Report from the Interior (12 page)

You are old enough to understand that Grant Williams, the actor who plays the shrinking man, has not grown smaller, that the effect has been created by a clever production designer who has built an enormous chair, a chair that could easily accommodate a twelve-foot giant, but the impact you feel is nevertheless wondrous and uncanny. There is nothing complicated about it, it is a simple matter of juggling scale, and yet the sensation of surprise and dislocation overwhelms you, thrills you, disturbs you, as if everything you have ever assumed about the physical world has been thrown abruptly into question.

Bit by bit, as you adjust to Carey’s diminished size, gradually feeling the oddness of it turn into something familiar, the action moves ahead. The story has indeed broken, and overnight Carey has become a national figure, the subject of magazine articles and television news reports, his house surrounded by journalists, gawkers, and camera crews, a once normal man transformed into a freak, a phenomenon, hounded so persistently that he can no longer go outside. His sole activity is writing, writing a book about his experiences, a journal that charts the progress of his condition, and you are amazed to see him in his little boy’s body working with a gigantic pencil, amazed by the immensity of the telephone receiver he holds in his hand, each visual trick continues to surprise you and move you, but what touches you even more is the portrait of Carey’s mental state, the tough, unsentimental depiction of a man on the verge of an emotional crack-up, for Carey cannot come to terms with what is happening to him, he will not accept it, and again and again he gives in to his rage, a madman crying out in bitterness, howling forth his contempt for the world, at times even turning on Louise, steadfast Louise, as patient and loving as ever, who still lives with the hope that the doctors will save him. Meanwhile, Carey continues to shrink. On October seventeenth, he is down to thirty-six and a half inches and weighs fifty-two pounds. He is in despair. Then, a sudden, miraculous turn. The medical center calls to tell him that the antitoxin is ready.

Tense, uncertain days as Dr. Silver injects Carey with the potential remedy, warning that there is just a fifty-fifty chance of success, but after a week of torment and waiting, Carey’s measurements continue to hold at thirty-six and a half inches and fifty-two pounds. An overjoyed Louise says, It’s over, Scott. You’re going to be all right … but when Carey asks Silver how long it will take for him to get back to normal, the doctor frowns, hesitates, and finally tells him that stopping the degenerative process of his disease is one thing, but reversing the process is quite another. Carey’s growth capacity is as limited as any adult’s, he says, and in order to help him any further, a whole new set of scientific problems will have to be overcome—meaning that Carey will most likely continue to be three feet tall for the rest of his life. They will go on working, the doctor says, they will push their knowledge as far as they can, and maybe, just maybe, the day will come when they have the answer, but at this point nothing is sure.

The news is both good and not good, then, and although you are disappointed that nothing more can be done for Carey, saddened that he will have to go on in this diminished state, another part of you is vastly relieved, for the shrinking of his body has been arrested, and you will not have to face the horror of watching him melt away into nothing. No one wants to be a midget, of course, but better that, you tell yourself, than to vanish into thin air.

Back home, Carey continues to brood. The worst might be over, but he is still struggling to come to terms with his condition, still angry, still unable to find the courage to act as a husband to Louise, and because he has withdrawn from her in his shame, he knows he is making her suffer, which only augments his own suffering. Louise, he says, so strong, so brave—what was I doing to her? I loathed myself as I never loathed any living creature! Unable to stand it anymore, he rushes out of the house one night, a grown man in his child’s body, still wearing his ridiculous, infantilizing sneakers, a lost and pathetic figure walking down the darkened streets of his neighborhood, not going anywhere in particular, just going for the sake of going. By and by, he comes upon a carnival, the noise and confusion of a honky-tonk fun fair. The noise draws him in, and once he enters the grounds, it isn’t long before he stops in front of the freak show.
Yes, sir, folks,
the barker is shouting,
it’s the big sideshow! See the Bearded Lady, the Snake Woman, the Alligator Boy! See all the freaks of nature!
Carey recoils in disgust, sweating and miserable, unable to watch anymore, and then slinks off to a nearby café, where he goes up to the counter and orders a cup of coffee. You note how tiny he looks in that setting, you register the grotesquely large size of the cup and saucer as he carries them over to a booth, you see his isolation in the midst of others, the unremitting pain of being who he is. Just moments after Carey sits down, however, someone approaches the booth, a pretty young woman, very pretty, in fact, who also happens to be carrying a cup of coffee—and is also tiny, also a midget. She asks if she can join him.

