Eat the Document

by Dana Spiotta

  “So, any comments? Obviously, this is just a rough cut. We are going to get ten minutes together, then hit the festivals, get some backers to put up money for digital animation, Avid, Pro-Tools and Flash formatting.” He wore wire-framed, narrow oval glasses low on the bridge of his nose and his black hair long and spiked straight up in sticky, unmoving finger pulls. A tattoo of an overwrought ivy strand riddled with viciously drawn thorns started at his neck, disappeared under his shirt until it reached his forearm, then wound painfully to encircle the delicate bones of his wrist. It looked as if a killer plant had crawled under his clothes and was stealing around his limbs to strangle and devour him. Nash found the tattoo distracting, and he couldn’t really even look at the kid after a time.

  “I think that doll stuff is played out. I remember seeing Barbie doll reenactments of historical events back in the early ’90s,” said Sissy, looking very sober with two neat, tight braids and precision-cut bangs. Oversized vintage aviator-shaped glasses overwhelmed her face and would have evoked low-budget porn movies if the lenses had a sunset tint, but since they were clear glass and obviously prescription, they seemed more like something a middle-aged serial killer would wear. Nash realized this was precisely the look she was trying to achieve, and he couldn’t help taking some pride in the fact that he could “get” it. Because most of the kids recognized her as a writer for the more underground of the local weekly magazines, when she spoke they regarded her as an absolute authority. Of course she only had a music column, but still, she was attached to the media, so everyone treated her as if she might bestow some instant fame on any one of them. There was nothing these kids respected like media connections.

  “The copyright infringement stuff with Mattel or Hasbro that inevitably happens with any Barbie or G.I. Joe reference is also sort of pointless. No one is going to let you show the thing publicly, but you can naturally put the cease-and-desist letter in your press packet and try to get some cred that way, I suppose. But it has to get a lot of notoriety to overcome the fact that it won’t really be seen.”

  Josh raised his hand.

  “Actually, have any of you heard of the ’60s filmmaker Bobby Desoto?” he said. “Desoto made a series of films from 1968 to1972. Many are on Super Eight, and some of them use dolls, or clay figures, in hand-done stop-action. They look amazing: beautiful in their own right, with that Lotte Reiniger sort of primitive-intricate animation, pinhole lighting and paper effects, but also with these very funny absurd political voice-overs, like La Chinoise, Godard’s film with the speeches about the Vietcong recited in flat, singsong tones by French beauties in miniskirts. Where the tone is such that you are never sure if the extreme didacticism is being satirized or espoused. It is both. Mix Godard with Gumby and Georges Méliès, that’s what Desoto’s films are like.” Josh smiled at the group of perplexed but nonchalant cineastes staring at him.

  “Desoto clearly was way ahead on all of this. Including copyright stuff. He made several films out of other films and news clips. He looped and sampled found clips, juxtaposed things for various effects. A prankster, as well. He also did some straightforward documentary stuff, not nearly as successful as the other things. He even got Jean-Pierre Léaud to narrate one of them, half in French and half in highly accented, rough English.”

  “Are his films available on video?” a girl asked.

  “No, but there is this sort of neo-Luddite group, the Formatters?” Some of the people nodded. “They are all about retro formatting. They preserve and disseminate stuff in its original format, like eight-millimeter, Super Eight or sixteen-millimeter film. Vinyl records, eight-track tapes, even laser discs. As long as it is obsolete, it’s included. No digital remastering or video transferring. You can also buy projectors from them. Anyway, they deal largely in bootleg stuff, so it is semi-illegal. All the Desoto stuff is bootlegged.”

  “So the artist doesn’t get any money for it?” asked Miranda.

  “Well, Desoto, as it happens, was involved in some terrorism, bombings related to weapons manufacturers, I think, toward the end of the Vietnam War, and he went underground. He is still a fugitive. So there is no way for him to get any money.”

  Nash glanced in Josh’s direction, and then he raised his right hand with his index finger and middle finger together and extended. A reluctant gesture. Josh nodded at him.

  “So, how did you find this neo-Luddite bootlegger group?” Nash asked.

  “On their website,” Josh said and then smiled widely at Nash.

  “Naturally,” Nash said, “on their neo-Luddite website.”

  “There are actually quite a few of those. They are finally not really antitech. They are kind of tech fetishists in a way. When you think about it.”

  “The Formatters, huh?”

  “Desoto was a genius.”

  Nash shrugged. “Sounds to me like they just value whatever is obscure and difficult to access. Obscuristas. Seems elitist.”

  After the group meeting was over and everyone had left, Miranda reappeared, either not having left at all or returning. Nash did the inventory. This meant a clipboard and a title count of all the books on the shelves. It meant counting all the backup books in boxes. It also meant reshelving the books the kids put in the wrong place. He did this once a month, working all night. He liked it, usually—concentrating but not thinking. Making order. He listened to his music—Thelonious Monk tonight. Miranda watched him work until he finally paused.

  “I’ve missed having you around,” he said.

  “I’ve been in New York. I’m moving there, actually.”

  “I heard about that. Great. That’s great.”

