Director's Cut

by Arthur Japin

  “I’m only scared when I’m alone,” Gala said, slurring her words, “but I’m not alone, am I? Weird, isn’t it? Alone, alone, alone, alone.” She laughed. “What a strange word it is, alone, simply ridiculous: alone, alone, alone …”

  “Not at all,” Maxim said, “I’m with you.”

  “Yes.” Gala beamed like a child that has been given a present. “Yes.” She pointed at her mouth and said, “Spri bilissiti?” Since he didn’t understand, she pursed her lips and pointed at them. Her eyes were now locked onto his. Her eyelids were drooping. She looked at him urgently from under her lashes, fragile.

  “Spri bilissiti!”

  She opened her mouth and pointed at her tongue. Maxim knew that something was about to go seriously wrong. He tried to free himself to paddle, but Gala wouldn’t let him. Her fingers clawed at his chest, as if she were afraid she was going to fall. Wailing like a frightened animal, she signaled that he mustn’t let her go. He felt tension, but no panic. Perhaps because Gala herself relaxed as soon as he lay down again. More than anything else, he felt flattered that she dared to let herself go in his arms. Because she was going. Slowly she slid away, Maxim felt that clearly. And while she slipped away from him, he rose up on the wings of her trust. He grew calm. These were the moments that mattered, when everything could be decided in a single second.

  She pointed at his mouth, more urgently.

  “What is it, darling?” Maxim asked, and it was the first time he had heard himself say the word. But was he talking to a woman or a child? “Just relax, what do you want me to do?” And he was intensely moved that someone dared to put herself in his hands.

  “Are you thirsty?”

  Gala shook her head. She pointed at his mouth. All he could think of was to kiss her on the forehead. And again. She shook her head and pointed at her mouth. Her mouth! She could no longer speak, but made little groaning sounds, weeping deep within about not being able to make him understand. Then he kissed her, not making a fierce and exaggerated show of it like on the stage, but carefully. First their lips touched without any pressure at all, as if passing by chance and only briefly lingering, but when she opened her mouth to him and he felt her breath in the back of his throat, he naturally went further.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed in admiration, beaming.

  Maxim moved closer with his legs wrapped around her, the way he’d sat behind her on the bicycle, and when he saw her widely dilated eyes roll back at the start of the epileptic fit, he held her tight with all his strength.

  “Let it go, Gala, I’m here, sweetheart, I’m here, aren’t I? Gala darling, dear Gala, Gala darling, it’ll be all right.”

  They could have been wrestling with passion, catching each other and then slipping away from each other again, the way new lovers raise each other’s body only to press it down again. Shoulders, feet, arms, and legs banged against the bottom of the boat. Sweat began to flow and heavy breathing sounded in the night. If people had been walking along the quay, they would have smiled or felt a pang of jealousy, thinking back on the hours in which they themselves had been snared by that kind of love. The jolting of the young bodies spread over the water in circles that grew until they broke against the banks.

  On the bottom of the boat, Maxim measured his strength against Gala’s. He was stronger, but for the first few minutes she had the advantage of a madness that stopped at nothing. Even her fiercest swipes seemed involuntary, as if controlled by something beyond her. Over and over he was caught out by the erratic way her muscles contracted, hitting and kicking. Her movements were unpredictable. Dangerous. As if determined to inflict injury. Again and again her head bashed against the ribs of the boat, and whenever he leapt in between to cushion the blows there was always an arm or leg that lashed out with wood-splintering power, cutting and grazing itself in the process.

  But finally her body came to rest and rolled back. The muscles that had gone through such contortions relaxed, still quivering from the strain. Maxim leaned back with relief and gently let her slack body sag against his. Now moving only to the rhythm of his breathing, she lay there heavily. One by one, he dislodged the black hairs stuck to her forehead. He stroked her cheek and wiped the drops of blood away from the corner of her mouth. He spat on his thumb to wash away the smudged mascara under her lashes. Then he wrapped his arms around her, felt her breathing, and, for a few moments, felt so intimately linked to this woman that he thought they would never be separate again.

