Next scene. We see Bernard as the uncrowned king sitting on his throne.
Strict but righteous, he declares the rules of the tunnels. No drug use in public spaces. No screaming. No dying in the tunnels: anyone who feels it is his last day is kindly requested to go up top and check in at a hospital.
A small palace coup by the traitors Hector and Shorty is effectively smothered by Bernard. They are evicted and banned for life from the tunnels, the worst possible punishment for tunnel people. The crucial scene. Bernard’s brother shows up in the tunnel and offers him money to leave. He pulls out a briefcase with dollar bills, fifteen thousand dollars total. “For no money in this world will I give up the truly veritable life,” Bernard tells his flabbergasted brother. Furious, he disappears.
The bad brother can’t stand losing and is scheming dirty plans. We see him take his briefcase of cash to the psych clinic from the opening scene. The clinic is in financial difficulties and could use a cash influx. The last scene is the same as the beginning. The bribed director tries to have Bernard declared mentally ill, but his intelligent answers to all questions confuse his interrogators.
In the end, he has a brilliant monologue, which makes the director burst into tears. She asks herself if perhaps she is the one who is crazy, with Bernard the only normal human left in this world. Fade out from Bernard, back in the tunnel and preparing a delicious stew above the fire, recounting laughingly his strange adventures up top to his fellow tunnel dwellers.
“Yes, of course it’s Hollywood,” Bernard admits. He has to seriously sit down with the movie people and discuss how to make the script more realistic and credible. But Denzel Washington was already approached as the leading actor and he was immediately interested.
In total, Bernard will receive 150,000 dollars for the exclusive film rights to his life. A lawyer he still knows from before his tunnel life has advised him on the contract. When the deal is done, he wants to retreat to his family’s estate. His great grandparents, former slaves, received at their liberation thirty acres of wetland in South Carolina. The property has been divided between his cousins and is partially rented out to Campbell’s Soup Company that is using it to grow vegetables for soup. Bernard wants to buy up all the parcels, and spend his days as a recluse in the middle of magnificent nature. “And then everybody can drop dead. Then I only want to see raccoons, alligators, and catfish.”
33. THE ADVENTURES OF FRANKIE, PART 8: FRANKIE MAKES MASHED POTATOES
“Ant, you should come over tonight and have dinner with us,” Frankie invites me cordially when I give him a copy of the reference letter I personally handed to Guy Polhemus from WeCan. I recommended Frankie as a “reliable, honest, hard working young man.” I actually meant it, because except for some stupid tricks, Frankie are Ment are guys with hearts of gold. When I definitively go back to Europe, I have promised Frankie my bike, so that he can get a steady job as a bike messenger and stay out of trouble. Frankie’s place is crowded and messy when I show up at dinnertime.
Frankie’s place is crowded and messy when I show up at dinnertime. Obviously nobody is still obeying the no-shoe rule. The white carpet is smudged with mud and other stains. Jazzy tips over an ashtray, throws a cup of orange juice on the couch, gets slapped by Maria, and starts to cry. A dirty diaper is stinking in the corner. One new improvement is the screen that protects the fan, so the baby can no longer poke her tiny fingers in between the blades.
Ment is injured from a small accident with a friend who has an off-road motor bike in the tunnel. Ment wanted to try it out and fell down. Now his back is scraped open, and his hand is a bloody mess. Concerned, Fatima is stroking his head and cleaning his back with a cotton swab drenched in hydrogen peroxide. Ment is biting his lips with the pain. His hand is soaking in a bowl with a reddish-brown iodine solution.
Once his damaged skin is soaked loose, it has to be cut away so the small pebbles and grains of sand and little pebbles under his skin can be removed. My tiny Swiss army knife with its scissors, tweezers, and toothpick is used as the operation equipment. Fatima and I start to remove the little pebbles but Ment screams and orders us to stop. He’d rather do it himself. He puts a handkerchief between his teeth and, his face distorted by pain, starts to wiggle loose the pebbles with the toothpick. In the meantime, Frankie is busy cooking. He can hardly watch the bloody operation and focuses on the meatballs cooking in a big frying pan. “I told you so, watch out with that motorcycle,” he says in a whining voice.
“Fuck you,” growls Ment. Frankie shrugs his shoulders and proceeds to make mashed potatoes. He is boiling water in a huge pot and adds instant mashed-potato powder. He mixes the substances with a big ladle and adds a bit of the water from the green beans and gravy from the meatballs, so the stuff gets a grayish color. Frankie tastes it. “Too dry,” he mumbles and throws in half a pack of margarine. Now it is too greasy, so Frankie adds a bit more potato powder. His hand slips, however, and the substance becomes too stiff again. He throws in a cup of water and lets Ment try it.
Blobs of mashed potatoes fall on the floor and Ment accidentally tips over the bowl that holds the iodine. A big reddish brown stains starts to expand across the white carpet, turning purple where the iodine enters into a chemical reaction with the starch in the potatoes. “More butter,” says Ment. Frankie throws in the remaining half pack of margarine. Fatima in the meantime tries to clean the carpet with Ment’s T-shirt.
The Coalition might pay a visit at any moment, and they are not supposed to know there is a baby in the house. Every time the dogs barks, Maria is sent upstairs with the baby and Frankie takes a look to see if someone is coming. Maria swears at Frankie, because the tiny sleeping attic is suffocatingly hot.
Ment has succeeded in operating on himself satisfactorily. The loose pieces of skin are gone and the wound is clean. He patches himself up with a dirty handkerchief as a bandage. If infection or other complications set in, he can always go to the hospital under a false name.
Frankie serves dinner on plates that are way too small. In every serving of mashed potatoes, he makes a little hole and dumps the over-cooked and crushed string beans into it. Then he pours the gravy on top and throws a meatball on everybody’s plates. The dirty-brown substance sloshes around.
Since Ment has trouble eating with his injured hand, half of his food falls off his plate. A meatball rolls between the sheets of the bed on which he is sitting. We eat our food in silence, balancing plates overflowing with murky liquid on our laps. The carpet starts to look like a Pollock painting. Frankie wolfs down his meal, burps loudly, and looks around.