The Book of Illusions (31 page)

Jostled by these sudden movements, the young woman groans, buries her head in the pillow, and then opens her eyes. At first, she doesn’t seem to notice that Martin is there. Still groggy, still fighting her way into consciousness, she rolls onto her back and yawns. As her arms stretch out, her right hand brushes against Martin’s body. Nothing happens for a second or two, and then, very slowly, she sits up, looks into Martin’s confused and horrified face, and shrieks. An instant later, she flings back the covers and bounds from the bed, rushing across the room in a frenzy of fear and embarrassment. She has nothing on. Not a stitch, not a shred, not even the hint of an obscuring shadow. Stunning in her nakedness, with her bare breasts and bare belly in full view of the camera, she charges toward the lens, snatches her bathrobe from the back of a chair, and hastily thrusts her arms into the sleeves.

It takes a while to clear up the misunderstanding. Martin, no less vexed and agitated than his mysterious bed partner, slides out of bed and puts on his pants, then asks her who she is and what she’s doing there. The question seems to offend her. No, she says, who is
he
, and what is
he
doing there? Martin is incredulous. What are you talking about? he says. I’m Martin Frost—not that it’s any of your business—and unless you tell me who you are right now, I’m going to call the police. Inexplicably, his statement astonishes her. You’re Martin Frost? she says. The real Martin Frost? That’s what I just said, Martin says, growing more peevish by the second, do I have to say it again? It’s just that I know you, the young woman replies. Not that I really know you, but I know who you are. You’re Hector and Frieda’s friend.

How is she connected to Hector and Frieda? Martin wants to know, and when she informs him that she’s Frieda’s niece, he asks her for the third time what her name is. Claire, she finally says. Claire what? She hesitates for a moment and then says, Claire … Claire Martin. Martin snorts with disgust. What is this, he says, some kind of joke? I can’t help it, Claire says. That’s my name.

And what are you doing here, Claire
Martin
?

Frieda invited me.

When Martin responds with a disbelieving look, she picks up her purse from the chair. After fumbling through its contents for several seconds, she pulls out a key and holds it up to Martin. You see? she says. Frieda sent it to me. It’s the key to the front door.

With growing irritation, Martin digs into his pocket and pulls out an identical key, which he angrily holds up to Claire—jabbing it right under her nose. Then why would Hector send me this one? he says.

Because … Claire answers, backing away from him, because … he’s Hector. And Frieda sent me this one because she’s Frieda. They’re always doing things like that.

There is an irrefutable logic to Claire’s statement. Martin knows his friends well enough to understand that they’re perfectly capable of getting their signals crossed. Inviting two people to the house at the same time is just the sort of thing the Spellings are apt to do.

With a defeated look, Martin begins to pace around the room. I don’t like it, he says. I came here to be alone. I have work to do, and having you around is … well, it’s not being alone, is it?

Don’t worry, Claire says. I won’t get in your way. I’m here to work, too.

It turns out that Claire is a student. She’s preparing for a philosophy exam, she says, and has many books to read, a semester’s worth of assignments to cram into a couple of weeks. Martin is skeptical. What do pretty girls have to do with philosophy? his look seems to say, and then he grills her about her studies, asking her what college she attends, the name of the professor who is giving the course, the titles of the books she has to read, and so on. Claire pretends not to notice the insult buried in these questions. She goes to Cal Berkeley, she says. Her professor’s name is Norbert Steinhaus, and the course is called From Descartes to Kant: The Foundations of Modern Philosophical Inquiry.

I promise to be very quiet, Claire says. I’ll move my things into another bedroom, and you won’t even know I’m here.

Martin has run out of arguments. All right, he says, reluctantly giving in to her, I’ll stay out of your way, and you’ll stay out of mine. Do we have a deal?

