They arrived at the Great Aquarium, at the dolphins’ turquoise tank, and Mari grabbed Jonna by the arm and yelled, “Wait, I’ll tell you when it’s going to jump. You’re wasting film…” And the dolphin corkscrewed high out of the water, sparkling in the sun, and Jonna burst out, “Now I missed it! Let me decide for myself!”
“By all means!” Mari said. “You and your Konica.”
It was inconceivably beautiful and mysterious down in the dark passages where the tank was lit underground. The whales were diving. Through the glass walls you could see the power of their dance as they plunged downward and turned and shot up into the light again. “It’s too dark,” Mari said. “You won’t get anything; the film will just be black…”
“Quiet!” Jonna said. “The shark’s coming.”
People pushed forward to see the monster, and Mari threw her arms wide to stop them. The shark came; a slow, grey shadow swept past close to the glass and vanished.
“Good,” said Jonna. “I got it. You’ve always wanted to see a real shark up close. Now you have.”
Mari said, “I didn’t see it.”
“What do you mean, didn’t see it?”
“I was only thinking of the Konica! I’m always thinking about the Konica and not about what I see! It just goes by.”
“But don’t be angry.” Jonna held out her camera in both hands. “Your shark is here, it’s in here! When we get home you can see it as many times as you want, whenever you want. And with music.”
Nothing made Jonna happier than finding a circus, or maybe even better a Sunday carnival somewhere on a city’s outskirts. They searched one out with the Konica, heard at a distance the breathless staccato of the carousel. Jonna started her tape recorder. “We’ll start here,” she whispered. “We’ll get closer and closer, quite slowly – anticipation. And our footsteps. Then the visual.”
They never rode the carousel.
And later, a long time later, in her studio, Jonna set up the screen, focused the projector, and turned off the ceiling light. Mari sat waiting with pen and paper. The machine began to whir and threw a rectangle of light across the screen.
“Makes notes where I should cut,” Jonna said. “And the repeats.”
“Yes, yes, I know. And when it goes black.”
Their trip came toward them. Mari made notes:
head gone to r.
jumping
fence on l.
too long beach
unnec. landsc.
people gone too fast
flower blurred
She wrote and wrote, and afterwards she didn’t really know where they had been.
“The clipping is even harder than the filming,” Jonna explained. “When I’ve cut it, we can add music, but not yet. Music makes you uncritical.”
“Jonna, right now I want to see something with music. And without taking notes.”
“What do you want to see?”
“Mexico. The empty carnival. You know, all the people who were too poor to ride the carousel.”
Jonna put in the cassette, an endless, mournful marimba. The picture was blurry and shaky at first but gathered itself suddenly into a long, evening landscape – the empty field outside Mazatlán. There was the drainage ditch running out toward the ocean, reflecting a last glimpse of the sunset in a long band of burning gold that quickly died. Then the barracks, the car dump, and now, far off, the Ferris wheel with its many-coloured lights that rose and sank and rose and sank.
The Konica came closer and you could see that all the little pleasure boats were empty. The picture moved over to a carousel that was also revolving and just as empty. Everything was sparkling and tempting and ready for fun, but the people strolling slowly through the carnival took no part in the amusements; they just observed. Except for some boys shooting at targets, whose stern faces Jonna had caught in a close-up.
As the film went on, dusk sank deeper over Mazatlán, the people left, but the Ferris wheel kept on turning, now just a circle of rising and falling lights. It was almost night. The marimba played on. The back of the circus tent, indistinct, some dogs rooting around in a rubbish tip.
“Terrible,” Mari said. “Terribly good. All those people who just had to go home without… But at least they saw it, didn’t they? Didn’t you get the ditch at the end, too? That sparkled?”
“Wait, it’s coming.”
The picture went black and stayed black for a long time. Several weak flashes of light, nothing more, and the screen was empty.
Mari said, “You have to cut that; no one will get it. It was too dark.”
