“No, quite the reverse. I avoided that aspect of it. I was wary of too psychological an interpretation, along the lines of the emotional loneliness of the great ones of this world. I wanted to exaggerate the cynical side of her reign …”
“That’s what’s the stuff of legend: a century of predators, hungry for female flesh and good living, yet sometimes they have a sense that their triumphant lives are a failure and hanker after quite a different life …”
The door opens, one of the “judges” comes out into the corridor.
“The committee will need an additional meeting for further consideration. You will be notified, Comrade Erdmann. Good day to you.”
Outside Luria heads toward the entrance to a subway station, stops, shakes his hand … And suddenly, as if breaking through a barrier, he asks: “Is Sergei Erdmann your father?”
“Yes … He died … eight years ago.”
“We knew one another in 1948, we were in preventive detention. At the time of the struggle against cosmopolitanism … Look after yourself now. Maybe we’ll meet again. Maybe at the premiere of your film, who knows?”
Back home Oleg rereads the screenplay with new eyes, in Luria’s voice. He regrets not having told him about the saying his parents used to repeat at the toughest moments in their lives. “All this, because a little German princess had the mad idea of going to live in Russia!”
Dressmakers are feverishly stitching away at the gown on this monumental body, pricking their fingers, keeping their heads down under the rain of blows the woman hands out. Broad hips, a bulging stomach—the flashing of the needles draws the silks taut, drapes the flesh, squeezes and tapers it, and, finally, phew, manages to achieve a tight fit around this ponderous graven image. The Empress Elizabeth enters the ballroom … The courtiers see her scowling—one of the guests has a more elegant coiffure than her own. Quick, a pair of scissors! The unfortunate woman loses her locks and flees in tears … After the ball they cut Elizabeth out of her dress, snip through the brocade, tear away the lace. The empress loathes undressing, all those hooks, all that lace, the farthingales … The next night there will be another ball and she has chosen the costumes: on this occasion the women are to be attired as men and the men will wear dresses with hoops. Oh, the walking dolls, tripping over their crinolines and the buxom women squeezed into military tunics! She orders the musicians to increase the tempo—the dancers fall over, lie struggling on the floor …
Now another costume change: a torturer tears off the Countess Lopukhina’s clothes to expose her back to the burning lash of a whip. The skin bursts open, the leather whip becomes soaked in blood, the woman faints, they open her mouth, the torturer seizes her tongue, a blade flashes …
And yet another masquerade: young peasants dressed in uniform charge into a field of barley with fixed bayonets and skewer other peasants clad in uniforms of a different color.
The swift succession of these scenes reflects the viewpoint of a girl in her teens poking her nose in everywhere, listening, watching, guessing. Soon she herself will be drawn into this maelstrom of masks: tsarina, rejected wife, adventuress, mother, lover, regicide …
“The only thing that’s been retained from my script,” Oleg often says to himself during the filming, “is the pace of the action.” And then at once he recognizes that this way of filming History was the whole point of his scenario. Its energy, its originality. His screenplay has survived. What could be more important?
Six months earlier, in February, the jury had finally given its verdict: the making of the film about Catherine II was entrusted to a seasoned director, Mikhail Kozin. But “Comrade Erdmann” was not forgotten: he was appointed “artistic assistant.” “The wolves are fed but the sheep are still alive,” his teacher, Bassov, observed. “You’ve neither won nor lost. No, that’s not true. You’ve won, because Kozin is a heavyweight. A strange guy, you’ll see he’s easily offended. And he stammers, which makes communication tough. But a good eye, he knows what he’s doing … And who’d have thought those slugs at the SCCA would have run scared! A spot of support from the Kremlin comes in handy, wouldn’t you think?”
In particular this “support” made it possible to start filming in June. “Her f-f-first s-summer in R-r-ussia,” said Kozin. For Oleg his trembling lips were painful to watch—yes, Catherine’s very first summer in St. Petersburg. It felt as if Kozin were eager to propel the young German girl without delay into the short-lived paradise of white nights.
