Tulse Luper Journey
Extended Suitcase List
In this document you can find additional information about Tulse Luper and each individual suitcase.
The black text is the official guide, the grey text is additional information written by Douglas Gayeton
Contents:
•Introduction Tulse Luper
•More about 3 Tulse Luper Films
•Suitcase List with aditional information
[NOTE ABOUT NAMING/NUMBERING SYSTEM IN THE GREY PARTS OF THIS DOCUMENT]
THE “TULSE LUPER SUITCASES” ARE THREE FILMS
TL1 = “THE TULSE LUPER SUITCASE: THE MOAB STORY”
TL2 = “THE TULSE LUPER SUITCASE: VAUX TO THE SEA”
TL3 = “THE TULSE LUPER SUITCASE: FROM SARK TO FINNISH”
PLEASE NOTE THAT INDIVIDUAL PAGE NUMBERS FROM THE SCREENPLAYS OF THESE FILMS ARE
REFERRED TO LIKE THIS:
“TL1-12” = PAGE #12 FROM FIRST LUPER FILM, “THE MOAB STORY”
THERE ARE 92 SUITCASES FEATURED IN THE FILMS
THE CONTENTS OF EACH SUITCASE ARE DESCRIBED IN THIS DOCUMENT AND REFERRED TO
LIKE THIS:
S1 = SUITCASE #1
TULSE HENRY PURCELL LUPER
being a brief introduction to his life
1911: TULSE LUPER WAS BORN IN NEWPORT, WALES
Tulse’s father (Ivor) was a coal miner. He fought for the Allies in World War I and was gassed by the Germans,
which left him with permanently weakened lungs. Tulse’s mother (Carrie) was a housewife with two children:
Tulse, the eldest, and Gabriel, 9 years younger.
From an early age Tulse declares that he doesn’t want to be a coal miner or a soldier (like his father) but a person
who can “find things”. He also, oddly enough, expects that he will spend much of his time being a “prisoner” in
jails both real and imagined (TL1-13).
1930: STUDIES AT DUBLIN UNIVERSITY
He attends the university in Dublin, where he writes a fake anthropological fiction that is later turned into a film
called “Water Wrackets” (TL1-21).
1934: TRAVELS TO UTAH
His study of Lost Mormon cities makes him into an amateur cartographer (TL1-53). While there he meets a group
of Mormon American Fascists who will keep him “prisoner” for nearly the rest of his life.
1938: WORKS AS JOURNALIST IN ANTWERP, BELGIUM
Tulse Luper later finds himself in Antwerp, where he works as a natural history correspondent for the Manchester
Guardian and the Times. His profession is at times a writer, naturalist, archeologist, but he primarily considers
himself a collector (TL1-16). He is eventually imprisoned for being a spy by the Red Fox Brigade, a group of
Belgian Fascists.
1940: CINEMA IN STRASBOURG
Luper is later a prisoner in a movie theater called the Arc en Ciel.
1941: MAID, PAINTER’S MODEL AND TUTOR IN FRANCE SEASIDE TOWN
After escaping from Strasbourg Luper finds himself living with the Montessier family, where he holds a variety of
jobs, including model, tutor, and painter’s model.
1941: LEFT ON ISLAND OF SARK IN ENGLISH CHANNEL
Luper’s time on this island is perhaps the only moment of freedom in his adult life.
1943: REAPPEARS IN DOPPOLDOPA, ON THE ITALIAN MEDITERRANEAN COAST BETWEEN LA SPEZIA
AND GENOA.
Luper is once again a prisoner, this time of the Italian Fascists. He is asked to play a French horn in a band
composed of other prisoners.
1943: IMPRISONED IN MOLE ANTONELLIANA TOWER IN TURIN, ITALY
Later that year Luper finds himself imprisoned inside a former synagogue in Turin. His occupation has become
that of elevator man.
1943: IMPRISONED IN PALAZZO FORTUNY IN VENICE, ITALY
Still in the same year, Luper ends up in Venice, this time prisoner in the Republic of Salo, Mussolini’s fascist
regime.
1944: IN ROME
It is unclear if Luper was a prisoner here. It mainly seems that he was enjoying the city’s architecture.
1950: IMPRISONED IN MOSCOW
While here he works on a fictional work called “The Historians”.
1953: IMPRISONED IN LECHSTEIN-BERGEN, EAST GERMANY (TL3-5).
1959: IMPRISONED AT SOVIET BORDER CHECKPOINT
He fulfills two roles here. First, he plays chess with the commandant of the checkpoint. Second, he is forced to tell
the commandant’s wife a story each day. This collection is called the “Gulag Scheherazade”.
1962: MAKES PORNOGRAPHIC FILMS IN HONG KONG
1989: DIES IN MANCHURIA (LOCATION AND DATE UNKNOWN)
One date for his death has been given (09 06 89) but not much else is known about Tulse Luper.
The recent discovery of 92 suitcases supposedly associated with Luper has led scholars from
around to world to speculate on various aspects of this enigmatic figure’s life.
THE TULSE LUPER SUITCASE FILMS
being a brief outline
This exploration of Luper’s life has been painstakingly documented by Peter Greenaway in 3
feature-length films:
1. “The Tulse Luper Suitcase: The Moab Story”
2. “The Tulse Luper Suitcase: Vaux to the Sea”
3. “The Tulse Luper Suitcase: From Sark to Finnish”
Within these three films, the formal nature of Greenaway’s examination breaks Tulse Luper’s life
into 15 Episodes (numbered through 16, but no 7th exists):
FILM 1/EPISODE 1: NEWPORT, WALES – 1921 – TL1-1/17 (SUITCASES 1-3)
We are introduced to a ten year-old boy named Tulse Luper. He is playing war games with his
friends behind his house when MARTINO KNOCKAVELLI brings a brick wall tumbling down on
Tulse. Somehow the boy emerges unscathed1.
As punishment for playing war games and causing a general ruckus his father locks Tulse in a
coalhouse (TL1-9). This is Tulse’s FIRST IMPRISONMENT. While there he’s secretly visited by
his buddy, Martino. The two boys each have favorite characters. Luper’s is Tiger Lily, an Asian
woman in the “Rupert Bear” comic. Knockavelli’s is the little mermaid in the Hans Christian
Anderson story. The boy’s also talk about what they want to do when they get older. Luper says
that he wants to travel, see things, make lists, etc. He also realizes that he’ll be a prisoner a lot.
Knockavelli, meanwhile, says he wants to document everything Luper does.
FILM 1/EPISODE 2: MOAB DESERT – 1934 – TL1-18/63 (SUITCASES 4-13)
Tulse and Martino go exploring the Utah desert in search of Mormon ghost towns (lost cities).
Luper is stopped by Mormons of German/Alsatian descent (the Hockmeisters) who claim Luper has
been spying on a nude woman (Passion Hockmeister).
Tulse’s complex relationship with this Mormon family will run through the rest of the three films.
Tulse nearly manages to escape these Mormons, only to be arrested on trumped-up charges. His
SECOND PRISON becomes the Moab Jail. His cell is lit by a single bulb (as are all of his makeshift
prisons).
Blaise Poignard, a Luper lecturer, offers various theories on how people are all prisoners of
something. Poignard also contends that Luper had a theory about jailers: he said that everyone has
them.
Alphonse Fengetty, a German scholar, likens Luper and his suitcases to the snail that travels
with its house on its back (TL1-43). He even says that snails prefer moonlight, which he calls
“ideal prison conditions”. The snail metaphor also appears in the closing of Greenaway’s film, “A
Zed and Two Noughts”. Fengetty also suggests that the suitcase is a suitable metaphor to
describe a world that’s “on the move”.
Martino Knockavelli ultimately helps Luper escape from the Moab jail (TL1-56).
FILM 1/EPISODE 3: ANTWERP – 1938 – TL1-65/135 (SUITCASES 14-30)
Tulse Luper finds himself in Antwerp, working as a Natural History correspondent for the
Manchester Guardian and the Times.
He shares an apartment in Antwerp with MARTINO KNOCKAVELLI.
1
This is the most pivotal scene in the three films. As we will learn at the end of the final film, Tulse
actually died in this accident. We will also discover that Knockavelli’s guilt at killing his childhood friend
led him to “invent” the 92 suitcases that define Luper’s life. Martino’s explanation can be found on
TL1-14.
On August 23, 1938 their apartment is raided by members of the Red Fox Brigade, a Belgian
fascist paramilitary group. They accuse Tulse of spying on the nearby coast and confine him in the
bathroom of the Antwerp Train Station. This is Tulse’s THIRD IMPRISONMENT.
The Mormon ranchers from Episode 2 (The Hockmeisters, including Passion Hockmeister) make an
appearance here. Being American fascists, they have returned to Europe and now work side-byside with the Red Fox Brigade. These people will be later explained by Lennie Cartoucher, a Luper
Lecturer, at a Symposium in the Brooklyn Museum (TL1-118).
Martino attempts to free Tulse from his confinement, but this plan fails.
After Percy Hockmeister (husband of Passion Hockmeister, American Fascist and Mormon rancher)
is killed by a Belgian fascist/dentist named PALMERION, the Red Fox Brigade decides to charge
Luper with the murder, as they have concluded that it has become too much of a nuisance to keep
Luper in captivity.
Luper has an affair with CISSIE COLPITTS, the stenographer hired to transcribe all of Luper’s
conversations and the various notes found in his books.
However, two events save Luper’s life. First is the arrest of a Tulse Luper lookalike (FLORIS
CREPS) on unrelated charges. The second is the appearance of Passion Hockmeister’s father,
JULIAN LEPHRENIC. He makes a deal to “share” the prisoner for three months, during which
time the Belgian Fascists can collect enough incriminating photographs of Luper in league with the
enemy to give to the press. After this time, Luper will be in Lephrenic’s custody (TL1-120), with
two jailers, Zeloty and Figura, to be hired as Luper’s captors.
FILM 2/EPISODE 4: VAUX-LE-VICOMTE – 1940 – TL2-1/58 (SUITCASES 32-38)
Luper is brought by his captors, Zeloty and Figura, to a chateau 30 km. outside Paris on the
evening of 22 July/June (?), 1940, the night the French surrender to the Germans. The chateau
has an interesting history. It was built by Louis XIV’s chief superintendent, Fouquet. The story is
that the King was so envious of the chateau’s beauty that he had Fouquet imprisoned for life and
had everything stripped out of the chateau and brought to Versailles (TL2-6).
Luper’s FOURTH PRISON is set on the grounds of a Vaux chateau, in the Trianon pavilion. While
there he is asked what type of writing he does. Luper replies that he writes “lists, catalogues, and
inventories” (TL2-11).
Luper also notes that “everything in the world has been created to be put into ... a book ... a prison
... or a suitcase.” (TL2-12).
Luper finds himself fitted with an iron mask (TL2-43). His captors Zeloty and Figura are dressed
like Mazarin and Richelieu (characters from the book,”The Man in the Iron Mask”). A German
general (Foestling) comments, “Your prisoner, gentlemen, has assumed even greater importance
than you ever dared imagine. You now have a prisoner to be kept in perpetual imprisonment.
Imprisonment everlasting.”
In a later conversation with the General, Luper comments that people should be curious about
what the ultimate prison is. Foestling replies that it’s a coffin (TL2-47).
The General is later arrested by higher ups and accused of the same crimes as the Vaux chateau’s
previous owner, Fouquet. Essentially, he is accused of living too well and with fraternizing with an
American (?), by which they mean Luper.
The General has a change of heart. Instead of handing Luper over to the authorities he removes
the iron mask, puts it on his own head, and lets Luper escape (TL2-48).
Luper is ultimately led out of captivity by Zeloty and Figura, who are under Lephrenic’s employ.
When they are captured by a German firing squad (after having stolen paintings from the Vaux
chateau), Zeloty sells Figura out. The Germans kill him. Somehow Zeloty and Luper manage to
survive and the Germans move on.
FILM 2/EPISODE 5: STRASBOURG – 1940 – TL2-58/101 (SUITCASES 39-44)
Luper’s FIFTH PRISON is set inside a cinema in Strasbourg The cinema is called “Arc-en-Ciel”, a
reference to Greenaway’s film, “A Zed and Two Noughts”, where the estate of Alba Bewick is given
this name. It is also the name of a legless horseman who falls in love marries Alba later in the film.
Luper measures the cinema’s dimensions: 652 numbered seats. Auditorium is 30 X 43 meters. 18
house lights. Screen dimension: 15 X 12 meters (TL2-59). A movie that continually plays is Joan
of Arc by Dreyer, a metaphor for France humiliated (at the hands of the British instead of the
Nazis) yet also a film to give the French resistance hope.
Zeloty is still Luper’s jailor. Feeling guilty for the death of Figura (his partner) at the hands of the
Germans back in Vaux, Zeloty arranges for Figura’s wife and children to join him in Strasbourg. To
complicate matters further, Madame Plens (Zeloty’s lover back in Vaux) arrives to join Zeloty (TL267).
Gottschalk and Lephrenic, the Mormons who met Luper in the first film, show up in Strasbourg.
Remember that Zeloty is in Lephrenic’s employ. Luper is actually Lephrenic’s prisoner. Lephrenic
informs Luper that Passion Hockmeister (Lephrenic’s daughter) has married Palmerion, the dentist
from Antwerp. Palmerion has moved up in the world. He is now Himmler’s dentist.
A Strasbourg club has been turned into a makeshift home for Zeloty, Figura’s wife and children,
and Madame Plens.
It is revealed by Madame Plens that Lephrenic is actually an “American rocket-expert on lease to
Germany by the Americans—a man respected for his religious beliefs” (TL2-83).
When Luper comes upon Lephrenic one day, he asks to be released from his “prison”. Lephrenic
says he can’t. It is simply too profitable to keep Luper. It seems he is selling all the manuscripts
Luper writes and keeping the money for himself (TL2-85).
Cissie Colpitts, the stenographer from Antwerp, shows up at the cinema. (TL2-93). The film
onscreen is “Boudu Sauve les Eaux” or Boudu Saved from Drowning (a film that Cissie Colpitts will
be watching, 40 years later, at the time of her death in another movie by Greenaway called
“Drowning by Numbers”).
Luper eventually escapes from Strasbourg with the help of two children, Jonah and Cecile
Moitessier.
FILM 2/EPISODE 6: DINARD HOUSE – 1941 – TL2-101/140 (SUITCASES 45-51)
The Moitessier children are able to get Luper to their family home on the coast. Luper is offered
sanctuary (his SIXTH PRISON) if he agrees to perform three jobs: the first is to be a maid (a job
for which he must dress as a woman); the second is to be a nude model for painting exercises; the
third is to tutor the Moitessier children in English.
Madam Moitessier is devoted to the works of a painter named Ingres. In fact, she is named after
one of his paintings.
Monsieur Moitessier is a doctor who buys corpses to further his medical investigations. He is
especially interested in the pituitary, duodenum and appendix. He claims that the Nazis are very
interested in his work. This will later inspire Luper, while a prisoner in Moscow, to write a fiction
called “Augsbergenfeldt”, which is about a 17th century anatomist looking for the seat of the soul.
Moitessier comments that “the cinema is about the only means of escape we’ve got these days out
of our grim little prisons”.
When four men in Fascist uniforms appear to arrest and possibly kill Luper, he escapes into the
night.
[NOTE: THERE IS NO EPISODE #7 (?)]
FILM 3/EPISODE 8: ISLAND OF SARK – 1941 – TL3-1/23 (SUITCASES 53-55)
The next time we find Luper is on the Isle of Sark. He spends three months alone on the beach,
tending a garden, even writing a work called “Robinson Crusoe on Concrete Island” (a novel in
1974 by JG Ballard is called “Concrete Island”, though Greenaway also refers to a bogus ecological
text of the same name in the film, “A Walk through H”). This is his SEVENTH PRISON.
While alone on Sark, Luper also wrote “Ten Maps to Paradise”. One of these later ended up drawn
and painted in the Monastery of St. Francis in Vilnius, Lithuania. A second is found in a prison
dungeon in Lubjilana, Slovenia. A third is on the walls of a dilapidated chocolate factory in Malmo,
Sweden (some critics complain, like William Dekkar does on SL3-10, that Luper never went to
Sweden ... but Knockavelli did ... we are begin closing in on the fact that the two are one and the
same). A fourth map is found in Sienna. It is televised. Luper was never in Sienna either ... but
Knockavelli was. A fifth map is found in an ice-factory in Helsinki.
A boat called “The Beagle” (name of Darwin’s boat used on travels that led to his theory of
evolution; Darwin’s work also appears in Suitcase #5) watches Luper’s actions from afar.
The three sisters on the Beagle (Leslie, Jeanne, and Frances Contumely) land on Luper’s beach and
try to seduce him. It is later recounted that our only record of Luper’s time on Sark with these
three women was from Knockavelli, who claims that Luper later told him about this in Hong Kong.
The sisters take photographs of Luper pretending to be dead from drowning in the water (Luper
reputedly died at the end of his life, SL3-139). These images later show up in the Sark Police
Morgue. These are done, also, in homage to early photographic works by Hippolyte Baynard, who
also photographed himself drowning.
The Contumely Sisters decide that their affair with Luper must end. They are horrified with how he
has desecrated their beach, and acutely embarrassed with their sexual liaisons with him. As they
leave they kill their dog, Sparrow, saying that the dog is the only witness to what happened to
them on that beach. The image of a dead dog also appears in Greenaway’s “ZOO: A Zed and Two
Noughts”.
FILM 3/EPISODE 9: DOPPOLDOPA – 1943 – TL3-23/29 (SUITCASE 56)
Luper and some 50 other prisoners end up on an Italian beach, captured by Italian Fascists led by
General Adamo Morelli. This is his EIGHTH PRISON. The prisoners are all given musical
instruments. Luper is given a French horn. When the prisoners are asked to perform, a tape
recording of the music plays instead and is sent through loudspeakers.
It is widely known that the prisoners’ main labors will be to excavate Etruscan artifacts for General
Morelli.
Luper considers the story of Shakespeare’s Prospero (The Tempest) and the geographical
inconsistencies of story where Prospero, the Duke of Milan, is dumped out at sea. Luper decides
that this location must have been the near this exact location (Doppoldopa). Luper draws
connections between Prospero’s exile and his own (Consult Greenaway’s film, “Prospero’s Books”).
Luper then comes upon Zeloty and Figura’s children. It turns out that Madame Plens and Figura’s
widow have left Zeloty and are having an amorous affair while also driving ambulances for the Red
Cross. Zeloty is now entrusted with the children. Five of them have already died.
Later that night Luper sees a film that chronicles the experiences of the American fascists in
Antwerp. The credits at the end of the film state that Luper was the writer.
The General’s wife, Lucinda, tells Luper that unless he agrees to write for her (and make love to
her), she will have him arrested. She draws comparison to a biblical story of Potiphar and Joseph
(Genesis 39:1-23).
Luper consents. They make love but are discovered by the General. He rages. Luper escapes inside
a large suitcase usual used to hold Etruscan archeological remains.
FILM 3/EPISODE 10: TURIN – 1943 – TL3-29/46 (SUITCASES 57-61)
Luper finds himself in his NINTH PRISON, an elevator in a tower called the Mole Antonelliana in
Turin for 18 weeks in the summer of 1943. The wartime local authorities decide that the building is
to be a clearing-house for the dispossessed. All confiscated belongings (including many suitcases)
will be stored here.
The middle of the lift has an elevator. It rises from “hell to heaven” 300 times a day. Luper’s main
job is to be the elevator man. (all of which is explained by Bollo Ecchi, Sicilian Luper authority, at
a Luper Symposium in 2002, TL3-30).
While in the tower Luper decides to make an inventory of all the suitcases abandoned there (TL332). This “inventory” becomes “92 stories of Amazing Suitcase Contents”. He also writes a series
of 8 STORIES set in the elevator at Mole Antonelliana (see S64).
Luper’s stay in the tower is brought to an end by the arrival of Passion Hockmeister (Luper’s
sometime lover and nemesis from Films 1&2) and Luper’s ex-captor, Zeloty.
FILM 3/EPISODE 11: VENICE – 1943 – TL3-46/61 (SUITCASES 66-68)
There are two schools of thought among Luper Scholars. One group claims that Luper died in the
Republic of Salo, Mussolini’s fascist state set in Northern Italy in 1943, a government kept propped
up by the Nazis (there is also a movie called “Salo” by Pasolini). Others suggest he was
imprisoned (his TENTH PRISON) in the book room/library of the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice (TL346). Luper’s situation is likened to that of St. Jerome, but instead of Jerome and his lion we see
Luper and a cat (TL3-47).
Luper is back in familiar territory. His captor once again is Zeloty (as in the first two films), only
this time Zeloty, instead of working for Julian Lephrenic, is working for Lephrenic’s daughter,
Passion Hockmeister. She has decided that since Luper won’t love her, she will keep him
imprisoned and sell his literary output to a speculator named Amadeus Lucca.
One day Luper is taken for a walk by Zeloty. Luper hides a mason’s small hammer, a chisel, and a
sharp paper knife in his coat. When he is alone with Zeloty in an alley he stabs and kills him with
the knife, then uses the hammer and chisel to break the chain that binds him to Zeloty (TL3-51).
A possible aid in Luper’s escape emerges: Passion Hockmeister’s violin-playing cousin, Ruby. She
brings Luper to the Church of St. Zachariah where he has an unexpected encounter with
MARTINO KNOCKAVELLI. Luper compares Knockavelli to John The Baptist. You’re “welcome in
the desert, but death hangs around you like a sandstorm” (TL3-54). Luper begins to question
Knockavelli’s motives. He wonders if he is the “jailor’s jailor”. Luper’s escape is thwarted by the
arrival of Passion Hockmeister and a group of Italian fascists, who capture Luper and destroy
Ruby’s violin. Before leaving the church Luper notes that a confession box in a church is the
smallest prison he knows (TL3-55). It is a coffin where one is obliged to sit upright.
After the episode in the church, Luper discovers that he is now Lephrenic’s prisoner once more.
Luper comments that he has been Lephrenic’s prisoner for many years. For the first time,
Lephrenic professes his love for Luper, saying that Venice is the “ideal city for being perfectly
honest in” (TL3-58).
Lephrenic also reveals that the suitcase Gottschalk gave Luper in Moab in the first film (S12:
Cherries and Dollars) was actually radioactive.
Finally, and in order to justify his treatment of Luper, Lephrenic says, “By making you an itinerant
prisoner I fed your myth. Kept it alive. And you know what experiences you’ve had.” (TL3-58).
Ironically, these words are better understood as Martino Knockavelli’s explanation for his own
role in creating the myth of Luper.
FILM 3/EPISODE 12: ROME – 1944 – TL3-61/67 (SUITCASES 69-78)
There are numerous Luper sightings associated with the 13 obelisks of Rome, however we cannot
say that he is a prisoner while in Rome. Perhaps this is because his chief jailer, Julian Lephrenic,
might have become his lover.
Stourley Kracklite (protagonist of “The Belly of the Architect”, a role portrayed by Brian Dennehy)
eats green figs with Julian Lephrenic. Kracklite is Passion Hockmeister’s current boyfriend.
Lephrenic is Hockmeister’s father. A Luper Scholar points out that the American actor who played
Kracklite in the Belly of the Architect looks very much like Lephrenic. This would mean that Brian
Dennehy, who played Kracklite in the film, looks like Lephrenic, so the two men eating figs,
theoretically, become the same person, or at least twins (make sense?) (TL3-63). The two men are
discussing what they are going to do (where they will escape to) now that the Americans are
descending upon Rome.
Lephrenic becomes sick after meeting Kracklite and consults a doctor (a sequence of events
straight out of “The Belly of the Architect”. The doctor says that perhaps Lephrenic is being
poisoned by Kracklite, who could be working as an agent of the CIA and is out to kill Lephrenic for
his un-American activities. In Greenaway’s film, “The Belly of the Architect”, it is Kracklite who
eats green figs then decides he is being poisoned and goes to see a doctor.
After working out at Foro Italico Stadium, Luper goes to the showers, where he meets Lephrenic.
The two men shower together. When they shower Lephrenic soaps Luper’s hair and tries to fashion
“soap horns”, just as Luper’s mother did when he was a boy (TL1-15). This scene seems curious,
since only Martino Knockavelli could have known about this similarity regarding soap horns. With
increasing regularity it is becoming clear that Knockavelli is simply in possession of two much
knowledge about Luper, giving increasing weight to the idea that something must be afoot.
A Luper scholar, Caezano Procturi, comments that Luper had finally given in to fascist powers, like
the poet Ezra Pound (TL3-65).
While in the showers Lephrenic and two others open a heavy suitcase to reveal that it contains 92
gold bars (S74-Gold Bars).
The Americans liberate Rome from the Nazis and Lephrenic dies (TL3-66). It is suggested that he
died from radiation poisoning due to his work with uranium, though Passion Hockmeister is
convinced that Luper is responsible. When Luper flees the city he is pursued by Passion
Hockmeister.
FILM 3/EPISODE 13: MOSCOW – 1950 – TL3-67/74 (SUITCASES 80-81)
We next find Luper in a Moscow jail. If we can conclude that he lived in no prisons while in Rome,
the Moscow jail is his eleventh prison.
He is in a bathtub, yet again writing on its white walls (as he did in Antwerp and Moab). He is
writing a fictional work called “The Historians”. Greenaway also spoke of such a book, which later
became the Tulse Lupe Suitcases.
We jump cut ahead to Strasbourg in the year 2000. A statue to Tulse Henry Purcell Luper has been
erected, honoring his time in the city. Vandals appear and do their damage to the statue. Cissie
Colpitts is on hand at its unveiling. When it is revealed it has no head, just a pumpkin.
A prisoner named Olaf Musil collects prison stories. Among those he collects are Luper’s and that
of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved many Jews in Bucharest from Nazi persecution
before being arrested by the Russians at the end of the war. He ended up in a Soviet gulag and
was never heard from again.
Luper, Wallenberg and Musil are taken from the prison and put into a car with Russian soldiers,
who kill Musil and throw him from the car.
FILM 3/EPISODE 14: EAST/WEST GERMAN CHECKPOINT – 1959/1960 – TL3-74/112 (SUITCASES 82-84)
It is nine years later. Luper is now a prisoner at border checkpoint set on a bridge (his twelve
prison). The commandant is a man named Kotchef. He refers to himself as Herod. He says
Wallenberg is a symbolic Barabbas, to be set free while Luper is held captive. Luper Lecturers
draw a connection Kotchef’s contention that he is “Keeper of the Bridge” and a popular children’s
story about the Troll of the Bridge and Billygoat Gruff.
Wallenberg is offered in a prisoner exchange for Rupert Bear (a comic book character from Luper’s
childhood). As he is being exchanged, Raoul is given a book by Hans Christian Anderson called,
“The Little Mermaid”. We recall a statue in Copenhagen on the same subject (TL1-10) and recall
that this is Martino Knockavelli’s fetish, not Luper’s. Curious. Wallenberg’s exchange goes bad. He
is stuffed in a car in a hail of gunfire and disappears.
Luper offers to become his keeper’s “Gulag Scheherazade”, essentially telling 1001 stories to
preserve his safety, in a nod to “Arabian Nights” (S82).
Meanwhile, the commandant of the Soviet bridge border checkpoint perfects a board game about
the events that take place on the bridge. This comes to be called, “Checkpoint”. To accompany
the game we are treated to 14 “Bridge Stories” (S83). The last story includes Luper’s escape.
FILM 3/EPISODE 15: HONG KONG – 1962 – TL3-112/135 (SUITCASES 85-88)
This episode opens with rooftops in Hong Kong loaded with stacks of luggage. Is this a lost
luggage repository?
When Martino Knockavelli is found here, he is working with a Hong Kong highway crew to excavate
a piece of concrete that reveals a suitcase. His job, we will later learn, is to make ice cream for the
Chinese.
A Japanese/Chinese translator named Sadako O speaks at a Luper Symposium in 2002. She looks
very much like the Tiger Lily character from the Rupert Bear comic that Luper read as a child. She
