The Magus - John Fowles [230]
to my right was a small cinema projector with a reel of i6-mrn. film. What light there was came from through the doorway I could see to my left. My trio of blackshirts wasted no time. They went to the projector, switched it on, checked that the film was correctly fed and then set it going. It began with the black wheel on white, as if it was a film company emblem. One of the men adjusted the lens focus a little. Adam came back and stood in front of me--out of reach of any kick I might attempt--and spoke. "The disintoxication." I understood that I had been forced to "forgive" so that I could be moved on to this final humiliation; a metaphorical, if not a literal, flogging. I had still not reached the bottom. I was alone with the whirring projector and whatever lay beyond the curtains. The emblem faded and words appeared. POLYMUS FILMS PRESENT The screen went white for a moment. Then: THE SHAMEFUL TRUTH The black wheel. Then: WITH THE FABULOUS WHORE IO A blank. WHO YOU WILL REMEMBER AS ISIS ASTARTE KALI A long blank. AND AS THE CAPTIVATING LILY MONTGOMERY There was a brief shot of Lily kneeling behind a man. It had almost ended before I realised that the man was myself. Someone, Conchis, must have taken us with a telephoto lens, the day she recited "The frog he would a-wooing go"; she had even warned me he was using exactly such a camera. AS THE UNFORGETTABLY DESIRABLE JULIE HOLMES Another brief shot: I was standing and kissing her in bright sunlight. The vegetable-garden terrace. She wore the white linen suit. It had been done on that last morning at Bourani, after the others had left. AND AS THE LEARNED AND COURAGEOUS VANESSA MAXWELL This time it was a still. She was behind a desk, a laboratory desk covered with papers. A rack of test tubes. A microscope. Madame Curie. AND NOW IN HER GREATEST ROLE AS The wheel reappeared for a moment. HERSELF! Blank film. Then a fade-in shot of Joe in his jackal mask running down the track towards the house at Bourani; a devil in sunlight; he ran right up into the camera lens, blacking it out. CO-STARRING THE MONSTER OF THE MISSISSIPPI A blank. JOE HARRISON The wheel again. AS HIMSELF Then there were words in an over-ornamented frame: ------------------------- Lady Jane, a depraved young aristocrat, in her hotel room ------------------------- I was going to see a blue film. It began: a lushly furnished, frill-laden bedroom in Edwardian style. Lily appeared in a peignoir, her hair down. The peignoir gaped absurdly over a black corset. She stopped by a chair to adjust a stocking, in a hackneyed leg-showing routine, though the close-up also allowed her to show the scarred wrist. She looked suddenly towards the door, and called something. A page entered with a letter on a tray. She took it and the page left. Shot of her opening the letter, sneering, and tossing it aside. The camera closed on the letter on the floor. The quality of the film was bubbly and blistery, badly synchronised, like early silent film. Another ffickering framed title appeared. --------------------------------------------- ... now I know the abominable truth about your perverted lusts, all is over between us. I remain, but not for long, your disgusted husband... LORD de VERE!" --------------------------------------------- A new shot. Lily was lying on the bed, with the camera shooting down on her. The peignoir had gone. The corset, fishnet stockings. She had managed to give her heavily rouged and mascara'd face a suitably pouting and _femme fatale_ look, but the visual effect was not far removed from the verbal: like so much pornography--in this case I supposed intentionally--it was dangerously near the ridiculous. It was all to end in a joke; a joke in bad taste, but a joke. --------------------------------------------- Panting with desire she waits for the arrival of her coal-black partner in unspeakable sin. --------------------------------------------- Back to the same shot. Suddenly she sat up with a leer on the French brothel brass bed. Someone else had come in. ------------------------ The entry of Black Bull, a vaudeville