Jonna turned off the projector and turned on the overhead light. She said, “Right there it has to be absolutely black, graphically black. But you were there now, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” Mari answered. “I was there.”
B-Western
JONNA CAME IN WITH A BOTTLE OF BOURBON, a carafe of water, and a packet of Cortez cigarillos.
“Aha,” said Mari, “the Wild West. A B-Western?”
“Yes. An early classic.”
The room was cold, and Mari wrapped herself in a blanket. “What time?”
“Actually,” Jonna said. “Actually, it would probably be better if I watched it alone.”
“I promise not to say a word.”
“Yes, but I’ll know what you’re thinking, and I can’t concentrate.” Jonna poured them both a drink. “You think Westerns repeat the same theme over and over. That may be. But you have to understand that Americans are in love with their history, which was so short and powerful, and they describe and depict it again and again… Are you in love with the Renaissance? What do you care about the ancient Egyptians? The Chinese?”
“Not much,” Mari said. “They’re just there. Or were.”
“Fine. Now don’t assume that I’m defending B-Westerns, but think about it, try to imagine what it was like in the early days. Courage! Courage and patience. And pure curiosity. Imagine being among the very first to discover and conquer a new country, a new continent!”
“Conquer,” Mari repeated and pulled the blanket tighter.
“Yes, yes. Now don’t go on about the Indians and all that stuff about cruelty and arrogance; those things happen on both sides. Great change always involves great intensity. That’s just the way it is, right? Look at their desolate little towns in a completely empty landscape, and remember they lived in constant danger… They had to develop a strict, an implacable, sense of justice, they had to try to invent the Law for themselves, as best they could…” Jonna put down her cigarillo. “It doesn’t draw,” she said. “It’s the wrong kind.”
Mari remarked that perhaps the cigarillos had been lying around too long, and Jonna went on. “It must be that lawlessness has its own laws. Of course mistakes occurred. They lived such violent lives that they simply didn’t have time to reflect, that’s what I think. But mistakes happen today, too, don’t they? We hang the wrong guy, so to speak.”
Jonna leaned forward and looked at her friend earnestly. “The sense of honour,” she announced. “Believe me, the sense of honour has never been so strong. Friendship between men. You said the heroines were idiotic. Fine, they are idiotic. But take them away, forget them, and what do you find? Friendship between men who are unswervingly honourable toward one another. That’s the concept of the Western.”
“I know,” Mari said. “They have an honourable fist fight and then they’re friends for life. Unless the noblest of them gets shot at the end, sacrificing his life to soft music.”
“Now you’re just being mean,” said Jonna. She lifted aside the cloth that protected her television screen and turned to channel two.
“Anyway, I’m right,” Mari said. “It’s the same thing over and over. They ride past precisely the same mountain and the same waterfall and that Mexican church. And the saloon. And the oxcarts. Don’t they ever get tired of it?”
“No,” Jonna answered. “They never do. It’s about recognition, about recognizing w
hat you’ve imagined. People make dreams, don’t they? The oxcarts that fight their way forward through unexplored territory, dangerous lands… Whether it’s an A-Western or a B or even a C, they feel this is the way it must have been, just like this, and it makes them proud and maybe gives them a little comfort. I think.”
“Yes,” Mari said. “Well, yes, maybe you’re right …”
But Jonna couldn’t stop. “It’s not fair of you to come and talk about repetition and the same thing over and over, and anyway your short stories are the same way, the same theme over and over again. Now close the curtains; it starts in three minutes.”
Mari dropped the blanket on the floor and announced, very slowly, “I think… now I think I’ll go to bed.”
