Tumble Down Rose

A story with David Lynch

My time in Mexico is difficult to explain. Suffice it to say that I fell into the company of people who found life disillusioning and preferred to live in a foreign land with their imaginations. When we left finally it was under varying conditions but the universal, perhaps misleading impression that we were once again exercising our right to free will.

I shared a ground-level, comfortable apartment with a German, Wolfgang. He was an amiable man with many friends who worked teaching English at government offices. He rose early and went about his day with well-bred, cheery resoluteness, with purpose in the purposeless tumble of the anarchic city. I worked at night on a movie shot in an abandoned mine in the ancient and decrepit outskirts of Tepito, a notoriously crime-ridden suburb.

We gathered at the Estudios Churubusco in the afternoon, the thirty or so of us that had been hired as extras, struggling young artists and marginals, wearing boots and silver jewelry. Che was an Argentine who had studied economics. Juliana was a daughter of a Catalan university professor. Francois, a Frenchman writing a travel book. Max, a Vietnam veteran from Arizona. These were just some of the characters brought together at that time, finding ourselves working together on the Hollywood gig.

After a bus ride through dusty streets thronged with the homeward bound, shopkeepers closing for the day, we arrived at a fenced-off compound and were transformed by make-up crews into futuristic mutants of a desert planet, a warrior tribe, products of a technological sensibility. There was nervous heckling and joking around while we waited in lines for our costumes and weapons. The Mexicans had a great sense of humor about the whole operation, amused at this brand of efficiency in the name of art. Nobody took it very seriously apart from the director and his assistant, Cookie, an irritable little Spaniard, who would shout at us to hurry. We took our places on the hill. The stars would appear, looking charismatic and sculptured, under the tutelage of the director, a very serious man somewhere between youth and middle age with a long blonde forelock that he kept sweeping away from his eyes and white, self-effacing deck sneakers. He apparently had made a name for himself with some low budget cult films, including Elephant Man, which I remembered having seen in college at some film club. At the time I had been unimpressed with the moody visuals and slow pacing of what was considered an iconic classic for people who were pre-punk and post Easy Rider.

The extras, thirty or so, clambered on the rocks, falling, scraping the expensive rubber suits, and prepared to begin the scene, which involved a shootout with some bad guy.

“You are not Apaches, please. You are dignified, noble. You draw your guns with calm. This is not a Western,” said Cookie.

“It’s obvious he never spent any time in Tepito", said one of the extras, twirling the ray gun on his finger. Max laughed loudly in appreciation, causing Cookie to tremble with rage.

Max had gone native in his sense of humor. He claimed to be the victim of a CIA assassination plot. He said this to test your reaction. He’d been with the Green Berets in the Mekong Delta, spending months at a time alone in the jungle up a tree as a sniper, and the experience had marked him. Cookie hurried back to the director’s side. From above, on the rocks, those of us who could understand English could follow their conversation.

“Did they understand, Cookie, what it is they have to do?” asked the director, breaking away from consultations with the camera man.

“Yes, David. They understand perfectly well,” said Cookie.

We worked on scenes interminably while the action perfected itself in this recreated world. We looked on like reverential and half-understanding aboriginals at the deeper and intriguing excesses that passed for drama. Our faces bore the right amounts apparently of reserve and hostility.

At midnight, breaking for a meal, we pulled the rubber suits off and let them hang around our hips. This was against regulations, but the wardrobe personnel did not have the heart to enforce rules, understanding that it was hot under the lights and we were tired of the interminable repetitions of the various scenes we were in. We’d been standing for hours. The food, served from the back of a truck and eaten under a tent: stews, steamed vegetables, apple pie, Perrier water. The crew and the stuntmen cut in line on front of us as a matter of rank, but we just laughed. After eating we drank coffee spiked with tequila, and the more enterprising mixed marijuana and tobacco in hand-rolled cigarettes.

I was transfixed by the clash of egos that happened off screen, between takes. It seemed more dramatic than the actual narrative of the film. The director did his best to soothe over any difficulties with an earnest, eager manner, but it was clear there was dissatisfaction in the air. The two stars, a young man and woman with all-American good looks, were feuding.

