Shadow Is a Colour as Light Is

by Michael Langan

  “Poor little witch,” says Jeffrey.

  He barks into the air — “On!” — and swivels to face the bank of screens on the wall. They flicker and spurt into life, though they’re looking rather shabby these days. He’ll have new ones installed, the best available, when this is all over.

  Each individual screen displays a room in his father’s quarters enabling Jeffrey to observe Walter as he slithers from room to room, square to square. He can zoom in, out, split the screens, combine them, anything he wants. His ability to hack into CantoCorp’s security and surveillance systems has enabled him to form the ideal relationship with his father. For the last ten years Jeffrey has seen Walter only on camera, heard Walter’s voice only in his mind and communicated solely in the imagination. It’s perfect, for both of them.

  Walter emerges onto one of the screens. “Library,” Jeffrey commands, and the whole wall blinks, before each screen displays a single image from one of the various cameras there, rendering the space as a splintered, cubist plane. Jeffrey’s eyes flit and track Walter’s wandering across the disjointed field of vision. Jeffrey used to find this fragmentation disorientating but he’s used to it now, his brain able to construct the ruptured whole.

  His father trails his hand along dark wood shelves crammed with books uniformly bound in red and gold, books Jeffrey’s never seen him open.

  Jeffrey understands that Walter, having created this incredible edifice, this crystal palace, lurks in its basement because it was designated the safest place in the event of a terrorist attack or kidnap attempt. But he has never understood why he would furnish it in the style of an English country house hotel cum gentlemen’s club; all wood panelling, hunting prints, swagged curtains and frilly lampshades. He could have employed the world’s best decorators, designers, and stylists to create the most sumptuously lavish and tasteful spaces ever conceived, but instead, chose, as he has always done, to interfere in things he knows nothing about, and spoil them, insisting on the worst clichés of dubious taste culled from soulless in-flight magazines and tacky cable shows.

  As Walter comes to a stop at a large portfolio resting on a stand, Jeffrey picks up his joystick.

  Walter pulls on a pair of white cotton gloves and begins to browse his collection of old master drawings.

  Jeffrey pushes the joystick forward and zooms in above Walter’s head.

  Together, they leaf through the fresh faces of noblemen and noblewomen long gone, brought to life by Veronese, Holbein, Ingres, then a Raphael study for a Madonna and Child, and a Pontormo self-portrait. Walter flicks desultorily past Jeffrey’s particular favourite — a beautiful Michelangelo sketch of a man’s heavily muscled back — before slamming the portfolio shut. He tears the gloves from his hands and tosses them out of the frame.

  In the corner of another screen a hand reaches out to catch them. Jeffrey zooms in, then, on the doctor’s face. Finely boned and angular, its planes form a handsome portrait of an unknown man. “It’s a great face,” Jeffrey says. He could look at it for hours. Does, sometimes.

  Jeffrey reads the doctor’s lips: “It’s time.” He has never heard this voice but imagines it smooth and low.

  Walter’s face contorts and, in his mind, Jeffrey hears a petulant groan.

  The doctor nods firmly, passing the ghostly gloves between his hands.

  “Very well,” Walter mouths, passing out of view.

  “Dressing Room,” Jeffrey orders. He remembers the harsh grate of his father’s voice and, at moments like these, worries his own is very like it.

  Walter is lowering himself into a plaid armchair, having taken off his jacket.

  The doctor bends to loosen Walter’s tie — perhaps more mushroom, than oyster, Jeffrey thinks — and unbutton his collar. He unfastens Walter’s cufflinks and rolls up one of his sleeves, then places a small box on a footstool. Lifting its lid brings it to life and he prods at the dimly lit touch-screen.

  Jeffrey has seen the doctor perform these actions many times over the last few months, thinks he could do it himself if need be.

  The doctor connects a tube into a catheter protruding from Walter’s bony forearm, and Jeffrey imagines that dry, reassuring touch on his own skin.

