Sway

by Zachary Lazar

  The sky was whitely dissolving, less blue each time he looked, and the distant roofs, once black, were now dark gray, stained green in places from the runoff of countless rains. The first pigeons cooed and batted their wings. It was easy to forget that his mother had given him the hundred francs and the thin sheaf of traveler’s checks that were in his wallet. He was thinking about his father, how he wished his father could see him in this place, its stone palace and geometric park the furthest thing imaginable from the garage with its table saw and lathe. The leaves of the trees were tinted silver at the edges. They looked as if they’d been requisitioned and carefully altered for the making of a film.

  The theater shakes. It feels as if it’s being bombed now — the flickering lights, the dust and sudden calm. Bobby can feel and hear the girders above him shaking, giving way, water pouring down through the ceiling in rivulets, white and blue mist illuminated in the projector light.

  A film by Anger

  Invocation of My Demon Brother

  The next image onscreen is of Bobby himself, his long hair coming down to his shoulders beneath the crown of a black top hat. In the background, someone is holding a noose. Bobby sees himself smoking a skull-shaped pipe. He and a few of his friends — Ron, Carol, Sharon — sit in a circle in the dark, surrounded by candles. One of the girls has painted on her jacket the words LOVE, EVOL, LOVE, EVOL. He sees himself from some earlier time, his arms raised in the green light, his bare torso all muscles and ribs. He sees his face in hallucination, mirrored eight times in a shadowed whirl.

  Over the speakers, there is a sound of revving motorcycles. There are pictures of motorcycles in neat rows, motorcycles on mud tracks in the desert, motorcycles being ridden through a crowd of fans on a lawn. The singer, Mick, gestures with his fingers as if to pull an invisible veil over his face, then crouches and stares out into the crowd. Keith leans forward and swings his arm up in a roundhouse, lashing at the strings of his guitar. The film cuts away, and for a moment there is only a red tableau of helicopters, soldiers disembarking in Vietnam, the silhouetted figure of Kenneth Anger dancing in front of them on the stage, shouting. It had been such a long time since Bobby had seen Kenneth that he hadn’t even recognized him at first. It occurs to Bobby that this theater is nothing more than a looping repetition of his own past, a room of caged and suspended time. It occurs to him that this is the kind of place you end up in when you are no longer alive, the space that is not a space at all, the moment that is not a moment because it has no beginning or end.

  Part Two

  thanatomania n. 1 condition of homicidal or suicidal mania 2 belief that one has been affected by death magic, the resulting illness.

  . . . Kenneth became friends with them maybe a year before Brian died. The band were always pushing their luck, and Kenneth would have already seen where that was leading because of this boy he knew in San Francisco, Bobby Beausoleil, who’s now spending the rest of his life in prison. It becomes a kind of craziness, the things Kenneth’s so attracted to. I don’t know if it’s his curse or just the way things are.

  —WILL TENNET, filmmaker, interviewed in Dream Plays: A History of Underground Film

  MARRAKECH, 1967

  MAYBE MONEY AND FAME would change everything. Brian had not been home in almost three years. He stood with his girlfriend, Anita, outside his parents’ house now, his blond hair cut in bangs just like hers, their long fur coats falling almost to their ankles. They had gotten high in the back of the limousine, and there was an intensity of recognition he hadn’t counted on: the evergreen shrub inside the iron gate, the white wooden box with its empty milk bottles. He held a cellophane-wrapped gift basket from Harrods behind his back.

  His mother answered the door, smiling at him, a little breathless. “Come in,” she said. “I was just getting everything ready.”

  In the living room, the windows were covered with lace curtains and framed by heavy, wine-colored drapes. There was an electric fire, two dressers displaying plates and books. His father slowly closed his newspaper above his crossed legs, then folded it in his lap, clearing his throat. Already there was the vague hesitation, the swirl of fear and goodwill.

  He put the gift basket on the floor and kissed his mother on the cheek. “Mum,” he said, taking her hand, “this is Anita.”

