Читать книгу Antkind: A Novel - Charlie Kaufman - Страница 23

I ARRIVE AT MY building, where my African American girlfriend is waiting for me on the stoop.

How did she know my arrival time?

The look on her face. Somehow I know it’s over.

“We need to talk.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, B.”

“What?”

She hugs me. I pull out of it.

“You don’t get to hug me while wearing those eyes!” I scream.

She just watches me, silently, like a cat, like a cat about to break up with a man.

“Why?” I demand.

“It’s just … I think we’ve grown apart over all this time apart, and I don’t know how to find a way back in.”

“I’ve been in a medically induced coma! Due to … something!” Suddenly I’m unclear. “Haven’t I?” I whine. “Isn’t that what happened?”

“I heard you were. But that doesn’t change anything.”

“We can try. We owe it to ourselves to try. I have a part for you in my movie.”

“It won’t work.”

“Why not? Because they shaved my beard off to facilitate coma-inducement? I can grow it back!”

“Because I’m with someone.”

My heart breaks. It’s a cliché, but I feel it. I feel my heart breaking. It even makes a sort of cracking sound.

“An actor?”

“A director.”

“Him?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“But—”

“I need to be with someone black, B. Maybe that’s a shortcoming on my part, but—”

“Anyone African American will do?”

“Of course not. Don’t be cruel.” She pauses, then: “We have a shorthand. You and I don’t. Yes, I understand the Jewish people have suffered, too, but—”

“I’m not Jewish.”

“OK, B. I’m sorry. I really am.”

“I don’t know why you always insist I’m Jewish.”

“I don’t know. You just … seem Jewish. It’s hard to remember you’re not. Even more so now. For some reason I can’t put my finger on.”

“Do you laugh with him about my seeming Jewishness?”

“No!”

“I suspect you do.”

“We don’t laugh about you! We don’t talk about you!”

“Wow. OK. I guess you’ve made yourself clear then.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“OK. Well, do you want the gift I brought back for you?”

“I don’t know, B. It’s very nice of you. But I don’t think I should.”

“Yeah. OK.”

I take the gift-wrapped box from my bag and drop it in a public trash receptacle. It immediately feels wrong, theatrical, pouty in a way I hadn’t intended. But the truth is I have little use for the pair of ladies’ pumps I had purchased in the hospital gift shop. Not no use, but little.

I wander the streets, clutching my small hospital-issued bag. I can’t face my apartment yet. Everything is gone. Ingo is gone. Kellita Smith of The Bernie Mac Show, my African American girlfriend, is gone. The possibility of getting financing for my New York film without Kellita is nil. My Florida transgender film monograph has been given to a hack half my age and twice my gender. I discovered Enchantment; it is by rights mine. There is nothing left. New York has become an expensive cesspool. It holds no interest for me, which is just as well as I’ll be squeezed out of my apartment if I don’t soon become gainfully employed. I look outward in an attempt to take in the magic of New York, in an attempt to allow the city to heal me.

Walking toward Times Square, I try to remember Ingo’s film. I feel certain this street is in the film, maybe even these very people. Maybe even me. Though I can recall very little of it, it has left an emotional imprint on my brain. I suspect my perspective is forever altered by it. Is this a good thing? I don’t believe it is. But there is nothing to be done. For all his fascination with movement and comedy and human psychology, at his core Ingo was a nihilist, I suspect. Pre-Ingo, I could best characterize myself as a teleological optimist. Leibniz’s Theodicy was without a doubt the most dog-eared book in my childhood library. God, because he/she/thon is God, has made what must, by definition, be the best of all possible worlds possible. But Ingo won me over to the “dark” side of meaninglessness. I am bereft. But without the comfort of remembering why.

Suddenly, huzzah! A flash of memory, the beginning of Ingo’s film:

A crudely constructed puppet of wood stands watching me, his joints and jaw articulated with hinges. Everything is silent. Exposure is inconsistent, the image black and white. The figure moves its arms and legs as if trying them out for the first time. His eyes remain fixed, open and blind. He raises his left arm, waves at me. His hinged jaw flaps twice, this followed by the handwritten title card “Hello, Mister!” It lingers too long, this card, allowing me to read it one hundred times. Then back to the puppet. He stands still, looking intently yet sightlessly into the camera. Finally he nods and his jaw clacks open and closed eight times, in a way inhuman, terrifying. “Very well, hello, B., then, if you insist.” This card holds even longer. Is he responding to what was to be my return greeting? Is this Movie Minus One? Was I to say, “Call me B.”? Back to the puppet and more jaw-slapping, then another title card: “I am happy to meet you, B.” Back to the puppet. A long moment followed by a nod and jaw movement. Title card: “Thank you. I shall enjoy having the name William.” I have named him? Back to puppet. He waves. The film irises out to black, then back in. The puppet has had some work done. Clearly a male now, he even has a hinged penis, which raises and lowers while William stares straight into the camera. His jaw moves and is followed by a title card that reads: “I am ashamed.”

