The Berlin Connection (17 page)

"God wants us to love one another. Grant His wish. Maybe then one of your wishes will come true."

Well, despite the rockets, the jet bombers, the poverty of black humanity, my wish had come true. It would be interesting how Shirley's Father Horace would have explained this. Or any other priest. Or anyone else who believed in God.

I called my wife without waiting for the evening of October thirty-first and with the certainty of knowing my fraud had been successful. Joan and Shirley had to come to Hamburg irrespective of whether or not Come Back would be made. Every day counted. Any day the police

could arrive at Joan's. So I called her the evening of the twenty-ninth. I had spent the afternoon with Schauberg. He gave me injections and intravenous infusions, and lamented his bad manners in the morning. "I behaved like a bloody idiot. You were perfectly right in leaving me, dear Mr. Jordan."

"Whatever got into you?"

"Without morphine for too long! Right away one's intelligence fades."

I said, "It takes expertise to live with addiction." Apparently he had not recovered sufficiently because he took my remark seriously.

"Quite right. Praise be I came to my senses at last and told the people I was conducting a test for the Ministry of the Interior. Survey: How does the man in the street react to communistic agitation?"

"And they believed that?"

"Every word after I casually waved an old MD identification and yelled at two of those who had agreed with me earlier. I bought a few tickets and praised their unexampled, their wonderful organization. But, I said, if contributions were made to underdeveloped nations it was also very necessary to do more for the Bundeswehr. Bravo! After all they had formed their Volksarmee first! Right! And we had to defend ourselves. Applause and general shaking of hands. I went into the nearest house and gave myself an injection. I am always prepared. Nothing like

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this is going to happen to me again!" He was now wearing a new, almost black suit, black shoes, a shirt, an unobtrusive tie.

The injections gave me enormous self-confidence and callousness. Schauberg's treatment seemed to have frozen my heart but had set my mind vibrating. Friendliness, charm, words of love, the longing quality in my voice when I spoke to Joan came from my mind precise, inexorable, and obviously effective.

"Joan, darling, this is Peter. I guess you are surprised that I'm calling..."

No answer.

Next to the telephone stood a drink. Just to see it there gave me assurance.

"Joan! Can't you hear me?"

"Yes, I can."

Nothing else.

"Did I wake you?"

"No, it's already ten o'clock."

I took a drink. Perhaps the police had been to see her. Perhaps she already knew everything.

"Is Shirley up?"

"No."

"Aren't you glad to hear from me?"

"Yes. Naturally. It was just so unexpected. Are you ill?"

"No."

"Is something wrong? With the movie??

Another drink.

I'm calling because I want you to come over here, to

me."

"You want. . . me . . ." her voice trembled.

"You and Shirley. Right away."

"But..."

"I thought about our last conversation. What you said about Shirley; that she was destroying our marriage; that yoii wanted her out of the house." Joan was silent but I

could hear her quick breathing. "Darling, we were all nervous and irritable. After all, we have lived together those last ten years. I like Shirley. She is your daughter. I wouldn't want us to do something which we might regret ...»

"Oh, Peter! It's wonderful to hear you say that. You have no idea how that had distressed me."

"I think I know. We'll just have to give ourselves another chance. In new surroundings. We're three adults. I'm sure with some effort we can solve the problem. You've never been in Germany. Neither has Shirley. She can work at her job here. I've already spoken to Kostasch." One more lie. What did it matter? Besides, Kostasch probably would hire her.

"Peter! You don't know what that means to me! After all, I love Shirley . . ."

"I know, darling."

"Sometimes I hoped you would ask me to come alone. But that you want both of us to come is so wonderful! Oh, Peter..."

Again I sipped at my drink. Then I said sternly, "Tell Shirley this is the last attempt to settle everything."

It really was. Comes the time when I have to tell Joan the truth I can say: "Here in Europe I had tried to end my affair with Shirley and return to my wife. I had not been successful." Unfortunately.

Joan interrupted my thoughts. "I feel as if I were young again, as if we had only just met."

"Yes, Joan."

