The New Confessions

19 The Hollywood One

I was back in Los Angeles when I got the news of my father’s death, wrangling with Eddie Simmonette over the start of preproduction on what I regarded as The Confessions: Part III—but which was known to everyone else as Father of Liberty. I was dreadfully upset by the news, much more than I had ever expected to be. In the midst of all the grief, the guilt and remorse for things unsaid and undone, one obsession came to dominate my mind — perhaps, I can now see, as a way of allowing myself to cope. What distressed me most was the sudden realization that my father might have died without ever seeing one of my films. I telegraphed Thompson immediately: DID FATHER EVER SEE MY FILMS STOP URGENT I KNOW SOONEST JOHN.

Thompson himself replied: YOUR QUESTION IN WORST POSSIBLE TASTE STOP SUGGEST YOU SEEK PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL ADVICE STOP THOMPSON TODD.

I wrote to Oonagh, then a very old lady living in Musselburgh, with the same inquiry, and received a shaky scrawl in reply, written by a neighbor.

Dear Johnny,

Terrible sad news about your father. He was a fine good man and we will all miss him “something dreadful.” I do not know if he ever saw your “films” (I have seen them many times), but I do remember him saying on frequent occasions that he “abominated the kinema.” But I am sure he would have changed his mind if only he had seen your own “pictures.” I do know he was very proud of those “photos” you took when you were a “wee laddie.” …

And so on for another breathless couple of pages clotted with arch “colloquialisms” all about the “funeral” and the “family.”

I think it was that finality in her message (I could hear quite clearly, as if from beyond the grave, the sound of his voice “abominating,” and could sense his intense pleasure in the archaic pronunciation of “cinema”). Even if he had been an avid cinemagoer I was sure that he would have contrived to ignore my own work. I told myself to forget it. Why was it so important that one cantankerous old man had seen my films? I felt ashamed of my abject filial needs — as if all sons worked only for paternal approbation. Grotesque idea!

Father of Liberty was on the surface little more than a conventional biopic of the sort manufactured by any Hollywood studio — usual subjects being kings and queens, philanthropists and bandleaders. You will be familiar with the genre. Eddie had insisted we follow this format if Lone Star were to finance it. Consequently I had rewritten the 1934 script with this stricture in mind. His second condition was that I must make the Jesse James Western afterwards. The Equalizer had been Lone Star’s top-grossing film of 1944 and ‘45. Eddie was hungry for more. There was also the now-pressing problem of Karl-Heinz’s age. I decided that convention would allow us to use him from the affair with Mme. de Warens onwards, although even that was straining credibility somewhat. I bent the truth slightly by allowing the implication to surface that the affair began later in his life than it really had. The much-vaunted verisimilitude of Part I was being compromised, but under the circumstances what else could I do? I expanded the adolescent and childhood years considerably. Then heavy makeup, a thick wig and careful lighting should just about see us through, or so I argued to Eddie, who was keen not to employ Karl-Heinz.

Karl-Heinz looked much better than he had in Berlin. He enjoyed California. He sunbathed a lot and his tan smoothed out the shadows and taut angularities of his face. His health improved too: his ulcers — he had several, apparently — responded to treatment. The studio rented an apartment for him in the Hotel Cythera on the oceanfront at Santa Monica, not far from my house, and I used to look in on him most days. Getting him over from Scotland had proved straightforward. Father of Liberty was slated to start and Karl-Heinz was cast as the lead. His entry visa and resident’s permit were rubber-stamped by the relevant authorities.

Karl-Heinz’s attitude to life was now even more one of placid resignation. He accepted his transformation from troglodyte Kippensammler to Hollywood movie star with nothing more than a shrug and a faint smile. I recognized the condition: he had surrendered himself to the current. In Santa Monica he affected the dress style of a slightly down-on-his-luck artist — faded shirts, baggy trousers and neckerchiefs — and settled easily into the community as if he had only been away on vacation for a while. One day when we were strolling along the beach, a boy abandoned his surfboard and loped up to him calling, “Hey! Hey! Karl, man, how are you?” We were introduced (I forget this lad’s improbable name — Chet, Brett or Rhett, I think) and he and Karl-Heinz discussed where they would meet later that evening. We strolled on.

“Ah, the boys …” he said wistfully.

“Having fun?”

“I wish they all could be Californian.”

I stopped worrying about him after that.

Pause. Reflect. Consider. Here we are in November 1948. I am going to be fifty years old in a few months. I am about to start filming a medium-budget biopic on the life of Jean Jacques Rousseau for Lone Star Films called Father of Liberty. It will feature my oldest friend in the lead role and will be produced and financed by another old friend and longtime collaborator. I live alone in my own house in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California. I am not rich but I am by no means poor. Father of Liberty will be my eighteenth completed film. I have two ex-wives and three children. I have a few close friends: Karl-Heinz, Eddie, Hamish, Ramón, Monika, the Coopers, the Gasts, the Hitzigs (Lori Madrazon was killed in a car accident in 1945). I have a few enemies. I have survived two world wars and serious injury. I have one lung, a strong heart, a weak left leg and my right shoulder stiffens up easily. I am carrying a little too much weight, my hair is graying, but I am told I still possess a certain vital dark attractiveness that is unusual in a man of my age.

My disappointments are profound but not numerous. I was unreconciled with my father when he died. My brother will not speak to me. I am estranged from my children. My second son, whom I adored, died when a baby. Worst of all, the woman I truly loved, and who could have transformed my life, abandoned me.

My moment of greatest triumph came early in my career. I have known fame and great wealth, have suffered poverty, neglect, and obloquy. My most commercially successful films have not been my best. My best work, the true expression of my particular genius, is unknown or unrecognized.

This seems an honest, not unreasonable summary. A half century with more than enough excitements and disasters, you might say, to fill several lives. And now with a pleasing structural neatness I am about to embark on a project that will complete an endeavor begun twenty years previously. Yes indeed, you might judge — with all objectivity — all things considered, given the absurd capriciousness of fortune, ceteris paribus, John James Todd has been a fortunate man.

I thought so too. I thought so too.

Then one day I got a call from Eddie Simmonette. Would I meet him in a certain drugstore on La Cienega Boulevard. And would I please make sure I was not followed. What was he talking about? I demanded. He wouldn’t say. I assumed he was going to tell me he was getting divorced. Rumor had it he and Artemisia were no longer happy together. I braced myself for a bout of Eddie’s self-pity, a rare event but an enervating one. Of course I made no checks to see if I was being followed.

It was a fine day, I recall, with only a faint haze. I stopped and bought a bottle of Coke from a sidewalk dispenser and drank it as I drove to meet Eddie. I looked at the tall spindly palm trees, the neat houses and immaculate gardens, the big chrome-heavy cars. The Coke was sweet in my mouth. The long nightmare that was to be the rest of my life was about to begin.

* * *

It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon when I arrived at the drugstore. I could see no sign of Eddie’s car outside, but when I went in he was there, pretending to browse at a revolving stand of crime novels. We sat down in a booth. He took off his sunglasses and mopped his face with a handkerchief. We exchanged pleasantries. Eddie was trying to lose some weight. He had grown really quite fat in the last two years. The cleft on his chin was half an inch deeper.

“How’s the diet?” I said.

“Great, great,” he said. The waitress approached.

“You want something?” Eddie asked me.

“I’ll have a black tea with lemon.” My teeth felt furry, faintly neuralgic.

“I’ll have a cheeseburger with slaw. Banana milkshake. No fries.” He smiled at me. “No fries. No booze. Why do I live?”

“What’s this all about, Eddie?”

He became serious. “I think we have some problems.” He took a magazine out of his pocket and handed it over, open at a page. I looked at the cover. It was called Red Connections.

“Look at that list of names.”

My eyes ran down the list. I recognized most of them. Herbert Biberman, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, Jr., Dalton Trumbo, Humphrey Bogart, Danny Kaye, Eddie Cantor and many more.

“You know who they are?” Eddie asked.

“The Hollywood Ten. And the people who signed that petition.”

“Right.”

“What’s it got to do with me?”

“Keep reading.”

I went on down the list. Groucho Marx, Bertolt Brecht, Frank Sinatra, John James Todd …

“What the hell is this?” I looked at the list’s heading: “Joe Stalin’s Hollywood Buddies.” The magazine was cheap — bad color reproduction, poor-quality paper. I scrutinized the contents. There seem to be a lot of exclamation marks.

“What does this mean?”

“You’ve been listed.”

