Читать книгу Antkind: A Novel - Charlie Kaufman - Страница 13

BACK HOME, I help Ingo into his apartment (just a sprain, thank God!). His place, the mirror image of mine, is dark and stuffy and crammed to the ceiling with cardboard boxes. He’s a hoarder! Too perfect! The boxes are dated and seem to stretch back many decades, with labels such as Buildings and Old Men and Storm Clouds and The Unseen. It’s spectacular! Who is Ingo Cutbirth? What upon have here I stumbled?

“A lot of boxes,” I say, hoping he’ll be encouraged to explain.

He isn’t. I take a different tack.

“So, anyway, what’s in the boxes?”

He won’t budge. I try again.

“Is it OK if I look in the boxes?”

“Take the ark of the LORD and place it on the cart; and put the articles of gold which you return to Him as a guilt offering in a box by its side. Then send it away that it may go. Watch, if it goes up by the way of its own territory to Beth-shemesh, then He has done us this great evil. But if not, then we will know that it was not His hand that struck us; it happened to us by chance. Then the men did so, and took two milch cows, hitched them to the cart, and shut up their calves at home. They put the ark of the LORD on the cart, and the box with the golden mice and the likenesses of their tumors. And the cows took the straight way in the direction of Beth-shemesh; they went along the highway, lowing as they went, and did not turn aside to the right or to the left. And the lords of the Philistines followed them to the border of Beth-shemesh. Now the people of Beth-shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley, and they raised their eyes and saw the ark and were glad to see it. The cart came into the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite and stood there where there was a large stone; and they split the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the LORD. The Levites took down the ark of the LORD and the box that was with it, in which were the articles of gold, and put them on the large stone; and the men of Beth-shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices that day to the LORD. 1 Samuel 6:8–15,” he says.

“Is that a yes?”

He stares at me through bloodshot ancient eyes.

“OK. Maybe later then. Because I’m curious is all. You’re an enigma, Ingo Cuthbert. You’re an enigma.”

“Cutbirth.”

“What’d I say?”

“Cuthbert.”

“And what is it?”

“Cutbirth.”

“Got it. Like cut plus birth. Got it.”

As I head to the door to let myself out, I catch sight of something in an adjacent room. It’s an exquisitely crafted miniature scene: a heavily populated city street with perfect little puppets. What’s more, I recognize it as my neighborhood. It is West 44th and 10th. There’s Dunkin’ Donuts. There’s H&R Block. It’s extraordinary. I can’t breathe. Ingo limps to the bedroom door and shuts it.

“May I look in there?” I ask.

He stares at me anciently through rheumy old bloodshot eyes.

“Maybe later then,” I say, and I leave.

IN MY APARTMENT, I check Poems and Curios. No comments. Then, for the purpose of convincing him, I try to google biblical passages about a black man letting a white man see a miniature city. There’s not that much. I do find a thing in Luke saying you should give to anyone who asks, but it’s not specific enough (not to mention it’s from Luke, the most namby-pamby of the gospels). Ideally, the passage would say something like, Show thy crafts to those in need of seeing them, so sayeth the Lord. But there is nothing even close. So much for finding all the answers in the Bible. I call my friend Ocky Marrocco, a biblical scholar at Stanford, but he doesn’t pick up. I leave a message, though I’m not hopeful since Ocky and I had a falling-out years ago after I told him the Bible is complete garbage, magical thinking from primitive desert-dwelling nomads. As an atheist, I have that obligation.

I bang hard on Ingo’s door. When he answers, I offer to do his shopping now that it will be difficult for him to get around. He sighs and nods, and I step in. The bedroom door is still closed.

“Have you given any thought to my petition?” I ask.

Ingo doesn’t respond but simply limps to a notepad on the cluttered kitchen table and begins to write. I scan the room, hoping for elucidation. Boxes. Perhaps hundreds of them, maybe thousands, possibly millions—all marked: Automobiles, Firemen, Weather, Natives, Pastries, Trees (Palm, Spruce) …

Ingo returns with his list: Whole Milk, Whole Chicken, Whole Wheat Bread, Hole Puncher, Peach Halves (in syrup), Halvah, Half and Half, Anne Hathaway Havoc DVD, Black Thread, Black-eyed Peas, Ketchup, Mucilage, Carrots, Peanut Butter (chunkless), 150 packages of Ramen (assorted), 50 cans of Neelon’s Tuna Fish (improved texture), 80 cans of Nimby’s Chicken Noodle Soup, 10 pounds of Bolton’s Powdered Eggs, 5 pounds of Fripp’s Powdered Milk, 1 pound of Prochnow’s Powder (talcum), a thousand boxes (empty).

I nod.

“So what would you say that little New York City street scene in there is for, if you were to say? If I were to ask?” I ask.

He says nothing.

“The reason I would ask,” I say, “if I were to, is that it looked so familiar to me, which I thought you might find amusing. Ha ha. In fact, from my cursory glance before you so aggressively slammed the door, it looked much like the very block on which I myself live at this very time. Well, not at this time, because I live next door now, but where my apartment is, where I live when I don’t live here, which is usually. And that is why I ask. That is why hence my curiosity, as it were, if you must know. Coincidence or no, I might be of some value to you in checking for accuracy. Also, in addition, I might be a little curious as to the why of this particular miniature set. That is why … I ask … of you … this … at this … time.”

After a protracted period of what I can only characterize as loud nose-whistle breathing, Ingo speaks:

“Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. Luke 12:2–3.”

