Purgatory (23 page)

Welles stared at him, incredulous. ‘In the papers I have here it says that there are magicians in your country, Charlie, illusionists . . . is that true? As you know I am more of an illusionist than a director.' Dupuy had been advised that Welles had recently released a film about forgery and magic,
F for Fake
. He had a copy in the screening room at
La República
, but had not had time to watch it. ‘You want to film magicians?' Dupuy was surprised. ‘No problem,' he said, ‘there are lots of them in Argentina. I'll make sure you have everything you need.' ‘Listen to me, Charlie, I read in here' – Welles once again placed his huge hand on the files piled on the table – ‘the magicians in your government make people in the streets disappear.' Dupuy began to panic. ‘Who told you that? They're lies. Argentina has been the victim of a vicious smear campaign, a tissue of lies put about by subversive terrorists. Nobody is disappearing. There would be no need for you to address the matter in your film. We would prefer to show that ours is a peace-loving country and that our people are happy. We need to think positively, Orsten.' He did not like this turn of the conversation, it was going off-track, and the longer it went on, the more difficult it would be to rectify. He needed to stop it before he or Welles lost their patience. He had been about to ask Welles to name his price. He restrained himself. The director was more astute and more refined than the intelligence services.

‘Maybe we can come to a deal, Charlie,' said Welles. ‘As you probably know, many years ago I caused a panic in this country with a radio programme. I convinced two million people that Martians were invading New Jersey. People rushed out into the streets, crazed with terror. Art is illusion, Charlie, reality is illusion. Things exist only when we see them; in fact, you might say they are created by your senses. But what happens when this thing that doesn't exist looks up and stares back at you? It ceases to be a something, it reveals its existence, rebels, it is a someone with density, with intensity. You cannot make that someone disappear because you might disappear too. Human beings are not illusions, Charlie. They are stories, memories, we are God's imaginings just as God is our imagining. Erase a single point on that infinite line and you erase the whole line and we might all tumble into that black hole. Be careful, Charlie.' Dupuy was confused, he couldn't see what Welles was driving at. If he didn't like the project, why didn't he just say? There was no need to beat about the bush.

An icy wind whipped across the terrace. The director had a large black cloak and a scarf next to him, but he did not even look at them. He seemed impervious to the wind, to the gathering darkness, to the rusty December leaves that went on falling. He called for another whisky. ‘More than twenty years ago, I was asked to direct a documentary about Babe Ruth,' he said. ‘You know who Babe Ruth was? A baseball legend the like of which has never been seen since. I didn't like baseball, I'd never seen Babe in his glory days, but people worshipped him and I was interested in recording that idolisation on film. I took on the project and went to work. We shot a few scenes with him. He was a very sick man by then, throat cancer, so obviously he couldn't talk much. I convinced the producers that we would invent Babe, that we would create a life for him. I wanted to show him shaking Roosevelt's hand, touching Marlene Dietrich's legs, playing dice with Gary Cooper. In cinema, you can create any reality you want, imagine things that don't yet exist, freeze some moment in the past and move to a point in the future; the football matches can be reflected in anything, Charlie, they're just smoke and air, the stadiums can be filled with crowds using special effects. Maybe we can come to some arrangement. Let's make this documentary of yours, but there is no World Cup, there are no players, no football matches. There's only magic. You stop seeing, you stop talking and everything disappears. It would be a great metaphor for your country.

‘Charlie, take off your watch and give it to me for a minute,' said Welles. It was a $20,000 Patek Philippe. Welles held it in front of his eyes and told Dupuy to pay careful attention. Then he threw it on the ground and stamped on it. The inner workings of the watch went flying everywhere. The doctor was speechless. ‘Don't worry, Charlie,' said Welles, ‘you'll get it back. It will be identical to the watch you had before, but it won't be the same because we have to pluck it from the unreality where it is now. Stamping on the watch did it no damage, but in the seconds that have passed since you gave it to me, the watch has been transformed. Here you are, Charlie.' The director opened his fist and the Patek Philippe reappeared exactly as it had been before he threw it on the ground, or at least it seemed to be. Welles had recovered his good humour and Dupuy his hopes. He was not going to go back to Buenos Aires empty-handed, but now he was not sure that entrusting the documentary to Welles was a good idea. He felt that he was dealing with a madman.

