Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter [29]
“I am really a romantic and a classicist,” he said. “I have almost been in love twice.”
Her glance fell, he told her something in a whisper.
“But never really,” he said, “never deeply. No, I long for that. I am ready for it.”
Beneath the table her hand discovered this. The waiters were brushing away the crumbs.
Lang was staying at the Inghilterra in a small room on the side. Long after the evening was over he still swam in thoughts of it. He washed his underwear distractedly. Somewhere in the shuttered city, the river black with fall, he knew they were together, he did not resent it. He lay in bed like a poor student—how little life changes from the first to the last—and fell asleep clutching his dreams. The windows were open. The cold air poured over him like sea on a blind sailor, drenching him, filling the room. He lay with his legs crossed at the ankle like a martyr, his face turned to God.
Iles was at the Grand in a suite with tall doors and floors that creaked. He could hear chambermaids pass in the hall. He had a cold and could not sleep. He called his wife in America, it was just evening there, and they talked for a long time. He was depressed: Guivi was no actor.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Oh, he has nothing, no depth, no emotion.”
“Can’t you get someone else?”
“It’s too late.”
They would have to work around it, he said. He had the telephone propped on the pillow, his eyes were drifting aimlessly around the room. They would have to change the character somehow, make the falseness a part of it. Anna was all right. He was pleased with Anna. Well, they would do something, pump life into it somehow, make dead birds fly.
By the end of the week they were rehearsing on their feet. It was cold. They wore their coats as they moved from one place to another. Anna stood near Guivi. She took the cigarette from his fingers and smoked it. Sometimes they laughed.
Iles was alive with work. His hair fell in his face, he was explaining actions, details. He didn’t rely on their knowledge, he arranged it all. Often he tied a line to an action, that is to say the words were keyed by it: Guivi touched Anna’s elbow, without looking she said, “Go away.”
Lang sat and watched. Sometimes they were working very close to him, just in front of where he was. He couldn’t really pay attention. She was speaking his lines, things he had invented. They were like shoes. She tried them on, they were nice, she never thought who had made them.
“Anna has a limited range,” Guivi confided.
Lang said yes. He wanted to learn more about acting, this secret world.
“But what a face,” Guivi said.
“Her eyes!”
“There is a little touch of the idiot in them, isn’t there?” Guivi said.
She could see them talking. Afterward she sent someone to Lang. Whatever he had told Guivi, she wanted to know, too. Lang looked over at her. She was ignoring him.
He was confused, he did not know if it was serious. The minor actors with nothing to do were sitting on two old sofas. The floor was chalky, dust covered their shoes. Iles was following the scenes closely, nodding his approval, yes, yes, good, excellent. The script girl walked behind him, a stopwatch around her neck. She was forty-five, her legs ached at night. She went along noting everything, careful not to step on any of the half-driven nails.
“My love,” Iles turned to her, he had forgotten her name. “How long was it?”
They always took too much time. He had to hurry them, force them to be economical.
At the end, like school, there was the final test. They seemed to do it all perfectly, the gestures, the cadences he had devised. He was timing them like runners. Two hours and twenty minutes.
“Marvelous,” he told them.
That night Lang was drunk at the party the producer gave. It was in