PARTISAN REVIEW
second secretary said that he remarked that he wants you to be hired
to him and to nobody else. She said she didn't
think,
on the basis. of
all
that he has said, that he would ever take you into the courts if
you refused to work, but he is. supposed to be very firm about having
your contract and using your name in the credits, and he is. supposed
to be confident that you will continue to write poetry and publish
it in the respectable intellectual magazines.. The second secretary
has
had
it
from the first secretary, she said, that J. F. doesn't give a hoot,
personally, about you or your poetry, but he wants to impress the
other producers on account of your being the last poet. We suspect
that he wants you to live in Hollywood, too, but we don't have any
evidence except a lot of gossip."
De Parter hadn't expected the little man to say so much, and
thought he should be rewarded. Mter two days of silence, he had
gained some pleasure out of hearing a human .voice, no matter what
it said. He had replied that he thought there was a shorter coat in the
big car. The little man had found it and put it on, saying it was per–
haps three inches shorter. The tall man had found one that fitted very
well. While the little one had rummaged in the car, the other had
asked an important question.
"Have you any message for J.F. in case you get killed up in the
mountains, or in case we don't have a chance to talk again?"
"A very good question," De Parter had said, "to which the an–
swer is no."
"Do you mean that you refuse to go back? Or do you mean that
you have no message for J.F.?"
"It's a double negative. Figure it out for yourselves."
"We can't because you're a poet. Tell us in plain language."
De Parter had then made a very long statement, of which he
was later secretly ashamed. He had talked at length about being "in
the throes," so that plain language was impossible. Noticing (the
setting sun glinted on their gold pencils) that they were carefully writ–
ing down the statement, he had been led on to speak at random
about the problems of a poet, concluding that all he could say, "in
the long run," was that his original answer would have to stand,
"provisionally, of course," since "I don't know, any more than you
know, what the result of all this. effort will be."
At the end they had asked, "Is that all?" and waited for him
to
168
