Part 50 (1/2)

We were silent, again, each with his own thoughts, until Doris came into the room. Her face was bright and scrubbed and smiling, her dress crinkled as she walked toward us. The clean refres.h.i.+ng scent of pine came to my nostrils as she stood by my side and looked down at the bed. ”Your bed's a mess, Papa,” she exclaimed.

He smiled up at her as she picked up the papers and put them in a neat little stack on the night table. She turned back to the bed and straightened up the sheets and fluffed up the pillows behind him. Her face was flushed as she straightened up and looked at him. ”There,” she said. ”Isn't that better?”

He nodded his head, then looked at her questioningly. ”Mamma is still sleeping?” he asked.

”Yes,” Doris answered, coming around the bed and sitting down next to me. ”She's so tired. She hasn't had a good night's rest since you were sick.”

Peter looked at her. There was a warm light in his eyes; his voice was very soft and gentle. ”A wonderful woman, your mother,” he said quietly. ”You can't know how wonderful. I couldn't get along without her.”

Doris didn't answer, but I could tell from the look on her face that she was very proud. She turned to me. ”Have you had lunch yet?”

”I ate before I got here,” I replied.

”You didn't hear me, maybe,” Peter persisted. ”I said your mother is a wonderful person.”

She smiled at him. ”I'm not arguing with you.” She laughed, ”I think you're both wonderful people.”

Peter turned to me. ”I been thinking,” he said. ”If it's a question of money, maybe Santos could help you.”

For a moment I was puzzled. ”But Al has retired,” I protested. ”Besides, what could he do anyway? They get all their money from the Boston banks.”

”The loan must be due now,” he said. ”It's almost two years old. What if they can't get an extension? They got enough money to retire it?”

I looked at him respectfully. There was always some way in which he would surprise me. Generally when I thought him far away from something and out of touch with it, he would pop up with some remark or question that made me realize he had been watching the situation very closely. This was one of those times. ”No, we haven't the money to repay it,” I answered slowly. ”But it doesn't make much difference. We started negotiations for an extension last month and Konstantinov a.s.sured us we would get it without trouble.” Konstantinov was president of the Greater Boston Investment Corporation, from whom Ronsen had borrowed the money to buy Peter out. The loan was subsequently transferred to the picture company.

”It wouldn't hurt to talk to Al anyway,” Peter insisted peculiarly. ”Four million dollars is a lot of money and anything can happen when there's that much involved. Why don't you run over and see him just in case?”

”Do you know something?” I asked him. It seemed to me that he had a reason for his peculiar insistence.

He shook his head. ”No, I just think you should not overlook anything. It doesn't hurt to be prepared.”

I looked at my watch. It was past four o'clock. I don't know why, but suddenly I could feel a surge of hope and confidence sweep through me. Al had retired to a ranch out in the valley about three hundred and fifty miles from Los Angeles. It would take about six hours to get out there and that would be too late. Al went to bed at eight o'clock. I looked up at Peter. ”Maybe you're right,” I said suddenly, ”but it's too late for today.”

”Why don't you spend the night here?” Doris volunteered, ”and I'll drive you out tomorrow. That way we can get off to an early start.”

I looked at her and smiled. Peter answered for me. ”A good idea,” he said quickly.

I laughed aloud for the first time since last night. ”Well, it seems to be settled,” I said.

Peter looked at me. ”Of course it's settled.” He turned back to Doris with a funny smile on his face. ”Liebe kind,” he said, ”would you do your old papa a favor and bring up the chessboard from the game room?”

He was feeling better all right. I lost two games before the nurse came back and chased Doris and me out of the room and we went down to supper.

THIRTY YEARS.

1936.

1.

Johnny picked up the letter from his desk and looked at it. There was a grimace of distaste on his face as he read it. This part of his job he didn't like, writing letters like this one.

Another pay cut. Ten percent this time for the whole company. The third since '32. Angrily he pressed the buzzer for Jane to come into his office.

