Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (506 page)

Bobby
: If I were rich, I’d buy you a fur coat for Autumn.

Pat
(
smiling
): Which one?

Bobby
(
pointing
): That one.

Pat
: You’ve got good taste. That’s Canadian Mink.

Bobby
(
lightly
): Would you like it? I’ll give it to you tomorrow.

Pat
(
without covetousness
): Do you know what it costs, darling?

Bobby
: Money’s no object. I’ll sell my yacht.

Pat
(
alarmed
): Our friends would talk.

Bobby
: Not another word — you’ll have it tomorrow.

184 AT THE NEXT WINDOW — A HABERDASHER —
 — exaggerated, comic dummy of a man in dress clothes. In the back of the window is a mechanical display — toy man and woman in evening dress on a circular track. They go in one door of a toy opera house and out the other.

Pat
: You’ve got to have those tails to go with my coat.

Bobby
(
pulling her back to the first window
): But you’re not dressed yourself yet. Two or three ball gowns.

Pat
(
pulling him to the man’s window
): Shirts, cane, topper —

Bobby
(
enthusiastically
): Where’s a jewelers? Where do they sell ship’s tickets?

Pat
: Egypt — South America.

Bobby
(
suddenly sobered
): There never was any South America.

Pat
: I knew it. But darling — (
they are walking arm in arm in the crowded street
) — it’s all right here in our hearts. We can go to the most exciting place — home.

(
they come to the taxi parked against the curb. He opens the door and bows. Pat gets in the back seat
)

Bobby
: Where to, please?

Pat looks at him, shaking her head fondly from side to side. He nods understandingly, gets in and drives off.

DISSOLVE TO:

185 THEIR ROOM

Rain outside. Pat broiling a chop on a gas burner. Bobby on the couch.

Pat
(
looking out the window
): Winter’s coming outside.

Bobby
(
his voice a little frightened
): No, not yet. You just think that because it’s raining.

Pat
(
as if to herself
): It’s raining. It’s been raining too long. At night sometimes when I wake, I imagine we’re quite buried under all the rain.

Thunder outside. The lights lower — brighten again.

Bobby
(
with feeling
): It seems to me we’re lucky. When I think of life as it was before — I thank God. I never thought I would be so lucky.

Pat
: It’s lovely when you say that. Then I believe it, too. You must say it oftener.

Bobby
: Don’t I say it often enough?

Pat
: No.

Bobby
(
melting
): From now on, I’ll tell you every time I feel it. Even though it makes me feel absurd.

A gust of rain against the window. A sudden knock at the door. Bobby answers it to find Frau Zalewska, the landlady.

Zalewska
: The phone, Herr Lohkamp.

DISSOLVE TO:

186 DOWNSTAIRS. BOBBY AT THE PHONE.

Bobby
: (
repeating in amazement a question that has been asked him
): “How did she stand the trip?” — What trip?

CUT TO:

186A DR. JAFFÉ’S OFFICE. LATE AFTERNOON

Jaffé
: The trip to the sanitarium.

Bobby’s Voice
(
over phone
): Why, she’s upstairs. I didn’t know —

Dr. Jaffé
(
impatiently
): I told her a week ago she must leave. I told her this change of temperature could simply blow her away.

Bobby
: She didn’t tell me.

Dr. Jaffé
: If you want to keep that girl of yours alive you take her off tomorrow — and I mean
tomorrow.
:
Bobby
: We’ll go tomorrow.

(
he hangs up in consternation
)

DISSOLVE TO:

187 THEIR ROOM UPSTAIRS

Pat with her face in her hands. Bobby annoyed and tender.

188 FLASH OF CHOP —
 — smoking in the pan.

189 THEIR ROOM

Bobby
: You should have told me, darling.

Pat
: Oh, I couldn’t. We’ve been so happy and it was such a little time. It didn’t seem that a week or two could make any difference.

Bobby
: We’ll have other weeks later. (
she looks at him sad-eyed — Bobby resists her firmly
) We’ll get Frau Zalewska to help pack — (
to cheer her
) — and listen, Pat, we’ll find Lenz and Koster and have a farewell dinner at Alfons’. We’ll celebrate.

Pat
: (
half between tears and laughter
): I stole a week anyhow. They can’t take that back. I stole a precious, lovely week — (
sing-song
) Pat stole a wee-eak. (
crowing
) Now you can put her in prison, but you can’t get the week. She’s got the loot buried deep in her heart.

DISSOLVE TO:

190 ALFONS’ CAFE

A nine o’clock crowd. At a heaping table are Pat, Koster and Bobby — a chair waits for Lenz who has not arrived. Alfons, unusually magnificent in collar, tie and coat, hovers over them.

Pat
: It seems awful not to wait for Gottfried but it does look so good.

Koster
(
to Alfons, rather concerned
): Do you know where he is?

Alfons
(
glancing around cautiously
): I have an idea — there’s a political meeting.

Koster
(
to Pat
): Anyhow I’ll bring him to the train — if he hasn’t got a couple of black eyes.

Pat
(
with feverish gaiety
): Alfons, I’m all a dither about how grand you look.

Alfons
: In honor of a very fine lady.

Pat
: But how can you throw people out dressed like that?

