Only the Dead Know Burbank

by Bradford Tatum

  And Mutter descended upon me like twenty tons of breathing brick. He knew my tensile strength, knew my deathly resilience. And all pretense of tenderness was crushed with his weight. Volker hissed and thrashed my limbs in flailing jerks. My eyes lolled in their sockets. I screamed and spat and moaned.

  “Please! Please, dear God! I’m just a little girl,” I howled. “I’m just a little girl!”

  But the priest was unmoved. He mumbled sacrament as he returned to me with his pyx and glistening aspergillum. He removed a wafer from the pyx and, crumbling it, sowed the powder over my eyes. He flicked his wet branch.

  “Water and crackers?” I gulped with laughter. “Water and crackers?” What good were his toys of office? I spat a black glob directly in his face. He wiped the bridge of his nose with his plowman’s hand. His eyes set hard and he dropped his pyx to the floor and threw his branch behind him. He slowly lowered himself to his knees. His hand shot to my throat and pulled my ear to his fevered lips.

  “Now you listen to me,” the priest whispered harshly. “Quit this child now. Flee this fragile vessel. Leave not a shred of your cantankerous offal. Or I swear by my most holy troth I will hound you. Whether you flee down to the ninth circle of hell or seek solace in the ass-crack of Moloch himself, I will find you and grind your rank and blasphemous pulp to grist.” The priest held me close, the tension of his grip so like the rictus of ecstasy, the hot spittle of his invective sizzling deliciously where it fell on my cheeks. “And I will shit you out again on Satan’s hoof,” he shouted. “Are we clear? And if you think for one second I can’t do it, you feculent son of a bitch, look deep into my eyes and call me liar.” His eyes were wide, flooded with a hatred so like passion, his pale irises ringing with a condemnation so like desire. But there in the pits of his pupils, girded by what he thought was the privilege of his office, of his crosses and candy glass, fluttered tiny angels of fear.

  And Volker surged.

  The priest tried to pull away, but my small and icy hands clapped firmly to the wet stubble on his cheeks. I pulled his face to mine and crushed my lips to his. He bucked frantically as my tongue pushed past the gate of his teeth and I could taste the sour nausea boil up inside him. Then a sweetness, flowing and tart and ferric filled my mouth and I felt my teeth on the tender flap of his lip, digging, tearing, forcing the blood to flow. I was nearly numb with fever. Then a sharp blow hit the back of my head and I felt his lip give with a sound I could have only imagined.

  “Stop, Maddy!” I heard Mutter howl. “Stop!” Mutter’s hands were on me, his roughness welcome as a lover’s caress and I was floating, gliding, it seemed, toward the bolted wood of the door. I felt my small body shatter upon it with echoing peals of delight. And I was on my feet, screaming, laughing, my eyes burning with wild fury. Mutter lurched toward me and my hands fumbled upon the bolt, my nails tearing. Then he froze, stopped by the voice of the priest.

  “No, my son!” the priest shouted. Then, softer, “Let her go.”

  I threw myself into the gray light of the day. I paced as if caged on the steps of the church. The streets seemed filled with sighs of parted lips and whispers of half-closed eyes, a whole world in recline, ripe for my vicious attentions. Then just as suddenly I hated it. Hated it all. And the hooks of my thumbs were raw upon the waist of my knickers and I was crouching, the cold public air hard upon my exposed ass. Nothing came, of course. But in my mind I left an offering on that topmost step, giddy at how the world would now have to sidestep my crude imagined eloquence. The door opened. Mutter was there. His face was composed now, all the fear and violence cooled to ash and brushed away. He said nothing, just bent down gently and pulled up my knickers and smoothed the tumble of my dress and lifted me high into his arms. Volker receded like gas from a choked tap, crowded out, perhaps, by such a surfeit of ordinary love. I felt the old unworthiness flow back into my small body, cold like the sheets of an abandoned bed. I wrapped my arms around the neck of the giant as he began the walk home. And I cried. Dry hacking sobs. Cried like the left-behind little girl I was, the daughter longing for the return of the happy hell of her poppa.

