Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  She sometimes came to Herma’s Wednesdays. But only once did Herma go to Bella’s apartment, a large and elaborately furnished set of rooms over her studio in rue Godot de Mauroy, just off the boulevards. They had been to Barbizon and came back in the train, tired and dusty, and Bella suggested they go to her apartment and bathe before they went out to dinner at Maxim’s. As they went up in the tiny lift Bella smiled, gazed at her, and impulsively kissed her. Still with her little smile, she let her into the apartment.

  It was full of Persian rugs, oriental hangings, divans, and pillows. There were large brass vases from Samarkand, a scimitar hanging on a velvet cord, and a large white-enameled cage with a macaw in it. A faint odor of incense lingered in the air. Herma took her bath first. An amusing notion struck her—a trick to play on Bella—but there was no mirror in the bath, or anywhere else in the apartment, it now occurred to her. Perhaps as you got older you didn’t care to have them around you. The bath, like the rest of the apartment, was an oriental kind of thing—a square sunken pool, large enough to float a small boat, into which you sank, voluptuously, in warm green-tinted water that smelled of mint. Everything in the bathroom was marble, even the bidet. The towel, when she got out, was a violet affair the size of a bedspread and deliciously soft. Along the marble counter were scents of every description. Herma rejected the more exotic ones, chose a little lavender, and touched it behind her ears and inside her elbows. She put on the things that Bella had left her in place of the dusty tailored suit: a narrow clinging silken robe with a slit skirt, enameled bracelets, and matching earrings. The robe fitted her perfectly even though she was taller than Bella. Evidently Bella kept clothing of various sizes in the apartment to lend to friends. Herma was not sure she was going to wear all this to Maxim’s. Perhaps the khaki suit could be dusted off and put back on.

  She came out, and Bella, with a theatrical gesture, showed her into the large salon and invited her to seat herself on the divan. Then she disappeared for her own bath. Herma waited. On the low table before her were multicolored liqueurs in elaborate bottles, bonbons and creamy pastel candies with perfumelike flavors, and crisp wafers speckled with paprika. She helped herself to a tiny glass of raki. The bonbons she didn’t care for, and the paprika wafers were so spicy that after she ate one she had to go off to the kitchen for a glass of water. She came back and arranged herself on the divan again.

  Bella appeared suddenly, on tiptoe and with a pirouette, as if making an entrance. She came down from her toes and smiled. “I have put on my costumes for you.” It was not quite clear why costumes was in the plural. Perhaps it was her imperfect French. In any case, what she was wearing was striking indeed. It was a wide flowing gown with enormous sleeves, so broad they almost touched the floor when she lowered her arms. The stuff was a pale gold silk with a good deal of embroidery, in silver and scarlet. When she moved, her bare feet could be seen. There were brass rings on her ankles and wrists. Her loose hair streamed out from a turban which was deftly wrapped from a scarf of the same silk as the gown.

  She swung around again, making the sleeves fly and the skirt swirl over the floor. She took to the air, her feet apart and both off the floor at once, with a jingle of brass. She alighted on one foot, the other knee bent and the ankle in front of her body. This particular maneuver ended with her settling gracefully, like a bird, onto the divan next to Herma. She radiated a heavy odor of patchouli, along with a little perspiration.

  “What are you drinking? Ah, raki.” She poured some Crème de Menthe for herself. “To our careers. To your career, my dear. Ah, mine is finished.”

  “Surely not.”

  “I can dance, dance. Ah yes, for my friends I can dance. For you. But not for the grand publique. They would make laughs. They are pitiless. Believe me. I have known. They will be pitiless to you too, when your time comes.”

  “They’re not pitiless to Bernhardt.”

  This made her furious. “Ah, merde. That cow. She has to do nothing. She doesn’t have to move. She only has to stand on the stage, leaning on her cane, and recite what she has recited for forty years.” Lowering her voice an octave, and infusing it with an exaggerated dramatic pathos, she declaimed a fragment of Racine.

