In the quiet of night, a man awakes. The walls of his dull cell closing in on him. Faced with a sense of dread since daylight is still hours away, he plots his escape. Resist the darkness! he shouts to no one. You are alone! The future, a mirage, hidden by hurdles so high they cause vertigo. Get over it. The wall, that is. Take flight!

So what does he do, this man locked up in solitude, condemned to death? He pops a DVD into the television and vanishes into another man’s dream. This time, it’s Robert Bresson’s astonishing film Un condamné à mort s’est échappé (A Man Escaped), the perfect antidote to self-pity.

Bresson’s extraordinary legacy is relatively new to me. Somehow in my film classes in college, we skipped over his contributions to cinema. Perhaps the department was too wrapped up in Truffaut and the nouvelle vague, and its world of ennui. (Truffaut, typically, characterized A Man Escaped as a movie about a man battling boredom.) Like Jules Dassin, whose film noir fantasies deserve to be better known, Bresson’s vision and artistry dazzle as much as they delight. Spare, luminous, breathtakingly honest, his films speak volumes, without almost saying a word.

In A Man Escaped, the word is all. It is the mechanism of hope. For the Christ-like prisoner, bloodied and beaten, wears handcuffs that stifle his ability to express himself. Later, after removing his handcuffs with a safety pin, he shows his defiance, in fact, the spirit of the Resistance, by refusing to turn over his pencil. His writing utensil is his weapon, and means of escape. He counts the knocks of his condemned neighbors, who tap on the thick concrete walls to which he presses his ear. He marks their messages, as he counts the days, by scratching, leaving jagged, seemingly meaningless scrawls on the surface. He is like the Cro-Magnon artist at Lascaux, leaving cave-dwelling representations of life outside. The prisoner, Fontaine (the name is itself literary, as in the legendary storyteller Jean de la Fontaine, and implies a flowing pen) then expresses himself in meticulously written notes passed along by his confreres, willing to risk their lives to get the word out. Writing is everything in this scripted dreamscape.

In fact, Bresson opens his film with a handwritten message saying that the story we are about to see is true, “unadorned.” But we know that is not the case. Film is a lie. Art can never express reality. It must prevaricate, twist, and reshape, fine tune, to make a point, like the graphite at the tip of the pencil. It is the essence of propaganda. And yet, by holding back, trapping us like prisoners ourselves, imposing his pacing, his style, his vision, Bresson achieves the perfect lie. He makes us believe in something which is intrinsically false, deviously surreal. A fable.

Bresson’s mastery of cinematic techniques was not entirely new to me. I’d seen Pickpocket (1959), and was swept away by its ingenious visual legerdemain. It’s a confidence trick par excellence. So it was no surprise, when I finally encountered his earlier masterpiece, A Man Escaped (1956), that I was left reeling by Bresson’s level-headed, painstaking artistry. But what did surprise me was an indisputable realization, a kind of revelation, one that confirmed what I had felt about Pickpocket, but was too circumspect to fully believe: a subtle, between-the-lines homoeroticism at the core of Bresson’s work. (Bresson, below.)

Watching Pickpocket, I was amazed by the similarity between the act of stealing and that of cruising. For both entail a mindset of hunting for prey: stalking, plotting, and circling one’s victim, culminating in the act itself, a violation, which is breathtakingly intimate, yet brutally anonymous, and over in a flash. Bresson captured this exotic, hyper-masculine underworld in the haunted expression of the thief’s eyes, the furtiveness of his hand movements, the ruthlessness of his stalking, and that of his cohorts. It is a subterranean set, a secret fraternity of mischief and mendacity. (Pickpocket, below.)

This unspoken language is also at the heart of A Man Escaped. For what begins as a simple prison film, of a single man’s plot to escape, suddenly takes a dramatic turn halfway through when a young man, a changeling, is dropped into his lap, so to speak. The boy, a satyr-like waif, Francois Jost, is an enigma. Half Resistance fighter, half German turncoat, he embodies the duality of Vichy France. A mere 16, he is filthy, disheveled, and infested with lice, but not enough to be undesirable. Bresson cleverly cast a handsome young man, Charles le Clainche, without any acting experience, whose vacant, yearning glances suck you in. It’s a child’s face, but also a punk’s mask. Could he be a spy? A plant? Or is he like Parsifal, the “naive fool”? Could he be the condemned man’s soul mate, his brother in arms, who helps him find the Holy Grail?

