Flicker (86 page)

There was a frozen sneer on Dr. Byx's face that showed me I wasn't getting through. “And in order to make this very important statement, Herr Kastell sees fit to associate the holiest symbols of our faith with drunken savages and striptease dancing.”

I decided it was best to back off. We were skirting matters of doctrine and religious discipline that were well beyond my grasp. Besides, it wasn't my job to defend Castle to his spiritual superiors. But I ventured one final remark. “There are some members of your church who regard Castle as a prophet.” I angled the observation to sound inquisitive: a question, not a statement. Dr. Byx threw me an expression of challenging incredulity. Feeling intimidated, I qualified my remark. “Well, at least one member said so.”

“I'd be interested to know who.”

Not wanting to rat on Simon, I retreated rapidly. “I may have misunderstood.”

Dr. Byx gave a small, dismissive shrug. “I can assure you that is
not
how Max Kastell will be remembered in the annals of our church.”

By the time we returned to the doctor's residence, he'd managed to cool down enough to recapture his sense of hospitality. He offered me a final brandy for the night and, much to my surprise, an apology. “You will excuse me if at times this evening I seemed in bad temper. I find this film so very offensive. It marks the failure of someone in whom we invested high hopes. Perhaps now you have some better idea why our church came to be so displeased with Max Kastell.”

Before I lost touch with the more ingratiating mood that had come over him, I hastened to thank him for letting me view the film and then decided to press my luck. “I'm sure you realize how greatly my research would be helped if I had the use of a multifilter. That might allow me to finish my article on Simon all the sooner.”

Dr. Byx lifted an eyebrow, weighing the request. “No doubt, no doubt. I will see if that can be arranged.”

I thanked him in advance for a favor I hardly expected to receive and finished my brandy. Dr. Byx showed me to my quarters for the night, a room on the same floor of the main building as his office. It was impeccably clean and quite comfortable, though monastically spare in its furnishings; the only decoration on view was a Maltese cross above the bed. Although I felt beaten flat by jet lag and an evening of strained conversation, I at once set to work recording all I'd learned that evening in my notebook. I didn't want to forget a word. Unless I was mistaken, I'd found the last missing fragment of Max Castle's story.

He'd set out for Zurich in the fall of 1941 hoping to raise the money he needed to finance his own production of
Heart of Darkness.
It was a long shot, actually a fool's errand, but the best hope he had at that dismal stage of his career. Possibly the orphans, trying to bring him home for disciplining, deliberately created the impression they might strike a bargain with him. There was never a chance of that, even though I felt certain Castle didn't intend the blasphemy his superiors saw in his version of
Heart of Darkness.
If he had, he wouldn't have planned to show them the excerpts he took with him. It was more likely he'd grown so estranged from his church and so immersed in his art that he could no longer tell where aesthetics left off and religion began. Or he'd ceased caring.

At least tentatively I was able to identify more of the symbolism contained in the little film clip than Dr. Byx realized; my studies in Cathar history had taught me a thing or two along the way. Castle had wanted to imbue his key scene with as much in the way of holy terror as possible. So he pulled out all stops and gave it the works. He drew upon the most vivid image of sacrifice and expiation he knew: the eternal love affair between the black bird and the lady Sophia. From what Dr. Byx told me, I gathered the Cathars still celebrated a sacramental rite which depicted that ambiguously erotic encounter between the true God and the fickle human mind that would embrace divine knowledge at the risk of profaning it. Was that rite as blatantly sexual as Castle made it in his film? Was it—I shuddered to think so—as murderously gory? I supposed not, though I'd given up guessing what might or might not be too extreme for the orphans.

What was clear was that Castle had, for his own artistic purposes, played fast and loose with images and ideas his church regarded as taboo in the deepest primordial sense of that word. For him, the
mysteries of the faith were the legitimate stuff of art. He saw nothing sacrilegious in using the love dance of the black bird and the white lady to imbue the primitive ritual of Conrad's savages with as much juice and power as he could bring to the scene. I remembered Faustus Carstad's remark. “Every religion in the world goes back to fertility rites and love feasts.” A rigid fanatic like Dr. Byx was hardly likely to admit that, let alone permit that fact to be exploited for its cinematic effect on an audience of unbelievers.

