Evening in Byzantium Read online

  She talked candidly of the men who had come before him, and he knew there would be others after him. He contained his jealousy. Now he knew that he had been suffering from deep wounds when he had met her. The wounds were healing.

  In the quiet room, suffused only with the mild sound of the sea outside the window, he waited anxiously for the ring of the telephone, the darting, husky tones of her voice. He was prepared to say, “I am taking the first plane back to Paris,” sure that if she had any other engagement that evening she would break it for him.

  Finally the phone rang. “Oh, you,” she said. The tone was not affectionate.

  “Darling,” he began.

  “Don’t darling me, Producer. I’m no little starlet wriggling her hot little ass for two weeks on a couch.” He heard voices in the background—her office, as usual, was probably full, but she was not one to postpone rage because of an audience.

  “Now, Connie …”

  “Now, Connie balls,” she said. “You said you were going to call me yesterday. And don’t tell me you tried. I’ve heard that before.”

  “I didn’t try.”

  “You haven’t even got the grace to lie, you son of a bitch.”

  “Connie.” He was pleading now.

  “The only honest man in Cannes. Just my goddamn luck. Why didn’t you try?”

  “I was …”

  “Save your goddamn excuses. And you can save your telephone calls, too. I don’t have to hang around waiting for any goddamn phone to ring. I hope you’ve found somebody to hold your hand in Cannes because sure as Christ your franchise has run out in Paris.”

  “Connie, will you for God’s sake be reasonable?”

  “As of now. As of this minute I am purely, coldly, glacially reasonable. The phone’s off the hook, laddie boy. Don’t bother trying to get the number. Ever.”

  There was the angry sound as she slammed the instrument down six hundred miles away. He shook his head ruefully as he put the phone down in its cradle. He smiled a little, thinking of the dumb quiet that must have fallen among the young at her office and the frantic, professorial eruption from the adjoining room of her partner, galvanized out of his usual somnolence by her tirade. It was not the first time she had yelled at him. It would not be the last. From now on he would call her when he promised if it took hanging on the phone all day.

  He went down to the terrace, had his photograph taken with a lion cub, wrote on it, “I have found a mate for you,” and put it in an envelope and mailed it to her. Express.

  It was time for his lunch with the Murphys, and he went out under the porte-cochère and asked for his car. The doorman was occupied with a peeling bald man in a Bentley and ignored Craig. The parking space in front of the hotel was crowded, with the best places reserved for the Ferraris, the Maseratis, and the Rolls-Royces. Craig’s rented Simca was shunted around by the doorman to spots less exposed to public view, and sometimes, when the spate of expensive hardware was intense, Craig would find his car parked a block away on a side street. There had been a time in his life when he had gone in for Alfas and Lancias, but he had given all that up many years ago, and now, as long as a car carried him where he wanted to go, he was satisfied. But today, when the doorman finally told him that his car was parked behind the hotel and he trudged on the hunt for it past the tennis courts toward the corner where the whores loitered in the afternoon, he felt vaguely humiliated. It was as though the employees of the hotel had a subtle knowledge of him, that they were letting him know, in their scornful treatment of his humble rented car, that they did not believe he really belonged in the palace whose walls they guarded.

  They will be surprised at the size of their tip when the time comes, he thought grimly as he turned the key in the ignition and started toward the Cap d’Antibes and his luncheon date with Bryan Murphy.

  MR. and Mrs. Murphy were down at their cabana, the concierge told him, and were expecting him.

  He walked through the fragrant piney park toward the sea, the only sound that of his own footsteps on the shaded path and the crackle of cicadas among the trees.

  He stopped before he reached Murphy’s cabana. The Murphys were not alone. Seated in the small patio in front of the cabana was a young woman. She wore a scanty pink bathing suit, and her long hair hung straight down her back, glistening in the sunlight. When she half-turned, he recognized the dark glasses.

  Murphy, in flowered swimming trunks, was talking to her. Lying on a deck chair was Sonia Murphy.

