“But I don’t even know what you mean: commit to you.”
“Promise me I will be the only person for you.”
“Forever?”
“Yes.”
Lee doesn’t know what to say. The Scotch isn’t warming her up the way it usually does, so she takes a bigger sip. This is not at all how she thought this conversation would go. It is Lee who is supposed to be angry—Lee, the one who was left to fend for herself last night. She sees again Man’s arms wrapped around Kiki, his mouth near her ear as he whispers things to soothe her.
“All those people saw you go to Kiki and not to me. How could you do that to me in front of them?”
Man pushes his fingers into his hair. “I just had to get her under control. I had no idea what she was going to do next. She could do anything, truly.”
“You make her sound like some kind of wild animal. Who were you scared for: you or her or me?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking it through. And then by the time I looked up you were gone.”
“I couldn’t be there. I hate that woman.” Lee’s voice sounds childlike when she says it and she feels a few new tears streak down her cheeks. She wipes them away and then actually laughs. “I do. I hate her.”
Man sets down his drink and moves closer to her. He clears his throat. “Lee…what I’m trying to say is this is not just love for me. The things I feel for you—it’s something more, something stronger. It’s making me—changing me back into someone I used to be, that I had forgotten how to be. Last night in our bed—it was so big and empty. I kept moving over to your side and hoping I’d feel you there. And this morning—I barely slept; I’m not all here today, I’m sure you can tell—I walked the long way to work so I could see the Seine and the whole time I was walking I imagined you next to me. I’m not explaining it very well. I wasn’t imagining it. I saw you next to me. I couldn’t not see you, everywhere I looked.”
He reaches out and takes the glass out of her hand and sets it down on a side table, then takes her hands in his. They feel hot. She knows he is waiting for her to say something but she is not sure what it is. He’s never spoken this way before. They’ve discussed marriage, but only their mutual dislike of it. They agreed it’s not for them. But this—this is something different. Man’s voice is ragged; he holds her hands uncomfortably tight, as if he can squeeze her into understanding what he is saying.
Before Lee can speak, he continues. “I want to give you everything. Me. Not some other man. And I have given you so much—I’ve made you so good. You’re so talented now. And every time you show me your work and it’s better than the work you’ve done before, I feel more justified in loving you, in these feelings I have that I can’t even make sense of.”
She stares at his fingers wrapped around hers, the short dark hairs between the knuckles. He is so serious, but the words don’t mean much to her. Commit—to say yes, to agree. And if it will gain her a permanent place here at his side, in this studio, then isn’t that what she wants? So she nods, and she says it. “All right, yes. You know I love you.”
He squeezes her hands harder and she feels her bones pressing against one another. “I want you to love me forever.”
“Forever,” she says, nodding, and then because she doesn’t want to say anything more, she pulls her hands free and wraps her arms around him and lets him hold her and rock her back and forth. They stay like that for a while. Finally she pulls away. Man squares his shoulders and looks as if he is trying to regain control of himself.
“I should get to work,” she says, and starts walking toward the darkroom. She turns to see if he is going to follow her. Instead, he picks up one of the birds’ nests on the mantel, cupping it in one hand.
“Lee,” he says as she leaves the room. “Do the film.”
“All right,” she says again. Of course she’s going to do the film; she’s already decided. But what is the harm in letting him think he is a part of her decision?
Outside the darkroom Lee looks down at the contact sheet he has on the table. “What are you printing?” she calls to him.
“Pictures of you,” he says. “What else?”
