Zeroville (32 page)

The first sign is the old projector at the far back of the closet, beyond the brooms and mops, the detergents and sprays, the discarded junk of half a century, its dust of more than five decades undisturbed.

They’re in plain sight, yet anyone not looking would never see them.

On a small stool, he can just reach them.

He looks up and down the hallway, then carries the canisters into the room behind the nearest white door, closing the door behind him and locking it.

He has no editing table. He has no viewer, only a small eye glass he’s brought with him. He pries open the canisters and inside is an official document certifying that the enclosed motion picture has been approved, without cuts or changes, by the Danish censor; the date of the document is 1928. Why, approved by a Danish censor, it would now be in a Norwegian asylum, Vikar doesn’t understand or think about. He unspools the film carefully on the electroshock table, terrified it will dissolve in his fingers, but it’s in extraordinary condition, like a mummified body.
They would have strapped Joan to this table
, but he’s no longer certain who “they” are, beyond the interrogating monks, or on whose side Joan was, Joan who was a child herself. He turns on the examination light overhead. Strapped on this table, Joan would have stared into this light.

Like making a leap of faith, he guesses that it might be around the same place as in
Nightdreams
, some eight thousand frames in. What does it mean, he will wonder later, that it was this easy?
I have eyes in my fingers
, and he runs his fingers over the spools like a blind man reading braille, like closing his eyes out in the lobby and following the movie that’s projected on his eyelids. He has no way to count the frames. He guesses by looking at the feet of film on the reel.

It’s almost the same frame of the same image: the same image buried in a 1982 porn movie made in Chatsworth, California, and buried here in a 1928 silent classic made in Europe, the image of a dream Vikar now has had for the better part of two decades, with the only difference being that in the newer film the image is a bit larger, as though over the century a camera draws ever closer.

Not until he’s finished and exits the room through the white door does someone finally approach him: the janitor, who says something in Norwegian that Vikar doesn’t understand. Vikar puts the canisters in the janitor’s arms. “Get these to the Cinématèque Française,” he says and walks away, a single frame in a baggie under his cap, somewhere near Elizabeth’s kiss.

At the Oslo airport, the phone connection is poor. “I’m coming back,” Vikar says.

Her voice crackles over the thousands of miles. “Sometimes I think I’m losing it, Vik,” he hears her answer.

“I’m coming back.”

“I have these dreams,” she says.

Am I just another who’s abandoned her? Am I another of God’s child-killers? At Heathrow he almost dozes through the announcement of his connecting flight; someone jostles him in time for him to jump from his chair and board the plane at the last moment. After that he doesn’t sleep, and has lost track of how long it’s been since he did.

Vikar says to the curator, “Do you see this?”

The curator looks into the viewer, then picks up the celluloid itself and holds it to the light to view with a naked eye. “What is it?”

In Los Angeles, Vikar has taken a cab directly to the UCLA film school. “What do you believe it is?”

“Uh.” The curator shrugs. “A cave of some kind? A big rock? Hard to tell. Is that writing of some sort?”

“Does it look like someone is lying on top of the rock?”

“Maybe.” The curator shrugs again. “Sure, I guess so.”

“What do you believe
this
is?” Vikar pulls off his cap and opens the baggie and takes out another frame of film.

The curator puts it in the viewer. “Same thing.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. Well,” now the curator moves from frame to frame on the viewer, “maybe one is a little closer than the other.” He looks at Vikar. “I don’t get it.”

“They’re from two different movies,” says Vikar. “One is from a silent movie and one is from, uh … another kind of movie. A more recent movie.”

“Are you sure?” The curator says, “Is this what you were looking for in the Dreyer?”

Vikar doesn’t answer.

“You mean you found it in the Dreyer after all.”

Vikar says, “The real Dreyer.”

“The real Dreyer?” the curator says. “What are you talking about?” But Vikar already has turned, walking away. “Wait a minute,” says the curator. “Mr. Jerome?” Vikar doesn’t stop. “You mean you found the real
Joan of Arc
?” Vikar continues down the hall. “You found in a week what no one has found in half a century?” Vikar doesn’t stop; the curator calls, holding up the two frames, “Don’t you want these back?”

