"It's Pasadena," she said. She shivered a little.
So I talked. "Pasadena. How well I know it! Caltech, where people think
the troubles of the world began. The peeling eucalyptus trees and the
long shadows on the long sidewalk. Way back in the dear, dead beryllium
days--"
"I haven't the faintest idea what you mean!"
"Dr. Einstein," I said, "walking around under his hair. Thinking
so hard he never noticed the earthquake. It was the spring of
nineteen-thirty-three. Perhaps I should explain that, in those days,
when they wanted to split an atom, they generally used beryllium. A
common element--half as heavy as aluminum and twice as strong--but
difficult to recover. Poor Dr. E! Like all the reasonable men,
seemingly he cannot perceive that what he thinks of as irrational is
the force that governs human destiny! He assumes it's just a matter of
enlightening the politicians. The deification of reason--the worship of
common logic--cuts off human personality from natural truth exactly as
idolatry destroys the faculty of rational analysis. And for the same
reason. The intellectual paragon is as blind as any pagan--in the
opposite direction. But we were talking about Pasadena--"
"Vaguely," she said.
"I'll be more explicit, then. I was working for Paramount in that
blessed era when nothing upset the world worse than a depression. A
curable malady--that. Anyhow, I had a producer who lived in Pasadena. A
big, reddish house on one of those irrigated buttocks that grow out of
the lower mountains. Completely surrounded by thornbushes--except for
the entrance gate. The first time I went there was Sunday--a nine A.M.
conference--and my producer's butler served highballs right away to
myself and the other writers. I shall never forget it--or ever recall
a word that we said there that day. I was an animal-horror man, at the
time--"
"A what?"
"Animal-horror man. That's what the studio boss called me. In fact, he
said I was pretty young to be an animal-horror man, the first time we
met."
She drank some of her brandy and then did a disturbing thing.
She took her pale, wavy hair in both hands and bent it back up over
her head so that the curly ends fell everywhere around her face. When
she did it, she looked at me in a certain way. We were both supposed
to understand the gesture perfectly--and not to notice it at all. Wild
horses weren't supposed to be able to drag out of us an admission of
what it meant.
"Those were not only the beryllium days, but the days of animal
pictures and horror pictures. Frank Buck and Osa Johnson and Tarzan.
Frankenstein. Paramount was trying to combine the grisliest features
of all of them. They were making Wells's _Island of Dr. Moreau_--for
instance. And I was doing some of the writing. Hence I was an
animal-horror man--and young for it, too. Precociously animalistic and
horrible. Remember? Cobras fought mongooses? Tigers fought pythons and
other unnatural antagonists? Zebus fought gnus? My producer wanted
to throw a half dozen lions into a school of big sharks--and get some
red-hot close shots of the fights that would then ensue. That--I
stopped. Even we ogres draw the line somewhere--and I know a good deal
about sharks. The lions, if you once got the sharks hitting them, would
not be fighting, as my producer imagined, but dying by mouthfuls."
"How awful!"
"Pasadena, it was," I reminded her. "Another conference at that big
house amongst the thorns. I know the place like a book. I know the
spirit of the place. You lived there?"
She stared at the room, empty now of all but waiters and two or three
pairs of murmuring people. Full, however, of Musak. Light operettas.
"Somehow it's easier to talk to strangers," she said, "than to people
you've known all your life."
"Of course!" I replied in sober agreement--although I thought the idea
was rubbish.
"And besides," she went on, immediately contradicting herself, "I've
read your articles and books and I feel as if I knew you better than
you knew yourself."
Unlikely, I figured. But this was important to her, so I nodded. "Maybe
you do--in some ways."
She had shown a certain economy of speech--owing possibly to the fact
that I had given her little opportunity to show anything else. But her
biography was fairly terse:
"I was born in Boston--and the family moved here when I was a baby.
My dad graduated from Princeton in 1921. He's a very intelligent,
strong-willed, wonderful guy. My mother's a chronic invalid--of her
own making. I have one sister--older--and no brothers. I'm very fond
of my sister--but I was always jealous of her when I was young. Dad
tried to make her a substitute for a son--took her everywhere, taught
her sports and games--and I wanted to be the one. She's married and
lives in Chicago. I went to school in Westchester--Rosehall--and came
out here. At a mass début. Dad's in real estate. After I came out, I
fiddled around awhile--Junior League, and Red Cross, and Bar Harbor in
the summers--and then I met Rol."
She took a breath that quavered like a musical saw. "He's handsome.
He has manners--buckets and barrels of manners. And money." She
looked angrily at her rings. "I tried to make something out of him.
To put ambition in him. I got him to work for dad--and he quit. He
wanted to go to California because he likes flowers. My God, how he
likes flowers! We had greenhouses full. He thought he could become a
botanist--or hybridize something--and he dawdled away his time with
paintbrushes and pollen. I persuaded him to go into real estate out
there--and he made a lot more money--but he gave it up. He began
collecting a library of old books on botany--and writing a history
of botany--and I was bottled up in botany. It got so he would hardly
even dress up. Or shave. Overalls all day. I'd want to go places and
see people and do things--and we'd be home, instead, with some French
professor, maybe, for dinner, complete with beard, accent, ribboned
glasses, and knee-patting under the table. Half the time, these
professors and Rol--for Roland--talked Latin. I flunked it, three
straight semesters, myself. Well--I took to going out alone--and he
didn't care. I even tried to make him jealous--and he positively seemed
to approve. He told me I needed outside interests and that he was a
dull fellow for me! I--" She bit her lip.
"--love the guy."
"Not now. I did. What finally happened was--"
"Should I get that beer ready?"
She shook her head. For a while she was silent. Then she touched
the book. "I heard--I knew--I suppose I shouldn't even have been
surprised--let alone driven out of my mind--but there's so much that's
nice about him. Used to be, anyhow. Too nice--and that should have
prepared me--"