Free The Deer Park by Norman Mailer Page A

human.”
    “Still, you’re giving her the brush,” Eitel said. “You’re giving the brush to a very human girl.”
    “There’s no future for us. I admit it, you see, I admit my faults. I’m a social coward like everybody else in the industry.”
    “So like all cowards you got tired of turning down her marriage proposals.”
    “Elena’s not a schemer,” Munshin said firmly. “You want to know something? Just a couple of days ago I tried to give her a thousand dollars. She wouldn’t take it. Not once did she ever ask me to marry her. She’s not the kind who threatens. It’s just that I can’t stand the thought she has no future with me.”
    “Herman Teppis can’t stand the thought either.”
    Munshin allowed this to pass. “Let me tell you about her. She’s a girl who’s composed of hurts and emotion and dirt and shining love,” he said in the round categorical style of a criminal lawyer who wishes to attract all the elements in a jury. “I had my analyst send her to a friend of his, but it didn’t come off. She didn’t have enough ego to work on. That’s how serious theproblem is.” Munshin held out a heavy palm as if to draw our attention. “Take the way I met her. She was doing a fill-in number at a benefit I ran. I saw her in the wings, dressed up, ready to go on. A real Carmen-type. Only, a Carmen shuddering with fright,” said Munshin looking at us. “She was practically clawing the hand off her partner. ‘There’s a human being in torment,’ I said to myself, ‘a girl who’s as wild and sensitive as an animal.’ Yet when she got up on the stage, she was all right. A good flamenco dancer. In and out, but talent. Afterward, we started talking, and she told me she couldn’t even eat a piece of bread on a day she was working. I told her I thought I could help her with some of her problems and she was grateful as a puppy. That’s how we started.” Munshin’s voice became heavy with emotion. “You, Eitel, you’d call that scheming, I suppose. I call it sensitivity and heartbreak and all kinds of hurts. She’s a girl who’s all hurts.”
    As Munshin kept on talking, I had the idea he was describing her the way he might line up a heroine in a story conference, the story conference more interesting than the film which would come from it.
    “You take the business of being Italian,” Munshin lectured us. “I can’t tell you the things I’ve learned, the human subtleties, and I’m a good liberal. For instance, if she was served by a Negro waiter, she always had the idea that he was being a little intimate with her. I talked to her about such problems. I explained how wrong it is to have prejudice against a Negro, and she understood.”
    “Like that,” Eitel said, snapping his fingers.
    “You stop it, Charley,” Munshin said, bobbing in his seat. “You understand what I mean. She was ashamed of her prejudice. Elena is a person who hates everything that is small in herself. She’s consumed by the passion to become a bigger person than she is,
consumed
, do you understand?” and he shook his fist.
    “Collie, I really think you’re upset.”
    “Take her promiscuity,” Munshin went on, as if he had not heard. “She’s the sort of girl who would love a husband and kids, a decent healthy mature relationship. You think it didn’t bother me, her seeing other men? But I knew it was my fault. I was to blame and I’ll admit it freely. What could I offer her?”
    “What could the others offer her?” Eitel interrupted.
    “Fine. Fine. Just fine coming from you. I’ll tell you, Charley, I don’t believe in double standards. A woman’s got just as much right as a man to her freedom.”
    “Why don’t we start a club?” Eitel jeered.
    “I’ve gone to bat for you, Eitel. I pleaded with H.T. not to suspend you after
Clouds Ahoy
. Are you so ungrateful that I have to remind you how many times I helped you make pictures you wanted to make?”
    “And then you cut them to