A Moment in the Sun

by John Sayles

  Harry moves on, the unalloyed yankeeness of it giving him a guilty twinge. “A freak of Nature,” the Judge was wont to say of the North’s martyred saint. “Malformed and malignant.”

  He wonders how many times a day the man must repeat the speech. Perhaps a phonograph recording of it would be more effective, not placed so it seems to be coming from the motionless figure, but amplified from above, like a voice from the Great Beyond. Harry has already worked out a mechanism whereby a spectator’s foot triggers the phonograph and is pondering the nature of sound waves when he wanders into the execution of Marie Antoinette.

  “—this moment, when my troubles are about to end, is not when I need courage, Father,” recites an acne-scarred youth in peasant garb. “And with that the lethal drumroll began—”

  A tumbrel filled with filthy straw and doomed nobles, a long-faced curée intoning from his open Bible, the buxom Marie with her hair shorn, hands tied behind her back, kneeling with neck stretched out over the block, the sans culottes, faces distorted as they jeer from every side—there is a sudden skreek of metal and the heavy blade falls in its slot—CHOK! neatly separating the Queen from her head! There are screams and cries from the flesh-and-blood spectators and one young lady in lavender quite close to Harry swoons and is caught in the arms of a man who might be either her husband or her father.

  “French degenerates,” mutters the man, legs bowing under the weight of his charge as he fans her with an orchestra program.

  Harry hurries past the other gatherings—the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Moses parting the Red Sea, a rather grisly evocation of one of Jack the Ripper’s attacks—waxen, three-dimensional versions of a Kodak snap and in that way inferior, no matter what their subject, to the moving actualities he’s just seen in the variety halls. Harry is about to climb the stairs to the Concert Hall when he hears a familiar voice boom out through the open door of a workroom.

  “If you don’t hurry with this I’m going to suffocate!”

  Looking in, Harry sees a man seated on a workbench, his face completely obscured by plaster bandages, while another man painstakingly pries the cast away from the skin with a metal instrument coated with petroleum jelly.

  “Mr. Teethadore?”

  “Who’s that?” The voice, even somewhat muffled behind the appendage, is deep and resonant.

  “We met in Wilmington. After a performance.”

  “You find me at a disadvantage.”

  Harry takes a step into the room. There are white wax heads, nearly featureless, lined up on a shelf, historical costumes hanging on a pipe and torsos made of wire. “Are you all right?”

  “Having my mug reproduced. It seems that General Custer shall soon be hors de combat from his Last Stand exhibit and donating the better portion of himself—body, hands, flashing saber—to our noted Rough Rider.”

  “It seems to be stuck somewhere,” says the other man, gently pulling on the mold.

  “If I lose so much as a hair from an eyebrow,” says Teethadore, raising a finger, “there shall be dire consequences.”

  “You said I should come see you,” ventures Harry with what he hopes is an ironic lilt in his drawl. “If I ever came to New York.”

  “And you’ve followed me here?”

  The recent disturbance in Wilmington seems too complicated, too tawdry to mention. “Actually I came for the views. This is something of a Mecca—”

  “Foreign subjects. Very uplifting. Celluloid novelties for the carriage trade.”

  “It’s really the camera that I—”

  “Of course. I remember you now—waxing poetic over the mysteries of the projection device. Drat!”

  “I’m sorry,” says the wax sculptor. “I told you to shave your moustache.”

  In Wilmington the actor’s moustache had been applied with spirit gum. “No use dragging the character onto the street with me,” he’d said then. “It’s enough to portray the little runt on the boards.” But that had been before the San Juan Hill.

  Harry watches uncomfortably as the sculptor wiggles the plaster this way and that, trying to loosen it.

  “It was very nice to see you,” he says finally.

  “You shall see me, my friend, when this moulage is removed from my face and not before. I suggest you go up and watch the other fellow suffer a bit. It’s quite a presentation.”

  When Harry steps away the sculptor has taken up a hammer and chisel and seems about to do something drastic.

