The Need for Better Regulation of Outer Space (8 page)

The theatre is about half full, the audience scattered throughout the auditorium. Brecht peeps out at them through a hole in the curtain, from his position in the wings. Laughton is on stage and the play is coming to its end.

‘I taught you science and I denied the truth.’
As he speaks the lines, Laughton is bent over, his body remarkably twisted. The audience can believe that this is an old, blind man.

‘Very good,’ murmurs Brecht. ‘Show the old man’s
self-loathing.’

‘Science’s sole aim must be to lighten the burden of human existence. If the scientists, brought to heel by self-interested rulers, limit themselves to piling up knowledge for knowledge’s sake, then science can be crippled and your new machines will lead to nothing but new impositions.’

One man in the audience has become increasingly agitated throughout the performance, writhing around in his seat and muttering under his breath, and the other audience members are glaring at him. Brecht has been watching him with amusement, hoping that he will eventually react. He doesn’t disappoint.

‘Nonsense!’ he finally cries out, but he seems ashamed of himself after this outburst and sinks back down into his seat. A man sitting behind him taps him on the shoulder.

‘Make them remember the horror, Charles. The horror of the Bombs.’ Brecht clenches the curtain.

‘As a scientist I had a unique opportunity. If one man had put up a fight it might have had tremendous repercussions. Had I stood firm the scientists could have developed something like the doctors’ Hippocratic Oath. As things are, the best that can be hoped for is a race of inventive dwarfs who can be hired for any purpose.’

‘Nonsense!’ the man in the audience cries out again. His face has gone red, which pleases Brecht. Their words have made this man think. He’ll remember this night out at the theatre.

When the play is over, Brecht goes to the front of house to watch the audience coming out into the cool night air, and lights a cigar. He wants to see their faces, to see if they’ve understood what he’s been trying to say. It’s mostly students who come to this theatre. Where are the workers in this town? The dockers? The street sweepers? The farmhands who pick the lemons in the vast orchards? He is not sure who his people are here, apart from the other exiled German writers, huddled together in smart bungalows at the top of one of the canyons.

Groups of girls wander past and he smiles absent-mindedly
at them. A young man hangs around the foyer watching them and furtively making notes with a pencil he keeps having to lick. He seems to be watching Brecht too. Perhaps he is a – Brecht gropes for the word – a spook?

Then – ‘How dare you!’

‘Excuse me?’

It is the agitated man, the man who shouted out. Brecht wants to thank him for his participation, his reaction, but the man is still clearly agitated. Indeed, he is angry.

‘“A race of inventive dwarfs?” Is that it? Is that your verdict on scientists? On the whole of science?’

‘Excuse me? Who are you? What is your profession?’ Brecht would really like to know the type of person who is interested in this play.

‘I’m one of your dwarfs. And I can punch pretty hard for a dwarf!’ He swings at Brecht and makes contact with his jaw. Brecht stumbles backwards and his cigar goes flying.

‘Ah, so you are a scientist,’ he feels his jaw while he speaks. Painful, but not broken. Worse has happened to him, usually but not always, as a result of women. The rest of the audience has disappeared, hardly anyone else has noticed this audience member shouting at, and then hitting, a small man dressed in an odd, foreign-looking leather coat.

‘Damn right I am! I worked on the Manhattan Project!’ The man is jabbing his finger at Brecht but does not look like he will hit him again. Brecht can usually judge these things fairly well. The first punch took him by surprise though, he’ll admit that.

‘Ah... then you know what I am talking about in this play. Selling your soul and so on.’

‘I know what
you’re
talking about. But do you know what
scientists
talk about? Night and day we worked to develop the Bomb, because we thought it would save lives! That’s what
we
talked about. Hell, the war would still be going
now
if it wasn’t for the Bomb!’ The man seems to find it easier to express
himself, now that he’s no longer confined to being part of the audience.

‘I am glad you had such interesting discussions whilst you prostituted yourselves to the authorities and worked to destroy thousands of people. It must make you feel so much better now, the memories of those discussions.’

‘I tell you what makes me feel better, and that’s the thought of my fist hitting your face!’ Perhaps Brecht has not judged this right after all, because the man looks murderous. Where is Charles, for heaven’s sakes? Charles wouldn’t be able to hit anyone but he is at least a big man. He appears imposing.