  Walter nods in response to something the doctor says, though Jeffrey couldn’t see what it was. Past lines include, ‘This won’t hurt,’ ‘It should take about half an hour,’ ‘Can I bring you anything?’ and, possibly on this occasion, ‘I’ll wait next door,’ because he leaves the dressing room and retreats back to the library.

  Jeffrey is tempted to leave his father and spend some time reading together (it is the doctor, only, who cracks open the spines of these leather-bound volumes and Jeffrey sometimes zooms in over his shoulder, or downloads the same book in order to experience it with him). But he’s curious to see how Walter will react to the evening’s events. It might even affect his treatment.

  Something rises inside him — not pity, exactly, maybe regret. But for what? And there’s a stain of guilt too at his taking pleasure in Walter’s defeat. Jeffrey pushes it away, but the effort exhausts him and weighs heavily.

  With the press of a button, the screens merge into one image of his father’s face. It is a portrait much bigger than life-size, as Walter Yeung is himself.

  Jeffrey crawls onto his bed and curls up in preparation for sleep, the only illumination emanating from the dim grey-green light of his father’s eyes.

  J-P, Liverpool — 2008

  The hansom carriage pulls up to a sharp, clattering halt. The cab door swings open and the entire contraption rocks and creaks.

  A man emerges, his round, bearded face glowing with excitement. He wears a dove grey frock coat and high white collar, splendidly tied with plum-coloured silk.

  The passenger alights, the chestnut horse skittish, stamping as he gingerly negotiates the steps. Once firmly on the ground he raises his glossy top hat and, sweeping the air with it in a generous, optimistic wave, smiles broadly.

  “Cézanne!” he exclaims, gazes into the middle distance, freezes.

  “Cut!” J-P shouted, and sprang out of his chair. “Let’s go again.” He strode up to the bearded actor and spoke softly into his ear. “Guillaume, listen, you get out of a carriage every day — try not to appear so… so nervous about it.” He lowered his voice further. “Look, it’s just a horse; a very well trained horse. He’s not going to kick you, you know?” J-P winked at him, then raised his voice so the others around them could hear. “The rest was great, really great. Keep it up!”

  A team materialised instantaneously, measuring the light, brushing the horse’s mane, spreading more straw on the ground, polishing the cab door. The actor closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sky while the make-up technician dabbed at his face and combed his beard, as someone from costume wiped away dust from the top hat, then flitted off, before Guillaume trotted back up the steps, then down, then up again, practicing, and disappeared into the hansom.

  J-P returned to his position behind the camera operator. “Okay — once more — just from the door opening this time.”

  The Assistant Director worked the clapperboard with her now wearisome flourish, called “Quiet please!” and silence came.

  J-P waited for a count of two: “Action!”

  Again, the cab door swings open and, again, the man emerges, his face glowing even more brightly, and tinged, J-P thinks, with a nervous edginess, which is good, very good, channelling his anxiety like that. He may well have been feeling uneasy at the sight of Cézanne, whose unpredictable and violent mood swings could cause such consternation.

  Placing his shiny, black-booted foot on the top step he all but bounds from the carriage, landing firmly on the cobbles while simultaneously raising his hat. His smile is wide but hesitant as he makes the sweeping gesture with his arm again, broad enough to take in the whole world this time, let alone Paris.

  He laughs, exclaims “Paul!” —- changing the line, but of course it’s better that he use his friend�
��s first name — smiles into the middle distance, freezes.

  J-P waits, then gestures for him to come forward.

  He moves swiftly, arms outstretched, readying for an embrace, his grin easing off into tender affection as he walks towards, and then past, the camera.

  “Cut! Perfect! Brilliant, in fact.” There was a smattering of applause as J-P got up. “That’s that one done. Let’s move on.”

  The bustle of concentrated activity started up again. J-P marched directly through the clamour and chatter beyond the cordon, along the metal barriers keeping the crowd at bay, past the security guards mumbling into their walkie-talkies, to reach the trailers lined up beyond where wardrobe were coming and going with briefcases and bags, hats and cloaks and umbrellas and shoes.