tells us some of Luper’s backstory: he was taken from the German/Soviet border checkpoint to
Yugoslavia, where he then ended up being handed over to the American Mormon Church near
Thessalonica OR to a Mormon enclave in Jerusalem. Either of these would be his thirteenth
prison.
When we finally see Luper, he is with Gottschalk and Passion Hockmeister, the two Mormons from
Moab, first seen in film #1. Both Gottschalk and Passion give Luper a biblical lesson from Genesis,
Chapter 19:30-38. Lot, along with his wife and daughters, had to flee Sodom and Gomorrah. They
were told NOT to look back. His wife did and she was turned into a pillar of salt. The two daughters
then decided that there would be no more men on earth, so to preserve the seed of their father the
two girls slept with him. The first child born was called Moab, which is the Utah town where
Gottschalk and Passion come from.
Luper suddenly finds himself in the pornographic film business. The name of his company is Pillar of Salt. This is
his fourteenth prison. Passion is one of the actresses. The visual aesthetic of their films are a cross between
Muybridge (earliest maker of moving pictures, done with individual cameras set in a row) blow-ups of the
paintings of Bacon (from 1950 to 1964), Goya’s War Capriccios, van Haarlem-Goltzius falling figures, images of
Chinese actors posed as corpses, Chinese decapitation photos, crucifixions, images of the Chinese death of a
thousand cuts.
Sadako O, originally hired by a government agency assigned to monitor the film industry in Hong
Kong, ends up working as an actress in Luper’s porno films. Sadako O reminds Luper of the Tiger
Lily character from the Rupert Bear comics of his childhood. The two ultimately become lovers.
Sadako O then kills Passion Hockmeister and puts her body in a suitcase originally used for cinema
lights (S85).
Luper is one the run. When captured by Chinese gangsters, his only possessions are “The
Pillowbook of Sei Shonagon” (inspiration for Greenaway’s film of the same name), a dustpan, a
silver metal comb, and a suitcase full of coins (S87) that reminds us of a similar case in Antwerp in
film #1 (S14).
It turns out that the gangsters work for Martino Knockavelli (TL3-124). Their odd conversation
makes clear (perhaps only in retrospect), that Knockavelli simply knows too much about Luper
(and his conversations ... like with Wallenberg) to be a casual or even a prejudiced observer. He
even admits finally, “I created you. I created the myth of Tulse Luper.”
Luper and Knockavelli put the suitcase with Passion Hockmeister’s body into an icehouse in Hong
Kong, which Luper says he will reclaim in 100 years. Then the last remaining Mormon fascist from
film #1, Gottschalk, makes a surprise appearance. With a gun in his hand he tells Luper that much
of what happened to him the last 30 years was due to Knockavelli. 1) The meeting with Cissie
Colpitts outside a Strasbourg Cathedral; 2) The drawings in his suitcase in Vaux; 3) his betrayal to
Van Hoyten in Antwerp; 4) his abandonment of Luper in Moab; 5) the discovery of Passion
Hockmeister’s body in Hong Kong. Before he has a chance to continue, Gottschalk is killed by
Knockavelli.
Due to Knockavelli’s work, Luper is deported from Hong Kong ... in exchange for a constant supply
of Knockavelli’s ice cream.
FILM 3/EPISODE 16: VARIOUS LOCATIONS – 1968-1990 – TL3-135/145 (SUITCASES 89-92)
It is 1968. Luper’s fifteenth prison is a Shrine Garden in Kyoto (TL3-135) where he sweeps the sand gardens.
As a form of penance he wears Passion Hockmeister’s photo on his back, and his body is pierced with Romanian
sewing needles. Whenever he gets the sand garden perfectly smooth 10 monks run out and mess it up so that
he has to start all over again. This continues through the seasons.
It’s now 1990 in Milan. An art show called “The Bathroom Arrest” shows part of Luper’s life. Knockavelli visits it
and shakes his head in denial (?). After he leaves the show Martino sees a woman who looks like Passion. They
have a drink at a sidewalk café in Milan. He shows her a suitcase filled with images of Luper (S89).
Knockavelli dies of a heart attack while eating ice cream in a Milan café in 1990.
Luper ends up in Manchuria. It is rumored that he drowned in 1989.
SUITCASE 1
COAL
A Suitcase of 92 coal lumps packed by the 10-year old Tulse Luper whilst he was imprisoned by his
father in the coal house of his home in Newport, South Wales in 1921. The 92 coal lumps were to
prophetically represent the major landscapes, real and metaphorical, of Luper’s life - a suitcase to
represent the geography of Tulse Luper’s life.
LIST
The Nipple
The Horseman
The Egg
The Stool
The Camel
The Two Friends
The Pawn
The Anvil
The Great Mound
The PriestÕs Head
The Mitre
The Nose
Bitten Rock
The Horn
The Ear
Tower Hill
The Three Sisters
Split Rock
PedlarÕs Hat
The Molar
The High Crump
Jug Mount
Moon Mountain
Monkey Rock
The Open Book
The Hook
The Crouching Cat
The Two Castles
The Fugitive
NapÕs Knob
Red Barn Mountain
The Whale
Dead ManÕs Head
The Lizard
The Ship
Bun Mountain
Bat Crag
The Knucklebone
No Name Hill
The Ghost
The Logga
The Blister
Blister Mountain
The Monk
The Cannon
The White Hand
The Skelter
The Chimneys
The Man without a Face
The Pizzle
The Orge
Rock-Pigeon Rock
The Nozzler
The Old Witch and her Baby
Funnel Mountain
The Monkey Bit By Its Tail
The Eye
The Jumping Fish
Apple Crag
Eagle Mountain
The Boots
The Bowman
Save-me Crags
The Cone
The Spur
Prickly Mount
Endurance
The Last Mountain
The Nose
The BellJar
The Lyre
The Pretty Pig
The Anvil
The Raven
Smokey Mountain
The Greenman
The Feathers
The Goat
The Wildman of Harris
The Pepper and Salt
The Backhand
Mustard Hill
Pokey Rock
The Brushes
Candlerock
The Mountains of the Moon
The Tumble
The SugarLoaf
The Empty Falls
The Hiccup
Mount Famous
The Boiler
LOCATION: Newport Backyards: Interior/Exterior Coalhouse
DATE: 1921
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-6
LATER FOUND: Luper Exhibition/Symposium 2002 (TL1-16)
DESCRIPTION: a suitcase of 92 coal lumps packed by 10-year old Tulse Luper while imprisoned by
his father in a coal house in their backyard in Newport, South Wales in 1921. The 92 coal lumps
represent the major landscapes, real and metaphorical, of Luper’s life.
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Tulse’s father was a coal miner.
Are the exotic locales imagined by the coal lumps metaphors for travel, for Tulse’s desire to
“escape” this “prison” and see the world?
The coal lumps, when stacked on the suitcase’s lid, look like objects in a Japanese sand
garden (refers to Kyoto Shrine Garden later seen on TL3-135).
Coal represents the world’s primary fuel source in the first half of the 20th century. It was
later replaced by uranium. The number 92 represents both the number of Tulse Luper
suitcases and the atomic number of uranium.
The suitcase is found in Tulse’s first “prison”, a coalhouse behind his house. Other objects
found in this coalhouse include:
1) photo of Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen (this being Martino Knockavelli’s
sexual obsession)
2) Tiger Lily (Luper’s obsession) and Rupert Bear comic taken from Daily Express
3) a small metal tin-toy figure of a soldier or cowboy later seen in Suitcase #5
4) a book of phrenology/eugenics
Tulse was beaten by his father before being placed in the coalhouse. He has red marks on
his butt.
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Martino studies the book of phrenology because he wants to remember what Tulse looks
like (S90).
Tulse’s attraction to the Tiger Lily character in the Rupert Bear comic demonstrates his
interest in the exotic (TL3-113).
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper was born in Newport, South Wales, in a coal-mining community.
SUITCASE 2
TOYS
A suitcase of toys packed by Luper’s mother in 1924 after her 12 year old son had left home. The
toys were a collection assembled out of the assortment of objects assembled by Luper, relative to
his many future interests, most of them associated with the disciplines of measuring and collecting,
classifying and ordering. It is a suitcase to represent the interests of Luper’s life.
LOCATION: Newport Backyards: Interior/Exterior Coalhouse
DATE: 1921
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-12
DESCRIPTION: a medium-sized suitcase wrapped with red rope. Its contents include:
1) newspaper cuttings of the Rupert Bear comic strip
2) photographs of trenches in the First World War
3) red-covered books
4) lead soldiers
5) cigarette cards
6) colored drawings
7) a diary
8) a flag
9) drumsticks
10) writing pens, pencils and paints
11) his father's gas-mask.
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Imagine a suitcase of toys packed by Luper’s mother in 1924 when her 12 year-old son
goes off to boarding school on a scholarship to Aberystwyth. The toys are a collection of
objects assembled by Luper, prophetically relative to his many future interests. Most of
them related to disciplines of measuring and collecting, classifying and ordering.
Lead soldiers also appear in S5.
Rupert Bear comic is relic from Tulse’s first “prison”: the coalhouse.
First World War trench photos and gas mask are relics from his father’s war years.
Red-covered books noteworthy as red is a repeated color throughout the films.
Writing pens and pencils appear later in S9.
Tulse Luper characteristic
As a 10-year old child, Luper lead a gang of children in adventures in the streets of Newport,
Monmouthshire, South Wales.
SUITCASE 3
LUPER PHOTOS
A suitcase of photographs of Tulse Luper discovered in 1987 at the London offices of the
Knockavelli Ice-Cream Company. It is a suitcase containing the visual record of Luper’s appearance
during 92 years.
LOCATION: Medina-Sidonia Airport
DATE: 1978
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-16
DESCRIPTION: A severe-looking black suitcase marked with Russian labels is on a luggage carousel
at a regional airport in Southern Spain.
Other objects on the carousel include boxes wrapped around with string, different sized soft
spheres in muslin bags, a children's bicycle wrapped in transparent wrap, rolls of packaged carpet,
untidy items in broken, unsophisticated cardboard parcels.
The suitcase explodes!
The air is filled with photographs of Tulse Luper. These include:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
sepia images of Tulse as a boy
as a student attending university in Dublin
traveling in Utah
arrested in Moab
as a journalist in Antwerp
with Fascists in Antwerp (S26)
other photos from newspapers, snapshots, police lineups, etc.
NOTE: a possible soundtrack to this suitcase, in the form of narration, is provided by Thomas John
Imox at the Luper Symposium (TL1-16).
Some of these same photographs appear later in S90.
SUITCASE 4
LOVE LETTERS
A suitcase of 92 letters written by Lupers father, Ivor, to Lupers mother, Carrie Ashdown, in 1916
and 1917, and sent from the Flanders trenches to Newport in South Wales. The letters, acquired,
read, studied and treasured by the 18 year old Luper, gave him an insight into questions of loyalty
and endurance, and emotional and erotic love. It is a suitcase to represent Lupers emotional life.
LOCATION: Vigeland Park in Oslo, Norway
DATE: 1953
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-22
Description: on a foggy night, two male figures in heavy coats and brimmed hats meet in Vigeland
Park, Norway. They exchange suitcases. One is filled with US dollars. The other is filled with 92
letters written by Luper’s father, Ivor, to Luper’s mother, Carrie Ashdown, in 1916 and 1917, and
sent from the Flanders trenches to Newport in South Wales. The letters are tied in bundles. Some
are wrapped in white and some in blue ribbon.
The letters, acquired, read, studied and treasured by the 18 year-old Luper, gave him an insight
into questions of loyalty and endurance, and emotional and erotic love.
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The 92 letters can be associated with 92 suitcases of Tulse Luper, with 92 lumps of coal in
S1, etc.
Wartime letters associated with wartime artifacts in S2.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper was very fond of his father who was gassed in the First World War in Flanders, and his
emotional and political perspectives were very much influenced by the love letters his father wrote
to his mother in 1916.
SUITCASE 5 & 6 CLOTHES
Two suitcases of clothes confiscated from Jewish lovers on the border-crossing railway-station at
Ventimiglia in 1939, a Luper discovery when he was imprisoned in the Mole Antonelliana in Turin.
The suitcases were a stimulus for historians of Luper’s life to make a collection of all of Luper’s
clothes from ___£the cradle to the grave, from birth-sheet to shroud.
LOCATION: Ventimiglia, Italy
DATE: 1942
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-29
LATER DISCOVERED: in Mole Antonelliana tower in Turin, Italy in 1943
DESCRIPTION: a man named Friso and a woman named Pinata - lovers, both aged 18 - Jewish,
wearing civilian clothes - are forced to undress by Italian and Nazi soldiers on the end of a railway
station platform. They remove their clothes and place them in suitcases by their feet. When they
have finished undressing one of the soldiers writes CLOTHES OF A JEWISH TRAITOR in German on
the lids. He then lashes the two suitcases together with a rope - making a double suitcase and kills
the couple.
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As they undress an aria sung by a virtuoso singer from a popular opera plays on a
gramophone standing alone on the station platform.
The stripping of the lovers is being watched by curious onlookers looking out of a signal
box, and from houses overlooking the railway line and the level-crossing gates.
The couple are taken away around the corner of a station building. There is the sound of
two revolver shots. A slow trickle of blood runs slowly across the platform.
A splash of water from a watering can washes the blood away.
Theme of love/doomed love/love in wartime compares to S4.
These suitcases are later discovered in the Mole Antonelliana tower in Turin (TL3-44).
Consult opening of Greenaway’s film, “The Belly of an Architect” for associative narrative of
architect and photographer passing through this border town at opening of film (TL3-44).
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper was fascinated by the border town of Ventimiglia on the borders of France and Italy. It frequently returned
as the location for many of his short stories.
SUITCASE 7
VATICAN PORNOGRAPHY
A suitcase of erotic photographic stills and film associated with the archives of the Vatican. They
were discovered in 1985 in the Victor Emmanuel Building in Rome at the time of the making of a
film called The Belly of an Architect. This is a suitcase to represent the iconoclasm, anticlericalism
and eroticism of Luper’s life.
LOCATION: an empty Art Deco swimming pool in Warsaw, Poland
DATE: 1948
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-37
LATER FOUND: in the Victor Emmanuel Building in Rome in 1985 (found during the making of
Greenaway’s film, “The Belly of an Architect”).
DESCRIPTION: a large, battered suitcase stuffed full of “ecclesiastical pornography”: images of
priests, cardinals and nuns. It also includes 100 ft. film reels labeled in Italian.
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The suitcase is discovered by five Soviet customs officials. They fight over the contents.
One of them (he looks like Martino Knockavelli) is killed.
the suitcase represents the iconoclasm, anticlericalism and eroticism of Luper’s life.
One final item in the suitcase: a right-foot running shoe with the initials THPL on a tag tied
to it (Tulse Henry Purcell Luper). This is explained by Luper Specialist Caezano Procturi
(TL3-64). These might be shoes of the Italian “Foro Italico” running team in Rome. The left
shoe is later found in S72.
SUITCASE 8
FISH
A suitcase of fish discovered in a refrigerator in a fish-restaurant at Rimini in 1962, a wry reference
to Luper’s belief in positive red herrings and a poetic reminder of all the fishy events of his life.
SUITCASE 9
Ruby’s PENCILS
A suitcase of pencils discovered in Moab, Utah in 1934, used by the 11-year old Ruby Hockmeister,
cousin of Passion Hockmeister, to make a series of prophetic drawings, seeing through a child’s
innocent eye, the events and anxieties of Luper’s life.
LOCATION: Moab Jail, Utah
DATE: 1934
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-41
DRAWINGS LATER FOUND: Tulse Luper Symposium in Brooklyn, 2001 (TL1-44)
DESCRIPTION: a battered, medium-sized suitcase filled with pencils used by the 11-year old Ruby
Mastersinger/Hockmeister, cousin of Passion Hockmeister, to make a series of prophetic drawings, seen through
a child’s innocent eye, of the events and anxieties of Luper’s life. Luper uses this same pencils to draw a map of
the world and a series of ‘water” drawings.
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The jailor’s wife, Mrs. Fender, gives a suitcase to Luper after telling him that she has never
seen the sea.
The suitcase includes yellow pencils all sharpened to a point and a number of prophetic
drawings (these were burnt by Percy Hockmeister, so we might see them catch on fire)
We also see pencils with chewed ends and blunt points.
Tulse uses these pencils to draw a map of the world on the white walls of his jail cell,
paying careful attention to the coastlines.
Tulse introduces the WATER THEME: he writes a list of the 5 oceans, followed by a list of
ten inland seas, including the Salt Lake in Utah.
These drawings of water include “Old Water” which later ends up at the Tulse Luper
Symposium in Brooklyn, 2002.
Water serves as a metaphor for evolution. Tulse said that apes learned to swim early and
since you don’t need body hair to swim, man lost his body hair. The jailor counters that
man coming out of water should be called “the original baptism”.
Luper points out that seven-tenths of the earth's surface is sea and nine-tenths of a man's
body is water. We are all born in the amniotic fluid. To accompany our highest emotional
states - when we laugh and cry - our eyes water.
There is an oil drum in his cell from which fish are taken. They are later caught and served
to Luper as a meal.
Ruby late appears in film #3 as a musician (TL3-45).
SUITCASE 10 HOLES
A suitcase of holes, 92 objects of negative space, a laconic joke packed by Luper after his political
experiences in Europe in the 1960s:
cribbage-boards, solitaire-boards, colanders, sieves, kitchen utensils, telephone switch-boards,
corsets threaded with eyelet holes, various mats and trays with holes used as welcome mats, table
mats, urinal sieves, etc.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper frequently composed sentences containing double negatives.
SUITCASE 11 MOAB PHOTOGRAPHS
A suitcase of photographs taken by the Italian-born Moab Photographer, Mastersinger, of the
community of Moab law-breakers, malcontents and petty criminals, collected by Luper as an essay
on mediocrity and small-time criminality.
LIST
Roger Boarman
Abe Loose
Kretchen Fisher
Achery Foster
Babyface Max
Magrebber
Ricco
Red End
Honeyboy
Mooney Pecker
Dude James
Finchey
Andriessen. M
Topolli
Barber Fleet
Mackerel
Blind Eye Simon
P. Gutteridge
Passover Myrtle
Elmer Fossey
Pigs Trotter
Valkerie
Amazon
Apple Jacques
Slattery
Purple Maisie
Salmon Eye
Noel
Floraty
Steely Gripe
Duo Parker
Glotto Sparks
Reno Fox
The Orangeman
Pipette Wipers
Danish Peters
Albie Spica
Ulster Irish
Filthy Simon Jr
Becky Sharpe
Arcansaw
Chips Buloo
Stops Manson
Blox
Mahoney
MChris Hooker
Magenta Smyth
Tipper Clements
Stourley Krackos
Taxi Palmer
Tiger Barman
Tripper
Topol Zooley
Jo Maddox
Pierce Roe
Mallow Edge
Newman Port
Pally Roe
Biting babies
Pie-throwing
Being drunk, lewd and swearing in church
Goosing a pregnant woman
Horse-stealer
Filthy talk
For being Italian and curling his moustache like Jesse James
Robbing banks
Digging up the dead and doing dirty things to them.
Simple rape
Stealing wood
Shitting on the church roof at night
Peeing in the Samson well
Buying cheap and selling expensive
Spying and being generally furtive
Kidnapping boys
Drumming at night
Robbing
Milking cows she had no business to
Embezzling
Laughing and bullying when he ought not to
Stealing wheels
Being cheap on Sundays
Compound rape
Squinting to please the devil
Spitting on the sidewalk in front of the minister’s house
Robbing
Revealing himself
Spitting in church
Staring at pregnant women
Stealing figs
Fouling the ministerÕs bed
Making a nuisance on a Sunday
Kicking the ministerÕs dog
Hayrick arson
Shooting his wifeÕs lover
Tampering with the gas
Illegal phone listening
Social climbing whoring
Eavesdropping at the drugstore
Stealing cabbages
Driving over the limit
Stealing a lame horse
Stealing a pickup truck with a baby inside
Cooking smells past midnight
Compound adultery leading to disturbing the peace
Changing road signs without permission
Pretending he was an architect
Defacing shop fronts
Trying to commit suicide on private property (50)
Siphoning petrol from the mayorÕs car
Rape with menaces
First degree murder
Humiliation of women
Repeated domestic disturbance with menaces
Writing ÒFakeÓ on the Colorado locomotive
Emptying the swimming-pool out of spite
J R Neville
R Madgett
Fleeman Host
Marcia Speke
Byman Palme
Open Bluey
Scratchey Bell
Candle Roe
Scotch Gomen
Ivor Van Os
Baskette Manny
Gopher Stops
Alice Topper
Beamer Fils
Hoary Titmus
Joanus Bibbs
Noah Jannsen
Atmos Fleece
Macey Vine
Jethro Tongues
Matthew Crabb
Boy Springer
Tabith Golight
Donaldson G
Jude Collins
Thomas True
Praline Bright
Gomap Boss
Vampy Mole
Brandon Parker
Single Froth
Simon Bisop
Gus Brandon
Billy Conlon
Stephen Parks
Dancer Roe
Posse Thomas
Stepson Olive
Owly Green
Fludd Streeter
Whale Streeter
Tears Malone
Mart True
Drawing for profit without license
Falsifying accidental death by drowning
Falsifying name and address for gain
Wasting police time with stories of Moon landing
Spitting blood on the minister’s carpet
Abusing his third wife because she wore lipstick
Burning bibles
Shamming to win favour
Being obscene in front of matrons of honour
Blinding a horse with a fish-hook
Hiding sexual identity
Shooting the telephone wires
Drunk in possession of a loaded shotgun
Hitting his wife at a bible class
Drugs
Falsifying age to join the army
Wearing female clothing in public
Wounding his brother with a knife
Being afraid of the dark
Wife-swapping
Child abuse and non-payment of stamp duty
Stealing laundry
Fixing a train derailment
Conspiring to make rain on harvest Festival Sunday
Taking bribes
Embezzlement
Being po-faced on a jury
Stealing wicks
Injuring a teacher with a forked stick
Smashing an Eastman camera
Writing obscenities for publication
Laundering Mexican money
Avoiding army recruitment
Truancy
Pretending too much too many times
Calling the minister foreign names
Scaring children in the dark with screams
Devil-worship
Rape of an eighty-year old woman
Travelling beyond state boundary on remand
Bossineying
Falsifying evidence to obtain preferment
Bullying
SUITCASE 12 FROGS
A suitcase of 92 collected emblematic frogs, manufactured in many materials, found in the bath of
an electrocuted rapist in Zagreb in 1957. A wry universal comment on the proposition of the
necessity to kiss the frog to obtain happiness.
LOCATION: a bathroom in Zagreb, Croatia
DATE: 1953 (1957?)
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-53
DESCRIPTION: two gangsters burst into a large white-tiled bathroom where a male corpse
(accused rapist?) lies electrocuted by an electric fire in a bath of clear water. It is still “live”:
sparking and steaming.
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The corpse clutches a locked suitcase. The gangsters shoot it open.
Inside are 92 frogs made of plastic, tin, wood and ceramic.
They burst out to bob and float on the water.
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1)
2)
Possible connected themes:
insects and animals, as in locusts/frogs
water
SUITCASE 13 FOOD DROP
A suitcase of food items dropped from a US Army bomber into Potsdammer Platz in September
1961 on the occasion of the East German isolation of West Berlin. Hoarded by Luper as a symbol of
the idea of sequestering rations for life’s survival.
LOCATION: a Berlin street, possibly Potsdammer Platz
DATE: 1960 (September 1961?)
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-62
LATER FOUND: in the form of a B&W film at Luper Symposium, Brooklyn 2001
DESCRIPTION: a metal-rimmed suitcase dropped out of a US Army bomber after the East German
have isolated West Berlin. It parachutes to earth and is claimed by a Berlin family.
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These scenes have the look of grainy B&W documentary film footage.
Children in street are drawing bombers, war, and hopscotch numbered squares.
The bombers come and the air sirens start. All the kids run inside.
Shadows of planes and rumbling of their engines.
Fifteen suitcases are parachuted out of a plane. Some burst open on impact. Others stay
shut.
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People run out of their house to claim the suitcases which contain non-perishable food
items of the period - sugar, flour, beans, canned items, raisins.
The last suitcase doesn’t open. It contains baby clothes, tinned food and a pistol. It will be kept by
Tulse Luper as an emblem of the idea of “sequestering rations for life’s survival” (a suitcase filled
with baby clothes appears on a checkpoint bridge in film #3 – SL3-106).
SUITCASE 14 DOLLAR Bills
A metal suitcase of small denomination US dollars given to Luper by William Gottschalk as an
inducement for his assistance in keeping an eye on the activities of his Mormon relatives in Europe,
though Luper was fully aware that it was laundered money offered to him as a bribe. Luper took
the money and it financed the first years of his European career.
LOCATION: a cherry orchard in Utah at Sunset
DATE: 1934
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-62
DESCRIPTION: a very heavy metal suitcase filled with lush red-black cherries and beneath, crimson
stained small denomination (USA $10) bills given to Luper by William Gottschalk as an inducement
for his assistance in keeping an eye on the activities of his Mormon relatives in Europe, though
Luper was fully aware that it was laundered money offered to him as a bribe. Luper took the
money and it financed the first years of his European career.
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This is one of the most pivotal suitcases in the film, as it somehow binds Luper to both
Gottschalk and Lephrenic for the rest of the three films. We learn later that the suitcase
was filled with uranium, which Luper unwittingly brought with him to Europe (TL3-58).
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The color “crimson” is also used to describe the color of Passion Hockmeister’s
undergarments (S5).
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Dollar bills can be contrasted with coins found in S15.
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This suitcase can even be considered the same as S75.
Suitcase should be labeled “BAR-T Ranch, Clearwater, Moab, Colorado River, Utah, USA, Earth, The
Universe” as a reference to a scene in Film #1 (TL1-58).
Tulse Luper characteristic
Gottschalk gave Luper a metal-bound suitcase full of dollars bills, with which Luper initially financed his journeys
in Europe, but the suitcase itself was prophetically more valuable than the money, since it was lead-lined and
could contain uranium with some sense of safety.
SUITCASE 15 COINS
A suitcase of small currency coins kept by the front door of Luper’s apartment in Antwerp from
1936 till 1940, a bulwark against needless poverty. In theory anyone was allowed to take what he
or she needed
for cigarettes, pastries, newspapers, Belgian chocolates, French condoms, a glass of wine, a tram
ticket, or flowers for visiting the sick.
LOCATION: an apartment in Antwerp, Belgium
DATE: 1938
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-65
DESCRIPTION: a “large trunk” just inside the apartment’s front door where the apartment’s
inhabitants would empty their pockets. It is full of a variety of odds and ends (TL1-67):
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.