We are left wondering, just as the prisoner too wrestles with his dilemma. Should he trust this mysterious stranger with his deep, dark secret? Ironically, it is because of the urchin’s lack of artifice that he is embraced, and accepted. Jost admits to having just a few lice, which surely a Nazi spy would never do. A liar would never be so fair, so lacking in guile. He’d be all or nothing, not ingenuous. Jost’s naivete is Fontaine’s ticket to freedom. And vice-versa. The boy is propositioned. Will you come with me? Or must I kill you? The youth chooses life.

A partnership is signed, not with a pen, but with a regard, a nod, a supreme gesture of submission: “Yes.” From there, the pace picks up. The static quality of the first half of the film is replaced by a state of ramped-up drama, of action. The rope, made out of sheared bed linens and clothes, serves as a tightrope, and ultimately as a lifeline.

But first, the man who seeks life must kill. The German guard is slain, off-screen, the only clue to his fate, a faint, garbled sigh as the soldier is stabbed to death with his own bayonet and slumps to the ground. Having killed for freedom, Fontaine turns to his partner, and helps him down the rope. The boy leaves his shoes and coat at the prison, half in and half out, braving this new frontier without protection. There is no holding back now. The couple climbs down the final wall to the ground below.

And then the moment of climax. “Jost!” the man exclaims, clutching the boy to his side, pulling him tight in a spontaneous embrace, their bodies so close it’s almost a kiss. Savoring his triumph, the man does not fall to the ground, or cry out “Free At Last,” or “Vive La France,” or even “Thank God!” His only sound is the name of the boy he has rescued. The man he loves.

But Bresson lets the boy have the last laugh, with a wink and a nudge. For Jost is slightly embarrassed by his savior’s devotion. He cracks a joke, about what his mother would think if she saw him like this (poorly translated below). It’s the perfect note to end on, a play on words. Le mot juste. Jost’s jest.

For this is not just a film about war and the inhumanity of man — it’s a film about loneliness. And the quest for love. Jost’s awkward ragamuffin is not only Fontaine’s partner in crime, but his savior. They walk off together, not into the sunset, but towards a new dawn.

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(By request, I am posting this excerpt from my memoir, The Glass Eye. It is still very much a work in progress. Some names have been changed.)

The Night Visitor

…I never passed the quarter test. That’s when you drop a quarter on your bed, after you’ve made it, and smoothed it out, and the coin is supposed to bounce. Mine always disappeared into the folds made by the blanket. Part of the problem, for me at least, was the blanket itself. Dad had supplied me with one of those thick, woolen, red-checked throws that people use when having picnics in the wilderness, or wrapping around their legs at football games. This one had a rich scarlet tartan plaid on it. He’d gotten a dozen of them from the Scotch liquor company he worked with. They were beautiful, and warm, with lots of fun fringe on them, but they never were designed to be used on bunk beds at a boys sleepaway camp in the Berkshires. Those bunks were too long and narrow, like planks. And the mattresses too lumpy for a tight fit, although my cabin mates didn’t seem to have any problem making theirs.

One tow-headed tyke, named Kit, with a severe crew cut, had a dull green army blanket that was always as taut as a drum. His father, who visited often, had been a sergeant in the military. Kit would wink at me whenever the counselor came by to inspect our bunks, knowing full well that I’d fail and he’d pass with flying colors. I hated watching the way the quarter bounced off his blanket, like an acrobat doing a somersault on a trampoline. One night I guess I got my revenge on Kit when I succumbed to sleepwalking and ended up in his bed. We were both startled in the morning when the bugler sounded reveille. I had no memory of climbing in beside him. He thought I did it on purpose. The rest of the cabin thought it was a riot, although the counselor had to write up a report about it for the village director, after Kit’s father complained.

