Cable from Mr. Menzies

even the unworldly professor should have known that grand illusion and grim reality seldom go hand in hand

The First Time I met Mr. Menzies was in a bathtub at the Hotel Prince de Galles in Paris. He was in the tub. I was living in Paris at the time, but not at the Prince de Galles.

It was the fourth appointment we had made. Three times before, over a period of about eight weeks, he had sent me cables from such outlandish places as Baghdad, Tiflis and Marrakech to tell me that he was passing through Paris for a day and wanted to see me most urgently. Each time, he failed to show up.

One night, a secretary with an indefinable accent telephoned me at three in the morning to say that Mr. Menzies had been gored in a bullfight in Toledo and would not be able to get to Paris for a week or so; the second time, I was received by a distinguished-looking Armenian in a pink dressing gown who said that he, personally, was not Mr. Menzies himself but that he knew Mr. Menzies like a brother. When I showed him the cable I had received from Mr. Menzies that morning, he said he had had awfully little sleep last night and would I mind calling back a little later. When I called again about midnight, he had checked out. Yes, he had paid his bill; I am mentioning this to forestall any false conclusions: When Mr. Menzies had money, he always paid his bills, and those of his friends as well.

The third date was the most obscure one. The cable was from Marrakech and the (continued on page 78) Cable From Mr. Menzies (continued from page 75)appointment it made was for five o'clock that day at the bar of the Hotel Esplanade in the Avenue Chateaubriand. When I arrived, Mr. Menzies was not there. When I asked the bartender about him, he said: "Are you a friend of Mr. Menzies', sir?" Proudly, though somewhat untruthfully, I said I was. At this, without further ado, he threw me out.

Having sampled the projection of Mr. Menzies' personality on three memorable occasions, I decided dramatically: (a) that I would never tell a lie again and (b) that I would no longer play bait to Mr. Menzies' hook. But I was poor, and although the French government had given me a fellowship for a year, there was not enough money in it to let me bring my wife over from Washington. She had a tough time of it, eight hours a day at a Government typewriter and our son Michael to look after in the few hours that remained her own. Mike was almost two at the time, and I felt like a deserter leaving her behind with the child--but I had to finish my studies if I was ever going to get a professorship anywhere, and the French were the only people who gave me a chance to live while learning. Paris was pleasant enough, but I wished to God that I could have had Ruth and Mike with me.

Then the cable from Mr. Menzies arrived.

"Dear Doctor Dickinson," it began, and immediately I was impressed because it was the first time in my life that I had received a telegram that observed the full formalities of a letter. "I Understand that you are our foremost authority on Moorish culture in Europe." This flattered me, although it was almost insanely untrue. Yes, I had done an obscure thesis on the history of the Moors in Spain, but how in the world Mr. Menzies had ever heard of it I shall never know. Words like "foremost" and "authority" certainly went way beyond my wildest dreams, but all my scruples vanished when I came to the next line: "I am producing a motion Picture on the moors in Spain and would like to have you prepare a draft script for me stop I am leaving by air April 29 and would like discuss terms with you Paris Hotel George-V tomorrow stop affectionate Regards--Bognor Menzies."

The Bognor worried me a little. I was not very well up on my movie lore in those days and the name meant nothing to me. I confused it with Bognor Regis and thought it was a town in Scotland.

The Affectionate regards, too, gave me some momentary apprehension, because, after all, I had never met Mr. Menzies, and all this affection from a stranger made me wonder how Ruth would like it when she found out about Bognor and me. For surely Bognor was a lady, a notion that came to me as soon as I had shelved the idea that she was a town in Scotland.

Well, that illusion, too, died among the embers of my inflammable mind when we met at long last--for here I was in one of the more voluptuous bathrooms of the Hotel Prince de Galles and Bognor Menzies certainly was no lady.

Not that he lacked any of the wiles and graces that you would normally associate with the gentler sex; far from it: He had all these and more. But he also had been married three times to three of the more stunning ladies of the screen and had had three healthy children by them; his affairs, it seemed, were ample and well-known to the daily press and fan magazines of two continents, and his prowess was confirmed and undoubted.

All this seemed as exotic to me as the South Sea Islands. Despite my firm decision to stay on guard against the seduction of high salaries and low tastes, I therefore soon found myself bewitched and confounded. Mr. Menzies was distraught, it seemed, because he had scratched himself on the leg and needed regular penicillin injections every three hours to guard against infection. He had ordered a nurse by cable from London; but on his arrival at Le Bourget, she had failed to turn up. He was furious. The hotel had promised to send up another nurse, but she, too, had failed to make an appearance. Would I do him a great favor and see if I could find him a doctor?

I said I would, and for two hours thereafter I argued with French doctors. It was a hot Sunday in June and the town was deserted. The few doctors who were in attendance refused to acknowledge the urgency of the case, but at long last I managed to persuade a friend at the Sorbonne, Dr. Aristide Viadoux, to spare us a few moments. Actually, Dr. Viadoux was lecturing, not practicing, but since I would have thought myself perfectly capable of giving Mr. Menzies a penicillin injection if he had asked me to do so, I was sure that Professor Viadoux could have equaled my talents. All this, however, proved entirely unnecessary, for Mr. Menzies already had three doctors and two nurses in attendance by the time we arrived back at the hotel.