  When he became aware of the chafing and burning of his own injuries, he rested his head. For a long time, he lay there like that with Gala’s head on his chest, looking at the moonlight, broken by all the facets of the diamond, differently every time, sparkling and unpredictable, falling inside the boat in countless rays and colors.

  The boat had been motionless for quite a while. Maxim opened the glass hatch, lifted Gala out, and laid her down carefully on the sand. They had run aground on a large sandbank just outside the city—maybe this is Amsterdam’s beach, he thought, with the sea far away, at low tide, or, if the city doesn’t happen to lie on the coast, we’ll make the broad, empty flats an excavation for the new harbor. Maxim took off his shirt and soaked it in the water. Then he thoroughly cleaned all those places where she had soiled herself in her trance, including the most intimate. He had never touched a woman there. He did it slowly and gently, but without hesitation or ulterior motives, because, all this time, the only thing he wanted was for Gala to regain consciousness feeling cool and clean and with nothing to be ashamed of.

  When she opened her eyes, he was sitting next to her on the ground and dabbing her forehead. It took a while before she could make herself understood. Meanwhile he tried to help by asking one question after the other—“How are you? What’s my name? What happened? Can you see how beautiful the moon is on the water? Are you thirsty? Does it hurt? Do you feel like crying? Shall I sing for you? Where are you now?”—not because he wanted answers, but because he was afraid that her attention might drift and she might slip away from him again. Every few minutes, he used his fingers to drip some moisture onto her lips, which were still bleeding in two places.

  “Sweet,” she mumbled finally, with a swollen tongue that had been caught between her molars on both sides.

  “Shouldn’t you take something?”

  She nodded, but shrugged.

  “Forgot.”

  “How can you forget something like that?”

  “It makes me dopey. Don’t want you thinking I’m dopey.”

  “Dopey?” Maxim kissed her on the forehead as easily as he had when she was unconscious. She rolled over onto her side and pulled up her legs; it hurt. He brushed the sand off her back, which was moist with sweat, turned toward her, and snuggled up closer. “Let me reassure you …,” he continued. “Dopey, you weren’t.”

  “I’m glad,” said Gala, and a little later she added, “I don’t want to miss anything, anywhere.”

  “Me neither,” Maxim replied eagerly. Suddenly he couldn’t bear the idea of having neglected so many aspects of life. As if he had walked past with his eyes shut. Now that Gala was calm and the tension was ebbing away, he had difficulty restraining his tears. With one ear on the sand, he could hear the waves coming in. The water made a sucking noise as it washed back between the grains. Gradually the realization sank in that, during the whole adventure, he had scarcely given himself a second thought. Just as in his scenes on the stage with Gala, he had done what he had to do without being conscious of himself doing it. He took that for maturity—acting autonomously without having to think about it—and considered the compulsion to take yourself by the hand and ponder the consequences of every deed as something childish, a rigidity he would eventually grow out of. He tried to remember whether he had ever lost himself in someone so completely before. I’ve got to stick close to Gala, he thought, and learn to see as she does.

  “So, she has finally deflowered you, has she?” As charming as ever, the Pole shouted it out from the ot
her side of the lecture theater. Everyone noticed that the tension between Solange and Monsieur Arnaux had disappeared from one rehearsal to the next. Their seduction scene had become somehow self-evident. It was no longer a brazen demonstration of intimacy. Although Maxim still massaged her breasts and Gala writhed as requested, the piquancy of their acting had given way to restrained tenderness, something the director couldn’t use at all.

  “Darling, I of all people know that de Dutch man needs a helping hand,” she said to Gala, “but couldn’t you wait until after de premiere? You look like an old married couple!”

