The Man In The Seventh Row (22 page)

Leon sticks his hand into an icy cold tank in the laboratory where they make replicants' eyes. He is with the replicant leader, a powerfully built man – robot – with strong Germanic features, very light blond hair and blue eyes. The replicant leader is played by the Dutch actor Rutger Hauer. Never again would Hauer have such a memorable part, except maybe the Guinness adverts.

'Fiery the angels fell,' he says. 'Deep thunder rode around their shores, burning with the fires of Orc.'

Jon had quoted poetry at Anna all the time, but when Hauer quotes poetry it has a quite different effect, creating an atmosphere not of intellectual snobbery, but of threat and dread, of imminent apocalypse. Anna hears Roy say the words, under his breath, along with Hauer.

'Who is it?' she whispers.

'Blake,' he replies.

Rachael goes to Deckard's apartment. She has a photograph of herself with her mother to prove she is not a replicant. But Deckard knows her most secret memories, except they are not her memories, they are Tyrell's niece's memories. Deckard shoots one replicant, Zhora, in the back and has to be rescued from Leon by Rachael. She shoots Leon.

Anna imagines the replicant leader is played by Roy. Earlier she had felt she could imagine him in Harrison Ford's role, but this is different. She feels he is much better suited to Rutger Hauer's role somehow. She can see Roy up there on the screen, slightly smaller than Rutger Hauer, but not dissimilar. The only great role Hauer ever had and Roy is taking it away from him. They have the same blue eyes. They have similar blond
hair. They have the same lines of dialogue. To begin with.

Somewhere inside the womb of the futuristic Mayan pyramid the replicant leader meets Tyrell.

'And Tyrell created man,' Anna imagines she hears Roy tell Tyrell. She finds it difficult to concentrate on the film on the screen, while a slightly different movie plays in her mind.

'But you got it wrong,' Roy says. 'Four years is not enough. I want my three score years and ten.'

Tyrell tells Roy in great scientific detail, involving
DNA
, mutation and virus, why he cannot extend Roy's life.

'The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long,' says Tyrell. 'And you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.'

Roy places his hands upon Tyrell's eyes and squeezes.

'Fiery the angels fell,' Roy murmurs in the seventh row.

'Fiery the angels fell,' Roy says on the screen.

Anna knows Roy never said that in the film, not at that point anyway, not when she saw it with Jon, not when she saw the director's cut with Brad. A shiver runs down her spine as she remembers the scene missed, the clue she missed when Roy suggested a Coca-Cola. Of course. Of course.

23

Roy cut down on wine and eating out and saved his wages, £50 some months, £100 in good months. Rosebud cut down on comics and eating sweeties and saved her pocket money, 50p some months, a pound in exceptional months. They had been saving to go to Hollywood, 'the country where the films come from', ever since Roy started taking Rosebud to the pictures. Yes, she would see Dorothy and Eaty, he told her rashly, though he knew nothing about what they might see in America other than the famous Disneyland rides.

In the summer of '95 they got a train from Edinburgh to London, spent a couple of days with Roy's brother, then flew right through the night to
LA
. They watched films and cartoons on the individual
TV
screens built into the back of the headrests in front and Rosebud looked out of the window at the stars. She was looking forward to seeing her 'little brown friend' and Roy was looking forward to a fortnight in the exclusive company of his daughter for the first time. Roy had been talking about going to Hollywood with Rosebud for years, but, when it finally came to making the arrangements, Jo started questioning whether Roy could look after her for a fortnight on his own. Jo worried about crime, muggings and rape. Roy asked her which one of them she thought would get raped.

'The plane might crash,' she said, 'or there might be a bomb on it.'

'The chances of there being a bomb on it are a million to one against,' said Roy. 'So if I took a bomb with us, the chances of there being another bomb on it would be a million times a million to one against. So that's what we'll do then.'

'That's not funny,' she said.

'We've more chance of being struck by lightning than being blown up in mid-air.'

'There might be an earthquake. Los Angeles is famous for earthquakes.'

'We'll be alright then, if we're in a plane at the time, won't we?'

'Look after my baby,' Jo said when she came to the station to see them off, tears in her eyes, 'and phone home.'

'Phone home,' droned Rosebud, holding up her
ET
doll, and making it wave one hand.

They stayed in the Roosevelt Hotel opposite the Chinese Theatre, where they saw the famous footprints and hand prints. They went to the Movieland Wax Museum, where Rosebud posed for a photograph beside Dorothy, the tin man, the lion and the scarecrow, while tunelessly singing the opening lines of 'Over the Rainbow' and throwing her arms wide to express her joy.

Rosebud looked for all the world like the star of the show, with her colourful, costumed chorus line behind her. Dorothy and co were among the better likenesses. Poor George C. Scott looked like he had been replaced by some unknown in
Patton
. Rosebud photographed her father beside Laurel and Hardy, but the end-result was another fine mess. The tin man didn't have a heart, the lion didn't have any courage and the scarecrow didn't have a brain, but at least they all had heads; Roy, Stan and Ollie did not have a head between them in Rosebud's photograph. Roy kept it anyway.

They went to Disneyland at Anaheim, stayed in the Holiday Inn and gorged themselves at breakfast on blueberry muffins and pancakes with maple syrup, enough to keep them going throughout the day. While others queued for the excitement of Splash Mountain, Roy and Rosebud stood in line for a brief audience with Minnie Mouse in her little house in Toontown, where all the houses looked like they had been made from Technicolor jelly. Roy and Rosebud swirled around in giant teacups at the Mad Hatter's tea party, joined the Pinnochio ride to Pleasure Island, sailed in Captain Nemo's submarine and Mark Twain's riverboat. They took a raft to Tom Sawyer Island, where they ate the fruit they had kept from breakfast time, and they were scared by the noisy Pirates of the Caribbean. Roy kept rememberin
g Jeff Goldblum's best line in
Jurassic Park
, in response to Dickie Attenborough's comparison between Jurassic Park's problems and teething troubles at Disneyland. Goldblum pointed out that when the Pirates of the Caribbean broke down they didn't eat the visitors.