"I feel it. We'll make a new start. I know. Europe will be good for us, for the three of us!"

"Let me know when you'll arrive here."

"I love you. I love you. Oh, God, how happy Shirley will be. I'm sure this is the greatest surprise of her life."

"Yes," I said. "I'm sure it is."

Later in the evening the effect of the injections wore off but I felt better after I had emptied half a bottle of

whisky. It occurred to me that the same thing had happened to me that had happened to Schauberg when he had not had his usual dose of morphine. We both had become too sober, too much ourselves. That is why I now had a sense of shame over my trickery to Joan, why Schauberg had raged over rearmament and its implication of war.

Or rather was it not the other way around?

Morphine and alcohol and drugs showed us how we truly -were: he, unscrupulous and cynical; I, egotistical and deceitful.

Yes. Surely. That was it.

13

Joan's telegram read,

ARRIVING NTNE-FTFTEEN PM

NOVEMBER THIRD LOVE JOAN.

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November 2, 1959 Dear Peter!

Le jour de gloire est arrive. Today is our first day in the studios. You know that it was my idea to make our movie Come Back, your comeback. You know why I brought you to Europe, why I want you to make this movie: because I believe in you.

Many difficulties lie ahead. Still I dare say that with a little luck Come Back will be an unusual, exceptional movie. But even if everything should go wrong, even then I shall say what I say now, on this our first day: It has been a pleasure and a great honor to have met you, to

have worked with you and to have had only the best intentions. Very sincerely yours,

Herbert Kostasch.

15

The waiter brought this letter while I was eating breakfast on this our first day of shooting. The letter was nice. It partly reassured me.

I took my coat and the black bag, which I had replenished last evening, and physically uneasy left the hotel. The lights were on, cleaning women still busy. I handed my car keys to the doorman. He smiled at me; he knew where I was going. Frequently movie people stayed at the hotel and if they were up this early they were shooting.

"Your car will be here in a moment. Good luck, Mr. Jordan."

I stepped out on the street. It was still dark and very cold. I recalled the mornings my mother and I had waited on such deserted streets for a studio car to pick us up.

The Nazis, in the name of Germany, in the greatest of mass genocides, were guilty of the death of six million Jews; guilty of a war in which sixty million people of all nations and races died. The guilty were undisturbed by conscience. The dreadful events passed. Whatever doubts their countrymen had were fleeting as a dream, about as permanent as a night watch. Feverishly the world was preparing for a new, even more dreadful war. Since my days as a child star nations had advanced, even philosophers had become activists; satellites circled the earth; a few cobalt bombs were sufficient to atomize the earth. All this had happened in the past twenty years, ever since I had last stood waiting for a car to take me to my work. Once again I was waiting: freezing, alone, afraid of failing, of being inadequate.

I drove north through the desert streets, passing freezing laborers waiting at tram stops; newspaper delivery men and boys on bicycles. I passed the dismal Eppendorf-er peatbog swamp above which screeching crows circled. There were no more dwelling places here. I saw blacksoil, occasional farms, and rotting meadows. A scene of desolation. I would drive this route to the studio for the next few weeks usually at this early.hour. As I was playing the lead and would be in most takes, I had insisted that those scenes be shot first. Wardrobe, hairdressers, make-up took an hour for preliminaries. That meant a daily morning arrival at the studios by seven-thirty.

I turned off into a country lane and slowly drove the car toward a dilapidated barn. Behind it, hidden from the road, stood an old Volkswagen. I left my car and opened the door of the other.

"Good morning," said Schauberg. ''Get in."

I did. He wore a new camel-colored flannel overcoat and a new blue suit. During the last few days I had seen him many times at the camp. Schauberg treated me daily and conscientiously. I received injections and medication for my circulation, my liver, my heart. Now he gave me an intravenous injection. He wore a new beret and smelled of cologne. He must have taken morphine; in time he seemed relaxed, confident, in good spirits. While giving me the shot he whistled the March of the Toreadors. Then, "Take one of these tablets now. Take the other two only when it is absolutely necessary. The first few days are the most difficult ones. Tm quite satisfied with you. When do you have lunch?"

