You and Your Husband Are Word People, Right?
WHILE IN HALIFAX for those three days, I went to the shoot on six different occasions, sometimes just hours apart. Obviously, I had no better judgment to work against. On my final visit, the crew was filming a scene in an inexpensive restaurant in which the character of Alfonse Padgett purchases a gun in a clandestine fashion from a bellman employed at a different hotel. I jotted down in my notebook, “The scene suggested murderous collusion among bellmen in the city of Halifax.” The two actors were wearing bellmen’s uniforms, implying they were both on break from their duties in their respective hotel lobbies. Quick exchange of words; they agree on financial terms. A revolver is passed from hand to hand beneath the table, in a paper bag printed with the name of a local pharmacy. When the other bellman then asked, “Why do you need a revolver anyway, Alfonse?” the reply he gets is “I’ve been spurned in love.” The other bellman laughs and shrugs. “So, you’re going to do yourself in, is that it?” he says. “‘Unrequited Love Drives Bellman Padgett to Drastic Measures,’ that’ll be the headline, eh?” Actor-Padgett fairly hisses, “No, she’s already done me in.” The actors went through twenty-two takes of this scene. When Istvakson said, “Still not perfect,” the cinematographer, Akutagawa, lost it.
Quite apart from anything else, the dramatic sufferings of Akutagawa were interesting to witness. I’d had some history on this fellow from the newspaper and from Lily Svetgartot, via Philip and Cynthia. One article in the Chronicle-Herald referred to him as “neurasthenic.” So I knew some things. He was fifty-five years of age. He had been an assistant cinematographer to the great Japanese director Kurosawa on one picture. He had been the chief cinematographer on five pictures to date, including one called To the City, written and directed by Istvakson; the two men had first met at a film festival in Oslo. To the City was a variation on a basic trope of Chekhov’s plays: people in the countryside endlessly debating whether to go to the city.
Istvakson’s version is set in Sweden. The characters, living together in dilapidated and cramped quarters, drink heavily and argue over whether to go to Stockholm to rob a bank or to fall back on the menial jobs they are sick and tired of and which make them feel useless and humiliated. I’d seen that movie. The dialogue is superficially Chekhovian. Plot-wise, the robbery is completely botched; one character dies in a spray of police bullets, the others are hauled off to prison. One critical accolade — or at least comment — about Akutagawa’s work on that film was “Never has claustrophobia been filmed with such nocturnal strangeness.” Indeed, most of the scenes leading up to the attempted bank heist take place at night, the result, I read, of Akutagawa’s creative insistence. According to Lily Svetgartot, Istvakson and Akutagawa had a grudging respect for, and yet basically hated, each other. A few months before the filming in Halifax began, Akutagawa was rumored to be “somewhere on the Sea of Japan, vacationing and thinking,” a journalistic euphemism, according to Lily Svetgartot, for confinement in a rest hospital.
Akutagawa was dressed in an expensive-looking black suit, a white shirt buttoned to the collar, and no tie, and he wore black high-top sneakers. He was about five feet six inches tall, very trim and well groomed, his considerably thick hair beautifully styled with a part on the left side. He seemed to move in staccato choreographies for even short distances — say, across a hotel lobby, quite arresting in itself. It occurred to me that he might suffer from chronic pain of some sort. Lily had told Philip, who told me, that Akutagawa was “never far away from his pharmacy.” Once, when she’d dropped off some script revisions, she counted no fewer than twelve vials of medications in his room at the Essex Hotel. She’d found the door slightly ajar, knocked, then went right in. “I even checked under the bed, but he wasn’t home,” Lily had said.
