The Getaway Car Page 22

  It was worse than Alcatraz. At least if you were there, you’d be able to see San Francisco out over the water, and there was always that one chance in a million you might actually swim to that city across the bay; I’d take those odds, or I would have then.

  But in the Azores, what? You make a break for it and jump in the water and if the ocean doesn’t throw you right back onto a volcano, what do you do? The nearest land is a thousand miles away, and that’s Portugal. Manhattan Beach Air Force Station is 2,400 miles the other way.

  Frustration, impatience, boredom; I would say that this was not one of the high points of my life.

  On the afternoon of our third day—I’m supposed to be home by now, in clothing of my own choice—I had found some kind of old magazine somewhere and had sat on my cot to try to find something of interest in it, or at least something bearable, when a guy half a dozen cots away switched on a radio. Oh, now, that’s the last straw, I thought. Now I gotta listen to somebody’s tinny little radio.

  It was AFN he had tuned to, the Armed Forces Network, American radio for the troops overseas, which was being beamed to us, the lost patrol, somewhere at sea. Unwillingly I listened, because when there’s a radio on you have no choice but to listen, and I was beginning to think that maybe a good fistfight would clear the air. Bust that radio over that clown’s head, mix it up with a couple Air Police, get thrown into a Portuguese brig, duke it out with a few of them for a while, work it all out of my system. Self-destruction therapy: Why not?

  But then I was snagged by a bit of dialogue: “How is her ladyship at the moment?”

  “Her lady doesn’t have a ship at the moment.”

  What? Unwillingly, I paid attention.

  The show seemed to be British, with an inspector questioning Lady Marks about the disappearance of her son, Fred Nurke, the scene ending as the inspector says, “Just leave everything to me—your furs, jewels, checkbook, ginger glass eye, war bonds, trombones . . .”

  What? Next, in a shipping office, the inspector is told that Fred Nurke left for Guatemala on a banana boat, disguised as a banana, but left this banana behind. Seizing on the banana, the inspector triumphantly cries, “Now I know I’m looking for a man who’s one banana short!” Great cheers from the studio audience, and a segue to a jazzy version of “You’re Driving Me Crazy” from a bouncy combo backing a lead harmonica.

  What? This was the most stupid, the most ridiculous, the most asinine thing I’d ever heard in my life. I was too angry and too upset and too thwarted by life to have to put up with nonsense like this.

  Back with the story, if that isn’t too grand a word for it, the inspector is now in Guatemala, talking with a rebel who intends to search him, because any foreigner found hiding a banana on his person “will be shot by a firing squad and asked to leave the country.” The inspector draws his banana and aims it: “You can’t fire a banana!” (bang!) “You swine! It was loaded!”

  Oh, please, I shouldn’t have had to listen to this. What I should have done, short of mayhem, is gotten out of there, gone outside, looked for a wall to throw stones at.

  Somehow, the inspector is in a prison cell where “the only other occupant was another occupant.” The two decide to escape by piling chairs one atop another to reach the high window. As we hear them begin, an announcer tells us that fifty to a hundred chairs will have to be piled up before our friends can reach that high window, so in the meantime here’s a song by Cyril Cringenut. A terrible version of “Three Coins in the Fountain” follows, interrupted when the announcer tells us the chairs have now all been piled, he interrupted by cries and crashes, followed by another run at “Three Coins in the Fountain.”

  Oh, why go on? It did go on, like that, as brain-dead as ever, and why was I laughing? I didn’t feel like laughing, I felt like being sorry for myself. So why did I no longer want to conk the radio owner on the noggin with his radio? Why couldn’t I bring myself to leave here and find someplace private where I could sulk in peace and quiet?

  And where are we now? “On the grounds of the British Embassy our heroes are dug in around the lone banana tree, the last symbol of waning British prestige in South America.” But not for long. Pretty soon, the inspector is alone, tied to a chair in the remote rebel headquarters deep in the jungle, and the phone rings. The phone rings, all right? And if that isn’t enough, deep in the jungle, the tied-up inspector answers it: “This is Fred Nurke, and this is my banana night. In three seconds a time bomb explodes in your room!”

