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“In case of what?”

“Oh, in case I get lost at sea,” I laughed.

Angelotti didn't understand. Why should he? “At sea? But you are flying, yes?”

“Of course. Castle was lost at sea.”

“Oh?”

“On his way to Zurich in 1941.”

“Oh. I didn't know.”

And then I wondered why I'd brought the point up at all.

Somewhere in the course of the last several days before my departure, I became aware of a curious change. Something was displacing the many reservations, even the real fear I'd been nursing about my mission to Zurich. Instead, I was experiencing a rising sense of giddiness, rather like the feeling that sets in on the steep uphill approach to the first dip of a roller coaster. Perhaps some of Angelotti's eagerness was rubbing off on me. In any case, I was actually enjoying the anticipation of risk. And there was something more. A sense of power. Just to be privy to the orphans' great project seemed to confer an importance upon my every thought and move. Never in all my life could I have imagined an enterprise as vast as theirs, a dedication as fierce. I found myself deliberately suppressing my incredulity about Angelotti's story. I
wanted
him to be right. Because then
I
would be the man who knew! And soon, like one of Hitchcock's lovably bumbling innocents—Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant—I might be moving inside the conspiratorial depths, sharing some part of the terrible adventure. This was a side of myself I hadn't known was there. Once I did, I issued a stern warning:
Careful, Jonathan! That way lies madness.

Los Angeles to New York. New York to Rome. Rome to Zurich. Then, by way of a waiting limousine, to the orphanage where I was scheduled to spend the night before continuing to Albi.

The old, weather-stained building was as cheerless as I remembered it, but Dr. Byx had changed markedly. While as stiffly formal as he'd been the previous summer, he was clearly making a supreme
effort to be affable. I could almost believe he was pleased to have me back. I had to remind myself that this couldn't be so, since I was an interloper here to ask more unwelcome questions. I'd been in his office making small talk for nearly an hour before I began to get a fix on my situation. A priest named Brother Basil happened by and Dr. Byx hastened to introduce me as “a guest of Father Marcion” on my way to the abbey. There was a buoyant note in his voice as he spoke that led Brother Basil to respond with a more than polite handshake and a “Congratulations.” I gathered that receiving an invitation from one of the Perfect conferred a certain distinction. Dr. Byx went on to let me know it was a rare privilege.

“I believe it is some three years since we last arranged a formal audience at the abbey. Let me see, that was for an official of the Red Cross with whom we were cooperating in a venture. But a scholar … I can't recall it has ever happened.”

I wanted to know how long I'd be permitted to stay. “That will be up to Father Marcion. There are accommodations at the monastery. You may find the food on the frugal side. Vegetarian, you know. Modest portions. But you may send out for things of your own.”

“Father Marcion must be very old,” I observed. “Will I be tiring him?”

“The elders are all very old. Many in their nineties. The oldest—Father Valentinius—is one hundred and nine. Living to a ripe old age is a characteristic of our faith. Our diet perhaps. I expect you will find Father Marcion lively and alert.”

I'd arrived at the orphanage in the late afternoon with no clear plans for dinner. I discovered that Dr. Byx expected me to dine with him at his residence. In fact, he insisted. As far as I could tell, the only reason for the invitation was to let me know how “very, very grateful” the church was for my “brilliant article” on Simon Dunkle. Dr. Byx had received a copy of the piece from Brother Justin and had taken the liberty of showing it to some of the elders, especially Father Marcion, who was delighted with my analysis. As Angelotti had surmised, my opinion of the boy wonder was of great importance to the orphans. It made me uncomfortable to do it, but I persevered in my deception, agreeing to everything Dr. Byx said about Simon's skill and promise, holding back my severe reservations.

At last, when I saw my opening, I reminded him that the article was still subject to revision.

“But your opinion of Simon will finish in the same positive vein, will it not?” Dr. Byx asked with marked concern.

“I hope so. To be frank, just now I'm not certain that the article will get finished at all. Because, you see, that depends …”

“On?”

