William Boyd - The New Confessions

Faithfull was still a successful second-rater — they never truly succeed, these types, but they never seem truly to fail, either. He was in Hollywood under contract to Warners and, like most of the European directors in the place, was engaged in serving up a trashy version of “Old Europe” for American consumption.

I met Monika and Faithfull at a cricket match in Bel Air (once again organized by the indefatigable Cyril Norman, a ghastly annual occasion for all the has-beens, bit-parters and lounge lizards to parade their stage Englishness). Faithfull ignored me except to comment, “Hard times, Todd? Hard luck,” and wander away. He was very fat but still annoyingly handsome in his sleek prosperous way, with his thick gray hair brushed straight back from his forehead. Every time I saw him I felt a bizarre cannibalistic urge to carve a steak of his plump haunches. I have a feeling Faithfull would have tasted good — porkish, with crackling, served up with roast potatoes, sprouts and applesauce. He had a superb tailor. His immaculately cut dark suits made him look tapered rather than bulky.

Monika wouldn’t leave him for me (she said he’d had his teeth fixed) and they made a stylish couple. However, she would motor down from Mulholland Drive to see me occasionally in my little apartment. I always liked Monika and we got on well. The sex was not the sole reason for the continued association. She was no snob. Faithfull wouldn’t be seen with me because I was a fifty-dollar-a-week writer on Poverty Row. Monika had a European egalitarianism that the British don’t possess. Hard times?… Hard luck. No one from Berlin would have said that in 1939.

* * *

I drove to Tijuana to the American consulate to renew my resident’s visa. I waited for an hour to see the consul, a Mr. Lexter, a quiet elderly man and a lay Baptist minister, so he told me later. He had a big shock of unruly gray hair that kept falling into an unlikely boyish fringe. He looked over my form, and me, and said he would get it processed right away. Then, dropping his functionary’s guard for a moment, he said, “I think your country is doing a fine and noble thing, Mr. Todd. I pray for an end to this evil.” It was only then (he obligingly fetched an American newspaper) that I learned war had been declared.

I left the consulate and went round the corner to the Hotel Cuatro Naciónes. I sat in the bar and read the news. I drank several beers and wondered what to do next. How did I feel?… First, oddly divided. Then emotionally and tearfully patriotic. Then irritated and frustrated. I thought of my years in Berlin and of all my German friends. Then I thought of those mad bastards with their uniforms and their flags. I wasn’t at all surprised by the news. Our Santa Monica chapter of the Anti-Nazi League had been predicting war in Europe for years. Now it had come and abstract arguments were suddenly concrete facts. I thought, for some reason, about my father, Hamish and Mungo before I considered my three children. These misplaced loyalties upset me. I felt a rush of self-hatred for so easily abandoning Vincent, Emmeline and Annabelle to Devize. I ate a solitary lunch of chorizos , goat’s cheese and a bottle of sweet wine, growing steadily more depressed as the particular fears — destruction of country, death of loved ones — elided into the generally maudlin.

My mind went back to 1917. I thought of the Salient, the bombers, that day with Teague. It was just my luck to fit two European wars into my four decades. How could all this be happening again? And so soon?… Then, Christ! Karl-Heinz! What about Karl-Heinz? Then I felt bitterly sorry for myself, alone in this noisy, noisome border town. What the hell was I doing here? I grew angry. I strode back round to the consulate, but it was shut. I had a vicious argument with an impassive concierge. I left a note urging Lexter to process my application with the greatest speed as I wished to return to Britain at once.

It was a curious day. I drove back to Rincón and packed my suitcases. Then I unpacked them. That evening I went down to the Cervecería Americana. The place was full of glum Germans. As I sat on the terrace and talked with them I suddenly realized that notionally we were enemies. To cope with this absurdity I drank too much tequila añeja and took a hundred-dollar bet with an affable man called Ramón Dusenberry that the U.S.A. would declare war on Germany before the end of November. When I left the cervecería at 2 A.M. it was still loud with the noise of morose disputation.

I confess the events of the next week or so are hard for me to untangle. My journal entries are undated.

Wednesday. To Tijuana. Lexter says he will do everything he can to expedite matters. Back to Rincón . Cervecería at night. F. says Hitler will sue for peace once he has Poland.…

Friday. To Tijuana. Lexter — no news. Cable Father for money. Telephone Lori to pass on message to the Coopers and Monika — no reply from AMPR.…

Tuesday. Herr and Frau K. return L.A .

Saturday. Americana — Dusenberry .

Sunday. Pack up. Settle bill—330 pesos.…

Monday. Cable AMPR for advance on salary. No news, Lexter. Cannot understand delay. Return Rincón. New room. Unpack …

Wednesday. Dusenberry bets me that Russia will ally with Germany against Britain and France — fifty dollars.… [Here there is an unexplained gap of one week.]

Wednesday. Lexter says my request for visa renewal has been turned down .

This was an astonishing blow. I had been in Mexico for getting on for three weeks, and despite the unprecedented delay I had never once suspected that I would not be allowed to return to the United States. Lexter was apologetic but formal. He declined to explain why I had been refused entry. His sympathy for me, his decent pro-European liberal sentiments, disappeared behind apparatchik reserve. As symbol of my plight he naturally became my enemy. Suddenly I found his mop of hair an offensive affectation. Shouldn’t a man of his age, I suggested to him, stop pretending to be a college kid? He called a Marine in to throw me out. I apologized, said I was overwrought; my country was at war; I just wasn’t myself. We sat down again. It must be a simple mistake, he said. He would investigate further. He advised me to do what every frustrated emigrant did: be patient and reapply.

I took his advice. There was one other course of action I could have followed: catch a boat to England from a Mexican port. But I was now running into the other eternal problem — money. Brodie McMaster’s chauvinistic loyalty to a fellow Scot had its limits. He sent me one week’s salary in lieu of notice. I was unemployed. The Coopers wrote and said that without the rent they could only hold my apartment until the end of October. Soon I would be homeless. I left the hotel and moved into a clapboard cottage behind the Vera Cruz. It cost sixteen pesos a day, cheaper than a double room at the Max. After a week there and more fiscal calculations, I transferred to a single room in the main hotel that bore an unfortunate resemblance to my cell at Weilburg, but it cost only eleven pesos a day.

My life took on a strange routine. I ate a modest breakfast at the Vera Cruz— pan dulce and coffee. I wrote letters in the morning. I lunched in a cheap restaurant (surrounded by suspicious monoglot locals — what was this gringo with his old newspaper doing here every day eating refritos eggs and rice with a bottle of Garci-Crespo mineral water?). After lunch I took a long siesta. In the evening I bought a couple of lardy quesadillas —hash and cheese — from a roadside stall on my way down the avenida towards the Americana. There, I tried, and usually succeeded, in getting mildly drunk on white tequila with beer chasers. I became a regular. There were always new émigrés to engage in conversation, but I am afraid people tended to avoid me after a couple of nights’ of my company. I could only talk about one subject and at length — the conspiracy to prevent me from entering the U.S. I had become a bore. Even Monroe Smee (whom the Anti-Nazi League had sent down with some money) stayed only twenty-four hours.