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THERE’S A SHORT film of Aisha’s I watched more than a few times during this period. It’s called Deadly Beige, is set in Cold War–era St. Petersburg, and relates the dual destruction of the mental health of a middle-aged brother and sister. The siblings share a house and are both long-standing party members, employed as writers of propaganda. One night they receive notification from Moscow that it’s time for them to do their bit toward helping keep the party strong. They are to do this by raising subtle suspicion among their fellow party members that they, the brother and sister, are in fact spies and observing the investigation into their activities at the same time as doing their genuine best to thwart this investigation. Discussion of this “exploratory exercise” is prohibited, so the siblings are unable to discern whether their St. Petersburg colleagues are aware of this exercise. Neither do they have the faintest idea who to report back to in Moscow. The letter they received was stamped with an authentic, and thus unrefusable, official seal, but was unsigned. This letter is delivered to them very late at night—the sister takes it from the trembling hand of a man who is then shot by a sniper as he walks away from their front door. The siblings then hear further shots at varying heights and distances that suggest the sniper has also been shot, followed by the sniper’s sniper. There can be no doubt that disobedience would be stupid. So would halfhearted obedience: If the brother and sister fail to perform their tasks satisfactorily they will receive “reprimands”—what does that mean, what is this suggestion of plural punishment per failed task? The first task is to tear the letter up and eat it. In order to receive their instructions they take turns visiting a derelict house on the outskirts of the city, where they find that week’s instructions written on a bedroom wall. They’re instructions for setting up various staged liaisons and the preparation of coded, nonsensical reports. Having read and memorized the instructions, they are to paint over them. The brother and sister are forbidden to enter the house together. So she enters alone, he enters alone, and it wasn’t so bad concocting slanders against each other as long as they took care not to look each other in the eye. Another concern: Some of the staged liaisons they set up feel all too genuine.
The siblings are so very unhappy. They can’t understand how this could be happening to them when they’ve never put a foot wrong. A colleague makes a jocular comment at lunch and introduces the possibility that someone in Moscow is pissed off with the wonder siblings, finds them insincere, has settled on this tortuous scheme to force them to dig their own graves. As you watch these siblings squabble over daily chores and exchange bland commentary on the doings of their neighbors there are unfortunate indications that every word of praise these two write actually is profoundly insincere, and has been from the outset. They have denied themselves all social bonds; everybody’s just an acquaintance. Now they search their souls, discern silhouettes of wild horses stampeding through the tea leaves at the bottom of their cups . . . What omens are these? “The horses are telling us to drink something stronger than tea.” This counsel is invaluable—the siblings dearly wish to be quiet, and it’s been their experience that alcohol ties their tongues for them. So they drink that at the kitchen table, facial expressions set to neutral, knees scraping together as each stares at the amply bugged wall behind the other’s head.
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IT’S A SPECTRAL wisp of a film, film more in the sense of a substance coating your pupils than it is a stream of images that moves before you. It’s all felt more than seen; tension darkens each frame; by the end you can see neither into these siblings’ lives nor out. Neither, it seems, can they. The film seems to be a judgment upon the written word and the stranglehold it assumes. Woe to those who believe in what is written, and woe to those who don’t.
I put this to Aisha and she shook her head.
“It’s a puppet show,” she said. Yes, it’s that too. The film’s siblings are played by two feminine-looking puppets and voiced by a singer and a puppeteer, both friends of A’s stepfather. The sister towers over the brother; she’s wooden. The brother’s made of metal, and his face is one of the most arresting I’ve seen, composed entirely of jagged scales—scales for eyelids, a button-shaped scale for a nose. When he opens his mouth to speak, it’s as if the sea is speaking.