It turned out that the first nurse had been awaiting Mr. Menzies at the airport, where he had arranged to meet her; alas, he had changed his mind about the plane he was going to take and had arrived two hours early. The second nurse was the one he had asked the hotel to send up: She had been trying to get in for the last half hour--but he'd hung the don't disturb sign on his door and taken the phone off the hook. The three doctors finally had arrived in reply to three emergency calls he had sent out through his lawyer, his publicity manager and his tax consultant--all this while I was walking the hot pavements of Paris in search of a fourth.

Now, while the four doctors and the two nurses did their best to administer one penicillin injection, I was delegated to watch the telephone. There was a call from a local film magazine asking for an interview, one from a tailoring house asking for payment for six tropical summer suits, two from female fans asking for autographs, one from an airline asking for the details of Mr. Menzies' reservation on the plane to Madrid, one from his lawyer asking for information on a breach-of-contract suit brought by a French producer against Mr. Menzies, one from the porter downstairs asking for instructions as to what to do about the fans and hangers-on who had collected in the lobby to see Mr. Menzies and, finally, one from a lady who addressed me as darling and said it didn't make any difference when I told her that I wasn't Mr. Menzies.

I felt that I was really in the center of things and that the academic life, by comparison, was definitely not all it had been cracked up to be. What impressed me particularly in the course of all these activities was the discovery that Mr. Menzies was a month younger than I: This came out during the telephone call from the airline, when I was asked to give Mr. Menzies' date of birth and had to look it up on his passport. The discovery startled me so much that I forgot all about the furious doings around me and fell to contemplating the fact that Mr. Menzies, at 34, could so gaily maintain a staff of four doctors and two nurses, not to mention a bathroom at the Prince de Galles, while I had to live apart from my wife and child because I could not afford to maintain them, in spite of some 15 years spent in the pursuit of higher learning.

Mr. Menzies, with his almost magical intuition, must have divined this accurately; for the first thing he said when he emerged from his medical treatment was: "How much will you need to live while doing my script?"

I silently totaled my expenses--the apartment in Washington, Ruth's household bill, food and medical supplies for the baby, my own hotel rent and meals in Paris, a little extra for transportation and repairs, the monthly allotment for my parents--and I arrived at about $100 a week. That should be enough to let Ruth quit her job and take care of the baby property. Well, shucks, Mr. Menzies was rich. "A hundred and twenty-five dollars," I said bravely.

"Double it," said Mr. Menzies. And (continued on page 171) Cable from Mr. Menzies (continued from page 78)then he added: "Are you married, Dr. Dickinson?"

"Yes," I said. "One wife, one child."

The humor of the one wife was lost on Mr. Menzies, who had three. But his voice was tender when he said, "They are with you in Paris, of course?"

I explained, rather apologetically, that they were in Washington, and why. "But, good God, Dr. Dickinson, you must have them join you," said Mr. Menzies; and if his voice had been tender when he had first broached the subject of my family life, it was positively melting with concern now. "You must cable them immediately." He thought this over for a moment and decided it was by no means enough. With wrinkled forehead, he walked to the telephone, lifted the receiver and spoke firmly in English: "Take a cable, please."

A humbler traveler, less experienced in the habit of command, might well have wondered whether the switchboard operator understood English or would accept a cable that was not delivered to her in writing. Mr. Menzies knew better. "The cable is for Dickinson," he said with authority, and then he added in a softly voiced aside: "What's your wife's first name, Dr. Dickinson?"

"Ruth," I said, taken aback.

"Mrs. Ruth Dickinson," he said. "The address is-- What's the address, Dr. Dickinson?"

"467 N Street NW," I said, "Washington, D. C."

Mr. Menzies repeated the address and proceeded to dictate:

"'Darling I am writing a motion picture for Bognor Menzies and want you to join me immediately Rome Love....' What your first name, Dr. Dickinson?"

"Robert," I said.

"Signed 'Love--Robert,'" said Mr. Menzies. "Will you read that back to me?" He held out the receiver to me so that I could check the text.

"Why Rome?" I asked when the switchboard girl reached the last sentence.

"Beg pardon, sir?" she said.

"Sh," said Mr. Menzies. "I will explain."

"What about my son?" I asked. "We can't leave him behind in Washington."

"'What about my son,' "the girl repeated. "We can't--'"

"No, no," I said. I was beginning to get panicky. "This doesn't go into the cable."

Mr. Menzies took back the receiver. I was relieved. It was a hot day, but I was perspiring more than the weather warranted. "What's your son's name?" he asked.

"Mike," I said. "Michael David Dickinson."

"Insert after the word 'you' the words 'and Michael,'" said Mr. Menzies. "Then read back the whole text, please." He listened patiently while she complied. Then he added, in answer to some unheard question: "No, not deferred. Not night letter. Send it ordinary. In fact, send it urgent and preferred. Charge my account." He rang off and turned to me. His face was deeply moved. "Dr. Dickinson, one thing one learns in this hurried, miserable and disorganized life which is the film man's burden--to keep one's family together while one can. You must come with me to Madrid tomorrow so that we can talk, and when I start the Bantu film, you must go back to my house in the Alban Hills and do the script on the Moors of Spain in all the peace and comfort which your family and my servants can give you."

