The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe (8 page)

He didn’t mind fags. He was used to them. But he sometimes
worried they were laughing at him. ‘What’s the big idea?’ he
said.
‘Roddy’s just been telling us about some of the geniuses
he’s worked with,’ said Marilyn.
Sammy was back. There had been a rather extended
maracas interlude while he changed his tuxedo. ‘Speaking of
which,’ said Roddy. ‘I’m working with Richard Burton just
now.
Camelot
.’
‘I saw the theatre on 44th Street.’
‘You must lay off the Ibsen,’ Marilyn said.
‘Fuck you.’
‘We’re both making a movie with Elizabeth next year. Fox
are doing
Cleopatra
.’
‘Hiss,’ said Marilyn.
‘O, don’t be like that,
swinehunt
,’ he said. ‘You love each
other really. You and Liz are the only stars left in this bloody
industry. Now shut your trap.’
‘Kiss my ass.’
‘Kiss my asp,’ said he.
The music was going crazy and I was still thinking about
Lassie. I must say Lassie was always the doll of dolls to me,
so sleek and elegant for the cameras. ‘Listen,’ I was saying.
‘That Elizabeth person was in the dog picture, too. The first
of those Lassie movies? Him there and Elizabeth and Lassie
all young kids together, right?’
But Sammy was already mid-flow, chewing the air and
tasting the sweet triumph of his talent. Roddy looked at
me once more. ‘What’s the dog’s name?’ he whispered to
Marilyn. She glanced up and saw Frank looking over. ‘Tell you later, honey,’ she said.
There wasn’t a part of Sammy that wasn’t responding to
the occasion, hearing the music, absorbing the lights. There
wasn’t a cell in his body that wasn’t meeting the thrill of
the audience. I’m sure his stomach muscles pulsed to the rhythm, an eye rolling to the ceiling here, a finger stabbing to the floor there, a foot tapped and pointed to the side just so, on the beat, on the moment, while the follicles of his hair itched in sequence. He was a showbusiness entity to the ends of his nerves, projecting hope and capability, all wrapped inside this strange little man from the worst slum in Harlem. He was singing, dancing, impersonating people, the most canine person I ever met. ‘I ain’t got nothing to be bitter about,’ he said between songs. ‘I ain’t had it this good
in my life, you dig? I got a pool and I can’t even swim.’ In the ladies’ room, a bottle of L’Heure Bleue was sitting
on the ledge beneath a misted mirror. Marilyn sat me in the
sink as she fixed her face. The nice attendant was amazed
to see us coming in. She said hello as if she were accepting
a prize and then went on wiping the mirror and looking at
Marilyn working with an open compact case. You must have
noticed: people talk to dogs as if they are people, speaking
the words they wish the dog would say. ‘You are a tired little
dog and a brave man, aren’t you?’ Marilyn said. ‘Yes. You are.
All these noisy people. Yes, you are a tired little thing. You
want to go home, don’t you? Want to go home and see what
Hattie’s left for you.’
‘He’s a fine animal,’ said the attendant.
‘Why, thank you,’ said Marilyn. ‘Only had him a few
weeks. He’s a tiddy biddy little thing who just wants his bed.
Good dog.’
That’s what humans do. They talk to you. They talk
nonsense. They talk to you and they talk
for
you. And so
they create a personality for you which is defined by the way
they act you out. Every minute they are with you they are
constructing you out of what they want, a companion, a little man, a furry friend who can only love their owners for their mothering tongue. ‘What do you say to the nice lady?’
asked Marilyn.
Come on. You know damn well you can’t hear me. You’re
doing to me what you say those studio bosses do to you. Stop
assuming I’m only really here to accord with your goddamn
version of me.
‘I’m afraid we don’t like too much noise, do we now, TootToot? Too many people. We like to walk in Central Park.’ I suppose it’s all acting. And I’m not going to pretend I
don’t love that aspect of people, the part to do with acting.
Other animals don’t have that capacity and are all the
poorer. And maybe Marilyn was right: maybe I
was
tired and
maybe we did like to walk in Central Park. In any event my
subservience was always the greater part of my charm. An elderly lady came into the restroom. She looked at
Marilyn and immediately came over to her. ‘I am Lillian
Gish,’ she said. Her voice was lovely and her manner was
direct. Marilyn immediately arranged for her to have a
chair and she behaved so beautifully with the older actress,
whispering such endearments and compliments, and soon
there was a little conversation over two glasses of iced water.
Ms Gish spoke of Springfield, Ohio, and also said things
about Mr Griffith, the director. The whole encounter seemed
to make Marilyn calm; she was now away from the tension
of messy, judging people, and safe with a pure actress like
Sarah Bernhardt. It was a fact about my fated companion:
she always felt calm with grand old ladies who flushed with
self-pleasure, as if her own radiance could be no threat to
them. Sybil Thorndike had been like that on the English
picture, so had Isak Dinesen when Marilyn and her friend Carson met her for dinner, and Edith Sitwell, who was so much herself that she only felt charmed by Marilyn’s face and mind. Old age was a badge of honour on those women, not a guarantee of envy and unrest as some other people found it to be. These women had suffered losses and they faced the fact with a humorous defiance. Of course, they each had the air of an antiquated beauty, which is an evergreenness in itself, quite different from the disposition of persons who were never blessed in that way. Marilyn liked them: she liked to feel survival was a trick women could pull off, in spite of everything. (There were few signs that her mother had ever managed such a trick.) Ms Gish had a very relaxing air of artistic fastidiousness, and Marilyn took it in naturally. They spoke of acting classes and Ms Gish said she was delighted to
be back on stage, at the Belasco.
