The Book of Illusions Read online

  I saw Scandal and Country Weekend in New York, then moved on to Washington for The Teller’s Tale and Double or Nothing. I booked reservations for the rest of the trip with a travel agent on Dupont Circle (Amtrak to California, the QE 2 to Europe), but the next morning, in a sudden burst of blind heroism, I canceled the tickets and opted to go by plane. It was pure folly, but now that I was off to such a promising start, I didn’t want to lose my momentum. Never mind that I would have to talk myself into doing the one thing I had resolved never to do again. I couldn’t slacken my pace, and if that meant seeking out a pharmacological solution to the problem, then I was prepared to ingest as many knockout pills as necessary. A woman from the American Film Institute gave me the name of a doctor. I figured the appointment would take no more than five or ten minutes. I would tell him why I wanted the pills, he would write out a prescription, and that would be that. Fear of flying was a common complaint, after all, and there would be no need to talk about Helen and the boys, no need to bare my soul to him. All I wanted was to shut down my central nervous system for a few hours, and since you couldn’t buy that stuff over the counter, his sole function would be to hand me a slip of paper with his signature on it. But Dr. Singh turned out to be a thorough man, and as he went about the business of taking my blood pressure and listening to my heart, he asked me enough questions to keep me in his office for three-quarters of an hour. He was too intelligent not to want to probe, and little by little the truth came out.

  We’re all going to die, Mr. Zimmer, he said. What makes you think you’re going to die on a plane? If you believe what the statistics tell us, you have a greater chance of dying just by sitting at home.

  I didn’t say I was afraid of dying, I answered, I said that I was afraid to get on a plane. There’s a difference.

  But if the plane isn’t going to crash, why should you be worried?

  Because I don’t trust myself anymore. I’m afraid I’ll lose control, and I don’t want to make a spectacle of myself.

  I’m not sure I follow you.

  I imagine myself boarding the plane, and before I even get to my seat, I snap.

  Snap? In what sense snap? You mean snap mentally?

  Yes, I break down in front of four hundred strangers and lose my mind. I go berserk.

  And what do you imagine yourself doing?

  It depends. Sometimes I scream. Sometimes I punch people in the face. Sometimes I rush into the cockpit and try to strangle the pilot.

  Does anyone stop you?

  Of course they do. They swarm all over me and wrestle me to the ground. They beat the shit out of me.

  When was the last time you were in a fight, Mr. Zimmer?

  I can’t remember. Back when I was a boy, I suppose. Eleven, twelve years old. School-yard stuff. Defending myself against the class bully.

  And what makes you think you’ll start fighting now?

  Nothing. I just feel it in my bones, that’s all. If something rubs me the wrong way, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself. Anything is liable to happen.

  But why planes? Why aren’t you afraid of losing control of yourself on the ground?

  Because planes are safe. Everyone knows that. Planes are safe, fast, and efficient, and once you’re up in the air, nothing can happen to you. That’s why I’m afraid. Not because I think I’m going to be killed—but because I know I won’t.

  Have you ever attempted suicide, Mr. Zimmer?

  No.

  Have you ever thought about it?

  Of course I have. I wouldn’t be human if I hadn’t.

  Is that why you’re here now? So you can walk off with a prescription for some nice, powerful drug and do away with yourself?

  I’m looking for oblivion, Doctor, not death. The drugs will put me to sleep, and as long as I’m unconscious, I won’t have to think about what I’m doing. I’ll be there, but I won’t be there, and to the degree that I’m not there, I’ll be protected.

  Protected against what?

  Against myself. Against the horror of knowing that nothing is going to happen to me.

  You expect to have a smooth, uneventful flight. I still don’t see why that should make you afraid.

  Because the odds are with me. I’m going to take off and land safely, and once I get to where I’m going, I’ll step off the plane alive. Good for me, you say, but once I do that, I spit on everything I believe in. I insult the dead, Doctor. I turn a tragedy into a simple matter of bad luck. Do you understand me now? I tell the dead that they died for nothing.

