The Day of the Locust Read online

  Tod grunted with annoyance as he turned to the photograph. In it she was wearing a harem costume, full Turkish trousers, breastplates and a monkey jacket, and lay stretched out on a silken divan. One hand held a beer bottle and the other a pewter stein.

  He had gone all the way to Glendale to see her in that movie. It was about an American drummer who gets lost in the seraglio of a Damascus merchant and has a lot of fun with the female inmates. Faye played one of the dancing girls. She had only one line to speak, “Oh, Mr. Smith!” and spoke it badly.

  She was a tall girl with wide, straight shoulders and long, swordlike legs. Her neck was long, too, and columnar. Her face was much fuller than the rest of her body would lead you to expect and much larger. It was a moon face, wide at the cheek bones and narrow at chin and brow. She wore her “platinum” hair long, letting it fall almost to her shoulders in back, but kept it away from her face and ears with a narrow blue ribbon that went under it and was tied on top of her head with a little bow.

  She was supposed to look drunk and she did, but not with alcohol. She lay stretched out on the divan with her arms and legs spread, as though welcoming a lover, and her lips were parted in a heavy, sullen smile. She was supposed to look inviting, but the invitation wasn’t to pleasure.

  Tod lit a cigarette and inhaled with a nervous gasp. He started to fool with his tie again, but had to go back to the photograph.

  Her invitation wasn’t to pleasure, but to struggle, hard and sharp, closer to murder than to love. If you threw yourself on her, it would be like throwing yourself from the parapet of a skyscraper. You would do it with a scream. You couldn’t expect to rise again. Your teeth would be driven into your skull like nails into a pine board and your back would be broken. You wouldn’t even have time to sweat or close your eyes.

  He managed to laugh at his language, but it wasn’t a real laugh and nothing was destroyed by it.

  If she would only let him, he would be glad to throw himself, no matter what the cost. But she wouldn’t have him. She didn’t love him and he couldn’t further her career. She wasn’t sentimental and she had no need for tenderness, even if he were capable of it.

  When he had finished dressing, he hurried out of the room. He had promised to go to a party at Claude Estee’s.

  4

  Claude was a successful screen writer who lived in a big house that was an exact reproduction of the old Dupuy mansion near Biloxi, Mississippi. When Tod came up the walk between the boxwood hedges, he greeted him from the enormous, two-story porch by doing the impersonation that went with the Southern colonial architecture. He teetered back and forth on his heels like a Civil War colonel and made believe he had a large belly.

  He had no belly at all. He was a dried-up little man with the rubbed features and stooped shoulders of a postal clerk. The shiny mohair coat and nondescript trousers of that official would have become him, but he was dressed, as always, elaborately. In the buttonhole of his brown jacket was a lemon flower. His trousers were of reddish Harris tweed with a hound tooth check and on his feet were a pair of magnificent, rust-colored bluchers. His shirt was ivory flannel and his knitted tie a red that was almost black.

  While Tod mounted the steps to reach his outstretched hand, he shouted to the butler.

  “Here, you black rascal! A mint julep.”

  A Chinese servant came running with a Scotch and soda.

  After talking to Tod for a moment, Claude started him in the direction of Alice, his wife, who was at the other end of the porch.

  “Don’t run off,” he whispered. “We’re going to a sporting house.”

  Alice was sitting in a wicker swing with a woman named Mrs. Joan Schwartzen. When she asked him if he was playing any tennis, Mrs. Schwartzen interrupted her.

  “How silly, batting an inoffensive ball across something that ought to be used to catch fish on account of millions are starving for a bite of herring.”

  “Joan’s a female tennis champ,” Alice explained.

  Mrs. Schwartzen was a big girl with large hands and feet and square, bony shoulders. She had A pretty, eighteen-year-old face and a thirty-five-year-old neck that was veined and sinewy. Her deep sunburn, ruby colored with a slight blue tint, kept the contrast between her face and neck from being too startling.