"From one to two."

"Come back here then. And I'll be here again after six. You know you can always call Kathe should you need me. Apropos." He reached over to the backseat and picked up a bunch of asters. On the attached card was written in awkward letters "Good luck—Kathe Madler."

"I wish you the very best too," said Schauberg, "because I still have forty-five thousand marks coming from you."

16

Professor, When you asked me to record my experiences you said and said more than once, "I want everything."

Well, I have been conscientious, hiding nothing while I play monologist to the insensitive audience of this electronic mechanism. Its only response to the revelations of my most tormented experiences, my most agonizing secrets, is a routine, indifferent whirr and, as a variation, a click to warn me that the tape has come to its end.

m tell you everything—but it would be unfair to you if I included the details of shooting in the studio. You wouldn't really care to know, would you, how often the signal sounded for silence, how often the slateboard listing the scene was held before the camera, what the script girl recorded, which takes were printed, which rejected, which of the film rushes were printed.

Surely you know, if only generally, how films are made; how actors, directors, producers, technical men behave on the set. Surely you can imagine how bravely, how amiably we began; how earnestly we hated each other after weeks of work on the set.

Most of what I will tell you about those days in the studio is what you will want to hear. The moments of creation and failure, of frustration and despair—of death and resurrection.

• The Alhambra Studios were floodlit. There was the usual intense activity, the suppressed hysteria that precedes a first day's shooting.

A white-haired man approached me as I entered and

directed me to my dressing room, murmuring that it was the most comfortable in the studio. He was pretty old but genial, and he remained genial through my most diflBcult days.

There were the usual telegrams offering good wishes and flowers too. After a quick look I murmured my thanks. Then, for an hour I went through the ordeal of make-up.

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Not unexpectedly, the first quarrel came early. The production manager, Albrecht, thin, bent, grim-faced, limped into the room. He shouted at my make-up man. "What's going on, Otto? Olga says Miss King still has her curse!"

Otto, Olga's husband, replied as loudly, "We sent you a notification in plenty of time. Now don't tell me that's not true! I have the carbon."

Kostasch came in. "Don't yell like that, Albrecht! What's the trouble?"

Still shouting, Albrecht explained.

It seemed at first a silly argument over just when there would be close-ups of Miss King, then hardly in condition to have them taken. Somehow I sensed that the argument had been designed by Albrecht. He had some reason for dishking me. The quarreling trio finally agreed to hold the close-ups until later. Instead, shooting would begin with the difficult scene between the second lead, Henry Wallace, who was to play Miss King's husband, and me. Thanks, Albrecht, I thought, you managed that cleverly.

I finished dressing and went to the set. I held Shirley's little cross tightly.

Wallace who was about to murder me in a violent scene, already on the set, put out his hand in welcome.

Seaton, the director, clapped his hands. "We'll run a test." A moment's pause while everyone froze in place. "Ready," said Seaton.

Wallace seized a bronze lamp. I tried to evade him. He held its base high and sent it whirling at me. It struck the back of my head. Soundlessly, I collapsed on the thick carpet.

For a few seconds there was silence. Then Seaton said, "That was quite good." He took Wallace and me aside, told us what he wanted changed. We played the scene three more times before Seaton was satisfied.

"Ready," said Seaton.

Then, for the first time in twenty years, I heard the words, the melody of my childhood.

"Sound!"

"Sound okay!"

"Camera!"

"Camera ready!"

"Four twenty-seven, take one!" The take slate clicked.

"Action!"

An hour later the first of what was to become four hundred and thirty-three takes had had the director's approval.

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In the next take Belinda King, playing Henry Wallace's wife, entered, discovered what had happened. The scene was long, but since her close-ups had been rescheduled we made more progress this morning than had been planned.

I was playing dead on the floor. After a long argument with his wife, Wallace had called the police. The distressed couple were waiting for the homicide detectives to arrive. Then the camera moved in for »noth6r close-up