Next Life Might Be Kinder (8 page)

“Simple cod,” I said. “All spiced to taste.”

She returned the lid to the pot, then retrieved
The Sleepless Night of the Litigant,
set it on the kitchen table, and carefully unwrapped the paper. I stepped closer to study it as she continued reading from Istvakson's letter:

“‘The image shows two mythical figures disturbing the litigant's rest: horrible Restlessness confronts him in his bed while another demon, Anxiety, hounds Sweet Sleep from the room. Do you know your scripture, Sam Lattimore? “For all his days are sorrows, and his travails grief; even in the night his heart does not rest.” This is from Ecclesiastes. Sweet Sleep runs away. The fat bourgeois burgher, the litigant, can't sleep. His nights are haunted. What is the question he needs to have answered? What is the mystery he needs solved? He cannot speak directly to God with all that disturbance around him. That's the real problem, I think.

“‘So from this gift I would like you to understand that I am awake much of the night litigating myself, judging my every decision that I make on my movie. Will it do justice to the life of Elizabeth and Samuel Lattimore and their young, tragic marriage? I will never experience sweet sleep during the making of this movie, and maybe never again. Come into Halifax, I am begging you. Give me guidance and direction. Look at even the few scenes we have shot already. My assistant can chauffeur you if you prefer. I mean no sanctimoniousness, only to relate to you, artist to artist, that if you look closely at what is depicted in the engraving, you are seeing my desperate state of mind. I need to speak with you.'”

Lily Svetgartot put the letter on the table.

“My God, how can you work with this man?” I said. “Self-litigation!”

“He wants to restore emotional fullness to the intellectual process of making a film.”

“That makes me want to throw up. Are you his ventriloquist's dummy? He makes me want to vomit.”

“Go ahead. I'll wait right here.”

“Here's what I'd like. Please take this engraving across the road and give it to Philip, your new close friend. It is the perfect engraving for Philip. He'll understand it right away. It belongs with him. He'll really appreciate it.”

“Fine, I understand.” She picked up the engraving. At the door she took her raincoat from the silent butler and wrapped it around the engraving. The steady rain had become a downpour.

“Also, please tell Cynthia and Philip that dinner is ready. Have a nice drive back, Miss Svetgartot.”

When Philip and Cynthia arrived for the bouillabaisse dinner, Philip said, “Thanks for giving me the working title of my new book, Sam.
The Sleepless Night of the Litigant.
It's perfect. I've hung the engraving on the wall behind my typewriter. By the way, Lily's eating leftovers at the house. What with this weather, she's staying in the guest room tonight. You can't send a person out on the road in this mess.”

It was a pummeling windblown rain, which was the only reason, after Philip and Cynthia went home, about nine-thirty, I didn't go down to the beach; Elizabeth never appeared in the rain. “I think she doesn't want her books to suffer any water damage” is what I had said to Dr. Nissensen.

“S
AM, YOU NEED
some employment,” Elizabeth said. This was a few days after her first lesson in the intermediate lindy. We were down to $320 in our bank account.

“I'm working on my novel every day.”

“I know,” she said. “If I know anything, I know that. Can't we take turns being the practical one? I'll go first. I saw this advertisement and think it would be great for you. The CBC has an interesting thing going and they're looking for writers. You could write for radio. Listen, I've got the clipping right here: ‘CBC radio is undertaking an ambitious re-creation of the cultural atmosphere of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, featuring the most popular radio entertainments of those decades.'”

“Okay, I admit it does sound interesting.”

“
You Can't Do Business with Hitler,
that's one program they're hiring writers for.
The Shadow of Fu Manchu,
that's another. But there's one I thought you'd be perfect for, Sam, and I even remember hearing it on the radio when I was a little girl. It's called
Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons.
Melodramas about a detective named—”

“Let me guess. Mr. Keen.”

“I typed up and sent your résumé last week. Including a copy of your first novel.”

“You already went and did that?”

“Yes I did.”

“And did I get a response yet?”

“In fact, they called this morning when you were out. You have an interview. Darling, my fellowship money is dwindling fast. I can waitress—I don't mind. I'd apply for the radio work myself, but my brain doesn't work that way. I couldn't make up dialogue and all that. Besides, Marghanita Laski would be too jealous a mistress. I have to stick with her.”

“The interview—”

“Four
P.M.
tomorrow, the CBC office on Cogswell Street.”

