LENIN IN THE CINEMA

 

 

‘For us, the cinema is the most important of the arts.’

                                                                   V.I. Lenin

 

 

 

nother day at work. The drawing office. Wet Paris mornings, where everyone looks like someone else: someone important, someone alive or dead. I set up my work, use it to conceal my pleasure, my cartoon. Paris was the capital of revolutions, then of the cinema: then, for a little while that is perhaps not over, of the cartoon. Will a Lenin find the cartoon a revolutionary art? And rescue me? Set me up there with the big names, the recognisable faces – make history of me? I start my story: ‘The lion of the Amazon’ – too enigmatic. ‘The treasure of Xica da Silva’ – the slave who made a fortune. Or shall I identify too much? And yet, for the Amazon, we need a queen, an Amazonian, Brazilian knockout, like young Xica.

‘Millions of heads, like black peppercorns, or matchsticks with dobs of red, of white, phosphorous. Bands with American tubas – their heads swaying like pythons’. Security men in Ray-Bans, feeling suspect bulges among the crowd: “Hey, man, what you carrying here, a Magnum?”

‘“Hey, right man, you right. That’s what I carrying.”

‘Gathered here in the name of the ballot and. the unity of the species, on the banks of this 32-lane freeway, inaugurating the first lady president of the hemisphere, an enthusiastic lesbian, not yet 24. Photo xeroxed, pasted on thousand-dollar bills and scattered to the crowds.

‘What enthusiasm! Here a guy selling cans of Bud, knocked down and trampled. There a small landslip slides a samba group down and out, into the headlines. Union of Brazil and Argentina, Brazentina: continental euphoria.

‘She sits up there, surrounded by her Amazons, all newly promoted general, and every one a samba queen. All ready for the hunt, beautiful black and white skins setting off the golden braid, little bows and arrows stolen from the Indians – a double row of cheesecake cupids. All ready for the hunt, across the sierra, across the pampas, into the rain forests, ready for the hunt... ’

I can’t focus, the picture fades. Xica da Silva came here, in her short real life, came to Paris. After her, but not because of her, the revolution. The director of my first, real job comes in. He has a famous face, an unenviable one. You say at once: ‘Aldo Moro’. Aldo Moro has been a cadaver for ten years, but already he is looking better. He was – he is – a true saint in sheep’s clothing, but as clever as he’s devout. Eating his madeleine, he looks like Mrs Sheep in her shop. Being dead doesn’t mean too much to him – no doubt he thinks that this is heaven. Ever-pressing fear of hell, already he has his sinners and his devils courting him. He’ll put in a word for them, they think, and rip them off a touch as well: himself he did not save. I slide away, from hierarchies here, and I’m back, back on the drawing board, back in Brazil.

‘The lady president abolishes sex and dissent for the duration of the hunt. Electronically, the votes against her are transformed into positive ones. She and all her company take a vow of chastity. All other world leaders follow suit – except the pope, who institutes a regime of non-stop orgies. To prepare herself spiritually, the queen-slave­president goes down to hell. It looks like Milwaukee. She is a beautiful glass flower.’

I break away from my narcissism, and watch the director in his office. Moro is praying again. The phone rings. He speaks to it. He hangs up, but continues conversing. I see he has the porter, a baggy Gorbachev, in a corner of the room. He is berating Gorbachev for bullying behaviour in the elevator. He says there have been complaints, and Gorbachev is sweating, accusing his enemies among the neighbours. Moro is unyielding, but in the end, with his little smile, he yields. Gorbachev barges his way down the corridor, and pushes his way into the lift. He ignores poor Ronnie Reagan, who is collecting our bets on the evening’s cycle racing. And Moro calls Ronnie into his office. Mildly, he reproves him for a wasted old age. Ronnie will start to cry.

I can’t stand this bathos, force myself back to my story:

‘The President, Candida, is challenged by tourists from the future. They are living in the barrios, the favelas, they want to change the course of time, turn Candida’s successes into failures. Why? They must be bored. They wear masks because human faces have become so ugly. They run everywhere, like Inca messengers. The world has no more fuel. On weekends you can skateboard.’

I can’t go on. I must be bored. I must have a beer, meet with my new friends, Lenin and Trotsky. Is it possible they hardly know each other? I slide out of the building, and see Moro’s long face at the window. He is the cow, and I’m the cowslip. Gorbachev is playing cards on a box in the street. He is slamming down his cards, ‘and one: and two: and the clincher’. He is playing with César Auguste, the big black who always beats him, and cheats. César Auguste tells me he is 35, but his hair is white: he looks like a pot-scourer.