Ticket stubs
Buttons
Tokens
Keys
Scraps of paper with phone numbers
Small currency coins for:
a) newspapers
b) cigarettes
c) drinks
d) pastries
e) Belgian chocolates
f) French condoms
g) a glass of wine
h) flowers for visiting the sick
i) croissants
j) pretzels
k) hot chocolate
Idea: re-create, from the objects left in the change jar, a day in the life of Tulse Luper.
See S87.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Martino - God knows how - calculated that Luper never owed more than a few pounds throughout his entire life,
but had lent thousands. Mostly in small change.
SUITCASE 16 LUPER’S LOST FILMS.
This suitcase contained 23 16mm films, many of them incomplete, the evidence of Luper’s filmic
interests before he left for Europe in 1938.
LOCATION: an apartment in Antwerp, Belgium
DATE: 1938
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-70
LATER SHOWN: Brooklyn Museum, Luper Symposium in 2001
This suitcase contained 23 16mm films (23 being 1/4 of 92), many of them incomplete, the
evidence of Luper’s filmic interests before he left for Europe in 1938.
They bear appropriate film lab labels and prophetic titles.





Luper is arrested by The Red Box Fascists and brought to the train station.
The fascists search his room, turning it upside down and discover film cans on top of his
armoire in a trunk.
Luper had a 16MM Bolex when he was in Utah. It is probable that the films he shot in Utah
(including “Vertical Features Remake”, first mentioned on TL1-22) are included here.
When the films are seized, three teenage fascist youths from the Belgian Red Fox Brigade
are entrusted with the task of hauling them away. These are Pip, Fritz, and Hercule. Pip is
the most organized of the three and is careful to spool all the film back onto the reels. Pip’s
greatest wish is to own underwear so that his rough pants to scratch his balls. Pip will later
been seen in the Vaux episode in film #2.
Luper’s manuscripts are also seized. They fill 15 suitcases.
Tulse Luper characteristic
When a student at Dublin University, Luper bought a cheap 16mm camera and started to make short, modest
films about his personal fascinations. One of the first films he completed was made in Venice and based on filmframe counts. Others were structured on notated bird-song, the letter H, 92 persons afflicted with a desire to fly,
defenestration, soil erosion, the uses and abuses of the telephone, and the biographies of entomologists.
SUITCASE 17 ALCOHOL
A suitcase of bottles of alcohol arranged according to the alphabet - 92 ways to drink a way to
Heaven or Hell.
LIST
A is for Absinthe
B is for Beer
C is for Champagne
D is for Drambuie
E is for Eau de Vie
F is for French Vermouth
G is for Grappa
H is for Hock
I is for a drop of the Irish
J is for Jamaica Rum
K is for Kirsch
L is for Lager
M is for Madeira
N is for Napoleon Brandy
O is for Ouzo
P is for Port
Q is for Quetsch
R is for Retsina
S is for Sake
T is for Tequila
U is for United Breweries
V is for Vodka
W is for Whisky
X is for Exceptional Elixir
Y is for Yalta Gin
Z is for Zambuca con mosche.
LOCATION: Antwerp Train Station-Master’s Office
DATE: 1938
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-80
DESCRIPTION: a meeting of the Belgian Red Fox Brigade.

