by Jim Shepard
Murnau spent the whole next day trying to compose a telegram. All he could conjure up were Paul’s sad eyes. And then his mother, distracted and anxious, jingling her jewelry in somebody’s face. When he once had voiced impatience with both of them, Hans had answered, “Is it really so hard, every so often, to sustain a thought for somebody else?”
The Flahertys left without saying goodbye. Crosby kept to himself, disappearing for days at a stretch. Murnau found himself with energy for neither work nor Mehao, who accepted his impassiveness and simply sat in the room with him, hands together on his thighs. He seemed to recognize that they were grieving. “Kare-peka,” he said. It’s all right.
Another boy took to following them around. He was thirteen years old and told Murnau through hand signs that he wished to see his ship.
In November, Mehao finally became concerned enough to lead Murnau into the jungle late one night. He made clear that he wanted to show him something.
For a while they kept to a road of crushed coral. Pal came along, trotting beside them.
They passed villages spotted with yellow light. Those who’d recently lost relations kept kerosene lamps burning to turn the spirits away. Now and then bicycle riders passed them, indistinct ghosts with tinkling bells.
They left the road for a grassy track. The canopy overhead prevented even starlight from providing illumination. It was so dark that Murnau was without opinions. He was completely in Mehao’s hands. Unknown things brushed and swept against him.
On an island so mountainous, the only means of penetrating the interior was to work one’s way up the valleys. The valleys began to narrow, the sides growing precipitous. He and Mehao climbed for hours, while the ravine narrowed to the width of a streambed. The sides were vertical, with vegetation choking every handhold. Pal labored over obstacles, scrabbling on the loose debris in the dark.
The ravine finally opened into a narrow track spanning a ridge, far above the tree canopy.
The sky began to pale. The track led to a large flat rock above a precipice six hundred feet high. The abyss was partially concealed by overhanging ferns and lilies. The Alps have a grander scale, Murnau thought, but for abruptness of the fall, nothing compared with this.
There Mehao extracted his gift from his shirt: a small folded parcel of leaves containing starfruit and two unripe bananas. A picnic, intended to cheer up his friend.
Murnau thanked him. The boy made them comfortable in a hollowed-out notch in the rock a foot or so back from the edge. Then he pointed out an interesting feature of the track off to the east, where it bordered an innocent-looking bank of moderate steepness. He was pointing to a notorious spot about which Murnau had been warned. The bank grew steeper in the center, where the slope was nearly 65 degrees. Off the track the grass was cropped short by the goats, and slippery. There was nothing on which to catch hold, and every so often a hiker would slip. He could slow himself, but not stop. His slide proceeded from exasperating to terrifying, and from there off into space. The place was called the Judgment Seat. The boy didn’t know why.
The two of them contemplated the slippery grass without speaking. Beyond it they could see the Residency. The light was brightening behind the islands to the east. The mountain ranges were lifting into relief. Attenuated clouds took flight overhead.
He began to weep. He took the boy’s hand. Who knew what he’d left untouched and what he’d polluted? Who knew what he had yet to ruin? The boy lifted their clasped hands and brought them to his chest. Again he seemed content to sit and respect his friend’s incomprehensible grieving.
It was as if freedom were an endless, snowy plain. He had come to make a movie. He had conceived the idea, sold it, talked his collaborators into working with him, raised a crew, sailed to the islands, written the story, and dealt with the collapse of funding. He had overseen the casting, the locations, the schedule, and the natives’ training and discipline. He’d ferried groups about, fought, ordered, wheedled, lied, seduced, abandoned, settled disputes, hated, and loved. He’d attempted to snatch opportunity as it had revealed itself.
Crosby had been wonderful throughout. Half the time he’d had no tripod, his thin body trying to hold the top-heavy Akeley steady while Murnau directed over his shoulder. One day they’d gotten thirty shots in four hours, in a boat, on a pitching sea, with native actors, and broken cloud cover changing the light every two minutes. Crosby had been the hero of the expedition.
Murnau had told him, before the final falling-out with the Flahertys, that he thought Crosby’s name should go first in the credit titles. Crosby had answered that he thought Tabu should have special discredit titles: “This Film Was Made in Spite of—…”
The forgotten Pal was whining a ledge below because he couldn’t reach them. “I’m here,” Murnau called quietly to him. “I’m here,” he called again, this time in German.
What his art lacked, he knew, was passionate humanity. His love for the world was distant and severe. Three-quarters of his life had had nothing to do with what he’d accomplished professionally.
Even now he was with someone while being almost completely elsewhere. He was a boy, happy to run errands, buy bread, butter, greens, and his father’s tobacco. He was consulting his errand-list. He was carrying two kilos of weisswurst. He was holding his future before him, a magic box with a lethal surprise.
His father was talking. He was speaking to his son Wilhelm, and young Wilhelm studied his voice and reminded himself to value the lessons being offered. In the street outside, his brothers tossed balls and shouted. They splashed through the runoff after the rain.
Where was it his father was shouting from, telling him to bring the hose and do some watering, with everything so dry? Someone was crying. Someone had climbed the tree to pick a basket of cherries. Wilhelm ran over with the hose on his shoulder, but couldn’t find his father. In the garden in the heat, something was twittering. The breeze made small dust devils on the patio.