  Mutter put me back in my room above the shooting floor, propped me in the corner like golf clubs still wet from the green, my body ringing from its abandonment. Mutter expected no conversation, no thanks as he set me on my feet, righting my straps and buttons. With the meat of his thumb he kneaded the stiffness of my cheeks, shaping a face he might recognize. Then he pressed the hollow of his massive palm to the top of my head. I felt no heat there, just the pressure of his gesture.

  Mutter knew in his simple way that I belonged more to the world of things and that “sleep” and “rest” would be like the admonishments of a child to a doll, would have no meaning for me. My spring had broken; my gears had clogged. And now I was repaired. Temporarily, at least. Or so he must have reasoned. For why was he smiling? What lies had the priest told him that made his face curl at the corners like that? Could he sense, somehow, the priest’s prescription, whatever it held, was soon to be filled?

  CHAPTER 19

  Two weeks later it came, brought up by Zann like room service. He didn’t know the trauma I had endured. He had news. And he was anxious to tell it.

  “I trust you’re rested,” he said by way of introduction, even though there was nothing to indicate this. I had been languishing behind vacant eyes since Volker’s departure for what felt like weeks. Refusing to dress, to even leave my bed. Where was he? Then sitting down on my still-made bed and pressing his small fingers together between his knees, Zann stared into the air before him. He had the distant look of the enlightened, a look I had seen on the faces of the witches of my village when their throats would brim with incantations honed to end a blight. The stupid softness of the faces of the young men I’d seen leaving the company of my mother. Something good had happened. Better than good. Transformational. I waited for his moment to crest, recede enough for the egress of speech. And then clearing his throat with a small plosive, he began.

  “Hollywood,” he whispered, letting the name linger and expand with the cold authority of the Jewish God. A name, if he could, he would have spoken without vowels. And turning to me with wet eyes he said, “Hollywood just called. Universal Pictures wants to release The Toymaker in America.” His voice sounded unused, fresh from its wrapper. “In Chicago, Philadelphia, and, goodness, what was it?” I watched him fumble with a slip of folded paper. (What was this hot stirring in my lap? Was that bergamot I smelled or Zann’s bay rum fouled by sweat?) “Cincinnati!” he shouted triumphantly. “Some lovely spot in the undulating wheatfields of Ohio, if I’m saying that correctly. Have you heard me, child?”

  My whole body was suddenly shot through with a shivering tumescence, with a narrow urgency like a boy racing home with the plain-papered promise of a skin magazine under his arm. Poppa was home.

  “When?” I almost shouted. Volker tugged at the muscles of my small legs and snapped me to my feet.

  “Soon,” Zann said, startled. “A few months I suppose. They requested several prints.”

  Mutter growled. But the vistas behind my eyes exploded with visions of platinum-blond angels with rouged knees and glittery tap pants, neon welcome signs flashing over the trampled expressways of their cervixes. The room felt small, cheap and suddenly shabby. Zann waited like a child holding the edges of a still-wet finger painting. And one floor below I could hear the lope of counterweights in their lacquered boxes. The whip of raw stock through sprockets. And raised voices crying “again,” and “once more please,” the din of practical filmmaking. The sound made me sick.

  “I’m going,” I said. And I waited for Volker to ignite my veins and burst through my surface to lead this new glorious charge with his sharp words and reposts. But something had suddenly quieted the ghost. I looked at Zann’s face, at the confusion lingering at the corners of his eyes. I felt a stab of shame. My mind reeled as I frantically searched for Volker’s cold and confident passion. He was silent.
But I was not alone. Something new was there. Mutter stepped toward me. “I’m going!” I hissed. And Mutter’s brow furrowed.

  “ W-What are you talking about, child?” Zann stammered. “You can’t just g-go to Hollywood. You have no contract. You have no introduction.”

  “My picture is my introduction.” I was terrified, teetering on some new and adamant precipice of myself.

  “But that’s folly. The picture may never play California. Besides, you have a future here.”

  “A future?” I spat. “With my work fouled by the name of that preening pig?”

  “Then we’ll make pictures with your name on them. Please, my dear. Don’t be hasty.”

  And just like that my sudden resolve faltered. I looked at the floor. It seemed as soft and swallowing as the sea.

