Zeroville (20 page)

In the yawning theater where the festival’s closing ceremony takes place are more people than Vikar has ever seen. They fill the mezzanine and a grand balcony above him; he didn’t know a building could hold this many people. He stands in the middle looking around, everyone looking back. Everyone looks at him but not the way people used to when they would throw themselves off hillsides and not the way they did in the Bowery when he came into the club. A golden glow settles on the theater, and up onstage in a box to the right are nine people that Rondell explains to Vikar are the festival jury. They include a famous Swedish actress whom Vikar recognizes from several Ingmar Bergman movies he can’t think of because all Ingmar Bergman’s movies are the same to him, and one of the producers of the James Bond movies. Mitch Rondell seems fairly beside himself. “My God,” Rondell says, partly to Vikar, mostly to no one, “do you suppose we might actually win the fucking Palme d’Or?”

The fucking Palme d’Or is presented to a three-hour Italian epic about a peasant boy on a long walk home from school who breaks his shoes. Italians, Vikar believes, like to make movies about things that break or get lost, like shoes and bicycles. Two so-called Grand Prizes are presented to a British movie by a Polish director about a man who’s learned from Aborigines a shout that kills people, which people in the movie insist on hearing anyway, and a French movie by an Italian director with Marcello Mastroianni and Gerard Depardieu about a man who finds the body of King Kong washed up on the beach; the title translates as
Bye Bye, Monkey
. “That sounds like a very good movie,” says Vikar.

It’s also announced that this year the jury has created a special award, the Prix Sergei, presented “to the film
Your Pale Blue Eyes
and editor Isaac Jerome for an original and provocative contribution to the art of montage and the creation of a revelatory new cinematic rhetoric.”

“That’s not my name,” Vikar says.

“What?” Rondell says, the applause around them swelling. Neither notices the sprinkling of boos.

“That’s not my name.”

“Vikar,” Rondell whispers urgently, “please go up there now.”

“Who put that name on the movie?” In the midst of the ceremony audience, Vikar is an eye-twitch away from ripping Rondell’s head off his shoulders, while Rondell appears on the verge of leaping out of his body. “I’m sorry, it was a mistake,” he begs, “a terrible, terrible mistake. We’ll change it, we’ll do anything you want, we’ll make it right. Just please please please go up there.”

Vikar reaches the stage several seconds after the mystified applause has died. Applause rises again in what sounds to Vikar like a swarm of bees—a collective murmur at the sight of the man with the unbuttoned shirt and tattooed head. The boos apparently have been stunned into silence. The jury president leans slightly away from Vikar as he hands him the award scroll, rolled and tied in the center with a red ribbon, and shakes his hand. A third wave of applause rises and Vikar steps to the microphone. “That’s not my name,” he says and walks off, strangling the award in his fist.

Dashing through the salons of the Palais, Vikar finally staggers out into the Mediterranean air. Small food and drink stands begin to close, as well as an outdoor café only a few meters away. Since he has no idea where he is or where to go, he takes it as something of a sign that there before him, just around the bend of the Croisette, are the nouveaux cupolas of the massive Carlton. Its vertical banners hang from the hotel’s rafters, mildly ruffled by the breeze off the harbor.

Thoroughly conflicted by Vikar’s tattooed head, his state of undress and the throttled red-ribboned scroll in Vikar’s hand, the concierge at the front desk apologizes that the suite isn’t ready. “We weren’t expecting you for at least another hour or two, monsieur,” he says, “are the ceremonies over?” He invites Vikar to wait in the Petit Bar, where someone will come retrieve him.

The bar is mostly empty. Everyone else is at the Palais except two men at a far table talking and an attractive blonde in her early fifties at another table, wearing a wide-brimmed fedora and sunglasses even though it’s night and the lounge is dark. At another table is a younger woman, around thirty, with dark curls, wearing a long white coat; she drinks a glass of red wine and seems to be waiting for someone. She surveys Vikar for a full minute with a cool and overt curiosity. Vikar orders a vodka tonic.

Now one of the two men talking at the far table looks at Vikar. He gets up from the table and comes over; he’s sharply though informally dressed in a light cotton summer jacket, and Vikar realizes he’s familiar. “Monsieur Vicar,” the man says, Vikar still trying to place him. “It is I, Cooper Léon.”

