The Theater

Although he’d said he was too busy, he decided to see a movie. Would she want to come? He went into the bedroom. She lay there on her back, one arm curled around her head, her mouth open. Better to let her sleep in. In fact, better to let her think he’d gone to work.

The familiar theater, fragrant with popcorn, relieved him of the stifling summer heat. And so early in the day, hardly anyone was there. Hardly anyone, in fact, went to the movies. It certainly had something do with the pandemic; but also, he thought, the duration of a movie was now too long to go without looking at one’s phone.

That feeling of being engrossed, entertained, was after all what drew most people to the theater in the first place, and one’s phone did that easily enough. He wanted that too, but he went to the theater to be alone and utterly unreachable. When the lights dimmed, it didn’t matter whether the theater was full or not. The audience might as well be sleeping; the movie might as well be their dream.

The movie, shown on 16mm, was a restoration of an Italian murder mystery from the sixties. He was almost sure he’d seen it before. He recognized the palazzo, the seashore, the woman who resembles (but is not) Brigitte Bardot. She's at the market. Everyone knows her, she fills up her basket, she goes home humming, singing, waving, greeting. The director’s and screenwriter’s names appear onscreen. When she returns home, a humorless, pot-bellied older man—her husband—is waiting. Where have you been? the man wants to know. Can’t you see, the woman says, showing him the basket. He slaps her, the basket drops. A head of cabbage rolls off-screen; the humorless man grabs his coat. Across the street, he takes a seat at a little taverna. The slut! the man growls.

Yes, he had seen this movie before, with his wife. They were still dating then—or was it when she was still married to X? She had liked it, he remembered. He didn’t think much of it, but the wind blowing into this little Italian town, which smelled to him like popcorn, also scattered all the things he was neglecting to do that day.

A few rows ahead, just below the screen, he saw two greenish flashes in quick succession. It repeated, like a heartbeat, before the source of the light, probably someone’s phone, was hidden away.

Have you told her? the man’s friends in the taverna ask. His head is buried in his arms. His friends are gathered around him, aghast, like the three figures in Caravaggio’s Incredulity of St. Thomas. He gives no answer, nor does he bother to wave them off. They leave slowly, one by one, of their own pitying accord.

Fragments of the following scene illuminate the darkness of the theater: the man, moonlit, haggard and drunk, climbing a tree; the man’s pathetic physiognomy thrown into relief by the brightness of a window; the man’s wife, stripped to the waist, in the arms of her lover.

Reaching for a handful of popcorn, the man tries to remember who in the movie winds up dead.

More scenes of the same theme follow. On another sorrowful night, in another tree, the man sees his wife with a different lover. This time they're quarreling. The woman, frustrated and enraged, swipes at an empty vase. Her lover tries to restrain her but cannot, and the husband scrambles to conceal himself as she storms out of the house. Later, coming home to find his wife sleeping peacefully in their bed, he studies her closely, his breathing heavy.

Again, a succession of green flashes illuminated the fore of the cavernous theater. Then the movie fell apart. He was rather taken by the poor man in the trees, his helpless fascination with his wife, and his inability to confront her. Clearly, he loved her too much to admit anything to her. But after the murder, when the woman’s lovers are questioned and the woman appears in court, he just wanted the movie to end. It kept going, on and on, like a fire that refuses to be put out when the house has already burned down.

When the lights went up, a couple near the front row quickly rose. There he saw, clinging tightly to another man, his wife. Or someone who looked exactly like her. But how could that be? The man halted, his heart in his mouth, and lowered himself to hide in the near-empty audience.