  He slips quickly into the rear of the hall, a few patrons looking back with annoyance at the intrusion of light. The seats are all full. On the screen, Christ carries a huge wooden cross past idlers and loose women, a pair of spear-carrying Roman soldiers trailing behind Him. There is bright sunlight above and a backdrop painted with the stone buildings of Jerusalem, but this cannot be what they’ve advertised out front. The Oberammergau Passion, Harry knows, is staged once every ten years, and the equipment to photograph motion did not exist at the time of the last performance. Christ falters, catching himself with one hand. The soldiers snatch Simon of Cyrene from the crowd and force him to shoulder the cross for a moment. Finally, after much prodding with spear tips and flogging, Christ exits the right side of the screen, the rough wooden post dragging behind, the mob turning to jeer his passing. The moving image fades in brightness, immediately replaced by a lantern view, a hand-tinted diapositive of El Greco’s Christ Carrying the Cross. It is one of Harry’s favorites, angled as if the painter were on his knees when the Nazarene passed, his eyes fixed on the hill above, dark sky brooding behind him.

  “Imagine the weight of it,” intones a white-haired gentleman wearing a pince-nez, his head barely peeking over the lectern set up beside the screen. “Imagine the rough stones underfoot, the scourge of the Roman whips, the raucous contempt of those who, only days before, had waved the palms of peace and cheered your entry into the city.”

  Harry is aware of a man standing next to him in the darkness at the rear, a man nodding vigorously as the lecturer continues.

  “Are these the souls He has come to save, these torturers, these blood-thirsty, mocking Jews and Philistines?”

  The El Greco fades into a new still image, this the circular Bosch painting with the turbaned Pilate at the left, the soldier reaching to wrench Him away, the potato-faced onlookers. These men do look like German peasants, rough and primitive.

  “ ‘Ecce homo,’ the Roman judge pronounces,” continues the lecturer. “See the man. Not the Messiah, not their Lord and Savior, but simply a man. This, we now understand, was the greatest degradation of all. Humble as He was, this was the only Son of God brought to His knees before the dregs of humanity, beaten and reviled, driven, at last, to Calvary.”

  Harry can hear several women in the audience begin to weep as the Bosch is replaced by a moving view. Three crosses, three crucified men, low hills in the background, a tall palm to the right, the centurions crouched below, throwing dice upon the ground and laughing. The shadows of the crosses are visible on the backdrop sky, of course, and no breeze stirs the painted palm fronds, but there are gasps and outcries in the hall when one of the Romans thrusts his spear into Christ’s ribs, and then a sigh of wonder as He lifts His eyes one last time to Heaven before letting His head drop in death. A golden nimbus, some sort of dye-process, no doubt, spreads from His body and suddenly a choir, previously unseen, is lit on the other side of the screen, a dozen angelic voices singing When I Survey the Wondrous Cross and it is then that Harry has his revelation. What drives the picture forward, the vital armature, could at the same time drive some phonographic device in synchrony with the celluloid. Not only could this holy music be joined to the film strip, but His dying words, “Lord, hath Thou forsaken me?,” audibly delivered by the actor portraying Christ as if he were in the room.

  Or is this sacrilege?

  The man who stands beside him has joined in the singing, a rich, full basso—

  His dying crimson, like a robe

&n
bsp; Spreads o’er His body on the tree

  Then I am dead to all the globe

  And all the globe is dead to me!

  The moving view gives way to a lantern-slide of Rembrandt’s moody Descent from the Cross, Joseph of Arimathea hugging the Body as he descends the ladder, Mary swooning into sympathetic arms in her own golden patch of light. The choir finishes the song, softening their voices into mournful oohs and aahs as the professor intones once more.

  “There is, of course, a simple human side to our story,” he says. “That of a mother’s love for her Son.”

  The Rembrandt gives way to the final moving view, the Pietà staged before the same backdrop. The thieves still hang on either side, the Roman soldiers gone now, replaced by nascent Christians who watch in sorrow as Mary clutches His thorn-crowned head to her breast. Harry can’t help wishing they had moved the camera closer so that the Virgin’s face could be seen, wishes he could walk into the view to comfort her.

