At the end of this piece, he contemplates portrayals of power and evil for his next movie review
The reason The Hunched Cornish won’t know I’ve re-abducted Tango Baby from his Proto-Mycenaean palace inside a cliff on the edge of Foros at the southernmost tip of the Crimean Peninsula is because he doesn’t read Manny Face’s reviews in The Checkout.
Know what I mean?
In the chill night of a Crimean winter, a black stallion lands in the freshly fallen snow on the 19th century portico atop the Baydar Gate, which marks the mountain pass that connects with the Black Sea Coast below.
Driven by throbbing forces, the horse rears and neighs and casts himself down to the cliff on which stands the Church of Christ’s Resurrection, where the horse kneels and says a prayer.
And then the horse throws himself down, down into the hamlet of Foros far, far below. Landing in the tiny central square, the horse clops up to an old star-shaped pension that had once been a wine cellar, now locked and boarded up for the winter.
The horse finds a passageway in a stone wall surrounding the star-shaped structure. The passageway is blocked by a concrete plug, which is cemented over.
The pulsations from the emerald studs in the tips of his ears beat and beat into the horse’s head, overwhelming him. The horse cannot record these moments with any pretense to fealty, know what I mean, as his mind darkens wildly into something like a trancelike blackout during which seconds the insane rage that moves him causes his hind legs to kick the concrete plug blocking the passageway to rubble and dust.
The horse collapses.
Manny Face does not know how much time passes before he awakens and tries to recall what has happened.
As his memory returns, the pulsations in the studs begin to beat again, and he rakes away the debris in the passageway and enters it crouching.
After about twenty meters, Manny Face knows he is under the star-shaped structure. I am now able to straighten and see the passage divides into many, with recesses in the walls and rows upon rows of shelves that had once been for wine.
I move into a wide corridor and pass massive crypt-like doors melded into the rock on either side spaced at uneven intervals. I have gone hundreds of meters – drawing ever closer to the sea; I feel it. Finally, I am all but pulled toward the door facing me at the end of the corridor. It opens at my slightest touch.
Tango Baby is reclining on a couch, eating grapes and laughing at the TV. I see the mound of her swollen belly under her gown. From the TV I hear, ‘Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax’, and Tango Baby laughing, like it’s the funniest thing. As I come closer, I see it is a broadcast of Aristophanes’ “The Frogs”; the original first-prize-winning performance in Athens, 405 BC. I see a packed travel bag at the foot of the couch.
“What’s a dark handsome stud like you doing rescuing a knocked-up fallen gal like me?”
“I’m the one who knocked you up.”
“Yeah, don’t I know it. And what’re you going to do about it?”
“Well, Baby, I figure I probably owe junior there some paternity.”
“I figure you do. Oh, Manny, what took you so long?”
“Sorry, Baby – I guess I got caught up in some horseplay.”
“Well, I wish you’d quit horsing around and save me.”
As I gather Tango Baby into my arms, the signal vanishes through us, harmonizing with our conjoined bodies.
“Careful you don’t hurt the kid.”
“Don’t worry, Baby, I won’t put it all the way in.”
Manny Face does not rescue Tango Baby right then – except maybe in a manner of speaking. He sleeps a profound sleep of many hours and wakes and plunges his passion into Tango Baby and sleeps and wakes, and plunges again and again.
The dark passes into morning, and the morning into day and the day into dark and the dark into morning again before I ask Tango Baby to show me around the digs. She takes me to the hollow in the cliff that looks out over the Black Sea, and throwing open the heavy casements, covered in heavy iron grating to make it look from the outside like a top secret and therefore off-limits government defense installation, she says:
“He told me I was free to leave any time.”
I look out and see only sheer cliff dropping into the sea and the sea beating against huge rocks below.
I get up on the ledge.
“Take your little bag and hop on my back. Put your arms tight around my neck, but don’t choke me.”
Trusting me completely, Baby does what I say without any doubt or fear.
The hawk takes wing and we soar down to a gentle small span of pebbly beach where a boat is waiting for us. I am Manny Face as I land and Baby walks beside me, swinging her bag.
“You might offer to carry this thing.”
“Shut up.” The wind presses the gown against her. She looks so beautiful with that belly straining out in front, the fullness of me ripening in her.
The boatman is silent as his vessel carries us to Sevastopol. We wait at the station for the Kyiv train. We have moved from dark to dark – it is now night again. It’s a 17-hour journey home. I’ve made sure of a first-class sleeping car compartment for two. As we have no passports or other identifying documents, I manufacture illusions with which to buy the tickets and get us aboard the train.
As the train moves out of the station, with the money I’ve created we buy some snacks and tea from the vendor. The conductor comes by to check our tickets (I could not make these because I did not know which car numbers would be available), and we close our compartment door.
My laptop has been provided and I write to John Smith to see if he can get my skylight and floor-to-ceiling turret windows replaced, and I send him specs and Internet sites where he can get a good idea of what the originals (well, the second or third originals) looked like. I tell him where he can find an extra set of keys in the city to my flat. I know, with the holes in my place where the windows and skylight had been, just about anyone can drop by and ransack it, so I made sure everything in the flat disappeared.
While I don’t know him that well, I know Smith’s a good egg, and I try not to bother him. I know he’s got his work cut out for him as it is.
But without asking any questions, he writes back that he will look into it and see what he can do before I’m back in Kyiv.
I put some music on and ask Baby to tango, but she begins to fall asleep in my arms. I lay her down and cover her. I change the music to David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, playing it softy, knowing she likes it, and watch her fall into deep slumber as I write a film review for The Checkout.
Know what I mean?
Manny Face, January 27, 2014