Syndrome E

1

Be the first one there.

No sooner had he seen the classified ad than Ludovic Sénéchal hit the road at the crack of dawn, covering the 120 miles between suburban Lille and Liège in record time.

For sale: old films, 16 mm, 35 mm, silent and sound. All genres, short and full length, 1930s and after. 800+ reels, including 500 spy thrillers. Make offer on site.

This sort of notice was pretty rare on a general-interest Web site. Usually, owners of such things sold them at trade fairs or put them up on eBay. This ad sounded more like someone trying to dump an old fridge. It boded well.

In the center of the Belgian municipality, Ludovic parked after some effort, verified the number on the building, then introduced himself to its occupant: Luc Szpilman. Around twenty-five, Converse All-Stars, surfer shades, Bulls T-shirt, scattered body piercings.

“Oh, right, you’re here for the movies. Come this way—they’re in the attic.”

“Am I the first?”

“There should be others soon. I’ve already had a few calls. I didn’t think they’d go this fast.”

Ludovic followed close behind. The house was typical Flemish: bland colors and dark brick. The rooms were all arranged around the stairwell, a kind of main area lit by a well of brightness.

“Can I ask why you’re getting rid of these old films?”

Ludovic had chosen his words carefully: getting rid, old… The bargaining had already started.

“My father died the other day. He never told anybody what he wanted done with them.”

Ludovic couldn’t believe his ears: not even cold in the ground, and already the patriarch was being stripped clean. On top of which, his idiot son didn’t see the point of hanging on to full-length movies that weighed a good fifty pounds each when you could store a thousand times more at a thousand times less weight. Poor sacrificed generation…

The staircase was so steep you could break your neck. Once up in the attic, Szpilman switched on a dim bulb. Ludovic smiled and his collector’s heart skipped a beat. There they sat, completely protected from natural light. Variously colored canisters stacked in turrets of twenty. There was that wonderful celluloid smell, and the air barely circulated between the storage racks. A ladder on wheels provided access to the highest shelves. Ludovic moved closer. On one side were the 35 mm, a hefty stock of them, and on the other the 16 mm, which were his particular interest. The circular canisters were all labeled and arranged perfectly. Silent classics, feature films from the golden age of French cinema, and especially spy thrillers, easily filling more than half the shelves. Ludovic took one in his hands. The Chairman, a film by John Lee Thompson about the CIA and Communist China. A complete, intact print, preserved from humidity and light like a bottle of vintage wine. There were even pH strips in the canisters to monitor acidity. Ludovic struggled to hide his emotion. This treasure alone would have fetched five hundred euros on the open market, easy.

“I take it your father was a fan of spy films?”

“And how—you should see his library. Conspiracy theories, the whole nine yards. It was like an obsession.”

“How much do you want for these?”

“I poked around on the Web. It’s a hundred euros a reel, give or take. Mainly I want to clear all this out as quick as possible, ’cause I need the space. So the price is negotiable.”

“I certainly hope so.”

Ludovic kept rummaging.

“Your father must have had a private screening room?”

“Yeah, we’re about to redo it. Getting rid of the old stuff and putting in all new equipment. LCD screen and the latest home system. Here’s where I’m going to set up a practice space for my band.”

Disgusted by such a lack of respect, Ludovic turned to his right, rearranged some piles of films, immersed himself in the celluloid aroma. He discovered features by Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, then, farther on, classics like Hamlet and Captain Fracasse. He wished he could take them all, but his functionary’s salary at Social Security and his various monthly subscriptions—online dating, Internet, cable, satellite—didn’t leave him much wiggle room. So he’d have to make choices.

He walked toward the sliding ladder. Luc Szpilman cautioned him:

“Careful on that. That’s where my father fell and fractured his skull. I mean, really, climbing up there at eighty-two…”

Ludovic paused an instant, then rushed forward. He thought of the old man, so passionate about his films that he’d died for them. He climbed as high as he could and continued shopping. Behind The Kremlin Letter, on a hidden shelf, he discovered a black canister with no label. Balancing on the ladder, Ludovic picked it up. Inside was what looked like a short, since the film took up only part of the reel. Ten or twenty minutes’ projection time, tops. Probably a lost film, a unique specimen that the owner had never managed to identify. Ludovic grabbed it up, climbed down, and added it to the stack of nine cult films he’d already chosen. Anonymous reels like this always added spice to the screenings.

He turned around, playing it cool, but his pulse was pounding.

“I’m afraid most of your movies aren’t worth a whole lot. Pretty standard stuff. And besides, can you smell that odor?”

“What odor?”

“Vinegar. The films have been affected by vinegar syndrome. They’ll be worthless before long.”

The young man leaned forward and sniffed.

“You sure about that?”

“Absolutely. I’m willing to take these ten off your hands. Shall we say thirty-five euros apiece?”

“Fifty.”

“Forty.”

“All right…”

Ludovic wrote out a check for four hundred euros. As he was pulling away from the curb, he noticed a car with French plates looking for a parking spot.

No doubt another collector—already.

Ludovic emerged from his home projection booth and sat down, alone with a can of beer, in one of the twelve fifties-style leatherette seats that he’d scavenged when they closed the Rex: his own private movie theater. He’d created an authentic auditorium for himself in the basement of his house, which he called his “mini-cinema.” Fold-up seats, stage, pearlescent screen, Heurtier Tri-Film projector: he had it all. At the age of forty-two, the only thing he was missing was a partner, someone to squeeze close while watching Gone with the Wind in the original English. But for the moment, those lousy dating sites had yielded only one-night stands or washouts.

It was nearly three in the morning. Saturated with images of war and espionage, he decided to round out his marathon screening with the unidentified, and incredibly well-preserved, short feature. It must have been a copy. These unlabeled films sometimes turned out to be veritable treasures or, if the gods were really smiling, lost works by famous filmmakers like Méliès, Welles, or Chaplin. The collector in him loved to fantasize about such things. When Ludovic unspooled the leader to wind the film into the projector, he saw that the strip was marked 50 FRAMES PER SECOND. That was unusual: normally it was twenty-four per second, more than sufficient to give the illusion of movement. Still, he adjusted the shutter speed to the recommended setting. No point watching it in slow motion.

Within seconds, the whiteness of the screen yielded to a dark, clouded image, with no title or credits. A white circle appeared in the upper right corner. Ludovic wondered at first if it was a flaw in the print, as often happened with those old reels.

The film began.

Ludovic fell heavily as he ran upstairs.

He couldn’t see a thing, not even with the lights on.

He was completely blind.