Tuesday, she dropped by Antares to collect a check and hopefully secure more work in the upcoming weeks, but Mario was still being evasive about future projects. At night she thought of the time a construction crew accidentally found more than a hundred nitrate negatives hidden under an ice rink in Dawson City. Strange discoveries happened at times, stories you wouldn’t believe if someone told them to you. Abel could be speaking the truth; Ewers might have been real. She kept going back and forth about him. Wednesday, she ventured to her sister’s place and they watched TV together. She hardly paid attention to the images on screen, thinking again of Beyond the Yellow Door. How much film had Abel shot before production shut down? What were the “half-stories” that happened on set that Abel had alluded to? All she’d ever heard was that Urueta had abandoned horror after Beyond the Yellow Door and picked other genres, something that was confirmed by his filmography. He hadn’t done too well and his career had quickly fizzled out.
Afterward, Montserrat went browsing around a shop that carried vintage magazines, looking at issues of Mexico Cinema and Cinelandia, with their yellowed pages and pictures of ancient actors. How things had changed since those golden years, not only at the box office, but also when it came to post-production. There was something kinesthetic about editing sound that would soon be lost as computers took hold of the business. Her thoughts whirled around negatives and lavender stock carefully wrapped in tissue paper, hand-winders, Moviolas, tables and joiners and cleaning machines. She’d met a negative cutter who told her you should never put nitrate in a tight container. It should have enough space to breathe. Breathe, like a fine wine! It had a special scent, too, once it had begun to deteriorate, but she couldn’t remember what it was.
She grabbed one of the magazines and went to the counter. Behind it sat an old woman who was doing a crossword. She smiled at Montserrat.
“Hey, Trini, you know every actor and director that set a toe in films in the fifties, don’t you? Ever heard of a guy called Wilhelm Ewers?” she asked, placing a copy of Cinelandia on the counter. Sonia Furió was on the cover and it had an interview with Urueta, from when he’d shot The Opal Heart in a Bottle. “He would have been a hanger-on in the late fifties, beginning of the sixties. Used to date Alma Montero and did a movie with Abel Urueta, but it never got released. Beyond the Yellow Door. I don’t know if he appeared in anything else, but I’m trying to find out.”
“He doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Ever heard anything about Beyond the Yellow Door?”
“No, but he had a spate of films that fell through in the sixties. Not that he was the only one; cinema took a dive around that time,” the woman said, shaking her head. “Urueta didn’t help himself by being difficult. I heard he spent more time at the racetrack than reading a script back in the day. I heard he got involved with gangsters and almost had his legs broken. Didn’t he die last year?” the woman wondered.
“He’s still around,” Montserrat said, handing her a bill.
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m not even sure,” she said, and it was the truth.
There was a guy she knew, Fernando Melgar, who sold movie memorabilia and who once told her he had a script from The Curse of the Hanged Man, Abel Urueta’s last horror flick, annotated by Romeo Donderis. Nando’s prices were steep, which is why she didn’t bid on that, but he had mentioned that he could get Donderis himself to authenticate the script. At the time, she had thought it was a ploy to try to impress her—Nando was a horny creep—but maybe she ought to call him and ask if he knew anything about Beyond the Yellow Door. She was even tempted to drop by his apartment uninvited, see if he’d chat with her. Then she thought better of it. Nando would see it as a come-on, and she’d be stuck fending him off. Besides, was a random idiot who sold autographed pictures of Lilia Prado in tight leopard-print dresses really going to know anything about Wilhelm Ewers? Nando might have heard a story or two about Beyond the Yellow Door, but it would be the same rumors about financing gone sour she’d heard, or the stories that Abel had a gambling problem.
When Montserrat returned home she phoned Tristán and complained about her futile attempt to build a story. Wilhelm Ewers remained faceless, only a smudge in her mind, like the discolored bottom of a film can.
“All the stuff at the Cineteca is useless. If I was doing a piece about Abel’s career it might fly, but I’m looking for this one movie and this one fucked-up German who wrote it and I’m not having any luck.”
“Don’t panic yet. Urueta is going to give you the interview you need sooner or later.”
“He doesn’t like us.”
“He got a little tense, but Urueta loves talking. He wouldn’t shut up about Liz Taylor and Richard Burton and how he had cocktails with them several times when Burton was shooting The Night of the Iguana. He’s an old soldier sharing war stories. He wants to be heard.”
“Not by me anymore. Not if Enigma is involved. This is bullshit.”
Editing was changing. The Moviola and the Steenbeck machines were yielding space to video monitors, tapes, and computers. Beyond the Yellow Door was an item from another era; it enchanted her with its antiquated film stock and post-synchronized sound: it was like meeting a gentleman in a tweed suit and a monocle these days. She wanted the story about its troubled production. She wanted to discover its secrets, and there was nothing to be known. In her mind, the picture she had assembled of the film was vanishing, like decomposing celluloid.
“What isn’t! Listen, hang in there. I’ll soften the old man. Be ready to come over on Saturday.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered without enthusiasm.
Friday instead of going to the Cineteca she headed to the archives at Lecumberri. She found more of the same: stubs, film capsules, a few reviews. An old issue of Cinema Reporter dated 1960 provided her with the only significant piece of material she was able to dig up: a black-and-white photo showing Ewers.
The picture in fact showed four people. Two of them she identified easily. Abel Urueta had his trademark scarf, and Alma Montero, although older, was recognizable from the publicity photos from her silent era years. A pretty, young woman in a strapless dress was new to Montserrat. She had the air and smile of a socialite if not an actress. The fourth person was a man in a dark suit. They sat with Alma at the forefront, the lens more interested in her, then Abel, the girl, and finally the man at the farthest end of the table almost an afterthought. The occasion must have been a birthday celebration or a big event, for there was confetti in Alma’s hair.
The caption read: “Film star Alma Montero, director Abel Urueta and his fiancée Miss Clarimonde Bauer, and Mr. Wilhelm Ewers enjoy an evening at El Retiro.” The story that accompanied the picture was a stub and useless filler, like everything else she’d found, but at least the image made a ghost tangible. Because until that moment she had begun to believe there was no Ewers. He had evaded her, but at least she was able to contemplate the reality of the man.
Yet stubbornly, as if he had known he was being sought, the man in the picture appeared almost out of frame, his head inclined, so that you couldn’t get a good glimpse of his face no matter how much Montserrat squinted and tried to make out more details. She could see the balloons decorating the background, but not Ewers.