a movie...and a Book (2 page)

part one

1.

“I don’t know,” said Lou, lying on his back in the sand. “And in a way, I don’t even care.”

Liz was looking toward the ocean. She was sitting right next to Lou in the sand. It was a special sitting position she had, with her arms closely around her pulled-in legs—the way someone sits to keep warm on a cloudy summer day on the beach. It’s especially recommended if you’re wearing only a dark blue bikini, along with a comfortable gray sweater with a hood. The way she looked at the ocean was the way a small girl would, safely at her mother’s side after she had just seen a young bird lying dead on the curbstone. She had glassy eyes and there was something dreamy about them.

“It looks like rain again,” she said.

“I don’t care,” came from the body to her right. “Rain is beauty.”

“You’re crazy,” she said, and shivered a little, pulling her naked legs a little closer.

“I’m not.”

“You definitely are.”

“I’m not,” Lou said. “I’m just a misunderstood Chinese intellectual.”

“You’re not,” Liz said, pulling her shoulders up a little. It brought the hood of her sweater a little closer around her neck. “You’re American.”

Lou kept looking toward the sky for a moment. Then he said, “What are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“How would you describe yourself if you had to?”

“I’m me.”

“You’re boring,” said Lou, and shook his head methodically from side to side, shaping the mold in the sand a little deeper. “Try it—try to tag a label on yourself. It isn’t that easy,” he challenged. Then he added, “You know, just for fun.”

Liz didn’t answer. She was looking toward the sea.

Lou raised his head a little to see what she was doing.

The wind blew a strand of hair over her face. She brushed it away.

Lou observed it with interest, kept his head suspended for a moment, then lowered it back to the sand.

“I’m the only normal person in the world,” she finally said.

“
Ha!
That’s great!” Lou smiled toward the clouds. “That’s certainly a be—”

He started.

Distant thunder had interrupted his pleasure. He sat up to look at the big black cloud over the ocean. After a moment he lowered himself back into the sand. “Did you know that I kind of like it here?”

Liz seemed to be listening but didn’t say anything.

“I like it here because we have an assignment,” he said. “It wouldn’t be the same if we had planned to get here. If we had planned it, it would be totally different.”

Liz still didn’t say anything, but just lowered her chin to rest on her kneecaps. It seemed to be a better position to look dreamily at the ocean.

“It’s a game . . . It’s a movie and it’s a book,” Lou continued, then thought it over. “Do you know what a movie and book are?”

“What do you mean? Of course I know it,” said Liz. “A book is written on p—”

“I don’t mean that,” Lou interrupted. “It’s a saying.”

He closed his eyes.

“Or, better, it’s something like a philosophy of life.”

With the word
philosophy
he raised his eyebrows a little.

He pressed his lips together.

“The philosophy of the
Japanese intellectuals,
I guess.”

“Ha, you’re so funny,” said Liz. “First you are this great, but misunderstood,
Chinese intellectual
, and now you are a Japanese intellectual.”

She was smiling at Lou while rolling her eyes.

“Okay, okay.” Lou was amused. “Let’s make it a great, misunderstood
Eastern
intellectual then, if you will.”

For a moment neither of them said anything. And only the sound of the small waves and the light wind coming in from the sea kept the place from indulging in a complete silence.

“So what’s behind the saying? What did you call it again . . . a movie and a book?” said Liz after a while. “So what’s the big wisdom of the saying . . . if there is any?”

“Oh, there’s a lot of wisdom,” Lou asserted, wagging his head seriously in the sand. “If you know what a movie and a book are, if you really know what it means, you start to—I don’t know, I guess you just start to look at life a little differently.”

“So, a movie and a book?” said Liz. “I never heard of it.”

“Maybe it’s just a family saying. I don’t know,” said Lou. “My father used to say it. I was never sure he got the wisdom of it, though—I guess he just picked it up from his brother.”

A moment of silence followed.

“So what does it mean?”

