at that time no moving picture had been given the setting that jacob zanin devised for the nature film. zanin had altered the interior of the building to make it as little as possible like the conventional theater. only the walls, galleries and boxes and stage remained as they had been. the new decorations were in the pale greens and pinks of spring and were simple. between foyer and auditorium were palms, with orchids and other tropical flowers. the orchestra was not in sight. the ushers were calm girls from the village—students of painting, designing, writing, sculpture—dressed modestly enough in a completer drapery of the sort worn by sue in the pictures, such a material as philippine women weave from grasses and pineapple strands, softly buff and cream and brown in color, embroidered with exquisite skill in exotic designs. the stage before the screen (zanin used no drop curtain) represented a native village on some imaginary south sea island. the natives themselves were there, quietly moving about the routine of their lives or sitting by a low fire before the group of huts at one side of the stage.
very likely you saw it. if so, you will understand the difficulty i am confronted with in describing the place. it made a small sensation, the theater itself, apart from the nature film. but a penned description could not convey the freshness, the quiet charm, the dignity of that interior.
the dignity was what first touched sue. the worm watched her sidelong as her eyes roved from the flat surfaces of pure bold color on the walls to the quietly idyllic scene on the stage that managed to look as if it were not a stage. she exhibited little emotion at first. her brow was slightly furrowed, the eyes thoughtful, the mouth set—that was all. she had gone through the difficult months of enacting the film at first with enthusiasm, later doggedly. she had early lost her vision of the thing as a whole; her recollections now were of doing over and over this bit and that, of a certain youthful actor who had taken it for granted that a girl who would dress as she had to dress the character could be casually made love to, of interminable train rides to the outdoor “locations,” of clashes of will between zanin and the interstellar people—of work, quarrels, dust, money and the lack of it and a cumulative disillusionment. it came to her now that she had lost that early vision. more, she had forgotten the sincerity and the purpose of jacob zanin, that beneath his cold jewish detachment he believed this thing—that the individual must be freed from conformity and (as he saw it) its attendant hypocrisy by breaking the yoke of the home. it must be the individual—first, last, always—-the glad, free individual—the will to live, to feel, to express.
it was the village jargon, done into something near a masterpiece. sue began to see as the film unrolled before her eyes, reel by reel, that zanin had never for a moment lost his dream. even now, merely sitting in that steep crowded gallery waiting for the first reel of the ten, sue knew that he had never lost it. nor had peter. the thought was exciting. it brought the color back to her cheeks. her lips parted slightly. she was feeling again the enthusiasm peter's scenario had roused in her at the start, but with a new intensity. the worm, at her side, watching every slight subtle change of that young face, forgot his own stirring news of the morning, forgot that he was alexander h. bates, and the expression of a man who had bcen long hungry crept into his eyes.
the nature film, you recall, pictured an imaginary people, simple, even primitive, untouched by what men call civilisation. to their secluded island comes the ship of an explorer, suggesting by its outlines and rigging and the costumes of officers and crew, the brave days of captain cook, or perhaps a period half a century earlier. the indefiniteness of it was baffling and fascinating. at no point did it date! and the island was not one of those that dot the south seas, at least the inhabitants were not savages. they were intelligent, industrious, gentle. but the women hunted and fished with the men. love—or passion, at least—was recognized for the impermanent gust it so often is—and, as such, was respected. no woman dreamed of tying herself for life to a lover she no longer loved. neither want nor respectability could lower her pride to that point. fatherhood, apparently, was not fixed, a hint being conveyed that the men as a group were bound to contribute to the welfare of young mothers. thus the men were perhaps less glad and free than the women; indeed there was more than a suggestion of matriarchy.... to this community, thrown by an accident on its shores, the hundred odd men from the ship brought a habit of discipline, a holy book (that was and was not the bible), a rigid marriage law, a complete hard theory of morality with attached penalties, plenty of firearms, hogshead upon hogshead of strong liquor, and underlying everything else an aggressive acquisitiveness that showed itself in the beginning as the trading instinct and later, of course, became politics and control.
in some measure it was the old obvious outcry against the conquest of weak and simple peoples. or the situation at the start indicated something of the sort. but the story that grew out of the situation was less obvious. indeed, developed by peter, with his theatrical skill, out of zanin's raw anarchism, it was a drama of quality and power. zanin had been able to make nothing more out of it than a clash of social theories. peter had made it a clash of persons; and through the deliberate development of this clash ran, steadily increasing in poignancy and tragic force straight to the climax of assassination, the story of a girl. peter himself did not know how good it was. not until he read about it in the papers (after which he became rather irritatingly complacent regarding it). for you will remember, peter was crazily pursuing that girl when he wrote it. and the girl was boldly, wonderfully sue—a level-eyed, outspoken young woman, confronting life; ashamed of nothing, not her body, not her soul; dreaming beautifully of freedom, of expressing herself, of living her life, vibrant with health, courage, joy.