“I can see that, for Christ’s sake, but so what?”

“Did you sign that petition, any petition, for the Hollywood Ten?”

“No. I mean I would have if I’d been asked. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t here at the time. I was in New York meeting Karl-Heinz.”

“Thank Christ he’s not on it.”

“Why should he be? Why should I be?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

“I haven’t the faintest.”

“Must be some mistake, then.” He smiled. He was the old Eddie again, relaxed and in control of his destiny.

“I don’t know why, John, but this Red shit has really got me spooked. Those bastards — McCarthy, Parnell Thomas — they’ve really started something. Now everyone gets to hunt Reds.” He gestured at the magazine. “And now this garbage.” He sighed. “Why do we do this to ourselves?”

I liked the “we”—good old Aram Lodokian.

“I can see why you’re worried,” I said, guilelessly. “I mean, God, you were even born in Russia.”

He gripped my arm fiercely. “Never, never say that to anyone, John, ever again.”

“Christ! All right. Let go.… Don’t worry, Eddie. Jesus.…”

He relaxed again. I had never seen him like this. I watched him eat his hamburger. Like everyone else in Los Angeles I had heard of the Hollywood Ten, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It reminded me a little of Berlin in the twenties. I had paid it little heed; I was busy with Father of Liberty.

I drove home, somewhat perturbed. Eddie had told me that Red Connections was published by an organization called Alert Inc., which gave a mailing address on Sunset Boulevard. As I pulled up near my house I saw two men in dark suits standing on the sidewalk opposite. As I approached, one of them — who for some reason seemed vaguely familiar — jumped into a car and drove off. The other man stood his ground.

“Can I help you?”

“Are you John James Todd?”

Why did I hear the voice of Ian Orr? I wish I had had the presence of mind to say, “Who wants to know?” but I managed only a docile admission. He handed me a manila envelope and walked away.

I waited until I was inside before I opened it. I poured myself a beer from the fridge and switched on the air conditioning. I killed two flies in the kitchen. Then I turned to my envelope. There was something immediately unpleasant about the sheet of pink paper it contained. Something ironic about it too: that the House Committee on Un-American Activities should issue its subpoenas on paper of such a politically suspect shade. I, John James Todd, was to present myself before the Brayfield Subcommittee of HUAC (we’ll call it HUAC; everyone else did) at Room 1121 of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where I would be questioned in “executive session.”

I phoned Eddie.

“Oh no! Oh no, Jesus fuck no!” He went on in this vein for a while. “When is it?”

“Next week.”

“Sweet suffering Christ. Have you got a lawyer?”

“No.”

“I’ll get you one. There’s a young guy works for us — very sharp. Don’t worry, John, I’m sure it’s just some terrible mistake. But listen, you’d better stay home for a while. Work from home.”

“All right. But we were going to start casting.”

“Let’s get this hearing out of the way.”

I went along with what he said. I spoke confidentially with a few people, who reassured me. All HUAC activities, they said, were in theory suspended pending the appeal of the Hollywood Ten. No one could understand why this subcommittee had been instigated. Even my lawyer, Page Farrier, was mystified.

Farrier was a junior partner in a firm that did a lot of business with Lone Star. He was a young man, in his late twenties, and his looks inspired confidence. He was big, over six feet, with a strong bulging jaw and thick curly hair that he forced into a parting. He wore bow ties, something I approve of in professional men: it hints at human qualities — vanity, self-esteem — behind the impassive expertise. But, after talking to him for half an hour, I found him less reassuring. He was soft-voiced and diffident, with mobile eyes that met your gaze only for split seconds. He gave me one of the worst pieces of advice I’ve ever received.

“I think you should take the Fifth.”

“The fifth what?”

“The Fifth Amendment to the American Constitution.”

“What’s that?”

“It means that you can’t be asked to bear witness against yourself. If you’re asked a question that might incriminate you, you can refuse to answer it — on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment.”

“But I haven’t done anything.”

“I would take it just in case, Mr. Todd, It’s safer than taking the First; you get cited for contempt of Congress. That could mean jail.”

“Jesus.… Right. But when do I take it?”

“Whenever it seems like something you’ll say will incriminate you.”

“Fine. You’ll tip me the wink if it looks like a tricky question.”

“Ah … I won’t be there, I’m sorry to say.”

“But you’re my bloody lawyer!”

Page colored. He took a pen out of his jacket pocket and replaced it carefully.

“Mr. Todd, may I be frank with you?”

“Please.”

“Ordinarily, I’d really prefer not to be associated with your case. I’m only a junior partner. But because of the Lone Star connection I’ve been told — been assigned to it.” He gave me a weak smile. “I’m sorry. We don’t even have your name on a file in the office.” I seemed to feel a sort of transparency invade my body, as if I were halfway to disappearing. I was around, here, but fewer and fewer people were acknowledging my presence. Page cleared his throat and touched the tips of his bow tie.

“May I ask you a personal question, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in point of fact a Communist? In the party?”

“I’ll take the Fifth.… No, of course not. I’m a film director.”

He beamed with relief. “God, that’s good news.” He lowered his voice. “I’m sort of a liberal-minded person but I don’t think my conscience could let me represent a real Communist. If my fiancée found out …” He swallowed. “Holy shit.”

“Your conscience can rest easy. Listen, do you want a drink?” We were in my house.

“No … no sir, thank you. I’ve got to run. Is there a back way out of here?”

Three days later I walked along the corridor of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel towards Room 1121. I knocked. It was opened by the man who had served the subpoena on me. I was shown in.

Room 1121 was a suite. The sitting room had been cleared and a long desk set up at one end with three chairs behind it. Another solitary chair was set opposite some six feet away in the middle of the room. Another man, in a pale-blue suit, was standing by the window smoking a cigarette. He came out and shook my hand.

“Mr. Todd? I’m an investigator for the committee. Paul Seager. This is Investigator Bonty.”

Seager had a fat kind face with thin brown hair. Bonty — the man with the subpoena — was dark and sallow with a harelip scar like MacKanness, the bantam who’d threatened to kill me.

“Congressman Brayfield will be with us in a moment.”

From the bedroom I could hear the buzz of an electric razor. We stood around in awkward silence. Our roles were about to be defined; until then we didn’t know whether to be pleasant or formal.

“Some fog today,” Bonty offered.

“Yes,” I said.

“We get bad fog in Washington,” Seager said.

“Really?”

Brayfield came in, pulling on his jacket. Representative Byron Brayfield was a fat man who thought tight three-piece suits might disguise this condition. Naturally, it had the opposite effect, as well as making him needlessly hot and uncomfortable. His waistcoat was tight as a corset, a small fan of creases, like crow’s-feet, on either side of the row of buttons. He had a pale fleshy face, with an eave of fat overhanging his collar all round, small alert eyes and thinning crinkly black hair combed straight back. He did not offer to shake my hand. We took our places. I felt a sudden urge to go to the lavatory. Seager made a telephone call and a minute later a stenographer came in. She sat down behind me.

Bonty uttered some preamble about the Brayfield Subcommittee of the House Committe on Un-American Activities being in executive session. Then proceedings were interrupted for a long moment as Brayfield blew his nose with astounding ferocity. His face went quite red and he examined his handkerchief diligently as if he expected to see particles of brain there. Eventually, Seager swore me in and the hearing began.

BRAYFIELD: You understand, Mr. Todd, this is a special subcommittee of one instigated as a result of a confidential dossier we, ah, that came into our possession, alleging subversive activities undertaken by you over a number of years.

TODD: May I know who supplied you with this dossier?

BRAYFIELD: That is classified information. However, such was the seriousness of these allegations it was decided that this committee be set up.… You have lived and worked in Berlin, Germany, I believe?

TODD: Yes. And in Scotland, England, France, Switzerland and the United States.

BRAYFIELD: You are about to start production on a film called Father of Liberty?

TODD: Yes.

BRAYFIELD: And this film is about a [checking notes] man called Rousseau? A French Socialist?

TODD: For heaven’s sake!

BRAYFIELD: Who is producing this film?

TODD: That is a matter of public record; I suggest you get Investigator Seager on to it.

SEAGER: I would remind you, Mr. Todd, this is an official subcommittee. We have powers to cite you for contempt.

TODD: Thank you for reminding me. I will not answer any of your questions until you tell me who gave you that dossier.

BRAYFIELD: I’ve told you—

TODD: Was it someone called Leo Druce?

SEAGER: Who?

BRAYFIELD: Seager!