  Since their night on the Amsterdam beach, Maxim and Gala had seen each other every day. After lectures they popped into a tearoom to eat cakes, one night they went to the cinema, and Wednesday afternoon saw them stretched out on the red plush of the Concertgebouw staircase, listening to a free performance by the renowned resident orchestra. When they wanted to go for a drink afterward, Gala suggested the museum of modern art, whose restaurant lay on the other side of the square, surrounded by a large pond. Instead of walking around to the main entrance, she took off her shoes, tucked the hem of her long skirt up under her belt, and stepped into the water, terrifying a school of carp.

  “Come on,” she said, wading toward the restaurant, “if you know where you want to go, why take a detour?”

  Maxim had never even walked on the grass if there was a sign telling him not to, but he didn’t want to be a spoilsport. Encouraged by the people at the outdoor tables, he kicked off his shoes and rolled up his trousers. With Gala he wasn’t afraid to show himself anywhere.

  Arriving at an outdoor café, they settled down for a long, drawn-out conversation. Others could have squeezed it into half an hour, but Maxim and Gala were so absorbed by each other’s company that the urge to talk or ask questions simply faded away. As long as thoughts were enough, words seemed almost inappropriate. Their silences were three parts satisfaction and one part the awkwardness inspired by a misunderstanding, each thinking the other’s conversation was more scintillating than their own, and each mistakenly suspecting that the other’s silence was given over to the formulation of original thoughts that neither wanted to interrupt. Nothing could have been further from the truth. They both enjoyed the pauses in the conversation, and when one of them finally broke the silence, the discussion was animated because there was nothing they had to do, and nothing either wanted to hold back.

  They spent quite a while in this hazy state before they finally got around to the seizure. Gala and Maxim were lying on the grass under an almond tree in the middle of an enormous roundabout. Across the road was a major brewery, and its big copper kettles caught the sun, casting a warm yellow sheen over the branches and the two young people. Gala had to cover her eyes from the glare. She told Maxim about her sensitivity to light and the stroke she had suffered as a child. The consequences had been limited to the black spot, which she tried to explain, and more or less regular seizures.

  “I’m a little careless with my medication,” she said, as if that were an achievement. “And when I do take it, I don’t follow the directions that strictly. Not at all, if you ask some people. No drinking, no smoking, early to bed. Am I supposed to live like an old lady?”

  “But aren’t seizures like that dangerous?”

  “Something could always rupture.” Smiling, she snapped her fingers against her temple. Maxim wondered why her nonchalance annoyed him.

  “I don’t understand why you would take that kind of risk.”

  “Is that any way to live, playing it safe?” asked Gala, surprised. In the silence that followed, she looked at him with big eyes. It reminded him of the way she’d stared at him on the beach, like an animal caught in headlights. He felt such a powerful emotion that he thought he might burst into tears. Instead he bent over and started to kiss her, carefully at first, like the first time, before he knew what was wrong with her, but when he felt her tongue shoot into his mouth, he threw himself on her, licking, biting, and sucking as if for dear life.

  They lay there entangled on the grass all afternoon and deep into the evening. Passengers in the trams that circled the roundabout struggled to catch a glimpse of the kissing couple rolling entwined among the narcissi. Whatever the Polish woman thought, this was the first time either had felt the love of another body. Now and then, breaking free of the embrace and looking up, Maxim saw the faces of the tram passengers. Children with their noses pressed flat against the windows waved, a plump woman going home from the market winked at him through the leeks in the bag she had propped on her knee. All these people were going about their business as if they knew what everything was all about. A group of boys encouraged Maxim with obscene gestures, and one of the tram drivers saluted the couple by doing a whole extra circuit, ringing the bell exuberantly all the while. Gala and Maxim burst out laughing, but weren’t distracted. On the contrary. Displaying himself shamelessly before the eyes of the city only encouraged Maxim. As if being seen were proof that he existed. He still had a chance of joining the party he had dreamed about in his isolation, the party he had always known was going on somewhere else, a little farther down the road, in squat buildings that radiated music and light when you passed them in the night.

