Fair Play (6 page)

“I don't think you should use more drinks,” Jonna said. “But that's a good idea with the woman. What about doing away with George as well? I mean, it's just a thought.”

“But you like him,” Mari said. “You said he was good.” She stood up and gathered her papers. “This isn't going to work.”

“Yes it will,” Jonna said. “You just need to rewrite it another way. Shall we have some coffee?”

“No. I don't think I want any coffee.”

“Mari. We've got Kalle's melancholy conclusion that nothing matters. We've got George who just goes around in circles and doesn't know it's hopeless. But then we've got Anton who dares to kill a lie. It's Anton who might be interesting, and you don't care about him at all. Forget George and think about Anton. Why is he behaving this way? Your engine's idling and you need to add a little fresh insanity, and now I'm going to make coffee.”

Jonna filled the teakettle in the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, looking at her own face, she thought with sudden bitterness that it couldn't go on like this, these short stories that were never finished and just went on and on getting rewritten and discarded and picked up again, all those words that got changed and changed places and I can't remember how they were yesterday and what's happened to them today! I'm tired! I'll go in and tell her, now, right now ... For example, I wonder if she could describe me well enough to give people a quick, convincing picture. What could she say? A broad, inhospitable face, lots of wrinkles, brown hair going gray, large nose?

Jonna took in the coffee and said, “Try to describe what I look like.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Just half a cup,” Mari said. “I think I'll head home.” After a while, she said, “I'd try to describe a kind of patience. And stubbornness. Somehow bring out the fact that you don't want anything except ... well, except what you want. Wait a moment ... Your hair has an unusual hint of bronze, especially against the light. Your profile and your short neck make one think of, you know, old Roman emperors who thought they were God himself ... Wait. It's the way you move and the way you walk. And when you slowly turn your face toward me. Your eyes ...”

“One of them's gray and the other one's blue,” Jonna said. “And now drink your coffee because you need to stay alert. We'll take the whole thing from the beginning. Read slowly, we've got time. Concentrate on Anton, always Anton. He has to come alive. You can sacrifice even George if you have to. Read slowly.
Kalle says, ‘Miss, another round.'
Real slow. We need to pay attention. Every time it seems wrong, we stop. Every time we get something like an idea, we'll stop. Are you ready? Read.”

J
ONNA
made movies. She'd acquired an 8mm Konica, and she loved the small device and took it with her everywhere they traveled.

“Mari,” she said, “I'm tired of static pictures. I want to make pictures that are alive. I want motion, change. You know what I mean: everything happens just once and right now ... My film is my sketchbook. Look at that! There comes the commedia dell'arte!”

And there they came, street performers with their plush rug, the child on the ball, the strong man who could swallow fire, the girl juggler. People stopped on the street and moved closer to the show. It was very hot. The light flickered and the shadows were a sharp dark blue.

Mari stood close beside Jonna with an opened Kodak film in her hand. She was waiting for the camera's steady whirring to change speed, at which point she had to have a new roll ready instantly. Another important job was keeping Jonna's field of view open. Mari saw it as a point of honor to keep people from walking in front of the camera.

“Don't worry about them,” Jonna said. “They're just extras. I'll clip them out.”

But Mari said, “Let me. It's my job.”

Equally important was finding Kodak film. And Mari searched. In the cities, the towns, at bus stops, she kept an eye out for the gold-and-red sign showing that here you could buy Kodak. Agfa seemed to be everywhere.

“It comes out blue-green,” Mari said. “Wait. I'll find Kodak.” And she'd search on, all the while afraid that they'd encounter something fantastic—one of those never-to-be-repeated street events that would play out before their eyes just as the film ran out—and then have to wander on trying to forget what they'd lost.

They traveled from city to city, Jonna, Mari, and Konica. Mari grew critical. She began giving instructions and advice and involved herself in questions of composition and lighting and bustled about looking for suitable subjects.