Lee picks up the loupe. The contact sheet has nine images on it with hardly any variation, as if Man just released the shutter again and again as fast as he could. In the images Lee lies in their bed, sleeping. She has one arm flung above her head, the other wrapped around her torso. She is under the sheets, but it’s clear from the folds in the fabric that her legs are spread wide, and the angle at which Man shot the pictures makes the shadows in the sheets point like an arrow toward the center of her. Lee has no memory of him taking these—it could have been yesterday or months ago. Man has taken pictures of her while she is sleeping before; it’s never bothered her. But now, as she looks at her sleeping self, tripled in every row, she doesn’t like the pictures. Not because it makes her uncomfortable to think of Man watching her while she sleeps, the voyeuristic aspect of them. No, what she doesn’t like is the implicit trust in them, what it reveals about their relationship. The vulnerability she sees in herself.
Lee wonders if this is what Man means by asking for a commitment. If what he wants from her is total surrender.
Later they go home together. Man seems satisfied by their conversation. He holds her hand while they walk to the apartment, gently moves her out of the way of a pothole in the road. When they get inside, he runs a bath for her, and when she has dried off and gotten into her dressing gown, she finds him in their small kitchen, where he has scrambled her an egg. It sits steaming on a plate on the counter, and Man spreads butter on a slice of toast and adds it to the plate. Lee is famished, eats the egg and then another. She feels warm from the food in her stomach and warm from the bath and from the robe she has knotted at her waist. She and Man barely speak, but there is comfort in their silence. If this is not love, then what is?
Dachau,
April 30, 1945
If Lee uses a wide angle and takes in the landscape, getting the tidy lawns of the nearby village in the shot, she can show how close the trains were to civilians, how they knew, how they must have known—
If she frames the shot through the open train car door, foregrounds the dead man’s skull, his cheekbones almost slicing through what’s left of his skin—
If she takes a photo of one of the rabbits they raised in the camp, its clean white fur, its plump rolls of well-fed fat. Bred to be a muff for an overfed Frau to push her fists into. A prisoner feeding the rabbit grain out of his dirt-blackened hand—
If she takes a photograph of someone else seeing what she sees. Prisoners, their eyes haunted, starving, looking on as bodies are tossed in a pit. An SS guard, jaw broken, watching blood spurt from another guard’s punched nose—
If she tries different angles, gets in close. The empty tin bowl, the number on a wrist, the man’s foot half gone when he takes off his boot—
If she takes photos of the ones in charge. A German official, vomiting next to a stacked pile of dead. Another of a suicide, his tongue a black worm pushing out of his mouth—
Sometimes Lee puts her camera to her face just so she can close her eyes. Sometimes she takes the photos blind.
If they knew—they had to know—there is no way they didn’t know—
If she—the smell. She will write of it to Audrey.
One by one members of the press corps leave. Lee stays. She must bear witness. The film canisters fill her pockets, grenades to send out for publication.
Chapter Twenty-three
Jean has picked up cast and crew members all over Europe. They are a ragtag group, but as soon as Lee shows up on the second day, resolute and motivated, she becomes a part of it. Most of them don’t even speak the same language, but when they are together it doesn’t matter: they crack jokes and talk in long looping soliloquies about everything, and somehow enough of it makes sense to create a fellow feeling. A woman named Anush is a palm reader, and one night everyone on the set gets their f
ortune read, which makes them reveal things they otherwise would never mention. Another evening they drink brandy and empty a metal trash can and have a fire right there on the stage. After only a few days Lee thinks she could count these people as her friends.
Some afternoons, when filming has wrapped for the day, they raid the dressing rooms, pulling out costumes. They cinch themselves into Edwardian gowns, men and women both, the corsets so tight their breath comes short and fast, or they don chain mail tunics and battle with dull-bladed swords. They act out skits and fall over one another laughing. When Jean is happy with how the day’s filming has gone, he acts as their ringleader, and the scenarios he invents for them to perform are crazy and wonderful.
Lee finds she loves acting. Freed from the constraints of the statue costume at the end of the day, she is loose and uninhibited. She’ll place Nefertiti’s crown on her head and feel her whole bearing change, growing languid and queenly, and her real identity will slip away. The other cast members are surprised she’s never acted before. She basks in their praise and finds herself working hard to impress them. The film inspires her photography too; there are similarities between her own process and what’s happening on set. She begins to understand photography as cinematic. When she takes a picture, she is laying claim to one moment out of a moving stream of a thousand potential moments, and the act of choosing it, of removing it from its context, is part of what makes it art.
