“You’re on the Edge of the World,” Wilson had said. “You liked those maps, didn’t you, Nick?”
Ignoring the ominous tone of Wilson’s declaration, Taer had pushed him for more information. “Where would the train take us?” she demanded.
“New Babylon.”
I made a surprised noise.
“Finding the train is like passing a test,” Molly said. “The train has three stops. The first stop is where you get on. And you can get off at the second or third stops. If you get off at the second stop, that means you don’t want to come to New Babylon, you don’t want to build a new world with us. If you get off at the third stop, that means you want to keep moving.”
“And getting off at station two, that’s an acceptable choice?” I wanted to make a joke like if I tell you, I’d have to kill you, but I was still a little bit nervous around Molly. It really was exactly like talking to the ghost of someone really, really famous.
“It’s what Gina chose,” she said.
“And Nick Berliner.”
“Well, yes, sort of,” Molly said. She smiled. “For the time being. He’s waiting for Marie-Hélène and then they will come to New Babylon together.”
“Waiting for her to get out of prison, you mean.”
“Yes, that’s my darling Nick, he’s very romantic about her. It’s wonderful to be around two people who are so dramatically fucking in love with each other. It’s been an inspiration to myself.”
As Marie-Hélène Kraus has been in prison since before Molly met Berliner, I’m not sure how she spent time around both of them (did she visit Kraus in prison with Berliner?) or whether it was enough time to adequately understand the depth of their love. I didn’t bring this up.
“Okay, so, New Babylon. Let’s go back to that. I’ve heard of that, it was a city Constant Nieuwenhuys designed, but it wasn’t a real city, it was never built.”
“ ‘Realness’ doesn’t mean it had a zip code. It was a real city then but, no, it was never built. But he didn’t design it to make an art project. It was a city, a potential city. Until now, when its potential has been realized.”
“What does that even mean?”
“We are building New Babylon, and we are living there. Cait is there, and Cyrus.”
“Is that where all the New Situationists went after the bombing?”
“I can’t answer questions about that.”
“But—”
“Stop asking.”
“Had you built the city from Constant’s original design?”
“New Babylon, by its very nature, is never ‘finished,’ always changing based on the desires and pleasure of the inhabitants but—restricted to traditional definitions—one might say that it is built. We have, for example, running water.”
“You built it since you were gone, a whole city?”
“Oh no.” She laughed. “You shouldn’t attribute the building of this city to me just because I’m famous. I’m not the builder of New Babylon, merely one of its most prominent citizens.”
“Who is the builder?”
“To explain that, let’s go back for a moment to the nature of New Babylon and Constant, because if you’ve studied his documents—we have a lot of the originals, actually—you’ll notice that he wasn’t very specific in regards to the practicalities involved in building his city. Their city, the Situationist city. So we’ve had to be very innovative. A lot of that innovation originated before I arrived. I’m not an engineer, though I’m becoming one, which is very exciting for me. I think every citizen of New Babylon will be able to self-identify as an engineer, that will be part of our national identity.”
“National identity?”
She nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “In terms of intent, has that remained the same, from Constant’s drawings?”
“For the most part.”
“So who is the mastermind? The guy who decided, fuck it, fuck America, I’m moving to New Babylon even if I have to build it myself?”
Molly looked at me. “You’re not as imaginative as Caitlin. Or perhaps, that’s not fair, just less well-read. The architect of New Babylon is Guy Debord.”
You might remember, as I remembered at the moment, that Guy Debord committed suicide in 1994 when he shot himself in the heart.
“Obviously he didn’t,” Molly said, when I pointed that out.
According to Molly, the manifestation of New Babylon began in 1984, with the murder of Gérard Lebovici, Debord’s friend and fellow filmmaker. Debord was investigated as the French equivalent of a “person of interest” in Lebovici’s death, though never arrested or even officially labeled a suspect. The murder reminded Debord of his own impending demise and his lack of impact on the world. When he was young, he had wanted to change everything, but he had changed nothing and while he grew old, the Society of the Spectacle only strengthened and spread. Debord felt he had failed. Rather than give up, he decided to carve out a new space for himself, a true Situationist space. He decided to build the Situationist city.
Quietly, with a few of his closest friends (all male), he began planning the construction of New Babylon. They found a location and developed strategies for how to actualize, how to “manifest,” Constant’s fictional city. Debord simultaneously began planning his final film Guy Debord: son art et son temps, that is, Guy Debord: His Art and His Times (which, despite the title, isn’t a biopic) as a cover story, to keep his acquaintances and wife, Alice Becker-Ho, in the dark about the New Babylon project.
Over the next decade, Debord supervised the building of the city from afar. In 1994, the city was inhabitable enough to accommodate even an aging man like Debord. To remove himself from the Society of the Spectacle and become a full citizen of the Situationist city, Debord faked his own death by suicide on December 1, 1994. Molly wouldn’t tell me the methods he used to fake shooting himself through the heart (perhaps he paid off the cops, coroner, etc.?) and maybe he never told. His two co-conspirators, publisher Gérard Voitey and writer Roger Stéphane, followed him on December 3 and December 4. Their deaths were called “copycat” suicides.
