Screenplay

by MacDonald Harris

  “We could take a walk.”

  “A walk? Where?”

  “Perhaps—down by the Old Mill Stream.”

  Turning to look directly at me with her little smile, she shook her head slowly back and forth.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you were naughty the last time.”

  “Moira …”

  “But in a half an hour you can be my fiancé.”

  “Muldoon gets the girl.”

  “Well, he’s a star, don’t you see, Alys. When you’re a star you can get the girl.”

  “I want you right now.”

  “Greedy greedy.”

  “It isn’t that I desire you. I mean, I do desire you. But it’s more than that. It’s that …”

  Her smile increased a little. “What?”

  “… that I love you,” I burst out, desperately and ridiculously.

  “Oh, a lot of people do,” she said blithely. “A different person loves me in every picture.”

  “Moira …”

  “You’re a very dear boy.” She offered me a long languorous glance, indicating sincerity, then threw off this manner and stood up in a businesslike way. I approached her and she turned away, with slight coquetry. Without raising my hands from my sides I managed to brush my lips against her cheek as she turned her head. The cheek was cool and smooth, with a faintly clinging texture like silk. Immediately my desire increased to the point that I could scarcely control it. I imagined embracing her and feeling the hardness of her body under the simple gingham dress. In the silence I became conscious of a faint humming sound, above us and behind us, or perhaps simply coming from the air itself. Moira seemed aware of it too.

  “We have to be on the set in twenty minutes,” she said, drawing away with what seemed to me a faint regret.

  “I was supposed to go over the part with you and Muldoon.”

  “There’s nothing to it. You just fall down.”

  THE

  FIRST PICTURE

  Reiter was waiting on the set, slapping his crop impatiently against his riding breeches. He was wearing his safari hat with the zebra-stripe band and the brim turned down all around. It was an outdoor take, not far from the sylvan scene where I had walked with Moira before. “Places!” he shouted impatiently. “Everybody on set. Script! Where’s the script-girl?”

  “Here I am, Mr. Reiter.” She was standing behind the camera, carrying the heavy typescript in its black cover as usual.

  “Where are we now?”

  “Walk in the countryside. Fall into the brook.”

  “Let’s go. What’s the matter with everybody? You’re standing around dead on your feet. Reflectors on the lovers.”

  The men pushed up the big reflector screens and adjusted them. On me, I realized. As though I were awakening from a dream, or falling into one, I found myself standing in a little clearing in the grass next to Moira. The camera began buzzing, only about ten feet from us. All at once I was aware, with a kind of cool chill, that I had passed a boundary into a deeper level in the flight from reality that Ziff had warned me so eloquently against. First, with Nesselrode holding me by the hand, I had escaped from the “real” world (whatever that was) into the thin and flimsy black-and-white world behind the Screen. Now I left even that tenuous reality behind and passed through another invisible membrane, into a play of shadows that was totally conventional and fictive. And in parting company with reality, I had also parted company with my freedom. As the camera started rolling I found myself in a mechanical state in which I was not free to move, to speak, or even to reflect on my emotions except in the manner that was dictated by Reiter and the notebook with its black cover. And Moira too, standing at my elbow, seemed converted into a kind of marionette, a doll capable of exact simulacra of the expressions and gestures of flesh-and-blood beings. Our motions were jerky and the words put into our mouths by the black notebook were of the utmost inanity. We gazed at each other for a few seconds while the camera clucked. Shyly she took my hand.

  “DARLING, LET’S GO FOR A WALK

  IN THE COUNTRY.”

  We began walking down the path, while the reflector screens and the camera on a dolly rolled along after us at one side. The path was narrower than I remembered and Moira went straight down the center of it, so that I often found myself walking in grass up to my ankles or skirting around bushes and other small obstacles.

  “Gaze at each other soulfully!” shouted Reiter, I gazed at Moira soulfully, and she did the same, although there was always a certain nuance of irony under the surface no matter what emotion she was demonstrating. It was even more difficult to walk down the path, or beside the path, now that I was obliged to gaze soulfully at Moira instead of looking where I was going. I blundered into a blackberry patch and scratched myself badly before I was able to extricate myself and catch up again with Moira, who had continued blithely on her way still gazing at the empty spot in the air where I had been.

