THE LOVE SCENE

by
Sarah Roberts

The American film director has been stationed in the sickbay for almost forty-five minutes. His second assistant, the elegantly named Carmelita Corrales, is there too, consoling him. Carmelita lays a thin brown arm across the director’s shoulders and drops her head, staring into his chest.

Maya.

Last month, the American film director visited the ancient underground city of Maya. Today he is wearing his souvenir shirt. It is covered with pictures of the ruins repeated again and again. A great mountainside of steps descends into a black pool. Then a new image appears; this time of people. A group of figures are standing, barely clothed and hands splayed, as though posing for a camera. When Carmelita squints she can send the people hurtling sideways, into the ruins.

The American’s breath is warm on the crown of Carmelita’s head. A few of her loose hairs sway from side to side like a crew of tiny oarsmen.

In just a few minutes the Best Boy will return from the pharmacia with a new thermometer held up to his face.

The director thinks he has a fever.

Apart from the second assistant, the American film director has only one admirer left on set. An actor. A Spanish boy with blue eyes. He is walking all over, picking up props and inspecting them. He leans back in several chairs and compares their features for comfort and style. He wanders into the ‘drawing-room’ where later this afternoon the lead actor must perform a ten-minute soliloquy without taking his eyes off the mirror. The Spanish boy lays his hands on a mahogany cabinet that has been transported especially from Pennsylvania. He sniffs the wood. Earlier this morning, before the director disappeared, everyone was talking about the mirror scene.

He cannot think in this heat, the Spanish boy is telling the crew.

But the crew are not listening. Many of them are playing a game of dare, strolling casually past the sickbay to catch a glimpse of Carmelita and the director obscured behind the frosted glass. Every so often a bearded engineer slams a cable against the ground and a group a nearby women scatter.

Everyone is sweating. But no one is sweating more than Justin. He is back from the international booksellers with a stack of newspapers so tall that he has to push his chin up to see where he is going. With every jolt of his head, drops of water fall from his hair and melt into the lovely, darkening pages of Le Monde.

Only Carmelita knows that the American film director is not really sick. He is in the sickbay because he is disappointed, he tells her. Because he feels like a failure.

Take one, the First Assistant had said, wafting croissants and currants in front of his nose on the balcony at breakfast. She had sat down hard on an iron chair opposite him. The hotelier will curse her, the director had thought, watching her brush crumbs from her lap to the floor. He had observed the staff’s early morning routine. He had witness the ongoing war against ants, had stood by helplessly while a short woman with dimpled knees moved slowly along the wall, pausing at places marked out with a pale yellow powder.

No one saw the director’s expression change. The first assistant had been too busy reading, gripping the edges of the newspaper and correcting her voice when it faulted. She had not seen the blood drop from his face and collect in the loose folds of his neck, like wash-water draining sluggishly from a basin.

It is not that the reviews were bad.

They were promising, better than promising. It was just that the reviewers had not seen the film that the director had wanted them to see. Their interpretations were poetic but wildly off the mark. Each was written as though in pursuit of some personal target and when each review reached its peak, it was then that the interpretation went most desperately awry.

The love scene.

The director had shaken his head. He had stared down at the balcony paving stones.

They had read the love scene as a metaphor. Hands, the exuberant essayist Nick Dutch had written in The Post, are always an open prayer. Whether they are praying or not, they are always at the service of the will. Hands, he had concluded with a flourish, are always haunted by the metaphysical.

Every director knows that drama relies, to a greater or lesser extent, on the dimensions of scale.

So when the First Assistant entered the sickbay for a second time and saw Carmelita and the director perching forlornly on the edges of a camp bed, she could hardly conceal her amusement. The sound of her laughter, a brief two-syllable laugh, stirred Carmelita from her sleep and the director from his misery.

There was no ignoring it. The sickbay was a small room. It had been composed from the outside walls of other, more important rooms. Facilities had agreed on a portable bed, for storage purposes.

In the presence of the First Assistant, the director suddenly felt quite absurd. He felt like a fool sitting on that bed, like the sensitive giant of a fairy-tale who tries to hide his coarse, brutish hands.

The giant stood up.

When the director walked out of the room, the last thing he saw was the First Assistant pulling gently at Carmelita’s elbow, guiding her to one side with a good deal of dexterity.

© Sarah Roberts
Reproduced with permission