  He understood. I hadn’t said it in so many words, but this doctor had a delicate, sophisticated mind, and he was able to figure out the rest for himself. J. M. Singh, graduate of the Royal College of Physicians, resident internist at Georgetown University Hospital, with his precise British accent and prematurely thinning hair, suddenly grasped what I had been trying to tell him in that small cubicle with the fluorescent lights and the shining metal surfaces. I was still on the examining table, buttoning my shirt and looking down at the floor (not wanting to look at him, not wanting to risk the embarrassment of tears), and just then, after what felt like a long and awkward silence, he put his hand on my shoulder. I’m sorry, he said. I’m truly sorry.

  It was the first time anyone had touched me in months, and I found it disturbing, almost repulsive to be turned into an object of such compassion. I don’t want your sympathy, Doctor, I said. I just want your pills.

  He backed off with a slight grimace, then sat down on a stool in the corner. As I finished tucking in my shirt, I saw him pull out a prescription pad from the pocket of his white coat. I’m willing to do it, he said, but before you get up and leave, I want to ask you to reconsider your decision. I think I have an idea of what you’ve been through, Mr. Zimmer, and I hesitate to put you in a position that could cause you such torment. There are other methods of travel, you know. Perhaps it would be best if you avoided planes for now.

  I’ve already been down that road, I said, and I’ve decided against it. The distances are just too big. My next stop is Berkeley, California, and after that I have to go to London and Paris. A train to the West Coast takes three days. Multiply that by two for the return trip, then add on another ten days to cross the Atlantic and come back, and we’re talking about a minimum of sixteen lost days. What am I supposed to do with all that time? Stare out the window and soak up the scenery?

  Slowing down might not be such a bad thing. It would help to take off some of the pressure.

  But pressure is what I need. If I loosened my grip now, I’d fall apart. I’d fly off in a hundred different directions, and I’d never be able to put myself together again.

  There was something so intense about the way I delivered those words, something so earnest and crazy in the timbre of my voice, that the doctor almost smiled—or at least appeared to be suppressing a smile. Well, we don’t want that to happen, do we? he said. If you’re so intent on flying, then go ahead and fly. But let’s make sure you do it in only one direction. And with that whimsical comment, he removed a pen from his pocket and scratched out a series of undecipherable marks on the pad. Here it is, he said, tearing off the top sheet and putting it in my hand. Your ticket for Air Xanax.

  Never heard of it.

  Xanax. A potent, highly dangerous drug. Just use as directed, Mr. Zimmer, and you’ll be turned into a zombie, a being without a self, a blotted-out lump of flesh. You can fly across entire continents and oceans on this stuff, and I guarantee that you’ll never even know you’ve left the ground.

  By midafternoon the following day, I was in California. Less than twenty-four hours after that, I was walking into a private screening room at the Pacific Film Archive to watch two more Hector Mann comedies. Tango Tangle turned out to be one of his wildest, most effervescent productions; Hearth and Home was one of the most careful. I spent more than two weeks with these films, returning to the building every morning at ten sharp, and even when the place was closed (on Christmas and New Year’s Day
), I went on working in my hotel, reading books and consolidating my notes in preparation for the next stage of my travels. On January 7, 1986, I swallowed some more of Dr. Singh’s magic pills and flew directly from San Francisco to London—six thousand nonstop miles on the Catatonia Express. A larger dose was required this time, but I was worried that it wouldn’t be enough, and just before I boarded the plane, I took an extra pill. I should have known better than to go against the doctor’s instructions, but the thought of waking up in the middle of the flight was so terrifying to me, I nearly put myself to sleep forever. There’s a stamp in my old passport that proves I entered Great Britain on January eighth, but I have no memory of landing, no memory of going through customs, and no memory of how I got to my hotel. I woke up in an unfamiliar bed on the morning of January ninth, and that was when my life started again. I had never lost track of myself so thoroughly.