  “At least until we get the reviews on Zipper,” Zann said. “Please, child. These things must come at their proper time.”

  Proper time.

  “Who cares about their fucking reviews!” I shouted, my eyes wild above my gaping smile. “Germany is shit! What she thinks is shit! There is only one place to be if you are serious. And it’s not here, bowing and mewing behind some ridiculous white coat!” Volker surged. He raged through me with a shrill sweetness as Zann looked on in horror. And Mutter reached to grab me. This is what Volker had been waiting for. His pupil was finally standing on her own hind legs.

  “Let me go!” I shouted. But Mutter did not even look at me.

  “Where . . . ?” he said to Zann in his dull bass. “Where is this Hollywood?” It was the most cognitive sentence I had heard him utter.

  “What?” Zann asked, recovering slightly.

  “Show me where,” Mutter said.

  I don’t remember them leaving me. I drifted into a twilight shot through which the crisp glare of opening-night searchlights and champagne soured mouths. When I was jolted back into consciousness I was being lifted in the dark. I felt myself dropped into some muffled dusk. It smelled strongly of Mutter, his size and sweetness. I tried to scream. But a lid slammed over me. I heard the resolute chink of a lock. I beat on the walls as I felt the floor beneath me tilt. I was jostled about with Mutter’s enormous collars and pants. I felt something sharp hit my head. A book. An English primer. And another book. The small atlas Zann must have given him. Where was he taking me? I thrashed among the soft and jagged effects, screaming, raining my tiny fists against my blind cage. The only response to my tantrum was the sickening heave of my tiny closed world, a rhythmic thump as we descended what must have been stairs. The sharp smell of pine on the shooting floor; the magnificent vacancy of the quiet studio. When I could smell the exhaust of the night air, I was rattled to the ground. The lid of the trunk was opened, and Mutter’s enormous face filled the horizon.

  “Shh,” the giant said, a finger to his lips. “I take to Hollywood,” he whispered. I tried to push past him. He blocked me with his immovable head. “I take.”

  “Why?”

  “Maddy knows,” he said with a growl. “For Maddy.” The lid fell just before the lock. Volker was not convinced. He made me thrash until my body was raw and limp. Exhausted, sullen, I remember looking through a tear in the canvas of the trunk. I saw a sinuous curl of smoke lithographed onto a poster. The smoke congealed into the countenance of my mother, in lidded bliss. And over the magenta nipples of her exposed breasts someone had drawn two scarlet swastikas. ZIPPER HELD OVER! was plastered at a drunken angle over the image.

  I lurched forward for what seemed like hours, days perhaps, but Volker’s nervous vigilance never calmed until I smelled the brine of the sea. I could hear voices, bells, money shuffling over palms, then feet on slats, now on solid plank and a feeling of descent. Down and then down again. The stink of rats. Bilge. And from far away, ghostly and cold, the disembodied cries of deep and distant whales.

  CHAPTER 20

  The priest’s cure had not been holy. Merely geographical. Pagan. To cleanse your friend, he had told Mutter, simply get her over a large body of water. Then the evil cannot follow. And Volker, cajoled by the tyranny of his own hunger, was made complicit in his own undoing. What was it like to lose him? It was a gentle blindness. An almost imperceptible deafness. To lay in the grave and lose, shovelful by slow shovelful, what made the world worth knowing. I was only let out of my trunk when we boarded the train headed west. In the cramped luggage car Mutter slowly opened the lid. The weak light burned. I did not try to run. I did not raise my head. Mutter had to lift me out like a scolded dog.

  “Maddy?” the giant asked cautiously.

  “Yes, Mutter. Maddy. Just Maddy.” And with my weakened hand I slapped him hard across the face. He only blinked. Then smiled. “Why did you do it?” I screamed. He put me gently to my feet. “Why?” I hollered at his lumbering back. He didn’t turn around.

  Mutter loved Maddy. Mutter make Maddy well. But Maddy was not well. She was sick. Sick from the absence of Volker. Sick from the need of him. Sick to the core of her cold and stilled heart that without him the realization of all her dreams, all her grand cinematic desires would be dulled and desultory, worthless as water upon rock. Mutter’s regret was in his silence, in my staring hollowness that could not offer him even a weak smile in gratitude. It took days on that westbound train for the ambition that had sparked back in Germany to quicken into something I could finally, cautiously, recognize as my own. All my own. And when it did, when it finally dawned it was a shallow thing. A shallow and hungry thing.