TODD: Courtney Young? Harold Faithfull? Alexander Mavrocordato? [Blank faces.]

BRAYFIELD: Who are these people? Can we get back to business?… We believe, Mr. Todd, based on information we have in this dossier, that you may be well placed to inform the committee of known subversive and Communistic elements in the Hollywood film community. Any such information you provide us with will remain confidential, of course.… I would like to remind you we are in executive session. Ah, in the light of you providing us with names and information the committee will be predisposed to look favorably on any … any indescretions in the past that you may have, ah, that you may have done. Perpetrated.

TODD: [gets up and takes newspaper from nearby table]: Why are you people wasting your time? Why? Catch some real criminals. Look, look, at random from today’s paper [quotes]: “Two men, Kemp P. Heald, twenty-five, and Coran Schlag, fifty-two, were today accused of breaking into Brewer Poultry Farm at Tujunga on the fourteenth of November and committing there acts of sexual indecency with fifty-four Christmas turkeys, leaving over twenty of the birds for dead.…” Good God! There are your criminals. Why aren’t you out catching them instead of wasting all our time and—

BONTY: May I see that newspaper please?

SEAGER: Mr. Todd, will you please resume your seat?

BRAYFIELD: Can you establish that these two men are Soviet agents? Or members of the Communist party?

TODD: What?

BRAYFIELD: Only then are we empowered to act.

BONTY: Five’ll get you ten they were Commies.

SEAGER: Who?

BONTY: The men who boffed the turkeys. They do that sort of thing in Russia, I read about it. Yeah.

BRAYFIELD: Mr. Bonty, please?

BONTY: Sorry, sir.

BRAYFIELD: Mr. Todd, are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?

TODD: I’d like to plead the Fifth Amendment.^* I will not answer that question on the grounds that I may incriminate myself — in your eyes.

When I saw the smile momentarily expand in Brayfield’s eyes and across his plump cheeks I knew I had made a mistake. We wrangled over whether I was entitled to take the Fifth for a while, and Brayfield’s threats became more and more explicit. At one stage he shouted at me, “You are a resident alien! We can deport-scum like you!” All this was excised from the transcript. I realized later I should have taken Bertolt Brecht’s route: lie boldly and then run for it. If Brecht hadn’t followed that course of action, it would have been the Hollywood Eleven. But old Bert lit out. When he was asked in 1947 if he had ever applied to join the Communist party he said, and I quote, “No, no, no, no, no, never,” and left at once for France. As I sat in my sitting room later that afternoon waiting for Page Farrier to turn up, I felt foreboding infest the house like vermin. Had I done the right thing?

“Yes,” Page said. “Without doubt.”

“Oh yes” said Eddie Simmonette. This was two days after the hearing. We were sitting in what used to be Lori’s diner. It was now called Chauncy’s after her eldest son. I hadn’t been the same since I had returned from Berlin. News of Lori’s death had distressed me greatly and I couldn’t imagine the diner without her. In fact, few memories lingered. Chauncy had redone everything in plasti-pine and melamine — it was altogether more nasty looking, cheaper and dirtier. But when Page had telephoned to say that Eddie wanted a rendezvous “somewhere very discreet,” Chauncy’s had seemed the most convenient.

Eddie wore dark glasses and a snap-brim hat. Page kept looking over his shoulder.

“Look, would you mind relaxing?” I said angrily. “Nobody’s going to know you here.… Have you heard anything? Are they going to cite me for contempt?”

Page told me he thought I would be all right, at least until the Supreme Court had heard the Hollywood Ten appeal.

“Well, thank God for that.”

“Ah, unfortunately, Mr. Todd, you’re on two more lists.”

“Jesus. But I haven’t done anything. Whose lists?”

“The American Legion Magazine and the AMPOPAWL list.”

“The what?”

“The American Motion Picture Organization for the Preservation of the American Way of Life.”

“But at least you’re not on the MPAPAI list,” Eddie said. “Thank the Lord.”

“?”

“The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.”

“Great. Wonderful.”

The waitress came over to our table. Eddie and Page ordered coffee. I looked up. “Nothing for me,” I said. She was a dark, faintly Oriental girl with a grubby apron on over a checked dress. Slim and pretty in an acceptably sleazy way.

“Hey, John,” she said. “God, how are you?” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Nora Lee,” she said. “Nora Lee Madrazon.”

“Good God. Of course.” I’d last seen her four years ago, a sulky lanky teenager with cropped hair and braces on her teeth.

“Catch you later,” she said. “Great to see you again.”

“You know her?” Page said, his voice high with incredulous WASP lust.

“I knew her mother.”

“Page, would you leave us for a moment? I need to talk with John.”

Page left for another booth. Nora Lee delivered Eddie’s coffee. As he stirred it we sat in silence. I looked out of the window at the beach and the Pacific. There had been some rain that morning and the roads were shiny. The ocean looked cold.

“John, that’s three lists you’re on now: Red Connections, the Legion and AMPOPAWL.”

“Someone sent a dossier on me to that committee. That’s the only reason this fucking … farce is happening at all. Someone’s setting me up. I’m being informed on. Framed.”

“Who?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Which still leaves us with our problem.”

“What problem?”

Eddie took a sip of coffee and made a disgusted face.

“Jesus! This stuff would make a billy goat puke!” He pushed it aside. He sighed, inhaled, touched his nose, tugged at an earlobe.

“After the Ten were cited for contempt of Congress last year, there was a meeting in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria of the MPAA … the Motion Picture Association of America—”

“Yes, yes.”

“Fifty of us. All the top executives. I was there. We said, we agreed, that no Communists or subversives would knowingly be employed in the film industry.”

“So?”

“You heard Brayfield. He thinks you’re a subversive, he thinks Father of Liberty is a subversive film. We’ve had calls from the Legion, the Catholic War Veterans, Red Connections, ODCAD — you name it. They think you and Rousseau are a couple of foreign Bolsheviks.”

“You’re not going to worry about what that arsehole Brayfield says?”

“John … I’m party to the MPAA decision. Don’t you see? I can’t afford not to.”

It was at this moment that any residual humor — of the black ironical variety — left the discussion.

“So what are you saying?”

“The film’s off. Until this blows over.”

“Wonderful.” I felt the tears squeeze into my eyes. “Well, I’ll do Jesse James then, fill in some time.”

“I’m sorry, John.”

“Come on.”

“I’m going to have to let you go. I have to be seen to fire you. You’re graylisted now.”

“Looks pretty black to me.”

He leaned forward. “I’ve just signed a fifteen-million-dollar, twenty-picture deal with Loews. I can’t jeopardize the company for you and Father of Liberty. What would you do in my place? The same, I know. I’ve got to distance myself from you. But I’ll stick by you, John. You won’t go without.”

“Fuck you.”

“All I ask from you is your discretion. Just don’t name me. Don’t ever mention what you mentioned the other day.”

“Well, after all you’re doing for me, how can I refuse?”

“For the sake of our friendship. You’ll be all right.”

“I can go somewhere else.”

“You can try.… But they’ve got you, John. They’ve got us. By the balls. Sit it out.”

“Thanks, Eddie.”

“Don’t be cynical, John. It doesn’t suit you.”

“You sound like my father.”

“Don’t call me at the office or at home, whatever you do. I’ll keep in touch through Page.”

“Why not?”

“Your phone is probably tapped.”

“Christ!..”

He leaned over and kissed me on both cheeks, the Armenian in him surfacing briefly, and then said something like “Cesaretini toplamak” I found this phrase later in Lori’s Turkish-English dictionary. It meant “Take courage.”

I sat on alone in the diner for a while after Page and Eddie had left. I felt a kind of draining of my spirit, as when a runner knows he’s used up his last reserves of stamina. I felt like sobbing with self-pity and frustration, but two competing trains of thought prevented a wholehearted surrender. First, I marveled at Eddie’s utterly decent ruthlessness. I suppose it was the same attitude that had got Duric Lodokian through pogroms and revolutions and now it was coming to the aid of his son. I wanted to rail at him and accuse him of treachery and disloyalty, but I could not fault his logic.… I even rather respected him for it.

The other pressing question was to do with the identity of the informer. Who? Why? I knew who my enemies were, but I found it hard to credit them with something so thoroughgoing. There was a fanatic diligence about this plan that seemed to speak of vast resources of perversity — all committed to bring me down. Faithfull? Druce?… It seemed farfetched.

