Steve Erickson - Zeroville

It’s also announced that this year the jury has created a special award, the Prix Sergei, presented “to the film Your Pale Blue Eyes and editor Isaac Jerome for an original and provocative contribution to the art of montage and the creation of a revelatory new cinematic rhetoric.”

“That’s not my name,” Vikar says.

“What?” Rondell says, the applause around them swelling. Neither notices the sprinkling of boos.

“That’s not my name.”

“Vikar,” Rondell whispers urgently, “please go up there now.”

“Who put that name on the movie?” In the midst of the ceremony audience, Vikar is an eye-twitch away from ripping Rondell’s head off his shoulders, while Rondell appears on the verge of leaping out of his body. “I’m sorry, it was a mistake,” he begs, “a terrible, terrible mistake. We’ll change it, we’ll do anything you want, we’ll make it right. Just please please please go up there.”

216.

Vikar reaches the stage several seconds after the mystified applause has died. Applause rises again in what sounds to Vikar like a swarm of bees — a collective murmur at the sight of the man with the unbuttoned shirt and tattooed head. The boos apparently have been stunned into silence. The jury president leans slightly away from Vikar as he hands him the award scroll, rolled and tied in the center with a red ribbon, and shakes his hand. A third wave of applause rises and Vikar steps to the microphone. “That’s not my name,” he says and walks off, strangling the award in his fist.

215.

Dashing through the salons of the Palais, Vikar finally staggers out into the Mediterranean air. Small food and drink stands begin to close, as well as an outdoor café only a few meters away. Since he has no idea where he is or where to go, he takes it as something of a sign that there before him, just around the bend of the Croisette, are the nouveaux cupolas of the massive Carlton. Its vertical banners hang from the hotel’s rafters, mildly ruffled by the breeze off the harbor.

214.

Thoroughly conflicted by Vikar’s tattooed head, his state of undress and the throttled red-ribboned scroll in Vikar’s hand, the concierge at the front desk apologizes that the suite isn’t ready. “We weren’t expecting you for at least another hour or two, monsieur,” he says, “are the ceremonies over?” He invites Vikar to wait in the Petit Bar, where someone will come retrieve him.

213.

The bar is mostly empty. Everyone else is at the Palais except two men at a far table talking and an attractive blonde in her early fifties at another table, wearing a wide-brimmed fedora and sunglasses even though it’s night and the lounge is dark. At another table is a younger woman, around thirty, with dark curls, wearing a long white coat; she drinks a glass of red wine and seems to be waiting for someone. She surveys Vikar for a full minute with a cool and overt curiosity. Vikar orders a vodka tonic.

212.

Now one of the two men talking at the far table looks at Vikar. He gets up from the table and comes over; he’s sharply though informally dressed in a light cotton summer jacket, and Vikar realizes he’s familiar. “Monsieur Vicar,” the man says, Vikar still trying to place him. “It is I, Cooper Léon.”

“Yes,” Vikar says, uncertainly.

Cooper Léon puts out his hand. “How are you?”

Shaking the other man’s hand, Vikar says, “All right.”

Cooper Léon looks at the crumpled scroll on Vikar’s cocktail table. “You have received one of the prizes at the ceremony tonight?”

“They said my name wrong.”

“May I sit with you?”

“All right.”

Cooper Léon sits down. “Felicitations. I am not surprised in the least. I knew three years ago in Madrid that you are a man of vision.”

211.

Now Vikar remembers. “The movie about the General.”

“Yes.”

“For the soldiers of …”

“The Soldiers of Viridiana.”

“Are they here?”

“Who?”

“The soldiers.”

“In Cannes?” Cooper Léon says, surprised. “I am no longer leading the revolution in Spain. The assassin the Generalissimo died, and now many good films are allowed in my country. Thanks to you.”

“I don’t believe the movie I made for you was a very good one.”

“That, Monsieur Vicar,” Cooper Léon points to the award, “says differently.” Vikar notices that Cooper Léon’s Spanish accent has turned to French. “I no longer am living in Madrid. I live in Paris now.”

“Are the soldiers there now?”

“Monsieur, there are no more soldiers. Please forget the soldiers. Now I am a publicist for Gaumont. We are here at the festival representing the new film by Claude Chabrol with Isabelle Huppert. I believe she won a prize this evening as well.”

“I don’t know.”

“We also are sponsoring a retrospective, as …” he pauses, “… as an unofficial tangent, you might say, to the official festival, a retrospective of one of your great American auteurs. Well, actually he is British, but he made all of his films in America. Irving Rapper.”

“Irving Rapper?”

“You know of Monsieur Irving Rapper?” Cooper Léon asks.

“ Now, Voyager .”

Relief floods Cooper Léon’s face. “Of course I was certain a scholar of film such as yourself would know of Irving Rapper. Cinema’s great poet of la femme dérangée . As you say, Now, Voyager. Deception. The Glass Menagerie. Marjorie Morningstar . Would you care for another?” He points at Vikar’s vodka tonic.

“I’m waiting for my room to be ready.”

“Of course. Allow me please to buy for you another drink while you wait. It would be my honor.” Cooper Léon calls out something to the bartender and turns back to Vikar. His brow furrows. “Monsieur Vicar, I feel it is fateful that I should see you here this evening. I wonder if I might make a confession to you that I never have told to anyone else.”

“All right.”

“It seems proper that you are the person to whom I should confess this.”

“All right.”

210.

Cooper Léon says, “Monsieur Vicar, perhaps you are wondering how it is I no longer am leading the revolutionary struggle for justice and rather have become a publicist for Gaumont.”

“Uh,” says Vikar.

“It is a difficult thing to comprehend, even for me sometimes. It is a result of a moment of truth I had, as it happens, not long after we met and worked together on our film about the death of the assassin the Generalissimo.” He pauses as if waiting for Vikar to respond.

“Oh.”

Cooper Léon shrugs. “Not long after we worked together on our film, I had a dream. Do you know who came to me in this dream?”

“God?”

“Luis Buñuel.”

“Oh.”

“Luis Buñuel, who once stayed in this hotel, this same hotel where he slept on the floor of his suite rather than the bed, as a revolutionary act. This dream was so real that I might almost have thought it was not a dream at all but the ghost of Buñuel, visiting me in the night, if Buñuel were not still alive. So it could not be his ghost.”

“No.”

“In this dream, Buñuel gave me a choice. Do you know what this choice was?”

“No.”

“Buñuel said to me, ‘Cooper Léon, you may have one of two things.’ Monsieur,” Cooper Léon’s voice breaks, “this is a difficult thing to confess.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Buñuel said, ‘Cooper Léon, you either may see the fruits of your revolutionary struggle and have justice and freedom for all people in the world, or you may fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel.’ Of course you remember Miss Sylvia Kristel, Monsieur Vicar?”