Flying to America (3 page)

We filmed all this, for the film.

9 April

A brief exchange with Perpetua about revolutionary praxis.

“But I thought,” I said, “that there had been a sexual revolution and everybody could sleep with anybody who was a consenting adult.”

“In theory,” Perpetua said. “In theory. But sleeping with somebody also has a political dimension. One does not, for example go to bed with running dogs of imperialism.”

I thought: But who will care for and solace the running dogs of imperialism? Who will bring them their dog food, who will tuck the covers tight as they dream their imperialistic dreams?

“My group says I should not be associated with you or with the film,” Perpetua said. “They say you have no more political consciousness than a cat.”

“But that’s what the priests used to say. They said I had no more religion than a cat!”

“The group says you’re a skeptic.”

In truth I am a monster or ex-monster. But ex-monstrousness however hard won is not a position entitling one to ride the first elephant in this particular parade.

“I’ll work on it, Perpetua.”

12 April

Somebody knocked on my door (a rare event). I undid the various locks top to bottom — like unbuttoning a shirt. A man standing there. He handed me a business card.

L. J
OHN
S
ILVERMAN

A
TTORNEY-AT-
L
AW

“Did you want to see me?”

“Are you Mr. Rush?”

“Come in.”

Mr. Silverman was a large man with a red face who looked a great deal like the late Wallace Beery.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Silverman? Have a seat.”

“It’s about your picture,” Mr. Silverman said. “I represent some folks — a consortium, you might call it — who are very interested. The long and short of it is, we’d like to buy in.”

“Why?”

“From what we’ve heard you’re making a very peculiar picture. Idiosyncratic and kinky.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Not exactly.”

I thought: Isn’t consorting a crime?

Mr. Silverman leaned forward earnestly.

“You young filmmakers are the key to the whole situation today. The rest of the industry is arse over teacup.”

“Mr. Silverman, I can hardly be called a young filmmaker. I’m thirty-nine.”

“Don’t matter. Don’t matter. I hear your picture is solid gold.”

“I’m just shooting a lot of raw material right now.”

“The question is, will you let us come aboard?”

“I’d rather not, to be frank. Brewers’ Natural is handling the whole deal and our relations with them are a little delicate and I’d hate to rock the boat at this point.”

Mr. Silverman became agitated. He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a plastic vial containing yellow pills and popped one into his mouth without even asking for a glass of water. The pills were not hard to recognize — Valium, a tranquilizer I’ve often used myself.

“I know, I know,” Mr. Silverman said, catching my expression. “It’s a crutch.” Then, businesslike: “Mr. Rush, I just want to leave you with one thought.”

“One thought?”

“There’s such a thing as too much individualism.”

“There’s such a thing as too much individualism?”

“You’ll be hearing from us,” he said, and stomped from the room.

13 April

Then I, Thomas son of Titus, took thought with myself about what measures might be taken against the threat. I devised then in
my mind many fine punishments of the first water for anyone who might dare trifle with our enterprise in any way great or small. On the first day the trifler will be hung well wrapped with strong cords upside down from a flagpole at a height of twenty stories. On the second day the trifler will be turned right side up and rehung from the same staff, so as to empty the blood from his head and prepare him for the third day. On the third day the trifler will be unwrapped and attended by a licensed D.D.S., who will extract every tooth from the top part of his jaw and every other tooth from the bottom part of his jaw, the extractions to be mismatching according to the blueprint supplied. On the fourth day the trifler will be given hard things to eat. On the fifth day the trifler will be comforted with soft fine garments and flagons and the love of lithesome women so as to make the shock of the sixth day the more severe. On the sixth day the trifler will be confined alone in a small room with the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. On the seventh day the trifler will be pricked with nettles. On the eighth day the trifler will be slid naked down a thousand-foot razor blade to the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen. On the ninth day the trifler will be sewn together by children. On the tenth day . . .

14 April

Thinking about my father.

My father was a drinker, favoring vodka. Vodka is for people who wish to conceal their anger. Sometimes my father concealed his anger in the middle of the afternoon, mostly he concealed his anger around dinnertime. Once in a while at breakfast, when he concealed it in Minute Maid orange juice.

A banging on my door. I opened it. A little man was standing there. He handed me a folded piece of paper.

“What the hell is this?”

But the man was already scampering down the stairs.

I unfolded the paper. There was nothing on it except, in the center of the sheet, a black circle.

I had been tipped the black spot.

15 April

Today we photographed fear, a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, real or imagined.

I’m interested in fear not only for its own sweet sake but because it seems the one emotion among the emotions that presents itself pure, unmediated. One does not so much observe oneself experiencing fear as experience it directly.

Perpetua watching, sitting in a folding chair, hands in her lap. Her breasts hiding beneath the long gray gown. She has red hair!

We filmed the startle pattern — shrinking, blinking, all that. We did the sham-rage reaction and also “panting.” Mitch panted. Then we shot some stuff in which a primitive person (my bare arm as stand-in for the primitive person) kills an enemy by pointing a magic bone at him.

“O.K., who’s got the magic bone?”

The magic bone was brought. I pointed the magic bone and the actor playing the enemy fell to the ground. I had carefully explained to the actor that the magic bone would not really kill him, probably.

Then, the thrill of fear along the buttocks. We used a girl named Heidi for this sequence because her buttocks are the most beautiful I know. This was a silent bit so that everyone could talk as Heidi’s buttocks thrilled.

“Hope is the very sign of lack-of-happiness,” Heidi said, stomach down on the couch.

