“They could only put me on trial,” she says. “They can never take him out of me.”
There’s no way these people could find each other without the fiber-optic cables and wireless signals wrapped around the globe. Herzog’s voiceover knows this, too: “I question whether, underneath all its utility and emptiness, the Internet has become a necessary tool of self-annihilation.”
Their stories unfold alongside his deeper exploration of Rolf Jaeger, and Herzog is curious to know what he makes of them. The inquiry triggers another titanic rant, withering in its contempt, that must have been familiar from the Kinski era. It’s all a grotesque pathology of sex gone wrong, Jaeger shouts. He despises them—pathetic people who don’t really want to die; they just want to bond with some other pathetic person and have exhausted all other options for how to go about it. They yearn to be told what to do by someone who has no boundaries left.
Such distinctions still seem little different from the devotees Jaeger draws as the film follows him between city and countryside. He exists, and they find him, yes. But why? He has insights. He has answers. He’s accessed realms, in time and space, his admirers have no idea how to find. How can they be so certain of this? A few seem embarrassed because they have no better answer than they can just tell.
Jaeger isn’t without charisma. He’s sure of himself. He never shows doubt. He careens from loving to paternal to tyrannical. And he listens. He listens a lot. It’s his hold on them. I bet most of these gullible people just wanted someone to listen awhile.
Yet the camera is allowed only so far. It has to remain at a distance when he meets with five of them in a tight circle beside a campfire behind a cabin on an Austrian hillside. He could be telling them anything over there. They could be promising him anything in return.
Stop, I want to yell at them. Don’t you know where this is going? Can’t you see what he is?
I know his shape-shifting type—eager to replace anything he’s said before with something else that sounds better now. I know it before he proves it, when Herzog, during another campfire retreat, revisits their earlier conversation in which Jaeger called himself a superficial yogi.
“That was all wrong. What I am is a shaman, in the most universal sense.”
“Forgive me,” Herzog says, sounding as though he’s had enough and is ready to spar, “if I have noticed a consistent lack of drums this entire time.”
His jab incites another tantrum. It has nothing to do with drums, Jaeger bellows. It has everything to do with the journey, one’s answer to the call for initiation. The one commonality to shamans across the world’s cultures, through time, is a vivid visionary experience of their own death. Torn to pieces by whirlwinds or wolves, swallowed by snakes, chewed to dirt by beetles and worms.
“You begin as useless! Your life is useless!” Jaeger shouts. “To be remade, to become something able to walk the tides between worlds, you must first be broken down.”
He spins from the camera and stalks back to the fire, calling out to ask if there’s one among them who is ready. When he stomps toward the camera again he’s never appeared more unhinged. I am thoroughly convinced of his ruling angers and his demons.
“Do you know why I don’t hesitate to do this in front of you, in front of your silly camera?” he demands. “Because no one will ever believe you.”
He returns to his volunteer, whom I remember from earlier—Stefan, his name, young enough to be impressionable, old enough to know better. Drifter by choice, poet by inclination, and living in the wrong century by accident of birth. There’s nothing for him in the vulgarity of the present.
The camera observes from a middle distance as Jaeger and Stefan stand facing each other. They exchange words only the observers lingering at the fireside can hear, with rapt and upturned faces. Leisurely, Jaeger unbuttons Stefan’s shirt, then his own. He caresses a hand up Stefan’s slat-ribbed side, then turns rough as he yanks them together. Jaeger cranes his neck and cups the back of Stefan’s head.
We’ve been in this disoriented zone before. The camera sees too much and not enough. Maybe Jaeger understands light and shadow and silhouette as well as any cinematographer, and lets the camera see only as much as he wants it to see.
Wait. No. What…what are those? And where did they all come from?
I can’t breathe. I’ve forgotten to. Is anyone here breathing? Is Lydia?
I wonder if the rest of the audience has viewed the works that have come before, so they can contextualize what we’re witnessing. Have they watched the polar biologist speak with horror of what it would be like to become ensnared in the tendrils of the predator? Do they recall his description of struggling to exhaustion, of being broken down and rent to bits? Did they ever ponder how the horrors would follow us onto land, and how we would evolve into our own?
Except…there’s no struggle here. In this squirming mass of tendrils, there is only acceptance.
There is only the todestrieb.
I’ve heard agony and I’ve heard ecstasy, but I can’t tell what I’m hearing from Stefan now. I only know I’ve never heard anything like it, and hope to never hear it again, a jubilant keening that warbles and wails to a point no human voice could go without breaking, except his continues onward, upward.
He folds in half, backward, no longer able to hold himself upright—only Jaeger is keeping him standing. On his upside-down face is a wide-eyed look of transcendence and awe. Yogis spend their entire lives hoping for one peek at whatever he’s seeing.
It’s a lie, it’s a lie, I’m screaming inside. I think of paralyzing venoms and morphine dreams. You’re only seeing what will keep you docile…
But try telling him that.
As Stefan sags further, a gap opens between them, and in the hostile interplay of firelight and shadow, I catch a glimpse of the network of gnashing maws at the chaotic center of Jaeger’s being.
