The Prince of West End Avenue Page 13

  "We are not going to tamper with Shakespeare's words, Tosca, apart, naturally, from the Sinsheimer cuts." (Sinsheimer had instituted certain judicious cuts in Hamletbecause of its abnormal length and because of weak bladders on both sides of the proscenium. This is why we are also to have three intermissions.)

  "In that case," she said, heaving herself to her feet, "some of us ain't going to stick around. For starters, you can find yourself a new Ophelia."

  But I had had time to prepare for this challenge. Her gauntlet lay at my feet. I let it lie there.

  "You are a person, Tosca, of extraordinary sensibility. Such people require special courage just to cope with the ordinary rotten facts of life." That held her. "But the fact here is, the people in this play are Christians, and Christians expect Christian burial. We can't do anything about that without doing unpardonable violence to the play."

  "Hah!" She tossed her head and pounded her fists into her hips.

  "But the good news for you personally, Tosca, is that Ophelia does notgtx. Christian burial."

  There was an excited murmur from the troupe.

  "Remember, she gets only maimed rites.' 'What ceremony else?' asks Laertes. None, says the priest. Only because orders have come down from the highest secular power does she get buried in that graveyard at all. So there's no possibility of Christian burial for Ophelia."

  La Dawidowicz frowned and dropped her arms to her sides.

  "Let us not forget what Sinsheimer, that great man of the theater, told us about the willing suspension of disbelief For the sake of the play the audience supposes you to be Ophelia, but that same audience also knows, and of course the printed program will make quite clear, that the part of Ophelia is merely played by Tosca Dawidowicz."

  "Well, maybe." She sat down again.

  "And when at the play's end you take your curtain call, when you blow your kisses to an ecstatic audience, it will be your name they'll be shouting, not hers: 'Tosca! Tosca!' "

  "Please, Tosca," pleaded Lottie Grabscheidt. "I beg of you, listen to what he says."

  She pouted. "I'll have to think about it."

  "Never mind thinking," said the Red Dwarf disdainfully. "Yes or no?"

  "Poliakov, please. Tosca knows we're working against time. She'll not keep us waiting long. Shall we say tomorrow morning, Tosca? Good. Meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen," I went on smoothly, "we must agree on a date for our performance. Thanksgiving is around the corner. I suggest we aim for the last night of Chanukah. Weekly rehearsal schedules and other pertinent matters will be posted on the bulletin board, as usual. One more thing: I assume you will empower me to send in the name of all of us a bouquet of flowers to our former director?"

  From the troupe, murmurs of approval.

  "Not from Pinsker on Broadway," said La Dawidowicz spitefully. "He carries only crap. For Nahum, money should be no object."

  "You have only to say from where, Tosca."

  "Okay, big shot, from Fratelli Fiorelli. On Madison and Sixty-fifth." She shot me a look of triumph.

  "So be it," I said, pretending to jot down a note to myself. "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen."

  Yes, I would say that all in all, I pulled it off. But my legs were trembling. Of my pounding head, I say nothing.

  That NEW MAN, Kunstler, bothers me. There is something about him that tugs at my memory. I sense trouble. Before the group in the library broke up, he had already roped in Hamburger, Blum, Pfaffenheim, Wittkower, and La Helfinstein for a game of poker.

  One OF MY FIRST ACTS as director was to send Goldstein a pair of complimentary passes to Hamlet. I enclosed them in a letter:

  Dear Bruce,

  Please accept these passes from Benno Hamburger and me as tokens of our continuing friendship and affection. We know that all concerned with the production will take heart from the thought that you and the companion of your choice are in the audience cheering us on. Meanwhile, I know that I can call on you and your considerable knowledge of the play should some directorial problem prove intractable.

  Cordially,

  Otto Korner

  Director, Emma Lazarus Old Vic

  I showed the letter to Hamburger. He looked doubtful. "Go ahead, send it off. At worst, it can't hurt." It didn't hurt. Today I received a reply:

  Dear Otto,

  Thanks for the passes. I'll be there. You want my help, you only got to ask.

  Too bad about Nahum. I heard.

  So how come you guys been giving me the cold shoulder? Coffee on the house next time you come in.

  Sincerely,

  Bruce Goldstein

  Prop., Goldstein's Dairy Restaurant

  I showed this letter, too, to Hamburger. "I believe it is peace for our time," I said.