Behind the cine camera, Jean is a master. Lee sees that now. His way of winding up the actors, angering them, even, is effective for getting what he wants. Enrique in particular. The two of them together engage in what she soon realizes is the same dynamic both on and off set: that they are lovers suffuses all their interactions. The relationship is a tempestuous one. They scream at each other in full view of the rest of the cast, and Lee even sees Enrique reach out to strike Jean at one point. Everyone studiously ignores them, and instead just comments on the range Enrique displays in the dailies. In the end, Lee thinks, their personal drama makes their art work, and she can’t help thinking of herself with Man, the way she can’t separate her feelings for him from the work they do together.
Even though she is glad to be on her own, Lee thinks of Man often while she’s on the set. The lightness inside her while she’s there, like a fountain bubbling over, fills her with guilt, and sometimes the thought of Man, alone at the studio, makes her wish she wasn’t having such a good time. She’s not sure she deserves to feel this way; being here without him should not make her this happy. But then in the next instant she finds herself laughing so hard she forgets to cover her teeth with her hand, and all Lee thinks is that she can’t wait to share all this with him, to let him in on all the fun.
One afternoon, after a long shoot of a bizarre scene in which the poet’s mouth separates from his body and reappears on his hand, Lee sits on a wobbly chair at the edge of the stage. They called her in for some of the crowd shots, and she loved being on film without all her makeup. Around her, other actors are talking and relaxing. Someone brings out a brandy bottle and passes it around. Another man rolls cigarettes on a barstool and hands them out, and soon the stage is hazy with smoke. It could be four in the afternoon or the middle of the night. Like the darkroom, the film set has a timeless quality, and Lee wants to linger. Her stomach is empty and the brandy settles in it like a hot-water bottle, all comfort and heat. After a while the bottle is empty and one by one everyone starts to get up to go home, gathering coats and hats and saying their goodbyes.
Soon Lee is one of the last people there. She picks up her coat and heads backstage for one last look around. The dark space smells of smoke and wet wool and some sort of herbal cleaner, and she breathes it in with pleasure. Only a few more days and they’ll be done filming. Lee doesn’t want to let it go.
Someone comes up behind her and puts his hand on her arm. She jumps, then sees that it’s Jean. “You scared me!”
“I am sorry.” He takes a deep breath. “You stay too—I’ve seen you. I never want to go home.”
“Me neither.” She turns to face him and he gives her an appraising look.
“I am headed to the ballet tonight—it is Lifar’s first production. Would you like to come?”
Lee smooths her hair and looks down at her wrinkled dress. “I look a fright.”
“You look a vision. Plus, we will sneak.” Jean makes a gesture with his hands like a little animal creeping, and she laughs.
They walk out of the studio together as the sun is setting. Masses of purple clouds gather, and through them the sun sends sharp rays of light.
“Oh, look,” Lee says, and they stop to stare until the sun shifts and the rays disappear. Then, companionably, Lee loops her arm through his.
“Enrique didn’t want to go?” she asks.
Jean sniffs. “Enrique does not like to be seen with me.”
“That can’t be true!”
“Lately it feels that way.”
“I’m sorry.”
Jean shrugs. “And you? Man Ray is not taking you out tonight, wooing you?”
“Man doesn’t need to woo me anymore,” Lee says, and laughs.
Jean gives her a look. “Certainly you always need wooing. Someone should tell him that.”
The facade of the Palais Garnier is one of the most beautiful in Paris, studded with statues of the Muses of poetry and harmony. Lee heads toward the front entrance, but Jean moves her around to the south side, where they enter through a small unmarked door.
“We really are sneaking?” she asks.
