Prater Violet by Christopher Isherwood Page B

see … How would it be if Toni…?”
    Another day was lost in speculation.
    Ashmeade was indefatigable. Either he telephoned, or he came to visit us, every day. He never minded being snubbed, and his ideas abounded. Bergmann began to entertain the blackest suspicions.
    â€œI see it all. This is a plot. It is a clear sabotage. This diplomatic Umbrella has his instructions. Chatsworth is playing with us. He has decided not to make the picture.”
    I was inclined to agree with him; and I couldn’t altogether blame Chatsworth, either. No doubt, Bergmann’s methods were leisurely. Perhaps they were conditioned by habits formed in the old silent days, when the director went into the studio and photographed everything within sight, finally revising his story in the cutting room by a process of selection and elimination. I was seriously afraid that Bergmann would soon reach a state of philosophic equilibrium, in which all possible solutions would seem equally attractive or unattractive, and that we should hang poised in potentiality, until the studio stopped sending us our checks.
    Then, one morning, the telephone rang. It was Chatsworth’s private secretary. (I recognized the voice which had introduced me to Prater Violet, on that last day of what I now looked back to as the pre-Bergmann period of my life.) Would we please both come to the studio as soon as possible, for a script conference?
    Bergmann was very grim as he heard the news.
    â€œSo. Finally. Chatsworth assumes the black cap. This is the end. The criminals are dragged into court to hear the death sentence. Never mind. Good-bye, Dorothy, my darling. Come, my child. We shall march to the guillotine together.”
    *   *   *
    IN THOSE DAYS Imperial Bulldog was still down in Fulham. (They didn’t move out to the suburbs until the summer of 1935.) It was quite a long taxi ride. Bergmann’s spirits rose as we drove along.
    â€œYou have never been inside a film studio before?”
    â€œOnly once. Years ago.”
    â€œIt will interest you, as a phenomenon. You see, the film studio of today is really the palace of the sixteenth century. There one sees what Shakespeare saw: the absolute power of the tyrant, the courtiers, the flatterers, the jesters, the cunningly ambitious intriguers. There are fantastically beautiful women, there are incompetent favorites. There are great men who are suddenly disgraced. There is the most insane extravagance, and unexpected parsimony over a few pence. There is enormous splendor, which is a sham; and also horrible squalor hidden behind the scenery. There are vast schemes, abandoned because of some caprice. There are secrets which everybody knows and no one speaks of. There are even two or three honest advisers. These are the court fools, who speak the deepest wisdom in puns, lest they should be taken seriously. They grimace, and tear their hair privately, and weep.”
    â€œYou make it sound great fun.”
    â€œIt is unspeakable,” said Bergmann, with relish. “But to us all this does not matter. We have honorably done our task. Now, like Socrates, we pay the penalty of those who tell the truth. We are thrown to the Bulldog to be devoured, and the Umbrella will weep a crocodile tear over our graves.”
    The outside of the studio was as uninteresting as any modern office building: a big frontage of concrete and glass. Bergmann strode up the steps to the swinging door with such impetus that I couldn’t follow him until it had stopped whirling around. He scowled, breathing ferociously, while the doorman took our names, and a clerk telephoned to announce our arrival. I caught his eye and grinned, but he wouldn’t smile back. He was obviously planning his final speech for the defense. I had no doubt that it would be a masterpiece.
    Chatsworth confronted us, as we entered, across a big desk. The first things I saw were the soles of his shoes and the smoke of