I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well by Norman Levine

Author:Norman Levine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2017-09-07T18:29:03+00:00

When we had finished, Juliette began to clear and wash up while Ruth went into the other room to dictate letters into a machine for the secretary next morning. I went up to the room where I would sleep the night—a large bare room in the attic with a low double bed, books all over, and a wide window with a view of Zurich. I looked at the lights and thought of the people who had come to Zurich, from other countries, for different reasons. And how few of them stayed.

Juliette came to the door and said, “There is a Canadian film on television. Have you heard of it? It is called Mon Oncle Antoine.”

“It’s the best Canadian film I have seen,” I said.

“Then we shall all see it,” she said.

I went down with her.

Juliette drew the curtains. Ruth put in a hearing aid. “I only do this for television,” she said.

I looked forward to seeing the film again. I had seen it, about twenty years ago, in St. Ives on television and remembered how moved I had been by it.

“There is a marvellous shot,” I said while the news was on. “It is winter. On the extreme left of the picture there is a horse and a sleigh with a young boy and his uncle. The horse has stopped. And on the extreme right of the picture is a coffin that has fallen off the sleigh. In between there is this empty field of snow. It is night. The wind is blowing . . . no words are spoken. But that image I have remembered all these years.”

Mon Oncle Antoine came on. The first surprise—it was in colour. I remembered it in black and white. Then I realized . . . it was because in St. Ives we had then a black and white TV set. There were other disappointments. It might have been because of the German subtitles, or my memory.

I told them the scene was about to come on.

When it did—it wasn’t memorable at all.

Was it because it was in colour? Or had it been cut? I remembered it as lasting much longer. And it was the length of the shot, in black and white, that made it so poignant.

When the film was over I could see they were disappointed.

“I remember it differently,” I said. And told them how I had seen it on a black and white TV set.

“It would have been better in black and white,” Ruth said.

“There may have been cuts.”

“It seemed very jumpy,” Juliette said. “You could see it had the possibility of a good movie.”

That night in the attic, in bed, I heard midnight by the different clocks in Zurich. I didn’t count how many. But there were several. Each one starting a few seconds after another. And thought about Mon Oncle Antoine. How it differed from what I remembered. I saw how I had changed that shot. Just as I had switched the candles from around the man in the coffin at the start.

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