  “Well, I wish we were going to a brothel this minute,” she said. “I adore them.”

  She turned to Tod and fluttered her eyelids.

  “Don’t you, Mr. Hackett?”

  “That’s right, Joan darling,” Alice answered for him. “Nothing like a bagnio to set a fellow up. Hair of the dog that bit you.”

  “How dare you insult me!”

  She stood up and took Tod’s arm.

  “Convoy me over there.”

  She pointed to the group of men with whom Claude was standing.

  “For God’s sake, convoy her,” Alice said. “She thinks they’re telling dirty stories.”

  Mrs. Schwartzen pushed right among them, dragging Tod after her.

  “Are you talking smut?” she asked. “I adore smut.” They all laughed politely.

  “No, shop,” said someone.

  “I don’t believe it. I can tell from the beast in your voices. Go ahead, do say something obscene.”

  This time no one laughed.

  Tod tried to disengage her arm, but she kept a firm grip on it. There was a moment of awkward silence, then the man she had interrupted tried to make a fresh start.

  “The picture business is too humble,” he said. “We ought to resent people like Coombes.”

  “That’s right,” said another man. “Guys like that come out here, make a lot of money, grouse all the time about the place, flop on their assignments, then go back East and tell dialect stories about producers they’ve never met.”

  “My God,” Mrs. Schwartzen said to Tod in a loud, stagey whisper, “they are talking shop.”

  “Let’s look for the man with the drinks,” Tod said.

  “No. Take me into the garden. Have you seen what’s in the swimming pool?”

  She pulled him along.

  The air of the garden was heavy with the odor of mimosa and honeysuckle. Through a slit in the blue serge sky poked a grained moon that looked like an enormous bone button. A little flagstone path, made narrow by its border of oleander, led to the edge of the sunken pool. On the bottom, near the deep end, he could see a heavy, black mass of some kind.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She kicked a switch that was hidden at the base of a shrub and a row of submerged floodlights illuminated the green water. The thing was a dead horse, or, rather, a life-size, realistic reproduction of one. Its legs stuck up stiff and straight and it had an enormous, distended belly. Its hammerhead lay twisted to one side and from its mouth, which was set in an agonized grin, hung a heavy, black tongue.

  “Isn’t it marvelous!” exclaimed Mrs. Schwartzen, clapping her hands and jumping up and down excitedly like a little girl.

  “What’s it made of?”

  “Then you weren’t fooled? How impolite! It’s rubber, of course. It cost lots of money.”

  “But why?”

  “‘To amuse. We were looking at the pool one day and somebody, Jerry Appis, I think, said that it needed a dead horse on the bottom, so Alice got one. Don’t you think it looks cute?”

  “Very.”

  “You’re just an old meanie. Think how happy the Estees must feel, showing it to people and listening to their merriment and their oh’s and ah’s of unconfined delight.”

  She stood on the edge of the pool and “ohed and ahed” rapidly several times in succession.

  “Is it still there?” someone called.

  Tod turned and saw two women and a man coming down the path.

  “I think its belly’s going to burst,” Mrs. Schwartzen shouted to them gleefully.

  “Goody,” said the man, hurrying to look.

  “But it’s only full of air,” said one of the women.

  Mrs.
Schwartzen made believe she was going to cry. “You’re just like that mean Mr. Hackett. You just won’t let me cherish my illusions.”

  Tod was halfway to the house when she called after him. He waved but kept going.

  The men with Claude were still talking shop.

  “But how are you going to get rid of the illiterate mockies that run it? They’ve got a strangle hold on the industry. Maybe they’re intellectual stumblebums, but they’re damn good businessmen. Or at least they know how to go into receivership and come up with a gold watch in their teeth.”

  “They ought to put some of the millions they make back into the business again. Like Rockefeller does with his Foundation. People used to hate the Rockefellers, but now instead of hollering about their ill-gotten oil dough, everybody praises them for what the Foundation does. It’s a swell stunt and pictures could do the same thing. Have a Cinema Foundation and make contributions to Science and Art. You know, give the racket a front.”

