Goodbye California - Alistair [127]
‘Cattle,’ Luigi said with a splendid contempt. He had just brought fresh beers to the three men and was now surveying the pandemoniac scenes being enacted beyond his unwashed windows. Luigi, the proprietor, regarded himself as a cosmopolitan par excellence in a city of cosmopolitans. Neopolitan by birth, he claimed to be a Greek and did his undistinguished best to run what he regarded as an Egyptian establishment. From his slurred speech and unsteady gait it was clear that he had been his own best customer for the day. ‘Canaille!’ His few words of French served, as he fondly imagined, to enhance his cosmopolitan aura. ‘All for one and one for all. The spirit that won the west! How true. The California gold rush, the Klondyke. Every man for himself and the devil take the rest. Alas, I fear they lack the Athenian spirit.’ He swung a dramatic arm around him and almost fell over in the process. ‘Today, this beautiful establishment: tomorrow, the deluge And Luigi? Luigi laughs at the gods, for they are but manikins that masquerade as gods else they would not permit this catastrophe to overtake those mindless infants.’ He paused and reflected. ‘My ancestors fought at Thermopylae.’ Overcome by his own eloquence and the alcohol-accentuated effects of gravity, Luigi collapsed into the nearest chair.
Ryder looked around at the incredible dilapidation which was the outstanding characteristic of Luigi’s beautiful establishment, at the vanished patterns on the cracked linoleum, the stained Formica table-tops, the aged infirmity of the bent-wood chairs, the unwashed stuccoed walls behung with sepia daguerrotypes of pharaonic profiled bas-reliefs, each with two eyes on the same side of the face, portraits of so unbelievable an awfulness that the only charitable thing that could be said about them was that they tended to restore to a state of almost pristine purity the unlovely walls which they desecrated. He said: ‘Your sentiments do you great credit, Luigi. This country could do with more men like you. Now, please, may we be left alone? We have important matters to discuss.’
They had, indeed, important matters to discuss, and their discussion led to a large and uncompromising zero. The problems of what to do with the apparently unassailable inhabitants of the Adlerheim seemed insuperable. In point of fact, the discussion was a dialogue between Ryder and Parker, for Jeff took no part in it. He just leaned back, his beer untouched, his eyes closed as if he were fast asleep or he had lost all interest in solving the unsolvable. He appeared to subscribe to the dictum laid down by the astronomer J. Allen Hynek: ‘In science it’s against the rules to ask questions when we have no way of approaching the answers.’ The problem on hand was not a scientific one: but the principle appeared to be the same.
Unexpectedly, Jeff stirred and said: ‘Good old Luigi.’
‘What?’ Parker stared at him. ‘What’s that?’
‘And Hollywood only a five-minute hop from here.’
Ryder said carefully: ‘Look, Jeff, I know you’ve been through a hard time. We’ve all been through –’
‘Dad?’
‘What?’
‘I have it. Manikins masquerading as gods.’
Five minutes later Ryder was on his third beer, but this time back in Sassoon’s office. The other nine men were still there and had indeed not stirred since Ryder, Jeff and Parker had left. The air was full of tobacco smoke, the powerful aroma of Scotch and,