Читать книгу Antkind: A Novel - Charlie Kaufman - Страница 12

I GIVE UP FOR now. Back in my apartment, I find I cannot focus on work. I write a poem for my blog Poems and Curios:

Home.

Finally home.

Suddenly home.

Never home.

Always home.

Without home.

Going home.

Goodbye home.

Broken home.

Leaving home.

O, Home, where did you go?

O, Homo.

Oh.

Conclusion: Home is a word of great power.

Research: Is this so in other languages? Is there a language in which there is no word for home? How might a person from such a culture think? Where would they say they live? Reread Whorf!!! This could be important!!!

I watch the screen for several hours, constantly refreshing, waiting for the comments to appear. They do not.

I knock on his door again, prepared to make my case. It opens. Now without makeup, I see he is ancient and African American. Oh, the lessons I could learn from him, the places we’ll go. But he is odd and distant minus his makeup, even odder and distanter. I attempt to show him I mean him no harm. Oh, the things he must have seen as an African American. The places he must’ve gone in his long and relentlessly African American lifetime. He was born in 1908. Perhaps his parents had even been slaves. Certainly his grandparents. He is a frail, hunched giant. He wears those new beige orthopedic Nikes everybody is going on about. Air Garry Marshalls. Several elderly people have been killed by several other elderly people down here in Florida for these shoes.

“I mean you no harm,” I explain.

He says nothing. Perhaps he didn’t hear me.

“I mean you no harm,” I tell him again, this time louder.

He bares his gums at me.

“Perhaps I could have you over for tea,” I say.

No response.

“I have written a monograph on William Greaves. The great avant-garde African American filmmaker.”

I’m grasping at straws. It is not fair to me that he is suspicious of all white people. I understand from whence that instinct comes, but still. I am not that guy, as the kids say, and I am making every effort.

“I have an African American girlfriend,” I tell him as the door closes.

I spend hours at my peephole. It is not healthy. He never leaves his apartment. I hatch and discard plan after plan. Might I borrow some ingredient or other for a pie? I’m going to the grocery store, does he need anything? Does he know a good barber? When is trash day again? Do you smell that?

Then his door opens. He peeks out into the hall, looks directly at my door. Is he trying to avoid me? It seems almost cruel at this point. But I remain hidden, watching. I don’t want to step out until he is well into the hall, until he has closed his door behind him and cannot get back into his apartment in time if I happen to appear. He emerges, closes his door. I do as well.

“Oh, hello,” I say. “I’m B. We’ve met. When you were wearing your costume. We even chatted.”

He doesn’t respond.

“I’m the fellow with the African American girlfriend. Perhaps you recall me.”

He shuffles slowly toward the staircase in his beige boat-like orthopedic kicks.

“Anyway, I was thinking since we are neighbors, we should exchange keys. In case of emergency.”

I fear this is too much too soon. I attempt to backpedal.

“Or just tea. Not saying we should exchange tea, but rather enjoy a cup together.”

Nothing.

Then something miraculous happens. He falls down the stairs. It’s a brutal tumble as if he has been pushed, and I worry someone will think he was pushed and then think that I pushed him. Which I did not and would never. I would never do that. I make a mad dash back into my apartment and close the door, waiting for another tenant, alerted by the noise of his tumble, his moans, to come to the old man’s aid. I will arrive second. That’s my alibi. Then I realize the other tenants in the building are either deaf or blind or some combination of the two. It is my great good fortune that the sad man with no car (deaf) happens to enter the building at this very moment.

“I’ll take him to the hospital!” I scream from my doorway. “I have a car!”

He doesn’t hear me of course and begins dragging Ingo toward what I assume is the nearest bus stop. I run down the stairs and roughly shake the neighbor by the arm to get his attention. He looks up at me.

“I’ll take him to the hospital. I have a car,” I mouth (using my now-perfected nose-breathing technique). He nods. I worry that this carless sad man will in the future ask for car favors now that he has been made aware of my carfulness, but this is my only opportunity and I must seize it, as Saul Bellow (Jewish and wonderful!) teaches us in his book Seize Today.

On the road to urgent care, I try to engage again.

“I am B.,” I tell him. “Perhaps you recall we chatted.”

I explain that B. is my first initial, which I use professionally as well as personally so as not to clutter my film writings with the gender assumptions of my multitudinous readers, or of those in my personal life, either.

He says nothing.

“I didn’t push you,” I say, almost shrieking it. In case there is some confusion about that.

I need him to know.

“My girlfriend is African American,” I fully shriek.