For the fourteen years since Hans’s death Murnau had betrayed him. He had betrayed himself by pretending he hadn’t. He had cherished his feelings for Hans as something sacred and untouchable and had worked to replicate them in a nearly endless stream of substitutes. He was a man of austere principles without principles. He was a man committed only to a personal art whose inner life never saw the light of day. When he considered the phases of who he had been, every step forward might just as well have been a retreat, and the line he traced of his own silhouette was ever more cloaked. Publicly he had lived a deception. Privately, too. To try to remember where he’d entered the shadows, or where the shadows had entered him, was pointless. The shadows had been there from the beginning.
Before the boy had come to get him that night, he had made another attempt to revise the ending of the film. He had written a rough version of the farewell note the woman would leave for her lover before being taken away for good to satisfy the tabu.
I have been
so happy with you.
Far more than I deserved.
The love you have
given me
I will keep
to the last beat
of my heart.
Across the great waters
I will come to you
when the moon
spreads its fate
on the sea.
Farewell.
He was shoulder to shoulder with this Polynesian boy. The boy’s smell was on his lips. The sun was a few degrees above an orange horizon. The final image of the film was already set in his mind, a shot on which he’d decided months ago: the image of the tabu woman’s lover, a lone swimmer in pursuit of her boat, swimming until he drowned.
The sun rose above them. Mehao leaned his dark head back and listened, taking pleasure in his friend’s inscrutable sounds. Murnau talked to his father in German, and to Pal in English. He apologized to Mehao. He apologized to Hans. He recited aloud from memory from de Bougainville’s journals, on the discovery of Polynesia: “We found
, companies of men sitting in the shade of their fruit trees. They greeted us with signs of friendship. Those who met us on the road stood aside to let us pass by. And everywhere we found hospitality, ease, innocent joy, and every appearance of happiness amongst them.”
RIGA, 1915
7. July 1915
Somewhere in Lettland
My Dear Murnau,
Your last letter hurtled me out of a clear blue sky and into a rain cloud—or something very like one. My apologies for the delay in answering. I’m pleased you liked your packet of gifts. Lately I’ve been taking pleasure in being a poor correspondent, something I might indulge in completely were I a pure artist, which is to say, an eccentric. What a prospect!
We lie here on the riverbank, the location a military secret, and to the south all is forest and marshland. There are swarms of gnats.
I meant to write you yesterday, but today is hazy and dreary, and the glory of inspiration is long past.
I’ll try to apply myself to some of your many questions. Mother’s fine, though reading between the lines I can see that she’s having her heart difficulties again. I’ve heard from various members of the New Youth; they sent along a review praising some tense “futuristic” lyrics by various dirty little boys, and sneering at my naïve stuff.
I’ve recovered only slowly from the news about Marc. I’ve written his poor wife. He was in vintage form in his last letter, declaiming that our ideals would in the future have to be fed on “grasshoppers and wild honey, and not on history.” I assume he’s closer now to those Secret Forces in the universe.
As for my risk-taking, on my worst days it’s a form of cynical recklessness. Every so often I give way to an intrepid madness and do things that garner praise. I’ve been put up for a decoration.
Did I once dislike the Russians? Briefly. November or December of last year.
And I disagree, again: Achilles does seem to me the greatest of all the Greeks, not only for his martial supremacy but because of the intensity of his love for his companion. Nothing in him seems nobler than the despair which makes him despise life once he’s lost his beloved. As Lasker-S—once said: When love has gone out of someone’s life, the heart engulfs the head.
Occasionally I think about my own safety. I wonder: What does this chaos hold in store for me. A field hospital? Will I be crippled? Lose my hand? Lose my sight!
And what about you, broken-down friend? Bad back, bad headaches, bad stomach. A deck chair really should be made ready for you somewhere in a garden back in Berlin, half in the shade, with ten glasses of milk within easy reach. Is this impossible? Is there no one to make it possible? What does your doctor say?
I’ve often thought that life for you is something entirely different than it is for the rest of us. Everything’s all or nothing with you. Everything’s very puzzling and absorbing, the way a locomotive is for a small child. The whole world is something you hold in high regard, because it’s good at what it does.
The photo you sent is not reassuring. That pale, drawn visage, those fixed eyes and tall body held straight by force of will all suggest Pluto, God of Shades. Or the Thracian Horseman, that mysterious figure seen riding through the copses by moonlight, carrying away the souls of the dead in the folds of his cloak.
I understand your despair over your father’s letter. You can’t read anything new into it; I wouldn’t try. It’s cordial and heartfelt and brutish, and in my opinion, your only answer can be what someone who loves you would say to him on your behalf: Leave this man alone. He’s attempting to live the way he should. He’s not asking for “accommodation.” He’s only asking for you to speak with him as one human to another, and not close yourself off to him in a fury. This is the only power you have to diminish the sorrow in both your lives.
Do your remember our trip to Zwickau? Do you remember the fire lilies and purple gentians? Do you remember that black dog in the snow, on the way to your namesake town? The strong red tea, with our English breakfast?