They are rehearsing their anthem. Its lyrics are:
“The Red Fox is the farmyard scourge.
Keeping the chickens in order.
Reynard is his name, Reynard is his name.
Our farm is a model of agriculture.
No strutting cockerels wake the sleeping sheep.
Till the fox has passed this way. Reynard. Reynard. Reynard.”



After they finish singing, the fascists have their photograph taken with a reluctant Tulse
Luper (S3, S90), who is now imprisoned in a bathroom at the train station (these pictures
may even appear in Suitcase #3.
When the fascists finish singing they are asked to sign a pink receipt book with their
names, then they are each given a clear bottle of alcohol. These are arranged according to
the alphabet. 92 ways to drink your way to Heaven or Hell.
The suitcase was initially packed by Palmerion, the Antwerp Railway Station dentist, who
had considerable access to contraband goods during the early years of the war.
SUITCASE 18 PERFUME
A suitcase of bottles of perfume emblematic of 92 good smells of the world.
LOCATION: Antwerp Train Station Bathroom
DATE: 1938
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-83
DESCRIPTION: A suitcase of 30 bottles of French perfume in elegant spray-top bottles with whitepaper labels saying PARIS FLEUR in large elegant letters.



Tulse is imprisoned inside the bathroom at the Antwerp Train Station. He is filling the walls
of his “cell” with writing. The walls become transparent and we can see that many people
(Travelers, perhaps) are waiting in line, perhaps to receive permission to travel.
Many of these Travelers have suitcases. It is a possible that some of these suitcases are
seized by the Fascists as contraband. Included in these seizures is French perfume (TL186).
This same perfume is used by the Train Station’s dentist/doctor in residence (a man named
Palmerion) to spray on unsuspecting female victims, who he unclothes and sexually
molests while they are sedated for treatment.
SUITCASE 19 PASSPORTS
A suitcase of materials for the making of false identities to permit the possessor access to illusive
freedom.
LOCATION: Antwerp Train Station
DATE: 1938-40
A suitcase of materials for the making of various identities - passports, visas and legal documents,
real and metaphorical, and licenses and permits to illusive (elusive) freedom.
SUITCASE 20 BLOODIED WALLPAPER
A suitcase of wallpaper fragments soaked in blood, long considered to be Luper’s blood, but
probably the blood of cattle from the cattle trucks arriving from Germany and Poland at Antwerp
Railway Station.
A reminder of the violence of Luper’s imprisonment.
LOCATION: Antwerp Train Station Bathroom
DATE: 1938
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-104
A suitcase of wallpaper fragments soaked in blood, first considered to be Luper’s blood, but
probably the blood of cattle from the cattle trucks arriving from Germany and Poland at Antwerp
Railway Station. A reminder of the violence of Luper’s imprisonment (S21).
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper had a mortal enemy in the person of Percy Hockmeister. He had after all been seduced by his wife.
SUITCASE 21 CLEANING Materials
A suitcase of cleaning fluids supposedly collected by Knockavelli on the occasion of an attempted
escape by Luper from his bathroom arrest prison in Antwerp Railway Station in 1939, emblematic
of Luper’s Noptimistically naive campaigns to clean up evil.
LOCATION: Antwerp Train Station Bathroom
DATE: 1938
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-104
FURTHER DESCRIBED: Luper Exhibition-Symposium Brooklyn Museum, 2002
DESCRIPTION: Tulse Luper is arrested by a group of Belgian Fascists (Red Fox Brigade) and held
prisoner in the bathroom of the Antwerp Train Station. After a severe beating that leaves the
white-tiled walls of the bathroom splattered with blood (the color red being a motif repeated
throughout the films), the train station’s director (a man named Van Hoyten) orders that the
bathroom be cleaned up.




Two cleaners arrive. They carry a suitcase that contains cleaning materials. These include
various brushes, rags, cleaning fluids, scrapers, soap and polish.
The identity of one of the cleaners is revealed to be MARTINO KNOCKAVELLI. He is
masquerading as a cleaner, and has actually come to help Luper escape from his bathroom
prison.
This event is further described by Jacques Appenhost at the Luper Exhibition-Symposium
Brooklyn Museum, 2002 (TL1-105).
Greenaway writes, “This suitcase might be emblematic of Luper’s optimistically naive
campaigns to clean up evil.”
Film 1 b
SUITCASE 22 DENTAL TOOLS
A suitcase of dental instruments once owned by Palmerion.
LOCATION: Antwerp Train Station Dentist Surgery
DATE: 1938
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-111
DESCRIPTION: These are owned by Palmerion, a Belgian dentist and officer in the Red Fox Brigade,
the Belgian Fascist paramilitary organization that has imprisoned Luper. After Palmerion sexually
violates Passion Hockmeister in his dentist’s chair, his crime is discovered by Passion’s husband,
Percy Hockmeister, an American Fascist and one of the Mormon ranchers in Moab who detained
Luper in Episode 1 of the film. Unfortunately, Percy confronts Palmerion about this AFTER he loses
a tooth and is on Palmerion’s dentist’s chair. The dentist puts him under with an anesthesia that
actually kills him (TL1-111). Palmerion then brands Percy with a Star of David on his forehead and
performs an impromptu circumcision (making the American fascist into a Jew), which is later
discovered on TL1-115.



The suitcase is filled with Palmerion’s used (bloodied) dental instruments, the artifacts of
his murder of Percy Hockmeister. This connects to S10, which contains bloodied sewing
needles.
The suitcase also includes a branding iron of the Star of David (a Judaic symbol).
This connects with other Judaic-themed suitcases, including S6 (Italian Jews murdered in
Ventimiglia) and S19 (ashes of cremated bodies).
SUITCASE 23 CHERRIES
A suitcase of black cherries given as a gift to Luper in his bathroom arrest imprisonment in Antwerp
Railway Station. Luper saw it as a memento of lost happiness and irrecoverable innocence.
A suitcase of black cherries given to Luper while imprisoned at the Antwerp Railway Station. Most
probably given by the Hockmeisters. Luper may also see cherries as a memento of lost and
irrecoverable innocence (his harrowing experiences in Utah).
SUITCASE 24 HONEY
A suitcase filled with honey, given as a prophetic gift to Luper whilst he was imprisoned in the
bathroom of a hotel suite of the Antwerp Grand Station Hotel in 1940. Honey is evidence of Luper’s
lost happiness and a reminder of the sexual humiliation he was subjected to by the Hockmeisters
back in Moab (stripped, with honey spread on his genitals, left tied to a post in the desert).
SUITCASE 25 PLACE-NAMES
A suitcase of place-names invented by Cissie Colpitts for the amusement of Luper at Antwerp, a
compendium of the places of Paradise on Earth reachable by the international railway network of
Europe before Fascism takes over travel and turns out all the lights.
LIST
ROMA STAZIONE TERMINI
PARIS
LYON
GENOA
RAPALLO
LA SPEZIA
PISA
FIRENZE
GHENT
AMERTENDEN
MAASTRICHT
IDENHOVEN
VAN DEIMENLAND
MENILMONTANT
L’EPEE VERDE
FONTENAY
GUSTAVIA
EIFFELO
BUSTARDA FILO
PICARDO POSTO
LÕESCARGOT DE ARC-EN-CIEL
COLOMBE-LES-DEUX-EGLISES
POMPONIO AUGUSTUS
VAUX LE VICOMTE
BEAUREGARD-EN-MER
SANTA PHILOMENA
ROMARIGRAD
LEISENDROGRAD
BADEN MARIENBADEN
CARCASSONE
MACARADOTTE
APRES-ROUGE
MARMONTIERE
APENSTOCKHAUSEN
VALENCIENNES FILS
FANJEAUX
BLUE STAG BAY
SAARBRUCKEN
MIREAUPOIX
CREVECOEUR
REGIS AUGUSTINO
EPEN SANDS
AGRIGENTO
CAFFERELLI
AEGYPTO RUSTINA
LAMPEDUSA
CIMAROSA
SANTA POMPONIO
CASTELLO DEL MONTE ASSASSINO
CASTRICASTROS
LASTERINO
POTTAGER CHINS
ABBAN-ANGENERE
FERRARIO
BOLESTERLAAN
SANTA SANDRIA
PESTERENDER LAESTORI
HARPENSTADIA
GAETANELLI
BENEVENTURA
RIPOSTE
PARAY-LE-MONDIAL
GROGAROSTORA
KNOCKALL MAISTER
BOCKERESTER
MUCKLEBURY STEPS
MINKSARIA
POLOCKI
CARLSBURGEN
LEIDENFRAG
ESTERHAZY MENARES
BORISTAVARI
THEYDON BOYES
MEYDEN DEN LARGO
SANTA BARBARINO
ARIES
POSTONBERRY EDGE
ST CLOUD EN MER
AUGSBERGENFELDT
COMPTON ANSTY
OLIVIANO
ST SEBASTIANO DEL BORGO
PRATOLINO SPATS
STUNFASTNET
ARCANTINI
RIPPOROLLO
DISS STAFFORD DISS
ELEPHANTOSOPHIA
INKERING
DIDEROT STAYS
ZASTERAYS
BOCHERLIN
LOCATION: Antwerp Train Bathroom/Corridor
DATE: 1938
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-123
DESCRIPTION: a suitcase of place-names invented by Cissie Colpitts, a stenographer who has been
hired to type transcripts of Luper’s interrogations. She is also been hired to type up his personal
papers. She has been purposely slow in her task so as to buy Luper time.

Colpitts, aside from being a stenographer, also takes to the microphone at the Antwerp
Train Station to announce incoming and departing trains. However, these destinations are
mostly invented (?), as her activities are mainly for Luper’s amusement.

Luper sees a connection between her fascination with exotic European place names and his
search for lost Mormon cities in Utah (S5).

Her compendium of paradises on earth are only reachable by the international railway
network of Europe before Fascism takes over travel and turns out the lights. Luper
creates his own “Ten Maps to Paradise” later (TL3-4).

These place names appear in another suitcase later (S61: Suitcase Maps).

Cissie Colpitts is also the name of three characters from Greenaway’s film,“ Drowning by
Numbers”.
• Luper’s own fondness for place names can be found in opening scene of film, when he calls
out names of prominent World War I battlefields.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper had a fascination for certain European cities which appeared to belong to a lost country
centred in middle Europe - Strasbourg, Brussels, Maastricht, Luxembourg, Geneva and Munich.
Maybe these were the legacy of CharlemaineÕs lost Middle Kingdom.
Suitcase 26 BOOTS AND SHOES
A suitcase of Luper’s boots and shoes symbolic of Luper as a restless traveller.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper took a size nine shoe.
SUITCASE 27 ANNA KARENINA NOVELS
A suitcase of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina novels translated into many languages. Luper had chosen
this novel of tragic love to write his own fictions between the lines of each printed page.
LOCATION: Antwerp Train Station Masters’ Office
DATE: 1939
SCRIPT PAGE: 130
DESCRIPTION: a suitcase of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina novel, written in Russian, in two volumes.





Julian Lephrenic comes up with a plan to assume the care of Tulse Luper’s imprisonment,
effectively transferring him from the Red Fox Brigades’ control to his own. His plan leads
him to hire Luper’s two jailers, Figura and Zeloty. He agrees to pay them if they fake
Luper’s death by killing a Luper look-a-like named Floris Creps. Once Luper is assumed
dead, he will be transferred by the Fascists to Lephrenic’s custody.
Lephrenic decries that Luper’s faked death should be inspired by a passage found in
Volume 1 of Anna Karenina, where the protagonist witnesses the death of a railway worker.
He wants Luper/Creps to appear to have committed suicide on Platform #9.
On the page in the book where the death is described Lephrenic places the down payment
for the murder.
The rest of the money is placed in Volume 2, which is put into storage, this money to be
paid after the deed is done.
Also to be found hidden in Volume 1: cheaply colored photos of American life:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
big cars
rich food
scantily-clad women
brightly-lit cities
shiny guns
money, gambling
photos of nude young men
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper wrote new fictions between the lines of the text of English translations of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, though
confessed he was more interested in train accidents than in Russian adultery.
SUITCASE 28 CANDLES
A suitcase of candles for symbolically lighting every kind of darkness.
LOCATION: Church of Saint Zachariah, Italy
DATE: 1943
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-53
DESCRIPTION: Passion Hockmeister’s cousin, Ruby, brings Luper to the Church of St. Zachariah
and lights two candles: one for her, one for Luper. A priest appears. He is Martino Knockavelli.
Luper compares Knockavelli to John The Baptist. You’re “welcome in the desert, but death hangs
around you like a sandstorm” (TL3-54). Luper begins to question Knockavelli’s motives. He
wonders if he is the “jailor’s jailor”. Ruby and Knockavelli’s plan to free Luper is thwarted by the
arrival of Passion Hockmeister and a group of Italian fascists.





•
A suitcase of church candles
Possibly a collection box to pay for the candles
Or a mechanical contraption where you put the coins in the box and a fake candle lights up
What are Ruby and Luper lighting candles for?
Theme of candles relates to “S45: Figura’s Children” and the scene in Strasbourg cathedral
where Zeloty lights candles for each of Figura’s children and says his prayers for their
safety, only to have Madame Plens snuff out each of the candles (SL2-72).
Candles = Light; a film is darkness becoming light
 end of film 1b
SUITCASE 36
RADIO EQUIPMENT
A suitcase of radio equipment from Vaux packed by Figura on LuperÕs behalf in the knowledge that
Luper and Cissie could continue their love affair across the air-waves wherever they were.
LOCATION: Vaux summerhouse
DATE: Summer, 1940
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-7
FOUND LATER: exhibition hall in Tromso, Norway in 1998
DESCRIPTION: a large suitcase of radio equipment has been packed by Figura on Luper’s behalf so
that he and Cissie can continue their love affair across the air-waves.