I need him to know that as well.

He glances over at me, then looks straight ahead and speaks:

“And he went up from thence unto Beth-el; and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him: ‘Go up, thou baldhead; go up, thou baldhead.’ And he looked behind him and saw them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and tore forty and two children of them. 2 Kings 2:23–24.”

“Jesus. That’s the Bible?” I say. “Jesus. What the hell?”

I wonder if he is mocking my baldness. Or threatening me with bears.

AT THE DESK I watch as he fills out the forms. He is 119! Wasn’t he just 116? No matter, a fall at either of those ages is understandable, and not anyone’s fault, certainly not mine. I did not push him. Truly, the miracle is that he is at his age still ambulatory. It is remarkable, and he should be grateful I saved him, rather than pointing fingers.

I put myself down as his emergency contact while he is distracted searching for his Medicare card. The attendant asks if I am his son. This thrills me. I am vindicated. Wait till I tell my girlfriend.

“No,” I say. “Just a friend.”

Not that an interracial friendship is a small thing.

In the car ride home, Ingo has become oddly chatty. Perhaps it is the painkillers. Perhaps it is that I saved his life, but in either case, I am happy to at long last be his friend. As an amateur Franz Boas in the making, cultural anthropology has long been my great passion, and here, practically dropped into my lap, is a receptacle of history. I turn on (with Ingo’s permission) my Nagra II reel-to-reel audio recorder, from 1953, itself a piece of history.

“November 4, 2019. I’m here in St. Augustine, Florida, with Ingo Cutbirth, an African American gentleman. What year were you born, Mr. Cutbirth?”

“I was born 1900.”

“So you’re 119 years old,” I say.

“Yes sir.”

“I thought you said 1908?”

“Nineteen hundred.”

“OK. What are some of your earliest memories?”

“From the past or from the future?” he asks.

“What do you mean, ‘from the future’?”

“Well, memories go either way.”

“Either way?”

“Yes. Rememorying the future is more or less the same thing as past rememorying; it gets foggy the more far you go away from the time you’re at. In either direction.”

I am at a crossroads here. Do I want to go down the path of this man’s craziness or steer him toward a more reasonable discussion? I have to say, as a student of fabulism, I am, at least presently, feeling the pull of Ingo’s future memories. And of course that his speech patterns have again changed is not lost on me. I am, after all, also a student of speech patterns, having studied with Roger K. Moore of the University of Sheffield while penning my monograph Patterns of Speech, from Stammer to Yammer, from Stutter to Mutter, from Drone to Intone.

Oh, also, From Mumble to Grumble.

“Can you give me an example of something you remember that hasn’t yet happened?”

“In the future, everybody talking about Brainio. That’s a for example, if you must know.”

“Brainio?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“Can I a-what-ah-late?”

“What is Brainio?”

“Brainio everywhere you look. Brainio. Brainio.”

“But what is it?”

“Brainio. It’s like a radio or a TV set, except it’s in a person brain.”

“Oh, like shows are broadcast directly into a person’s head?”

“Everybody talking about Brainio.”

“In the future.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have Brainio in your head in the future?” I ask.

“No. I’m dead when there’s Brainio.”

“Oh.”

“I’m a hunnerd twenny-nine now. What the fuck you think?”

“Yes. Right. So you can remember things that happen after you die?”

“Just a few and not very good. Brainio is what they call it. Evy’body talkin’ ’bout it.”

“Yes. What other things can you remember from the future?” I ask.

“Future cars.”

“What do they look like?”

“Silver. Evy’body talkin’ ’bout them silver cars all the time. Silver cars this. Silver cars that.”

“What do they say about them?”

“I got me a future car, that sort of thing. Look, it’s silver. It’s all a little foggy. Because it’s the future.”

“Do these future cars have any unusual characteristics or abilities?”

“Fly. Also they be a boat, too, if you want.”

I suddenly suspect this avenue of inquiry will go nowhere, so I back up.

“How about we talk about your past for a bit now.”

“Makes no nevermind to me.”

“OK, good. Are you still working, Ingo?”

“Retired.”

“And what type of work did you do?”

“Janitor at the School for the Blind, Deaf, and Dumb right here in St. Augustine.”

“When did you start work there?”

“Six A.M. Evvy day. Rain an’ shine.”

“No, I’m sorry, I meant what year?”

“Oh. Gosh. Nineteen twenty, I believe. Thereabouts.”

“And you worked there your whole life?”

“Till 1995.”

“That’s seventy-five years.”

“I never counted.”

“It is,” I say.