A young woman hurries over, ‘Leave Mr Brecht alone!’

‘Leave
me
alone, you mad woman!’ Although she is a small girl, she clearly knows how to slap a man. Brecht smiles gratefully at her as the scientist sidles out of the building, muttering to himself. Time to find Charles, and have a celebratory drink.

‘Mr Brecht!’ the woman follows him, ‘please wait! Can I talk to you for a moment?’

Brecht sighs. He would like to drink a large brandy. But the woman really is very pretty. Slim, dark, oriental. He smiles at her again.

Brecht is meeting Laughton at his house. Even though the play has already opened, they still want to work on it. Particularly the ending. The troublesome ending.

Laughton is in his garden, wearing shorts and trimming some sort of flowering plant. Brecht doesn’t know the name for it in German, never mind in English. And it is pointless to learn, now. He does not feel terribly motivated to learn more English words.

Laughton grins at him, ‘Pretty good, Bertie boy.’

‘Pretty good, Charles.’ But he doesn’t grin back. May as well get to the point, ‘Why do you keep playing it differently to the way I tell you to?’

Laughton pauses, shears hanging from one hand, ‘Because you’re not actually the director, Bertie, even though you like to tell everyone what to do. You’re not even an actor. You’re just the writer, and here in Hollywood that doesn’t count for much.’ There is an edge of steel in his voice that hasn’t been there in their previous discussions and rehearsals.

‘But you didn’t speak the line where Galileo acknowledges he was not in any real danger!’

‘It’s better without it. If Galileo genuinely thinks he’s under threat of the Inquisition’s torture instruments, then it makes it more dramatic. He’s a more interesting person, more three-dimensional. You want to make it all black and white but there’s no point in acting such a cardboard character, the audience would get bored and so would I. I thought you wanted to educate people through theatre, but if you just shout at them and hector them, they’ll fall sleep. You’ve got to be more subtle.’

Brecht is taken aback. ‘I thought we wanted people to realise that what he did was wrong. And it’s something people should be thinking about
now
. Did you know Oppenheimer is about to be given some sort of award for his work on the Bomb?’

‘Galileo and Oppenheimer don’t have anything in common, Bertie. Galileo underwent a show trial and made a forced confession. Oppenheimer
chose
to do what he did.’ Laughton snips off a dead rose. Brecht cannot tell what colour it once was before it falls into the long grass and is lost.

‘Galileo was the first modern scientist. There is a direct link between him and Oppenheimer. He had a unique opportunity to stand up for truth.’

‘You’re just like a scientist yourself! You set up your little experiment, you get people to watch it and you expect them to think what you think. But proper scientists are open minded about the results and I think you’ve tried to rig your experiment.’

‘Rig? Like a lighting rig?’

Laughton sighs, ‘Not quite, Bertie boy. Not quite.’

I’m back in the same café, trying not to stare at the legs of the same waitress.

It’s just across the street from my apartment. The first time I came here, I thought it was a fancy neighbourhood because the fronts of the buildings on the street are magnificent, all painted and carved wood. But the actual buildings crouch behind them as if ashamed to be seen. And all I have is a room with a hotplate and a shared bathroom down the corridor. I heat up frankfurters on the hotplate and eat them standing at the window looking out at the scenery. There’s not much else to look at in the room itself. From where I stand I can see a little bit of ocean, about the size of my thumbnail. It’s funny to think that this is the same ocean we fought in, thousands of miles away. The same water slopping over dead bodies.

A girl enters the café, slim, dark, Oriental. She’s clutching a pile of books to her chest and looking around for a place to sit. There’s a free chair opposite me.

‘Mind if I –’ she says, but it’s just for show and she sinks into it before I can reply. I sip my coffee and try not to look at her. She’s too pretty to look at directly. She’s one of those girls you have to take sideways glances at, in case you get burned, so I can only catch glimpses of her straight black hair, and delicate pink lips.

She’s perusing the menu, and I’m making my coffee last longer than it normally does. I should be out of there, tailing Brecht.

The waitress appears, ‘What’ll it be?’

