Flicker (52 page)

I let her take several long, healing breaths. “Well, it was just a movie. I mean afterward Dandy was there.”

“Yes, he was. But in my mind, it was all mixed up. For days and days, all mixed up. You see, for me he wasn't Dandy. He was God. And I made love with him and I killed him. For a long time after that I had bad dreams about this. I couldn't forgive Max.” Tears had gathered in her eyes. Embarrassed, she brushed them away. “It isn't
worth hurting people like that just to make a movie. And the movie never got made anyway, did it? Because how could they show something like that?”

I was more than a little ashamed to have put her through so great a personal ordeal. I waited until she had calmed herself before I asked, “This ritual Castle had you act out—do you know anything about it? What it meant, where he got it from?”

She wagged her head. “Max didn't tell me anything, just to do it. He didn't say so, but I think it was very religious for him. He wanted it done just so, very particular. Me and Dandy, he wanted us to take it serious. I think maybe it was something you shouldn't put in a movie.”

“And the pill,” I asked. “Do you have any idea what it was?”

She shook her head. “Max had so many pills. For movies, for
bhoga,
for good times. Some he used to get from the twins, the Reinkings. Those were for religious things, I think.”

With my taxi waiting at the canal side outside her house, I took a final glance at my notes. At the bottom of the last page I had scribbled “BBB—?” It provided a pleasant note to end on. “That tune—do you know why Castle chose it?” When she failed to understand, I hummed a few bars of “Bye Bye Blackbird.”

She smiled. “Ah! It was a favorite song with Max. He was always whistling it. He said he could sing it in fifteen languages. You know the words?” I said I didn't, at least not well. She tried to recall them for me. “Very sad it is. Something … something … nobody loves me, nobody understands me. Like so?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Max said it was very old, from ancient times.”

“I don't believe so.”

“He said so. He said it came from the time of the pharaoh.”

“Oh come now. Surely not.”

We were on her front stoop now, exchanging a good-bye kiss. “Well, Max was a great kidder. You couldn't believe half what he said. Could be he was kidding with Dandy and me in the movie.” She thought that one over and wagged her head. “But I don't think so.“

The orphanage was a squat stone bastion in the Old Town sector of Zurich west of the river. Even on a bright summer day and framed against the magnificence of the ice-bright Alps, it darkened its neighborhood like some skulking carrion bird. Its cheerless walls seemed stained with more than the grime of years. The streaks left by centuries of rain along its stones might have been made by tears shed from its windows which looked for all the world like eyes darkened with despair. I thought how effectively Castle might have used the world headquarters of the Orphans of the Storm for one of his patented exercises in Gothic atmospherics.

A plaque in the entrance hall informed me in three modern languages plus Latin that I was in one of the oldest surviving structures in the city, dating back to the dawn of the Reformation, when it was built—originally as a school—by the great Swiss Protestant leader Zwingli. The orphans had taken over the site in 1739, adding a few more wings and dedicating it to the service of “the light that shines in the darkness and is comprehended not.” In the French, German, and Italian, the plaque left this final phrase in Latin, a language in which I had little proficiency. But I had plenty of time to work it out. Though I'd phoned ahead for an appointment with one Dr. Byx, the chief administrator of the order, I was left to spend over an hour in the chill and gloom of the foyer.

All the while I sat waiting on a stiff wooden bench, black-robed men and women bustled across the floor, eyeing me inhospitably. Their garb suggested they were clerics, but of no order I could identify. Not that I was an authority on religious vestments. Still, I was convinced the costume was more austere than any Catholic monastic dress I'd ever seen. It featured a tight black bonnet that covered the hair, making the men—all clean-shaven—difficult to distinguish from the women. At the cheeks, a high starched white collar blinkered the eyes so that those who looked toward me seemed to be peering surreptitiously around a corner. I remembered Olga had told me the
orphans weren't Catholics. “Older than Catholics.” Wasn't that what she had said? But what was older than Catholics? Weren't Catholics as old as Christianity got?