  And so, with the roars of explosions and the rasp of the banana tree being sawed down, the fastest and most lunatic half-hour of radio I’d ever heard crashed to a close, to be replaced by something more normal and less interesting. But that was all right; I didn’t need any more. Somehow, I felt a whole lot better than I had thirty minutes before. Day Three in the Azores, and I was smiling.

  I asked the guy with the radio what that show had been, but he didn’t know. He’d just switched the radio on to see what was there. I knew the station was AFN, but the AFN I’d listened to in Germany had never broadcast a program like that. I would have noticed.

  Whatever it had been, it had done its job. I was calm, I was patient, I was even cheerful. The storm clouds had cleared from my brow.

  And the next day, they cleared from America as well. We all climbed back aboard our plane, I did finally get to Manhattan Beach Air Force Station and out of uniform, and life went on.

  But over the years, from time to time, I found myself wondering anew: What in the world was that show? Maybe nothing in the world. Maybe, instead of AFN, that little radio there in the Azores had picked up a broadcast from Mars. That was a better explanation than most.

  It was a decade or so before the mystery was solved, when first I heard about The Goon Show, the utterly daft (British for “wacko”) BBC series from the ’50s written by Spike Milligan and starring Milligan with Peter Sellers (that’s where he started) and Harry Secombe (that’s where he finished). The episode I’d heard was called “The Affair of the Lone Banana,” and a few years ago, in London, I found that the BBC had put The Goon Show, including “The Affair of the Lone Banana,” onto audiocassette.

  Obviously, I now own it. You never know when the Azores are going to reenter your life. Every once in a while, medicinally, I listen to it again:

  “Headstone, you’re a footman.”

  “Two-foot-six, to be precise.”

  “How lovely to be tall.”

  I don’t want to get all misty-eyed here about the beneficial effects of humor. I’ll leave that to Preston Sturges, who, at the end of his movie Sullivan’s Travels, had Joel McCrea say, “There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.”

  Right on. I don’t suppose The Goon Show has ever been accused of saving anybody’s sanity before, but in my case, that’s pretty much what happened.

  TWELVE

  SIGNED CONFESSIONS

  Letters

  Donald Westlake wrote a lot of letters. His files are full of business letters, personal letters, and responses to fans—all typed neatly, and nearly all of them revealing his light-fingered approach to hotel stationery. (The best hotel stationery in the batch? From the Hotel Dead Indian, in Dead Indian, Illinois, birthplace of John Dortmunder. The genius who sent him that gag gift? Tabitha King.)

  Westlake almost never failed to get at least one joke into a letter, and I’ll admit to including a couple here solely for their humor. The others I’ve selected because they shed light on his thinking about his work, the work of others, or the writing process.

  In some cases I have made excisions rather than reprinting the whole of a letter. The excised portions, marked by ellipses, dealt in detail with uninteresting business matters, referred in a complicated fashion to recent interactions, or are simply inexplicable without reference to the whole of the correspondence. The occasional bracketed interpolations ar
e my own.—Ed.

  TO JUDY ?

  Judy (last name unknown) was an assistant in Westlake’s UK agent’s office.—Ed.

  February 20, 1999

  Judy,

  I feel this may not be the last chapter of this story, which is why I’m sending you copies of everything so far, except of course my initial phone call to Lawrence Chance pointing out the problems. (I love it that the guy who deals with residuals and royalties at the Guild is named Lawrence Chance.) (I believe his brother is Fat.)

  Don

  TO PETER GRUBER

  Peter Gruber was professor of English at SUNY-Binghamton.—Ed.

  November 17, 1981

  Dear Pete,

  Enclosed please find my weird play.

  We had a grand time last night. Apart from anything else, it was lovely just to make contact with Ellen again, and to marvel at how thoroughly she has not changed in twenty-two years. Jesus!

