by Hari Kunzru
We toasted each other with whatever cocktails we’d just grabbed from a passing tray. “Man,” he said, “did we ghost that bitch.” I winced at “bitch” and mimed dejection to cover myself, grimacing and holding up my drink in a what-can-you-do-about-it shrug. “Well, I guess we’re not going to Switzerland.”
He laughed. “That was so, so wrong.” We introduced ourselves and he told me to call him Anton. I never did find out if it was a middle name or something completely assumed. We talked about some innocuous topic, I can’t even remember what, because I was mentally and physically reeling, drunk but at the same time hyper-alert, my nervous system sending notice that it was about to trigger fight-or-flight.
“Are you feeling OK?”
“Sure. I’m just a little light-headed.” I tried to pull myself together. “I have to ask, are you the director of Blue Lives?”
He shrugged. “I directed a couple of episodes. I’m the creator and show runner. You’ve seen it?”
“I guess you could say I’m a fan.”
“You guess?”
My strained laugh was surely a tell. A silence began to build or congeal or perhaps spawn between us. I broke it by blurting out a question.
“So why are you interested in the Comte de Maistre?”
It didn’t sound natural. It just wasn’t the sort of thing people say. It’s not always a good idea to start a serious conversation about someone’s work, particularly in the middle of the kind of party where half the room is trying to persuade the other half to come back to its hotel. Anton pretended not to understand. “Sorry, who did you say?”
This was when I knew I’d stumbled onto something weird, because he was so obviously lying.
“Maistre.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Come on. You quote him.”
“I do what?”
“You quote a lot of things in Blue Lives. Heraclitus. Schopenhauer. Emil Cioran. That’s not exactly standard for a TV cop show. And as far as I can see you don’t talk about it in interviews, so it’s probably not just so you can look intellectual.”
“Somebody’s paying attention.”
At first, when the little wheel began to rotate in the center of my screen and no amount of reloading or reconnecting would get the video up again, I was desperate to find out what happened. Later a tinge of relief crept in. La Mettrie was the personification of the thing I lay awake worrying about: the darkness, the outside. Carson had invited the darkness into his world through his own corruption. It had arrived to swallow up a weak, helpless, arrogant man. I didn’t care what happened to him. My anxiety was focused on the children. If they were murdered, I didn’t know what I’d do.
It wasn’t that I thought Carson’s children were real, or even particularly well-drawn. They were Anton’s puppets, marionettes in his theater of cruelty. At the same time, I can’t claim that I was watching in a dispassionate way. I identified instinctively with the family whose house was being broken into. The door was my door. The children were my children. In stories, at least the kind of serial dramas that are financed and streamed by big American networks, the outcome of this situation is never really in doubt. Carson will arrive in the nick of time and his children will be saved. But Blue Lives had demonstrated, again and again, that its vision of the world was utterly cold and merciless. In that show, it was perfectly possible that the children would die. And if they died, would Anton make the viewer watch? Would their terror and pain actually be shown on-screen? Again the answer ought to have been obvious. No network would ever allow it. To show such scenes would go against all established norms of decency. But I didn’t feel certain. I didn’t think it was likely, but it didn’t seem impossible either, and that in itself was frightening. If that particular norm had shifted, then what else had changed? What other lines were nihilistic young men like Anton now dreaming of crossing?
What I wrote, my faltering accounts of the things I thought and believed, reached a few thousand readers in the tiny milieu of people who bought and discussed books of cultural essays. Anton’s work had an audience of millions. Blue Lives wasn’t big as far as TV shows went, but it had more reach than I could ever dream of. Not that I had anything to say that would be of interest to millions, and I was comfortable with that, or at least reconciled to it. At a certain point I’d accepted that I could only communicate in my own way, which is to say by generating a sort of paratactical blizzard of obscure cultural references and inviting my reader to fall through it with me. This is almost by definition not popular, and though I have no interest in being recondite for its own sake, I also have no gift for simplicity. So my issue with Anton’s TV show wasn’t jealousy, or not exactly. And it wasn’t mere curiosity, a bland expression of interest in some phenomenon passing by the porthole. Blue Lives felt threatening. Threatening to me, to me personally, to who and what I was, to the people I loved. I understood that this was an excessive reaction to a TV show.
“So what is it you want to ask me?” Anton seemed suddenly bored. For a moment I thought he’d break off the conversation. But he didn’t, and since I’d started, I felt obliged to go on, to pick my way into the thicket. What was it I wanted to ask?
“Blue Lives has a very pessimistic tone.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
If I’d stopped then. I could have gone to the bathroom. I could have turned and walked out of the party into the cold night air. I was free to do those things. One of the knots I find hard to unpick about my encounter with Anton is how much of what happened to me in the following months would still have happened without him. It may not be important, ultimately, or not important to anyone but me. Still, I would like to know. It would help.
I heard the familiar note of hysteria in my voice, and tried to fight it. “So that’s it? Is that what you believe? That it’s just a war of each against each. That we’re living in hell?”