He had gone back to the telephone while he was speaking. "Get me another seat on the plane to Madrid tomorrow morning," he said. "For Dr. Robert Dickinson." He hung up without waiting for a reply.

"I have no visa for Spain," I said. "And I can't pack my bags in a few hours ... and I've got too much baggage for an air journey ... and, anyway, I've got to wait a few days to hear if the French government will extend my fellowship ... and I've got no money."

The last was the worst. I had not wanted to admit it, because I had been told that movie people only paid you if they though you needed no money. If you did need money, you were obviously a man of no talent and therefore not worthy of their attention.

But Mr. Menzies laughed and said: "Don't ever worry about money. All your expenses will be paid. Go home now, pack one suitcase lightly with summer clothes, leave the rest at the hotel, leave your passport with me and meet me here again for breakfast tomorrow morning. My office in Rome will look after your family's passage. Today is the third Sunday in June. I am starting the Bantu film on the first of July. Your wife should arrive in Naples round about the sixth of July. You can meet her there and my chauffeur will drive you back to the house in Rome. The script should take you about six weeks. By mid-August, I'll have finished the location sequence in Kumasi and we can start shooting the first scenes of The Moors in Spain. By October we should finish the interiors and in November we should have a first test print. All right?"

"Well ... Yes...." I said. The French fellowship was forgotten. I was dazed. There was something paralyzing about the scope, speed and decision of Mr. Menzies' operations. And what in the world was the Bantu film that kept cropping up in Mr. Menzies' conversation? If he expected me to supple him with academic advice on the history of Kumasi, he had the wrong man and I would never be able to earn my pay.

"About the Bantu film. ..." I said.

"Don't worry about that," said Mr. Menzies. "You are our authority on the Moors in Spain. Now run along and be back here tomorrow morning for breakfast."

• • •

Back at breakfast I was, and that afternoon we were in Madrid; and for three of the most exciting weeks of my life, Mr. Menzies and I drove and walked and rode all over Spain in the track of the vanished civilization that had provided me with 15 years' food for thought and study. Without Mr. Menzies, I would never have been able to see all I wanted to see: Doors opened to him as if by magic, and where my academic introductions failed me, a word from Mr. Menzies to a government official here or a church functionary there always did the trick.

We were not always alone. Mr. Menzies' secretary, the lady with the indefinable accent who had telephoned me in Paris one night at three o'clock, joined us in Toledo. The Armenian gentleman who had welcomed me in a dressing gown at the Hotel George-V in Paris joined us in Seville. And a charming young lady, who had just won a beauty contest in Paris, began to take care of Mr. Menzies by the time we reached Barcelona. Nominally, she had joined us to play a part in one of the countless films that Mr. Menzies seemed to be preparing simultaneously, but the film was left unscheduled and since the lady's living expenses were well and amply taken care of, she did not dare ask too many questions about duration of contract, dates of production and other matters that Mr. Menzies found distasteful. Being a European gentleman and a man of sensibility, Mr. Menzies rightly resented his emotional life's being burdened with questions of business; and when it came to discussing financial matters, an expression of such agony usually spread over his boyish face that stronger people than the beauty-contest winner had dropped the subject in shame at their own vulgarity.

If there was one other matter that was as distasteful to Mr. Menzies as money, it was the mechanics of everyday life: He never packed his own bags, never answered the telephone, never picked up his mail and never walked anywhere. Like Queen Victoria, who was in the admirable habit of sitting down without looking whether there was a chair or not (knowing full well that there'd better be one or else), Mr. Menzies had the habit of walking out of hotel rooms without even looking at his baggage, having insured it so heavily that the hotel manager himself would pack it and mail it to distant spots of the globe if Mr. Menzies' own minions weren't around to look after it. There had been so many scenes with furious insurance inspectors that the rumor of Mr. Menzies' foible had spread through the hotels of the world like a spell.

As for the telephone, I came to appreciate that the cable he had phoned through to Ruth from Paris had been altogether exceptional: As a rule, Mr. Menzies treated the telephone like a wild beast that was to be avoided at all costs. Even in his own room, he never lifted the receiver. When it rang, he called for his staff. They would repeat everything the other party said, then Mr. Menzies would give his reply and they would repeat that to the other person.

All this, of course, made life quite difficult at times for Mme. Fernandez, the lady of the accent, and Mr. Rhamajurian, the gentleman of the bathrobe. Charged with taking care of Mr. Menzies' business affairs and yet unable to pierce the curtain of Mr. Menzies' thoughts, they often found themselves in somewhat precarious situations.

One such situation occurred during the last week of our stay in Seville. It was one of Mr. Menzies' favorite practices to engage me in discussion around dinnertime and keep me talking with well-placed and often truly searching questions till about three or four in the morning. Frequently, he was up again at seven or eight for breakfast; from none to eleven he dictated letters, cables and filmscripts; from eleven to five he worked in his room on future projects; from five to sunset we mapped the town for location scenes; from sunset to about three in the morning we talked; and often he would start dictating again after I had gone to bed.

