Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  He turned his back swatting his hand slowly and dismissively at the night, I think genuinely wanting to be through. But then he turned, pointing at me with the two fingers holding the smoldering cigarette.

  “You know, I’m wrong about that. I say Hollywood is shaping our world. Present tense, like it’s something new. But it’s been this way from the beginning. Since Steamboat Willie and The Jazz Singer. But now, after all these years of immersion in this toxic brew – the pathological self-absorption, the prurience, the contagion of personality, all boiling away on a pyre of money and lost souls – we are finally disintegrating.”

  “Will you lighten up? They’re just movies, Angus. They’re not real. Take what you like, leave the rest, and get back to the real world.”

  “Real world? What real world? Nothing is real in our country unless it is fictionalized, given a schmaltzy soundtrack, and sold back to us at a multiplex. We no longer have the ability to distinguish fact from the most implausibly conceived script. Our muscles of discernment have atrophied down to nothing. Hollywood has drugged us into believing that anything and everything is possible.”

  “But all good things are possible, Angus,” I said, imploringly. It was more than just a little ironic for me, of all people, to have been cast as the panglossian naif in the conversation. Certainly my parents would never have recognized me. But then again, my early relation-ship with Angus Mann was always one of reaction and separation at an unconscious level, like two magnets pushing each other around a table, each of us stubbornly unwilling to turn around and face the other direction.

  “And who is going to do these good things, Matilda? You? We are narcotized into inaction and we are unmoved by anything that is not a cause celeb. It is now Hollywood that focuses our attention. We care about our oceans because some movie star cares about our oceans. We care about genocide because some movie star cares about genocide.”

  “Is that so bad, I mean, how else . . .”

  “Yes,” he said flatly. “That’s bad.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s not really caring. Cooing over celebrities doesn’t cut it. It lulls us into thinking that we care; we feel better about our-selves as we plunder the planet, but that’s not caring. As soon as the celebrities move on to something else, we’ll go with them. We have lost our independent hearts. We are idolatrous to the core. Think of it.”

  I did, or pretended to.

  “We can’t even express a point of view without at least footnoting some movie for support. What do I think about the plight of man-kind? It’s like what Cornelius said in Planet of the Apes...”

  “So then just tune it out, Angus. Tune us all out. No one says you have to…”

  “Tune it out?” He smiled sardonically, pointing at me again with the glow of his cigarette. “How? There is no tuning it out. You don’t tune out a brainwashing. Remember Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork…” He dropped his cigarette calmly and stepped on it, shaking his head in disgust.

  “What? What is it?”

  “You see? You see what I mean? A fantastic book. A book, Matilda, a piece of literature, written by Anthony Burgess. And do I reference the book? Do I even invoke the protagonist? No. The thought never occurs to me. And I’m a writer. My brain is choking on celluloid and I can only summon forth the cinematic adaptation of the book and the name of the actor who played the lead role. The book is a memory, now. A new reality has been implanted.”

  “I never read the book so it’s just as…”

  “Of course you didn’t read the book. Your generation doesn’t need to bother with books. Too much time; too complicated; all of those words and sentences. The only way to increase literacy in this country is to actually capture on film the stars and starlets, people like yourself, reading books out loud to the camera, preferably laying about naked and bleeding, and then charging people nine or ten bucks to see the movie in a theater. Short of that, books are a thing of the past.”

  Angus lit another cigarette and blew out a long blue stream that held his interest for several seconds as it lost its integrity.

  “Anyway…” I prompted. “What.”

  “Malcolm McDowell.”

  “Right, Malcolm, with his eyelids pried open with metal clamps as he is forced to watch the equivalent of snuff films while a nurse uses a dropper to keep his sockets moist. That, is your precious Hollywood. There is no tuning it out as you suggest. I am being forced to bear witness to the whole ugly spectacle. All of you thrusting your asses and your tits and your thighs up in my face every time I wait in line to buy a loaf of bread. God help me. If I could get a restraining order against the industry I’d do it.”

  “How long have you been working on this rant, Angus?”

  “Am I ranting?”

  “Yes. You’re calm enough, but it’s definitely a rant.”

  “Alright then. My whole life. So many books people will never read because some moviemaker got to it first. To Kill A Mockingbird. Of Mice and Men.”

  “Hey! I loved those movies.”

  “They’re books, Matilda. Books.”

  “So what if it is? They’re also great movies. Can’t there be both?”

  “No. No, there cannot be both. One replaces the other. The book is ineluctably lost, and we with it.”

  “Much ado about nothing,” I said, mocking him. “I can see I’m wasting my breath.”

  I remember something of my own sublimated irritation taking over at that point, tired of absorbing him with no end in sight. Tired of his words. His little shovels digging at the mountain.

  “I get the point. I get it, okay? I have a degree in English lit so stop assuming that I’m a moron.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Is that what you’re so afraid of?” I asked. “That your precious words will be turned into images and lost? That you will become so successful as a writer that all of your books will become tempting Hollywood snacks? Are you worried about what will become of your tragic little story?”

