As these appearances galloped along, the newspapers, to my shock, reported them as fact. I didn’t know which I preferred more: giving the speeches or reading about them a day later in my bungalow at the Chateau Ravine. In truth, it was hard to divide the two, for the event seemed to happen only when it had been written about, or rather, it was only then that it was confirmed to have happened — its having happened, its being preserved in the gel of that tense, made it delectable, like hearing of a stranger you happened to be.
On those mornings when I expected a newspaper article, I’d open the door to find the West News rolled on the black doormat. Feigning a light curiosity, I’d page through before turning to the Politics section. There I would happen upon the headline, reading the article in a gulp before cutting it out and adding it to the scrapbook.
ACTOR BERNINI ENDORSES SENATOR STENGEL
Former senator Rory Stengel addressed a mixed and boisterous crowd of seven hundred supporters today on the steps of the Old Municipal Tower, marking his third such appearance in Fantasma Falls this month as he, along with his opponents, make their final preparations for the statewide presidential primary on the 21st. While Mr. Stengel has failed to gain a foothold in Fantasma Falls, let alone nationally, his candidacy was bolstered today by the appearance and public support of actor Giovanni Bernini, famous for his role as spy Harry Knott in the films Everyman and No Man’s Land.
Political endorsements from entertainers are nothing new, of course, in this heated primary season. What distinguished this appearance from others was Mr. Bernini’s decision to appear as the character Harry Knott, the fictitious spy the actor plays onscreen. Mr. Bernini took to the podium this afternoon in a suit identical to the one worn by Harry Knott, delivering a twenty-minute address praising Mr. Stengel’s right-wing positions in a manner indistinguishable from that of the character.
These eccentricities did not appear to faze the energized crowd, however. When this reporter canvassed them after the addresses, many confirmed they had attended solely to see the movie actor. “I’d vote for him if I could,” said Carl DeWee, a high school senior. “Have you seen his movies? Now he’s taking it into real life.” Said Timothy Michaels, a retired engineer, “He hunts pinkos in the pictures, and he’ll do it right here, too.”
Opponents may well seize upon this appearance as evidence of the former senator’s reactionary positions. Given the robust turnout at today’s rally, however, it seems a trade the candidate is willing to make. “Mr. Bernini is going to continue to stump with us,” a spokesman from the campaign confirmed. “We’re delighted to have him.”
I campaigned with Rory Stengel for six months, rarely interacting with him backstage and then hugging him or gripping his hand and hoisting it with mine once on it. In this proximity, I learned the strategies. The sanctity of eye contact, for instance. How eruptive a grin can be. Above all, the key was to have said things so many times that when you were delivering the line, whether solemnly or casually, whether to a cigar-chewing reporter or tongue-tied voter, you weren’t ever thinking about the words, but about some essential, misdirected thing — the way you touched a man’s shoulder, for instance, or seemed to smile unthinkingly to yourself — in the way a magician talks always but never about the palmed ace or hidden thrumming dove.
By the time Stengel was defeated in the election, I had stolen what I could from him. Little time passed, perhaps a month, before my appearances recommenced at political rallies and in convention halls up and down the state, at which events I delivered speeches deviating little from the message I preached with Stengel, the primacy of patriotism, mainly, and the specter of communism. “I am a patriot in the stories I tell and in the life I live,” I must have said a thousand times, becoming the master of certain phrases and mottoes, whose syllables I’d run up and down, like melodies. We traveled in a motorcade from event to event, winding our way as far north as Red Rock Shoals.
By that time there had developed a cult of admirers, zealots who attended rallies in my suit and bolo tie and cowboy boots, waving placards and vicious signs. These men seemed to grow in number with each new appearance, and security men often mistook Bernard for one of their lot, checking his passage or giving him a skeptical once-over. “Committed, huh?” a burly organizer once asked him. Bernard answered, “Why, sir, I’m committed to any cause that will awaken this country to the real.” After making it past this guard, I expected Bernard to wink, but he looked solemn, if anything, strutting ahead with the bellicose energy of a football player taking the field. During the rallies, I would sometimes spot him in the crowd itself, waving a sign or joining a chant as if electrified, genuinely, by the policies I described. “Meet the most natural politician this country’s ever produced,” he said when showing me off.
In truth, the content of my speeches mattered little to me. No, what mattered was the performance, of which these addresses were but a small part (and the meaning of them hardly relevant at all). How I walked onstage, waving to the peopled bleachers, the style in which I descended stairs — these mattered as much as my rhetoric or tone of voice, and to test these gestures I began to use the mirror every morning.
Previously I had used it sparingly: to verify, say, a look I’d caught on the traffic-scanning face of a jaywalker. I think I saw it as a cheat. But after we announced that I was running for governor, I began to rely on the mirror, to practice in front of it in the morning, usually after reading an article about me, in order to solidify certain details. How I looked flipping the page on the dais, for instance, or sighing.
As I soon discovered, however, the bedroom mirror wasn’t big enough. I made the request to Frankie and Lou, and it was taken care of: a larger, multipaneled mirror replaced the length of the wall opposite my bed, so I could examine the full sweep of a gesture. Even this was insufficient, though, and, upon my request, was expanded again. Wrapping around the bed, a semicircular mirror came to be installed, but this, too, disappointed me — seemed to emphasize the lack of mirror elsewhere — and I eventually told Frankie and Lou that I wanted the entire room mirrored, three hundred sixty degrees, and the ceilings, too.
The Chateau Ravine staff, who already considered me a permanent resident (informally referring to the property as the Knott Suite), was happy to oblige. It was achieved with surprising speed, but my first night in the mirrored room, I could barely sleep, kicking the sheets, the innumerable Giovannis spitting it all back so that I had to shut my eyes, the bursting feeling coming again. I vowed to call Mama first thing in the morning, to book a flight back to Sea View, when at some hour sunlight nosed the edge of the curtains, which I parted, flooding the room in angles, and I understood the mirrors were no mistake at all but a miracle.
For there are innumerable points of view, of course. A man might choose to see you from a variety of locations in the stands, and it was best to learn how you might appear to him standing wherever he was. Soon I had props brought in from the lot: a dais, a set of stairs, a small desk on wheels. At my request, Julie Dark joined me in that chamber, part of my effort to be comprehensive. Once she was a tall Swede with a lightly cruel sense of humor. Another a woman with black bangs who kept stroking my cheek with her finger. And yet I soon found that sex itself was too homely an act to bear to watch in the mirrored room, and I asked Julie to simulate more practical positions, such as shaking my hand or asking me a question at close range, with that upraised, auditor’s tilt of the head.