  “… Tu connais ce fils de L’Amazone,

  Ce prince si longtemps par moi-même opprimé?”

  “Bah. Any female impersonator from Montmartre could do it. Do you know Félix Mayol? ‘Viens Poupoule,’ ” she sang throatily in another imitation, this time of the well-known transvestite entertainer. She was certainly adept at parody, and the flexibility of her voice was remarkable for one who was not a trained singer. “Sublime. He is a good friend of mine. Although not in the way you might imagine. And you, my dear.” She turned suddenly to Herma, as though she had been reciting to an audience and noticed only for the first time that she was with a single person. “You’ve never told me. Do you have a petit ami?”

  “No. Not now.”

  “Have you ever?”

  Herma smiled and said nothing.

  “Oh, I know them. I’ve known men—so many …” Here she made a gesture of astonishing obscenity. Herma could scarcely believe it. “They all want the same thing. They wish to humiliate us, above all. First we must be knocked flat and spread out like a frog. Then they fall on top of us. The quicker over the better. Their sweaty odor. Their pride of peacocks. And their precious accessories, of which they’re so proud. Dangling like two prunes and a banana in a shopping net … or sticking up at you like a hat rack. Je m’en fiche de leurs appartenances, ma chère.” She got up and leaped around the room, to liberate the energy generated by her anger. “But now we forget such a boring subject. I dance for you. I dance only for my friends. You are honored.”

  Herma was prepared to be honored. But it was odd of her to say so—to order her to be honored, so to speak. Bella went to the Victrola—which also gave the appearance of having been manufactured in Baghdad, although this was hardly possible—and put on a record. It was an atonal sort of reverie, probably something by Saint-Saëns. Then she began dancing. Although she had spent her career as a prima ballerina in the classic tradition, she danced now in a more personal and exotic style, something like Isadora Duncan, between the athletic and the oriental. She retained, however, the leaps and entrechats of her classical training. It was the arms, mainly, that were used in a way different from that of the classical ballet. While the legs danced, the arms gestured more in the manner of an actress than the manner of a dancer. The fluttering hands moved up and down the body as though caressing it, they flattened onto her face and parted to reveal it detail by detail; they spread in the wide flowing sleeves and pointed like two arrows at her body. Dance, Herma thought as she watched, is only an elaborate set of gestures calling attention to one’s self.

  The Saint-Saëns ended. Bella threw away the record without putting it into its envelope and fitted on another one. It was the “Dance of the Seven Veils” from Salomé. Once again she swirled around the room. The flowing silk gown came off and sailed into a corner. As she danced she unwound the turban too; it turned into a long pale-gold scarf that streamed behind her, around her body in coils, over her head like a cowboy’s lariat. It too flew off lightly into the corner, taking some time to settle down into a soft mass indistinguishable from the gown.

  Under the gown was a more closely fitting garment, and one of even more fragile stuff. It was a kind of sleeveless tunic, ending at the knees, perhaps of lace, although the work was too fine to be seen from across the room. In any case it was translucent enough that a third garment, a kind of dark net or reticulation, could be seen through it. Now that her arms were bare, Bella skillfully worked the brass rings on her wrists so that their tinkling exactly accompanied the sinuous strains of the Strauss. The tunic came off—it went to the opposite corner of the room rather than on top of the gown and the veil. Hardly pausing in her dance, almost as though it were part of the choreography, Bella turned the record over and began the other side.

/>   The layers of costume seemed endless. No doubt, thought Herma, there were seven of them. The tight-fitting net of knotted cords was attached at the top to a wide golden collar in the Egyptian style which had not been visible before. At the bottom, just above her thighs, it disappeared into a mass of gauze veils of various pastel colors. Through the net it could be seen that her breasts were enclosed in brass hemispheres. The veils came off one by one—this was where the number seven came in, probably—and Bella was clad only in the net, a brief cache-sexe, and the shiny brass cups on her breasts. Herma looked at the needle crawling across the Victrola with a rhythmic lurch. It was almost at the end of the record.

