We're Flying (10 page)

Dominic played uncertainly with Legos, and kept looking up at them on the sofa. Benno had put his feet up on the coffee table, and had his arm around Angelika. He undid the top button of her blouse. Stop that, she said, but he carried on, and shoved his hand down her front. When she tried to get up, he held her down. I’m not going to let that runt spoil my fun, he said, and he took off her
blouse. If he says anything, I’m out of a job, said Angelika. Benno kissed her on the mouth and talked at the same time, she didn’t know what he was saying. He must have seen things at his parents’, he said, and anyhow he had to learn sometime. Angelika tried to forget about Dominic, but she couldn’t. She remembered how he had cried on the stairs. He had looked at her as though it was her fault his parents weren’t coming. I don’t like him, she thought, actually I don’t like any of them. She lay on the sofa and embraced Benno. He laughed and thrust his hand between her legs. When he tried to undo her belt, she pushed him away. He allowed himself to fall to the floor, and lay there on his back, next to Dominic.

Do you want to fly? he asked the boy, who was staring at him in utter bewilderment. He grabbed him and lifted him onto his belly, where he began tickling him. Dominic squirmed, but he didn’t laugh. He assumed the serious expression he had had during his dance at the bus stop. Angelika sat up, straightened her bra, and pulled on her blouse. She felt ashamed of herself.

Do you know where babies come from? Benno asked. Dominic said he had come out of his mama’s belly. But do you know how you got in there? asked Benno. I was so small, said Dominic, I was as small as this, and he pinched his finger and thumb together.

Just before nine, Dominic’s mother called. Angelika jumped, as she always did when her cell phone rang. The woman’s voice sounded half annoyed, half embarrassed. She apologized. Her husband had a late meeting that he hadn’t told her about. Angelika could hear his voice in the background, protesting. At any rate, we each thought the other was doing it. They were at the day care, and were on their way here. Angelika gave them directions, with a lot of difficulty. Well, we’ll be there soon, said the mother. Dominic’s fine, said Angelika. Yes, of course, said the mother with a little laugh, I didn’t doubt it. I’ll see you in twenty minutes, half an hour, maybe.

She’s a lawyer, said Angelika.

Is she good-looking? asked Benno. Rich?

Angelika said she was sure Dominic’s parents weren’t short of money. His father was a relationship counselor.

What’s she look like? asked Benno.

Average, said Angelika.

Half an hour later the bell rang. Dominic had been sitting on the sofa in shoes and coat for the past ten minutes. Good-bye, little fellow, said Benno. Come and see us again, will you?

Dominic didn’t answer. Angelika took him by the hand.

When Dominic saw his mother through the glass door, he broke away and ran down the last couple of steps. The
two of them faced each other, separated only by the glass. The mother had crouched down and was signaling to the boy. He pressed his hands and face against the cold glass, which misted over with his breath. Angelika unlocked the door. The mother stood up. Angelika saw she had a package in her hand. Is that for me? asked Dominic. That’s for dear Angelika, said the mother. As thanks for letting you come and visit her. She handed the present to Angelika, and repeated that she was terribly sorry it had happened, and she was thoroughly embarrassed. A misunderstanding. Angelika had thought of some reply, but then all she said was these things happened, and thank you for the present. I hope you’ll enjoy this, she said, and then to Dominic, Right, let’s hurry home and get to bed. Say bye-bye. Angelika watched them leave and walk over to a jeep that was parked diagonally to the other cars. She could just make out the silhouette of the father at the wheel. The mother bent down to Dominic and seemed to tell him something. Angelika waved, but they didn’t seem to notice. When the door closed behind her, she turned around once more. The car was gone. On the glass she saw the traces left by Dominic’s hands. She wiped them away with her sleeve.

Benno was in the shower, Angelika could hear the water. She sat down in the living room and opened the
package. It was a bottle of perfume. She sniffed it and dabbed some behind her ears and between her breasts. Benno emerged from the shower. He was naked, with a towel slung around his hips. She saw the bulge of his erection. He sat down beside her and embraced her. She freed herself and said she would have a quick shower too. She locked the bathroom but didn’t undress. When Benno knocked on the door, she was still sitting on the toilet, with her face in her hands.

