The Paris Exposition Universelle, May 1, 1900
The Paris Exposition Universelle,
It’s already a bad day at the Phono-Cinéma-Théatre, and Otto has barely begun his shift.
To start out with, the Lumière brothers—who gave Otto’s boss his start as a cinematographer and supported his further endeavors, including this exhausting theater that runs talkies all day on a constantly rotating schedule—those Lumière brothers, were supposed to visit and didn’t show up.
There are sweating glasses of champagne and trays of food spoiling in the back room.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, in place of Otto’s personal hero, the genius Louis Lumière, in came a red-haired woman and a man who was annoyed when Otto asked if he was part of the Africa house and lectured Otto on how there was no Africa house because Africa is an entire continent and not a single country, and he himself was from Budapest, as if Otto was supposed to know that just by looking at him.
They’d demanded to know if anyone strange had been lurking about, to which Otto responded only the two of you, after which he found out they were, in fact, good friends of Louis Lumière and there with his blessing.
Afraid for his job, Otto had tried to be helpful, but they wanted to view all the reels he had, which simply wasn’t possible.
He told them they could sit in the audience and watch like everyone else.
But then the woman, who seemed more sure of herself than any woman ought to, asked him if any equipment had gone missing.
Otto wipes sweat away from his forehead, staring at the edge of the flickering screen, waiting for the warning bulb next to the phonograph to turn red so he knows to synchronize the sound.
He’d lied to her, of course, but he’s paranoid they’ll somehow know the truth.
Not only is the theater missing one projector—he’d said it was broken when he did inventory and found it gone—but they’re also missing one of the specialized phonographs and Poulsen’s magnetic recorder device that they’d worked so hard to track down.
Sarah Bernhardt herself, famed actress, light of his life, pain in his ass, and the theater’s biggest draw, was using it to experiment with creating better talkies.
She’s convinced she can perfectly match her dialogue to the films. She’ll be livid when she finds out he’s lost their one and only telegraphone.
Otto can’t even say when the equipment went missing. Whenever he tries to think of the last time he saw the items, it’s like the flickering, clacking moment between reels.
There’s a solution. Otto knows there’s a solution, planted in the same place where his memories should be.
A quick and easy solve for when that woman and man come back, or others come and ask questions.
Otto won’t have any answers for them. But he doesn’t need to have answers anymore.
He knows exactly what to do, and he has to do it now.
As if in a dream, no conscious thought required, Otto leaves his station and moves deeper backstage.
Above his head is a heavy rig holding lights and a backup screen, operated by a simple pulley system.
Otto’s hand reaches into his pocket, pulls out a knife, and waits. Just as the scene on the screen in front of him cuts to a train roaring by, Otto cuts one of the ropes.
The rig crashes down, smashing half the equipment, neatly rendering it impossible to use or inventory.
It also smashes half his body. The crowd seated in the theater, unaware of what’s happened behind the screen they’re enraptured by, politely claps at the astonishing combination of sight and sound, assuming the noise of disaster was meant to replicate the noise of a train.
Otto looks down at his splintered legs, trapped beneath the rig, his bones jutting through his trousers, and he wonders:
Why did he do that?