I sighed, contemplating once more the ruin of The Confessions. How many scripts had been written, how many false starts and premature conclusions had there been? The concept, the work, seemed almost alive, animallike in its capacity to live on, evolve and adapt itself to the multitude of obstacles the century placed in its way. The Confessions had a life of sorts, that was true. It had been born, grown up, suffered setbacks, struggled on, changed, adapted itself.… I felt urgently that I needed to round it off, let it mature and die. I had hoped that Father of Liberty would have been that final hybrid. How long would I have to wait? Sit it out, Eddie had said. Be patient.

I got up, planning to wander along the beach and tell Karl-Heinz the bad news. Nora Lee came over. I saw she was a tall girl wearing flat shoes like dancing pumps. I thought suddenly, painfully, of Doon.

“Do you want to come upstairs for a moment, John? We kept some things of Mom’s. Maybe you’d like to have something, like a sort of souvenir. No, I don’t mean that. What’s the word?”

“Memento.”

“Yeah.”

“I’d like that.”

We went upstairs to the apartment. I chose Lori’s Turkish-English dictionary.

I sat it out for five years. For four years I waited for things to blow over. It may sound strange to you, it may even sound unlikely, but it was during those years that I missed my children the most. I have not spoken to them, but I had not forgotten them. I missed them keenly, desperately — or rather, I missed a private fanciful version of them. I used to think about them often — Vincent and the twins, a young man and two young women now, total strangers to me and vice versa. I had corresponded with them, dutifully, desultorily, but their letters were banal and disappointing — and I daresay mine were too. It was the change of surname that distressed and distanced me: this Vincent Devize didn’t seem to be my son anymore (it can happen so easily, believe me). At times I was wracked with the loss of Hereford. Hereford, dead all these years, was closer and more real to me than my three children living. I had an ideal platonic love for them of sorts, but its concrete manifestations were mere tokens, mutual obligations halfheartedly and effortfully fulfilled. My life bottomed out, as they say, until 1953—when it got worse. But let me take you through this unsatisfactory interlude.

The Hollywood Ten were not so lucky either. They had pleaded the First Amendment — the constitutional right to freedom of thought and opinion — and had been cited for contempt of Congress. This had been foreseen and planned for. In the Supreme Court there was a majority of liberal judges who, it was calculated, would overturn the verdict. Unfortunately, in the summer of 1949 two of the judges died and were replaced by hardline reactionaries. The Ten went to prison and the HUAC hearings on Hollywood subversives resumed with new spiteful vigor in 1951.

That was a fretful year of genuine worry for me. I felt sure that Brayfield and his subcommittee would release their findings or the dossier itself. But nothing happened. Slowly, I began to relax. Perhaps the dossier had been a crude trick to try and panic an admission out of me? Perhaps it had never existed? Sometimes I saw the open sessions in Washington on television and I would contemplate Brayfield’s fat sweaty face among the others on the committee with a mixture of loathing and acute trepidation. But I seemed to have been forgotten. Others were subpoenaed, took the Fifth and were blacklisted, or named names and were cleared. Then I noticed that I was forgotten because the damage had already been done. I was graylisted. I approached other studios for work — but as Eddie had predicted, the damage had been done.

In 1950 I was dropped from the Legion’s list, but Red Connections and AMPOPAWL never left me out. Briefly in 1952 I appeared on the MPAPAI list and got a call from a man in Alert Inc. offering to get my name cleared for a cost of one thousand dollars. I didn’t have the money then so I asked him to call back, but he never did. As I hadn’t made a film since 1944, I assumed that Alert Inc. had concluded that it was hardly worth clearing someone so evidently unemployable as me.

I had some savings, profits from The Equalizer, some money I’d inherited from my father, and I was soon reduced to living off my capital. I did three versions of the Jesse James script for Eddie, until I realized he had no intentions of making the film and it was merely a way of giving me money. Eventually I told him I wouldn’t go on. So I wrote another script, a story of adolescent love loosely based on my own entanglement with Donald Verulam and Faye Hobhouse. I embellished my experiences in World War II with Two Dogs Running and produced a war adventure called Alpha Beach, St.-Tropez. Eddie paid me for them out of charity.

I sublet the ground floor of my house. I rented a room to Nora Lee Madrazon and the rest to an Austrian couple, the Linds, friends of the Coopers. When funds ran lower still, I took up teaching again, some maths but increasingly English lessons, mainly to Japanese immigrants and some Filipino relatives of Nora Lee. Ends met with some difficulty.

When I told Karl-Heinz what had happened, he seemed more concerned for me than for his own prospects. Curiously, from that point on his own career advanced. He acted under the name K. H. Cornfield and he soon had a steady supply of small roles — usually playing shady or dandified foreigners — in films and on television. He never moved from his two-room apartment in the Hotel Cythera on the seafront. The hotel became another 129B Stralauer Allee: its unpretentious decrepitude was the sort of environment he flourished in, and besides, as he put it, the beach was so very handy. He would reassure me when, in my low moments, I used to bemoan my wretched luck. “Don’t worry, Johnny,” he would say. “I know we’ll finish The Confessions.” He saw something talismanic in our encounter in Weilburg in 1918. Over thirty years ago, he would remind me. Who could have guessed then that the two of us would be living in Los Angeles? There had to be some reason for it. I wished I could have shared his confidence.

Outbreaks of war always affected my life in surprising ways. At the end of June 1950, the day after the North Koreans crossed the 38th Parallel, my affair with Nora Lee Madrazon began. She came upstairs with a cousin to arrange an English lesson for him and stayed on for a coffee after he had left. Lori, though hefty, had had a pretty face. Nora Lee had inherited this, modified somewhat by her half-Filipino blood. She looked Eastern — dark skin, slanted eyes, straight black hair — but she was in fact unregenerate American. It was this juxtaposition that particularly attracted me. I admit that the fact she was nineteen years old had something to do with it as well. She had a slim brown body with perfectly round, almost black nipples. She was tired of boys, she said; that’s why she liked me. She had been renting the room from me for almost a year before we became lovers and couldn’t understand what had taken me so long.

“Chauncy and Hall figure we’ve been balling since I moved in.”

“They do?” I didn’t go to the diner very often, but that explained the leering familiarity with which they greeted me. “Don’t they mind?”

“Why should they? They know about you and Mom. You’re practically one of the family.”

And so my life progressed on this somewhat reduced level. I still had my small circle of friends — Karl-Heinz, the Gasts, the Coopers, the Hitzigs and Monika. Monika’s career too had taken a leap forward. Now that she conceded she was a mature woman she began to get more work, particularly on television. She urged me to try the television and then the radio companies, which I did, only to find that the graylist made me if anything even more of a pariah. As long as I appeared on lists I would get no work. I thought vaguely about paying to have my name “cleared,” but when I rang Alert Inc. they told me it would now cost between five and ten thousand dollars. The longer I left it, the harder it became.

I had plenty of time on my hands. One bonus of my new leisure was that I discovered California north of Los Angeles. Karl-Heinz and I spent two long holidays near Carmel and the Monterey Peninsula in ’51 and ’52. I liked the coast up there. It reminded me vaguely of Scotland — the pines, the cliffs, the small beaches in coves — and of holidays I had taken as a child with Oonagh, Donald, Thompson and my father.

However, it was on that second trip in ’52 that I noticed the surveillance had begun again. I spotted a maroon Dodge behind us on the highway from Ventura to San Luis Obispo, where we stopped for lunch. I saw it again two days later when we made a trip to the hot springs at Tassajara. I didn’t tell Karl-Heinz because I didn’t want to spoil his vacation. I wasn’t that perturbed. Since the day I had been called before the Brayfield Subcommittee I knew I had been watched. As Eddie had predicted, my phone was tapped for two years. My mail was intercepted regularly (everything from Britain was opened). I was often aware of being followed, though I could never identify the men doing it. Once or twice I had seen a figure in the crowd that looked oddly familiar. He reminded me of the man I had seen jump into his car the day I was subpoenaed. I never saw his face. It was something about his posture that nagged at me: the set of his shoulders, the rake of his hat … I couldn’t place it.

The year turned, my fifty-fourth birthday came around, and for the first time I began contemplating giving it all up. One evening with Karl-Heinz, drinking Scotch in his rooms at the Cythera, he began talking about the five months he’d spent at Drumlarish with Mungo Dale — old Sir Hector had passed away in ’39. (In fact Karl-Heinz talked very fondly of Mungo and from time to time prurient speculations flitted across my mind.…) Anyway, I felt a sudden urge to abandon everything, to go back home to Scotland and settle down. I confided this to Karl-Heinz. He laughed at me. “You’d go mad,” he said. “Wait till you’re sixty, and besides we have to finish The Confessions.” I was moved by his faith. It was much stronger than mine. “Don’t worry,” he said, “this crazy witch-hunt can’t last forever.”