That the orphans were Christians I had no doubt. Their emblem—the Maltese cross—had been worked into all the leaded windows and interior decor. A massive version of the cross hung suspended from the ceiling above the door that opened into the central corridor. But this cross had a variation. Where the arms intersected, there was a circled logo. After some study, I concluded that it was the letter A overlapped at its crossbar by the letter X. AX. Which meant nothing to me. I found myself wishing I knew something more about basic religious history. My Sunday-school education in Modesto had been satisfied with teaching me that everything outside the boundaries of Free Methodism was a wilderness strewn with idolatry and popish-ness. Where, then, did a Christian church older than the Catholic fit in?

Orphanage though this was, I saw no children in any of the halls or rooms I casually inspected while I waited. Then, glancing down from one of the lobby's narrow, fortresslike windows, I spotted a line of kids, about twenty of them, being led double file across a bare, gravel-covered yard by one of the nuns … or was it a priest? The children wore uniforms every bit as somber as the clerics', once again with high collars and bonnets. The boys wore knee pants and the girls skirts; below that, long black stockings ending in black, high-topped shoes. The children, rigidly erect, marched in orderly columns, looking neither left nor right, hands folded prayerfully at their waists. My heart went out to them, poor, cheerless little things. They might have been workhouse urchins from a Dickens novel.

As I watched them trudging away toward a rear building, I heard a voice at my shoulder. “Dr. Byx will see you now.” It was the nun who had met me at the door more than an hour before. Sister Leonine she'd called herself. A young woman, perhaps quite pretty, but cheated of her good looks by the expressionless mask she had made of her face. Without another word she led me down one of the gloomy halls to a well-appointed but no less gloomy office.

Dr. Byx, a smallish, round-faced man of about fifty, was almost totally bald. His eyes, heavily lidded, gave the impression of chronic boredom. He was dressed less severely than the others: a simple black business suit and dark turtleneck sweater. He wore a necklace bearing the Maltese cross. When I entered his office, a narrow, highceilinged
room lined with books and heavily shadowed even in the bright early-afternoon light, he greeted me with a curt nod and not very welcoming gaze. I wondered which of the three Swiss languages he might expect me to speak, but his English was perfect.

“Professor Gates, won't you have a seat?” The invitation was coolly formal, leading to a long silence. How much did I need to explain?

“I'm a film scholar … motion pictures. History, theory. From California. The university. At Los Angeles. The University of Cali—”

“UCLA,” he volunteered. “Not to be confused with the University at Berkeley, or at many other locations around the state.” He was showing off, but I smiled gratefully for his help. “Nor with Harvard,” he added. The cool look that accompanied the remark suggested a put-down. My smile tightened but held.

“I'm studying the films of Max Castle,” I continued. “Von Kastell … who was, I believe, raised in one of your orphanages.”

He responded with the faintest of nods. “Yes. And?”

“I'm interested in learning about Castle's early years … in the orphanage. I thought perhaps you might have some records… .” I rummaged nervously through my briefcase, but before I could come up with my MOMA monograph to offer him, he'd picked a copy of the publication from his desk and set it out before me.

“We know something of your work, Professor Gates. Good, substantial scholarship.” He must have noticed my surprise at seeing the volume in his hand. “We have a rather good library of film studies,” he explained. “But I fail to see why you would find Herr Kastell's years with us of any relevance to your work. It is a long way from the orphanage to his career in the United States. What connection could there be?”

“Well, he did learn something about filmmaking at the orphanage, didn't he? In any case, early influences are always worth considering in any artist's work.”

“Early influences …” He repeated the phrase as if it had been spoken in a language that required translation.

“Things he learned at your schools—about your religion, for example.”

I felt as if I'd succeeded in lowering the temperature of the room by ten degrees. Dr. Byx's already cool tone turned frosty. “Do you know much about our faith?”

“No, not really. I was hoping …”

“May I ask if you have a religious profession of your own?”

