The next thing he knew, he was being shaken awake. The sun was in his face. Uncle America and the three andartes stood over him.
‘Where is she?’ he asked, confused for a moment.
‘We go,’ said Uncle America.
Geraxos was standing behind him, his eyes fixed on the mountains.
They would pass through villages where blackened foundations marked the positions of the dwellings. Sometimes chairs and tables were set up, as though people were living in the ruins. From a distance, a church built on a high ridge seemed purposeless in its isolation. Drawing nearing, they found the cottages of its parishioners strewn around it. Not one stone stood on another. They traversed a hillside strewn with smashed furniture and pottery which seemed to have fallen from the sky. There was no sign of the houses which must once have held these contents. Their inhabitants had vanished. Further on, the six men looked down into a steep-sided gully where a stream raced. Uncle America took the heavy pistol from Sol; a shot resounded. Why should these things have printed themselves in his memory while so many others left no trace? His fever abated but he had been weak and light-headed.
The air thinned as they moved higher into the mountains. There was a junction in their journey; it was somewhere ahead, but before the entrance to the gorge. At that point their route must intersect that of Thyella and Xanthos. The boar was run to ground in the marshland about a lake where reeds grew. Peleus loosed the first spear and missed, then Atalanta her arrow, wounding the beast. Ancaeus would be the first of his victims. It fell to Meleager to kill him. But the lake was far behind them now. Instead there was the river-bed, which more than a year ago had been dry enough for the trucks carrying Geraxos's enemies to use as a road. Now a shallow sheet of clear water ran over its stones. Sol knelt to dip his hand in the water, which felt warm and cold at once. The hunters must gather here.
They camped in the ruins of the village, beneath the charred tree which had once supported the roof of the kaphenion. Sol shivered and dreamed that men were stepping carefully about him and his prone companions, placing their feet in the narrowest spaces: the crook of an elbow or knee, between barely separated legs. A heel descended and fitted itself in the cup of his chin and breastbone, lifted and disappeared. They were the same footsteps, repeated over and over again.
When morning came he had stopped shivering, but the sickness was still there, a tight cord strung through his frame. The intervals between bouts were briefer and briefer. Uncle America sat on a low wall. He nodded to Sol. Geraxos and the three younger men stood behind him. Sol got to his feet. The rock face rose above him, more irregular than he remembered it. His limbs felt loose, weightless.
Sol remembered the entrance to the gorge. The ground sloped up to a lip and then appeared to fall away. The old man and the three andartes strode forward, then dropped out of sight. Sol and Uncle America followed until they stood at the point where the gorge began.
Sol looked down. Every step hence would incur debts he could not repay on his return. The old man was halfway down the descent, which was a steep slope of crumbling earth punctuated by narrow ledges and outcrops of rock. He leaped from point to point, his rifle held balanced in one hand. The younger men followed in his footsteps.
Uncle America gestured to the vista before them. Crags jutted from the sides of the gorge, which were fissured where frost had cracked the dark grey stone. Sol thought of what lay ahead, the space into which he was falling. He could not stop now. The four men who had preceded them were shrinking figures in a waste of boulders and scree through which a black stream curled. What did this place mean, except that a twisting cord of water had cut its way through the rock over the millennia? Sol heard something catch in Uncle America's throat, a sound he did not recognise. The older man pointed down into the bare, sunless place. Then they began the descent.
***
Flights of stairs fenced with elaborate wrought-iron balustrades and bannisters rose through the building. Their steps sagged where the human traffic had worn down the stone. Sol took them two at a time, pausing midway to catch his breath. At the top of the final flight, a young woman sitting on a plastic chair looked up from a paperback novel.
‘Madame Lackner telephoned,’ he began to explain.
Before he could finish the woman got to her feet and put out her hand.
‘You're Solomon Memel, of course. I'm Elenie, Madame Lackner's assistant.’ She picked up a clipboard from the floor and made a tick against a list of names, then smiled. ‘Door duty today. Come with me. They're between takes.’
