Читать книгу Antkind: A Novel - Charlie Kaufman - Страница 11

BACK IN MY St. Augustine rental, hard at work writing about the wardrobe design in Enchantment. I’m whimsically entitling this section “Return to Gender, a Dress Unsewn,” which is a play on the song “Return to Sender”—written by the great African American songwriters Scott and Blackwell—which contains the lyric: “Return to sender, address unknown.” I am not above being playful in my work.

A violent yelling comes from the apartment of my neighbor directly across the hall.

“Fucking fuck. You fucking little bastard. You sheeny kike little fucker. Do what I tell you to!”

I am taken aback. What poor Jewish soul is the recipient of this abuse? As much as I am not a Jew, I will not tolerate anti-Semitism in any of its many forms. Should I summon the police? Should I mind my business? Certainly a domestic squabble is not a cause for police intervention. And certainly we each of us lose our temper at times. I am new in town. Do I want a 911 call to be my introduction to the neighborhood? Furthermore, due to the general belief that I am a Jew myself, perhaps my interference will be seen as “a Jew protecting a Jew,” which many see as Jews sticking together and therefore frown upon. In that way, it might do more harm than good to the local Jewish community. I must carefully consider all of the potential repercussions.

Then there is a thwack. Then breaking glass. Then a thwack.

I cannot in good conscience not get involved. Remember Kitty Genovese. Or, more to the point, remember Harlan Ellison calling the do-nothing witnesses “thirty-six motherfuckers.” I don’t want to be called a motherfucker by Ellison, even though it turns out he was wrong and the Genovese witnesses were misrepresented and besides by all accounts Ellison was an obnoxious fellow. The point is everyone still thinks the witnesses were not misrepresented, that Ellison was right. And as we all know, perception is everything. Just ask anyone ever wrongly accused of child molestation. Do they ever get their lives back? The answer is no, and I say that as a sympathizer. To be clear, I say it as a sympathizer of the wrongfully accused, not of child molesters, and certainly not as a Nazi sympathizer, if that’s what you’re thinking for some reason. Although I will say that there is a witch hunt mentality in our society in regard to any and all perceived aberrations. We have become a country of politically correct sheep. I realize this view opens me up to criticism from others and, more important, even from myself. Then again, perhaps the definition of courage is forging ahead in the face of self-criticism. But let me take this opportunity to reiterate that I do not support any form of abuse of children, physical, emotional, or sexual. However, I would just add, as a matter of fact, that there is a popular misunderstanding of the term pedophilia. It specifically and only refers to sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Interest in young teens is hebephilia and interest in teens older than fifteen is ephebophilia. Look it up.

I decide I will wait for one more indication of my neighbor’s violent abuse and, if it happens, act.

“FUCK YOU, HEBREW!” he screams.

I grab my key, leave my room, knock on his door.

A very old man answers.

“Oh, it’s you,” he says, quietly.

“Excuse me, I could not help but hear some commotion through our common wall. Is everything all right with everyone over here?” I say, trying to look past him into the dark apartment. I am worried that perhaps someone is abusing this elderly Jew standing before me.

“I am alone,” he tells me. “I live alone. I have always lived alone. I am an old man,” he adds, as if it were germane, as if this were not obvious.

“I heard yelling, someone called a kike. Who were you talking to, if not someone? Or who was talking to you, if you were the one not talking to someone?”

“I was talking to you,” he says, enigmatically.

“First of all, I am not a Jew,” I say, reflexively, defensively. “And besides, I was not in your apartment when you were or someone was calling someone or you a one.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m glad we’re able to finally talk in a civilized manner.”

“I’m sure I do not know what you are saying,” I say. “You and I have never before met. In fact, this is my first visit to St. Augustine.”

“I am old and lonely,” he asserts once more, for no apparent reason.

Then it hits me: OK, here we go. Old man wants a friend. How many times have I found myself in this situation? There should be a psychiatric term for old people.

