Wherein we see a low-budget apocalypse stage-managed and directed by Filippo Ragone.
Wherein Moses renovates the Café Spartacus by employing foreign workers.
Wherein Freddy Dubois and Sandy Sparks transform the corpse of Nelson Trapp into a plaster statue.
Wherein photographs taken by Claire Premier of characters of The Crippled King are set alight in the nightfall.
Wherein the Daughter of Leïla will charm snakes on a high-wire. Madame Roberge, Nelson Trapp, Judith Roberge, Lou Birkanian, Roy Williams and Ferdinand, Catherine Ragone and Richard Premier are dead.
Moses, who has inherited Old Man Roberge's gold mines, has recovered the Café Spartacus. He renovates the building with a crew of foreign workers speaking strange tongues. They use an electric welding machine as Moses oversees their work.
The Daughter of Leila is rehearsing a music-hall act which involves her charming snakes on a high-wire. It will be a hit.
Freddy Dubois, who has become a community radio announcer, has a regular program on the airways. From time to time, we hear excerpts from it. The program is entitled «The Tales of Lou Birkanian».
Having survived all accidents due to the excess of speed, the immortal Filippo Ragone (known as the Moron) stage manages them all. In his neon lit booth, he sits before a console with chrome dimmers and switches. He is having the time of his life, while nibbling on raisins. Like a god, according to his inspiration, he decides how the show progresses. Shouting triumphant "YEH’s", he turns lights on and off, sets off smoke machines and ventilators, inflates or deflates rubber hoses that lay about the stage and blasts out music exactly as he pleases.
Claire Premier, who has set up a darkroom in a corner, develops large format prints of her photographs that she hangs, still wet, on a clothesline. These photographs are of all the characters of The Crippled King.
At one point, Sandy Sparks and Freddy Dubois will drag on the corpse of Nelson Trapp. They'll try to make a statue out of it by covering it with quick drying plaster. When their work is done, they'll hoist the statue on a plinth in the middle of the stage.
At one point, Sandy Sparks and Freddy Dubois will drag on the corpse of Nelson Trapp. They'll try to make a statue out of it by covering it with quick drying plaster. When their work is done, they'll hoist the statue on a plinth in the middle of the stage.
In the end, both the stage manager's booth and auditorium begin to glow with a strange purple light. To his amazement, Filippo finds that he no longer controls his console. A sound of locusts is heard together with that of a racing washing machine. The volume builds to a deafening climax. The stage manager's booth explodes and Filippo Ragone disappears.
In the silence that follows, the photographs are set aflame and burn. The statue of Nelson Trapp blows apart. The foreign welders are petrified and frozen their welding torches still burning. It is by their light that the Daughter of Leila performs her snake-charming high-wire act.
The lighting slowly diminishes to nothing. In the dark, we hear Freddy Dubois on the radio: «We interrupt our regular programming for this breaking news: a strange incident has occurred at the Café Spartacus in the neighborhood of the Arsenal at the corner of Belle-Isle Boulevard and Bourbonnais …
The End
