Murther and Walking Spirits Read online

  It was an editor’s problem. I had been made head of the Entertainment section of the Advocate because I was a good critic. Good, that is to say, from the reader’s point of view because what I wrote was much appreciated. It was the old error of management: take a man out of a job he does well, and make him a boss, for which he has little liking or ability. The theatrical forms of entertainment have always been my great delight and recreation, and I write about them with gusto. Theatre, yes; opera, most decidedly; even television had its place in my affections. But for films I had a special affection, though not for the reasons that possess the majority of critics; I did not care much for technicalities of filmmaking, though I knew a good deal about them; I never treated film actors as real actors, because their work does not allow of the full range of the actor’s art and they are the creatures of the director and his technicians; I was gentle in my dealings with the writers, for I knew how little those poor wretches amounted to in the film world. But for a handful of truly great directors I had a warm-hearted admiration; they were artists, working in an especially recalcitrant medium, and when they succeeded they brought me great dreams. Dreams, not of a crass reality, a thin-spirited comedy, a blockhead’s notion of tragedy, but of the stuff that lies just beyond the observable, everyday world, that world of the daily news and the club gossip. Dreams in which something significant is told, not in bold Civil Service narrative, but in a puzzle of ambiguity and omission.

  When I went into a movie house to see something made by one of these great men, I felt that the half-darkness, the tunnel-like auditorium, spoke of that world of phantasmagoria and dream grotto of which I was aware as a part of my own life, which I could touch only in dreams or waking reverie. But film could open the door to it, for me; film therefore had a place in my life that I had never tried to define, for fear that too much definition might injure the fabric of the dreams.

  So of course I wanted to attend myself and write the reviews of these great films, retrieved from splendid archives, which were to be so much a feature of this Festival. Ah, but as an editor I had to play fair. I could not grab all the best jobs for myself, as the loss of my film critic strongly tempted me to do in this case. The Sniffer must have his way, damn him!

  But I shall be there. Yes, I shall be there. A favourite quotation of my father’s rises in my memory –

  My soul, sit thou a patient looker-on;

  Judge not the play – something-something –

  Something-something – every day

  Speaks a new scene – and so forth –

  I can’t recall it exactly, but beyond doubt I shall be a patient looker-on.

  Suppose McWearie was right. Or rather, suppose the Bhagavad Gita is right. Is my eternity to be unending movies, sitting beside the Sniffer, as he sniffs for influences?

  That would be Hell indeed, or at least a Purgatory worse than any McWearie had ever described. An eternity of watching dearly loved movies, at the side of a man who, in my opinion, had a shallow, self-serving, nincompoop’s attitude toward them? My murderer, furthermore. Can it be? Have I deserved this?

  In the true sense of the word, I have been roughly translated, without the complicity of a normal death, into another sort of existence. Can I face what awaits me? What choice have I? An unauthorized translation has always been a shady sort of narrative.

  II

  Cain Raised

  THE FILM FESTIVAL was prepared for film zealots of all kinds, and was to occupy them for a full week. New films from all over the world were to be shown, and prizes and awards and assessments were offered to tempt the best and challenge the most aspiring. A somewhat unusual feature was to be a showing of historic films, notable films that few people had seen, and films that had been, for one reason or another, suppressed. Great film archives had been ransacked, and persuaded to allow precious reels to leave their vaults; guarantees of safety had been exacted by the Moscow School of Cinema, by the Cinématique Française, by the Reichsfilmarchiv of Berlin, to ensure that their perishable nitrate-based prints should be cherished as they deserved. The organizers of the Festival assured the public that it was the most extraordinary assemblage of hitherto forgotten or neglected films – each one a masterpiece, deserving of breathless scrutiny by those who regarded the film as the great art form of the twentieth century – that had ever been put together. A large and costly program had been prepared for the Festival as a whole, but the most space and the most exultant prose had been reserved for these reclaimed jewels.

  This was the part of the Festival that excited the Sniffer, for surely it would be rich in influences and forgotten injustices and anticipations of film techniques that had been attributed to the wrong people; he would gleefully right such wrongs.

  The grand opening, which I attended as the shadow of Going, was what one might expect. It took place in a large, enclosed space in one of our best hotels, which could not be called a room, because it had no focus, no centre of interest; nor was it a hall, because it had no architectural concentration to point an audience in any single direction. It was simply a huge, carpeted area, windowless and in no way associated with either nature or art, and its multitude of electric lights could not wholly dispel its cavern-like quality. It was approached through a long tunnel-corridor, hung with modern tapestries, from which masses of yarns hung out at intervals, as if a bull had gored them and their entrails were bursting forth. Otherwise the great space was entered by almost invisible doors, through which waiters and waitresses came and went, bearing trays of jewel-like edibles, the work of artificers whose days were passed in preparing these destructible beauties. Although air was intruded and removed from it mechanically, the space smelled of many such earlier functions; a compound of food and ladies’ scents.