'It's a Small World' was a boat ride that was more to Rosebud's taste, a long, slow ride that seemed to take in every nation on the globe. Roy could not shake the repetitive little theme tune from his head.

But what Rosebud looked forward to most eagerly was seeing
ET
at Universal Studios.

'Eaty,' squealed Rosebud at the sight of the little creature shrouded in a white blanket in the basket at the front of a ride designed to look like individual bicycles.

'It's like being in the film,' said Rosebud as they started through the dark pine forest on their bikes. Lights flashed. A vehicle screeched to a halt. With a scream of delight from Rosebud, the bicycles took to the air over the forest and over the lights of the city of Los Angeles, beyond the end of the movie, accompanying
ET
over the rainbow through constellations of twinkling stars.

'It's like in the aeroplane,' said Rosebud.

They flew through the stars to
ET
's home planet, where his special powers and glowing finger are needed to save the world and revive his friends, who are seriously peeky, probably after getting the bill for all his reverse-charge phone calls.

'Look Eaty,' said Rosebud to the cuddly toy in her lap, 'all your little friends'.

ET
saves the planet and his friends sing and dance in jubilation. Roy wondered if
ET
was bringing them any of the beer he had enjoyed during his holiday in
LA
, though they didn't seem to need it, they seemed to have their own stimulants.
ET
thanked Roy and Rosebud by name when they got off the ride.

'Again, again, let's do it again,' said Rosebud. And they did it again. And again. And again. All day. Not for Rosebud the state-of-the-art
Back to the Future
virtual ride. It left Roy slightly motion-sick and Rosebud decidedly bored. She wanted to see
ET
again. It was all Roy could do to get her to go on the studio tour tram. But earthquakes and flash floods did not compare with
ET
. It was Roy that jumped when the bus drove alongside a stretch of water and a shark came jumping out of it right beside his open window.

'Can we see Eaty again now?' asked Rosebud, as if she had just been humouring Roy by taking him on other rides.

Rosebud splashed around in her bath at the Roosevelt Hotel that night while Roy lay on his bed sipping a Budweiser in a frosted glass, surfing the television channels until he settled on a report about the forthcoming Oscars, suggesting it was a two-horse race between
Forrest Gump
and
Pulp Fiction
. He hoped John Travolta might at least win the best actor award. Suddenly he was aware of a little figure in the doorway wrapped all in white, just like
ET
, with only a little, mischievous brown face showing.

'Phone home,' she droned, as she had done at the station. Rosebud did a great
ET
impression. So they phoned home.

'Mummy, Dada took me to where they make the films, and we saw Eaty, and we were on a bicycle that flew over the trees, and it was just like the film, but different, because it didn't stop where the film stopped, and we kept going past the stars to where Eaty lives and ...'

They were happy days for Rosebud and Roy. He wound up and played her 'Singin' in the Rain' musicbox while she prattled endlessly and expensively on the phone.

24

Deckard jumps but he does not quite make it. He clings desperately to the edge of the building, his grip loosening all the time. The street is far below him. Deckard must kill the replicant, the replicant Anna imagines is played by Roy Batty, the man sitting next to her in the seventh row of Mann's Chinese Theatre; kill him or be killed by him.

Roy is stronger, but it seems he is dying. His right hand is knotting up, twisting involuntarily into a fist. He grimaces as he sticks a nail through the palm of the hand.

'Damn this rheumatoid arthritis,' he says. 'My grandfather had it too. Couldn't play snooker in the end.'

And he lets out a demonic exclamation 'Ha,' that is both a laugh and a cry. Deckard carried a gun, but he lost it. Roy carries a white dove. Vangelis's melancholy, contemplative music plays. Roy leaps over the top of Deckard and lands safely on the roof. He is almost naked, his body shiny in the rain.

What does it mean? Anna asks herself. This man beside her who was an archaeologist like Indiana Jones and ... and ...

'I've seen things,' Roy says to Deckard, with a certain relish, 'that you wouldn't believe. I've seen sharks as old as the dinosaurs, swimming in the sea as close to me as you, with rows of teeth like the nail in my palm. I've seen a man's head cut clean from his body with a machete in Africa. I've seen Orson Welles play an old man in
Citizen Kane
, I've seen George Best play football for Hibs and I've seen Glen Campbell play 'Amazing Grace' on the bagpipes. I've seen the sublime and the ridiculous. I've seen life and I've seen death. I was there.'

Deckard squirms as his fingers struggle to keep a grip on the ledge.

'I've looked into the face of fear,' says Roy.

Deckard does not hear him. Life slips through his wet, weak fingers. He loses his grip completely. He hangs motionless for just the briefest moment in time, surrounded by space, by eternity, with the earth far, far below him, calling him towards it; the briefest moment in time, a mere comma in the history of the universe, not even a comma, an atom, nothing. Instinctively Roy reaches out his hand and grips Deckard's wrist, saves his life.

What does it mean? Anna wonders. Who is this man beside her, with whom she has shared so little and so much?

'I've looked into the face of fear,' Roy continues, 'and I've looked into the face of love. I've seen people die and I've seen people live. I've seen a child being born ...'

Anna sees the man who calls himself Roy Batty up there on the screen in the movie, making up lines as he goes along. There is no doubt about it. She sees him. There. On the screen. The movie in her mind is playing up there on the cinema screen. Such is the power of her realisation of the significance of what she missed. Such is her confusion.