Friday, July 13, 2007

Logbook 10: Conversation and dialogue

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From behind her dressing screen, Felicity Hunter gave a sigh and then a long pause before answering.

"Denis," she started," You've posed an interesting question. Yes, I did have the coffee on the morning you mention, and yes, I did make the phone call you mention, but honestly, Denis, the rest doesn't ring a bell. Your coffee was perfectly hot -- and it usually cools to a distractive degree. But ... it's interesting, Denis; it was piping hot."

"And the artwork, Miss Hunter. Did you notice the artwork? Do you recall?"

"Oh, my yes. It was a lovely fern, like those on the banks of the lake, what do they call them, Denis?"

"A sword fern; the image of a sword fern, etched in white within the crema. It was JR's, ma'am. It was an excellent one! He wanted it perfect, for you."

"It was perfect -- a perfect latte from your marvelous coffee shop. Whatever else could matter, Denis? How did you say you sent it?"

It was an awkward moment. If I answered honestly I would be nattering to a beautiful and talented actress at Lake Eden's much-loved cultural center. "Whatever else could matter," that's for sure. Certainly not fantastic tales of molecular recurrence and prophetic cross-stitching and ancient Chinese hokus-pokus. I wanted to flee. Felicity seemed absorbed in her work. She adjusted her costume, turned left and right before the full-length mirror on her dressing room door, then examined her backside, her thin neck turned nearly half-revolution and her hair coiled incarnadine against it. She returned to her dressing table and touched up her makeup, then moved to her door. She spelled me of my fantastic tale.

"Come, Denis. They want to make some adjustments to the lighting. Come along. No wait -- the changes."

She called for a stage hand to bring her costume changes, and a stubby man with a fluffy mustache soon arrived. "Which ones, Miss Hunter?" he asked. "Oh, bring them all, Skenk. God only knows what these technicians will want." As Skenk gathered the costumes and hung them from a rod on a cart, we left the dressing room and walked the hallway behind the stage in silence, her dress swishing with her dainty strides and I a half-step behind like a puppy. We turned the corner and came to the stage left wing and entered the stage behind the scrim.

Lighting technicians aimed the suspended lights and adjusted the colors, turning them on and then off to test the scrim's transparency. As they worked Felicity chatted casually, like a factory worker who repeats motions on the assembly line. She was completely at ease. She asked me to move to the audience side of the empty theater and take a seat there, so the technicians could test the lights and we could talk. I was trapped.

"You've passed the Fourth Wall, Denis! How exciting! I stand behind the scrim and you sit in the first row. We communicate across an imaginary Great Wall, Denis! Now tell me about this business of the car -- what was it?"

"A 1927 REO Flying Cloud. It's a wonderful car, something like you've seen in a movie. Our neighbor, Ernie, said he could make the car move a lightning speed by invoking the incantations of a Chinese prophet named Chang."

I blurted it out like a child, on the one hand animated and enthused and on the other embarrassed and shy.

"How terribly interesting, Denis. You've all gone batty at the coffee shop. How wonderful! Is it the caffeine you sip all day? Perhaps I should switch to straight espresso!"

She spoke her words as if lines in a play, and the spot illuminated her indigo gown, and the bright colors played against the sharkstooth weave of the painter's scrim. Lights from above and in front of the curtain came on, and her image was obliterated while the lights played on the surface of the screen. When those were doused and the back lights came up, she was a silhouette, each curve of her fine figure disclosed and her full costume alive as a shadow. She moved as an apparition. The front lights rose, and all but her voice was gone.

"Well, dahling; it was perfect. I simply cannot get started without a hot latte. Beautiful is extra, and I love beautiful, too, Denis. Thank you for beautiful! It was beautiful. And an old jalopy delivering it -- I had no idea! Splendid, Denis! Splendid!"

"It's why I'm curious, Miss Hunter. The story is fantastic. It was Ernie's plan. He got the idea from a Chinese prophet who had a lightening-fast donkey!"

"Oh, that's lovely, Denis! A speeding donkey brings my latte each morning. A wonderful story, Denis! Let's have it that way each and every morning, love. Who needs an old jalopy?"

"We didn't have a donkey. All we had was Ernie's '27 Flying Cloud, but Ernie felt it would do. So we rigged the latte to the REO, Ernie said his incantation, and Christopher DeFarge set his prophetic cross-stitch needles to clacking. I know it's utterly fantastic, Miss Hunter, but the contraption began to move -- backwards! -- and then the phone rang, and it was you and you said you appreciated your piping hot latte. Do you think I'm mad, Miss Hunter?"

"Of course you're mad, Denis! Isn't it wonderful?!"

The front lights dimmed, and the technicians brought up the back lights. Felicity Hunter's beautiful curls were visible against her soft shoulders. She had changed her costume, now wearing an angular pants suit and top hat and carrying a slim cane. She rehearsed a dance step as the technicians maneuvered the lights. Her hair bounced as she stepped; she looked to me exactly like Rogers or Astaire.

"Good, Miss Hunter," a technician said through a loudspeaker. "Please try some lines."

"It reminds me of a play by the same name, Denis. Flying Cloud, by Ryan. It's a wonderful play, a one-woman play. She's a lonely actress who has only her stage. Here's what she says, Denis. George! George! I'm going to do some lines from that Ryan play, the Flying Cloud. Are you ready, George?"