They do. They even shake hands on it, and as Martin clomps out of the room to begin working on his story, the camera swings around and slowly pushes in on Claire’s face. It is a simple but compelling shot, our first serious look at her in repose, and because it is accomplished with such patience and fluidity, we sense that the camera isn’t trying to reveal Claire to us so much as to get inside her and read her thoughts, to caress her. She follows Martin with her eyes, watching him as he leaves the room, and an instant after the camera comes to rest in front of her, we hear the latch of the door click shut. The expression on Claire’s face doesn’t change. Good-bye, Martin, she says. Her voice is low, barely more than a whisper.

For the rest of the day, Martin and Claire work in their separate rooms. Martin sits at the desk in the study, typing, looking out the window, typing again, muttering to himself as he reads back the words he has written. Claire, looking like a college student in her blue jeans and sweatshirt, is sprawled out on the bed with
The Principles of Human Knowledge
, by George Berkeley. At some point, we notice that the philosopher’s name is written out in block letters across the front of the sweatshirt: berkeley—which also happens to be the name of her school. Is this supposed to mean something, or is it simply a kind of visual pun? As the camera cuts back and forth from one room to the other, we hear Claire reading out loud to herself:
And it seems no less evident that the various sensations
or ideas imprinted on the sense, however blended or combined
together, cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them
. And again:
Secondly, it will be objected that there is a great
 
difference betwixt real fire and the idea of fire, between dreaming
or imagining oneself burnt, and actually being so
.

Late in the afternoon, a knock is heard at the door. Claire goes on reading, but when a second, louder knock follows the first, she puts down her book and tells Martin to come in. The door opens a few inches, and Martin pokes his head into the room. I’m sorry, he says. I wasn’t very nice to you this morning. I shouldn’t have acted that way. It is a stiff and bumbling apology, but delivered with such awkwardness and hesitation that Claire can’t help smiling with amusement, perhaps even a trace of pity. She has one more chapter to go, she says. Why don’t they meet in the living room in half an hour and have a drink? Good idea, Martin says. As long as they’re stuck with each other, they might as well act like civilized people.

The action cuts to the living room. Martin and Claire have opened a bottle of wine, but Martin still seems nervous, not quite sure what to make of this strange and attractive reader of philosophy. In a clumsy stab at humor, he points to her sweatshirt and says, Does it say Berkeley because you’re reading Berkeley? When you start reading Hume, will you wear one that says Hume?

Claire laughs. No, no, she says, the words are pronounced differently.
Berk
-ley and
Bark
-ley. The first one is a college, the other is a man. You know that. Everyone knows that.

It’s the same spelling, Martin says. Therefore, it’s the same word.

It’s the same spelling, Claire says, but it’s two different words.

Claire is about to go on, but then she stops, suddenly realizing that Martin is pulling her leg. She breaks into a broad smile. Holding out her glass, she asks Martin to pour her another drink. You wrote a short story about two characters with the same name, she says, and here I am lecturing you on the principles of nominalism. It must be the wine. I’m not thinking clearly anymore.

So you read that story, Martin says. You must be one of six people in the universe who knows about it.

I’ve read all your work, Claire answers. Both novels and the collection of stories.

But I’ve published only one novel.

You’ve just finished your second, haven’t you? You gave a copy of the manuscript to Hector and Frieda. Frieda lent it to me, and I read it last week.
Travels in the Scriptorium
. I think it’s the best thing you’ve done.

By now, whatever reservations Martin might have felt toward her have all but crumbled away. Not only is Claire a spirited and intelligent person, not only is she pleasant to look at, but she knows and understands his work. He pours himself another glass of wine. Claire discourses on the structure of his latest novel, and as Martin listens to her incisive but flattering comments, he leans back in his chair and smiles. It is the first time since the opening of the film that the brooding, ever-serious Martin Frost has let down his guard. In other words, he says, Miss Martin approves. Oh yes, Claire says, most definitely. Miss Martin approves of Martin. This play on their names leads them back to the Berk-ley/Bark-ley conundrum, and once again Martin asks Claire to explain the word on the sweatshirt. Which one is it? he says. The man or the college? It’s both, Claire answers. It says whatever you want it to say.

