Somewhere inside the womb of the futuristic Mayan pyramid the replicant leader meets Tyrell.
'And Tyrell created man,' Anna imagines she hears Roy tell Tyrell. She finds it difficult to concentrate on the film on the screen, while a slightly different movie plays in her mind.
'But you got it wrong,' Roy says. 'Four years is not enough. I want my three score years and ten.'
Tyrell tells Roy in great scientific detail, involving DNA, mutation and virus, why he cannot extend Roy's life.
'The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long,' says Tyrell. 'And you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.'
Roy places his hands upon Tyrell's eyes and squeezes.
'Fiery the angels fell,' Roy murmurs in the seventh row.
'Fiery the angels fell,' Roy says on the screen.
Anna knows Roy never said that in the film, not at that point anyway, not when she saw it with Jon, not when she saw the director's cut with Brad. A shiver runs down her spine as she remembers the scene missed, the clue she missed when Roy suggested a Coca-Cola. Of course. Of course.
23
Roy cut down on wine and eating out and saved his wages, £50 some months, £100 in good months. Rosebud cut down on comics and eating sweeties and saved her pocket money, 50p some months, a pound in exceptional months. They had been saving to go to Hollywood, 'the country where the films come from', ever since Roy started taking Rosebud to the pictures. Yes, she would see Dorothy and Eaty, he told her rashly, though he knew nothing about what they might see in America other than the famous Disneyland rides.
In the summer of '95 they got a train from Edinburgh to London, spent a couple of days with Roy's brother, then flew right through the night to LA. They watched films and cartoons on the individual TV screens built into the back of the headrests in front and Rosebud looked out of the window at the stars. She was looking forward to seeing her 'little brown friend' and Roy was looking forward to a fortnight in the exclusive company of his daughter for the first time. Roy had been talking about going to Hollywood with Rosebud for years, but, when it finally came to making the arrangements, Jo started questioning whether Roy could look after her for a fortnight on his own. Jo worried about crime, muggings and rape. Roy asked her which one of them she thought would get raped.
'The plane might crash,' she said, 'or there might be a bomb on it.'
'The chances of there being a bomb on it are a million to one against,' said Roy. 'So if I took a bomb with us, the chances of there being another bomb on it would be a million times a million to one against. So that's what we'll do then.'
'That's not funny,' she said.
'We've more chance of being struck by lightning than being blown up in mid-air.'
'There might be an earthquake. Los Angeles is famous for earthquakes.'
'We'll be alright then, if we're in a plane at the time, won't we?'
'Look after my baby,' Jo said when she came to the station to see them off, tears in her eyes, 'and phone home.'
'Phone home,' droned Rosebud, holding up her ET doll, and making it wave one hand.
They stayed in the Roosevelt Hotel opposite the Chinese Theatre, where they saw the famous footprints and hand prints. They went to the Movieland Wax Museum, where Rosebud posed for a photograph beside Dorothy, the tin man, the lion and the scarecrow, while tunelessly singing the opening lines of 'Over the Rainbow' and throwing her arms wide to express her joy.
Rosebud looked for all the world like the star of the show, with her colourful, costumed chorus line behind her. Dorothy and co were among the better likenesses. Poor George C. Scott looked like he had been replaced by some unknown in Patton. Rosebud photographed her father beside Laurel and Hardy, but the end-result was another fine mess. The tin man didn't have a heart, the lion didn't have any courage and the scarecrow didn't have a brain, but at least they all had heads; Roy, Stan and Ollie did not have a head between them in Rosebud's photograph. Roy kept it anyway.
They went to Disneyland at Anaheim, stayed in the Holiday Inn and gorged themselves at breakfast on blueberry muffins and pancakes with maple syrup, enough to keep them going throughout the day. While others queued for the excitement of Splash Mountain, Roy and Rosebud stood in line for a brief audience with Minnie Mouse in her little house in Toontown, where all the houses looked like they had been made from Technicolor jelly. Roy and Rosebud swirled around in giant teacups at the Mad Hatter's tea party, joined the Pinnochio ride to Pleasure Island, sailed in Captain Nemo's submarine and Mark Twain's riverboat. They took a raft to Tom Sawyer Island, where they ate the fruit they had kept from breakfast time, and they were scared by the noisy Pirates of the Caribbean. Roy kept remembering Jeff Goldblum's best line in Jurassic Park, in response to Dickie Attenborough's comparison between Jurassic Park's problems and teething troubles at Disneyland. Goldblum pointed out that when the Pirates of the Caribbean broke down they didn't eat the visitors.
