Flicker (77 page)

Yet, if I could believe Simon, everything the church had thus far accomplished with the movies was as nothing compared to the latest phase of their work. Within the next several years, the orphans planned to invade new territory, the world of the video screen, and with an even more fearful arsenal of psychic weaponry. For most of the drive back to L.A., I tried to hold that one thought in mind, concentrating on its significance. I now realized that Simon's career was meant to reach far beyond that of a promising underground filmmaker. His destiny lay in a new medium, which he predicted would soon be open to the most extreme forms of artistic license.

I couldn't dispute what he said. Clearly the Reign of Excess was upon us. On all sides, the walls of taste and intelligence were tumbling down. Why should I doubt that if a means could be found to bring porn and gore into the living rooms of the world, it would be done?
There were probably orphan inventors already at work on the project. And when the dust settled at the advent of that new Dark Age, there would stand a little, snow-white and bunny-pink-eyed Antichrist, Simon the Dark, holding out a handful of tiny flick chips that contained the nightmares of his diseased imagination. So far, only I in all the infidel world outside the circle of the chosen Cathar few could see it coming. And what are you going to do about that, Professor Gates, you who alone can chronicle the history of the movies from Lumiére to Dunkle, from light onto darkness? Or do you even care?

All this was on my mind the night Jeanette opened her barrage upon my sexual failure. I might have tried to explain that the future of civilization was weighing upon my poor, unresponsive organ. But that would have been a dodge. Because she was right, as only the woman who shares your bed can be right about such things. It was Simon's sewer babies that had emasculated me, they and all the horror and despair with which his movies had been flooding my senses. His nihilism had saturated me and claimed me for the Great Heresy. As a result, Jeanette's elegant young flesh had turned rank for me. I couldn't bear to touch her, smell her, share my space with her. Of course we would have to part.

That happened three days later. It was neat and friendly. A sharply dressed older man named Barry dropped by to help Jeanette move her few modest possessions to his condo in Century City. I vaguely remembered him from studio parties in the past. He was a low-level Disney executive whom I could recall she'd mentioned meeting several weeks ago. Sizing him up with a frankly jaundiced eye, I concluded Jeanette was better than he deserved. But then, every guy I'd ever met in the film industry was accompanied by a woman who was better than he deserved. In any case, Barry seemed suave and polished smooth around the edges, so I judged he would be kind to her for a while and, so I hoped, pass her along in better shape than I was leaving her.

Jeanette was relieved to be going but not happy. She showed true concern when I gave her a goodbye kiss—probably the warmest kiss I'd bestowed on her in months.

“Remember what I have warned you,” she said.

“You were right,” I answered. “I intend to stop with Simon.”

That brought a sudden light into her teary eyes. “Ah, then maybe … ”

“Then … I'll be leaving town for a while.”

“To go where?”

“New York. I need help.”

She knew at once what I meant. “To see … ?”

“Yes. To see … ”

She offered a final kiss. “I think it is the right thing.”

Success had done good things for Clare. Under its influence, she'd flowered astonishingly like some tough desert cactus one wouldn't have thought kept the promise of a blossom hidden among its thorns. When I'd first known her during her long years of obscurity, she was a bitter woman torn by hurt and envy. It showed in her sullen moods, her belligerent swagger, her aggressive arrogance with one and all. Rebelling against the intellectual establishment and, more immediately, against the glitz of a Los Angeles she regarded as a philistine slum, she'd affected a Parisian Left Bank slovenliness, her hair a riot of tangles, her clothing the same drab sweater and skirt each day. I'd fallen madly in love with that surly, unkempt woman, though I knew at the time that much of what I found exciting about her were the wounds left by years of heartache. Still, at a certain stage in my life, she'd been the living image of daring and defiance, holding out the promise of hot new ideas and forbidden sex.