The extraordinary spectacle of a man conducting a complex and vigorous business on less than four hours' sleep per night used to fascinate me, until I found out by mere accident that Mr. Menzies spent all his time in his room sleeping and that it was almost impossible for him to do any kind of work if he did not have at least the usual eight hours' sleep on which lesser mortals manage to do their day's labors.

There was really nothing shameful in this, but the careful myth that had been built around Mr. Menzies' "working" hours made me wonder for the first time how many of Mr. Menzies' accomplishments were actually his own.

On the day of which I speak, we had been discussing the impact of Moorish music on the folk music of modern Spain. Mr. Menzies had talked most entertainingly, taking the dry points of my discourse and quoting them back at me with so much charm of paraphrase that I hardly recognized the ugly ducklings of my academic learning when they came strutting back across the table decked out like peacocks in Mr. Menzies' imagery. All this time, he had kept Mme. Fernandez and Mr. Rhamajurian waiting to give them dictation; but when we finished talking, he decided that he was too tired after all to start dictating letters at four in the morning, because he had to get up again at six to catch the first plane for Madrid, where he had to make a deposition in a suit of plagiarism brought against him by an American author who claimed that the story of Mr. Menzies' first and most memorable film had been lifted from one of the author's early books. Mme. Fernandez was delegated to wake him (he did not trust alarm clocks or hotel clerks) and with a feeling of infinite luxury, I went to bed that night knowing that, for once, I would be able to sleep as long as I liked.

I was wrong. Mr. Menzies, deciding that six o'clock was too early, after all, refused to get up when Mme. Fernandez woke him, slept through till eleven and then called me, of all people, to ask where he might charter a plane to take him to Madrid. Why I was asked instead of Mme. Fernandez or Mr. Rhamajurian I shall never know, but I was being so grossly overpaid for work that was mere play to me that I could not have refused in decency to render Mr. Menzies any reasonable service for which he asked me. By lunchtime, therefore, I had packed Mr. Menzies off in a hired two-seater with an ex-R.A.F. pilot; and for the next 18 hours, a heavenly calm descended upon Seville.

It was broken with a bang at nine the next morning, when Mme. Fernandez woke me to present a telegram from Mr. Menzies. It was addressed to "Dickinson Fernandez Rhamajurian" and it read: "Starting New Film Tomorrow Paris Please Meet me Seville Airport Noon With Car and Papers." There was no signature.

What did it mean? Mr. R. and Mme. F. were unable to decode it. Should they pack Mr. Menzies' baggage? Should they take it to the airport? Was he going straight on to Paris? If so, why by car from the airport? Why not by plane? And why papers? What papers?

We decided to play safe. We packed all of Mr. Menzies' baggage and hired two cars--one to take him from the airport straight to Paris, if that was what he wanted, the other one to take us either back to the hotel or on to Paris in his wake. The idea was Mme. Fernandez'. It was a Solomonic decision, I thought.

Mr. Menzies arrived in the hired plane. He was alone. He had dropped the ex-R.A.F. pilot in Madrid and had flown back to Seville on his own. It was the first time any of us had learned that he had a pilot's license and somehow, puny as the incident was, it added to the Menzies myth. Looking boyish, tousled and sunburned, he stepped out of the plane and said, "I'm hungry; let'l eat."

So we drove back to the hotel--two cars, four people, baggage and all--and after one of the most leisurely and expansive lunches we ever had, Mr. Menzies said casually to Mme. Fernandez: "You have packed the papers, of course?"

"I have packed everything," Mme. Fernandez said proudly.

"I don't want everything," said Mr. Menzies with gentle sadness. "All I want is the papers. I am not going to drive across the Pyrenees with a cabin trunk and twelve suitcases."

That seemed fair enough, but it still left one question open. "Why don't you go by train?" I asked. "Or if you want to go by plane, we can bring the baggage the next day on the transcontinental train."

There was a breathless silence. It was the first time, I learned later from Mme. Fernandez, that anyone in her hearing had ever asked Mr. Menzies for an explanation of anything he did, had done or wanted to do.

Mr. Menzies looked at me with the affectionate respect of a man who had just discovered that his favorite pet dog had learned to talk. "Why," he said, "if New World Pictures wants to pay for a car, I might just as well take a car." And with a nod at Mme. Fernandez, he said: "Please unpack my baggage and bring it to my room."

We did not dare tell Mr. Menzies that he no longer had a room, but with a series of well-placed bribes, we managed to get him back into the room we had canceled that morning when his telegram had arrived. There he went to sleep and was not heard from till late that night, when he woke briefly, asked for Turkish coffee and went back to sleep again. Altogether, Mr. Menzies slept for 23 hours without causing further trouble for anyone except New World Pictures, who telephoned from Madrid toward midnight to find out why Mr. Menzies still had not availed himself of the car that they had kept waiting for him since early morning.

It turned out that Mr. Menzies, refusing to talk to New World on the phone, had misunderstood everything. The car was to take him from Madrid to Seville and not from Seville to Paris. The film was to start today and not tomorrow. Mr. Menzies was to play the lead, not to direct it. He was to be paid in francs, not in dollars. And if he was not in time, every lost hour would be deducted from his salary.