It took time to adjust to being away from home. The YMCA camp I attended was in the Berkshires, not far from Jacob’s Pillow (the name of which always made me think of a man’s buttocks, even then) when I was eight years old, the summer of ‘65. I don’t think I’d ever been away from home more than a weekend at that point, although my memory from ages 0-5 is a bit shaky. It’s possible that I spent some extended time at a cabin in the woods of Montauk that my folks used to rent. But I think it’s safe to say that I was a novice at the whole camping experience. My family’s idea of roughing it was pitching a tepee in the back yard and taking naps in a sleeping bag. We did that often until my brother burned the tepee down.

One of the reasons my father sent us away that first summer, was that he was worried that we didn’t have enough discipline at home. Terms like “structured play time” didn’t exist back then, and we were often on our own as my father traveled a great deal and my mother was in a state mental hospital. My sister led a separate life at a vigorous girl scout camp, with heaps of friends. My eldest brother was off at Berkeley, riding his motorbike across the West, when not at school.  A month at summer camp seemed like the perfect solution. Eventually I went for two months each summer, for the next seven years.

I particularly enjoyed the thrills of the Indian village, where I was housed my first three years, which included weekly campfires in the woods, where we all dressed like wild Injuns, covered with warpaint and skimpy loincloths (which literally were just pieces of loose cloth slipped under a belt and over our naked crotches.) The counselors and even the village director, Bill, wore these silly, revealing garments, and joined us in making ridiculous noises with our hands slapping our mouths. Imagine Lord of the Flies crossed with Romper Room and you sort of get the idea.

I loved those outings because I felt invincible in my warpaint and feathered crown, made with leather, “gimp” (a plastic coated thread) and beads. We’d create weapons out of bamboo-like reeds, shaving down sharp tips with our Swiss knives. Or we’d cut down birch striplings and carve our names into small, bark-covered logs, totems of friendship. (That practice ended when the birch trees nearly became extinct.) On certain weekends, we’d have nightly hunts for “moon rocks,” which were luminescent stones, painted by counselors, then hidden like Easter eggs in the fields. We were told they had been put there by aliens and it was up to us to find them all to prevent an invasion. My favorite activities were the “snipe hunts,” in which we’d search far and low for a legendarily rare bird, the snipe, that only came out when the moon was full. After much running around, again in skimpy loincloths and warpaint, someone would show up with one caught in a pillow case. Few of us guessed that it was just a chicken, borrowed from the neighboring farm.

Some nights we’d chase the legendary One-Armed Brakeman who lived in the scary run-down shack by the dam. Other nights he’d chase us. One counselor, visiting from Northern Ireland, with the hilarious name Pete Moss, got into trouble one night when he dressed up as the One-Armed Brakeman and broke into one of our cabins, carrying a bloody laundry bag full of what looked like human heads (they were footballs), scaring us half to death. He nearly got sacked, himself.

That first summer I was in a cabin next to the snake pit. I wasn’t crazy about that fact. Growing up on Long Island, I’d seen a few garter snakes, especially when we’d go to Montauk. But I’d never come across the kind of reptiles they had in this snake pit: Big fat snakes which ate moles and frogs and sometimes other snakes. During the day we’d sit and stare into the pit with fascination as we watched these creatures go about their strange lives. But at night, I’d lie in bed in my bunk, itchy from the wool blanket rubbing against my sun-burnt skin, and the inevitable mosquito, and I’d imagine the snakes and toads and turtles climbing out of the pit, crawling their way into the cabin and into my bunk. That fear almost became a reality one time when Skip, the cabin bully, put a turtle in my bed. I kicked its cold shell with my foot when I climbed into bed that night. They said that you could hear my screams at the neighboring girls’ camp a mile down the road.

Frankly, I spent half that summer scared to death. As a child, I had an inordinate fear of moths. And the cabins back then in 1965 had no screens on the windows, which were really nothing more than openings that had been cut out of the wooden sides, then propped up with sticks. At night they’d be shut, but that didn’t stop all varieties of insects from creeping in. You’ve never seen such creatures! Back home the moths had been smallish, mostly gray or light brown, and fluttered about in window sills or corners. Here some were the size of my fist, clinging to bedposts or circling over pillowcases, and came in a myriad of colors, some speckled, with great bulging eyes and long tendrils. I remember one in particular that was a neon tropical green, with white eyes, and seemed to have suction cups on its limbs. Perhaps it wasn’t a moth at all, but some frog-like praying mantis. During the day, if I felt brave, I’d visit the Nature Center where I could study specimens of ancient flying insects and exotic butterflies which were pinned to a display in glass-enclosed cabinets. But these artifacts were harmless and dusty with neglect.