“In a way, it just helps you to get over two difficult situations in life, that’s all,” said Lou. Then after a moment he said, “A movie is the first situation, it’s when something strange or crazy happens to you. It could be something as stupid as walking into a pole, for example.”

Lou looked for a moment toward the clouds in silence, then he blinked a couple of times.

“The interesting thing is, if stuff like this happens to
someone else,
it’s highly funny and entertaining. But if it happens to you, it all of a sudden doesn’t seem that funny anymore. It’s rather trying.”

Lou stopped again, and by rolling his head to the right he looked at Liz.

She was looking out at the ocean.

Lou evened his head back into a more natural position and reflected for a moment. “But it’s not trying for the person who understands the saying. Of course, it hurts them just as much as anyone else if they walk into a stupid pole,” said Lou, “but they don’t forget—in the heat of the moment—that life is a movie and that for the audience this situation is highly entertaining . . . So they just step a little out of themselves and share the amusement with the audience. That’s all they do—that’s the whole secret behind it!”

Lou kept looking to the sky for a moment. Then he raised his head a little and said, “Do you know what I mean?”

“Kind of,” said Liz.

All of a sudden Lou’s stare lit up. “So, say my father, for example, secretly had planned the whole thing, staged the whole crazy thing to bring us together. It would be a movie,” he said dryly but with amusement in his voice.

Liz looked to Lou, rolling her eyes. There was amusement in her look too, however guarded.

Lou saw it from the corner of his eye and enjoyed having successfully confirmed his “craziness.” He added seriously, “Observe your life from the third person, and if it’s funny or strange, it’s a movie.”

“And what’s the use of this
wisdom,
if I may ask?”

“What’s the use? Hell, it’s pretty clear. Put two people in the same situation, and the normal guy gets angry, while the guy with
wisdom
is amused.”

“It’s escaping into a dream-world. It’s not facing reality,” said Liz. She seemed to be a little worried again.

Lou didn’t say anything.

“What’s a book, then?” said Liz after a while.

“A book,” Lou said after a short moment of suspense, “is when something dramatic is happening to you. It could be something sad, a difficult situation, or lovesickness, for example. Or just a rainy day.” He thought it over, his focus still on the clouds. “Everyone knows the books.
Oliver Twist, The Catcher
—or even
Heidi,
for God’s sake. Someone tries to find a way through something difficult, or something sad—that’s basically all.” Lou stopped for a beat. “The interesting thing is, for the person
in
the book, it may sometimes be a little difficult, or sad. But you, reading the story, you feel kind of cozy about it. You feel a little sad too, like the person in the book, but at the same time something beautiful happens in your heart. I guess you’ve read these stories too?”

Liz nodded, looking toward the sea.

“So, if we secretly were falling in love on this island, and then we died—right in the rain—before even having an affair, it would be a book,” Lou said. “It would be a story full of desire, full of courage—and, of course, full of melancholy.”

Liz rolled her eyes again.

Another clap of thunder came from the sea.

“But what’s the wisdom? What do you get from it?” Liz said, looking at Lou.

“Well,” he said, “a person with the wisdom in a situation like this feels a little cozy too. Right when feeling sad. He’s able to see what the third person—reading the book, so to speak—can see.”

Liz thought for a moment, still looking toward the sea.

The wind was stronger now; it carried the black clouds a little closer to the island.

“Don’t you think we might die here?” said Liz reflectively.

“I don’t know. All I know is before I die I will have fought it as best I can.”

Liz didn’t say anything for a while. Then all of a sudden her face lit up a little, as if she had thought of something clever. “I guess you feel a little sad, but cozy, right now?” she said with a trace of a new spirit in her voice.

“No,” he deadpanned, “I just like sitting here and talking with you.”

Liz smiled a little. Then shivered.

“Sometimes you’re nice,” she said. She said it loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to be a part of the conversation.

But Lou couldn’t accept it just like that. “That’s obvious. Everyone likes a Chinese intellectual.”

“Sometimes you’re a moron too,” she said, and this new spirit completely took over.

Slowly, but gradually, the clouds that had hung over the ocean began to break and rain started to fall.

