Marion.
One night when I wandered over to have a drink at his house, he mentioned the director. “There’s a case,” he said. “When I was a kid, I used to think”—and Faye laughed harshly—“that Eitel was a god and devil all in one.”
“It’s hard to think of you feeling that way about anybody,” I said.
He shrugged. “Eitel would talk to me when he was dating Dorothea. I was such a freak of a kid. Even after he broke up with my mother, he used to invite me over once in a while.” Faye smiled at the hint of feeling in what he said.
“What do you think about him now?” I asked.
“He’d be all right,” Marion said, “if he weren’t so middle-class. Very nineteenth century, you know.” With a blank expression, he left me for a minute to search through the drawerof his aluminum and blond-wood desk. “Here,” he said, coming back, “take a look. Read this.”
He handed me a printed transcript of the testimony taken at the hearings of a Congressional investigating committee. It was a heavy pamphlet, and as I looked at it, Marion said, “Eitel’s dialogue starts on page eighty-three.”
“You sent away for this?” I asked.
He nodded. “I wanted to have it.”
“Why?”
“Oh, that’s just a little item,” Marion said. “Someday I’ll tell you about the artist in me.”
I read it through. The testimony of the director came to twenty pages, but it was my introduction to Eitel, and I think I ought to give a page or two which is typical of the rest. In fact, I read it aloud many times. I had brought a tape recorder with me to Desert D’Or, and I would study my speech and try to improve it. Eitel’s dialogue was an opportunity for me, and although I cared little enough about politics, considering them a luxury like gentleman’s ethics which I could not yet afford, I would always have a reaction from his words. It is not very neat to say, but I felt as if I were speaking my own words, or at least the way I would have liked to say them into the eye of somebody who knew I had broken a regulation. So the testimony was not boring to me, and I took the idea while I read, that I had a lot to learn from Eitel:
C ONGRESSMAN R ICHARD S ELWYN C RANE : … are you now or have you ever been, I want you to be specific, a member of the Party?
E ITEL : I should think my answer would be obvious.
C HAIRMAN A ARON A LLAN N ORTON : Do you refuse to answer?
E ITEL : May I say that I answer with reluctance and under duress. I have never been a member of any political party.
C HAIRMAN N ORTON : There is no duress here. Let’s get on with the thing.
C RANE : Did you ever know Mr.——?
E ITEL : I probably met him at a party or two.
C RANE : Did you know he was an agent of the Party?
E ITEL : I didn’t know.
C RANE : Mr. Eitel, you seem to delight in presenting yourself as stupid.
C HAIRMAN N ORTON : We’re wasting time. Eitel, I’ll ask you a simple question. Do you love your country?
E ITEL : Well, sir, I’ve been married three times, and I’ve always thought of love in connection with women. (
Laughter
.)
C HAIRMAN N ORTON : We’ll have you up for contempt if you don’t stop this.
E ITEL : I wouldn’t want to be in contempt.
C RANE : Mr. Eitel, you say you met the agent in question?
E ITEL : I can’t be sure. My memory is weak.
C RANE : A film director has to have a good memory, I should think. If your memory is as bad as you claim, how did you make your pictures?
E ITEL : That’s a good question, sir. Now that you’ve pointed it out, I wonder how I did make them. (
Laughter
.)
C HAIRMAN N ORTON : Very clever. Maybe you won’t remember something we have on record here. It says you fought in Spain. Want to hear the dates?
E ITEL : I went over to fight. I ended up as a messenger boy.
C HAIRMAN N ORTON : But you didn’t belong to the Party?
E ITEL : No, sir.
C HAIRMAN N ORTON : You must have had friends among them. Who incited you to go over?
E ITEL : If I did remember, I