Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (11 page)

Barbara said, “You're very right, Mrs. San-Marquand, and I'm terribly sorry”—but I felt that she did not, now, quite know how to carry on. My reaction to Lola—for Barbara was swift—had disarmed her; had
caused the top she had been maliciously spinning to fall, with a perceptible thunder, uselessly and tamely down. She looked at me briefly, wondering if I thought she should be ashamed of herself, then concentrated on her plate, having made it very clear that she now waited to take her cue from me.

Saul San-Marquand had also shaken my hand. His hand was wet and white, I felt nothing when I took his hand except a deep aversion. I disliked him at once, and as profoundly as one man can dislike another—from the very bottom of my balls. His lips were thin, his eyes were vague, his nearly snow-white head seemed far too heavy for his neck. He impressed me as a Jeremiah who had never had any convictions. Perhaps I disliked him because I liked Lola—
he
seemed, certainly, the most preposterous and deadly of all her preposterous details—or perhaps it was because I knew that Barbara admired him very much. Women liked Saul. No doubt it is due to some fatal lack in me that I never understood this at all.

But perhaps I disliked him because he was one of the very few men I've ever met, if not the only one, who seemed really to dislike men. I am probably being unjust here, and, if I'm to be honest, I must confess to a certain bewilderment and to a very definite awareness that my attitude cannot be defended by logic. For I get along with women who dislike women very well. Perhaps the male ego finds the female antipathy flattering and perhaps it also flatters itself that it is able to understand this antipathy. Barbara, God knows, can't bear women and has only had, in all the time we've known each other, a single close female friend—who can't bear women, either, and who can't even, in fact, bear the theater, and
who has lately taken a post in a hospital in Hong Kong. But my own instinct, as to the male relation, is that men, who are far more helpless than women—because far less single-minded—need each other as comrades, need each other for correction, need each other for tears and ribaldry, need each other as models, need each other indeed, in sum, in order to be able to love women. Women liked Saul, but I never felt that Saul liked women. I felt that he used them, collected them, huddled like an infant between their breasts, and used their furnace to diminish his chill. If his chill could be—barely—diminished, it could certainly not be conquered. It eventually began to seem to me that the women clung to Saul in the hope of being able to get back some of the heat he had stolen. Perhaps some of them managed to do so, but his wife was not to be numbered among that improbable few. For warmth she had substituted a deft imitation, a most definite style, which was bizarre and bewildering precisely to the degree that one sensed beneath it a genuine impulse, perpetually, and not without bitterness, held in check.

“We know that Miss King is from Kentucky,” said Lola San-Marquand, “but she has not told us where
you
are from. And, while I'm aware that the most unlikely things happen every day—that's the very lesson, the
charm,
the
discipline
of the theater—yet, I must say, that the script which would have the two of you meeting in Kentucky would”—and she laughed elaborately, a high, clear, rather girlish sound—“impress me as lacking
verisimilitude.
Now, I'm sure that you'll shatter all my preconceptions and tell me that you both grew up in Kentucky in the same house.”

“Well,” I said, “that's happened more than once,
though—friendship—wasn't the usual result. But I've never even seen Kentucky. I rather hope that I never do. I was born in New York. In Harlem.”

For reasons securely hidden from me, the mention of Harlem created in Lola's husband a comparative vigor, a stunning hint of life. “We lived there long ago,” he said. He looked at nothing and no one as he said this, and I concluded that he was seeing the streets of Harlem. “Oh,” I said, quickly, “where?”

“It was a long time ago,” he said. He then lapsed, as it were, out of our sight, and then again was shaken with a brief convulsion. This one reached his lips and caused the corners—nearly—to turn up. “Did you know Ethel Waters?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “but, of course, I know who she is.” I didn't like Saul, but he had the power—how the years were to prove it!—of bewildering me, of throwing me off-guard, of distracting my attention to
him
when it should have been on the terrain. “She's a wonderful singer,” I said inanely, and felt, at once, with a sharp and furious resentment, that this nerveless, wormy little man had somehow carried me beyond my depth. I stared at him. I felt Barbara concentrating on her plate in order the more deliberately and totally to concentrate on me. And I also felt—and this, too, I resented, feared—that my immediate affection for Lola and my unshakable love for Barbara—for it was love—had created, with the speed of flame, a deep, speechless communication between them. And this communication had to do with Saul and me—they were exchanging signals over our heads, quite as though my quality, far from nerveless, and my value, were to be equated with that of this unspeakable refugee from the garment center. I had worked in the garment
center, pushing trucks, and indeed I was to work there many times again, and Saul San-Marquand was the very distillation of my foremen and my bosses. I choked on my food, which now seemed, as, in a way it was, stolen, and my Scotch burned me. But of course I was going to be cool, and, in any case, I needed time to calculate, and so I used my sputter and my cough to make my statement impeccably ingenuous and juvenile: “I hear she's a marvelous actress, too, but I've never seen her.”

“But, my dear boy,” cried Lola, leaning forward, and with something very genuine in her face now—perhaps it was a genuine affection—“how could you possibly have seen her? You're far too young.
I
am old enough to be your mother, and
I
have seen her very seldom—Saul, my dear”—leaning forward again, beautifully interrupting herself, and moving a compassionately nerveless hand toward her magnificent brow—“she never acted, did she, at the Lafayette Theater—which is before
your
time, my dear youth,” turning now to me, “though it's in your territory. I
don't,
” she said portentously, leaning back, “
think
that she did. But your memory is so much better than my own.”

Saul's obsessive perusal of the streets of Harlem elicited, “No. We saw Rose McClendon there. Before we met.”

“Of course!
Wasn't
she superb. What was the play? Oh. My memory. I do not know what I would do without Saul. And he does me the honor of pretending not to know what he would do without
me.
Do you remember the name of the play, my dear?”

“Ethel Waters,” Barbara interrupted, “couldn't possibly have acted in the Lafayette Theater. I don't think. She wasn't considered an actress then, she was only, as
Leo says, known as a singer. Isn't the first thing she did as an actress”—she leaned into Lola San-Marquand's quite incredible breasts—“the play called
Mamba's Daughters?
Which
I
didn't see. I was still doing penance in Kentucky then.”

Lola threw back her head and laughed—that oddly genuine, girlish sound. “My dear. If you
had
seen it, I assure you that your penance in Kentucky would have been perhaps more painful, but certainly more brief. I assure you—”

“The play in which we saw Rose McClendon,” said Saul, with what I was now beginning to recognize as the unanswerable firmness of the totally infirm, “was a play by Paul Green—you remember Paul Green—it was called
In Abraham's Bosom.
”

“Of course!” said Lola. “About the schoolteacher. Neither of you, of course, could possibly have seen—”

“But I read it,” I said. I was beginning to find my feet again. “I'm not sure I really liked it.”

“If you were older,” said Lola San-Marquand, with assurance, “it would be a very good role for you. Miss King has confided in us that she wished—aspired—to become an actress. Are you also tempted toward the sacred flame? I must tell you—and Saul will tell you that I am
never
wrong about these things—these
elements
—he likes to pretend that I was really born to be a medium”—and now she laughed again, not as long as it seemed, not as loud as it sounded, with her marvelous head thrown back—“and, truly, I never
am
wrong. In
these
matters.” She looked at her husband roguishly; he had not yet looked at her. “And I must tell you—my beamish boy—that, whether or not you are tempted toward the sacred flame, the
flame
”—she raised her hand, she spread
her fingers wide; the lights flashed, like flame, like flame, on her abjectly jeweled fingers: it was as though, with the same gesture, she were warding off and abjectly awaiting the mortal blow—“the flame has very definite intentions toward
you.
The flame demands you. The flame will have you. You are not handsome. You are not, really, even, very good-looking. But you are—
haunting.
If you are capable of discipline—and I
know
that you are, it shows in the way you carry yourself, it shows in ways that you do not see—which you will never see—my dear, you will go far. Much further than you imagine. I know. I am gifted in these matters. In fact,” and now she leaned toward Barbara; they had been continually exchanging signals—over our heads; now Lola hurled her deadliest, most crucial flare, which was also her vow, to Barbara, of fidelity. “Miss King will also go very far—very far indeed. Her fame will be greater than yours, and it will certainly come sooner. But she will not have had to cross your deserts. And she will have to pay for that. And so will you.” And then she leaned back, mighty, exhausted.

Barbara said, much to my surprise, “I hear you. I hear you. I think you're right. I'm very glad you've said it. I've never known how.”

I was amazed. I was flattered. I was frightened. I looked at the two women, who looked neither at each other nor at either of us. Barbara leaned back and put her empty plate behind the sofa, on the floor. “I still don't like,” I said, with a certain, very deliberate obstinacy—deliberate, but far from calculated—“
In Abrahams' Bosom.
I'd like—if you think I can act—to try
The Emperor Jones—
”

“You're much too thin for that,” said Lola, with
finality, “and, frankly—I hope you aren't inordinately sensitive—much too young—”

“Leo,” said Barbara—she looked at Lola—“I think the play we should try to do is
All God's Chillun Got Wings.
”

Lola clapped her hands. “Of course,” she said. She smiled at Saul. “And Rags could direct it. Rags would love to do it.”

“We are,” said Saul, sounding far more definite than he had sounded all night, “the artistic directors of The Actors' Means Workshop.”

“Rags—Rags Roland—was once, I believe, a good friend of the actress who did that play in London. With great success.” Lola spoke now with a bright, matronly vagueness which impressed me as being a way of stalling for time. “You've heard of Rags Roland? You know who she is?”

“Oh, of course,” said Barbara, “she's a very successful producer.”

Lola leaned back, raising one finger, closing both eyes. “She is not only
that,
my dear. She is also a
most
interesting director.
Most
interesting. The world does not yet know it, but
we
do—and many of the actors she has worked with are very aware of who
really
directed them in some of their greatest performances—oh, there is far more to Rags Roland than her mere function as
producer.
She is part of our staff at the Workshop. She is one of our oldest friends. And
invaluable.
”

“Is there really any hope of our being allowed to study at the Workshop?” Barbara now asked. She asked this of Saul. Lola, continuing to smile, now looked very steadily at Barbara in order, I felt, not to look too directly at her husband, on whom Barbara's effect was now, critically,
practically, to be tested. “I've heard marvelous things about it, but, of course, we both also know that it's virtually impossible to be accepted there.”

Barbara had decided that she
wished
to be accepted, had decided, indeed, that she was
going
to be accepted, on terms, whatever these might prove to be, which she would simply have to prepare herself to meet. I was undecided. Events seemed to be moving rather faster than I liked. But I struggled to be ready with my answer when the moment for my answer would be ripe.

“Well, of course,” said Saul, and he looked very briefly at me—he liked me no more than I liked him—“we would be derelict in our duty, in our responsibility to the theatrical community at large and to the American theater in particular, if we didn't insist that those who wish to work with us meet the very highest standards. Many people feel that our standards are ridiculously high, I have even heard us accused, in some quarters, of cruelty. This has never dismayed us for a second, we have steadfastly gone on with our work, and we have achieved what we consider, and not only we, if we may say so, some exceedingly fine results. Our harvest has not been negligible, we are very much encouraged, and we intend to continue in the great light which our long experience has permitted us to achieve.” He paused. I watched him; I think my mouth was open. “Now, you,” he said, “and your friend, Mister—?”

“Proudhammer,” I said.

“Yes. You are both very interesting young people. You impress us very much. Your own quality,” and he favored Barbara with a meek, shy smile, “is something like a—stormy petrel, so to say. We don't yet have, honestly, as clear an impression of your—uh—
friend.
Proudhammer.
As we do of you. But this is not to say that we find him less interesting,” and he attempted a smile in my direction which failed, quite, to reach me. “But our methods at the Workshop are extremely severe and not everyone can bring to the Workshop the necessary background, the background which will enable them to achieve the necessary
discipline.
We have a responsibility, as we have said, not only to the theatrical community at large, but to all those who work with us and who try to learn from us.” I was silent, for Barbara's sake. I finished my drink and, only for Barbara's sake, did not immediately leave the sofa to pour myself another. But I leaned forward, with my empty glass in my hand, deliberately in the attitude of imminent departure. “You are an exceedingly attractive young lady, but what makes you feel that you are qualified to become an actress?”