“Well, no, not currently.”

“Not currently.” He gave the phrase a sardonic twist. “But you were perhaps raised in a religious belief.”

“Yes, I was. My parents were Methodists.”

“Methodists.” He pondered the word like some indigestible tidbit, a gourmet palate sampling McDonald's latest creation. “And would you say your scholarship is therefore under the influence of Methodism?”

“Oh hardly. Not at all.” I couldn't even imagine what a Methodist influence might be.

“So you see,” he continued, “just as you have grown away from the faith in which you were raised, so Max Kastell grew away from his childhood religion. You would do better to look for the influence of Fritz Lang or Josef Von Sternberg on his films.”

“But I understood that members of the church, orphans like himself, were always with him while he worked in Hollywood.”

“Oh?”

“Are you familiar with the Reinking brothers?”

“Brothers?”

“I believe they were brothers. Well, they were twins in any case. Film editors. They assisted on all of Castle's …”

“Yes, yes, yes. I knew them quite well. They taught at this school for a time after the war. But of course, like the Reinkings, many of our alumni worked in films—and not only with Kastell.”

“Well, I know he stayed in touch with one of your orphanages in southern California. I believe it's in the mountains north of the city—isn't it?”

Dr. Byx pointedly offered me no more exact location. “In touch, perhaps. But how cordially? That is another matter.”

“He did try to raise money from your church, I know that.”

“And did he succeed?”

“Well, that I don't know.”

Dr. Byx raised his hands in a gesture that implied he'd proved his point. “After a time, Professor Gates, Herr Kastell had very little interest in our church beyond money. Yes, he approached us many times. I cannot say how often he was given some stipend or loan or on what terms. You understand this would have been before my tenure in this office. Our order seeks to be generous with its alumni. Herr Kastell may indeed have taken our money from time to time.
But that is a very different matter from staying loyal to the faith. Consider all the great Renaissance artists who accepted the patronage of the popes. How many of them were obedient sons of the church?”

All I seemed to be learning from Dr. Byx was that the Orphans of the Storm took little pride in Max Castle and retained no fond memories of the man. Still, I pressed on. “Is there any chance that some of his schoolwork … papers, essays, drawings, anything, might have been stored away? I might gain some insight into …”

He shook his head emphatically. “Herr Kastell attended our school in Dessau, which was totally destroyed in the war. Its records would have been lost along with everything else, sad to say.”

I realized I had one bit of information that might be of interest to Dr. Byx. “Actually, a film of Castle's was salvaged from Dessau after the war … by the American army.”

For the first time, his eyes brightened with attention. “Oh?”

“Judas Everyman.
It's mentioned in my monograph.”

“Ah yes,” he said, idly flipping through my little book. “So that is where you found the film. Strictly speaking, one might say that it is the property of our church.”

I hadn't expected that. “Well, I suppose we'd have to regard it as part of the fortunes of war.” He answered only with a lifted eyebrow. “I don't believe the film was ever released.”

“In fact, it was banned, was it not?”

“Yet it contains many unusual effects. A powerful work. Have you ever seen it?”

“No, no.”

An idea was taking shape in my thoughts. “You know, I could have the film copied for you. Maybe it would be of interest to your students.”

I could see he was drawn by the suggestion. “That would be very good of you. We would of course be willing to defray the costs.”

To my relief, I began to feel as if I were at last something more than a nuisance to Dr. Byx. But how much further could I presume upon his time? There was so much more I felt I wanted to learn about this bizarre institution I was in, yet I couldn't think of what to ask. The things that came most readily to mind—questions about the treatment of the children, their discipline, punishments, rewards—seemed impolitic. Others—about ancient heresies—I found it beyond my capacity to formulate. I had the sense that in dealing with Dr. Byx, I was talking—or struggling to talk—across long, dusty
centuries to someone for whom the age of the Crusades or the primitive Christian church was still a lively topic. Finally, for the lack of any better way to prolong my visit, I asked, “Might I see some more of your school?”