Lenin is prematurely bald. Prematurely for what, I don’t know. He is always in this bar, playing tric-trac, or, as now, vigorously annotating Of Grammatology, a book he says is tops but I suspect he doesn’t understand. I usually see him here with Trotsky. They are regulars here, but they only speak to each other when I’m around. Sometimes Lenin tries to talk to the Algerians, needling them, till they tell him to piss off. ‘Piss off, piss off,’ he repeats. ‘Yes, you’ve learned the language of reason all right.’

      I ask him, ‘Where’s Trotsky?’ I never talk about my cartoons, the revolution he, or the Amazonian queen, should lead: but he knows all about my job, the office, Moro, Gorbachev.

He answers, ‘Trotsky’s doing his martial arts, I believe. He insists his puny physique’s an advantage.’

Lenin himself is no Hercules, and his skin is yellow and wrinkled like a pickled brain. I can’t think what to say. ‘I hear Trotsky is being rehabilitated over there.’

Lenin is suddenly animated. ‘What a disgrace! I’d sooner rot than have that happen! Talk about skinning the ox twice!’

I am stuck in this bar, stuck in this city, with a deflated Lenin who won’t play his part. A little effort, and I’m in Brazentina once again. ‘Candida cannot find the way out of her city. The city has excluded the colours red and green. This means the traffic lights in every district have different phases – from violet through turquoise to brown, from orange to blue to diamond white. But her city stretches for ever, like an immense production line, or gut – showrooms to wreckers’ yards, courts and hospitals, each zone packed with people of a different colour.’

I wait for Trotsky.

Lenin says, ‘Trotsky’s always late.’ He’s in a nervous mood. He often rants on about the others. He calls Gorbachev ‘Motormouth’, but I think he may be jealous. Of me? I don’t know why. I’ve taken the same oath as Candida. It has become hard to enjoy glory or death in the first person. Some larger figure seems to intervene, to find the right words, of regret, of condemnation. I feel I shall not even be sorry for myself, someone more powerful, skilled, or just more sensitive, will do it for me. Even Lenin is better informed about my fantasies than I, although he’s unemployed, and Trotsky has problems with the rent. Trotsky doesn’t look as much like Trotsky, though, as Lenin looks like Lenin.

I ask Lenin: ‘Are there lions in the rain forests?’ and he replies, ‘In the rain forests there is everything.’

In my head I draw the pictures of the words: it is indeed the Amazonian lion that Candida hopes to find. That is indeed her programme. That she was elected on. The lion: described by the many writers of the zone – for this is the real treasure of Xica da Silva – apart from its long legs and musky smell, its features are: its orange teeth, and a mane that passes through three phases – from black beneath, to blue, and then smoke-grey. Its tail-end is held high, the tuft is black enamel, a kind of policeman’s badge, or maybe a cockade. It’s hard to see, to concentrate on, because you are held by those pale eyes, like grape-flesh, in the dusk they go to quince, the pupils inflexible, like two typed ‘l’s. And when it speaks…

Trotsky parks his motorbike, and comes in with his messenger’s satchel. I don’t trust him. Things I say only to him and Lenin seem to get back to Moro. Moro has spoken to me about lions. I’ve seen Moro and Trotsky together in another bar, eating steamed potatoes and salt herring. I know that Trotsky bets, and wins, with Ronnie Reagan, but he never treats us. Lenin and I owe so much money in this bar, it would take some huge upset to set us free – meanwhile, we are obliged to keep on coming. Trotsky is lucky to have a messenger’s job: it’s good news, if you bet. There’s no future in it. But future for what?

I am back in the land of the lion, the forest: ‘None of the freeways leaves Candida’s city. They circle it like the grooves on a record. Some of her escort are hurt in road accidents. They are seized and used for spare parts by gangs holed up in hospitals, experimenting with immortality.’

Trotsky says, ‘I can’t wait till the last real Parisian leaves. It’ll be better when there’s only exiles here.’

Lenin is irritated. ‘Not exiles, immigrants.’

Trotsky replies, ‘Well, I prefer being an exile – it’s not a question of nationality.’

I know they’ve always lived here. Trotsky drinks my beer and rushes out. ‘This district’s going downhill fast,’ he says. ‘All kinds of funny business.’ He looks like a philosophy prof, and Lenin his mature pupil who can never graduate.

Lenin says, ‘I’d like to ask you out. But I don’t have any money. Perhaps you’d like to ask me out?’

I say, ‘Well, anyway, where would we go?’

We pause outside my building. I must go in, pretend to be working. Lenin’s going to the cinema. Reagan is protesting about something. Usually he’s quiet. Lenin says, ‘They’re arresting Ronnie. Gambling. Serve him right.’

Gorbachev is busy with a broom, sweeping out the courtyard. There seems a great quantity of leaves, but I had never seen a tree there. He makes no move to intervene in Ronnie’s plight.

Lenin dismisses the incident. ‘Of all the arts, the cartoon is, for the moment, the most important. But – those little boxes the pictures are in, and those little bags for the words!’

