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Authors: Michael Kelly
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the front door she hears the sound of someone moving around heavily in the treatment room. She looks at the skeletal frames on display in the racks, the uncomfortable straight-backed chair and the side-table that has no magazines on it. Perhaps she should tell someone that she has collected the glasses. The noise in the treatment room stops. Which would be worse, she wonders: opening the door and seeing no one or finding somebody there?
Even objects he knows to be hard-edged are indistinct. The hotel staff, from Poland, Lithuania and the Tamil-speaking tip of southern India, hover as they walk, their white-sleeved arms blurred like the wings of hummingbirds. The auteur can’t read his newspaper, which lies folded on his lap. He is waiting in a fudge-coloured leather armchair in the residents’ lounge. His niece has agreed to fetch his glasses (he is shaky, a delayed reaction to his fall) from the optician’s and then meet him for lunch. What troubles him most is that he remembers neither the second half of his eye examination nor choosing his frames—or his return to the Acme Hotel. His first recollection is waking in the middle of the night and knowing he has been dreaming about the alphabet: black letters, like those on the treatment chart, swirling in a space as white as snow.
At first light, he wakes up, with a sentence half-formed on his tongue.
A message has been left at the reception desk. His new glasses are ready for collection. Has he already paid the optician? He cannot remember having done so. But now the swing doors of the residents’ lounge open and a figure in a blue dress advances (even in the soft world there is a familiarity about her flowing movements) towards him.
He rises and they kiss. (A perfume he doesn’t recognize).
“Have you got my . . .”
“Yes, they are here.”
He takes his spectacles and puts them on. The residents’ lounge takes a pace sideways. He sees the silvery wires in his niece’s blonde hair, scuffed leather on the arms of the sofa; the pattern on the carpet sets in sharply delineated surroundings.
“Do I owe you anything?”
“I don’t think so. There was no one there to pay, but since there wasn’t a bill I assume you must have paid already. Can’t you remember?”
“I’ve told you—it’s all a bit hazy.”
As they walk towards the dining room, he remembers the scene in the waterfall: his eighteen-year-old son naked with his niece, the patches of glistening light on their slippery flesh, the sun picking out streaks of lemon and ash in their hair. Their dancing steps in the brilliant white water foaming about their feet. That was the first of his films to be shot in colour. It had something of the freedom of the times, he thought. But later, when his reputation declined, the critics claimed there were scenes that marked his transition from film-maker to pornographer. Such snobs! Why was it that black-and-white had this curious kudos? And as for those people who couldn’t distinguish simplicity of vision and candour from pornography. . .
The
maitre d’
fussing with the chairs. Two enormous menus and a wine list. Would they like bread and jug of iced water? Olives, perhaps?
“And so he’s refusing to meet up tomorrow?” the auteur asks.
“I wouldn’t put like that. It’s simply not possible. He has other engagements.”
“Ah, I see he’s punishing me for not turning up yesterday. Didn’t you explain to him how badly I was shaken? Since I’ve come all the way from Paris to meet him, I want to be on reasonable form.”
“He’s not trying to punish anyone. And he’s had to fly from America.”
The auteur remembers the ten-year-old who lurked outside his study when he was trying write. Always a creak of the floorboards or a tentative knock at the door just when the words had begun to flow. Of course, it was understandable. So much time had to be spent away, on location or talking to potential backers. And of course, the boy loathed
Even objects he knows to be hard-edged are indistinct. The hotel staff, from Poland, Lithuania and the Tamil-speaking tip of southern India, hover as they walk, their white-sleeved arms blurred like the wings of hummingbirds. The auteur can’t read his newspaper, which lies folded on his lap. He is waiting in a fudge-coloured leather armchair in the residents’ lounge. His niece has agreed to fetch his glasses (he is shaky, a delayed reaction to his fall) from the optician’s and then meet him for lunch. What troubles him most is that he remembers neither the second half of his eye examination nor choosing his frames—or his return to the Acme Hotel. His first recollection is waking in the middle of the night and knowing he has been dreaming about the alphabet: black letters, like those on the treatment chart, swirling in a space as white as snow.
At first light, he wakes up, with a sentence half-formed on his tongue.
A message has been left at the reception desk. His new glasses are ready for collection. Has he already paid the optician? He cannot remember having done so. But now the swing doors of the residents’ lounge open and a figure in a blue dress advances (even in the soft world there is a familiarity about her flowing movements) towards him.
He rises and they kiss. (A perfume he doesn’t recognize).
“Have you got my . . .”
“Yes, they are here.”
He takes his spectacles and puts them on. The residents’ lounge takes a pace sideways. He sees the silvery wires in his niece’s blonde hair, scuffed leather on the arms of the sofa; the pattern on the carpet sets in sharply delineated surroundings.
“Do I owe you anything?”
“I don’t think so. There was no one there to pay, but since there wasn’t a bill I assume you must have paid already. Can’t you remember?”
“I’ve told you—it’s all a bit hazy.”
As they walk towards the dining room, he remembers the scene in the waterfall: his eighteen-year-old son naked with his niece, the patches of glistening light on their slippery flesh, the sun picking out streaks of lemon and ash in their hair. Their dancing steps in the brilliant white water foaming about their feet. That was the first of his films to be shot in colour. It had something of the freedom of the times, he thought. But later, when his reputation declined, the critics claimed there were scenes that marked his transition from film-maker to pornographer. Such snobs! Why was it that black-and-white had this curious kudos? And as for those people who couldn’t distinguish simplicity of vision and candour from pornography. . .
The
maitre d’
fussing with the chairs. Two enormous menus and a wine list. Would they like bread and jug of iced water? Olives, perhaps?
“And so he’s refusing to meet up tomorrow?” the auteur asks.
“I wouldn’t put like that. It’s simply not possible. He has other engagements.”
“Ah, I see he’s punishing me for not turning up yesterday. Didn’t you explain to him how badly I was shaken? Since I’ve come all the way from Paris to meet him, I want to be on reasonable form.”
“He’s not trying to punish anyone. And he’s had to fly from America.”
The auteur remembers the ten-year-old who lurked outside his study when he was trying write. Always a creak of the floorboards or a tentative knock at the door just when the words had begun to flow. Of course, it was understandable. So much time had to be spent away, on location or talking to potential backers. And of course, the boy loathed
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