'It's a Small World' was a boat ride that was more to Rosebud's taste, a long, slow ride that seemed to take in every nation on the globe. Roy could not shake the repetitive little theme tune from his head.
But what Rosebud looked forward to most eagerly was seeing ET at Universal Studios.
'Eaty,' squealed Rosebud at the sight of the little creature shrouded in a white blanket in the basket at the front of a ride designed to look like individual bicycles.
'It's like being in the film,' said Rosebud as they started through the dark pine forest on their bikes. Lights flashed. A vehicle screeched to a halt. With a scream of delight from Rosebud, the bicycles took to the air over the forest and over the lights of the city of Los Angeles, beyond the end of the movie, accompanying ET over the rainbow through constellations of twinkling stars.
'It's like in the aeroplane,' said Rosebud.
They flew through the stars to ET's home planet, where his special powers and glowing finger are needed to save the world and revive his friends, who are seriously peeky, probably after getting the bill for all his reverse-charge phone calls.
'Look Eaty,' said Rosebud to the cuddly toy in her lap, 'all your little friends'.
ET saves the planet and his friends sing and dance in jubilation. Roy wondered if ET was bringing them any of the beer he had enjoyed during his holiday in LA, though they didn't seem to need it, they seemed to have their own stimulants. ET thanked Roy and Rosebud by name when they got off the ride.
'Again, again, let's do it again,' said Rosebud. And they did it again. And again. And again. All day. Not for Rosebud the state-of-the-art Back to the Future virtual ride. It left Roy slightly motion-sick and Rosebud decidedly bored. She wanted to see ET again. It was all Roy could do to get her to go on the studio tour tram. But earthquakes and flash floods did not compare with ET. It was Roy that jumped when the bus drove alongside a stretch of water and a shark came jumping out of it right beside his open window.
'Can we see Eaty again now?' asked Rosebud, as if she had just been humouring Roy by taking him on other rides.
Rosebud splashed around in her bath at the Roosevelt Hotel that night while Roy lay on his bed sipping a Budweiser in a frosted glass, surfing the television channels until he settled on a report about the forthcoming Oscars, suggesting it was a two-horse race between Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction. He hoped John Travolta might at least win the best actor award. Suddenly he was aware of a little figure in the doorway wrapped all in white, just like ET, with only a little, mischievous brown face showing.
'Phone home,' she droned, as she had done at the station. Rosebud did a great ET impression. So they phoned home.
'Mummy, Dada took me to where they make the films, and we saw Eaty, and we were on a bicycle that flew over the trees, and it was just like the film, but different, because it didn't stop where the film stopped, and we kept going past the stars to where Eaty lives and ...'
They were happy days for Rosebud and Roy. He wound up and played her 'Singin' in the Rain' musicbox while she prattled endlessly
and expensively on the phone.
24
Deckard jumps but he does not quite make it. He clings desperately to the edge of the building, his grip loosening all the time. The street is far below him. Deckard must kill the replicant, the replicant Anna imagines is played by Roy Batty, the man sitting next to her in the seventh row of Mann's Chinese Theatre; kill him or be killed by him.
Roy is stronger, but it seems he is dying. His right hand is knotting up, twisting involuntarily into a fist. He grimaces as he sticks a nail through the palm of the hand.
'Damn this rheumatoid arthritis,' he says. 'My grandfather had it too. Couldn't play snooker in the end.'
And he lets out a demonic exclamation 'Ha,' that is both a laugh and a cry. Deckard carried a gun, but he lost it. Roy carries a white dove. Vangelis's melancholy, contemplative music plays. Roy leaps over the top of Deckard and lands safely on the roof. He is almost naked, his body shiny in the rain.
