Chapter 5. Rendezvous in the Dark
Jackson - Seraphinaria’s 10-year-old - was walking with two of his girlfriends – with Desiree, Sevaladelia’s 11-year-old, and with Shelby, Misevasundia’s 9-year-old. All three of these kids were somewhat put out for two main reasons. First, everyone save Al, Seraphinaria and Katie were ordered out of the tavern and ordered to start marching; they were instructed to find a hiding place off the main road, preferably not too far from the tavern, a mile away at most. From this hiding place they were instructed to keep a watch out for their three comrades, who would be joining them sometime later that, after they had worked out the details for getting the provisions with Maria, that is with the barmaid / tavern wench. When everyone had met up again, then, everyone might have to march right back to the tavern. Eventually they would load the supplies Maria was going to get for them on to their backs. She was quite confident she would have no issues finding 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of provisions on short notice. The second reason they were put out was due to Martha Manning. Martha was forever tossing out ideas as to how they might free these 1,000 Avallonian prisoners-of-war, but she was always referencing movies where the characters died or were shot up attempting to pull off something daring, like a heist or a rescue mission. Jackson was giving the girls his impersonation of Martha. He was trying to get the tone and the inflections right as he mimicked Martha explaining these movies she somehow found pertinent to their rescuing 1,000 prisoners. Jackson’s impersonation of Martha ran as follows: `The film was called Escape from Sobibor and it was about these prisoners who escape from a Nazi concentration camp. Rutger Hauer was in it: he was the villain in Blade Runner and The Hitcher, and he was a villain, I seem to recall in Nighthawks, and I forget what else he was in besides The Oesterman Weekend. Anyway they didn’t hesitate to kill Nazi guards when they made their escape from Sobibor. I was watching this movie called The Mackintosh Man, starring Paul Newman and James Mason, and it was a little like The Spy who came in From the Cold, though, whereas in the later film Richard Burton got himself tossed into prison on purpose, so as to build his bona fides, to suggest to some people in East Germany that he was a broken down Western spy ready to cooperate with communist authorities behind the Iron Curtain, in The Mackintosh Man, Paul Newman, also goes to prison on purpose - he is working as an undercover cop you see – and he’s looking to bust the organized crime racketeers who are busting people out of that prison for profit. I remember this chick who was working for the organized crime syndicate kicked Newman in the jewels pretty hard after she learned he was a cop. So you’re probably wondering how Paul Newman getting kicked in the jewels by some chick ties in with how we are going to spring those prisoners in Menzies, right? Well let me explain. In The Mackintosh Man a smokescreen was used to shield the escaping prisoners from the guards atop the prison walls, and therefore we too might want to employs a smokescreen. Take this other film I watched; it was directed by Jules Dassin. That’s an English speaking American director, not a French dude. After he got himself blacklisted during the McCarthy Era – I’m not sure if he was a flower-child sort of Commie or a big fan of Joe Stalin and Joe Stalin’s gulags sort of Commie, but in any event, he left the USA and went to France where he made this film called Raffifi; it’s about a French gangster and a Swedish gangster and an Italian gangster busting into a chic Parisian bijouterie. They broke through the concrete floor in an apartment about the jewels, you see, and they did so without setting off any alarms. They drilled a little hole through the concrete. Then they stuck an umbrella through the hole, opened up the umbrella, and then when they widened the hole the debris was caught in the umbrella: it didn’t crash to the floor setting off any alarms, you see? The gangsters all got shot up at the end of the film, but that doesn’t concern us. What concerns us is the technique they used to bust into the jewelry store without setting off any alarms. Obviously there are no electronic alarms in this pre-electrified universe of yours, but there are watchmen with good hearing, and the techniques used in Riffi can be used by us to prevent guards from hearing us as we break into this prison. There are other techniques I could cite to you from Touchez pas au grisby, Bob le flambeur, Un flic, Classe tous risque, Le deuxieme soufflé, Bonnie and Clyde, The Sting, The Italian Job, The French Connection I and II, Kiss Me Deadly, The Thief, The Hunted, Escape from Alcatraz, Elevator to the Gallows, The Gypsy, Clouded Yellow, Witness, Shindler’s List, The Thomas Crown Affair, Grand Slam - - a heist film with Aldo Celi, Edward G. Robinson, Klaus Kinski, Janet Leigh – where, again, the gang gets shot up at the end - I like that music from Ennio Moriccone at the beginning of Grand Slam when they’re taking the shots of Manhattan from the helicopter. Morriconne is sort of the Muir Mathieson