Howard Norman - Next Life Might Be Kinder

Then Cynthia said, “I paraphrased there, Sam. I don’t have your memory. But that’s pretty much what Violet told me. Whew. And then she went back into her house and I drove the table back home.”

So, that is my friend Cynthia. The table is still in her studio.

ISTVAKSON SENT LILY Svetgartot to give me a gift, a framed print of The Sleepless Night of the Litigant. I had never heard of this engraving. “I understand you have your new telephone number, now unlisted,” she said.

“That’s right.”

She was wearing jeans and that thick sweater again. She also wore a stylish black raincoat. It had started to rain.

“Hmmm, okay, Mr. Lattimore. Well, Mr. Istvakson has sent me, delivery lady, with this picture. Will you accept it?”

“I’m not going to watch the movie being made. No bribes. And contractually I got out of having to contribute any dialogue, so—”

“Mr. Istvakson wrote something for me to read to you. May I?”

“Go ahead.”

“On the porch here?”

“Yes, I’m busy.”

“I smell some cooking.”

“I’m busy with cooking. That’s what I’m busy with.”

“It’s a two-hour drive from Halifax. A truck almost killed me. My car slid in the rain.”

“Read what you have to read.”

“All right.” She took out a piece of paper from her raincoat pocket and read from it:

“‘Hello, Sam Lattimore, my author. My brilliant writer and, I hope someday, friend Sam Lattimore. Our start with the movie is going very well. We have often had miracle weather and the actors are doing brilliant work. They all would like to meet you. So, please, come meet. My assistant Lily Svetgartot delivers something I want you to keep as a gift, based on my admiration. It is called The Sleepless Night of the Litigant. It is an engraving from 1597. I had this facsimile sent from Amsterdam, an art dealer I befriended there. I had it framed in Halifax last week. The artist is named Hendrik Goltzius. It is an engraving from a series called The Abuses of the Law. I was once thinking of having a screenplay written based on this engraving and may someday. Look at the engraving! A man so guilty of something he cannot sleep, and demons visit him. I admit it is a familiar situation to me personally. I have a notebook full of ideas. If I do make that as a movie, maybe you would consider writing the novel based on the screenplay. They do that kind of thing in America and they are often successful books, I’m told. Look at this engraving closely, please, Sam Lattimore. Lily Svetgartot will unwrap the paper and kindly please closely look at it.’”

“All right, come in,” I said. “Let’s have a look at the engraving.”

I didn’t expect her to take off and hang up her raincoat on the silent butler (from the apartment in the Essex Hotel), near the front door, but that is what she did. “Could it be a bouillabaisse? Mmmm,” she said. “Such a dinner takes time. It takes patience. I have learned something about you.” She set the engraving down on the sofa and walked into the kitchen, lifted the top off the cooking pot on the stove, closed her eyes, and inhaled dramatically. Then she took up the wooden spoon from the counter, dipped it in the pot, and sampled the soup. “Sea bass, definitely, but a bouillabaisse needs two fish, usually. I can’t quite make out the other—”

“Simple cod,” I said. “All spiced to taste.”

She returned the lid to the pot, then retrieved The Sleepless Night of the Litigant, set it on the kitchen table, and carefully unwrapped the paper. I stepped closer to study it as she continued reading from Istvakson’s letter:

“‘The image shows two mythical figures disturbing the litigant’s rest: horrible Restlessness confronts him in his bed while another demon, Anxiety, hounds Sweet Sleep from the room. Do you know your scripture, Sam Lattimore? “For all his days are sorrows, and his travails grief; even in the night his heart does not rest.” This is from Ecclesiastes. Sweet Sleep runs away. The fat bourgeois burgher, the litigant, can’t sleep. His nights are haunted. What is the question he needs to have answered? What is the mystery he needs solved? He cannot speak directly to God with all that disturbance around him. That’s the real problem, I think.

“‘So from this gift I would like you to understand that I am awake much of the night litigating myself, judging my every decision that I make on my movie. Will it do justice to the life of Elizabeth and Samuel Lattimore and their young, tragic marriage? I will never experience sweet sleep during the making of this movie, and maybe never again. Come into Halifax, I am begging you. Give me guidance and direction. Look at even the few scenes we have shot already. My assistant can chauffeur you if you prefer. I mean no sanctimoniousness, only to relate to you, artist to artist, that if you look closely at what is depicted in the engraving, you are seeing my desperate state of mind. I need to speak with you.’”

Lily Svetgartot put the letter on the table.

“My God, how can you work with this man?” I said. “Self-litigation!”

“He wants to restore emotional fullness to the intellectual process of making a film.”

“That makes me want to throw up. Are you his ventriloquist’s dummy? He makes me want to vomit.”

“Go ahead. I’ll wait right here.”

“Here’s what I’d like. Please take this engraving across the road and give it to Philip, your new close friend. It is the perfect engraving for Philip. He’ll understand it right away. It belongs with him. He’ll really appreciate it.”

“Fine, I understand.” She picked up the engraving. At the door she took her raincoat from the silent butler and wrapped it around the engraving. The steady rain had become a downpour.

“Also, please tell Cynthia and Philip that dinner is ready. Have a nice drive back, Miss Svetgartot.”

When Philip and Cynthia arrived for the bouillabaisse dinner, Philip said, “Thanks for giving me the working title of my new book, Sam. The Sleepless Night of the Litigant. It’s perfect. I’ve hung the engraving on the wall behind my typewriter. By the way, Lily’s eating leftovers at the house. What with this weather, she’s staying in the guest room tonight. You can’t send a person out on the road in this mess.”

It was a pummeling windblown rain, which was the only reason, after Philip and Cynthia went home, about nine-thirty, I didn’t go down to the beach; Elizabeth never appeared in the rain. “I think she doesn’t want her books to suffer any water damage” is what I had said to Dr. Nissensen.

“SAM, YOU NEED some employment,” Elizabeth said. This was a few days after her first lesson in the intermediate lindy. We were down to $320 in our bank account.

“I’m working on my novel every day.”

“I know,” she said. “If I know anything, I know that. Can’t we take turns being the practical one? I’ll go first. I saw this advertisement and think it would be great for you. The CBC has an interesting thing going and they’re looking for writers. You could write for radio. Listen, I’ve got the clipping right here: ‘CBC radio is undertaking an ambitious re-creation of the cultural atmosphere of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, featuring the most popular radio entertainments of those decades.’”

“Okay, I admit it does sound interesting.”

“ You Can’t Do Business with Hitler, that’s one program they’re hiring writers for. The Shadow of Fu Manchu, that’s another. But there’s one I thought you’d be perfect for, Sam, and I even remember hearing it on the radio when I was a little girl. It’s called Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons. Melodramas about a detective named—”