Thoroughly conflicted by Vikar’s tattooed head, his state of undress and the throttled red-ribboned scroll in Vikar’s hand, the concierge at the front desk apologizes that the suite isn’t ready. “We weren’t expecting you for at least another hour or two, monsieur,” he says, “are the ceremonies over?” He invites Vikar to wait in the Petit Bar, where someone will come retrieve him.
213.
The bar is mostly empty. Everyone else is at the Palais except two men at a far table talking and an attractive blonde in her early fifties at another table, wearing a wide-brimmed fedora and sunglasses even though it’s night and the lounge is dark. At another table is a younger woman, around thirty, with dark curls, wearing a long white coat; she drinks a glass of red wine and seems to be waiting for someone. She surveys Vikar for a full minute with a cool and overt curiosity. Vikar orders a vodka tonic.
212.
Now one of the two men talking at the far table looks at Vikar. He gets up from the table and comes over; he’s sharply though informally dressed in a light cotton summer jacket, and Vikar realizes he’s familiar. “Monsieur Vicar,” the man says, Vikar still trying to place him. “It is I, Cooper Léon.”
“Yes,” Vikar says, uncertainly.
Cooper Léon puts out his hand. “How are you?”
Shaking the other man’s hand, Vikar says, “All right.”
Cooper Léon looks at the crumpled scroll on Vikar’s cocktail table. “You have received one of the prizes at the ceremony tonight?”
“They said my name wrong.”
“May I sit with you?”
“All right.”
Cooper Léon sits down. “Felicitations. I am not surprised in the least. I knew three years ago in Madrid that you are a man of vision.”
211.
Now Vikar remembers. “The movie about the General.”
“Yes.”
“For the soldiers of …”
“The Soldiers of Viridiana.”
“Are they here?”
“Who?”
“The soldiers.”
“In Cannes?” Cooper Léon says, surprised. “I am no longer leading the revolution in Spain. The assassin the Generalissimo died, and now many good films are allowed in my country. Thanks to you.”
“I don’t believe the movie I made for you was a very good one.”
“That, Monsieur Vicar,” Cooper Léon points to the award, “says differently.” Vikar notices that Cooper Léon’s Spanish accent has turned to French. “I no longer am living in Madrid. I live in Paris now.”
“Are the soldiers there now?”
“Monsieur, there are no more soldiers. Please forget the soldiers. Now I am a publicist for Gaumont. We are here at the festival representing the new film by Claude Chabrol with Isabelle Huppert. I believe she won a prize this evening as well.”
“I don’t know.”
“We also are sponsoring a retrospective, as …” he pauses, “… as an unofficial tangent, you might say, to the official festival, a retrospective of one of your great American auteurs. Well, actually he is British, but he made all of his films in America. Irving Rapper.”
“Irving Rapper?”
“You know of Monsieur Irving Rapper?” Cooper Léon asks.
“Now, Voyager.”
Relief floods Cooper Léon’s face. “Of course I was certain a scholar of film such as yourself would know of Irving Rapper. Cinema’s great poet of la femme dérangée. As you say, Now, Voyager. Deception. The Glass Menagerie. Marjorie Morningstar. Would you care for another?” He points at Vikar’s vodka tonic.
“I’m waiting for my room to be ready.”
“Of course. Allow me please to buy for you another drink while you wait. It would be my honor.” Cooper Léon calls out something to the bartender and turns back to Vikar. His brow furrows. “Monsieur Vicar, I feel it is fateful that I should see you here this evening. I wonder if I might make a confession to you that I never have told to anyone else.”
“All right.”
“It seems proper that you are the person to whom I should confess this.”
“All right.”
210.
Cooper Léon says, “Monsieur Vicar, perhaps you are wondering how it is I no longer am leading the revolutionary struggle for justice and rather have become a publicist for Gaumont.”
“Uh,” says Vikar.
“It is a difficult thing to comprehend, even for me sometimes. It is a result of a moment of truth I had, as it happens, not long after we met and worked together on our film about the death of the assassin the Generalissimo.” He pauses as if waiting for Vikar to respond.
“Oh.”
Cooper Léon shrugs. “Not long after we worked together on our film, I had a dream. Do you know who came to me in this dream?”
“God?”
“Luis Buñuel.”
“Oh.”
“Luis Buñuel, who once stayed in this hotel, this same hotel where he slept on the floor of his suite rather than the bed, as a revolutionary act. This dream was so real that I might almost have thought it was not a dream at all but the ghost of Buñuel, visiting me in the night, if Buñuel were not still alive. So it could not be his ghost.”
“No.”
“In this dream, Buñuel gave me a choice. Do you know what this choice was?”
“No.”
“Buñuel said to me, ‘Cooper Léon, you may have one of two things.’ Monsieur,” Cooper Léon’s voice breaks, “this is a difficult thing to confess.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Buñuel said, ‘Cooper Léon, you either may see the fruits of your revolutionary struggle and have justice and freedom for all people in the world, or you may fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel.’ Of course you remember Miss Sylvia Kristel, Monsieur Vicar?”
“Yes.”
“From the French masterpiece Emmanuelle?”
“Yes.”
“And Emmanuelle 2?”
“I guess.”
“And Emmanuelle ’77?”
“Uh.”
“And Goodbye, Emmanuelle?”
“I don’t know about those last ones.”
“So then. ‘Now I know what you are thinking,’ Buñuel went on in my dream. ‘You are thinking that you will fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel and it will be over in the usual forty-five seconds and that is hardly worth it. No,’ Buñuel said in my dream, ‘if you choose to fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel, I will give you an erection not as in real life but a cinematic erection, as men have in films. It will last as long as you want, it will last hours, days if you want. But,’ and Buñuel was emphatic about this, Monsieur Vicar, ‘but once you have reached climax and the fucking is over, then … no more.’ And as soon as Buñuel said this, I woke.” Cooper Léon sighs heavily. “I woke, monsieur, to the truth that I would trade the freedom and justice of all the world’s oppressed masses for one chance to fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel. And of course the tragedy, monsieur, is that I woke to this truth that I have to live with forever without ever having actually fucked Miss Sylvia Kristel. So it is as though I made the choice in my soul without ever having received the benefit of that choice. Do you understand?”
“I believe so.”
“I believed that you would,” Cooper Léon nodded. “I believed that you of all people would understand that this is the exquisite cruelty of cinema, confronting men with truths about themselves that they must live with without ever actually getting to fuck Miss Sylvia Kristel.”
“I’ve cheated on Elizabeth Taylor,” Vikar says, patting his own head.
“Yes, monsieur,” the other man says dismissively. “But Elizabeth Taylor has cheated on you far more often.”
209.
“Mon dieu,” Cooper Léon says, looking across the room.