Evening in Byzantium

1006 Pages·2013·3.033 MB·English

by  Irwin Shaw

Evening in
Byzantium
Irwin Shaw

Contents
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A Biography of Irwin Shaw
Many thanks to my editor, Kathy
Anderson, for her invaluable assistance
and advice.
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To Salka Viertel
Overture
Dinosauric, obsolete, functions and
powers atrophied, dressed in sport
shirts from Sulka and Cardin, they sat
across from each other at small tables
in airy rooms overlooking the changing
sea and dealt and received cards just as
they had done in the lush years in the
rainfall forest of the West Coast when
in all seasons they had announced the
law in the banks, the board rooms, the
Moorish mansions, the chateaux, the
English castles, the Georgian town
houses of Southern California.
From time to time phones rang, and
hearty, deferential voices spoke from
Oslo, New Delhi, Paris, Berlin, New
York, and the card players barked into
the instruments and gave orders that at
another time would have had meaning
and no doubt been obeyed.
Exiled kings on annual pilgrimage,
unwitting Lears permitted small bands
of faithful retainers, living in pomp
without circumstance, they said, “Gin,”
and, “You’re on the schneider,” and
passed checks for thousands of dollars
back and forth. Sometimes they talked
of the preglacial era. “I gave her her
first job. Seventy-five a week. She was
laying a dialogue coach in the Valley at
the time.”
And, “He brought it two and a half
million over the budget, and we had to
yank it in Chicago after three days, and
now look at him, the pricks in New York
say he’s a genius. Shit.”
And they said, “The future is in
cassettes” and the youngest of them in
the room, who was fifty-eight, said,
“What future?”
And they said, “Spades. Double.”
Below, on the terrace seven feet
above sea level, open to the sun and