“I am old and lonely and I do not have much time,” he continues. “Perhaps I have wasted my life in isolation. As a young man, I did not have the confidence to speak to the ladies. Then the years passed, as they must, as they will. And here I am today, never having known the love of a woman, never even having had a friend. And here you are in the flesh, finally. Someone to talk to, someone with whom to share my life and work.”

“Listen,” I say, “I’m in Florida for a very short period and I have a lot of work to do while here. I understand and appreciate your loneliness. Certainly I am on the road to old age myself, as are we all, and, consequently, I just don’t have the time to take away from my writing.”

“Oh? What are you writing about?” he asks, an odd, obnoxious little smile on his odd and uniformly pale face.

“I’m researching a little-known silent movie shot in St. Augustine in 1914.”

“A Florida Enchantment,” he says. It is not a question.

“How do you know?” I ask.

“I was the little boy in it. Ingo Cutbirth. My name is in the credits.”

“There is no little boy in it,” I say, racking my brain to make certain. I am an expert on the film, of course, having viewed it several thousand times, not only forward, but backward, something I do with films that interest me. It allows me to look at the film as a formal construction rather than a story, of course, much like copying a face upside down so that one’s preconceptions of “nose” and “eyes” and et chetera don’t get in the way of following the actual lines. But in addition, I, as contemporary physics teaches us, believe the arrow of time is illusory, cause and effect a story we tell ourselves. The truth is there are infinite versions of each story, the first the simple narrative convention: This happens, then this happens because of it. The second version is that events are quantized and separate and occur independently and can, nay must, be viewed in every conceivable order to understand their full implication. Of course the great intellectual of cinema Rene Chauvin explored this very notion in its most simple iteration in his film Moutarde, which must be viewed in both directions and centers on a pivotal moment located in the very center of the film between husband Gerard and wife Claire. In the “forward” version of the film, Claire serves Gerard a plate of sausages. He asks if there is any mustard in the house, and Claire says, “Oh, I am so sorry, Gerard. I went to the market today, but I forgot to pick up mustard. I will get some tomorrow.” “Don’t worry, my dear,” he says, and they kiss. The next shot finds Claire at the market, with a sweet smile on her face, lovingly choosing a jar of mustard for her husband. In the reverse juxtaposition, we see Claire lovingly picking up a jar of mustard followed by denying to her husband that she bought any. A devious Claire. Why is she denying her husband his mustard? Of course everything that happens after (or before) these two scenes is colored by this treachery or, in reverse, this act of kindness. That the movie ends (or begins) with the death of Claire, making her a ghost in the reverse version of the movie, only serves to further complicate the story. Chauvin’s experiment, which shook the film world to its very core, should in theory work if the scenes were rearranged at random, allowing for even more complex and varied interpretations of this quantized world. In any event (I’ll stop nattering), I view all worthwhile films this way, as well as once with the monitor upside down, which forces me to not take gravity for granted as a force in the film. For when we talk about figurative gravity in a film, we often forget that literal gravity is essential to truly understanding the human condition. We are none of us immune to the burden it imposes on us, nor should we be ungrateful for its gift of keeping us from flying off into space and exploding in the cosmic vacuum, or whatever happens in space (I am not a scientist, although I did minor in horror vacui studies at Harvard). The truly great and introspective characters in cinema have an awareness of this duality, and it is only revealed to us by watching them move while upside down, where every step is both a prayer and a commination.

The old man is staring at me.

“I am unseen,” he says. “In the Enchantment film. It is from my point of view. The director was experimenting with form. I stood under the camera for every shot. I was a smallish boy with a flattish head, so I easily fit. I’m in the credits. Unseen Boy—Ingo Cutbirth.”

“Of course!” I say.

Suddenly the movie makes sense. The boy! Of course! The unseen boy! The narrator! The dreamer of the dream. How this changes everything! How many new questions there now are. Why a boy? Why did the director choose a—

“Wait. How old were you in 1914?”