 

The interview went well, and the CBC gave me four cassettes of episodes of
Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons,
parts 1 through 4 of “The Case of the Author Who Lost His Soul,” which originally ran on the NBC Blue network. For my audition, I was asked to write a fifth episode, “to extend the story line,” even though in the original broadcasts the story had been fully concluded. I went right back to the hotel and listened to the cassettes. Part 1 (December 27, 1938, 7:15–7:30
P.M.
) synopsis: “Jane Merrill asks Keen to locate her ex, Stephen Giddings, a struggling author. An unpublished novel he wrote years ago is now in demand. Giddings left Jane to wed affluent Rita Sandford.”
Part 2 (December 28, 1938, 7:15–7:30
P.M.
) synopsis: “Rita could support Giddings's writing lifestyle. Jane still loves him and wants to see the book succeed. Keen finds the Giddingses living in Bermuda, and flies down to urge Stephen to return to writing.”
Part 3 (December 29, 1938, 7:15–7:30
P.M.
) synopsis: “Giddings has changed. He and Rita live wasted, lazy existences. He hasn't written in years. Disillusioned, he's fed up with his marriage. Keen reports this to Jane.” Part 4 (January 3, 1939, 7:15–7:30
P.M.
) synopsis: “Mr. Keen takes Giddings, a beaten failure, back to his first wife, Jane. Giddings realizes that all his achievements sprang from the devotion and encouragement of this woman.”

I played the episodes for Elizabeth that night. “Oh, this'll be a piece of cake for you,” she said.

“I'm not sure I like that response, seeing that the title is ‘The Author Who Lost His Soul.'”

“It's fiction. Just pretend to be someone else.”

I wrote the episode and got the job. To celebrate my becoming employed, Elizabeth made salade Niçoise, with crème brûlée for dessert. At the kitchen table I was typing away at my first paid assignment, to extend the episodes of “The Case of Lucy Daire's Real Family,” originally broadcast in 1939. Elizabeth was wearing only a denim work shirt, a few sizes too big for her, held together by a single button at the navel. “Making your favorite aphrodisiac salad for you, Sam. I bought an expensive bottle of Chablis, too. Way too expensive. I couldn't be happier.”

She took a small fillet of tuna from the refrigerator and seared it for a few minutes in a pan slicked with olive oil. She put two eggs on to boil. She took out a head of lettuce and washed it leaf by leaf under the spigot, pressing each on a paper towel to soak up the moisture before setting it in a big wooden bowl. She put two large red potatoes, cut in quarters, in a pot of water and lit a flame under it. She put a handful of green beans on to boil. She took out a bread board and cut three scallions into quarter-inch pieces and pushed them with the knife into a saucepan, where she sautéed them for a minute or two in olive oil. On a separate board she cut the tuna into quarter-inch pieces. She took out the potatoes, peeled the skins, and cut the pieces into neat rectangles. She took up the eggs with a spoon and ran each under cold water. Then she cracked and peeled their shells and sliced the eggs into the salad. She put in the potatoes and fish and scallions. She sprinkled in peppercorns, laid the green beans on top, and dropped in half a dozen or so sweet grape tomatoes. She emptied a can of white kidney beans in the bowl. She added an oil-and-vinegar dressing, tossed it all lightly—just twice—with long wooden spoons, and set the bowl on the table. She brought out two plates and forks and cloth napkins. She took a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator and poured us each a glass. I was famished and the salad looked so good. “Thank you for all this,” I said, and reached for the bowl and wooden spoons that lay crosswise on top.

But before she sat down, Elizabeth put an album by Marianne Macdonough,
Winter Trees,
on the phonograph and set the needle on the song called “Upward.” Fiddle, guitar, and flute accompaniment, with a voice straight from the Cape Breton highlands. The first stanza was:

 

It only takes one glass of wine

To do as I please.

The breeze gently unbuttons my blouse,

I comb your hair with my fingers,

You kiss me upward from my knees.

 

As the song continued, Elizabeth opened the button of her denim shirt.

 

Last night I was reading an Acadian romance,

All pounding hearts and rain,

And owls at prayer in the trees,

When, my sweet love, you set my book

Beside the pillow

And kissed me upward from my knees.

 

“Get the hint?” she said. She lay down on the Victorian chaise longue.

Elizabeth used to say, “I have certain defining impulses.”

