Earthly Powers (102 page)

       "You," M. Brochier the journalist said, "spoke on the Nazi radio. I do not consider it convenable for you to speak on this subject in connection with this film." He was a Marxist; Comrade Lazurkina was assured of his vote; he had evidently done his homework on his fellow jurors.

       "I am making an aesthetic judgment. My personal biography is totally irrelevant."

       All this had to be translated for Rayne Waters. She nodded in incomprehension and said, "Surely, surely."

       A screaming rock opera about Christ and Judas, with Judas a hero of progressive if simplistic politics, was adjudged genial. I condemned it for blasphemy and vulgarity, for the implication that Jesus and his betrayer were locked in homosexual lovehate—M. Brochier was ready again with his dossier: You did not feel it was blasphematory when you defended the poems of your friend in London. Your own proclaimed homosexuality is mondially known. You have what is called the double standard." Rayne Waters could be heard loudly whispering to her translatrix: "A fag? Who's a fag? He's a fag? My my."

       I did not, then, enjoy these sessions. Nor did I enjoy entering the vestibule of the Canton after them, hot and weary, to be assaulted by posters and stands taking orders for commercial pornography. Alon Schemen and I would escape to small dark bars and share a bottle of chilled wine of the province. He Was a plumply handsome man of forty, no wencher, devoted to unglamorous wife—1...        an children in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. He had made his world name in a singing film about dybbuks, based on a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, a very irritable Yiddish writer I had met in New York. He looked not unlike my idea of "Leopold Bloom," he said to me one early afternoon in a bar off the Croisette. "It's just been offered to me."

       "God," I said, "how astonishing. I was just thinking how absolutely—A film based on Ulysses? Sam Goldwyn wanted to do it, you know. Joyce wanted George Arliss for the part. But yes, you—It will make no money," I added.

       "I do not know the book, though I've heard of it. No, this is a Broadway musical called The Blooms of Dublin. Lublin I thought I heard, but, no, Dublin. I must learn an Irish accent."

       "A musical?"

       "They say The Cohens and the Kellys and Abie's Irish Rose were great successes. This they think could be the same. It will be good to be back on the stage. I think you know the man who is to write the music. I went to Menton to see him last Sunday evening. He played me one or two of the songs. How does this sound to you, if I can remember the words?" And he sang, drumming a Born da rara rhythm on the table: "Today It's the sixteenth of June today And from morning till moon the Hours to come Will add up to a humdrum Summer's day—"

       "You mean Campanati?"

       "Yes. Does that accent sound all right to you?"

       "So he's left off his Moog and backwards birdsong. Good. It will save his life. Not that it's worth saving."

       "The bridge goes 'Plenty of fleshly exposure Napes and strawberries are red Buttocky peaches in a basket Racing on at Ascot In the royal enclosure Ted' The words are not always easy to sing. A young New York man is writing them, Sid Tarnhelm. The accent is right?"

       "The accent's fine. Now we have to go and see this Peruvian horror."

       In the vestibule of the Palais I saw my West Coast agent, just arrived, in a magenta shirt with a montage of Greek heroes in profile. His keen agential eyes were hidden from the Côte d'Azur by dark glasses that were also the new insolent golden mirrors to be favoured by him who was soon to enter my life. The parrot beak sat ill between the jowls. His name was, even now hard to accept, Lev Trapeze. He said, arms out, "Ken, baby. You look beautiful."

       "Old," I said.

       "Yeah, but only the old are beautiful. You think about that, kid," he said to the exquisite leggy brunette nonentity in linen shorts beside him. And to me, "They took up the final option on that Heracles thing."

       "Socrates?"

       "That's the one. Principal photography starts in the fall. A guy called Wrigley did the script."

       "Oh my dear God."

       "This Greek guy called Lilliputtopiss or some shit like that, they have the weirdest names, he's playing the lead. Very mysterious money in it, Ken baby, but their check ain't no condom, like they say. You going in there?"

       "I have to. C'est le boulot."

       "Paedophilia Productions they're called now. Philadelphia? I ask them. Then they spell it out. Where's that? I ask them."

       "Oh my dear God."

       "What is this movie now? Is it the one with Bardot naked and the performing seals?"

       "This is Peruvian. Peruvian and seals have something in common. Think about it, Lev. So long."