* * *
I couldn’t remember seeing the end of the movie, or if it even had one.
It was simply over, and the lights came up, and I was sitting in the midst of an audience that looked bludgeoned into submission. Crying, sick, stunned into silence…any response was valid. It was art. It was supposed to provoke a reaction.
Beside me, Lydia was the silent type. I moved to hold her hand and found it cold and inert. It hurt me to wonder which of us, in the future, would blame the other more for this. You were the one who wanted to go. Yeah, but you made it possible.
Please, now the reveal that it was all an elaborate hoax. Remember Lydia at the motel this morning, asking what if we were the subjects of a documentary? Come on, just tell us. I wanted to laugh at myself. To feel stupid for daring to believe any of this.
When our host, Tobias Woodbury, returned to the front of the room, he wasn’t alone this time. Okay, now the reveal, even better with the rest of us looking at him in the flesh: this actor who’d played Rolf Jaeger to perfection, and was still so committed to the role that in his presence I was more convinced than ever of his ruling angers and demons. I was willing to concede he’d seen things beyond the veil of everyday none of the rest of us could.
“If you are here, you were meant to be here,” Jaeger said. “If you watched, then you were called to see.”
I could believe there was only one copy of Todestriebe in existence, whether Jaeger had fabricated it, stolen it, or procured it by threats.
“Some more than others tonight. You are welcome to join us out back when you are ready.”
As Jaeger peered out over us with his polar-blue eyes, I wondered if this was what it was like for Timothy Treadwell at the end, face-to-face with his final bear. No kinship, no mercy, just a half-bored interest in food.
“As for the rest of you? The years are long. I exist, and you may find me yet.”
And Tobias Woodbury? Only the eyes of a man who’d watched Todestriebe seventy-
three times could look so enraptured. No one else could appear so ready.
They left together.
In time, another four followed.
Before Lydia and I could make it to the car, that keening I’d hoped to never hear again began to shred the night air, rising in pitch beyond the range of human ears.
* * *
Free to leave? Sure. We retraced our route in reverse, returning to the city and our shitty motel in a silence of fog and empty distances. What was there to say: Thanks for an interesting evening out? How about coffee and pie?
Lydia and I didn’t much sleep, and couldn’t feel clean no matter how long we stayed in the shower. We were stuck counting the hours to a return flight I had no idea how to disembark, because…what, just go home? Then what? Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our lives, trying to unsee this thing?
That shit does damage.
Even I had no idea how much.
The irony I’ve always found most haunting about Grizzly Man was how close it came to avoiding its ending, thus never being made at all. How close Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard came to going home. They’d called it a season, packed up their gear, and got as far as the airport ticket counter before deciding to return to the Alaskan bush awhile longer. As if they’d heard a call to go back.
Had Lydia seen this, and never told me? She would know I had. And trusted I would understand exactly what it meant when, after a trip to the bathroom at Vancouver International, I found her seat in our gate’s waiting area empty. Or if not right away, I’d get the message eventually.
When I missed our flight, too, I couldn’t say if it was because I was still waiting for her to come back. Or because I wasn’t aware of when everyone else started to board. Or because I was trying to work up the courage to go after her, but couldn’t get past my fear of the mess that might be waiting.
Mostly I wished I’d paid more attention to how much of herself Lydia must have seen in Stefan—alive in the wrong time, unable to see anything more ahead for her.
All I’d ever wanted was someone to watch movies with, and talk about what they meant before we went to bed. Profound ones. Silly ones. All the ones in between. It seemed so simple, so little to ask for.
So why couldn’t I have reached out a hand’s length farther, and accepted it?
But as I sat transfixed by the sky, by the clouds and all they concealed, the maker of teeth made it clear. That’s not how this universe works. That’s not how any of this works.
FROM THE BALCONY OF THE IDAWOLF ARMS
Jeffrey Ford
WILLA HATED SATURDAY NIGHTS. She had to leave the kids home alone with no babysitter. She knew they weren’t old enough to be on their own, but there was no one nearby to help her. Their father was three states away and she wasn’t unhappy about that. Every cent she made waitressing was apportioned before she even served the drinks and meals at Walsh’s Diner. Only when the tips were great did she have enough to stow a few dollars away for an emergency. She’d never been a churchgoer growing up but now she prayed every night, primarily for the kids to stay healthy and to get to a better place and time. It had nothing to do with religion. Leaving them on their own was taking a big chance, but there wasn’t any aspect of their life now that wasn’t.
Landing the unexpected diner job was a godsend and with it she just managed, before the start of winter, to get out of the mothers and children shelter they’d landed in and into a crazy old apartment. It was at least warm and had a door that locked. The electricity and the water were erratic, the TV was dead, there was no shower in the bathroom, just an old tub with lion claw-feet, and the furniture smelled like a dog on a rainy day. Still, in its way, the old place was magnificent. The ceilings were ten feet or more, affording plenty of room to dream of a better future. And it was cheap—a redbrick leviathan from the early 1900s. Four stories with a tile roof. Some of the brick was chipping, a few of the windows on the bottom floor were cracked, the bannisters were splintery, but otherwise, the place looked pretty good for an old wreck. There were three-story wooden buildings on either side, both ramshackle and abandoned.
