L.A. 46, page 9
“Please, kleine liebchen,” he’d begged. “I could be shot for this. But it won’t ever happen again.”
And because he’d called her his small sweetheart and she’d seen men shot and he’d sworn it wouldn’t happen again, she’d finally promised she wouldn’t tell.
Tell whom? What wouldn’t happen again?
A week later, barely giving her time to heal, he’d returned to the alcove for an encore and it had been the first of hundreds of identical nights. Her affair with Heinrich Hauptman, if the rape of a twelve-year-old girl and the subsequent carnal relations between them could be called an affair, had continued for the next two years, the schoolmaster coming to her four or five nights a week.
Eva was honest with herself. True, some of the blame was hers. After the pain had lessened, then disappeared, and the business had become mildly pleasant, she’d begun to look forward to his visits. They’d made her feel singled out and important. Der Schulmeister preferred her to all the other girls in her class. For the first time since Tante Gertrude had died, she felt as though she belonged to someone, that someone cared something about her. Besides, unfrocked priest, dismissed professor, devil, whatever he had been, Herr Hauptman had been wise in the ways of young girls. He usually brought her a sweet or an extra portion of food and, after admiring and using her, he never once failed to call her his little sweetheart and tell her she was a truly beautiful little girl.
If the Vranovs knew what was going on in the alcove, and she didn’t see how they could possibly fail to know, they never remarked about it. After all, they were simple country folk and Herr Hauptman was der Schulmeister. Then, too, from time to time, he left other bottles of schnapps on their table and had renewed his promise to help Herr Vranov get a job.
As Eva watched one of the fishermen standing at the rail reel in a fair-sized fish, she gave credit where credit was due. If Heinrich Hauptman had been an insistent lover by night, he’d been equally demanding during the day. Day after day he’d drilled her and the rest of the class in reading and writing and science and mathematics and literature and philosophy and languages until they were months ahead of the curriculum for their form.
The wind blowing in off the ocean felt suddenly cold. It might have gone on like that for years. She might still be in D.P. Camp Ein und Zwanzig if Heinrich’s own evil nature hadn’t been his undoing.
That had come about during the last half of the second year of their affair. Because it was that time in her body’s development, perhaps hastened by the almost nightly stimulation of her genitalia, she began to be able to experience climactics, and from then on Herr Hauptman hadn’t been able to leave her alone.
Eva wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand. Because it had amused him, sadistically no doubt, to see her child’s face contorted and ugly with passion, Heinrich had been like a man in a frenzy. He doubled the number of his visits, stayed longer, delayed his own satisfaction, even taught and subjected her to various forms of erotica, forcing her by one means and another to expend her fragile emotional and physical resources until she was on the edge of a nervous and physical breakdown. He literally tried to love her to death.
If such a thing was possible, he might have succeeded. But one morning, after a particularly exhausting night, while on her way to school the camp commandant’s wife had noticed her pallor and listlessness and fearing tuberculosis, the scourge of all such camps, ordered her taken to the camp infirmary immediately.
There the doctor in charge, unable to find any signs of the suspected disease, had been puzzled to find her suffering from what appeared to be loss of sleep, excessive muscular fatigue, and acute physical debility. When a thorough physical examination revealed the fact she was no longer virgo intactus, he’d asked a few pertinent questions and she’d been so frightened she told him the truth.
“How long has this business been going on?” he asked.
“Almost two years,” she told him.
“With one of the boys in the camp?”
“No. With one of the men.”
“Which one?”
“Herr Hauptman.”
“Der Schulmeister?”
“Ja.”
A family man with preadolescent and teen-age daughters of his own, the doctor had been furious. So had the retired colonel in charge of the camp. And for some hours there had been a great deal of confusion and much talk of first horsewhipping then emasculating Herr Hauptman.
However, in the end the police had been called and following a short trial in the neighboring village during which she’d had to tell the whole sordid story from the stand, the former Schulmeister of Camp Ein und Zwanzig had been found guilty of raping and of having multi-sexual connections with a minor female and had been sentenced to an indefinite term in a mental institution.
The last she’d seen or heard of him had been when they had led him, manacled, from the courtroom. The Tyrolean hat he affected cocked at a jaunty angle, one eyebrow arched higher than ever, he stopped in front of her and smiled.
“You shouldn’t have told them, Eva.”
Eva wiped at her eyes again. Then, as she’d told Jack Gam, early in her fourteenth year she had agreed to be adopted and the Hoffmans had brought her to America. And now, in the morning mail, the letter from Miss Schmidt.
This was the sort of a story a girl wanted her husband to know? Especially after she had just informed him that she was not only his three-month pregnant wife, but also his blond baby sister who he thought had been dead and buried for seventeen years.
Eva resisted a hysterical impulse to laugh. When and if she did tell Paul, the chances were he would try to have her committed to a mental institution. How was he supposed to react? What was he supposed to say? Gesundheit? God bless you? Welcome home, kleine Schwester?
She took her compact from her purse and repaired her makeup as best she could in the dim light, then got heavily to her feet and climbed the wooden stairs and walked back the way she’d come, lifting her chin a trifle higher every time one of the elderly fishermen turned from the rail to admire her with wistful, remembering eyes.
