Prater Violet Read Online Free PDF Page A

night.”
    â€œAnd…?” Bergmann watched me keenly, waiting for my answer.
    â€œIt’s even worse than I expected.”
    â€œMarvelous! Excellent! You see, I am such a horrible old sinner that nothing is ever as bad as I expect. But you are surprised. You are shocked. That is because you are innocent. It is this innocence which I need absolutely to help me, the innocence of Alyosha Karamazov. I shall proceed to corrupt you. I shall teach you everything from the very beginning.… Do you know what the film is?” Bergmann cupped his hands, lovingly, as if around an exquisite flower. “The film is an infernal machine. Once it is ignited and set in motion, it revolves with an enormous dynamism. It cannot pause. It cannot apologize. It cannot retract anything. It cannot wait for you to understand it. It cannot explain itself. It simply ripens to its inevitable explosion. This explosion we have to prepare, like anarchists, with the utmost ingenuity and malice.… While you were in Germany did you ever see Frau Nussbaum’s letzter Tag? ”
    â€œIndeed I did. Three or four times.”
    Bergmann beamed. “I directed it.”
    â€œNo? Really?”
    â€œYou didn’t know?”
    â€œI’m afraid I never read the credits.… Why, that was one of the best German pictures!”
    Bergmann nodded, delighted, accepting this as a matter of course. “You must tell that to Umbrella.”
    â€œUmbrella?”
    â€œThe Beau Brummel who appeared to us yesterday at lunch.”
    â€œOh, Ashmeade…”
    Bergmann looked concerned. “He is a great friend of yours?”
    â€œNo,” I grinned. “Not exactly.”
    â€œYou see, this umbrella of his I find extremely symbolic. It is the British respectability which thinks: ‘I have my traditions, and they will protect me. Nothing unpleasant, nothing ungentlemanly can possibly happen within my private park.’ This respectable umbrella is the Englishman’s magic wand, with which he will try to wave Hitler out of existence. When Hitler declines rudely to disappear, the Englishman will open his umbrella and say, ‘After all, what do I care for a little rain?’ But the rain will be a rain of bombs and blood. The umbrella is not bomb-proof.”
    â€œDon’t underrate the umbrella,” I said. “It has often been used successfully, by governesses against bulls. It has a very sharp point.”
    â€œYou are wrong. The umbrella is useless.… Do you know Goethe?”
    â€œOnly a little.”
    â€œWait. I shall read you something. Wait. Wait.”
    *   *   *
    â€œTHE WHOLE beauty of the film,” I announced to my mother and Richard next morning at breakfast, “is that it has a certain fixed speed. The way you see it is mechanically conditioned. I mean, take a painting—you can just glance at it, or you can stare at the left-hand top corner for half an hour. Same thing with a book. The author can’t stop you from skimming it, or starting at the last chapter and reading backwards. The point is, you choose your approach. When you go into a cinema, it’s different. There’s the film, and you have to look at it as the director wants you to look at it. He makes his points, one after another, and he allows you a certain number of seconds or minutes to grasp each one. If you miss anything, he won’t repeat himself, and he won’t stop to explain. He can’t. He’s started something, and he has to go through with it.… You see, the film is really like a sort of infernal machine…”
    I stopped abruptly, with my hands in the air. I had caught myself in the middle of one of Bergmann’s most characteristic gestures.
    *   *   *
    I HAD always had a pretty good opinion of myself as a writer. But, during those first days with Bergmann, it was lowered considerably. I had flattered myself that I had