Ash Cinema Read online

ASH CINEMA

  edward j. rathke

  Copyright © 2012 by edward j. rathke

  (KUBOA)/SmashWords Edition

  www.kuboapress.wordpress.com

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  ONE

  --hurt left by those who care leaves a hole that only love fills--

  The darkness filled every corner and then skin shown too close. A cutaneous canvas smooth and devoid of features flown over. The topography of flesh cast in bold chiaroscuro and a face. The eye, nothing but. Closed. Opened. The pupil wandered, searched. Widening, a face, the face of a man. Shorn scalp and fine eyebrows, the only hair visible. Deep caverns for eyes and their movement disappeared, obscured by the shades. His face bloomed in the halflight, then withered to a forehead, nose, and chin. Shadows long. There was no movement then. A face invisible but a body grew in view. Emaciated, ribs peeked through the darkness, all corners, sharp elbows and knees, a long body origamied.

  Encased by a hole, the man sat and waited. For many minutes there was nothing but a cough and a readjusting of body parts, an attempt or three at comfort. Dirty and hairless and nude, the hole shovelled into the earth. The man looked up, his face bathed in light for a moment. Gone. A hand over the skin of his bare head, the sound grated through the silence. And silence set. And movement stilled. The man's face dropped in and out of light and dark, a battlefield around him between the shadows and the filtered light. Their movement and appearance followed no logic and disintegrated naturalism. The shadows grew like teeth, like a mouth, and swallowed first his head and reached down over his shoulders, but the light took back the arms and the crossed legs, then it flipped. The face shown bright, the extremities obliterated. Thin lips and a straight narrow nose etched from skeletal features. High cheekbones and a pointed chin on either side of cavernous cheeks that no light penetrated. Movement, closing in, following his skin once more from his right knee to his stomach and round him up his spine, each vertebrae cracking skin, to his neck. round and round, and slowly up swirling cyclically about his head at an increasing pace until there was only flashed brightness and dizzying darkness, and then the hole above, so far above, so bright above, and spinning still, but it slowed and then stopped and traced the wall of dirt, the shovelhead's force, the mark of human hands, of fingernails, of despair.

  Back to the man, the back of his head and downward to his back, the in and out of his breathing, the way his back expanded and contracted, and then shuddered violently and seized with a cough. He reached to scratch his back and the mechanisations of his physiognomy, sinew and bone so clear, scratching through the thin sheen of dissolving skin, so long since sunlight.

  Twist and his jaw chewed on nothing, chewed on dreams, on memories, a tooth fell from between his lips and then another and blood followed, but a hand to understand did not. It rolled down his chin and he spit. His eyes stared far as the blind away through the dirt inches from his face.

  Far away, at the top of the hole, perhaps, or in an adjacent hole, maybe, fingertips grazed piano keys, not in song, but in experimentation. Testing each sound, each key, drawing an audiographical map on his face. Each key punctured his expression, his deadeyes and absent chewing jaw raining teeth and rivers of blood.

  The body's in the seats shifted uncomfortably and murmurs pierced the illusion of celluloid. Hundreds of humans staring together at a large screen in the southeast of France in late May. The film continued but the crowd's impatience loomed. Twenty minutes of film already passed and nothing but a dirty bald frail man sitting in a dirthole. He did not move because there was no where to move, no room to do anything but sit, and so he sat, he coughed, he bled, his teeth fell, but nothing.

  Riveted to his seat, his eyes never fading beneath the screen's glare, an octogenarian sits between three women. To his left is a young asian woman who sits beside a middle aged caucasian with dark hair and a face that held onto its beauty. To his right sits another middle aged white woman, not as pretty, rugged and unrefined. All three women cried, the tears streaking the face they wore to the premier. His eyes remained dry but the fist in his throat choked. His breathless glassy gaze swallowed each and every instant lived on screen. Every moment of the man in the hole and the unbroken eye of the camera lens.

