The Book of Illusions (4 page)

Before leaving Rochester, I called Smits, the dean of faculty at Hampton, and told him that I wanted to extend my leave for another semester. He was a bit put out at first, claiming that my courses had already been announced in the catalogue, but then I lied to him and said that I was undergoing psychiatric treatment, and he apologized. It was a nasty trick, I suppose, but I was fighting for my life at that point, and I didn’t have the strength to explain why looking at silent movies had suddenly become so important to me. We wound up having a cordial chat, and in the end he wished me luck, but even though we both pretended that I would be returning in the fall, I think he sensed that I was already slipping away, that my heart was no longer in it.

I saw
Scandal
and
Country Weekend
in New York, then moved on to Washington for
The Teller’s Tale
and
Double or
Nothing
. I booked reservations for the rest of the trip with a travel agent on Dupont Circle (Amtrak to California, the
QE 2
to Europe), but the next morning, in a sudden burst of blind heroism, I canceled the tickets and opted to go by plane. It was pure folly, but now that I was off to such a promising start, I didn’t want to lose my momentum. Never mind that I would have to talk myself into doing the one thing I had resolved never to do again. I couldn’t slacken my pace, and if that meant seeking out a pharmacological solution to the problem, then I was prepared to ingest as many knockout pills as necessary. A woman from the American Film Institute gave me the name of a doctor. I figured the appointment would take no more than five or ten minutes. I would tell him why I wanted the pills, he would write out a prescription, and that would be that. Fear of flying was a common complaint, after all, and there would be no need to talk about Helen and the boys, no need to bare my soul to him. All I wanted was to shut down my central nervous system for a few hours, and since you couldn’t buy that stuff over the counter, his sole function would be to hand me a slip of paper with his signature on it. But Dr. Singh turned out to be a thorough man, and as he went about the business of taking my blood pressure and listening to my heart, he asked me enough questions to keep me in his office for three-quarters of an hour. He was too intelligent not to want to probe, and little by little the truth came out.

We’re all going to die, Mr. Zimmer, he said. What makes you think you’re going to die on a plane? If you believe what the statistics tell us, you have a greater chance of dying just by sitting at home.

I didn’t say I was afraid of dying, I answered, I said that I was afraid to get on a plane. There’s a difference.

But if the plane isn’t going to crash, why should you be worried?

Because I don’t trust myself anymore. I’m afraid I’ll lose control, and I don’t want to make a spectacle of myself.

I’m not sure I follow you.

I imagine myself boarding the plane, and before I even get to my seat, I snap.

Snap? In what sense snap? You mean snap mentally?

Yes, I break down in front of four hundred strangers and lose my mind. I go berserk.

And what do you imagine yourself doing?

It depends. Sometimes I scream. Sometimes I punch people in the face. Sometimes I rush into the cockpit and try to strangle the pilot.

Does anyone stop you?

Of course they do. They swarm all over me and wrestle me to the ground. They beat the shit out of me.

When was the last time you were in a fight, Mr. Zimmer?

I can’t remember. Back when I was a boy, I suppose. Eleven, twelve years old. School-yard stuff. Defending myself against the class bully.

And what makes you think you’ll start fighting now?

Nothing. I just feel it in my bones, that’s all. If something rubs me the wrong way, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself. Anything is liable to happen.

But why planes? Why aren’t you afraid of losing control of yourself on the ground?

Because planes are safe. Everyone knows that. Planes are safe, fast, and efficient, and once you’re up in the air, nothing can happen to you. That’s why I’m afraid. Not because I think I’m going to be killed—but because I know I won’t.

Have you ever attempted suicide, Mr. Zimmer?

No.

Have you ever thought about it?

Of course I have. I wouldn’t be human if I hadn’t.

Is that why you’re here now? So you can walk off with a prescription for some nice, powerful drug and do away with yourself?

I’m looking for oblivion, Doctor, not death. The drugs will put me to sleep, and as long as I’m unconscious, I won’t have to think about what I’m doing. I’ll be there, but I won’t be there, and to the degree that I’m not there, I’ll be protected.