Luper is chained by the ankle and wrist to the bars of a metal-frame bed. The bed itself is
covered with receivers and cables. Luper is trying to make sense of the wiring. He gets the
wiring to work and ends up having a conversation with “Charlotte Courcy” (she later calls
herself “Charlotte des Abres”), a woman imprisoned in the Trianon (Marie Antoinette’s
former chateau).
In their radio conversation, Charlotte calls Luper, “Hippolyte”. He calls her “Cissie” (Cissie
Colpitts was the stenographer hired to type transcripts of Luper’s interrogations).
She calls Luper “Hippolyte” perhaps because Hippolyte Baynard was a photographer who
faked his own death (TL3-15), and Luper himself was rumored to have perished by
drowning a swell (TL3-139).
Cissie Colpitts is also the subject of suitcase #25.
Luper’s radio transmissions also reach Martino Knockavelli in his London office, where he is
cutting and pasting photos of Luper into a ledgerbook (S90). One of these photos might
reference Luper in the style of a photograph by Hippolyte Bayard of a drowned man.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper loved a Belgian stenographer called Cissie Colpitts.
SUITCASE 37 CLEAN LINEN
A suitcase of freshly laundered clean white linen, a symbol of ecstasy to Luper who never ceased
dreaming of the allure of clean sheeted beds and fresh underwear. The suitcase was packed at
Vaux near Paris on Luper’s behalf in 1941 by Mrs Haps-Mills, who dreamt of a life of servile
domestic devotion to a man of her dreams.
LUPER
Is a list such a simple thing? Take the most obvious one - a
laundry list. Two pairs of sheets, four pillow-cases - two plain, two
edged in lace, two shirts, two blouses - two white, two off-white.
Four vests, four underpants, a white broiderie anglais petticoat.
... a camisole, two pairs of knickers, sixteen pairs of white
stockings, a garter-belt, a white damask table-cloth, twelve
matching damask napkins ... You see. A whole household is revealed.
All in one colour. Domestic relationships are uncovered. Class, wealth, tensions,
extravagances - perhaps a history - even happiness. The
imagination of the reader is excited. And the ___âlists can be reordered, the catalogues updated. The inventories can embrace
everything. Yet all these objects with their histories and
associations can be packed in one suitcase.
LOCATION: Vaux Chateau lake
DATE: 1940 or 1941
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-9
FOUND LATER: exhibition hall in Tromso, Norway in 1998
DESCRIPTION: While imprisoned at Vaux, Luper is asked what he writes. He says, lists, catalogs,
and inventories. When he is told that such writing is reductive/primitive, Luper counters that
something as simple as a laundry list can reveal everything about a family.







As an example, Tulse asks us to consider ... two pairs of sheets, four pillow-cases (two
plain, two edged in lace), two shirts, two blouses, four vests, four underpants, a white
broidery anglais petticoat, a camisole, two pairs of knickers, sixteen pairs of
white stockings, a garter-belt, a white damask table-cloth and twelve matching damask
napkins.
This laundry list is later found at a Paris Laundry in 1947 (TL2-15).
Tulse claims that based on an examination of the objects above, the secrets of a whole
household can be revealed. Domestic relationships can be uncovered. Class, wealth,
tensions, extravagances - perhaps a history - even happiness can be illuminated. And
such lists can be re-ordered, catalogues updated.
And all these objects with their histories and associations can be packed in one suitcase.
Is a suitcase of freshly laundered clean white linen a symbol of ecstasy to Luper, since, as
a perpetual prisoner, he has never ceased dreaming of the allure of clean-sheeted beds and
fresh underwear?
The suitcase was packed at Vaux on Luper’s behalf in 1941 by Mrs. Haps-Mills, who dreamt
of a life of servile domestic devotion to a man of her dreams.
Note from Greenaway: all items should be freshly laundered and ironed with a twig or two
of lavender. One or two items can be wrapped around with a white ribbon as though
recently arrived from a shop and as yet not used.
SUITCASE 38 WATER
A suitcase reinforced to hold water, redolent of Luper’s fascination with water and his fear of
drowning.
LOCATION: Antwerp Train Bathroom
DATE: 1938
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-118
A suitcase reinforced to hold water, redolent of Luper’s fascination with water and his fear of
drowning, both being themes that appear throughout Greenaway’s films.






Large bodies of water (oceans) were drawn by Luper while in captivity at the Moab Jail
(S9).
Luper’s “prison” in Antwerp was the Train Station hotel’s bathroom, where most of Luper’s
time was spent in a bathtub. He eventually floods his “cell” with water from his bathtub
(TL1-118). The water eventually fills the entire train station and hotel.
On the subject of drowning, see photograph by Hippolyte Bayard of a drowned man.
Water is also subject of first “book” in Greenaway’s film, “Prospero’s Books”.
Bathtubs and the fear of drowning (or at least suicide) are explored in Greenaway’s film,
“The Belly of the Architect”.
Luper reportedly drowned in China in 1939.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper believed one day he might perish by drowning, and was fascinated by Hippolyte Bayard’s Self-portrait of A
Drowned Man taken around 1834, the first photograph of a male nude, the first photograph of a corpse (however
assumed), the first photographic self-portrait, the first photographic reposte to a critic, and the first example of a
photograph captioned with a title that contained much more meaning than the image.
SUITCASE 39 CODE
A suitcases of code-books
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper persistently spelt the word “development” with a fourth unnecessary letter E.
SUITCASE 40 A SLEEPER
A suitcase large enough to pack Charlotte des Arbres, a woman so desperate in love, she slept in a
suitcase ready to be immediately mailed to her lost lover.
LOCATION: Trianon Pavilion at Vaux
DATE: Summer 1940
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-24
DESCRIPTION: Tulse is freed (temporarily) from his captivity by Cissie Colpitts. Upon her arrival
she recites a story about her love for Tulse (TL2-36).



They later retire to a bedroom in the pavilion. Beside the foot of the bed is an old traveling
suitcase lined with red felt and colored, patterned eiderdowns, and containing a small white
head-cushion and a cut-glass decanter of water cupped with a small drinking glass, and a
confining straight-jacket for the insane laced with long ties or ribbons.
This suitcase is large enough to contain the sleeping body of a 90-pound female, Charlotte
des Arbres, a woman so desperate in love she slept in a suitcase, always ready to be
carried to her lost lover.
Other suitcases with people inside include:
1) Figura’s Children (S45)
2) Wolfgang Speckler’s dead body (S53)
3) Luper’s body, as he escapes (S60)
4) Julian Lephrenic’s coffin and dead body (S76)
5) Passion Hockmeister’s dead body (S87)
SUITCASE 41
EROTIC ENGRAVINGS
A suitcase of late 16th century erotic prints stolen from the walls of the Vaux Chateau by Luper and
his jailers in 1940. The engravings are by Hendrik Goltzius who sought commissions in Europe to
keep his workshop from bankruptcy. Luper, imprisoned in a Moscow jail, wrote a scenario of the
commissioning of these engravings as an excuse for contemplating Old Testament tales and Ovid’s
Metamorphosis as erotic dramas.
LOCATION: Vaux Chateau Hall
DATE: Summer 1940
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-24
DESCRIPTION: German soldiers are stripping the Chateau’s artworks and selling them, in this case
to a member of the Red Fox Brigade from Belgium (seen in Film 1). These include a number of 16th
century works by Julio Romano (?) and black and white engravings by Goltzius and Spranger.
LOCATION: Vaux Woods
DATE: Summer 1940
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-50
Luper escapes from Vaux. Inside one of his suitcases his captors (Zeloty and Figura) have hidden
erotic images from the Metamorphoses Series of Drawings and Prints by Hendrick Goltzius and his
circle around the 1580s to 1600. These can be found in “Seductress of Sight” by Eric Jan Sluijter,
published by Waanders Publishers, Zwolle, 2000.
The Discovery of Callisto’s Pregnancy
Jacob Matham after Cornelis, Cornelisz van Haarlem. 1599. Engraving
The Discovery of Callisto’s Pregnancy
Cornelis Cort after Titian 1566. Engraving
The Discovery of Callisto’s Pregnancy
Anonymous after Hendrick Goltzius. Engraving
The Discovery of Callisto’s Pregnancy
Anonymous after Hendrick Goltzius 1590. Engraving
The Discovery of Callisto’s Pregnancy
Jan Saenredam after Hendrik Goltzius 1599. Engraving
The Discovery of Callisto’s Pregnancy
Jan Saenredam after Paulus Moreelse 1606. Engraving
Leon Davent after Primaticcio
Nymph Emasculating a Bound Satyr. Engraving
Hendrik Goltzius
Reclining Nude 1594. Drawing
Gian Giacomo Caraglio after Perino del Vaga
Mercury and Herse. Engraving
Agostino Carracci
Nymph and Satyr (Le Satyr Macon). Engraving
Jan Saenredam after Cornelis Cornelisz van haarlem
Paris and Oenone c 1600. Engraving
Workshop of Henrick Goltzius after Henrick Goltzius
The Five Senses 1588. Engraving
SUITCASE 42 92 OBJECTS TO REPRESENT THE WORLD
A collection of lost property items Luper found beneath the seats of the Arc en Ciel cinema in 1941.
Luper eventually increased this collection to make a suitcase of 92 objects that represented the
world and all that was in it.
LOCATION: Strasbourg
DATE: 1940/1941
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-58
LATER FOUND: Brooklyn Academy Luper Exhibition, 2002
DESCRIPTION: a suitcase of lost property items Luper found beneath the seats in the Arc en Ciel
cinema in Strasbourg in the autumn and winter of 1941. Luper eventually increased this collection
to make a suitcase of 92 objects that he said completely represented the world and all that was in
it. This includes:
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child’s doll with a ceramic face
a dead rabbit
a large salmon wrapped in newspaper
a packet of condoms
female silk underwear
a woman’s handbag
a man’s wallet containing family photographs
a pocketful of small coins
a pistol
a toy dog
a crucifix
a box of matches
keyring
woman’s gloves
There is also a second layer to the suitcase that includes:
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a small portable typewriter
a toy bath
a toy chair
NOTE: each of these items is ticketed with a brown label attacked to the object, with the object’s name written in
neat calligraphic writing, as these objects are later discussed at a Luper Symposium in Brooklyn in 2002 (TL2-59).
Also note that the Luper Lecturer (Philippe Pilar) refers to 100 instead of 92 objects. Greenaway also did an
opera called, “100 OBJECTS TO REPRESENT THE WORLD”.
ANOTHER NOTE: Luper originally stores all these objects in a tiny hiding place under some chairs
on row #92 in the theater.
SUITCASE 43
RAINBOWS
A suitcase of rainbows, most unusable, unbuyable, unpriceable commodity, and a promise that the
world would never perish through drowning.
The rainbow is an unnecessary phenomenon of which no live thing has taken advantage. No
animal is parasitic on a rainbow, no-one colonises a rainbow. No-one uses a rainbow like they use a
cloud or hot air or the mountains of the wind or geysers or hot water springs or snow. Rainbows
are supremely unused. No-one can exploit them to measure anything by, test anything by. The
only exploiters, and that for the idea and not the reality are writers, painters and fabulist
theologians.
Luper: 100 objects to represent the world.
SUITCASE 44 PRISON MOVIE FILM-CLIPS
A suitcase of film-clips of feature films of prisons and prisoners and prison escapes. The film-clips
were appropriated by Luper whilst imprisoned at the Arc en Ciel cinema in Strasbourg in 1942.
LOCATION: Strasbourg
DATE: 1940/1941
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-62
LATER FOUND: Brooklyn Museum, Luper Exhibition 2002
DESCRIPTION: a medium-sized suitcase of film-clips of feature films featuring prisons and
prisoners and famous prison escapes. The film-clips were appropriated by Luper when he was a
projectionist’s assistant at the Arc en Ciel cinema in Strasbourg in 1942.
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thirty sections of 35MM B&W film wrapped around with rubber bands
50 film strips of some 30 frames long wrapped loosely in tissue-paper and/or rubber-bands
five small - 100 foot - tin film cans
anonymous tin-cans (small tobacco cans or small sweet tins)
50 brown paper envelopes of different sizes containing short clips of from 5 to 10 frames
the brown envelopes should be labeled in black ink with a pen on the outside in Luper’s
handwriting.
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one or two 1940s film-stills (publicity material used by the cinema) that might show
evidence of prisons or prisoners

make possible reference to prison-themed works by film directors von Sternberg and von
Stroheim.
These images may also be stored in a pillowcase.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper was imprisoned in a stable at Vaux full of stuffed animals, and then in a cinema in Strasbourg that
persistently showed prison-escape movies. He combined the experiences by writing a play called The Escaping
Taxidermist.
SUITCASE 45 MANUSCRIPTS FOR THE BABY OF STRASBOURG
A suitcase containing the drawings and manuscripts of a project Luper called The Baby of
Strasbourg, much later made into a film under the name of a different city. It was a story of the
making of a child saint suffocated in order to dismember his body to make Holy Relics. Luper had
been much disturbed by the death of his jailer Figura who had left eleven children behind at the
mercy of the world.
LOCATION: Strasbourg
DATE: 1940/1941
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-66
LATER FOUND: in a Strasbourg cathedral
DESCRIPTION: Luper is increasingly disturbed by the death of his jailer Figura, who had left eleven
children behind at the mercy of the world. As a result he writes “The Baby of Strasbourg”, a libretto
about the making of a child saint suffocated in order to dismember his body to make Holy Relics.
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A medium-sized suitcase containing the drawings and manuscripts for the opera written in
fountain pen and with a distressed typewriter on faded white paper of different kinds ruled, graphed and plain.
The opera finds life later as a film, with the author’s name changed from Luper to
Greenaway and the locale from Strasbourg to Macon in a film by Peter Greenaway called
“The Baby of Macon”.
A Luper scholar claims that many years later the suitcase was later found in a Strasbourg
cathedral, beside a painting of the Virgin and Child by Derek Bouts.
Tulse Luper characteristic
It is rumoured that Luper is the father of Mathilda Figura’s twelfth child.
SUITCASE 46 HOLOCAUST GOLD
A suitcase of 92 bars of gold reconstituted from the stolen property of victims of The Third Reich
between 1930 and 1945. Each gold bar has a story.
THE GOLD STORIES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
LAST APPLE
BLONDI
PROPERTY OF THE BBC
BUTTER CRUCIFIX GOLD
THE SCHERHERAZADE COMMANDANT
THE COAT OF YELLOW STARS
THE BISCUIT TIN
THE NAKED JOCKEY
THE BURNT ELEPHANT
PETER THE GREAT
THE COLOSSEUM JEWS
THE VIOLIN SUITCASE
THE SAUSAGEMAN
THE GOOSEGIRL
DANAE
LOVE OF DENTISTRY
THE LEFT-BIASED STEERING-WHEEL
THE HAYSTACK STORY
THE RING COLLECTOR
HOT WATER VALUABLES
THE GOLDEN WEATHERCOCK
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS
THE GOLD PISTOL
PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE
IN THREES
THE CANADIAN ENVELOPES
CALLISTO MAGDALENE
THE RING CYCLE
MIDAS
GLOVED IN THE BATH
THE DOLLSHOUSE BOOTY
THE CIGAR-BOX
THE GOLDEN FLEECE
THE PUSHER
THE RAILWAY LINE
HH TO POSTERITY
THE THREE BEARS
THE SPECTACLES
THE WATCH CHILDREN
GROSZ ENTHUSIASM
THE TOOTHBRUSH
PAPER-CLIPS
THE RABBI CONSPIRACY
LILAC SOAP
PRE-COLUMBIA___˜N DEATH
A FAMILY HERITAGE
BURNT HANDS
EUTHANASIA
THE ITALIAN LETTER WRITERS
JACKDAW GOLD
GOLDEN BOOKSHOP
MAGRITTE'S BUSINESSMAN
PASSPORTS TO VESPUCCIO, HADEN AND EREWHON
BIRD JEWELLERY
BODY PARTS
MUNICH RAILWAY STATION
THE PORK WAITER
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
THE SWALLOWED RING
GOEBBEL'S DIARY
THE GOLDEN GARDENERS
THE TROOP TRAIN
FRANK'S FRIENDS
RUSSIAN HOT RINGS
TWELVE GOLDEN KILOMETRES
GIVING AWAY GOLD
THE INITIAL B
AMERSFORT ICE
THE TENNIS MATCH
THE GOLDEN BULLET
THE THREE SISTERS
I AM DEAD
THE U-BEND
RINGS ON A KNIFE
GOLDEN HEELS
THE TRAM DECISION
BREAKING GLASS
THE GOLDEN FILM
STORKS
TRAIN GOLD
CRYSTAL COLLECTION
THE BLUE ROOM
THE HEAPS AND P___MILES MAN
SCARECROW
NAVEL GOLD
TREE GOLD
THE GOLDEN PEN
SANTA CLAUS
THE RUNOVER GOLD
THE HAIRDRESSER
FINGER GREASE
THE SEMPSTRESS
HARPSCH'S STORY
LOCATION: Rome bathhouse, Italy
DATE: 1944
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-65
LATER FOUND: In Brooklyn Museum, 2002
DESCRIPTION: Lephrenic and two Italians (one a mobster first seen in Turin, the other an art speculator seen in
Venice) open a large suitcase at the back of the showers in a Roman bathhouse. We discover 92 bars of gold
constituted from the stolen property of victims of The Third Reich between 1930 and 1944.
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wrapped in green felt
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neatly packed
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in many different sizes and weights - sometimes quite small
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metal-stamped with different dyes identifying the time and place of smelting and storage and ownership