of the Italian cinema. A lot of gangster films end sort of negatively for the gangsters, like in Goodfellas Ray Liotta saves himself by ratting on his friends, and in The Firm Tom Cruise gets out of a nasty situation by reminding the Feds that mail fraud and tax fraud carry long prison sentences. Things end really bad for Robert Mitchum in The Friends of Eddie Coyle when he gets his brains blown out. Of course we’re not gangsters but I’m trying to think of a time in the movies when things turn out well for anyone, good guys or bad guys, with elaborate plans. Well there’s The Wizard of Oz of course, but it didn’t happen for Scarlett in Gone with the Wind, and it didn’t happen for those P.O.W.s in either the Bridge over the River Kwai or The Great Escape, and it didn’t happen in The Train either, which, I think, along with Grand Prix are John Frankenheimer’s best films, both are much better than the over-rated The Manchurian Candidate, and for that matter his The Island of Dr. Moreau is a million times better than The Manchurian Candidate. Even in The Island of Dr. Moreau I seem to recall the good mutants all got killed off by the bad mutants. That’s the way it always goes it seems. Anyway, The Train is pertinent to our predicament because it has a very elaborate use of deception in it, and some such elaborate deception, albeit of a different variety entirely I presume, might aid us in the freeing of those 1,000 prisoners. I think it is always important for us to think positively because negativity really drags you down, and negativity has you thinking all is futile, whereas, I really think that if we can free those prisoners in Menzies, and then of course make our escape back to Avallonia, we will reap huge profits on our Lecture Tours and via our best-selling books. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a Roger Corman movie – something like Swamp Women starring Marie Windsor, Beverly Garland and Mike Conners, or even an Ed Wood film. Sometimes I capitulate to negative impulses, like when I feel I’m progressing about as well as Gerard Depardieu progressed in Going Places, aka La Valseuses, meaning I’m going nowhere real fast. Rogert Ebert said the director of Going Places was the film director he would least like to meet, as Going Places was the world’s most misogynistic film. Ebert has a point, but perhaps the director was only acting like a misogynist in order to rail against misogynism? I don’t know that Going Places is any more misogynistic than Scream…and Die, which Al mentioned earlier. I’m trying to think of some celebrated directors who were positive but not maudlin. Who directed Hunted starring Jon Whitely and Dirk Bogarde? That was a cool film. Then there was the director of that Natalie Wood film where she’s a little girl and these people try to say her dog is a vicious beast that needed to be put down. Obviously there was Capra and Fleming. Eric Rohmer comes to mind, witness for instance the positivity in My Night at Maud’s and The Green Ray, though I don’t recall much positivity in either Claire’s Knee, La Collectioneuse, or in much else of Rohmer’s ouevrve which I’ve seen. Bergman gets a bad rap for being a downer depressing sort of Swede but Smiles of a Summer Evening is quite light-hearted. I suppose it’s the exception which proves the rule. What was the name of that one film or his where those lesbians and that little boy are sweating it out in that Eastern / Southern European hotel room? He was no doubt pissed at Sweden when they prosecuted him for tax evasion; that happened to that film director husband of Sophia Lo
ren as well, I mean he was prosecuted by Italy for tax evasion, but I think he was found guilty whereas Bergman was acquitted. Sort of like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who both died on the same day and exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence - 7. 4. 1826 - Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni both died on 7.30.07. Antonioni made Blow-Up and L’Aventura among other things. L’Aventura begins with this beautiful girl who goes missing on a small island in the Mediterranean. The people who made Picnic at Hanging Rock picked up on that theme, which is sort of my theme as well, at least as far as my friends and family back home are concerned. I mean, though I’m not beautiful, and though I’m not young any more, nevertheless I am a woman and I did go missing, at least I went missing from the perspective of my friends and family. Sometimes, when I’m really down and depressed I start to think I’m in a Werner Herzog film. Herzog made Even Dwarves Started Small, Strozek, Aguirre: the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, which are undoubtedly the cinema’s supreme depictions of Futility in the universe I’m from. Al is right in insisting A Prize of Arms is also pretty good at depicting futility – at showing people with these elaborate plans which explode suddenly in their faces – but you know, as I’ve emphasized again and again: if we’re smart, if we don’t make any dumb mistakes, all our elaborate plans might not explode in our faces. What a Negative Nancy you would have to be if you were always assuming your plans will eventually explode in your face, huh?’