‘Orsten, could you explain a little more?' he said. ‘Talk to me about the documentary. What do you think of the opening shots, the sky, the birds, the microphone?'

‘Maybe,' said Welles. ‘What's next?'

Dupuy unfolded the speech he had written during the long flight and began to read. ‘In the film, it will be your voice, Orsten. It's in Spanish, but I'll have it translated for you. “My name is Orson Welles, I'm speaking from the River Plate Monumental Stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We share the excitement of this righteous, humane country, one of whose greatest feats had been to organise and host the 1978 World Cup, defying the sceptics who said, ‘They'll never succeed.' Here, stadiums, motorways and airports have been built in record time. Here, the people love life and live in peace.” What do you think, Orsten?'

‘It's not my style, Charlie, it's too eloquent. Get Robert Mitchum to read it. He has a more compelling voice.'

‘Whatever you say, Orsten,' said Dupuy. ‘We'll hire Mitchum, whatever it costs.'

‘How much were you thinking of spending, Charlie?'

‘Whatever we need to. The budget for the World Cup is four hundred million dollars. We could put fifty or sixty million towards the film, whatever you need.'

‘Don't be so extravagant, Charlie. The documentary I have in mind is going to cost you two million tops. Most of the budget will be spent on tricks, special effects, editing. There's no need for stadiums, players, crowds. What we are going to create is illusion. Like in the radio play with the Martians. No political speeches, no patriotic eulogies, I don't do that kind of thing.'

Dupuy was more confused than ever by Welles. How was he planning to make a World Cup documentary without the World Cup taking place? The trick with the Patek Philippe proved that the director was a master of illusion, that he could confound millions as he had confounded Dupuy. But I'm a rational man, thought Dupuy, I'm not about to sell the
comandantes
hot air. I need something solid, I need to know what this necromancer is getting at. Maybe what he's thinking of is even more majestic than Albert Speer's imperial Berlin in
Olympia
, maybe he wants to make a film as ineffable as the Great Mass in C minor by Mozart, an intangible glory, pure sound, maybe we need to think in terms like that. ‘Orsten,' he said, ‘as you know, there can't be a World Cup without an audience. Millions of people in hundreds of countries watch the matches on television. We have to show the pitch, the stands, the fans cheering the goals. We can't have people screaming
gooooooal
if there are no goals. These are serious people. They're not actors.'

Welles's demeanour did not change. ‘The more we talk the less you seem to understand, Charlie,' he said. ‘The matches will be broadcast on television, but that doesn't mean there have to be any matches. People believe something happens when they are told that it's happening. Did you believe I broke your watch?'

‘Of course, Orsten. I saw it with my own eyes.'

‘But I didn't break it, Charlie. It was an illusion. It never left my hand. Cinema is that same magic raised to the highest power. In your country, Charlie, magic is possible: Martians, the apocalypse, prophets walking on water. Your people believe in all these things, even those that don't exist.'

‘That's not how it is, Orsten. In Argentina, people want to hear El Gordo Muñoz
¹⁹
commentating on the matches, cheering the goals. What is a sports commentator supposed to do if there are no matches, no goals?'

‘Charlie, a truly great presenter can make and unmake reality as it suits him. Do you really think that this guy Muñoz has never imagined games, missed shots, fouls? He's seen thousands of football matches in his life. All he needs to do is take the best, the most exciting moments. And if he allows his imagination free rein, he could create unforgettable matches, games that no one could ever play. I'll make a deal with you, Charlie. I'll bring my magic to this documentary, you pay me with your magic.'

‘I still don't understand, Orsten.'

‘You don't understand, Charlie? I make the film for you for free, with the best World Cup anyone's ever seen, and you and your generals will make the disappeared appear.'