Your heart lifts when Carey does not send her away. He looks nonplussed, as if it had never occurred to him that there were other small people in the world besides himself, and yet, shy and awkward as he is with her at first, you also sense that he is intrigued by her, not only because she is beautiful to look at but because he knows he has found a
semblable, une soeur.
Her name is Clarice. Kind and affable, she slowly wears down Carey’s defensiveness with her friendly manner, they are settling into what promises to be a pleasant conversation, but then he tells her his full name, and she freezes. He didn’t have to do that, of course, he could have given her his first name only, or else have invented a false name, but he has done it on purpose because he wants her to know that he is the notorious shrinking man, for it is already clear to him—even if he doesn’t know it yet—that she is the one person he can confide in. Not understanding, Clarice delicately asks if he would rather be alone. No, no, that isn’t it, Carey says, he wants to talk to her, and suddenly she relaxes again, realizing she has misjudged him. The conversation continues, and bit by bit she tries to lead him into a new way of thinking about himself, explaining that being small is not the worst tragedy in the world, that even if they live among giants, the world can be a good place, and for people like them the sky is just as blue as it is for the others, the friends are just as warm, love is just as wonderful. Carey listens attentively, still dubious but at the same time wanting to believe her, and then she must be going, she can’t be late for her performance, and as he stands up to say good-bye to her, he asks if he can see her again. If you like, she says, and then she adds, looking into his eyes: You know, you’re taller than I am, Scott.

Cut to the living room of the house, where Carey is hard at work on his book. That night I got a grip on my life again, he says. I was telling the world of my experience, and with the telling it became easier.

You are beginning to feel encouraged. For the first time since the opening minutes of the film, something positive has happened, the ineluctable forces of disintegration have been reoriented toward acceptance and hope, and as you watch Carey immerse himself in the writing of his memoir, you prepare yourself for what could be an optimistic conclusion to the story, a possible happy ending. Carey will fall in love with little Clarice and live out the rest of his days as a contented midget. He and Louise will have to separate, of course, but his good and honorable wife will understand that marriage is no longer feasible for them, and they will part the best of friends, for Carey must now live among people of his own kind. That is the crucial point. He will no longer be alone, no longer feel that he has been cast out from society. He will belong, and in that belonging he will find fulfillment.

You cling to that view of Carey’s fate because of the voice-over narration, because the hero of the story is continuing to tell his story to the audience, and now that he is writing his book, you assume the words he is speaking are identical to the ones he has written. In your mind, the book has already been published (why else would he be using the past tense?), which could only mean that he has survived his horrific ordeal and is now living a normal life.

As the next scene begins, it appears that your prediction is about to come true, for there is Carey sitting on a park bench with Clarice, watching her read the manuscript of his book, and if the book has now been finished, if there are no more words to write, would that not seem to suggest that the shrinking part of
Shrinking Man
is finished as well?

Moved by what she has read, Clarice looks up and tells him what a fine job he has done. Carey takes hold of her hand. He wants her to know how much their meeting has meant to him, what an enormous difference it makes to be with
someone who understands,
to which she replies: You’re so much better now. They are a picture of two souls in harmony, a man and a woman reveling in a moment of serene companionship, and even if you are just ten years old, it is clear to you that they have fallen in love. All true, everything you have predicted is coming true, but then they stand up, and the joy in Carey’s face suddenly turns to alarm. Two weeks ago, he was taller than she was, but now (
horribile dictu
) he is shorter. It’s starting again! he shouts. It’s starting! He backs away from her in terror, in panicked revulsion, and then, without saying another word, turns around and starts to run.