  He looked at me from across the clearing, his features inscrutable. “Are you really too good or too smart or too pure for all of us? Or are you really just protecting your own vanity? Are you worried about your place in literary history being sullied by a band of underbred, oversexed, shallow minded acting twits?”

  He still didn’t answer. Feeling him off-balance for the first time, I kept pushing.

  “Let me tell you something. Thanks to the movies, more people know about Jane Austen and Billy Shakespeare than ever would otherwise. More people will know your name because of Tilly Johns and Blair Gaines than for any other reason. They’ll see the movie, then they’ll go buy the book.”

  “Story.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Hogwash.”

  “They will.”

  “And when they realize the story has no explicit sex scenes? No exploding dome? No harrowing chase scenes through the center of Rhuton-Baker?”

  “You tell me,” I demanded.

  “Crushing disappointment. It will ultimately turn them away from books.”

  “You mean you. It will turn them away from you.”

  Silence.

  “Maybe you should spice things up a little, then. Try to keep pace with modern sensibilities, Angus. Maybe Colonel Ivanova really does just need a good fuck.”

  “Are you actually trying to prove my point?”

  “Well, okay, I am messing with you a little, but you’ve got to laugh at the irony, Angus. The more successful you are as a writer, the more likely you are to have to risk the plunder of your genius by the movie industry. I’ll bet you sold off the rights to more than just The Lion Tree, am I right?”

  He did not answer. I could feel the shame radiating in waves from his body. I know now that he thought of those stories, fifteen of them altogether, as his children, sold into slavery for the price of the rent.

  “And the more the movie makers take what you have written and dumb it down and spice it up, the more your stock as
a writer will rise by simple virtue of the fact that more people will want to see the movie and will know who started it all. Your name will seep into the public consciousness and the next book you write will fly off the shelves.”

  “And why? Because they love me as a writer?”

  “Maybe. But more likely because they love the movies that are adapted from what you have written. The written work is really just a first draft of the movie.”

  I remember almost making it through those last words without laughing, having no idea what I would get back. He watched me smirk and, after a moment, at last, I saw his face relax a little. Something approximating a smile passed his lips.

  “Now you’re talking my language,” he said, sounding suddenly tired. “You’re still fucking with me, but at least I understand you.”

  “I’m just trying to get along. This is going to be a long production.” I ground my long-cold cigarette into the mortar of the stone wall surrounding the spewing pachyderm. “And if Blair doesn’t get me a solid script, I’m going to walk. This is getting ridiculous.”

  The moon had climbed higher in the night, shedding its saffron for bone. I can remember Angus standing at the end of the clearing, the angles of his form softened in the darkness, his face obscured by stone and water, except for, every now and then, a sheen of silvery beard and the burning tip of his cigarette. I could not tell whether he was staring at me or at the fountain between us, and even if I could tell, I would not have known what he was thinking. That level of knowledge was still too far away. It was early in the project and I would grow to dislike him far more than I did at that moment.

  “Yes. Ridiculous. On this we agree.”

  He left me alone in the clearing with water washing over the sound of his footsteps as they receded around the hedge towards the hotel. But before they were altogether gone, they stopped, and Angus was suddenly back in the moonlight.

  “Let me just ask you this. What is it that you find tragic about my story?”

  For a split second I was lost in the ambiguity of that question, unaware at the time that I would eventually become lost in the answer.

  “What?”

  “You referred to my story as tragic.”

  “What... The Lion Tree? Well, isn’t it?”

  “I’m just asking. Who’s tragic?”

  I thought for a moment. It was a serious question.

  “Lieutenant Miller, for one, obviously. His dead wife, Jules, for another. Elena Ivanova for a third. God, Angus. They’re all tragic, aren’t they?”

  “What’s tragic about Ivanova?”

  “Well . . . she loves him, right? Against her better judgment, she allows herself that comfort in this extremely isolated, emotionally sparse existence. This is a . . . a military woman. Which means she’s not a woman. Or, she’s not supposed to be. She’s an officer. Her whole life she has excelled by deep-freezing her feelings for safe keeping. I mean the whole cryogenic pod thing was a decent metaphor, although a little overused if you ask me.”

  “It wasn’t overused in 1962,” he said.

  “Fair enough.”

  “You want to know why it feels overused?”

  “I know, I know, Hollywood.”

  “Beating it to death in every single science fiction movie ever made.”

  “Sorry I brought it up.”

  “Please continue.”