Actually, that is pretty much the type of biblical passage I was searching for earlier. And it was right there all along in namby-pamby Luke. But Ingo got to it first and used it against me. Damn him to hell.

ON THE WAY to the supermarket, I amuse myself by ticking off all the possible narrative conflicts available to filmic storytellers:

Man vs. Man (Woman, Nonbinary, Child)

Man vs. Self

Man vs. Nature

Man vs. Society

Man vs. Machine

Man vs. Supernatural

Man vs. God(dess)

Man vs. Two Men (and et chetera)

Man vs. Everything

Man vs. Nothing

Man vs. A Few Things

Man vs. Disease

Man (Sick) vs. Healthy Person of Any Gender

Man vs. Idiocy

Man vs. Memory (Memory is a map of sorts, but hand drawn, incomplete, and full of errors. It can let you know a place exists, but you cannot trust it to get you there. To get you there, you need a computer. A computer is precise. A computer does not think your mother is more important than the chair, or the space that’s not your mother is more important than the space that is, or the glass of water on the table, or the sun pouring through the window, or the velvet drapes, or your mother’s love for her father, or the front stoop, or the cracks in the front stoop. This is why Man must fight it.)

Man vs. Computer

Man vs. Time

Man vs. Fate

Man vs. Marketing

Man vs. Clone

Um …

Man vs. Smell

Um …

Man vs. No Smell

Um …

Man vs. Some Smell

Um …

I’m certain there are others, but I am preoccupied. The Winn-Dixie supermarket is as big as a football field, and I mean a king-size football field, not a queen-size. While in the produce section, looking at carrots, I once again ponder the tiny re-creation of my neighborhood. I am not a person who believes in destiny. But how could my world be in that elderly African American gentleman’s apartment? I choose a bag of carrots. It seems as if I have stumbled upon something dangerous, perhaps even otherworldly. I, an avowed atheist who believes in reason and the rule of law, am not a person who accepts an unseen spirit realm, but something is amiss here. Who is Ingo Cutbirth? I find the mucilage aisle. So many choices! Should I be disturbed that Neelon’s also makes a mucilage? Is it Cutbirth or Cuthbert? Either way, he is most likely a giant elderly African American gentleman. Unless this is just more makeup. Shandy’s Eco-Mucilage looks good. Oh, the experiences he most certainly has had. It would behoove me to engage him. My privilege shelters me, and Ingo is the ax with which to hack away at the shelter that is the privilege which I have had. Halvah is hard to find. I should train my eyes to look at him with the awe I would afford one of my old white man heroes. Halvah is filed alphabetically under chalva (I had to ask a stockperson). I will imagine he is Godard, the great French filmmaker and talented anti-Semite, and then look at him as if he is the part of Godard that is a genius and not a talented anti-Semite. I think that will work. That is what I have done with Godard himself. Chunkless, it turns out, is not the same thing as smooth, it turns out.

“It’s a southern thing,” a second stockperson explains.

ON THE DRIVE back, I find myself obsessed with the following cinematic predicament: It is nearly impossible in a motion picture to effectively communicate odor to an audience. And yet a film for blind and deaf people must be all smell all the time. How to accomplish this? I must ask my friend Romeo Quinoa, who is a nasal artist.

Then this: I wonder if there is the possibility of smelling the future. Second smell, I would call it, were the government to assign me the job of naming it. My thoughts are popping like lightning. It is a sign that I am finally excited about something.

As Ingo unpacks his groceries, I attempt to get into his eyeline. His old rheumy bloodshot eyes become glassy. Is he about to cry? Perhaps he has never in his entire life been looked at as though he were an anti-anti-Semitic Godard. I would imagine not, especially as an African American. Such is the lot of African Americans in America. Was he a Pullman porter? A sharecropper? Oh, wait, he told me what he was, but I don’t recall. I think I have it on tape. In any event, the things I might learn from Ingo if only I can persuade him to open up. But he is a taciturn man. No one can know the trouble he’s seen, certainly not I, with my milk-white skin and my degree from Harvard, which I went to. Sure I have tramped, ridden the rails, lived in a hobo jungle, but that was part of a summer program at The New School, sanctioned by Union Pacific, our hobo jungles simulated, the hobos improvisational actors from Upright Citizens Brigade. Granted it gave us the flavor of the rootless life, but there was at least a hint of a safety net. When Derek Wilkinson had an allergic reaction one day during hobo luncheon (the beans had been prepared in a factory that processed nut products), there was a nurse (dressed as a yard bull) with an EpiPen at the ready. One can assume that an actual hobo with a nut allergy would be on his own in such dire circumstances. Or her own. The assumption of male gender in hobos has hindered the dreams of more female hobos than I as a white man can imagine. Perhaps it is best to refer to all hobos as thon.

“Well,” I over-enunciate, “I must bid you adieu as I have work to which I must presently attend.”

Nodding in a folksy manner, I turn to the door, my right shoulder inching back slightly as it anticipates Ingo’s gentle touch, beseeching me to stay for just a bit. “Don’t go!” he’d say. But it is not to be, and I must follow through, cross the hall, fumble for my key, enter, and close the door behind me. I do my trick of the sound of receding footsteps, while standing in place and watching Ingo through my security peephole. I am not certain what I am hoping to learn, but I have discovered through my research into the underrated and trailblazing work of filmmaker Allen Albert Funt that a person who believes thonself to be unobserved will act in a manner different from a person who believes thonself to be observed.

Ingo stays put.