Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter [28]
They were brought small cups of coffee from across the courtyard.
“How does it sound to you?” she asked the writer.
“Well …” he hesitated.
He was a wavering man named Peter Lang, at one time Lengsner. He had seen her in all her sacred life, a figure of lights, he had read the article, the love letter written to her in Bazaar. It described her perfect modesty, her instinct, the shape of her face. On the opposite page was the photograph he cut out and placed in his journal. This film he had written, this important work of the newest of the arts, already existed complete in his mind. Its power came from its chasteness, the discipline of its images. It was a film of indirection, the surface was calm with the calm of daily life. That was not to say still. Beneath the visible were emotions more potent for their concealment. Only occasionally, like the head of an iceberg ominously rising from nowhere and then dropping from sight did the terror come into view.
When she turned to him then, he was overwhelmed, he couldn’t think of what to say. It didn’t matter. Guivi gave an answer.
“I think we’re still a little afraid of some of the lines,” he said. “You know, you’ve written some difficult things.”
“Ah, well …”
“Almost impossible. Don’t misunderstand, they’re good, except they have to be perfectly done.”
She had already turned away and was talking to the director.
“Shakespeare is filled with lines like this,” Guivi continued. He began to quote Othello.
It was now Iles’ turn, the time to expose his ideas. He plunged in. He was like a kind of crazy schoolmaster as he described the work, part Freud, part lovelorn columnist, tracing interior lines and motives deep as rivers. Members of the crew had sneaked in to stand near the door. Guivi jotted something in his script.
“Yes, notes, make notes,” Iles told him, “I am saying some brilliant things.”
A performance was built up in layers, like a painting, that was his method, to start with this, add this, then this, and so forth. It expanded, became rich, developed depths and undercurrents. Then in the end they would cut it back, reduce it to half its size. That was what he meant by good acting.
He confided to Lang, “I never tell them everything. I’ll give you an example: the scene in the clinic. I tell Guivi he’s going to pieces, he thinks he’s going to scream, actually scream. He has to stuff a towel in his mouth to prevent it. Then, just before we shoot, I tell him: Do it without the towel. Do you see?”
His energy began to infect the performers. A mood of excitement, even fever came over them. He was thrilling them, it was their world he was describing and then taking to pieces to reveal its marvelous intricacies.
If he was a genius, he would be crowned in the end because, like Balzac, his work was so vast. He, too, was filling page after page, unending, crowded with the sublime and the ordinary, fantastic characters, insights, human frailty, trash. If I make two films a year for thirty years, he said … The project was his life.
At six the limousines were waiting. The sky still had light, the cold of autumn was in the air. They stood near the door and talked. They parted reluctantly. He had converted them, he was their master. They drove off separately with a little wave. Lang was left standing in the dusk.
There were dinners. Guivi sat with Anna beside him. It was the fourth day. She leaned her head against his shoulder. He was discussing the foolishness of women. They were not genuinely intelligent, he said, that was a myth of Western society.
“I’m going to surprise you,” Iles said, “do you know what I believe? I believe they’re not as intelligent as men. They are more intelligent.”
Anna shook her head very slightly.
“They’re not logical,” Guivi said. “It’s not their way. A woman’s whole essence is here.” He indicated down near his stomach. “The womb,” he said. “Nowhere else. Do you realize there are no great women bridge players?”
It was as if she had submitted to all his ideas. She ate without speaking. She