What does it mean? Anna asks herself. This man beside her who was an archaeologist like Indiana Jones and ... and ...
'I've seen things,' Roy says to Deckard, with a certain relish, 'that you wouldn't believe. I've seen sharks as old as the dinosaurs, swimming in the sea as close to me as you, with rows of teeth like the nail in my palm. I've seen a man's head cut clean from his body with a machete in Africa. I've seen Orson Welles play an old man in Citizen Kane, I've seen George Best play football for Hibs and I've seen Glen Campbell play 'Amazing Grace' on the bagpipes. I've seen the sublime and the ridiculous. I've seen life and I've seen death. I was there.'
Deckard squirms as his fingers struggle to keep a grip on the ledge.
'I've looked into the face of fear,' says Roy.
Deckard does not hear him. Life slips through his wet, weak fingers. He loses his grip completely. He hangs motionless for just the briefest moment in time, surrounded by space, by eternity, with the earth far, far below him, calling him towards it; the briefest moment in time, a mere comma in the history of the universe, not even a comma, an atom, nothing. Instinctively Roy reaches out his hand and grips Deckard's wrist, saves his life.
What does it mean? Anna wonders. Who is this man beside her, with whom she has shared so little and so much?
'I've looked into the face of fear,' Roy continues, 'and I've looked into the face of love. I've seen people die and I've seen people live. I've seen a child being born ...'
Anna sees the man who calls himself Roy Batty up there on the screen in the movie, making up lines as he goes along. There is no doubt about it. She sees him. There. On the screen. The movie in her mind is playing up there on the cinema screen. Such is the power of her realisation of the significance of what she missed. Such is her confusion.
Roy looks away from Deckard. There is a far, faraway look in Roy's eyes.
'I've seen the fiery angels fall, heard the thunder ride around the shores.' He sighs as if about to expire and talks again, very slowly. 'When I die those memories will all be lost ...'
Anna knows what comes next, or what should come next. It is etched in her memory from the time she sobbed as she was swept away by the pathos of the replicant's plight and Jon sighed in exasperation at the ridiculousness of a robot's death scene. Roy sits next to her in silence, not moving at all, as if only his shell is there, but the real Roy is somewhere else. She looks at the ghostly face beside her in the eerie twilight that bounces back from the screen.
'Like tears in rain,' she whispers, and she raises a finger to wipe her eye.
'Like tears in rain,' the Roy in the film repeats, gently; and he looks away from Deckard, looks straight at Anna in the seventh row.
What was it Tyrell had said? 'The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.' And then? 'And you have burned so very, very brightly ... Roy'. He said that when she saw the film with Roy. He said that when she saw the film with Brad. He said that when she saw the film with Jon. She did not imagine it. Tyrell called the character Roy.
She remembers the detail of the scene she missed when she went for Coca-Cola, the scene when Bryant produces the records of the other replicants who escaped with Leon. She remembers all the details. Zhora, a member of an off-world kick-murder squad. Pris, a pleasure model. And their leader. Rutger Hauer's character isn't just called Roy. She remembers now, clear as day. His name is Roy Batty and it always was. But if he is Roy Batty, who is the man in the seventh row who claims the identity of a character in a film, not even a human character, but a robot who cannot even be sure that his memories are his own?
Harrison Ford is readying himself for the voice-over in which he says that he does not know why Roy saved his life, maybe he just fell in love with life, the idea of life; and Deckard will suggest that all Roy wanted were answers to the fundamental questions about where he had come from, where he was going and how long he might have.
'I've looked into the face of fear,' says Roy. 'And I've looked into the face of love.' He says a name. Not Deckard's name, but Anna's name.
Anna gasps. She wants to break away from this game, this fantasy. She wants to return to reality, return to the familiar film with Harrison Ford as Deckard and Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty. She wants to stop imagining Roy Batty being played by the man beside her. But she can't.
