William Boyd - The New Confessions

Uproar. Brayfield swore vilely at me. I was fined five hundred dollars for contempt. The session resumed after a recess. Brayfield was armed with more questions of astonishing accuracy.

BRAYFIELD: Did you attend a meeting of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League on the night of November 14, 1940, in the home of Stefan Dressier?

TODD: I decline to answer that question on the grounds—

BRAYFIELD: You lived in Rincón, Mexico, for a period during 1939.

TODD: Yes.

BRAYFIELD: And at that time you were friendly with Hanns Eisler, who appeared before this committee last year, were you not?

TODD: I can’t remember. Lots of people passed through Rincón.

The committee got nowhere. I was dismissed before lunch, Brayfield still threatening deportation. In the corridor outside the Caucus Room a journalist from the Hollywood Reporter stopped me. He asked me if I had any evidence of a blacklist.

“Oh, there’s a list, all right,” I said. “Only no one will admit it.”

He asked me what I was doing now.

“Teaching maths and English and minding my own business.”

“Is that all?”

He looked disappointed and walked away. I watched him go. As he passed through an open door leading through to an anteroom, I saw Doon sitting inside. She wore a blue dress with white polka dots, white shoes and gloves. Her hair was up. Her tan was as deep as ever. She looked lean, old and tough. She saw me, stood up and walked towards me.

My heart … my guts … I kissed her cheek.

“Hello, Jamie.”

“What’re you doing here?”

“I was subpoenaed. I think they want me to nail you.”

We sat down on a bench in the corridor.

“They seem to know everything about me,” I said.

“There was a guy came down to the ranch, asked me a whole lot of questions about you. About us.”

“What was he like?”

“Sort of unpleasant looking. Big gaps between his teeth. Said his name was Brown. Worked for the FBI, he said.”

“Gaps in his teeth?…” Who could it be? Brown. Gap teeth. I looked at Doon. “Can I see you tonight?”

She told me the name of her hotel. We arranged to meet at eight.

Doon perjured herself for me. She lied to the committee with flair and aplomb. She swore I had never been in the Communist party and declared that the membership card was an inept forgery.

Later that evening we sat in a small restaurant on Fourteenth Street Northwest, talking about old times. Doon chain-smoked. Nobody paid us any attention. I thought, This used to be the most famous beauty in Europe. Women strove to emulate her. She was the object of a million male fantasies. Thirty years ago the world was at her feet. I felt the universe’s huge indifference to our fates. It made me cold.

“What’re you thinking?”

“Nothing.… When are you going back?”

“Tomorrow. Got three new guests coming this week. I only hope they didn’t see me on TV.”

I looked at her. I thought about sex with Doon, what it would be like now. Our old bodies.

“Doon. I love you. I’ve never loved anybody else. It’s as simple as that. You’re the only—”

“Jamie. Please. That was ages ago.”

“No, I mean it. When I saw you this morning. It all came back. It was like that day in the Metropol.…”

She smiled. “It takes two, you know. We fouled up. Nobody’s fault, but it would never have worked.” She patted my fist. “You’re my oldest friend. That’s all.”

My mouth was dry. I forced a smile. At least I had told her.

“I suppose you’re right.”

I walked her back to her hotel.

“Why don’t you go home, Jamie? You don’t need all this HUAC shit. Just leave.”

“What about Karl-Heinz? I brought him here.”

“God, he’ll be all right.”

“What about my film?”

“ The Confessions? For Christ’s sake.”

“I’ve got to finish it. Bloody hell, I’m fifty-four. I haven’t made a film in nine years. And I was so close.… Anyway, Eddie owes it to me.”

She kissed my cheek. “OK, honey. You do what you want. Like you used to say to me — make your own rut.”

I hugged her. Felt her thin body against mine. Smelled the tobacco in her wiry hair. She had none of my regrets. My massive regrets. I felt desperately sad — not because nothing was going to happen, but because I suddenly had a glimpse of an alternative life in a different world. Do you know those moments? I saw myself in Paris, 1934, knocking on her apartment door and this time Doon would answer it. It was another edition of my life, our lives, and these two people standing outside a Washington hotel weren’t allowed to participate in it.

“Look after yourself,” she said cheerfully. “And come and visit. Keep in touch.”

We said good-bye to each other.

After my appearance before the committee in Washington I achieved a small notoriety. There were articles and a photograph in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter . In the latter, the headline ran: EX-WIFE NAMES TODD IN HUAC SESSION. The old lady at the Italian fruit stall just round the corner from my house spat at me and called me a “Red stooge.” Eddie Simmonette was interviewed in Variety under the headline LONE STAR PREZ SAYS NIX TO REDS.

Chief exec Eadweard Simmonette admitted hiring Todd in the forties to direct B-feature Westerns. “I knew him vaguely in Berlin, but I never guessed he was a Commie. He hasn’t worked for me in ten years — since The Equalizer in ’44. I respect his expertise but deplore his values.”

A late-night show of The Equalizer was picketed by an organization called ODCAD and the film was withdrawn from circulation. Another trickle of income dried up. I increased my teaching to six hours a day. Nora Lee moved into my rooms and I rented hers to a student at UCLA. Foolishly, I lent Chauncy and Hall a thousand dollars to redecorate the diner and never saw any of it again. My poverty level descended to Berlin, 1924, standards.

I went to see Monika but she had moved to New York to do television there. I spoke to her on the phone.

“I’m sorry, Johnny, but I had to do it. I had no choice.”

“But for God’s sake, we were married once! Man and wife.”

“Don’t give me that. Eddie Simmonette paid me five thousand dollars to marry you. It was strictly business.”

Another revelation I did not need. I went round to the Coopers’ shortly after my return from Washington but found the front door locked. I returned several times to the same rebuff. Then one day Elroy answered.

“Hi, Elroy,” I said. “Is your Dad in?”

“My dad says he’s sorry and will you please stop coming here.”

I pushed past him into the hall. I heard a lock turn on the dining room door. I hammered on it.

“Ernest! Come on! This is stupid. Come on out.”

When I stopped shouting I could hear him sobbing behind the door.

“Stop it, Ernest. For Christ’s sake, I don’t care, honestly.”

“I’m sorry John. I’m sorry. Forgive me, please. But go away. Don’t come here again. They’re still watching me.”

Elroy stood behind me, his face contorted with shame and indignation.

“Will you please go away and leave him alone.”

For several weeks nothing depressed me more than this new status I had achieved as one-man leper colony. Even Werner Hitzig, who had taken the Fifth, didn’t want to associate with me because he was now paying Alert Inc. to clear his name. (He eventually named me as a Communist in 1954. The problem was that once you were named it was open season. Between 1953 and ’55 I was named twenty-seven times, mostly by total strangers.) I lost all my friends, apart from Karl-Heinz, and all connection with the film community.