  The Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario was patron of the Festival, and as he was the patron of many ambitious and deserving ventures it was not expected that he should show much knowledge of what was happening, but that he should shed the light of his countenance upon it and appear as host of this party, which our provincial government gave in its honour. He did so, with a fine demonstration of viceregal goodwill, greeting people he hardly knew, or did not know at all, with the warmth appropriate to his office. He himself was resolutely democratic, but his hovering uniformed aides, and the splendour that attended his appearance, made it clear that he was indeed a grandee, though of course one who owed his place to the approval of the people – which meant, in effect, the government in office. A curious grandee, surely, for though he bore the democratic stamp of approval he was primarily the representative of the Queen. The provincial premier was not present because he had to be two hundred miles away, warming up the voters in an important by-election, but his wife came, gracious in the highest degree but also unaffectedly democratic. Ontario wines, and especially Ontario champagne, flowed without stint, and were consumed in quantity befitting the occasion. They too were democratic – quite without affectation of superiority. The guests in the room were in evening dress, and those who possessed the Order of Canada wore their enamelled marks of distinction with pride tempered by democratic bonhomie, as though to say, “I wear this because I have been awarded it, but I am very much aware that there are many here more worthy of such meritorious ornaments than my humble self.”

  It was, indeed, one of those Canadian occasions where the vestiges of a monarchical system of government vie with the determination to prove that everybody is, when all is said, exactly like everybody else. These disquiets are inseparable from a country which is, in effect, a socialist monarchy, and is resolved to make it work – and, to an astonishing degree, achieves its aim; for though an egalitarian system appeals to the head, monarchy is enthroned in the heart.

  It is not in human nature to set aside all ideas of rank. The Lieutenant-Governor and his lady shouldered the task of mixing these ingredients into a fine, eager assembly of film enthusiasts, but their best efforts could not fully mingle the Socially Prominent, the Very Rich, and the Intelli
gentsia into a smooth broth. Here and there the Socially Prominent and the Very Rich were united in couples who glowed with a special radiance of certainty, but there were bigwigs and moneybags whose eyes moved restlessly as they felt that they should blend, but did not quite know how to do it. As for the Intelligentsia, they were chiefly critics, and it was they who stayed closest to the bars, and sometimes looked at the others with what might have been interpreted as scorn. The aristocracy of intellect admits nothing of democracy.

  Going felt no uncertainty. He was, after all, socially prominent as a descendant of one of the old families, wearing about him the glory of Sir Alured, that long-dead colonial official. Although not himself rich he had rich connections, and they were Old Money, not latecomers to affluence. He was unquestionably, and indeed clamorously, intelligent, for had not the country’s foremost newspaper invited him to instruct its readers as to what was, and what was not, worthy of their attention? Although he wore no Order, he had his walking-stick, which was in itself a mark of distinction, and all but a few of those present knew that it was his critical sceptre, and would certainly not have been left in the garderobe. All of this was made manifest in his evening clothes, which were from a first-rate tailor, and fitted him elegantly.

  He was the only critic to wear a dinner jacket. The others scorned such frivolities, and wore everything from messy turtlenecks and corduroys to tweed jackets and flannel slacks; the woman from a large populist paper wore a rather dirty pullover with loud roundabout stripes, which did nothing for her figure (a lost cause) but was irrelevant because of her critical status, and the rancorous distaste with which she regarded just about everything.

  Thus I was present at the Gala Opening, though I was invisible and cost the government nothing, as eating and drinking were no longer within my range. But I was able to watch Going in his glory. Indeed, I had no choice in the matter. As McWearie had said, and as I now recalled with dismay, I was less of a free spirit than I had thought and was now tied to Going, for how long I could not tell.

  Indeed, my sense of time was changing rapidly. Time, as we are so frequently assured, and as we so frequently forget, is a relative concept. But if I was tied to Going, in what degree was he tied to me?

  (2)

  IS THE HORROR of Death the loneliness I feel so overwhelmingly as I wait – wait – wait with a decreasing sense of time as the living world knows it, and an expanding sense of the pleroma that enfolds me? I frequent the world of men, but there is no creature of my own kind anywhere, to whom I may speak, or from whom I can hope for counsel or sympathy. Is this a time of probation, or can it be that this is what I shall know for – I dare not imagine for how long? Whatever the answer I must do what I am impelled to do, and now I must go to the movies with my murderer.

  (3)

  IT IS A MORNING session, and by Going’s watch it is five minutes to eleven when I go with him into the theatre where the special, precious old prints are to be shown. Several movie houses are engaged for the Festival, and this is the least important as it is assumed that these films of historic interest will draw the smallest audiences. How desolate a film house is at this time of day! It is lighted just enough for the audience to find seats, and the dimness compels a silence and subdues the people who are spread about and fill perhaps a third of the house. There is the half-sanctified air of a funeral parlour about it, and it stinks of children, feet and old popcorn. The walls are painted a shade which would once have been called vieux rose. Has it a modern name other than dirty pink? At one end, as one descends a gentle slope, is what looks like a stage, but is not, although it has skimpy velvet curtains inside what would be a proscenium if there were any scene for it to enclose. Movie houses feel an impulsion to imitate theatres, feebly and unconvincingly, just as manufacturers of automobiles cannot rid themselves of the ghosts of elegant nineteenth-century carriages. As Going entered this dismal place a few other critics looked at him, but did not nod or smile. This was not ill-will but professional custom; surgeons do not shake hands with each other in the operating theatre.