  “A mother’s grief knows no bounds,” says the lecturer. “But we can take comfort, we can find solace, in this story. For the Lord God on high loved us so much,” and here the projectionist, for it must be his hand, causes the image on the screen to begin to glow and then brighten further to a blinding whiteness as the voices of the choir climb to an almost unbearable crescendo, “that He gave His only begotten Son that we might be saved!”

  The electric house lights flash on then and there is stunned, then uproarious applause.

  “What did you think?”

  It is the man beside him, dark-haired, with an intense, hawklike face.

  “Very powerful,” says Harry. “But it can’t be Oberammergau.”

  The man smiles. “A ruse to deflect the protestations of clergymen,” he says, offering his hand. “Such as myself. Reverend Thomas Dixon.”

  “Harold Manigault.” Harry shakes the preacher’s hand. “You had no objection?”

  “On the contrary. I’ve hosted a similar production at my church down the street, though I must admit our moving views were not as—as sumptuous as these.”

  “I wonder, though, if the spectacle does not overwhelm—”

  “We are poised to enter a century of light, my friend.” He grips Harry’s arm and looks deep into his eyes. “This—” nodding toward the screen, “—this in the proper hands will move men’s souls. I detect that you are of my home section.”

  “Wilmington.”

  “Goldsboro, in the Piedmont,” smiles the reverend. “And I pastored in Raleigh for a year.” He leans close, lowering his voice conspiratorially as his eyes move over the departing audience. “Some rather propitious events have taken place in your lovely city.”

  Harry looks around—the room is nearly empty of spectators but it feels close. “Unfortunate events—”

  “I am something of a novelist, in addition to my efforts from the pulpit, and your Wilmington situation strikes me as one of those instances in which history does not need to be greatly modified to instruct us. There is a great lesson to be learned.”

  “And what might that be?” Harry asks.

  Dixon regards him with a hot gleam in his eye. “That corruption unaddressed will fester,” he says. “And that the leopard, no matter how one paints him, does not change his spots.”

  Harry tries to approximate the carefree grin that Niles would use. “What a pity—I’ve been hoping to change my own.”

  Dixon pats Harry’s arm as he would to comfort a child, and starts away with an indulgent smile on his lips. “Breeding will out, I’m afraid.” He pauses in the doorway and spreads his arms as if to indicate all of New York. “Where better to bring our struggle than to the belly of the beast?”

  Harry is sitting alone when Teethadore, face raw from scrubbing, comes to join him.

  “Did you get here for Salome’s dance?”

  “I’m afraid I missed it.”

  “Charming girl. Travels with a sister act, the Singing Simpsons, but she’s the only one who hasn’t had her knees glued together. Did you see me?”

  “In this?” Harry finds it unsettling to think of the diminutive variety artist rubbing elbows with the Savior.

  “Herod’s minion, Elder of Zion, St. Matthew, Pilate’s clerk, bad Samar-itan—I’m all over the thing. The days we spent on that rooftop—”

  “And Christ—?”

  “Splendid fellow. Long-suffering. He and those thieves were strung up there for hours, waiting for the clouds to open. I suppose you’ll want to examine the device?”

  “Do you think that would be possible?”

  Teethadore gives him the smile and a wink. “The operator is an old friend.”

  A youngish man named Porter is blowing air from a bellows into the workings of the cinematograph as they enter.

  “The hero of Santiago,” he observes.

  “Merely his theatrical counterpart,” grins Teethadore. “I bring you a worshipper at the altar of celluloid.”

  Harry nods but can barely take his eyes off the machine. It is even smaller than he imagined.

  “This is the French model?”

  “Greatly modified,” says Porter. “This can’t double as a camera.”

  “The image was so smooth.”

  “Thank you.” Porter gives the crank a whirl. “Two revolutions per second.”

  Harry looks out through the small window toward the screen. “You watch the view as it’s projected—”

  “Only the edge of the screen, I’m afraid. We’ve improved the pull-down claws quite a bit but she’ll still jump around on you. Nothing like that mess Biograph uses.”