  The Belgian actress playing Hortense was talking to a group of extras, though she wasn’t on the schedule today, as well she knew. There was talk, rumours of an affair between her and Guillaume, who wasn’t long married to a Danish royal, or Swedish, maybe Dutch. Well, J-P couldn’t remember and didn’t care, as long as their work remained unaffected.

  He was brought to a halt. One of the extras, a fit-looking, middle-aged guy dressed as a respectable bourgeois out for a stroll, was the image of his dad. J-P thought it was him for a moment and wouldn’t that be crazy if his dad had got a job on his son’s first feature, so he could see him. J-P instantly realised his mistake when the guy smiled a very tight smile, a totally different expression from his dad’s generous, open grin. It wasn’t him.

  He smelled coffee suddenly, would love a coffee, and continued on until he reached his own trailer, ascending the dinky aluminium ramp and slipping into its cool, tranquil cell. He went straight to the fridge, took out a bottle of mineral water and a tin of coffee. The scent of it made him nauseous — had he eaten today? Yes, but breakfast was ages ago. He unscrewed the espresso maker and filled the bottom from the bottle of water then spooned a little mountain of coffee into the thing he didn’t know the name of, the thing with holes through which the water came, tamped the coffee down with the back of his spoon, screwed it all together, placed it on top of the portable twin hotplate.

  He did all this swiftly and deliberately, as if he was annoyed, but he was not annoyed, he just needed a proper coffee and a bit of space and this making of his own coffee himself, exactly how he liked it, had become a daily observance, a small marker of autonomy within the bloody zoo the shoot had become. He took two cups from the drainer by the sink, placed them on the work surface, then snapped opened the window blinds.

  There was Marius, standing on the steps of his own trailer — directly opposite J-P’s though some twenty metres away — with a posse of women gathered round him. He was wearing the brown, woollen overcoat they’d chosen as Cézanne’s signature costume and, in one hand, he clutched a navy-blue felt hat. His face was framed with short, dark whiskers and moustaches, and his whitened teeth, especially when flashed at his fans, positively radiated in the sunlight.

  J-P’s confidence dipped at moments like these. Marius looked too much like their idea of an artist and, at the same time, too much like himself; his hair perfectly clean and shiny and well cut, his smile too dazzling (quite like his dad’s come to think of it) for him to be anything other than a young Brazilian-American actor and, perhaps what was worse, a real life blockbuster movie star.

  He’d voiced his concerns about this to Maria, during last night’s dinner, but some of those were, in turn, concerns about his own ability, at the age of thirty-six, to be finally directing his first movie, written by him, with the backing of a consortium of producers and funders, many of whom he’d never met.

  It was Maria who’d asked him when he was going to see his dad, now that he was back in Liverpool for the first time in ages. J-P told her there wouldn’t be time. The schedule was so tight, the budget too small to allow him time off. The look she gave him! She knew he’d barely been home since he went off to film school, then moved to the States, but not that he’d all but made a stranger of his dad over the years, despite everything they’d gone through together.

  Was it him, that extra? Maria wouldn’t have engineered his dad being on set, would she? No, that would be mad. Talking about him last night, along with everything else they’d shared, had obviously placed that image of his dad in his mind, but he couldn’t deal with all that now. There was so much riding on the film and he mustn’t lose focus.

  He turned on the heat under the milk pan. Before the day’s work could begin they must have this fucking sideshow, insisted upon by Betsy, his Executive Producer, usually instigated by her in fact, so that everyone could see the importance of ‘The Project,’ as she called it. He loved Betsy, truly, but today she had invited a band of Marius’ admirers through the barriers and on to the set and they looked properly drunk with the excitement of it all. Who could blame them?

  J-P watched one woman unzip the hoodie of her pink Juicy Couture tracksuit and pull down her vest top, offering up her generous chest. Marius hesitated before — to cheers and squeals from the rest of them — scrawling his name across her cleavage with a sharpie. Despite himself, J-P laughed and shook his head.

  The espresso maker sputtered and J-P poured some coffee into his cup, added the warmed milk, took a sip. It was spicy and rich, and his stomach grumbled as he swallowed.