“If you say.”

“It is.”

“I’ll take your word.”

“It is.”

“OK then.”

“You want me to show you on a calculator?”

“Forgot my Eyebobs at the bottom of them stairs.”

“Did you like your job?”

“Sure. Nice people. Treat me nice.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“I like being around the blinds and the deafs.”

“Why is that?”

“Hard to explain,” he says.

“Could you try?”

“I like the deafs and the blinds because they don’t use their eyes and ears what to judge a man.”

“I see.”

“Though I gotta say, the blinds judge a man’s sound and the deafs judge a man’s looks. The deaf/blinds are the best in that regard, but the halfsies are still better than all those that can see and hear. The wholies. Those are the ones make me most uncomf’able.”

“So you’re self-conscious?”

“What’s that? Self-what-sis?”

“You worry about people judging you?”

“I don’t care for judging. ’Ceptin’ the Lord doin’ it.”

“Who does?”

“What’s that?”

“I’m agreeing with you that it’s unpleasant to feel judged.”

“I see.”

“Have you ever been married? Had children?”

“No. I been pretty busy. And anyway, the gals never cared much for me, it seem. I’m not saying I blame ’em. There’s no explaining why someone likes someone. Some say it’s chemicals, how a person smell because of certain chemicals he got. But I don’t know. I’ve never smelled any chemicals and yet I have liked certain gals. So I don’t know.”

“Did you ever ask any of them on a date?”

“No. I can tell they don’t want me to. With their eyes they’re saying, please don’t ask me on a date. The ones that ain’t blind. The blind ones say it with their ears. And so I just keep walking when I see that look or those ears. But it doesn’t mean I don’t like them. It’s just a secret. And I think about them to myself. Make up stories about them.”

“Do you write stories?”

“Not ’zactly.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

“Well, I do make up stories but they’re just for me. They keep me company. I get lonely. Always have. I have my television set and my TV Guide, but sometimes I make up stories just for me. Too bad Brainio don’t exist yet. I’ll be dead ’fore there’s Brainio. You know how Brainio works?”

“Um, no. I just heard of it for the first time a few minutes ago,” I say.

“Brainio goes into a person brain through invisible rays and the like.”

“Like radio waves?”

“That sounds right, though I’m no science-tist. And these invisible rays they tell you a story that you get to see in your brain. But it’s not like the television set where you have one story and evy’body watches. Brainio mixes up with your own ideas, and then the story you watch is like you and Brainio making it up together.”

“Like a custom-made story.”

“What’s that?”

“Making it up together.”

“That’s what I said. And you’re in it, too. Did I say that part? You can be in the story. If that’s what you want.”

“That sounds like a fascinating invention. And not a little terrifying,” I say.

“Yeah. I wish I could be alive for Brainio.”

“Would you be in your Brainio stories?”

“No. I don’t much like looking at myself.”

“Even in Brainio?”

“Even there, I expect.”

“But you could make yourself look like anything you want in Brainio.”

“Yeah. But then it’s not me.”

“That makes sense.”

“I do wish I would be alive when Brainio comes about. It would be so much faster and easier.”

“Faster and easier than what?”

“Than the story I’m making up now. Brainio makes stories fast. That’s one of the things everyone is saying in the future about Brainio,” Ingo says.

“Can you tell me the story you’re making up?”

He grows silent and stares off as he had yesterday. I wait. Is he considering telling me? I feel he might be. He licks his lips as if about to talk, but he remains staring off.

“I can’t tell it to you.”

I am crestfallen.

“Maybe I can show it to you,” he says.

“Are you a painter, then? You’ll show me pictures?”

“I do some painting. And building. And other arts and crafts and such. Sewing. And many such arts and crafts as is necessary.”

“Fascinating! I’d love to see this work! Is it on display in a gallery or—”

“In my apartment. I have to project it for you.”

“It’s a film?”

“Yes, I’m making a motion picture.”

This is too good to be true: ancient, reclusive, eccentric, likely psychotic African American filmmaker. Outsider art, undoubtedly. I have stumbled upon something magnificent. Visions of Darger dance in my head. Now for the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question:

“Have many people seen your film?”

“What’s that now?”

“Have you shown your film to a lot of people?”

Please say no.

“It’s not for other people. It just for me. Nobody else ever seen it,” he says.

How could I have stumbled upon this? No matter how crude, how amateurish, no matter how painful to watch, I can spin this into anthropological gold. I can dine out on this for the rest of my life. Finally I can pry open the prudish legs of Cahiers du Cinéma.