  “Good, good!” shouted Reiter. “Go on gazing soulfully! What’s next?” he asked the script-girl.

  “The tree branch.”

  I fixed my eyes on Moira’s face. It was not difficult for me to simulate a soulful expression, because I was hypnotized by the desire I felt for the pale, childlike, and yet sensuous face with its dark expressive eyes. I went up and down unevenly as I trod in a ditch or rose up over a hillock. Then, still staring at her as though transfixed, I struck my head violently on the low overhanging branch of a tree.

  “Good, good!”

  I was almost knocked cold. I felt dizzy and almost fell. Pressing one hand over the rapidly growing lump on my brow, I hurried on after Moira, who continued at her normal pace and had not seemed to notice my accident.

  “Keep looking into her eyes! Even for a second don’t glance away!”

  It was perhaps the shock of striking the tree branch that jolted me out of my trancelike state for a moment, and I found it was possible to think or even speak on two levels at once, pantomiming the actions in the script and at the same time making side remarks on the imbecility of it all to Moira.

  “I think I’ve fractured my skull,” I told her under my breath.

  Without altering her tender expression, she said, “Isn’t this where you wanted to come for a walk?”

  “With you. Not with this crowd of clowns pushing cameras.”

  She touched her finger to her lips, still smiling. Ahead was the Old Mill Stream, and the pathway crossed it on a pretty curved bridge in rustic style. The bridge too, however, was narrow, no wider than the path. Moira, with her lovelorn glance fixed on me, went straight up the center of it. Although I was only two feet to her left I missed it completely and walked straight into the brook, clambering out on the other side soaked almost to the waist.

  “Good! Good! Go take off your pants!”

  I went over behind a clump of trees, and the camera on the dolly followed me to a point where I took off my pants and socks and wrung the water out of them, and also poured several cupfuls of water out of my shoes.

  “Now get dressed again.”

  I put my pants back on, pulled on the damp socks, and put on my shoes and tied them. The wet shoes and socks squishing a little, I walked back to the end of the bridge where Moira was now talking to Muldoon, who was in full kit with top hat and monocle and swinging his umbrella behind him in a dashing manner.

  “THIS IS LORD MULDOON. HE HAS JUST

  ARRIVED FROM LONDON, ENGLAND”

  Muldoon negligently extended his hand, and I found myself holding an empty white cotton glove. I didn’t know what to do with it and looked around for a place to put it. Meanwhile Muldoon had stopped swinging his umbrella and was bending over to kiss Moira’s hand.

  “IF I MAY TAKE THE LIBERTY”

  Moira put her fingers to her mouth to suppress a giggle. She looked at me questioningly, and I opened my mouth to say something. Muldoon offered her his arm, and the three of us strolled casually back toward the bridge again.

 
“Both gaze at her! One from each side!”

  We both gazed at Moira, I still with my hopeless lover’s moon-eyes and Muldoon with a careless and blasé confidence. When we came to the bridge Moira kept to the center as before, I of course walked into the brook again, and Muldoon sprang up with agility to balance on the rustic railing of the bridge. The umbrella unfurled as if by magic and he held it out at arm’s length, miming a tight-wire performer.

  Her hands clasped in shy delight, Moira followed his every move. She had forgotten me now and was intent only on Muldoon and his capers. There was the obligatory near-fall; he tottered until it seemed that his center of gravity was far out in the air over empty space, balancing himself only with the quivering umbrella. He regained his equilibrium, poised himself primly on his toes, and did a ballet pirouette. His whole body turned suddenly feminine, while he grinned maliciously at this vein of perversity, of the androgynous, that lurked in his Protean form. Resuming his masculine guise, he tightwired on to the end of the railing, where he did a somersault in the air, managing somehow to turn a complete circle without entangling himself in the still-open umbrella. He landed on the ground as lightly as a bird, with his monocle still in place. He bowed. Moira clasped her hands again, and then, a thought striking her, looked around anxiously to see where I was. The camera panned around to show me wringing out my pants and socks again behind the tree.

