Steve Erickson - Zeroville

The official looks at Vikar, some inexplicable annoyance flashing across his eyes. “I speak English,” he says.

“What?”

“Is there someone who can vouch for your business here?”

“A man outside,” says Vikar.

“A man?”

“Holding a sign.”

The official turns and says something in Spanish to one of the other officials, who leaves the room. The official sits down next to Vikar and looks at his head. He points at Vikar’s head and says, “There are not many people in my country who appear like this.”

“No.”

“In America there are many people who appear like this?”

“No.”

The official looks around at the others. “Myself,” he confides to Vikar, “I am a great admirer of Miss Natalie Wood.”

Vikar just nods.

“I saw her in the film about the two married couples who trade.” He shrugs. “This film is not allowed in my country. I saw it while on holiday in Paris. Miss Natalie Wood is very beautiful in this film.” A low, desperate groan seems to emanate up from within him. “ Muy, muy, muy . Do you know this film?”

“Yes.”

“She is very beautiful.”

“Yes.”

“She is very immodest in this film. You hear my English is excellent.”

“You should see Splendor in the Grass .”

“This Splendid film stars Miss Natalie Wood?”

“Yes.”

“In this film she is immodest?”

“It’s like The Exorcist , except better.”

“I know of this Exorcist film, this is the film about Satanás. Yes?”

“What?”

“ Diablo . The Devil.”

“Yes.”

“This film is not allowed in my country.”

Vikar nods. “It’s not very good.”

“ This film,” the official taps Vikar on the head hard, “is not allowed in my country.”

Vikar says, as politely as possible, “It’s not Natalie Wood.”

The official rises slightly from the chair, looks at Vikar’s head. He studies the woman’s face.

“It’s Elizabeth Taylor,” says Vikar.

“Elizabeth Taylor?”

“And Montgomery Clift. A Place in the Sun .”

“ Qué ?”

“The name of this movie,” Vikar taps his own head in turn, speaking slowly, “is A Place … in … the … Sun .”

“This,” the official says, tapping Vikar’s head back even harder, “is …” tap “… not …” tap “… the …” tap “… film with Miss Natalie Wood about the young degenerate American hoodlums who are probably homosexuals?”

“No.”

“Do you know this film that I mean?”

“ Rebel Without a Cause .”

“This is the one I mean,” the official nods, “it is not allowed in my country.” The two men say nothing more but sit at the table looking at each other. Five minutes pass, then ten.

139.

The door opens and the other official returns, and says something in Spanish.

The official sitting with Vikar continues to stare at him as if barely registering whatever has been said. Then he stands. He hands Vikar his passport. “This film you are working, is Miss Natalie Wood in this film?”

“I don’t believe so,” Vikar says.

“Perhaps your film will be allowed in my country.”

“I’m certain it will be a very good movie,” Vikar says.

140.

When the phone rings in his hotel room, Vikar assumes it’s Viking Man. But amid the static of the phone call he hears a female voice saying his name; for a moment he imagines it’s Soledad and only after the phone has gone dead does he realize it was Dotty. He waits for the phone to ring again but it doesn’t, and finally he sleeps.

141.

When he wakes in the morning, someone seems to have been knocking at his door for hours.

The same driver who met Vikar at the airport and drove him to the hotel now drives him through a depressed part of Madrid to an ugly industrial building twenty minutes away. In the editing room Vikar finds bread, butter and jam but no knife to spread them, coffee and bottled water, and a stack of film cans that have just arrived from a lab. There are no instructions from Viking Man or anyone else.

For a while Vikar sits staring at the cans. He eats the bread with the butter and jam that he spreads by using the other end of the china pencil with which he’ll mark the print. He doesn’t drink the coffee.

142.

He sits a while longer staring at the cans. He believes his life itself is in a kind of jet lag. After half an hour he gets up and begins stripping away posters, photos and memos from the room’s largest wall until it’s bare.

He takes the film can on top and separates the lids. He threads the film through the drive mechanism of the viewer. For the moment he doesn’t concern himself with what kind of splices to make, with fades or dissolves or wipes, let alone with lighting or color. He’s putting miles of film into order, which means locating the sequences that he’s marked in the script, and the camera set-ups within each sequence.

143.

Over the weeks to come, first he’ll match the exposed film with the soundtrack, then select a representative still from each setup, sometimes more than one.

If there is, for instance, a sequence in which the Berber chieftain lops off the head of a thief, Vikar will choose a single still of perhaps a flying head, or a head rolling on the ground. He’ll print an enlargement of the still and number it and tack it onto the bare wall that he’s stripped. He’ll group set-ups chronologically into sequences, then number and group sequences as they’re represented by the set-up stills, until finally he’s determined the sequence for everything that’s been shot. He’ll catalog images and sounds by a synchronization code, then begin splicing together footage. Sometimes he’ll make a decision for one take over the others when the choice seems clear, particularly from a technical standpoint.

As Vikar does this, more rushes come each day or sometimes arrive every two or three days, or occasionally two or three times in one day. He works nine hours a day. Around one o’clock his driver brings lunch, and sometimes he eats dinner around ten o’clock in the Spanish fashion. Not once in the weeks to come will he receive a phone call from Viking Man.

144.

At night, after his work, he falls asleep in the back of the car, and the driver shakes him awake when they reach Vikar’s hotel. Vikar doesn’t go out into the city at all; he doesn’t care about the city. Madrid is a ghost town, fixed in the suspension of the Generalissimo’s pending death. Black wrought iron wreathes the city’s doors and balconies and fountains and windows. As the weeks pass, on the Fuencarral below his hotel window Vikar notices first the appearance of one streetwalker, then another, then another.

145.

After he’s been in Madrid three weeks, one night on the way back to his hotel Vikar wakes not to the driver’s touch but rather the jostling of the car, and realizes he’s blindfolded.

He also realizes his hands are bound. “What’s happening?” he says; he can feel someone on each side of him in the backseat. “What’s happening?” he says again, and someone answers, “Please do not talk. We will be there soon.”

“Where?”

“Please do not talk.”

146.

Soon he feels the car come to a stop. All the doors open and someone pulls Vikar out of the backseat. Led blindfolded for several minutes, at one point Vikar trips and two men catch him and pull him to his feet.

They stop and there’s the metal creak of an opening door. “There is a step here,” someone says. Vikar lifts his feet to step inside the door, which he hears pulled closed behind him.