Part 14 (2/2)
”Oh, Buddha,” Sarah said, sniffling, and Nathan had his jaw clamped like a vise. Quite the sentimental moment. I turned to go, and sort of pulled the other two along with me; there wasn't that much light left, after all. Buddha took off upstream, and last I saw him he was on top of a riverside boulder, looking back down at us curiously, his wild russet fur suddenly groomed and perfect-looking in its proper context; my Dodgers cap looked odd indeed. That yeti was a hard man to read, sometimes, but it seemed to me then that his eyes were sad. His big adventure was over.
On the way back down it occurred to me to wonder if he wasn't in fact a little crazy, as I had thought once before. I wondered if he might not walk right into the next camp he found, and sit down and croak ”Namaste,” blowing all the good work we'd done to save him from civilization. Maybe civilization had corrupted him already, and the natural man was gone for good. I hoped not. If so, you've probably already heard about it.
Well, things were pretty subdued in the old expedition camp that night. We got up the tents by lantern light, and had some soup and sat there looking at the blue flames of the stove. I almost made a real fire to cheer myself up, but I didn't feel like it.
Then Sarah said, with feeling, ”I'm proud of you, Nathan,” and he began to do his Coleman lantern glow, he was so happy. I would be, too. In fact, when she said, ”I'm proud of you too, George,” and gave me a peck on the cheek, it made me grin, and I felt a pang of... well, a lot of things. Pretty soon they were off to their tent. Fine for them, and I was happy for them, really, but I was also feeling a little like old Snideley Whiplash at the end of the Dudley Do-Right episode: left out in the cold, with Dudley getting the girl. Of course I had my fossil seash.e.l.l, but it wasn't quite the same.
I pulled the Coleman over, and looked at that stone sh.e.l.l for a while. Strange object. What had the yeti who drilled the little hole through it been thinking? What was it for for?
I remembered the meal on my bed, Buddha and me solemnly chomping on wafers and picking over the supply of jelly beans. And then I was all right; that was enough for me, and more than enough.
XVIII.
Back in Kathmandu we met Freds and found out what had happened to him, over schnitzel Parisienne and apple strudel at the Old Vienna. ”By noon I figured you all were long gone, so when the bus stopped for a break at Lamosangu I hopped off and walked right up to these guys' taxi. I did my Buddha thing and they almost died when they saw me coming. It was Adrakian and two of those Secret Service guys who chased us out of the Sheraton. When I took off the cap and shades they were fried, naturally. I said, 'Man, I made a mistake! I wanted to go to Pokhara! This isn't Pokhara!' They were so mad they started yelling at each other. 'What's that?' says I. 'You all made some sort of mistake too? What a shame!' And while they were screaming at each other and all I made a deal with the taxi driver to take me back to Kathmandu too. The others weren't too happy about that, and they didn't want to let me in, but the cabbie was already p.i.s.sed at them for hiring him to take his car over that terrible road, no matter what the fare. So when I offered him a lot of rupes he was pleased to stick those guys somehow, and he put me in the front seat with him, and we turned around and drove back to Kathmandu.”
I said, ”You drove back to Kathmandu with the Secret Service? Secret Service? How did you explain the fur taped to the baseball cap?” How did you explain the fur taped to the baseball cap?”
”I didn't! So anyway, on the way back it was silent city behind me, and it got pretty dull, so I asked them if they'd seen the latest musical disaster movie from Bombay.”
”What?” Nathan said. ”What's that?”
”Don't you go see them? They're showing all over town. We do it all the time, it's great. You just smoke a few bowls of hash and go see one of these musicals they make, they last about three hours, no subt.i.tles or anything, and they're killers! Incredible! I told these guys that's what they should do-”
”You told the Secret Service guys they should smoke bowls of hash hash?”
”Sure! They're Americans, aren't they? Anyway, they didn't seem too convinced, and we still had a h.e.l.l of a long way to go to Kathmandu, so I told them the story of the last one I saw. It's still in town, you sure you're not going to see it? I don't want to spoil it for you.”
We convinced him he wouldn't.
”Well, it's about this guy who falls in love with a gal he works with. But she's engaged to their boss, a real crook who is contracted to build the town's dam. The crook is building the dam with some kinda birds.h.i.+t, it looked like, instead of cement, but while he was scamming that he fell into a mixer and was made part of the dam. So the guy and the gal get engaged, but she burns her face lighting a stove. She heals pretty good, but after that when he looks at her he sees through her to her skull and he can't handle it, so he breaks the engagement and she sings a lot, and she disguises herself by pulling her hair over that side of her face and pretending to be someone else. He meets her and doesn't recognize her and falls in love with her, and she reveals who she is and sings that he should f.u.c.k off. Heavy singing on all sides at that point, and he tries to win her back and she says no way, and all the time it's raining cats and dogs, and finally she forgives him and they're all happy again, but the dam breaks right where the crook was weakening it and the whole town is swept away singing like crazy. But these two both manage to grab hold of a stupa sticking up out of the water, and then the floods recede and there they are hanging there together, and they live happily ever after. Great, man. A cla.s.sic.”
”How'd the Secret Service like it?” I asked.
”They didn't say. I guess they didn't like the ending.”
But I could tell, watching Nathan and Sarah grinning hand-in-hand across the table, that they liked the ending just fine.
XIX.
Oh, one more thing: you must not tell ANYONE about this!!! you must not tell ANYONE about this!!!
Okay?
