K Jeter - The Kingdom of Shadows

Von Behren sighed, watching his protegee waltz with an actor dressed as a nineteenth century Prussian cavalryman. He could hardly remember directing the scene, or writing the stilted dialogue. In the midst of the great tragedy, the film that was not a film but was this world, the Propaganda Ministry dictated the making of such lightweight fluff as this. Costume dramas, the comforting dreams of a glorious past. Or modern trifles such as Die gro?e Liebe, all about the romances of Luftwaffe pilots on leave, torn between a woman and duty. Goebbels’ Ministry had cited that one as a film of particular artistic merit, though when von Behren had finally seen it, he had been bitchily fascinated by how much weight its star, the Swedish actress Zarah Leander, had put on while he had been away in America.

He pulled his attention back to the images on the screen. This raw footage would have to be edited into more of the same, a place to which the German audiences could escape for an hour or two, sitting together in the darkness, dreamers all, while the fires of Europe burned closer. Marte looked so sad as she waltzed with the cavalryman. But not sad, really; more as if she were dreaming, too, dancing in her sleep, her eyes half-closed, her body weightless in the arms of men.

Perhaps it wasn’t too much different from the films he would have been making with Marte if they had stayed in America; Herr Wise’s tastes were close enough to those of the Reichsminister. He could at least comfort himself with that notion.

“The question, Marte, is what comes next.” Von Behren spoke through the lilting Strauss music. As the war went more and more disastrously for Germany – as any fool could tell, despite all the Propaganda Ministry’s trumped-up news of victories and assurances of secret weapons being developed – what kind of films would he be allowed to make? He remembered talking with Herr Wise, the American screenwriter, in the parking lot of the Wise Studios, as the desert winds had drifted through the warm California night. About how the great tradition of the German cinema of the fantastic had died, or rather been put to death, in the new Reich. Perhaps that would change, now that so many could feel their dark collective fate pursuing them, like the relentless Rote Jager of the old stories. The punisher of those guilty of breaking the ancient laws of the hunt, those who had washed their hands in the blood of the innocent… perhaps there were others now who dreamed each night, as von Behren did, of the hooded figure dressed in tattered animal skins, striding through the forest, as close to one’s heels as one’s own shadow…

That image, the woodcut in his childhood book of Marchen, haunted him. The face hidden in darkness, and one hand reaching out for the fleeing huntsman, the other drawing a knife from the scabbard on the leather belt, its point sharpened for skinning prey…

Von Behren felt a familiar chill crawl up his spine. The memory of the woodcut, that piece of his childhood that had always stayed with him, had blotted out for a moment the swirling ballroom on the screen.

The room was suddenly bathed with light as the reel came to an end; he could hear the fluttering noise from the projectionist’s booth behind him. He knew there were more sets of rushes to be gone through, but he wouldn’t watch them now; they would be too much to bear. To see Marte, with her sad, dreaming face, caught in the motions of that other world, the one he had created for her…

He shook his head. Perhaps later, tomorrow or the day after. Right now, he only felt like going back to his flat, the same one he’d had before – before he’d fallen into that brief dream of sunshine and exile – and writing a few more pages of the script that he still hoped to be given permission to film. As dreams and nightmares becoming increasingly real, in both the night and the day, the time to suggest his pet project might be approaching. If the Reichsminister wished to see his mistress clothed in a brocaded medieval gown, imprisoned in a stone castle, then it would come to pass. The Teutonic heaviness, that dreaming deeper than all others, would appeal to Goebbels’ Wagnerian predilections.

Von Behren closed his eyes. He already had it worked out, inside his head, how he would light Marte, the first time that anyone would see her in the film. She would be at an arched window, gazing out across a forest that stretched to the horizon, a dark world where a hooded figure in animal skins waited for the transgressors of his laws. She would turn from the window, slowly, as though she and the audience in the theater were waking for the first time. Turn, and then her downcast eyes would raise, bringing her devastating beauty straight into the vision and hearts of all who saw her.

Another chill ran across his shoulders. He opened his eyes and saw nothing. The projectionist had switched off his machinery, leaving the screening room in darkness.

He sat for a while longer, in silence, waiting for the image he had conjured inside his head to fade.

The little boy lifted the ball up and, grinning, threw it at the camera lens. She leaned toward the flickering black-and-white image, as though she could bring her own hands up and catch the ball.

“You see?” A man’s voice came from somewhere beside her. “He is healthy and happy. Does he not look well fed? You should be proud of such a sturdy lad.”

Marte could barely hear what Joseph said. All her attention was drawn to her son. This bit of him that she was allowed to have.

“His hair is the same color as yours.” Joseph spoke as if the resemblance between mother and child pleased him. “And there – you can see it – just when he turns. His eyes. One brown, one blue.” His voice went softer. “So you know this is your son, don’t you?”

She didn’t need any proof like that. She could feel it inside herself, the drawing short of her breath, the trembling of her pulse. She wanted to cry out to the little boy, and reach through the screen and gather him to her breast.

“Every provision has been made for his care. Both he and his mother – I mean, the woman who looks after him – have been issued supplemental food authorizations. I had my staff make the arrangements; you can be sure that your little boy receives tidbits that a general’s wife would be hard-pressed to find here in Berlin.” Joseph leaned back in his chair, nodding sagely as he placed the tips of his fingers together. “And of course, as you can see, they are billeted far from any city or industrial center, so they are free of any danger from the Allied bombing raids. Where your son is, one could barely tell that we are at war.”

Marte knew that was true as well. There were still places like that. This little film, taken by one of the Reichsminister ’s technicians, without sound – she couldn’t hear her child’s voice or laughter – caught a piece of that other world. Her child had grown older – more than a year and a half, closer to two, had gone by since the consulate official had ensnared her, brought her back here with the only possible enticement. The film showed a little boy growing up, time racing by him as he ran after a bird hopping across the ground.

There had been other photos, images of her child, that had been doled out to her since her return. She had begged for something more, and Joseph had finally relented, and this was what she had been given. Not the child himself, a living form that she could wrap her arms around and hold so tightly that he could never be taken away again, her tears darkening the child’s fine white-blonde hair. But this, a film, a thing of light and shadows. Several minutes of it had gone by already, the projector rattling behind them – Joseph had threaded the machine himself, taking the film from a small metal canister sealed with his security chief’s initials. She wondered how much more of it there was, how much longer it would be before the tail-end passed through and blank light filled the screen.