  There were four films left—Cowpokes and Mr. Nobody in London; Jumping Jacks and The Prop Man in Paris—and I realized that this would be my only chance to see them. I could always revisit the American archives if I had to, but a return trip to the BFI and the Cinémathèque was out of the question. I had managed to get myself to Europe, but I didn’t have it in me to attempt the impossible more than once. For that reason, I wound up staying in London and Paris much longer than was necessary—almost seven weeks in all, burrowed in for half the winter like some mad, subterranean beast. I had been thorough and conscientious up to that point, but now the project was taken to a new level of intensity, a single-mindedness that verged on obsession. My outward purpose was to study and master the films of Hector Mann, but the truth was that I was teaching myself how to concentrate, training myself how to think about one thing and one thing only. It was the life of a monomaniac, but it was the only way I could live now without crumbling to pieces. When I finally returned to Washington in February, I slept off the effects of the Xanax in an airport hotel, and then, first thing the next morning, collected my car from the long-term parking lot and drove to New York. I wasn’t ready to return to Vermont. If I meant to write the book, I would need a place to hole up in, and of all the cities in the world, New York struck me as the one least likely to wear on my nerves. I spent five days looking for an apartment in Manhattan, but nothing turned up. It was the height of the Wall Street boom then, a good twenty months before the ’87 crash, and rentals and sublets were in short supply. Eventually, I drove across the bridge to Brooklyn Heights and took the first place I was shown—a one-bedroom apartment on Pierrepont Street that had just come on the market that morning. It was expensive, dingy, and awkwardly designed, but I felt lucky to have it. I bought a mattress for one room, a desk and a chair for the other, and then I moved in. The lease was good for a year. It began on March first, and that was the day I began writing the book.

  2

  BEFORE THE BODY, there is the face, and before the face there is the thin black line between Hector’s nose and upper lip. A twitching filament of anxieties, a metaphysical jump rope, a dancing thread of discombobulation, the mustache is a seismograph of Hector’s inner states, and not only does it make you laugh, it tells you what Hector is thinking, actually allows you into the machinery of his thoughts. Other elements are involved—the eyes, the mouth, the finely calibrated lurches and stumbles—but the mustache is the instrument of communication, and even though it speaks a language without words, its wriggles and flutters are as clear and comprehensible as a message tapped out in Morse code.

  None of this would be possible without the intervention of the camera. The intimacy of the talking mustache is a creation of the lens. At various moments in each of Hector’s films, the angle suddenly changes, and a wide or medium shot is replaced by a close-up. Hector’s face fills the screen, and with all references to the environment eliminated, the mustache becomes the center of the world. It begins to move, and because Hector’s skill is such that he can control the muscles in the rest of his face, the mustache appears to be moving on its own, like a small animal with an independent consciousness and will. The mouth curls a bit at the corners, the nostrils flare ever so slightly, but as the mustache goes through its antic gyrations, the face is essentially still, and in that stillness one sees oneself as if in a mirror, for it is during those moments that Hector is most fully and convincingly human, a reflection of what we all are when we’re alone inside ourselves. These close-up sequences are reserved for the critical passages of a story, the junctures of greatest tension or surprise, and they never last longer than four or five seconds. When they occur, everything else stops. The mustache launches into its soliloquy, and for those few precious moments, action gives way to thought. We can read the content of Hector’s mind as though it were spelled out in letters across the screen, and before those letters vanish, they are no less visible than a building, a piano, or a pie in the face.

  In motion, the mustache is a tool for expressing the thoughts of all men. In repose, it is little more than an ornament. It marks Hector’s place in the world, establishes the type of character he is supposed to represent, and defines who he is in the eyes of others—but it belongs to only one man, and in that it is an absurdly thin and greasy little mustache, there can never be any doubt as to who that man is. He is the South American dandy, the Latin lover, the swarthy rogue with hot blood coursing through his veins. Add in the slicked-back hair and the ever-present white suit, and the result is an unmistakable blend of dash and decorum. Such is the code of images. The meanings are understood at a single glance, and because one thing inevitably follows from another in this booby-trapped universe of missing manhole covers and exploding cigars, the moment you see a man walking down the street in a white suit, you know that suit is going to get him into trouble.

