Billy Wilder on Assignment by Noah Isenberg (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

The methods of these gentlemen are clearly quite laudable.

In Texas, let’s say, there may well be bookstores that don’t operate in such a peaceful manner. As soon as a customer enters the shop, the door is locked from the inside, the seller puts the key into his pants pocket with a smile, and now the purchase begins. The poor man who has entered the shop to buy a timetable and was careless enough to leave his machine gun at home hardly stands a chance of getting back to the street alive without having purchased fifty books that he doesn’t care a fig about or find interesting.

Try to imagine that on our end. That you’re not let out of a bookstore until you buy a couple of books by Rudolph Stratz and a complete set of Rudolf Herzog. Thank you.

Der Querschnitt, issue 2, March 1930

How I Pumped Zaharoff for Money

I actually wanted to go to Heligoland, wanted to sit on the beach and play with shells. I ended up in Monte Carlo, sat in the casino, and played roulette. I had a burning desire to break the bank of Monte Carlo with my exceedingly surefire system.

Well—it didn’t succeed in the slightest.

After ten days I was left high and dry. But what was even worse, when I wanted to go to bed one night, Hotel Savoy, room 37, I was not even allowed into the building. At the Riviera they have incredibly reliable X-ray vision, enabling them to see straight through the wallets of the unlucky gamblers. They hold off with the bill for three days, then they rattle off a few charming courtesies to guests and unceremoniously kick them out onto the street.

So that night I stood there, sleepy and freezing, my last ten francs in my tuxedo trousers.

I sat down on a bench at the promenade downstairs, counting all the palm trees; there were 127, I know the exact number. Then I spat into the Mediterranean another three times, which brought the number up to 130. Finally I prayed softly to the dear Lord that he would never, never again make the sun rise. After all, my tuxedo still made some sort of sense at night. But going around in a tuxedo during the day—that just isn’t done. Distraught as I was, I ran up to Monaco, to the so-called suicide cliff, where so many longtime gamblers had put an end to their messed-up lives by taking a little leap into the abyss. On the way there it occurred to me that I knew a jazz player in the Café de Paris. I wanted to pump him for money. But he couldn’t give me any. He did lend me an empty violin case, and that was already a big help. All of a sudden my tuxedo gained a reason for existence. For the following two days I ran back and forth like an unemployed violin virtuoso between Monte Carlo and Nice with an empty violin case under my arm and an empty stomach.

I dragged myself around like that for two days. I cleaned my tuxedo shirt with an eraser. Holes were already poking through the thin soles of my patent-leather shoes. I couldn’t even think about what to do; my empty stomach utterly incapacitated me.

It was just awful. I was standing at the train station in Monte Carlo with my violin case, waiting for the express train from Marseille for no good reason. Maybe I subconsciously wanted to fling myself in front of the locomotive. I leafed through a German book that was on a sales display at the newspaper stand. The title was How They Got Rich and Powerful. Suddenly, I discovered in it the picture of an old man with a white goatee, in a high-necked gray overcoat and with a sort of pith helmet on his head. Under the picture it said: Sir Basil Zaharoff.

What made my knees tremble was the irrefutable fact that I knew this man by sight. So this man, whom I saw daily on my hunger marches, this man, whom I’d regarded as a fellow sufferer, was the richest man in Europe and the principal shareholder of the casino over there: so this man may be living off my twenty thousand francs at the moment, which I had placed on even instead of odd.

When the express train for Marseille arrived, I was already firmly resolved to pump him for money. I had to swindle him, preferably for a sum of four figures, in order not to starve, I swore to myself.

I knew for a fact that every morning between 8:30 and 9:30, Sir Basil Zaharoff took a stroll near the casino. He walked somewhat unsteadily, leaning on a cane, and after every ten steps he sat down on a bench to catch his breath.

My nerves were insanely tense as I sidled up to him the next morning. The sole of my right patent-leather shoe was no longer there, and I was already walking on my sock. My arm was so weak that the empty violin case felt like a truck. My breath grew fast and furious, my white lips trembled. Now I caught sight of him walking very slowly toward the bench I was standing at and quivering. His gray overcoat moved softly, his gray hat, which he wore like a pith helmet, sat so far down on his face that only the white goatee peeked out.

My God, the richest man in Europe. I had to hold on to the bench or I would have fallen onto the violin case with excitement.

Word of honor, we were sitting next to each other: Sir Basil Zaharoff, the billionaire, and me, the derelict without a centime to my name. I counted to twenty-five, mustered up my courage, and declared heroically, “Bonjour, Monsieur Zaharoff!” He peered over at me, looking quite unfriendly at first, but then he nodded. I spent a minute listening to my heart pounding,