  Craig was about to go back to the hotel to call Murphy on the telephone and tell him to come up because he didn’t like the company at the cabana when Murphy spotted him. “Hey, Jess,” Murphy called, standing up. “We’re over here.”

  Gail McKinnon did not turn around. She stood up, though, when he approached.

  “Hi, Murph,” he said, and went over and shook Murphy’s hand.

  “My boy,” Murphy said.

  Craig leaned over and kissed Sonia Murphy’s cheek. She was fifty but looked about thirty-five, with a trim figure and a gentle, unlined, non-Hollywood face. She was covered with a beach towel and was wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat to keep from being sunburned. “It’s been too long, Jesse,” she said.

  “It certainly has,” Craig said.

  “This young lady,” Murphy said, gesturing toward Gail McKinnon, “tells me she knows you.”

  “We’ve met,” Craig said. “Hello, Miss McKinnon.”

  “Hello.” The girl took off her glasses. The gesture was deliberate, like the lowering of a disguise at a masquerade ball. Her eyes were wide, jewel-blue, but somehow evasive and uncertain, prepared for pain. Face grave and open, body not quite ripe, flesh satiny, she could have been sixteen, seventeen. He had a peculiar feeling that the rays of the sun were concentrated on her, a downfall of light, that he was looking at her from a distance, himself shadowed by a cloud with a dark promise of rain. She was perfect for the moment, poised quietly against the sea, the dazzle of the reflections from the water celebrating her youth, the richness of her skin, her almost-angular shapeliness.

  He had the troubling sense of having already been a witness at the scene—a girl perfect for a moment in bright sun with the sea behind her. He could not tell whether he was oppressed or exhilarated.

  She reached down, not completely graceful, her long hair swinging, and he saw that there was a tape recorder at her feet. As she bent to the machine, he couldn’t help but notice the soft roundness of her belly over the pink cloth of the tiny bikini, the adolescent jut of bones on generous hips. He wondered why she had disfigured herself the morning before with the absurd oversized sweat shirt, the affectation of the blank expanse of dark glass.

  “She’s been interviewing me,” Murphy said. “Against my will.”

  “I bet,” Craig said. Murphy was famous for giving interviews to anybody on any subject. He was a big, heavyset, squarely built man of sixty, with a shock of dyed black hair, a whisky complexion, shrewd, quick eyes, and an easy, bluff Irish manner. He was known as one of the toughest negotiators in the business and had done very well for himself while enriching his clients. He had no written contract with Craig, just a handshake, although he had represented Craig for more than twenty years. Since Craig had stopped making movies, they had only seen each other infrequently. They were friends. But, thought Craig meanly, not as close friends as when I was riding high.

  “How’re your girls, Jesse?” Sonia asked.

  “When last heard from, they seemed okay,” Craig said. “Or as okay as girls can be at that age. Marcia, I hear, has put on weight.”

  “If they’re not up on a possession or pushing charge,” Murphy said, “consider yourself a happy parent.”

  “I consider myself a happy parent,” Craig said.

  “You look pale,” said Murphy. “Put on a suit and get some sun.”

  Craig glanced at the slender tan body of Gail McKinnon. “No, thanks,” he said. “My season hasn’t started yet. Sonia, why don’t you and I take
a walk and let them finish their interview in peace?”

  “The interview is over,” Gail McKinnon said. “He’s been talking for a half hour.”

  “Did you give her anything she can use?” Craig asked Murphy.

  “If you mean did I use any dirty words,” Murphy said, “I didn’t.”

  “Mr. Murphy was most informative,” Gail McKinnon said. “He said the movie industry was bankrupt. No money, no talent, and no guts.”

  “That’ll help a lot the next time you go in to make a deal,” Craig said.

  “Screw ’em,” Murphy said. “I got my pile. What do I care? Might as well enjoy telling the truth while the mood is on me. Hell, there’s a picture going into production that’s been financed by a tribe of Apache Indians. What the hell sort of business are you in when you have to get script approval from Apache Indians? We ordered lobster for lunch. You got any objection to lobster?”

  “No.”

  “How about you?” Murphy asked the girl.