  They both nodded at each other. Coleman Hawkins blew down the last verse of “Ruby, My Dear.”

  “Can I help you do inventory?” she asked.

  Nash shook his head.

  “Can I hang out for a while?”

  “Of course.”

  She watched him mark his clipboard. After ten minutes or so, she took out one of her hash-laced cigarettes and lit up.

  “Smoking in the store?” he said. She just laughed and inhaled, holding the smoke in her lungs. She held the joint out to him. He walked over and took it from her.

  “You still bite your nails,” he said. He took a drag. She sat down on the floor and crossed her legs.

  “I should put that nasty nail polish on, the stuff that tastes awful, so I won’t bite them.” She pulled him next to her. He sat on the floor and took another drag.

  The hash made the music expand and deepen around them. Nash found the intensity almost unbearable. The music wasn’t meant to be background.

  “Are you upset about something?” she said.

  He handed her what remained of the hash cigarette.

  “I’m moving with that guy, Josh. He went to my high school, you know.”

  “I’m not—”

  “I don’t mean you are upset about me and Josh, I just meant you seemed upset about something—”

  “I didn’t know you went to high school together.”

  “—and then I said that about me and Josh next because it was on my mind.”

  There was a long, piano-filled pause between them. Nash laughed, nervously. He stood up. “I have to finish inventory. Unfortunately, my concentration is so fragile I can’t talk and count. And with the hash, I may yet drool all over the books.”

  Miranda nodded but didn’t move or get up to leave.

  “And that crap cinema pseudo meta-provo group has got to go,” he said, mostly to himself and his clipboard.

  “I thought they were ecto-provo.”

  “That has no meaning, you realize that, don’t you? Still, that’s probably the best thing about them,” Nash said.

  “You don’t like Josh, do you?” she said.

  “He is a very bright guy. A little overenamored of his finely calibrated sensibility perhaps, and maybe also contrary for its own sake, and definitely more cynical than he could possibly have the right to be. But, all in a
ll a sharp kid.”

  “You don’t like him.”

  Nash smiled at her as he marked something on his clipboard.

  “We are moving to New York for a project Josh is working on. Top secret. I think it will be cool.”

  She started to say more, but as Nash began silently mouthing his count, she stopped herself.

  “No, I don’t like Josh,” he said, but she probably didn’t hear, because she was already out the door. After he realized Miranda was gone, Nash sat for a minute. He leaned back and lay on the bench by the bookshelves. He closed his eyes and listened to the music.

  PART SEVEN

  1982–1999

  Rules of Engagement

  IT WASN’T THAT she no longer loved Augie. She felt increasing affection for him. It wasn’t that she found him repellent in any way. Objectively she would watch him from across the room when he went to get another beer from the bar. He was pleasing in a gentle-bear way. Nice muscles covered by an easygoing layer of soft fat. No edges, no offenses. But somehow the initial excitement of sleeping with him left with no warning. It didn’t wane or dwindle. It just disappeared for her altogether.

  She liked him, his hair, his large eyes, his bumped-up hands, his open face. She thought he smelled just fine—not at all bad. Sometimes she noticed his breath, but not too often. That was not it. There was nothing specific in his person that offended her or put her off. Everything was fine, even pleasing. So why then did she suddenly have no desire for him? He still desired her. He wanted lots of sex, and she complied as much as she could. But sometimes he took so long, and her generosity would fray. She would catch herself thinking, Come on. And he would nearly come but not quite. He’d want to switch positions. And the thing of it was Louise knew she could never betray her impatience. She couldn’t say “hurry up” because that didn’t help at all. No, the best thing was to feign enthusiasm, to act as turned on and enthusiastic as possible to peak his desire and make him come. But it was a fine line: if she feigned too much enthusiasm, he might try to hold back longer, to prolong her enjoyment. Often she flicked her tongue at his ear suddenly, or whispered a hushed cliché to him at a crucial moment. She knew to stroke his back but not in too distracting a way. It wasn’t that she minded his being inside her, but the artifice and the effort required, that was tough. He relaxed after and looked at her in adoration. He didn’t know, did he? She was ashamed and terrified to think that he might know. But maybe he didn’t. She had become so good at arousing him, at the micro-modulations that worked his desire. She had paid attention, it was true, but just not for the reasons he believed.

  Would it be better to be honest? He used to try, quite often, to get her to come. He was not bad at it. He would slip down beneath the sheets and stay there until it was done. He seemed to enjoy himself—perhaps feigning for the same reasons she did, perhaps not. She didn’t fake orgasms. No reason to. When he used his mouth she could have them quite easily. Sometimes so intense and shaky that she couldn’t believe they came from within her. But it still didn’t matter. She also did this for him. She didn’t really care if she had the orgasm. She would just as soon have gone to sleep. Because in a way an orgasm is mostly a physical thing, which doesn’t necessarily have to do with desire. Desire was more complex: a desperation and a need you felt before, an imagining and then a realizing during. It required mind and body. Her body was just fine. Her imagination—well, it failed her most of the time.