At that moment, a small glint of mischief flashes in her eyes. Something has occurred to her—a thought, an impulse, a sudden inspiration. Or, Claire says, putting her glass on the table and standing up from the couch, it doesn’t mean anything at all.

By way of demonstration, she peels off the sweatshirt and calmly tosses it onto the floor. She has nothing on underneath but a lacy black bra—hardly the kind of garment one would expect to discover on such an earnest student of ideas. But this is an idea, too, of course, and now that she has put it into action with such a bold and decisive gesture, Martin can only gape. Not in his wildest dreams could he have imagined that things would happen so fast.

Well, he finally says, that’s one way of eliminating the confusion.

Simple logic, Claire replies. A philosophical proof.

And yet, Martin continues, speaking after another long pause, by eliminating one kind of confusion, you only create another.

Oh Martin, Claire says. Don’t be confused. I’m trying to be as clear as I can.

There is a fine line between charm and aggression, between throwing yourself at someone and letting nature take its course. In this scene, which ends with the words just spoken (
I’m trying
to be as clear as I can
), Claire manages to straddle both sides of the argument at once. She seduces Martin, but she goes about it in such a clever, lighthearted way that it never occurs to us to question her motives. She wants him because she wants him. That is the tautology of desire, and rather than go on discussing the endless nuances of such a proposition, she cuts directly to the chase. Removing the sweatshirt is not a vulgar announcement of her intentions. It is a moment of sublimely achieved wit, and from that moment on, Martin knows that he has met his match.

They wind up in bed. It is the same bed where they encountered each other that morning, but this time they are in no rush to separate, to fly apart on contact and scramble into their clothes. They come crashing through the door, walking and embracing at the same time, and as they fall to the bed in an awkward tangle of arms and legs and mouths, we have no doubt where all this groping and heavy breathing is going to take them. In 1946, the conventions of moviemaking would have required the scene to end there. Once the man and the woman started to kiss, the director was supposed to cut away from the bedroom to a shot of sparrows taking flight, to surf pounding against the shore, to a train speeding through a tunnel—any of several stock images to stand in for carnal passion, the fulfillment of lust—but New Mexico wasn’t Hollywood, and Hector could let the camera go on rolling for as long as he liked. Clothes come off, bare flesh is seen, and Martin and Claire begin to make love. Alma had been right to warn me about the erotic moments in Hector’s films, but she had been wrong to think that I would be shocked by them. I found the scene to be rather subdued, almost poignant in the banality of its intentions. The lighting is dim, the bodies are flecked with shadows, and the whole thing lasts no more than ninety or a hundred seconds. Hector doesn’t want to arouse or titillate so much as to make us forget that we are watching a film, and by the time Martin starts running his mouth down Claire’s body (over her breasts and along the curve of her right hip, across her pubic hair and into the soft inner part of her leg), we want to believe that we have. Again, not a note of music is played. The only sounds we hear are the sounds of breath, of rustling sheets and blankets, of bedsprings, of wind gusting through the branches of the trees in the unseen darkness outside.

The next morning, Martin begins talking to us again. Over a montage that denotes the passage of five or six days, he tells us about the progress of his story and his growing love for Claire. We see him alone at his typewriter, see Claire alone with her books, see them together in a number of different places around the house. They cook dinner in the kitchen, kiss on the living room sofa, walk in the garden. At one point, Martin is crouching on the floor beside his desk, dipping a brush into a bucket of paint and slowly writing out the letters H-U-M-E on a white T-shirt. Later on, Claire is dressed in that T-shirt, sitting Indian-style on the bed and reading a book by the next philosopher on her list, David Hume. These small vignettes are interspersed with random close-ups of objects, abstract details that have no apparent connection to what Martin is saying: a pot of boiling water, a puff of cigarette smoke, a pair of white curtains fluttering in the embrasure of a half-open window. Steam, smoke, and wind—a catalogue of formless, insubstantial things. Martin is describing an idyll, a moment of sustained and perfect happiness, and yet as this procession of dreamlike images continues to march across the screen, the camera is telling us not to trust in the surfaces of things, to doubt the evidence of our own eyes.