A copper plaque above the tall front door, its letters gone green, announced The Idawolf Arms. The real estate person told her that the owner, who lived on the top floor, a Mr. Susi, had just opened the place up for rentals and was renting only the middle two floors. The first floor was a dusty lobby from way back when the place had been a small, upscale hotel—dim lighting, sheets thrown over the furniture and front desk. It was spooky to walk through at night on the way up to the third floor. As of yet, there were no other boarders, but the owner had hopes to rent the remaining available rooms. Willa never met Mr. Susi, and the real estate woman told her he was “somewhat reclusive.”
Whereas Willa hated Saturday night, the kids, Olen and Dottie, looked forward to it. With Willa not there to scold or hug, there were any number of opportunities to be bad. They weren’t, though. Even Dottie, the younger at eight, knew what was at stake. They perfectly grasped the dilemma their mother was in with work and not always being able to be there; how everything in their lives balanced on a knife blade. Willa cared so much and they could feel it. They wanted for it to be always like that. So, instead of running roughshod, breaking things and eating badly, they behaved and channeled their energy into a ritual built around a miracle of chance.
At the door, before leaving, Willa knelt down in front of the kids and once again went through the list of things they were absolutely not allowed to do—leave the apartment, open the door to strangers, cook anything on the stove. They could use the microwave to heat up their dinner, spaghetti in the refrigerator from two nights earlier.
“What if it’s the cops at the door?” asked Dottie.
Willa remained patient and said, “Get a chair, stand on it, and look through the peephole. If it’s someone saying they are the cops and they’re not dressed like cops, go and get in the bathroom and lock the door behind you.”
“We’ll be okay,” said Dottie, sensing that even the thought of someone breaking in made her mother a nervous wreck.
Willa reached into the pocket of her blue-striped uniform and brought out a small bag of M&M’s in each hand. “You can only eat these after dinner and if you’re good,” she said, and they all laughed at the absurdity of it. Then she slipped her coat on, kissed and hugged them, and went out the door. She waited to hear it lock behind her and then the kids listened to her footsteps on the creaky stairway heading down to the dark lobby. They bolted into the living room at the front of the apartment to look out the tall window. In the twilight they saw her heading up Rose Street, away from the dilapidated end of the city.
Olen went through the apartment and turned on all of the lights. Then he settled on the couch with the paperback he’d recently gotten at the local library used-book sale—Watership Down. Next to him, sitting on the floor, Dottie drew a portrait of a robot with a head like a lightning bolt, eyes, and a square mouth.
“What’s that one’s name?” her brother asked her. He loved the things she called her robots. There were dozens of the pictures lying around the apartment. After the drawing and the naming, there seemed nothing in it for her.
“This one is going to be Mrs. Shakes,” she said, concentrating on keeping the pink crayon in the circle of the right eye. “She shakes and then electricity shoots out her ears.”
“I don’t see any ears on her,” he said.
While looking him in the eye, she drew a C and a backward C on either side of the robot’s head. She laughed and gave him the finger.
An hour later, night had fallen and the children knew they had to get moving so as not to be late for the show. Olen put the spaghetti in the microwave and Dottie poured the milk. “Cheese?” she asked, putting the milk back in the fridge.
“You mean that white stuff in the shaker?” asked Olen. “That’s not really cheese.
That’s the shaved-off calluses of old men’s feet.”
“I used to eat it,” said Dottie.
“What happened?”
“You.”
Dinner was served. The spaghetti was partially cold, but they were so hungry they didn’t even bother to put it back in the microwave. While they ate, they discussed the new school they were in. They’d been in a number of them in the two years since their father had left. “What’s your teacher’s name?” he asked her.
“Mrs. Beaglestretch.”
“No way.”
“That’s her name,” said Dottie. “Every day after lunch she goes in the coat closet at the back of the room and farts. We all hear her in there and everybody tries not to laugh.”
“You’re making that up.”
She shook her head. “Who’s yours?”
“Mr. Mace. The kids call him Mace Cut and Paste ’cause all he does is hand out sheets he makes on the copier that we have to fill out. He never teaches us anything, he just hands out sheets. He sits at his desk while we fill out the sheets and looks at his iPhone.”
When they were finished with dinner, they scraped the plates into the kitchen garbage and set them in the sink. Sometimes they washed them and cleaned up the kitchen, but as it was, they were running a little late. By seven thirty, they were back at the front window looking down and scanning the sidewalks, watching for any movement beneath the only two streetlights in the neighborhood that still worked. “Like usual, you watch on the right and I’ll watch on the left,” he said.
“I always get the right,” she said, disappointed.
“I always get the left. What difference does it make?”
“None, I guess,” she said. A moment later she pointed quickly and said, “What’s that?” But in an instant, they saw it was a kid on his bike, going in the opposite direction. Then there was a long spell of silent anticipation.
Final Cuts Page 21