He was wrong. A few weeks later I was round at Ernest Cooper’s house having Sunday lunch when a U.S. marshal knocked on his door and served him with the dreaded pink subpoena. Ernest looked as if he had been shot. I tried to calm him down.

“They can’t do anything to you, Ernest. It’s not like it was in Germany. They can’t lock you up. Just plead the Fifth like I did.”

“Then they blacklist you. You haven’t worked for three years.”

“Well, not properly, that’s true. But … why don’t you lie? Look at Bertolt.”

I could make no headway. He was terrified.

The next day Monika Alt phoned me. She had been subpoenaed too. Werner Hitzig as well.

“Have you been subpoenaed?” she asked.

“No. Why? I was subpoenaed in ’48.”

“Well, why are they calling us and not you? They’ve been watching you for years, you said.”

I didn’t like the implication in her tone of voice.

“It’s got nothing to do with me, if that’s what you’re trying to say.”

“I’m sorry, Johnny. No, it’s just that I’m worried. Everything’s going so well for me now. I got a film at Fox. Eddie promised me something at Lone Star. I can’t go on those filthy lists, I just can’t.”

“They call masses of people. Hundreds. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

I saw Monika’s appearance on television. It looked like an enormous press conference: microphones, TV cameras, lights, a crowd of about four hundred people. Monika looked marvelous. She denied everything and seemed to have an easy time. Ernest admitted that he had been in the Communist party in Germany before World War II but insisted that since then he had utterly repudiated everything it stood for and was now staunchly and proudly American. Werner Hitzig took the Fifth.

Two days later I was lugging groceries from a supermarket to my car when I heard a hoarse stage whisper.

“Mr. Todd.”

I looked round. It was Page Farrier, crouched behind a Chrysler. He pointed at an open-air hot dog stand a couple of hundred yards away.

“See you there. Ten minutes.”

Page arrived eventually, with a caution that would have done credit to a commando behind enemy lines. I had seen him regularly over the intervening years. He picked up my scripts for Eddie and delivered payment in cash. I knew him well. He sat down. I had ordered him a Dr Pepper and a chili dog. I knew he liked them.

“Ah, no thanks, Mr. Todd. Really, I can’t eat.”

“How’s Brooke [his wife]? Rockwell and Stockyard [his children]?”

“Stockard. Fine, fine. Yes. Fine, all fine.”

“Good. What’s up?”

“You’ve been named. In executive session.”

“What? Who by, for Christ’s sake?”

“Some people called Monika Alt and Ernest Cooper.”

“What did they say?”

He opened a notebook. “That you were a member of a revolutionary Communist cell in Berlin in the twenties. That you were a member of the Santa Monica chapter of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League in the thirties. That you consorted with subversives in Mexico in 1939.” Page looked shocked. “This is much worse than last time,” he said. “They’re going to subpoena you again. This time it will be Washington, the full committee, open session. The works.”

“God.” I felt very tired. “What should I do?”

Page cleared his throat. “Well, with the open session you’ve got three choices. Plead the First and go to prison for contempt. Plead the Fifth and effectively admit your guilt. And you get on the MPAA blacklist. Or, three, name names. Tell them all the Communists and ex-Communists you know. You get cleared and you can work.” He paused, and popped a gherkin from his plate into his mouth. “You see,” he said munching, “the ultimate test of a witness is not whether he lies or whether he tells the truth. It’s the extent to which he cooperates with the committee. And the only way to do that is inform.”

“So what do you suggest I do?”

“Well … name names. Everyone’s doing it. Look, even your friends have named you.” He gave a puzzled smiled. “I tell you, people are naming their family, their friends, their colleagues. Anything to get off the list.” He looked at me worriedly. “But in your case, Mr. Todd …”

“Take the Fifth?”

“Yes.”

“What do I risk?”

“They might deport you. But I doubt it, because you’re British.”

I sat in silence for a while. Page began to nibble at his chili dog.

“Terrible times we live in, Mr. Todd,” he said. “I know there’s going to be a nuclear war — an atomic bomb war — for sure. In the next two, three years. There has to be.”

“Surely not.”

“Yes. Oh yes. Without any doubt. I’m absolutely certain.”

“But you can’t be worrying about that?”

“But what about these camps they’ve got ready for subversives? They’re getting ready for a war.”

“Nonsense.”

“No. The McCarran Act. All subversives are going to be held in concentration camps. Why pass the act if nothing’s going to happen?”

“Me included, no doubt. Relax, Page, for God’s sake. Do yourself a favor. And listen, you don’t need to come with me to Washington. I can plead the Fifth on my own.” I stood up. “Send me your bill.” I held out my hand. “See you soon, Page.”

“Don’t shake my hand. Don’t. Just sorta wave casually.…” He gave me a wry smile.

I waved casually and left.

BRAYFIELD: Todd, you got your nose against the penitentiary gates! I warn you!

TODD: The Fifth Amendment allows—

BRAYFIELD: This is a Communist party card issued to John James Todd in Berlin, Germany, 1926—

TODD: It is a patent forgery.

BRAYFIELD: The next time you refuse I’m going to call a marshal and have you sent to jail!

CHAIRMAN: Representative Brayfield, please.

BRAYFIELD: I apologize.… I put it to you, Mr. Todd, that your last film, The Equalizer, was un-American.

TODD: It’s pro-American.

BRAYFIELD: You denigrate one of America’s folk heroes, Billy the Kid.

TODD: Billy the Kid was a thief and a murderer. The hero of my film is a law enforcer, like Mr. Hoover, Sherriff Pat Garrett. [Muttering among the representatives.]

TODD: May I ask if Representative Brayfield has seen the film?

BRAYFIELD: No, I have not.… I don’t need to see pornography to know what it is. What nationality are you, Mr. Todd?

TODD: I’m British.

BRAYFIELD: How long have you lived in the United States?

TODD: Since 1937, off and on. I made two visits to Europe. One in World War II when I was a war correspondent for America—

BRAYFIELD: Why have you never applied for citizenship? You were married to an American, were you not?

TODD: Yes, but I’m British. There was no need—

BRAYFIELD: Well, Mr. Todd, I’m going to do everything in my power to get you sent back there!

The klieg lights for the TV cameras made Brayfield sweat more than ever. On the desk in front of me were seven microphones. Three TV cameras were ranged to survey the scene. From time to time flashbulbs flared from the press gallery. We were in the Caucus Room of the Old House Office Building, Washington, D.C. It could seat four hundred people. Today it was almost empty. I noticed Investigators Seager and Bonty up at the back. Bonty gave me a wave. It had to be said that the interrogation of John James Todd did not draw the crowds. I was no star. Brayfield was no Torquemada.

I had been before the committee for forty minutes. Ninety percent of the questions had come from Brayfield. I had stonewalled with blunt persistence, taking the Fifth Amendment whenever I felt like it. We paused now, while Brayfield blew his nose with his customary ferocity, as if he were trying to make his eyeballs bounce onto the desk in front of him. True to form, he scrutinized his handkerchief for bits of expressed brain. The other representatives on the committee (I forget their names, an undistinguished bunch of second-rate opportunists eager for the limelight) looked at each other with evident distaste. I had felt nervous, but now I was possessed by an angry calm. Brayfield was astonishingly well informed about me, and this — paradoxically — abated my concern. I was not a “subversive,” I was the victim of a vengeful and elaborate plot, and Brayfield, I was sure, was in it up to his neck.

REPRESENTATIVE EAMES: Mr. Todd, ah … do you know the names of any members of the Communist party, and if so are you prepared to, would you volunteer them to this committee? In executive session, of course.

TODD: Well, I volunteer to name one dangerous fanatic who is desperately trying to pervert the course of justice and undermine the U.S. Constitution. And I’m prepared to name him in open court.

EAMES: I don’t think we—

CHAIRMAN: Really? And who is that?

TODD: Representative Byron Brayfield! That man is waging a personal vendetta against me!

Uproar. Brayfield swore vilely at me. I was fined five hundred dollars for contempt. The session resumed after a recess. Brayfield was armed with more questions of astonishing accuracy.

BRAYFIELD: Did you attend a meeting of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League on the night of November 14, 1940, in the home of Stefan Dressier?