are these a devil’s ransom of some kind?
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How did these men get the bars?
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Is it Lephrenic’s payment for helping the Germans with their uranium research?
Must convey that this gold was stolen from Jews who ended up in concentration camps.
SUITCASE 47 CHILDREN
A large suitcase that imprisoned the abandoned children of Figura in Strasbourg. Madame Plens
later filled it with their toys.
LOCATION: Strasbourg
DATE: 1940/1941
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-71
LATER FOUND: in a Strasbourg cathedral
DESCRIPTION: When one of Luper’s captors in Vaux was killed by German soldiers, the man left
behind a wife and 12 children. Afterwards, Luper’s other captor, Zeloty, feeling partial guilt for the
death, brings the children and their mother to live with him in Strasbourg. Imagine then a very
large suitcase, almost like a small room, in which four live small children aged from 2 till 7 are
squeezed in together.
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The inner suitcase is papered with a flowered and stained wall-paper
It contains a baby’s bottle with a teat
a battered teddy-bear
a toy mermaid (this being a long established Knockavelli fetish from S2)
a Rupert Bear red jersey (reminding us of S2)
a yellow scarf with black squares
NOTE: Madame Plens is very jealous, initially, with Zeloty’s decision to assume the responsibility
for Figura’s widow and her 12 children. There is even a scene where she enters the Strasbourg
cathedral after Zeloty has lit candles for each of them and said his prayers for their safety.
Immediately afterwards, Madame Plens enters and snuffs out each of the candles. (This connects
with S68: Candles.)
ANOTHER NOTE: Zeloty makes three “prisons” for Figura’s children (TL2-95) in their Strasbourg
apartment. A large container trunk normally used for storing laundry. A small broom closet. A
disused toilet. He keeps the keys to them with him at all times.
Tulse Luper characteristic
It is rumoured that Luper is the father of Mathilda Figura’s twelfth child.
SUITCASE 48 DEAD ROSES
A suitcase of dead red roses, the collected sentimental items of love exchange left in the
Strasbourg cinema by the unrequited lover, Horace Whirlpool, who later was inveigled into a false
suicide pact from which he did not survive. Luper was known to have preserved the dead flowers
as a symbol of hopeless love.
LOCATION: Arc en Ciel Cinema, Strasbourg
DATE: 1940
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-93
DESCRIPTION: The projection booth at the cinema is used as a bordello. Customers line up with
their tickets. Green tickets are for watching a film. Pink tickets are for visiting the prostitutes in the
projection booth. In the line is a man named Horace Whirlpool. He has roses wrapped in newspaper
for one of the prostitutes, Trixie. It turns out that Trixie is actually his wife.

When Cissie Colpitts first reveals herself to Luper, she is dressed like a man and standing in
line to enter the projection booth.
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After they make love he gives her the roses.
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Later, she takes a seat in the theater. When she leaves, the flowers are still on the seat.
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Tulse takes the flowers and sits beside two children 9 (a boy aged 12 and a girl aged 9,
their names Jonah and Cecile Moitessier) who are frequent visitors to the cinema. He gives
the flowers to the girl and he begins to cry.
From Greenaway: dead red roses are the collected sentimental items of love exchange left in the
Strasbourg cinema by the chief cinema usherette’s unrequited lover, Horace Whirlpool, who later
was inveighed into a false suicide pact from which he did not survive. Luper was known to have
kept the dead flowers as a symbol of hopeless love.
SUITCASE 49 TRAINS
A suitcase of toy trains.
Luper spends much time moving from prison to prison by train, the railways are the major form of
transport in Europe during the Second World War, and the phenomenon of the Holocaust Jews
being transported in railway cattle trucks is imperishable. The suitcase would include an
assortment of different sorts of train sets during those times.
SUITCASE 50 SEWING NEEDLES
A suitcase of sewing needles stained with blood.
SUITCASE 51 SHOWER-HEADS
A suitcase of shower-heads stolen from washrooms, shower-rooms and bathrooms in memory of
the deception of the Holocaust.
LOCATION: a Roman bathhouse
DATE: 1944
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-64
DESCRIPTION: This is a gleaming, white-tiled bathhouse frequented by Italian fascists, done in a
30’s version of ancient Roman baths.
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Jews were gassed in fake shower rooms by Nazis in concentration camps.
The shower heads are in memory of how Nazis deceived Jews
This suitcase belonged to Martino Knockavelli. It is mentioned in Greenaway’s notes as
appearing in the first film, but its exact location is unclear.
They can be primitive - like the detachable heads of metal watering-cans - and stained and
corroded as though used in a water/liquid situation - a little rusted or covered in calcium
stains or verdigris.
Connects to S19, S74
SUITCASE 52 55 MEN ON HORSEBACK
A suitcase of 55 equestrian paintings which inspired Luper to write a scenario for a project he
called 55 Men on Horseback.
LOCATION: Madame Moitessier’s Bedroom – Dinard (Deauville)
DATE: 1941
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-111
DESCRIPTION: A moderate-sized suitcase of 55 small gouache equestrian paintings inspired Luper
to write a scenario for a project he called “55 Men on Horseback”.
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These paintings do exist in Wilton House, Wiltshire, UK.
In the scene where these paintings appear, Madame Moitessier is removing her clothes to
be photographed naked.
As she strips Wolfgang Speckler plays classical music in the background.
The scene should evoke paintings by Ingres ... (?)
It is rumored that Greenaway’s next film will be based on 18th Century British painter
George Stubbs’ series of flying horses and naked riders. The film tells a tale of a man who
tried to seduce a woman by sending messages on the back of the pictures.
This suitcase links with another featuring 55 horseshoes (S80).
SUITCASE 53 CHINA DOGS
A suitcase of broken china dogs kept by Madame Moitessier at her house in Dinard.
LOCATION: the Moitessier house in Dinard, France
DATE: 1941
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-103
DESCRIPTON: a suitcase full of the fragments of broken china dogs once kept by Madame
Moitessier at her house in Dinard (Deauville?).
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“Madame Moitessier” is the title of a painting by Ingres.
She has a King Charles Spaniel in her lap when Luper first meets her. It turns out not to
be real, but made of china. She later refers to this “dog” as Felix.

The sound of barking dogs is heard, yet they are never seen.
The china dogs seem to always get smashed, perhaps as a way for the people of this house to
handle repressed anger (as does the maid, Guam Ravillion, upon leaving on TL2-134).
SUITCASE 54 BRUSHES
A suitcases of paint-brushes. Luper had always wanted to be a painter. Someone later added the
candles to suggest that a painter’s prime concern was to paint light.
LOCATION: Dinard (Deauville) dining room
DATE: 1941
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-126
AN EVENT DESCRIBED: Brooklyn Museum, Luper Symposium, 2002
DESCRIPTION: on the night of Madam Moitessier’s 40th birthday the dinner gathering of French
fascist officers and collaborators are given a special treat: they are each giving painting supplies
and allowed to make a painting. The sitter: Luper, dressed in female clothing. He strips.
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•
The quandary: were they to paint what the saw (a man) or what they had been presented
(a woman)?
Frances O’Donnell, a Luper scholar, analyses the event (TL2-124).
The suitcase can therefore include painting supplies from the period.
It can also include a sampling of portraits of a nude or semi-dressed Luper.
It may also include 46 candle-stubs to suggest that the very best painters always
concentrated on painting light.
Among the dinner group is Palmerion, the Fascist Dentist from Antwerp seen in Film #1.
SUITCASE 55
DRAWINGS OF LUPER
A suitcase of drawings of Luper posing naked in a garden at Dinard. The drawings demonstrated a
quandry of whether a draughtsman should draw what he sees or what he knows, a proposition that
Luper later wrote as a play called The Draughtsman’s Conflict.
SUITCASE 56 MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
A suitcase of assorted musical instruments that seemed to Luper to indicate ideal camaraderie.
LOCATION: Doppoldopa, Italy
DATE: 1943
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-24
DESCRIPTION: The end of April 1943 finds Luper on the Italian coast near Dossoldopa in Liguria. He is a
prisoner-of-war of the Italian Fascists. They hand out musical instruments to the prisoners in order to create a
military band. Luper is given a French horn. He and the other prisoners don’t know what to do. They end up doing
a lot ot marching with the instruments.
In the end they don’t play their instruments, but FAKE it as patriotic Italian anthems are played over a speaker.
At night, the wooden hut where the prisoners-of-war sleep on iron frame cots, we see that the instruments are
beside their beds. Some of the prisoners even grasp the musical instruments in a sexual manner.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper had a liking for popular sentimental music, most especially if it was Italian, a language where the lyrics had
style even if the meaning was banal.
SUITCASE 57 SMOKED CIGARS
A suitcase of smoked cigars, the clue to the death of two composers, Wolfgang Decker and Anton
Webern. Luper was in Bolzano when he heard of the death of Webern; he served WebernÕs
apparent assassin, US Army Sergeant W. Bell, with a glass of creme de menthe, and later wrote a
fiction about the deaths of composers, which later surfaced as an opera performed in Amsterdam in
1998 called Rosa.
LOCATION: Dinard (Deauville) dining room
DATE: 1941
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-126
AN EVENT DESCRIBED: Brooklyn Museum, Luper Symposium, 2002
DESCRIPTION: A suitcase of smoked cigars, the clue to the death of two composers. Wolfgang
Speckler is killed while he smokes a cigar after “lights out” curfew. Luper was in Bolzano when he
heard of the death of Webern; he served Webern’s apparent assassin, US Army Sergeant W. Bell,
with a glass of creme de menthe, and later wrote a fiction about the deaths of composers, a part of
which was turned into an opera in 1998 called “Rosa”.
 This can be directly related another Greenaway work, “Death of Webern”.
 An early twentieth century German composer named Anton Webern stepped onto the street
in Berlin after a curfew to smoke a cigarette and was mistakenly shot to death.
Irony: in the case of Wolfgang Speckler’s death, the shooter, instead of Nazi coastal guards, was
Pierre, owner of the Strasbourg movie theater, who was trying to kill Monsieur Moitessier for the
illegal autopsy performed on his twin brother, Paul.
SUITCASE 58 BODY-PARTS
A suitcase of body-parts, an illustration to a story called Body Parts that Luper wrote to exorcise a
horror of dismemberment.
LOCATION: Dinard (Deauville) Local Hospital
DATE: 1941
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-128
DESCRIPTION: Wolfgang Speckler’s body is on Monsieur Moitessier’s dissecting table. It is cut up
into pieces and placed into a variety of jars.
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Plaster
Luper recalls a story about a woman who could identify her mother by her sewing thumb.
Luper later wrote a story called Body Parts to exorcise his horror at being dismembered.
This suitcase could include body parts in jars.
Medical samples of anatomical parts
casts of sculpture items - hands, fingers, feet etc.
SUITCASE 59 INGRES PAINTINGS
A suitcase of postcard reproductions of portrait paintngs by Ingres.
SUITCASE 60 BROKEN GLASS
A suitcase of broken glass and broken mirrors, Luper’s representation of chance escapes and bad
luck.
LOCATION: Martino Knockavelli’s office in London
DATE: 1940
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-9
FOUND LATER: exhibition hall in Tromso, Norway in 1998
DESCRIPTION: Nazi bombardment of London. White flashes illuminate the street. A suitcase of
broken glass open on a chair.
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On closer examination we see blood and fingerprints (Knockavelli’s?) on the glass panes.
Do these shards of glass and broken mirrors become Luper’s representation of lucky
escapes and bad luck?
This parallels end of first film at the Antwerp Train Station. A bomb goes off and glass
shards are sent everywhere.
How does this relate to scenes from bombing in Deauville?
The suitcase is later displayed in a museum in Norway, above the Artic Circle. It is in a
collection of other suitcases, including wooden chests, which in this part of the world take
the place of suitcases.
As with S 31, does this suitcase reflect Knockavelli more than Luper?
SUITCASE 61 MOITESSIER GOWNS
A suitcases of clothes worn by the portrait sitters of the French painter Ingres, collected by
Madame Moitessier in association with her Ingres namesake.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper is said to have asked a famous dress-maker to reproduce 92 of the costumes worn by Ingres portrait
sitters.
SUITCASE 62 CRABCLAWS
A suitcase of crab-claws, evocative symbol of highly specialised evolutionary Natural Selection at
work.
LOCATION: Island of Sark
DATE: 1941
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-11
DESCRIPTION: a suitcase filled with sun-dried crab-claws often found on beaches across Europe.

What is its connection to Greenaway’s film, “A Walk through H”? Perhaps this can be found on TL3-3 or
TL3-11.

Crabs brought out to sea by birds (TL3-21).
Symbolism: Luper as crab, left alone on Isle of Sark. The three Contumely sisters who happened
upon Luper (on their boat the Beagle) as birds (?).
Tulse Luper characteristic
As a young man, Luper bound together a much reproduced copy of Genesis and a first-edition copy of Darwin’s
the Origin of Species.
SUITCASE 63 FEATHERS AND EGGS
A suitcase of feathers and eggs to memorialise Icarus, first successful pilot and victim of the first
flying accident, a symbol of LuperÕs passion for personalised flight.
A suitcase with white feathers - swan and duck - and blown white hen’s eggs. Some of the white
eggs should have a number code written on them in very small black ink, and some of the larger
swan’s feathers should be marked with a white sticker oat the base of the quill. To memorialize
Icarus, first successful pilot and victim of the first flying accident. Icarus was a symbol of Luper’s
passion for personalized flight. (NOTE: a swan crashes into a car and kills two people at the outset
of Greenaway’s film, “A Zed and Two Noughts”.) Greenaway’s film, “The Falls”, also is concerned
with an “avian disaster” and it preoccupied with Hitchcock’s film, “The Birds”. The migratory paths
of birds are also a prominent element in a short film by Greenaway, “A Walk through H”.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper was fascinated by Icarus, first successful flyer and first victim of a flying disaster.
SUITCASE 64 BOTTLE MESSAGES
The South-West coastline of Sark was a terminus for bottled messages. They drifted across the Bay
of Biscay from Spain and the Canary Isles, from the Mediterranean and the west coast of Africa,
from the islands of the Atlantic and even from South America, floating east on the Gulf Stream.
Luper collected them as indicators of the most extreme optimism.
Tulse Luper characteristic
With the fullest understanding of how futile it was, Luper wrote 92 letters to Cissie Colpitts and placed them in
bottles that he threw into the sea. He speculated on their fate and wrote an elaborate fiction that traced their
journeys. He made just one reach its destination, fully realising that one success in 92 for such a venture was
hopelessly optimistic.
SUITCASE 65 YELLOW PAINT
A suitcase of yellow paint.
LOCATION: Island of Sark
DATE: 1941
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-7
DESCRIPTION: water-based yellow paint (chrome-yellow paint used for road signage) has been
poured into a suitcase and left for 40 years to dry.


Luper escapes from France and finds himself on the Isle of Sark.
A sea current brings a variety of things his way. These include driftwood, crates, boxes,
suitcases, and even twenty drums filled with yellow paint.

Luper takes the paint and writes epigrams on the rocks. “The good seldom get rewarded,
the bad are seldom punished, and the innocent always get abused. A beautiful woman only
serves to frighten the fish when she jumps in the water. If you leave me, can I come with
you?
He also dips tennis balls (S65) in the paint and throws the balls against the rocks, leaving a series
of yellow dots.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper was betrayed to the Germans by three jealous sisters on the island of Sark.
SUITCASE 66 TENNIS BALLS
A suitcase of 92 tennis balls taken from the sea. They reminded him of Henry VIII endlessly playing
tennis with Anne Boleyn. They occupied his long isolated days on Sark until the very last of them
was lost in the surf and left him bereft as though they were the last attributes of civilisation.
LOCATION: Island of Sark
DATE: 1941
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-8
LATER FOUND: Brooklyn Museum, Luper Exhibition, 2002
ALSO FOUND: Vienna Theater Green Room 1995
DESCRIPTION: Luper takes the tennis balls, dips them in yellow paint (S56), then throws them at the walls of the
cliff. This is his chief form of entertainment on the island.

