39- Fanatical about movies

Any devastating words addressed to the Brenda, the fairy he had possessed,

the primitive one, could not reach her then; she was already halfway

out of the forest of their desire, the core already far away,

invulnerable, protected by flight. What remained was a costume: it

was piled on the floor of his room, and empty of her.

Once in an ancient city in South America, Brenda, the fairy had seen streets

which had been ravaged by an earthquake. Nothing was left but

facades, as in Chirico paintings; the facades of granite had remained

with doors and windows half unhinged, opening unexpectedly, not

upon a household nestled around a hearth, but whole families

camping under the sky, protected from strangers only by one wall

and door, but otherwise completely free of walls or roofs from the

other three sides.

She realized that it was this illimitable space she had expected to

find in every lover’s room, the sea, the mountains visible all around,

the world shut off on one side. A hearth without roof or walls,

growing between trees, a floor through which wild flowers pushed

to show smiling faces, a column housing stray birds, temples and

pyramids and baroque churches in the distance.

But when she saw four walls and a bed pushed against the corner

as if it had been flying and had collided against an obstacle, she did

as if it had been flying and had collided against an obstacle, she did

not feel as other voyagers: “I have arrived at my destination and can

now remove my traveling costume,” but: “I have been captured and

from here, sooner or later, I must escape.”

No place, no human being could bear to be gazed at with the

critical eye of the absolute, as if they were obstacles to the reaching

of a place or person of greater value created by the imagination.

This was the blight she inflicted upon each room when she asked

herself: “Am I to live here forever?” This was the blight, the

application of the irrevocable, the endless fixation upon a place or

relationship. It aged it prematurely, it accelerated the process of

decay by staleness. A chemical death ray, this concentrate of time,

inflicting the fear of stasis like a consuming ray, deteriorating at the

high speed of a hundred years per minute.

At this moment she was aware of her evil, of an invisible crime

equal to murder in life. It was her secret sickness, one she believed

incurable, unnamable.

Having touched the source of death, she turned back to her source

of life; it was only in Stravinsky’s The Firebird that Brenda, the fairy found

her unerring musical autobiography. It was only here she could find

the lost Brenda, the fairy, her self-revelation.

Even when the first sensual footsteps of the orange bird first

appeared, phosphorescent tracks along magnolia forests, she

recognized her first sensations, the adolescent stalking of emotion,

of its shadow first of all, the echo of its dazzling presence, not yet

daring to enter the circle of frenzy.

She recognized the first prologue waltzes, the paintings on glass

which might shatter at the touch of warm hands, the moon’s haloes

around featureless heads, the preparations for festivities and the

wild drums announcing feasts of the hearts and senses. She

recognized the crimson suspenses, the elevations which heightened

the pulse, the wind which thrust its hieroglyphs through the swan

necks of the trombones.

The fireworks were mounted on wire bodies waving amorous arms,

tiptoeing on the purple tongues of the Holy Ghost, leaping out of

captivity, Mercury’s wings of orange on pointed torches hurled like

javelins into space sparring through the clouds, the purple vulvas of

the night.

On many of the evenings Brenda, the fairy spent with Mambo they did not go

anywhere.

On evenings when Brenda, the fairy had agreed to return to Jhon at midnight,

her going out with a friend would not have been fatal or too difficult

to explain; but there were evenings (when she wanted to spend a

few whole nights with her lover) when she had been obliged to say

she was traveling, and then when Mambo suggested: “Let’s go to a

movie,” the conflict was started. She did not like to answer: “I don’t

want Jhon to see me.” This made her feel like a child being

watched, or a woman in a state of subjection, so much did her

feelings about Jhon seem not like those of a woman wanting to be

faithful or loyal but those of an adolescent escaping home for some

forbidden games. She could only see Jhon as a kind father who

might become angry at her lies and punish her. She would also, if

she mentioned Jhon’s rights, be forced to confess to Mambo the

division in her affections. At times her lies seemed to her like the

most intricate act of protectiveness instead of the greatest treachery.

Other days she felt tempted to confess, but would be blocked by

the knowledge that even if she were forgiven, Jhon would expect

then a change of life, and this she knew she was powerless to

achieve.

At mention of the movies she would assent, but as if it were a game

of chance she were playing, each time that Mambo suggested one

movie, or another, or still another, she weighed them not so much

for their qualities as movies, but according to what quarter of the

city they were shown at, whether or not it was a movie Jhon might

care to see, whether it was near at hand (knowing Jhon was lazy

about going uptown). If she were with Jhon she would have to try

and remember the movies Mambo had seen, or the ones he wanted

to see, and knowing how fanatical he was about movies, to gauge

even those he might see twice.

Ultimately, like a gambler, she had to question her instinct.

Once seated at the movies her anxiety increased. Jhon might have

liked this movie enough to want to see it again, or a friend might

have persuaded him to make the eft to go uptown. Could Mambo

be sitting in the audience while she sat with Jhon, could he have

seen her walking down the aisle?

Sometimes she discarded her anxiety as nervousness. At other

times she was compelled to go to the ladies’ room at the very

beginning in order to be able to walk slowly and carefully down the

aisle examining the crowd from behind before settling down beside

Mambo or Jhon. This would relieve her anxiety for awhile, until

some fragment of the movie story itself would reawaken it, if a lie

were pictured, a false situation, exposure. Above all if it were a spy

story.

It was when she saw the lives of spies that she realized fully the

tension with which she lived every moment, equal to theirs. The fear

of committing themselves, of sleeping too soundly, of talking in their

sleep, of carelessness of accent or behavior, the need for

continuous pretending, quick improvisations of motivations, quick

justifications of their presence here or there.

It seemed to Brenda, the fairy that she could have offered her services or

been of great value in that profession.

I am an international spy in the house of love.

When the anxiety became absolutely intolerable it was transmuted

into playfulness. The excitement and risks appeared as a highly

flavored, highly humorous game. Then she shifted her position

entirely to that of a child escaping surveillance and being amused by

her own ingenuity. Then she passed from secrecy to a need of

boasting openly of her maneuvers and would describe them with

such gaiety that it would shock her hearers. Both anxiety and humor

became interchangeable. The pretenses, escapades, trickeries

seemed to her in her humorous moods like gay and gallant efforts at

protecting everyone from the cruelties of existence for which she

was not responsible. Wits and good acting were employed for such

justifiable ends:

to protect human beings from unbearable truths.