She had a hard time falling asleep. Now they’re galloping past the red mountain. Now they’re playing poker in the saloon. Honky-tonk… They’re shooting bottles in the bar, girls are screaming. Now the stairs to the second floor are crashing down…
A trumpet blast woke her up, and she knew the movie had come to the brave men in the final fort. Maybe they’ve more or less worked things out with the Indians – everyone forgives everyone, except maybe the ones who died – and now they’re playing ‘My Darling Clementine’, which means she’s finally figured out who she loved the whole time.
And now Jonna’s turning off the television and rewinding the video. She’s brushing her teeth and coming to bed and doesn’t say a word.
Mari asked, “Was it good?”
“No. But I’m saving it anyway.”
“Still, I liked ‘My Darling Clementine’,” Mari said. “They use that same song every time, but somehow it’s right.”
Jonna got up and closed the window because the snow had begun to blow in. The room was very peaceful.
Before Mari fell asleep, she asked if they could watch this same B-Western some other evening, and Jonna said yes, she supposed they could.
In the Great City of Phoenix
AFTER A LONG BUS TRIP THROUGH ARIZONA, Jonna and Mari came late in the evening to the great city of Phoenix and checked into the first hotel they could find near the bus station.
It was called the Majestic, a heavy building from the 1910s with an air of shabby pretension. The lobby with its long mahogany counters beneath dusty potted palms, the broad staircase up to the gloom of the upper floors, the row of stiff, velvet sofas – everything was too grand, everything except the desk clerk, who was tiny under his wreath of white hair. He gave them their room key and a form to fill out and said, “The elevator closes in twenty minutes.”
The elevator operator was asleep. He was even older than the desk clerk. He pushed the button for the third floor and sat back down on his velvet chair. The elevator was a huge ornamented bronze cage and it rattled upward very slowly.
Jonna and Mari entered a static, desolate room with way too much furniture and went to bed without unpacking. But they couldn’t sleep. They relived the bus trip again and again, through shifting landscapes of desert and snowy mountains, cities without names, white salt lakes, and brief pauses in little towns they knew nothing about and to which they would never return. The trip went on and on, leaving everything behind, hour after hour, a long, long day in a silver-blue Greyhound bus.
“Are you asleep?” Jonna asked.
“No.”
“We can get our films developed here. I’ve been filming blind for a month and haven’t any idea what I’ve got.”
“Are you sure it was a good idea to shoot through the bus window? I think we were going too fast.”
“I know,” Jonna said. And, after a while, “But it was so pretty.”
They left the films to be developed, which would take a couple of days.
“Why is the city so empty?” Mari asked.
“Empty?” repeated the man behind the camera counter. “I never thought about it. But I suppose it’s because most people live outside of town and drive in to work and then back home.”
When Jonna and Mari came back to their room, they noticed a change, a small but sweeping change. It was their first encounter with the invisible chambermaid, Verity. Verity’s presence in the hotel room was powerful. It was everywhere. She had reorganized their travellers’ lives in her own way. This Verity was an obvious perfectionist and at the same time a conspicuous free spirit. She had laid out Jonna’s and Mari’s belongings symmetrically but with a certain humour; had unpacked their travel mementos and arranged them on the dresser in a caravan whose placement did not lack irony; had placed their slippers with the noses touching and spread out their nightgowns so the sleeves were holding hands. On their pillows she’d put books she’d found and liked – or perhaps disliked – using their stones from Death Valley as bookmarks. Those ugly stones must have amused her greatly. She had given the room a face.
Jonna said, “Someone’s having fun with us.”
The next evening, the mirror was decorated with their Indian souvenirs. Verity had washed and ironed everything she thought needed washing and ironing and placed it in symmetrical piles, and in the middle of the table was a large bunch of artificial flowers, which, if they remembered correctly, had previously adorned the lobby.
“I wonder,” Mari said. “I wonder if she does this in all the rooms, and is it to cheer up the hotel guests or herself? How does she have the time? Is she just teasing the other chambermaids?”
“We’ll see,” said Jonna.
They met Verity in the corridor. She was large, with red cheeks and a lot of black hair. She laughed out loud and said, “I’m Verity. Were you surprised?”