  “Right. Anyway, on the long trip out to Rhuton-Baker with Lieutenant Miller, Ivanova has . . . how to put it . . . allowed herself to thaw. And you get the sense . . . she never really shows it very well, she’s not used to showing her feelings . . . but you get the sense that the feelings run deep. But then she finds out this horrible fact about Miller. Murder. The sin of sins, and yet nothing compared to the betrayal she feels. So she snaps back into this official relationship. She’s an officer again. But it’s just a façade. I mean she never really cracks, she’s tough, she’s ruthless, but you just know that she still loves him. She’s stuck with these feelings and she can’t go back. The tough-ness used to be her defense – that ruthlessness that she has – but now that is just an expression of her own anguish. I mean, look at the final punishment. That’s fucking brutal. That only comes from serious emotional pain. That comes from love. So she still loves him even though she knows she shouldn’t.”

  “Why shouldn’t she?”

  “Because she knows she’s next.”

  “Next what?”

  “His next victim.”

  “Murder?’

  “I’m not as prosaic as you think, Angus. Don’t insult me. No, not murder. Rejection.”

  “And she loves him anyway?”

  “Isn’t that the whole point?”

  “So she escapes?” He asked.

  “No. That’s the thing. There is no escape. How do you escape rejection? She is every bit as trapped as he is. She is tragic. She just got to have the last word.”

  Angus was barely visible in the shadows. He was still and I waited, nervous to have ventured my lowly interpretation of his famous story.

  “And so shall you have the last word tonight, Ms. Johns,” he said at last. “Try your very best to go to bed alone. Lest you meet a similar fate.”

  He turned and was suddenly gone. It was the first of many times that I would go to bed alone, with only the sound of his words pulling at the sheets.

  CHAPTER 6 – David

  I have turned on the television so loud it is nearly deafening. It is the only way I can hear. My neighbor Carl – the insurance guy on the left, not the cable technician on the right – has invested in a new circular saw. Everything is apparently much too long. He must cut his world to the proper length or terrible things will happen.

  His is a job that must always be done under the cover of early evening, preferably when others are trying to prepare lesson plans. Each day that I come home, I half expect to notice my neighbor’s house is just a little shorter than the day before until it is, eventually, only a roof sitting on top of a lawn. Like a big shingled tent, with an antenna on top and a big round saw inside hungrily screeching and screaming for more.

  The television does nothing to muffle the metal whine, cutting through my thoughts with its jagged teeth every bit as well as it does through wood, metal and plastic.

  But I know better. I know this is only what I have told myself; that the television is a pathetic attempt to drown out the saw. That is simply a lie. Inside I know that the television is a pathetic attempt to drown out the silence that fills my home. Silence packed so deep it bows my windows and cracks the siding. Silence far louder and more emotion-ally disruptive than anything Black & Decker has to offer.

  I try to ignore the television and the circular saw and the silence. I focus again on the lesson plan in my lap, which is basically a blank sheet of paper in a brand new notebook filled with other blank sheets of paper. I used to have a laptop until the operating system seized up from the computer equivalent of a sexually transmitted disease.

  Thereafter, I had access to Mae’s laptop. Now Mae has her laptop all to herself. Far, far away. Paper is better anyway.

  On the table in front of me are five identical notebooks, one for each class. I don’t believe in a generic lesson plan to cover different classes. Each class is unique. Quality teaching is adapted to the student. The teacher should go to the student, find the student, learn the student. A lesson plan should be well adapted, not one-size fits all. This, at least, is what I told myself at the office supply store, staring at endless options of colorful, well-fronted paper products.

  I am predictably overcome by a secret, fluttery giddiness at the beginning of each school year. It is the prospect of a clean page and a well-ordered life. It is the very idea of color-coding and alphabetizing and sharpened pencils with good erasers.

  There is an aphrodisiacal quality to back-to-school organization. Maybe not for everyone. But for me, there is a familiar… surge. Not like sex, really, or dating, and yet it is a courtship of sorts. It is a flirtation
between a man and an idealized conception of the future. It is an exercise in constructive anticipation. Hopeful nervousness put to good use. It is knowing something is going to happen and preparing for that moment.

  Of course, there is preparation and there is Life. There is really no variety of back-to-school shopping that can adequately prepare a high school teacher for malignantly incurious students. Walking into a classroom armed with a lesson plan is on the same order of futility as using a whip and chair to motivate a colony of phytoplankton.

  The television attacks in a dizzying barrage of sound and color and swirling funhouse distortion. A man in plaid shouts at me about a Midnight Madness furniture sale.

  Sale! Sale! Sale! We’re crazy! We’re insane! We’ve gone mad!!

  My thumb spasms, asserting itself, and the television implodes to blackness.

  I am relieved. I can actually feel waves of muscle tension receding.

  The circular saw takes another ripping pass through my living room, but even that is somehow more bearable than being drugged with synthetic, electronic reality, as I am slowly crushed into paste beneath a juggernaut of infotainment consumerism. We live in the age of high-definition, digital lobotomies. Nurse Ratchett is now an international multimedia conglomerate.

  I search over my shoulder for the time. The wall clock is gone and I know for the one-hundredth time this week that Mae has taken it with her. It is hers. She brought it with her and now she has taken it back. She has claimed Time itself. I am wearing a watch, but that is hardly the point.