“Yes—like little mice. You should see backstage.”
They walk down a narrow hallway and emerge into the costume room. From a delicate metal frame bolted to the ceiling, dozens of tutus hang suspended in the air. Against the dark wood of the room, the tutus are ethereal clouds scudding across a nighttime sky. Lee immediately reaches for her camera and takes a few pictures, but the light is fading from the small windows and she knows the shots won’t turn out well.
“Can you bring me back here another time?” she says to Jean, but he is already leading her farther into the building. They ascend a short flight of stairs and emerge backstage. The room takes Lee’s breath away. Dark wood and shrouded set pieces. A vast floor, stained black and scuffed from thousands of ballet shoes, the scent of dance tallow lingering in the air. Lee walks toward the stage and, as her eyes get used to the darkness, notices the sets that must be ready for use that evening: beautiful tapestries with pastoral landscapes, a cloth painted to look like a four-poster bed, a scene of a dining room table laid out for a sumptuous party. Like the tutus, each set panel is suspended from a series of cables, and Lee likes the way the ropes crosshatch the ceiling, lets her eye be drawn up to the top of the room, where the last of the sunset filters through a row of small windows. In the light the dust motes twirl and sparkle.
Lee watches for a while and then notices a person up in the rafters, standing on a wooden platform suspended between two ropes. He extends a leg off the platform and grabs a cable, then crosses over to another ledge, nimbly climbs down a ladder, and moves closer to the ground. She can see him better now. He is dressed all in black: tight black pants, black shirt, black scarf tied around his waist like a belt. When he moves again, pulling a different cable so that he can adjust one of the set pieces, she sees the power in his body, the lithe maleness of him. When she finally tears her eyes away to look at Jean, she realizes he has been watching too, and they exchange a smirk.
“Caruso!” Jean shouts at the man. “We see you!”
The man turns to them, and Lee picks up her camera and frames him in the viewfinder, his shadowy form silhouetted against the ropes. She focuses, releases the shutter, and puts her camera away. The man climbs down and jumps neatly to the ground, the thump of his feet sending up a puff of rosin powder. Jean goes over and embraces him, which the man endures without reciprocating.
“Caruso!” Jean says again. “You are here—why are you here? I need you
on my set!”
Caruso doesn’t respond but gives Jean a brief smile. Then he glances over at Lee, and his face shows a flicker of recognition.
As their eyes meet, Lee recognizes him too. Soft dark hair, sharp cheekbones, shirt unbuttoned with a sprouting of straight chest hair visible. Full dry lips. His first name comes to her immediately. Antonio. From Drosso’s.
Antonio reaches into a back pocket and pulls out a flattened pouch of tobacco, then sits on a chair and starts to roll a cigarette.
“Caruso, Caruso,” Jean says. “I need you for my last scene. I need you to paint me a billiards room.”
Antonio licks the edge of the cigarette paper and twists it closed. “You know how much Lifar’s paying me? Good money.”
He lights the cigarette and takes a huge drag, his lips going white with the force of his inhalation. He moves to hand the cigarette to Lee.
“I don’t smoke,” she tells him, but he ignores her and places the cigarette to her mouth. His boldness surprises her, and when his fingers touch her face she thinks at first he must have burned her with the ash, the feeling of his skin on hers sends such heat through her. The effect is absurd, outsize, makes the world seem sharper, as if she has rubbed her eyes and brought everything into better focus. As if she has just come awake. The part of her cheek where he touched her feels separate from the rest of her face, and separately awake. The smoke burns her throat as she exhales, and she is desperate not to cough. Antonio lights two more cigarettes, one for himself and one for Jean, and as he does so Lee tries to look anywhere but at him. But every time she looks, Antonio is staring right back at her, rolling the cigarette without even glancing at it. His eyes are gray, clear like chips of river ice, and he doesn’t seem embarrassed to be looking at her so intently.
The Age of Light Page 22
