“Yes. Did you really take these, Claire? They are good. Excellent in fact.”
“Yes.”
Distrustful of the slender vein of hope that was beginning to surge through me, I asked him softly, “You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“My whole life,” I could feel the words cracking in my throat, “I wanted to be a painter.”
“My whole life,” he surprised me by glancing quickly over his shoulder and then saying, “I wanted to be a ballet dancer. To soar through the air with beautiful women in pink tutus. I have, however, two left feet. In life, we work with what we’ve got. We work with our gifts. Our blessings. Not our unrealistic desires. In this way, we are useful to ourselves and others. Why? I’ll tell you why. Doing something to which we are unsuited is tedious and frustrating. Doing something really well is fun.”
I felt my cheeks grow warm. “I didn’t think I was that bad,” I said. “Couldn’t I become better with hard work? I’m not afraid of hard work.”
“My dear,” this gentle, kindly man went on to ease me forward, to help me understand, “is that what you want for your life? To be not bad?” He held up a crooked, moonlit picture I’d taken of the Viktualienmarkt in snow. “As a photographer, you could be one of the best! You have the talent! The real thing! Wasn’t it fun to take this photograph?”
I remembered the moment well. Yes, it had been fun. Easy. I thought of all the struggle and impatience that went along with my sketching because it never went smoothly. No. It was never fun, that was for sure. “You think I could be a great photographer?”
“I could guarantee it.”
“Come back in here, you two!” Isolde demanded.
She acted as though she were annoyed at me, but I could tell she was pleased.
I was suddenly embarrassed to have taken so much of his time. “Your dinner will be cold.”
“What sort of a hostess do I look like? Daisy!” Isolde bellowed. “Go get Harry’s plate from the oven.”
“Look, just look at this.” Harry held up the photograph to Wolfgang. “And this one.” He held up one I’d taken in a dressing room. Eleven beautiful women at their worst, curlers in their hair, everyone looking unhappily, even tragically, into their mirrors. He pressed another into Wolfgang’s small hand. “Take a look at this.” It was the picture I’d taken of Rupert’s back, his head out the window, behind him the rooftops of Munich.
Wolfgang said grudgingly, “Yes. That is good.”
Even Blacky seemed impressed. But only for a moment. Tupelo, sensing mutiny, leaned opulently forward toward the package of HB cigarettes at Blacky’s distant elbow. Obediently distracted, he reached into his pants pocket and provided her with a light.
“It’s so easy to conjure a good layout with the camera,” I said.
“Of course,” Wolfgang agreed, one professional to the other. “But that’s the point, darling. To follow your bliss. Not your headache. You see, you’ve already found what you do well, you just didn’t know it.”
We smiled at each other. Wolfgang was sitting directly across from me and, because I wasn’t an actress interested in being discovered, he took a liking to me. I asked him a couple of questions about black-and-white photography and depth of field and he answered me in a simple, easily understandable way.
I got the distinct impression that this business was beginning to annoy Reiner Decke. He sat there, jealous and aggravated. I’d spent two weeks with the man and by now knew when he was upset. I couldn’t figure out why, though. Surely he wouldn’t rather be the one showing me how to use my camera? No. Then I realized it was Wolfgang Scherer’s attention he wanted.
I turned my attention back to Wolfgang. “Everyone else I’ve ever asked has got me so confused that I was almost ready to ditch my thirty-five-millimeter camera for an automatic,” I told him.
“Oh, but no,” he insisted, “the less contraptions on a camera, the less can go wrong. There’s less that can break on it. Just keep it up, you’ll get it.” I felt somehow protective toward him. There was something virile about him, though, an underlying heavy beard he took great pains to keep at bay, and a thirsty darkness to his voice. There was something, certainly not feminine, but feline about him. I hated even to think it but there was something dwarflike about him, too, with his short little arms and legs and big feet and head.
Still, we hit it off right away. His English was very good. He liked to tell a joke and I liked to laugh, almost always doing so at the punch line, so to him and everyone else we were having a fine old time. Despite my disappointment, there was something magical about that evening. Maybe we had the right chemistry; the party never seemed to want to break up.
