Flicker (80 page)

“You mean like abduction … murder?”

“Never murder,” Angelotti was quick to insist. “Not as far as I am aware.”

“But they did kidnap LePrince, is that so?”

He nodded. “I fear so. A futile gesture. LePrince was the most active promoter of the cinema in his day, but abducting him was quite useless. By then there were too many inventors, entrepreneurs, filmmakers at work. And the public was already too fascinated to be denied. It was only a matter of time before the movies would be born.”

“And is it true that all the most important inventions were the work of the orphans, feeding their ideas to Edison, Dickson, Lumière, all the others?”

Again he nodded. “If not all the inventions, enough of them to inspire the rest.”

It was going on toward three in the morning when we finally got around to Simon Dunkle. I explained that “my agreement with Brother Justin is to let him and his superiors approve my article before I publish.”

“I would be surprised,” Angelotti interjected, “if they really wished to see you publish anything.”

“Possibly that's so,” I agreed. “God knows, they've given me enough of a runaround. But I think they want to pump up Simon's reputation a bit. Anyway, I don't intend to honor that agreement.” I fetched my briefcase, took my article on Simon from it, a manuscript of seventy-some pages, and laid it on the coffee table. “I've finished the piece. Last week. After Clare asked me to come, I decided to get it all down for her to read. I worked around the clock. It's only a rough draft but it covers the ground. You'll find yourself generously credited in the footnotes. I'll see what Clare says, polish it up, and put it in print wherever I find the chance.”

Angelotti flipped through the manuscript. “Of course I can understand that you should want to see your article published. But am I right in detecting a note of urgency in your voice? Why is that?”

“The reason is there in the paper. There are developments afoot that I think justify some haste.”

“And these are …?”

“Simon's going into television.” For the first time that evening Angelotti's eyes lit up with surprise. I didn't have to spell out the significance of my announcement to him.

“How soon?”

“Not for a while. A few years yet. There are technical problems. I gather orphan inventors somewhere are working on them at top speed.”

Angelotti released a tense sigh. “The flicker on television. Well, well … ”

“You agree I should go public with this as soon as possible?”

He took his time answering. “Yes … and yet, I would like to see the article first. I hope you appreciate that one must go about this in exactly the right way. Recall that poor Rosenzweig made an effort to go public. You see what came of that.”

The comparison jarred me. “But Rosenzweig was a nut.”

Angelotti smiled indulgently. “At the end, yes. But not always. He went crazy. But why? Because he was driven crazy—by contempt, ridicule, scorn. Believe me, once he was as sane, as lucid—and as concerned as ourselves. But when he took his message to the world …”

“I hope you'll agree that my style, my approach, my credentials lend me a bit more credibility.”

“Without question. But remember, please, what I have told you about raising the cry of conspiracy. There are secrets that guard themselves, because even when they are revealed, they will not be believed.”

I agreed he had a point. “That's all the more reason to try this out on Clare. I'll be guided by her reaction. And by yours.”

At this late hour, Angelotti decided to take Clare up on her offer to spend the night, or what was left of it. Reaching to flip through my article on the table, he asked, “Would it be possible for me to glance over this tomorrow? I may be able to make a few suggestions.” I had a copy; I fished it out of my briefcase and handed it to him. He started to shuffle off toward the small guest room where Clare kept a daybed, then stopped in the doorway and looked back. “Am I presuming? You will be staying with …?” He gestured down the hall toward Clare's room.

“Actually, I'll just use the couch in here,” I answered, wondering what he might think my relationship with Clare was.

“Ah, I see. Then perhaps you will want the guest room?”

“No, no, it's all right,” I assured him as I pulled off my shoes and loosened my clothes. When he was gone, I stretched out for several minutes trying to review all we had talked about. Most of what he said really boiled down to little more than rumor and conjecture—though he had certainly made it sound spellbindingly convincing. But like so much else about the orphans and Oculus Dei, it was a history that defied documentation. Despairingly, I realized that everything I'd written about these subjects was simply a pedantic version of what zany old Sharkey had once told me years ago in the projection booth at The Classic. And how had that sounded to me at the time?

After a while, still too restless to sleep, I made my way quietly down the corridor to Clare's room. I stood outside the door for several long moments wondering if I dared knock. From behind the door I could hear Clare's heavy, boozy breathing. She would be in no mood to be awakened. Still, just that muffled sound of her light snoring
nudged my memory; I was comforted to be that close to the woman whose onetime love had started me out on this improbable adventure which now left me shaken, fearful, and plain helpless. My forehead pressed against her door, I whispered a small appeal.
Clare, tell me how to live with this evil.

I used a few good-sized belts of Clare's whiskey to put me down for the night. The drinks were more effective than I intended. When I woke, cramped, rumpled, and headachy on the couch the next day, it was nearly ten-thirty and the apartment was empty. Clare had left a scribbled note.

Busy day. Home late. Wait up, love, do. Took the article. (Weighs a ton! Who's going to print this?) I'll give it a read today. Promise. Eddy says will ring you. Ask him about 2014. That's the zinger.

2014?

As I sat over a cold meal salvaged from Clare's none too ample larder, Angelotti called. Was I free to meet him later that day? Of course I was. “Excellent,” he said. I should expect him in the late afternoon. I spent the day reorganizing my notes from the previous evening, wondering how much of this I should try to squeeze into my already overlong article. About four o'clock, Clare's doorman phoned to tell me there was a delivery. I told him to send it up. A few minutes later a Puerto Rican kid was at the door with two smallish bags of groceries from one of the town's upscale delicatessens. Pinned to the bags was a hefty bill. Since there was no one else to pay the tab but me, I paid, adding the usual exorbitant New York tip, and stored the supplies in the refrigerator.