We tossed coins to see who would have the sad duty of waking Mr. Menzies to face him with the news. I won. Mr. Menzies was wonderful. He said: "Get me my toilet kit and see if that little plane is still at the airport."

I called the airport. They said they had been wondering for 27 hours what to do with the plane and would be delighted if we took it off their hands. Mr. Menzies nodded.

Less than an hour later, we saw him taking off from the airport. Less than a day later, I had a telegram that said: "Dickinson Proceed Rome as arranged contact my Office Hotel Excelsior Re Passage Your Family." There was no signature, but less than three days later I was on my way.

I arrived on July 4 and Ruth was supposed to arrive in Naples on July 6. I had no money, because Mr. Menzies had expected to pay me out of the money he was to receive from New World for playing the lead in their film, and since the production had been temporarily delayed, my first salary, too, had been delayed a week or two.

Still, tomorrow I was going to be richer than I had ever been in my life, and so I spent my last francs cheerfully on the plane fare for Rome, made my way straight to the Hotel Excelsior and was delighted to find Mme. Fernandez waiting for me at the Bognor Menzies Office on the fifth floor.

"How-won-der-ful," she said in her incredible accent, "that-you-are-here. Now-I-won't-have-to-go-to-Naples-to-meet-your-wife. Downstairs-the-car-is-waiting. Better-take-it-quick." She ran all her syllables together, but it did not set my teeth quite as much on edge as it had in Spain, because I was grateful beyond words to find that there was such a thing as a Bognor Menzies Office in Rome, that it was actually working, that it had a real, live motorcar and that it had received news from Ruth.

When I arrived at the pier next morning, I found I was late. The boat had come in way ahead of time and Ruth, one of the first to disembark, was standing in a circle of customs and immigration men. I located her by following the sound of Michael's howls. When she saw me, she just handed the noisy bundle over the Customs barrier, confounding the entire discipline of the Italian immigration service.

Two hours later, we had worn down the resistance of the Neapolitans, had paid off the porters, the police, the Customs, the immigration, the military and the beggars, and were being driven to San Gabriele, Mr. Menzies' fabulous house in the hills above Rome.

Fabulous it was. We had been driving for four hours on a winding mountain road that went through Albano, Castel Gandolfo and Frascati, past the Pope's summerhouse, past the vineyards and olive orchards where the Roman gentry had built their country homes for the past 2000 years, when suddenly the car served off the highway, turned into a sandy hill road and proceeded to climb.

Up we went, past stone troughs with peasant women busy at the wash, past roadside shrines and apple-cheeked priests on bicycles, and then suddenly into an archway that carried a tolling bell. Smiling faces showed briefly at the door of the gatehouse and again we were climbing, this time on a graveled driveway shaded by sweet-smelling jasmine bushes and linden trees, bordered by a coach house on the left, a tennis court on the right, then a loggia framed in wild roses, a swimming pool cast in the smooth blue stonework that the Italians call terrazzo and, at long last, on the crest of a hill that looked at distant Rome across blue vineyards and umbrella pines, the house itself--San Gabriele.

A row of servants graded in size stood expectantly at the carved entrance door. Dwarfed by the mass of the house and its retainers, Ruth drew back for a moment into the dark recess of the car. Then Giovanni, the chauffeur, flung open the door and the row of servants began to bow and curtsy with the precision of a variety act: We had arrived.

While the cheerful bustle of unloading and unpacking went on, we made our first tour of the house. Built on the foundations of an antique summer home, it had preserved the fundamental dignity of the region's peasant architecture. Despite its enormous size, it blended well into the landscape, and its three stories seemed no more boastful than the one-storied homes of its tenant farmers. But inside there were five bathrooms tiled in different colors, six bedrooms painted and carpeted in a matching scheme, a paneled library, a drawing room with a beamed ceiling and a vast dining room with 12 carved chairs saluting a carved refectory table, pewter mugs on a medieval sideboard and rows of oaken benches that framed that walls like church pews. The master bedroom, upstairs, had the biggest bed I had ever seen, covered in green sheets, and two of its three doors opened out onto a terrace that overlooked not only Rome in front but the walled town of San Gabriele in back of the house.

That night, undisturbed by the memories of the departed, we dined by candlelight while a white-coated butler served us with three kinds of wine out of our own cellars, wonderful octopus followed by scaloppine with mangoes and zucchini, huge peaches on ice for dessert, four kinds of cheese and, in the end, on the terrace, the best coffee I had ever drunk in my life.

The next morning, we had breakfast among the roses on the loggia, lunch by the swimming pool, tea on the lawn and dinner out on the terrace. The weather was wonderful, the servants were kind and well trained; everything was there except a writing desk, but I found a plywood drawing board, a garden chair with horizontal armrests and a parasol on an adjustable stand and, equipped with these three commodities, I settled down under the lindens and the jasmines on an eight-hour-a-day schedule, hammering out the first draft of The Moors in Spain while Mike went tumbling through the landscape, pampered by the countless servants and tenant farmers, picking up odd toys, scratches and mosquito bites here and odd pieces of bruised fruit, Italian idiom and dirty language there. Ruth gradually went through all stages, from the frightened mother, the lady of the manor and the screenwriter's wife to the student of the region, the confidante of the servants and the foreign lady going native. Altogether, these were the most relaxed and pleasant ten days of my life.

