James Salter - Burning the Days

Yoko Ono was married to an acquaintance of mine who acted as her manager and dedicated himself to her career. She had been married before. He was somewhat ingenuous; she was not. They lived in one place and another, always struggling for money, and had a little daughter to whom he was devoted. I would see him in the Village with the baby in his arms and her bottle in a musette bag over his shoulder. His wife was above this. A performance artist, she radiated ambition. She was determined to have her chance, and in the end, in a very unexpected way, she found it.

Daily Life in Ancient Rome was never completed. We did make ten or twelve other films, documentaries, scraped together, some of them eloquent. We traveled over the country together, flying, driving, checking into motels, in the mindless joy of America, beer bottles lying by the roadside, empty cans tumbling light as paper. I can see his hands moving in small, inviting circles as he explains himself and his requests to someone. He sketched broadly and only lightly filled things in. He could so quickly make himself liked. It is his curious charm that I am remembering, the pockets with money crumpled in them, some of which often fell to the floor, the migraine headaches, which eventually came in clusters, the familiarity with names of all kinds, the cars in need of repair, the essential loneliness.

His older son, named for him, was hit by a car while riding a bicycle and died a few days later. It was at a time when we had already begun gradually to separate. Perhaps we had lost the power to amuse each other. We made one final film, on American painters: Warhol before his real recognition, Rauschenburg, Stuart Davis, a dozen others. From the small, asbestos-shingled house in Piermont he moved to Sneden’s Landing, an exclusive enclave where the houses, though passing through the hands of various owners, had their own traditional names. Disasters followed, principal among them the death of his wife.

On envelopes addressed in his beautiful handwriting the postmarks moved west, to California, where, if it was to happen, he would at last become a director. He lived for a time in a house owned once by Greta Garbo, came back East for a third, unsuccessful marriage, and then retreated to Arizona and a ranch with the unlikely name of X-9. There the trail came to an end.

—

I had a friend, knot-jawed and earnest — Hurley was his name — who lived in a snug, orderly apartment like a captain’s cabin on Sixty-first Street and who always used to ask, “But how did you meet them?” as if it were inconceivable. He also accused me — a cut slow to heal — of writing down everyone’s address in a little book as soon as I met them. Was there really a time when I was trying to meet people? Oh, yes. I was ecstatic at the chance, in about 1963, to meet Peter Glenville, an Englishman, a director who had directed Rashomon on the stage and the film Becket. He had an undeniable gift and lived like a prince.

There were four of us at dinner, all men, in his New York town house. The meal was served by a uniformed maid. Glenville asked if I would be interested in writing a script, an Italian story he wanted to make. The mere proposal seemed a reward. He was showing his faith in me; he had tapped me, as it were. It was easy to see that he was discriminating — the house, the fine clothes, the tall, soothing companion, Bill Smith.

I was sent a typewritten outline and felt, upon reading it, disappointment. It was trash: A young man in Rome, a lawyer, meets and falls in love with a beautiful girl who is strangely evasive about her personal life. She is either only uncertain and innocent or — the evidence is flimsy but his suspicion mounts — a call girl. He marries her anyway, but incidents recur that are disturbing. I have forgotten the cliché climactic moment, but it causes her to attempt suicide and there is a final reconciliation amid the white sheets of the ospedale, or perhaps she dies.

No matter what was done with it, I told Glenville frankly, it would never possess the least merit. He understood my misgivings, but still the theme of jealousy was interesting and the locale …

The producer called from California. They were all “fans” of mine there. He had talked at length to Glenville. They were confident that I was the one to write the film. Forgetting everything, I inhaled.

There is the feeling that directors are dependent on you. In reality they are only attendant, waiting to see what is brought back, with luck something plump in your jaws. You are at most a preliminary figure. Their view extends past yours to meetings, cajolings, intrigues. They are the ones who actually create things. How reassuring it is to be drawn along by their energy, to linger in their society, which seems luxurious and perhaps elevated, intimate with that of the stars themselves.

I once sat near a victor at Cannes. He was in a buckskin coat and a sort of black peddler’s hat. The party was all young, and as he spoke, the girl beside him took his hand, fingers intermeshed with his, raised it to her lips, and began to kiss it in devotion. He continued to talk, his free arm extended like a pope’s.

—

In Rome, ochre and white, uninterested in me, I had the name of a Count Crespi; Glenville had supplied it. He was cool on the telephone. I had to wait several days for an evening appointment.

He came out of his office to introduce himself, tan, handsome face, ears close to his head, shattering smile. “I am Crespi,” he said, taking me into a small, plain room where he sat down across from me.

As well as I could I told him the story of the film and he began without hesitation to suggest things. The girl, instead of being a model, which was rather a commonplace, might work at Vogue, where his wife’s former secretary, a very clever girl who spoke four or five languages … but Vogue was already a little too fancy, perhaps, he decided. A salesgirl in a boutique, he thought, or perhaps, yes, even better, a mannequin in one of the couture houses — Fourquet on Via Condotti, for example. “She may earn only eighty thousand lire a month but it’s interesting work, she meets people, a certain kind of person with money, taste. If she has something to attend, Fourquet will probably lend her one of his expensive dresses.”

With heroic charm he began to describe the man in the film, the young, proper lawyer. Politics slightly to the left—“In Italy, everybody is, everybody except me,” he explained. The lawyer has a good car, he goes dancing, to the beach. He loves sport, like all Italians, though not as a participant, of course, and there is also something traditional — he still goes home every day to eat with his mother at noon.

Crespi’s enthusiasm and willingness to provide details increased my confidence. There might be a tone, a manner in which it could be presented, which would redeem it. As we talked on, in response to certain things I said, Crespi began to shift his view, to see the lawyer as less sophisticated, not part of the new Italy where people in Rome, as Fellini had shown, had seen everything. Perhaps it might take place in a more provincial town, Piacenza or Verona. Yes, he said, he saw it as a really romantic story. The women would all be crying, he predicted.

“But could all this happen in a town like Verona?” I said. “Are there call girls there?”

“Of course. Everywhere,” he said. “It’s in all the papers. It’s the scandal of Italy. They advertise as manicure, with a chic address, senza portiere. Columns of them. Look in Il Messaggero.”

It was true. In Il Tempo as well. I sat reading the papers in a noisy hotel on the Piazza della Rotonda, the recommendation of which had also come from Glenville. The furniture seemed to be from an old orphanage. The floors were bare wood. Giovanissima —very young — the ads all said. Via Flaminia, Via del Babuino, senza portiere.