Steve Erickson - Zeroville

101.

around five o’clock, frame by eight thousand frames into the film

100.

he finds it

there in the Hellfire sequence, all shimmering heat, the constant, relentless surging sound in the background of machinery grinding and people crying, like hydraulics bashing and engines being stoked, the clanging of metal to metal slightly muffled as though by a volcanic sea, and beyond the Devil’s

shoulder is the dim naked figure of the slave chained to the molten walls of the underworld urging the Devil on, and the madwoman bending over before him as the Devil stands behind her, spearing his pleasure, saying things just barely more than sounds and groans, grunting meaningless proclamations over and

over and pulling out of her now and then for no other reason than to reveal a satanic cock, all to the same ongoing muffled industrial roar, and then, spliced wetly between the frames of the PornHell, so that any untrained eye not searching so intently would glide right over it and never see it or ever know it was

there, he finds the single frame

of the horizontal rock, out of its open chasm a sound roaring as though it’s the crashing machines of the PornHell, as though another movie is trying to emerge through the rock’s portal, and the glowing white writing across the top of the rock, and there, draped across the top of the rock, the still silhouetted figure

waiting; and Vikar reels, shoving himself back from the table. Although he can hardly stand it, he looks again

99.

and is overcome by a kind of panic. “Oh, mother,” Vikar says out loud, or perhaps he doesn’t say it out loud but just feels as though he does.

He catches his breath, regains his bearings. Then he removes an exacto-knife and a plastic baggie from his pocket. He locks the door of the editing room. He removes the single frame from the print, puts it in the baggie, puts the baggie back in his pocket. Then he splices the film back together.

98.

He walks quickly from the editing room, crosses the warehouse, passes the two women, pushes out through the glass exit and keeps walking.

97.

At some point he realizes he’s walking the wrong way, away from the first of the four buses home. On the bus he has to make himself focus in order not to miss his connection. When he arrives home at ten-thirty, Zazi is waiting; he isn’t through the front door before she’s screaming at him, “Where have you been? Where did you go?” and then barricades herself in her room.

96.

He hears her crying in her bedroom as he has before, when he would stand at her door wondering what to do. When he opens the door, she’s stopped crying but lies on her bed with her face in her pillow. “I would never abandon you,” he says, and goes into his own room, closing the door behind him.

95.

Zazi is gone the next morning when Vikar wakes.

He takes from his pocket the baggie with the frame of film, half expecting it will have vanished with the morning.

94.

The curator at the UCLA film school says, “Of course you understand I can’t let you take the print.” He looks more like a banker, a short stout man with thinning hair and glasses.

“What if I use one of your editing rooms here?” Vikar says.

“What are you looking for anyway?”

“I’m not going to hurt the print.”

“You’re not Vikar Jerome the editor, are you?”

“Yes.”

“The, uh …” The curator nods at Vikar’s head. “It’s kind of a giveaway.” He says, “The only editor ever to win a prize at Cannes.”

“No one is sure of that.”

“I heard you were directing something of your own.”

“I don’t know.”

The curator looks around his cubicle as if someone else might be listening before he says, “If you weren’t who you are, I wouldn’t consider it. It’s on loan from the Cinématèque in Paris.”

“I promise I’ll be careful.”

“But … what are you looking for?”

93.

Vikar spends the rest of the day poring over the rare footage, and returns the following day.

92.

The curator says, “Did you find it?”

“No,” says Vikar.

“Are you sure it’s there?”

“I was certain.”

“You do know, right,” says the curator, “that this isn’t the real movie?”

“What?”

“It’s not the real movie. It’s an alternate version.”

“But I’ve seen this movie. It was the first movie I ever saw in Los Angeles.”

“Whatever you saw or have ever seen was only a substitute,” the curator answers. “The real movie vanished after it was finished in 1928. It probably had a single screening in Copenhagen, the director Carl Dreyer’s home town, and it may have had a screening in Paris. Then it was burned in a fire, like Joan herself, goes one story. Suppressed by the French government — like Joan herself — goes another story. Lost, anyway. No one knows. So Dreyer assembled another version from out-takes and scraps of footage he had cut from the master copy. Can you imagine? The most powerful film of all time, and it’s made from leftovers .”

“God,” Vikar says, “was destroying the evidence.”

“So maybe what you’re looking for was in the real movie.”

“But this is the one I saw,” Vikar says, pointing at the canisters on the curator’s desk. “Where is the real film?”

“That’s what I’m telling you. It doesn’t exist.”

“No,” Vikar says, “it exists.”

“Well, then, Mr. Jerome, you know something the rest of us don’t.”

91.

Zazi says, “Where are you going?”

“I’ll be back soon.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I promise I won’t be gone long.”

“Is this like a work thing or something?”

“It’s like that.”

“A movie thing?”

“It’s like that.” He says, “Come with me.”

“When did this happen?” she says with evident anger. “All of a sudden you’re leaving?”

He says, “When you say it, it sounds like a long time.”

“I can’t go with you. I have gigs, studio time,” she says irritably. She throws up her hands. “Hey, I know I just threw myself into your life. So.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I know it’s because you promised Mom.”

“That’s not all.”

“Whatever,” she says, and gets up from the kitchen table. There’s no tuna sandwich to throw. She vanishes down the stairs.

“I hate traveling,” Vikar says to the empty living room. “It’s always too far from Hollywood.”

90.

In the Air France terminal, Vikar slumps to sleep just long enough to be awakened by the boarding announcement. Flying overnight, he always feels like he’s not really going anywhere. He sleeps little of the eleven hours. For a reason he doesn’t understand, he finds himself compelled to draw on a sketch pad he bought in the terminal, over and over from memory, a picture of the model church he built at Mather Divinity, which now seems long ago.

89.

At Orly the next afternoon, he realizes he’s never gotten off an airplane when there wasn’t a driver and car to take him where he was supposed to go. Outside the terminal he stands staring at the cabs for ten minutes before he flags one. “Paris,” he says to the cab driver. The cab driver says something back and Vikar keeps saying, “Paris,” and the cab driver keeps arguing with him, gesturing some incomprehension. Finally Vikar says, “Cinématèque Française,” and when the driver still doesn’t understand, Vikar writes it down.