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More surprising, I discovered that he could be, after his own madcap fashion, an entertaining raconteur. I actually began to look forward to my sessions with him, perhaps because they provided a sort of comic relief from Clare's relentless intellectuality. In the course of our brief working relationship, Sharkey ushered me into the wackiest film talk I could have imagined, beginning with an infinitely convoluted exposition of
The Shanghai Gesture,
which he regarded as “metaphysical pornography on the highest level.” From there he launched into an endless encomium on the films of Maria Montez and Judy Canova. The thesis of this labyrinthine disquisition seemed to be that they were the best actresses there ever were because they were so very, very bad. Or that, at least, is as much sense as I could make of it. Much of this I assigned to the state of chemical relaxation Sharkey brought with him to the job. Sheer stoned silliness.

But there was another set of rambling exchanges of a different character. Baffling as it was at the time, I would in later years have reason to recall what Sharkey once told me in all the detail I could muster. It would be his unwitting contribution to my study of Max Castle.

It began like this.

One evening while he was escorting me through the basic anatomy of the projector, Sharkey dropped a remark about “fusion frequency.” “You know what that is, don't you?” he asked.

Of course I did, as any film student would. It was the speed at which the still images on the frames of a running film “fused” in the eye, giving the appearance of motion. Twenty-four frames per second.

“Damn, but that's a remarkable thing!” Sharkey went on, “when you stop to think about it. Ever think about it? It's remarkable. Because none of the pictures on this film is really moving, right? The old Simplex here's playing tricks on the eye. Clickety-click. Open-shut. Off-on. Now you see it, now you don't. And every time you see it, your eye tells your brain it's moving. But it ain't. In here, inside the eyeball, there's this weird little gimmick—persistence of vision, right? And out there somewhere in the universe is this fusion frequency, just waiting for some machine to come along that can run pictures at the right speed. And one day the two of them get together, and you got“—Sharkey did a nasally to-ta-ta-to version of the 20th Century-Fox fanfare—“you got the
movies!”
Then, giving me a soulfully quizzical look: “Why should it be like that? The world didn't
have to be like that. Every time I think about it, it just spooks me. I mean, who writes the script for things like that?” And then with a sudden, sobering change of tone that caught me off guard: “Work of the devil. Ever hear that one?”

I grinned back, assuming he was making some typically bizarre joke.

“Seriously,” he insisted. “It's a lie, see? A hoax.
Contra naturam.
That's what the authorities used to call it.
Un-natural
.”

“What
authorities?”

He gave me a sly wink. It was one of his characteristic gestures when he was seeking to appear deeply significant. A wink and a low, dry whistle. “Well, I don't mean the Hays Office, buddy-boy. Goes a lot deeper than that. We came
that
close—a hairbreadth—to seeing moving pictures banned right out of existence.”

“When was this?”

Sharkey shrugged. “Can't say for certain. It was all done under wraps. We never hear about these things on the outside, you know. Somewhere back in the nineteenth century. Time of Napoleon. There were all these heavy discussions inside the Vatican. Went on for years.”

“The Vatican!”

“Sure. There was a whole brigade of holy fathers wanted to kill moving pictures stone-cold dead—as an offense against the faith.”

Now I was convinced he was putting me on, which he often did. “Sure, sure. Movies in the time of Napoleon.”

“I didn't say ‘movies.' I said ‘moving pictures.' You know about the Zoetrope.”

I did. The Zoetrope was part of basic film history, mentioned in all the textbooks. It was a little carousel-like device with a series of drawings inside the drum, usually of a running or jumping figure in different positions. Spun at the right speed, it would blend the drawings together at their fusion frequency and make them seem to move. It had been a popular novelty in the last century.

“Zoetrope goes back to the infidel peoples,” Sharkey went on. “The ancient wheel of life. There was this zonked-out Arab—Al-Hazen … something or other. H. P. Lovecraft has the lowdown on him. He worked out all the principles way back, just before the crusades, I think. And he wasn't the first. He was just picking it up from the heretics.”