Ten days, I said. Then the blow fell. It fell on a lovely Sunday afternoon, when Mme. Fernandez, who had come out for lunch with a small intimate group of 12 friends, took me aside to explain that Mr. Menzies was temporarily incapacitated--financially, that was--and would have to rent out the house as of next week.

I was a little shaken by the news, but I did not want to show my feelings; and, in any case, I was too much taken aback to think of all the implications right away. So all I managed to say was, "Well, I'll need a little money, I guess, if I'm going to live in a hotel."

"Oh-that's-all-right," said Mme. Fernandez. "I'm-sure-we'll-find-you-enough-to-live-for-a-month-or-so."

It was said quite kindly, but all at once I had a cold feeling in my spine and I knew: This must be fear. The night before, Ruth had told me she had spent all our combined savings on her transatlantic passage, since the Menzies office in Rome had cabled her they had only lire and no dollars on hand at the time; and now, suddenly, I realized that I was penniless. Worse, I was in the red: I had given up my fellowship in France, I had made Ruth give up her job in Washington, I had made her give up our apartment there, I had paid some $500 to have my furniture moved and stored, I would have to spend another $1000 or more to take the three of us back, I would have to find money to keep my parents alive, I would have to find a job--which would take time. Quickly, between two sentences, I tried to calculate what Mr. Menzies owed me. The total was just about $4500 for everything.

"How much," I said, and I think my voice was still quite steady at this time, "how much do you think you will be able to let me have?"

"Oh, about-a-hundred-thousand-lire," she said, not unkindly, but in that matter-of-fact tone that excluded automatically all thoughts of our broken hopes.

"Why," I said, "that's less than a hundred and seventy dollars! That's not even a twenty-fifth of what he owes me."

"I-think-you-forgot-that-Mr.-Menzies-is-temporarily-out-of-funds," said Mme. Fernandez; and for the first time, there was an edge to her voice--not angry, but a little disturbed at my obstinacy and lack of comprehension.

"Under those circumstances," I said, "I should probably have the house for another month in lieu of notice. It was as much part of my contract as my salary or my wife's passage to and from Rome. The same rules should apply to it."

"But-you-have-no-contract," said Mme. Fernandez impatiently. "Nobody-has-a-contract. Mr.-Menzies-never-signs-contracts."

This was true, it suddenly occurred to me. One night in Toledo we had talked things over, reaffirming the terms that Mr. Menzies had proposed in Paris; and that night, Mr. Menzies had closed the conversation with the words, "Ah, well, Mme. Fernandez here will look after all the details." And he had looked at her tenderly and that was the end of it. And here, now, was Mme. Fernandez, the only person aside from Mr. Menzies and myself who had been a witness to our conversation, and all she had to say on the subject was that Mr. Menzies never signed contracts.

"But I have some cables," I said. "Cables from Mr. Menzies."

"Do-they-quote-figures?" Mme. Fernandez asked on a note of triumph. "Do-they-state-your-salary, the-duration-of-your-employment, the-ceiling-price-on-your-family's-transatlantic-passage, the-rent-of-the-house?"

"He simply said he was lending me the house while I was working on the film. I was to work on it till November."

"The-house!" Mme. Fernandez, usually a reserved and businesslike lady, had begun to glow with an unearthly light of revelation. "Then-who-pays-for-the-light, gas-and-telephone? Who-pays-the-servants? Who-bribes-the-mayor-so-that-he-doesn't-cut-off-your-water-when-the-drought-begins? Who-pays-for-food?"

She shot out that last question like a bullet. I was appalled and yet fascinated. There could no longer be any doubt that Mme. Fernandez' concern in Mr. Menzies' affairs went way beyond that of an ordinary secretary. But why? I decided to ask. "About the telegram ..." I began.

"Yes," she said. "No-figures, I-bet-you. And-no-signature." She glowed with triumph.

That was true enough, but why should it delight her so much? Mme. Fernandez was a tall, ungainly woman in her middle 30s. It was inconceivable that she should be in love with Mr. Menzies, or Mr. Menzies with her. But there were a great many persons in Mr. Menzies' chain, and the locket that linked them all had not become visible to me until I had seen his house up here in the hills; Mr. Menzies had modeled his life on a Renaissance ideal--his ambition to be actor, director, producer and writer all at the same time was as surely borrowed from Leonardo's ideal of the Universal Man as his business ambitions were borrowed from Machiavelli's ideal of the scheming Prince. Mme. Fernandez, as a secretary, was profoundly bored by Mr. Menzies' artistic ambitions; but his business skulduggery made her admire him with a passion that came close to love. And if he practiced his skulduggery on her--charming her, bullying her and diddling her out of her salary--she loved and admired him only the more, for thus he proved that he was really her master and worthy of her love.

All this, of course, was merely a guess, but I thought I would test it by leading her on. "That's odd," I said. "But there really never was a signature on any of those cables except the first. Why should that be?"

