Zeroville: A Novel

by Steve Erickson

  “How would that have happened?”

  “The rumor is that the film somehow was acquired by the head of an asylum, and he would show it to the patients. Or inmates, as it were.”

  “An asylum in Copenhagen?”

  “That would make sense,” the man nods, “since it was Dreyer’s city. But no, not Copenhagen. Oslo.”

  73.

  On the way back to Orly, Vikar momentarily feels bad that he never said goodbye to Pamela. At the airport, again he tries to call his house in Los Angeles. Is it the middle of the night in Los Angeles if it’s noon in France? After waiting four hours, he boards the two-and-a-half hour flight to Oslo.

  72.

  On the drive from the airport into Oslo, when the cab driver asks where he wants to go Vikar shows the cab driver the picture he drew on the flight from Los Angeles, of the small door-less model he made at Mather Divinity. “Church?” says the cab driver.

  “Not a church,” Vikar says. “Hospital.”

  71.

  Vikar spends the night in a city park. A hotel light blinks only a hundred meters away, but Vikar is tired of people he can’t understand who yell at him about currency and walking around his room in circles. In the park is a tall column-like sculpture carved with intertwined bodies of men and women.

  In the morning, when he’s startled by the sound of a cab horn, he can’t be sure that he didn’t fall asleep. He realizes the cab driver who drove him from the airport the night before is honking at him; when the driver gets out of the cab, Vikar suppresses an urge to attack him. He watches the driver confer with several other cab drivers also parked there, then the driver signals Vikar to go with one of them.

  70.

  The second cabbie drives to a hospital. Vikar looks at his drawing and at the building. “No,” he says.

  69.

  The cabbie pries the drawing from Vikar’s fingers gently, like he might if he were trying to take a bone from the mouth of a snarling dog. He runs into the hospital, leaving the cab running.

  He returns ten minutes later, shifts into gear, and begins driving again. Oslo seems to have water seeping up everywhere; at one point the cabbie tells Vikar there are three hundred lakes. They drive forty-five minutes out of the city, and when the cabbie pulls up to the building, its steeple—with the crowned lion holding a gold axe—is perched on the edge of a fjord, overlooking a vast sundial swallowed by shadow.

  68.

  Vikar isn’t thinking about what to do or how to do it. The building has an older and newer section, with the entrance in the new section, SYKEHUS over the main door. Vikar walks into the lobby of the asylum.

  As Vikar enters, the check-in desk is to the right. Beyond that, in the lobby, is a large aquarium, as though the fjord has bubbled up through the floor to fill an inner window. Stray nurses and attendants wander by, but Vikar is struck by how empty it seems. He sees no patients.

  Every time someone looks as though they might ask him something, Vikar turns and heads down another hallway. He doesn’t want to commit violence. He has broken continuity; he won’t accept the continuity of guards or attendants or doctors.

  67.

  In the middle of a large central annex to the hospital, Vikar stops.

  He imagines, fifty-three years before, the patients gathered here, watching The Passion of Joan of Arc on a screen; he wonders what they made of it. He imagines, some twenty years before, Soledad strolling these halls, in a paper-thin hospital gown such as a lost young woman might wear stumbling along Pacific Coast Highway or sleeping outside a club in the Bowery. What would she have thought of The Passion of Joan of Arc, had she seen it? He thinks of Anna Karina as the prostitute in Godard’s Vivre sa Vie, in the scene where she goes to the movies and sees Passion of Joan of Arc and weeps; he can imagine Soledad weeping, if she had been within these walls in 1928, as she wept at The Elephant Man. Had Joan coupled with God and carried His seed, would they have produced an elephant child, to then be sacrificed as proof of Joan’s devotion? He closes his eyes and turns where he stands. If anyone sees me, they’ll only believe I’m another lunatic.

  He turns where he stands, eyes closed, in the moviehouse of his mind until he sees it—the rock, the writing, the gaping portal, the figure draped across the top—then opens his eyes and goes through the doorway before him.

  66.

  Not a single person speaks to him or asks what he’s doing. He follows the image in his head until he reaches a line of white doors, some open. Beyond the open white doors he can see tables with straps, cables, electrodes; he closes his eyes and turns, and when he opens them he’s looking not at a white door but a common custodial closet.

  65.

  The first sign is the old projector at the far back of the closet, beyond the brooms and mops, the detergents and sprays, the discarded junk of half a century, its dust of more than five decades undisturbed.

  64.

  They’re in plain sight, yet anyone not looking would never see them.

  63.

  On a small stool, he can just reach them.

  62.

  He looks up and down the hallway, then carries the canisters into the room behind the nearest white door, closing the door behind him and locking it.

  61.

