The Teleportation Accident

‘Like Wilbur Gorge?’ said Loeser, remembering what Blimk had said earlier.

‘Yes. How do you know Gorge?’

‘I don’t. Do you mean to say you do?’

‘Yes. I have the sort of easy, genial relationship with the Colonel that you can only have with a man you’re vigorously cuckolding.’

‘Could you introduce me?’

‘Why?’

‘I just want to meet him,’ said Loeser. ‘It doesn’t matter why.’

‘I could get you an invitation to dinner, but what would I get out of it?’

‘I’ll owe you a favour. All right?’

‘I suppose so. By the way, you know Hecht’s here?’

‘In Los Angeles or in this house?’

‘Both. He’s got a contract with Paramount. You might see Drabsfarben, too. And Gugelhupf.’

‘I already knew about Gugelhupf. But the others? You can’t be serious.’

‘Half the Romanisches Cafe is here, Loeser. Or at least on its way.’

Loeser felt a heavy squelch of dismay. ‘But the only thing I like about this place is that I don’t have to see anyone I know!’

‘Nonetheless.’

‘Fucking hell, this is like going to the Alps for a tuberculosis cure and finding out everyone else in the sanatorium is determined to reinfect you. Well, as long as Brecht doesn’t turn up, I won’t have to jump into the ocean. Thank God I’m going home soon.’

‘Mr Loeser! I’m so glad you could come.’ Mutton’s wife was radiantly at his side. ‘I see you already know Mr Rackenham.’

‘Yes. Mrs Mutton, before I forget, I don’t have a car and I’m staying at the Chateau Marmont and I’m not quite sure how I’m going to get back to my hotel…’

‘Oh, don’t give it another thought, we’ll have the butler drive you. Now, you must meet Mr Gould. He’s a recent arrival from Berlin, like yourself.’

She led Loeser back out to the patio, where Gould turned out to be one of the men he’d passed on his way in. A tall fellow with a smile as big as an almond croissant, he was talking to Stent Mutton and two women. Dolores Mutton introduced Loeser to everyone. ‘Yes, Mr Loeser and I have already met,’ said her husband, raising an eyebrow.

One of the other women said, ‘Mr Gould was just telling us about how he got out of Berlin.’

‘Yes. As I said, the Nazis had tried to ban my latest book of poems. So, like a fool, I went to the police station to insert a complaint. They told me if I waited a few minutes I could see the police chief. So I sat down. Then, by luck, I overheard another policeman mention my name to one of his comrades. There was an order out to arrest me. But they did not realise yet that I had just walked right into their clutchings. So I waited until no one was watching and then I fled straight to the train station. I did not even go home to pack a bag, I just purchased a suitcase on the way and carried it, vacant, so I would look like a realistic tourist.’

‘You sound so calm about it all,’ said Dolores Mutton.

‘Actually, never have I been so frightened!’

‘Knowing that you can have everything taken from you just because you happen to be Jewish … I can hardly imagine what it must have been like, Mr Loeser.’

‘Sorry?’ His attention had wandered during Gould’s boring anecdote.

‘Tell me, how did you get out?’ said her husband. ‘Was it just as perilous?’

Loeser’s old rule against lying about himself to impress had not formally been repealed. So he was about to inform the woman that he was not Jewish; that he ‘got out’ on a tourist visa, which had taken him ten minutes to acquire; and that never, in Berlin, had he felt himself in jeopardy, nor had he detected that anyone else was. But then he remembered Scramsfield. What punishment had ever befallen Scramsfield for his almost hallucinant level of dupery? Why should Loeser come all the way to Hollywood, where half the population punched their time cards every morning at the ‘dream factory’, and still stubbornly persist in correcting every flattering little misapprehension, while right now Scramsfield, a man who had shot his fiancee dead during sex and got away with it, was probably cheating his rent out of some tipsy dowager? Scramsfield swam in his lies like a penguin. Loeser waddled around damp and pretended to be dry. No more. Also, Mrs Mutton was far too beautiful to disappoint, and he’d already decided he didn’t like Gould and didn’t want him to win. So: ‘Yes,’ said Loeser. ‘My escape was quite dramatic.’

‘Go on.’

‘They’d been tipped off that I was going to try to get across the border into France. But, you see, I’m a designer of theatrical effects. So I used an invention of mine called the Teleportation Device. From one side to the other as easily as an actor circling around from stage left to stage right without being seen.’

‘How did it work?’ said one of the women.

‘I’m afraid I can’t say anything about my invention while there is still a chance it may be in use. My first loyalty must be to my tribe.’

‘Oh, yes, of course.’

The butler came to tell Dolores Mutton she was needed inside.

‘So you were in the theatre?’ said Gould. ‘What was your last production before you left?’

‘Lavicini,’ said Loeser, even though it had never actually been performed.

‘Oh. I did not see that. Still, I knew a lot of theatre persons — we must have crossed roads at some point. Were you at Brogmann’s party with all the stolen brandy?’

‘No.’

‘What about when Vanel directed the nude ballet at the beach?’

‘No.’

‘I do not remember you coming on the big camping trip that Klein organised.’

‘No.’ Not only did Loeser not take part in any of these things, he didn’t even remember getting invited to any of them. Who was this prick and why did think he could make Loeser feel as if he’d missed out on all this fun back in Berlin?

‘How extraordinary that the two of you had to come all the way to the edge of another continent to meet for the first time,’ said Stent Mutton.

‘And now you are out here you will work for the movies, I assume, Herr Loeser?’ said Gould.

‘Why?’

‘You are a set designer.’

‘Yes. For the theatre. Not for the movies. I despise American movies.’

‘That does not mean you will not be slurped in,’ said Gould. ‘I do not know why but the studio bosses seem to have a lot of respect for Germans. Like it or not, there is no better way for us to earn some livings in California. Look on Hecht. He is working for Goatloft.’

‘Who’s Goatloft?’

‘He directed Scars of Desire. Very powerful. So Hecht is making five hundred dollars a week now. That is fifteen hundred marks, almost. He certainly has not been making that in Berlin.’

‘Is it hard there, for writers?’ said Stent Mutton.

‘Sometimes. Especially if you do not get an allowance from your parents and you do not like living on credit. I used to work as a waiter.’

How fucking self-righteous, thought Loeser. ‘Where?’ he said.

‘The Schwanneke,’ said Gould.

To the assembled witnesses, what then happened was that somehow Loeser tripped over from a stable standing position. What actually happened, as only some sort of careful Muybridgean analysis could have made clear, was that he tried to thump Gould in the nose and instead threw a punch so inept that even its intended recipient could not confidently identify it as such. The problem was his legs, which were just beginning their slow transmutation into the elongated pine cones that can be found glued to the pelvis of anyone with Loeser’s desultory level of physical fitness who wakes up the morning after a four-hour hike, and were therefore in no condition to perform a sudden vengeful charge. Neither, really, was Loeser himself, who hadn’t had any warning that he was about to make an assault on Gould — he just heard ‘Schwanneke’ and without a word of internal debate he was