Remaking History
”The point is not not to make an exact replica of the Teheran emba.s.sy compound.” Exasperated, Ivan Venutshenko grabbed his hair in one hand and pulled up, which gave him a faintly Oriental look. ”It's the to make an exact replica of the Teheran emba.s.sy compound.” Exasperated, Ivan Venutshenko grabbed his hair in one hand and pulled up, which gave him a faintly Oriental look. ”It's the spirit spirit of the place that we want to invoke here.” of the place that we want to invoke here.”
”This has the spirit of our storage warehouse, if you ask me.”
”This is is our storage warehouse, John. We make all our movies here.” our storage warehouse, John. We make all our movies here.”
”But I thought you said we were going to correct all the lies of the first movie,” John Rand said to their director. ”I thought you said Escape from Teheran Escape from Teheran was a dumb TV docudrama, only worth remembering because of De Niro's performance as Colonel Jackson. We're going to get the true story on film at last, you said.” was a dumb TV docudrama, only worth remembering because of De Niro's performance as Colonel Jackson. We're going to get the true story on film at last, you said.”
Ivan sighed. ”That's right, John. Admirable memory. But what you must understand is that when making a film, true true doesn't mean an absolute fidelity to the real.” doesn't mean an absolute fidelity to the real.”
”I'll bet that's just what the director of the docudrama said.”
Ivan hissed, which he did often while directing their films, to show that he was letting off steam and avoiding an explosion. ”Don't be obstructionist, John. We're not doing anything like that hackwork, and you know it. Lunar gravity alone makes it impossible for us to make a completely realist film. We are working in a world of dream, in a surrealist intensification of what really happened. Besides, we're doing these movies for our own entertainment up here! Remake bad historical films! Have a good time!”
”Sure, Ivan. Sure. Except the ones you've you've directed have been getting some great reviews downside. They're saying you're the new Eisenstein and these little remakes are the best thing to hit the screen since directed have been getting some great reviews downside. They're saying you're the new Eisenstein and these little remakes are the best thing to hit the screen since Kane Kane. So now the pressure is on and it's not just a game anymore, right?”
”Wrong!” Ivan karate-chopped the air. ”I refuse to believe that. When we stop having fun doing this”-nearly shouting-”I quit!”
”Sure, Sergei.”
”Don't call me that!”
”Okay, Orson.”
”JOHN!”.
”But that's my my name. If I call you that we'll all get confused.” name. If I call you that we'll all get confused.”
Melina Gourtsianis, their female lead, came to Ivan's rescue. ”Come on, John, you'll give him a heart attack, and besides it's late. Let's get on with it.”
Ivan calmed down, ran his hands through his hair. He loved doing his maddened director routine, and John loved maddening him. As they disagreed about nearly everything, they made a perfect team. ”Fine,” Ivan said. ”Okay. We've got the set ready, and it may not be an exact exact replica of the compound-” fierce glare at John-”but it's good enough. replica of the compound-” fierce glare at John-”but it's good enough.
”Now, let's go through it one more time. It's night in Teheran. This whole quarter of the city has been ga.s.sed with a paralyzing nerve gas, but there's no way of telling when the Revolutionary Guards might come barreling in from somewhere else with gas masks or whatever, and you can't be sure some of them haven't been protected from the gas in sealed rooms. Any moment they might jump out firing. Your helicopters are hovering just overhead, so it's tremendously noisy. There's a blackout in the compound, but searchlights from other parts of the city are beginning to pin the choppers. They've been breaking like cheap toys all the way in, so now there are only five left, and you have no a.s.surances that they will continue to work, especially since twice that number have already broken. You're all wearing gas masks and moving through the rooms of the compound, trying to find and move all fifty-three of the hostages-it's dark and most of the hostages are knocked out like the guards, but some of the rooms were well sealed, and naturally these hostages are shouting for help. For a while-and this is the effect I want to emphasize more than any other-for a while, things inside are absolutely chaotic. No one can find Colonel Jackson, no one knows how many of the hostages are recovered and how many are still in the emba.s.sy, it's dark, it's noisy, there are shots in the distance. I want an effect like the scene at the end of The Lady from Shanghai, The Lady from Shanghai, when they're in the carnival's house of mirrors shooting at each other. Multiplied by ten. Total chaos.” when they're in the carnival's house of mirrors shooting at each other. Multiplied by ten. Total chaos.”
”Now hold on just a second here,” John said, exaggerating his Texas accent, which came and went according to his convenience. ”I like the chaos bit, and the allusion to Welles, but let's get back to this issue of the facts. Colonel Jackson was the hero of this whole thing! He was the one that decided to go on with all them helicopters busting out in the desert, and he was the one that found Annette Bellows in the emba.s.sy to lead them around, and all in all he was on top of every minute of it. That's why they gave him all them medals!”
Ivan glared. ”What part are you playing, John?”
”Why, Colonel Jackson.” John drew himself up. ”Natch.”
”However.” Ivan tapped the side of his head, to indicate thought. ”You don't just want to do a bad imitation of the De Niro performance, do you? You want to do a new interpretation, don't you? It seems to me a foolish idea to try an imitation of De Niro.”
”I like the idea, myself,” John said. ”Show him how.”
Ivan waved him away. ”You got all you know about this affair from that stupid TV movie, just like everyone else. I, however, have been reading the accounts of the hostages and the Marines on those helicopters, and the truth is that Colonel Jackson's best moment was out there in the desert, when he decided to go on with the mission even though only five helicopters were still functioning. That was his peak of glory, his moment of heroism. And you did a perfectly adequate job of conveying that when we filmed the scene. We could see every little gear in there, grinding away.” He tapped his skull.
”De Niro would have been proud,” Melina said.
John pursed his lips and nodded. ”We need great men like that. Without them history would be dead. It'd be nothing but a bunch of broken-down helicopters out in a desert somewhere.”
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