  Hamburger shrugged. "Let's hope you did better than Chamberlain."

  Simply to keep you abreast of events, I should note that Blum reports success with Mandy Dattner. I was sitting in Goldstein's with the Red Dwarf this morning, enjoying a cup of coffee and a plate of fritters. Goldstein has proved as good as his word: the brouhaha is forgotten; we are on our old footing. In fact, Goldstein was sitting with us, a sure sign of special favor since this was the brunch hour, a busy period during which he ordinarily stands by his pillar directing traffic. Poor fellow, he had a cold, persistent; he couldn't shake it off. Misery had led to despair. "The neighborhood is changing," he said. "People come in nowadays, I don't know what to make of them. Ham

  and cheese on white toast, easy on the mayo, Pepsi on the side. I tell them this is a dairy restaurant, strictly kosher. Okay, they say, make it a burger, medium, and fries. I don't know should I look around for a buyer, sell the goodwill, or should I simply lock the doors and walk away, get out while I can still think straight." This is a familiar refrain, heard at intervals over the years as his lease comes up for renewal. I knew better than to comment. "Blaustein is bleeding me white. 'I'm a landlord, too,' I tell him. 'I know what the market can bear. The neighborhood's going downhill. We, at least, still bring in a good element, you should be grateful. Trumpeldor, for instance, still comes in, all the way from Hartsdale. You got a New York institution here. Don't squeeze the life out of it.' 'Business is good?' he says. 'Congratulations.' What's missing is compassion."

  "Marx foresaw all this," said the Red Dwarf. "The bloodsuckers are sucking the blood of the bloodsuckers."

  That was when Blum came in. Seeing us, he sat down at our table. "The world is still full of surprises," he said.

  As you may imagine, this, coming from Blum, startled me.

  "What'll it be?" said Goldstein.

  "The Charlton Heston and a glass of tea with lemon. My stomach's acting up."

  Goldstein signaled to Joe. "Did I ever tell you the one about the Jew, he's out traveling, and there's this storm: thunder, lightning, pelting rain?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "No, I don't think I've heard it," said the Red Dwarf.

  "So he comes to this bridge, it's swaying in the wind, it can't hold out much longer."

  "Yes, I remember now," said the Red Dwarf.

  "No, go on," said Blum.

  "The Jew has to get across. So he turns his face to heaven and he says, 'Lord, you get me safely to the other side and I'll give five hundred dollars to the UJA.' "

  "Yes," said Blum, "I think I know it. To cut a long story short, it ends 'Lord, I was only kidding,' right?"

  "Right," said Goldstein. He sighed.

  Joe brought the Charlton Heston and the glass of tea.

  "I've got another," said Goldstein. "A Jew is crawling across the desert, he's dying of thirst, and he meets a tie salesman. Wait, this one's fantastic."

  "Now's the time to quit," said Blum. "While you're ahead. You want to talk fantastic? I'll tell you what's fantastic. Randy Mandy is fantastic. You get to our age, you forget what it can be like."

  "For God's sake, Blum," I said.

  "So you got into her pants?" said the Red Dwarf admiringly.

  "What pants?" said Blum
. "You kidding me? Nothing's hiding that honey pot. She tells me she's never had it off with an old guy before. I tell her she's in for a real treat. I ache just thinking about it."

  The event had taken place, it appears, at about the time I was listening to the Marriage of Figaro playing on the phonograph across the hall and Hamburger was walking in amorous bliss around the grounds of the Hamptons estate with Her-mione Perlmutter.

  "Let me tell you, that girl's a quality gymnast," said Blum.

  "Perhaps now you can give some attention to learning your part in the play," I said acidly.

  "I've been meaning to talk to you about that," said Blum. "It's enough already with the play. I don't want to be in it anymore, it takes up too much sack time."

  "I didn't hear that," said the Red Dwarf menacingly. "The

  reason I didn't hear it is because I know you wouldn't want to make anyone angry. That's right, isn't it?"

  Blum swallowed. "Right," he said.