As she neared the shore end of the pier, as she passed the front of the brightly lighted restaurant in which she and Paul had eaten so many times, a stocky, well-dressed man in his middle thirties took his fat cigar from his mouth, whistled softly, then asked:
“Hey. How about it, beautiful?”
Eva stopped briefly and faced him. “Go to hell. You go to hell,” she said fiercely, then walked on.
10
Lili Marlene had a penchant for new and expensive things. When she moved into the Casa del Sol, along with the other new furniture she purchased she spent three of her alimony checks, totaling twelve hundred and twenty-six dollars, plus tax, for a French provincial, deluxe, home theater combination hi-fi record player, F.M. radio, twenty-seven inch color television set.
The set was much too large and too powerful for her living room, but it was one of her prize possessions. Except when she was sleeping, whenever she was in her apartment one or another of its components was usually blaring full blast. Mrs. Malloy had to ask her to turn down the volume on an average of four times a week.
John Johns was broadcast in color. The color reception was perfect. Lili seldom left fof work before nine o’clock P.M. She was an avid follower of the news. But she made a point of not listening to her fellow tenant’s seven o’clock telecast.
She thought John Johns stank. It was difficult for her to put a finger on exactly how he did it, but somehow, at least in her opinion, he managed to twist every piece of world and local news he analyzed toward one focal point, the downgrading and belittling of anything typically American, especially if his subject matter had anything to do with motion pictures or show business.
It was her considered opinion, and she told everyone in the building who would listen to her, despite the black string tie he affected, his deliberately tousled hair, his poor country boy act, and the fact he was married to a slab-chested Mrs. John Johns who might have been lifted bodily out of the painting “American Gothic” by Grant Wood, if Johns didn’t like it where he was, he ought to go back where he came from.
Tonight, at her next door neighbor’s suggestion, having dubiously watched and listened to Johns’ telecast on Gloria Ames’ suicide and sarcastic dissertation on the motion picture industry in general, while she and Richardson had consumed several pitchers of postprandial martinis, she’d been able to talk of little else.
His sign-off in particular still bothered her. At five minutes after nine, a half-filled brandy glass in one hand, weaving slightly as she walked, she got up from the Swedish Moderne sofa, made her way into the dressing room, modestly closed the door part way, and used her free hand to strip off her gold lam6 hostess pants and matching halter, preparatory to dressing and leaving for the club to do her first show. She quoted Johns verbatim in a surprisingly good imitation of his dry, nasal drawl.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, I leave you with this, I hope sobering, thought. Wasn’t the needless, yes, tragic, death of this poor, misguided young woman by her own hand at least partially your fault and mine; the end product of a way of life in which license is mistaken for liberty and the pinnacle of perfection and feminine acting ability is presumed to be two oversized, overexposed, mammary glands? Until Monday night. Good evening.
Lili finished the brandy in her glass and set the glass on the built-in dressing table. In the first place, Gloria hadn’t died poor. The chances were, considering her percentage of the net of her last two pictures, her estate would run to several million dollars. In the second place, she hadn’t had any bigger breasts, or exposed them more, than a dozen girls, herself included, whom she could name.
“Why, the Red son of a bitch,” she called through the opening in the dressing room door. “And the more I think about it, the bigger son of a bitch he is. How does he know why Gloria wanted out? Where does he get off criticizing her? If he doesn’t like the way we do things here, why doesn’t he go back to Russia?”
Busy in the kitchenette using a pad of steel wool on the pan in which he’d simmered and almost burned the sauce for their Spaghetti Caruso, Richardson considered pointing out that while Johns might or might not have pink ruching on his rhetoric, he hadn’t been criticizing the dead girl. He’d been taking a crack at the mores of a moronic public and the system that permitted a girl with little or no talent to become a star. More, as far as going back to Russia was concerned, to the best of his knowledge John Johns had been born in Osage, Oklahoma.
Richardson decided the dissemination of the information wouldn’t be politic. Writing was a lonely business. He didn’t know how long it would last, but he and Lili had struck it off from the day he’d moved into the Casa del Sol. Why look a gift broad in her lack of logic?
He liked being with Lili. He liked eating and talking and drinking with her. She could, and frequently did, call a spade a goddamn dirty shovel. She was one of the few girls he’d met who could consume a fifth of gin without becoming sloppy. He enjoyed the occasional favors she granted when she happened to be in the mood. She was big. She was bawdy. She was his, at least for the time being.
He dried the saucepan and put it in the sliding drawer under the stove. Then, too, it was all grist for his IBM. People were always asking him:
“Where in the world do you get your ideas and your characters for your books?”
All they had to do was look around them. True, if you wanted to write a children’s classic like Black Beauty or Seven Little Peppers and How They Grew, you sought out other source material. But as far as he was concerned, for the type of work he did, the Casa del Sol and its tenants were a gold mine he’d just begun to work.