“An opulent feast.” Harry licked melted butter from the tips of his beautiful fingers. “I adore white asparagus.”
“So much left over!” Isolde cried, eyeing the expensive surplus.
Chartreuse, piously righteous, observed, “That would never be a problem in India. In India there is always someone waiting just outside to take the food home.”
“Did I hear you mention India?” Wolfgang turned his attention abruptly from me to Chartreuse.
“Yes.”
“Have you been there?”
Chartreuse gave that dramatic, negative French shrug of his. “But of course. Many times.”
“You know, if you don’t mind, I’d love to pick your brain about it sometime.”
Chartreuse said, “Bien sûr. At your service, eh?” He looked up from the joint he was rolling and grinned at Wolfgang in that wicked, childishly happy way he had.
“I’ve always wanted to make a documentary about India,” Wolfgang said. “You know, a train-of-thought film. Just go to all these unusual places and film as you go. I might really have time to go to India if I plan it well enough. I can’t start filming Brazilian Love until the fall. I wonder if I could change it to next fall.”
“Is that your next film?” Blacky asked Wolfgang.
“You know,” Wolfgang grew excited, “perhaps I could get up a little band to go there. To India, I mean.” He was unable to give it up.
“Ah, that would be the life.” Blacky tore himself from Tupelo’s gaze and sat back in his chair. His eyes shone at the thought of such a trip. He put his hand through his silky dark hair and combed his long fingers through. “You’ve got the right job, all right,” he said to Wolfgang. When he spoke I had an excuse to gaze at Blacky outright. He was one of those rare people who was content in his skin, comfortable, even, in his envy. He stretched his legs out. I admired the circumference and length of those legs. He saw me looking. I pulled back, caught.
And then Chartreuse said, “Why not drive?”
“Drive?” Tupelo guffawed. “That’s ludicrous. Can’t you see it?” Her green pearls shimmered with laughter.
Everyone tittered obligingly. Chartreuse sat back in his chair. His eyes shone with the memory. “Each day,” he said, “the light climbs easy, easy through the curtains into your caravan. If yesterday was bad, today begins a new landscape, new people, new country! This is a wonderful thing, I think.”
We listened, transfixed.
“The blue sky,” Chartreuse said, “each day, only sun and sky …”
“Drive to India,” Vladimir went on, tasting the idea. Then he said, “It would be like flying to the moon.”
“What do you mean, the moon?” Reiner Decke’s head bobbed and he squinted at him in an unpleasant way.
“He means,” Isolde said, “metaphorically.” Because she was happy, she wasn’t on her toes. Vladimir looked at her crossly. “Why do you interpret what I mean? Do you know what I am thinking?” He stood up. “Am I not even allowed my thoughts?”
“No.” She touched her chest. “I didn’t mean—”
It was so like Vladimir to attack her like that in front of everyone. But this time he kept on. “Then why do you say ‘metaphorically’ like that? As if interpreting for me! Do you want my thoughts, too?” He turned to me. “She e
ven wants my thoughts!”
I think we all thought the same thing, that Vladimir was coming unhinged. For a moment I thought he would hit her.
“Don’t worry,” she said carefully, “you’ll soon have them all back. Anyway,” she laughed nervously, as if none of this bothered her, as if it were all nonsense and she was in on the joke all along, “you who gets carsick driving to Salzburg—”
“That’s because I hate to drive there.” He sat down.
“Doesn’t your mum live in Salzburg?” Daisy asked stupidly.
“No,” Vladimir said, “Isolde’s mother does.”
“Ah, so.” Reiner Decke grinned maliciously.
Isolde smiled at everyone.
Wolfgang said, “No, I was just thinking, why shouldn’t we all go?”
“We?” Reiner Decke shunted his knife into a lamb haunch. “As in everyone at this table?”
Conversation stopped as each of us digested the idea. We looked one another over.
“I mean,” he went on, lowering his voice so we all had to lean closer, “it seems you can drive through easily enough.”