“I believe,” Vikar answers, not turning, “there are more where those came from.”

From a phone booth outside the film school, he calls the house again. No one answers. The cab that’s waited for him at UCLA takes him first to Rhino Records on Westwood and then to Vinyl Fetish on Melrose, among the thriftshops and warehouses, on the chance he might find her. He calls again from a phone booth at the corner of Melrose and Gardner.

On the way home, Vikar has the cab stop at a small market on Sunset to pick up some groceries. When he gets to the house, Zazi still isn’t there. He goes downstairs to her bedroom on the second level, knocks on the door, and opens it when there’s no answer.

On the walls are posters of Marianne Faithfull, Lora Logic, the Stooges, the New York Dolls, Bowie, Exene Cervenka, Patti Smith, the Doors, Siouxsie and the Banshees. Vikar notes with passing interest that Siouxsie reminds him of Maria from Cannes, with straighter hair. There’s a mockup of an EP cover, a picture of Zazi and the rest of the band on the front. RUBICONS it says across the top, then the title
Tick Tock
, on Slash Records.

Vikar begins searching around her bed, looking at scraps of paper, looking in the drawers of her dresser and a small table by the window. Only after all of his other searching does it occur to him to look through the spiral notebook that’s in plain sight on the window table.

man these dreams,
he reads,
one after another, they dont seem to have anything to do w/ anything, I’m not even in them. what does that mean I’m not in my own dreams? maybe i should ask some of the guys in the band except i dont want to go into it or talk about it
—

woman surrounded by monks in robes in a church, theyre hassling & questioning her, i get the feeling its like, another century or something But HERES THE WEIRD PART theyre asking questions
in words i cant hear or understand
—whats THAT about. then they tie her to a post & burn her & i wake up. fucking horrible

Then Vikar finds this entry.

o.k. i cant tell ANYONE about this. last night i dreamed about, i think it was hell, i mean the real hell (if there is a real hell) everythings hot & burning & i could hear people kind of screaming/moaning, Then this satanic kind of guy, i guess the devil maybe, hes putting this weird pitchfork inside this womans various places & theres this kind of industrial sound, machines in the background. like in the other dreams none of these people seem to have anything to do w/ me, the woman isnt me, it would almost be better if it were—am i a PERV or something? this doesnt seem like any kind of fantasy i ever have, wouldnt i know that? This is
somebody elses fantasy,
whats it doing in MY dream

Now, before Zazi returns, Vikar reads the rest of the dream journal.
i write these down when i wake & by the next afternoon i dont remember anything about them at all, they’ve vanished from my memory & all i know is what I’ve written. even reading the dreams over, i don’t remember them

another religious sort of dream last night, a convent? in the middle of the mountains high on a cliff, theres this one crazy nun trying to push another out of a tall tower & winds up falling off herself—down down down

another steeple dream, no crazy nuns but this private-eye guy, in love w/ this girl hes following who thinks shes like this reincarnated chick, then she jumps off this old mission steeple & he thinks shes dead, then he meets another girl who reminds him of the FIRST & theres more but the main thing is the private-eye is just really VERY FUCKED UP

in this bordertown this really fat horrible cop in this sleazy hotel stands over this blonde w/ pointed boobs, shes drugged or something, hes pulling gloves onto his fat fingers

that Bogart guy from the flick i saw w/ Vik lives in this little cottage in love w/ this chick, hes a writer or something & flies off the handle like he could kill anyone any minute & the cops think maybe he has & the chick begins to wonder because every now & then the writer gets nuts/violent (reminds me of Vik)

this beautiful dark woman in sunglasses, so beautiful shes not even real looking sitting in a rowboat on a lake watching w/o emotion this kid drowning in the water just a few feet from her, hes calling out to her to save him but she just watches

on a stone bridge crossing a moat outside a castle or maybe its just a big estate, this hot blonde holding this scythe & its got blood on it, shes wearing a black cape & completely nude underneath. she’s pretty hot i must admit

is it the middle ages or something? this sadistic prince guy & this fucked-up masquerade ball going on inside the castle walls while everyone outside is dying

guy w/ blood smeared all over him, hes just killed everyone to save this prostitute whos like my age, he looks kind of punk w/ mohawk & army jacket—

this maze-like apt complex of the future where this private-eye wanders trying to find this dark woman, i don’t understand what language theyre speaking
—