  “That sure was different from the first kiss,” he sighed after rolling onto his back for a moment to catch his breath. His lips were burning where Gala had nipped them. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at him, squinting a little from the sun.

  Finally Maxim realized what she had reminded him of that night on the water: a girl, four or five years old, that he had seen not so long ago at the swimming pool. She couldn’t swim and was standing at the edge of the pool with her water wings on, quivering with fear and looking down at her father in the water. He stretched out his arms and gestured for her to jump. Her eyes were glued to his, as if the world outside her field of vision had dissolved. She didn’t dare to take a step in either direction and, considering all the options, her face contorted, as if simply standing there caused her physical pain. Her lips started to tremble. Her eyes filled with tears and Maxim felt the tears welling in his eyes too. He was fascinated by the invisible lifeline between the man’s and the girl’s eyes. He had abandoned her to her fate and yet she still wanted to be with him. He had already betrayed her and now he was asking her to trust him anew. It worked. Drawn only by the pull of his eyes on hers, she moved closer to the water. Her toes were already over the edge when she started to cry, with heartrending sobs, but the man was implacable. Once she realized that there was no way back, she surrendered, swung her arms, and leapt toward him.

  “What first kiss?” asked Gala. “Did you kiss me?”

  It took Maxim a moment to grasp that Gala didn’t remember a thing of what had happened.

  “I probably asked for something between my teeth, a bit of wood, or a hankie, so I wouldn’t hurt myself, and you thought … Man, I could have bitten your tongue off.” She seemed to find the idea amusing. She knew, of course, that she had suffered a seizure and that Maxim had looked after her, but she didn’t have any memories of it at all. Their most intimate moment, and he had experienced it alone.

  “Usually the last thing I remember is this feeling that someone or something is coming up behind me, an enormous wave about to wash over me. Then I don’t know a thing until I come to. I remember coming to, I remember that very well. It was somewhere on sand, wasn’t it? With you, very peaceful. Yes, I remember that very well, lying there together so peacefully, for a long time. That was it, wasn’t it?”

  Maxim didn’t know exactly why, but suddenly, perhaps because he was so happy, perhaps because he was tired and relaxed, but suddenly he was so moved by the thought of that quivering girl that he began to cry. While Gala kissed the tears from his cheeks, he resolved that he would one day be worthy of the trust she had shown him.

  And so I gradually fill this high, empty space. This blank page. I search for big shapes, to make a small effect. I fill the picture with
extreme details because each of them hides a facet of the essence. I gather strange butterflies. My white is made up of so many colors. Nobody who has seen my chaotic films will be able to believe it, but I strive for the tranquillity of a Japanese print.

  Japanese prints have always fascinated me. Usually, most of the surface is taken up by something insignificant, a branch, the back of a head, blown-up details that for no apparent reason have reached the foreground: an extravagant fan, the grotesque face of a Nö actor. As if they had been caught by chance as they were creeping by. A geisha’s shoulder blocking the view of Mount Fuji. An umbrella dominating the chaos of a bustling street scene. The teahouse is less important than the paper lantern dangling from the doorjamb in the wind.

  I show life as it shows itself to me; what really matters is hidden behind an enormous thigh that just happened to wobble past. Maybe I could gather all my strength and use both hands to push away that floral dress and reveal the truth, but the truth is so much less attractive. If I don’t see something, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. If I don’t show something, it doesn’t mean it’s not there for all to see.

  With the body still, consciousness can go its own way. The flesh is weary, but the soul wants to go on. That’s why we dream. The body is not going anywhere, but thoughts take off in all directions. These night visions have always been more important to me than the issues of the day. The memories from my sleep are dearer than the memories of my life. Since the fifties I have kept a diary in which I note down all my dreams and draw the impossible images that appeared in them. They are my escape, and my gold mine. I use them in my films and, transmuting dreams into my work, bring them into my conscious life.

  As I wait to start shooting my next film, my days and nights are free for dreaming. Project after project flashes through my mind. Stories, drawings, vistas—I don’t know where to begin.