One night the executive producer appeared on the set. By then we were disenchanted with the supposed glamor of the business. We didn’t care that he was signing all the checks. We just saw a balding old man with a potbelly and a funny silk jacket. That night there was an unusually long after dinner break as the cast confined themselves to their trailers. Some of us walked to the top of a promontory, and Juliana broke out a pack of Marlboros. We smoked, leaning back against the rocks like the languid primitives we were supposed to be playing. There was a half moon, a spray of stars and orange smog over the city.

“This stupid suit. It cramps my style,” said Juliana, tugging at one of the arms.

“I suppose we are soldiers, not sex symbols,”said Francois in his Parisian accented Spanish.

“Still, they could have tailored them a little better,” said Juliana.

“Some of the others are talking about a strike. I think it might be a good time,” said Che.

“If we went on strike they’d just fire us and get some other people,” said Francois.

“It would be a problem for them. Remember, they already have us on film,” said Che.

One of the production assistants yelled from below that the extras were to take their places.

“What are we doing now?” I asked.

“Who knows?” answered Francois ironically, getting up to follow directions once again.

“We’re still trying to get that idiot to cry,” said Juliana.

Juliana considered it incomprehensible that a professional actor could not shed tears as the scene demanded. We had already spent almost the whole night waiting for he miracle to happen.

“I’d give him a good hook on the ear and that would take care of it,” said Che.

We walked down the hill, blinded by the lights, to our places at the mouth of the canyon. I stood on a precarious ledge, preferring the vantage it gave. Juliana, more practical, stood on solid ground below where she could lean and rest between takes. The dust machines started up, fouling the air with red powder meant to imitate some distant planet’s atmosphere. The director checked the camera view, conferred with Cookie. The make-up crew placed some drops in the young star’s eyes as he leaned his head back. A production assistant yelled SILENCIO, punctuating the night with his single command. For his consistently irrelevant responsibility, we had settled on him as our favorite object of derision.

Everyone was anxious as the producer sat in a high chair behind the camera, observing. Make-believe desert dust was blown in the air by large, noiseless machines.

The work was called off in the early morning. We traded in our weapons and rubber suits for civilian gear and changed in the tent reserved for us. Some of the women tried rubbing the caked grime off their faces with paper towels, but it seemed a painfully slow operation. We looked like survivors of some strange experiment as we boarded the bus.

Someone caught sight of the overweight assistant, our nemesis, trudging across the parking lot.

We stuck our heads out the windows and gave him back his epitaph. He gave the whole bus the finger. We were rolling now. Juliana, the last one on, slid into the seat next to me. I watched storefront colors bloom and wraiths of daybreak glide on the sidewalk. We held hands and never looked at each other until we got back to Churubusco. I caught a ride with Francois up the Avenida Insurgentes. He usually gave two or three of us a lift in the old Chrysler that had traversed much of the continent. He let me out on the street into the ephemerally fresh morning air. In no time the city would be overrun.

I walked across Condesa, leaving footprints in the grass of the old horse track that runs down the center of the street. Two Indian men, Oaxacans by their dress, walked silently by, faces lowered under their hat brims. I looked away. I was in the realm of ghosts again, over the bridge and on to the empty avenue. I looked through the tinted glass at the early morning customers in the coffee shop on the corner. A woman stared vacantly past her man while he stirred his coffee.

It was an unbroken, monotonous, grey, evil-smelling cityscape. The movement of shadows took on a degenerate sensuality. In my doorway, a drunk lay asleep, his shirt unbuttoned and draped on an obscene gut, spittle on his beard and his arm stretched over a bundle of newspapers. He used his shoes for a pillow. I unlocked the door and stepped over him into the hallway.

Wolfgang was still asleep. I took a shower, running the lukewarm water over my head. Deltas of reds and purples formed around the drain, the sediment of planet Dune. Then I got into bed and fell asleep. The noise of the taxi stand intruded on my dreams. I woke up. The drivers liked to shout and honk their horns at each other and at women walking along the sidewalk. I rolled out of bed and opened the window a crack to stave off the heat. I wiped dust off the Venetian blinds with my finger. The telephone rang. It was the studio calling to say there would be no need for any extras that night. I made myself some eggs and reheated some beans. I called Francois. He’d been given the same story.

Francois knocked on my window a little while later. He came in and rolled a joint as he talked. Then we went out, driving along the Perisur, stopping at a cement, garrison-like shopping mall smelling of perfume and sugar. We had something to eat in a gourmet food outlet, ham, brie, croissants and espresso. There was nothing in the stores that I really wanted, but Francois had found a credit card that he claimed had belonged to a friend.