  “Good! Good! Print that!”

  “Muldoon and the hay wagon,” said the script-girl.

  I was provided with dry clothes identical to those I had on, and Moira exchanged her gingham frock for a chaste and simple white dress like a nightgown, with a hem that came a little below her knees. This dress, which was translucent to the strong light of the reflectors and showed her form clearly, made me dizzy again with desire.

  “Hurry up with that,” bawled Reiter. “Are we ready? Reflectors on the lovers. Camera! Action!” He raised his crop and pointed it at me. “Dear can’t we find some place to be alone!”

  “DEAR, CAN’T WE FIND SOME

  PLACE TO BE ALONE?”

  Moira made her chaste but mysterious smile—her specialty. Taking me by the hand, she led me away down another rustic path while the camera and reflector screens trundled along after us. Presently we came out by the rustic farmhouse a little beyond the Old Mill, and there we stopped while the camera focused on the farmyard.

  The English lord, still impeccably clad in top hat and monocle, strolled onto the set and found an empty hay-wagon standing in front of the barn. He seized a rickety chair, twirled it once or twice, and then sailed up in a graceful somersault in midair, coming down on the bed of the wagon seated in the chair with one leg crossed over the other. He seemed to have no bones. He could bend any part of his body at will, all without losing a particle of his aristocratic dignity. He reached into his pocket for a cigar and lit it with his trick lighter-thumb. He puffed contentedly. He had not noticed the yokel with Dutch chin-whiskers who was holding the reins at the front of the wagon. An enormous load of hay appeared at the loft door overhead and slid down the chute, filling the wagon. Muldoon disappeared.

  “Go! Go!” shouted Reiter. “Take a hayride.” He pushed us forward, jabbing me in the back with his riding crop.

  “OH LOOK, DEAR, WE CAN TAKE A HAYRIDE.”

  We climbed into the wagon. Enthroned in the soft and fragrant hay, we held hands and looked at each other happily. Moira seemed to have forgotten Muldoon. We were young and in love. The yokel snapped his whip and the wagon started off with a lurch. The camera, the reflector screens, and the rest of the crew trailed along after us. Wisps of smoke began appearing in the hay around us.

  “Don’t notice! Pay no attention!” Reiter shouted.

  There was more smoke, coming mainly from around me now. I stretched out my arm to embrace Moira and was about to kiss her, then withdrew the arm and reached down in alarm through the hay to my trousers. I pulled out the arm and shook it. The coat sleeve was smoldering.

  “FIRE!”

  Moira smiled. Writhing, I tried to put out my burning clothing. I leaped up, rolled about, and did somersaults in the hay. Finally I fell out of the wagon onto the back of my neck and dashed off with alacrity toward the nearby brook. The camera followed me. My clothing was aflame and the seat of my pants entirely burned away. I leaped into the brook and disappeared except for one shoe and the top of my head.

  When I clambered out, with water sloshing from me onto the dusty path, Moira with a pleased smile was allowing Muldoon to hand her down from the wagon. The yokel looked around in astonishment to find his hay on fire.

  “He meets her parents,” said the script-girl.

  Moira and I walked along the sidewalk through the suburban neighborhood with its rose-covered bungalows and picket fences.

  “DEAR, MY MOTHER AND FATHER

  WOULD LIKE TO MEET YOU”

  We turned in at a gateway and entered the house. Moira’s mother was arranging a geranium in the window. Her father, an irascible old gent, was sitting in a rocker with his glasses on the end of his nose, reading a newspaper. He put down the newspaper and glared at me over the tops of the glasses.

  “SO, YOUNG MAN, YOU WISH TO

  MARRY MY DAUGHTER?”

  I mumbled something. Meanwhile the mother had left off fiddling with the geranium in the window and was stretching up in an attempt to replace a light bulb in the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, high over her head.

  “This is ridiculous,” I told Moira. “Why should she be trying to change a light bulb when her daughter’s fiancé is coming to call?”