I recall all of this quite clearly, yet somehow feel it entirely inaccurate.

MY APARTMENT, WHEN I finally return to it, smells horrific. My Lord, I neglected to ask anyone to care for my dog Au Hasard Balthazar! The floor is covered with his feces, the rugs darkened with his urine. I find him emaciated but somehow alive, shivering in the bathroom. He feebly wags his tail. That’s what a greeting without underlying hostility looks like. No dead eyes here. That’s love. He doesn’t blame me for his predicament, which, to be fair, he could. The human race should take a lesson from Au Hasard Balthazar. I gently pet him, whispering comfort, praising him for his fortitude. He seems grateful for the attention, but his eyes are trained on the gnawed, unopened cans of dog food scattered around the room.

“OK, fella,” I say. “Let’s get you fed.”

I honestly do feel bad that I completely forgot him for all this time. I’m just thankful he survived. It seems unlikely. I guess one can live a long time without food. Water is the issue, the scientists tell us. I imagine he drank out of the toilet. There’s no other explanation. That’s what I would have done, if I had only paws and didn’t understand faucets. I place his bowl of food on the floor. He attempts to swallow the food, but it’s a struggle.

“Take it slow, dear friend,” I advise him.

He looks up at me and seems to smile. His teeth are gone. Perhaps if I mash the food? It is soft, but with his overall weakness and his lack of teeth, perhaps he needs some additional help. I reach for the bowl and he snarls at me. That’s weird. Not like him at all. He was always such a friendly fella. I’m not sure what to do. They say one cannot allow a dog to display dominance. A dog must always respect the alpha, which is the owner, which is me. Still, no one wants to get bitten. But I guess with his current toothlessness, he could not do all that much damage. I pick up the bowl. He snaps at my hand, getting hold of it, but it slips easily from his gummy grip. He falls over and appears to exhibit some sort of seizure. It is pathetic to watch. I stroke his head and say “Shhh. Shhh.” His body stills, and just like that he is dead. The world is cruel. I weep for my best friend, for that is truly what he was. He was always there for me, ever happy to see me. He didn’t care whether or not I was successful, whether or not I was a genius, whether or not I was African American. I feel I probably let him down. He was, in many ways, a better man than I, and I hope someday to learn from his example. Except for that snarling moment, which, to be frank, hurt my feelings, even though I understand there were perhaps extenuating circumstances and that, in the end, it wasn’t really about me. Hunger is a cruel mistress. I take a moment to consider his funerary urn. I have a collection of them (containing various family members and pets and three unclaimed bodies from the city morgue) on my bookshelf. I come from a family that favors cremation over ground burial, burial at sea, or shooting into space. I have always been the one with the artistic sensibility in my clan, so the choice of funerary urn ever falls to me, as I insist upon it.

I invite my funerary urn sculptor Olivier over for a consultation.

“What can you tell me about your pet donkey?”

“He was a dog.”

“In what sense?” he says, taking notes.

“The canine sense. In the sense that he was a dog.”

“And yet you name him after the most famous donkey in all of France? Pourquoi?”

“It is the third-best film of all time, the best French film of all time, the best animal film of all time, the sixth-best film about the Seven Deadly Sins, the fourth-best film of the sixties—”

“How can it be the third-best film of all time and the fourth-best film of the sixties?”

“I don’t tell you how to design funerary urns, Olivier.”

“Well, I found it très fastidieux.”

“Your cinema rankings are of little interest to me. I’d prefer to discuss my dog’s funerary urn.”

“Let me see … how best to pay tribute to a donkey who is a dog?”

I understand Olivier is mocking me, but I scan the urns on the shelf behind him and they are exquisite: a pewter wishing well, a bronze Adonis, a tiled men’s room complete with urinals, the cookie jar one, a magnificent crystal snowstorm that houses my uncle the meteorologist, the found-object pterodactyl, which is also a functioning fountain, each reflecting, with precision and grace, the personality of its occupant. My eyes come to rest on the singed donkey puppet from Ingo’s film and I am struck by a notion. Why not pay tribute to the ashes of Balthazar and those of Ingo’s film, both of indomitable spirit, both destroyed (some might say) by my actions. My daily reminder will be my penance. I propose to Olivier that the donkey puppet be incorporated into the urn. He studies the donkey, plays with it, moves its articulated limbs.