Jackson’s impression of Martha came to an abrupt end when he felt both Shelby and Desiree brushing, or to be more accurate, pushing their young bodies into his body as they walked along the road leading away from the tavern, and this naturally distracted Jackson, enough to cause him to completely lose his train of thought. Jackson, who, along with Luke, were more or less the big male heart-throbs among the female kids, was thinking that he would have to choose sooner or later between Desiree and Shelby. Which one did he love more? Desiree was the more mature and the more affectionate of the two, but he found Shelby slightly more beautiful, slightly more exciting. Shelby had the most amazingly beautiful eyes. And it wasn’t as if she wasn’t affectionate. It’s just that her ardor didn’t seem to burn quite as hot as Desiree’s did. And then it’s not as if Desiree didn’t have a beautiful face. Still, Jackson had to concede her face was less beautiful than Shelby’s. There was also the consideration that Jackson’s mom, Seraphinaria, would be thrown into a fit of apoplexy if she ever learned her son and Sevaladelia’s daughter Desiree were a couple. Sevaladelia was the widow of a man who was not only never a military officer but he never even served in the military. He had been a beer and spirits distributor, of all things! Seraphinaria was the widow of both a nobleman and a cavalry officer. If his mom ever found out that he was courting a girl of such humble birth Jackson suspected his mom might immediately disown him. But then his mom would no doubt also be angry if he and Shelby were a couple, as her dad, though he was an army officer, and had died valiantly fighting for Avallonia, was not a nobleman. He had been an executive with a big company that made lots and lots of cardboard boxes, but to the widow of a nobleman that’s not much different than saying he drove a garbage truck and picked his nose and stank to high heaven all day long. While Jackson was deliberating the passions and opposing forces pulling on his heart-strings, he pulled off something of a shrewd move. He took both of his hands out of his pockets and he reached for the hands of the two girls walking so closely beside him. He was sort of upping the ante in their flirtation. They all had one or two glasses of beer back at the tavern. Jackson knew he could expect the girls to be less inhibited than usual. Two other girls, two slightly younger girls, Barb and Marla, who also had some ale back at the tavern, were snickering at the three people holding hands and walking just in front of them. Then they laughed out loud as the beer-emboldened Jackson kissed both Shelby’s hand and Desiree’s. Soon enough Jackson was thinking he had overplayed his hand, because Desiree said flat out at one point that Jackson was going to have to decide if he wanted her of if he wanted Shelby. She was seeing his wager and raising it. Then Jackson told the two girls he loved them both, that he was crazy about both of them, which set both Desiree and Shelby, as well as the two younger girls behind them laughing pretty loudly.
Walking just behind these kids was the gang-like clique of the 5-year-old girls: Morgan, Camille, Guilia, Mercedes and Mercedes’ new adopted sister, Jocelyn. What was interesting here is that little Jocelyn, who had formerly felt a little alienated from that clique – at one point she even wished she was back at The Sisters of Mercy Orphanage - was now the undisputed leader among the 5-year-old girls. She was both cute and she also had a sophisticated and worldly aura about her, yet, at the same time, there was an immensely gentle and kind quality to little Jocelyn. The shyest and youngest of the boys found her charming and approachable. The rowdiest older boys and older girls didn’t disdain to cultivate friendships with her. The other ex-orphan girl, the 7-year-old Jasmine, never had any problems fitting in with the kids her age and younger. But now that Luke had a steady girlfriend, and now that lots of girls were throwing themselves at Jackson, Jasmine felt a good deal of pressure `to get a man and hold on to him.’ The problem for Jasmine was not that she was not lovely and alluring: the problem was there was tons and tons of stiff competition if she set her sights on either Jackson or Luke. And Brent, though he was the same age as herself, just wasn’t her type. Brent was sort of pushy and aggressive, super gregarious in a way which suggested he was an insincere social climber; he was like a Shriner or a Lions Club member on steroids. Jasmine went for the musician type, preferably a saxophone player or a bass guitarist. She would consider a classical guitarist or even something like a flutist provided he was good-looking and charming. Jasmine could just never see herself digging some guy who bowled or who played beer-league softball. To Jasmine, it just seemed as if you were throwing your life away if you married someone active in Toastmasters or the Elks or Kiwanis etc. The handsome brooding loner, Hugh, was close to her type, but he was just a 6-year-old, and, on top of that, in Jasmine’s estimation, `he seemed pretty young for his age.’
`I’d be robbing the cradle if I went after him,’ as Jasmine explained matters to the Heather, the sister she acquired after Jasmine was adopted by Valmyristarsis.
`Well you don’t want to be single all your life, do you? You don’t want to end up an old maid,’ replied Heather.
`Am I supposed to throw myself at some 5-year-old? That Dante kid is kinda cute but he is 5 years old! Or what about that 4-year-old, Curt? I got some standards, you know, in case you weren’t aware it!’
`You’ll never get anywhere in this world if you refuse to compromise,’ said the 7-year-old Heather. `Sometimes it is wise to set lofty goals, but it is imperative that you always set realistic goals, as my dear old mother keeps reminding me.’
