There’s a scene in The Third Man I shall always remember. The cobbles of an empty square in Vienna glint with rain under the uncertain lights of the night. Distantly across the square stands a simple, cigarette kiosk wrapped by an advertisement. Then, through a door within the poster, steps a man.
The mystery of The Third Man is embedded in this moment – details such as penicillin, murder and intrigue are simple sideshows playing in its shadow. If film were reality, the viewer would never be the same again for he has seen something he is not meant to see.
Ask a child if she has seen the STOP sign being put in place, the statue being cleaned, the lines painted on the road. Her answer will be no. She may have, but her subconscious will override it because a child’s world is there without human agency: it is the way things are. To see these things will disturb this, undo the fixed reality of the world and leave her snagged to a hook that emerged when she saw it happen.
Children are born trusting in their parents: they do not expect love but accept it best, with minds free from thoughts about any ulterior motives. Their innate trust provides them a foundation of security: it is the way things are. The infrastructure of the world is likewise accepted: the lights in the streets don’t go out, signs change but it’s never seen. In a seamless working, the quiet authority of normality elicits effortless co-operation.
As they grow, children will see the posters being changed at the bus shelter, the models dressed in the window and lights going out in the skyscrapers. To imagine that this happened as part of a clandestine operation would be absurd: they know now that things have to be organised – they don’t just happen. And when they don’t, such abnormality is rejected as readily as normality was accepted. Life should work.
Things that are not meant to be seen differ from things which should not be seen. The latter belongs to human priorities: people undressing in their houses, dentures being adjusted or a policeman going off duty. There’s an unwritten rule about these which stems from decency and common sense. But some things are not meant to be seen: where birds die, frogs twink together or lightning strikes twice. Such sightings remove vital colour from the palette of life. Children know this: there is no such thing as an old lion, aeroplanes have no home and trees have never been seen to fall, only found that way. Nor should you ask why: it is the way things are. Were it not, The Third Man would cease to astound.
Sometime you are going to have to consider collecting some of your short essays and publishing them as a collection. Not because there would ever be a huge market for them – there is not, in today’s witless society, a very big market for thoughtful, reflective writing – but because they deserve to reach a wider audience; to be made available to those readers who do enjoy well crafted, thoughtful writing.
Have you ever read anything by the Italian scholar, writer and philosopher (since deceased) Umberto Eco? ‘Some things are not meant to be seen’ put me in mind of him.