Now, after Istvakson expressed dissatisfaction with all the takes of that restaurant scene, Akutagawa cried out, “Istvakson, you are mad! Look at the takes, please. You will find an excellent one!” Istvakson said, “No, we need another take, now!” The two actor-bellmen got ready to do the scene again. But Akutagawa removed his suit jacket and began to tear at the sleeve with his teeth. “I bought you that suit!” Istvakson said, which sent a current of nervous laughter through the crew. Akutagawa then took a vial of pills from his trouser pocket, motioned to his assistant for a glass of water, emptied the vial into the palm of his hand, and shouted, “Twenty-two pills!” In other words, the number of takes of the scene was likely to kill him. He gulped down only one or two pills, however, and threw the rest at Istvakson. Akutagawa’s personal assistant, a film student at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design named Randolph Morse (Philip had mentioned his name at dinner one evening; he kept up with such things more than Cynthia did), dropped to his knees and searched for the pills. At this point Akutagawa said to the assistant cinematographer, a Japanese woman about his age, Michiko Zento, “Please film this — now! One take!” She moved in behind the camera — Istvakson, by the way, watching all of Akutagawa’s shenanigans with what appeared to be amused interest, did not intervene — focused, and nodded to Akutagawa, who then said, “This is the last will and testament of Akutagawa Matsuo. With sound mind and body, witnessed by Michiko Zento, assistant cinematographer. I begin by pointing a finger.” He pointed at Istvakson. “‘Listen to me! Listen! I’m telling you, the man is horrible. He’s a demon! Ah, I can’t bear it! Away with him!’ I have just quoted sentences composed by Dazai Osamu, my favorite writer. I acknowledge my debt here to Dazai Osamu.”
Akutagawa stepped into the restaurant scenery on set. Michiko Zento turned the camera toward him. “I have been driven to my death by Mr. Istvakson. Finally it has happened!” Akutagawa said, apparently continuing his last will and testament. “I leave my clothes to my nephew in Tokyo. I leave my journals and other writings to Michiko Zento. I leave my house to my sister. Whatever little money I have, I leave to my niece Kyoko, who lives in the city of Portland, Oregon, in America. Otherwise, I have nothing. I have only had my work. I am now leaving for home. I think I’ll go shipboard. There is much water, as you must have heard, to jump into between the country of Canada and the country of Japan.”
Istvakson applauded, but nobody else did.
Michiko Zento now helped Akutagawa to his hotel room. He stumbled along beside her. The scene was struck and the cast and crew scattered to their various rooms or off to cafés or restaurants or other night spots. Lily Svetgartot saw me and walked right up and said, “This has been a pretty awful day. What just happened was only part of it. Now I’m going to have to sit up with Akutagawa all night — how do you say it? I heard this phrase once and liked it — applying the balm. I’ll have to talk him into staying. Doctors will be summoned. All that, all that, all that. Good Christ.”
The fact is, Padgett had declared his sordid intentions to Elizabeth on several occasions outside the ballroom. The first was about two months before he murdered her. At that time, he’d seen her leaving the public library on Spring Garden and, after following her for a few blocks, stepped up to her and said, “Mrs. Lattimore, out for a stroll, I see.” Elizabeth said, “I’ve been working, Mr. Padgett. And now I’m going to meet my husband at home.” To which Padgett replied, “Oh, I’ve tied him up to that antique sofa of yours. That gives you and me lots of time to have an old-fashioned heart-to-heart. What do you say?” “You’d have to have a heart for that,” Elizabeth said, and crossed the street. Padgett apparently was stung by this remark. He soon caught up with her. Elizabeth stopped, looked around at how crowded the shopping area along Spring Garden Road was, and felt less vulnerable for all of that. “Fuck off, Mr. Padgett,” she said. It struck Elizabeth that having said this was an incitement to him, because he said, “You have a certain way with words.” Then he said, “I get women. I can get all the women I want. Whenever I want a woman, I get one. I’ve even got them in the very hotel where I’m employed. The very same hotel you live in.” “Mr. Padgett,” Elizabeth said, “I’ll see that you get fired. You’re a creep. You’re a menace. Now fuck off.” “Hey, it so happens I’m on my way back to the hotel too,” he said. “My shift begins in ten minutes. What’s the harm in me escorting you? Afraid hubby will get jealous and try to do something about it?” “You think you’re in a movie,” Elizabeth said. “But really you’re in your own sick head.” She shoved him hard and he stumbled into the road, barely avoiding being hit by a car. Padgett looked around, shrugged, and said loudly to passersby, “Lover’s quarrel.”