  “I witnessed some this morning.” Harry puts his hand on his stomach. “Still queasy.”

  “Did you notice the odor?”

  “There’s an odor?”

  Porter pokes at Teethadore. “From this fellow’s acting. For whom, I believe, the term rank amateur was coined.”

  “Touché. Mr. Porter is a photographer as well. We have toiled together in the wilds of New Jersey.”

  “Gramps Gets Hosed. You can catch it on the Bowery.”

  The apparatus is dark metal and glossy wood, mounted on a sturdy tripod. Harry fights the urge to put his hands on it. This is closer to the thing, to the intricate, holy apparatus, than he has hoped to come—

  “Mr. Porter,” he ventures, “if you were ever to hear of a place, of an opening within the—”

  “Edison’s always looking for new lackeys,” says the projectionist, rewinding a strip of celluloid onto a spool. “I can give you a name.”

  Harry holds the folded slip of paper with the name written on it in his hand, thrust safely into his jacket pocket, as he crosses back through the maze of waxen statuary. He pulls up short at the French Revolution, a young cleaning woman on her knees scrubbing what looks like vomitus from the floor.

  “Oh my,” says Harry, stepping back from the spreading puddle of wash water. “Someone’s been ill.”

  “We get one or two every day when the Missus loses her head,” says the girl. She is Irish, and when she glances up she has the brightest, clearest green eyes Harry has ever seen.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s none of yer fault, is it?”

  “I meant—that you have to deal with it.”

  She looks up at him again, cocking her head, then she indicates the bloodstain painted on the guillotine block and the floor around it.

  “And wasn’t it a poor girl like meself had to mop up that mess after the killin was done?”

  “You work here?”

  “At the moment, yes.” She goes back to scrubbing.

  “Have you seen the attraction in the Hall?”

  “The death of Christ? No, I haven’t, as a fact. But I know the story well.”

  Of course she would. Harry resists the impulse to hand her a dime, not knowing how the gesture would be received. “Have you ever seen a moving view?”

  The young woman sits up on her knees. She has a breathtaking smile. “Ah, I love the f
illums, I do, but I rarely have the money nor the time. They take my breath away.”

  He feels a little dizzy and wonders if the hamburger was a miscalculation. “Do you think,” he asks, once she has turned her head back to her task, “you might like to attend a show with me some time?”

  The eyes grow sharp. “Yer foolin with me.”

  “I assure you I’m not.” He lifts his skimmer off. “My name is Harry Manigault. I’m very new in this city—”

  “Brigid,” she says, still suspicious. “It’s another name in Irish but here they call me Brigid.”

  “May I call for you?”

  “Fer that ye’d need to know where I’m situated. Number and street.”

  Harry flushes, in deep now and not sure how to get out of it. “I suppose I would.”

  “And what would ye think of a girl who told that to a man who’d just stumbled upon her workin?”

  He hadn’t thought of that, with her on her knees in bucket water, an immigrant. A scrubwoman. He wonders if he could ever capture those eyes, not the color of course, but the brightness, the life of them, in a photograph.

  “Quite right.”

  What would Niles say? Even if he didn’t mean it, he would have something.

  “Perhaps I could return at closing time and escort you—”

  “My work is just beginnin then. It’s only me and the wax heroes, havin a grand time together.”

  “Ah.”

  She watches him for a moment with her green eyes. “Sunday afternoons,” she says finally, “I’ve been known to pop into the Hippodrome on Houston Street. A persistent gentleman might find me there. By accident, ye might say.”

  “A most happy accident.” He puts his lid back on, then tips it to her. “A pleasure making your acquaintance, Miss Brigid.”

  “And where do ye come from, Mr. Mannygalt?”

  “North Carolina.”

  “Right,” she nods sagely. “I had ye spotted fer a foreigner. Twas a pleasure makin yer acquaintance as well,” she says, raising her scrub brush, “considerin the circumstances.”