•
Luper will later number each yellow mark left on the cliff with red paint.
There are 92 marks in all.
SUITCASE 67 GREEN APPLES
A suitcase of green apples, the origin of the Fall of Man.
SUITCASE 68
See movie 3.
Foundlings
Tulse Luper characteristic
It is rumoured that Luper is the father of Mathilda Figura’s twelfth child.
SUITCASE 69 INK & BLOOD
A suitcase of ink and blood. To represent the act of writing and all hand written and printed texts.
To demonstrate the purveyance of knowledge and the channels of communication through ink. Ink
can be seen to be the second blood of the world and as disposable.
Maybe as much ink has been used in the dispatch of human affairs as blood. You think sometimes
that ink and blood could be interchangeable, for it might seem that as much ink has been spilt over
blood, as blood over ink. Huge amounts of ink were spilt from the Treaty of Westphalia to the
Treaty of Versailles to settle vast amounts of blood-letting. At the Nuremburg Trials ther___Üe
were over fifteen million documents of ink-written evidence to settle the blood-accounts of over
fifty-seven million killings to occupy a library of over one million books.
Luper: 100 objects to represent the world.
LOCATION: Italian country kitchen
DATE: 1963
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-110
DESCRIPTION: A suitcase is placed on a kitchen counter beside wine bottles, a cauliflower, and a
stained oilcloth. Flies buzz. A distant conversation between a mother and her children is heard.
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Blood drips into the suitcase.
As the suitcase fills, it is tipped over and the blood is emptied into the sink.
The suitcase is then filled with ink from a large ink bottle with a spigot.
Does this refer to Monsieur Moitessier’s anatomical investigations (TL2-107)? Monsieur
Moitessier is a doctor who buys corpses to further his medical investigations. He is
especially interested in the pituitary, duodenum and appendix. He claims that the Nazis are
very interested in his work. This will later inspire Luper, while a prisoner in Moscow, to
write a fiction called “Augsbergenfeldt”, which is about a 17 th century anatomist looking for
the seat of the soul.
This also can be referenced with blood/ink motif in Greenaway’s opera, “100 Objects to
Represent the World”.
Ink = writing. Blood = living. Ink + Blood = to write about life (?).
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper had a blood temperature half a degree higher than the average.
SUITCASE 70 MATCHES
A suitcase of spent matches, indicative of profitless waste, and Luper’s freezing days in the Mole
Antonelliana in Turin.
SUITCASE 71 SAUCEPANS
A suitcase of saucepans redolent of the memory of fine meals.
LOCATION: Mole Antonelliana in Turin, Italy
DATE: 1943
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-46
DESCRIPTION: Luper gives his companion at the Mole Antonelliana, Ana Frascati, a present: a
suitcase filled with saucepans of all sizes and shapes, along with various sets of cooking utensils.
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
Ana Frascati offers to cook for Luper while he is imprisoned in the tower
Luper initially gives her a suitcase filled with Italian food (S60). This suitcase is therefore
its logical companion.
Luper gives Frascati the suitcase with pans while they are on the roof of the tower.
Suddenly Passion Hockmeister (Luper’s sometime lover and nemesis from Films 1&2)
appears on the scene with Luper’s ex-captor, Zeloty. A struggle ensues and Frascati dies,
falling from the tower along with her suitcase (she died as Primo Levi died).
Frascati had always feared her death in this way (TL3-43/44)
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper’s ability to cook was limited. Even making tea was, for him, a doubtful event with a not always calculable
outcome.
SUITCASE 72
FLOWER BULBS
A suitcase of flower bulbs. In wartime famine, Luper ate flower bulbs cooked such that his breath
was scented with the smell of petals and he could imagine his intestines flowering. It was a
powerful reminder of nutritious beauty regenerated in abject dearth.
SUITCASE 73 RESTAURANT MENUS
A collection of restaurant menus that grew into the Luper Cookbook, a record of 92 Luper meals.
Tulse Luper characteristic
It is intended that the Martino Knockavelli Foundation plans to make a Luper Cook-Book of 92 meals, and it is
decided that the very first meal to be recorded with regards to Luper’s prisons, is the bread and dripping sandwich
that Luper’s friend Ryan Arbuthnok brought to him in his father’s coal-house on an August Sunday afternoon in
Newport in 1921.
SUITCASE 74 92 ATOMIC ELEMENTS
A suitcase of symbols of the atomic elements, a present to Luper from Primo Levi in Turin.
LOCATION: Mole Antonelliana in Turin, Italy
DATE: 1943
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-40
DESCRIPTION: Luper is making an inventory of all the suitcases stored at the Mole Antonelliana.
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•
One suitcase is a heavy black case (see S75).
Inside it are an assortment of rocks, metals, and small-stoppered bottles.
Each of the specimens is numbered and named with the 92 elements.
This is a suitcase of symbols of the atomic elements. It is a present to Luper from Primo
Levi, an Italian chemist who wrote a book called “The Periodic Table”.
Levi is also a character in a story Luper wrote about the elevator at Mole Antonelliana, “The
Gangsters” (TL3-35).
Uranium is the 92nd element.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper met Primo Levi and together they discussed the Atomic Table whilst looking at the rooftops of Turin though
a military telescope.
SUITCASE 75 VIOLIN SPLINTERS
A suitcase of 92 violin splinters, symbol of needless destruction and the death of music.
LOCATION: Church of Saint Zachariah, Italy
DATE: 1943
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-56
DESCRIPTION: Ruby Hockmeister was a child artist in Moab (S9: Pencils) who came to Europe and
now lives with her cousin, Passion Hockmeister, in Venice. Passion Hockmeister is keeping Luper
captive here. This causes some friction between the two cousins.

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

From
Ruby plays the violin but is most unhappy, as her cousin forces her to play German lieder
music when she would rather play Vivaldi or Monteverdi.
Ruby also professes an interest in sacred music (St. Agatha, St. Lucy, both of whom were
savagely mutilated martyrs).
Ruby tries to help Luper escape by bringing him to Martino Knockavelli in the Church of
Saint Zachariah, but her plan is foiled by Passion Hockmeister, who ends up destroying
Ruby’s violin in a fit of jealous rage.
Imagine a suitcase containing the remains of a violin that has been totally destroyed, yet
somehow manages to play music.
Each splinter numbered from 1 to 92.
Greenaway: symbol of needless destruction and the death of music.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper’s middle two names are Henry Purcell, a curiosity, supposedly caused by his father’s enthusiasm for
Purcell’s choral music. Luper’s father had been a celebrated child soprano for three years
SUITCASE 76
OBELISKS
A suitcase of obelisks, monuments of perfect geometrical shape, the ancient world and longevity.
LIST
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
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38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
Carried by ship from Luxor to Cairo to Naples
Floated down the Nile to Alexandria and left in the dock for 600 years before shipped to
Verona
Shipped to Manchester from Thebes
Taken by barge to Cairo and shipped in a French vessel to Paris
Shipped to Rome in 120AD and abandoned in Ostia for 700 years before being hauled to
Trastevere
Reassembled from pieces in Ankara probably transported by ship from Cairo in the 1650s
Reconstructed- only the centre stone portion can be authenticated
Brought from Thebes by way of Sicily and Italy to St Petersburg in 1841
Erected in Turin in the celebrations for the unification of Italy
Probably from Thebes erected in Marachese in the 1740s
Luxor monument now in Prague
Some authorities belive this to be a fake erected in Edinburgh by the Egypt society
Shipped from Alexandria to Europe in the 1680s
Lost and reconstructed in Phillipi by Antinous in 172___T0
Brought by barge to Boulogne by a wealthy American
Erected in a cemetery in Padua in memory of an Egyptian horse
Belived to have been touched by Antinous and erected on the Nile banks in his memory
A limestone reconstruction in Loughton, Essex, England in memory of a horse that fell in
the Battle of Waterloo in 1815
Turtle-supported obelisk from Corunna.
Luxor origins
Two-part column made of purple marble reconstructed in Valencia cemetery
Memorial to an American businessman in Cairo
Heliopolis artefact discovered in a junk yard in Barcelona
Obelisk with circular cross-section found in Calcutta
Obelisk from Luxor formerly believed to be from Thebes
Memorial to Emmanuel III erected in the gardens of Pratolino near Florence.
Bolted edifice erected in Saragossa 1910
Monmouthshire memorial to the dead in the Crimea War, the Crimea being thought to be
in Egypt by Welsh artillery.
Verona marble
Fluted obelisk in Riga
Granite column from Syracusa
Antique Roman obelisk probably from Actium manufactured AD9, supported on a 1719 base
with a floral design
Decomposed Coptic column discovered in Rubba
Brick obelisk in a cemetery in Rheims
Possible column of calamine limestone from Mabu
Inferior obelisk discovered in the harbour at Jaffa
Pink veined marble column lost at sea in 12th century, rediscovered 1927
Simple obelisk column of grey granite found in Allissio
Double column capped in white porphyr
Naval obelisk erected in the Venetian naval docks
Obelisk from Memphis adopted as a war memorial in Palermo
Celebratory column found in Romania in t___Uhe 15th century
Layered obelisk of tuffa found in Pergamum
Cast-iron pinned obelisk found on Minorca shipped there in the 1400s
Undressed granite column in the antiqques market Istanbul
Yellow sandstone obelisk from Marathon
Ship’s prows obelisk, Messalina
Brown marble column erected in Thessaloniki
Obelisk in Malta built into the wall of a Knights of the Cross chapel
Milan memorial
Decorated obelisk discovered in Sparta, believed to be used as a mile post in the Spartan
Marathon
Obelisk in St Petersburg erected by Peter the Great
From Crete
Unidentified obelisk from Cairo
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
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76
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81
82
83
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89
90
91
92
Memphis origins
Mis-matched obelisk discovered in the house of a tanner in Spoleto
Three-stone obelisk discovered on the island of Elba believed to be 1st century BCEgyptian
Memorial obelisk seen in Boulogne
Obelisk in Paris at the Tomb of Fleuris
Christianised obelisk in Naples
Gray granite obelisk sand blasted in the 1900s
Obelisk converted to Spring Maypole use in the 1890s in Turenne
Banded obelisk from Miletis in Syria
Crated obelisk from Sparta seen in a cemetery
Black granite obelisk from Alexandria
Obelisk converted to a hot water fountain in Potsdam
Large obelisk discovered in Sinai converted into a local lock-up
Sidon obelisk of red sandstone
Obelisk for transport manufacture from Heliopolis
Discovered in the sea off Messina, believed to be a spoil of war
discovered by troops associated with Garibaldi
Known as the pillar of Samson and discovered built into the wall of a corn store in Accra.
White marble obelisk in the museum at Baiae
LOCATION: outside the Pantheon in Rome, Italy
DATE: 1944
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-61
FOUND: In Room 23 of Hotel Locarno, near Piazza del Popolo in Rome
SHOWN: Brooklyn Museum, Luper Symposium, 2002
DESCRIPTION: Pope Sixtus V had a plan to re-erect all the Roman/Egyptian obelisks in major
thoroughfares around the city of Rome. He wanted them to work as a series of sundials so that the
entire city could be on the same clock.
The obelisks are as follows:
1. Lateran Obelisk in The Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano
2. Vatican Obelisk at the center of St. Peter's Square.
3. Flaminian Obelisk in the Piazza del Popolo.
4. Psammetikos II Obelisk in the Piazza di Montecitorio.
5. Piazza Navona Obelisk at the Piazza Navona.
6. Piazza dell'Esquilino Obelisk behind of the Bascilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.
7. Piazza del Quirinale Obelisk in the Piazza del Quirinale.
8. Trinita dei Monti Obelisk at the top of Spanish Steps.
9. Monte Pincio Obelisk Pincio Hill's Garderns.
10. Terme Obelisk South Garden, Viale delle Terme di Diocleziano.
11. Rotonda Obelisk in front of Pantheon. (Piazza della Rotonda)
12. Minerva Obelisk in front of Chiesa di Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. (Piazza della Minerva)
13. Celimontana Obelisk Villa Celimontana
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
A suitcase filled with postcards.
It is claimed that a series of photographic postcards taken of the obelisks in 1944 were later proven to
have Tulse Luper in them (Vatican, Flaminian, Rotonda, Trinita dei Monti, Piazza del Quirinale,
Minerva). These images were taken by a cousin of Knockavelli’s who came to Rome looking for suitable
locations to put ice-cream stands.

It is said that Luper’s interests in the obelisks led to his writing of the screenplay, ”The Belly of the
Architect”, which also features postcards of these obelisks.
These postcards were addressed to a 19th century French architect named Etienne-Louis Boullée (to
an address once used by Martino Knockavelli). In the film The Belly of an Architect, a character
named Kracklite wrote postcards to Boullée. Greenaway intended to make a short film
complementing the main movie, but never did. They were published in 1988 together with the
screenplay for the main film in a book called “Dear Boullée”.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper was fascinated by Michelangelo’s Laurentiana Library Staircase in Florence and, in respect of his
fascination, and as a seven-day memorial to Luper, Martino Knockavelli had the staircase recreated in wood and
gesso in an Amsterdam wharfside ship-maintainance dock once used for refitting oil-tankers.
SUITCASE 77 GREEN FIGS
A suitcase of green figs, most ancient biblical fruit, a ubiquitous vehicle for poisoners.
LOCATION: outside Victor Emmanuel building in Rome, Italy
DATE: 1944
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-63
DESCRIPTION: Stourley Kracklite (protagonist of “The Belly of the Architect”, a role portrayed by
Brian Dennehy) is eating green figs with Julian Lephrenic. Kracklite is Passion Hockmeister’s
current boyfriend. Lephrenic is Hockmeister’s father. The two men are discussing what they are
going to do (where they will escape to) now that the Americans are descending upon Rome.
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
They eat green figs out of a green suitcase.
It is possible that the figs are poisoning Lephrenic, a theme also present in “The Belly of
the Architect”. Who would do this and why? Is Lephrenic no longer useful to the Nazis (he
is an American rocket-expert on lease to Germany” (TL2-83)?
A Luper Scholar points out that the American actor who played Kracklite in the Belly of the
Architect looks very much like Lephrenic. This would mean that Brian Dennehy, who played
Kracklite in the film and looks like Lephrenic, become the same person. He is eating figs
with himself. Theoretically, they are at least twins (a theme from “Zed and Two Noughts”?)
(TL3-63).
The two men are in front of the Victor Emmanuel building, known to some Romans as the
“big typewriter” building due to its unusual design. What does the symbolism mean? The
typewriter is used to write, to create. Did Lephrenic create Luper, who in turn created
Kracklite? Or did Luper create Kracklite based on his experiences with Lephrenic? Or is
Lephrenic meeting himself, his doppelganger?
The location is the central geographical point of reference in “The Belly of the Architect”
and is also where Kracklite inevitably dies, falling from a window (a scene actually
described in a film Greenaway did years earlier: “Zed and Two Noughts” and also the way
Primo Levi died as well.
SUITCASE 78 HOLY EARTH
A suitcase of black earth stolen from the Capuchin Convent on The Via Veneto in Rome; the earth
itself was stolen from Golgotha by monks in the 13th century.
A suitcases of black burial earth.
SUITCASE 79 MAPS/light
A suitcase of light, emblematic of the power of Uranium, symbol of Pandora’s power and the
impudence of Prometheus.
A suitcase of maps, supreme indicators of a scaled-down world, showing you where you have been,
where you are, and where you could be.
SUITCASE 84
MEASURING TOOLS
A suitcase of measuring tools, tape-measures, thermometers, slide-rules, clocks, watches, rules,
pedometers, egg-timers, the evidence of Luper’s fascination with measuring.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper was fascinated by measuring, measuring anything at all.
SUITCASE 89
TYPEWRITER
A suitcase containing the typewriter that manufactured Luper and his world.
SUITCASE 90 DOLLS
A suitcase of 92 minature dolls, each doll representing a character in the life of Tulse Luper and
ticketed with his or her name.
THE TULSE LUPER CHARACTERS
1
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26.
27.
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
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51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
TULSE LUPER
MARTINO KNOCKAVELLI
MACEY BRITTLESTONE
RYAN ARBUTHNOK
IVOR LUPER
CARRIE LUPER
CAPPIE LUPER
THE DANISH MERMAID
TIGER LILY
PASSION HOCKMEISTER
PERCY HOCKMEISTER
JULIAN LEPHRENIC
ABEL GOTTSCHALK
SHERIFF FENDER
MA FENDER
JOE MASTERSINGER
SOPHIE VAN OSTERHUIS
GUMBER FLINT
STEPHAN FIGURA
GUNTER ZELOTY
SESAME ESAU
JORIS SALMON
FASTIDIEUX
CISSIE COLPITTS
ERIK VAN HOYTEN
JAN PALMERION
FLORIS CREPS
PIP
HERCULE
GENERAL FOESTLING
CHARLOTTE DES ARBRES
MRS HAPS-MILLS
MRS BROGAN
VIRGIL DE SELINCOURT
DIANA
CALLISTO
LIEUTENANT HARPSCH
GENERAL PLANTING
MADAME PLENS
JEAN-PIERRE FIGURA
JEAN-PAUL FIGURA
CLAUDE FIGURA
HYACINTHE FIGURA
PICOT FIGURA
JEANNE-MARIE FIGURA
MAXI FIGURA
CLOTHILDE FIGURA
HORTENSE FIGURA
ANTOINE FIGURA
JOAN OF ARC
FELICITY CLEMENCEAU
JONAH MOITESSIER
CECILE MOITESSIER
TRIXIE BOUDAIN
REGINALD GAUMONT
HORACE PATOIS
THE BABY OF STRASBOURG
COSIMO MEDICI
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
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79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
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89
90
91
92
BOUDU
LEON DE MEAULES
MADAME MOITESSIER
GUAM RAVILLION
MONSIEUR MOITESSIER
WOLFGANG SPECKLER
THE DRAUGHTSMAN
THE INVESTIGATRIX
PETER FOIX
PAUL FOIX
MARION ARBUTUS
FRANCIS CONTUMELY
LESLIE CONTUMELY
JEANNE CONTUMELY
MATHILDA FIGURA
HIPPOLYTE
MARIE OOSBACKER
PRIMO LEVI
RUBY HOCKMEISTER
CONSTANCE BUTLITSKY
ELIZABETH
MARIA
CATHERINA
GIDEON
BOUILLE
DE DAUDE
WALLENBERG
VILMOS
HEINKEL
ERIK
ALAZARIN
KOTCHEV
PYTOR
TIGER LILY
LOCATION: PARIS RESTAURANT
DATE: 1990
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-138
DESCRIPTION: Jules Doree, the man who ultimately put on the Luper Symposium in Brooklyn in
2002, is eating in a Paris restaurant with his eight year-old daughter. A street vendor comes into
the restaurant and insists that Doree buy a suitcase filled with dolls. On closer examination we
realize that 10 of these dolls are actually pivotal characters from the life of Tulse Luper. They are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
a young Martino Knockavelli
Passion Hockmeister in Moab
Cissie Colpitts, the Antwerp Stenographer
Julian Lephrenic
Zeloty
Madame Montessier
Leslie Contumely
Commandant Kotchef
Sadako O (Tiger Lily)
Tulse Luper (wrapped in a shroud, with the date 09 06 89).
SUITCASE 91 THE PHRENOLOGICAL BOOK
A suitcase containing the pages of Martino Knockavelli’s Phrenological Book, an illustrated volume
that provided a catalogue for the anatomical details of Luper’s friends, jailers and protagonists.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper shared a large part of his life with four jailers, Stephan Figura, Gunter Zeloty, Sesame Esau and Gamber
Flynt.
SUITCASE 92 LUPER’S LIFE
A suitcase of Luper’s life-history.
1. a battered bicycle-wheel from Dinard,
2. blue feathers from the dancerÕs dress on board the Portuguese passenger ship,
3. photos of Virginia Woolf,
4. postcards of the Ingres paintings of Madame Moitessier,
5. broken pieces of china dogs,
6. Monsieur MoitessierÕs photographs of his lover,
7. female clothing Luper wore at Dinard,
8. the revolver used to shoot Madame Moitessier in Dinard,
9. cherry-stones,
10. the spiked-collar from Strasbourg worn by the dog Titan,
11. film-stills of Joan of Arc,
12. pink and blue cinema tickets from the Arc en Ciel,
13. packets of black and white 35mm film-clips (held up to the light),
14.manuscripts of The Baby of Strasbourg,
15. the water-logged watch once belonging to the twin Paul,
16. a dried and withered bunch of roses from the cinema in Strasbourg,
17. bleached and gnawed dog bones,
18.postcards of Strasbourg Cathedral.
19. Radio parts from Vaux with station-identity dials showing exotic locations,
20.the Kodak camera belonging to Mrs___ƒ Haps-Mills and many of the photos she took of German
soldiers in the park at Vaux,
21. a metal fly swat
22.Manchester Guardian from 1940,
23.an erotic print by Goltzius
24.Lupers manuscript of The Pairing,
25.the quilted nightdress of Charlotte des Arbres worn by Cissie at Vaux,
26.the eleven photos of FiguraÕs children,
27. a Belgian Fascist Cadet Force uniform,
28. a silver whistle threaded on a cord,
29.desert sand from Moab packed in a brown envelope,
30.Moab Mormon maps,
31.three dead locusts,
32.newspaper cartoons of Rupert Bear and Tiger Lily,
33. bundles of the love letters sent from LuperÕs father to his mother,
34.the lump of chalk used by the 10-year old Luper to write on the Newport wall, wrapped
together with string with the lump of coal used by Martino to do the same.
35. a medical model of the human brain
36. Monsieur MoitessierÕs cigarettes
37 LuperÕ___‡s red dress from Dinard
38 a set of a childÕs distressed red building blocks
39 a cork-stoppered bottle of water
40 a perfume bottle from Paris
41. a distressed and browned human skull
42. a bundle of used pencil stubs wrapped around with string
43. a ceramic egg-cup in the shape of a chicken.
44.a snowstorm toy of Milan cathedral
45. a pack of used playing cards
46.a trianglar kalesidoscope - the kind with mirrors
47.a childÕs model of a stork carrying a baby in a sling from its beak
48. a glass eye in a blue glass eyeglass
49. a toy bath
50. a dried eidleweis flower
51.a black and white portrait photograph of Raoul Wallenberg
52.a small squat bottle of black ink
53.an Anna Kerenin novel in any language other than Russian
54 a bar of brown carbolic soap
55.a blown ostreich egg dated 5th April 1942 in black indian ink
56.a bunch of dried lavender tied with a pink ribbon
57. a bold red rib___Âbon
58. a 1940s black telephone
59.a large false moustache
60.a dental tool with vicious intent
61.a pair of 2nd world war motocycle goggles
62. a transparent envelope of white dust
63.a rusty spring
64.a toy or miniature easel
65.a red dyed handkerchief
66.a much-used leather football boot
67. pieces of coloured glass from a stained glass window
68.a pair of metal handcuffs
69. a green-painted wooden apple
70. a school hand-bell with a wooden handle
71. a manÕs leather trouser-belt with a metal buckle coiled like a snake
72.a framed and glazed photograph of the bearded Charles Darwin
73. an abacus distressed from over-use
74.a circular hand mirror in a wooden frame
75. a manÕs blue folded shirt with chest pockets
76. a wooden police truncheon
77.a vinyl gramophone record of dance music still in a cardboard sleeve
78. a heavy metal model sphinx that can be used as a paper-weight
79.a pair of sugar tongs
80. a small microscope suitable for a chi___ˆld or a beginer studying biology at home
81.a bunch of keys
82. a bunch of glass grapes
83.a sheet of pink blotting paper blotted with blue fountain-pen ink
84. a metal mask for the eyes
85. a crucifix
86. a blue ceramic teapot
87, a wooden chair leg turned on a lathe
88.an English dictionary published before 1950
89.an empty bottle of Dom Perignon champagne
90.a large sheet which could be a shroud or then again a make-pice screen for the projection of
films
91. an imitation Roman helmet
92 a film-can. It is a little rusty. Inside is a 16mm film wound on to a metal spool.
XX Suitcases (used in the movie without nr)
SUITCASE XX BOARD GAMES (XX1)
A suitcase of board-games, both newly created and as old as history, all played according to the
agreed rules of chance; conflict reduced to emblematic miniatures.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper met Raoul Wallenberg in a Moscow prison and then at an East-West German border-crossing near
Creuzberg on the River Werra.
SUITCASE XX Luper Menus (XX2)
A suitcase of board-games, both newly created and as old as history, all played according to the
agreed rules of chance; conflict reduced to emblematic miniatures.
SUITCASE XX A Dead Dog (XX3)
A dog found by Tulse Luper on the Island of Sark. Later the dog was shot by three sisters.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper for a short time owned a dog called Max that had been cast onto the sea in a barrel.
SUITCASE XX Dog Bones (XX4)
Luper was amused that God spelt backwards was dog, and what of His bones?
Suitcases Not Used in the movie
SUITCASE
??
ICE (N1) (movie 3)
A suitcase containing a block of ice, Lupers last object to represent the world, and the ultimate
container of Passion, the beautiful woman who loved him so unwisely.
LOCATION: HONG KONG FILM STUDIO 1962
DATE: 1962
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-122
DESCRIPTION: SADAKO O, a female police inspector hired to monitor public morals and the film industry in
Hong Kong, infiltrates Luper’s pornographic film company (PILLAR OF SALT). First she becomes an actress in
Luper’s films, then his lover, then she kills Passion Hockmeister.