THE MOST FUCKED UP ONE OF ALL & i remember all of it in vivid detail & DONT WANT TO REMEMBER ANY OF IT. this asian model goes to this art gallery showing these bondage photos shes posed for & sees this blind guy running his hands over this sculpture of her, she runs away feeling like his hands are actually on her & then goes to get this massage & hes the masseur & says
I have eyes in my fingers
& drugs & kidnaps her, takes her to this warehouse place full of huge sculptures of naked women, bodies, body parts & the model is trying to get away from this ASSHOLE, climbing up & down huge thighs, huge boobs, on the walls are eyes, noses, mouths, arms, legs. he sculpts a statue of her & she becomes blind too then she fucks him because shes trying to escape, then she becomes not just the model but the art itself & this fucker is cutting off her arms,
I have eyes in my fingers
he keeps saying, WHY AM I HAVING THIS DREAM

i think i must be going insane

Vikar goes downstairs to the house’s bottom level, into his film library with the moviola. He unpacks from the bags he bought at the small market on Sunset three quarts of Stoli and a quart of tonic, then begins pulling movies from his shelves. He doesn’t have them all. He doesn’t have
Taxi Driver
or Mosumura’s
Môjuu
, about the blind sculptor, and he doesn’t need
Nightdreams
or
The Passion of Joan of Arc
. But he does have Powell’s
Black Narcissus
, Hitchcock’s
Vertigo
, Welles’
Touch of Evil
, Ray’s
In a Lonely Place
, Stahl’s
Leave Her to Heaven
, Rollin’s
Fascination
, Corman’s
Masque of the Red Death
, and Godard’s
Alphaville
, in which private-eye Eddie Constantine cries, “This isn’t Alphaville, this is Zeroville!”

He no longer has to pore over the celluloid. Having found the frame in the same place in the silent film and the porn film, now he knows where to look. Now it doesn’t take more than half an hour to find the frames. After he’s gone over these movies he begins pulling out others, old and new, near and far-flung, celebrated and obscure.

Sometimes from exhaustion Vikar collapses where he stands, waking himself when he hits the floor, pulling another reel from the shelves around him.

Where is Zazi? Has she fled, as she receives nocturnal bulletins from the subconscious of film, dreaming one scene after another from movies she’s never heard of, let alone seen? Did Vikar loom above her with an exacto-knife, sacrificing her to the pursuit of a divine secret? From the radio of her upstairs bedroom comes the soundtrack of a new Los Angeles noir, without hours or latitudes—Ornette Coleman’s “Virgin Beauty,” X’s “Unheard Music,” Duke Ellington’s “Transbluency,” strange female chants from Tuva, the movie scores of Soledad Palladin lesbian-vampire movies.

Soon film unspools from one level of the house to the next. It’s fixed to the walls, draped in strips, hanging from the rafters like webs. Vikar viciously chops up film as though the frame he’s looking for is hidden not only from him but from the film itself, in its own flesh. Isn’t this flesh his to cut as he chooses? To flop right profiles with lefts as he chooses, and left profiles with rights, to reverse the utopian and anarchic ends of the boulevard? Down through the history of movies, what Auteur has invaded every movie ever made in order to leave him a sign, each of which grows closer and clearer with every extrication and every enlargement? Little pieces of black celluloid litter the floor like granite, up and down the stairs. He runs his hands along the trail of enlarged stills:
I have eyes in my

fingers
, and in every film he examines he finds it, and from every film he extricates the single frame; though he doesn’t know it, he’s become the medium of Film Id. He enlarges the frames and assembles them until their own film is complete, an altogether different film that draws closer and