‘Your dog has a very kind face,’ she added.
‘I guess he’s not a bad little soldier,’ said Marilyn. ‘I would
say he’s feeling a little overawed by tonight.’
‘It’s nice to have a friend,’ said Ms Gish. Then she pressed
her lips over a piece of tissue and turned to Marilyn. ‘When
you were very young, Miss Monroe, did you have a best
friend?’ Marilyn paused only for a second to register both
her surprise at the question and her general satisfaction that
such a question could be asked in a place like this. Marilyn
had a gift for immediate intimacy.
‘Yes I did,’ she said. ‘Her name was Alice Tuttle.’ ‘That’s what I find as I get older: the little girls of one’s
past step forward to keep you company. In my dressing room
at the theatre I often find I’m thinking about them. Isn’t
that strange? Only the other day I found a picture of a girl
like that – haven’t seen her in fifty years – and I put it on the
mirror in the dressing room.’
‘I bet you are a swell friend,’ said Marilyn.
We allow the human story always to take centre stage:
that is what makes a dog the perfect friend. And yet I
was thinking of the wild dogs that wandered the streets of
ancient Rome, the ones remembered by the philosophers for
haunting the city in the dead of night. They were Celtic
hounds who came from the mountains, keeping to their own
kind, threading through the pillars, licking dust from the
mosaics and circling the Forum to bark at the mysteries of
civilisation.
Friendship. It depends on a suspension of the instinct
merely to propagate oneself. One must leave parts of oneself
dormant in order to succeed as a good friend. I never wanted
to be the sort of animal who inveigles others and nuzzles his
way to a summit of affection. Being a good friend requires
a willingness, on occasion, to appear to subvert the cause,
being critical when clarity and progress demand it. My career
as Marilyn’s pet was pursued with a degree of moral vigour:
in that universe of flattery I tried to sing my own notes, not
very successfully, but I think she got my meaning through a
long concatenation of looks and yaps.
Before we took off, a fan called Charlie, whom she knew
very well, asked the doorman to take a quick picture of him
and Marilyn, and she was happy to do it, taking his arm.
‘Gee. Your hands are cold this evening, Charlie. How long
you been standing out here?’
‘Two hours.’ He shrugged. ‘Less than that. I went to see
Exodus
at Warner’s on 47th Street.’
‘Preminger,’ said Marilyn.
‘And Dalton Trumbo.’ Together they walked the few
steps to her waiting car. ‘Can you believe it, Trumbo writing
again?’
‘They blacklisted him, right?’
‘Oh, yeah. Big time. Maybe things are easing off.’ ‘Mmmm, I doubt it,’ said Marilyn. ‘Not while Khrushchev
is still banging the table with his shoe. What did you think
of the picture?’
‘A bit talky,’ he said. ‘Cobb’s good.’
‘Lee Cobb?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Arthur knew him.’
‘I know,’ said Charlie. ‘He was in his play.’
‘He named names. They always get forgiven in the end.’ ‘Who does?’
‘Men.’
‘Oh get lost,’ said Charlie, wrinkling his nose. Charlie
was one of those smart kids it makes you feel nice to like.
‘The picture tries to be fair to everybody, which is always a
mistake in drama, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I guess so,’ she said.
Charlie was one of the Monroe Six. This was a group
of kids who hung around in front of Marilyn’s apartment
building and who used to wait in the lobby in the days when
she lived at the Waldorf. She often saw them as she made
her way to appointments and she would always smile for
them and sign autographs. They looked after her if she was
out walking by herself, following her at a distance, and I got
to know Charlie. Sometimes she would let him ride with her
in the limousine across town.
‘Not tonight, Charlie.’ She meant about the car. But she
looked at him as if he was the right kind of friend, and my
earlier ruminations on the subject began to fade into the cold
night air. ‘Some other time, huh? I mean, some time soon.’ ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I got work tomorrow.’ He was already
walking backwards and stuffing his camera into his pocket
and winking goodbye. Marilyn thought he was the future. I
heard her thinking it as he walked away. The boy was able
to take something for granted about fame and politics, about
their joint power, and Marilyn took it for granted the same
way. The difference was that it gave her a strange feeling in
the pit of her stomach. I was just getting to know my fated
companion but already I loved the quality identified by Carl
Sandburg. ‘There was something democratic about her,’ he
said. But the question of fame and intellect often haunted
her reveries. Driving away from the Copacabana, she waved
to Charlie from the car and said to herself that if anybody had
made her a star it was the people. That’s all. But popularity
has many snares. As we crossed onto Lexington she recalled
that a picture of Rita Hayworth in a pink negligée was pasted
on the bomb they dropped on Hiroshima.
The park on Sutton Place faces the East River. We often
went there in the daytime and watched children playing in a
sandbox. Other dogs would come and Marilyn would sit on
the bench and stare at the water, imagining the lives of the
people on the passing boats. The night of the Copacabana we
went down to the park and she sat there smoking a cigarette.
People can be alone with their dogs, perfectly alone, so long
as the dog knows how to pipe down and simply be vigilant
over their owner’s privacy. On such occasions, Marilyn
would often just stare into space and mention names. Men’s
names. She felt alienated by the thought of how indebted to