"Why? Because-Mr.-Menzies-is-an-artist. Because-he-can't-always-remember-the-dreary-details-of-business-routine. And," she added with sudden mischief in her eyes, "because-he-can-always-say, if-it-isn't-signed, that-his-secretary-sent-it-without-his-knowledge."

That ended it for the night. We said goodbye to each other like the civilized human beings we thought we were, and the next morning I went to the embassy, where I was told that I'd been a fool to accept Mr. Menzies' word about anything; that he was too deeply in debt to pay me a nickel, even if I should succeed in suing him; and that the one thing to do was to sit tight at his house until I had word from him personally.

I telephoned Ruth and gave her the verdict. What happened after that I shall never know. The two versions I heard, one from Ruth and the other from Mme. Fernandez, differed so widely that it was almost impossible to arrive at a common denominator. All I could gather was that Mme. Fernandez had brought a prospective tenant to the house that afternoon and that Ruth had told the prospective tenant with Churchillian clarity that she had not come to Italy in order to preside over the dissolution of her new household; that she considered the house her own until she had heard something to the contrary from her husband; that her husband couldn't tell her anything until he had heard from Mr. Menzies himself. And, anyway, the kitchen range had no oven, there was a drought to be expected next week, you had to bribe the mayor if you wanted water, the toilets smelled, you couldn't get a bath in any of the five pastel-colored bathrooms, and only this morning the servants had found a dead rat in the cistern.

Mme. Fernandez, more bewildered than hurt, had walked off with the shocked surprise of a pet-loving lady who had just been bitten by a hydrophobic dog. Only much later did her surprise turn to anger, and even then it was anger at herself--anger at allowing herself to be outdone in her own game of pushing people around. Whatever her emotions might have been, her attitude from now on became coldly formal. She held all the cards in her hand and she decided to use them. I was broke and she was the only one who could dole out money.

I sat in her office, sometimes for eight hours at a stretch, watching her paying out diminutive sums to creditors who asked for anything from ten to a hundred times what they were given. Being offered a 25th of what I was owed, I seemed to be fairly well treated. The only trouble was that I had not received even this promised pittance yet.

All this came to a head the day that Mr. Rhamajurian arrived in Rome. Ruth discovered this fact by chance when she bumped into an English film producer for whom she had once worked as a secretary when he was traveling in the U.S.A. She came up to see me at the Menzies Office, where I was still sitting, waiting for my pittance to materialize. "Why didn't you tell me that Mr. Menzies' production manager was in town?" she asked before she was through the door.

It was news to me. Mme. Fernandez, by then, had disappeared from the office. I asked the typist where she had gone and was told to a conference in Mr. Rhamajurian's room. I called the room and was told the phone was busy. I called again and again, for two hours or so, and got the same answer. Finally, I sent the typist up with a note asking him to call me back when he was through. He did not call.

I sat there for another hour, humiliated beyond anything I'd ever felt in my life before. Then I saw red. I walked upstairs in a blind rage, entered without knocking and sat down.

There were six chairs in the room. On the other five sat Mr. Rhamajurian, Mme. Fernandez and three people I did not know.

Mr. Rhamajurian, polite and urbane as always, got up delightedly, shook my hand and then said with a sad, all-encompassing glance, "Trouble, trouble, trouble--nothing but trouble."

I agreed--saying so for approximately 20 minutes. When I had talked myself out of my rage, Mr. Rhamajurian said gently, "My dear boy, Mr. Menzies has long left France. That's, of course, why he hasn't replied to you. As for money, I am authorized to pay you two hundred and fifty thousand francs. After that, we will see."

I asked Mr. Rhamajurian with renewed distaste, "And why francs? Aren't we in Italy? And, in any case, why not in dollars? That's what I was supposed to get."

Mr. Rhamajurian explained with patience that Mr. Menzies had been paid by New World out of the blocked francs they had received from the distribution of their films in France. "We never had any dollars," he said pleasantly.

"And where is Mr. Menzies now?" I asked at last with an icy politeness that almost matched his own urbanity.

"Oh, in Kumasi," he said, blowing dust from his lapel. "That's West Africa, you know. He's shooting his new picture there."

"And The Moors in Spain?"

"Oh, my God," said Mr. Rhamajurian absently. "We shelved that months ago. Didn't you know?"

I walked out of that room in a daze, and it was not until three hours later that I managed to draw up a coherent cable to Mr. Menzies, asking him, in effect, whether he would at least be able to let me have enough money to get back to America with my family so that I might try to salvage the remnants of my shattered existence and start all over again--a humbler but wiser man.

Then I went back to the hotel to get my 250,000 francs from Mr. Rhamajurian.

Mr. Rhamajurian, I was told, had checked out. What was his forwarding address? Paris.

I wired Paris that night as well as Kumasi, using Ruth's last savings to pay for the cables.

There was no reply from Mr. Menzies, but Mr. Rhamajurian replied as follows:

Dear Dr. Dickinson,

Thank you for your cable of the 28th inst.

In accordance with your request, I enclose the from which you will kindly sign undated against payment by Mr. Menzies of 250,000 francs, but I must make it very clear that I do not at all guarantee that I shall have this amount available in a very few days' time. The present balance is extremely low, and Mr. Menzies has asked me only today to cable him a considerable amount of the balance to Kumasi.

