Radiance

UNCK: The fairy tale thing was never going to work. It’s beautiful, but it can only come at the story obliquely. It can only tell how it felt. It can’t say anything like: “Severin Unck died by electrocution.” It can’t say she didn’t. The language is all wrong. We have all the ambiguity we can eat already; we don’t need more. And anyway, it’s not a child’s story. Or an adult’s. It’s not Anchises or Severin or anyone else, but all of them together, stuck in a room with no idea how to get out.

MAKO: There’s a thought. A locked-room mystery?

UNCK: Huh. Maybe. We started him off as a detective. Maybe we can end it that way, too. Let him detect a little. But what room? We’d need a cell, a vault, perhaps a ship? We tried the grand estate already.

MAKO: Don’t be so literal. Venus is the locked room.

UNCK: Things do tend to come out when there’s nowhere to go.

MAKO: Let the mystery stay, but take the angry noir brooder out. Give it a bit of the old Victorian dash. A lashing of lace and leather. A room full of suspects, a brilliant genius with a flair for the dramatic. And why stick to people who really lived? Give it the shine of magic, a surreal spit-and-polish. Not too much—everyone hates the avant-garde, deep down. But enough to go out with a bang.

UNCK: But, Vince…I’ve got experience with this one. I know the song too well. It’s been sung at me at top volume. I don’t know if I can go through it again, even at the typewriter. That ghastly, desperate night, Mary staring at me like I’d become a hellhound before her eyes…

MAKO: Let’s not talk about that right now. It’s long over.

UNCK: I should have told Severin. Secrets seem so important until there’s no one left to spill them to. I would have told her eventually. I would have found the right time. I remember she asked me once about endings. I told her you could have a story that was nothing but beginnings, but I didn’t know if you could have one that was only endings. If she loved me, she’d have given me an ending I could use. If she’d loved me at all. [long pause] I was a terrible father.

MAKO: You weren’t. Eccentric. Not terrible.

UNCK: I abandoned her. It’s the one capital crime of fatherhood. Mothers can fail a thousand ways. A father’s only job is: do not abandon this child. And what did I do? I let her run wild and never called her back in for supper when the sun got low.

MAKO: Percy…you don’t have to finish this. You can just stop. Severin wouldn’t be disappointed if you didn’t finish. She’d understand. She left her movie unfinished, too.

UNCK: Oh, Vince, no. If I leave it like this…if I leave it, it looks just like her. A poor abandoned creature without an end. If I do that…she’ll think I didn’t love her. I can’t let her think that. I let her think many wicked things about me, but not that. This is how I loved her. She knows it, recognizes it. And I promise you, if she’s anywhere, she hates herself for leaving Radiant Car undone.

MAKO: Mystery on the Pink Planet, then?

UNCK: If you have a “Mystery” title, you’re promising answers. If you’re going to put your cards on the table, there’d better be something on them. Besides, that’s just dreadful on the face of it. “Pink Planet.” You’re fired, Vince. I mean it this time.

MAKO: We have some answers. The rest…we guess. We lay down our best hand. Maybe it’s not a royal flush, but it’s enough to beat the house. And you never know. We could get it right. Stranger things have happened.

UNCK: [whispers] If I say she’s dead, she will be.

MAKO: Then don’t.

UNCK: I want to go back and start it all over again. From the first shot. In the thunderstorm. With the silver basket. I’ll get it right this time. I can do it better. Just one more take.

The Deep Blue Devil

The Man in the Malachite Mask

Doctor Callow’s Dream

And If She’s Not Gone, She Lives There Still:

The Case of the Disappearing Documentarian

Begin with the widest shot possible and tighten it in: infinite lights in the infinite dark. Ten lights—shades of gold, blue, green, violet, red. One, one pink-orange lantern hanging in a wide, endless nothing without ceiling or floor. Every time it turns around, a year flies by. Closer. A city in the lantern, cordoned off by canals like velvet ropes. A single building in the city, almost a castle but not quite, thin and tall and ornamented with tangerine agate pillars, with gargoyles holding hearts in their hands and peonies in their mouths, with windows that face the sea. The doors close and lock discreetly; everyone necessary is already inside.

Begin with the most impersonal perspective, then tighten the aperture: What do the gargoyles see when they look through the windows?