  The man there, on the screen, he stood and stretched. His penis dipped in and out of shadow revealing his jewish heritage. The war of shadow and light never ceased and violence escalated as the man's movement increased. A lightshow of absence and ablutions, of dissolution and absolution, carved into the skin by the chaos blaring from the piano, still far away or buried nearby, played as if by a child with wooden hands and glass eyes and metal ears. The camera connected to no time or geometrical boundaries moved as if tied to a serpent's head as it glided and spun, revolved and orbited, dived and soared.

  Halfway through the film the unrest of the humans turned intolerable and the man in his seat was torn for an instant from the man in the screen when heads disrupted the illusion. Bodies standing and walking and leaving, grumbled whispers, hisses, outright single syllable condemnations broke the sound and the man in the seat in the cinema in the southeast of France late in May during a film festival lost the thread that had woven round him. He watched them go, nodded, a frown pushed his lower lip over his upper, and then attention cut out the humans in the theatre and returned to the man in the screen in the hole in the past.

  For eighty seven minutes the film lasted. For eighty seven minutes the unbroken take lasted. For eighty seven minutes a man sat in a hole. When the credits rolled, the jeers struck, the boos, the hisses, the shouts of indignation, demanding why this lost film had not stayed lost. The three women beside the man still cried, whether from sorrow over the film or sorrow over the film's reception. The man returned to the world of the present when the humans erupted in anger and dismay. He looked around, nodded, frowned, pushing his lower lip over the upper, and pulled his hat low. He shook the hand of the young asian woman beside him, thanked her, his voice rattled, tears that did not come rang in his vocal chords, but she did not hear over the humans.

  He watched the postfilm interview with the asian woman, Miho Takitani. It lasted two minutes and one question: Who cares about Sebastian Falke?

  I do, she said, and walked off stage to much booing, hissing, and jeering.

  ***

  The man sat at the bar where no one spoke french but neither did they speak english. The jeers did not stop and the entire festival turned on the film that never should have been unburied. He drank two glasses of red wine and walked to the beach, wandering from encroaching violence. The sunset long past, the moon smiled, but not at him or for him. He steadied himself and slowly kicked off one shoe, then the other. He bent at the waist, reached out a hand to the shoes, gave up, and stood upright again, his breath shallow, his frown stuck to his face since the film ended. Loosening his tie, he walked to the shore. The sea danced over the sand and cooled his feet, a sigh dropped from his frown, eyes closed. The stars, numerous and luminous. One shined brighter than the others far away at the spot where sea and sky greet and meet each night and day.

  He stood there for minutes and then walked up and down the beach until midnight. A woman appeared beside him and his heart beat too hard when he noticed her watching him.

  She did not say anything but stood so close he felt the sadness of her life. It was the woman from the theatre, the unpretty one. He glanced at her, then the stars, her, stars, her, stars, sand, sea, stars, her. She watched, not him
, but the one star brighter than the others.

  That's him, she said, I know it.

  He looked at her and she looked back, his frown already in place. He averted his eyes but she did not, so he put his hands in his pockets and began to whistle.

  He whistled the song to an old film that he composed the music for. Another lost film about a young girl who carries the souls of the dead to the ocean.

  The woman began to whistle with him and he stopped, stared back at her, but she was lost to the stars once more, whistling a song he had written before she dreamt of being born, lost nearly as long. He studied her but there was no answer for him to the question he did not ask.

  He sat down with great effort, rolled up his trouser legs, and let the waves take them.

  Did you know him, she said when the whistling stopped.

  He frowned and nodded but she was not looking at him so he said Yes.

  She sat, put her arms around him, pressed her head to his shoulder. I miss him, she said. The tears crawled through the fabric of his suit and reached his aged skin. He put a palm to her cheek and patted it once.

  She helped him stand and his breath was gone. They walked, him through the waves, smiling, her on the beach, behind, crying, watching that one star.