  (Ever since Lipschitz's accident, the Red Dwarf—quite unfairly, as I now know—has come to be seen as a man whom it is better not to tangle with.)

  death by supposing him translated into a constellation. Sins-heimer is my polestar, by whose steadfast light I steer this ship. Lipschitz (who, by the way, is still in the infirmary and looks far from well) handed on to me a treasure the existence of which until last night I had no inkling, a thick manuscript, alas, never completed, but nonetheless breathtaking in its scope. The title-page alone tugged at my heart as it evoked poor Adolphe in all his admirable modesty: "Notes on 'Hamlet': Prolegomenon to the Emma Lazarus Old Vic Production, by A. Sinsheimer, Friend to Ronald Colman." Merely to riffle through the pages is to become aware of the man's meticulous concern for every aspect of the play, set down in notes that he continued to revise and augment until the day of his sudden death. Here are sections on Lighting, Costumes, Stage-Groupings, Color Symbolism, Voice Inflection, Scene Construction, and so on and on. The topics range from the historical to the speculative. There is, for example, a chapter of some thirty pages with the teasingly Freudian title "What Does Hamlet Want?" a chapter that leads him, as if by chance, to certain penetrating comments on Sarah Bernhardt's extraordinary re-creation of the role and to the remarkable affinities to be found between the wit of the Prince and that of Georges Sand.

  Here, as another example, is a passage from the chapter entitled "The Duel, V.ii":

  . . . For Shakespeare's contemporaries the duel would have been a singular highlight of the play, an entertainment in itself, a match between near equals, whose passes and strategies the Elizabethan would have relished even as a modern American might appreciate the finer points of a football game on Rose Bowl Day. We may be sure that the Lord Chamberlain's Men would have been coached by fencing masters, that Hamlet and Laertes would have achieved a kind of figured ballet, passes de deux, as it were,

  sufficient to cause the groundlings to quit their shuffling and pay their due of awed attention. . . . But what of us at the Emma Lazarus? In my youth I learned to wield an epee, albeit with only moderate skill. (Dear Ronnie once remarked, his eyes atwinkle, that I held my sword like a truncheon.) And what of our Laertes? [At that time played by Carlo Pflaumenbaum, now in Mineola, a man grossly overweight and by nature ludicrously clumsy.— Korner] Let us not forget last year's fiasco, in which Romeo preceded Tybalt to the grave. . . .

  The duel remains a problem. And I do not think Sins-heimer's tentative solution is practicable: "A translucent screen, backlighted. The duelists seen only in silhouette. Professional dancers or members of a fencing club hired for the evening." The time grows short, and a solution must soon be found.

  As you can see, Notes on "Hamlet" is a cornucopia. What hubris, what laughable ignorance was mine, when I sought to fill Sinsheimer's shoes! Without the Notes I would be lost.

  A sheet of paper, obviously included in error in the manuscript, not only reminds us of the simple humanity of this fine man but also strikes an ironically poignant note:

  To purchase: Time magazine Sleep-Eze tablets Cheese danish (or cherry tart)

  Ah, that cheese danish (or cherry tart)! It was Sinsheimer's sweet tooth that took him from us, that caused his Time to run out, that gave him a Sleep of perpetual Eze.

  The Emma LAZARUS is in the grip of poker fever, an epidemic that threatens the production itself. I was right that Gerhardt

  Kunstler spelled trouble. Usually a new resident has the natural decency, the prudence, even, to keep himself in the background for a time, at least while he's learning the ropes. Not so Kunstler, who talks to everyone as if on terms of long-standing intimacy and, like a cynosure, draws the residents into a circle of which he is the center. The hearts of the ladies are all aflutter; one can see them blushing, dipping, dimpling in his presence. The gentlemen are no better, since he gives off an aura of dashing cosmopolitanism and masculine charm that seems to embrace them, too. From his table in the dining room comes the most boisterous laughter. None of this of course would matter were Hamlet not imperiled. I am not, for heaven's sake, in a popularity contest with the likes of Gerhardt Kunstler! But the game he arranged on his first evening has become a nightly entertainment, with Friday only, for obvious reasons, excepted. And the number of games has grown, until hardly a resident still capable of picking up cards is left out. Every table in the games room is taken. Large sums of money reportedly change hands.