The unit’s all up and about. We’ll be tramping somewhere soon. I have questions for you, as well. How’s our friend Lubitsch, and what does he think—should we declare war on America or not? Have you heard any more about Lasker-S—and Twardowski? What about Paul?
If I survive this spastic war, the summit of an unreal, unspiritual time, I want out of civilized Europe. I want to collect my strength for action elsewhere. I want to join others in acting and not remain dreaming and sleeping. I want to be allowed to be myself without lies, without masks. I want all this before life is snatched away, leaving the ideal image, which disappears, of the bravest swimmer drowning.
I have no idea how I’ll strike you when I finally return from here, all battered and burned out. I’m at work every day at mastering my emotions. Soon I’ll be atop the situation. I wish you all good fortune. Hand in hand with you, I wish you quiet nights, a quiescent front, and many packages from home.
Warmest wishes to you. Remember my prediction—
Hans
7 July 1915
A trench—Riga.
Hans, Hans, Hans,
Still no rest for your sleepless friend. Wildflowers are blooming all around. The fields are filled with a hay that no one cuts and no one uses, other than our “field gray,” to make temporary camps on the damp ground. A warm wind blows clouds and rain over us, and the nights are a complete darkness that one believes could be grabbed in the hand. I’m living in a dugout that reminds me of the heatherhut in Lear: much straw and rain, a lantern and a little madness; only the Fool is missing. I’m so endlessly alone that it’s almost pleasant. Unfortunately there’s always the constraint that stands behind the loneliness. The fact that I can’t suddenly change my situation inhibits the pleasure.
I’ve separated myself from the criminal mindlessness that’s the rule here, so there’s an obliviousness to me among my compatriots that’s breathtaking. Unless I actively seek out a group and insert myself into it—always unbidden, and usually unacknowledged—I spend my time alone. I’m approached only when it’s time for memorials or eulogies. I’m also the accepted authority on cultural activities.
I’ve become the unofficial quartermaster, due to my perceived fussiness. Schedules, shipments, complaints, aggravations, detritus—my head’s a railroad station. Every so often the Captain rings up and I’m called on the carpet, the whole swindle about to come out. At such times I should be visualized like that boy we saw in the garden in Königsplatz, staring into space like an idiot.
With all our recent movements, the regular mail has not arrived. It’s doubtful that anything will come tomorrow, either. The day before yesterday we were in a village that brought me closer to you geographically than any time since Friedrichstadt.
Are you still dug in? Are you safe behind your fortifications? A view of your escarpment, please.
Müthel recently passed through, with his unit. They were headed east! We had a short conversation on politics. He certainly is one of his family; you’d think you were listening to the father, with a little more humor. Still, he’s a good fellow, a Marc-type, not conventional, with eyes and a heart.
Speaking of that, more ugly news: Veidt wrote that a friend of his was beaten to death in a hotel catering to sailors in Hamburg. Twenty-two years old. The news made me contemplate again how few fulfill themselves before death. I resolved to judge all interrupted careers with more pity.
It’s been so long since we conversed. What will happen when you see me? The door will open and an emaciated beanstalk will be swaying there, finally smiling (incessantly, and more out of embarrassment than pleasure). He’ll then sit where he’s told. When the welcoming ceremonies are over, he’ll scarcely speak, since he lacks the strength to do so. And he won’t even be as happy as he feels he should be, lacking the strength even for that.
Hans! What you are for me can’t be found in the scraps I send you. Remember when you argued for the writer’s greater pleasure, for moving others across time and space? How did people
ever get the idea that they could communicate adequately by letter—?
You complain about my letters that there “isn’t a single word that isn’t well-weighed.” And yet those are the letters by which I hope to draw myself closer to you.
I can no longer lament the falling-apart. I lament instead the wait for the rebuilding.
But listen to me: I should be making clear that I’m only frightened and self-berating. Instead I posture. I pose.
Throughout our time together I have forced you to settle for murmured sounds and inattentive ears. Forgive me.
I don’t know how to approach my other subject. I begin by saying that about my own fidelity I deceived myself, the way a teacher, out of exhaustion and yearning, allows himself to be convinced that one correct answer means that his student now comprehends the subject.
Be patient. Your letters are rain on my forehead. My letters are words spoken into your ear while you lie beside me, turning toward my mouth.
Do you know when you were most beautifully dressed, on that trip to Murnau? There can’t be any argument about it: the night we arrived.
I want to go back to that moment.
I realize that I deserve to be hit in the face for speaking beyond this moment, which belongs to you.
When I was a child, I did something very bad, though not in the public sense but only in my private reckoning. (The fact that it wasn’t publicly acknowledged as bad confirmed my suspicion that the adult world was asleep.) Afterwards, I was amazed that nothing had changed: the grown-ups, though somewhat gloomy, had gone about their business, their mouths shut in the natural way I’d admired from below since my earliest days.
What I’m most frightened of is experiencing the eclipse of love: seeing those eyes that were home to me close themselves off forever.
What will happen to me? Even if I sit among people until my last breath, welcomed, embraced, and initiated into their secrets, I’ll never be one of them.