The suitcase was originally made to hold lights used for shooting films.
The suitcase is ultimately left on a Hong Kong rooftop. The entire skyline is filled with buildings whose
roofs are littered with such suitcases.

Luper and Knockavelli eventually deposit the suitcase with her body in a Hong Kong icehouse. Luper
says he will reclaim it in a hundred years.
The suitcase ultimately ends up at the Artic Circle.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper was loved by an American Utah woman called Passion Hockmeister.
SUITCASE ?? LUPER STORY MANUSCRIPTS (N2) (movie 3)
A suitcase of the manuscripts of Luper’s 1001 stories written at a checkpoint border crossing
between East and West Germany. Considering himself as a blackmailed latterday Sherherazade, it
was his attempt to rewrite the 1001 Arabian Nights, to stave off death and obscurity for as long as
he could.
LOCATION: East/West German Boarder Checkpoint
DATE: 1959
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-72
DESCRIPTION: Luper is offered safety by his latest captor in exchange for playing chess and telling one story
each day (or even more) to his captor’s wife. This suitcase of Luper’s 1001 stories, which he calls “Gulag
Scheherazade” is in obvious homage to “Arabian Nights”. The stories begin like this:
1. “An Eastern country was afflicted with sparrows. They ate the crops, covered the roof-tops with bird-lime, and
littered the gutters with their corpses ...”
2. “A man was convinced that the human eye was like some sort of battery that the sun alone could recharge ...”
3. “A woman believed that she was destined to inherit China from her great aunt who spoke Mandarin and had
two hearts ...”
4. “A golden horse tethered at night in a field at Fydor Street, took fright at a runaway train and bolted into the
labyrinth tunnels of the Moscow underground ...”
5. “A naturalist of very fixed habits followed the sun around his house. Soon after dawn he sat a breakfast with his
family on the porch that faced due east. At eleven o'clock he joined his family for a cup of coffee on the verandah
that faced the sun towards the south-east. At lunchtime he ate on the terrace with his family overlooking the
garden that lay due south. At about seven o'clock the naturalist dined with his family in the conservatory that
faced the sunset, and as soon as it was dark the naturalist went to bed ...”
35. “Mr. Lucas was a man whose enthusiasm were divided equally between his garden and his children.
Whenever his wife conceived, Mr. Lucas planted a fruit tree.”
89. Titled, “The Way the world turns”. Note: it is never actually told in the film.
132: “A woman who lived in the country watched and waited for the approach of the city. She was convinced it
would come directly from the north and only in the afternoon, and she watched the landscape avidly through
binoculars. The speculators grew wise and parked their lorries to the east of her property, and unloaded their
bricks and dumped their timber to the Western and Southern sides of her garden whilst she was pouring tea.”
133: “In Moravia, on the old East-West border of Germany, there was a games-master who dreamt of earning
money, becoming very rich, and then retiring to a chess farm. He saw the world in terms of winning and losing at
chess. This games-master had a wife who had an obsession scarcely less equal than his own - which because
she had no babies ... because her husband couldn't give her any. This frustration presented itself as a wish to be
told stories.”
134(?): “Two ogres lived in a wood by a river. They had an idiot son who
they kept locked up under the bridge ...”
310. “An impoverished billiard player read history solely to follow the movement of power. He always saw power
in terms of personalities and wrote notes on his findings were which were all in the end no more or less than short
... and the billiard player confirmed his belief that power was solid, weighty and volatile and ultimately appeared
as a heavy red billiard ball bouncing on a green field of envious energy prodded by the long black finger of
Money. On Sundays God was allowed to change places with Mammon.”
618: “'... and the entomologist traveled with his baited sponge nearly three thousand miles in fast trains in the
restricted terrain that the insect inhabited, and then he published his findings. His colleagues, armed with bait and
time-tables, embarked on
fast train journeys to collect yet more evidence.”
827: “'Amongst other material a naturalist took a photograph of a dead dog on a beach. The
corpse was a week old and covered in flies. The photographer returned home, took the film from
his camera and sent it to a reputable laboratory. The film was developed and printed and returned
by post to the sender. The naturalist opened the small parcel in his study and examined the prints.
Comparing the prints with the negatives he had cause to hold one of them in his teeth. It was the
negative of the dead dog on the beach. That evening the naturalist died of an infection. His body
was found by the police a week later and photographed” (this echoes “Zed and Two Noughts”, TL316, S59, “Bridge Story11: “The Dead Dogs” in S83).
1001: Never told.
SUITCASE ?? FIRE (N3) (movie 3)
A suitcase containing highly combustible materials ready to be set alight, to remind us of how fire
has ravaged the civilisations of man from the Burning of the Library at Alexandria to the burning of
the martyr Joan of Arc to the burning of Dresden.
SUITCASE ?? LEAD (N4) (movie 3)
A suitcases of lead, the most stabile of elements and in constant competitive antithesis to uranium.
LOCATION: St. Peter’s Cathedral Rooftop, Vatican City, Rome, Italy
DATE: 1944
SCRIPT PAGE: TL3-65
LATER FOUND: In Brooklyn Museum, 2002
DESCRIPTION: a suitcase made of lead, the most stabile of elements and therefore the antithesis of uranium.
Someone has finger-scrawled the letters THPL (Tulse Henry Purcell Luper) on its surface, but it might be better if
it says, “Lephrenic”.
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Suitcase should be labeled “Lefrenic, BAR-T Ranch, Clearwater, Moab, Colorado River, Utah, USA,
Earth, The Universe” as a reference to a scene in Film #1 (TL1-58).
Lephrenic dies right after the Americans liberate Rome
If it is indeed possible that this lead-lined suitcase carried uranium, it might’ve succeeded in poisoning
Lephrenic with radiation.
A Geiger counter would prove its degree of radioactivity.
Since Lephrenic died from radiation burns stemming from being too close to the contents of the leadlined suitcase, Luper associates opening the suitcase with opening the original Pandora’s Box.
This suitcase can be partnered with “S77: Uranium” (a suitcase filled with uranium which most probably
came from this suitcase initially, and even from Moab),
This suitcase can also be partnered with “S76: Coffin/Lephrenic’s Body”, as Lephrenic most probably
died from carrying this suitcase around.
SUITCASE ?? ROMAN POSTCARDS (N5) (movie 3)
A suitcase of Roman postcards that pictorially record and link the buildings of Rome in journeys
back and forth across the city.
SUITCASE ?? LIGHT-BULBS (N6) (movie 2)
A suitcases of light-bulbs, witnesses of ambiguous events in conditions of poor light and total
darkness.
LOCATION: Antwerp Train Station Bathroom
DATE: 1938
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-83
DESCRIPTION: Important to note that each of Tulse’s prisons to date (the coalhouse, the Moab Jail,
the bathroom at the Antwerp Train Station) all feature single overhead bulbs as the primary light
source.
* Lone light bulb is symbol of imprisonment.
SUITCASE ?? LOCKS AND KEYS (N7) (movie 2)
A suitcase full of locks and keys, symbolic of Luper as a perpetual professional prisoner.
LOCATION: streets outside Strasbourg Cathedral
DATE: 1940
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-97
DESCRIPTION: After Luper’s work in the cinema concludes each night he is taken for exercise. This
entails being chained to a mastiff (named Titan) that goes on a nightly round before returning to
the cinema. While walking one night Luper comes upon Jonah and Cecile Moitessier, the two
children at the cinema who he gave the roses (S46).
The mastiff is distracted with a bone to gnaw on as they pick the lock binding Luper to the dog.
Once Luper is free they offer him a place to stay.
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This suitcase can be full of locks and keys, symbolic of Luper’s life as a perpetual prisoner.
It may also include the lock to his iron mask.
It can also include Luper’s chains - including the curious special screw-handcuffs used in
Vaux episode.
SUITCASE ?? IDEAS OF AMERICA (N8) (movie 2)
Luper, even in 1940, had an unsettled equivocal idea of America. He packed a suitcase to contain
his equivocations. Such equivocations had been presented to his jailers in Antwerp to either
convince them to go to there at once, or stay completely away and try to forget that such a place
had ever existed.
SUITCASE ?? NUMBERS & LETTERS (N9) (movie 2)
A suitcases of three-dimensional numbers and letters. To Luper, an apocryphal writer, the three
dimensional characteristics turned letters, and therefore possibly words, into tangible, holdable,
portable objects.
SUITCASE ?? LUPER UNIFORMS (N10) (movie 2)
A suitcase containing Luper’s clothing from his imprisonment in the Antwerp Railway Station Hotel,
it certainly once contained his Fascist uniform and the paper suit he made from Belgian Railway
train time-tables.
LOCATION: Antwerp Train Bathroom
DATE: 1939
SCRIPT PAGE: TL1-126
A suitcase containing Luper’s clothing from his imprisonment in the Antwerp Railway Station Hotel,
including a Red Fox Fascist uniform he was forced to wear so that he could be photographed as
“proof” that he was a member of the National Socialist Party of Belgium.
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Luper is photographed in uniform with the following people:
1. Van Hoyten
2. two Japanese politicians
3. dark suited dignitaries and Nazi soldiers
4. Julian Lephrenic and his daughter, Passion Hockmeister, all standing under black
umbrellas.
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These images can be found in S3 and S90.
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The uniforms connects with S11 (sewing needles) where women are forced to sew fascist
uniforms.
Also in the suitcase is a suit of clothes Luper made from Belgian railway timetables that had been
left in his bathroom “cell”.
SOME
FAKE,
SUITCASE ??
APOCRYPHAL & UNAUTHENTICATED SUITCASES
LIVE SQUID (N11)
A suitcase of live squid from Maxims in Paris apparently presented to Luper by General Foestling to
demonstrate the excessive power of the occupying powers in France to obtain anything they
wanted from anywhere.
LOCATION: Vaux Chateau grounds
DATE: Summer 1940
SCRIPT PAGE: TL2-38
DESCRIPTION: Luper claims that the German General Foestling wants to turn Vaux into a “paradise
eugenics camp”. Luper suggests that for the most effective form of mating they should fill the lake
with male semen and simply have the women swim through it, in much the same way squid are
impregnated.
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Pip, the ubiquitous motorcycle delivery boy first seen as on of the Red Fox Brigade in
Antwerp, delivers to Luper a small newspaper-lined suitcase containing live squid from a
fish-market or fish restaurant (Maxims in Paris). These are a gift from General Foestling,
who wants to demonstrate the power of the occupying powers in France to obtain anything
they wanted anywhere.
Squid as metaphor for organic machine for creation of Aryan race.
SUITCASE ?? WHISTLES (N12)
A suitcase of whistles, symbol of imperative command and emblematic of Luper’s favourite ghost
story, Whistle, and I will come to you. It was said that Luper hoped one day to whistle up death
when he was ready for it.
A suitcase collection of various types of whistles - preferably of metal - whistles used in railwaysstations, playgrounds, gymnastics, the army, football pitches, high-pitched for calling dogs etc.
Symbol of imperative command and emblematic of Luper’s favorite ghost story, “Whistle, and I will
come to you”. Luper hoped one day to whistle up death when he wished for its appearance.
Tulse Luper characteristic
Luper was erroneously thought to have packed a suitcase of whistles in commemoration of the Antwerp Railway
Station-Master, Erik van Hoyten.
SUITCASE ?? HUMAN ASH (N13)
A suitcase of human cremated ash and bone, collected from Hiroshima on August 8th 1945.
A suitcase of human cremated ash and bone, supposedly collected from Hiroshima on August 8th
1945. Grey ashes and grey dust with some charred animal bones, some metal buttons, small
pieces of scrap iron bearing molten metal evidence, and a few burnt scraps of red and white paper
with three faded chrysanthemum flower heads.
SUITCASE ??
NOTES ON DROWNED CORPSES (__)(movie 3)
Luper feared death by drowning. Disturbed by the very early self-portrait photograph of Hippolyte
Bayard as a drowned man, Luper wrote out his own mortuary notice of death by drowning in 92
different ways.