Steve Erickson - Zeroville

147.

Vikar assumes he’s been arrested by the same officials who interrogated him in customs when he entered the country. When the blindfold is taken off, he expects to see the fan of Miss Natalie Wood waiting for him.

Instead he’s in some sort of warehouse. On the far side is what appears to be a makeshift soundstage with a bed, and in one corner a particularly old moviola. Lined against the wall are a dozen guns and rifles and rounds of ammunition.

There’s also a small screen and projector with a low table nearby and someone sitting on a stool watching a movie. Vikar looks around him; one of the men, his driver, holds several film canisters. The other men wear rifles on their shoulder or guns in their belts. The figure on the stool doesn’t turn to look at Vikar but continues watching the movie.

148.

When the man on the stool turns from the movie to Vikar, he doesn’t look like a policeman or customs official.

He’s slight in stature, dark, in his late twenties. He wears dark pants and combat boots and a kind of workshirt; a scarf is tied around his neck. On the table next to the stool where the man sits, next to a bottle of wine and several glasses, Vikar sees a military issue.45.

The man on the stool notes Vikar’s bound hands. “Untie his hands,” he says to the other men. He says to Vikar, “I apologize for the ropes. Please,” and indicates another nearby stool for Vikar to sit. He turns his attention back to the movie, and together the two men watch.

149.

The movie is about a young bride who travels to Thailand to be with her French diplomat husband. Among the embassy’s aristocratic females, the bride has a number of sexual relationships, then is sent by her husband to be trained by an older man in the art of sexual submission.

Vikar believes that the young woman is very attractive but perhaps the movie is not so good. “This film is not allowed in my country,” the man on the stool says to Vikar. “You know of this actress?” Over the man’s shoulder, Vikar watches the driver of his car set the film cans on the editing table.

“No.”

“Miss Sylvia Kristel,” the man says, as though this explains everything.

“Is she French?”

“The film is French. She is …” he thinks, “… Dutch, I believe.”

150.

They watch awhile longer, the man riveted by the Dutch actress. Then he reaches over and turns off the projector. He says, “You are Señor … Vicar? How do you say it?”

“Vikar.”

“Like a church name.”

“With a k.”

This isn’t altogether clear to the other man but he says, “I am Cooper Léon. Are you hungry?”

“No, thank you.” There are seven or eight men besides Cooper Léon. One is an older man who sits on the soundstage bed smiling at Vikar, and who appears to Vikar to be wearing some sort of military costume and make-up, although from the distance Vikar can’t be sure.

“Have a little wine,” says Cooper Léon, who takes the bottle from next to the pistol on the table and pours a glass and hands it to Vikar. “Of course Cooper Léon,” says the man, “may not be my real name. Or it might. It might be that my parents really did name me after Gary Cooper who fought for the Republic in For Whom the Bell Tolls . If that is so, then it places you in a potentially untenable position, since I have told to you my real name.”

“But it might not be your real name,” says Vikar.

“Exactly. It is as with the chamber of a gun that may or may not have a bullet in it. But the larger point is that if you cooperate, you will be all right in either case and it will not matter if it is my real name.” Cooper Léon says, “Do you know who we are?”

“No.”

“We are the Soldiers of Viridiana.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“We are the resistance to the fascist assassin the Generalissimo.”

“The man who’s dying?”

“Ah.” Cooper Léon is pleased. “ Gracias . We arrive at the heart of the conversation without further preliminaries.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Dying is not dead, this is the mournful truth of our situation. The assassin dies and dies and dies and dies, it goes on and on and on and on, which is to say he lives and lives and lives and lives. It is a tedious thing.”

Vikar says, “He should die more quickly.”

“He should die NOW!” Cooper Léon roars in Vikar’s face, then pulls back, hands raised. “You see?” he waves to the men around him, then places his hand on his chest. “It unsettles us. It unsettles all of Spain.” He pours himself more wine and stares at the blank movie screen, lost in thought.

151.

Cooper Léon says, “What is cinema, Señor Vicar?”

“What?”

“What is cinema? Cinema,” he answers himself, “is metaphor.” He looks at his men around him to gauge the awe with which this insight has been received. “Cinema is metaphor, and this is one of the things that cinema has in common with politics, which often is metaphor as well. The assassin the Generalissimo, it is no longer a question of his power. He is dying, and in his dying he has no true practical power anymore. Slow but sure the country rustles itself to freedom and justice. On the Fuencarral by your hotel, for instance, you have recently noticed more women of the night?”

“Yes.”

“This is what I mean.”

Vikar considers the political implications of the women he has seen on the Fuencarral.

“But in his unseemly insistence on continuing to live, the assassin the Generalissimo holds another kind of power over the minds of the countrymen he has oppressed for more than thirty-five years. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“No.”

152.

Cooper Léon waves it away. “It is of no matter,” he says. “We are going to make a film about the death of the assassin the Generalissimo.”

“The one who hasn’t died.”

“That is why we make the film. Cinema is metaphor, and when politics is metaphor as well, then cinema is guerrilla action. So that although the assassin may live another thirty-five years, he will die in the imaginations of the people, which is what matters. I am certain you understand.” Vikar doesn’t understand. Cooper Léon indicates the old man sitting on the bed on the soundstage. “My papa here, he is playing the assassin the Generalissimo. You will direct the scene.”

“I’m not a director.”

“You will direct the scene, and then you will put the film together with what we have filmed, and with documentary footage we have gathered of the assassin the Generalissimo over the last thirty-five years, and with what you have cut from the film that you have been working on in Madrid.”

Vikar looks at the soundstage and the little old man, and looks at the cans of film that his driver has placed on the far editing table. “Those,” he says to the canisters, “are what I’ve cut from Viking Man’s movie?”

“Who is this viking?”

“That is footage from the movie I’ve been cutting?”

“Some is other footage, as I said. As well,” he adds, patting the projector, “we might put in some of this film.”

Vikar looks at the projector. “The French movie starring the naked Dutch actress?”

Cooper Léon frowns. “I have to consider this. I have to consider whether it is proper to sacrifice this film for this purpose. Perhaps some parts of this film that are not as,” he’s at a loss for the precise word, “stirring. If you cut something from this film,” patting the projector again, “you can put back together what is left?”

“I can splice it,” says Vikar.

“That is it,” Cooper Léon points at Vikar triumphantly, “splice!”