  Putting her head close to mine, she said something behind her hand. “It’s a fall-down part and …”

  “DON’T BE AFRAID OF FATHER: HIS BARK

  IS WORSE THAN HIS BITE.”

  “… you have to fall down in every take.”

  “Alys, go for the ladder,” yelled Reiter.

  With a helpful eagerness I ran off the scene and came back with a stepladder, with which I first struck the doorway a heavy blow so that the whole flimsy set quivered. Then, turning around while holding the ladder horizontally under my arm, I managed to knock both Moira and her mother flat with it. They got up, smiling indulgently, and the mother handed me the light bulb. I erected the ladder and mounted it.

  The action continued in its absolutely inane sequence. I stuck my finger into the empty socket and was electrocuted, leaping into the air and writhing like a caught fish but managing to come down onto the ladder again. The mother went off to the window for some unexplained purpose, perhaps to tend her geranium again.

  “Rock, Alys!”

  I began rocking back and forth on the ladder, attempting to screw the bulb into the upright fitting each time I shot past the chandelier. The camera left me and panned around to look past the mother and out the window. There on the sidewalk was of course Muldoon, swinging his umbrella and winking rakishly at the mother. The mother simpered.

  “IT’S SOME ENGLISHMAN, DEAR”

  Moira nodded and moved her lips, no doubt explaining that she was already acquainted with Lord Muldoon. I rocked back and forth with greater and greater velocity on my ladder, still trying to screw in the bulb. The mother had gone to the door to let in Muldoon. Swaying to one side and another on the ladder, I finally passed the point of equilibrium and shot out the window. The light bulb, following its own trajectory, landed in the father’s lap. He picked it up and glared at it as though he had never seen a light bulb before. I landed in the soft earth and was helped to my feet by a couple of grips. Inside, Muldoon was bowing with a little twirl of the umbrella, which charmed the mother.

  “Take Eighteen. The construction site.”

  “Alys, by this time you are beginning to look a little wan,” explained Reiter. “All these fall-downs are taking their toll. However you are still hopeful.”

  THE HOPEFUL SWAIN TRIES AGAIN.

  Moira and I walked down the street of bungalows with their roses and picket fences.
I smiled wanly. Moira was just as always, blithe, youthful, and insouciant.

  “DEAR, LET’S GO SEE IF OUR

  APARTMENT IS FINISHED YET.”

  I shrugged and agreed. She took my arm and we hurried away down the sidewalk.

  “OH, ALL RIGHT. AS LONG AS THAT PLAGUEY

  ENGLISHMAN ISN’T THERE.”

  We came to the construction site, where one wall was almost finished and a carpenter with a walrus mustache was hammering on the siding. He seemed to he the only one working on the building. Other parts of it were little more than a frail scaffolding of timbers.

  I pulled a long rolled blueprint out of my pocket and unfurled it.

  “THIS SHOULD BE OUR LIVING

  ROOM RIGHT HERE”

  Moira stepped over a plank into the room beyond and assumed a coy, arch, and simpering expression.

  “AND THIS WILL BE THE NURSERY”

  At this I smiled, broadly but rather uneasily, and adjusted my necktie. Muldoon appeared, of course, carrying a hammer and hypocritically pretending to hammer a nail into a wall at a place where no nail could possibly be needed. When he caught sight of Moira he dropped the nail and tossed the hammer over his shoulder. It sailed through the air and landed square on the head of the mustached carpenter. He clapped his hand onto his head and looked around irately to see where the hammer had come from.

  Muldoon bent over to kiss Moira’s hand, crowding so close to me that I was obliged to take a step backward. As a result of this I found myself in a small construction elevator, which immediately started upward. There followed a series of improbable physical concatenations involving the elevator, my own body, and the persons of Moira and Muldoon. A plank laid over the top of the elevator shaft struck me on the head, Moira and Muldoon came up in the elevator which caused the same plank to vault into the air and come down on me again, and so on. Like the carpenter, I grimaced and felt the bump on my head. Moira put her hand over her mouth to repress a giggle. Muldoon looked around in a distinguished and reflective way, swinging his umbrella.