  I read the Creative Writing thingy, and of course it does strangle on its own contradictions; as it must, I suppose. The contradiction stands out most clearly at the top of pages 2 and 3. On page 2, what is called “pop” fiction, also defined as “the widely published” and “money-making,” is cast into the outer darkness. On page 3, top paragraph, poor W. Shakespeare is called upon to shlep it back in again. How “art” can “return to the community” without being “widely published” or even (whisper this) making money I know not.

  Of course, this isn’t one program here, it’s two programs—fiction and poetry. In poetry there’s no real choice, is there? The poet has a vocation in poetry, but he also has a job somewhere, or a rich family, or a wife with good job-market skills. In fiction, though, the choice is still open; it can be a hobby, or it can be a career. So I guess each person has to decide which way to go, then choose the education or preparation that’s appropriate. An honest writing program would say either, “You will learn here how to make a living as a storyteller,” or, “You will learn here how to enhance your leisure hours by refining the uniqueness of your storytelling talents.”

  I like to think of myself as being in a profession, which of course implies that it can be taught. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, journalists, engineers, dentists, even teachers can go to a university and be taught their profession without anybody for a second being embarrassed by the undeniable truth: These kids are going to take this knowledge and try to turn it into money.

  Sex, sports and writing are the three fields where it is considered somehow a fall from grace to accept money for doing what you’re good at. (At the other extreme, I have a plumber who’s happy to take my money, and he isn’t even good at what he does.) I think writing program people are afraid of being tarnished with that brother image, which also combines with the notion that their field is an art, goddammit, and they don’t want to have to think of themselves as teaching shop. But are they teaching shop in law school?

  And the word “art” gets bandied about a lot, doesn’t it? An individual’s sensibility is engaged upon a specific subject; a medium (writing, painting, whatever) is selected; a level of craft or technical knowledge or expertise is employed; the result is invariably art. Which doesn’t mean it’s invariably good. Crappy art is still art. And where in that series of steps is there a role for a teacher? In the individual sensibility? Of course not. In the subject to be chosen, or the medium to be chosen? Only in the most shallow and insubstantial way. In the level of available craft? Ah hah!

  To suggest, as this brochure does, that “art” can be taught is an absurdity on the face of it, rather as though a medical school offered a course in post-operative recovery.

  Is a university an appropriate place to teach a profession? Of course. Is it an appropriate place to teach an avocation?

  Maybe what it comes down to is, it’s a holding pattern for poets. As the monasteries of the Middle Ages kept alive valuable human learning through the time of darkness, the universities of today shall succor the poets until a better age shall find a use for them. Of course, one couldn’t quite say that out loud, particularly when fund-raising or justifying a teaching program’s existence, which is why I guess people suddenly find that their tongues are all elbows.

  A million bucks does seem a little steep to keep poets from having to knock over liquor stores, but I guess it’s okay. Only what does it have to do with teaching writing?

  How rapidly I have become a curmudgeon. Talk to you soon.

  Don

  TO JAMES HALE

  James Hale was an editor and also served as Westlake’s UK agent for a few years.—Ed.

  April 20, 1978

  Dear James,

  Enclosed, if I have my wits about me, is the short-story manuscript called “The Girl of My Dreams,” which I am submitting to you for The 14th Ghost Book. If it’s wrong, or inept, or not-quite, or unsuitable for whatever reason, don’t send the thing back to me. Do with it as you would with any fairly soft pieces of waste paper.

  My understanding from our phone conversation—we may be going mad, you know—is that I am keeping for myself magazine rights, for one magazine appearance subsequent to the publication of the book.

  The real trick, of course, if we’re going to deal with the eerie and the supernatural, would be for me to get a story now into The 12th Ghost Book. And next year into The 11th Ghost Book. And the year after that . . . And the year after that . . .

  My favorite story from #13, by the way, was “The Uninvited.” Charming story, charming idea, charming character.