“Six,” he says.

Why did the director choose a six-year-old, a boy clearly not yet sexually developed, to have this dream, this fantasy, about an adult woman? This seems—

“Wait. You were born in 1908?”

“Nineteen-fourteen was a time of change,” the old man says, ignoring my question. “We knew we had three years left before we would enter the First World War and that the Second World War was scheduled to begin shortly thereafter. The Germans are nothing if not punctual. So—”

“How did you know what the future would bring?” I ask.

“There were prognosticators,” he tells me. “Those who understood the quantized nature of time. Physics was a burgeoning field and everyone was jumping on the bandwagon. Painters, writers, even fortune-tellers. Things are not as they seem.”

“I know that,” I say. “I just told you that! Have you read my book on Mustard?”

“I’m not much of a foodie.”

“The film Moutarde.”

“Oh,” he says. “Not yet, but it’s on my night table.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“Why of course?” I ask.

He hesitates, then says a little too quickly: “I have a long-standing interest in film. Anyhoo, my point is that the world was changing. Women were questioning their societal roles. Men were soon to be dying on foreign battlefields. The art of cinema, while not in its infancy, was certainly in its young adolescence, the Hebe period, as it was called, I believe.”

“Hebe? As in a Jewish slur?”

“As in hebephilia,” he says.

“Ah. Yes. Love of Jews? No, that’s not it. But the term is familiar. I simply can’t put my finger on it.”

“And because of that there was all sorts of exploration, growing pains, testing the limits imposed by theater and literature, the mother and father of film, respectively.”

“Are you a cinephile?” I ask, suddenly impressed with this withered, white papery Jew (?) before me.

“If by cinephile you mean someone sexually excited by film or film stock, then yes.”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant a lover of the art of film.”

“I am that as—”

“In the platonic sense, I mean.”

“Oh. I am that as well. Some films I love as friends, some in a deeper way.”

Although I had never put it that way for myself, I understand what he means. And I feel a sudden kinship. I should add here that I have always been violently repulsed by the elderly. I know this is not a societally acceptable reaction and therefore I have kept it to myself. So now as I approach my own doddery, I find that repulsion more and more directed inwardly. Rather than discovering empathy for them, I find I hate them and myself all the more and that I look longingly and jealously at the young, at the taut of skin, at the sharp of mind, at the perfect of form, at the cocky of spirit, at the tattooed of arm, at the pierced of wherever. Granted I see them as stupid and shallow, in their baseball caps with factory-flat bills, stickers still adhered, in their ignorance of international affairs, in their inability to see me, to be sexually attracted to me, to admire me. “You, too, will get old and die,” I have on occasion screamed at groups of teens who have called out “baldy” or “beardy” or “baldo” or “beardo” or “baldhead” or “beard face” at me from the safety of the 7-Eleven parking lot. At times I have screamed it at teens who have said nothing to me. Whom I am not repulsed by are the elderly genius directors amongst us. The Godards, the Melvilles, the Renaiseseses. Although I am not homosexual by inclination, I do feel a certain romantic interest in these men. Perhaps because I see them as father figures, as godlike, as paterfamiliases, if you will. Perhaps because I would like them to see me, to love me and admire me the way I love and admire them. How to achieve that? Well, certainly if I could write a monograph elucidating their work in ways never before elucidated in the history of film history that would help. Perhaps if I could even show them things about their work they themselves had never considered. But this has not happened, and as they have died off one by one, the possibility of it happening has diminished greatly. I have often thought it unfair that pulchritudinous young women can gain access to older, successful, brilliant male artists for no reason other than the artist’s wanting to fuck them. Whereas I have sweated and strained to understand their work, to shed light on it. I have, in my highly insightful way, adored them, and yet nothing. This is the height of sexism. Why can’t they love me? Why couldn’t my father love me just for being me? It was always about proving my worth to him. Never because I was cute or sexy. And as a child, I was both, I believe. Imagine a holy synthesis of Brandon Cruz from The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and Mayim Bialik of Blossom fame and you’re imagining me as a boy. I was the epitome of pulchritudinous. I know it’s impolitic to celebrate Man-Boy love, but the Greeks, the greatest generation (with apologies to those of you who fought the Nazis), with the most geniuses per square foot in the history of the world, seemed to do all right with it. To be clear, I am not condoning such an uneven power dynamic in any relationship, and I fully believe children must be protected from predators. The only thing I am saying is that if Alain Resnais had taken an interest in me as a little boy, I would have been flattered. Obviously that ship sailed a long time ago.