Debord, Voitey, and Stéphane, all old men in 1994, didn’t build and inhabit the Situationist city alone.
“Lots of young French men and women, people in their twenties, psychogeographists, went missing in 1994 as well.”
I must’ve looked startled.
Molly laughed. “I didn’t mean to make that sound so nefarious! Nothing untoward happened. I merely meant to imply …” She paused again, laughed again, exuding such warmth and vivacity, was so familiarly herself, so much the woman I remembered from MTV and the “Don’t Stop (N’Arrête Pas)” music video, that I shuddered.
She said, “My aim was to soften the blow of explaining that Guy and many of his contemporaries, while geniuses, can’t do the heavy lifting. At the time they were doing a lot of building. We are still doing a lot of building. Our building will never end.”
Molly held her arm above the table and flexed her bicep.
“You see how strong my arms are getting. We have a number of manufacturers but there is still some heavy lifting to do. I’m speaking both metaphorically and literally.”
“So you are designing and building, both.”
“Yes!”
“Can you explain the city to me?” I asked. I realized, the moment after I asked the question, that I was interested not out of journalistic impulse, but because I wanted to picture where she and Cait were living.
“It’s not hard to explain. In the early days of the Situationist International, especially then, they were basically declaring that architecture would revolutionize all lives, everyone’s everyday lives. People could be released from ordinary activities—wake up, drink coffee, go to work, drink wine, fuck somebody, sleep—and become citizens of a city in a world of experiment and play. Possibly this would mean some kind of anarchy, but most likely not, order comes out of chaos, that’s what happens. It happens inevitably, I think. Several millio
ns of years ago, we were hunting bison with our hands and teeth and now there are magazines that are designed only to report on the music business—how many peoples’ lives are supported by just one of those magazines, even now, when print media is falling apart? I’m not sure Guy would agree with me on this point, but he chose not to visit with you.
“So they promised this new way of living to the whole world, but when you promise something to the world, the first person you promise it to is yourself.”
She put her hands on her heart, and continued speaking while holding that pose:
“And the second and third people that you promise it to are your comrades, the ones who are helping you make that promise. The Situationists failed the world but mostly they failed themselves. They wanted to keep their promises, even belatedly, to as many people as they could.”
“It’s a compromise,” I said.
“No.”
“They said—I researched this—they said they didn’t want to create, what did they call it? ‘Holiday Resorts.’ ”
“New Babylon is not a Holiday Resort.”
“No this—this is a Holiday Resort that you’re describing. You’re selling me a timeshare in New Babylon.”
“No. For one thing, you don’t get to go and come back to your ‘regular life.’ A Holiday Resort is something you can visit on the weekend, and when the season is over, you can leave. And when the resort becomes unfashionable, you can move on to the next one. But not for us. It’s either old world or New Babylon. The only reason I disappeared rather than fake my own death was because we were aware my body would be more highly scrutinized than the average citizen of New Babylon. To live there, you must renounce your citizenship of this ‘Society of the Spectacle,’ to quote Guy.”
“Some people would say that, by becoming a famous pop star, you were actively upholding the Society of the Spectacle.”
“I was trying to change what pop culture was, what it meant—”
“You did that.”
“—until I discovered I didn’t have to. We have large plans. We won’t stay a secret place for very much longer.”
“That’s why you let Cyrus give me his work? And why you came to talk to me?”
“Guy and everybody didn’t want me to come,” she said, running her fingers through her thick mane of messy blondish hair, so long that the ends still retain some of the blue dye I recognized from her “Apocalypse Dance” music video. “But I thought it would make a good end to the book.”
“Yeah,” I said, “it will make a very good reveal, I think.”
“Cyrus showed me his draft and I thought it lacked narrative symmetry and I realized that I was the only one who would be able to provide it. So I made a decision, even though there are people who won’t believe that this is actually happening. They will dismiss you.” She spoke slowly and firmly, enunciating every word—her style from a life of giving interviews.
“You’ll let me take your picture?”
“Sure. That will make some people believe it. Some people will always think you faked it. I hope the right people believe you.”
I must’ve looked deflated. She was right, of course. Before visiting the train station, I had begun to face the reality that putting my name on this book would be the end of something for me, but it was disconcerting to hear it so assuredly confirmed.
“I understand that it might be a bit frightening, but we all have to put a bullet through our hearts. Even you, in your own way. You’ll be killing your credibility, which is a version of yourself. Your death will be as metaphoric as Caitlin Taer’s.”
I told her I agreed, even though she sounded a little insane to me. I also refrained from mentioning how much she liked to talk about metaphors.
“Don’t worry about what they will think of you,” Molly coached. “We should always try to be our best selves. And our best selves are always moving forward.” Then she slipped into her pop star pout, and threw half her hair in front of one eye as she had in so many red carpet pictures. “Haters gonna hate,” she said.
