The Age of Light

by Whitney Scharer

  “Why did you leave her?” Lee wants to know because she wants to confirm she is better than Kiki, wants to know all the ways in which the other woman failed.

  “She was jealous.”

  “Jealous of what? What did you do?”

  Man looks at her with an injured expression. “Nothing! She was volatile—such a performer. She spent every night singing songs about betrayal and pretty soon she saw it everywhere.” He stands up and crosses over to the office. “Here, let me show you something.” He returns with a small black address book. Inside are dozens of names, all written in Man’s neat hand, but as Lee looks closer she sees that some of the names and telephone numbers have been altered, run over again and again in thick black pen until the letters look like misshapen animals.

  “I came home one day and found it like this.” He flips through the pages, chooses one, and hands her the book. “My cousin Flora, who lives in Philadelphia. My grandmother. Every woman’s name that was in there.”

  “Had you been with someone else?”

  “No, no, nothing like that.”

  Lee thumbs through the book. The markings are pressed into the pages so hard they are visible on the other side, and there are gouges where the pen’s tip caught against the fibers. On one page, Kiki has written merde merde merde in the margins. Lee imagines Kiki in Man’s bedroom, white-knuckled, furious. But as she keeps flipping through, something about the other woman’s anger tugs at Lee, and she is surprised to find herself feeling empathy, or even kinship. “There must have been some reason she did this—”

  “There’s not. I was devoted to her.” Man’s tone is sharp. “When I was with her, I did everything I could to help her along. She wanted to paint, so I bought her canvases, let her use my oils. She wanted to act, so I took her with me to the States when I went home to visit my family and set up meetings for her in New York. She wanted to write—she had this idea that she’d write a memoir, so I read some of her early pages and helped her translate them into English. And I introduced her to a friend of mine, Broca, because he put out a newssheet about Montparnasse and I thought he might be interested in Kiki’s stories. Well, he was more than interested. She started working with him all the time. Writing. And then she moved in with him.”

  Lee is confused. “So…she left you?”

  Man takes the address book out of Lee’s hands and sets it down on the side table, then walks across the room and stares out the window. “No, I left her. I made it very clear that her behavior was unacceptable. And it was. Broca turned out to be a drinker and a drug addict, always wandering through the street and muttering to himself. Kiki wasn’t with him for long—I think she left him for her accompanist, actually. An accordion player.”

  It is clear from Man’s tone that he is still angry about what happened. He has not answered Lee’s question about why Kiki was so jealous of him, but she doesn’t want to push him much further. She goes over to where he stands at the window, wraps her arms around him, and kisses his ear.

  She waits a few moments, then says, “I want to meet her. I want to hear her sing.”

  “Well. She can be cruel. She knows we are together.”

  “Are you worried she’s going to be mean to me?” Lee puts on a pout, bats her lashes.

  Man rubs his finger along the side of her face and down her neck.

  “You want to know? I’m worried that you two are going to become best friends and Kiki is going to tell you terrible stories about me that make you regret all of this. She could do that. She has done that.”

  “And all along I thought you were worried for me.”

  “Worried for you? I think you’re quite capable of taking care of yourself.”

  When Lee walks through Montparnasse she keeps seeing broadsheets advertising Kiki’s performances, and no matter what she does she can’t get the woman out of her head. Later that week she asks Man if she can see his pictures of Kiki. She can’t help herself. He never misses an opportunity to show off his work, so she’s not surprised when he goes over to the flat files and starts pulling out folders.

  At first what she feels is utter relief, tension she didn’t know she had unknotting in her neck. This is the most beautiful woman in Paris? To Lee’s American eye, Kiki looks bloated as over-yeasted bread, her makeup garish, her hairstyle outdated by two decades, her derriere wide and sagging as a half-filled flour sack.

  But some of the compositions are uncomfortably familiar. Here are Man’s bedroom curtains, the same as they are today. There Kiki tips back her head—Man has taken a close-up of her neck. It could be Lee’s neck, the shot is so similar. Man doesn’t seem to expect Lee to say anything and keeps up a quick patter about what he was thinking when he shot a certain image, or pauses to inspect one and explain how he would print it differently now.

  He shows her at least a hundred pictures. When he is done she is still quiet. Man asks what she thinks. Lee hesitates and then says what she thinks she must: Kiki is very beautiful.

  “Of course,” Man says. “But what do you think of the work?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Biarritz,” Man says.

  Lee is balancing the ledger; Man is sitting at the table in the far corner of the room. He has appointments booked solid for the rest of the week.

  “Biarritz?”

  “Let’s go,” he says. “I can get the car out, we can drive there. You’ve never been, have you?”

  She makes the phone calls for him. Apologies—Man Ray is very sorry, but there has been a death in the family. Can they rebook? Part of her knows Man should be worrying about money, about angering the clients who pay the bills, but it is simple for her to ignore that thought. If he isn’t worried, she shouldn’t be either.