‘One egg sunny side up and a rasher of bacon, and hash fries, and a link sausage. Oh, and two pieces of toast. White, with jelly. No butter.’ She’s got a big appetite for such a little girl, and for some reason that cheers me up. The waitress cocks an eyebrow at me.

‘Just a refill of coffee. Please.’

After the waitress has gone I say to the girl, ‘I’ve seen you before.’

She sighs and looks out the window, so I have the opportunity to see her profile.

‘No, no, I really have,’ I think about it for a moment. ‘At the theatre,’ I say finally, ‘you were the girl who slapped that man.’

She lays her hands flat on the table, which is still sticky from having been wiped by the waitress and grins at me, ‘He deserved it!’

‘Do you often hit men?’ I try to make it sound funny and flirtatious but she takes me seriously.

‘I hit him because he hadn’t listened to the play. He’d actually worked on the Bomb!’

‘So that’s where you’re from? Japan.’

I can’t keep that note from my voice, the hard note. And this is clearly the wrong thing to ask her, because her voice is also hard now, ‘I was born here.’

‘Ok, you got me,’ after all I wasn’t born here, and so I spread my hands out and smile my loser’s smile at her. But she doesn’t smile back which is a pity because I want her to, I want to see her face tipped up to mine, breathless, waiting. I watch an awful lot of bad movies. Perhaps that’s the only way I can understand the world around me, in terms of scenery and acting, and false words and looks.

She does at least carry on talking to me, ‘Anyway he started it. He was going for Mr Brecht!’

‘Brecht? You know him?’

‘Of course I know him! He’s a famous playwright!’ I am being told off by a butterfly, a lotus flower.

‘Yeah, but do you actually know him?’

She narrows her eyes, ‘Why? Why are you interested?’

Why indeed. I am not very good at this job. I am too obvious, too straightforward, I can’t hide what I want. This is why I never get the girl, or the information.

‘I’m trying to interview him. For a paper back East.’

‘You’re a journalist? Which paper?’ Her cutlery is paused over her breakfast. Some things I am good at in my job. Like noticing the physical stuff. The way the yolk shines innocently in the sunlight before it gets all torn apart.

‘Just a small one. You won’t have heard of it.’

‘A small paper back East sent you all the way here just to interview Mr Brecht? Must be an awfully intellectual paper,’ but she is smiling again and my heart leaps and soars. I can do it this time.

‘My name’s Stan,’ I say.

‘Stan. I’m Hiroko. Maybe we should join forces. I’m trying to get an interview with Mr Brecht too. For my college newspaper.’

She holds out her hand, and I am allowed to touch it.

‘My, you’ve got clean hands for a journalist. Usually they’re all inky and dirty,’ and she laughs at me. I laugh back. I will need to buy some ink if I’m going to see her again.

And I do see her again. We meet over breakfast and eat toast together and she tells me she’s interested in ‘Mr’ Brecht because of his politics. He is an inspiration to workers everywhere, apparently. She asks me for tips on interviewing him. I used to interview people when I was in the army, but that’s probably not the sort of interviewing she means. Finally, I risk asking her for a date.

‘A date?’ She pokes her knife into some left-over jelly. She doesn’t look at me, ‘Sure. Ok. A date.’ The word ‘date’ sounds foreign when she says it.

I wonder what she is thinking, ‘Tomorrow? Are you free tomorrow?’

She nods, ‘Of course I’m free.’

‘Meet you in front of the Ritzy at seven.’ I try not to sound triumphant.

‘Are you going to bring me a corsage?’ She laughs a little.

‘Maybe.’ But I don’t laugh. I will bring her anything she wants.

Brecht receives a letter. He doesn’t receive many letters here, people tend to use the telephone. This letter looks official and he has the old fear that they have found out some secret of his and they will require him to leave. He doesn’t feel protected here in this country, living in a city where earthquakes may strike at any moment, where landslides cause parts of people’s gardens to fall off and into the sea below. This happened in Laughton’s garden just last week and he lost a much-loved oak tree as a result.

Brecht carries the unopened letter through to the dining room, where Helene is sitting and drinking her morning coffee. She watches as he slits it open. She doesn’t get many letters either.

Silence for several minutes.

‘I have been subpoenaed,’ Brecht says finally, ‘to give evidence at their hearing.’