“Yes,” Vikar says, uncertainly.

Cooper Léon puts out his hand. “How are you?”

Shaking the other man’s hand, Vikar says, “All right.”

Cooper Léon looks at the crumpled scroll on Vikar’s cocktail table. “You have received one of the prizes at the ceremony tonight?”

“They said my name wrong.”

“May I sit with you?”

“All right.”

Cooper Léon sits down. “Felicitations. I am not surprised in the least. I knew three years ago in Madrid that you are a man of vision.”

Now Vikar remembers. “The movie about the General.”

“Yes.”

“For the soldiers of …”

“The Soldiers of Viridiana.”

“Are they here?”

“Who?”

“The soldiers.”

“In Cannes?” Cooper Léon says, surprised. “I am no longer leading the revolution in Spain. The assassin the Generalissimo died, and now many good films are allowed in my country. Thanks to you.”

“I don’t believe the movie I made for you was a very good one.”

“That, Monsieur Vicar,” Cooper Léon points to the award, “says differently.” Vikar notices that Cooper Léon’s Spanish accent has turned to French. “I no longer am living in Madrid. I live in Paris now.”

“Are the soldiers there now?”

“Monsieur, there are no more soldiers. Please forget the soldiers. Now I am a publicist for Gaumont. We are here at the festival representing the new film by Claude Chabrol with Isabelle Huppert. I believe she won a prize this evening as well.”

“I don’t know.”

“We also are sponsoring a retrospective, as …” he pauses, “… as an unofficial tangent, you might say, to the official festival, a retrospective of one of your great American auteurs. Well, actually he is British, but he made all of his films in America. Irving Rapper.”

“Irving Rapper?”

“You know of Monsieur Irving Rapper?” Cooper Léon asks.

“
Now, Voyager
.”

Relief floods Cooper Léon’s face. “Of course I was certain a scholar of film such as yourself would know of Irving Rapper. Cinema’s great poet of
la femme dérangée
. As you say,
Now, Voyager
.
Deception
.
The Glass Menagerie
.
Marjorie Morningstar
. Would you care for another?” He points at Vikar’s vodka tonic.

“I’m waiting for my room to be ready.”

“Of course. Allow me please to buy for you another drink while you wait. It would be my honor.” Cooper Léon calls out something to the bartender and turns back to Vikar. His brow furrows. “Monsieur Vicar, I feel it is fateful that I should see you here this evening. I wonder if I might make a confession to you that I never have told to anyone else.”

“All right.”

“It seems proper that you are the person to whom I should confess this.”

“All right.”

Cooper Léon says, “Monsieur Vicar, perhaps you are wondering how it is I no longer am leading the revolutionary struggle for justice and rather have become a publicist for Gaumont.”

“Uh,” says Vikar.

“It is a difficult thing to comprehend, even for me sometimes. It is a result of a moment of truth I had, as it happens, not long after we met and worked together on our film about the death of the assassin the Generalissimo.” He pauses as if waiting for Vikar to respond.

“Oh.”

Cooper Léon shrugs. “Not long after we worked together on our film, I had a dream. Do you know who came to me in this dream?”

“God?”

“Luis Buñuel.”

“Oh.”

“Luis Buñuel, who once stayed in this hotel, this same hotel where he slept on the floor of his suite rather than the bed, as a revolutionary act. This dream was so real that I might almost have thought it was not a dream at all but the ghost of Buñuel, visiting me in the night, if Buñuel were not still alive. So it could not be his ghost.”

“No.”

“In this dream, Buñuel gave me a choice. Do you know what this choice was?”

“No.”

“Buñuel said to me, ‘Cooper Léon, you may have one of two things.’ Monsieur,” Cooper Léon’s voice breaks, “this is a difficult thing to confess.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Buñuel said, ‘Cooper Léon, you either may see the fruits of your revolutionary struggle and have justice and freedom for all people in the world, or you may fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel.’ Of course you remember Miss Sylvia Kristel, Monsieur Vicar?”

“Yes.”

“From the French masterpiece
Emmanuelle
?”

“Yes.”

“And
Emmanuelle 2
?”

“I guess.”

“And
Emmanuelle ’77
?”

