Celluloid Afternoon

In a svelte city of coffeehouses, bridges, and boulevards, there stands an old cinema with a tall, skinny electric sign that once blazed.

 

In the lobby there stand a popcorn machine, a rotating glass pizza baker, and a row of colorful candy dispensers. On the walls are glossy posters for Super Size Me and Fahrenheit 9/11.

 

It is 2004, but – as though it possesses a recalcitrant spirit of its own – the physical structure of the theater does not acknowledge this.

 

An adolescent girl sits in the back rows, cloaked in the shadow of the balcony. She sees looping wires that snake up the walls, past several missing panels. The high ceiling is lost in darkness, from which ageless red velvet curtains cascade to the floor: the sexy, elegant dress donned 80-some-odd years ago, and never relinquished. The gussied-up date that got stood up and never lost the scars.

 

Hiply dressed guests arrive in waves, pointedly choosing seats at least ten feet from any strangers. A clutch of five students wears thick black glasses and stridently discusses Buster Keaton. If anyone notices the girl, none of them stare. None of them can be bothered to monitor her.

 

That's nice for a change, she thought. Probably for the best… could be someone I know.

 

She reconsiders the notion that anyone she knew would dare step into a place like this. She laughs to herself.

 

The darkness descends and covers everything. The UFA logo flickers across the screen and bodiless organ music leaps up. The girl can no longer see her own hands in her lap, but as a pinprick of light opens on a wintry, colorless garden, an onlooker would see the girl's pale face turned up to the screen, her eyes filling with wonder.

 

She came because of the playbill: The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. The tale of a sinister old man who travels the German countryside, showing off a fortune-telling somnambulist at town fairs, always leaving a string of murders in his wake. The girl had been delving deeply into Tim Burton's oeuvre for months now, and in her ad hoc exploration of films that her matronly Mormon supervisors would certainly deem unfit for her tender eyes, Caligari was the next step.

 

 In the garden, two men huddle on a bench; the young man whispers his tragic story to his gray elder. Without warning, the woman the young man had once hoped to make his wife glides past in a pure white sheath. Her eyes are deep, dead black pools; she sees nothing. The boy gazes at her with bated breath, his feverish eyes yearning at her. The tempest of his face and the pungency of his pure feeling, completely lost on the woman he desires, instead flow out of their celluloid prison – trapped there ninety unbridgeable years ago – and straight into the Mormon girl's heart.

 

In the little half-timbered village of Holstenwall, the houses and lampposts twist into tortuous shapes. Men in suits and derbies and women in coats and cloches clamor at the carnival, where a hunched man with lingering eyes cranks a hurdy-gurdy and feeds the vested monkey on his shoulder. The man who calls himself Caligari, with a cape and top hat and unpleasant smile, waves innocent men and women into his tent, urging them to inquire of his entranced man about their futures.

 

And then… those eyes. Large, clear, piteous, and pleading. The Mormon girl has never seen magnetic eyes before, and these are magnetic as no other pair has ever been. Vulnerable, feminine, empty of agency.

 

Poor little Cesare, wisps up from her subconscious like smoke. She thinks he is as beautiful as every man and woman that ever lived.

 

From his silhouette against a bedroom wall, she sees him raise a huge knife and murder a student whose death he had predicted the day before.

 

It was clear to the Mormon girl that Cesare remained in the thrall of forces larger than himself. She imagined the sensitive, artistic part of his soul chained up in a deep, damp cellar, guarded in the cigarette light by a jowly, bitter old schemer.

 

 She is enamored of every wide-eyed stare, every gasp from black-painted lips cleft into statuesque faces, every trembling white hand… all beautiful artifacts from the lives of once-people, who now can only stare back from the celluloid and yearn for sound to come out of their mouths when they scream.

Dark Night of the Soul

 She sat on the dingy bus, feeling sleepy and cold under the yellow fluorescent tube lighting. Outside, an amorphous black suburban landscape rolled past, the only significant lights belonging to strip malls. Her mind for the moment empty of interesting thoughts, the girl kept a side eye on the grizzled homeless man who sat too near to her. She kept a firm grip on the outward signs of her anxiety.

 

When she stepped off the bus and began trekking home up vaulting hills of McMansions, she stared at uneven patches of darkness in the shrubbery and kept her ears open for rustling.

 

Trotting up the steps to her house, she retrieved the key from her pocket, and relaxed the first few levels of her frantic awareness.

 

The television quacked and the house smelled like Tex Mex. The fluorescent light from the kitchen was white and clean. She wanted to race up the pink-carpeted stairs, to swaddle herself in the warm envelopment of bed, and to think about the beautiful things she had seen. But first, she had to present herself.