I could imagine how desperate Castle must have felt traveling so far to lay his proposition before the scorning authorities of his church. Even if he had succeeded in reaching Zurich with his meager bit of film, it was a doomed mission. The powers that dominated his church had lost all patience with him. “Movies have their function,” Dr. Byx had said. He meant they were an instrument for mental manipulation, a means of twisting the psyche of the infidel masses. Just that, nothing more. For Dr. Byx, artists like Max Castle and Simon Dunkle were mere technicians whose task it was to work in absolute obedience to their superiors. Castle was bound to be sent away empty-handed.

And then what? Zip Lipsky had said he was ready to resort to extortion if the orphans failed to come across with the cash he needed. He'd already been shooting his mouth off around the studios, telling outsiders—like John Huston—more about the church than the orphans cared to have known. Was he still in that rebellious frame of mind when he set out for Zurich? Would he have been willing to spill the beans if he'd made it back to the States? Zip Lipsky had hinted darkly that the orphans might be quite ruthless about muzzling their enemies. But how, if they refused to shed blood?

It was nearly midnight by the time the fatigue of the day overcame me. I was just opening the window of my room to bring in the fresh night air when I heard a distant singing. It came from the direction of the chapel, the priests and nuns, no doubt, performing a late service of some kind. The music was soft and crooning, rather like a Gregorian chant. At that moment, within sight of the moon-blanched Alps, I would have said it was the most touching music I'd ever heard: sweet, dark, and infinitely plaintive. A deep melancholy washed over me. Though I couldn't make out the words of the song (they were probably Latin anyway), I felt certain they hymned some ancient memory of hardship and persecution. Somber praise offered to long-suffering ancestors whose only crime was that they honored an austere faith in the face of brutal opposition. Despite all I knew about them now—their
maniacal vengefulness, their secret machinations devoted to an act of universal extermination—still, in that moment, caught in the spell of those mournful voices, my heart went out to the unhappy orphans for all they had endured. It was the last generous thought I was ever to spare them.

That night I didn't sleep well. Early on I had a dream that left me too jumpy to settle down. I saw myself in the limousine from the orphanage. I was on my way to the airport. Dr. Byx sat on one side of me; on the other sat a second man whose presence made me afraid, so afraid that I could not bring myself to look in his direction. Rather I averted my eyes, trying not to see him. When we arrived, there was no plane in sight. “Don't worry,” Dr. Byx said cheerily. “We can provide an alternate carrier. But first we must mark the spot.”

“Of course,” I agreed.

At once, he and the second man took large pieces of chalk from their pockets, knelt down, and began to draw a series of long, straight lines on the tarmac. Once again, I turned my eyes away, not wanting to see the second man's face. The lines that he and Dr. Byx were drawing came together in the shape of a large Maltese cross and I was at the center of it. I stood admiring the precision of their work. “No wonder your church has lasted so long,” I commented. “You take such great care with every detail.”

“Exactly so,” said Dr. Byx. He scanned the sky, then pointed. “You see?”

I looked up and saw a dark speck circling slowly overhead. It turned and swooped, coming lower. It was the black bird. But now it was very large. Very, very large. Larger than an airplane. Suddenly it dived—straight at me. I tried to run, but the chalk cross was holding me in like an invisible fence; I couldn't step across any of its lines. The bird, sweeping overhead like a windstorm, snatched me by the shoulders and lifted off. We were soaring away, climbing steeply. I tried to cry out, but the rushing air stifled me. Looking down in terror, I saw the rapidly receding figures of Dr. Byx and the second man smiling after me, waving.