  More shrieks drew him closer to the window. One of the women was holding a phone up to Marius’ face and he was speaking into it. Most of the others were pointing their phones too, taking pictures or recording him.

  Around these, a satellite crew swept from side to side, filming ‘The Making of…’ for the DVD.

  Beyond the barriers a regional news reporter was doing a piece to camera — maybe live? — with Marius and the fans as backdrop.

  Another crowd had surrounded this, most of them holding up their phones in turn. It was — all of it — madness.

  J-P fished his own mobile phone from his trouser pocket and speed dialled Marius. He spied him look up and squint towards the trailer, pull his Blackberry from the pocket of his greatcoat, watched his lips move a second or so before he heard him.

  “Yup?”

  “Cut,” J-P said.

  “Sure thing boss. Be right over.” Marius pulled the felt hat on and down over his eyes. He jogged in the direction of J-P’s trailer, his devotees swivelling round to continue their recording of him.

  The whole trailer shuddered as Marius leaped up the ramp and through the door, skittish as that beautiful chestnut horse, J-P thought.

  Marius clamped a clay pipe between his teeth and glowered across at him, his glittering amber eyes and agile mouth quivering with amusement. Now, there was Cézanne.

  J-P was wrong, always wrong, to doubt Marius’ ability to become the young painter, because Marius was possessed, J-P knew, with the same blazing impulses as the man he was playing had been, determined to conquer and sweep aside all obstacles, filled with the burning conviction that he could, that he would, astonish everyone with his brilliance.

  Marius tossed his hat aside, then rushed at J-P, taking his face in both hands, kissing him hard on the mouth, then threw his arms up. “I’m so fucking excited!” He beamed and kissed J-P again, softly this time. “Thank you, baby.”

  Yes, Marius would make people believe he was Cézanne, and they would want to believe he was Cézanne, and J-P would direct him closely because his unbridled talent needed directing, and the film would be a success and easily recoup its relatively modest budget and Marius would gain the credibility he craved, despite his agent’s advice that the movie was just too… too strange, and J-P would repay the faith Betsy invested in him, and in years to come this film, his film, Astonishing Paris, would be written about as their breakthrough work. All of this would happen and, as if to cement this belief, he pulled Marius towards him and kissed him deeply, slipping his hands in under the thick, dark coat.

  Marius pulled away suddenly and looked behind him. “Shit!” He leaned across and flipp
ed the blinds shut.

  “Sorry,” J-P said. “I forgot.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t think anyone saw.”

  “You can see out far more than people can see in,” J-P reassured him. “You were very good with them, your fans. I was watching. Could you see me watching?”

  “No, but they might still be filming,” Marius said, “or taking pictures. You never know. I’ll be on the internet signing that girl’s chest in minutes. Seconds. Oh God, I hope they weren’t recording that cell phone conversation.”

  “Why? What did you say?”

  “Oh… nothing. But it might’ve sounded a bit dorky, y’know? Or sleazy? Flirting over the phone with a girl I’ve never laid eyes on? Christ knows how old she was. Jesus!”

  “You’re being paranoid,” J-P said, pouring him some coffee. “It’ll be fine. Everyone saw you were just innocently talking to her.”

  “Yeah, and next thing you know it’s been cut and spliced so it sounds like I’m inviting her up to my hotel suite for the weekend. End of career.”

  “Marius, why would anyone do that? You really believe people spend time thinking up these schemes? You’re not — ” J-P nearly said you’re not that important — “you don’t attract that kind of bad feeling.”

  “Not yet,” Marius said. “Give it a couple of years. You could sit on that baby for as long as you like and then pick your moment. The evening of a premiere. The Oscars. My wedding day — ”

  “Your what?”

  “Well, you know,” — Marius waved dismissively “ — just, whatever, to maximise what you could make from something like that.”

  “It’d be useful though,” J-P said, with a smirk. “Stop people getting ideas about us. Put them off the… scent,” this last word spoken into Marius’ neck as he buried his face there.

  Marius was silent, though J-P felt him relax against him. He picked up the shooting schedule from the counter, began to thumb through it, though they both knew it practically by heart.