Michael Gruber - The Book of Air and Shadows

“They were paranoid?” offered Crosetti. “Maybe they thought that the people they were after could open mail too.”

Klim shook his head, making his white crest wobble amusingly. “I do not think that is possible. Spies create secret messages, they do not decipher them. Ciphers and codes are used by governments only when they think other governments will read them. This cipher we have here-it is difficult to use, yes? Every letter must be enciphered by hand, and by a key that is quite laborious to generate. Why not simply write it in clear and give to royal messenger?”

“I know why,” said Mary Peg, after a wondering silence from the party. The men looked at her, the older with delight, the younger with dubiety, who said, “Why?”

“Because they weren’t working for the government. They were plotting against the king and his policies. Didn’t you read all that business in Bracegirdle’s memoir about the Catholic match for the prince and how they were going to get King James to turn against the Catholics even more than he was already? I mean that was the point of all of it. They were going to destroy the theater and discredit the pro-Catholic policies in one blow. They couldn’t let anyone in the king’s party or administration find out what they were doing, and so they had to use this powerful cipher.”

After some discussion, they agreed that this interpretation made good sense. Klim was particularly generous in his admiration. Mary Peg modestly attributed it to her Irish upbringing, in which she learned to look for the utmost in deviousness and perfidy among the English. Crosetti was impressed too, but not surprised, having been raised by the woman; but he was pleased to see that it had won the admiration of a secret policeman trained by the KGB. By that stage, the large jug of Californian red that had begun the evening nearly full was nearly empty. The talk now turned rather drunkenly to films. Klim told some Kiéslowski anecdotes, giving Crosetti fodder for any number of saloon conversations, after which Crosetti asked what Klim thought of Polanski. Klim sniffed, pulled thoughtfully at the tip of his nose, and said, “I cannot like him. I am not a friend of nihilism however beautifully done.”

“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think? You said before that you thought Zanussi was too religious. Religion or lack of it isn’t the point. He’s a great director. He can tell a story on the screen with vivid characters and terrific pacing and mood. It’s like saying that if you like Rosemary’s Baby , you’re on the side of the devil.”

“Are you not?”

Crosetti was about to launch into an exposition of the pure aesthetics of film, but this answer to what he had imagined was a purely rhetorical statement checked him. He looked at Klim to insure that the man was serious, at his pale blue eyes, which certainly were, serious as fate. Klim continued, “If film or any art for that matter has not some moral basis then you might as well look at flickering patterns, or random scenes. Now I do not say what is this moral basis, only that there should be one. Pagan hedonism is a perfectly acceptable moral basis for a work of art, for example, as in Hollywood. Domestic bliss. Romance. It does not have to be…what is the word? Where the villain always dies and the hero gets the girl…”

“Melodrama.”

“Just so. But not nothing . Not the devil laughing at us, or not only that.”

“Why not? If that’s the way you see the world.”

“Because then art suffocates. The devil gives us nothing, only he takes, takes. Listen, in Europe, in last century, we decide we will not worship God anymore, instead we will worship nation, race, history, the working classes, what you like, and as a result of this everything is totally ruined. And so they said, I mean the artists said, let us not believe anything but art. Let us not believe, it is too painful, it betrays us, but art we trust and understand, so let us believe at least in that. But this betrays too. And also, it is ungrateful for life.”

“What do you mean?”

Klim turned to Mary Peg with a smile that quite transformed his face, showing her a faded image of the man he was when he knew Kiéslowski. “I did not expect to talk of such things. We should be in smoky café in Warsaw.”

“I’ll go burn some toast,” said Mary Peg. “But what did you mean?”

“So…this Polanski. He has had a horrid life. He is born at just wrong time. He is a Jew, his parents taken to death camps, he grows up wild. He makes success through hard work and talents and marries beautiful wife, and she is killed by some madman. Why should he believe anything but that devil rules this world? But I was born somewhat earlier in same time, not a Jew but still, life was not so happy for Poles either, the Nazis thought we were almost so bad as the Jews, and so I say I was, if not same as Polanski, at least, you agree, in the same class. Father murdered by Nazis, mother killed in uprising, 1944, I am on streets, a baby cared for by my sister, she is twelve years old, my first memory is burning corpses, a pile of bodies in flames and the smell. How we survived I don’t know, a whole generation of us. Later, I should add, like Polanski I lost my wife, not to a madman but also tortured to death, months of it. I was by that time not very well in with the authorities and it was difficult to obtain morphia for her. Well, not to talk about these personal troubles. I meant to say, after the war, somehow, despite the Germans and the Russians, we look around and discover there is still life in us. We learn, we make love, we have children. Poland survives, our language lives, people write poetry. Warsaw is rebuilt, every brick, same like before the war. Miloscz wins Nobel, Szymborska wins Nobel, and one of us is pope. Who could imagine this? And so when we make art, this art most often says something more than, oh, poor little me, how I have suffered, the devil is in charge, life is trash, we can do nothing. This is what I mean.”

Crosetti considered this statement as much as he could, which was not very much, because he was an American and he wanted to make movies and sell them and he thought he had to at least be a tourist in the dark country. Suffering, nihilism, the devil laughing, all that Polanski stuff was a necessary spice, like oregano, not something you were expected to make a meal from. What he admired in the Poles was the competent surface, the camera movements, the way a face was lit, the way the camera dwelled upon a face.

After a pause, he said, “So, anyway, do you want to watch some films?”

“Not Chinatown please!” said Mary Peg.

“No. We’ll watch moral art,” said her son. “We’ll have a John Wayne festival.”

So they did. Crosetti owned nearly five hundred DVDs and several hundred videotapes and they started with Stagecoach and proceeded to hit the highlights of the Duke’s career. Mary Peg crashed halfway through She Wore a Yellow Ribbon , her head drooping against Klim’s shoulder. When the film was over, they settled Mary Peg on the couch with a blanket over her, turned off the set, and went back to the kitchen. Crosetti reflected that this was the first time in his memory that his mother had missed seeing the Tonight Show , and this produced in him a good feeling, as if she had won some kind of prize.

“I too will go to bed, I think,” said Klim. “Thank you for a most interesting evening. I confess I have always liked the cowboy films. They are very soothing to me, like a lullaby when one is a child. Tell me, what do you intend to do about this cipher?”

Crosetti was startled by the change of subject and then recalled that his father had said it was an old cop trick to get the suspect off balance.