“ ‘Don’t worry what they think of you,’ ” I repeated. “So that’s why you’re letting this book happen? To come out of the closet, so to speak.”
“That will happen with or without the book. Debord has been negotiating politically for years, we will be an independent nation eventually.”
“Then why did Cyrus have to fake his death? If I wanted to come, would I still have to ‘die’?”
“Yes, you would have to fake your own death. And the reason you would have to is the same reason as why Cyrus had to. We require complete commitment.”
“How do you pay for it?”
“Every inhabitant contributed their wealth when they arrived. We have several incredibly wealthy inhabitants—you might’ve heard of a family called the Pullmans? I have become close with Liz Pullman. They still receive income through various covert means, as do I.”
“Why do you use the train? It seems unnecessarily complicated. And why the special map that you changed at the last minute to lead Berliner to the train? All of this drama? Some kind of fucking war with the New Society?” I asked.
“The train is a thing to find, and you have to really commit, really care about figuring out what the New Situationists were up to, in order to find it. Finding the train helps people get ready to fully commit to New Babylon.
“ ‘Why the train?’ Of course the train! The point of New Babylon is to live in your fantasies. The train is a huge magnificent toy. The reason the New Situationists failed was because they decided to do the bombing—not because one of them got caught. Their passion for the group soured because they forgot that they were supposed to be playful and fun. New Babylon is an ever-changing city built on the idea that playfulness is just as important as efficiency. Becoming a pop star was the best fun I could’ve had, before New Babylon. The point is to live your fantasy!”
Without thinking about it, I reached across the table and grabbed her hand.
“Will you stand up so I can hug you?” she asked.
I stood up and we hugged. I think I shook a little bit, in her arms.
“Can fun be fun if people are getting hurt?” I whispered into her hair. “Even emotionally hurt? Especially emotionally hurt?”
“Most people are ready to suffer, as long as it’s for the right reasons.”
What is my role in the narrative supposed to be? I wondered this as our hug ended and the train began to break for Plaques Tournantes Deux. I remembered something an old boyfriend had said, during a seven-hour stretch of time when we were trapped at an airport waiting for our delayed plane to take off. “You don’t need the same things as everyone else,” he said. “You can have fun anywhere.” We still talked every month even though we’d broken up years ago, because neither of us liked the idea that we would never hear each other’s voice again.
I said, “What does having fun even mean?”
Molly responded, “How can I answer that for you? You have to figure it out for yourself. You can find your own path or you can try following other people’s maps. Repeating someone’s actions, taking their choices as your own can be a creative act. Or, if you want, you can deviate.”
The train slowed under my feet and I held Molly’s shoulder to stabilize myself as we rocked to a stop.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“We’ve looped around a few times so we could talk, but now we’ve pulled into the second stop. Do you want to get off?”
“Can we loop around a bit more, I have a few more questions, some important ones.”
Molly signed heavily, over-emphasizing her distress. “I’m afraid this is it. You can get off, or travel with us to the third station and get off there.”
“But if I do that, that basically means, I’m committing to going to New Babylon.”
“Yes.”
“So if I don’t want to go to New Babylon, I have to get off now?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not fai
r. I need to know who the New Situationists are, and, like, what Cait’s job is in New Babylon. And where it is, for fuck’s sake.”
“Off,” Molly said. “Or on?”
I couldn’t stay.
I grabbed my voice recorder and Molly hustled me out of the train car.
“Please,” I said, from the platform of Plaques Tournantes Deux. “Please tell me where it is.”
“What does it matter if you’re not going?” Molly said. This was the last thing she said to me, the door of the train closed and she was gone again. I’ve listened to the recording dozens of times and I think I can hear disappointment in her voice. I think she was angry at me for staying behind.
I walked up the wide and well-lit staircase, which terminated in a heavy door set into a brick wall. I pulled open the door and felt a gust of warm air; leaning against the wall opposite the door was Nix, smoking and waiting for me.
“Did she tell you where it is?” Nix said.
“No,” I said. “She refused.”
“Fuck, I thought maybe she would. I guess that was stupid.”
“So, you don’t know?”
“Nick doesn’t know yet and no one would tell me, not even Cait,” Nix said. “I don’t even know why I’m here, I mean like, she’s never coming back even if I find her.”
“Did she leave without telling you?” I asked.
Nix laughed. “No, I’m the fucking idiot that helped her fake her own death so she could run away and never see me again.”
Nix noticed I was holding a voice recorder.
“Could you please turn that fucking thing off?” She asked. “I’m so sick of everyone taping everything I say.”
I obliged.
Plaques Tournantes Deux is under a neighborhood called Edgewater in a northern part of the city proper, close to the lake (as you can probably tell by the name). The door to the train station is in the alley behind an Ethiopian restaurant on North Broadway. Once I let it close, it nearly disappeared into the wall. I could only see the lines of the door because I knew they were there. There was no knob, and as far as I can tell, no way into Plaques Tournantes Deux besides the train from one of the other stations.
The Ghost Network Page 26