Curiously enough, his stammer made relationships on the set easier. Kozin said only what was essential. Unable to describe, he showed. Miming a scene, he left the actors to infuse it with emotions from their own experience.
This art of silence reconciled Oleg to his secondary status: “I could never direct people the way Kozin does!” Bassov’s advice came to mind: “Note every detail of his way of working. You’re not so far from him in the way you see things. But he can only speak to other people through the camera.”
By now, two months after the start of filming, Oleg’s notebook is filled with observations, sketches, jottings. The scenes that worked: the dress being cut off Elizabeth, the men in crinolines crawling about on the floor, Lopukhina and her torturer, the battle in a field of barley …
The facts are true. Elizabeth owned fifteen thousand dresses. Catherine herself was once knocked over by a male courtier’s skirt when dancing. Lopukhina was mutilated, while her fellow accused, Princess Bestuzheva, slipped a cross studded with diamonds into the torturer’s hand, thus saving her own tongue. The bayonet charge in a field of barley is a reconstruction of one of the battles in the Seven Years’ War …
A Swedish diplomat and the young Poniatowski come to the reception given by Catherine and Peter. The tsarina owns a little greyhound bitch that snarls at the Swede but nuzzles affectionately up to Poniatowski. “Dogs are the most treacherous of creatures,” the diplomat hisses into the blushing favorite’s ear.
A similar shortcut is taken in filming the trade in bodies organized by Potemkin: he receives a hundred thousand rubles from each new lover he introduces to Catherine. This is precisely the sum each favorite is given by the tsarina as a “gift of welcome.” Kozin telescopes the two transactions together: the young man collects his rich pickings and goes straight to hand it over to Potemkin …
Oleg notes even more economical details: Catherine arrives in Moscow, her carriage gets bogged down in the mud, the golden onion dome of a church is reflected in a puddle, a pig lazily contemplates the mired carriage … Five seconds of action and Catherine’s scorn for Moscow is plain for all to see!
The sequence in which Catherine hides under the bed to escape the anger of her lover, Orlov, is equally brief. “I would have made it a comic scene,” thinks Oleg. “Kozin shows a terrified woman confronting males equipped by natural selection for killing, violating, and crushing the weak …”
This laconic style is the echo of Kozin’s shackled voice.
Poniatowski loves Catherine at the risk of rotting in prison! “At the sight of her beauty one forgets the existence of Siberia.” A romantic declaration to which Kozin adds three seconds: the lover returns to Europe, and his grand passion is quickly forgotten.
“Having loved you, how could I love another?” Catherine asks Potemkin, in tears. A moment later the camera catches her in the arms of Vassilchikov, the one who has the courage to admit: “I’m simply a kept woman …”
It is at this moment in the filming that a little incident occurs. The actor playing Vassilchikov moves off into a gallery in the palace. Kozin is about to speak, he has his eye on one of the dollies. Tongue-tied, he gasps painfully … Suddenly the dolly, badly wedged, begins to slide down its track, then stops. “A tracking shot by telepathy,” shouts out one of the technical crew. They all have a strong sense of there being “a drama behind the drama”—of a world that underlies the words spoken.
Oleg goes out, toward the ashen-gray Neva, lights a cigarette. The thought is disturbing: a life
beyond the games of power and desire they are in process of filming …
He hastens to reassure himself: “But of course not! Kozin’s going to make a good, realist film, faithful to the Party line. Catherine’s marriage to this great oaf, Peter. Her first lovers, coup d’état, the ferment of great reforms. Wars, festivities, debates with Diderot … The apotheosis: Catherine in the Crimea. And the decline—the fall of the Bastille, a tsarina in old age, deserted by Mamonov, weeps at a window …”
“They’ve finished for the day, Oleg! Shall we go home? No, first treat me to an ice cream. Kozin said I was brilliant.”
Oleg kisses the pretty face from which the makeup has just been removed: Dina—the young Catherine II. Half an hour ago she was hurrying over to a secret alcove, a mirror slid aside, revealing a bed and Vassilchikov, naked …
They stop on the Palace Bridge, embrace, Dina’s body is as pliant as a growing plant. A body that lends itself to everything the role demands. And when they embrace this suppleness offers a soothing pleasure, a banal sweetness.
