spine was crawling. He could think of nothing to say. Finally he summoned one word: “Remarkable.”
“Yes, decidedly so. You must not fail to read it when it’s published. Germany and the Next War is the title. By the way, will you see that we receive a copy of your films?”
“Through our Berlin exchange, depend on it.”
“Good old German reliability. Fine. Good evening, then.”
“Majesty,” Paul said with another bow, his skin like ice and his belly knotted. Drenched in the Gemütlichkeit of the noisy party, he tended to forget the dark side of the German character, which the Kaiser exhibited all too freely.
At dinner, Paul and Sammy found themselves seated at one end of a trestle table dominated by Prussians, if Paul could judge from their accents: arrogant, preening asses. Not to be dismissed lightly, though. The German soldier was a top professional, war his lifetime study.
The stomach-stretching meal of breads and meats and side dishes was accompanied by loud conversation among the officers about tactics, the relative merits of different units, the low morals and stupidity of the French, the usefulness of females for sex and cooking. There were a couple of jokes about Jews and excrement. Paul was glad Sammy couldn’t understand what was being said.
Then the toasts began—windy praise of the Kaiser, his wife, Kaiserin Augusta, his six manly sons, his daughter, Viktoria Louise, who held an honorary colonelcy in the Death’s Head Hussars. Paul rose dutifully for each toast, dutifully drank from his tankard of beer.
A colonel at the head of Paul’s table stood.
“Majesty—gentlemen. I give you a special toast appropriate to the events which have drawn us together. I give you the Day, when our armies will take revenge on all those who attempt to wall us in, threaten us and humiliate us, and restrict the rightful power of imperial Germany.”
A hush had fallen; someone kicked a kitchen boy who was still turning a squeaky spit. In one of the hearths a log broke and fell, shooting up a geyser of sparks. The colonel lifted his tankard.
“Der Tag.”
The Day. Paul had heard it for twenty years. The army was maniacal on the subject.
The Kaiser leaped up, and the several hundred fellow officers with him, shouting in unison, “Der Tag.”
Casting a puzzled look at Paul, Sammy started to stand. Paul pulled him down. His heart was speeding, thumping in his ear. Don’t be an idiot.
Heads turned, surprise swiftly changing to disbelief, then animosity. The colonel looked down the table at the two civilians still seated.
“You object to the toast, my friend?”
“With all due respect, Colonel, I don’t celebrate killing. At least not the premeditated kind.”
Far across the hall Paul could see the Kaiser’s livid color. In the drafty stone hall the electric lights washed out faces so that all those staring at Paul and Sammy had the look of corpses.
The colonel’s eyes flicked to one side, then the other. Aware that he was the focus of attention, he raised his voice.
“Then may I ask what you are doing here, presuming on our hospitality? That strikes me as grossly hypocritical.”
Paul wadded his serviette and stood up. The beer and tiredness and disgust with this crowd had pushed him over a line h
e was usually too prudent to cross.
“Perhaps so.”
“I suggest you raise your tankard or leave.”
Paul swallowed, saw one of the Kaiser’s sons with his sword half drawn. “Come on, Sammy. We’ve overstayed.” He bowed. “Majesty.”
The Kaiser didn’t acknowledge it. His jaw was clenched, his blue eyes raging.
The moment they left the hall, a strange cry went up behind them—a roar of defiance and hate that reminded Paul of the baying of wild dogs. He forgot his bowler and overcoat as he dashed from the fortress into the courtyard and out the gate to the riverbank. Sammy scrambled to keep up.
They turned north, toward the central bridge over the Main. On the far bank the lights of the town glowed as pleasantly as miniature houses under a Christmas tree. “God, I lost my head. I shouldn’t have let go,” Paul growled.
“What the hell was that all about, gov?”
Paul explained the significance of Der Tag. “They live for it. Plan for it. Can’t wait to see it come. Not all the German people are that way, but the ones closest to the Kaiser certainly are, and they’ll drag the rest along with them.”
Bending into the autumn wind, they crossed the river to their first-class hotel up by the Luitpold bridge. Paul asked the night porter for a railway schedule, found there was a train for Frankfurt at half past two in the morning.
“We’ll take it,” he told Sammy.
“Don’t you want your hat and overcoat?”
“No. I wouldn’t walk back into that viper’s nest for ten overcoats. Let’s pack.”
On the way down to a taxi at a few minutes before two, Paul was hailed by the hall porter, who handed him a message with a cheery, “Mein Herr! Heartiest felicitations and congratulations.” Paul translated the German in a second.