“On whether I make some progress with my research on Max Castle.”

“I'm sure you will find Father Marcion very helpful in that respect.”

“So I hope. And what about you, Doctor? You could also be of great help to me.”

“Please, in what respect?” he asked eagerly.

I took a deep breath and made my play. “I've brought a film with me. Actually, it's only a clip, a few minutes long. Max Castle's last serious piece of work. It's been stored away for years in a private collection. I'd like to look at it tonight.”

The eagerness melted from his voice. “You haven't seen this film yet?”

“Yes, I've seen it. But not all of it. I think you know what I mean.”

He did. Offering me the steady, searching look of a man weighing a difficult bargain, he pushed back from the table and strode across the room to a cabinet. He unlocked a drawer and took out a flashlightsized box. “What was the amusing name you had for it?” he asked.

“A sallyrand. She was a famous striptease dancer.”

“Striptease … yes. A dance that hides more than it reveals.”

We left his quarters and walked across the courtyard outside. In his office, where I'd deposited my luggage, I unpacked the reel of film Olga Tell had sent me and followed him to the lower floors of the school. I remembered this part of the orphanage; it was where the film labs were. We entered one of the rooms containing a dozen or so moviolas. Dr. Byx chose one, took the reel of film from its canister, inspected it with undisguised displeasure, and began to thread it into the machine.

“Perhaps we should have a fanfare. Max Von Kastell's last serious piece of work. Is that what you called it? As usual, it would seem to be incomplete.” He switched on the moviola. A familiar but still startling scene from
Heart of Darkness
sprang into view on the small screen: the fence of severed heads. It was followed by the raucous native dance and gory ritual. Dr. Byx and I watched the short clip all the way through. Or, rather, he watched it; I watched him from
the corner of my eye, eager to gauge his reaction. I expected it to be unfavorable, but it was more than that. His face was that of a man struggling to hold back a convulsive repugnance. Still, when the film ran out, he managed a controlled response. “Quite shoddy, don't you find?” he asked coolly. “The man was finished, at the end of his rope.”

“But we haven't seen it all, have we?” I replied.

Without being asked, Dr. Byx rewound the reel and handed me the sallyrand. I aimed the device at the moviola and watched the film for a second time. I had a strong hunch what I might see, and I was right.

There they were, Olga Tell and the man she had called Dandy Wilson, their wraithlike images emerging in a run of negative etching that coiled through the interlaced smoke and shadow of the scene. He was wearing his ritual costume, the great black wings and beaked headpiece. She, while as completely naked as I'd seen her in the footage Zip Lipsky managed to salvage, was now ingeniously if minimally clothed in the flashing light of the sword she wielded. This was cleverly done, lending her marvelously contoured body an angelic luster. At the same time, in the close-ups Zip had filmed, Olga's face showed unmistakable signs that she was indeed doped up and not at all in control of what she was doing. That was painful to watch. Her eyes were spacey and blurred, filled with an unfocused fear, her movements somnambulistic as she and her partner performed the graphic, totally joyless sexual maneuver Zip had been so eager to deny was porn. The outtakes he'd saved made that denial a great deal less than convincing. But in this version, using the shot Castle must have been hunting for all along, the act had taken on a more ritualized and at the same time more tortured quality. This was partly because the scene had been filmed in super-slow motion. The black man and the white woman seemed to be making both love and war simultaneously, embracing and tearing at one another, caressing and clawing with an achingly labored underwater heaviness.

But there was something else happening. The subliminal footage of Olga and her partner was shifting back and forth between its positive and negative images: black man, white woman; black woman, white man. As their sexual encounter mounted in intensity, these reversals accelerated, producing a dizzying effect. Finally, at the moment of climax, the camera went into a slow spin that swirled the wildly
flickering forms of the man and woman into a yin-yang configuration, an animated union of the opposites. But this came to a sudden, jolting halt as Olga took up the sword she'd laid to one side, and struck at her lover with one swift blow, a graphic act of decapitation.