The deeper he dug, the richer the vein became. And the best was yet to come. Who knew? Some day he might want to write a book about a six-foot-tall, twenty-eight-year-old, statuesque, naturally flame-haired, three times married, onetime minor child motion picture star, born Gertie Swartz in Modesto, California, current leading exotic dancer at the Purple Parrot (The Hottest Show In Town—Five Shows A Night—No Cover Charge At Any Time) superpatriotic stripteaser?
“Well, you know how it is,” he called back. “Johns has to make a living, too.”
“Why?” Lili called back as she used the facility in the bathroom. She continued to be incensed. “With her dead and unable to defend herself, he as much as called her a tramp. She can’t even get a little publicity by suing him and his crummy station for libel.”
Richardson veered the subject away from Johns. “You worked with her, didn’t you?”
“A couple of times.” As long as she was stripped, Lili decided to take a shower before she dressed. She raised her voice in order to be heard above the rush of water. “Of course I was big and gone long before she came along. But I did a nightclub bit when she made ‘The Waif for Metro. Then two years ago I was the lead Oriental dancer when she starred in their remake of ‘Sinbad The Sailor.’ ”
“What kind of person was she?”
“You wouldn’t want to meet a nicer kid. We all used to have lunch together in the commissary every noon. And there was no upstage business. She was just one of the gang.”
Richardson gave up trying to talk above the rush of water. He waited until Lili finished showering, then said, “It makes you wonder, though, huh? You know, with everything she had going for her.”
“You said it,” Lili agreed. “I should be doing half so good. But she probably had her reasons.”
“Undoubtedly.”
Richardson gave the tile apron of the sink a swab with the sponge, dried his hands, ran one of them over his prematurely bald head, and walked into the living room.
“Did you bring in the evening paper?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Richardson opened the door leading out onto the balcony and picked the paper from the mat. The heat was holding. It was as hot at nine o’clock as it had been at noon. A number of the tenants were in the pool. More were relaxing on the chaise longues. Either a child or a young girl was crying in the Romero apartment.
He closed the door and unfolded the paper. The headline read—
A STAR BURNS OUT!
He couldn’t decide if he liked the headline or not. In a way, it was much more libelous than anything Johns had said. All Johns had been trying to point out was that there’d come a time in the dead girl’s life when she wanted to do more than open her mouth and simper and follow where her nipples pointed. She wanted to be an actress. Unfortunately, as Johns had also pointed out, her studio couldn’t allow that to happen. They couldn’t afford to allow her to change one simpering word or slinky undulation, or even wear a bra. Why? Because she’d become the all-American sex symbol. Because, just as she was, she was already their biggest box office attraction.
He made himself comfortable in an easy chair. “It’s all over the paper. There’s a picture of her as the Waif on the front page. Also a publicity still of her imprinting her footprints for posterity in the foyer of Grauman’s Chinese. Maybe you’ll get a little publicity out of it. Maybe there’ll be some reporters waiting at the club to talk to you.”
“Hah,” Lili scoffed.
“It says here that the police talked to Dr. Gam.”
“That’s different. He was her psychiatrist.” Lili opened the door of the dressing room and stood holding the towel in front of her. “What does it say about Dr. Gam?”
“Not much. The police talked to him, trying to find out some motive for her doing what she did.”
“Did he know why?”
“No. He’s quoted here as saying that while she was admittedly neurotic, the last time he talked to her she was quite cheerful and enthusiastic about the new picture she was scheduled to make. At least, cheerful and enthusiastic for her.”
“Why for her?”
“Gam told the police she was a very unhappy young woman.”
“What did she have to be unhappy about?”
“According to Gam, quite a number of things. Including a highly developed inferiority complex and a sense of insecurity.”
“With all her money and friends?”
“I’m just reading what it says here. But the lieutenant in charge put that same question to Gam. And what do you think he said?”
“What?”
“That now, when she needed them most, he didn’t see any friends. You know, the old Caesar—Marc Antony bit. ‘But yesterday the word of Caesar might have stood against the world; now lies he there, And none so poor to do him reverence.’ ”
“Oh,” Lili said, uncertainly.
She retreated into the dressing room and toweled the places she’d missed. For some reason she felt depressed. She didn’t like to admit it, but there could be some truth in what Johns had said. If a girl with all Gloria Ames had going for her had been unhappy enough to take the sleeping pill route—it made a girl think. Still, the square hadn’t needed to be so nasty about it. He’d said in almost so many words that Gloria’s only talent had consisted of a pair of big boobies.
Lili dropped the towel on the floor and studied her upper body. If big breasts were a sign of talent, she was loaded. On the other hand, outside of helping to attract three husbands and packing them in nightly at the Purple Parrot, as far as she knew her breasts had never done anything in particular for her. Before she’d even had any, when she’d been a snot-nosed kid, she’d made ten times the money she’d ever earned since.
They were too big. All of her was too big. That was why she’d had to turn stripper. Drunks liked to look at a lot of woman. But the few directors and producers who remembered her from the days when she’d been a child star were hesitant to cast her in serious roles. Time after time they’d told her, “You’re a big girl now, Lili. Too big.” Then they’d claimed the viewing public liked small, cuddly, leading women, that they weren’t ready for a leading lady, however well she could sing and dance and act, who weighed as much as and who was taller than most leading men.