  It takes her an hour to tidy up, go home, and pack her valise, and when she comes downstairs from her apartment he is already idling at the curb in his Voisin, the big long car growling like an animal. Lee has never been in a car this nice. She ties a striped scarf over her hair and props her arm on the leather-covered door, feeling glamorous and louche. She rests her hand on Man’s thigh for most of the ride.

  It’s a long drive on lousy roads, so they stop in Poitiers for the night, strolling like tourists through its cobblestoned streets, eating dinner at a small restaurant where they are served brown bread and boeuf bourguignon, the gravy rich with cognac and studded with carrots and potatoes and pearl onions. Lee eats so much the waistband of her dress is tight when they leave the restaurant. At night they make love in their small hotel room, lit only by the full moon that glows like a lamp through the curtainless windows, and in the morning they eat croissants in bed, their fingers slick with butter and smelling of sugar and yeast. When they go outside, shielding their eyes from the bright sunshine, so different from the light in Paris, Lee takes pictures, the towers on the Palais de Justice like men in jester’s caps, and she feels happier than she has ever felt, free and clean and light inside. As they cross over a footbridge, she turns to Man. “Let me take your picture.”

  “No one takes my picture.”

  “That’s absurd,” she says, and holds her camera to her eye.

  Shrugging, smiling, he agrees. She frames him with the wide stone railing running off to a point on the horizon, holding the camera slightly off axis so his body is parallel with a lamppost just behind him. He wears a white scarf, cream-colored linen pants. He is still smiling, just a little, and the wind catches his hair and his scarf and blows them straight out sideways. He looks old, a bit tired, and for some reason that makes her love him all the more.

  Biarritz, when they finally arrive after two days of solid driving, is a postcard. The sun is setting as they pull into town, and Man puts the Voisin’s top down and takes them along Esplanade du Port Vieux to Villa Belza, which rises narrowly from the road as if it has been gouged out of the sandstone cliffs. Man parks nearby and together they walk up the path to the villa’s front door.

  Man books a room while Lee waits, admiring the lobby’s
elegant furnishings and thick velvet drapes. He comes over to her with a giant key, and when she sees it in his hand she feels dizzy. They cannot move fast enough. She walks in front of him up the stairs and brazenly he puts his hand between her legs as they climb, his fingers hot on her skin right up above the lace at the top of her stockings, so high he must be able to feel the wet heat between her legs. As soon as the hotel room door closes behind them they are on the bed together. The window has been left open and as Man makes love to her—hard, fast, the way she likes it—she smells sea and salt and thinks that from now on she might always think of salt when she thinks of him. When they are finished she lies back on a gigantic pillow and looks around for the first time. The hotel room walls are covered in red brocade. Red curtains are suspended from the ceiling and drape over the headboard. Even the vanity and sitting areas are upholstered in red fabric.

  “What is this place?” she asks him.

  “Isn’t it amazing?” he says, laughing at her expression. “Just wait until you see the cabaret.”

  They nap and make love again and emerge from their room for dinner, where they stuff themselves with seafood dishes: moules marinières, amberjack in orange marinade, a crudo made of some fish Lee has never had before. They refill their wineglasses again and again. Lee feels as though she will never stop being hungry. Eating like this—ordering whatever she wants, scraping the last bits of frosting off her dessert plate—makes her feel like a child again, and for a moment she grows antsy. But then Man takes her into the cabaret, which is as lavish and ostentatious as he promised, and she relaxes. They sit at a mirrored table with their knees pressed together. On the stage, women in sequined brassieres and tall feathered headbands dance the Charleston. The music is loud and brassy and when the show ends and the music continues, most of the patrons get up to dance. Man pulls Lee up onto the floor. He is a wild and uninhibited dancer, not particularly graceful, but so full of joy she cannot help but get caught up in moving with him, following his steps and growing wilder and wilder herself. When they are sweating and winded, Man nicks a wine bottle and two glasses off their table and they go upstairs and climb into the giant red bed and talk until three o’clock in the morning. Art, inspiration, the difference between painting and photography. The conversation is its own dance, looping and circling back on itself until she is practically breathless.

  “I had this idea,” Man says, “a series of self-portraits I want to do. Maybe six or seven of them, all with subtle variations. A close-up of my face and on the desk in front of me a mask, a death mask. The change in the images would be in the other objects on the desk. I’m not sure what they are yet. Maybe in one a noose, in another a feather. Like how it feels to be an artist—”

  Lee nods with excitement. “Yes! How one day you can’t think of a single original picture and the next day there’s almost too many of them—and how do you capture that, or how do you hold on to the feeling from the good days—”

  “And not let the noose days be all you’re thinking about.”

  “Yes,” Lee says. She tips the last drops of wine into her mouth and sets down her glass. He trails his fingers across her arm and she moves her hand to his, lifting it up and pressing just her fingertips to his.

  “Let’s set it up when we get back to the studio,” she says.

  “Yes,” he says, and kisses her.

