The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [71]
I think he was concerned more for his own dignity than for Al Jolson’s reputation or the merits of the moving picture itself. He had on cotton gloves, used to handle the spools of film without damaging the film stock with secretions from the pads of his fingers. He is tough-looking, the producer from Hollywood, swarthy and sinewy with cruel eyes. He took off one of the gloves and with his bare palm slapped the German, hard, across his face. The German looked startled for only a moment, before smiling at the American and offering him a curt bow. This was the protocol, apparently, for the duel they are to fight; the challenge made and accepted in the heat of a half-drunken moment.
But Dennis tells me it is all deadly serious. The German had fought duels before, was part of a student duelling society in Heidelberg in his youth. And the American, of Italian extraction, was a college fencing champion, good enough at épée and sabre to represent his country in the Olympic Games. The men here seem very excited at the prospect of blood and steel. The women feign indifference, but are excited too, I think.
I have a small problem of my own, concerning blood and steel. The cut on the flesh of my thumb has become infected and swollen. It leaks fluid, which has a sweetish smell, like decay. I have disinfected and bandaged it, but I think I have a slight fever now and am concerned about infection. Beyond that minor worry, I have to confess to a more general and far greater uneasiness. I’ve prattled on about the row prompted by the ‘talkie’ and the prospect of the duel and my septic thumb, avoiding writing this part. But I have to write it, because it is all I can now think about. It is more urgent and important than anything else possibly could be.
I have known for months about the ceremonies and the sacrifice, have had more than sufficient time to prepare myself for what is involved in the rituals being staged here. But tonight the blood banquet was held. And it was vile. It was staged in a huge dining hall reached through the library of the house. This hall is panelled in polished wood with a heavy and elaborate burr. We served ourselves from a cold buffet displayed at one end of the room, the staff having been dismissed after the preparation of the food. There were thirteen of us, of course. We ate by candlelight at the long table running through the centre of the hall, our meal accompanied by music played loudly on Fischer’s gramophone. The machine positively gleams, so new and up-to-date is it. The sound from its horn is shrill and crisp and it runs hot, smelling of metal and Bakelite. The gramophone is another of the uneasy juxtapositions in his house between contrived, Middle Ages décor and the opulent trappings of modernity. The music started staidly enough, emotional arias warbled throbbingly by Caruso and the sweet-voiced Irish tenor John McCormack. Then, with the steady intoxication of the evening, it got darker and more mischievous. It turned first to ragtime, which I’ve always thought sinister, somehow, in the way its simple and deliberate rhythms stalk the mind. And then, of course, it turned to jazz. I recognised a handful of tunes played by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, Bix Beiderbecke soloing on his cornet. And then our host played a recording by the Red Onion Jazz Babies. I saw them in Chicago last year, could hear again now the brass virtuosos Sydney Bechet and Louis Armstrong competing on their crowd favourite, ‘Heebie Jeebies’. I stole a glance at Göring, the German, expecting some new explosion, now about nigger musicians. But none came. Tonight, he had other things than jazz on his mind. The music got ever wilder, less controlled.
What’s this? I asked Fischer, at one point, as piano keys echoed some whorehouse lament. Perhaps it was just me. I was slightly feverish, I suppose, from my infected thumb.
Fats Waller, he said, with an indulgent