I wanted desperately to wake up but couldn't. The dream had a fierce grip on my mind; it wouldn't be shaken off. The great bird was carrying me over the Alps, over forests and farms. It seemed to be holding me by the threads of my jacket. Fearful that I might fall, I strained to reach around and grab hold of its talons, but each time I tried, I seemed to slip. Then we were over open ocean, traveling at
a fierce speed. I could hear the gigantic wings beating above me. In a panic, I wrenched myself around—and the bird let go. My blood froze as I felt myself falling, falling. Now I'll wake up, I said to myself. But I didn't. As if in slow motion, I splashed into the water. It closed about me, cold and thick and damp. I sank and sank. All around me the darkness deepened. I should have been drowning, but I wasn't. And this frightened me more than I would have feared dying, for I realized I was passing into some hideously unnatural condition: hopelessly trapped in a kind of living death.

I became aware of music … voices singing, reaching me with a deep, wavery distortion there below the water. A familiar song. The words of “Bye, Bye, Blackbird,” that old vaudeville dirge about hard luck, lovelessness, and everybody's long dark way home.

And then, far below me, I saw blurred yellow lights. It was a city under the sea, at the bottom of the world.
No
, I said,
I d'ont want to live here!
And with a convulsive effort, I woke. But just before I did, I made out a sign in the sickly lights below me. ‘It said “Holly-wood.”

As I pulled myself up from the bed, I could still hear the singing voices from my dream. They were there in the room with me. No, outside … coming from the chapel. I listened intently. Silence. Yet I was certain I'd awakened in time to catch just the final strains of their singing. I waited for several minutes to see if they would sing again. There was nothing.

I spent the rest of the night afraid to sleep again. Toward dawn, I managed to doze for about an hour.

That morning I was served breakfast in my room. Soon after, a priest came to tell me my car was at the front door. I'd been told that someone from the orphanage would escort me to Albi to make introductions. This turned out to be a young nun named Sister Angeline. She had a pleasant, fresh face, too pretty, I thought, to be encased in the close black bonnet of her order. As we sat together in the back of the car waiting for the driver to return from a last minute errand, I wondered what color her hair might be beneath her censoring habit and how she might look if it were free to frame her face. All the while we waited, she wore a small, strained smile, trying hard to please, it seemed. Instead, the tension in her face unsettled me, as did her silence. She said nothing except to answer questions, and then only briefly. She didn't, for example, tell me we would have a traveling companion. It was Dr. Byx, who came bustling out of the
orphanage with the driver. He hurried to the car holding out a small box. It was a gift. “By all means, open it,” he said, smiling benevolently.

I did. It was a sallyrand. It was shiny new. “Well, thank you,” I managed to say. My surprise was evident. I asked if he expected me to return it.

“Not at all,” he said. “It is yours. After so many severe criticisms of Max Kastell last evening, it seemed appropriate, as, shall we say, a goodwill offering? I want you to start your long journey in the right frame of mind, so to speak.”

I thanked him again. “It will be put to good use.”

“I'm sure.” And he waved me on my way.

At the airport, a sleek little twin-engine commuter plane was waiting for us. Sister Angeline quickly climbed in and took her seat; I followed. The pilot, a personable young priest named Brother Jerome, welcomed me aboard and began to taxi us toward a distant runway as soon as I was buckled in.

I settled down for the trip with a distinct sense of triumph. I had a sallyrand! Dr. Byx had simply given it to me. Everything was falling into place, just as Angelotti had said it would. I began to make a mental list of the people to whom I would show the multifilter, starting with Clare. I might even schedule an invitational screening of the works of Max Castle and Simon Dunkle at the Museum of Modern Art and let the films be viewed with this remarkable instrument. It would provide all the proof I needed of the orphans' cinematic techniques. My God, it would make history!

It wasn't until we were floating west over the Alps that I became aware of something buzzing away at the back of my mind like a persistent alarm one wakes and hears distantly in the darkness. I was remembering another flight I'd taken above the landscape I now saw below me. In my dream the night before, the great bird had flown with me across these mountains, had dropped me in the cold sea. But there was something about that dream that was more frightening than those experiences. That fear was still there, refusing to leave my memory. The second man, whose face I refused to see. I knew now as I had known in the dream who he was. Angelotti.