They arrived at the Great Aquarium, at the dolphins' turquoise tank, and Mari grabbed Jonna by the arm and yelled, “Wait, I'll tell you when it's going to jump. You're wasting film ...” And the dolphin corkscrewed high out of the water, sparkling in the sun, and Jonna burst out, “Now I missed it! Let me decide for myself!”

“By all means!” Mari said. “You and your Konica.”

It was inconceivably beautiful and mysterious down in the dark passages where the tank was lit underground. The whales were diving. Through the glass walls you could see the power of their dance as they plunged downward and turned and shot up into the light again. “It's too dark,” Mari said. “You won't get anything; the film will just be black ...”

“Quiet!” Jonna said. “The shark's coming.”

People pushed forward to see the monster, and Mari threw her arms wide to stop them. The shark came; a slow, gray shadow swept past close to the glass and vanished.

“Good,” said Jonna. “I got it. You've always wanted to see a real shark up close. Now you have.”

Mari said, “I didn't see it.”

“What do you mean, didn't see it?”

“I was only thinking of the Konica! I'm always thinking about the Konica and not about what I see! It just goes by.”

“But don't be angry.” Jonna held out her camera in both hands. “Your shark is here, it's in here! When we get home you can see it as many times as you want, whenever you want. And with music.”

Nothing made Jonna happier than finding a circus, or maybe even better a Sunday carnival somewhere on a city's outskirts. They searched one out with the Konica, heard at a distance the breathless staccato of the carousel. Jonna started her tape recorder. “We'll start here,” she whispered. “We'll get closer and closer, quite slowly—anticipation. And our footsteps. Then the visual.”

They never rode the carousel.

And later, a long time later, in her studio, Jonna set up the screen, focused the projector, and turned off the ceiling light. Mari sat waiting with pen and paper. The machine began to whir and threw a rectangle of light across the screen.

“Make notes where I should cut,” Jonna said. “And the repeats.”

“Yes, yes, I know. And when it goes black.”

Their trip came toward them. Mari made notes:

head gone to r.

jumping

fence on l.

too long beach

unnec. landsc.

people gone too fast

flower blurred

She wrote and wrote, and afterwards she didn't really know where they had been.

“The clipping is even harder than the filming,” Jonna explained. “When I've cut it, we can add music, but not yet. Music makes you uncritical.”

“Jonna, right now I want to see something with music. And without taking notes.”

“What do you want to see?”

“Mexico. The empty carnival. You know, all the people who were too poor to ride the carousel.”

Jonna put in the cassette, an endless, mournful marimba. The picture was blurry and shaky at first but gathered itself suddenly into a long, evening landscape—the empty field outside Mazatlán. There was the drainage ditch running out toward the ocean, reflecting a last glimpse of the sunset in a long band of burning gold that quickly died. Then the barracks, the car dump, and now, far off, the Ferris wheel with its many-colored lights that rose and sank and rose and sank.

The Konica came closer and you could see that all the little pleasure boats were empty. The picture moved over to a carousel that was also revolving and just as empty. Everything was sparkling and tempting and ready for fun, but the people strolling slowly through the carnival took no part in the amusements; they just observed. Except for some boys shooting at targets, whose stern faces Jonna had caught in a close-up.

As the film went on, dusk sank deeper over Mazatlán, the people left, but the Ferris wheel kept on turning, now just a circle of rising and falling lights. It was almost night. The marimba played on. The back of the circus tent, indistinct, some dogs rooting around in a rubbish tip.

“Terrible,” Mari said. “Terribly good. All those people who just had to go home without ... But at least they saw it, didn't they? Didn't you get the ditch at the end, too? That sparkled?”

“Wait, it's coming.”

The picture went black and stayed black for a long time. Several weak flashes of light, nothing more, and the screen was empty.

Mari said, “You have to cut that; no one will get it. It was too dark.”

Jonna turned off the projector and turned on the overhead light. She said, “Right there it has to be absolutely black, graphically black. But you were there now, weren't you?”