I was beginning to get the idea how he got things done. His sense of drama and timing had everyone mesmerized. But it wasn’t only that. It was the way he stayed on track. How he remained intent on this one thought. I wasn’t surprised he made good films. For all his Puckish looks, his big hands, and his probably oversized scrotum, his voice so hypnotic and deep, he had us all mesmerized.
“Would you be interested in such a venture?” Wolfgang peered into Chartreuse’s eyes and I thought for a moment, He is a hypnotist!
For all the hash he’d smoked you’d have thought Chartreuse would be more stoned. But he was alert as a chipmunk on a fox’s hill. “Do you mean you would want a guide? Someone who would know the way as I would?”
“Exactly!”
Chartreuse pressed his elbows together. I could almost see his mind lurch into gear. He would get back to enchanting India, where he could wangle Lord knew what sort of deals, and now, on top, he’d be paid. He pretended to mull all this over, “Hmm,” he said. “I know of an excellent van, totally equipped for overland travel. I might be able to get it for you for a good price.”
I almost laughed out loud. Now, if it broke down, it would be someone else’s problem. And he would have money. Not only that but he could do whatever it was one did under the prosperous and respectable title of “film company guide.”
“The Orient,” murmured Harry.
I became unreasonably jealous. The Orient was my idea!
Blacky said, “You know, I’m coming, too.” He meant it when he said it.
Tupelo threw back her head and laughed. “Darlink! You cannot! You are a doctor!”
“Yes, I am quite sure I am. But it’s not as though I can’t leave when I want. I can lease out my practice. There are at least ten doctors who will jump at the chance to take my place. Munich is the most desirable place to work in Germany.”
“You can’t be serious,” Reiner said.
We all watched him. This was beyond us all. A doctor, willing to give up his hard-earned position. I found him so idealistic and beautiful. His sooty curls.
Blacky drained his glass and looked around for the bottle. “When I come back,” he said, as though he were talking to himself, “I’ll take it over again.”
“But what about moi?” Tupelo asked in a baby doll voice. She twiddled her fingertips in the candlelight. It was an action related to the scent of money.
“You’re always flying off on a filming trip,” Blacky reminded her. “Here. There. You probably won’t even be in the country while I’m gone.”
“I’m doing that play.” She frowned. “In Munich. Right here.”
Chartreuse stood up and circled the table, sidling ingratiatingly, on his way to refill Blacky’s glass.
I watched Tupelo Honig’s bright little eyes calculate her next move. She was a quick study as to which direction things were going. And although they went along well, Hollywood had not yet cabled. After all, one doctor in the hand was worth two in the cattle-calling bush.
“Wolfgang,” she announced, “I want to come, too!”
“You!” Wolfgang looked at her with startled eyes. “The first time there was no regular bathroom you’d be looking for the nearest airport!”
“No, that would be me,” Isolde interjected.
We all laughed.
“No, really, Liebling, I would return broadened,” here Tupelo paused, “as an artist.” Her head swung majestically atop her neck. She said it all with a queenly pout. I think I hated her completely at that moment. Not only had she taken Blacky from me. Now she was the artist. And, on top, she was taking my place as a gal on her way to the Orient.
“What about your play?” Daisy reminded her.
“Ach.” She made a shrug and a gesture as though that were of little consequence. “Any actress could play that part,” she said, using Blacky’s tactic. “But India,” she wobbled her head like a Jaipuri temple dancer, “people would see me as an actress who could play any role.” She lowered her voice. “They run documentaries at Cannes, don’t they?”
Isolde added, “Or even at the Berliner Film festival.”
“Hey,” Wolfgang leaned forward, “it would be wonderful. I could get no end of backing if you came along.”
“But I wanted to go,” I blurted tipsily.
“Oh, you! You just want to go to Afghanistan!” Daisy dismissed my credibility with a demeaning little swipe of the hand. “You’re not up to the grand trip.”
I was a little stunned that Daisy would demean my wishes in front of all these people.
There was a sliver of true malice in her attitude and I was surprised and a little hurt. Daisy and I had always been close.