  Jokingly, he held the two women’s hands in his own, as if to join them in marriage. Beneath her coat, Anita wore a paisley minidress. Gold earrings hung just above the ridges of her collarbone and her eyes were outlined in black kohl. She seemed to grow taller and thinner as his mother appraised her.

  “We had a lovely drive,” she finally said. “The countryside. You must enjoy living here.”

  His mother led them farther into the living room. “Yes, it must make quite a change from London,” she said. “Though to us Cheltenham is rather a large town.”

  On the television, there was a formation of Stuka bombers flying through gray banks of clouds. Then a fire brigade trained its hoses on a smoking building whose roof and upper windows were luminous white flashes in a grid of black.

  “We’ve just got back from Rome,” said Brian. He was standing near his father’s chair now. His father was looking down at his newspaper as if he’d forgotten something important.

  “You drove down from London, did you?” his father said.

  Brian looked at the TV. “Yes. Nice drive. A little rain.”

  “We’ve brought all sorts of things,” said Anita. “I think I could live for a month on all the things we have here.”

  She had picked the basket off the floor and now they all looked at it in her hands. Its little pots and tins of food were obscured by the green cellophane, the basket’s handle crested with a dark green bow.

  “Anita’s from Switzerland,” Brian said. “She’s been teaching me German, haven’t you?”

  His mother handed his father a cup of tea on a saucer. Then she turned to Anita, whose hair was so much like Brian’s that they seemed to be impersonating each other. “Do you take yours with sugar?”

  “Yes,” said Anita. “I’ll just go and put this in the kitchen, if that’s all right.”

  She turned in a purposeful way, a robotic smile on her face, and walked out of the room. Brian sat down in a seat angled toward the window. Through the lace curtains, he could see the silent street outside. He could see the silhouette of the white limousine that was waiting for them. He was trying to remember how this had all played out in his mind beforehand — a couple of jokes, a little comic nervousness as his parents tried some caviar from the gift basket, holding up one of the little tins in curiosity to read the label.

  He stared out the window of the limousine, his face rigid, watching the neighborhood pass by. There were ranks of iron fences, hedges whose leaves had turned a muddy brownish green. He held Anita’s hand absently, his wrist on the leather seat.

  “They never told me their names,” she said.

  “Lewis and Louisa. Very droll. They met at a jumble sale.”

  “They never asked me any questions. Nothing.”

  “They know everything they needed to know about you.”

  “They were afraid, I think.”

  “No. They weren’t afraid. They were glad that everything went the way they expected it to.”

  She lit a cigarette. In her lap was a magazine she had brought over to amuse his parents but had never taken out of her purse. Inside it was a picture of Brian and her that could have been an advertisement for “Swinging London.” He was standing with his back to her, holding her hands behind his waist, turning to the camera with a faintly mischievous grin. She was falling away from him in a sudden fit of laughter, her mouth open to reveal a white ridge of teeth. They looked like twins, that’s what everyone said, Brian in a finely tailored suit, Anita’s long legs seeking purchase on the slick white floor.

  She rested her head on his shoulder and took his arm. “Do you have anything left?” she said.

  He looked at her from out of th
e corner of his eye. “No. That’s the worst part.”

  But then he reached his fingers into his jacket pocket and smiled, pulling her closer with his other hand. When she caught his eye, sitting up a little, their life together came back in a sudden blur of color. On their last night in Rome, her friend had come back with them to the hotel and all three of them had ended up on the bed, kneeling and kissing and touching one another’s hair, laughing. Whatever they’d smoked had made the room brighter, outlined in a haze of yellow and violet. They were both smiling at him as they took off his clothes, admiring him as if he were their creation.

  He handed her a canister and a tiny silver spoon. She leaned against him as she brought them carefully to her nose. Then she tilted her face up to his and he put his finger on the ridge of her cheekbone, staring into her upside-down eyes.

  “I wish we were back in Rome,” he said.

  “No. Someplace else.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Morocco. I’ve always wanted to go to Morocco.”

