Return to The Quarry

Chapter Fifteen

1925

The sounds of afternoon traffic could be heard through the open windows of Gerhardt Fluchvater's downtown office that afternoon, as his secretary showed Deirdre into the stuffy office. He looked up from his calendar, into which he was busy scribbling in and crossing out. Deirdre, back in her actual clothes again, sailed into the office. She turned to the secretary and smiled.

"Don't worry about me," she said, pinning Fluchvater down with a pointed glance. "I think we've come to an understanding." The secretary was anxious to leave and did so with no delay. Fluchvater motioned to one of the leather armchairs before his desk.

"My, my, my," he said monotonously, removing his spectacles and sitting back in his chair. "Brunhilde arrives."

Removing her gloves finger by finger and placing them in her handbag, Deirdre ignored the comment.

"Mr. Fluchvater, I need to make myself perfectly clear. Over the last several weeks of working on this picture, you have been harder and harder on those gypsy folks."

Fluchvater's face was emotionless. "I'm paying them, I'll treat them how I please."

Deirdre curled her toes inside her shoes. "I take this profession very seriously, sir."

"Yes?"

"On one hand I feel that you take it entirely too seriously."

Fluchvater tented his fingers in front of him and eyed her dispassionately.

"And on your other hand?"

"That you don't take it seriously at all."

His eyes flashed for a second, but he remained perfectly still.

"You play a director," Deirdre continued, "throwing tantrums and threatening those gypsies-"

"You know nothing of how important this film is to me." he growled

"Perhaps not. But I cannot imagine anything being so important to create that it warrants harming people in the process!"

Fluchvater's lips quivered with barely contained rage. He slid his chair back, the wheels shrieking, and he got up. Pacing about the room, he rubbed his face, thinking of the right words - or perhaps the respectable words.

"This film. This one could either be shown on the screen and fall into the gutter

of mediocrity, or it could be hailed as the crowning achievement of filmmaking. The pinnacle-"

"I admit, Mr. Fluchvater, that in your short time in America, you have secured a reputation for producing remarkably good films. But I had no idea you'd go so far-"

He slammed his fists on the desk in front of him and shouted "I will go as far as necessary for my art!"

Deirdre only raised her eyebrows. "Always?"

'Always."

"Then why didn't you put up much of a fight over that damn broom?" She studied him with arms folded across her chest. To her amazement, his eyes softened somehow, and the hard line of his lips almost twitched into an amused smile. He returned to his chair, studying Deirdre sternly, but with a sort of interest that was not there before.

"Because I see the same fire in you, fraulein Alan. You too know how harsh and tragic the world can be, I know. You have fought against it and clawed your way to safety, here, in the warm sun of California."