Zeroville (30 page)

It’s while watching the porn film that Vikar sees it: it flashes by in the wink of an eye, and if he hadn’t seen it hundreds of times over the years he wouldn’t see it at all, or he might suppose he’s imagining it; but he’s not imagining it. As powerfully as he dreamed it the night after seeing the movie at Royce Hall, he sees it now, there on the screen, and this time he knows it isn’t a dream.

Sometime in the sleepless night he hears Zazi return home, and after he’s heard her door shut, and after the first light over Laurel Canyon comes through his window, he rises from bed. He walks down to the Strip and waits forty-five minutes for a bus to pick him up and take him west through Bel-Air, past UCLA, cutting up past the veterans’ cemetery where he transfers to an express bus on Wilshire that heads north to the Valley through the Sepulveda Pass. At Ventura and Van Nuys Boulevards, waiting for a third bus, he buys a box of glazed doughnuts and a quart of milk, and sits at the bus stop waiting.

He catches a third bus heading west on Ventura. Eight miles later he changes again to another heading north on Highway 27 that cuts from the sea through Topanga Canyon. He takes this final bus to Chatsworth in the far northwestern badlands of L.A. County and gets off among the rocks and train tracks not far from Corriganville, where many Westerns have been shot. It’s taken him four hours to make the trip. He wanders up and down the Chatsworth roads asking directions until he finds what he’s looking for on De Soto, a plain industrial building with no windows and a single glass door.

In the small lobby of the building beyond the glass door, the receptionist behind the counter takes one look at Vikar, jumps up from her chair and vanishes into a back room.

The receptionist returns with another woman, who looks around fifty but may be younger. She has chopped peroxide blonde hair and enormous breasts beneath a tight t-shirt; a cigarette burns between her fingers. She reminds Vikar a bit of a female punk singer he once saw who performed wearing only shaving cream. “What do you want?” she says.

“Is this Caballero Films?” says Vikar.

“What do you want?”

“Did you make a movie called
Nightdreams
?”

“We can’t help you,” says the blonde.

“I want to buy a print of
Nightdreams
,” says Vikar. The receptionist appears terrified and backs into the wall.

“Nobody can help you,” says the blonde.

“I’ll wait,” Vikar says, “for someone who can help me.”

The woman regards Vikar and takes a puff on her cigarette. “I’ll call the police,” she says.

“The police never come in Los Angeles,” Vikar advises her.

“Maybe
you’re
the police.”

“I’m not the police.”

She takes another puff. “It’s on video,” she says, “why don’t you rent it?”

“I don’t want to rent it. Are you sure you don’t have a print?”

“I’m sure.”

Vikar isn’t sure she’s sure. “Do you have a cutting room?”

“Why?”

“If you can’t sell me a print, can you rent me the use of the room?” He says, “I’ll pay a hundred dollars an hour to rent your room and look at a print of the movie. I won’t do anything to the print and I won’t leave the building with it.”

The woman glances at the receptionist. “A hundred an hour?”

“Yes.”

“How long will it take?”

“Perhaps the rest of the day, if I start now.”

“A hundred an hour for the rest of the day.”

“Yes.”

“We lock up at six.”

“I hope before then that I find what I’m looking for.”

Vikar waits in the small lobby ten minutes until the woman with the cropped hair reappears and motions for him to follow. They cross the warehouse to a line of rooms on the other side. “You can use this,” she says, opening the door to one.

“Thank you.”

“A hundred up front. Every hour I’ll come by and collect another hundred.”

Vikar hands her two fifties.

She looks at the money and says, “In about an hour, a guy comes by selling sandwiches. There’s a soda machine over by where we came in.”

“Thank you.”

“You must have a thing for this movie.”

“I believe it’s a very good movie.”

“Yeah,” she says, “a very good movie. I’ve never had anyone like a movie so much they wanted to look at the print. You’re not going to jerk off or anything in here, are you?”

“What?”

“Just keep it in your pants, is all I care about.”