She led the way down the landing, edging past a depot of metallic cases draped with cables and stacks of bright orange plastic crates with the legend Cine-BGT and a telephone number stencilled on the side. She knocked softly on the door at the far end and there was a murmured exchange. Elenie turned back to Sol with a smile.
‘Please, Monsieur Memel.’
She stood aside to let him pass, drawing in her breath as though the passage were too narrow for them both. Sol slid around the door and found himself in a room he recognised. This was where Paul Sandor and his co-star had circled each other and grappled, five times over: the light-filled space which had appeared in the dark of the screening room. Now it contained a dozen or more people, the nearest of whom was Lisa Angludet, sat in front of him wearing shoes, blue jeans and nothing else. A woman was dusting her shoulders with powder.
The actress looked up at Sol as though her state of undress were perfectly unexceptional. They exchanged greetings. Sol looked around the room, which was larger than had been apparent in the rushes. Two doors led to further rooms, on either side of this one. It was warm, but the dull light entering by two high windows at the far end seemed to chill the air. Vittorio was standing in front of the left-hand opening with another, younger man, whom Sol recalled from the restaurant. They held up instruments to the light then examined them intently. The younger man scribbled in a notebook. Rolf? Ethan? In front of the other window Ruth crouched beside a chair in which sat Paul Sandor.
The actor was bent forward, elbows propped on his knees, fingers interlaced behind his head. Ruth spoke to him, then rose and patted him on the back. Sandor straightened and stretched his arms. Ruth looked quickly over at Vittorio, who shrugged, then at Lisa. The girl was watching Sol. The make-up artist dabbed ointment on her face and retouched her lipstick. Sol smiled uneasily. Ruth mouthed a silent greeting as she approached, then addressed the girl in the chair.
‘Five minutes, Lisa. We have time for three more takes, maximum.’ Ruth's voice was brittle.
‘Three?’ The girl stuck out her lower lip.
‘Yes, I know. Life is terribly hard. Is she ready?’
The make-up artist looked the girl over and nodded. Behind Ruth's back, a man walked in carrying a soundboom. Vittorio followed him with a large camera, which he waltzed around the floor for a few seconds. No one laughed. Sandor glanced over his shoulder, then looked away again. Men walked in from the adjoining room carrying chairs which they positioned carefully according to marks chalked on the floor. Ruth watched these preparations and waited, her lips pursed. Eventually, everyone found their place.
‘Please everybody,’ she said. ‘No mistakes.’
The scene began as Sol remembered. Sandor stood by the window, first craning his neck then pressing his face to the glass as whatever it was that had captured his attention approached down the street. He was dressed in the same sweater as before but the trousers were darker and cut more formally. This time, when the object of his interest disappeared from view, Sandor's face dropped and then puzzlement surfaced in his features, slowly becoming surprise. The actor's character had understood something, thought Sol, who was sitting on Lisa Angludet's stool among the gear piled in the corner. Vittorio stood back from the actor, the sound-man with his boom beside him, Ruth behind both. All three turned slowly away from Sandor.
Lisa stood with her arms crossed over her breasts and a creased white scarf wrapped about her ne
ck. Now Sandor's surprise meant something different. He smiled theatrically at her appearance. Lisa was looking around the room. No overcoat this time, noted Sol. Was she more naked in jeans, or less so?
‘Where is everything?’ she demanded.
‘Come in, come in. You must be cold.’ Sandor skipped forward, the eager suitor. ‘We had too many things. Far too many, don't you think?’
Lisa wore mules. Her footsteps resounded around the room as she walked over the floorboards. Vittorio pulled back slowly.
‘No. I don't think.’ A look of disapproval spread over her face. ‘What's wrong with you? Why don't you get rid of me too?’
Sandor pretended to look shocked.
‘What do you want?’ Lisa went on. She was trying to work herself up but she was tired. Their affair was tired?
‘You know what I want,’ Sandor growled.
He moved around Lisa, who stepped back. Suddenly he pulled a face and made as if to grab her breasts, flexing his fingers, a silent-movie villain. Lisa crossed her arms more tightly. Sandor changed tack.
‘What do we care?’ he exhorted her grandly. ‘We still have chairs. Wonderful chairs!’
