Free Stories in an Almost Classical Mode by Harold Brodkey Page A

He smells the woods. But plot if you like. Only remember to be innocent at the same time, a man who does not plot. You have a very fine sense of life. Play it with uncertainty.” Marcus, even from the boom, can see the tension in Oskar, and he is pleased. Liselotte crosses her spindly arms stiffly over her large breasts and stands pigeon-toed while Whitehart slips a pebble into her shoe. The shot will follow the ones of Oskar and Liselotte strolling and is to be taken from the boom, from above, to suggest Oskar’s aloofness, his detachment from Liselotte after the disdainful girl has passed. Marcus shouts, “All right, let’s go!” and Oskar tugs Liselotte, who cannot walk very well with the pebble in her shoe. She watches Marcus tearfully, and when Marcus nods, Liselotte halts with stunning suddenness, pulls back, and passes her hand over her forehead and speaks to Oskar. On the sound track her voice will say,
“Meine Fusse”
—a child near tears.
“Gut,
Lise,
gut!
No, don’t look at me!” Marcus shouts. He thinks, Very good and crude: an unimaginative woman. Oskar bends his head over Liselotte woodenly, to hide his confusion about the nature of the man he is playing, and to conceal his wrath with her amateurishness. In the inclination of his head and the way his hand touches her shoulder, he overacts—Oskar wants the scene done with and to be rid of having to deal with Liselotte. The concern he pretends has a vast adamancy, a coldness of spirit, and the grace Oskar cannot help displaying in his attempt to appear a gentleman. Peremptorily the man and the actor merge; he raises his arm and snaps his fingers. A taxiscreeches to a halt in front of Oskar and Liselotte; Oskar helps Liselotte in, and the taxi roars in a U-turn while Marcus shouts to Alliat’s assistant,
“Allez oop!”
and the boom rises and dips to suggest Oskar’s sensation of freedom and release, as if he were flying above the Viale Trinità dei Monti as the taxi vanishes with Liselotte in it.
    That shot will be succeeded in the movie by the close-up of Oskar standing at the railing atop the Spanish Steps, smiling at Marcus’s joke about Goethe and the statue. The smile will seem to the audience to be expectant—Oskar is waiting to see what reality will emerge for him from the City of the Absolute.
    As soon as the shot ends, Oskar hurries toward Marcus, who is standing beside the boom. Oskar says, “That woman! That whore! She is stupid—an amateur.” His mouth assumes a bent, paranoid smile. “You put her in the movie to make me a fool. It is a plot.”
    Marcus says, “Oskar, I need her. I need her for the movie.”
    “Why?”
    Marcus shrugs. “For a touch of innocence. Of soul. She is a symbol of your soul, Oskar,
mein Lieber.
” Oskar relaxes in part. “A symbol,” he says.
“Ja, ich verstehe.
And I cast her off.
Ja,
I see.” Marcus walks away, to end the conversation. Sweating in the sunlight, he thinks, So she’s dead. How could a woman so old know so little? The minnow eyes are stilled—how strange. His heartbeat generates a haze in his chest. Whitehart, on the first landing of the Steps, a sketch in his hand, is arranging extras and instructing them in their attitudes and actions for the next shot. Marcus says to himself, “I must go down.” But he knows Whitehart finds his safety in thinking he is indispensable to Marcus. Marcus tells himself, “I must give him another moment to be important.”
    He turns and goes down—not the Spanish Steps but the steep flight of steps that leads to the Via della Carrozze. Marcus’s heart labors. He thinks it will be forty-five minutes before the sun is right for Jehane’s ascent. He wants no shadows when Jehane climbs the Spanish Steps. He turns from the Via della Carrozze into the Piazza di Spagna, a middle-aged, heavyset man moving slowly. He says to himself, “It is the work; I take everything too seriously. The shots went well; if they had gone badly, I wouldn’t grieve for