"Ready, Miss Hunter. Whenever you are. Wait, let's try the scrim. Here ... here's the front." A bright yellow of primary shade came from above and Miss Hunter disappeared as if overwhelmed by sunlight. A spot projected a variety of shadow images against the curtain, first a shade tree and then a cityscape and then a mountain range. "OK, working fine," came the voice in the loudspeaker. "OK, here's the back..." The yellow front lights dimmed, and a soft green back light faded in. Miss Hunter had changed again, and now her silhouette was soft and round. She wore a country girl dress, bobby socks and her hair had apparently been tucked into a wig. She had pig tails. Her voice became deeper and vowels distinct. She recited these lines.

"We sailed a sky one summer day
As katydids from jasmine fields
Kissed an edge of snowy clouds,
We reached with gods at play.
Caught a puff on feathered tide;
Held a hand of time.
Laded thoughts on Flying Cloud
Where dreams alone reside."


A stage hand placed a wing-backed chair beside a drop leaf table, simple stage props for her leisure. Felicity Hunter removed her wig and fell into the chair whimsically. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, then pulled her right leg under her and leaned toward the empty theater. Lights behind the scrim came up slowly and the areas behind it were exposed. A technician tested images visible to me from where I sat. The misty patterns of clouds were to me very pleasing. I imagined a summer day, like the one she had spoken of in her lines.

"Denis, have you read the Quixote?"

"Cervantes? No, I have not. I've seen Picasso's drawing."

"There was a man invented by the Argentine, Borges, named Pierre Menard. He wrote the Quixote."

"No, Miss Hunter, I'm sure it was Cervantes."

"Pierre Menard wrote it the second time. He copied it word for word. An exact copy of Cervantes. Ha! Isn't that interesting, Denis? He copied the wondrous tale word for word!"

"Why?"

"An illustration, Denis. Or an illusion. When we experience something, we change it. The wise man said you can't go twice to the same river. Isn't it interesting, Denis?"

"Heraclitus."

"That's it, Denis! That's it! Heraclitus. What a wonderful Greek name, and perfect, like your latte, Denis!"

"Dad used to say that. He'd say, 'Nothing endures but change, Denis; you can’t step into the same river twice, 'cause by the time you step in and step out the water has run away and the river is different.' That's what Dad said. Then he'd take another job in some new city and we'd have to move. I hate change, Miss Hunter."

"He would move you around, just like that? How thrilling!"

"Always wanted a better job, Miss Hunter. Grass was greener. Mom left him because of it, and I finally ran away, too. I wanted a steady, dependable place, so I rode the rails until I came to Eden Hills. It was time for a change, and I found Lost Goat."

She leaned back. The stage crew lowered a backdrop as she raised her arms and clasped her hands behind her head. On the backdrop had been painted a gallery of men and women dressed in black against a clinquant background. Each mouth was an open oval, and each face otherwise blank. Each held a book like choristers. On the scrim was projected a goliath form, like a warrior. Then it vanished. In the long silence I let my eyes wander to the proscenium directly above, and the box seats to each side. Below me and easily visible was the orchestra pit, and I imagined a great kettle drum, oboes, horns and trumpets before a conductor who danced at the end of gleaming puppet strings. I heard only the rustling of scattered theater workers.

"Menard's version is infinitely richer," she said. "His notebooks were in his handwriting, not the printed words from some embossed book of the month. He burned them."

"Ma'am?"

"He burned his notebooks in a crackling bonfire by the river, his work and Cervantes' work in the same cloud of smoke, wafting over the flowing river that is never the same. Isn't it a wonderful thought, Denis?"

"It would have been better, and his work worthwhile if he had imagined it himself. What does it do to repeat another's thought?"

"He did imagine it himself. No one else had thought of it, Denis."

"But it's not a new thought. It's a stolen thought, someone else's thought. It's just plagiarism, Miss Hunter. It's worthless."

"Then why would he trouble himself to burn it, and why would Borges thought to have mentioned the bonfire? If it were unimportant, it wouldn't rate a story. It's like your latte tale, Denis. It's important because it actually ideaed. Is that a word, Denis? Is 'idea' a verb? Heavens -- how can a language have so many unhelpful words? No, it was an exquisite Idea, existing alone in Menard's brain and expressed in Menard's own handwriting. Borges said Menard's handwriting was like an insect. Isn't it a wonderful idea, Denis? Writing like an insect -- a spider, or a ladybug or the viscid meanderings of a garden slug -- splendid!"

She had lost me. I think now she was simply reciting lines from the play she mentioned, not telling me something. It made no sense to copy another's story. She had done this hundreds of times, saying passages someone else had written and not a thought inside her head, just memorized lines punctuated with affectations of emotion. I wanted music -- Honegger or Bartok from the stolid mouths of the choristers to bring the scene to life, but I heard only the distant steps of stage hands exiting the long hallway to my right.

"Miss Hunter, was Menard real?"

"Of course. Borges invented him."

"Then Menard was just a fiction, an invention, wasn't he? He created nothing. I can see that he only was an invention."

"Just an invention? Oh, Denis, you speak the unspeakable."

The theater was silent except for our voices. Only the lights remained, and the scrim with its projection, the chair and table which Miss Hunter used, and the backdrop of silent vocalists. I wondered if it was completed, probably just an unfinished part of the set, and I visualized the builders and artists working before it on ladders dripped with colors from hundreds of sets from thousands of plays, workers with busy brushes looking like Marceau in mime, coveralls growing bright with smudges and spills.