“Very much,” replied Jonna politely. “We wondered what made you so playful?”
“I thought you looked like fun,” Verity said.
And so, quite naturally, they began to be friends with Verity. Every day she was interested to know if Jonna’s films had come back. No, they hadn’t. It would take a whole week before Jonna and Mari could travel on to Tucson.
Verity was amazed. “Why Tucson, of all places? It’s just another town, except it’s the closest city on the map. Why do you have to keep travelling, here or there or somewhere else? Is there such a big difference? You’ve got your health and each other’s company. Moreover, now you’ve got me. For that matter, you should meet the residents. They can be very interesting if you take them the right way.”
“The residents?”
“Pensioners, of course. Aren’t you pensioners yourselves? Why else would you have come to the Majestic?”
“Nonsense,” said Jonna, somewhat sharply, and headed for the stairs.
Verity said, “But aren’t you going to take the elevator? Albert likes people to take his elevator. I’m going down myself.”
Albert stood up and pressed the button for the ground floor.
“Hi, Albert,” said Verity. “How are the legs?”
“The left one’s working better,” Albert said.
“And how’s the birthday coming?”
“I don’t know yet. But it’s all I think about, all the time.”
In the lobby, Verity explained. “Albert’s going to be eighty, and he’s terribly anxious about his birthday. Should he invite all the residents or just the ones he likes and then the others will be hurt? By the way, would you like to have some fun this evening? Of course everyone goes to bed early at the Majestic…”
“Not us,” Jonna said. “But this city is empty and quiet in the evenings. You know that.”
Verity looked at her for a moment, almost sternly. “Don’t talk like a tourist. I’ll take you to Annie’s bar. I’ll come and get you when I’ve finished work.”
It was a very small bar, long and narrow with a pool table in the back. Annie herself tended the bar, the jukebox played constantly, and people came in steadily and greeted one another in passing as if they’d seen each other an hour ago, which perhaps they had. No ladies among the clientele.
Verity said, “Now you’re going to have Annie’s banana drink, an Annie Special, her treat
. Tell her you like it, then you can get a real drink to chase it. Annie’s my friend. She’s got two kids and she’s a single mother.”
“On the house,” Annie said. “And where do you come from? Finland? Oh, I didn’t think you were allowed to travel to other countries…” She turned her smile toward new customers, but after a while she came back and wanted to give them another Banana Special. They had to toast Finland.
“In that case, Annie, I think we’ll need some vodka,” Verity said. “Am I right?”
Somebody played the current hit, “A Horse with No Name”, and Annie poured vodka into three small glasses, raised a quick, invisible glass of her own, and disappeared to take care of other customers. Jonna opened her tape recorder, and a Stetson to their right hollered, “Hey, Annie! They’re stealing our music!”
“They like it!” Annie hollered back. “How did it go with that job?”
“Nothing came of it. How are the kids?”
“Fine. Willy’s had a sore throat, so John’s bound to catch it. Getting sitters is hopeless.”
The bar had grown crowded.
“Give these ladies some space!” Annie yelled. “They’re from Finland.”
Verity turned to the Stetson and told him cheerfully that her new friends, among other curious undertakings, had travelled a great distance out of the city “in order to see a cactus garden, of all things – cactus that doesn’t even flower – and there’s an entrance fee!”
“Very bad,” said the Stetson sadly. “Pure weeds. I cleaned out a whole patch of them at the Robinsons’ last week. They didn’t pay much.”
“Let me show you something interesting,” said their neighbour to the left. “Look, a wonderful little item that ought to sell like nobody’s business, but doesn’t.” He put three small plastic dogs on the bar, one pink, one green, one yellow, and the dogs began marching side by side, the green one in the lead. Mari looked at Jonna, but Jonna shook her head. It meant, no, he’s not trying to sell them, he just wants to amuse us.