One of the struggles of getting old is holding on to power. You spend your whole life in the thick of it—building, selling, reaping rewards and destroying enemies—and then at the end, you’re forced to sit still and brood. It’s pitiful. I’m not suited to it at all.
In some ways, death can’t come fast enough.
Until then …
There is one last project.
A reason to open my eyes.
My son, wherever he is, stolen by a young witch.
In the afternoon, I watch home movies, shot on super 8 film. In the dark, my life literally flashes before my eyes. Most of it disgusts me. My former wives were not auteurs. There are too many records of Christmases and birthdays. So much cake and children running back and forth. It bores me. The only films I like are the ones that show days at the beach. In those, the city can be glimpsed in the background. Over the course of years, the place rises up like a wave. Glorious. A triumph.
But there aren’t many of those movies, and I’ve played them all to death. Reviewing them involves my nurse Elda moving things back and forth, which she finds tiresome. There are days now where she simply refuses and in my weakened condition there is little I can do to persuade her. She’s a fool, but one cannot trouble one’s nurse too much. So instead of the beach movies, I watch the other home movies. The films of the woman. They’re longer, engrossing me for hours on end. The dirty pictures of the concubine I invited into my world. A ghost captured in flickering light. I gorge on her, then and now. The flesh is weak, right till the very end.
The phone in the study snaps me from a daydream.
I wheel myself over. ‘This is Victor Owens.’
‘Just calling to make sure you’re still alive.’
‘You can’t get rid of me that easily, Allan.’
‘We’re nearly there, mate. I can’t let you croak just yet.’
‘How’s business?’
‘The money’s coming in.’
‘I should hope so.’
‘We’re getting there. That’s the main thing.’
‘You have to dream big to win big, Allan.’
He laughs. ‘There’s big and then there’s …’
‘Yes, son?’
‘This is diabolical. We’re bloody well up to the guts in nutters, Victor. These blokes are … it’s more of a nightmare than a dream.’
‘It’s all the same thing.’
‘Is it?’
‘It’s how you look at it. One should take the good and the bad with everything. My clean money and your dirty deeds. My noble enterprises and your sinful business. It’s all light and shade, Allan. It’s all the same when it’s over. The future forgets everything that came before. It’s about to be a new day, my friend.’
‘Well, right now it feels like bloody midnight.’
I laugh at that. ‘Allan, that’s just because you’re still asleep.’