“Yes, a pistol,” he said.
“I don’t have to tell you that the pistol is a fixed psychological symbol.”
“For what?”
“For what do you think?” Cindy asked.
“Oh,” Kling said.
“Yes. And then, to further underscore the Oedipal situation Antonioni has his photographer discover that the older man is dead, he has been killed — which is what every small boy wishes would happen to his father. So that he can have the mother all to himself, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, so that’s what started me thinking about the detective as a voyeur. Because, you remember, there was a great deal of suspense in that part of the movie, the part where he’s blowing up the photographs. It’s really a mystery he’s working on — and he, in a very real sense, is a detective, isn’t he?”
“Well, I suppose so.”
“Well, of course he is, Bert. The mystery element gets stronger and stronger as he continues with the investigation. And then, of course, we see an actual corpse. I mean, there’s no question but that a murder has been committed. Antonioni leaves it there because he’s more interested—”
“Leaves what? The corpse?”
“No, not the corpse. Well yes, he does leave the corpse there, too, as a matter of fact, but I was referring to the mystery element, I meant... ” She suddenly looked at him suspiciously. “Are you putting me on again?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, and smiled.
“Well, don’t be such a wise guy,” she said, and returned the smile, which he thought was at least somewhat encouraging. “What I meant was that Antonioni doesn’t pursue the mystery once it’s served his purpose. He’s doing a film about illusion and reality and alienation and all, so he’s not interested in who done it or why it was done or any of that crap.”
“Okay,” Kling said. “But I still don’t see—”
“Well, it occurred to me that perhaps police investigation is similarly linked to the primitive and infantile desire to understand the primal scene.”
“Boy, that’s really reaching, Cindy. How do you get—”
“Well, hold it a minute, will you?”
“Okay, let me hear.”
“Got you hooked, huh?” she said, and smiled again, this time very encouragingly, he thought.
“Go on,” he said.
“The police officer... the detective—”
“Yes?”
“... is privileged to see the uncensored results of violence, which is what the child imagines lovemaking to be. He can think his father is hurting his mother, you know, he can think her moaning is an expression of pain, he can think they’re fighting. In any event, he’ll often explain it to himself that way because he has neither the experience nor the knowledge to understand it in any other way. He doesn’t know what they’re doing, Bert. It’s completely beyond his ken. He knows that he’s stimulated by it, yes, but he doesn’t know why.”
“If you think looking at a guy who’s been hit with a meat ax is stimulating—”
“No, that’s not my point. I’m not trying to make any such analogy, although I do think there’s some truth to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, violence is stimulating. Even the results of violence are stimulating.”
“The results of violence caused me to throw up last Saturday morning,” Kling said.
“That’s stimulation of a sort, isn’t it? But don’t get me away from my point.”
“What is your point?”
“My point is—”
“I don’t think I’m going to like it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you said I inspired it.”
“Antonioni inspired it.”
“You said I did.”
“Not the initial impetus. Later, I connected it with you, which is only natural because there was a homicide involved, and because I’m madly in love with you and very interested in your work. All right?”
“Well, I like it a little better now, I must admit.”
“You haven’t even heard it yet.”
“I’m waiting, I’m waiting.”
“Okay. We start with a man — the detective — viewing the results of violence and guessing at what might have happened, right?”
“Well, there’s not much guesswork involved when you see two bullet holes in a guy’s head. I mean, you can just possibly figure out the violent act was a shooting, you know what I mean?”
“Yes, that’s obvious, but the thing you don’t know is who did the shooting, or what the circumstances of the shooting were, and so on. You never know what really happened until you catch whoever did it, am I right?”
“No, you’re wrong. We usually know plenty before we make an arrest. Otherwise, we don’t make it. When we charge somebody, we like to think it’ll stick.”
“But on what do you base your arrest?”
“On the facts. There’re a lot of locked closets in criminal investigation. We open all the doors and look for skeletons.”
“Exactly!” Cindy said triumphantly. “You search for detail. You examine each and every tiny segment of the picture in an attempt to find a clue that will make the entire picture more meaningful, just as the photographer did in Blow-Up. And very often your investigation uncovers material that’s even more difficult to understand. It only becomes clear later on, the way sexual intercourse eventually becomes clear to the child when he reaches adulthood. He can then say to himself, ‘Oh, so that’s what they were doing in there, they were screwing in there.’ ”
“I don’t recall ever having seen my mother and father doing anything like that,” Kling said.
“You’ve blocked it out.”
“No, I just never saw them doing anything like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like that,” Kling said.
“You can’t even say the word,” Cindy said, and began giggling. “You’ve so effectively blocked it out—”
“There’s one thing I hate about psychologists,” Kling said.
“Yeah, what’s that?” Cindy asked, still giggling.
“They’re all the time analyzing everything.”
“Which is exactly what you do every day of the week, only you call it investigation. Can’t you see the possibilities of this, Bert?” she asked, no longer laughing, her face suddenly serious, suddenly very tired-looking again. “Oh, I know I haven’t really developed it yet, but don’t you think it’s an awfully good beginning? The detective as voyeur, the detective as privileged observer of a violent scene he can neither control nor understand, frightening by its very nature, confusing at first, but becoming more and more meaningful until it is ultimately understood. It’ll make a good thesis. I don’t care what you think.”
“I think it’ll make a good thesis, too,” Kling said. “Let’s go work out the primal scene part of it.”
He looked down into her face just as she turned hers up, and their eyes met, and held, and neither said a word for several moments. He kept watching her, thinking how much he loved her and wanted her, and seeing the cornflower eyes edged with weariness, her face pale and drawn and drained of energy. Her lips were slightly parted, she took in a deep breath and then released it, and the hand holding the drink slowly lowered to hang limply alongside the arm of the chair. He sensed what she was about to say, Yes, she would say, Yes, she’d make love even though she didn’t feel like it, even though she was depressed and tired and felt unattractive, even though she’d much rather sit here and watch the skyline and sip a little more scotch and then doze off, even though she didn’t feel the tiniest bit sexy, Yes, she would, if that was what he wanted. He read this in her eyes and perched on her lips, and he suddenly felt like a hulking rapist who had shambled up out of the sewer, so he shrugged and lightly said, “Maybe we’d better not. Be too much like necrophilia,” and smiled. She smiled back at him, wearily and not at all encouragingly. He gently took the glass from her dangling hand and went to refill it for her.