While Francois wandered through the mostly empty stores, I sat under potted palms and read a Time magazine. Francois emerged with a pressure cooker, some Japanese steak knives, bottles of champagne and some rum.

It was mid-afternoon and the fire eaters were plying their trade at the intersections. I popped open a bottle of champagne and we drank it in the slow moving traffic. I asked Francois to let me off by the University Stadium.

“See you around,” I said.

I walked over to Juliana’s house. Her brother answered the door. He was wearing a Felix the Cat tee-shirt and listening to Led Zeppelin, drumming his fingers on the door.

Juliana wasn’t in, so I took a crowded bus up to Napoles, breaking into a sweat from the heat on the bus, watching closely for pickpockets.

Juliana’s boyfriend lived on the second floor of an old, yellow building. I called from a payphone across the street. She always spoke in a monotone that sounded on the verge of cracking.

“Can I come by?” I asked.

“Yes. Come by. Can you bring me some milk?”

“Where’s Roberto?”

“He went to Guadalajara for the weekend, and I don’t have anything to eat.”

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Some Marlboros.”

The hallway smelled of rotting garbage, and there was a hole in Roberto’s door where somebody had taken a crowbar to it. I knocked and she opened. She smiled with a slight overbite and flashing teeth. Her eyes looked dark and tired. She was busy rearranging the furniture. I helped her with a sofa, pushing it to one corner. Juliana laughed in surprise.

“Your face gets so red,” she said, coming closer.

“I’ve been drinking,” I said, and explained about Francois and the credit card. Juliana sighed. She had plans of her own and needed money. She wanted to open a cafe to be frequented by poets and musicians. She was taking a bus up to Valle de Bravo the next day to see if she could find something there.

“What about the movie?” I asked.

“I don’t give a shit about it. Why don’t you come?”

We kissed. I had no good answer. We lay together in the night, motionless. Juliana held my hand.

In the morning we caught a bus that ran over the Desierto de los Leones and into the pine-forested mountains. The bus was full, mostly of young people returning to their villages. Juliana fell asleep and slumped against me. The people on the bus were quiet, enjoying the mystery of the journey. We stopped at Toluca and several smaller towns along the way. Families of peasants gathered at the side of the road to greet the homecoming sons and daughters.

At Valle de Bravo we climbed down from the bus and descended the cobblestone street to the zocalo past groups of marketgoers. We had a coffee at a restaurant that smelled of disinfectant.

“Oh, what the hell. I don’t really care,” Juliana blurted out.

“About?”

“Finding anything.”

“You’re worried you won’t find what you’re looking for.”

Juliana marched down side streets, inquiring with matrons about floor space and rents. They all seemed charmed by her, a young woman with purpose. But there was nothing that suited Juliana’s dream or her budget. The street we were on dwindled to a trail between two houses. A man led a mule down the trail and onto the street. In a breeze of discouragement, we walked down to the side of the lake and sat on a rock at its edge, trailing our hands in the water. A boy rowed up in a dinghy.

“Would you like a ride? How about it, mister?”

“Good idea,” I said.

“Hold it for me,” said Juliana.

We sat in the stern, facing the boy. He rowed leisurely while he plied us with questions. He asked and waited for an answer. Whether or not we had responded, he would strike with the oars and pull violently, extracting all the leverage possible from his thin arms. Then he would lean forward and resume his interview. By the middle of the lake he gave us the name of his aunt who sold artesania, from a bodeguita in town. He turned the boat so we could see the town above us on the shores of the lake, spires and roofs that seemed melted by the sun.

We found his aunt Rosario on a street near the bus station and climbed the thick steps to the little shop, lined with huaraches, wool blankets, tapestry, wedding dresses, wooden chests, and mandolins. Rosario was a small woman, dark-skinned and sharp-nosed. She completed a sale of sandals to a satisfied American woman and looked Juliana up and down appraisingly, guessing that she was not a shopper. Juliana introduced herself, and threw herself into a description of the emporium she imagined.

“We could put the tables back there,” said Juliana. She pointed to a doorway that led to a back room.

“That’s where I sleep with my two children,” said Rosario.

