_Four adults and five children, all seated, fill the screen. They face the camera head-on_.
_Time passes_.
"What's that jump?"
"It could be the shelling," Lightborne said.
"That's the second time."
"The Russians are a quarter of a mile away. Nuisance fire. In an all-out bombardment, they wouldn't be able to film. Aside from the steady concussion, the place would be full of smoke and dust."
_The blond woman slowly rises and walks off camera_.
"She knows what happens."
"What do you mean?" Moll said.
"The children."
"What happens?"
"Goebbels has them poisoned."
_Another room_.
_This one, although small and narrow and with an incomplete look about it, contains a writing desk, sofa and chairs. The walls are paneled. There's a picture in a circular frame over the writing desk_.
_A woman sits in one of the chairs, facing an open door that leads to another room. She turns the pages of a magazine. There's a trace of self-consciousness in the way she does this. Finally she decides to look directly at the camera, smiling pleasantly. This puts her at ease_.
_From her next reaction, it is clear that someone in the adjoining room is speaking to her_.
_She sits with her legs crossed, paying no attention to the magazine pages she continues to turn. A light-haired woman in her early thirties, she wears a dark tailored suit, a bracelet, and what appear to be expensive shoes. She has a small worried mouth (even in her present good humor) and a somewhat shapeless nose. Two distinct shadow lines make her cheeks look puffy_.
_She gestures toward the open door_.
"Where are we?" Moll said.
"Still in the bunker. It's not inconsistent, the two rooms. See that picture over the desk? If we could see it from a better angle, being in a circular frame, that could be his portrait of Frederick the Great, which would make this room his living room."
"Whose living room?"
"It's a possibility. It could be. And through that open door, that's his bedroom. Whoever's shooting this film, it could be he's shooting one room, he's stopping, he's walking over to the next room."
"Editing in the camera," Moll said.
"We're getting everything. What do you think? We're getting the one and only take of each scene."
"It's certainly unprofessional. But I can't say I mind."
"Those kids and those others are sitting in the first room waiting for the camera to come back. Maybe that's why the thing seems so real. It's true. It's happening. I didn't look for this at all."
_Another woman enters the room. The blond woman from the first sequence. Magda Goebbels-if Lightborne's speculation is correct_.
_She hands the younger woman a flower. Expression of delighted surprise. It's a white boutonniere. The woman takes it into the next room_.
_Visual static. Flash frames_.
"What are we looking at?"
"I don't know," Lightborne said.
"If that's Frau Goebbels standing there, who's the woman who just disappeared?"
"That shouldn't be hard to answer."
"I want to hear you say it."
"You know as well as I."
"Who is she?"
"It's real," Lightborne said. "I believe it. It's them."
The routine persisted.
In the late morning sun, Selvy placed the bolo knife on a bench in the littered compound. Seating himself on an overturned crate, he began working with oil and whetstone on the base of the blade. A snowy torn rolled in the dirt nearby. Directly ahead the spare land extended to the bottom of an enormous butte, its sloping sides covered with rockf all.
He saw it as memory, as playback. The border of appearances. Within is perfect color, the sense of topography as an ethical schematic. Landscape is truth.
When he looked up, ten minutes into his sharpening, he saw Levi Blackwater approaching from the southeast. Had to be him. There had always been something physically offcenter about Levi. Nothing so distinct as a limp or even an ungainliness of stride. The right shoulder sagged a bit. Maybe that was it. And the head tilted. And the right arm hung slightly lower. All apparent as he drew nearer.
He was a tall man, balding, and wore the same old field cap with ventilating eyelets. He was pale, he was sickly white, as always. Soft baby skin. A little like skin that's been transplanted from another part of the body. He stood smiling now. That knowing smile. Dust devils spinning fifty, sixty yards away.
"I came in to feed the cats."
Only Levi could speak of traveling to this remote site as "coming in."
"Where are you when you're out?"
Levi kept smiling and stood in profile, turning his head left toward the barest stretch of desert. He came forward to shake hands. It was the right hand that lacked two fingers, severed by his captors. Selvy had forgotten the directness of Levi's manner of looking at people.
"I always knew if anyone came back, Glen, it would be you."
"Not much left, is there?"
"Everything you'll need."
"I won't be staying, Levi."
People use names as information and Selvy believed the use of that particular name, Glen, indicated that Levi was deeply pleased to see him and wanted to suggest a new level of seriousness. In the past he'd often called Selvy by his rarely used first name, which was Howard. A teasing intimacy. It "had amused Levi to do this. His eyes would search Selvy's face. Those fixed looks, curious and frank at the same time, were irritating to Selvy, even more than hearing the name Howard. But he'd never complained, thinking this would put a distance between them.
Levi had been tortured, had spent extended periods of time in a dark room not much larger than a closet, and consequently had things to pass on, knowledge to impart, both practical and otherwise. He'd found tolerances, ways of dealing with what, in the end, was the sound of his own voice. He'd come out stronger, or so he believed, having lived through pain and confinement, the machine of self.
"This is a stop then? On a longer trip?"
"You might say."
"A way station," Levi said.
The phrase seemed to please him. His liquid eyes peered out of the shadow cast by the visor of his hat. He wore a soiled fatigue jacket, torn in places.
"I see you've brought along some metal."
"An antique," Selvy said.
"We were just getting started when you left."
"I know."
"We were beginning to see results, I think. I'm happy you've come back, even for a while. It's gratifying. You're looking well, Glen."
"Off the booze a while."
"You ought to stay, you know. There are things you can learn here."
"True. I believe that."
"The less there is, Glen, the more you're tested to find the things that do exist. Within and without. It works. If you limit yourself to the narrowest subject, you force yourself to concentrate to such an extent that you're able to learn a great deal about it. You already know a great deal about it. You find you already know much more than you'd imagined."
"I believe that."
"With no limits, you wander back and forth. You're defeated at the outset."
"That's why you're here, Levi."
"Both of us."
"Tighter and tighter limits."
"To learn. To find out what we know. When you left, we were just starting out. Damn shame if you didn't stay for a time. I've learned so much. So very much of everything."