He shrugged and did a sort of movie-mogul drawl. “If I wanted to send a message, I’d use Western Union.”
“Come on.”
“Whatever’s on your mind, just let it go. It’s entertainment. You’re taking it too seriously.”
It is infinitely annoying to be told what to take seriously and what not to. What sense of my priorities can some stranger have? None. So why say it? Anton’s ironic tone compounded my irritation. “But you’ve slipped in all these literary allusions. That’s a lot of trouble to go to, if it’s just entertainment. I mean, how did you even get the studio to agree?”
“I don’t know what you mean by trouble. You’re a writer, you know how it is. Bad writers borrow, good ones steal.”
“That’s not the whole story.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Why Maistre? You’re not just saying you were lying by the pool and happened to pick up the Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg.”
“You actually know about Maistre? You realize we’re probably the only two people in this building who ever even heard of the guy.”
“That speech. The one about the whole earth being perpetually steeped in blood. You left out the end.”
He held up his hands. “Before you get into—whatever it is, I want to know is this, like, your specialist subject? You teach eighteenth-century something or other?
“No. That is, not in particular. I’m not a specialist. I don’t really have a specialist area.”
“So, a generalist.”
“Yes.”
“Who wants to talk to me about an eighteenth-century French aristocrat.”
“Exactly. I played back what you have Carson say. A few times, actually. With the screaming. I don’t know how you handle that, by the way. In the edit or whatever. Over and over again.”
“They’re real screams.”
“What?”
“Just fucking with you. Go on.”
“OK. Sorry. I
mean, right. You left out the last lines. In the Soirées, Maistre talks about the earth being a sort of sacrificial altar, with every living thing being butchered forever, on and on, until what he calls the consummation of things. That’s where you cut.”
“Yeah. As you say, it’s hard getting the weird shit past the execs, and that speech was already quite long.”
“Really? That’s it?”
“What can I say? You have to know which battles to fight.”
“I—well, I looked it up. Maistre continues the sentence ‘until evil is extinct, until the death of death.’ So yes, the world is an abattoir, but he’s not saying that’s the end of it. That’s not the meaning of life. There’s redemption. He was enjoining his readers to obey God, because their only hope of salvation from the earthly meat grinder was Heaven.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The meat grinder. That’s it, for you. That’s all there is.”
“You’re calling me out for this? Because I left out the redemption?”
“No.”
“Good, because that would be unbelievably lame. Although maybe not if you were a Christian of some kind. Are you?”
“What?”
“A Christian of some kind.”
“No.”
“You do strike me more as the secular type. A believer in progress, religion of the liberals.”
A waiter was passing with a tray of drinks. I swapped my empty glass for a full one. “You don’t want something to hope for? Something to work towards?”
“What? Why would I need something to work towards? Jolly as that sounds.”
“Because…”
I trailed off. I had the hollow feeling in my chest that usually meant I was missing something. I was too drunk to construct an argument, or even really follow one. I knew I sounded hopelessly naïve. I wanted to say something about how human beings should always be ends, and never means, how we have rights by virtue of our agency. I wanted to tell Anton that his nihilistic TV show made a mockery of human dignity. The following day, through the acid mist of my hangover, it would all present itself to me in an orderly sequence.
Anton was still laughing at me when we were interrupted by a sallow-faced man in a tux and an LA Raiders cap who clapped him on the back and began to administer a sort of one-handed shoulder massage, bobbing his head up and down to the music like a nodding dog toy. “Hey!” he said. “There you are!” And again. “There you are.” His face was doglike too, which accentuated the effect, thin and jowly, the sort of bloodhound countenance that is doomed always to look disappointed, even if its owner is animated by stimulants.
Anton shrugged him off. “What up, Greg.”
“Me and Irina are going to try our hand at the roulette wheel. You want to come?” He had a woman with him, tall and professionally beautiful. I registered her as a semi-familiar face, like many other people in the room. The whole party was swimming in a sort of amniotic fluid of celebrity.
Anton shook his head. “I’m heading out pretty soon. Going to get something to eat.”
“Seriously? We just had a five-course meal. You want a bump? Get you back in the game?”
“No, I’m good. I’m going to go. I’m meeting some people.”
“I don’t understand you. Why would you want to leave? Did you get to meet Irina?”
Anton smiled. “Hi Irina.”
Irina smiled back. Greg obviously felt he was getting somewhere. “Irina, can you believe this guy seriously wants, what is it you want? What kind of food is worth leaving this lovely party and this unusually attractive company?”
“A döner.”
“That’s a kind of sandwich.”
“A kebab.”
“You are out of your fucking mind.”
“No. That’s what I want. I might take this guy along with me. We’re having a very interesting conversation.”
Greg turned to me and stuck out his hand. “Hi. Greg Novak.” I shook it, but he’d already launched back into his conversation with Anton. “I don’t understand. You got a fucking tapeworm? We just ate. And before that the canapés. I saw you with the fucking canapés. You were raping the fucking canapés and now you want to go get fucking Lebanese food?”
“Turkish.”
“Hold on.”