  In the morning they walk to the Rocher de la Vierge and then to the Grande Plage, where they take off their shoes to stroll along the hard-packed sand. It is mid-May, before the summer season, and the beach is not that crowded. There are rows of empty sun shelters, and when Lee expresses interest, Man rents one. They open its canvas doors and watch the rise and fall of the white-capped waves. Lee lies half in, half out of the sun, marooned under a gigantic sun hat she buys from a passing pushcart, sitting up only to sprinkle water on her legs so she can feel the sea breeze on her skin. The water leaves a filigree of salt when it dries. Man naps next to her in a sun chair. She watches him, his jaw slackened, skin loose around his neck, perfectly at peace. Lee decides to take a walk while he is sleeping. She grabs her camera and heads up to the sidewalk where the chic hotels line the waterfront. Everyone is beautiful. Men in straw caps and cuffed trousers walk hand in hand with women in gauzy palazzo pants. Lee takes a picture of the rows of sun shelters sprouting like button mushrooms from the sand, another of a couple carrying a gigantic parasol and arguing while they walk. At the edge of the beach a woman sells necklaces made out of sea sponges, which charms Lee enough that she buys one to show to Man. It smells of brine and ocean rot, but she puts it around her neck anyway and heads back to him. He is still sleeping, so Lee sits down near him, her head tipped back to the sun. After a few minutes he opens his eyes and sees her and picks up her camera. She doesn’t move, closes her eyes as he takes pictures of her, the sun warm on her face, melting into her bones like butter.

  Before they leave they go into the shelter, close the doors. Inside the thick canvas enclosure the sound of the sea is muffled to a whisper. They lay their towels over the soft white sand and lie down, and Man kisses her, a long deep kiss as if he is drinking her. Lee is astounded at how much she desires him. She takes his hand and puts it at her waistband, and he unbuttons her pants and thumbs aside her underwear and touches her until she is spent and trembling, her skin damp and lightly textured with sand. Afterward she lies against him, her body completely relaxed. He holds her close, and she wants the moment to last forever, for nothing to break the way she feels.

  Lee hears the phrase in her mind but wants Man to say it first. She directs all her attention to him and wills him to say it, even nuzzling her head into his chest and clearing her throat a few times. I love you. They are both silent for a long time, listening to the soft sucking hiss of the surf.

  Finally he says, “I wish you hadn’t gone for a walk while I was sleeping.” Lee sits up slightly so that she can look at him, but he has his eyes closed.

  “Why on earth not?”

  “We’re in a strange town. I didn’t know where you were. And you alone—it worries me. I don’t like to think about other men seeing you.”

  “Other men seeing me?” He can’t be serious. “So the entire time you were napping, I was just supposed to sit here waiting for you to wake up?”

  Man opens his eyes and looks at her. “I guess when you put it that way, it sounds a bit ridiculous. I just…I need you, Lee.” And then, more softly, he says, “Don’t ever leave me.” He pulls her down so that she is lying on his chest again, and strokes her hair.

  The words are not what she wanted him to say. Still, there is something thrilling about them. The vulnerability. The power he is giving to her. She wants to reciprocate, to show him that she knows he’s revealing something of himself, so she rests her head on his shoulder and says, “I won’t.”

  If by staying with him she can always feel as happy as she has felt on this trip, then it will be an easy promise to keep. “Can we come back here every year?” she asks him.

  “Nothing would make me happier.”

  Lee imagines it, a ritual they will create together, and thinks of how it will be in twenty years. His hair the silver that right now dusts his temples, the creases in his face more pronounced, his eyes deeper set. He’ll have old man complaints, and Lee will be the type of woman who finds them endearing, who carries his tonics in her handbag. He will make her into that woman by loving her.

  Man squeezes her closer and they lie in silence until Lee begins to overheat. It is stifling inside the shelter. She pulls away, sits up and adjusts her clothes, and ties open the doors again, staring out at the blurred line where the ocean meets the horizon, admiring the way the doorway frames the view.

  Saint-Malo,

  August 1944

  The rumble and whine of the planes fill the air before Lee sees them nose-diving toward the citadel. In perfect unison, they straighten, and the engine growl is replaced by the hiss and scream of bombs. In an instant everything is chaos
, the citadel exploding with fire. Lee gets a shot of a bomb dropping, and one of a soldier against the haze, his body a silhouette of flame. After the war she’ll find out this was the Americans’ first use of napalm—explaining not only why they censored her photos but also the way the fire seemed to stick like syrup to the soldiers’ skin.

  The attack doesn’t last long. Ears ringing, Lee makes her way down the fort’s steps and back toward headquarters, but the gunfire follows her, and when shots go off so close she can feel their reverberations, she ducks into an underground vault and cowers there, crouched down and clutching her camera against her chest. The vault stinks of war and decay; the walls are covered with what might be blood. When Lee takes a step forward, her heel lands on something fleshy, and she panics and heads back up to the street and begins to run. Her ears ring so loudly she can barely focus, so when someone shouts at her at first she doesn’t realize she’s being asked a question. She turns to find four GIs staring at her.