Dupuy stalked out of the house indignantly. In the distance, the lights of Los Angeles looked like fireflies. Sullenly, he contemplated the tree-lined streets, the downtown skyscrapers, the glittering bars. In some dark corner of the city, he thought, Argentinian extremists were hiding. They had injected their poison into the files Welles had piled on his table and flicked through from time to time. It had to be them, he was sure of it, there were cockroaches scuttling everywhere. The World Cup would shut them up, it would wipe them forever from every map, condemn them to perpetual disappearance.

 

The following night he took the flight back to Buenos Aires. He was no longer interested in Welles now. He would make the documentary with another director and personally instil the spirit of Riefenstahl into whomever he chose. He would get someone like Mitchum on board, that would be easy. The trip had been useful if only for the fact that it had confirmed that reality is a creation of the senses, something men had known for centuries but constantly forgot. There are no disappeared in this country, the Eel would say, no one is disappearing, and under the spell of his insipid voice everyone denied the obvious; and the more people were disappeared into non-existent dungeons, the less their absence was noticed. I'll bombard the
comandantes
' offices with new ideas, thought Dupuy, I'll suggest they persuade the people to see the World Cup as something more than just football. They need to think of their team not just as eleven players against another eleven players, but to consider every match as a fight to the death between two countries, between the flag they worship and the flags of foreign countries. We'll need to come up with images, metaphors, he thought. That was what Welles had said, and though the director would not have liked the idea, in this they were in agreement.

In less than a month, it will be New Year. That would be an ideal opportunity to test the credulity of people, to see just how effective Orson Welles's illusions could be. He asked two like-minded journalists to meet him in his office and asked them if they could dress up as Joseph, a carpenter, and his wife, the Virgin Mary. The investigation would take them two days, writing it would take another two. No,
La República
would not publish the article: it would be circulated only among the elite. He would take charge of placing it with a magazine that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and ensure they were well paid. The fake Virgin Mary was to improvise the clothes they needed to wear and write dialogue for them. He would have to approve the text, it was a confidential matter. That night, the woman rang his doorbell. Her hair was covered by a blue shawl and she was wearing a loose white dress and crude sandals. She had padded herself and looked to be seven or eight months pregnant. Dupuy showed her into his study and offered her a glass of water or fruit juice. ‘I'd prefer a whisky,' she said. She took off the shawl and draped it over an armchair. She showed him photographs of Joseph wearing coarse canvas trousers and a dark shirt and sandals. He was growing out his beard. ‘This is what we're going to say: “I'm María, a housewife, and this is my husband José, he's a carpenter. We're expecting a baby on December the 24th. Joseph is unemployed. Could you help us?” ' ‘The beard is good,' said the doctor, ‘but I think it would be better if you didn't wear the shawl. You need to be less obvious, to challenge reality, instil the symbolism in the minds of the readers, don't you think? The dialogue is good. And José can carry a carpenter's tool of some sort, a ruler, a saw so people don't think he's a tramp.' ‘Don't worry, Doctor,' the woman said, and finished the glass of whisky before she left.

José came to see him a week later. ‘We're exhausted,' he said. ‘We've been to Victoria, to Carapachay, to the railway works in Remedios de Escalada, and having failed there, we tried our luck in Córdoba. We were turned away everywhere we went. The place where they treated us best was a filthy dive bar – they gave us food, rancid cheese and stale bread. There were two drunks in the bar who made fun of María. “So you're going to give birth on the 24th, on Christmas Eve? Who do you think you are, the Virgin? I could easily believe you're a virgin, you fat fuck. Get out of here.” María, who's a devout Catholic, said, “God forgive you, how could you take me for Our Lady?” and that's when things went sour. I couldn't convince her to stay. I finished the article myself and have brought it to you, Doctor, just to fulfil our obligations.' ‘Does the article explain everything exactly as it happened?' asked Dupuy. ‘Word for word,' said José. ‘Neither of you understands anything. Go back and write it again. Write about people being helpful, say they invited you to eat with them, offered you work, gave you clothes for the baby. I've already earmarked seven pages in the magazine for the piece. Just because you failed in reality doesn't mean I have to fail.'