  Their flat was in Earl’s Court. It was made of sooty red brick, with tall windows whose wooden frames were covered in flaking white paint. When they got back that night, Keith called them from his house on the Sussex coast. It had just been raided by the police. They’d found drugs everywhere — drugs on Mick and on their art dealer friend, Robert Fraser — and when they went upstairs, they’d found Mick’s girlfriend, Marianne, curled up in bed with no clothes on. They were all coming down from an LSD trip: a walk in the woods, an hour or so of wandering on the beach, looking at the stones and the remnants of the wooden piers. For the half hour that the police were there, it had never fully sunk in that the raid was real.

  Keith’s voice was almost inaudible, more solemn than Anita had ever heard it. She hunched on the edge of the bed, shielding her eyes with the flat of her hand in an effort to concentrate.

  “Are you all right?” she said.

  “I’m fine. Surprisingly fine.”

  “I’m sorry. We’re a little out of it. We’ve just been lying here, sort of strung out.”

  “Well, whatever you’ve got left, you’d better chuck it. Brian’s going to be next.”

  “You think so?”

  “I don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Everything’s gone.”

  “Well, just tell him to cool it. You know how he is. That’s the last thing we need.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “I’ve got to hang round here for a while. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Are you?”

  “I’m not too worried right now. I’ll see you as soon as I can.”

  She hung up the phone. Then she closed her eyes, inexplicably lonely.

  “They were busted,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Everyone. Keith, Mick, Marianne, Robert. Keith is out on bail.”

  He stood up from the bed. The air in the room, clouded by candle smoke, moved in circular waves.

  “They would have come by now if they were going to come, don’t you think?” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  He felt dizzy and sluggish at the same time. He looked at the Moroccan rugs on the floor, the religious icons, the pop-art painting of a 7UP ad on the far wall. His sinuses burned and his mouth was dry, but he knew that they were down now to just booze.

  “What did Keith say?” he asked.

  “He said he was all right. He seemed calm.”

  He went over to the window and pushed aside the curtain. His heart pumped in a strange, disjointed rhythm, and he closed his eyes and then opened them until it stopped.

  “They could come in here and plant something if they wanted,” he said. “We should go through the drawers.”

  He looked at her, her face tinged yellow in the light from the candles. She wouldn’t look back. She sat with the distant, sullen concentration of a child, one foot in her hand, crossed over her knee.

  “What else did he say?” he asked.

  “He said he was worried about you.”

  He turned. “He said that or you said that?”

  “Don’t. You’re acting like it happened to you. Like you’re at the center of it all.”

  He grabbed her by the arm, but she twisted away. She closed her eyes and shook her head, as if too exhausted to say anything else.

  He walked out of the room. He felt awkward, unwieldy, more drunk than he’d thought. Every movement he made now reminded him of his father.

  She could hear him banging around the flat, knocking things off the bookshelves, moving the furniture. When she finally got up, the lamps in the living room were all burning. He was standing in nothing but his underpants and the white dress shirt he had worn to lunch.

  “You’re not going to keep it together, are you?” she said.

  “No. Not if you’re like this.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not getting started with all that. I’m not going through the drawers.”

  He shook his head, smiling. “I never should have taken you there. That was all very funny to you, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “My parents. What else would I be talking about?”

  She brushed her hair out of her eyes, then rubbed her cheek with her hand. “They were just two people. A little ordinary. I don’t see why it matters.”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders. When she freed herself, she stubbed her toe on the edge of the carpet and they both fell to the floor. They rolled and struggled, their hands grappling and their elbows cocked. They didn’t stop until they were both curled up in their separate numbnesses, unable to look at each other.

  The heat went on with a banging in the pipes. She heard cars passing in the street. She looked at the dim bedroom, lit by the streetlight through the thin curtains: the Moroccan tapestries, their clothes in piles on the floor, the mirror on its stand at the foot of the bed. He was stroking her shoulder beneath the sheet now, saying her name, his face burrowed against her back. She lay there with an impassive stare. He was emptied now, a boy seeking his mother. The more they stayed alone in this room, the more they seemed to merge.

