Flicker (25 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Cuz the whole point is what's up there on the screen. If you got no split lightin', you don't see anything with the sallyrand. It's like you got a key but no lock, see?”

“Oh yes,” I said, as if I understood. “Would you let me borrow the sallyrand?”

“Over my dead body!” he flashed out at me, then repeated the phrase, lending it a somber tone that rather worried me. Zip was inhabiting what looked too much like a dead body already.

As tactfully as possible I raised a small protest. “Don't you intend to tell anybody how Castle did these things—not ever?”

As if he'd been waiting all his embittered life to answer that one,
Zip rifled his answer back. “You think that's what Max'd want after how they screwed him over? Not on your life. Made him go beggin' work off all these crumb-bum no-talents. Katzman, Halperin, hacks like that. They had him doin' Fu Manchu, for God's sake! Max!”

I could see his jaw clenching with anger. “But he did have friends, didn't he?” I asked. “People who admired him and wanted to work with him. You told me Karl Freund gave him some help when he was down on his luck, and Murnau.”

“Oh sure. Them krauts, they stuck together—except for the Big Dictator Von Sternberg there, stuck-up son of a bitch. Hell, why shouldn't they push some work Max's way? On a bad day when he was hung over to beat the band, he could still grind out a better movie than any of 'em. Right from the first, when he worked with what's-his-name-there Leni … Paul Leni. It was Max did all the lightin' on
The Cat and the Canary.
And that scene on the milk wagon, with all the hellfire. Sure that was Max. At least Leni was good on his own, and a right guy. Paid Max what he was worth. But now like Edgar brainless Ulmer—that was a different story. Cheez! Max give him all the best shots in
Black Cat,
rewrote the thing, redesigned it. You know for how much? Chicken feed.”

“That's interesting,” I commented. “Because actually Edgar Ulmer is very highly regarded these days. A few of his films have been called masterpieces.”

Zip stared back at me almost cross-eyed with amazement. It was as if I'd slugged him with a blackjack. “Ulmer? By
who
is Ulmer regarded?”

“French critics for the most part. Mainly because of
Black Cat.
And
Detour.
”

“French? You mean like … from
France?”
His expression began to tilt toward true anguish. I wondered if I should offer apologies. “Jeez, if that don't beat all! You mean … you mean, Ulmer …
Ulmer?”

He was turning grey with disgust. I rushed to take what advantage I could of the moment. “You realize you could do a great deal to salvage Castle's reputation. There are directors who'd give their eye-teeth to learn what you could tell them about these unusual techniques.”

He spit out an exasperated breath. “Who wants to hear from
me,
huh? The little freak, the commie runt. Flung me out on my ass is what they did. So let'm do without.” Then, after a short private sulk,
he looked up with a wily smile. “You don't know the half of it, what Max and me was up to.” He was clearly aching to tell me, so I waited until he'd sucked a few more strangled drags out of his cigarette. “Eddy Puss. You heard of him?”

“Who?”

“College boy! Eddy Puss. Ancient Greek guy.”

“Do you mean Oedipus? The Greek tragedy?”

“That's the ticket. Max and me were gonna make a movie about him.”

“Oh? That's interesting.”

“You think that's interesting, do you? Well, get a load of this. Max was gonna have the camera be this guy's eyes.”

“That's clever. A first-person narrative.”

Zip made a sour face. “First person … Get off it, professor. The movie was gonna show the story like Eddy saw it. You get me?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Hell, you do!” Zip spat back cantankerously. “The guy was
blind.
Didn't you know that?”

“Well, yes, he puts out his own eyes. That comes at the end. Of course there's another play by Sophocles that begins after Oedipus is already blind. It's called … ”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the one, where the guy's blind. That's the movie Max was gonna make.
Through his eyes.
Catch?”

I didn't catch. “You mean a dark screen? All dark? But what would there be to look at?”

Zip started to laugh, then broke down in a racking cough. He loved being one up on “the professor”; that had become one of the pleasures he took in my company. When he got enough air back in his lungs, he went on. “There was gonna be plenty on that screen, take it from me. Max had it all worked out. We even shot some stuff—just on the quick and cheap.” Zip assumed a crafty air. “That's where the underhold comes in.”

