Robert Wilson - Julian Comstock - A Story of 22-nd Century America

In any case my attention was absorbed by the prospect of new Easton books to read. I confessed to Calyxa, as we walked home, how inspiring Mr. Easton’s work had been to me, and how it had formed my ambition to become a professional writer, and how distant that prospect now seemed.

“Nonsense,” Calyxa said. “Adam, you are a professional writer.”

“Not professional—not even published.”

“You’ve written a popular pamphlet already.

The Adventures of Captain Commongold was on sale in Grogan’s, if you didn’t notice. Selling briskly, it appeared to me.”

“That abomination! The piece that imperiled Julian’s life. Horribly mangled by Theodore Dornwood, on top of it all. He murdered half my commas, and misplaced the rest.”

“Punctuation aside, it’s your work, and professional enough that a surprising number of literate Manhattanites are willing to part with a dollar and fifty cents to read it.”

That was true, though I had not thought of it in such a light. My indignation at Mr. Dornwood was rekindled. I escorted Calyxa to the brownstone house of Mrs. Comstock, and said no more about the question, though I privately determined to visit the offices of the Spark and express my grievances there.

I would have preferred to spend that evening reading, for the books I had bought were a novelty to me, and I could not help admiring the crisp pages and unsmudged letters of the freshly-purchased volumes, and the clean white string that bound the signatures snugly together; but Julian insisted on taking Calyxa and me to see a movie—an invitation that was difficult to resist after everything Julian had said about movies back in Williams Ford.

We rode a taxi to the Broadway theater where Julian had reserved our seats, and we mingled in the lobby with a crowd of well-dressed Eupatridians of both sexes. It was clear even before we entered the auditorium that this would be a performance infinitely grander than the recruiting film I had seen in the Dominion Hall in Williams Ford. The movie to be shown here, which was called Eula’s Choice, was advertised with colorful Lobby Posters, which portrayed a female in antiquated dress, and a man with a pistol; also a horse and an American flag. Julian explained that Eula’s Choice was a patriotic story, its debut timed to coincide with the Independence season. He didn’t expect much in the way of refined drama, he said, but the movie had been produced by a local crew known for its extravagant camera-work and lavish stage effects. “It ought to be a fine spectacle,” he said, “if nothing else.”

Calyxa was ill-at-ease among the haughty Eupatridians, and she seemed relieved when a team of ushers appeared to shoo us into the auditorium, where we took our assigned seats. “All the money that changes hands here,” she said, “could feed a thousand orphans.” [Orphans were a common sight on Manhattan streets, where they begged for coins in ingenious and aggressive ways. There was also a generous supply of limbless veterans, their competition.]

“That’s not the way to think of it,” Julian reproved her. “By that reasoning there would be no art at all, nor philosophy, nor books. This is an independent theater, not a Eupatridian institution. The profits pay the salaries of working actors and singers, who would otherwise go hungry.”

“Singers as well as actors? In that case I withdraw the remark.”

The entire theater was powered by an in-house dynamo which thrummed from the basement like a snoring Leviathan. The lights were electric, and they dimmed in unison as the orchestra—a full brass band, with strings—struck up the overture. The curtain rose, revealing a huge white Screen and the veiled booths in which the Voice-Actors and Sound Effects persons worked. As soon as the darkness was complete the beam of the projector threw an ornate title on the screen: THE NEW YORK STAGE AND SCREEN ALLIANCE presents EULA’S CHOICE A Musical Story of Antiquity accompanied by the Dominion Stamp of Approval.

“This ought to be rich,” remarked Calyxa, who had seen movies under less elaborate circumstances in Montreal ; but Julian shushed her, and the music swelled and subsided as the story began.

I won’t describe my astonishment—the reader can take it for granted. I will say that, for once, Julian’s pride in Eastern culture seemed justified and wholly excusable. This was Art, I thought; and on a grand scale!

The story took place at some unspecified time during the Fall of the Cities. The main characters were Boone, the beleaguered pastor of an urban Church; Eula, his fiancé; and Foster, a thrifty industrialist.

The show was divided into three Acts, itemized in a Program Book the ushers had distributed. Each Act featured three songs, or “Arias.”

There was no singing at first, however—only Spectacle, as the audience was treated to flickering scenes of a City of the Secular Ancients in the last stage of its decline. We saw many impossibly tall buildings, artfully constructed of paper and wood, but fully real to the eye; we saw streets crowded with Business Men, Atheists, Harlots, and Automobiles. [The Automobiles were perhaps a less successful artistic effect, as they seemed unusually one-dimensional, and bobbed unconvincingly as they moved; but the dedicated crew of Sound-Makers compensated for this with engine noises created by a baritone growling into a speaking-tube. How these automobiles had survived so long into the End of Oil was a question the film-makers did not address.]

Boone and Eula appeared, working together in Boone’s small pious church, and bantering in a way that suggested their approaching nuptials; but they were interrupted by a troop of Secular Policemen who barged in and accused Boone of speaking such forbidden words as “faith” and “heaven.” These thugs led Boone away to prison, while Eula wept piteously. Boone, as he was dragged through the street in chains, sang the first song, which according to the program was: Aria: The hand of God, not gentle.

The filmed actor was expressive, and he was voiced by a masculine tenor who lent fire and discipline to the lyrics. ( The hand of God, not gentle but just / Descends upon the wicked by and by , and so forth).

If the Secular Policemen by this brutish behavior had earned themselves a place in Hell, their city was already halfway there. We witnessed a montage of strikes, rioting, and fires, the tall buildings beginning to burn as if they had been built of kindling. Now the audience was introduced to Foster, the industrialist, who labored mightily to subdue a fire in his iron mill, which had been set ablaze by unruly workers; but he was forced back by the heat and fallen timbers. Against this backdrop of destruction Foster wiped his sooty brow and sang in resignation the Aria: Gone, all that I have built.

All this was sorrowful enough to melt the hardest cynic’s heart, but it wasn’t finished. Eula appeared once more. She had left the scene of Boone’s cruel arrest, only to find her family home engulfed in flame, and her mother and father crying out from a window from which they could not be rescued. The flames consumed them. Overwhelmed with grief, Eula stumbled on to the jail where she believed Boone had been taken; but that building, too, had burned to the ground.

Several of the Eupatridian ladies in the audience were moved by this tragic scene, and they dabbed their eyes and blew their noses in a manner that distracted from Eula’s excellently performed Aria: Lost and alone among the ruins, which was the conclusion of Act I.

The lights came up for an intermission. Many of the Eupatridians adjourned at once to the lobby; but Calyxa and Julian and I were young and staunch of bladder, and we kept our seats. Images from the film were still vivid in my mind’s eye, and I began to think about the lost wonders of the Secular Ancients. I said to Julian, “The Secular Ancients made movies, didn’t they?—you told me so, I think.”