  Tod took Claude to one side to say good night, but he wouldn’t let him go. He led him into the library and mixed two double Scotches. They sat down on the couch facing the fireplace.

  “You haven’t been to Audrey Jenning’s place?” Claude asked.

  “No, but I’ve heard tell of it.”

  “Then you’ve got to come along.”

  “I don’t like pro-sport.”

  “We won’t indulge in any. We’re just going to see a movie.”

  “I get depressed.”

  “Not at Jenning’s you won’t. She makes vice attractive by skillful packaging. Her dive’s a triumph of industrial design.”

  Tod liked to hear him talk. He was master of an involved comic rhetoric that permitted him to express his moral indignation and still keep his reputation for worldliness and wit.

  Tod fed him another lead. “I don’t care how much cellophane she wraps it in,” he said—”nautch joints are depressing, like all places for deposit, banks, mail boxes, tombs, vending machines.”

  “Love is like a vending machine, eh? Not bad. You insert a coin and press home the lever. There’s some mechanical activity inside the bowels of the device. You receive a small sweet, frown at yourself in the dirty mirror, adjust your hat, take a firm grip on your umbrella and walk away, trying to look as though nothing had happened. It’s good, but it’s not for pictures.”

  Tod played straight again.

  “That’s not it. I’ve been chasing a girl and it’s like carrying something a little too large to conceal in your pocket, like a briefcase or a small valise. It’s uncomfortable.”

  “I know, I know. It’s always uncomfortable. First your right hand gets tired, then your left. You put the valise down and sit on it, but people are surprised and stop to stare at you, so you move on. You hide it behind a tree and hurry away, but someone finds it and runs after you to return it. It’s a small valise when you leave home in the morning, cheap and with a bad handle, but by evening it’s a trunk with brass corners and many foreign labels. I know. It’s good, but it won’t film. You’ve got to remember your audience. What about the barber in Purdue? He’s been cutting hair all day and he’s tired. He doesn’t want to see some dope carrying a valise or fooling with a nickel machine. What the barber wants is amour and glamor.”

  The last part was for himself and he sighed heavily. He was about to begin again when the Chinese servant came in and said that the others were ready to leave for Mrs. Jenning’s.

  5

  They started out in several cars. Tod rode in the front of the one Claude drove and as they went down Sunset Boulevard he described Mrs. Jenning for him. She had been a fairly prominent actress in the days of silent films, but sound made it impossible for her to get work. Instead of becoming an extra or a bit player like many other old stars, she had shown excellent business sense and had opened a callhouse. She wasn’t vicious. Far from it. She ran her business just as other women run lending libraries, shrewdly and with taste.

  None of the girls lived on the premises. You telephoned and she sent a girl over. The charge was thirty dollars for a single night of sport and Mrs. Jenning kept fifteen of it. Some people might think that fifty per cent is a high brokerage fee, but she really earned every cent of it. There was a big overhead. She maintained a beautiful house for the girls to wait in and a car and a chauffeur to deliver them to the clients.

  Then, too, she had to move in the kind of society where she could make the right contacts. After all, not every man can afford thirty dollars. She permitted her girls to service only men of wealth and position, not to say taste and discretion. She was so particular that she insisted on meeting the prospective sportsman before servicing him. She had often said, and truthfully, that she would not let a girl of hers go to a man with whom she herself would not be willing to sleep.

  And she was really cultured. All the most distinguished visitors considered it quite a lark to meet her. They were disappointed, however, when they discovered how refined she was. They wanted to talk about certain lively matters of universal interest, but she insisted on discussing Gertrude Stein and Juan Gris. No matter how hard the distinguished visitor tried, and some had been known to go to really great lengths, he could never find a flaw in her refinement or make a breach in her culture.

