First of all, I'd like to express my gratitude to my precious friend and Russian beta-reader of this story - Mary Eglantine, to my English editor and good friend (I cannot call her a beta-reader, her work is priceless!) DeboraKLA, to my translator Yana Starikova and to Artemis Day and Ayala Steelfire - for their invaluable help:)
Study in Gray.
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied, full of charm; imaginary good is tiresome and flat. Real evil, however, is drear, monotonous, barren. Real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
Simone Weil.
Introduction
Once, early in the morning, Beelzebub arose,
With care his sweet person adorning,
He put on his Sunday clothes.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Devil's Walk".
Buenos Aires, 1950.
It was a quarter of an hour before the shop's closing when his most important customer arrived to see Señor Ramirez. The shop owner motioned to his assistant - a gawky teenager named Ricardo - to shut the door and put up the "Closed" sign as soon as he entered.
"Señor Lang!" Ramirez greeted his guest with a broad smile and a strong, sweaty handshake.
"Señor Ramirez," the customer, a spare European dressed in a pearl-grey suit, smiled back, discreetly removing a snow-white handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped his hand thoroughly, then tossed the hankie into the waste bin. "My apologies for the late visit." He paused to give the shop owner time to acknowledge his importance. "Every visit to your shop is a genuine treat for me, but my circumstances make our meetings rarer than I would wish—"
He said this with a touch of a smile, one full of awareness of his personal responsibility and helplessness in the face of his "circumstances".
"Trust me, Señor Lang," the shop owner interrupted hastily, "we always look forward to seeing you." Ramirez gazed at his guest with dogged affection, his hands clasped as though in prayer.
Lang took time to look through the vinyl records in the "New" box, paying no attention to the shop owner. Finally he put the last cardboard envelope back in the box and, skimming the shelves, uttered dreamily, "I can't wait to see what you have found for me - "
The shop owner, as if suddenly awoken from the sweetest dream, smiled guiltily, flashing a golden tooth. He turned to the back office and barked: "Ricardo! Fetch the films they've brought us today!"
After a few minutes of hustle and bustle, scraping metal and squeaking shelves, Ricardo emerged from the darkness, dragging two crates of tin boxes. He set them down quickly and, without waiting for further direction, disappeared once again into the darkness of the back office to get more.
Lang squatted down in front of the crates. '''The Wizard of Oz'—you must be joking, Ramirez," he said with a touch of a frown, though his tone was light-hearted.
The shop owner mumbled that they'd received too many films all at once and had no time to sort them out, but Lang waved him off absently.
"'Rebecca'… hmm…'Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller'… that might be interesting - "
Ricardo dragged out two more crates.
"'The Lady Vanishes', 'The 39 Steps', 'Shadow of a Doubt'… Ramirez, you have quite a collection of Hitchcock's films…'The Way Ahead'…ah, yes, a valiant British platoon against Rommel's Tank Corps!" Lang didn't even attempt to conceal the irony in his voice.
"I'd like to suggest 'You Were Never Lovelier,'" said the shop owner timidly.
"'You Were Never Lovelier'? Who starred in it?"
"Rita Hayworth, Señor Lang, and Fred Astaire."
Lang sniffed in a most ungentlemanly manner. "I've seen it already. Please, spare me from the sight of Hayworth's scrawny legs and flat behind."
"Well then, what do you say to Vivien Leigh? We have 'That Hamilton Woman' and 'Caesar and Cleopatra'."
Lang thought for some time, and then decided he would take both.
More and more films emerged from the back office. Lang took his time choosing. He mulled aloud over every film, rejecting some and then musing over them again, taking absolutely no heed of how increasingly worn out Ramirez and Ricardo were becoming.
Ramirez could wait hours on end, however – Lang was his most important customer. His small shop sold books, magazines and records, but for some customers he bought films (illegally, of course). Lang was special because he didn't buy the sixteen-millimeter prints; he bought the genuine thirty-five-millimeter films designed for projection in commercial cinemas. Depending on the amount of footage, one film was usually recorded on three or four reels stored in flat, tin boxes. Lang usually bought several at once – he could easily put several boxes of the reels in the large trunk of his Mercedes.
Unlike other cineastes – Ramirez had several such customers– Lang usually ordered the films himself and patiently awaited their arrival. He was not a voracious viewer, often preferring old, forgotten black-and-white silents to the newest, most popular color spectaculars.
At last, all the selections were made and a bargain was struck – the cash flowed into the till, the change into Señor Lang's pocket, and the boxes of film into the trunk of his car. Lang gave ear to Ramirez pouring out his thanks, nodded absently and left the shop with a growing smile on his face.