       Next morning we watched the Quebec entry, Et Patati et Patata. The French jurors protested that they could understand neither the Canadian French dialogue nor the English subtitles. I raged at them and said: Christ, it's only eighteenth-century Norman. The projection was intermitted while a simultaneous translator was sought. Finally I did the job myself. With a parched mouth and thuds in my skull I tottered into the Carlton vestibule at lunchtime: the posters (REAL! NOW! FOR THE FIRST AND LAST TIME!) hurt my eyes. A limp hand touched my sleeve. The face looked familiar. I frowned at it.

       "Bucolo," he said. "Jimmy Bucolo. Professor Bucolo. You know me."

       "You," I said, "are supposed to be in Africa."

       "Could we talk? Alone?" He was in a dirty beige tropical suit and his face and head were so wet with sweat that it was as though he had been dunking em for a hangover. "Alone," he said, "like me, alone. I came back alone, you can see that. Nairobi to Casablanca via El Obeid, Murzuq and Tuggurt. I telephoned from Casablanca and they said where you were. It's been a long trip but I had the money, you gave it. I booked one way for all of us, I might have known." All this was spoken manically. Passersby in the vestibule frowned or grinned at the ham actor demonstrating a role: this was not the place, this was strictly for commerce not art. I felt cold and my head cleared of its ache. I led Bucolo to the elevator, "I've these bags," he said. "A lot of luggage." I signalled to the porter's desk.

       Up in my sitting room I poured whisky into him. He sat hunched and thin and ill and haunted. He could not take the whisky. His face bulged, he got up and staggered, looking for a place to throw up. I pointed, he ran tottering. I sat trying to take in the news. The evidence he had placed on the round glass-topped table seemed irrelevant to anything I was able to, meaning wished to be able to or perhaps unable to, believe. Two certificates headed REPUBLIK RUKWANI with a crouching leopard, the subheading Sertifikit Kijo, the two names and the numbers of two passports, as though for the immigration control of the next world; a Bank of America credit card; John's notebook. Bucolo came back and flopped on the couch facing me. He was not far from total breakdown.

       He said, "There's no need to look at me like that."

       "How am I looking at you?"

       "As if I should have gone with them. But I gave up the faith, you see. Reaction to my brother, my father and mother liked him better than me, he became a priest. It's not uncommon in families, you know that. I don't go to mass any more. Besides, I'd had to go to Morogo, you see, to see the snake ceremony. It was safe enough for them, you see, everybody said that. It was just a matter of a few miles in the Land Rover. A real paved road, you know, and open country a couple of abandoned shantytowns and some scrub before they got to the new village. And everybody said that the terrorists had been contained, you see that. Shinya had been executed publicly. By firing squad. Near total pacification." He started to laugh.

       "Stop that stop that now for Christ's sake. What terrorists, what are you talking about?" He went on laughing, showing brown teeth. I slapped him. He stopped.

       "Thanks. Thanks very much. Thank you very much, that was the right thing to do, thank you. It's Mbolo's party really, but they put Mbolo in jail and they want Mbolo out of jail. They'll kill anybody, but whites are best, Africa for the Africans, you see that. They're still killing but it was put out about total pacification, you know. Containment, you see that."

       "You saw, you saw—"

       "I saw them, I had to identify, you see that. I saw the faces, the bodies were covered, they didn't want me to see the bodies. Damu damu this man kept saying in Swahili, that means blood. Robbed of everything, clothes, watches, money, everything. Except passports, they didn't want the passports. There's a man representing the United States who came in from Kipila, an honorary Consul, you see, black of course. He took the passports. They were given a proper burial, taken to the Christian graveyard in Kilwa Kivinje, that's outside the territory, you know. There was a black Catholic priest did the ceremony, you see that."

       "Let me get this clear," I said. "They were going to mass and they met a roadblock near a shantytown and then the terrorists got them. This was in broad daylight?"

       "No, night, night, you see, they were going to a night mass, they always have mass at night. If they hadn't been going to mass, if they'd lost the faith like me—You see that."

       "John had as good as lost it. He got it back through Laura. Oh Christ, I got Laura there."

       "You got us all there. But you mustn't blame yourself, blame the badness in these bastards, that's all, it could have happened any time any place. There's only Laura, yes, she wouldn't have gone if it hadn't been for ... but it could have happened some place else some time else."