  Claude was still using his peculiar rhetoric on Mrs. Jenning when she came to the door of her house to greet them.

  “It’s so nice to see you again,” she said. “I was telling Mrs. Prince at tea only yesterday—the Estees are my favorite couple.”

  She was a handsome woman, smooth and buttery, with fair hair and a red complexion.

  She led them into a small drawing room whose color scheme was violet, gray and rose. The Venetian blinds were rose, as was the ceiling, and the walls were covered with a pale gray paper that had a tiny, widely spaced flower design in violet. On one wall hung a silver screen, the kind that rolls up, and against the opposite wall, on each side of a cherrywood table, was a row of chairs covered with rose and gray, glazed chintz bound in violet piping. There was a small projection machine on the table and a young man in evening dress was fumbling with it.

  She waved them to their seats. A waiter then came in and asked what they wanted to drink. When their orders had been taken and filled, she flipped the light switch and the young man started his machine. It whirred merrily, but he had trouble in getting it focused.

  “What are we going to see first?” Mrs. Schwartzen asked. “Le Predicament de Marie.”

  “That sounds ducky.”

  “It’s charming, utterly charming,” said Mrs. Jenning. “Yes,” said the cameraman, who was still having trouble. “I love Le Predicament de Marie. It has a marvelous quality that is too exciting.”

  There was a long delay, during which he fussed desperately with his machine. Mrs. Schwartzen started to whistle and stamp her feet and the others joined in. They imitated a rowdy audience in the days of the nickelodeon.

  “Get a move on, slow poke.”

  “What’s your hurry? Here’s your hat.”

  “Get a horse!”

  “Get out and get under!”

  The young man finally found the screen with his light beam and the film began.

  LE PREDICAMENT DE MARIE ou LA BONNE DISTRAITE

  Marie, the “bonne,” was a buxom young girl in a tight-fitting black silk uniform with very short skirts. On her head was a tiny lace cap. In the first scene, she was shown serving dinner to a middle-class family in an oak-paneled dining room full of heavy, carved furniture. The family was very respectable and consisted of a bearded, frock-coated father, a mother with a whalebone collar and a cameo brooch, a tall, thin son with a long mustache and almost no chin and a little girl wearing a large bow in her hair and a crucifix on a gold chain around her neck.

  After some low comedy with father’s beard and the soup, the actors settled down seriously to their theme. It was evident that while the whole family desired Marie, she only desired the young girl. Using his napkin to hide his act
ivities, the old man pinched Marie, the son tried to look down the neck of her dress and the mother patted her knee. Marie, for her part, surreptitiously fondled the child.

  The scene changed to Marie’s room. She undressed and got into a chiffon negligee, leaving on only her black silk stockings and high-heeled shoes. She was making an elaborate night toilet when the child entered. Marie took her on her lap and started to kiss her. There was a knock on the door. Consternation. She hid the child in the closet and let in the bearded father. He was suspicious and she had to accept his advances. He was embracing her when there was another knock. Again consternation and tableau. This time it was the mustachioed son. Marie hid the father under the bed. No sooner had the son begun to grow warm than there was another knock. Marie made him climb into a large blanket chest. The new caller was the lady of the house. She, too, was just settling down to work when there was another knock.

  Who could it be? A telegram? A policeman? Frantically Marie counted the different hiding places. The whole family was present. She tiptoed to the door and listened.

  “Who can it be that wishes to enter now?” read the title card.

  And there the machine stuck. The young man in evening dress became as frantic as Marie. When lie got it running again, there was a flash of light and the film whizzed through the apparatus until it had all run out. “I’m sorry, extremely,” he said. “I’ll have to rewind.”

  “It’s a frameup,” someone yelled. “Fake!”

  “Cheat!”

  “The old teaser routine!”

  They stamped their feet and whistled.

  Under cover of the mock riot, Tod sneaked out. He wanted to get some fresh air. The waiter, whom he found loitering in the hall, showed him to the patio in back of the house.