He threw out his arm to indicate them, hamming up his character's performance. He was drawing the girl in, Sol saw. Making her react to him. The two actors circled each other.
‘I don't care.’ Her voice was sullen. ‘I've had enough.’
‘My thought entirely.’ Sandor was spritely, still. But there was an edge to his voice now.
‘I've had enough of you. I've had enough old men!’ She was going to burst into tears.
‘Oh really? And how many old men have you had?’
‘Enough!’ she shouted, and lunged at him. Vittorio, the boom operator and Ruth moved back at the same moment. Lisa hit Sandor on the side of the head before he caught her by the wrist and pulled her towards him. They struggled clumsily, stumbling towards the window. Lisa made listless attempts to free herself but they were no more than gestures. Then she gave in. Sandor pushed her slowly, heavily against the wall. Lisa stared over his shoulder then grimaced in sudden pain. Ruth guided Vittorio closer until the camera obscured the actress's face, then manoeuvred the cameraman around to the side. Sandor bent his head to the wall, rested it there for a moment, then pulled both him and Lisa towards the centre of the room, out of shot. Ruth stepped back.
There was silence.
‘Getting better,’ Ruth announced, and clapped her hands.
A dark smudge now stained the wall between the windows at shoulder height, like a bloodstain that had been rubbed in, then allowed to dry. As Lisa walked back to reclaim her stool he saw that the same substance, a kind of oily chalk, was smeared over her back. He stared at her, puzzled. She caught his eye.
‘Your shoulder.’ He touched his own. The make-up artist was preparing her alcohol wipes and cotton wool.
‘They paint this stuff on the wall, then paint white over the top,’ she said, as Sol rose to his feet. She scratched at her back and held up her fingers. Behind her, Vittorio was playing his camera over the stain, back and forth. A man carrying a paint-pot waited for him to finish.
Sandor looked across the room and raised his hand in greeting. Sol walked over as Ruth reappeared. Vittorio made a final pass over the wall then lifted the camera from his shoulder.
‘You came,’ said Ruth.
‘Of course,’ Sol replied. ‘I said I was curious.’
‘Yes,’ said Ruth. ‘That's what you said.’
‘We've saved the best till last,’ said Sandor. ‘Or the last till worst.’ He looked tired, and older than he had appeared a few minutes earlier. He was wearing face-powder, Sol saw. A young woman hovered behind the actor carrying a bag of pots and brushes. ‘That's what I need,’ he said, nodding to the man now dabbing paint over the stain on the wall. ‘A good coat of white-wash.’
‘It was much better,’ said Ruth. ‘We'll get it next time.’
She looked anxiously out of the window, then beckoned Sol to follow her into the adjoining room, where a table and chairs had been set up. A woman hunting through a long rail of clothes looked over her shoulder, smiled at Ruth, then resumed her search. The two of them sat down. Ruth sighed and rubbed her eyes.
‘Difficult day,’ prompted Sol.
Ruth glanced back into the next room as though this thought had only just occurred to her.
‘You don't see anything in what we're doing, do you?’ she said. ‘Of your work, I mean.’
The question caught him by surprise. ‘Am I meant to?’
‘I don't know. It depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On what happened. On where we are, the two of us.’ She thought for a second. ‘These are your memories, not mine.’
‘I wanted to talk to you. That first night.’
‘Yes, I know.’ She looked up. ‘I wasn't delayed. I said I was. At the airport . . .’
She would have said more but then someone in the next room called her name. She smiled apologetically at Sol.
‘We can talk tonight,’ Sol said. ‘After you're finished here.’
Ruth nodded. ‘There's coffee,’ she said as she pushed a chair aside.
Sol sat at the table. Members of the crew walked in and out. Then the room beyond went silent, the door was closed and Sol listened for the scene to begin again. This time, however, the two actors had hardly begun their dialogue before there was a muffled thud and Ruth's voice sounded.
‘Shit! Can someone please tell me why this is happening?’ Her voice rose. ‘Anyone?’
The door opened and Vittorio's assistant marched in shaking his head. Ruth spoke more calmly.
‘OK. We go again. Last chance everyone. We need one take, just one.’