  He has no editing table. He has no viewer, only a small eye glass he’s brought with him. He pries open the canisters and inside is an official document certifying that the enclosed motion picture has been approved, without cuts or changes, by the Danish censor; the date of the document is 1928. Why, approved by a Danish censor, it would now be in a Norwegian asylum, Vikar doesn’t understand or think about. He unspools the film carefully on the electroshock table, terrified it will dissolve in his fingers, but it’s in extraordinary condition, like a mummified body. They would have strapped Joan to this table, but he’s no longer certain who “they” are, beyond the interrogating monks, or on whose side Joan was, Joan who was a child herself. He turns on the examination light overhead. Strapped on this table, Joan would have stared into this light.

  60.

  Like making a leap of faith, he guesses that it might be around the same place as in Nightdreams, some eight thousand frames in. What does it mean, he will wonder later, that it was this easy? I have eyes in my fingers, and he runs his fingers over the spools like a blind man reading braille, like closing his eyes out in the lobby and following the movie that’s projected on his eyelids. He has no way to count the frames. He guesses by looking at the feet of film on the reel.

  59.

  It’s almost the same frame of the same image: the same image buried in a 1982 porn movie made in Chatsworth, California, and buried here in a 1928 silent classic made in Europe, the image of a dream Vikar now has had for the better part of two decades, with the only difference being that in the newer film the image is a bit larger, as though over the century a camera draws ever closer.

  58.

  Not until he’s finished and exits the room through the white door does someone finally approach him: the janitor, who says something in Norwegian that Vikar doesn’t understand. Vikar puts the canisters in the janitor’s arms. “Get these to the Cinématèque Française,” he says and walks away, a single frame in a baggie under his cap, somewhere near Elizabeth’s kiss.

  57.

  At the Oslo airport, the phone connection is poor. “I’m coming back,” Vikar says.

  Her voice crackles over the thousands of miles. “Sometimes I think I’m losing it, Vik,” he hears her answer.

  “I’m coming back.”

  “I have these dreams,” she says.

  56.

  Am I just another who’s abandoned her? Am I another of God’s child-killers? At Heathrow he almost dozes through the announcement of his connecting flight; someone jostles him in time for him to jump from his chair and board the plane at the last moment. After that he doesn’t sleep, and has lost track of how long it’s been since he did.

  55.

  Vikar says to the curator,
“Do you see this?”

  The curator looks into the viewer, then picks up the celluloid itself and holds it to the light to view with a naked eye. “What is it?”

  In Los Angeles, Vikar has taken a cab directly to the UCLA film school. “What do you believe it is?”

  “Uh.” The curator shrugs. “A cave of some kind? A big rock? Hard to tell. Is that writing of some sort?”

  “Does it look like someone is lying on top of the rock?”

  “Maybe.” The curator shrugs again. “Sure, I guess so.”

  “What do you believe this is?” Vikar pulls off his cap and opens the baggie and takes out another frame of film.

  The curator puts it in the viewer. “Same thing.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. Well,” now the curator moves from frame to frame on the viewer, “maybe one is a little closer than the other.” He looks at Vikar. “I don’t get it.”

  “They’re from two different movies,” says Vikar. “One is from a silent movie and one is from, uh … another kind of movie. A more recent movie.”

  “Are you sure?” The curator says, “Is this what you were looking for in the Dreyer?”

  Vikar doesn’t answer.

  “You mean you found it in the Dreyer after all.”

  Vikar says, “The real Dreyer.”

  “The real Dreyer?” the curator says. “What are you talking about?” But Vikar already has turned, walking away. “Wait a minute,” says the curator. “Mr. Jerome?” Vikar doesn’t stop. “You mean you found the real Joan of Arc?” Vikar continues down the hall. “You found in a week what no one has found in half a century?” Vikar doesn’t stop; the curator calls, holding up the two frames, “Don’t you want these back?”

  “I believe,” Vikar answers, not turning, “there are more where those came from.”

  54.

  From a phone booth outside the film school, he calls the house again. No one answers. The cab that’s waited for him at UCLA takes him first to Rhino Records on Westwood and then to Vinyl Fetish on Melrose, among the thriftshops and warehouses, on the chance he might find her. He calls again from a phone booth at the corner of Melrose and Gardner.

  53.

  On the way home, Vikar has the cab stop at a small market on Sunset to pick up some groceries. When he gets to the house, Zazi still isn’t there. He goes downstairs to her bedroom on the second level, knocks on the door, and opens it when there’s no answer.

  On the walls are posters of Marianne Faithfull, Lora Logic, the Stooges, the New York Dolls, Bowie, Exene Cervenka, Patti Smith, the Doors, Siouxsie and the Banshees. Vikar notes with passing interest that Siouxsie reminds him of Maria from Cannes, with straighter hair. There’s a mockup of an EP cover, a picture of Zazi and the rest of the band on the front. RUBICONS it says across the top, then the title Tick Tock, on Slash Records.

  Vikar begins searching around her bed, looking at scraps of paper, looking in the drawers of her dresser and a small table by the window. Only after all of his other searching does it occur to him to look through the spiral notebook that’s in plain sight on the window table.

