Andy was looking at Jim and started to smile. “You’re just going through a difficult time, that’s all. And even if it were true, even if someone put us into these situations, it wouldn’t change a thing. You still have control of everything. And do you know why?”
Jim was looking at Andy.
“I’ll tell you why, damn it. You are a writer. You should know it best. You can’t just take someone and put them into a loser’s situation—it doesn’t work. Yes, you could do it in a book, but something would seem wrong. It would come off as false. And do you know why? Because a situation has to fit the character. My character, for example, wouldn’t work in a pathetic situation—I’m a fighter. So if there’s someone behind my story, he can use me only in that way,” said Andy. “You yourself write the book. If you want to change the script, change your character. Is that really so hard to see?” He shook his head for a beat. “What happens if you put a guy full of self-pity and a guy that tackles life like a panther into the same situation? Does the story end the same way?”
“No.”
“You’re right. It’s not the same story. You need a weak guy, someone that gives in fast, someone that gets sore about everything, in a loser story. And you need someone that jumps at life with excitement, someone that never gives in, someone with ideas, in a winner story . . . You need a mean guy to be hated, and you need a guy with integrity to be loved.”
Jim was now looking at Andy.
“Those are the rules. In writing—and life. I guess they teach this stuff in writing school, or if they don’t, they should.”
Jim kept looking at Andy for a while. “Let’s get the boat and get them back.” Then he said, “We can’t waste time.”
Music starts to play, and we float over the surface of the ocean.
46.
The water is calm and peaceful, and the sun is shining through some light mist; it must be morning. With a picture like this on the screen, one just wants to take a breath of the fresh air.
We approach a raft floating on the surface of the water.
We cut to Lou and Liz on the handmade raft. Liz is sitting on the edge, letting her legs dangle into the water. Lou is sitting against the pole in the middle of the raft, looking in the opposite direction.
“I was once on vacation, with a friend,” said Liz. “And we ate only ice cream for the entire week. That’s about all. Girls don’t do stuff like that all the time.” She started to stir the water with her legs, looking down.
“Uncle Andy says that’s healthy.”
“Who’s Uncle Andy?”
“My father’s brother. He has these crazy ideas all the time. He lives from his ideas, basically. He sells them,” said Lou. “He also eats only ice cream for a couple of days sometimes. Do you know why?”
Liz had stopped looking down at her circling feet for a moment and was now looking over her shoulder to Lou. “Because he likes it?”
“For one thing, he probably likes it,” said Lou, rubbing the back of his head against the pole. “But he also believes that that way the body starts to appreciate normal food again. He thinks the body can know what healthy food is only if it knows what unhealthy food is. And if you give your body only the most tender treatment, it gets spoiled and takes it for granted. But if you sometimes give it something to cope with—like eating only ice cream for a couple of days, I guess—then it starts to deal with it and begins to appreciate normal food again.”
“It’s possible. We didn’t get sick on the vacation. We didn’t even gain weight,” Liz said, and pushed down on the wood with her arms, observing how her side of the raft sank a little then came up again.
“He also says it’s healthy to get drunk once in a while. Just to give the body something to think about. He always has these opinions. He used to kid my father because he hates cold water. Uncle Andy said no body likes cold water, but that you shouldn’t care. Just jump in and look how the bastard reacts—that’s the way he talks,” said Lou, amused. “He says if you treat your body only with great care, it gets lazy. And a lazy body causes you pain all the time, since it knows it can manipulate you that way to keep comfortable.”
“In a way, he’s probably right. It sounds sort of extreme, though,” said Liz. She lifted her feet out of the water, touching them to gauge their temperature. Then she put one foot next to the other and covered them with her hands.
“He says depressed people don’t treat their bodies like that. Depressed people try to keep their bodies comfortable. That’s the whole trouble, Andy says. He has so many opinions, it’s almost like a religion—some crazy religion, though,” Lou said, and turned his head to see what Liz was doing.
She didn’t see him look. She was still warming her feet.
47.
“We’re late. It’s already nine,” said Jim with concern.
They were coming out of the shrubby landscape, a small, sandy beach in front of them. There were two boats lying stranded in the sand. They walked toward them.
“All right,” said Andy, squatting down to the sand.
He drew a circle in the sand. “This is the island we’re on.” Now he drew a long line. “This here is the mainland.” He made two other small circles. “These are the other islands.” He looked at the sketched-out map for a moment. “I guess we’ll find them somewhere in between.” He made a cross on one of the smaller islands. “Here is where they started, so we’ll start there too. You go west, I go east. We scan the whole area. If we can’t find them here we go farther out to the ocean.” He drew an arrow in the sand between the mainland and the islands. “If they tried to come to the mainland, the current probably drifted them west. Without a motor, you can’t make it. So in the worst case we look for them in this area.” He drew another circle. “Let’s say we start now and meet at noon. If we find them, great; if not, we’ll make further plans. Any questions?”