  But why should I care? you ask. Am I a latter-day Cato? The answer is very simple: actors who stay up all night feeding the kitty and puzzling over combinations of pasteboard symbols cannot give of their best during afternoon rehearsals. Salo Wittkower, for example, still does not know his new lines; Lottie Grabscheidt, in the scene in which I "talk daggers to her," fell asleep in her chair in the midst of my impassioned outburst; others walk about like zombies.

  Hamburger, to my disappointment, has proved unhelpful. "You worry too much," he says. But he, of course, has a seat at the Big Table—that is, the one where Kunstler holds court, the principal game. (A regular there is able to sell his seat, I am told, for as much as a hundred dollars!) And when I wondered out loud whether perhaps I ought to go to the Kommandant, such nightly high-jinks being surely detrimental to the health

  of those under his care, Hamburger became quite huffy. "What are you, Korner, a tattletale? We are grown-up people here, we live in a democracy."

  Meanwhile, I understand Kunstler has been asking questions about me. I pique his curiosity. Well, he piques mine. What is it about him that hovers in my memory just beyond the grasp of recall? At a convenient moment I shall launch some discreet inquiries. Selma in Personnel I can rely on.

  Mandy DATTNER IS PREGNANT, or believes she is. "Not a whole lot," she said. "Only four weeks. But I know just the moment it happened. I could tell."

  I had found her sitting on a bench on Riverside Drive, bundled up in a quilted jacket, staring through the trees, through "yellow leaves, or none, or few," at a lone barge making its serene progress up the silent Hudson. She was lost in moody thought and did not see me raise my hat. I sat beside her, supposing her melancholy brought on by Lipschitz's death. After all, her first failure.

  "Life goes on," I said, or some such fatuous thing.

  She looked at me, shocked. "Can you tell already?" she said. "Does it show?" And so I learned of her condition.

  Miss Dattner was not inclined to draw a modest veil across the details. "We were going pretty good, you know, humping away, and like I had my legs up around his neck and all, so he was in pretty deep, and it was happening, you know." Her eyes became dreamy, lost focus. "He was getting into places I never knew I had in there, it was like fantastic, and like I was all hot syrup beginning to boil and then—boom!—we both popped together and I actually felt these great gushes just surging in—boffo!—and I was beginning to float way out, easy, just drifting, and then I felt it, you know, kind of like a cute little ping! sort of all by itself, like a soap bubble popping in the air, and I knew."

 
A seagull squawked overhead, then banked and swooped. We followed its flight to the river.

  "The thing is, I'd been off the pill for days. Ralph had been kind of standoffish—nervous, you know—ever since Dr. Weisskopf had this talk with him. One of the old ladies must have complained or something. Anyway, Ralph told me his career was on the line and that we'd better cool it for a while. He was all antsy about something called 'immoral turpentine.' So anyway, I wasn't prepared, you know, I was like taken by

  surprise. Hey, I'm not complaining, it was great and all. But now I'm pregnant." She smiled. "Little Mandy, I'm gonna be a mommy." Then the tears began to fall.

  "By Ralph you mean Dr. Comyns?"

  "Yeah, Ralph," she sniffed.

  "And have you told Dr. Comyns he's going to be a father?"

  "Ralph? It wasn't him! I told you, we've been cooling it." She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. "Nobody ever listens."

  As you can imagine, I was out of my depth. I wanted to put a comforting arm around her but was afraid to do so. Instead I draped it awkwardly behind her, along the back of the bench. "Whoever it was, will he marry you?"

  "You crazy? He could be my grandfather!"

  It was Freddy Blum!

  To think that Blum should bring my analogy of the microcosm and the macrocosm, of the Emma Lazarus and the greater society beyond our walls, so much closer to completion! From this house of the dying was to spring forth new life. A seed had been planted and was even now ripening. I felt a tiny flutter of elation.

  We walked back slowly together, arm in arm. How I had misjudged her! What has she, poor child, to do with Magda Damrosch, now spiraling for more than thirty years, a wisp of smoke in the air? She is a child of her own generation, decent after her fashion, abysmally ignorant, culturally vapid, but innocent all the same, however hedonistic. How young she is, how vulnerable! The nip in the air had brought a flush to her cheeks, and I suppose also to mine. I told her I would do whatever I could to help. She told me about Led Zeppelin.

  THE DEATH OF LlPSCHITZ has given me a little breathing space. That puts the truth bluntly, but it remains the truth. The