“I say it’s time we all had a drink, and dinner,” said Liesl. She took the arm of the silent Ingestree and sat him at the table beside herself, and we were all especially pleasant to him, except Magnus who, having trampled his old enemy into the dirt, seemed a happier man and, in some strange way, cleansed. It was as if he were a scorpion, which had discharged its venom, and was frisky and playful in consequence. I taxed him with it as we left the dinner table.

“How could you,” I said. “Ingestree is a harmless creature, surely? He has done some good work. Many people would call him a distinguished man, and a very nice fellow.”

Magnus patted my arm and laughed. It was a low laugh, and a queer one. Merlin’s laugh, if ever I heard it.

(7)

Eisengrim was altogether in high spirits, and showed no fatigue from his afternoon’s talking. He pretended to be solicitous about the rest of us, however, and particularly about Lind and Kinghovn. Did they really wish to continue with his narrative? Did they truly think what he had to say offered any helpful subtext to the film about Robert-Houdin? Indeed, as the film was now complete, of what possible use could a subtext be?

“Of the utmost possible use when next I make a film,” said Jurgen Lind. “These divergences between the acceptable romance of life and the clumsily fashioned, disproportioned reality are part of my stock-in-trade. Here you have it, in your tale of Sir John’s tour of Canada; he took highly burnished romance to a people whose life was lived on a different plateau, and the discomforts of his own life and the lives of his troupe were on other levels. How reconcile the three?”

“Light,” said Kinghovn. “You do it with light. The romance of the plays is theatre-light; the different romance of the company is the queer train-light Magnus has described; think what could be done, with that flashing strobe-light effect you get when a train passes another and everything seems to flicker and lose substance. And the light of the Canadians would be that hard, bright light you find in northern lands. Leave it to me to handle all three lights in such a way that they are a variation on the theme of light, instead of just three kinds of light, and I’ll do the trick for you, Jurgen.”

“I doubt if you can do it simply in terms of appearances,” said Lind.

“I didn’t say you could. But you certainly can’t do it without a careful attention to appearances, or you’ll have no romance of any kind. Remember what Magnus says: without attention to detail you will have no illusion, and illusion’s what you’re aiming at, isn’t it?”

“I had rather thought I was aiming at truth, or some tiny corner of it,” said Lind.

“Truth!” said Kinghovn. “What kind of talk is that for a sane man? What truth have we been getting all afternoon? I don’t suppose Magnus thinks he’s been telling us the truth. He’s giving us a mass of detail, and I don’t doubt that every word he says is true in itself, but to call that truth is ridiculous even for a philosopher of film like you, Jurgen. What’s he been doing to poor old Roly? He’s cast him as the clown of the show—mother’s boy, pompous Varsity ass, snob, and sexual non-starter—and I’m sure it’s all true, but what has it to do with our Roly? The man you and I work with and lean on? The thoroughly capable administrator, literary man, and smoother-of-the-way? Eh?”