Underhold?

When he saw I didn't understand, he repeated the word, hitting every syllable as if he were spelling it out for a child. “The un-derhold. That's German.”

Zip might have thought it was German, but he'd certainly gotten the word wrong. “German for what?”

“You're the professor. I thought professors was supposed to know German.”

I'd never claimed to. But I could see it was useless to ask for clarification. As usual, Zip didn't have it to give. Castle, I gathered, had frequently used German to buffalo Zip. This was probably another instance. I filed the word away, hoping to discover its meaning later.

That evening when I returned to The Classic, my big news was about the sallyrand. Sharkey, with his technical turn of mind, was immediately fascinated, though he couldn't follow what Zip had told me about the instrument's construction. “What kind of lenses did he say were in there?”

“He didn't.”

“Plus a diffuser, is that what he said?”

“Yeah. And some kind of refracting filter.”

Sharkey wagged his head. “Can't feature that. You're sure he won't let you borrow the thing?”

“Absolutely. In fact, I got the idea he wished he hadn't shown it to me at all.”

“Me too,” Clare chimed in. “I wish he'd kept it to himself. Hocus-pocus.”

Sharkey was amazed. “You mean you're not curious about how it works?”

“Not me,” Clare answered. “I wouldn't touch the thing.”

“You wouldn't?”

“If she'd had any sense, Madame Curie wouldn't have touched radium. Get the point?”

As for what Zip had told me about a production of
Oedipus,
that brought a blank, uncomprehending stare from both Clare and Sharkey. “A movie without pictures—I've heard of that,” was Sharkey's comment. “It's called radio.”

Seeking as best I could to clarify, I asked Clare if she'd ever come across a German word that sounded like “underhold.” She hadn't; even after she'd paged through all the
unters
in her German dictionary, she couldn't come up with a good guess at what Zip might have in mind. Her conclusion was predictably dismissive. “A blank screen is what you get for free before the movie starts and after it's finished. In between there's supposed to be a work of art. Probably Herr Castle thought he could dispense with that little item.”

“I don't think so. Zip said there'd be 'plenty' on the screen.”

“Plenty of what?”

“He wouldn't tell me that. Maybe it has to do with the sallyrand.”

Though I asked Zip about the sallyrand a couple more times, he
slapped me down hard, refusing to talk further. “Forget it, wouldja? If I was you, I'd just forget I ever seen that damn thing. If them orphans knew I had one … ”

Zip had mentioned “them orphans” a few times before, but without explaining who they might be. The one time I asked, he clammed up for the rest of the day. I'd learned to handle the subject gingerly. I paused, then put my question as casually as possible. “What would they do, these orphans?”

“Just never you mind.”

And that was the last I heard from Zip about the sallyrand. It would be a long while before I saw one again.

Another two weeks went by before Zip made an important admission—almost a confession. By that time, thanks to my constant deference, he'd softened toward me, offering more about his work with Castle as he came to trust my appreciative responses. “Some of these tricks here—I can spot 'em … but the fact is, I don't always know just exactly how they was done.” I could see how embarrassed he was to tell me this. “I mean—see, I wasn't in on that part of things.”

Not knowing what to ask, I simply waited for him to tell me more.

“See, I did just about all the shootin'. I was the only shooter Max really trusted with a camera. But some of these tricks—like the slide and all like that—that was done in the editin'. Max sort of kept that to himself. Not cause he didn't trust me. Me an' Max—we was like that. Like he usta say, 'Zip, you are the
pure
technician. That's why you are my most valued associate.' His very words. 'You are my eyes and my hands.' That's what I was all right, Max's eyes and hands, doin' the job just like he wanted. You know how they treated me in the studios before Max came along? And
after,
too? Like some kinda lousy little monkey or somethin'. Usta give 'em a laugh to see me bustin' my guts with the big loads. I never backed off a job, I can tell y'. But I knew I could be a shooter. I had the eye, that's what I had. The rest don't matter. Max knew that. He spotted what I had. He gimme the chance to ride the camera. You know what that feels like? Man! There's nothin' like it.”