  ***

  In his room he sat on his bed and tried to slow his breathing and heart. Unbuttoning his shirt, removing his tie, his stomach sagged over his belt and he left his shoes on the beach. He drank a glass of water and then another and then another, gasping, splashed some more on his face and ran a hand through the remainder of his hair and over the crags of his face. A desk provided, he sat, pulled open the drawer to find post-it notes.

  He looked around for a pen and saw it next to the bed. He frowned, his lower lip over his upper, and pushed himself up from the chair, his arms shaking. The pen retrieved, he pulled out the stack of post-it notes, his hands shaking, but not from apprehension or exertion.

  I saw you today. For so long you’ve been lost. They reacted the same today as fifty years ago. Was it ever so bad? Sebastian’s found a rare ability to offend and insult prestigious audiences even after so long dead. I miss you. Have missed you so long.

  He peeled it from the stack and placed it on the wall before him and read it over and over for five minutes, his hands supporting his head.

  The clock read 4:19.

  He lied down in bed but did not sleep until 5:41. He stared at the ceiling, at the walls, he cried for thirty eight minutes, rasped sobs that wrecked his chest and left him weak and frail beyond his too many years. He said two syllables aloud: Alec.

  When he fell asleep his pillow was still warm and wet from his tears, the ones he saved and carried inside since before anyone in that theatre with him had yet been born.

  He slept fitfully. Jostling with the sheets and wrapped up by them till his legs no longer kicked, body no longer turned, new tears, awake in cold sweat and pang burning in his chest, his neck, the back of his head. Sitting up, he put his face in his hands, the moisture and salt of tears caught in the folds, the crevasses of hanging skin.

  6:47, he left bed and dressed lightly. By 7:07 he stood with his feet in the sand again. Missed sunset but the sun still young clung low to the sea and reflected there, a brilliant photonic bridge that lead back centuries to where he lived a different life in a different world before film or death that lasted a lifetime. The moon still shown but smiled with translucence and retreated long before the fires smoldered. The beach not empty but with only a few.

  He did not look at the other humans but held onto the shine in the sea until a young asian woman stood beside him. Miho Takitani.

  Thank you so much for coming, she said, breaking him from his millennial stare. His eyes widened then narrowed and he frowned, raising one hand to block the sun to see her. Smooth skin and straight black hair.

  It means so much to me that you came.

  He nodded, the frown hiding his upper lip. She put a hand to his arm, squeezed, and he watched, his face betraying bemusement, then back to her face, tears in her blackeyes, a sorrowful porcelain. He placed his hand on hers, patted once, and both withdrew. He deeper to the beach, feet brushed by waves, she to take her first step in thirty years towards a future she denied, but the deed finished, she was left with only the option to follow a man long dead or begin anew for him.

  The octogenarian did not watch her go or know they parted at a crossroads that would define however many hours or years were left to her. He stood in the waves and listened. Echoes carried by the water brought sound across time and space. He shuddered, sweat covered him, a hand to his face, dizzy, eyes from meat to glass, a shattering sigh.

  ***

  Dust in stasis but growing, accumulating, always becoming more, nothing else. Beams of light peered through blinds and particles wandered the air like phantoms lost in a void looking for what they no longer remembered or smelt or tasted but only felt. Silence inside. The walls bare, the furniture sparse, the windows large but blind, a studio apartment with a kitchen, dirty, though never used. From the window rolled the waves from nowhere near France. Continents divided.

  The jingle of metal rolled on metal, of metal tapping metal, of grooves locking into grooves, and mechanisms turning. The door opened and air rushed out and air rushed in. Dust blown and sucked, a cyclone invisible to all but the light. He struggled with the keys stuck in the lock and pushed the door behind him but it did not close but he did not push it shut. He set his suitcase on his single bed and took out both suits, hung them in the closet, and returned the ties to their vacant places. The undershirts and underwear tossed into the hamper. Closing the suitcase with a sigh, he lowered, slow, and pushed it under his bed, arms a quiver, back groaning, and pushed back to a stand. He sat from exhaustion, from 5,000 miles, from twelve hours, and he left the fires of southeast France for the fires of home.

