“What do you want to do? We’ve got a few films on hand here.”
I thought for a moment and then came to a conclusion. If we’re being honest, I’d reached it quite some time ago.
What’s the last film you’d want to watch? The answer was quite simple, really.
I walked into the theater and sat down.
Fourth row from the back, third seat from the right. This was our spot all through our college years.
“OK. Roll ’em!”
Her voice rings out from the projection room. The show begins. Light is projected onto the screen. But there’s nothing there but a blank space, a rectangle of white light illuminating the screen.
I had chosen nothing.
As I gazed at the blank screen I remembered a photograph I once saw. It was a picture of the inside of a movie theater. It was taken from the projection room and showed the seats and the screen. The photograph captured one entire film, and was taken by opening the shutter at the beginning of the film, and then closing it when the film ended. In other words, the photograph recorded one entire two-hour-long film. The result of absorbing the light from every scene in the movie was that the picture shows nothing but a white rectangle.
I suppose you could say that my life is like that photograph. A movie that shows my whole life, the comedy and the tragedy. But if you put that all into one still photo, all that would be left is a blank screen. All the joy, anger, and sorrow I’ve been through, and the result is that my life shows up as nothing more than a blank movie screen. There’s nothing there, nothing left. Only an empty blank space.
Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after a long time, it makes a totally different impression than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed. It’s you that’s changed, and seeing the same film again makes that impossible to forget.
If my life were a film, it would have to find a way of showing my changing perspective. That’s to say, how I see my own life has changed over time. I would feel affection for scenes that I’d hated before, and laugh during scenes where I’d originally cried. The past love interest is now long forgotten.
What I’m remembering now are all the good times I had with my mother and father. Only the good times . . .
When I was three years old, my parents took me to the movies for the first time. We saw E.T. It was pitch black inside the theater, and the sound was so loud. The theater was filled with the buttery salty smell of popcorn.
On my right sat my father, and on my left was my mother. Sandwiched between my parents in the dark theater, I couldn’t have escaped even if I’d wanted to. I just looked up at the huge screen and watched. But I remember almost nothing about the movie.
The only thing I remember is that scene where the boy, Elliott, rides through the sky with E.T. on his bike. It’s a powerful memory. It made me want to shout, or cry, or something . . . It seems to me that that’s what movies are all about. I can still remember the impression it made on me—it was overwhelming. I held on tight to my father’s hand and he held mine tightly in return.
A few years ago a digitally re-mastered version of E.T. was showing on late-night television. I hate watching movies on TV, with the constant interruptions from adverts, so was about to turn it off, but once I started watching I was gripped.
About twenty-five years had gone by since I first saw the film, but I still found myself as moved by the same scenes as I had been as a child. I couldn’t stop myself from crying. But that still doesn’t mean that the experience was exactly the same as it had been when I was three.
For one thing, twenty-five years later I knew I’d never fly through the air like they do in the movie. And it’s been years since I spoke to my father, who back then was sitting next to me holding my hand tightly. Meanwhile, my mother, who sat on my left in the theater, is no longer of this world. So I suppose I know two things I didn’t know then. I can’t fly, and what I had then has gone forever.
What did I gain by growing up, and what did I lose? I can never resurrect the thoughts and feelings I had in the past. When I think about that, I feel a wave of sadness so strong that the tears won’t stop.
Sitting alone in the movie theater staring at the blank screen I started to think.
If my life were a movie, what kind of a movie would it be? Would it be a comedy, a thriller, or maybe more of a drama? Whatever it would be, it definitely wouldn’t be a romantic comedy!
Toward the end of his life, Charlie Chaplin said something along the lines of:
“I may not have been able to produce a masterpiece, but I made people laugh. That can’t be all that bad, can it?”
And Fellini said:
“Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams.”
They created masterpieces, made people laugh, gave them dreams and memories.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my life just didn’t lend itself to being adapted for the big screen.
As I stared at the blank screen, I tried to imagine what it would be like.
I am the director.
Then there is the film crew and the cast, made up of my family, friends, and former lovers.
The opening scene is set thirty years ago, when I am born. There is my infant self and my parents smiling down at me. Relatives gather around and all take turns holding the new baby, squeezing its hands and pinching its cheeks. Soon the new baby learns to turn over, crawl, then stand up on its own, and before you know it begins to walk. Subject to all the same hopes and fears of all new parents, my mother and father take to their roles with gusto, feeding, clothing, and frantically playing with the baby.
Is it possible to imagine a healthier and more normal start in life? Our opening scene couldn’t be happier.
Then, as anger, tears, and laughter flit across the screen, I gradually grow up. I talk less and less to my father. Who knows why, after all the time we’d spent together? I’ve never figured it out.
Then one day a cat arrives in our home. Its name is Lettuce. There are lots of happy times, between Mom, Lettuce, and me. But Lettuce eventually grows old and dies. And then my mother dies. Cut to the most tragic scene in the film.