Jim was eyeing the drawings for a moment longer. “What do we tell them if we find them?”
“Hmm? That’s a good question.”
“I guess we can’t tell them the truth?”
“No, hell, no, not the truth. In a way, no one knows what really happened. So why not just tell them that they were missed, so we started looking for them?”
“But they may wonder why we’re searching on our own without help. I mean, it sounds kind of careless not to inform the authorities,” said Jim.
“That’s another point to consider,” mused Andy. “Why not tell them that we found them by accident?”
“You mean, as if we were just speeding over the ocean for our own amusement, and then by chance we found them?” said Jim, looking at Andy.
“All right, that’s out of the question. Look, we can solve that problem when the time comes. Right now we shouldn’t waste precious time. We should try to focus on finding them. Let’s say the one who finds them improvises something. I guess we have time to think about that before we spot them.”
They started to pull the boats into the water. Andy started the engine and sped off first.
48.
We are back with Liz and Lou. We see them both on their raft. Lou is lying on his back, and Liz is sitting against the pole, looking toward him.
“And the crazy thing is, we didn’t even realize it,” said Lou. “But what happened to that guy in the book I told you about happens to everyone one way or another.” He looked at the sky for a moment. “Whatever problems you had as a kid you naturally try to fight. You may think that it’s all a mess once in a while, but step by step you will find a way out, and you learn and grow a lot.” He shook his head slightly. “That’s the beauty of life.” A look of awe crossed his face. “Heck, life always finds a way. You can’t imprison life.”
“Yes, you can,” said Liz, observing Lou’s reaction.
He didn’t move; he just kept looking up at the sky.
“I was once on vacation somewhere, and at the hotel they had this aquarium in the lobby. One day I noticed a little fish in the tank looking at
the glass. There were many different fish in the tank, but only one like him. So I got pretty close in front of him and looked back in, to try to get his attention. But he didn’t move. He just looked at the glass. A day later I passed the tank again, and this fish was still in the same spot, looking at the glass. The other fish, which weren’t unique, chased each other all over the place. But he only looked at the glass.” Liz reflected for a moment. “Isn’t that sad?”
“That was just because he was in captivity. In nature he would never have given up looking for someone of his kind. Even if he never managed to find one,” Lou said. “And as long as he was looking, he would never feel blue.”
49.
Jim was already back by the small lagoon, looking toward the water. After a moment he heard some noise, then he spotted Andy closing in on his boat.
Andy came full bore toward the sand, pulling up the engine shortly before hitting the shore. He leaned backward so as not to tumble forward with the impact. The momentum delivered him about five yards inland, right next to Jim.
Finally stopped, he stood and eyed Jim critically, pressing his lips together. “Nothing?”
Jim shook his head. “No.”
“Did you cover your whole area?”
“Twice.”
“Me too.”
“Let’s go out to the ocean, then,” said Jim.
50.
We see the same small lagoon. No one is there. The sun is now orange and almost touching the water.
After a moment the shapes of two boats appear against the sunlight. They are closing in on the sand. This time neither of the boats hits with much enthusiasm. Each figure gets out, and we observe, by slowly turning our perspective, how they walk through the sand back to the trail. This time it’s just a dark spot between the shrubs. They enter the darkness and disappear.
51.
With a cut we float over the surface of the ocean. It must be just about daybreak of the next morning. A warm breeze blows over the water, the way it sometimes does in the summer before a thunderstorm. The sky, reflected on the surface, seems gray and cloudy.
We keep floating over the water for a while. After a minute or two the camera raises up and we see the cloudy horizon above the sea.
We float a little longer.
All of a sudden we see something on the horizon. We are way too far away to tell what it really is—it’s just that we see it’s the shape of something.
We float a little closer.
With a cut the screen turns black.
We’re listening to the wind for a while. We also hear someone breathing.
Eyes open and we see the cloudy sky. On the right side of the screen we see long brown hair moving in the morning breeze. It almost looks like Liz’s hair.
From here on, everything happens slowly.
“Do you think they will find us?” It was Liz’s voice we heard. She sounded exhausted.
“I don’t know,” said Lou. He also sounded exhausted.
“It looks like rain,” said Liz.
A long moment of silence.
“I always used to go running when it rained. Always through the forest,” said Lou. “Have you ever gone running in the rain?”
“No.”
“You have to. It’s the best thing you can do. If you run through the woods while it rains, all the colors are so beautiful. Everything shines. Everything is green as hell.”
A small pause.