“But listen girl, if you have the money we can talk about it. We could start a partnership. My children and I could move into my mother’s home.”

I finished browsing through the store and went outside to sit on the steps and wait. The two women came outside together. Juliana introduced me as a friend. I stood up as they concluded their negotiations.

“The place is perfect. Did you see it? said Juliana. I agreed enthusiastically.

We rode the bus back to the D.F. in silence. Juliana deep in thought and humming to herself. I was happy for her. We parted at the bus station.

There was a card game in the living room. Francois, Wolfgang, Sharif, an Iranian waiting for a chance to get into the US illegally, and David from Newcastle upon Tyne. Sharif was dealing. A bottle of gin was on the table, a finger or two left.

“Who’s winning?” I asked.

“Wolf is, as usual,” said David.

“The German is too bloody smart,” said Sharif.

Wolfgang yelped, communicating superb satisfaction.

“We are going to Brazil, Jack. Are you coming with us?”asked Wolfgang.

Wolfgang yelped again. I was dealt into the game as Sharif begged out and fell asleep on the sofa. We played poker as Francois told us about his travels in Brazil. It seemed like a good place to go, the way he described it.

The goons at the studio, who saw to it that we got on the bus on time, spread the rumor around that most of us would be laid off soon while a few would be kept on for an extended period of work. We were filming a fight sequence, and I had been picked as part of a crew that supported the bad guy, the loser in the fight. We had to approach slowly and wrap his body for burial, part of the strange rites that went on on this planet. Most of the time we watched the actors rehearsing for the scene. A man flew in from Japan to choreograph the sequence and coach them on kicks and punches. The actor who played the bad guy hyperventilated off to the side, psyching himself. The actress who would be the winner’s spoil stood on the sidelines. We stamped our spears and coughed, trying to get her to turn around. She smiled at us between takes and went to put her arm around the male lead, that lifeless, tearless husk. Apparently they had been reconciled the night the executive producer appeared.

She sat with us at dinner one night. She was tall and nicely shaped. We talked a little. She asked me what I was doing in Mexico. I told her I was a journalist doing research on the indigenous peoples of Mexico, the Nahuatl and the Yaqui. She told me the company was moving to Chihuaha for a month to shoot battle scenes in the desert.

A few days later I was standing in the studio parking lot waiting to get on the bus and talking with Max, the former Green Beret. He was telling me about some troubles he’d had with the police. I wasn’t really listening. I heard my name called. Some of the guys were yelling for me from the office. I went inside. A goon stood in the doorway, looking at a clipboard and chewing gum.

“Jack Parker?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not needed tonight. You can go home.”

“What do you mean? Everyone else is going out.”

“He’s got your name on some list, Jack,” said someone.

I went in to see the secretary. She gave me some kind of a runaround, but it was clear I was being terminated.

“I’m telling you, they don’t fuck around,” said Max, getting on the bus.

The early evening smog began to gather and sting me in the eyes walking west along Reforma past pasty-faced groups of tourists. The Metro station was crowded. A group of pachuco-looking glue-sniffers surrounded a fat, young girl on the platform, scaring her silly with their stares and their hands running up and down their arms. Nobody moved, families watching over crates of belongings, bureaucrats with briefcases and sweat popping on their lips. I squeezed myself against the far wall of the car as the doors whistled closed. The delinquents stared over the heads of the commuters with relaxed, red eyes. I got off at Juan Acatlan, the Butterfly, and prepared to walk the rest of the way back to the apartment. A cat ran under a car.

A few years later, I went to see the movie, Dune. By then I knew that David Lynch was the director’s name, and that he was considered a genius. I was working in Galveston at the time, on shrimp boats.

The audience were young, mildly artistic, mostly clean cut, fans of the science fiction genre. The lights went out and the beam of the projector kicked off the latest adventure. I found the movie hard to follow, all muted tones and interplanetary landscapes. There wasn’t a single character I could identify with in my angst-ridden lonely, over-privileged self. My desert tribe didn’t appear until late in the film and by then I had given up on following the story. I recognized a few of my former friends, including Francois and Max, but it was a fleeting, dissatisfying glimpse. Most of us were in shadow, up on the rocks, in long shot. If the audience could have seen Juliana’s face that morning in Valle de Bravo, heard Francois talking about Brazil, they would have been privy to something. As it was, I wondered what it was all about.