Protected against what?

Against myself. Against the horror of knowing that nothing is going to happen to me.

You expect to have a smooth, uneventful flight. I still don’t see why that should make you afraid.

Because the odds are with me. I’m going to take off and land safely, and once I get to where I’m going, I’ll step off the plane alive. Good for me, you say, but once I do that, I spit on everything I believe in. I insult the dead, Doctor. I turn a tragedy into a simple matter of bad luck. Do you understand me now? I tell the dead that they died for nothing.

He understood. I hadn’t said it in so many words, but this doctor had a delicate, sophisticated mind, and he was able to figure out the rest for himself. J. M. Singh, graduate of the Royal College of Physicians, resident internist at Georgetown University Hospital, with his precise British accent and prematurely thinning hair, suddenly grasped what I had been trying to tell him in that small cubicle with the fluorescent lights and the shining metal surfaces. I was still on the examining table, buttoning my shirt and looking down at the floor (not wanting to look at him, not wanting to risk the embarrassment of tears), and just then, after what felt like a long and awkward silence, he put his hand on my shoulder. I’m sorry, he said. I’m truly sorry.

It was the first time anyone had touched me in months, and I found it disturbing, almost repulsive to be turned into an object of such compassion. I don’t want your sympathy, Doctor, I said. I just want your pills.

He backed off with a slight grimace, then sat down on a stool in the corner. As I finished tucking in my shirt, I saw him pull out a prescription pad from the pocket of his white coat. I’m willing to do it, he said, but before you get up and leave, I want to ask you to reconsider your decision. I think I have an idea of what you’ve been through, Mr. Zimmer, and I hesitate to put you in a position that could cause you such torment. There are other methods of travel, you know. Perhaps it would be best if you avoided planes for now.

I’ve already been down that road, I said, and I’ve decided against it. The distances are just too big. My next stop is Berkeley, California, and after that I have to go to London and Paris. A train to the West Coast takes three days. Multiply that by two for the return trip, then add on another ten days to cross the Atlantic and come back, and we’re talking about a minimum of sixteen lost days. What am I supposed to do with all that time? Stare out the window and soak up the scenery?

Slowing down might not be such a bad thing. It would help to take off some of the pressure.

But pressure is what I need. If I loosened my grip now, I’d fall apart. I’d fly off in a hundred different directions, and I’d never be able to put myself together again.

There was something so intense about the way I delivered those words, something so earnest and crazy in the timbre of my voice, that the doctor almost smiled—or at least appeared to be suppressing a smile. Well, we don’t want that to happen, do we? he said. If you’re so intent on flying, then go ahead and fly. But let’s make sure you do it in only one direction. And with that whimsical comment, he removed a pen from his pocket and scratched out a series of undecipherable marks on the pad. Here it is, he said, tearing off the top sheet and putting it in my hand. Your ticket for Air Xanax.

Never heard of it.

Xanax. A potent, highly dangerous drug. Just use as directed, Mr. Zimmer, and you’ll be turned into a zombie, a being without a self, a blotted-out lump of flesh. You can fly across entire continents and oceans on this stuff, and I guarantee that you’ll never even know you’ve left the ground.

By midafternoon the following day, I was in California. Less than twenty-four hours after that, I was walking into a private screening room at the Pacific Film Archive to watch two more Hector Mann comedies.
Tango Tangle
turned out to be one of his wildest, most effervescent productions;
Hearth and Home
was one of the most careful. I spent more than two weeks with these films, returning to the building every morning at ten sharp, and even when the place was closed (on Christmas and New Year’s Day), I went on working in my hotel, reading books and consolidating my notes in preparation for the next stage of my travels. On January 7, 1986, I swallowed some more of Dr. Singh’s magic pills and flew directly from San Francisco to London—six thousand nonstop miles on the Catatonia Express. A larger dose was required this time, but I was worried that it wouldn’t be enough, and just before I boarded the plane, I took an extra pill. I should have known better than to go against the doctor’s instructions, but the thought of waking up in the middle of the flight was so terrifying to me, I nearly put myself to sleep forever. There’s a stamp in my old passport that proves I entered Great Britain on January eighth, but I have no memory of landing, no memory of going through customs, and no memory of how I got to my hotel. I woke up in an unfamiliar bed on the morning of January ninth, and that was when my life started again. I had never lost track of myself so thoroughly.