       "Black bastards," I said, "black filthy bastards. What did fucking bad filthy Ralph do about it, eh, Africa for the filthy fucking Africans, cut the white man's balls off. You didn't see the bodies, no, you said that, no, you didn't."

       "They wouldn't let me see them, only the faces, you see that. I think the bodies must have been cut up. They don't have guns, they have the kisu and the sikkin. Can I have some hot tea with mint? It's the only thing that stops my stomach churning. I'd appreciate it if you ... if you...

       "You can have tea but no mint. This isn't North Africa. The French don't go in for mint. I'll order some for you. Then I have to go. I have to watch a film."

       "You have to what? You have to what? You mean you could after what I, you mean you could ..." Old Mulberry Street proprieties were being outraged. "Christ, to go to a movie."

       I telephoned for tea for him. "The job goes on," I said. "I said I'd do the job and I'm doing it. What do you propose to do?"

       "I'll rest here if you'll let me. Stay the night if it's no bother. Then I can see about getting back home from Nice. I'll leave their things with you. These." He made hand movements at two of the bags. "When I get back I'll get down to telephoning to St. Louis. You can give the news to John's mother."

       Why me? And what do I want with this dead luggage?"

       He opened his mouth at my hardness of tone. "You're his uncle. His nearest relative. I mean nearest in space. I mean, the same continent, though you're in Europe now, I see that. I mean, what the hell can I do, send a cable saying: John dead?"

       "You'll be flying to New York. Give her the news in person."

       "I can't I can't I can't."

       "All right," I said sighing. "I've missed lunch. I have to grab a sandwich or something. At the bar downstairs. You stay here. Rest. Would you like a sleeping tablet?"

       "I have some of my own. They only bring bad dreams. I can't sleep. I'll just lie down here if it's all right with you. Oh Christ, my stomach." But it was his belly he grasped.

       The film I had to see that afternoon was an ill-made Brazilian feature entitled Os Cidaddos, all about low life in Rio, with a norm of gratuitous violence in gaudy psittacine colours. I heard the French journalists saying "genial" whenever a particularly gross cinematic cliché presented itself. I saw the violent killing of John and Laura very clearly in my own inner projection room. It became part of some other film full of outrage in exotic settings, it was half-cleansed to bad art, it was a help, it would in time become an abomination I had been forced to look at as juror at Cannes, title and plot forgotten, that one scene enacted with terrifying conviction but still a cliché, genial. When we staggered out into the huge marine light after the cosy dark shot with screams and stripped bodies, I knew what I had to do.

       I went back to my suite at the Carlton to find Bucolo at the escritoire scribbling madly. He looked at me with demented brightness to say, "I'm doing it. I'm writing letters. I'm telling them all about it."

       "To John's mother too?"

       "I got to. It's my duty. I was head of the team."

       "Don't. I'm seeing about that now." I looked up Domenico in the Alpes Maritimes telephone directory—boulevard Garavan 22—and then ordered a car to take me to Menton. "I'm going," I said, "to see John's father."

       "You mean his real father? You've found his real father?"

       "What the hell do you mean, real father? There are no real fathers, only legal ones. Mothers are different, mothers are all too real."

       "So I don't have to write?"

       "Later, very much later."

       It was a gorgeous early evening, ideal for a coastal spin. The uniformed chauffeur was inclined to talk, making much play with his heavy shoulders and short thick neck. He was a devotee of the cinema, the Cannes festival cared not a turd for art, only for the commerce of the flesh, look at these would-be vedettes thrusting their naked bellies out at the world, being laid by fat Arabian Jews. We sped through Monaco, which he castigated as a principality made rich on human weakness, did I know the book by Dostoevsky about the agonies of a gambler, that would make a great film. At length he dropped me on boulevard Caravan in Menton, which town, he told me, the Italians called Mentone and claimed as their own. Was he to wait? Yes, he was to wait. I could have found Domenico's third-floor apartment blindfolded. It was a matter of climbing as far as a loud composition made up of birds, glissandos and electronic ostinati and then knocking at it. At my knock the noise left off. Domenico opened up. He looked terrible. He was old, though some years younger than myself, but he was far gone in decrepitude. He was in dirty white like a Conrad character going to pieces in the tropics, his belly was huge, he was totally bald, he was leaning heavily on two thick sticks. I had not seen him since that bad time at La Scala. He seemed prepared to fend me off with his right hand stick. "All right, all right, Domenico," I said, "I come in peace."