Both stood up.

“You know what?” said Liz, “I don’t mind the rain.”

“You’re crazy,” Lou teased.

“No, I’m an
intellectual Chinese
.”

With the word
Chinese,
she turned and ran ahead. Lou didn’t follow—he just watched her run. The way she was moving reminded him of a child running in her favorite but really oversize sweater.

2.

We are in a kitchen. If we take a good look we see
that it’s the kitchen of the suburban house we saw in
the intro. There’s Beth, whom we already got to
know, working behind the sink. And on the tiled
floor lies a young boy. He could be ten, maybe
eleven.

“Pete, don’t bother the cat while she’s eating.”

“I’m not bothering her,” said Pete, lying on his stomach next to the cat, his chin resting on his flat palms. “I’m just observing her.”

“I don’t want you lying on the cold floor.”

“Mother?” said Pete, showing no intention of removing himself from the allegedly cold floor. “Do we still have that small box with the holes in the lid—I mean the one we used to put the bait in?”

“I don’t know. It could be in the garage. Why? What do you need it for?”

“I don’t need it. I just wondered,” said Pete. He slid his right hand from under his chin and reached for the cat. For a moment he tried to hold the cat’s hind leg to the floor with two fingers.

“Pete. I don’t like what I heard from Sarah this morning,” said Beth, looking down at Pete. “She said you threatened to put a spider on her bed. And you know how she feels about spiders.”

“I was just kidding,” said Pete.

One part of the cat continued to eat, and another part tried to pull its leg out of the hold.

“But it isn’t nice, anyway. You know how she’s afraid of spiders.”

“I only said I discovered a small spider in my room behind a seashell,” said Pete in his defense, looking up at his mother for the first time. “Well, I just asked her if she hates small spiders too.”

He must have let go of the hold while changing his focal point, so the cat, still eating, pulled its leg away.

“That’s not what she told me,” said Beth, cleaning another leaf of lettuce. “She told me you showed her the spider.”

“Yes, I showed it to her. But she said it was too small to really scare her,” said Pete, looking back at the cat.

The cat had its head suspended over the bowl now, concentrating on chewing a big chunk.

“Didn’t you say you planned to feed it with flies to make it a big one? Sarah said you threatened to put it on her bed one day, when it’s big enough.”

“I was just kidding,” said Pete. “I said one day I’m going to put the spider
underneath a cup
on her bed. But when I do it, I’ll just put an empty cup on her bed.”

“That’s not nice. That’s really not nice, Pete. You know she won’t go near the cup, and in the end it’s me who has to—”

She stopped as she saw Pete pursuing the cat out of the kitchen. He walked four-legged and in slow motion, pretending to be some hideous beast of nature.

3.

We are back on the island. It’s night.

“Are you asleep?” Liz asked.

“No.”

“I can’t sleep.” She turned and tried to make a picture out of the darkness. But she saw only that Lou was lying supine, looking to the sky. She moved into the same position, then said, “Are you afraid of the dark?”

“No.”

“Do you like the stars?”

“Yes.”

“Are you afraid of dying?”

“No.”

“Do you like the sea?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe in something after— Oh . . . did you see that shooting star?”

“There wasn’t one.”

“You have to make a wish,” said Liz.

“There wasn’t even a shooting star.”

Liz wasn’t listening. After a moment she said, “Did you make a wish?”

“Yes.”

“What did you wish?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to shoot you,” Lou said casually.

“Oh, come on. What was it?”

“If you tell, it won’t come true,” he said and added, “That’s the rule.”

Liz just said, “Oh.”

After a moment she said, “I can’t sleep. Tell me a good-night story.”

“No. You tell me one.”

“No,”
she wailed. “Please tell me one.”

“All right. But let me think first.”

4.

In Pete’s bedroom. The same night.

Pete was lying in his bed saying his prayer: “Dear God, please make Mom and Dad a little more cool.” He thought for a moment, then went on, “Besides, I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s class trip. I hope that the weather’s going to be nice.”