TODD: I decline to answer that question on the grounds—

BRAYFIELD: You lived in Rincón, Mexico, for a period during 1939.

TODD: Yes.

BRAYFIELD: And at that time you were friendly with Hanns Eisler, who appeared before this committee last year, were you not?

TODD: I can’t remember. Lots of people passed through Rincón.

The committee got nowhere. I was dismissed before lunch, Brayfield still threatening deportation. In the corridor outside the Caucus Room a journalist from the Hollywood Reporter stopped me. He asked me if I had any evidence of a blacklist.

“Oh, there’s a list, all right,” I said. “Only no one will admit it.”

He asked me what I was doing now.

“Teaching maths and English and minding my own business.”

“Is that all?”

He looked disappointed and walked away. I watched him go. As he passed through an open door leading through to an anteroom, I saw Doon sitting inside. She wore a blue dress with white polka dots, white shoes and gloves. Her hair was up. Her tan was as deep as ever. She looked lean, old and tough. She saw me, stood up and walked towards me.

My heart … my guts … I kissed her cheek.

“Hello, Jamie.”

“What’re you doing here?”

“I was subpoenaed. I think they want me to nail you.”

We sat down on a bench in the corridor.

“They seem to know everything about me,” I said.

“There was a guy came down to the ranch, asked me a whole lot of questions about you. About us.”

“What was he like?”

“Sort of unpleasant looking. Big gaps between his teeth. Said his name was Brown. Worked for the FBI, he said.”

“Gaps in his teeth?…” Who could it be? Brown. Gap teeth. I looked at Doon. “Can I see you tonight?”

She told me the name of her hotel. We arranged to meet at eight.

Doon perjured herself for me. She lied to the committee with flair and aplomb. She swore I had never been in the Communist party and declared that the membership card was an inept forgery.

Later that evening we sat in a small restaurant on Fourteenth Street Northwest, talking about old times. Doon chain-smoked. Nobody paid us any attention. I thought, This used to be the most famous beauty in Europe. Women strove to emulate her. She was the object of a million male fantasies. Thirty years ago the world was at her feet. I felt the universe’s huge indifference to our fates. It made me cold.

“What’re you thinking?”

“Nothing.… When are you going back?”

“Tomorrow. Got three new guests coming this week. I only hope they didn’t see me on TV.”

I looked at her. I thought about sex with Doon, what it would be like now. Our old bodies.

“Doon. I love you. I’ve never loved anybody else. It’s as simple as that. You’re the only—”

“Jamie. Please. That was ages ago.”

“No, I mean it. When I saw you this morning. It all came back. It was like that day in the Metropol.…”

She smiled. “It takes two, you know. We fouled up. Nobody’s fault, but it would never have worked.” She patted my fist. “You’re my oldest friend. That’s all.”

My mouth was dry. I forced a smile. At least I had told her.

“I suppose you’re right.”

I walked her back to her hotel.

“Why don’t you go home, Jamie? You don’t need all this HUAC shit. Just leave.”

“What about Karl-Heinz? I brought him here.”

“God, he’ll be all right.”

“What about my film?”

“The Confessions? For Christ’s sake.”

“I’ve got to finish it. Bloody hell, I’m fifty-four. I haven’t made a film in nine years. And I was so close.… Anyway, Eddie owes it to me.”

She kissed my cheek. “OK, honey. You do what you want. Like you used to say to me — make your own rut.”

I hugged her. Felt her thin body against mine. Smelled the tobacco in her wiry hair. She had none of my regrets. My massive regrets. I felt desperately sad — not because nothing was going to happen, but because I suddenly had a glimpse of an alternative life in a different world. Do you know those moments? I saw myself in Paris, 1934, knocking on her apartment door and this time Doon would answer it. It was another edition of my life, our lives, and these two people standing outside a Washington hotel weren’t allowed to participate in it.

“Look after yourself,” she said cheerfully. “And come and visit. Keep in touch.”

We said good-bye to each other.

After my appearance before the committee in Washington I achieved a small notoriety. There were articles and a photograph in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In the latter, the headline ran: EX-WIFE NAMES TODD IN HUAC SESSION. The old lady at the Italian fruit stall just round the corner from my house spat at me and called me a “Red stooge.” Eddie Simmonette was interviewed in Variety under the headline LONE STAR PREZ SAYS NIX TO REDS.

Chief exec Eadweard Simmonette admitted hiring Todd in the forties to direct B-feature Westerns. “I knew him vaguely in Berlin, but I never guessed he was a Commie. He hasn’t worked for me in ten years — since The Equalizer in ’44. I respect his expertise but deplore his values.”

A late-night show of The Equalizer was picketed by an organization called ODCAD and the film was withdrawn from circulation. Another trickle of income dried up. I increased my teaching to six hours a day. Nora Lee moved into my rooms and I rented hers to a student at UCLA. Foolishly, I lent Chauncy and Hall a thousand dollars to redecorate the diner and never saw any of it again. My poverty level descended to Berlin, 1924, standards.

I went to see Monika but she had moved to New York to do television there. I spoke to her on the phone.

“I’m sorry, Johnny, but I had to do it. I had no choice.”

“But for God’s sake, we were married once! Man and wife.”

“Don’t give me that. Eddie Simmonette paid me five thousand dollars to marry you. It was strictly business.”

Another revelation I did not need. I went round to the Coopers’ shortly after my return from Washington but found the front door locked. I returned several times to the same rebuff. Then one day Elroy answered.

“Hi, Elroy,” I said. “Is your Dad in?”

“My dad says he’s sorry and will you please stop coming here.”

I pushed past him into the hall. I heard a lock turn on the dining room door. I hammered on it.

“Ernest! Come on! This is stupid. Come on out.”

When I stopped shouting I could hear him sobbing behind the door.

“Stop it, Ernest. For Christ’s sake, I don’t care, honestly.”

“I’m sorry John. I’m sorry. Forgive me, please. But go away. Don’t come here again. They’re still watching me.”

Elroy stood behind me, his face contorted with shame and indignation.

“Will you please go away and leave him alone.”

For several weeks nothing depressed me more than this new status I had achieved as one-man leper colony. Even Werner Hitzig, who had taken the Fifth, didn’t want to associate with me because he was now paying Alert Inc. to clear his name. (He eventually named me as a Communist in 1954. The problem was that once you were named it was open season. Between 1953 and ’55 I was named twenty-seven times, mostly by total strangers.) I lost all my friends, apart from Karl-Heinz, and all connection with the film community.

But what surprised me was that I was still under surveillance. My phone made strange clicking noises when I picked it up. My mail was still being intercepted a year after the hearings. Someone was watching me too, I was sure, though I had no evidence. In late 1955 a local paper called the Ventura Bee ran a scurrilous story that had me as a Communist agent poisoning the minds of immigrants with Soviet ideology while purporting to teach them English. I asked Page to sue for libel, but he advised energetically against it. Ramón Dusenberry discovered that the Ventura Bee was owned by ODCAD — the Organization of Decent Citizens of America for Democracy — which in turn was run by the American Business Union, whose address on Sunset Boulevard was the same as that of Red Connections.

It was Toshiro Saimaru who finally helped me out. Toshiro was a portly Japanese businessman who wanted some work done on his English accent. He had been greatly impressed by Laurence Olivier in Henry Vee, as he called it, and chose him as his model. We read a lot of Shakespeare and English poets to each other. His accent never improved, but he seemed to enjoy himself and it was an easy five dollars an hour for me. We were reading Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” one day.

“And what were thou,” I repeated, “and earth, and stars, and sea, if to the human mind’s imagining silence and solitude were vacancy?…”

“Sirence an’ soritude were bacancy.”

“Great, Toshiro. Much better. Let’s try ‘Ode to the West Wind.’ ”

He leafed through his anthology.

“Toshiro, do you ever use a private detective in your business?”

“Oh yes. Very good. Very good man. Mr. Sean O’Hara.” He wrote down his name and number. I phoned and a secretary said Mr. O’Hara would call on me.

The next Saturday morning there was a knock at the door. A small thickset Japanese man was there, wearing a beige suit and a porkpie hat.

“No teaching on Saturday,” I said. He looked blank. “We no teach on Saturday.… No teachee.… Nevah teachee. We close. Close. Shutee.”

“You got the wrong guy, bub.” He handed me a card: SEAN O’HARA, PRIVATE DETECTIVE. I apologized and asked him in. He spoke with a perfect American accent. I felt a headache coming on. Eugen, Orr and now O’Hara.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Your name. I had this image of … Silly of me. Just goes to show.”