“In a way, rain is nothing more than Mother Nature bringing water to the trees. And if you run through the woods, right when it’s pouring down, you’re so a part of it.”
We see the surface of the water now. After a moment, some drops start to hit.
“I just felt a drop,” said Liz, excited. “I just felt one.”
Lou didn’t say anything.
We see the clouds again, with the hair on the right side of the screen dancing in the wind.
After a minute or two the hair begins to get sticky from the rain.
We see the rain hitting the sea again. It rains harder now.
We keep looking at the rain-hammered surface for a while.
52.
Jim and Andy have gone back to the ocean. Jim is somewhere out in the storm, fighting the waves with his small boat. He seems lost.
53.
Andy, at a different place, speeds full of self-confidence toward the black clouds.
54.
There’s a black, flashlike cut. We see Jim in the desert, walking toward the setting sun. If this were an old Western movie, he would ride on a horse. But it’s not, so he’s just walking. We hear a narrator’s voice. This time it’s not the elderly guy from the beginning. This time it’s Jim’s voice. He’s probably looking at the scene with us.
“Rather than explaining it all now, I would prefer to say nothing at all. Have you ever sat silently on top of a big hill while the sun was slowly disappearing behind the horizon?”
The scene changes. We see Jim from far away, on top of a hill, sitting in the filtered sunlight in the grass. The grass is moving in the wind. Jim continues to narrate.
“It would be great to do it that way. I bet if we were sitting on top of a big hill while the orange sun-ball hit the ocean, molding our shadows smoothly over the hills behind, this story wouldn’t need an extra explanation. We would just sit there, understanding.”
The scene changes to the first one, when we saw Jim in the desert, walking toward the descending sun.
“Unfortunately, I can’t bring you to the hill. I’m almost forced to explain the whole thing.”
He takes another step toward the horizon.
“If you think I’m dead—in heaven, so to speak, looking back at my life—you’re wrong about that. I’m more alive than I’ve ever been.”
He lets us wait for a beat.
“Do you remember how that senile psychiatrist told me to write about my problems—saying that I should try to focus on the positive side while writing?
“And do you remember how my brother told me that those things that had been bugging me would be the perfect script?”
We see flashes of the movie. The first scene as Jim angrily paints the wall. Then we float over the cloudy ocean. Then we see Liz and Lou running into the waves. Then we see Jim walking along the street with Arnold. Then we see him on the train, then together with his brother, then at the psychiatrist’s. Then we see Jim in the desert again.
“They made a pretty good point. They really did. It’s funny, the things we need always come to us . . . and it’s funny, but sometimes we just don’t get it.
“The really crazy thing is that this psychiatrist—if he really was one—was right. If you start to write about yourself it’s like climbing a hill. You climb a hill until you’re almost able to look at yourself from a distance. And with this distance you can see things differently . . . You don’t take everything so goddamn personally anymore. That’s all.
“He was certainly a strange guy, though. This psychiatrist. In his crazy way, he not only told me that I should write about my problems, but he even gave me a story. I mean—do you think I was surprised when the psychiatrist told me that made-up stories usually start with a couple getting lost on an island? Of course not. I had no idea what he was talking about. It was way later that I understood he had given me the whole script in a nutshell.”
The sun has almost disappeared by now. We see Jim as a small shape in front of the orange half. Some background music gets a little louder, then gets turned down, and we hear Jim’s voice again.
“First, it took a lot of guts to climb this hill, but then something wonderful happened when I was close to the summit. I got a glimpse of something wonderful.”
We cut to Jim on the hill again, sitting in the grass. Now the sun appears on the other side.
“All of a sudden I realized that there is some real beauty in what I’ve been through. I was excited about it because in this new light my life seemed kind of cool. Strange and crazy, but cool. I reme
mber exactly when I decided to write a book about it. It was a beautiful fall day and I was riding my bicycle through the leaves. I felt so good and free, thinking about my life. I remember I shivered a little and started to whistle an old tune, just riding through the leaves.”
After a rather long moment of silence, a flock of birds enters the scene, and they fly through the bright morning sun. It looks just a tiny bit too cheesy.
“Look, I’m not trying to kid anyone. I’m a writer. This story was made up.
“But the crazy thing is, it’s true anyway.”
At this moment the scene cuts and we are floating over the bright surface of the ocean. Smoothly flying over it. The song “Edge of the World” by Faith No More starts to play. For about a minute or two we just hear the music while looking at the water. Then the credits roll.
DANIEL WAGNER
a movie ... and a book
Daniel Wagner lives in Basel, Switzerland.
a movie . . . and a book is his first novel.
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, JULY 2005
Copyright © 2004 by Daniel Wagner
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks and Vintage
Contemporaries is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
a movie...and a Book Page 7