  The film to be shown was The Spirit of ‘76. It had been produced in the U.S. in 1917 by one Robert Goldstein, who for his pains received ten years’ imprisonment under the Espionage Code. The reason? The film was rowdily anti-British, and had the bad luck to appear just as the United States entered the First Great War as Britain’s ally. It was suppressed and it was a great coup for the Festival to have unearthed a print. Would it cause outrage now? Most unlikely.

  As it was a silent film a woman took her place at a piano in front of the screen, removed her rings and laid them carefully at the side of the keyboard, crunched up a handkerchief and put it on the top of the rings, and, as the first shadows appeared, began to play, and played without a stop until the film came to an end. She was skilled at her job, and ranged through every emotion – from grave to gay, from lively to severe – without ever seeming to change gears. She had an historic sense, and played nothing written later than 1917. She also had a sense of congruity and her moments of sentiment, when she played “Hearts and Flowers,” were the sentiment of 1917, offered without irony or comment. Her style was lush – musically unchaste – and she dashed off arpeggios like confetti. In her peculiar realm, she was an artist of no trivial achievement, as must have been many of the women who, in the Old Red Sandstone Period of film, did what she was doing now.

  I dwell on her achievement although I was aware of it only fitfully. For almost from the beginning, as I saw grainy images of actors rigged out in a rough approximation of late-eighteenth-century dress gesticulating and moving their lips soundlessly, in some overheated drama of their own, I was aware that I was seeing something else. Seeing, yes and hearing, for my film – my private film – was accompanied by orchestral music of great subtlety and modern in manner; my images were clear and convincing; my actors – if that is what they were – spoke aloud. I did not immediately or easily understand them; for, though their language was English, it seemed to be American English of the period of the American Revolution, and it was spoken in a tune and with an accent unfamiliar to me. Mine was an astonishing film, and if I had seen it during my days of life, I would have been delighted with it. But now it frightened me.

  Was this what Going was watching? From time to time he scribbled notes on a pad on his knee, and so far as I could read them they had no connection with my film. None whatever. What I was watching was life, strange life, but life without a doubt, and I could enter into it only with difficulty, but with the sense that what I saw was of deep importance to me.

  (4)

  WHAT I SAW was New York, as it was in 1775. Or was it 1774? I could not be sure. But there it was; John Street, a street of respectable but not affluent houses where lived, so far as I could make out, middle-class families – shopkeepers, lawyers, physicians and the like – and in the one to which my attention was directed, a soldier. There he was, confident and trim, in the uniform of an officer of a British regiment, coming down the three nicely holystoned steps of his dwelling into the sunshine. As he walked down the street, civilian neighbours greeted him. Good morning, Major Gage. A fine day, Major. His progress was stately, not marching but with soldierly bearing, a man proud in his profession. From his own windows a little girl waved, and he gave her a smart salute, which was plainly a joke between father and daughter. To the others who greeted him his acknowledgement was not quite a salute, but a lifting of his gloved hand to the foremost horn of his three-cornered hat, correctly pointing over the left eye. A popular man. A good neighbour. A credit to the neighbourhood.

  Then there was an indication – do film people call it a wipe? – of passing time, and the music gave a strong hint of changed circumstances, of poorer weather, of autumn, indeed, and there was the Major coming down his steps again. His look was sterner, as well it might be, for running toward him was a crowd of street boys, shouting Bloody-back! Tory bloody-back! and as they ran past him one of them turned and hurled a dirty sod which left a sta
in on the back of his red coat. The child in the window disappeared, plainly frightened; the Major gave no sign of discomfiture, but walked on proudly, and this time there was something of the military march in his step.

  The scene changes again, and this time it is inside the Major’s house, where he and his family are at table for their evening meal. It is a good meal and there are two black servants – not slaves, but in some ill-specified area of indenture – to put it on the table. With some trepidation the little girl, who is the second of the three children, asks her father about the insult of the morning. Nothing whatever, my dear. It don’t signify. Ragamuffins from the poorer quarter, who have been listening to foolish talk from malcontents. A soldier’s daughter must know that her father will not be popular with rogues, who fear the law and the army. It is not for a soldier to heed such riff-raff. If he meets them again let them beware of the cane which is part of his uniform.

  Major Gage talks to his wife later, when they are tucked up in their pretty four-poster; he admits under questioning that perhaps the clod of dirt signifies a little more than he would say to Elizabeth. He has the imperturbable confidence of an Englishman and a soldier. Is he not an officer in one of the seventeen regiments Britain keeps in her American Colonies, for their defence against the French, and the Spanish, and the privateers and smugglers? To say nothing of the Indians. And are not these ruffians under pretty sharp control? If he meets the street boys again he will dust their jackets.