Yours sincerely, K. Rhamajurian.

The form that was attached to the letter had the savage elegance of Mr. Rhamajurian's Eastern mind:

I, Robert Dickinson, hereby acknowledge receiving the sum of Two Hundred And Fifty Thousand Francs (Frs. 250,000.-) paid to me by check No.--dated--on--.

This payment is accepted in full and complete settlement of any and all sums that may be due or may become due to me by Mr. Bognor Menzies, his heirs or assigns forever as the result of any relations or transactions whatsoever and/or any contracts or agreements, verbal or in writing, entered into between Mr. Bognor Menzies and myself.

Signed in--the--day of--.

I talked things over with Ruth that night, telling her that I was surrendering my chance of ever receiving my full due from Mr. Menzies if I signed Mr. Rhamajurian's quitclaim form. After a night of weighing arguments, we decided not to sign.

The next month was hell.

We sold Ruth's jewelry, my camera, my watch, her watch and, finally, about half of our clothes. The servants left us, one by one. We learned to our interested but rather academic satisfaction that none of them had been paid for more than three months prior to Mr. Menzies' official crisis. Food shrank from four courses per meal to one and from three meals a day to two and, finally, to a single one, taken at midday. Then the gas and the electricity were cut off because Mr. Menzies had not paid his bills for three months. We cooked on charcoal and advanced our day by three hours--get up at sunrise, eat at noon, retire at sunset. Then the water was cut off and we began to wash from the cistern. Then the telephone was cut off and we were on our own.

Our decline could be measured by our means of locomotion. In the early days, we had been taken to Rome and back in style by the office car. Later, when the crisis had begun but about two or three days before it had been officially announced to us, we went one way by car and the other by taxi. Then, for two days, we went both ways by taxi. Then we went by taxi to Frascati and took the bus from there to Rome. Then we forgot about the taxi and walked to Frascati--40 minutes twise a day in the broiling sun; then we forgot about the bus from Frascati and took the streetcar instead.

Meanwhile, we were waiting for a cable from Mr. Menzies. Perhaps, we thought, he had a heart after all. Perhaps, instead of spending $500 for five minutes' shooting, he would send it to us so that we could get back to America and start earning a living again. True, we might succeed in earning a living even here in Italy; that was the reason we went to Rome each day--Ruth to check the employment agencies for a job as English-speaking typist or secretary, I to make the rounds of the museums and universities for some kind of job commensurate with all those years of higher education.

Neither of us was successful. The scarcity of food, the heat of Rome in July, the absence of a telephone and the agony of daily two-hour streetcar rides helped make us look rather unpromising. Employers do notice failure.

We had never slept well in that house after our first days of luxury, but now sleep ceased entirely. Ever since we had become squatters, we had woken up at every sound of every car on the highway: Was it coming up our driveway? Was it the bailiff to throw us out? Was it Mme. Fernandez intent on practicing new tricks of her Machiavellian mind on us? Or was it, perhaps, Mr. Menzies himself, returning at long last from darkest Africa to drive the intruders out of the promised land? Our nerves were frayed to a thin edge. We had forgotten that it was Mr. Menzies who had placed us in this untenable situation where we could neither go home nor stay at our own expense. All we knew was that we lived on stolen time, penniless, in another man's house.

One night, I went downstairs and almost secretively signed Mr. Rhamajurian's quitclaim form. The next morning, I took the letter down to Frascati myself to send it off.

Two days later, we had a letter from Mme. Fernandez, giving us a detailed account of our household expenses--rent, electricity, gas, telephone, servants' wages since the day that she had brought us the news of Mr. Menzies' default. All of it was accurate. No electricity, no gas, no telephone was charged after it had been cut off. The total expenses were $568.17 or 278,403 francs. Of this, Mr. Menzies owed me 250,000 francs. This left a balance of 28,403 francs in Mr. Menzies' favor, and Mr. Menzies would appreciate it very much if Dr. Dickinson could settle this amount at his earliest convenience, since Mr. Menzies was slightly short of cash.

This broke the nightmarish spell in which we'd been living. At first we stared and then we laughed. Yes, our nerves were a little strained that day and perhaps our laughter was tinged with a bit of hysteria, but we laughed. And every time I looked at Ruth or she at me, we started all over again.

What next? Well, Ruth found a job as relief typist at the American Consulate and I found a job teaching English at the Berlitz school. We left Mr. Menzies' palace and went to live in a one-room apartment in one of those poor districts of Rome that Mr. Menzies would have shunned like the plague. Yes, Ruth still looks a bit drawn, if not haggard, and I have lost a little weight, and we still haven't made quite enough money to go back to America, but then, we haven't any debts, either.

Oh, yes, we did get a cable from Mr. Menzies at long last. It was brief and to the point. We had asked him, you will recall, what we should do to make ends meet. He replied in two words, but he made up for his taciturnity by reverting to the full opening and closing phrases with which he had adorned the first cable he had ever sent me:

Dear Doctor Dickinson

Live Simply

Affectionate Regards

Bognor Menzies