“No.”
“We are the Soldiers of Viridiana.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“We are the resistance to the fascist assassin the Generalissimo.”
“The man who’s dying?”
“Ah.” Cooper Léon is pleased. “Gracias. We arrive at the heart of the conversation without further preliminaries.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Dying is not dead, this is the mournful truth of our situation. The assassin dies and dies and dies and dies, it goes on and on and on and on, which is to say he lives and lives and lives and lives. It is a tedious thing.”
Vikar says, “He should die more quickly.”
“He should die NOW!” Cooper Léon roars in Vikar’s face, then pulls back, hands raised. “You see?” he waves to the men around him, then places his hand on his chest. “It unsettles us. It unsettles all of Spain.” He pours himself more wine and stares at the blank movie screen, lost in thought.
151.
Cooper Léon says, “What is cinema, Señor Vicar?”
“What?”
“What is cinema? Cinema,” he answers himself, “is metaphor.” He looks at his men around him to gauge the awe with which this insight has been received. “Cinema is metaphor, and this is one of the things that cinema has in common with politics, which often is metaphor as well. The assassin the Generalissimo, it is no longer a question of his power. He is dying, and in his dying he has no true practical power anymore. Slow but sure the country rustles itself to freedom and justice. On the Fuencarral by your hotel, for instance, you have recently noticed more women of the night?”
“Yes.”
“This is what I mean.”
Vikar considers the political implications of the women he has seen on the Fuencarral.
“But in his unseemly insistence on continuing to live, the assassin the Generalissimo holds another kind of power over the minds of the countrymen he has oppressed for more than thirty-five years. Do you understand what I am saying?”
“No.”
152.
Cooper Léon waves it away. “It is of no matter,” he says. “We are going to make a film about the death of the assassin the Generalissimo.”
“The one who hasn’t died.”
“That is why we make the film. Cinema is metaphor, and when politics is metaphor as well, then cinema is guerrilla action. So that although the assassin may live another thirty-five years, he will die in the imaginations of the people, which is what matters. I am certain you understand.” Vikar doesn’t understand. Cooper Léon indicates the old man sitting on the bed on the soundstage. “My papa here, he is playing the assassin the Generalissimo. You will direct the scene.”
“I’m not a director.”
“You will direct the scene, and then you will put the film together with what we have filmed, and with documentary footage we have gathered of the assassin the Generalissimo over the last thirty-five years, and with what you have cut from the film that you have been working on in Madrid.”
Vikar looks at the soundstage and the little old man, and looks at the cans of film that his driver has placed on the far editing table. “Those,” he says to the canisters, “are what I’ve cut from Viking Man’s movie?”
“Who is this viking?”
“That is footage from the movie I’ve been cutting?”
“Some is other footage, as I said. As well,” he adds, patting the projector, “we might put in some of this film.”
Vikar looks at the projector. “The French movie starring the naked Dutch actress?”
Cooper Léon frowns. “I have to consider this. I have to consider whether it is proper to sacrifice this film for this purpose. Perhaps some parts of this film that are not as,” he’s at a loss for the precise word, “stirring. If you cut something from this film,” patting the projector again, “you can put back together what is left?”
“I can splice it,” says Vikar.
“That is it,” Cooper Léon points at Vikar triumphantly, “splice!”
“You want to make a movie of your father,” says Vikar, looking at the little old man on the set, “and Viking Man’s movie and old documentaries and the movie with the naked Dutch actress?”
“You keep saying this viking.”
Vikar says, “I don’t believe I can make this movie you want.”
Cooper Léon’s face goes cold. “This has been a civil conversation, has it not?”
“I’m very busy with the other movie.”
“It has been a pleasant conversation, no?”
“All right.”
“Let us not be uncivil. Let us not be unpleasant. You will do this.”
Vikar looks at the.45 on the table and at the stage behind Cooper Léon.
“Pablo,” Cooper Léon calls. One of the other men raises a handheld camera.
“Viking Man’s movie,” Vikar nods at the cans of film on the editing table, “is about long ago. It’s about the desert and people who ride horses and wear robes and have swords. I don’t believe,” he says, “your movie is going to make sense.”
Cooper Léon smiles, having anticipated this objection. “Señor,” he says, “do you know of Buñuel?”
“Yes.”
“He is known in your country?”
“People who know about movies know about him.”
“He is considered a good director?”
“Yes.”
“Your great American novelist Henry Miller said, ‘They call Buñuel many things but they do not call him a lunatic.’ Señor Vicar, have you seen a film by Buñuel that makes sense?”
“No. I believe the movie of Catherine Deneuve getting splattered with mud is a very good movie.”
“That is my favorite as well,” Cooper Léon nods. “The mud splattering especially.”
153.
Vikar says, “Do you know Buñuel yourself?”
“This is what I have just said.”
“I mean, do you know Buñuel?”
“You mean Buñuel the man?”
“Yes.”
“Buñuel has not been in Spain a long time.”
“Do you know his daughter?”
“I know of no daughter. I know he has sons.”
“No daughter?”
“If Buñuel had a daughter, would he not acknowledge it?”
“You would be surprised,” says Vikar, “what fathers do to their children.”
154.
The car returns Vikar to his hotel where he sleeps three hours, then rises to find the car waiting to take him to the cutting room where he edits Viking Man’s movie. Every night the car picks up Vikar from the cutting room; three or four other men are always in the car, where Vikar is blindfolded but his hands are no longer bound. By night Vikar “directs” the death of the Generalissimo, starring Cooper Léon’s papa. By day he cuts Viking Man’s Barbary pirate movie.
155.
As the Generalissimo’s death is filmed, one of the Soldiers of Viridiana cooks what the men call the “Basque Breakfast”—although it’s the middle of the night — a hash of fried eggs, potatoes, onions and chopped tomatoes. It becomes the one thing Vikar looks forward to, eating it out of the skillet with the other men and drinking it down with Spanish red wine.
Pablo with the handheld camera shoots the Generalissimo’s death scene from every angle. For the “lights” on the makeshift soundstage, three stainless-steel standing floor lamps that twist into shapes appear to have been liberated from a gynecologist’s office. Cooper Léon’s papa is lit and shot in every position that might conceivably suggest a dictator on the verge of death. Vikar shoots and shoots night after night because, first of all, he has heard that when a director has no idea what he’s doing, he should shoot as much film as possible, and because, second, he’s trying to prolong the filming so that he might finish Viking Man’s movie first and slip out of the country.