  6:29 became 8:48 before he moved, the growl in his stomach, the push of prostate on bladder, and he walked unbalanced to the toilet. Holding the bar installed beside the toilet, he took aim and dropped a stream that sputtered from him, his breath heavy and audible. His face reflected before him, he did not meet his eyes, which were not blue and were not green and were not grey but some color where all of these met, shook hands, and exchanged histories.

  The dying light turned the beach ghastly. Sharp rocks and hazardous teenagedom beyond where he stood watching the sun fall into the ocean. The ocean where the past meets the present to watch the future crumble. The ocean carries memories and death and they wander as vagabond reminisces in search of what they lost on the otherside of the great divide.

  He watched the fires start and the laughter echo into the echoes of all the new ghosts and new dead stumbling over the sand and rocks of this coast. He looked south to LA, a land of stars on earth to replace all the ones blotted out in the firmament. He did not see LA or the fires that began there, the inferno that turned fame to forgotten, actors to ash, directors to dust, and smut to soot. He did not see beyond the bend of the coast but more ocean, the ocean that ran south to different shores carrying different deaths to different echoes to different silent shouts.

  Shuffling in sand, each step a meditation, he watched his feet mingle with the sand. In the deadlight they were the same and he watched his body crumble into the dust as he sought the ocean with outstretched hands and dry lungs and empty cries.

  ***

  4:57 and he gave up on sleep after hours of shifting, readjusting, watching the inside of eyelids, the blank stares of walls. The walls breathed, the pipes beyond seethed, and all was still and silent but for the rustling of sheets and his tepid heartbeat. Four times he clutched his heart. Four minutes he fought tears. Fifty one minutes he gave into them and let the pain run from his eyes to stain the sheets. He whispered no names but his lips moved incessantly, a prayer, perhaps, or a memory.

  He showered from 6:11 until 6:42, the steam blinding, the heat scourging, the pain pleasant, the lines of his face longer
, the sag heavier, the eyes barely open, the breath came in fragments, the heartbeats in intervals.

  im here

  Written in the mirror but he did not see. Drying himself, he exited the bathroom and sat on his bed. A smell. The smell of a man, of oceanfires and futurerain. He shuddered, his spine threatened to collapse, to splinter, racked by sobs that assaulted his frailty. Eighty six years gone, his eighty seventh so full of tears. Not since fifty nine years before.

  He remained so for one hour and twenty eight minutes, sometimes staring into his hands, sometimes out the window, rolling in bed, shifting, the tears crawling from his eyes and rivering in all directions from the many canyons of his visage.

  ***

  The day progressed from the light running through his window. It covered his body in bed and reached the four walls of the apartment, the hunger pangs stronger, battling the gnawing pain only tears can cure, but he shivered, not from cold. Wiping his face, he dressed: slacks, grey shirt, white, tie, red, double Windsor, cufflinks, obsidian, sportscoat, camel. A fedora on his head, he exited the apartment.

  Salmon salad, water, then tea, chamomile. He tipped generously, tipped his hat to the staff who knew his name, who asked him about Cannes, who he hid what lied deep behind the irises of his eyes, smiles, come back soons, thank yous, and the jingle of the door opening and closing. The sun shaded by wisped clouds but bright somehow, he walked, directionless, habitual, up and down streets, a silent cry inside him bursting with the creak of each joint, the heat on his neck and lower back. He took out his kerchief, wiped his forehead, then neck, his breathing heavy from the incline of streets.

  On a hill overlooking a different beach, a fog descended, shrouding the meaning of waves and the call of celestial bodies unseen. The wind blew against his face drying the sweat and tears. He bellowed in the midst of mist. He screamed until his throat turned to glass and shattered in the wind swirling about him. He did not scream a name or a face or any word in any language he knew. He screamed and the lines of his face dug deeper, the canyons wider, the bags of his eyes heavier. His blood ran thin, his wheeze audible, his eardrums popped, the world in low register.