This is the last thing you were expecting—a development so unexpected that you never even considered it as a possibility. You thought the antitoxin was infallible, that once it was shown to be effective, it would go on being effective forever, but now that its powers have been exhausted, what is there to look forward to but an agonizing plunge into the void? You brace yourself for something terrible, trying to imagine what will happen next, grimly struggling to accept the fact that all hope is gone now, but even though you think you are prepared for whatever it is that might come, the filmmakers are far ahead of you, and they begin the third and last part of the story with a startling leap forward in time, so far in advance of what your child’s imagination ever could have conceived that the wind is knocked out of you, and from that point on you will be gasping for air, struggling to breathe until the last moment of the film.

The next scene begins with a shot of Carey standing alone in a room. He is wearing what looks to be a loose-fitting pair of pajamas made of some coarse, homespun material, a strange costume, you feel, but not too strange to distract your attention from the furniture in the room, which is perfectly proportioned to the size of Carey’s body. He is no longer dwarfed by his surroundings, no longer out of place in a world that is too large for him, and this confuses you, for it is certain that he cannot have grown bigger since the last scene, which ended with the discovery that he was growing smaller again. And yet everything looks so normal, you say to yourself, as if all the elements of the physical environment have been put back into their proper balance. But how can things be normal when you have just been told they aren’t normal? A few moments later, the answer is given:

Because he is living in a dollhouse. Because he is no more than three inches tall.

Louise comes down the stairs, and her footsteps are thunderous, shaking Carey’s little house so violently that he has to cling to the banister to prevent himself from falling down. When she opens her mouth to speak, her voice is so loud that he covers his ears in pain. He steps out onto the balcony and scolds her for making such a racket, and you understand that he has lost his mind, that he has turned into a tyrant, that this ever-shrinking man rules over his wife with aggressive, ever more vicious acts of mental terrorism. Only I had the power to release her, he tells the audience—if I could find the courage to end my wretched existence. But each day I thought: Perhaps tomorrow. Tomorrow the doctors will save me.

Louise goes out to do some errands, and as she opens the door to make her exit, their pet cat slips into the house. The cat has already appeared in a number of earlier scenes, but Carey was larger then, too large for the cat to pose any threat to him, but now he has been reduced to the size of a mouse, and with Louise suddenly out of the picture, the film enters its final, excruciating act.

For the next half hour, you watch in a state of horrified wonder, marveling at each new trick of perspective, each new distortion of scale, the brutal assault of the cat to begin with, who attacks the dollhouse and sends Carey sprinting across the living room carpet, a thumb-sized man running for his life over a floor that resembles an immense barren field, an empty plain stretching for hundreds of yards all around him, the ferocious, Brobdingnagian cat in pursuit, yowling with the force of a dozen demented tigers, who manages to swipe Carey with his claws, ripping off part of his shirt and bloodying his back, but Carey leaps up onto a dangling electric cord, which is attached to the base of a table lamp, and when the lamp comes crashing to the floor, the cat is temporarily frightened off. Carey dashes toward the cellar door, another all-out run across the immense, barren plain of carpet, maneuvers himself behind the door to hide from the now-recovered cat, standing on the top step of the mountainous wooden staircase that leads to the cellar, and just when it looks as if he has wormed his way out of trouble, Louise returns to the house, a draft of air rushes through the room as she opens the front door, and the cellar door slams shut, banging into Carey and knocking him off balance. Without warning, he is suddenly pitching forward into empty space, falling headlong into the depths of the cellar, like a man who has been pushed off the roof of a twenty-story building.

He lands in a wooden crate filled with assorted bits of discarded junk—and (luckily) a thick pile of rags. The rags cushion the fall, but the impact is nevertheless jarring, he is stunned senseless, and some moments pass before he comes to. Meanwhile, upstairs in the living room, Louise has walked in on the disturbing spectacle of the wrecked dollhouse, the presence of the cat, and the absence of her husband. When she discovers the small bloodied fragment of Carey’s shirt lying on the floor, there is only one conclusion to be drawn. Grotesque and unthinkable as that conclusion might be, the chilling sight of the cat sitting in a corner licking his paws leaves no room for doubt in Louise’s mind. She moans in agony, unable to see her way past the evidence. Carey is dead. She has proof that Carey is dead, and before long the news will be reported on television, word of the tragic death of the shrinking man will be broadcast from one end of the country to the other, and Louise will retire to her bedroom in a state of nervous collapse.