  The net came off—Bella swung it out with a flourish like a gladiator. The net was attached to the Egyptian collar, and when the collar came off the net did too, with the collar serving as a handle. It was possible that Bella planned to snare her, gladiator fashion, with this contrivance. Her gestures mimicked this action, in fact. But after a few more bars of Strauss the net was flung into the corner with the rest.

  Bella extended her arms around behind her back. She had the flexibility of a contortionist; without effort and without bending her trunk she reached behind and unfastened the chain that held the two elaborately embossed hemispheres. They came off too, with a jingle matching that of the brass rings. The music came to an end and Bella stood before her like an exultant Lysistrata, her legs apart and the two brass cups dangling high in the air. The lower part of her costume was only a triangle in front and a string behind. Higher up there was an affair of beads, perhaps an inch wide, draped around her firm and unsagging breasts. The brass rings remained on her wrists and ankles.

  The Victrola needle, having come to the end of its path, was jerking back and forth in the inane manner of such contrivances. Bella rather impatiently pushed the lever to stop it. Then she looked pointedly at Herma.

  “Tu veux?”

  Well, did she want or didn’t she? In principle there was nothing against it. Except that …

  “You see,” Herma began to explain tactfully. “How can I put it? I agree with you in some respects about men. It’s just that”—it was very awkward to explain—“that part of me is inside me, so I like something to be inside it.” When Bella said nothing she added, perhaps superfluously, “That’s the reason we’re made that way, isn’t it? Otherwise I don’t see any point to it.”

  Whereupon Bella, looking cryptically at her, went off and came back with an extraordinary object. It was fashioned out of ivory, perhaps a foot long, and curved, with a handle at one end like a dagger. In color it was pale as milk, with a slight yellowish cast. It was elaborately carved, with inscriptions and wavy decorations along the curving shaft. It resembled a serpent, even to the head on the end with a tiny mouth. The thing was evidently of Arabic work, for it was circumsised—it would hardly have been Jewish.

  With her chin held high, she offered it with a theatrical gesture, thrusting it out bolt upright.

  Herma began to laugh. “Oh, Bella. If I chose, I could show you a much better one than that.”

  11.

  At the end of the summer, as the hot days of August drew to a close, the war took a turn for the worse. The Germans had swept through Belgium in only a few days—they raped nuns and cut off the hands of little children, the papers said, although perhaps this was only propaganda. The French offensive in Lorraine came to a halt; two German armies advanced through Toul and Épinal and closed their jaws around Verdun. The French fell back, abandoning one line of trenches after another. The English were cut off in Flanders and the Pas de Calais. The newspapers spoke of “withdrawal to previously prepared positions.” But you only had to look at the map to see that the capital was in danger. By the first week in September the Germans were along the Marne, and on still nights when there was no wind the sound of guns could be heard in Paris.

  General Gallieni, the military commander of Paris, decided to throw his last reserves into the battle to the east, leaving the capital unprotected. Six thousand troops of the Fourth Corps were just detraining in Paris to serve as a defence garrison for the city, and he ordered them to the Marne the same day in requisitioned taxicabs, which had to disgorge their passengers. The taxis took them to the Ourcq, only sixty kilometers from the capital, and made two trips a day. That morning Herma and Bella were shopping in the St.-Honoré quarter, and a policeman stepped out into the street in front of their taxi and stopped it with a white-gloved hand.

  “Allez,” he told the driver. “To the Ministry of War, at the Invalides.”

  “But my fares?”

  “Out.”

  The driver, a small shy man with a wispy mustache, opened the door for them, explaining with a little smile of pride, “We have to go to battle.” He got back in and drove away. The taxi disappeared down the street in the direction of the Pont Alexandre III.