“Did you see that dolly moving all on its own? That was a paranormal phenomenon, wasn’t it?”
She laughs with light, childish joy. Everything about this shoot is running so smoothly that their meeting seems to be part of the script. The costumes are delivered on time, the sets are skillfully designed, and the young female star falls in love with the “artistic assistant.” All that is needed now is for Kozin to become infatuated with the tsarina number two, the “older” Catherine! A handsome couple they’d make: this bear with his stammer and the East German actress who will soon be coming to Leningrad …
They walk around the Peter and Paul Fortress, sit down in a café. Dina heaves a comical sigh: “I don’t want to put you off your food, but all my lovers smell really bad. Especially Poniatowski. He’s the fattest and, what’s more, Kozin wants him to wear a lot of things made of fur. Apparently he was an aristocrat terrified of the tiniest draft. Talk about the prince and the pea! And I have to put up with his emanations …”
Outside the window the fortress wall can be seen and the bluish expanse above the Neva, lit by a shaft of light … A few months ago Oleg’s life had been this frozen river, rare meetings with Lessya, sadness, shame. Now, there is this young woman who loves him, the filming, the work with Kozin. An aura of being on vacation. The buoyancy of a life waiting to be explored.
Dina holds out her hand to him, draws him to her. He lets it happen, going along with the sweetness of these human games. At twenty-eight he finally feels he has understood that not loving too much may be a form of wisdom.
In Dina’s expression he recognizes the smile with which the young Catherine, in love, greeted Vassilchikov.
Little model soldiers, made of starch, parade across the salon floor. A man kneeling on all fours lines up the regiments, whistles to imitate gun-fire … A valet enters, announces that dinner is served. Reluctantly the man abandons his game, goes out. And in the salon where the wax from a candle is dripping onto the floor, a rat appears—monstrous by comparison with the size of the little soldiers … The scene changes brutally and the tiny figures are being trampled under the boots of giants. Killers hurl themselves at the man we have seen playing his game of soldiers …
It was Oleg who had suggested this way of filming Peter’s murder. “An artistic assistant can have his uses,” he jokes at intervals. Kozin nods in agreement: “S-s-spare w-wheels are the b-b-best.”
Another suggestion: Cagliostro. “So much has been written about the elixirs of youth the old rogue used to dispense to the women of St. Petersburg. Why not film Princess Golitsyn’s baby instead? The child has just died, Cagliostro carries off the body, and two weeks later the baby is brought back to life! The parents are overjoyed and it is only the child’s nurse, an illiterate peasant, who denounces the substitution. She’s the only one who’s truly fond of this other child.”
Oleg has learned Kozin’s silent language. He knows its syntax! A whole scene “compressed” in a single detail … Catherine gives herself to Grigory Orlov (a dull reflection in a mirror) and, reflected in another mirror, Peter III, with his throat crushed beneath the boot of Aleksey Orlov, Grigory’s brother …
Kozin has a special gesture of his own to show that a solution pleases him: in one hand he grips an imaginary needle, with the other he slips a thread through the eye. “You’ve scored a bull’s-eye!” he would have said, but, with his halting words, that would take too long.
It feels as if, for Kozin, this film is an exam retake, following an error for which he must earn a pardon. The censors will be lying in wait for him at every turn, especially in the scenes depicting the tsarina’s sexual life. Oleg remembers that, according to one biography, the walls of Catherine’s vaulted recess were covered in licentious miniatures: nymphs and satyrs in suggestive poses, copulating dancers. Why not film these, instead of the sex scenes, which will, in any case, be censored? Kozin thinks for a moment, then his hands go up. A thread, a needle’s eye!
Alcohol liberates Kozin from his stammer. One evening in August he and Oleg are in a restaurant—“to take stock, on reaching the halfway mark.” Soon “the young Catherine” (Dina, who has aged on film by thirty years) will pass the baton to Eva Sander, the East German actress who will play the tsarina in her declining years … Kozin is now on his fourth glass.