Inside the editing room, he’s surprised to find a relatively sophisticated flatbed table, which is good for looking through more film quickly but not as good as a moviola for locating a particular frame. Several canisters sit on the table. He takes the film out and begins unspooling it, running it through the table’s prism and searching.

An hour passes. There’s a knock on the door and the woman sticks her head in. “Got an extra sandwich here,” she says, holding out a cellophane-wrapped sandwich.

“Thank you.”

“Want a soda?”

“Thank you.”

The hours pass, then the afternoon, interrupted only by the hourly collection of another hundred dollars, until Vikar isn’t sure he trusts his eyes anymore, when

around five o’clock, frame by eight thousand frames into the film

he finds it

there in the Hellfire sequence, all shimmering heat, the constant, relentless surging sound in the background of machinery grinding and people crying, like hydraulics bashing and engines being stoked, the clanging of metal to metal slightly muffled as though by a volcanic sea, and beyond the Devil’s

shoulder is the dim naked figure of the slave chained to the molten walls of the underworld urging the Devil on, and the madwoman bending over before him as the Devil stands behind her, spearing his pleasure, saying things just barely more than sounds and groans, grunting meaningless proclamations over and

over and pulling out of her now and then for no other reason than to reveal a satanic cock, all to the same ongoing muffled industrial roar, and then, spliced wetly between the frames of the PornHell, so that any untrained eye not searching so intently would glide right over it and never see it or ever know it was

there, he finds the single frame

of the horizontal rock, out of its open chasm a sound roaring as though it’s the crashing machines of the PornHell, as though another movie is trying to emerge through the rock’s portal, and the glowing white writing across the top of the rock, and there, draped across the top of the rock, the still silhouetted figure

waiting; and Vikar reels, shoving himself back from the table. Although he can hardly stand it, he looks again

and is overcome by a kind of panic. “Oh, mother,” Vikar says out loud, or perhaps he doesn’t say it out loud but just feels as though he does.

He catches his breath, regains his bearings. Then he removes an exacto-knife and a plastic baggie from his pocket. He locks the door of the editing room. He removes the single frame from the print, puts it in the baggie, puts the baggie back in his pocket. Then he splices the film back together.

He walks quickly from the editing room, crosses the warehouse, passes the two women, pushes out through the glass exit and keeps walking.

At some point he realizes he’s walking the wrong way, away from the first of the four buses home. On the bus he has to make himself focus in order not to miss his connection. When he arrives home at ten-thirty, Zazi is waiting; he isn’t through the front door before she’s screaming at him, “Where have you been? Where did you go?” and then barricades herself in her room.

He hears her crying in her bedroom as he has before, when he would stand at her door wondering what to do. When he opens the door, she’s stopped crying but lies on her bed with her face in her pillow. “I would never abandon you,” he says, and goes into his own room, closing the door behind him.

Zazi is gone the next morning when Vikar wakes.

He takes from his pocket the baggie with the frame of film, half expecting it will have vanished with the morning.

The curator at the UCLA film school says, “Of course you understand I can’t let you take the print.” He looks more like a banker, a short stout man with thinning hair and glasses.

“What if I use one of your editing rooms here?” Vikar says.

“What are you looking for anyway?”

“I’m not going to hurt the print.”

“You’re not Vikar Jerome the editor, are you?”

“Yes.”

“The, uh …” The curator nods at Vikar’s head. “It’s kind of a giveaway.” He says, “The only editor ever to win a prize at Cannes.”

“No one is sure of that.”

“I heard you were directing something of your own.”

“I don’t know.”

The curator looks around his cubicle as if someone else might be listening before he says, “If you weren’t who you are, I wouldn’t consider it. It’s on loan from the Cinématèque in Paris.”

“I promise I’ll be careful.”

“But … what are you looking for?”

Vikar spends the rest of the day poring over the rare footage, and returns the following day.

The curator says, “Did you find it?”

“No,” says Vikar.

“Are you sure it’s there?”

“I was certain.”

“You do know, right,” says the curator, “that this isn’t the real movie?”

“What?”

“It’s not the real movie. It’s an alternate version.”

“But I’ve seen this movie. It was the first movie I ever saw in Los Angeles.”