  “I love it,” she said.

  Oh, Craig thought, she’s here for lunch. He sat down on one of the folding canvas chairs facing her.

  “She’s asked me a lot about you.” Murphy jabbed a blunt finger in the direction of the girl. “You know what I told her? I told her one of the things wrong with the business is it’s driven people like you out of it.”

  “I didn’t know I had been driven out,” Craig said.

  “You know what I mean, Jess,” Murphy said. “So it became unattractive to you. What’s the difference?”

  “He was most complimentary about you,” Gail McKinnon said. “You would blush with pleasure.”

  “He’s my agent,” Craig said. “What do you expect he would say about me? Maybe you’d like to hear what my mother used to say about me when she was alive.”

  “I certainly would.” The girl reached down toward the tape recorder. “Should I turn it on?”

  “Not for the moment.” He was conscious of the girl’s small smile. She put the dark glasses on again. Once more she was an antagonist.

  “Gail says you’re being stony-hearted,” Murphy said. It didn’t take him long to call girls by their first names. “Why don’t you give her a break?”

  “When I have something to say,” Craig said, “she’ll be the first to hear it.”

  “I take that as a promise, Mr. Craig,” the girl said.

  “From what I heard my husband spouting for the last half hour,” Sonia said, “you’re wise to keep your thoughts to yourself, Jesse. If it was up to me, I’d put a cork in his mouth.”

  “Wives,” Murphy said. But he said it fondly. They had been married twelve years. If they ever fought, they fought in private. The advantage, Craig thought, of late marriages.

  “People ask too many questions,” Sonia said. She had a quiet, motherly voice. “And other people give too many answers. I wouldn’t even tell that nice young lady where I bought my lipstick if she asked me.”

  “Where do you buy your lipstick, Mrs. Murphy?” Gail McKinnon asked.

  They all laughed.

  “Jess,” Murphy said, “why don’t you and I wander down to the bar and leave the girls alone for a cozy little preluncheon slander session?” He stood up, and Craig stood, too.

  “I’d like a drink, too,” Sonia said.

  “I’ll tell the waiter to bring one for you,” Murphy said. “How about you, Gail? What do you want?”

  “I don’t drink before nightfall,” she said.

  “Journalists were different in my day,” Murphy said. “They also looked different in bathing suits.”

  “Stop flirting, Murphy,” Sonia said.

  “The green-eyed monster,” Murphy said. He kissed his wife’s forehead. “Come on, Jess. Apéritif time.”

  “No more than two,” Sonia said. “Remember you’re in the tropics.”

  “When it comes to my drinking,” Murphy said, “the tropics begin just below Labrador for my wife.” He took Craig’s arm, and they started off together on the flagstone path toward the bar.

  A plump woman was lying face down on a mattress in front of one of the cabanas, her legs spread voluptuously for the sun. “Ah,” Murphy murmured, staring, “it’s a dangerous coast, my boy.”

  “The thought has occurred to me,” Craig said.

  “That girl’s after you,” Murphy said. “Oh, to be forty-eight again.”

  “She’s not after me for that.”

  “Have you tried?”

  “No.”

  “Take an old man’s advice. Try.”

  “How the hell did she get to see you?” Craig said. He had never liked Murphy’s hearty approach toward sex.

  “She just called this morning, and I said come along. I’m not like some people I know. I don’t believe in hiding my light under a bushel. Then when I saw what she looked like, I asked if she had brought her bathing suit with her.”

  “And she had.”

  “By some strange chance,” Murphy said. He laughed. “I don’t fool around, and Sonia knows it, but I do like to have pretty young girls in attendance. The innocent joys of old age.”

  They were at the little service hut by now, and the uniformed waiter there stood up as they approached and said, “Bonjour, messieurs.”

  “Une gin fizz per la donna cabana numero quarantedue, per favore,” Murphy said to the waiter. Murphy had been in Italy during the war and had picked up a little Italian. It was the only language besides English that he knew, and as soon as he left the shores of America, he inflicted his Italian on the natives, no matter what country he was in. Craig admired the bland self-assurance with which Murphy imposed his own habits on any environment he entered.