That Clare was now gone forever. Her years in New York had transformed her radically—and, I had to admit, all for the better. With the exception of that one glowing evening she'd arranged with Orson, she never spared me more of her time when I came visiting than a quick luncheon or a drink during the happy hour. But on each occasion she looked brighter, more chic, more contented than before. That made me happy for her. It was hard to imagine Clare mellowing, but so she had, even in her reviews. She no longer indulged in the
vitriolic contempt and studied aesthetic dissection that were once the trademark of her criticism. She'd learned that such intellectual acrobatics strain the pages of any publication paying enough to cover the cost of lunch in New York. Instead, she'd perfected a style that managed to both chafe and charm her public. While the mordant wit was still there, she now tempered its use to champion struggling talent: the little film, the marginal effort, the one redeeming performance that deserved praise in an otherwise dreary production. She made her readers feel they were partners in discovering these few bright grains of gold in the growing mountain of cinematic slag. At least with me, she stopped pretending she felt compromised by the rewards her popularity brought her: a string of successful books, topdollar lecture stints, invitations to festivals and conferences across the country and abroad. These days she was as apt to be traveling as to be at home in the small but luxurious condo she now owned in the East Eighties. She'd spent years resentfully convinced that the world owed her its recognition. Now that the world had come across, she relaxed into its applause gratefully.

Though I admitted it with reluctance, the new Clare had acquired sexiness with success. It was nothing like the steamy bohemian appeal that had once stirred my boyish lust. Her features took on a confident glow, a relaxed grace of manner. Her figure had grown trimmer and she dressed to show it off to the best advantage. There was always a lover or two in the background—not penniless students, but men of substance. I felt like such a prehistoric relic in her life that I approached her with apologies even as I wrote her the long, urgent tale of Simon, the orphans, and the Cathars. I didn't mention Jeanette, but I hinted at the strange enfeebling effect the films were having on me. I knew I ran the risk of sounding loony, but I was beyond caring about that. This was no academic query; it was a cry for help. I wanted her to know it was.

To my amazement, I got a phone call the very day my letter reached her. It was a brief but pressing invitation couched in unmistakably affectionate terms.

“Darling, you may be in a lot deeper than you realize. I want to see you right away. Can you come soon?”

“How soon?”

“Now. Tomorrow. Possible?”

“Well … I'm teaching. I'd have to make … ”

“Sweetheart, I'm worried for you.”

Worried for me! The tone in her voice made
me
even more worried. “Next week. I'll be there first thing.”

“Don't bother to book a hotel. Stay here. But hurry. It's important”

Clare was telling me it was “important” for us to meet. I couldn't believe my ears. The last thing I expected from her was therapeutic consolation. But her voice on the phone raised my hopes. Maybe I was going to have the chance to pour my heart out.

I did. But not to Clare. To a stranger who, as it turned out, already knew my story better than she did.

When I arrived in New York, I headed straight for Clare's, where I'd been promised a modest meal and a long evening's talk. To my intense disappointment, I discovered our dinner was not to be
ô deux.
There was someone else on hand, a dark, excessively lean but strikingly good-looking man in his late forties, dressed in a baggy black suit and high-necked sweater. His hair, lightly streaked with gray, was a curly, minimally combed mane that straggled down his cheeks into a rough, short beard and mustache. His English was good enough to make his accent nearly imperceptible. Clare called him “Eddy.” I wouldn't have guessed he was Italian until she mentioned his last name: Angelotti. “Eddy is the new film archivist at NYU,” she told me.

“Thanks to Clare,” Eddy acknowledged. “She rather smuggled me into the job.”

I assumed, with a small, well-disguised twinge of jealousy, that he was the new love in her life. And why not? Though on the ascetic side, he was a gorgeous sort of man, and clearly gifted at exactly the sort of verbal fencing Clare enjoyed. The two of them traded film talk across the table like champion Ping-Pong players—fast, tricky volleys of likes and dislikes, with plenty of spin on each judgment. The well-chewed bone of contention that evening was Pasolini's posthumous shocker
Salo,
which they had seen the night before, the grand climax of a Sadistic Cinema Festival that was the hot topic of the film crowd. I gathered they'd been arguing over it ever since. Eddy considered it “the definitive anti-fascist statement.” Clare disagreed passionately. “But it
isn't.
Fascists would love it; it's an outright surrender to their aesthetic. The beauty of atrocity. With the Carl Orff music yet.
Salo
would have had an extended run in the officers' quarters at Buchenwald.”