“What heretics?”

“Zoetrope worshipers. The first movie fans. They were all over the biblical lands there.”

“Where did you say all this took place?”

“The biblical lands. You know … Arabia like. India. Katmandu.”

“That's not ‘biblical,'” I protested.

“Not now, no. But then it was. All the way out. East. Way east. Far as a camel could walk. Bible used to cover more ground then.”

“When?”

“Thousand, two thousand years ago. The whole thing goes way back. Egypt maybe.”

Sharkey could see I wasn't taking him seriously. But that didn't stop him. He rambled on, keeping things playful as if for the benefit of my untutored understanding. “Oh sure, the Zoetrope's just a harmless toy, right? But it's based on an illusion. Same illusion this projector's built around. That's what makes this a magic lantern. But what kind of magic? Maybe
black
magic.” He gave me the wink and the whistle, then waited to see how things were registering.

“Where did you pick all this up, Sharkey?” I asked, letting my incredulity show, but politely.

“Met this priest in Paris back in the forties. He knew the whole story. See, originally—meaning all the way back, Dark Ages, like that—the church was totally down on moving pictures. Said the Zoetrope, anything like it, was an infernal engine. You got caught eye-balling one, they might burn you at the stake. No kidding. But there was this faction in the Vatican—the good guys, our team, so to speak—finally got the holy fathers turned around. The pope and all the rest, they decided that persistence of vision was an innocent amusement and an okay thing. Because, after all, God made the eye that way, didn't he? That's the ten-cent version of what they came up with. I mean: they were talking heavy-duty theology, you understand. When the authorities hold a powwow like that, it sends out vibrations in all directions, way beyond the pope's private parlor. Well, like I said, it finally came out the right way. Lucky for us. You know what would have happened if old Mother Church had clamped down on the Zoetrope? Very likely no Charlie Chaplin, no Donald Duck, no Rhett and Scarlett. You think I'm kidding? I'm not kidding. There are powers you don't go up against. If you do, you get creamed.”

“Who was this priest?” I asked.

“Funny old bird. Name was Rosenzweig. A Jesuit. Actually, he
wasn't a Jesuit anymore when we met him, Clare and me. He got unfrocked for making too many waves on the inside of the inside of things. See, he wouldn't give up. He was still fighting to get the decision reversed—but it was nothing doing. He was out on his ear. Used to mouth off for hours on the evils of the movies. Not what was
in
the movies, you understand. Sex, violence, profanity—he didn't care bat's crap about that. Just
movies.
The illusion, that's what had him pissed off.
Black magic,
was what he called it. He used to hang around the Cinémathèque trying to make converts. For him, that was Satanic headquarters. You can imagine how much luck he had there. He got to be quite a local character, coming around with his little pamphlets, speechifying at the drop of a hat. Boy, could he work himself into a lather. Foamed at the mouth. After a while, they decided to lock him out. He was getting to be a real nuisance. That's when he took a potshot at Henri Langlois.”

“He tried to shoot Henri Langlois?”

“Yep. Quite a sensation. An act of cultural assassination. Missed by a hair. He was convinced Langlois was trafficking with the dark powers.”

Henri Langlois was the head, heart, and soul of the Paris Cinémathèque, its founder, father-figure, and mad genius. But for him, there might never have been a French film community. He was one of Clare's great heroes.

“Were you there when this happened?” I asked.

“Nope. That was a year or so after we left for the States. Clare nearly had heart failure when she heard about it. She once got into a shouting match with Rosenzweig. One of those big, dumb arguments that used to break out at the Cinémathèque. Who knows? He might have tried to gun her down too. He got nearly mad enough to attack her, I recall.”

“She never mentioned that.”

“She won't talk about it.”

“Sounds wild. I had no idea … ”

“Basically,” Sharkey continued, “Rosenzweig was a nut. That's obvious. But he was the kind of nut that makes you think. Because it's a damn good story, you know. Makes a lot of sense.”

“What does?”