“Yes,” Mari answered. “I was there.”

J
ONNA
came in with a bottle of bourbon, a carafe of water, and a packet of Cortez cigarillos.

“Aha,” said Mari, “the Wild West. A B-Western?”

“Yes. An early classic.”

The room was cold, and Mari wrapped herself in a blanket. “What time?”

“Actually,” Jonna said. “Actually, it would probably be better if I watched it alone.”

“I promise not to say a word.”

“Yes, but I'll know what you're thinking, and I can't concentrate.” Jonna poured them both a drink. “You think Westerns repeat the same theme over and over. That may be. But you have to understand that Americans are in love with their history, which was so short and powerful, and they describe and depict it again and again ... Are you in love with the Renaissance? What do you care about the ancient Egyptians? The Chinese?”

“Not much,” Mari said. “They're just there. Or were.”

“Fine. Now don't assume that I'm defending B-Westerns, but think about it, try to imagine what it was like in the early days. Courage! Courage and patience. And pure curiosity. Imagine being among the very first to discover and conquer a new country, a new continent!”

“Conquer,” Mari repeated and pulled the blanket tighter.

“Yes, yes. Now don't go on about the Indians and all that stuff about cruelty and arrogance; those things happen on both sides. Great change always involves great intensity. That's just the way it is, right? Look at their desolate little towns in a completely empty landscape, and remember they lived in constant danger ... They had to develop a strict, an implacable, sense of justice, they had to try to invent the Law for themselves, as best they could ...” Jonna put down her cigarillo. “It doesn't draw,” she said. “It's the wrong kind.”

Mari remarked that perhaps the cigarillos had been lying around too long, and Jonna went on. “It must be that lawlessness has its own laws. Of course mistakes occurred. They lived such violent lives that they simply didn't have time to reflect, that's what I think. But mistakes happen today, too, don't they? We hang the wrong guy, so to speak.”

Jonna leaned forward and looked at her friend earnestly. “The sense of honor,” she announced. “Believe me, the sense of honor has never been so strong. Friendship between men. You said the heroines were idiotic. Fine, they are idiotic. But take them away, forget them, and what do you find? Friendship between men who are unswervingly honorable toward one another. That's the concept of the Western.”

“I know,” Mari said. “They have an honorable fist fight and then they're friends for life. Unless the noblest of them gets shot at the end, sacrificing his life to soft music.”

“Now you're just being mean,” said Jonna. She lifted aside the cloth that protected her television screen and turned to channel two.

“Anyway, I'm right,” Mari said. “It's the same thing over and over. They ride past precisely the same mountain and the same waterfall and that Mexican church. And the saloon. And the oxcarts. Don't they ever get tired of it?”

“No,” Jonna answered. “They never do. It's about recognition, about recognizing what you've imagined. People make dreams, don't they? The oxcarts that fight their way forward through unexplored territory, dangerous lands ... Whether it's an A-Western or a B or even a C, they feel this is the way it must have been, just like this, and it makes them proud and maybe gives them a little comfort. I think.”

“Yes,” Mari said. “Well, yes, maybe you're right ...”

But Jonna couldn't stop. “It's not fair of you to come and talk about repetition and the same thing over and over, and anyway your short stories are the same way, the same theme over and over again. Now close the curtains; it starts in three minutes.”

Mari dropped the blanket on the floor and announced, very slowly, “I think ... now I think I'll go to bed.”

She had a hard time falling asleep. Now they're galloping past the red mountain. Now they're playing poker in the saloon. Honky-tonk ... They're shooting bottles in the bar, girls are screaming. Now the stairs to the second floor are crashing down ...

A trumpet blast woke her up, and she knew the movie had come to the brave men in the final fort. Maybe they've more or less worked things out with the Indians—everyone forgives everyone, except maybe the ones who died—and now they're playing “My Darling Clementine,” which means she's finally figured out who she loved the whole time.