The Hundred-Year House (29 page)

She saw that same wild look in Armand’s eyes. He was looking for someone to love. He was a transitive verb with no direct object.

She said, “Just watch your heart.”

Down at the bottom of the stairs, Alfie started barking. He ran all the way up and then all the way down, and Samantha followed him.

A woman struggled at the door, propping it open with her foot and hefting a wet valise through the frame. Behind her, a man unloaded trunks from a taxi straight into a puddle. The screenwriter wasn’t due to arrive till tomorrow, but this was obviously her. She bore that distinct look of the arriving artist: disoriented, exhausted, profoundly relieved to be there. “I’ve arrived too early!” the woman said, only she said “arrifed,” her voice thick with dignified German. Samantha scrambled to remember the name—Marcelina von Hornig, there it was, and she’d wondered if it would be a “Marcy” type or a “Lina,” but clearly this woman was above shortening—and then, as the door closed behind her and Alfie was subdued and the woman looked up into Samantha’s face, Samantha reeled. This was
Marceline
Horn
, the film star Marceline Horn, in color, in three dimensions. The same high-bridged nose, the enormous eyes, eyelashes like window valances. She’d played Juliet and Charlotte Corday. She’d kissed Valentino. Samantha had gotten used, over the years, to speaking with artists and writers whose talent intimidated her. This was different, though, more like meeting Cinderella than the Brothers Grimm.

Samantha managed to say, “It’s not a problem. The maid was already making up the room for you. You might have to work in the—in the library. Until it’s done.”

“Oh, of
course
. I need a few hours to screw my head back on.”

“You’ve had a long trip.”

“Vell, I vas in Chicago a veek.”

“Yes.” The address on this woman’s papers—Beverly Hills, California—hadn’t seemed odd, since she was coming to write two movie scripts. A letter of recommendation from L. B. Mayer, himself, of MGM. Samantha had convinced the rest of the file readers that this would be a novelty, that they’d be embracing a new form of storytelling. Mayer’s letter said he’d worked with the woman in the past, but it said nothing of directing her in films, of their affair—wasn’t there an affair? She remembered something, an item in
Picture Play
—just that she showed great talent and needed a quiet place. And for all Samantha could tell from the script sample, she was a natural writer.

Stupidly, her lips numb: “This is Alfie. A wirehaired pointing griffon. He’s harmless.”

Marceline bent to look him in the eye. “I’m a great friend of the dogs.”

Samantha took in the woman’s outfit: the green cloche hat, the slim black frock with pearls at the hip—all regular enough, if a bit formal for mid-morning—but below that, and above her black one-straps, she wore silk stockings appliquéd with green velvet snakes that appeared to climb her legs.

Behind her, Armand crouched on the landing, peering down. He was silent—which, Samantha knew, was his particular form of shrieking. Beatrice stood behind him, her fingers to her little chin.

“Armand,” Samantha said, and he didn’t answer. “Will you be a dear and see if Maisie has finished the yellow room? And the kitchen needs to know, as well, that there will be one more for dinner. You could help with the trunks. And Beatrice, the packet. For Miss von Hornig.”

Beatrice vanished. Armand rushed past them both and out the door with no umbrella. It occurred to her that Armand might
bang on everyone’s door with the news before he bothered finding Maisie, that eight noses might be pressed to the wet window within minutes, but meanwhile she had her list of things to say, her regular and memorized orientation to Laurelfield—the quiet hours, and keys, and meals—and this woman looked as thirsty and tired as any new arrival. She invited Marceline to follow her up to the kitchen. She dropped the folded telegram into the dustbin and put the kettle on for tea.

Marceline stopped her, as she crossed the kitchen, and clasped one of Samantha’s hands in her soft, strangely large ones. “I tell you, I feel like Shakespeare’s Viola, vashed up on the shore of Illyria. And I can tell this is a blessed place. A
generous
place. I feel it in my feet.”

“You haven’t even seen it all yet!”

“It is not something von
sees
.”

LUDO AND JOSEPHINE ON THE LAWN

They look at the roof, the way the sun just now, at eleven, shoots a tentative ray over the top, the last rain turning to mist. In a minute, it will be too bright to look east.

Ludo says, “No, I don’t believe. Back in Napoli, one time, I go to a séance. Is all tricks. All click-click and knocking sound and guess what someone wants to hear.” He laughs. “Is same with my music, no? Knock knock, tell you what you want to hear. I used to write symphonies. Now I make rhymings and bouncings.”

“No ghost appeared? At the séance?”

“The ghost is in our ears.”

“Marlon
swears
he heard something in the night.”

“I tell you what I learn: At a colony, there always come noises in the night. Howling, thumping, door slam, moaning, bang bang bang, you know. You know what is? Is not ghosts.”

“What?”

“Is people making sex.”

In Residence

UPDATED 29 AUG ‘29

Abbaticchio, Ludo (M)

Composer

*

St: Comp. Cottage

R: Southwest

*

Cadfael, Fannie (F)

Sculptor

Cleveland Hts, Ohio

St: Solarium

R: Blue

through 9/2

Cox, Armand (M)

Illustrator

Chicago

St/R: Longhouse E

through 10/4

Lizer, Josephine (F)

Sculptor

Cleveland Hts, Ohio

St: Solarium

R: Green

through 9/2

Moore, Marlon (M)

Writer

Lake Bluff, Ill.

St/R: Northeast

through 9/5

Osin, Viktor (M)

Maître de ballet

Chicago

St/R: Longhouse Cent.

through 9/16 (extended)

Parfitt, Edwin (M)

Poet

Phil, Pa.

