“You don’t have it?”

“I guess not.”

“You guess?” Aarne barked it out again—“You guess?”—and for the first time Hugo was frightened of him. “I apologize. I don’t like leaving rubbish in the forest. It could make the forest angry. But come along.”

The night was already getting brighter. There was a straight cobblestone pathway flanked by pine trees that had once been trained and trimmed, and at the end was a gate, the key to which Aarne produced, stepping up on the balls of his feet to reach the lock. It opened with a shriek like a startled donkey. Hugo approached cautiously, his steps stiff and awkward. There were obviously no women here. Who was this mysterious dwarf he was following? He had no idea what was beyond the gate, or how he could defend himself against it. The depth of his despair? He missed Wodziczko. He had a rifle and a detached bayonet and five bullets that were in a bag around his neck. He was doomed.

33

Early on December 19, there was strangely mournful music hanging in the air around the intersection of La Brea and De Longpre. Automobiles were parked along the curbside, dozens of them, and trucks and buses and coaches extending as far as Sunset. There were men around the trucks, men with broken noses, dirty caps, and rollneck sweaters. They had been playing cards, but with the rising music, they stopped what they called work—for they were stagehands—and were silent.

The music was coming from behind the gate of the Chaplin Studios. If you were to walk past the old woman who tended the gate, you would see that she, too, was transfixed. Cross the courtyard, where the gardener had paused, shears in hand, from tending the rose beds, and then pass the swimming pool, where extras dressed in farm clothes were cooling their feet. Here was the stage, open to the air, with racks of radium lights among the diffusers. There were day players (but not Rebecca—she’d moved on) pressed stomach to back here, players dressed like Roman statues or still in their street clothes mingled together, some on the lawn, some by the makeup tables, some hanging in midair, others standing in clusters in the few places where there was still room to stand, what with the livestock that had been imported.

Alf Reeves, who had been sick two days with stomach flu, had returned this morning and had spent the entire time silent, occasionally shaking his head, and looking at today’s invoices.