 

Children squealed at the sound of the shutting door, and attacked the girl. Jaden and Jordan clamored at her waist for the mythical leftover cupcakes they were convinced she always possessed on Wednesday nights. Meanwhile, Jaylynn tugged at the doll in Jordan's cruel grip. Out of the pure white kitchen of strip lighting and pine-upholstered cabinets swayed the girl's mother, bouncing baby Jacob on her huge hip. The girl reflected with a sense of dread that her mother's hips seemed to take up half her body.

 

 "So, how was tonight? Did you all do something fun?" the woman asked.

 

The girl had prepared for this.

 

"We put together care baskets and took them to a bunch of people: Sister England, Sister Wyeth, you know… and Sister Thompson…"

 

"Oh, good…“ the woman cooed. “She is such a sweet spirit."

 

Sister Thompson had Downs Syndrome. The girl had wondered before why the women on whom her mother dropped this verbal kiss were usually overweight or developmentally disabled.

 

Yet the phrase did not belong to the girl’s mother, and the woman kissed with none of the snidery from which the phrase must have originally sprung; rather, she did it with all the sincerity of recitation.

 

“We talked to them for a while," the girl continued. "They told us we were lovely Daughters of God and bore witness to the peaceful spirit we brought into their homes."

 

There. That ought to do it, the girl thought.

 

Her mother's face broke into a smile, and her eyes got small and crinkly, like she was about to cry.  She often looked like this.

 

"That's wonderful. Did you have a good time?"

 

The girl thought seriously about this. She responded truthfully.

 

"Yeah, I guess. I think I made a break-through."

 

Her mother's spidery mascara eyes widened towards her daughter mechanically, and her bubblegum pink lips stretched thin in a you-go-girl smile. The daughter remembered this expression of her mother's washing over her after she received her period for the first time.

 

"Wow. Keep up the good work, Jennifer. You'll find your place with the girls eventually."

 

Jennifer's mother swiveled on her pelvic axis and swayed back to the kitchen to feed Jacob. Jennifer climbed the stairs to the warm dark of the second floor bedrooms, lowering all of her defensive awareness. She felt a bit sick.

 

An hour later, after removing her make-up and contact lenses, showering, and brushing her teeth as she had obediently done three times a day for every day of her life, she knelt by her bedside. She tried harder and harder to penetrate the dark void, to feel something - anything at all - call back to her.

 

"Dear Heavenly Father," she whispered. "We thank thee for this day. We thank thee for our food and for family and for keeping us safe as we traveled home today. We thank thee for sending us the Gospel… well, not really, but… yeah, I guess so. Heavenly Father… I lied to my mother. But only because she wouldn't understand the truth…. or appreciate it. Do I have to repent for this?"

 

Jennifer scrunched her eyes even tighter, but saw only multicolored sparks in a muddy abyss. A chill ran up her spine, and she wanted to attribute it to the hand of the Holy Ghost, but as ever, she did not possess the confidence to conclude this.

 

How come everyone else always knows, and I can never tell?  What did I do wrong?  Maybe I was a bad person in the Pre-Existence.

 

I better repent, just in case.

 

OK, Step 1: feel remorse. Do I feel remorse for skipping Church activities to go see a weird movie? Well, kind of, but only because I knew the whole time I was doing something I wasn't supposed to. That counts, right? Yeah, it should – does anybody else get this technical when they're repenting? Step 2: confess to God. Well, I'm doing that right now. Step 3: ask God for forgiveness. Ditto. Step 4: confess to those you have wounded. Well, I can't do that! She'd never let me out of the house again. And why should I tell her? The fact that I didn't go to Mutual won't hurt her if she doesn't know.

 

But then how do I pass off this step?

 

The question grew large in the silence around her, like the weighty philosophical enquiry that it was.

 

If lying to her mother was a sin worthy of repentance, then why was repenting for it so hard?  For crying out loud, repentance was a list of steps to pass off, like household chores. But it was easy to make her bed, empty the hamper, and vacuum the rec room… why was it so much harder to summon up remorse? To be a good girl and meekly give up her ticket to discovering something unusual…

 

…and insanely beautiful and worthwhile. Honestly, I feel like dancing, but nobody's gonna get up and dance with me. I don't get it.

 

Look at how screwy you are, Jen: you can't even get yourself to do the right thing this time… 'cause the right thing doesn't feel right. I guess I'm evil.