  Herma and Bella—still good friends, although not yet, or ever, lovers—decided to walk over to the Left Bank and see what was happening. But when they came out into place de la Concorde they found it had already been converted into an assembly point for the troops. The immense square was full of taxicabs, mostly Renaults with their shovel noses, along with a few old Unics. Backing and filling, they milled around trying to arrange themselves in rows. Meanwhile a long column of troops, not yet provided with battle uniforms and still in horizon blue, came down the quay from the Gare de Lyon with their rifles slung and mess kits clanking. Each man had a knapsack, a bedroll, and a bandolier of ammunition. In the square, between the rows of taxis, they began forming up raggedly into companies.

  The crowd watching them was somber at first. But as the square filled up with taxis, soldiers, and spectators a festive spirit began to spread. Prom the balcony of the Hôtel Crillon facing the square an enormous tricolor tumbled down. People went up rue Royale to pastry shops and brought back éclairs and cognac for the soldiers. Girls impulsively kissed them. One midinette, who was probably no better than she ought to be, was passed along hand to hand to forty or more soldiers. There were shouts of “To Berlin!” and “Vive la France!”

  Herma and Bella caught a glimpse of General Gallieni himself, who had come down to Concorde to see if his orders were being carried out. He was a crusty old bird, lean and wrinkled, with a braided képi pulled down over his eyes, small round glasses with gold frames, and a straggly gray mustache. He was surrounded by his staff officers in black tunics and scarlet breeches. They stood under the porch of the Ministry of the Marine for a while, then Gallieni strode out into the square followed by his officers.

  “Allez-y, mes enfants!” he screeched like a bird. “Go get them. The fate of France depends on you.”

  The soldiers crammed into the taxicabs, as many of them as would fit. The rest of them would have to wait for the second trip of the day. A girl who had been surreptitiously inserted into a taxi was put out. As the taxis started their engines and began rolling more bottles of cognac were pushed in through their windows. “Vive la France!” cried the crowd. “Hang the Kaiser!” The taxis circled the square, their engines rumbling and their horns blaring like Roland’s oliphant at Roncevalles, then they set off up the avenue toward the Porte de Pantin. A few people who had not been able to get their bottles of cognac into the taxis drew out the corks and began drinking them. There were a few more cries of “Vive la France!” Across the square, under the statue of the Spirit of Strasbourg, a woman put her face into her hands and began weeping.

  This First Battle of the Marne, as it was later called, was terrible. After only a day or two the wounded began, streaming back into Paris in ambulances, in trains, and even in boxcars. The hospitals were full. The government forbade people to drape mourning in their windows; there would be too many of them and it was bad for morale. At the Opéra the rehearsals of the Forza del Destino stopped and the rest of the season was canceled. The Châtelet and the Comédie Francaise were closed too, except for benefit performances for the troops.

  Now people began t
o take the war seriously. The crowds in the cafés were somber, studying their newspapers. A German aeroplane came over and dropped a bomb in Maisons-Alfort, killing three people. There were shortages in the shops; one day there would be no meat and the next day no bread. It “went to the troops,” people said. For entertainment there were the cinemas, which were still open and sometimes showed newsreels of the troops in the trenches, and the music halls in Montmartre, which broke out into a patriotic vein with the dancers clad in tricolor. Every performance—even the transvestite Félix Mayol prancing and singing in his squeaky soprano—ended with the Marseillaise.

  Fred had to scour about and find something for Herma to do. It wasn’t a matter of money; she had long since paid off Lloiseaux his ten thousand francs for the apartment and there was a comfortable balance in the bank. But a performer had to remain in the public eye, otherwise they would forget you. There were benefits for the troops: Herma sang at the Châtelet and helped to raise enough money to send a trainload of bandages to the front. She sang the Marseillaise at a ceremony under the Arc de Triomphe, honoring the dead of the Marne. In November Fred got her an engagement to take part in a benefit performance at the Val-de-Grace, the old abbey near Montparnasse which had been converted into a military hospital and was now full of wounded soldiers from the Marne.