‘I need to pee.’ Lisa Angludet's voice.
‘Too late. Positions everyone.’
’Merde. I said I need to pee.‘
‘Positions.’
‘The light's hopeless,’ said Vittorio's assistant to someone behind Sol. ‘We're not getting anything.’ He picked up something from the floor and walked out.
‘Calm down,’ Sol heard Sandor tell someone. ‘We just move through this together. One, two, three.’ The girl.
There was silence and then the scene began again. Sol listened to the actors’ ballet, the wooden reports of Lisa's footsteps as she approached across the room, Sandor's retreat, a feint, then the struggle. They stumbled, stopped and stumbled again. A short silence meant she was pressed against the wall, which would graze her shoulder. The mark she left was a quotation from the poem's concluding section, when Meilanion grazed himself in the cave. It stood for evidence.
Then, in quick succession, Sol and everyone else in the room heard Ruth say, ‘That's it, get her face now,’ followed by Sandor's voice, ‘For Chrissakes, Ruth, what are you doing?’ and an instant later Lisa Angludet who shouted, ‘Get off me! Get off!’ Her voice broke into sobs.
Sol jumped up and opened the door as the girl freed herself and ran across the room, one hand to her face, the other pressed to her crotch. Sandor turned from the wall, his face red. Ruth stepped back, nodding to herself.
‘Jesus Christ, Ruth.’ Sandor was shaking his head.
Ruth ignored him. ‘Did you get it, Vittorio?’
The cameraman looked down at his camera as though noticing it for the first time. ‘I think so.’
‘Did you get it or not?’
Vittorio nodded.
Ruth smiled. ‘We're done. Break camp. Saddle horses. Thank you everyone.’ She clapped her hands, seemingly oblivious of the silence in the room, or perhaps determined to break it. The crew turned away and began to pack up.
‘You're a fucking piece of work, Ruth,’ growled Sandor as someone handed him a jacket.
‘We need to write you some new lines, Paul,’ she said, walking past him to Sol. ‘I'll get things organised for tomorrow, go over some things with Elenie. Then we can go. Will you wait for me?’
‘Of course,’ said Sol
stiffly. He went back into the adjoining room and sat down again. People came and went. Sol heard three dull clangs as the chairs were stacked. A trailing plug scraped over the floor and banged against a plastic bucket. Someone dropped a teaspoon in a cup. The crew swapped ‘goodbyes’ in a mish-mash of languages to a flushed urinal's distant crash of applause. He sat in the company of the empty costumes hanging from the rack behind him. The afternoon reached its final shade of grey.
Several minutes of silence had passed before Sol rose and walked into the main room in search of Ruth. It was empty. He crossed and opened the door opposite. Beyond it was a corridor with doors off to the left. A fragment of plaster crunched beneath his heel. There was a skylight at the far end, whose weak illumination fell on what appeared to be rubbish sacks.
‘Ruth?’
No reply came from the corridor. He tried the first door, which was locked. The second swung open on a bathroom. A pull-cord lit a bare bulb hanging over a bath of yellowed enamel. The mirror's spotted silvering gave him his face in a spray of shrapnel. Perhaps Ruth was waiting for him outside, on the landing.
‘Ruth?’ he called again.
‘She's gone.’
One of the rubbish sacks rose. Lisa Angludet walked towards him. ‘There’s no one here,’ she said.
She wore a military jacket and a towel wrapped around her waist. Her jeans swung from one hand. ‘They won't dry.’ She pushed past him. Sol followed as she walked, barefoot, back into the main room.
‘Gone where?’ he asked.
‘Just gone,’ she said, glancing around from the place of her earlier humiliation. ‘So she plays these games with you too?’
The main room was almost dark. Yellow palls of street-light entered by the windows and fanned across the ceiling. Sol leaned in the doorway.
Her jacket was an approximation of Wehrmacht uniform. The cut was wrong and there was something that looked like a medal ribbon, red and white, on one of the breastpockets. The girl stared at him, a strip of her skin visible between the lapels of the unbuttoned jacket.
In the Shape of a Boar Page 30