Peter looked for the tell-tale glare of the spotlights, but found none. Studio lighting was always turned off between takes because of the intense heat it generated. Besides, the set was supposed to be low-lit, so he doubted that anything could be seen from the road. He found the producers waiting on the second floor with a small crew (below British union requirements, certainly) and a simple set of rubble and straw, in the centre of which was a single wooden chair. Bound to it with ropes around the torso and legs was a rather unrealistic dummy, intended to represent the young hostage. Luserke came over and greeted him warmly.
‘I hope the late hour does not upset you, Mr Tipping,’ he said apologetically, ‘but we have been having some trouble with the lights.’
‘Nothing serious, I hope?’ Peter looked over at the single cable trailing behind the set. There didn’t seem to be enough lighting here to go wrong. But then, the scene they were about to film was an intense one, and every element had to be exactly right.
‘You will be pleased to know that our “Jack” is so far very good,’ the director continued, anxious to please. ‘He finished his part of the scene today. I would have liked him to stay here for your lines, but he is a big star in his country because of a television show, how you say “sitcom”, and he will not sit with the bag like so.’ He indicated the linen sack gracing the head of the mannequin, whose left leg looked as if it was about to detach itself completely. Wherever the money was being spent on this production, thought Peter, it certainly wasn’t going into the props.
‘The dummy doesn’t look very convincing,’ he complained. ‘Couldn’t you make the scene more realistic by getting someone to take its place while we film?’
‘I think we will not need to do so. Watch please.’ He gestured to one of the crew and the set lights came on, throwing a dingy blue haze across the chair and its occupant. With the figure half buried in indigo shadow, its imperfections were lost to the darkness. ‘I am more concerned with your close-ups tonight, and your speech, which we will do in one take. I think we will not need to feature our Jack in clear focus. If you would like to take your mark on the set -’
‘I haven’t been made up yet.’
‘Made up.’ The phrase seemed new to him. Luserke looked over to his producer, who said something in German. ‘Now I see. This was not made clear to you before I think. No make-up for this scene. The light, the blue light will be on your face.’ Peter looked back at the low glow of the set and hoped it would be bright enough for his facial expressions to register. This was to be an emotionally draining moment. He didn’t want his performance to be lost in the gloom, like it had been with the extras on the hill.
He made his way past the shattered-looking writer who was sitting with his head in his hands, nodded to Ostendorf, who was whispering into his mobile phone, and found the gaffer-taped cross on the floor of the set. Ostendorf had told him that he only needed to learn two pages of dialogue for this first night’s shoot, which involved the end of his scene with the hostage, and the moment of fury in which he kills him. The producer felt that as he would be addressing a plastic dummy rather than a live actor, it would help to start with the least interactive part of the sequence.
Peter studied the lolling strapped-up figure and rolled the handle of the carving knife between his fingers. Although to his eyes the set appeared absurdly unrealistic, he knew that through the camera lens it would take on a strange reality so that even the luminous turquoise lighting would somehow be appropriate. The lengthy scene was divided into sections, the last part involving a ranted monologue from Peter which culminated in him stepping forward and thrusting the knife into the mannequin’s chest.
By the fourth rehearsed take of his ‘fury’ speech, the crew were egging him on and applauding. Encouraged by Luserke, who sat forward on a stool beside the camera studying Peter’s every movement with glittering eyes, he grabbed the chair-back with one hand and with a despairing scream thrust the knife deep into the gut of the dummy, splintering the plastic shell to bury his fist deep within the kapok and foam interior. The director wanted his inner rage to surface, to slam against the floor and walls until it exploded into unstoppable violence.
During the final rehearsal Peter caught himself thinking; this is what it’s really about, to be in the centre and in control, to reach inside and draw emotion from the heart, to feel the sheer naked power of performance. He had reached this point by his own efforts, not through some agent looking to cream off a percentage. This was just the start, the tip of the future making itself clear to him, a fabled city appearing through a calming sea. Enjoy the moment, he told himself. Make it last.
They took a short break and the film magazine was loaded for the first take. Peter returned to his mark and stared across at the battered dummy strapped to its chair, chunks of torn rubber clinging to its cream plastic chest.
‘Peter, could you come here a moment please?’ Luserke called him over to query an inflection at the end of the monologue, tapping the speech with a nicotine-stained finger.
‘I can handle it that way if you like,’ he conceded, ‘but it’s a long speech, and by the time I get to the end my voice has risen so high it’s hard to control.’ Peter promised to try his best, but he knew that he’d do it his way. The matter was out of his control. He could only give his talent full rein and shape the power as it grew within him.
‘Your mark, please. Quiet everybody.’ The crew quickly returned to their places. Peter reached his spot and looked up. Rain still blurred across the skylight. The knife handle was warm in his hands. The lights dimmed even lower than in the rehearsals, and the room fell silent, so that the only sounds came from the rain above and the breath catching in his chest. He could see nothing beyond the shadow of the dummy and the straw-lined edge of the set.
Slowly, carefully, he began the speech.
The anger flowed from him as he accused the captive young man of having all the things he could never have, of squandering his inherited power, of wasting a life that paid service to truth and decency while perpetuating an immoral, divisive society. He felt the bile rise within him, felt real hatred for this golden boy who knew nothing of the real world, who had never tasted the hard lives of working men and women, and forward he ran with the knife at his waist, thrusting it out into the bound ribcage of his captive in an explosion of bare rage.
The first spray of warm liquid jetted into his face, blinding him as the next boiled hotly over the fist which still clutched the knife. He tried to pull his hand free from the dummy’s chest but it was trapped, caught between the flesh and bone of the hostage’s ribcage. There were no lights at all now, only the scuffling of feet and the slamming of a distant door. As he fell to his knees he knew he had cut into a real, living body with the foot-long blade, and that even now the roped-up figure was sinking fast within the coils of death, leather-soled shoes drumming madly on the floorboards until the chair toppled onto its side and the form bound to it lay still and silent, but for the steady decanting of its blood.
The crawl across the room in darkness seemed to last a lifetime. When he finally found a light switch he was frightened to turn it on. Two bare bulbs served to illuminate his blindness. He looked down at his shirt, his hands, his trousers, at the gouts of blood, as if someone had emptied the stuff over him in a bucket. The camera, if that was what it had been, had gone. There was nothing left in the room except the ‘set’, a pile of bricks and straw, a pair of gel-covered standard lamps set on the floor in either corner, a wooden chair and the cooling corpse of a young man, bound at the hands and feet, and taped at the mouth.