 

In the midst of her fevered reverie, Jennifer had ended up sprawled across her duvet.  She scrambled under the covers and curled into fetal position. She closed her eyes to welcome the sweet sleep.

 

It was then she remembered that she hadn't finished her prayer.

 

There is no way I'm leaving this warmth to kneel on the floor.

 

Gosh, Jennifer, you're just racking up the unworthiness points tonight, aren't you?

 

She contemplated her predicament for a long moment, before moving her lips softly while still in bed: "And I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

The Sunday Reckoning

 In a small, square room, a circle of demure figures sat on metal folding chairs. Each clasped her hands in her small lap, or placed her palms on each thigh. Slim legs were shaved immaculately, and bare knees kissed each other chastely. They were a flurry of white cup-sleeved tops and powdery pink-and-blue skirts.

 

Sister McCall, Jennifer's Mia Maids teacher, had just posed the following question as a thought exercise: who is a role model for you? Who do you admire?

 

Megan giggled her answer, like a guilty child, blushing and twisting her fingers. "My mom…"

 

"Yeah, my mom, I guess," Carly acquiesced.

 

"Mom."

 

"Mom, too."

 

"Well, Orlando Bloom is pretty hot," Kelsey drawled.

 

The circle of mice tittered nervously. A key buttress of Sister McCall's grin buckled.

 

"But if we're talking about role models…" Kelsey amended, "I guess it would be my mom. Yeah."

 

All eyes flicked to Jennifer, and stared baldly. The girls' eyes and teeth, Sister McCall's lips, and the dangling drops at the woman's ears glistened at Jennifer under the blazing panel lighting. She felt like she was going under the knife and staring at the operating lamp above her.

 

Under such harsh light and scrutiny, Jennifer didn't feel brave enough to break the commandments and lie, as she had done to her mother.

 

"I– I just found out about this actor named Conrad Veidt. He's dead…"

 

At the mention of something so dark, Sister McCall's and Megan's faces moved into expressions that a little girl might make if someone ripped apart her favorite stuffed animal. Jennifer faltered; she'd caused them pain.

 

"…but he's really great," she finished lamely.

 

Sister McCall was now smiling brightly again, though her eyes blocked the smile's upward progression. She valiantly held that face for a good long moment, as if baring her orthodontia-perfect teeth would scare Jennifer’s awkwardness away. Sister McCall made no further inquiry of the girl, and her face flicked back to the group. Obediently, the other girls' laser eyes left Jennifer to examine her lacerations.

 

"Isn't that interesting?" Sister McCall sang. "The people we admire most are often rock stars or athletes!"

 

Jennifer opened her mouth to say something, but when some of the girls’ eyes flicked back in response to the movement, Jennifer shut it.

 

"But you are all Daughters of God," Sister McCall continued, "and He has placed special men on this earth to guide you on the path to heaven. God's prophets have been through everything you girls are experiencing right now in these tender years of your life."

 

Jennifer wanted to blush furiously and cry at the same time, because she hated when adults fondled her body with their words: their voices either 100 years old, greasy, and male... or wailing, 10 years old, and female. Inwardly, Jennifer cried madly that Sister McCall was a grown woman but so, so wrong.

 

"Listen to their counsel, and you will be blessed," Sister McCall admonished. "Now, don't you think such great men are worthy of our admiration and attention?"

 

But they're so dull! Jennifer blurted, but only within the safety of her unobserved mind.  How could I possibly admire Gordon B. Hinckley or Boyd K. Packer over true artists?

 

Whenever they speak in General Conference, I don’t remember anything they said, afterwards…. I've learned nothing from those old men… I'm so stupid.

 

But it's not my fault! You know, I bet they personally trained their voices to be the most boring thing they could produce.

 

It feels so much better to go see Conrad do his magic in the dark, secretly, with no one else to judge me. I guess it makes sense that temptation appeals more to me than doing the right thing. That's pretty much what Satan's famous for, right?

 

Why does doing the wrong thing feel so right? I think I could do it forever and eventually get rid of my feelings of guilt. If it's truly wrong, then I shouldn't be able to do that, right?

 

For the remainder of Sister McCall's lesson, Jennifer was lost in dreams of red velvet curtains, mysterious worlds hidden in reels of black and white film, and the eyes of the magic man.

 

She planned her next visit to the cinema. This time, she thought she might walk into the coffeehouse across the street and order a drink. Maybe Satan himself would pop out of her mug and eat her. Or maybe, as she was beginning to suspect… it would just be an ordinary drink.

 

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 31.08.2015

Alle Rechte vorbehalten