I say abstractedly, ‘You can do anything you like – it’s like the blues, it’s like opera, without music, but you could make videos and add everything ... It’s like drawing the inside of your head.’

I think, ‘Perhaps Moro will sort out Ronnie’s problem,’ but then I wonder if he hasn’t sent for the cops himself. I must concentrate on my own story:

      ‘Candida finds the rain forests only a few metres from the ramparts of the city. Her comrades must board a tall ruined galleon, manned by black admirals. They go down through galleries and passageways lined with stone animals, their pupils fixed and inflexible, like typed ‘1’s. In the city, the travellers from the future are speeding up the seasons. Winter lasts only a few days, in a few minutes spring has come, the fruit and flowers burst out like roman candles. The people are enthralled – but they are ageing, slowing down; as they gape, their teeth fall out, their limbs wither ... The city falls to ruin, the rivers are red with rust.’

I see Gorbachev taking sacks of leaves from César Auguste, and sending him away for more. He empties them out, and sweeps them up again.

I must get to the lion: ‘In the hold of the galleon, they find the lion. He is lying on a white vinyl couch, and around him are the lights and reflectors for television. Candida has only three of her most faithful lovers to accompany her. The admirals crowd round, their wiry white hair looks like pot-scourers.’

Lenin hisses to me, ‘It’s that bugger Trotsky’, and then leaps forward, like a balding jackal, pushes the cop and sends him sprawling as he’s ushering Ronnie Reagan away. The cop can’t see what’s happening, and Lenin is really very quick, very practised. He shouts to Ronnie, who is struck still like some stone animal, ‘Run, you twerp’, and slowly Ronnie scutters off.

The cop gets up and runs to the metro after Lenin. But I see that Lenin is over there, talking to the girl on the cinema box-office. They seem good pals. So that’s how he sees so many films. Gorbachev is leaning expressionless on his broom: the courtyard is clear, but I can see a space by the wall now filled with neatly stacked bags of leaves. César Auguste has disappeared. 

I am at my desk. I must finish the cartoon. I feel like the pilot of a black bomber flying over a silver sea, the radio antenna is like cobwebs. I am hurrying, I am rushing the story of Candida, I have been trite about Xica da Silva. My lion is not the Brazilian revolution, nor yet an ecowizard.

‘The lion is old and chilled. He doesn’t eat gazelles, but drinks carrot-juice and pops testerone pills. He now puts on Ray-Bans and a shawl embroidered with strawberry leaves. Candida has become old and fat after her adventures, and with her three attendants she looks like a malign pumpkin surrounded by witches. She asks the lion the three questions: first, to test him – since we see the answer on a screen behind him, “How shall I die?” and he tells her.

‘Secondly, “Shall I fulfil my mandate, and be successful?”

‘The lion chuckles: “What do you think?”

‘Finally, she asks, “Is it worth it?”

‘The lion closes his magnificent eyes, which have become a diamond-white under the lights, the pupils, like two typed “l”s, as narrow as keyholes. He is asleep.

‘But these answers restore Candida. She longs to be away, and regain her city in a last battle. The admirals form up behind her and her court, making a clangourous afoxé behind her Zis convertible, drawn by mules – a crepitating, shuffling swarm, 158 abreast, back along the Avenue of the Americas, swinging round Radio Square and into Silicon Alley.’

Moro calls me. He had been watching everything from above. I thought I saw his sheep’s head peeking from behind the blinds. I feel that cartoon days are nearly done. He has seen me, with Lenin. ‘I’m afraid,’ he says, showing his long, orange teeth, ‘I shall have to let you go, Chantal. Not that I ever really let anyone go, my dear girl (and what a lovely name yours is), but – now there is a closeness, now a distance. Now you’ll do your drawings on your time, not on mine.’ He chuckles, and his pupils constrict into two typed ‘1’s.

I can see, far below, Gorbachev handing the broom to Reagan, who looks dumbstruck, like a garden gnome. The last of the bags of leaves is disappearing to the roadway, César Auguste is toting it. In their own ways, Lenin and Trotsky have let me down.

I am through. The story finishes: ‘Candida must fight her last battle alone, regain her city from the time travellers. She fills the subway, transforming herself into a hydra, as a hatch of mayfly she aerates the rivers, and as a fall of steel feathers – amber, lilac, black – she cleanses the air. Time slows down again, the seasons drag out. People age, but slowly. Terribly slowly. Life becomes imperceptible again, in its passing. Candida looks younger and younger.

‘She has triumphed, again she is surrounded by bright lovers. We are back on the banks of the 32-lane freeway. Millions of heads, like black peppercorns, or matchsticks with dobs of red, of white, phosphorous …’

I am liberated, whether I want it or not, freer than Candida, freer even than Xica da Silva. Lenin has lived up to the name I’ve given him.