“But surely,” Eddy protested, “the film is done with a certain formalistic rigor that objectively distances … ”

Clare was having none of that. “Eddy, please! You don't defeat brutes by showing them what they are—least of all ‘objectively.' They're proud of what they are. They
like
it. That's what sadism means: beyond shame. Films like
Salo
just appeal to the same in the rest of us. The only way to deal with fascism is to show people what it
isn't
over and over again. Joy, love, innocence.
Singin' in the Rain
—
that's
the ultimate anti-fascist movie.”

Backing off the argument, Eddy turned to tell me that Clare had insisted they leave after the first half hour. “Perhaps it was too strong at points,” he conceded but with rather too much condescension.

“Too strong, yes, but not for the eye,” Clare countered. “For the nose. You didn't notice that the theater reeked of vomit? Which was actually very encouraging. There are still people going to movies who can have their stomachs turned. The visceral index of civilization. I'd given up hope. Or does the Trans-Lux East always smell like that? In any case, I left before I made my contribution.”

Good old Clare, still the same bright spirit fighting for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. And here I was, back in her life again to bring word that worse than
Salo
lay in store for us. Simon Dunkle, impresario of the Bad, the False, and the Hideous.

We were halfway through dinner before I concluded that I was wrong about the relationship between Clare and Eddy. The talk between them had the ring of recent acquaintance and purely academic interest. Clare was doing nothing along the way to clue me in about the man except to say they'd met at a screenwriters' symposium in Milan the year before. I had the feeling Clare was making every effort to build up Angelotti's expertise for me. By the time we got to her usual epic dessert—a
tarte tatin
with heaps of crème Chantilly, one of my old favorites—I was suitably impressed, but also puzzled. After all, Clare knew I hadn't rushed across the country for an evening of movie chatter, no matter how scintillating. At last, a bit impatiently, I decided to move the conversation to new ground. The question was a clumsy one, but I simply dropped it on the table. “I once read a book by an Angelotti. Any relation of yours?” I'd flashed on the name when Clare introduced us. Since the man didn't look, dress, or talk like a priest, I hardly expected the answer he gave.

“My little monograph on the Manichaeans? How remarkable you should have come across it.”

Clare shot me a mock-angry glance. “There now, you've spoiled my surprise. Father Angelotti is a member of Oculus Dei.”

My pulse gave a heavy twitch, but I tried to keep the tone relaxed. “Oh? Any connection with Father Rosenzweig?”

“One of our more militant members,” Angelotti answered, picking up smoothly on the reference. “A gifted man, though I am afraid he became an embarrassment. He recently passed away, did you know?”

“Yes, a sad death. I visited him in Lyons, at the asylum just shortly before he died.”

“Did you? For what reason?”

“An interview. About Max Castle's work. It was quite hopeless. He was beyond communication.”

“Still, I'm sure he appreciated the visit. None of us dared put in an appearance, as I'm sure you can understand.”

“ ‘Us'? How many of you are there?”

Angelotti unloaded a sad sigh. “Barely a handful. I'm not sure you would any longer call us a group at all. I keep in touch with four or five others. We rarely meet, and never in gatherings of more than three. We keep a low profile. Except, that is, for Rosenzweig. But he paid dearly for his outspokenness. Poor man.”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I can tell you just
how
poor. Crazy as it may seem, I'm the old boy's heir. They sent me all his worldly goods after he passed on.”

I could see that drew Angelotti's interest. “Anything of importance?”

“Oh, some real treasures. A heap of very smelly old clothes and very moldy books. That's where I came across your book.”

“Was there also perhaps a Greek text among them?”