Alfons
: Oh, can’t I? I’m ready in two seconds. (
like lightning he whips off his coat — the shirt front, tie and collar are in one piece and come off with a click. He is ready for action
) You see? — if they get tough, I do this — and this —

He picks a little man off a seat at the bar and goes through the action of tossing him out the door. Then setting the little man back on his stool, he replaces his ceremonial front.

Pat
: Alfons —

(
she pulls his face down to hers and rubs her cheek against him
)

Alfons
(
retiring to the phonograph in embarrassment
): It is not done to kiss the maitre d’hotel.

Koster
: In front of her husband, too. (
he shakes his head
) I was afraid it wouldn’t last.

Alfons starts the “Pilgrims’ Chorus” from Tannhauser.

DISSOLVE TO:

191 THE SAME SCENE. AN HOUR LATER —
 — the food eaten. Pat at the bar having cognac with Alfons. Koster and Bobby at the table.

Bobby
: We’ll have to go home — our train goes at noon.

Koster
(
low voice
): I’m worried about Lenz. Somebody said there’s street fighting down in the Schmedgrasse Quarter. And he’s always in front of everything.

Bobby
: You think we’d better go after him?

Koster
: I think we ought to. I hate to drag you out tonight.

Bobby
: That’s all right.

Koster
: You take Pat home and I’ll be waiting for you in the street with Heinrich. No use frightening her.

Bobby
: I won’t tell her.

DISSOLVE TO:

192 THE BEDROOM IN THE BOARDING HOUSE

Pat’s trunk and suitcases are in evidence. She is undressed, getting into bed.

Pat
: I hope there won’t be a bad dream.

Bobby
(
tenderly
): Let me come into your dreams.

Pat
: You’d be very welcome there.

Bobby
(
hesitantly
): Pat, I’ve got a little taxi job — I’ll have to go out for a while. A little more money for our trip.

(
he bends over her
):
Pat
: I hate it when you drive all night.

Bobby
(
cheerfully
): But I remember you once said you didn’t like people watching you when you’re asleep.

Pat
: I didn’t. But now I get frightened that I won’t come back.

Bobby
: But one always does. I won’t let you go away while you sleep. I’m an old wakeful soldier.

(
he extinguishes all but the reading lamp and goes out the door
)

DISSOLVE TO:

193 THE MISTY STREET OUTSIDE

In the distance a roll of drums, distant shots, the scream of an ambulance. Bobby gets into “Heinrich” beside Koster and they roar away.

DISSOLVE TO:

194 ANOTHER STREET —
 — crowded with truck-loads of police with straps, helmets, guns, gleaming in the lamplight. Young men in half uniforms are gathered in the doorways.

“Heinrich” drives through — stops. Bobby and Koster get out and walk to where a speaker is declaiming on an outdoor platform. In the general commotion we can only hear the speaker’s voice as it rises to a climax.

Speaker
: This cannot go on! This must be changed! (
etc. etc.
): the audience roars applause. Bobby and Koster jump up on a doorstep and scan the faces of the audience — lower middle-class and proletariat.

Koster
: He isn’t here — come on. There’s another meeting down the street.

DISSOLVE TO:

195 EXT. THE FACADE OF A BIG GRIMY APARTMENT HOUSE

Small stores in front. Two trucks of police waiting. A small crowd listens to a yogi in a turban, preaching beneath a sign which reads:

“ASTROLOGY — PALMISTRY — FORTUNE TELLING YOUR HOROSCOPE — 1 MARK”

CUT TO:

196 TWO SHOT OF BOBBY AND KOSTER

Bobby
: What these people want isn’t politics. They want a bogus religion.

Koster
: Sure. They want to believe in something again — it doesn’t matter what it is. Great Snakes! Look out!

CUT TO:

197 FULL SHOT OF THE STREET —
 — along which comes a line of Sturmtruppen — simultaneously a bunch of young men and boys spring from the shadows and plunge a great plank into the door of the apartment house. A fight begins at the door. Some of those within resisting, some pouring out. Chair legs, beer glasses, etc., as weapons.

IN A MEDIUM SHOT, Lenz appears suddenly, grapples with a policeman. Koster grabs the policeman and in a minute, as the police whistles sound, the Comrades are safely out of the melee. They hide —

198 IN A DOORWAY —
 — with a crying child, then they step forth and we truck in front of them as they walk down the street, side by side.

Koster
(
to Lenz
): I should think you’d have had enough. After four years of war —

CUT TO:

199 ACROSS THE STREET, FOUR YOUNG MEN —
 — stop and regard the Comrades. One of them, wearing new yellow puttees, darts across the street toward them.

Yellow Leggings
: There he is!

He fires two shots, turns and tears away, his companions with him, as we —

CUT TO:

200 GOTTFRIED LENZ —
 — shot through the heart, falls dead on the sidewalk.

201 KOSTER AND BOBBY —
 — kneel beside Lenz, rip open his coat and shirt. Seeing the wound they stiffen.

Koster
(
getting up
): Stay here — I’ll get the car.

(
he runs off
)

Bobby
(
shaking Lenz
): Gottfried! Can you hear me?

Lenz’s eyes are half shut, his face grey. Bobby listens for breathing, for heartbeats. Nothing.

Koster backs “Heinrich” up with a rush beside the body. The street is silent, but there is a far-away burst of machine-gun firing as they pick up the body, lay it in the back seat of the car and cover it with an overcoat. Koster and Bobby get up in front and drive off hurriedly.