It pops into my mind, for no clear reason, that sometimes I imagine myself as solid through and through. No bones, no blood. No organs. Rubber perhaps, with a skeleton of metal. It would be an ideal construction for a being. No longer any worry about kidney disease, for my kidneys would be solid rubber and solid rubber is impervious to kidney disease. I have looked this up. Just as when I have dental issues, I consider how much better a world it would be if people had beaks, and I mean instead of teeth, not in addition to them as have Hegel and Schlegel. Beaks in addition to teeth would solve no problems, obviously.

I refocus on my previous train of thought: The old man is still old, however, and, let’s face it, no Alain Resnais. If I am to cozy up to an old man, he must be a certified genius, a poet, an artist. As I in my youth had hoped to be as an old man in my own future and still do in the future from now, but with less time to get there. But as of now, I am simply a celebrator of geniuses, an apologist for great men who are anti-Semites and racists, for brilliant artists who abuse women. These quirks of character must be forgiven in our geniuses is my unpopular opinion. Artists must have the freedom to express and explore the darkest regions of their psyches. As Persephone must spend half the year in the underworld, so must these men delve deep within themselves (and young women sometimes!) to bring us the fruit we so need for our sustenance. The pomegranate—symbol of life, of death, of royalty, of fecundity, of Jesus’s suffering, of virility, and so much more—is of course the fruit associated with Persephone. It chains her forever, albeit intermittently, to the underworld. Do we despise her for this? No, we celebrate her, because when she emerges, she brings us the spring. A field must lie fallow sometimes if we are to have any hope of an eventual renewal. A genius must sometimes be a racist if we are to hope for elucidation. History is generously peppered with geniuses who despised the Jews, who dismissed the blacks, who objectified women. Are we to bury their great works because of this? The answer is a resounding no, we are not to. We are, all of us, human. We are, all of us, imperfect. Prejudice is evolutionarily implanted in our genes. We need to know The Tiger is a dangerous animal. We need not know that all tigers are not. Identifying the personalities of individual tigers does not serve our need to survive. Granted, it might make us more enlightened individuals and friends with some tigers, and I am all for that. I applaud that, but one must recognize that there is a tribal instinct in humans and it is at its base an instinct for survival. So accept that, mourn it, decry it, rail against it, but recognize it is a very human trait and have patience with it. Have compassion. Thank you and good night. This is an impromptu speech I delivered to a great deal of heckling in the Bates College copier room when I was a visiting critic in their film department, where my job was to sit in the back during student film screenings, tap my pen impatiently against my notebook, and sigh.

The old man stares. I am not certain how long we have been in his doorway. I search for clues: Was it light before? It is dark now. I don’t recall. Perhaps it was light before. Certainly it was light at some point today. Of this I am almost certain.

“Anyhoo,” I say.

He asks if I would like to come in. He tells me again that he has spent his life in isolation, brimming with social anxiety, and that he has decided to change his ways at this very late stage. He realizes now that his phobias greatly limited his joie de vivre. Never has he felt the embrace of a woman, shared a beer with a male buddy, seen a football match with a buddy, had a buddy, played pool with a buddy. This is actually, he confides with some embarrassment, the first time he’s even said the word buddy. He likes the word, it turns out, he tells me. It’s friendly, he explains. It’s got a nice nose to it, as they say about those wines with nice noses to them.