  Before he hit her, he sometimes looked wild, as if a spirit had entered his body. Afterward, she would see the old confusion in his eyes, the babyish rage, and the wildness would disappear. But before it disappeared, there was a glimpse of someone he never could be for very long: the blended image of themselves that they used to look for in the bedroom mirror. He would look like she’d imagined him the first time she’d seen him onstage.

  The next day, all the papers printed front-page layouts of the band’s captioned photographs, all of which now looked like mug shots. Their disembodied heads stared out stupidly between blocks of text: “POP STAR ORGY. NAKED GIRL FOUND UPSTAIRS. FUTURE UNCERTAIN FOR MICK, OTHERS.” It was more serious than Keith had made it sound. According to the papers, he and Mick were both facing ten years in prison.

  They had never stopped wondering when it would end. Until recently, for the last four years, they had done almost nothing but work, struggling to keep their luck going. They had written songs, recorded songs, promoted songs, toured behind songs, and it had turned out to be a kind of endless tantalization, a way of traveling the world without ever really seeing it. What they’d seen was duty-free shops, swimming pools, parking lots, ashtrays. They’d seen themselves, always at a remove, made increasingly strange by the scrutiny of cameras and the remoteness of crowds. They’d get jumbled together, speaking phrases and jokes that originated with one of the others, then seeing themselves in the others’ faces, a warped and disjointed reflection. In interviews, they didn’t have to be funny to make people laugh, or interesting to provoke their scorn. They became a set of pictures in magazines: pouting young men in lavender and rust, oddly tailored suits made of suede. As if cities were moods, each stop seemed to bring out in them some new kind of flamboyance, the ceaselessly changing backdrops — Sydney, T
okyo, Munich, Rome — triggering an urge to live out another aspect of the total freedom that was the compensation for having given up their identities. They wore white suits, white shoes, acrylic blue shirts with polka dots, sideburns and tinted sunglasses, and the girls never mentioned the sweat on their backs or the corn oil stench of their hair. They were all in their early twenties. They moved through everything in an increasingly arrogant fog, aware of secret jokes and ironies, except for Brian, who sometimes moved through it like someone already dead, standing onstage with a Vox guitar and bangs that covered his eyes.

  It was no longer his band. It was Mick and Keith’s band. They wrote all the songs. The music they made was rhythm and blues with a jaded edge, the music of being young and famous and still dissatisfied, and onstage, in a French fisherman’s shirt and red jeans, Brian still seemed to somehow embody what the music said. He seemed to have gone past the point of wanting anything at all, and the fans, more and more of them male, could feel vicariously that they had gone past it too. They knew perfectly well about dissatisfaction, but now they could experience it as a consequence of fame, which they could imagine was theirs, and which turned out to be another, more glamorous form of isolation.

  Onstage, as a “joke,” Brian would sometimes play the wrong parts to songs, especially the big hits, all of them originals, no longer covers, all of them written by Mick and Keith. The shows consisted of twenty or thirty minutes of violence. It was as if the prettier the band got, the more rivalrous they became, the more the crowd needed to feel the nightsticks. After the pressing of records, the stamping out of cardboard sleeves, the distribution of identical disks to thousands of distant stores, perhaps it was no wonder that when the fans at last heard the music live, in its pure form, they rioted.

  Brian could not write original songs; his attempts were intricate and stiff, like formal exercises. In the studio, he would ornament the songs Mick and Keith came up with, adding color and instrumentation. As he did with his clothes, he would make striking collages out of different, seemingly incompatible styles. Marimba, saxophone, organ, piano, dulcimer, sitar — it became a strange kind of trap after a while. It was so easy. He began to think that Mick and Keith were providing him with simple frameworks, three-minute pop songs that would be nothing more than that unless he was there to transform them. It was a little boring for him sometimes, a little silly.