“I thought you don’t tell me how to design funerary urns,” he says, finally.

“Olivier, please don’t be difficult. I am grieving. Cannot you see that?”

He is silent for a long time, then:

“With a small motor in the base of the urn, I can make your donkey toy move.”

“What could it be made to do?” I ask.

“Dance, perhaps. March. Hang its head in grief. Supplicate.”

“Can it do all four?”

“That won’t be cheap.”

“Money is no object,” I say and call my sister.

I AM VISITING my editor Arvide in his office.

“I think I am still able to write the piece,” I tell him.

“For a film that no one can ever see,” he says.

“Yes. But I can re-create it.”

“A novelization?”

“Well, no. That’s offensive to me. I wouldn’t call it that.”

“I would.”

“Fine. I feel certain I could write it, Arvide, so ineradicable was the experience. If I can remember it.”

“I’ll be frank with you, B.—”

“Don’t be frank.”

“I do not believe there ever was a film.”

“There was. And it was the single most important film in the history of cinema.”

“See, that’s the part where I begin to doubt the veracity of—”

“Look,” I say and hold up my extant frame.

“What’s that?”

“An extant frame.”

Arvide takes it from me.

“Careful,” I say.

He studies it for a long while, then:

“I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

“A pivotal moment in the film. I’m guessing it’s when the lighting grid falls and fractures Molloy’s skull, sending him into a life-changing coma. I still don’t remember that part.”

“That makes no sense. And besides, I don’t see anything like what you just said.”

“Well, it’s obscured by the cloud of smoke from the cigarette of the best boy in the catwalk, from whose point of view (POV) the shot originates.”

“So I’m looking at cigarette smoke.”

“No! That’s the thing! Amazingly, it’s cotton wool. The effect was created with common cotton wool. The very type of cotton wool one might easily purchase at a chemist’s or the cotton wool store down the street.”

“The moment is obscured, is my point.”

“Intentionally so. What you don’t see in a film is as important as what you do see. Ask anyone.”

“Don’t lecture me. You’re not helping your cause.”

“Look at this,” I say, pulling the donkey urn from my man bag.

“Horse doll mounted on a box,” he says.

“It’s a donkey puppet. From the movie. He lived in the Giant’s house with the Giant, I believe. I believe there was a Giant. I might be confusing it with Shrek. Was there a Giant in Shrek?”

“Where’s his tail?”

“What? That’s neither here nor there. Look at the craftsmanship. The tail burned off. OK?”

“It’s a nice doll, but it does not get you what you want.”

“Then let me have Enchantment back.”

“That would not be fair to Dinsmore.”

“He’s utilizing my research.”

“You offered it to them to use.”

“Thon.”

“In any event—”

“If I can’t have Enchantment back, which I deserve, then let me write the Ingo piece. A novelization, as you said! It’s all in my head,” I say, tapping it. “A novelization it shall be!”

“I don’t know what the audience would be for a book outlining a nonexistent film.”

“Not only outlining it. Critiquing it. Explaining it. And it’s not nonexistent. It’s destroyed.”

“Who would want to read that? It’s not like you were the only person to see a lost Hitchcock film.”

“Hitchcock isn’t fit to suck Ingo’s dick.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know. I’m just … frustrated. Come on, Arvide, remember Harvard? Roomies forever!”

“That doesn’t apply here.”

“You owe me!”

“I owe you?”

“I’ve saved your ass so many times! Remember when you needed someone to do the piece ‘Swedish Hsi Dews’ on the Swedish palindromists for your Cinema of Scandinavia issue and you couldn’t find anyone in town who had even heard of them?”

“You asked me if that piece could be in the issue.”

“How could anyone even think to do a Cinema of Scandinavia and leave the palindromists out?”

“B., I can’t pay you for an analysis of a film no one will ever be able to watch.”

“I don’t want to take it elsewhere, Arvide, but I will.”

“It’s OK if you do. No hard feelings.”

“I’ll do it. I swear.”

“I understand. Godspeed.”

“What about college? Roommates? Remember when we said we would be brothers forever?”

“That wasn’t said.”

“I said it. And you nodded.”

“I really don’t recall nodding.”

“I wrote it down.”

I frantically search my man bag for the paper.

“Again: not proof.”

“You’ll be sorry when this comes out and changes the way we watch movies.”

“I’ll be very happy for you.”

“That’s such an asshole thing to say.”