“Cinema theology. The good and the evil. Reality and illusion.”

“You take all this seriously?”

“Damn right. It's just a matter of getting into—
really
getting into
the magic of it. I mean: we're mucking around with the fundamental ontology of things here.” Another wink and a whistle, this time more haughty, as if to add:
You didn't think I knew words like that, did you?
“What's real? What's not? The old magic lantern here”—he slapped the projector affectionately—“is basically one hell of a mind-fucker. You think the authorities don't care about that? Believe me, they care.”

I left that night inclined to dismiss everything Sharkey had said as one of his patented exercises in surrealistic humor. I'd often heard him holding forth at parties, rambling on about flying saucers, miracle cures, the secrets of the pyramids. Only this evening, he hadn't been burning any grass; and his manner hadn't been all that comic. In fact, Sharkey had been about as serious as he ever got.

Another evening, another wild conversation.

This one started off almost rationally. Sharkey let fall a name I didn't recognize, so I asked, “Who?”

“Louis Aimé Auguste LePrince. You never heard of him? Look him up in the
Guinness Book of Records.
First man to show movies. You did hear of Edison, I imagine. Thomas Alva Edison?”

I assured him I knew who Edison was.

“Well, Americans like to think Edison invented the movies, right? That's just patriotic bullshit. What Tom Edison invented was the Kinetoscope, which was a souped-up peep show, that's all. Big deal. If anybody invented real movies—I mean
projected moving pictures
—it was LePrince. He got the whole works together. Camera, projector, lenses, celluloid film stock.”

“When was this?”

“Eighteen-eighties.”

“That early?”

“Yep. Not only that, but he was a zealot. Traveled the world pushing movies. London, New York, Chicago. He really wanted to see this technology take off. That's what did him in.”

“How do you mean?”

“Dropped off the face of the earth. That's why the textbooks say so little about him. Listen, he was a real genius. He invented perforated film, not Edison. Edison stole the idea from LePrince, not that he knew what to do with it except to stick it in his peep show. Also”—Sharkey's voice dropped into a confidential whisper—”here's the clincher. Louis Aimé was the first to use the Maltese cross gear. But that's a whole 'nother story.”

I decided to let that other story wait and stick to LePrince. “You say he vanished?”

“In a puff. Without a trace. One of the great mysteries—1890. He went to visit his brother in the south of France. Mind you, he'd just done a big number at the Paris Opera. Projected movies. On a screen. The real thing. Great triumph. All the honchos in the French theater were there. Well, on his way back from seeing his brother, he disappeared off the train. Never heard from again.”

I could tell there was more to the story. I waited for Sharkey to add the punch line.

“The ODs got him.”

“The
who?”

“Remember Papa Rosenzweig I told you about? He was one of them. Oculus Dei. The Eye of God. Did I get the Latin right? I think so. You dig the name? Eye of God—it sees things
right,
not like in the movies. If they were all like Rosenzweig—these ODs—they were the worst enemies us film folk ever had. Worse than the Legion of Decency, House Un-American Activities Committee, all that. Because they were out to kill the art, zap!”

“Well, who were they?”

One of his sly winks.
“Were?
What gives you the idea they're not still around? Just ask Miss Swann some time. They haven't given up on her.”

“She's still in touch with them?”

“They're
in touch with
her.
Or they'd sure like to be. Couple times since we left Paris they've dropped by for a chat, not that Clare'd give 'em the time of day. Allies is what they're after. Respectable-type brainy people like Our Lady of The Classic.”

“Well, who
are
they?”

“Search me, kid. Only OD I ever met was Rosenzweig. And he wasn't saying. All I know is they were out to sabotage the movies from the word go.”

“And you think they … what?
Murdered
LePrince?”

“Could be.” Then, with a laugh, he added, “Or maybe Father Rosenzweig was just shitting us. Maybe he was the only OD there was.”

“But there
was
a LePrince. And he did vanish.”

“Oh yeah. But maybe he was just running out on his wife. Who knows?”