“Uh.”

“And
Goodbye, Emmanuelle
?”

“I don’t know about those last ones.”

“So then. ‘Now I know what you are thinking,’ Buñuel went on in my dream. ‘You are thinking that you will fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel and it will be over in the usual forty-five seconds and that is hardly worth it. No,’ Buñuel said in my dream, ‘if you choose to fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel, I will give you an erection not as in real life but a cinematic erection, as men have in films. It will last as long as you want, it will last hours, days if you want. But,’ and Buñuel was emphatic about this, Monsieur Vicar, ‘but once you have reached climax and the fucking is over, then … no more.’ And as soon as Buñuel said this, I woke.” Cooper Léon sighs heavily. “I woke, monsieur, to the truth that I would trade the freedom and justice of all the world’s oppressed masses for one chance to fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel. And of course the tragedy, monsieur, is that I woke to this truth that I have to live with forever
without ever having actually fucked Miss Sylvia Kristel
. So it is as though I made the choice in my soul without ever having received the benefit of that choice. Do you understand?”

“I believe so.”

“I believed that you would,” Cooper Léon nodded. “I believed that you of all people would understand that this is the exquisite cruelty of cinema, confronting men with truths about themselves that they must live with without ever actually getting to fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel.”

“I’ve cheated on Elizabeth Taylor,” Vikar says, patting his own head.

“Yes, monsieur,” the other man says dismissively. “But Elizabeth Taylor has cheated on you far more often.”

“
Mon dieu
,” Cooper Léon says, looking across the room.

“What?” says Vikar.

“Do you know who that is?” He’s looking at the two women on the other side of the room, the older blonde in the wide-brimmed fedora and sunglasses, and the younger one with dark curls in the long white coat. Vikar isn’t certain which one he means.

“Which one do you mean?”

“That one.”

Vikar believes Cooper Léon means the older blonde but he still isn’t certain.

“That, Monsieur Vicar, is Christine Jorgensen.”

A worrisome recollection flickers across Vikar’s mind.

“She is here for the Irving Rapper retrospective. Monsieur Rapper filmed the story of her life eight or nine years ago. You know of Christine Jorgensen, of course.”

Vikar doesn’t say anything. He looks back and forth from the older blonde to the younger woman in the white coat.

“You know of the story of her life. She was a man. She was an American soldier who—”

“I know the story.”

“—had herself, how would you say, altered surgically—”

“I know the story.” It has to be the older blonde.

“Allow me to introduce you.”

“No, thank you.”

“It is no trouble.”

“I believe my room is ready now.” Vikar stands up from the cocktail table.

“Are you sure you would not like to …?”

“I’m going to check on my room.”

“Very well,” says Cooper Léon, standing as well. The two men shake hands. “Felicitations again, Monsieur Vicar.”

“Yes.”

“I am very pleased to have seen you in Cannes,” he calls as Vikar rushes from the lounge.

Forty-five minutes later, Vikar is in his small suite on the fourth floor of the Carlton. It’s eleven-thirty. From the small balcony onto which the suite’s French doors open, the Mediterranean is to the left; getting underway along the waterfront are the many parties of the festival’s closing night. Party yachts line the harbor. Vikar can’t see the fireworks but can hear them.

He lies on the bed in his unbuttoned shirt watching the TV. He flicks around the channels; the news is in French so he doesn’t understand much. There’s a story about an Italian president or prime minister who appears to have been assassinated. Grace Kelly’s daughter is getting married; both are princesses now. The granddaughter of Charles Foster Kane has been sent to jail for being kidnapped, which Vikar didn’t realize was a crime. The coffin and body of Charlie Chaplin have been recovered, not far from where they were stolen; Vikar didn’t know they had been stolen. When were they stolen? Soon Vikar finds on the TV an old American black-and-white movie.

Vikar’s award sits in a furious ball of mangled parchment and red ribbon on a table next to a basket of fruit, cheese and red wine. The suite is all white and reminds him of the room at the end of
2001: A Space Odyssey
that he saw his first afternoon in Los Angeles. In another corner of the all-white suite is a small writing table. Vikar is trying not to think about anything. When someone knocks at the door, he doesn’t answer because he assumes it’s Rondell and he doesn’t want to talk to him.