Letters

Now the big guns blasted away with their blank black-powder charges. Time for Ambrose to don his costume. Things were being filmed, he said, “not necessarily in sequence”—understatement of the season! As the full sunshine, for example, was apt for the Wedding scene but wrong for the rainy “twilight’s last gleaming” of 13 September 1814, we were pretending that today was tomorrow; tonight and tomorrow we would shoot today with the aid of fireboats and wind and rain machines. Certain scripted statements, too — not very meaningful to us lit’ry types — were delivered face-on to the camera, Godard-style, some of them by Author and Director standing shoulder to shoulder. E.g.:

AUTHOR:

This film begins with a shot of the opening pages of my novel.

DIRECTOR:

The novel opens with a sequence from my film.

Or:

AUTHOR:

And the Word shall have the last word.

DIRECTOR:

Cut.

DREW MACK:

The Novel is a cop-out. The Film is a cop-out. But the Movement is not a cop-out. Until now the media have killed us with accommodation. Now we will fight them on their grounds, with their weapons. We will make use of them without their knowing it—

DIRECTOR:

Cut.

And how about this, read by Prinz’s erstwhile protégée?

MEROPE:

The Author knows very little of the Movement; his rendering of it in the novel is naive, as is the Director’s rendering of the novel into film. But real revolutionaries can make use of such ingenuous mimicries.

Or, finally, this, delivered to me (Ambrose’s hands upon my shoulders) and meant to be the wrap-up shot not only of the Word-versus-Image theme but of the whole cockamamie film:

AUTHOR:

Make no mistake about it, my darling: We will have the final word! We will triumph over our natural enemy in—

The scene ended at the dash. I asked him where the last two words were. Oh, well, you see, he said, they’re to be superposed in block capitals on the film…

Enough of that, yes? Getting on to half after three now, and up we trip to the dressing-room barracks, where A. strips to become Francis Scott Key, transferring your unopened letter, of the existence whereof the bride has not yet been apprised, to the waistcoat pocket of his dandy Federal-period togs. Then — well, it’s that time again, and #5, R.I.P., was his Reign of Terror — before dressing he bends me forward over a barracks-bed footboard, ups B.P.B.‘s green gown and white petticoats and downs her drawers, and, his potency more than restored by that Asti spumante, merrily puts it to me (your indulgence, sir) like a ramrod up the breech.

Wedding time! And, Zeus be praised, no hitches to our hitching! Once for the cameras: Do I, Britannia, and do you, America? We did. God Save the Queen! My Country, ’Tis of Thee! Once more for real. Who gives this woman? Andrew Burlingame Cook, sir: Chief Singer of the Old Line State, / Bell ringer for our new fine fate, etc. Did he Ambrose take this woman to be etc.? He did. And did I Germaine ditto? I did, I did! If there be any present who etc., let them speak now or etc…

(We held our breaths. Bray? Marsha? Merope? Magda? André? One could hear the soft whirr of cameras, the flap and crack of the great fort flag, a mockingbird practising gorgeously our epithalamion…)

We were then pronounced Husband and Wife. Off went the guns! Kisses from Ambrose, from Magda and the family! Shy gift from Angie of her treasure beyond price, that Easter egg! Bear hug from Chief Singer/Bell Ringer! (Did I espy, behind his winks, traces of a tear?) A bronze wedding band (I forgot to say) more precious than gold, because fashioned from a bit of the nib of the very pen of History: gift of A. B. Cook to me via our Director/Best Man (who framed us once through it before passing it to Ambrose) and my groom, who slipped it with a kiss upon my finger! Key to the city from the jolly mayor himself, a bit late arriving but better late etc.: Mr & Mrs Key, I give you the key! A grave blessing from Mr Andrews; a tongue-tisking one from Drew Mack, who disavows the institution on ideological grounds but wishes us the best anyroad. And a rousing chorus by all hands, standing hats off and palms over hearts (a few raised fists among the hippies), of what else but “O Say Can You See”!’