Videocity

“You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?
Then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me?
Well I’m the only one here.”
—
TRAVIS BICKLE
in
Taxi Driver

I
T ALL BEGAN
with the death of his mother. With their claim that his mother had died. He can hardly remember what came before. Just occasional images: exterior, day. A large garden, colors, fruit trees, a house with a steeply pitched roof. The image is distorted at the edges, as though seen through a wide-angle lens. In close-up the face of his mother. She is laughing and swinging him up in the air. She is holding him by the hands and swinging him around in a circle. His eye is the camera. The garden smudges in the accelerating movement, a green blur. Cut.

A long hallway, gray linoleum, white walls. Rainy light leaks in from outside, dim. He is sitting on a bench next to a woman he doesn’t know. They wait for a long time
until a doctor emerges from one of the rooms, shakes his head, says something he doesn’t understand. The face of the doctor is gray. The woman stands up, takes the boy by the hand, and they leave down the hallway and down a wide flight of stone steps. They walk out of shot, which is held a moment longer. Cut.

A montage: dining rooms, dormitories, gym halls. He is standing there, in too short pants, in a gym outfit, clothes that others have worn before him. Always with other boys. The soundtrack is a babel of noise, an echoey confusion of scraps of words, yells, whistles, the singing of children. The loneliness of never-being-alone. The light goes out and goes on again immediately. The taste of toothpaste, porridge, white bread. Someone is banging around on an upright piano, the clatter of dishes and sounds of liquids being slopped out and scraping noises. He shuts his eyes, opens them again.

Twenty years later. The radio alarm plays “I Got You, Babe.” A hand slams on the button and the music stops. A man gets up, sits for a moment on the edge of the bed, his face buried in his hands. He stands up and leaves the room. We track him to the bathroom, then to the landing. The camera pans away from him, moves toward the window, then through it. Outside a street in a poor neighborhood. The asphalt is wet, but judging by the clothes of
the passersby it is not cold. As if on command, the extras start to move. A man carrying a bouquet of flowers walks past, the same as every morning, then two women of thirty or so, presumably foreigners, with long black hair. Both are wearing jeans and white T-shirts, one of them is carrying a light blue shoulder bag. They are yards apart, but even so they seem to belong together, like clones, or sisters unaware of each other’s existence. The front door of a house opens. The man we saw a moment earlier steps out onto the pavement. His hair is wild, he looks like an unmade bed. At a corner bodega he buys a cup of coffee. Then he walks on in the same direction as the two women.

From street level, a couple of steps lead down to a low basement premises. V
IDEOCITY
it says on the glass door. On the inside of the glass is a red sign:
CLOSED
. The man unlocks the door, walks in, and turns the sign around. A smell of cold cigarette smoke. The room is dark, even after the man has switched on a light. On the walls are shelves stacked with hundreds of videocassettes, at the far end of the room is a counter with a cash register and a small TV set. Behind it a door leads into a tiny room with a toilet, an old fridge with a stained coffee machine on it, and a rickety cabinet that looks as if it’s been salvaged from a dumpster. The man plugs in the TV and the
register and starts the coffee machine. Only then does he take off his coat.

All morning no one comes. A little before noon, a short woman of about fifty walks into the shop and looks around. She is wearing blue shoes and a 1950s hounds-tooth jacket. She has a vaguely stunned facial expression. She seems to have walked in by mistake. She turns and walks out again without saying a thing. It often happens, people walk in here and leave, for no apparent reason. Sometimes they just look in the window, sometimes they walk in under some pretext. They’re looking for some film he’s never heard of, or they want to buy the life-sized cardboard figure in the window. Sometimes they want change for the meter. He can’t do anything, he can’t prove anything. They’re too cunning for him. Once he saw that someone must have broken in during the night. Since then he’s careful to remember all the details of where he leaves everything when he goes. They must have noticed it, because they’ve stopped coming in at night. They are very cagey.

