He goes through the museum, moving intently from painting to painting, as though he might carry with him the memory of so much extraordinary work. The camera scans the paintings, as Henry Berger might, its eye crossing the walls like a beam of light.
When he leaves the museum he gets into another cab and instructs the driver (or so we imagine) — we perceive the conversation from outside the cab, from the distance of a bystander — to take him to the White House. We follow the taxi through the streets of Washington, Berger’s eyes closing and opening, tiredness catching up.
We pick up Henry Berger as he leaves the cab and walks tentatively up the White house steps, the sun, glancing off the facade, blinding him. Among the crowd of tourists, there is no one he knows. A fat man, camera around his neck, wearing a sky blue shirt with a flame of ghastly orange flamingos across its front, seems to want to ask Berger something, steps awkwardly in his way. “Yes?” “Got the time?” asks the pilgrim. Berger, smiling, a tourist himself at this moment, lifts his left arm to glance at his watch. “Five after one,” he says, or starts to say, one hand eclipsing the other. There is a gunshot from the camera or from somewhere above and beyond the camera. A carnation of blood appears at Berger’s chest. Someone cheers or jeers. The detective’s face register’s all, amazement, the cancellation of hope, the death of passion, disillusion beyond further disillusion. The camera catches him in freeze frame as he falls backwards, the steps moving under his feet, his arms out anticipating momentary flight.
The 747 taxis down a runway, changes direction, stops and starts, trapped in indecision. And then without further announcement, just when I think we’ll never go anywhere, we tear loose from the earth, ascend with heartbreaking abruptness.
I remember this time when I was a kid of eight or nine and I was eating breakfast by myself in the kitchen (corn flakes with half-thawed frozen raspberries) and the doorbell rang and we weren’t expecting anyone and I answered (my mother out shopping, Kate playing solitaire in her room) and my father was there and he lifted me onto his shoulders and I asked him if he had come to stay and he mumbled something which I took to be yes and for that moment before I heard in echo what he actually said I had this sense that everything was all right not only that but it was going to be all right for a long time to come and until I realized that I had misheard his answer I was so glad so glad I mean I can’t even remember the feeling only that it rang in my head like a siren or a scream and I didn’t want to give it up (I was flying on his shoulders) and when it was gone it was gone.
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