“My dear Claire, Americans don’t want to go to Afghanistan now,” Harry said. “It’s absolutely perilous.” I think he was the only one of us who wasn’t noticeably drunk. Well, he was so used to his alcohol.
“All the more reason you should come along,” Vladimir said. “One of the last great frontiers.”
Isolde said bluntly, “You’re Afghani, Chartreuse, aren’t you.” She didn’t say it as a question.
He flinched without flinching, if you know what I mean. “My mother.” He glanced momentarily up from the joint he was rolling.
“But,” she pursued, “you were born there, surely.”
He returned her gaze. “Herat.” He said the word fondly.
“Well, then you know better than anyone,” Wolfgang said. He turned to me. “Why would you want to go to Afghanistan, anyway, Claire?”
I closed my eyes and went to see what I imagined when I thought of me in Afghanistan. I saw the silk route of the past winding its way through the yellow mountains. The marketplaces. Men sitting cross-legged in apricot shops. Fierce women. The color red. I found I had said all this out loud.
The cool silence that greeted me opened my eyes.
Then, “India, too, has red,” Blacky said.
“Pink,” Tupelo corrected. “India has pink.” She loosened her shawl. “Hot pink.”
But his green eyes held me from across the table. They were interested now. Indulgent and captivated.
The way he said the word. “Inja.” With such refinement. And yet, there was passion. I heard the sounds of marketplaces and the roar of nearing elephants. The jingle of ankle bracelets on brown legs. The homespun white of Gandhi. Suddenly I wished very much that I could go. Go to India, where no one I had known at home had ever been. From where I, too, would come back changed. I asked myself why was he looking at me like that. There was something so charmed in that. I felt that I could trust him. I also felt the blood well up in my cheeks. Then I burst out into nervous, hysterical laughter and he looked away. Oh, I loathe myself, I thought.
Wolfgang turned to me. “Why don’t you tag along? Afghanistan is on the way.”
“What, me?” I touched my throat, chickening out. “I couldn’t.�
��
“Why not?”
“I haven’t got that kind of money put aside,” I admitted. “Anyway, anything I’ve got right now ought to go toward a car.” I sighed. “I spend so much on taxis”
“You’ve got tons of money,” Daisy said. “Come on. We can both go.” She opened a nail polish bottle and she drew an iridescent stripe down the middle of her thumbnail.
Vladimir’s mouth dropped open. “I wouldn’t do that so near to the food.”
“And I wouldn’t admonish someone publicly who is just about to possibly shrink your shorts in the dryer,” Daisy shot back. She smiled. “Those are your things left in the hamper, aren’t they?”
No one said a word. This was new. What had got into Daisy, acting up like this. So cryptic. It was so out of character that nobody knew what to do. And yet Vladimir couldn’t let this go unpunished. It occurred to me that Daisy might like to be fired. They’d have to pay up, wouldn’t they? It was known that they were very cavalier about paying. She had no expenses. But she did keep track. Her back wages would add up to a nice sum.
“Claire doesn’t have enough money to stop work for a couple of months.” Isolde sounded angry. Naturally. She wanted me here with her, handing in my tidy rent each week in cash.
“I think it would be all right,” Wolfgang said. “You could do the still photography.”
“Oh, I’m not good enough to be professional.” I laughed.
“That’s true,” Isolde said. “You’re not.”
“Yes, you are.” Daisy poked me, changing sides. “Those shots you did of the children were lovely!”
“There’s a bit more to it than that,” Reiner tut-tutted with a patronizing smirk.
“Claire can’t leave Munich now.” Isolde looked around worriedly. “She’s just beginning to save money.”
“Yes, I could,” I announced defiantly, noticing Blacky’s interest in Tupelo waver and hoping it was due to my independent swagger. “I can go wherever I choose.” Then, in a smaller voice, “I’d just have to save a bit more first.” Everyone was looking at me. “And then I would work hard when I got back. I would work really, really hard!” I heard myself. I sounded like a child.
“The thing is,” Chartreuse said, “everyone comes back from India looking like merde.”
Pack Up the Moon Page 9