  52.

  man these dreams, he reads, one after another, they dont seem to have anything to do w/ anything, I’m not even in them. what does that mean I’m not in my own dreams? maybe i should ask some of the guys in the band except i dont want to go into it or talk about it—

  51.

  woman surrounded by monks in robes in a church, theyre hassling & questioning her, i get the feeling its like, another century or something But HERES THE WEIRD PART theyre asking questions in words i cant hear or understand—whats THAT about. then they tie her to a post & burn her & i wake up. fucking horrible

  50.

  Then Vikar finds this entry.

  49.

  o.k. i cant tell ANYONE about this. last night i dreamed about, i think it was hell, i mean the real hell (if there is a real hell) everythings hot & burning & i could hear people kind of screaming/moaning, Then this satanic kind of guy, i guess the devil maybe, hes putting this weird pitchfork inside this womans various places & theres this kind of industrial sound, machines in the background. like in the other dreams none of these people seem to have anything to do w/ me, the woman isnt me, it would almost be better if it were—am i a PERV or something? this doesnt seem like any kind of fantasy i ever have, wouldnt i know that? This is somebody elses fantasy, whats it doing in MY dream

  48.

  Now, before Zazi returns, Vikar reads the rest of the dream journal. i write these down when i wake & by the next afternoon i dont remember anything about them at all, they’ve vanished from my memory & all i know is what I’ve written. even reading the dreams over, i don’t remember them

  47.

  another religious sort of dream last night, a convent? in the middle of the mountains high on a cliff, theres this one crazy nun trying to push another out of a tall tower & winds up falling off herself—down down down

  46.

  another steeple dream, no crazy nuns but this private-eye guy, in love w/ this girl hes following who thinks shes like this reincarnated chick, then she jumps off this old mission steeple & he thinks shes dead, then he meets another girl who reminds him of the FIRST & theres more but the main thing is the private-eye is just really VERY FUCKED UP

  45.

  in this bordertown this really fat horrible cop in this sleazy hotel stands over this blonde w/ pointed boobs, shes drugged or something, hes pulling gloves onto his fat fingers

  44.

  that Bogart guy from the flick i saw w/ Vik lives in this little cottage in love w/ this chick, hes a writer or something & flies off the handle like he could kill anyone any minute & the cops think maybe he has & the chick begins to wonder because every now & then the writer gets nuts/violent (reminds me of Vik)

  43.

  this beautiful dark woman in sunglasses, so beautiful shes not even real looking sitting in a rowboat on a lake watching w/o emotion this kid drowning in the water just a few feet from her, hes calling out to her to save him but she just watches

  42.

  on a stone bridge crossing a moat outside a castle or maybe its just a big estate, this hot blonde holding this scythe & its got blood on it, shes wearing a black cape & completely nude underneath. she’s pretty hot i must admit

  41.

  is it the middle ages or something? this sadistic prince guy & this fucked-up masquerade ball going on inside the castle walls while everyone outside is dying

  40.

  guy w/ blood smeared all over him, hes just killed everyone to save this prostitute whos like my age, he looks kind of punk w/ mohawk & army jacket—

  39.

  this maze-like apt complex of the future where this private-eye wanders trying to find this dark woman, i don’t understand what language theyre speaking—

  38.

  THE MOST FUCKED UP ONE OF ALL & i remember all of it in vivid detail & DONT WANT TO REMEMBER ANY OF IT. this asian model goes to this art gallery showing these bondage photos shes posed for & sees this blind guy running his hands over this sculpture of her, she runs away feeling like his hands are actually on her & then goes to get this massage & hes the masseur & says I have eyes in my fingers & drugs & kidnaps her, takes her to this warehouse place full of huge sculptures of naked women, bodies, body parts & the model is trying to get away from this ASSHOLE, climbing up & down huge thighs, huge boobs, on the walls are eyes, noses, mouths, arms, legs. he sculpts a statue of her & she becomes blind too then she fucks him because shes trying to escape, then she becomes not just the model but the art itself & this fucker is cutting off her arms, I have eyes in my fingers he keeps saying, WHY AM I HAVING THIS DREAM

  37.

  i think i must be going insane

  36.

  Vikar goes downstairs to the house’s bottom level, into his film library with the moviola. He unpacks from the bags he bought at the small market on Sunset three quarts of Stoli and a quart of tonic, then be
gins pulling movies from his shelves. He doesn’t have them all. He doesn’t have Taxi Driver or Mosumura’s Môjuu, about the blind sculptor, and he doesn’t need Nightdreams or The Passion of Joan of Arc. But he does have Powell’s Black Narcissus, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Welles’ Touch of Evil, Ray’s In a Lonely Place, Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven, Rollin’s Fascination, Corman’s Masque of the Red Death, and Godard’s Alphaville, in which private-eye Eddie Constantine cries, “This isn’t Alphaville, this is Zeroville!”

  35.

  He no longer has to pore over the celluloid. Having found the frame in the same place in the silent film and the porn film, now he knows where to look. Now it doesn’t take more than half an hour to find the frames. After he’s gone over these movies he begins pulling out others, old and new, near and far-flung, celebrated and obscure.