A
LFONSE PADGETT WAS
a psychopathic thug in a bellman's uniform, but I could not see this at first. I saw only the bellman's etiquette, the practiced sense of deference. Like any bellman in any hotel lobby, he was part of a hierarchy: hotel manager, concierge, bellman. I did notice that he often acted put out, to the point of dramatically sighing in exasperation at normal requests. And I witnessed one incident that far exceeded feigned insult or petulance, when the hotel manager, Mr. Isherwood, asked him to unload six large suitcases from a limousine—a rare sight in Halifax, especially at the Essex Hotel, because wealthy people usually stayed at the Lord Nelson—and to “fetch them up to the Provincial Suite,” on the top floor, “as quickly as possible.” I happened to be in the lobby to buy a newspaper when I overheard the exchange. Padgett more or less snapped at Mr. Isherwood, “I'm going to take my coffee break first.” “No,
after,
” Mr. Isherwood said. “I don't
fetch
luggage,” Padgett said. “I'm not a dog.” Then he walked out of the hotel and went next door to the Saint-Laurent Restaurant, which had a counter that all of the bellmen frequented. The chauffeur lined up the suitcases, and a trunk festooned with travel stickers, in the middle of the lobby, as if to reprimand the bellman for his negligence. Other guests had to walk around the luggage. I sat on a couch in order to see what might occur, I admit. It was a good twenty-five minutes before Padgett returned. Mr. Isherwood met him at the suitcases and said, “You are docked half a day's pay.”

The morning of Elizabeth's second lindy lesson, Padgett was on shift. Elizabeth had worked all morning at her desk, despite a headache. She had made a breakthrough in her understanding of
The Victorian Chaise-Longue,
the symbolic elements of a kind of time travel: the main character, Melanie, is tucked in by the nurse for restorative sleep, and when she wakes up, she finds herself imprisoned in the body of a woman in Victorian times. Elizabeth read me a couple of pages of her dissertation and then said, “I still don't want you to read the thing until it's done.”

“What you just read sounds good,” I said. “The thinking is solid, Lizzy. But do you want to take a break? I can massage your temples, work on that headache, or don't you have it anymore?”

“In some strange way it might be helping me to concentrate, concentrate away from the headache, I mean. But can you go next door and get me two espressos?”

“Be right back.”

I took the electric lift. When it had descended to the lobby, the door opened and I slid the old-style metal grille sideways and there was Alfonse Padgett. He was holding a suitcase, but its owner was not in tow. First thing, Padgett glanced around the lobby as if to see whether he was under surveillance from Mr. Isherwood or anyone else. The coast was clear, so he blocked my path. He set down the suitcase, roughly grasped me around my waist and clutched my right hand in his left hand, then spun me around inside the lift and shouted, “Yowza! Yowza! Yowza!” When he had me pressed against the back of the lift, he kissed my forehead with a loud smack and said, “I can't wait for tonight's lesson, baby.” He stepped back. “I put the fix in with Arnie Moran,” he said. “Alfonse Padgett and Mrs. Lattimore are partnered up tonight. Oh, goody.” He turned around, picked up the suitcase, and decided to take the stairs.

E
LIZABETH'S DESK WAS
a Canadian school desk that she had purchased at Webster's, a used-furniture warehouse at the foot of Agricola Street; we had borrowed the hotel's flatbed truck to haul it to our apartment. To the left of her desk was a bookcase with two shelves containing scholarly monographs about Marghanita Laski, a few in French, which Elizabeth read fluently. On the wall to the left was a framed photograph of Lizzy and me standing in front of Cyrano's Last Night on our wedding day. Marie Ligget had taken the picture with Elizabeth's camera. On the wall directly in front of her desk was a framed author's photograph from the back of one of Marghanita Laski's books. In this black-and-white portrait she appears to be perhaps fifty. She is wearing a round pendant at the neck of a dark blouse and is looking straight at the camera—serious expression, kind eyes, sensual mouth, dark hair pulled back and combed close to her head, very precise about her person, composed. Anyway, when Elizabeth looked up from her work, there Marghanita Laski was. On the wall to the right of the desk was a third framed photograph, this one of her mother and father in front of their small house in Hay-on-Wye. On the day Elizabeth died, on the left-hand side of her desk was her well-thumbed copy of
The Victorian Chaise-Longue,
held open by a glass paperweight to pages 66–67. I have that very copy right here, with a paragraph on page 66 underlined, with an exclamation point in the left margin: