“All right, come in,” I said. “Let’s have a look at the engraving.”
I didn’t expect her to take off and hang up her raincoat on the silent butler (from the apartment in the Essex Hotel), near the front door, but that is what she did. “Could it be a bouillabaisse? Mmmm,” she said. “Such a dinner takes time. It takes patience. I have learned something about you.” She set the engraving down on the sofa and walked into the kitchen, lifted the top off the cooking pot on the stove, closed her eyes, and inhaled dramatically. Then she took up the wooden spoon from the counter, dipped it in the pot, and sampled the soup. “Sea bass, definitely, but a bouillabaisse needs two fish, usually. I can’t quite make out the other—”
“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.
Kiss Me Upward from My Knees
“SAM, 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.”