Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [79]
Of course, L.A. was full of writers who didn’t live in the shadow of the studios and didn’t care whether they were invited to parties or not, who were there because they had always lived there, or because they liked the climate, or to escape from the presence of other writers, or out of some obscure combination of sun worship and natural living that was as deeply embedded in the city’s culture as the entertainment business. The Durants, needless to say, were in this category and ignored the movie people—to the extent that they were even aware of them—as much as they were ignored by them. Whatever had brought them to the West Coast from New York in the first place, they lived in resentful seclusion among the ravines and steep, wooded hills of North Hollywood, unfindable without elaborate directions and a map. Back in the day of silent pictures, this had been a fashionable neighborhood, though its aspect was sinister and strangely dark for L.A.: winding, narrow roads, high walls with dense shrubbery concealing grotesque houses and huge, overhanging trees, all combined to produce an atmosphere that was more Transylvanian than Californian. Unlike Brentwood, where the Wallaces lived amid flat, manicured lawns, stately palm trees, and cheerful houses, the Durants’ neighborhood was more in the spirit of Norma Desmond’s gloomy mansion in Sunset Boulevard. Their home, what could be seen of it behind high stone walls and fiercely overgrown vegetation, was in the 1920s Hollywood Spanish Gothic style, with much wrought iron, heavy wooden doors, gargoyles, tiny barred windows, and carved oak shutters. It looked more than capable of holding off an assault by armed pikemen or the angry peasantry, if necessary. Innumerable parapets and towers vaguely suggested a medieval castle, while the rusting wrought-iron gate in the wall that faced the street resembled that of a prison, so that one half expected to be taken immediately to a dungeon. Had Erich von Stroheim appeared in livery to announce a chimpanzee’s funeral, I would not have been surprised.
After I had vigorously rung the old-fashioned bell, Ariel Durant appeared from out of the dense shrubbery that covered the flagstone pathway and shuffled out to open the gate for me. Her home attire was even more eccentric and bulky than what she had worn in New York. She greeted me in a hoarse, gravelly voice and warned me that I was about to see something to which few people had ever been granted entry—she squeezed my arm sharply—Will’s workplace, the place where he had researched and written his books. Max and Ray Schuster had never been here—a lot they cared for the Durants’ labors; all that mattered for them was money, money, money. But I, Ariel confided, seemed to her—though she was prepared to be disappointed—to have a finer sensibility and a real love of history, despite my having been brought up in wasteful affluence and having chosen an odious profession that was based on exploiting honest, decent, hardworking writers and scholars and stealing bread out of the mouth of genius.
But the house into which she ushered me was not exactly the West Coast equivalent of a Left Bank garret. It would, in fact, have been luxurious, had the Durants cared to give it some thought and attention, and must have been built by or for a star. The library had big French windows overlooking the garden and the empty pool. The overgrown trees around the house made it dark and cool, but it was the books that gave it a certain dusty, mildewed air, rather like that of Miss Havisham’s dining room in Great Expectations. I felt a little like Pip, when he returned from London dressed as a gentleman, except that there was no Estella in sight, worse luck.
The Durants’ working arrangements, unlike those of Irving Wallace, seemed jury-rigged and primitive. Will worked in an old wooden armchair covered in ratty-looking rugs, writing in longhand on a pad placed on his knees, with lots of