Greg raised a finger and stepped away to take a call or do some other business on his cell phone. For a moment Anton and I were left standing either side of Irina, who really was very tall. That was when the photograph was taken. No one wanted me in the shot, least of all me—I must have looked like a monkey trying to climb a tree—and the photographer was motioning me to step aside so he could get one with just the supermodel when Greg walked into frame and someone wearing a headset popped up next to Irina and she disappeared, actually vanished, or so it seemed to me, as if she’d been raptured. The photographer had no interest in a picture of three non-celebrity men and moved on. Greg confronted Anton with all the grace of a child whose ice cream had been knocked on the floor.
“You asshole. You let them get her back.”
“What did you think I could do?”
“Thirty seconds I leave you. You could have been charming. Made fucking conversation until I could take the reins again. I had a fucking connection going.”
“Dude, she’s married.”
“She is?”
“To the guy who owns LVMH. Or Formula One. I forget which.”
Anton let Greg process his disappointment and turned to me. “You’re hungry, right. You look hungry.”
I did actually feel hungry.
“Yeah, you’re hungry. Follow me of your own free will, for I have opened the book of secrets.” He said it with a sort of ironic courtly flourish, but this odd phrase had the same unsettling tone as the speeches in Blue Lives. I got the feeling, dulled by alcohol, that his words had hidden barbs, and the joke (if there was one) was at my expense. But I left the party with him. I got my heavy jacket from the coat check and went outside. Greg trailed along behind us like a small boy being taken to visit relatives.
As we trotted down the steps, Anton began to wave at one of the drivers who’d lined up their cars on the street, hoping for a fare. I spotted Finlay under the portico. He was wrapped in a foil blanket, sharing a cigarette or a joint with someone. He waved and gave me a thumbs-up. I waved back. I saw his friend leaning up against the other side of the pillar, making out with a waiter. I got into a taxi with Anton and Greg.
Anton read the driver an address in Kreuzberg that he looked up on his phone. Greg turned round from the front seat to remind us again that we’d “lost Irina.” “Where are we even going?” he asked.
“I told you. To get a döner.”
“On our own?”
“Some friends of mine will meet us there.”
Greg turned to me. “This fucking guy. Seriously. He knows people everywhere. Every fucking city we go to.”
“What do you do, Greg?” I asked. “Do you work with Anton?”
“I’m a producer.”
Anton smiled. “Greg’s rich. Or as he likes to say, fucking rich. And he always wants to have a good time. That’s the only reason I keep him around.”
Greg laughed heartily, though there was nothing in Anton’s tone to suggest he meant it humorously. He finished with his phone and looked out of the window. We traveled through the city in silence.
“You get it, right?” It took me a moment to realize that he was talking to me. “It’s Carson’s show. His journey. He starts off as just another schmuck, but as time goes on he learns the truth about the world. He’s initiated into the mystery of power.”
“You mean he tortures people.”
He sighed, as if indulging a difficult child. “I thought you said you’d read Maistre.”
I shrugged.
“Pop qu
iz: on whom does all greatness and all power rest?”
Drunk as I was, I knew the answer. It was the most famous passage in Maistre’s writings. “The executioner.”
“One point to you. You can’t have a state without the threat of violence. It’s the only way to get people to obey. The executioner is that threat. He’s the one who wields the axe.”
“So what are you saying? We need Carson, because he’s the executioner?”
“The executioner isn’t a criminal, he’s a priest. The scaffold is his altar. Everyone worships there, even if they pretend they don’t. Killing in war is fine—we admire soldiers, we give them parades and medals—but the executioner does something just as important, and the only emotion he inspires is fear.”
“Carson’s a corrupt cop who robs and tortures suspects.”
“Go ahead, call him names if it makes you feel better. But you rely on him. You know you do. You fear and hate him for doing something that you can’t do, that you secretly know has to be done. Society needs fear. It’s our dirty little secret.”
The argument got confused. I said that what Carson did was morally wrong and Anton accused me of being “one of those people,” so I asked what kind of people and he told me the kind who say morality when they mean politics and politics when they mean morality. Most of what I called politics was, in his opinion, just squeamishness. There were people who acted, and people who wrung their hands and behaved as if they were going to act at some point in the future, once they’d sorted out what was moral and what wasn’t. Their so-called morality was just paralysis. In truth, they’d delegated their power of action to others, men who weren’t frozen rabbits, who could do what needed to be done. I told him he sounded like every other writer guy, secretly fretting that he wasn’t a man of action. If he really wanted to be a fireman or whatever, why didn’t he just go and fight fires instead of making TV shows?
It was the first time I saw him angry. He sniffed something about my “censoriousness” and withdrew into himself. We drove for a long time in silence. Greg paid the driver and we got out on a dim street lined with concrete apartment blocks, pocked with satellite dishes. Breaking their ranks was a single-story arcade of little stores and cafés. We found an awning saying Okacbaşi, a steamed-up window. Greg shoved his hands in his pockets and said no fucking way was he going inside. “Nothing in there for Greggy but food poisoning.”