So Cabbage and I are left behind. We decide to go on living together. My father is out of the picture at this point. I start working as a postman, and normal everyday life goes on.
Could this be more boring! Scene after scene of mundane detail, line after line of trivial dialogue. What a low-budget movie! And on top of all that, the star of the show (me!) doesn’t show any sign of having a goal in life, or values of any kind. He’s an apathetic guy, completely without any spirit, who is of no interest at all to the audience.
Obviously the film would never work if it showed my life exactly as it is. The script would have to be written in a hyper-real, in-your-face kind of style, with more of a sense of theater. A dramatization. Sets can be simple, pared back, but they’d have to have a certain flavor to them. Props are picked out to add to the sense of atmosphere, and costumes would come in black and white.
And what about editing? The scenes are all pretty boring so they’ll need some fairly major editing. But if it goes too far we’ll only be left with like five minutes of film. That’s no good. It would be a good idea to start by taking a careful look back through the script. Completely unnecessary scenes run way too long. And the scenes we really want to see are cut right at the point where they’re getting good. But that’s pretty much what my life has been like.
And what about the soundtrack? Let’s see, maybe a nice melody played on piano, or on the other hand perhaps something grand and stately, with a full orchestra? No, let’s try something more relaxed, like an acoustic guitar. But whatever we go for, I have only one request—that during the sad scenes, up-beat music should play in the background.
Now work on the film is done. It’s a quiet, low-key production, and probably won’t be a box-office hit. Its release will be pretty subd
ued, and it’s likely to go mostly unnoticed. It will probably be the kind of film that goes to video quickly, and is left in a corner of the rental shop, the colors on its box fading.
The last scene ends and the screen goes dark. Then the credits roll.
If my life were a movie, I’d want it to be memorable, in a way, no matter how modest the production was. I’d hope it would mean something to someone, somehow, that it would give them a boost and spur them on.
After the credits, life goes on. My hope is that my life would go on in someone’s memory.
The two-hour screening ends.
I step outside the theater and the quiet and the darkness envelops me.
“Do you feel sad?” she said, as we left the theater.
“I don’t know.”
“I guess it must be rough on you.”
“I don’t know. Sorry, I really don’t know how I feel right now.”
And I really didn’t know. I wasn’t sure if I was sad because I was going to die or if I was sad because something really important and meaningful was about to disappear from the world.
“You can come back and see me any time, you know, if you ever feel bad, if you’re in so much pain you can’t stand it.”
Her words reached me just as I was about to turn away.
“Thanks,” I said, and headed back up the hill.
“Wait!”
She shouted from behind me.
“One more quiz!”
“Not again . . .”
“This is the last question. Just one more.”
As she shouted after me I could see she’d begun to cry.
Then seeing her cry made me feel like crying.
“OK. I’ll give it one last go.”
“Whenever I watch a movie with a sad ending I always watch it one more time. Do you know why?”
This time I knew the answer. It’s the one thing I remembered well.
It’s something I was hoping for during the whole plane ride back from Buenos Aires, and even for a while after we broke up.
“Yeah, I know.”
“OK, so what’s the answer?”
“Because you’re hoping that maybe it’ll have a happy ending the next time.”
“Right! That’s it!”
She wiped her eyes roughly with her sleeve, and giving me a big wave, shouted manically, “May the Force be with you!”
To which I responded, holding back the tears, “I’ll be back!”
When I got home Aloha was waiting for me sporting a big grin. He gave me a wink (of course he can’t really wink so it’s more like kind of a squint), and with that, made movies disappear.
While Aloha was busy erasing movies, I was thinking about my mother. There was an Italian movie she liked a lot. Fellini’s La Strada.
The story goes like this: Gelsomina, a naive young woman, is bought from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò, who wants her for his wife and partner. She remains loyal despite the abuse she suffers at Zampanò’s hands as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Eventually Gelsomina grows weaker and when the abuse becomes intolerable, she begins to physically waste away. Zampanò abandons her.
A few years later the traveling circus arrives in a seaside town and Zampanò hears a young woman singing a song that Gelsomina used to sing. Zampanò finds out that Gelsomina has died, but her song lives on. Listening to the young woman singing Gelsomina’s song, Zampanò realizes that he loved her. He walks to the shore and collapses in tears on the beach. Crying won’t bring her back. In the end he realizes that although he really did love her, he was incapable of treating her as if he did, when they were together.
“You only realize what the really important things are when you’ve lost them.”
That’s what my mother would say when she watched this film.
It seemed like the same thing was happening with me now. I was genuinely sad now that I’d actually lost movies. I knew I would miss them. I know it was stupid, but it was only when I realized that the movies were really gone that it hit me how much they’d helped me emotionally, and how much they’d had to do with making me who I was. But my life was more important . . .
The Devil picked that moment to announce in his usual cheerful manner the next item he’d make disappear.
I couldn’t think about anything anymore, so I said yes just like that.
At that point, the thought that it could happen to Cabbage had never crossed my mind.