“Relax,” he said. “My real moniker is Yatsuhashi Ohara. For a whole year I got no work. Absolutely zilch, nada. Couldn’t figure out why. It’s amazing what one of those apostrophes will do. Call me Sean.” He lit a Kool. “What’s the problem, Mr. Todd?”

I told him my story. “I think someone’s behind the whole thing. I just want to know who.”

“Twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses.”

“Fine.” I would have to borrow some money off Nora Lee. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

“Who knows? A week — a month? Don’t worry, Mr. Todd, I’ll find out who it is.”

I hadn’t actually set eyes on Eddie for over two years. Shortly after O’Hara’s visit in the summer of ’56, Karl-Heinz spent two weeks in hospital with a ruptured stomach ulcer. He recovered, but all the rejuvenation of his Californian years disappeared. He looked old and gray beneath his tan. I went to see him in hospital after the operation.

“My God, Johnny,” he said, “let’s do this fucking film soon. Else I’m in a wheelchair.”

I was filled with a sudden nervous panic. I went round to Page’s office, unannounced, to set up a meeting with Eddie. His secretary buzzed him.

“A Mr. Todd to see you? He says it’s urgent?”

Page flung himself through his office doors.

“Mr. Smith. What a surprise.”

He marched me out of his office.

“For God’s sweet sake, John!” he wailed once we were outside. We were on first-name terms now. “I don’t know you, remember?” We found a coffeeshop. “Someone called the other day asking if I represented you. I think the office may be bugged. I only use pay phones now.”

“Christ, you’re worse than me.… Look, I want to see Eddie.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Only promise me you won’t come around like that again.”

* * *

Eddie stood at the surf edge in front of his beach house. The spent waves crept up to his feet and crept away again. He wore cerise and mustard bathing shorts and smoked a cigar. His neat round belly hung like a medicine ball beneath his plump girlish breasts. From the sun deck of his beach house, smoke curled from a barbecue.

“Hey, John!” he shouted as he saw me approach. It was as if absolutely nothing had happened. We stood for a while and watched the waves curl in, smash and spread themselves on the sand.

“I’m sorry about that piece in Variety,” he said. “But I knew you’d understand.” He looked at me and at my clothes. “Is everything all right, John? You don’t look so good.”

“I’m fine. I just need to make a film.”

“Soon, John, soon. Come on up, have a bite of lunch.”

“Lunch? Good God, you’re sure?”

“Everything’s beginning to change. Ike’s got a second term. People are relaxing. Even Trumbo got the Academy Award.”

“He did?”

“Yeah. For The Brave One.”

“He wrote that?”

“He’s ‘Robert Rich.’ Didn’t you know?”

“No. Remember I’m rather out of touch these days.”

We climbed the steps up to his deck. A petite dark woman was sunbathing in a two-piece swimsuit, the same color as Eddie’s.

“This is my wife, Bonnie. Bonnie, say hi to my oldest friend, John James Todd. John, why don’t you take some clothes off?”

Later we talked about my plans. I told him about Karl-Heinz’s state of health and that I had a new idea for a film, not Father of Liberty. Something much smaller scale, much cheaper. But we had to do it soon.

“I don’t know, John. It’s a question of timing. I’m sure I can let you do pseudonymous script now. But directing a film … Let’s wait a while.”

I took a deep breath. “Eddie, I’ve done a lot for you, these last years.”

“And I’ve done a lot for you, John.” It was obviously one of those days for using Christian names. But I think he sensed my seriousness.

“Yes,” I said, thinking about Monika. “But look where we are today.”

“Johnny, Johnny …” He put his hand on my shoulder. “My father told me something I’ve never forgotten. You’ve got two forces in life that control everything. Just two. The Profit Motive and Human Values. Sometimes they run together but mostly it’s war. Pick your side early, my father said, and stick with it. And by the way, my father said, remember this: the Profit Motive always wins.” He spread his hands.

I looked out to sea. “It’s not as simple as that.”

Sean O’Hara came by.

“Well, I got him,” he said. “This guy turns out to be a vice-president of AMPOPAWL. He’s a special investigator for ODCAD and HUAC. He’s been an FBI informant since 1934. He owns fifty percent of Red Connections, which has a monthly circulation of twenty-four thousand copies at five bucks a copy. Know how much money that is? A hundred twenty thousand dollars a month. This bozo hates Commies and it’s making him a stack of mazoola. He’s a professional blacklister who advises radio and TV stations and sponsors about the OK-ness of the people they hire. Quite a guy. What I can’t figure out is what he’s got against you.”

“What’s his name?”

“Monroe Smee. Mean anything?”

I sat beside O’Hara in the front of his Buick Roadmaster. He had a paper cup of Pepsi-Cola on the dashboard shelf, a shrimp and pastrami sandwich in one hand and a Kool in the other. He stubbed out his cigarette and took a bite of his sandwich. It was half past eight in the morning.

“This gumshoe life is bad for your health. You gotta eat proper.” He offered me a cigarette. “That’s why I smoke menthol.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I’m trying to give it up. I’ve only got one lung.”

“No shit? What happened?”

“I got shot in the war.”

“No shit? God … I respect you for that, Mr. Todd, I really do. Was it the Krauts or us guys?”

“Actually I was shot by my own side.… I’ll tell you about it later.”

We were on Sunset Boulevard, not far from where Beverly Hills becomes West Hollywood, parked opposite the building that contained the Red Connections offices. Waiting for Smee.

“Every second Wednesday he comes, my man says,” O’Hara told me. Then he started to sing quietly to himself. He always got the lyrics slightly wrong. Today it was “A kiss on the lips may be quite sentimental.” Yesterday, when we had arranged this stakeout, it had been “Petting in the dark, sad boy. Petting in the dark, sad girl.” He unwound his window and threw the wax paper wrapper of his sandwich outside.

“Here he comes,” he said.

Smee had left his car in the building parking lot and strode briskly along the sidewalk. He wore a dark suit and carried a briefcase. I saw again the pale face, the gap teeth, the large uneven nose and the slightly weak chin. He looked thin and wiry. But the thinning brown hair had gone. He wore a neatly combed, short-haired dark wig.

“He used to be bald,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s quite a toop,” O’Hara said.

I watched Smee as he went inside. What did I ever do to you? I wondered. I couldn’t believe that Monroe Smee was responsible. There must have been some terrible error or confusion.

He emerged at half past three. O’Hara had lunched on a box of ribs, root beer and popcorn and was well into his second pack of Kools. We followed Smee’s car, a Cadillac Fleetwood, to some offices on Wilshire Boulevard and then on to his dentist in Highland Park. When he left there he drove all the way down Alameda Street to Long Beach and picked up the Pacific Coast Highway south. We motored past the oil pumps, Huntington Beach, down to Newport, and followed him off the highway into the smart beachside suburb of Balboa.

“No wonder he only comes in every second Wednesday,” I said. I felt like we had been driving for hours. “I’m exhausted.”

“You’d never make a shamus,” O’Hara laughed. “I spent eighteen days living in this car on one case.”

That was the source, I realized, of the Buick’s particular moist frowsty smell.

Smee’s house was a big low stucco bungalow with an orange tiled roof. At the back there was a long garden and beyond that what seemed to be a private dock with two boats inside it. As Smee’s Cadillac pulled into the carport, a teenage boy dressed in tennis whites left the front door. He waved at Smee and jogged off. Smee got out of his car and went inside.

“What now?” O’Hara asked.

“I’ve got to talk to him.”

“Yeah, well, be careful.”

I got out and buttoned my jacket. I felt crumpled and dirty after a day in O’Hara’s car. I rubbed my chin — I needed a shave. I wished somehow I looked smarter, more prosperous.

I went up to the front door and rang the bell. A Hispanic maid answered. Right behind her was a thin, rather sharp-faced woman with hard blond hair.

“It’s all right, Caridad,” she said. Then to me: “Yes?”

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Smee. It’s a committee matter.”

“Oh.…” She frowned. “Come in.”

I stepped into the hall, and as I did so my fear returned. Mrs. Smee went into a room and I heard her say, “Monroe? It’s a man from the committee.”

Smee came out. He wore black suspenders over a white nylon shirt.

“Hello, Monroe,” I said. “I think we need to talk.”

He looked deeply and profoundly shocked. Then his nose wrinkled in a curious way.

“Get out,” he said. “Get out of my house you filth! You Commie filth.”

“For God’s sake, Smee—”

“You evil Red bastard! How dare you contaminate my house! How dare you!”