St/R: Flower

through 9/27

Silverman, Zilla (F)

Painter

Madison, Wis.

St/R: Longhouse W

through 10/12

Von Hornig (Horn), Marcelina (Marceline) (F)

Screenwriter

Beverly Hills, Calif.

St/R: Yellow

through 9/20

Beatrice, please note:

Miss Silverman has asked use of attic in addition to Longhouse W.

Miss Lizer and Miss Cadfael are in fact sharing Green bedroom; trunks of both are stored in Blue; Miss Cadfael has that key.

Garden studio is empty if Miss Horn prefers it to working in her room.

Please remember Mr. Abbaticchio not to be listed on public documents.

WHAT WE’VE GLEANED FROM MARLON

Marlon Moore claims to know a woman who knows the Devohrs. It’s impossible, Samantha insists, because
no one
“knows the Devohrs.” You might know one Devohr, or another Devohr, but they aren’t an entity. It’s like saying you know all the feral cats in the woods. You’ve probably just seen the same one five times. Marlon counters that his friend knows the
important
Devohrs, the ones who’ve stayed sane, the ones with the houses.

—

Marlon has heard testimony, from some of the greatest living writers, that the best way to induce strange and inspiring dreams is to eat very strong cheese before bed. He himself keeps a crock of Roquefort on the windowsill in his room. He doesn’t see the problem. It has a lid! “Yes,” Josephine mutters, “but your mouth does not.”

—

Marlon knows with great certainty that back home, Ludo, our own Italian fixture, became unnecessarily political for a composer. It seems Ludo was a great friend of the Communist leader Bordiga, and wrote a song lampooning Bordiga’s rival, Gramsci, and (worse) Mussolini himself. Marlon believes he rhymed “Benito” with “finito.” (“Let’s ask if it’s true!” says Armand. “I wouldn’t,” says Viktor.) And so (Marlon fingers his moustache, adopts a tone of epic narration), by 1926, both Bordiga and Gramsci were in jail, and Ludo was on a boat to New York under
an assumed name, quotas and papers be damned. How he landed at Laurelfield, where he’s stayed the past three years, is no great mystery. Bordiga probably phoned Samantha himself. Is Ludo sleeping with Samantha? Oh, everyone assumes so. Certainly. But that’s beside the point. And now Ludo has a bit of a career stateside as well, writing show tunes. “Our gain,” Fannie adds emphatically. Fannie is our greatest optimist.

—

Marlon can tell astrological signs with great accuracy. He pegs Zilla as an Aquarius, and she nods. We are duly impressed.

—

Late one night, Marlon starts giggling about Viktor Osin and his ballerinas. “They’re all French,” he says, “or Russian. Nineteen years old, eighty pounds each. Let me tell you: a line of twelve swans? He’s been under every tutu.” His giggling turns shrill. “Not a single bosom between them, but can you imagine the ways they stretch?” Zilla leaves the room.

—

Marlon wears a silk burgundy smoking jacket over his clothes. He is poised for great things.

—

Marlon has heard a rumor: Mr. Devohr is already on his way.

Civic Opera Company

Mary Garden, Director

430 South Michigan Avenue

Chicago

Aug. 28

Dearest Samantha—

Dashing this off to say Gamby Devohr has written to all the board. Received my letter this a.m.

Samantha, what’s happened? Wishing I could zip up but all is chaos here, moving to the new space, Aida, etc. Tell me if I should come, though. Do.

Devohr is requesting ad hoc meeting Sept. 3rd for what I fear are apocalyptic purposes.

Do advise if I can help, but as you know I haven’t much clout with the other boardsters, I’m the artistic quack not the purse strings.

I’m worried, Sam. Tell me you’re fine. Tell me Laurelfield’s fine.

Oh dear lord,

Mary

EDDIE IN THE LIBRARY

The hour before dinner, normally restrained—stretching writers, artists just scrubbed up, a shared bottle of gin—turned into an all-out soirée in everyone’s effort to meet and impress Marceline Horn. The party continued after the meal, the artists reconvening to the library where Viktor mixed an enormous vat of orange blossoms and Ludo played the piano. It was fortunate Ludo was kept busy. Having seen Marceline as Scheherezade (“Just scarves! No other clothings!”), he couldn’t speak to her without leering.

Viktor ladled a drink into a smudged glass for Eddie, slopping some down the side. Viktor was all arms and legs. A dancer and dance maker with hair of the most rebellious kind, each strand hating its neighbors with such static ferocity that his head achieved a perfect geometry of divergence.

Eddie sipped and tried to listen to the music, but it didn’t help. He felt sick again: a chill that had vanished a few hours the night of the Indian raid, that the August sun baked away whenever he took lunch outdoors, but that returned the moment he reentered the house. Now the dizziness was back, the feeling that he needed to leave the house soon, or else he would fall into his bed and freeze to the mattress and never rise again. Fannie and Josephine had told him, his first night, to watch for the ghost, for the long white nightgown in the upstairs hall. They had giggled and shivered, and expected him to do likewise. But the chill, he knew, was
not something he’d encounter in the corridor. It had already gotten deep in his bloodstream.

There was something wrong with the house. The windows gazed in on you instead of out at the world.

And now the White Rabbits had cornered Marceline on the davenport behind Eddie, and leaned in eagerly to tell the story of Violet Devohr. “She locked herself in the attic,” Fannie said. “It’s unclear why.”

“Well, she was mad!” Josephine cried. “Why else does a woman lock herself in an attic?”

“And the old man, Augustus, the one who built the place for her, begged her to let him in, but he didn’t go so far as to kick down the door. He was too genteel. And he didn’t want the servants hearing.”