THURSDAY: IF CLOCKS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD
It’s funny how one strange thing is often followed by another. Like when you lose your keys and you invariably end up losing your wallet. Or in a baseball game when your team hits one home run after another. Or how a whole series of major manga artists just happened to end up living in the same cheap apartment building (the Tokiwa-So) in the early 60s.
As for me, I end up with terminal cancer, the Devil appears, phones and movies disappear from the world, and the next thing I know the cat is talking.
“Why, are you still sleeping, sir?”
I had to be dreaming.
“By George, you will get up this instant!”
It had to be a dream.
“Come now, up with you!”
But no, it wasn’t a dream. He was actually talking. And the he who was speaking was definitely Cabbage. And for some reason he sounded so refined . . . It was hard to know exactly what was going on.
“A bit confused, are we?”
Aloha appeared with that big grin on his face. Today he wore a sky-blue Hawaiian shirt. Again I felt like telling him to put on some real clothes. In keeping with the flamboyant style I’d come to expect from him, the brightly colored shirt featured parakeets and huge, swirly lollipops. It was so bright it made my eyes hurt. Not exactly the easiest thing to wake up to. Aloha was getting to be a pain in the ass. I snapped.
“C’mon, man, you’re always doing this to me! Now I wake up and the cat’s not meowing, it’s talking. And like a member of the landed gentry! Seriously, what’s happening here?”
“My, aren’t we witty this morning. Well, that’s just a little something extra from me, to you.”
“Something extra?”
“That’s right. After all, there are no more phones, the movies that you were so attached to are gone, so I thought you might need a little something to cheer you up. Like someone to talk to, or a new hobby or something. So, I just thought I’d try making the cat talk. I just happen to dabble in magic—you didn’t know? After all, I am the Devil . . .”
“But having the cat suddenly start to talk is a bit, um, disconcerting, I guess. Can you get it to stop?”
“Oh?”
Suddenly Aloha fell silent.
“Did I say something wrong?”
Aloha remained tight-lipped.
“I hope this isn’t something that you can’t fix—like you can’t put things back to normal.”
“Well, no, that’s not it. I mean, I can put things back . . . or should I say, it’ll all go back to normal eventually, it’s just a question of timing. You might say . . . I mean, God knows! But anyway, I don’t really know. I mean, I’m not God, you know? I’m just the Devil.”
How about if I just smack your head against the wall! is what I was thinking, but I swallowed my words and burrowed deeper under the covers. A world with no movies and where cats talk was not a world I wanted to wake up in.
Then Cabbage began to walk on my face. He’d always do this to wake me up (I was never a morning person). I once heard that the origin of the Japanese word for cat, “neko,” is actually “sleeping child” (same sound, different choice of kanji characters), but I think that’s a load of rubbish. Cabbage never sleeps late—he always wakes up early and starts harassing me.
“I shall be most put out if you don’t get up soon!”
Cabbage rattled on, letting out a loud moan that sounded distinctly cat-like.
“That’s it! I can’t take this anymore.”
Reality, it seemed, would not leave me alone. I gathered what energy I had and jumped out of bed.
“Oh, and just to check, you do remember, don’t you?”
Aloha thrust his face close to mine as he spoke.
“What? What do you mean?”
“What I’m erasing today, of course!”
I had no memory at all of what that was supposed to be. What had he made disappear? What was next on the list? Looking around the room I saw no change.
“Sorry, I don’t remember. What was it?”
“Honestly, what am I going to do with you . . . It’s clocks, man. Clocks.”
“Clocks?”
“That’s right. Today you erased clocks.”
Ah, now I remember. I made clocks disappear.
If clocks disappeared from the world . . .
Would the world change? I thought about it for a while.
The first thing I thought of was my father. I could see him in my mind’s eye, hunched over, working in his shop. You see, my father ran a small clock shop.
The ground floor of the house I grew up in was my father’s shop. Whenever I went downstairs I would see my father bent over his workbench in the semi-darkness, the desk lamp shining over where he worked, repairing clocks.
I hadn’t seen my father in four years. He was probably still repairing clocks in that small shop, tucked away in a corner of that small town.
If clocks were to disappear from the world, there would be no more need for clock-repair shops. No need for that little shop, nor my father’s skills. When I thought of it that way I started to feel pretty guilty.
But had clocks really disappeared from the world? It seemed hard to believe that they could all disappear so suddenly. I looked around the room. My wristwatch was definitely gone. And the small alarm clock I had in my room was nowhere to be found. Maybe it was like when phones disappeared—maybe I’d simply stopped seeing them, but whatever had happened, practically speaking, clocks had disappeared from the world.
Then I realized—without clocks, how would I have any sense of time? It looked and felt like morning. And since I had overslept a bit I figured it was probably around 11am. But even when I turned on the TV the time didn’t show up on the screen as it usually did, and of course phones had already disappeared, so I couldn’t rely on that. If I was being honest, I had no idea what time it was.
If Cats Disappeared From the World Page 7