“Very impressive,” I said. “Academy Award stuff. Now, we’ve—”

“Get out! Get out!”

I grabbed his shirtfront with both hands and slammed him up against the wall.

“Call the police!” he bellowed at his wife.

“Why? Why me? Just leave me alone!” I felt a homicidal anger distort my voice unpleasantly. Years of frustration boiling over.

Mrs. Smee screamed behind me. I felt her fists pound my back. I let him go.

“You can’t do anything more to me,” I said. “Just leave me alone.”

He rummaged in the drawer of a hall table and took out a small revolver.

“I could kill you, Todd!” he screamed. “I could kill you here and now and they’d give me a medal for killing Red scum—”

“You’re fucking mad!”

“—but I don’t want the stink in my house!”

“I’ll kill you!” I yelled back unthinkingly. “Leave me alone or I’ll kill you, so help me!”

“Get out, you Commie shit! Get out of my house!” He leveled the gun at me.

“You’re a lunatic. Madman … I warn you!” I backed off all the same. Mrs. Smee had sunk to her knees and was sobbing loudly.

“You’ve had it, Todd! I’ll get you!”

“And I’ll break your fucking neck!”

We shouted insults at each other as I opened the door. My last image was of Mrs. Smee hauling herself up his body, clutching imploringly for the gun.

As I strode across the front lawn the sprinklers came on — automatically, I assume — and soaked my trousers from the knee down. I danced over the grass to O’Hara’s car.

“Did he do that?” O’Hara asked as I got in beside him. “Want me to knock him around some? Little roughhouse stuff?”

“No. Let’s go.”

O’Hara drove off.

“He pulled a gun on me,” I said, delayed shock setting in. “Jesus, he pointed a fucking gun at me.”

“Bastard,” O’Hara said. “Want me to break his legs? His arms?”

“Some other time, Sean.”

He lowered his voice. “I can do that sort of thing for you, Mr. Todd. Anything. Not too expensive, for certain clients. Get my drift?”

I wasn’t listening.

“He’s mad,” I said, my arms and body beginning to tremble. I rubbed my face. “As simple as that. Stark, staring, Grade A nut case.”

VILLA LUXE, June 29, 1972

Why did Smee hate me with such vehement passion? I don’t know. It couldn’t have been simply that incident with the scripts. But it must have started then, as a basic irrational dislike that over the years his anti-Communist mania had turned into something righteous and patriotically American. He was indisputably mad, Smee, beneath the perfect sanity of his life. Perhaps one shouldn’t look any further. He was a manic force operating in Los Angeles and I just happened to come into range.

And yet … admit it, we have all met people whom we have instinctively disliked. It doesn’t take much irritation to turn that emotion into something altogether more venomous. I presume Smee must have felt something like this where I was concerned, especially after I had so guilelessly rubbished his work. When I did that I turned the knife in his vanity — and there are few people vainer than the deluded, talentless ones among us. But also he was an FBI informer when he met me and possibly he saw me as even more of a traitor.… Anyway, one can’t speculate much beyond this. The motivating factors in a psyche like Smee’s are too dark and baffling to be elucidated. He hated me, he was convinced I was a Communist. It was his bounden duty to bring me down. Smee was a given — call him another brute contingency that my life had thrown up. And I had never guessed, not for a moment. And that made the experience even more alarming. Monroe Smee, G-man, HUAC investigator, Red scourge, anti-Communist entrepreneur. My appointed nemesis.

Emilia has done something appalling to her hair. She has dyed it black — a gunmetal blue-black — and has had it set in hard waves around her head. She wears a pungent scent that today at lunchtime I thought I could even taste in my food. On two occasions this morning she found opportunities to brush against me. And I sense her looking at me, covertly, as if weighing me up all the time. The atmosphere in the house is charged, tremulous, on the brink of something drastic.

Her new hairstyle is not flattering, but as the day wears on I find my thoughts returning to her more frequently than I would have imagined. There has been no one in my life for years, you see. Perhaps, like Jean Jacques, I could do worse than take up with someone like Emilia, faithful and efficient. Just as he had his Thérèse, so I would have my Emilia.… I project myself into this putative future and, do you know, it has its own real attraction. There’s a lot of life left in Emilia. She is attractive in a crude, faintly primitive way.

I go looking for her. I find her in the living room, which is shuttered against the afternoon sun. She was dusting the books on the bookshelves, something I had never seen her do before. Suddenly, I knew I could find a sort of happiness with her, and that’s not something to be spurned.

“Oh, Mr. Todd,” she says. “That man was looking for you again. I forgot to tell you. In the village. The American.”

Jesus Christ. “Did you see him?”

“No, Ernesto told me, at the bar.” She sees the look of worry in my face. “Is there a problem, Mr. Todd? Is something wrong? You can tell me. If you like.”

She comes over, heralded by her perfume. I go to meet her. She stops.

“I don’t know, Emilia.… Something happened a long time ago,” Unthinkingly, I put my hands on her shoulders. For the first time my fingers on her flesh. Her new hair gleams with dull-blue highlights. She twists the duster in her hands.

“Mr. Todd, are you in trouble?”

“I don’t know.”

She pushes me away with astonishing strength. I stumble, catch the back of my leg painfully on a coffee table. Emilia seems to be shivering slightly. She has one hand up to her mouth.

“No,” she says. “No. We must wait. We must wait.”

She turns round and runs out of the room. Wait for what? A minute later I hear her motorbike start up. I sit down. What was that all about? I wonder. Shock, shame, second thoughts? Head-in-hands time.…

Then I remember what she told me and I feel the fear creep back. It’s like a smell; my nostrils flare; my mouth feels pasty, dry. I decide to ask Ernesto for more information.

I walk up the track towards the village. Günther’s driveway is clogged with cars and jeeps. Children’s shouts and conversation rise up from the swimming pool. It’s hot. I should have brought my hat. I slow down. On either side of the track the pinewoods seem to bake in their dusty silence.

I arrive at Ernesto’s, parched and overheated. The terrace is deserted apart from a couple in their swimming costumes. I look again: Ulrike and a young man. I wave limply at them.

“Mr. Todd. A moment.”

They come over. I step into shade and lean against a pillar. Ulrike wears a bikini. Despite my exhaustion I note the muscled plane of her stomach, the swell and cleavage of her breasts, the flick and contraction of her thighs as she comes over. Certain women, walking towards me … My stomach dips. I think of Doon. I would weep if I weren’t so tired. But what’s happened to me today? I seem to be in the grasp of some geriatric satyriasis.

They sense my vague distress. Soon I am seated, a cool beer is in front of me, offers of food have been declined. I am an old man, over seventy. I keep forgetting. Sometimes I feel a coltish eighteen, hard though it may be to credit.

“Is Ernesto here?” I ask.

“No. Just Concepción.”

“Never mind.”

“Mr. Todd, I’d like you to meet Tobias, my boyfriend.”

I look at the young man. Dark hair, receding temples. He is thin, with broad shoulders. He takes my hand.

“Mr. Todd,” he says. He speaks good English. “This is a real honor for me. I couldn’t believe it when Ulrike told me about you.” More plaudits follow. I begin to relax and order another beer. Tobias tells me of the new plans he and his colleagues have made since Ulrike’s discovery of me. From the way he talks, you’d think I was a new continent. I barely listen. I hear him mention old names from past: Julie, Doon Bogan, Karl-Heinz, Duric and Aram Lodokian, UFA, Realismus, The Confessions …

I interrupt. “Have either of you, by any chance, heard of a man in the village looking for me? An American?”

“An American? No.”

“I heard this man was asking for me. Asking Ernesto.”

More negatives. Tobias leans forward.

“The great mystery, Mr. Todd, this is what we all want to know … The Confessions: Part I—what happened to that film? We can find no print at all in Germany. No negative. It hasn’t been seen for forty years. Do you know where there is a copy?”

“Alas, no.” I spread my hands. “Sorry.”

“Think hard,” Tobias implores. “Imagine, if we could discover it.” For a moment he allows his own ambitions to overrun his altruism. “Think what a discovery it would be. A lost masterpiece restored. The greatest film of the silent era. Astonishing news.”

“I wish I could help you,” I say. “But everything must have been destroyed in the war.”

* To add to my list of firsts: I was the first person to take the Fifth in Hollywood. There was little publicity. Ramón Dusenberry tried to run a campaign in his papers, but no one else took it up. Only in Southern California was I referred to as “The Hollywood One.”