“It’s no use, no use. I can’t put it all back up before they come. I need so very much help I don’t know what to do.”
The old man leaves his hammer lying on the road and begins to walk with no direction, with no purpose, it seems, save that he is thinking to make one last round and take one last look at everything and say good-bye to whatever there is or was in this world to say good-bye to. And so he walks with the shadows all around and the shadows all through this land where time has grown late indeed, and the shadows are of all kinds and types and sizes, shadows of buildings, and shadows of people.
And he doesn’t look straight at them, no, because if he looked at them straight, they would all blow away. No, he just walks, down the middle of Piccadilly Circus . . .the echo of his steps . . . or the Rue de la Paix . . . the sound of him clearing his throat . . . or Fifth Avenue… and he doesn’t look right or left. And all around him, in dark doorways and empty windows, are his many friends, his good friends, his very good friends.
Far away there are the hiss and steam and soft whispering of a caffè espresso machine, all silver and chrome, and soft Italian singing . . . the flutter of hands in darkness over the open mouths of balalaikas, the rustle of palm trees, a touching of drums with the chimes chiming and small bells belling, and a sound of summer apples dropped in soft night grass which are not apples at all but the motion of women’s bared feet slowly dancing a circle to the chimes’ faint chiming and the belling of the tiny golden bells.
There is the munch of maize kernels crushed on black volcanic stone, the sizzle of tortillas drowned in hot fat, the whisk of charcoals tossing up a thousand fireflies of spark at the blowing of a mouth and the wave of a papaya frond; everywhere faces and forms, everywhere stirs and gestures and ghost fires which float the magical torch-colored faces of Spanish gypsies in air as on a fiery water, the mouths crying out the songs that tell of the oddness and the strangeness and the sadness of living. Everywhere shadows and people, everywhere people and shadows and singing to music.
Just that very trite thing—the wind?
No. The people are all here. They have been here for many years. And tomorrow?
The old man stops, presses his hands to his chest.
They will not be here anymore.
A horn blows!
Outside the barbed-wire gate—the enemy! Outside the gate a small black police car and a large black limousine from the studio itself, three miles away.
The horn blares!
The old man seizes the rungs of a ladder and climbs, the sound of the horn pushing him higher and higher. The gate crashes wide; the enemy roars in.
“There he goes!”
The glaring lights of the police shine in upon the cities of the meadow; the lights reveal the stark canvas set-pieces of Manhattan, Chicago, and Chungking! The light glitters on the imitation stone towers of Notre Dame Cathedral, fixes on a tiny figure balancing on the catwalks of Notre Dame, climbing and climbing up where the night and the stars are turning slowly by.
“There he is, Mr. Douglas, at the top!”
“Good God. It’s getting so a man can’t spend an evening at a quiet party without—”
“He’s striking a match! Call the fire department!”
On top of Notre Dame, the night watchman, looking down, shielding the match from the softly blowing wind, sees the police, the workmen, and the producer in a dark suit, a big man, gazing up at him. Then the night watchman slowly turns the match, cupping it, applies it to the tip of his cigar. He lights the cigar in slow puffs.
He calls: “Is Mr. Douglas down there?”
A voice calls back: “What do you want with me?”
The old man smiles. “Come up, alone! Bring a gun if you want! I just want a little talk!”
The voices echo in the vast churchyard:
“Don’t do it, Mr. Douglas!”
“Give me your gun. Let’s get this over with so I can get back to the party. Keep me covered, I’ll play it safe. I don’t want these sets burned. There’s two million dollars in lumber alone here. Ready? I’m on my way.”
The producer climbs high on the night ladders, up through the half shell of Notre Dame to where the old man leans against a plaster gargoyle, quietly smoking a cigar. The producer stops, gun pointed, half through an open trapdoor.
“All right, Smith. Stay where you are.”
Smith removes the cigar from his mouth quietly. “Don’t you be afraid of me. I’m all right.”
“I wouldn’t bet money on that.”
“Mr. Douglas,” says the night watchman, “did you ever read that story about the man who traveled to the future and found everyone there insane? Everyone. But since they were all insane they didn’t know they were insane. They all acted alike and so they thought themselves normal. And since our hero was the only sane one among them, he was abnormal; therefore, he was the insane one. To them, at least. Yes, Mr. Douglas, insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.”
The producer swears under his breath. “I didn’t climb up here to talk all night. What do you want?”
“I want to talk with the Creator. That’s you, Mr. Douglas. You created all this. You came here one day and struck the earth with a magical checkbook and cried, ‘Let there be Paris!’ And there was Paris: streets, bistros, flowers, wine, outdoor bookshops and all. And you clapped your hands again: ‘Let there be Constantinople!’ And there it was! You clapped your hands a thousand times, and each time made something new, and now you think just by clapping your hands one last time you can drop it all down in ruins. But, Mr. Douglas, it’s not as easy as that!”
“I own fifty-one percent of the stock in this studio!”
“But did the studio ever belong to you, really? Did you ever think to drive here late some night and climb up on this cathedral and see what a wonderful world you created? Did you ever wonder if it might not be a good idea for you to sit up here with me and my friends and have a cup of amontillado sherry with us? All right—so the amontillado smells and looks and tastes like coffee. Imagination, Mr. Creator, imagination. But no, you never came around, you never climbed up, you never looked or listened or cared. There was always a party somewhere else. And now, very late, without asking us, you want to destroy it all. You may own fifty-one percent of the studio stock, but you don’t own them.”
“Them!” cries the producer. “What’s all this business about ‘them’?”
“It’s hard to put in words. The people who live here.” The night watchman moves his hand in the empty air toward the half-cities and the night. “So many films were made here in all the long years. Extras moved in the streets in costumes, they talked a thousand tongues, they smoked cigarettes and meerschaums and Persian hookahs, even. Dancing girls danced. They glittered, oh, how they glittered! Women with veils smiled down from high balconies. Soldiers marched. Children played. Knights in silver armor fought. There were orange-tea shops. People sipped tea in them and dropped their h’s Gongs were beaten. Viking ships sailed the inland seas.”
The producer lifts himself up through the trapdoor and sits on the plankings, the gun cradled more easily in his hand. He seems to be looking at the old man first with one eye, then the other, listening to him with one ear, then the other, shaking his head a little to himself.
The night watchman continues:
“And somehow, after the extras and the men with the cameras and microphones and all the equipment walked away and the gates were shut and they drove off in big cars, somehow something of all those thousands of different people remained. The things they had been, or pretended to be, stayed on. The foreign languages, the costumes, the things they did, the things they thought about, their religions and their music, all those little things and big things stayed on. The sights of far places. The smells. The salt wind. The sea. It’s all here tonight if you listen.”
The producer listens and the old man listens in the drafty strutworks of the cathedral, with the moonlight blinding the eyes of the plaster gargoyles and the wind making the false stone mouths to whisper, and the sound of a thousand lands within a land below blowing and dusting and leaning in that wind, a thousand yellow minarets and milk-white towers and green avenues yet untouched among the hundred new ruins, and all of it murmuring its wires and lathings like a great steel-and-wooden harp touched in the night, and the wind bringing