'Time to die,' Roy tells Deckard and he frees the white dove, which soars up into the perpetually wet grey sky, the wet grey sky so like an Edinburgh autumn afternoon. He looks again at Deckard, as if summoning his final strength to pull him onto the roof and save his life. He releases his grip. Deckard falls backwards. He plunges towards the ground, getting smaller and smaller as he falls.
Roy turns round and Sean Young is waiting for him, wearing a fur coat that she might have borrowed from Lauren Bacall or Mary Astor.
'Tyrell lied to me,' says Roy's voice on the soundtrack, 'when he said I had only four years to live. The virus he talked about, the seizure in my hands ... in laymen's terms that really was just a form of arthritis, or rust, take your pick. I was a new type of replicant with no termination date. Rachael and I were the only two.'
Roy shivers in the cold rain and Rachael wraps her coat around his shoulders as they walk away across the rooftop puddles.
'I don't know how long we will have together. But then again who does?'
Roy and Anna stay there, in the cinema, until the credits are finished and the lights go up. 'What does it mean?' asks Anna in a small, shaky voice.
'It's about loneliness,' says Roy, 'The only characters that feel real emotion and affection ... and love are the replicants. I think that's why Roy saved Deckard's life.'
'But, he didn't,' says Anna, quietly.
The colour drains from Roy's face. He is not quite sure what she means. Surely she cannot have seen what he saw.
'Roy didn't save his life. Roy let him fall ... You let him fall.' She looks into his blue eyes. They have the same faraway look she had seen in the film when Roy Batty talked about what he had seen.
'I think I'm going mad. I meet a man from nowhere, I take him home, I sleep with him ... I ... I fall in love with him, damn it. And suddenly I realise he is masquerading as a robot from a fucking science-fiction film, because he can't actually be a character out of a film. Can he?'
Roy shakes his head. Her voice is rising now.
'Who are you? Who are you next? James Bond? Harry Lime? Mel Gibson? Who are you?'
In response to the question the man from the seventh row does something very strange. He unzips his fly.
25
Anna waits with the same confused uncertainty with which she had watched the end of the film. She frowns. There have been some crazy things going on, but ...
Roy pulls out a brown linen money belt that he has been wearing around his waist. From the pocket of it he produces a little pink booklet, which he hands to Anna. Above a golden lion and unicorn it says 'European Community, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Below the beasts it says 'Passport'.
The passport automatically opens
at a page that carries a United States visa. American visas are not like other visas. A rubber-stamp will not suffice for the US of A. No, the United States has embossed, coloured paper visas with all the grandeur and technology of a bank note, over-stamped with an eagle and partially covered in cellophane that is transparent, but if you hold it up to the light you can see golden eagles on the cellophane. US visas take up a whole page to reflect the importance of the country.
Anna is not interested in the visa. She knows he is in America and she fumbles impatiently with the little book. You would think that they would put the passport holder's details at the front. But no, that would be too simple for the British.
They used to put them at the front in the old days when Britons had big black hardback passports that reflected the importance of the British Empire. But now Britain puts the passport holder details at the back to reflect the post-empire backwardness of the country. On the inside back page. And they do not even put the details the right way up.
Anna turns the passport sideways and looks into the clear blue pools of eyes that had mesmerised her in the movie that had just played in her mind, the movie she thought she saw on the screen of Mann's Chinese Theatre, or rather the latter part of the movie she thought she saw there. The picture in the passport is certainly not Rutger Hauer or the Roy Batty that Hauer created, as familiar from posters, video covers, album covers, photographs, the Roy Batty who was an established part of post-modernist culture. The blue eyes that stare out at her are the eyes of the man beside her now.
She glances at the man and then back at the passport, as if checking details like a border guard before permitting entry to her country. There is a pronounced dimple in his chin.
'Batty,' it says under 'Surname/Nom (1)'. And below that 'Roy'. Roy Batty. Like he said. British citizen. Male. Born in Edinburgh in 1957. Of course it gives an exact date, but the exact date comes no closer to registering on Anna's consciousness than the passport number in the corner. Batty. Roy. British. Edinburgh. What else? Children. Enfants. The figure 1. She wants to see the child. She wants to see a picture of the child. But there is no picture.
The Man In The Seventh Row Page 16