I tell him I’m busy.

He nods sadly.

Then I think, Be nice; he’s an old man. Then I think, Not too nice; I don’t want him to think every time I bump into him, I’m going to stop for a long conversation. Then I think, Someday I’ll be old, what if no one wants to talk to me. Then I think, Oh no, karma: What if I’m not nice to him, maybe something bad will happen to me. Then I think of that movie where Meg Ryan turns into an old man. Not that I believe in that sort of magical nonsense, but the movie does make some valid points. And not that Meg Ryan is by any stretch of the imagination old now, but it does make one remember about how she was once the girl next door and how we as a society keep trading in our old models for new ones. Then I think, This old man was once young—as young as Meg Ryan used to be. But no one can see that now. We are stuck in the present. An old man is old. A young man is young. A boy is a boy. We can’t see life as a journey. Where we are now is not where we started. It is not where we’re going. It is essential to see this old man not just as a reminder of my own mortality, but as a person, someone who might have had or might still be having a fascinating life with fascinating thoughts.

“I have errands,” I say.

“OK. I wasn’t sure you were going to say anything. It’s odd the way you keep staring at me for so long.”

“I had fallen into a fugue state,” I say, covering. Then I think, That movie was called A Kiss to Remember. Then I think, No, that’s not it.

“I envy you young people your fugue states and jelly bracelets. Your Eyebobs.”

“Our what?”

“Eyebobs? No Eyebobs yet?”

“I don’t even know what that sentence means.”

“Sometimes I get ahead of things. See, I have these dreams.”

Oh boy, I think.

“Why do you say that?” he asks.

“What?”

“Oh boy.”

“I said that? I thought I thought it.”

“You both thought it and said it, if we are to be completely accurate.”

You cagey bastard, I think (say?). I’d best be off.

I am about to turn and go, am actually in process. I am literally turning, but slowly for some reason, in slow motion it seems, for some reason, very, very slowly, when I notice something.

He massages his temples and it occurs to me that his face might be covered with makeup. On his smudged temples, darker skin is revealed. Suddenly I suspect perhaps he is African American and wearing Caucasian American makeup, more commonly called whiteface or paleface or cracker countenance or trash visage or clown white.

“Are you African American?” I ask.

“No!” he screams and slams his door.

But I believe he is. And now I want to know him. More than anything, I want to know him. I pound on his door.

“I want to visit,” I say. “I’ve changed my mind. Helloooo?”

“Go away, kike,” he yells.

“I am not Jewish,” I explain to the wood between us.

There is no response. He doesn’t believe me. It has been said that people are only really seeing themselves when looking at others. Perhaps because he is in denial regarding his own ethnic heritage, he assumes I am in denial about my own. But I am not Jewish. I am not. I will put together a slideshow for him of those who appear to be Jewish but are not. Ringo Starr will be featured. Ringo Starr is not Jewish even though he has a prominent nose. It occurs to me his name is almost the same name as Ingo’s name, which is Ingo. The difference is the R, which is the first letter of my surname. R + Ingo = Ringo. I imagine it inside a heart on a tree. I explain all this to him through the door.

“R plus Ingo equals Ringo,” I repeat. It feels almost cosmic, somehow meant to be. Perhaps our eventual communion will form a new star in the firmament. I go on to explain that Ringo’s last name is Starr and that is why I suggested our relationship might form a new star.

Damn. I should have agreed to visit with him in the first place. When I had the chance. What was I thinking? Even if he had been white, humoring him would have been such a small price to pay to get in his good graces, so I could interview him about his experience on Enchantment. Sometimes I don’t know what I am thinking or why or even when. My mind travels a thousand miles an hour, careening wildly from topic to topic. It is a thing I must work on, stilling this monkey mind, as the Buddhists call my mind, even though its monkey-ness is a by-product of my intelligence. But due to this intellect, I am a monkey on a string, the butt of some constant cosmic joke of the gods.

“Go away,” he says.