When they had marched nearly a mile from the tavern they found a place that looked as suitable as any other place to leave the roadway and plunge into the forest of evergreens which ran alongside the road. They settled themselves at a vantage point which gave them a clear view of the roadway while they tried to blend in with the foliage and speak in whispers to remain hidden. The kids wrapped themselves in blankets to keep warm ass they played cards. Their moms let them drink a little whiskey to help them deal with the cold, provided they kept their voices down. You got cut off as soon as you raised your voice a little too loudly. The kids found it rather frustrating to be given whiskey but to be unable to do anything with the whiskey – that is doing things along the lines of partying / love-making - as that was simply impossible with so many moms around policing everyone closely. So the kids played cards and flirted in the way kids do when the chaperons are close by. There was some chocolate and some cheese and crackers and some pretzels and beer to go along with the whiskey. Though their breath frosted in front of their faces everyone was more or less warm and well-fed and cozy. Man
y of the kids and some of adults drifted off to sleep while the shadows of the afternoon lengthened towards evening. In a few more hours the sun was setting, and by twilight there was still no sign of Al, Seraphinaria and Katie. At last they heard the approach of footsteps in the night; then the vague outlines of two people were seen striding down the road in the direction of those hidden in the trees. Valmyristarsis whistled, the signal she always used. A match was struck on the roadway, illuminating the faces of Al and Katie. The kids stayed where they were but their moms went out to converse with the two on the road. Al and Katie, who were acting like forward scouts, announced that Maria and Seraphinaria would be along shortly. The four of them were all late in arriving because they thought it best to keep a watch out for trouble, for as long as possible, from a vantage point closer to the tavern. They were naturally watching for soldiers and policemen, but any sort of civilian posse was something to worry about, and by nightfall they still weren’t sure if the Krull authorities had been alerted to them or not. A few minutes after Al and Katie arrived Maria arrived on a horse drawn wagon loaded with food and supplies. By this time Al and the womenfolk confirmed what everyone more or less suspected: they would leave the road and take to the back country. The Krull Republic is much like Norway, as both are mountainous and both have numerous fjords, though Norway’s fjords reach the sea by flowing to the west, whereas in the Krull Republic they reached the sea by falling to the east. Maria was also helpful in getting them some maps. She was sophisticated enough to not ask where they were going, and no one was naïve enough to tell her. Maria was rather business-like in her arrival and her departure. She said hello, then the supplies were unloaded her wagon, and then everyone thanked her and everyone said their goodbyes. When the click of the horse’s hooves were no longer heard in the distance, Seraphinaria took command of the distribution of the goods, seeing that no one was given too much or too little weight carried in his or her ruck sack. They decided to cache 700 pounds of food, which they might need rather desperately on their journey back to Avallonia, and they would carry another 700 lbs on their backs on their journey to Hibernia: 700 lbs they decided was more than enough to last them till they got to Menzies even if they trekked over the roughest country. Everything in cans was placed in gunny sacks and hidden amid dense clusters of fir trees, which had been scouted out earlier, before night had descended, for just such a purpose. Having stashed away a month’s supply of food, it was back to the main road for a short hike. They didn’t actually leave the roadway for good until they had walked another three miles beyond the place where they had met Maria. Al was impressed to see that even the youngest kids, the two 3-year-olds, Jay-Jay and Buddy, and the 4-year-old, Curt, walked the entire way without complaining once. Army life seemed to agree with them more now than it ever had before. Or they might simply have had enough whiskey in them to deaden the pain of yet another march in an endless campaign full of such marches.
The light of the half moon rescued them from having to walk in pitch darkness. At one point Sevaladelia’s 5-year-old, Dante, who was staggering a good deal from all the beer and whiskey he’d been drinking, became rather lecherous, and he began pawing Camille, Casilevatates’, 5-year-old daughter, who then began screaming, as she was already unnerved by the spooky scene of the dark pines rising up on both sides of the road; she was afraid a bear or a pack of wolves or a witch might attack. And then this drunken kid started to grope her in the dark and soon she couldn’t stop screaming.
`Get your brat away from my girl before I slap him around,’ screamed Casilevatates in Sevaladelia’s face.
`You touch my son and I’ll smash your face,’ screamed Sevaladelia at Casilevatates.
There was silence for a second or two and then some of the older kids, who were well-fueled with alcohol, started screaming: `Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!’ This brought in all the younger kids and they starting whooping and howling and shouting things like: `kick her ass!’ and `Cat-fight! Cat-fight!’ For minute after minute the little kids were impossible to quiet, and they roared like demons, fueled as they were by beer and whiskey. Finally a large posse of old men on horses road up and told the company of 34 people, in the vilest language I might add, to shut up. Most of the kids became very quiet, but Casilevatates and Sevaladelia, who were about to rumble, and therefore both were hyped up on adrenaline, told the old men in equally colorful language what they could do with themselves. The men cursed at Casilevatates and Sevaladelia before riding off. A few minutes later Katie informed everyone that those men were probably cops or at least deputies looking for Avallonian spies, and they probably rode off thinking they had found some typical drunken Krullites but no Avallonian spies.