  After the mustache, the suit is the most important element in Hector’s repertoire. The mustache is the link to his inner self, a metonym of urges, cogitations, and mental storms. The suit embodies his relation to the social world, and with its cue-ball brilliance shining against the grays and blacks that surround it, it serves as a magnet for the eyes. Hector wears the suit in every film, and in every film there is at least one long gag that revolves around the perils of trying to keep it clean. Mud and crankcase oil, spaghetti sauce and molasses, chimney soot and splashing puddles—at one time or another, every dark liquid and every dark substance threaten to smudge the pristine dignity of Hector’s suit. That suit is his proudest possession, and he wears it with the dapper, cosmopolitan air of a man out to impress the world. He climbs into it every morning the way a knight climbs into his armor, girding himself for whatever battles society has in store for him that day, and not once does he stop to consider that he is achieving the opposite of what he has intended. He isn’t protecting himself against potential blows, he is turning himself into a target, the focal point of every mishap that can possibly occur within a hundred yards of his person. The white suit is a sign of Hector’s vulnerability, and it lends a certain pathos to the jokes the world plays on him. Obstinate in his elegance, clinging to the conviction that the suit transforms him into the most attractive and desirable of men, Hector elevates his own vanity into a cause that audiences can sympathize with. Watch him flicking specks of imaginary dust from his jacket as he rings the doorbell of his girlfriend’s house in Double or Nothing, and you’re no longer watching a demonstration of self-love: you’re witnessing the torments of self-consciousness. The white suit turns Hector into an underdog. It wins the audience over to his side, and once an actor has achieved that, he can get away with anything.

  He was too tall to play an out-and-out clown, too handsome to act the part of innocent bungler as other comics did. With his dark, expressive eyes and elegant nose, Hector looked like a second-rate leading man, an overachieving romantic hero who had wandered onto the set of the wrong film. He was a grown-up, and the very presence of such a person seemed to run counter to the established rules of comedy. Funny men were supposed to be small, misshapen, or fat. They were imps and buffoon
s, dunces and outcasts, children masquerading as adults or adults with the minds of children. Think of Arbuckle’s juvenile rotundity, his simpering shyness and painted, feminized lips. Remember the forefinger that flies into his mouth every time a girl looks at him. Then go down the list of props and accoutrements that shaped the careers of the acknowledged masters: Chaplin’s tramp with the floppy shoes and ragged clothes; Lloyd’s plucky Milquetoast with the horn-rimmed specs; Keaton’s saphead with the pancake hat and frozen face; Langdon’s moron with the chalk-white skin. They are all misfits, and because these characters can neither threaten us nor make us envy them, we root for them to triumph over their enemies and win the girl’s heart. The only problem is that we aren’t quite sure they’ll know what to do with the girl once they’re alone with her. With Hector, such doubts never enter our mind. When he winks at a girl, there’s a better than even chance that she’ll wink back. And when she does, it’s clear that neither one of them is thinking about marriage.

  Laughter, however, is by no means guaranteed. Hector is not what you would call a lovable figure, and he is not someone you necessarily feel sorry for. If he manages to win the viewer’s sympathy, it is because he never knows when to quit. Hardworking and convivial, the perfect incarnation of l’homme moyen sensuel, he is not out of step with the world so much as a victim of circumstances, a man with an inexhaustible talent for running into bad luck. Hector always has a plan in mind, a purpose for doing what he does, and yet something always seems to come up to thwart him from realizing his goal. His films are fraught with bizarre physical occurrences, outlandish mechanical breakdowns, objects that refuse to behave as they should. A man with less confidence in himself would be defeated by these setbacks, but other than an occasional burst of exasperation (confined to the mustache monologues), Hector never complains. Doors slam on his fingers, bees sting him on the neck, statues fall on his toes, but again and again he shrugs off his misfortunes and continues on his way. You begin to admire him for his steadfastness, for the spiritual calm that comes over him in the face of adversity, but what holds your attention is the way he moves. Hector can charm you with any one of a thousand different gestures. Light-footed and nimble, nonchalant to the point of indifference, he threads himself through the obstacle course of life without the slightest trace of clumsiness or fear, dazzling you with his backpedals and dodges, his sudden torques and lunging pavanes, his double takes and hop-steps and rhumba swivels. Observe the thrums and fidgets of his fingers, his deftly timed exhales, the slight cock of the head when something unexpected catches his eye. These miniature acrobatics are a function of character, but they also give pleasure in and of themselves. Even when flypaper is sticking to the bottom of his shoe and the little boy of the house has just lassoed him with a rope (pinning his arms to his sides), Hector moves with uncommon grace and composure, never doubting that he’ll soon be able to extricate himself from his predicament—even if another one is waiting in the next room. Too bad for Hector, of course, but those are the breaks. What matters is not how well you can avoid trouble, but how you cope with trouble when it comes.