“Fame is a palliative for doubt,” I said.

“Wealth-formation is a source of fear for both winners and losers,” Ezra said.

“Civilization aims at making all good things available even to cowards,” said the actor who had played dead, quoting Nietzsche.

Perpetua said nothing. How can I persuade her to have a drink with me? She does her parts of the film (mostly disquisitions upon revolutionary tactics and the oppression of women) in a stern and serious and workmanlike manner and refuses to have a drink with me afterward.

I took the magic bone home with me. I don’t believe in it, exactly, but you never know.

17 April

Thinking about “Flying to America.” Will it really say what I want it to say?

A telephone call. The Bill Bones Forwarding Company. Mr. Bones speaking.

“Listen, Rush. You want to finish that picture?”

“Who is this?

“You got our message.”

“The black spot?”

“We want two hundred thousand.”

“You’re out of your mind. We don’t have that kind of money.”

“Put in to the bank for an overrun.”

“If the bank ever saw what I’m doing —”

A pause.

“You mean you’re ripping off the bank?”

“Not exactly.”

“O.K.,” Mr. Bones said patiently. “Put us on the picture as consultants.”

“Who is this?”

“L. J. Silverman Incorporated.”

“I thought you were Bill Bones Forwarding.”

“Bill Bones Forwarding is a subsidiary of Pew Associates, which is part of a conglomerate called L. J. Silverman Incorporated. Make the check out to L. J. Silverman but send it with a letter of transmittal to Bill Bones Forwarding. And a blind copy to Pew Associates. Ha ha.”

“Do I have any options?”

We considered this together.

“I don’t see any,” he said. “Do you? And I want to leave you with one thought.”

“I know,” I said. “There’s such a thing as . . .”

On the tenth day the trifler will be nibbled at by bald eagles. On the eleventh day . . .

Then I had a slosh and then another slosh and then another slosh. Then another slosh and another slosh and another slosh. A total of six, in a quarter of an hour. Then I skittered and skated and bounced and danced, in my mind, and felt myself kin to Zeus the immortal whose breath makes the waves mount even to the height of the mast of a tall ship and whose breath makes the dust of the earth leap up and form into whirlwinds and whose frown makes the high-reaching many-branched trees split asunder showing their marrow and whose frown makes the white-terrible snow rush from the mountaintops in house-destroying rushes and whose smile is never seen, but rather hid behind his hand, because it roasts the eyes. Then the mood changed and I felt not kin to Zeus the well-feared but rather myself, Thomas — Thomas the fuddled, Thomas of the putty spear, Thomas of the fell-short arrow, Thomas the kithless, Thomas of the gnashed teeth, Thomas the ricked wrenched twisted and maimed, Thomas the marrowless, Thomas the reduced, Thomas of the overdraft, Thomas of the last legs. I was, in fine, depressed.

I thought: Perhaps I drink too much?

20 April

Perpetua smiled at me today. Why?

I asked her if she wanted to have a drink after we finished shooting.

“Sure,” she said.

In the bar she asked: “Are you going to give them the money?”

“Who told you?”

“Ezra.”

“I don’t have the money.”

She thought about this. Then she said: “I like people who are struggling with dark malefic forces.”

25 April

No shooting for three days. It’s been raining and I don’t have any interiors scheduled. That is to say: No ideas.

I wanted to film everything but there are things we’re not getting.

The wild ass is in danger in Ethiopia — we’ve got nothing on that. We’ve got nothing on intellectual elitism funded out of public money, an important subject. We’ve got nothing on ball lightning and nothing on the National Grid and not a foot on the core-mantle problem, the problem of a looped economy, or the problem of praxis vs. theory. I wanted to get it all but there’s only so much time, so much energy. There’s an increasing resistance to antibiotics worldwide and liquid metal fast-breeder reactors are subject to swelling and a large proportion of Quakers are colorblind but our film will have not a shred of material on any of these matters.

Tonight I got rid of my rocking chair. It was a bentwood rocker made by Thonet in 18-something and of all the physical objects I once owned I liked it best. I had it recaned nineteen times. I carried it down the stairs and set it in front of the building and hurried back to the window of the apartment to see who the lucky legatee would be.

It was not two seconds before a young couple paused in front of my rocker. They could not believe their eyes, peered all about like thieves, and then were off down the street with it, the girl in front and the boy in back. Looking for all the world like a Siberian sleigh pursued by wolves.

26 April

A day of crises.

Then did the umbrage of the gods fall upon Thomas son of Titus, Thomas the unbuckled, Thomas the not-together, Thomas the weeper of night-weeps, Thomas the bald-someday. As when sacrifice is made incorrectly not according to custom, as when Father Zeus’ fair-wrought altar is affronted by a goat not fresh-killed but killed many days before and sending forth a foul odor, as when guests disposed about a feast board neglect to pour upon the ground the sweet-souled wine in offering to Athene, so calamities arose.

The crew festered and fought. Marty said he’d rather go to jail than work one more day on the film, and Mitch said the same thing vis-à-vis the asylum. Joan began sending things through the mail again — nude photographs of herself together with a spurious Annual
Report suggesting a considerable net worth. Marcello approached Ezra with a garrote in one hand and an oubliette in the other.

And Brewers’ Natural slapped a lien on the film.

They sent a lien officer around for the purpose. Ezra gave him a drink, and then another drink, and then many more drinks. But the lien officer had a head as clear as the decimal system, as clear as capitalism.