the girl, you know, fell in love with a young sailor and gave herself proudly and freely. the sailor could not comprehend her, became furtive and jealous. they quarreled. to quiet her he was driven to brutality. for he was a respectable man and held his reputation high. the affair became known. the men of the ship, muttering strange words about a custom called marriage, held her as bad, fell on the age-old decision that she must continue to be, bad, at their call, though furtively. for they were all respectable men.
then we saw the girl as an outcast, fed, for a time, secretly by the cowed bewildered tribe. we saw her as a dishonored mother, fighting the sea, the forest, the very air for sustenance. we caught glimpses of the new community, growing into a settlement of some stability, the native men forced into the less wholesome labor, then wives and daughters taken and poisoned with this strange philosophy of life. then we saw our girl, her child toddling at her heels, creeping back into the society where trade and politics, hard liquor (distilled now from the native grain), that holy book of mysterious spell, the firearms and an impenetrable respectability reigned in apparent security over smoldering fires. and finally we saw the girl, not at all a penitent, but a proud inspired creature of instinct, fan those fires until they purged the taint of sophistication from each slumbering native soul and drove a half-mad people at the desperate job of extermination and of reasserting itself as a people on the old lawlessly happy footing. they burned the hogsheads of liquor, the firearms, the heap of holy books, on one great bonfire.
i am not doing it justice. but this much will serve to recall the story.
as for zanin's propaganda, i doubt if it cut in very deeply. critics and public alike appeared to take it simply as a novelty, a fresh sensation as they had taken reinhardt and the russian ballet. the primitiveness of it reached them no more clearly than the primitiveness of wagner's operas reached them. the clergy stormed a bit, of course; but not because they comprehended the deeply implied anarchistic motive. they were concerned over zanin's rather unbending attitude toward a certain book. and zanin; delighted, fed columns of controversy to the afternoon papers, wrote open letters to eminent divines, and in other ways turned the protest into a huge success of publicity. then a professional objector, apparently ignorant of the existence of an enticing and corrupting “revue” across the street, haled zanin, silverstone and two of the interstellar people into court on the ground that the costuming was improper. this matter zanin, after the newspapers had done it full justice, compromised by cutting out twenty-two feet of pictures and one printed explanation which seemed to the professional objector to justify child-birth out of wedlock.
no, beyond these brief attacks of virtue, i have never been able to see that the great city did not pulse along about as before. broadway and forty-second street held their usual evening throngs. the saloons and hotel bars took in fortunes from the flushed, sometimes furtive men that poured out between the acts of that “revue.” gamblers gambled, robbers robbed; the glittering hotels thrived; men bought and sold and centered on the ugly business of politics and bargained with the nameless girls that lurked in shadowy doorways—but furtively, of course, with an eye to respectability. and in parsonages on side streets clergymen studied the precise attitude of paul toward the doctrine of free will or wrote (for sunday evening) of the beautiful day that was close at hand when all men should sing in harmony and not discord, with harp accompaniment.... no, i think, despite zanin's purpose, despite sue's blazing faith, what really triumphed was peter mann's instinct for a good story. it was the story that held them, and the real beauty of the pictures, and the acting and personal charm and sincerity of sue wilde.
all this, or something, held sue herself. for it did catch her. she had thought she knew everything about the nature film; whereas she knew everything about it but the nature film. at first, naturally, her self-consciousness clung a little; then it fell away. she sat with an elbow on the arm of the seat, chin on hand, never once taking her eyes from the screen, hardly aware of the dense audience about her, no more than barely hearing the skilfully selected russian music of the hidden, very competent orchestra.
there were two intermissions. during the first she tried to chat and failed. in the second, when the worm suggested a turn in the open air she merely shook her head, without looking up. and that hungry look deepened in the worm's eyes.
toward the end, when the buffeted but unbowed young woman was fighting with the strength of inspired despair for the one decent hope left to her, the hope of personal freedom, peter's story reached its highest point. as did sue's acting. the girl herself, sitting up there in the gallery, head bowed, shading with a slim hand her wet eyes, leaned more and more closely against the dear whimsical friend at her side. when his groping hand found hers she clung to it as honestly as the girl on the screen would have done.
it was over. for a moment the house was in darkness and silence. this was another of zanin's effects. then the lights came on dimly; the concealed orchestra struck softly into another of those russian things; the primitive people on the stage, you suddenly saw, were quietly going on about the simple business of their village. a girl like sue walked on, skilfully picked out by the lighting. the audience caught the suggestion and turned where they stood in seat-rows, aisles and entrances to applaud wildly. still another zaninesque touch!
