Fair Play Read Free Page B

film. Say hello to everyone. We’ll see you ... Yes, I will. Have fun. So long.”
    â€œWas she mad?” Mari asked.
    â€œOh, you know. Apparently the woman hasn’t a clue about Fassbinder.”
    â€œShould we unplug the phone?”
    â€œIf you want. Nobody’s going to call. They know better. Anyway, we don’t have to answer.”
    The spring evenings had grown long, and it was hard to darken the room. They sat in their separate chairs and waited for Fassbinder, their silence a respectful preparation. They had waited this way for their meetings with Truffaut, Bergman, Visconti, Renoir, Wilder, and all the other honored guests that Jonna had chosen and enthroned—the finest present she could give her friend.
    Over time, these video evenings had become very important in Jonna and Mari’s lives. When the films were over, they talked about them, earnestly and in detail. Jonna put the cassette into a slipcover decorated in advance with text and pictures, copies from the film library she’d been collecting all her life, and the cassette was given its dedicated place on the shelves reserved for videos—an attractive, continuous surface of gold and soft colors with little flags on the backs showing the country where each film was made. Only very rarely did Jonna and Mari have time to see their films a second time. There was an uninterrupted flood of new ones to accommodate. They had long since filled every shelf in the house. The shelves in the hall were in fact badly needed.
    Especially close to Jonna’s heart were the silent films in black-and-white; Chaplin, in particular, of course. Patiently, she taught Mari to understand the classics. She talked about her student years abroad, the cinema clubs, her rapture at seeing these films, sometimes several a day.
    â€œYou understand, I was possessed. I was happy. And now when I see them again, these classics, so awkwardly expressive, with the clumsy technology that was all they had, it’s like being young again.”
    â€œBut you never grew up,” said Mari innocently.
    â€œDon’t be smart. They’re the real thing, those old films. The people who made them went all out, defied their limits. They’re hopeful films—young, courageous films.”
    Jonna also collected what she called “pure movies”—Westerns, Robin Hood films, wild pirate romances, and a lot of other simple stories of justice, courage, and chivalry. They stood alongside the films of contemporary multifaceted geniuses and defended their territory. Their slipcovers were blue.
    Jonna and Mari sat in their separate chairs in the darkened room and waited for Fassbinder.
    â€œBefore I go to sleep,” Mari said, “you know, I think more about a film you’ve shown me than I do about all my worries, I mean all the things I’ve got to do and all the dumb things I’ve ever done ... It’s sort of like your movies freed me from myself. I mean, of course it’s still me, but I’m not my own responsibility.”
    â€œYou do get to sleep pretty quickly,” Jonna said. “It can’t hurt you to not have a bad conscience once in a while for twenty minutes. Or ten. Now you can go and turn it on.”
    The little red light came on. Fassbinder confronted them in all his exquisite, controlled violence. It was very late when he was done. Jonna switched on the lamp, slipped the cassette into its cover, and put it on the shelf labeled “Fassbinder.”
    â€œMari,” she said, “are you unhappy that we don’t see people?”
    â€œNo, not anymore.”
    â€œThat’s good. I mean, if we did see them, what would it be like? Like always, exactly like always. Pointless chatter about inessentials. No composition, no guiding idea. No theme. Isn’t that right? We know roughly what everyone will say; we know each other inside out. But here on our videos every remark is significant,