She stood in front of him silently, her face grave.

”Send it out on Friday,” he said, giving it to her.

She took it from him without a word and left the office. He turned his chair to the window and stared out of it unseeingly. The futility of the letter ran through him.

Pay cuts weren't the answer, they never were. Friday, when a copy of the letter would be placed on each employee's desk, faces would grow longer, more worried. They would talk quietly to one another or not speak at all. Each would be trying to figure out how he could exist with this new burden. But few would dare to complain, jobs were too scarce. They would pa.s.s him silently in the hall and their eyes would stare at him resentfully and accusingly. They would blame him and Peter for it. Maybe they were right.

They couldn't know that Peter and he had not taken any salary from the company for almost three and a half years now. They couldn't know that Peter had put back almost three million dollars into the company to keep it going. That it was all the money that Peter had.

Yet, in spite of it, maybe they were right. Certainly Peter and he had not acted from altruistic motives entirely. They were trying to save their own necks. Several of the other picture companies had already filed pet.i.tions in bankruptcy, and Peter had sworn that he would never do that.

Whom were they to blame if not Peter and himself? he asked himself accusingly. Certainly the average employee had not made the mistakes that were responsible for the company's predicament. The mistakes were their own, he told himself, going over them in his mind, Peter's and his. He had made his share of them too.

So what if Peter had guessed wrong about sound pictures? He himself had guessed wrong about what type of sound-recording methods they should use. He remembered his insistence on using sound on disks instead of on the film itself. Look at the phonograph, he had said, it was the only proved method of reproducing sound, you couldn't go wrong with it. But they had.

The disks were c.u.mbersome to transport; they broke easily, were too difficult to synchronize with the film. It cost almost a million dollars to replace the equipment they had bought when they had to switch to sound on film.

Since that time he had kept his hands off production. Peter had been angry, but he had to admit that Peter had enough reason. A million dollars' worth of reason. He would have felt the same way if he had been in Peter's place. Peter had been in charge of production, not he, and Peter had paid for the mistake.

There were other mistakes too, but what was the use of rehas.h.i.+ng them? They proved nothing except that Peter and he were human and couldn't bat a thousand. But most of all it was the pictures.

If the pictures had been good, they would have been all right no matter what had happened. The pictures were bad. It was almost as simple as that. Peter never caught on to the technique and use of sound in pictures.

He had made one good sound picture. That was back in '31. The war picture. It was the only one and it was good because Peter had put tremendous effort into it. He had salved his conscience toward his homeland with it, compensated for the picture he had to make about German atrocities during the war, but after that he seemed to lose his touch.

Johnny thought that Peter had gone wrong about the time he had become obsessed with the idea that the industry was in the throes of a religious war, that the Jewish people in it were under attack. Johnny couldn't be sure about it, but it was a possibility. Making pictures was a highly specialized and creative art and no artist could do his best while torn by seething tensions.

He lit a cigarette and walked to the window. That was part of it. You could go farther back than that-back to when the business was starting and no one had ever dreamed how big it would become. The picture business was a relatively simple thing then. You made pictures and you sold them. It was different now. Very different.

Today a picture man had to be a financier, an economist, a politician, and an artist all rolled up into one. He had to read balance sheets as well as scripts, market a.n.a.lyses as well as stories. He had to be able to forecast public tastes and preferences six months to a year in advance because that was how long it would take for the picture he was working on to reach the public.

Johnny turned around and picked up the small bust of Peter that stood on his desk and looked at it. Maybe that was what was wrong with Peter. Peter was trying to be too many things. He had never learned really to delegate duties and responsibilities. He tried to do everything himself, not trusting anyone else to do it for him, and his methods were the same as they had been when he first started in the business years ago.

That was it, Johnny thought. A man had to be flexible in order to survive in the complex world of motion pictures today. Peter wasn't flexible, he was too used to running the whole show, and the habits of years were difficult to break.