Fire in a crowded theater
The theater manager, dressed in a dark suit and bearing an
expression of deep concern, tells us to stay calm, his shape dark against the
now-blank movie screen as if a ghost. He looks bigger than he is, as if the
screen shapes him in the same way it does the movie stars we have come to see.
Around me, people stir, panicked by the repeated word, “fire,”
he claims is nothing to worry about, small to start with, already extinguished,
although his voice trembles with the dread we all feel in close spaces when
disasters strike.
He keeps repeating the same phrase, “there’s no reason for trepidation,”
a word so far above the heads he speaks to, it does more harm than good, people
stirred up like cattle about to stampede, making me grateful I came to the show
alone, not with my wife or kids, alone time I need but not one with the word “fire”
in it.
How did it start? Is someone to blame? Did they catch the
person, and if not, will that person start another before we can all get out?
Firemen and women with fire hats and heavy gear appear at
the exits, as foreboding as an invading army, stirring up more in the crowd so
that the man in front of the screen cannot contain them, he repeating again and
again what no one understands in first place, the old FDR phrase coming into my
mind, I am afraid of fear, I breathe it in with the scent of burning I cannot
see but know must be real because he on the stage tells me it’s real, this idea
if fire burns beyond our vision, does it exist?
“Don’t panic,” one of the fire officials yells, throwing fuel
onto the fire, making many more think this is more serious than they are
telling us, “just move orderly towards the exits,” with orderly the last thing
any of us have in mind, people behind me pushing me and I push the people in
front of me, and this makes someone say, “I got to get out,” and then others,
say it, too, until everybody is shouting and nobody can hear the man on the
stage or the fire official, only our own voices yelling to hurry up, and this
makes everybody believe the fire is not out, and that it is worse than they are
telling us it is, and we might all die soon if we can’t reach the exit, some
climbing onto the stage with the man who no longer seems bigger than life,
looking helpless as he holds up his hands to hold the panicked crowd back, he
repeating again and again the phrase nobody understands even those close up who
can hear him.
I smell smoke, and push harder, and someone else yells he
sees the flames coming, when nobody can, and so we are shoving ahead all in one
mass of flesh, too big to fit through the doors, and so we get stuck in them,
fire official yelling, “one at a time,” but nobody wants to be the last man
out, and so we keep pushing, until somebody bushes too hard, and there is a
fight near the stage, one man hitting another until some forget the fire and
start hitting back, and I just keep pressing on, inching towards the light I see
coming through the open exit door, if I can reach it, if I can only breathe clean
air I can clear my head, people yelling on all sides of me “Fire! Fire!” when
there is none except the one inside our heads.
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