“Whatever you saw or have ever seen was only a substitute,” the curator answers. “The real movie vanished after it was finished in 1928. It probably had a single screening in Copenhagen, the director Carl Dreyer’s home town, and it may have had a screening in Paris. Then it was burned in a fire, like Joan herself, goes one story. Suppressed by the French government—like Joan herself—goes another story. Lost, anyway. No one knows. So Dreyer assembled another version from out-takes and scraps of footage he had cut from the master copy. Can you imagine? The most powerful film of all time, and it’s made from
leftovers
.”

“God,” Vikar says, “was destroying the evidence.”

“So maybe what you’re looking for was in the
real
movie.”

“But this is the one I saw,” Vikar says, pointing at the canisters on the curator’s desk. “Where is the real film?”

“That’s what I’m telling you. It doesn’t exist.”

“No,” Vikar says, “it exists.”

“Well, then, Mr. Jerome, you know something the rest of us don’t.”

Zazi says, “Where are you going?”

“I’ll be back soon.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I promise I won’t be gone long.”

“Is this like a work thing or something?”

“It’s like that.”

“A movie thing?”

“It’s like that.” He says, “Come with me.”

“When did this happen?” she says with evident anger. “All of a sudden you’re leaving?”

He says, “When you say it, it sounds like a long time.”

“I can’t go with you. I have gigs, studio time,” she says irritably. She throws up her hands. “Hey, I know I just threw myself into your life. So.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I know it’s because you promised Mom.”

“That’s not all.”

“Whatever,” she says, and gets up from the kitchen table. There’s no tuna sandwich to throw. She vanishes down the stairs.

“I hate traveling,” Vikar says to the empty living room. “It’s always too far from Hollywood.”

In the Air France terminal, Vikar slumps to sleep just long enough to be awakened by the boarding announcement. Flying overnight, he always feels like he’s not really going anywhere. He sleeps little of the eleven hours. For a reason he doesn’t understand, he finds himself compelled to draw on a sketch pad he bought in the terminal, over and over from memory, a picture of the model church he built at Mather Divinity, which now seems long ago.

At Orly the next afternoon, he realizes he’s never gotten off an airplane when there wasn’t a driver and car to take him where he was supposed to go. Outside the terminal he stands staring at the cabs for ten minutes before he flags one. “Paris,” he says to the cab driver. The cab driver says something back and Vikar keeps saying, “Paris,” and the cab driver keeps arguing with him, gesturing some incomprehension. Finally Vikar says, “Cinématèque Française,” and when the driver still doesn’t understand, Vikar writes it down.

It’s six o’clock before the cab gets into the city. All the streets are round like film reels and all the cars drive in circles. Parked before a large palatial building, the driver says, “
Fermé, monsieur
.”

“Thank you,” Vikar says, getting out of the cab.

“
Monsieur, c’est fermé
.”

“All right.” From the sidewalk, Vikar pushes a fistful of American dollars at the driver through the cab window.

“
Non, pas de dollars americains
,” says the driver. “
Francs
.”

“Yes, thank you,” says Vikar, waving the dollars. The driver snatches two twenties in exasperation and speeds off, and Vikar turns to circle the building, discovering to his surprise that it’s closed.

Vikar crosses the Trocadero, the Eiffel Tower looming before him. The remnants of an anti-nuclear demonstration line the fountains that tumble toward the Seine. As always, people stare at him until he draws from his coat pocket the cap that he once took to Spain and pulls it down over his head. He crosses the river and the long military field beyond the Eiffel Tower and finds a small hotel where he rents a room. He keeps the cap on. Everyone yells at him about his American dollars.

He’s hungry and has dinner in a small brasserie near the hotel. He identifies what he wants to eat by pointing at the menu and a picture of a ham sandwich on long bread. He orders a vodka tonic; the garçon brings him straight vodka in a tall glass that Vikar drinks immediately, asking for another. On the table next to his, someone has left a small magazine called
Pariscope
in which Vikar finds a section that he recognizes as a listing of movies. He’s never known of a city that showed so many movies.