There were four films left—
Cowpokes
and
Mr. Nobody
in London;
Jumping Jacks
and
The Prop Man
in Paris—and I realized that this would be my only chance to see them. I could always revisit the American archives if I had to, but a return trip to the BFI and the Cinémathèque was out of the question. I had managed to get myself to Europe, but I didn’t have it in me to attempt the impossible more than once. For that reason, I wound up staying in London and Paris much longer than was necessary—almost seven weeks in all, burrowed in for half the winter like some mad, subterranean beast. I had been thorough and conscientious up to that point, but now the project was taken to a new level of intensity, a single-mindedness that verged on obsession. My outward purpose was to study and master the films of Hector Mann, but the truth was that I was teaching myself how to concentrate, training myself how to think about one thing and one thing only. It was the life of a monomaniac, but it was the only way I could live now without crumbling to pieces. When I finally returned to Washington in February, I slept off the effects of the Xanax in an airport hotel, and then, first thing the next morning, collected my car from the long-term parking lot and drove to New York. I wasn’t ready to return to Vermont. If I meant to write the book, I would need a place to hole up in, and of all the cities in the world, New York struck me as the one least likely to wear on my nerves. I spent five days looking for an apartment in Manhattan, but nothing turned up. It was the height of the Wall Street boom then, a good twenty months before the ’87 crash, and rentals and sublets were in short supply. Eventually, I drove across the bridge to Brooklyn Heights and took the first place I was shown—a one-bedroom apartment on Pierrepont Street that had just come on the market that morning. It was expensive, dingy, and awkwardly designed, but I felt lucky to have it. I bought a mattress for one room, a desk and a chair for the other, and then I moved in. The lease was good for a year. It began on March first, and that was the day I began writing the book.

2

BEFORE THE BODY
, there is the face, and before the face there is the thin black line between Hector’s nose and upper lip. A twitching filament of anxieties, a metaphysical jump rope, a dancing thread of discombobulation, the mustache is a seismograph of Hector’s inner states, and not only does it make you laugh, it tells you what Hector is thinking, actually allows you into the machinery of his thoughts. Other elements are involved—the eyes, the mouth, the finely calibrated lurches and stumbles—but the mustache is the instrument of communication, and even though it speaks a language without words, its wriggles and flutters are as clear and comprehensible as a message tapped out in Morse code.

None of this would be possible without the intervention of the camera. The intimacy of the talking mustache is a creation of the lens. At various moments in each of Hector’s films, the angle suddenly changes, and a wide or medium shot is replaced by a close-up. Hector’s face fills the screen, and with all references to the environment eliminated, the mustache becomes the center of the world. It begins to move, and because Hector’s skill is such that he can control the muscles in the rest of his face, the mustache appears to be moving on its own, like a small animal with an independent consciousness and will. The mouth curls a bit at the corners, the nostrils flare ever so slightly, but as the mustache goes through its antic gyrations, the face is essentially still, and in that stillness one sees oneself as if in a mirror, for it is during those moments that Hector is most fully and convincingly human, a reflection of what we all are when we’re alone inside ourselves. These close-up sequences are reserved for the critical passages of a story, the junctures of greatest tension or surprise, and they never last longer than four or five seconds. When they occur, everything else stops. The mustache launches into its soliloquy, and for those few precious moments, action gives way to thought. We can read the content of Hector’s mind as though it were spelled out in letters across the screen, and before those letters vanish, they are no less visible than a building, a piano, or a pie in the face.