One time a bat got trapped inside our cabin, a great cause of excitement, since it flew from one bed to the next, alarming us all. I thought it would land on my mouth and suck the air out of me like some imp of the perverse from an old Edgar Allan Poe tale. One of the boys cornered it and killed it with a broomstick, then carried its carcass triumphantly out to the snake pit where he fed it to a snake. By far the scariest creature was an owl that mysteriously appeared one day inside the cabin, under the rafters. Immobile and silent, it had not been noticed for a long time, and only a stone thrown at it finally forced it to fly out.

Those early cabins didn’t even have electricity. So I don’t know what attracted the moths, unless it was the candle we used at night, just before going to bed. That’s when we would have cabin chat, a nightly ritual in which my bunkmates would either sit on the floor in a circle around a candle and talk about the days events, or if it was later than usual and we were all pretty much beat from the day’s activities, we’d lie in our narrow beds while the counselor led the discussion. I relished these golden-lit conversations, even if the moths congregated inside, drawn by the light of the single candle set out in the middle of the floor. The counselor (I can’t recall his name) had a limited imagination and usually just went over the events of the day and tried to craft little parables out of them, with sermon-style morals at the end, like the time one of the boys, Darryl, hadn’t washed his sneakers after a frog hunt in the swamp and the entire cabin stunk like a sewer. The counselor had placed Darryl’s sneakers in the middle of the room, then went around from bunk to bunk, asking us to chime in on how not taking care of our sanitary needs could affect others. I felt sorry for Darryl. There hadn’t really been time after the swamp trip to wash them out, and dry them, and he only had one pair of sneakers anyway.

Darryl stuck out at the camp, and was something of a character. He was black, wore great big horn-rimmed glasses, and came from New York City (most of the other kids either came from Massachusetts where the camp was situated or the suburbs, like me). Darryl’s parents were poor, at least so we were told. We never saw them. He was at the camp on a scholarship, although I don’t think it cost much to go there. Darryl, surprisingly, at least to me, since my only acquaintance back then with black people was with other students, who were bused into my grade school, most of them pretty tough, was a lousy athlete. He couldn’t swim, run or do archery. He was tall and skinny and you could see all the ribs in his chest even though his skin was as dark as obsidian. He always wore a red corduroy shirt and cut-off jeans shorts, and his smelly Keds hightops. But Darryl did have one talent: horseshoes. He could throw a ringer nearly every time. It was a mystery to me how he knew how to play since I can’t imagine there were too many horseshoe pits in Harlem.

There was another kid in the cabin who people picked on. His name was Peter Schloss. We used to laugh whenever we heard his name. It sounded like the noise you’d make when putting on wet galoshes. Poor Peter was immensely fat and had countless freckles. Peter had problems wetting his bed. The first time it happened, no one thought much about it. We were all getting used to being at camp, and not having our usual bathroom routines. In fact, I had gone an entire week without going to the bathroom (number two, that is) at the Automat, which is what we called the latrine. I guess they called it that because it was still a novelty back then to have automatic flushing toilets. When my other brother, who is ten years older than I, had gone to this same camp in 1960, they only had outhouses.

Peter never got used to the Automat. He hated going there at night because it was so dark out and there were even more moths there than in our cabin. They’d tried to fix the problem by putting a huge yellow light bulb over the door, to ward off bugs, but that didn’t stop them from zooming down and swatting you in the face when you tried to enter. So Peter tended to piss in his bunk. Like I said, the first few times no one said anything when the counselor came in the next morning and made Peter change his sheets. But it soon became a regular event.

Each morning, after reveille, during which we’d all march outside in our pjs and salute the flag as it was raised in the center of the village, Peter Schloss would carry out his linens, take them to the Automat where he would wash them out in the large trough-like sink, and hang them on a cord attached to the cabin wall and a nearby tree. Things reached a fevered pitch one morning when Peter rolled out of bed, and there were giant shit stains on his sheets and his pajamas. The poor guy had lost control of his bowels during the night. Suddenly everyone started laughing hysterically, poking him in the gut, throwing things at him, and begging him to strip his bed and get the offending sheets out of the cabin. For the rest of the day, Peter scrubbed those sheets in the lake (the counselor wouldn’t let him use the Automat sink) and he couldn’t get the stains out. When he hung them out to dry, the brown spots were still visible. Peter broke down, sat on a rock and cried, snot running down over his lips.