  There was nothing to do but stare out the window. I lay tucked in my seat, lulled into some false reverie by the bland blur that raced past me. I was defeated by the emptiness of the country. I saw nothing but fields and telephone lines. A small shack in the distance. And mile after mile of vapid blue sky. Where was this nation of people? Chicago radiated its septic signature for twenty miles before we slowed at the station, but then it was just a uric choke of frightened cattle. Where were the gangsters? The molls and bootleggers? Did they spring from a carpet of cow shit like the miles of cornfields that surrounded the city? Where were the great cities and hamlets? Was America just an inflated rumor?

  Changing trains in Chicago to the Santa Fe California Limited, I noticed a change in character among the passengers. The locals left and a new creature took their places. They were girls, mostly, all in line-dried cotton with cheap tint on their cheeks, clutching cardboard suitcases and creased copies of Screenland in their corn-shucker knuckles. They were the new breadwinners, whose fathers mourned combine-severed limbs or manure-hosted infections, sent out in droves to keep home fires from failing. And they were willing, willing to spill their youth and a little farm-tanned tit for a shot in the flickers. They were drawn to Hollywood like bacilli to putrefaction. And as the train drew farther west, they replicated just as virulently. Some fell into clutches of loose gossip, but for the most part they remained silent, eyeing one another like competing chemists guarding the formula to their unpatented charm. And I was one of them. Less than one of them for I possessed none of their leggy and matured arsenal. They all avoided me, as they would avoid anything small and dark and contagious. Mutter slept. His capacity for sleep was matched only by his capacity for food and without one he indulged in the other. But I did not sleep. I did not even close my eyes and pretend. The quiet shouting was too loud.

  My fledgling ambition might find roost past the gates of Universal Pictures, for that was where I had decided to take my chances, but nature herself only wanted me buried. And toward that end she filled what functioned as my mind with the intoxicating honey of open spaces. During our crossing I had been safe, secure in my trust of the dark in the cramped but amniotic angles of Mutter’s trunk. But once propped in my seat, gutted by the unspooling of the miles, ten thousand leagues of planted and abandoned dirt shouted love songs of the grave at me. There were great downy arms in those songs, a sharp ginger breath that siphoned out between the pebbles and the shale and whispered of hollows only my shape could fill, of a longing only
my pale and tiny mass could quell. I do not know how the living desire. But these cold siren soughs from dirt that stuttered past my eyes were what could soothe most frightened midnights, were what filled me with a longing greater than any lover’s absence, more tender than any mother’s memory. And what of my mother? Had she heard of my leaving? Was she furious? Jealous? Proud? I would never know. I knew then the only thing that would keep me aboveground was the narrowness of my desire.

  My only defense was living.

  And for several jostled days, the skipping of steel wheels over the gaps in the rails a surrogate heartbeat, I was gently convinced that something vital stirred in me. The illusion only ended when the train was still. And with the stillness came a second death. Mutter slept fitfully as the train huffed at the platform. The air was heavy with orange blossoms, but what was that smeared over the distant shrubs and low hills? What was this nauseating operating-theater brightness scattered so absently in the atmosphere? Sunshine. I was used to it in seasoned decorum, veiled in the marine mist of the Danube, discreet behind branches, laced behind brick. But this display. This was obscene. I couldn’t imagine any population of leaves, flowers or fronds, any ocean of steeping algae that could possibly require the blaring attention of so much rude and unforgiving light. Mutter opened his eyes.

  “Wo sind wir?” he asked.

  “In English,” I said, tossing him the primer I had been studying. I peeked through the dirty window next to our seats and saw the hopefuls yawning on the platform in a spill of hard sunshine. They stretched and righted the seams behind their knees, shook their heads like new-broke colts in the fragrant air. I slumped back into the vague curve of my seat and squinted. I would have given both my aborted tits for even a thimbleful of respectable fog.

  “Are we here?” Mutter asked in his heavily accented English.