  She wondered if she felt this way because she still longed for Bobby. Because she still, after all these years, remembered his smell, his taste, his touch. Mostly she remembered wanting him deeply. She could also still remember when she had wanted Augie badly. But her desire for Bobby continued, that was the difference. And there was the question: Did she still want Bobby because things didn’t have time to dwindle and disappear the way they did with Augie? Or was it just different, did she just love Bobby more? If she’d met Augie first, would she pine for him? It occurred to her that her shutdown, her unfeeling state, could not last indefinitely. He would catch on, or she would grow too impatient, and it would be over.

  Sometimes when she lay on her bed, she considered that there was no longer any point in not giving herself up. She knew she could dwindle only so long and then she would turn herself in after she had made the freedom part of her life as lifeless as any incarceration could possibly be. “There’s no escape.” Yes, but not for the reasons you might think.

  When August reached for her, she would order herself to think of her early times with him. The rainy afternoon she visited him at his job site, a large country house. He took her hand and led her into the woods behind the building. Despite the rain, they leaned against a tree, kissing and pulling at clothes. He yanked and adjusted her and then she was on him, both of them clothed and aching for it. She could remember all these moments in her head; she could not remember them in her body. She could not get them to live in her skin, between her legs and then to a shivery platform of interior nerves, forcing the tiniest of anticipatory contractions, the floor of her muscles already quivering. She could not conjure that.

  She knew she should change her life. She felt herself to be in such a diminished, subtracted state. It even occurred to her that it might be the name itself—Louise Barrot. She believed taking the name of a dead infant had colored all her possibilities, tinted everything with morbidity. She knew also that the dead infant took on more significance for other reasons. Her underground status had convoluted all context—the fact that she could change her identity so completely changed the very possibility of engagement, or precluded the possibility of real engagement. She regarded everything and everyone from a distance, both ephemeral and abstract.

  After a few months of dustiness that progressed into a low-grade disgust for her life with Augie, he began to speak to her about their future with great specificity. Amazingly, Augie had developed a real attachment to her. But it just made her feel trapped, circumscribed, desperate. People with real freedom never do really “free” things, like reinvent themselves, leave lives behind, change everything. Only trapped, desperate people did that. It took such coldness and will. She thought of it constantly. Rephrased it to see if she could find some comfort in it. Not go to jail. But surrender. Resurface. That sounded good, as though she had been drowning underground. She could yield, retire, repent.

  She could see her family again. But she would have to go to trial. She would have to convince them she was innocent, which she wasn’t. Repentant? Perhaps. Regretful? Definitely. Or she could make a speech, say she wasn’t sorry, say she’d do it again if she had her life to live over. And then she would certainly go to jail for a long time. Especially if she didn’t give any information about the others, which of course she could never, ever do.

  But could she even take a stand? Because the truth of it was she wasn’t sure of the tactics they had chosen, or of the consequences. There wasn’t moral clarity. The truth was she even doubted the intentions, the motivations. This was tragic, a great, terrible tragedy, to do something so clearly full of consequence, so irreparable, and then to have such foundational doubt.

  She would stare at the rain outside their bedroom window and recite the narrative of what had happened. She considered, as accurately as she could bear, what exactly she, or they, had done and why.

  Bobby had taken convincing, hadn’t he? He wanted to make his movies and leave it at that. He was frightened of action. And she convinced him. It was mostly her, wasn’t it?

  Bobby had shown the group the latest of his “protest” films. These were meant to be polemical propaganda pieces. Credited to the SAFE collective, the film really was made solely by Bobby. They sat on the floor, four of them, in the dark, as he ran the projector.

  The glare of the sun on the street in unforgiving Kodacolor. An old man leaves his house. He walks to his car. Cut to the same old man walking on the street. He squints at the sun. He is unaware of being filmed. He is outside a monolithic International-style buildi
ng. He enters, and the door closes behind him. We see again, the same thing, in excruciating real time, the old man walk to his car. We see him leave in the morning, squint in the sun. The camera is stalking him. The third time through the filmmaker appears, or a man one supposes is the filmmaker. He approaches the old man with a hand mike.

  “Excuse me, Dr. Fieser?”

  The old man looks at him and scowls. He shakes his head.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  The old man speeds up.

  “Why would you invent napalm? Why?”

  The old man stops and turns to the filmmaker. He stares at the microphone and then speaks.

  “I am a scientist. I solve problems. I don’t ask what use they are put to. That is not my job. That is the politician’s job.”

  “What domestic use did you imagine jellied gasoline could possibly have?”

  “I am not responsible. Leave me alone.” The man stumbles and tries to escape into his house. The camera follows, and you can see his face as the filmmaker shouts at him from off camera.

  “Pauling refused to make the bomb.”

  The old man is trying the door to his house. He is fumbling the keys. Still, the filmmaker is talking.

  “Do you think the employees of the Topf Corporation in Wiesbaden in Germany during the war should have asked why they needed to develop hydrocyanic acid in increasingly large quantities? Should they have betrayed any curiosity about why their employer was building larger and larger crematoriums for the government? Do you think these Germans had an obligation to ask, What for?”

  The filmmaker follows the old man in close-up and is upon him at his door. He thrusts a Life magazine in his face. It has the famous photo of a girl running. She is naked and in agony. Napalm is searing her skin.