Читать «Infinite jest» онлайн - страница 901
David Foster Wallace
‘Q.’
‘Hermaphroditic. Androgynous. It wasn’t obvious that the character was supposed to be a male character. I assume you can Identify.
‘The other had the camera bolted down inside a stroller or bassinet. I wore an incredible white floor-length gown of some sort of flowing material and leaned in over the camera in the crib and simply apologized.’
‘Q.’
‘Apologized. As in my lines were various apologies. “I’m so sorry. I’m so terribly sorry. I am so, so sorry. Please know how very, very, very sorry I am.” For a real long time. I doubt he used it all, I strongly doubt he used it all, but there were at least twenty minutes of permutations of “I’m sorry.”
‘Q.’
‘Not exactly. Not exactly veiled.’
‘Q.’
‘The point of view was from the crib, yes. A crib’s-eye view. But that’s not what I mean by driving the scene. The camera was fitted with a lens with something Jim called I think an auto-wobble. Ocular wobble, something like that. A ball-and-socket joint behind the mount that made the lens wobble a little bit. It made a weird little tiny whirring noise, I recollect.’
‘Q.’
‘The mount’s the barrel. The mount’s what the elements of the lens are arranged in. This crib-lens’s mount projected out way farther than a conventional lens, but it wasn’t near as big around as a catadioptric lens. It looked more like an eye-stalk or a night-vision scope than a lens. Long and skinny and projecting, with this slight wobble. I don’t know much about lenses beyond basic concepts like length and speed. Lenses were Jim’s forte. This can’t be much of a surprise. He always had a whole case full. He paid more attention to the lenses and lights than to the camera. His other son carried them in a special case. Leith was cameras, the son was lenses. Lenses Jim said were what he had to bring to the whole enterprise. Of filmmaking. Of himself. He made all his own.’
‘Q.’
‘Well I’ve never been around them. But I know there’s something wobbled and weird about their vision, supposedly. I think the newer-born they are, the more the wobble. Plus I think a milky blur. Neonatal nystagmus. I don’t know where I heard that term. I don’t remember. It could have been Jim. It could have been the son. What I know about infants personally you couJd — it may have been an astigmatic lens. I don’t think there’s much doubt the lens was supposed to reproduce an infantile visual field. That’s what you could feel was driving the scene. My face wasn’t important. You never got the sense it was meant to be captured realistically by this lens.’
•Q.’
‘I never saw it. I’ve got no idea.’
‘Q.’
‘They were buried with him. The Masters of everything unreleased. At least that was in his will.’
‘Q.’
‘It had nothing to do with killing himself. Less than nothing to do with it.’
‘Q.’
‘No I never saw his fucking will. He told me. He told me things.
‘He’d stopped being drunk all the time. That killed him. He couldn’t take it but he’d made a promise.’
‘Q.’
‘I don’t know that he ever even got a finished Master. That’s