The next night, after lights out and we’d all fallen asleep, and I was in the midst of a dark dream, I awoke when I felt a hand pressing against my shoulder. I opened my eyes but could barely make out a thing, except a faint beam of light from a small flashlight. The light danced across the floor. The flashlight was being held by a tall young man, with thick curly black hair, dark, tanned skin, and deep blue eyes. My own eyes had adjusted to the light and I could see his in the glow from the flashlight, that now was lodged between the mattress and the wooden bunk edge. I did not recognize this man, or boy, I should say, since he was no more than 15 or 16 himself.

“Peter,” he whispered, his face so close to mine that I could smell a faint trace of lemon meringue pie on his breath (staff members often raided the larder after hours). I thought he said “Peters,” so I answered back, yes. But he put his finger to my lips and said to be quiet. Then, very quietly, he pulled back the red tartan blanket that barely covered the bed and reached under my back with his right arm, scooping me up, and pulling me towards his chest. He reached for the flashlight with his left hand, then bent his head down, gingerly avoiding the edge of the bunk over us, and held me so that my head was resting on his shoulder. He adjusted his arm so that my buttocks rested on his elbow, and he carried me out of the cabin, down the stairs and out into the dark of night.

“Where are we going?” I whispered in his ear. “Quiet,” he said, without answering. “You’ll wake the others.” Then he lit the way with his flashlight and we passed the snake pit, where his flashlight illuminated a slug on the side of the wall. We then moved away from the center of the village. I soon realized he was taking me to the Automat. The moon was out and I could see some things very clearly, like the giant mushrooms on the side of trees, or the white stones along the path that shone like lamps buried in the ground. I could hear the crunch of the pine needles, and smell their sweet scent, as my visitor made his way. Off in the distance a lone bird hooted.

“We’ve started a Pee Wee Patrol,” he told me. “To help those who need to go to the bathroom at night.” I didn’t say anything. I was wondering how I got on the list.

The bugs were out in full force that night, but this tall, dark stranger paid them no mind. He raced up the stairs into the bathroom area and dropped me onto my feet. Taking my hand, he led me over to the trough and pointed to the basin. “Go,” he said. “But I don’t have to go,” I said, not quite sure what was going on. “Force yourself,” he said, giving my backside a little push. “I don’t want to have to carry you out here again later.” But the notion of peeing in front of this stranger, whom I’d never seen before, froze me in my tracks. I’d had enough problems those first few weeks peeing when my fellow Indian villagers used the loo.

But before I could explain myself, another young man entered the Automat, carrying a boy from another cabin I recognized but had not yet met. He was near tears and quickly stood by the trough, undid his pajama bottoms, and peed constantly, like that famous sculpture, the Mannekin Pis. My night visitor laughed and pointed to the boy and said to me that I should do the same. “But I don’t have to pee,” I repeated. “What about number two?” he said, nodding towards the toilet area. “We don’t want a repeat of last night.”

Then I realized that he thought I was Peter Schloss, the kid who had crapped himself, and I almost burst out laughing, but something stopped me. I’m not sure how I even knew how to behave, or why, but I said, give me a sec. And I went over to the trough and forced myself to pee. A thin trickle came out, but my new friend smiled and said, “that’s good,” as if he were encouraging a dog. I didn’t mind. I liked the attention and didn’t want him to leave disappointed. By now other boys were being led into the room and while I was somewhat ashamed to be seen with them, for by now I had figured out that we were all being given special treatment due to perceived bed-wetting problems, I also knew that none of them would rat on me because they all suffered from the same problem. Although, ironically, I didn’t.