Whenever Zip spoke of Castle, there was a thrill of pride in his voice. His little body actually seemed to take on size with the memory. But in what he said, I heard a different message, one that struck a deep note of pathos. I'd begun to wonder how much Zip really understood about Castle and about the meaning of his work. While Zip was forever telling me what great friends he and Castle were, I now felt
certain their relationship hadn't been one of true partners, let alone equals. Rather, it struck me that just possibly what Castle most valued in Zip was his stubborn loyalty and willing subservience. Zip was always ready to be the unquestioning tool in his master's hand, a first-rate cameraman who could complete an assignment even when he didn't grasp its meaning.

I reported all this to Clare. “I think Castle exploited Zip quite a lot. Zip doesn't remember it that way, but I think Castle used him because he was easy to boss around.”

Clare nodded agreement. “The more I learn about your Max Castle, the less I like him.”

My
Max Castle. That was becoming a fixed phrase in her vocabulary.
My
Max Castle. Not hers. This stubborn standoffishness on her part made me reluctant to convey the full flavor of some of Castle's movies. I began to soft-pedal the aspects of his work that most unsettled her—like the crushing sense of decadence that permeated
Zombie Doctor.
The zombies of the story weren't simply obedient robots. They were also endowed with a peculiarly physical repulsiveness: unnatural creations without soul or mind, clinging to the life of the body. I knew that if Clare had viewed the films, she would have done all she could to block that repellent experience out. I decided to block it for her.

On the other hand, by way of my reports, Clare's respect for Zip Lipsky was mounting by the week, despite his incessant crustiness. She asked me to find out more about his blacklisting period, and I did. It turned out that he wasn't all that political himself; his parents were the lifelong Lefties, communists of some prominence in the New York radical scene. They'd been at the famous Paul Robeson concert in the Catskills that got broken up by vigilante patriots in 1946. Old Mr. Lipsky had suffered a severe concussion in the riot. Zip was convinced it brought on his death about a year later. He got involved in the Robeson documentary that finally cost him his career more out of family loyalty than ideology.

Before that, at the beginning of the war, Zip had employed a Japanese gardener who got caught in the government roundup after Pearl Harbor. Just before the troops closed in, the gardener appealed to Zip to help keep his two young sons out of the camps. Zip agreed. He took Yoshi's two boys in for the duration, telling those who asked that they were Chinese refugees. In the camps, Yoshi had become seriously ill. When the war ended, Zip took him in too as a sort of
semicompetent household factotum. As a result, Yoshi and his boys had become fanatically loyal to Zip. I'd seen the two sons helping out around the house and grounds on a couple of occasions, once doing what looked like a major roof repair.

A man who takes risks and does favors like that can be forgiven a good-sized load of bad temper. Clare decided to arrange a Zip Lipsky festival at The Classic, though we both wondered if he'd last long enough to see it. Each time I visited, he seemed to have visibly deteriorated. He was basically a fragile, rabbity man; even at his strongest, he couldn't have given his disease more than bones to gnaw on. Now it was as if the cigarettes he couldn't do without were smoking
him,
burning his insides to ashes. It was bad enough to watch the feisty little guy wasting away before my eyes; but his declining health was posing an odd problem for me. The sicker he became, the longer into the day he had to rest. Which meant that more and more often, when I arrived at the house, the ailing Zip was still asleep. And that presented an opportunity which the predatory Mrs. L. wasn't about to pass up.

Through my first two months as a guest in Zip Lipsky's home, I'd done my best to fend off the lady's insistent lechery by playing dumb. But there is a boundary beyond which dumb becomes idiotic, and I was well past that point with Franny—as she insisted I call her. Footsies under the table had long since given way to handsies in the darkness of the projection room. And the handsies were getting tighter, sweatier, more exploratory all the time. When I came and left, there were mushy kisses hello and goodbye at the door, with ever more insistent invitations to spend the night. “You're
sure
you don't wanna stay overnight? You're
sure?
Ah, come on … stay over-night. I gotta nice, big, soft bed waiting for you upstairs.”