At just that moment, the surface film that overlay Olga's ritual murder brightened and pressed forward. The first of the victims in the “unspeakable rite”—it was one of the women—was swiftly immolated by the witch doctor. That moment had been edited from the visible footage; but Castle had preserved it subliminally. It was a terrifying image: the black native woman impaled upon the fierce white tusk. I couldn't have put the symbolism of all this into words. I didn't have to. I was left knowing that I had witnessed a sacrificial act that was at once sacred and obscene. When the film finished, I felt as if I'd been punched in the gut. I took a moment to compose myself, then offered Dr. Byx the sallyrand so that he might watch the sequence in its entirety.

“No need,” he sniffed as he rewound the reel. “I have seen this little piece of work.”

“Oh? When?”

“When I first took up my duties here in Zurich. This excerpt was in our film library.”

“But how did it get there?”

“I was told that some of our people in Hollywood helped with the editing and effects—such as they are. When the studio—RKO, was it?—wisely elected to abandon the movie, our editors took whatever footage they could find into safekeeping. How it eventually found its way here, I cannot say. It is an even greater mystery to me why it was preserved. I'm sure my predecessors found it as distasteful as I do.”

His reply raised more questions than it answered. “My understanding was that Castle took this excerpt with him when he left on his final trip to come here.”

“Indeed? I wonder why he should have done so?”

“He thought it might persuade your church to help finance a production of
Heart of Darkness.”

Dr. Byx stared at me, confounded. “I can't believe he would make such a misjudgment. In any case, if he did take the film with him, it would have perished when he did, not so?”

“Yes, that's true.” Dr. Byx was giving me an owlish stare, as if he were trying to read my thoughts. I decided to let him know what was
on my mind. “Is there any chance that the film was delivered here by Castle?”

He frowned at me. It was a smiling, inquisitive frown. “How could that be?”

“I mean, is there any chance Castle actually got to Zurich in 1941?”

Dr. Byx pursed his lips, furrowed his brow, and made a great show of pondering my question. “I can't recall that this was ever reported to me.”

“Do you still have the film here?”

A quick, bitter laugh burst from him. “Hardly! It was one of my first acts as director to dispose of this little horror.”

“Do you really find it so disagreeable?” I asked, hoping he would open up for me. “I grant you the scene isn't up to the best technical standards, but Castle was quite handicapped at the time he shot this. He was working fast, trying to avoid the supervision of the studio… .”

Dr. Byx broke in impatiently. “This has nothing to do with artistic values.” He hissed the last two words at me as if it burned his lips to pronounce them. “There are things you have seen here in this wretched little scrap of film that are precious to our faith. Kastell was given no permission to make use of them, let alone to desecrate them. We place a very high value on obedience in our church. Perhaps this is difficult for you to appreciate with your rather exaggerated modern concern for artistic freedom.”

“I don't understand what you mean by ‘desecrate.'”

He answered as if he were doing me a great favor to be responding at all, though hardly expecting me to appreciate what he said. “I wonder what the concept of
sacrifice
means to you, Professor Gates. Does it convey any spiritual import at all? Suppose I were to tell you that what you have seen in the multifilter is a gross parody of a sacrificial rite that has been honored in our church since ancient days. Would that clarify anything at all for you? I suspect not. You would have to understand a great deal more about our theology to know how offensive we find this crude piece of burlesque. Suffice it to say, that even if this effort were not blasphemous, it would be intolerable that the emblems of our faith should be placed on public display in such a film, in
any
film.”

Now I was getting what I wanted, teasing the spleen out of the man and with it a few anguished truths about the last days of Max Castle. “But why? You teach your pupils to make movies.”

Dr. Byx's tone became crushingly sententious. “Motion pictures are a profane art. They have their function. It is not to dabble in sacred doctrine, especially when one has no higher goal than aesthetic sensation.”

“Do you really believe that's all Castle was after here? I happen to know that he took this movie very seriously. He wanted it to be a commentary upon the barbarism of our time, the revolt against civilization. I believe he was looking for the most powerful images he could find to make that statement.”