  “Si, si, signore,” the waiter said, smiling either at Murphy’s accent or with pleasure at the thought of the eventual tip Murphy would leave him.

  On the way to the bar they passed the swimming pool set in the rocks above the sea. A young woman with pale blonde hair was standing on the side of the pool watching a little girl learning how to swim. The little girl had hair the same color as the woman’s, and they were obviously mother and daughter. The mother was calling out instructions in a language that Craig could not identify. Her tone was soft and encouraging, with a hint of laughter in it. Her skin was just beginning to turn rosy from the sun.

  “They’re Danes,” Murphy said. “I heard at breakfast. I must visit Denmark some day.”

  On inflated mattresses set back from the ladder leading to the sea two girls were lying face down, enjoying the sun. Their halters were discarded so that there would be no telltale strips of city-white skin across the tanned, beautiful young backs. Their brown rumps and long legs were smoothly shaped, appetizingly tinted. The bikini bottoms were merely a symbolic gesture toward public decorum. They were like two loaves of newly baked bread, warm, edible, and nourishing. Between them sat a young man, an actor Craig recognized from two or three Italian films. The actor was equally tanned, in swimming trunks that were hardly more than a jockstrap. He had a lean, muscular, hairless body, and a religious medal hung on a gold chain down his chest. He was darkly handsome, a superb animal with black hair and very white teeth, which he showed in a pantherish smile.

  Craig was conscious of Murphy beside him staring down at the trio next to the sea.

  “If I looked like that,” Craig said, “I’d smile, too.”

  Murphy sighed loudly as they continued walking.

  At the bar Murphy ordered a martini. He made no concessions to what his wife called the tropics. Craig ordered a beer.

  “Well,” Murphy said, raising his glass, “here’s to my boy.” He gulped down a third of his drink. “It’s wonderful finally catching up with you. In person. You don’t hand out much information in your letters, do you?”

  “There’s not much to say these days. Do you want me to bore you with the details of my divorce?”

  “After all these years.” Murphy shook his head. “I never would have thought it. Well, people have to do what they have
to do, I suppose. I hear you’ve got a new girl in Paris.”

  “Not so new.”

  “Happy?”

  “You’re too old to ask a question like that, Murphy.”

  “The funny thing is I don’t feel a day older than the day I got out of the army. Stupider but not older. Hell, let’s get off that subject. It depresses me. How about you? What’re you doing down here?”

  “Nothing much. Lazying around.”

  “That kid, that Gail McKinnon, must have asked me in a dozen different ways what I thought you were after in Cannes. You want to work again?” Murphy glanced speculatively at him.

  “Might be,” Craig said. “If something good showed up. And if anybody was crazy enough to finance me.”

  “It’s not only you,” Murphy said. “Anybody’d have to be crazy to finance almost any movie these days.”

  “People haven’t been knocking your door down asking you to get me to work for them, have they?”

  “Well,” Murphy said defensively, “you’ve got to admit you’ve sort of dropped out of things. If you really want to work, there’s a picture I’m putting together … I might be able to swing it. I thought of you, but I didn’t bother writing you until it was more definite. And there wouldn’t be much money in it. And it’s a lousy script. And it’s got to be shot in Greece, and I know about you and your politics …”

  Craig laughed at the torrent of Murphy’s excuses. “It sounds just dandy,” he said. “All round.”

  “Well,” Murphy said, “I remember the first time you came to Europe, you wouldn’t go to Spain because you didn’t approve of the political situation there, and I …”

  “I was younger then,” Craig said. He poured some more beer into his glass from the bottle on the bar in front of him. “Nowadays, if you wouldn’t shoot a picture in a country whose politics you didn’t approve of, you wouldn’t expose much film. You certainly wouldn’t shoot a picture in America, would you?”

  “I don’t know,” Murphy said. “My politics is take the money and run for the hills.” He motioned to the bartender for another drink. “Well, then, if the Greek thing develops, do you want me to call you?”