I assumed the provisions were for Clare; but when Angelotti arrived
an hour later, his first words were to ask if “our food” had come. “I took the liberty of ordering for us,” he explained. “It is so difficult to find a decent cheap restaurant in New York.”

Judging from what I'd shelled out for “our food,” it was no less difficult to find decent cheap take-out. I wondered if I should mention how much the delivery had set me back. But here was a man of God, providing me with a ton of valuable information. So I kept it to myself. I noticed that Angelotti never asked.

We gravitated into the same seats as the night before, but with a fresh bottle of cognac from Clare's liquor cabinet between us on the table. Angelotti drew out his copy of my manuscript; I could see a wealth of pencil notes up and down the margins.

His first words were high praise, but I could hear the hint of serious reservations that lay behind them. “What you have to say about Dunkle is illuminating. I had no idea he was making such inroads among the young. That is very worrisome. These movies he makes, they are the Cathar gospel in its very essence. The message comes closer and closer to the surface. My God! we have come so far. I found your critical commentary excellent, very persuasive. I see so much of Clare's influence there, the precision, the ethical clarity… .” His voice trailed off, his brow taking on a deep frown.

“But I gather you have some doubts.”

He hesitated, then felt his way forward gingerly. “There are certain details that need correction.”

“Oh?”

“I have made some marginal notes. Fine points, for the most part. Theological matters, a few historical references …”

And for the next hour or so, Angelotti ran through my paper fastidiously offering revisions. A few were important, most were nitpicking. When he finished, I thanked him, but knew we were skirting the edge of larger issues. “There's something more, isn't there?”

He sighed deeply and shook his head, a gesture of honest regret. “Yes, something more. How to say it? Even with corrections, everything you say about the Cathars, the orphans … I am bound to tell you, Jon, I believe it will make you look foolish.”

“But it's what we both know to be true.”

“You and I, yes. That makes two. And all the rest of Oculus Dei, which is perhaps a dozen more. Also there are those in the Vatican—ten or twenty, let us say—who will believe you, since they already know the truth. Beyond these, and of course the orphans themselves,
I think you will find not one sympathetic reader who is not a psychotic.” He saw the disappointment in my face. “Please understand, I want to be helpful. Let me assure you, what you have done here is what I have sat down to do a hundred times. To tell the whole story from beginning to end. Now I see why I have never done so. Because this is how it would read. Like a paranoid fantasy. I'm sorry… .”

He meant the apology sincerely, but his words stung nonetheless. “What else can I do but tell what I've learned? Are you saying there's no way to do that and sound sane?”

He pondered what I said. “Hitler spoke of the big lie—so big that people had to believe it. I begin to think there is also the big truth—so big nobody can believe it. You realize what you are up against, Jon? We suffer from the reflex of trivialization so ingrained in the modern world. People live off the surface. Even our so-called deep thinkers only wade the shallows. And in the shallows the mind can find no true clarity, no satisfactory answers for its questions. It is like trying to comprehend the cube by means of the square: the depth dimension is missing.

“What are the big issues of our day? Justice for the oppressed, peace in the Middle East, prosperity or depression, communism versus capitalism. For many there is nothing more urgent than the baseball, the football. Such transient matters, but enough to distract one's attention for a lifetime. How many live and die never once touching the greater questions which are the source of all the rest?
One God or two?
There you have the question that lies at the root of all conflict between nations, cultures, races. It is quite simply the second most important question in the world.”

“What's first?” I asked.

“Is there a God at all? Until one answers that, there is no point in thinking, or living, is there?”

In consternation, I slugged down my cognac, at once reaching to pour another. “Then I have no idea what to do.”

He was thumbing through my paper. “Frankly, I think there is simply too much here. Too much to tell all at once. It becomes a jumble. Perhaps …”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps you should consider limiting yourself to Simon, to his films, and perhaps to Castle. A good, solid piece of film criticism. That might be enough to warn the film community to raise its guard.”

“You mean I shouldn't mention the orphans at all?”

He thought carefully. “Not yet. That is another, more delicate, project. On that I could be of assistance. We might work together. Of course, I would not want any credit. In fact, I would prefer to go unnamed.”

“How long do you think such a collaboration might take?”

He wagged his head uncertainly. “That is hard to say.”

“Weeks? Months?”

“… hard to say.”

“Years? Are you talking about years? A major piece of scholarship? Is that what you have in mind?”

“Possibly.”

Did he know how exasperating he was being? “Eduardo, how long have you been part of Oculus Dei?”

“Some twenty years. Why do you ask?”

“In all that time, you haven't published a thing on this subject, have you?”

He assumed a defensive tone. “I have a wealth of notes, years of research. You would be welcome to it all.”

“I'm not prepared to spend twenty years of my life getting ready to write. Frankly, I'd rather take my chances on public ridicule.”

He nodded judiciously. “I understand your impatience. I admit my own approach has been laggardly. But you see, I have felt the need to be thorough, to prove every point solidly. I haven't wanted to become another Rosenzweig.”

I rose and paced the room, letting my frustration show. “I don't know, I don't know. I can't keep something like this bottled up inside me indefinitely.”

“I understand,” he said, trying to soothe me. “But there is good reason to plan what we do carefully for the maximum effect. You may, for example, have a unique opportunity that should not be overlooked.”

“What do you mean?”

“To get closer to the orphans, to enter their world.”

“How?”

“They want your help with Simon. In return, they let you talk to the boy, they tell you things.”

“Mostly they just run me around in circles.”

“Ah, but each time you go around the circle, you learn a little bit more, yes? They may believe they are misleading you … but nevertheless
you find here a fact, there an insight. And with my help to sort through the gleanings …” He grew suddenly more intense, leaning forward in his seat. “Jon, I believe you could be admitted to Albi itself, if you played your cards right.”