“So that’s it, Erdmann. You’ll have no more need to be jealous of all those lovers groping Dina … Your erotic miniatures have already made her task a lot easier. Just imagine if all those bareback circus tricks had to be acted out for real! And circus tricks is the operative word. Apparently the tsarina once fancied a stallion … Well, I know it’s only gossip. But it speaks volumes about the contempt men feel for women like her! You see, I want to defend her …”
Kozin casts furtive glances around him, a vigilance that is second nature to him: on the telephone, in a restaurant, and even when talking to close friends …
“I’m not going to put her on a pedestal,” he goes on. “It just needs to be shown that she wasn’t a pathological nymphomaniac, or totally obsessed with power. Of course the old crocodiles on the SCCA will cut to ribbons anything that goes beyond the official portrait. If it comes to the crunch they’ll put up with her bare backside, but not the revolutionary aspects of her reign. Look, she created the House of Education—where any child of a serf, once accepted as a pupil, becomes free. She can’t abolish slavery, so she adopts an oblique maneuver. The peasants know that a means of becoming free exists. And that’s what is crucial! How can we say this without bringing the crocodiles paddling out of their backwater?”
Kozin drinks slowly, he looks relaxed: he has just revealed the very basis of his thinking and the burden of suspicion falls away. “In our country,” thinks Oleg, “rehabilitating Catherine the Second is a subversive enterprise, and one that marks you as a dissident!”
He says this out loud and it is like the password Kozin has been waiting for. If one of them is hiding what his real game is, so be it. When sharing confidences everyone takes the risk of being denounced. The two of them are banking on sincerity.
“Let’s copy Luria!” Oleg spells it out, referring to the historian who defied the SCCA. “Let’s imitate his method. A flash of truth—the House of Education where slaves become free—and then, immediately after that, a politically unassailable scene. A country landowner reading this advertisement: ‘For Sale one light carriage (new) and one female serf, aged twenty …”’
“So you mean the crocodiles’ suspicions will be lulled by this reminder of the harsh realities of feudal life? The sale of a surrey and a young woman, bundled together in the same lot …”
As Kozin says this he makes his gesture of approval: a thread in the eye of a needle.
“And what do we do with the scene where Catherine talks about her Great Instruction? A text so in advance of its time that its publication was banned in France. They’ll never let us show that.”
“We’ll tell
a story, like Luria did. You film a courtier reciting some verse ponderous enough to put your jaw out of joint. At Catherine’s court they made up for lack of taste by declaiming one of Tredyakovsky’s poems, clumsy imitations of the classical French poets …”
They laugh, picturing Dina, first of all serious and passionate, her manifesto of reforms in her hand (“Rulers should serve the people and not submit them to their whims”)—then in a lighthearted mood, smiling, as she listens to the versified mumblings haltingly recited by a sweating courtier.
Kozin pours more wine for himself, then sighs, as if what he now puts to Oleg is a challenge beyond their powers: “Right, we’re going to rescue Catherine. But Potemkin? He’s a lost cause, isn’t he? A tyrant, a crook, an erotomaniac, a warmonger … And what’s more, a Cyclops. The Orlov brothers put out one of his eyes in a brawl. Such a male-dominated world for our little Cathy, coming from her fairy-tale principality … So how about it?”
Oleg draws out his notebook.
“I’ve got someone to speak up for him: the prince de Ligne. Listen to this: ‘Potemkin is the most remarkable man I have ever set eyes on … Lazy, but he works incessantly … Melancholy in his pleasures, unhappy by dint of being happy, blasé about everything, quickly losing patience with things, morose, inconstant, a profound philosopher, an able minister, a brilliant politician, as thoughtless as a ten-year-old boy, fabulously rich, but without a penny to his name, holding forth about theology to his generals and strategy to his archbishops, never reading, but learning from those he talks to, greedy as a child for everything and, like a great man, capable of doing without anything. What was his secret? Genius, genius, and yet more genius!”’
Kozin waves his glass in the air.
A Woman Loved Page 8