I knew I had to fess up to this handsome stranger that I wasn’t Peter Schloss. And for a moment I felt guilty that I had taken Peter’s place, even if unwittingly. Would he be angry? As we descended the steps of the Automat, and headed back to the cabin (I guess he didn’t think I needed to be carried anymore), I pulled on his sleeve and said that my name was not Peter, but Peters. “So I got the wrong guy?” he asked, a bit perplexed. “You’re not on the Pee Wee Patrol list?” “Well, I guess not,” I said. “But I’m glad you came because now I can sleep without worrying about you know what.” He laughed, and put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll add you to the list, if you like.” I nodded.

I asked his name. “Chad,” he said. “I’m one of the Aides.” The Aides were high school kids who worked at the camp, doing odd jobs, like sweeping the dining hall, or setting up the sports equipment. They all lived in the Aides quarters near the camp chapel. Then as we approached my cabin, Chad picked me up in his arms, patted my bottom and carried me to my bunk. He tucked me in, adjusting the blanket and sheet. “Which one is Peter Schloss?” he asked, leaning down, whispering in my ear. I could feel the stubble on his chin graze against my cheek. But I was too tired to say anything. I just pointed to the bunk catty-corner from mine. Chad got up and moved to Peter’s bed. I heard muffled voices, a groan, the rustling of sheets. But I soon drifted off to sleep, thinking of Chad’s strong hands, the scent of lemon on his breath, and wondering if it had all been a dream.

As I noted a few entries ago, I’ve been swept up in a whirlwind of distractions, making it difficult to keep up my regular habit of blogging here once a week. Not to make a mountain out of a mole hill, but I’ve had to focus more on my health, my financial well-being and my career.

In terms of health, I’ve finally located the source of my constant asthma, headaches and allergy attacks. Dust-mites from the books I’ve been storing in my house since I closed my bookstore. I had about 1000 tomes in my bedroom so there was no escaping the swirling dust-bunnies or the itsy-bitsy buggers infiltrating my lungs. So I decided, when I got back from the South (where I had no allergy problems) to give the house a thorough spring cleaning, including removing all those books (and bookcases) from my bedroom, as well as numerous other rooms in the house (I even had a bookcase in the bathroom). This turned out to be a monumental task, involving boxing up my collections, taking down shelves, rearranging vasts amounts of furnishings, setting up a real office, vacuuming until I was blue in the face, then dusting with a treated cloth professionals use that I found at a hardware store. There’s no controlling mother nature, and the pollen count has been extremely high. But at least the books are gone and I can lie in bed without sneezing, wheezing, coughing and gasping for air.

As for my financial well-being, I had to go through seven years worth of files and computer disks to rid myself of meaningless clutter, do my taxes, and safeguard valuable documents. I managed to do it all without losing anything, or throwing anything away by accident, which for me is a miracle.

The career? Well, that is perhaps the prickliest pickle. I’m looking for a full-time job, which of course means putting together a resume, sending out letters, queries, shout-outs for advice, etc. So far, the response has been deafeningly silent. But you never know. Sometimes I feel like Bette Davis, who after winning an Oscar, put an ad in Variety asking for work. I don’t have her chutzpah, nor her talent, but I do have all of her movies on tape. (Thanks to LIFE magazine’s wonderful website which allows bloggers like me to access their archives.)

In the meantime, I’m taking a break from the blog while I pursue these various activities. I’ll be back shortly with some new writings (from the memoir I’m in the thick of) and a review of a new book about Samuel Steward (aka Phil Andros) by Justin Spring. My piece on Jay Little will be appearing shortly in Ganymede Journal’s June issue, so keep your eyes out for that. I’ll provide a link when the time comes.

Blogging is no easy task, especially when one is as long-winded as I am. But one fellow traveler who never fails to interest me in her writings is Maud Newton, who recently was included in a list of the 40 best literary bloggers. She deserves the praise. Here’s one of her latest columns that tackles some of the themes I’ve just been expressing: the difficulties of maintaining a blog and the passion that lies behind it. Maud Newton.

Thanks too to fans of this blog such as Robert John Keefe, whose The Daily Blague is one of the best ones out there.

If you’re hungry for more literary links, feast yourself on the latest entries from my other favorite blog, Brad Bigelow’s The Neglected Book Page.

And if you’re simply in the mood for a good chuckle, check out my friend TJB’s hilarious blog, Stirred, Straight Up, With a Twist. His zest for the past and his knack for uncovering the dandiest of trouvailles are uncanny.

BRB. Soon.