It’s not just the young men in dark suits with name tags. Sometimes there are children or old women, foreigners with some illegible piece of paper they hold in his face, some address they claim they’re trying to find. He’s remembered the addresses, marked them down on a map,
and connected them up. It’s not yet clear to him what their significance is. He is unable to trust even his oldest customers. They’re sounding him out. They start a casual conversation, ask him if he’s seen some film or other, and what he thinks of it. He’s very careful with what he says. He doesn’t know how many of them are involved. It’s not impossible that they’re all in league with each other.

The sets are made of wood and stone. They are to very high specifications, you barely notice the difference, but you sense there’s something missing. Distant buildings seen against the light look transparent. The horizon retreats as you walk toward it, it seems two-dimensional, a painting. Sometimes he spots mistakes, trivial things, but they can’t be accidental. When he taps the wall, it makes a hollow sound. Some things are smaller than they should be in reality. He feels tempted to lift the manhole cover in the street to see what’s concealed underneath. But that would be too obvious. When he goes home at night, he thinks he could just keep on going, straight on, but he’s convinced they wouldn’t allow it. He would lose his way in the streets, he would wind up at a dead end. An accident could be organized.

Every step he takes is watched. At night he can hear people walking about in the apartment above. He’s tried to spot the cameras and microphones, but they’re so small
and so well concealed that he can’t find them. He can’t exclude the possibility that a computer chip has been implanted in him that records his whereabouts, controls his physical processes, pulse rate, blood pressure, metabolism. He pats himself down sometimes, but he can’t feel anything. The chip must be buried deep in his flesh. He doesn’t believe they can read his mind. The technology for that hasn’t been invented. But they’re working on it.

When he showers, he hangs a towel over the mirror. When he goes shopping, he often puts back the package he picks up first and chooses a different one from the back of the shelf. He’s noticed the salespeople looking at him. He is almost certain they are mixing things into his food, drugs that alter his consciousness. Hence his forgetfulness, his visual distortions, his racing pulse, his tendency to sweat. Hence the occasional panic attacks. Who knows whether the medications the doctor prescribes aren’t the real cause for his condition.

He’s stopped going to restaurants long ago. He’s not even sure of the coffee at the corner bodega. Sometimes he changes his order to tea at the last moment. Then he monitors his body’s reaction very carefully.

For security reasons, he’s detached the little TV from the antenna. There’s nothing easier than picking up data that travel through a wire. Now he only watches videos.
They are his last connection to the world outside, to the real world. He sees the same films again and again, runs them in slow motion and attends to their tiniest details, to minute slips. A wristwatch in a film set in ancient Rome. The shadow of a boom falling across a scene.

He’s tried to get in touch with film people, written letters to Jodie Foster and Martin Scorsese. No reply of course. It was naive of him to suppose his letters would get through, but back then he saw no other way. Since then he’s learned to use dead letterboxes. He leaves his plans and protocols and samples behind mirrors in public toilets or in garbage cans at certain crossings. He gets the position of the garbage cans from films, and also whether the messages have been received. His progress can be charted from film to film. Each film answers the question put in the one before. The communications are encoded, but he’s learned to decipher them. Sometimes he laughs aloud when he gets their meaning. He often feels a great hilarity, the cool bliss of being undeceived. He won’t be misled by the voices in his head anymore:
You can’t leave. This is where you belong. You belong to me
.

The sudden clarity, after years of uncertainty. He walks through the city and laughs. He sees through things. He could knock over the buildings with one hand, uproot the
trees that have been fixed in the ground like parasols. He has achieved mastery over his body. By pure mind he can control his physical functions.

He knows his contribution is vital. Otherwise they would have pulled him out long ago. A sacrifice will be required of him, but he is willing. The sacrifice will give shape and meaning to his life.

He has forgotten his sandwiches. He wonders whether he dares to buy a hamburger at the bodega. They can’t know that today of all days he will go there. If he’s quick enough, he can take them by surprise, not give them time to doctor his food. Some risks are unavoidable.