  Drawrof,

  Don

  TO STEPHEN AND TABITHA KING

  The following selection is from a letter sent just over a year after Stephen King, out walking, was nearly killed by an out-of-control driver behind the wheel of a van. (King offers a gripping account of the story of the accident and his recovery in his On Writing.)—Ed.

  July 23, 2000

  Dear Steve and Tabby,

  It was wonderful to see you both again. On the other hand, Steve, it affected us all strongly how much you’re going through and how powerfully you’re dealing with it. Steve Sorman was talking about it in the car afterward. He has been hospitalized for meningitis, getting him in there two hours before death, and a few years later, as a belated result, back in for a heart valve transplant, and what he said was that the guy who already had somebody to be and to do, like you (and like him), has a better chance of true survival than somebody who previously was not much more than a wage earner and a dinner consumer who now has nothing to say beyond gee-look-what-happened-to-me. Steve is a painter and a graphic artist, and I can remember him, a big guy reduced to a beached whale, saying, “All I wanna do is get back in that goddam studio.”

  As you will recall, the next day after we saw you, Saturday, garden tour day, included a certain amount of rain. Abby and Melissa and Steve squished around seven gardens while I sat in the car and read, so we all had a good time. . . .

  Oh, all right, what was I reading. Proust, through no fault of my own. Years ago, Abby and a few women friends started a reading group, going through Dickens and Trollope and so on. (We called them the Trollopes then.) Then they branched into nineteenth-century French, and one evening Abby was flinching and gasping and moaning while reading, and I knew I wasn’t having anything to do with it, so I asked her what was happening, and she said, “This is the most exciting novel I ever read in my life.” Germinal, by Zola; down the coal mines, nineteenth century. With that recommendation, I had to read it, and she was right. You will never meet a character as close to rock bottom as the lead of that book on its opening page. And then he gets going.

  Anyway, after that, I watched her read, for clues, and when she started laughing a lot I said, “Now what are you reading?” and she said, “Proust,” and I said, “Proust?”

  So she and her four companions romped through Proust, then, this May, they went to France for ten days for a Proustian tour, and now they read everything about Proust, and I am once again trailing in their wake. I’ve
done the first volume, Swann and all that, and now the second, the Budding Grove, and once I adapted to the idea that he had no passing gear everything was fine. Some of the stuff is, in fact, very funny.

  Your lovely Harry [Potter] review in today’s Times has convinced me. The next time I’m twelve, I’m going to read those books; the rate I’m going, it won’t be long. . . .

  Abby will be writing you and sending you a book. As for me, I’m going to get this out in the morning’s mail and then do chores. Tomorrow I work. Honest to God.

  Be well. Be better. Be yourselves. As you said to me the first time I met you, years ago at Tavern on the Green, don’t die.

  Don

  TO BRIAN GARFIELD

  November 11, 1985

  Dear Brian,

  As soon as I turned my back, the people doing The Stepfather did the very worst thing you can do to a movie, any movie. (It was, for instance, the worst thing that was done to Reds.) They tried to earlier and I fought them back, and I believed I’d won that one, and they patted me on the back, and said, “Terrific, Don, everything’s fine, we’ll go to Vancouver and shoot the movie now, you just go on to New York and don’t worry about a thing.” I thought I heard them giggling behind my back, but I figured that was just paranoia. What I forgot—briefly—was that paranoia is the clearest view of reality. They did it, you know, they did the worst thing that can possibly be done to a movie.

  They added a puppy. . . .

  You know, when I started, it was just sit at the typewriter, try to think of stories and dialogue and motivations and all that, then go down to the Post Office from time to time. Who knew? You know what I mean? Who the fuck knew?

  For instance. The new Dortmunder being sold through the Nieman-Marcus catalog. A coup, right? Special edition, boxed, five months before regular publication. So I signed a thousand and forty-six—one thousand, plus the alphabet, plus twenty to allow for problems—and they sold ninety-seven the first two days, and then one of the ninety-seven phoned the store and told them Nieman-Marcus was misspelled on the page I’d signed.