Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

by Francine Prose

  What is a woman, after all? You are alive and in Paris.

  From the (Unpublished) Memoirs of Suzanne Dunois Tsenyi

  To be destroyed on the occasion of its author’s death

  HE WAITED TILL we were in bed, after sex.

  He said, “Suzanne, I need a favor.”

  I thought, There is nothing I wouldn’t do.

  I said, “Like what? It depends.”

  He wanted me to play dead on the sidewalk across from his hotel. Some friends of his would pretend to be strangers gathered around me. They’d play it so straight that real strangers would collect around my corpse. He’d arranged for a hearse to take me away, while he photographed the scene in stages, looking down from his window.

  Any sane, self-respecting woman would have said “Are you out of your mind?” But love, it seemed, had obliterated my sanity and self-respect.

  Morning and night I thought about him. All day I waited for evening so I could see him again. When I got home from the language school or the life-drawing class, Gabor was waiting for me at his hotel. We made love as soon as I walked in and only afterward thought about dinner. His kitchen was a hot plate on which my repertoire was limited to a decent onion soup. There were only a few restaurants that we could afford. One café let us split an order of roast lamb and flageolet beans, the perfect meal for indigent lovers.

  There were problems, small ones, but problems nonetheless. When he asked me to pose as the dead girl, I asked, “Who’s paying for the hearse?”

  “A friend,” he said. I knew which friend. Let her lie in the street in her ermine coat! He pulled my head against his chest and gently stroked my hair.

  “When?” I said.

  “Tomorrow noon.”

  I said, “I’m giving lessons all day.”

  He said, “Come on your lunch break. The light will be perfect. It’s supposed to be cloudy.”

  I said, “It’s all the way across town.”

  He said, “Take a taxi. I’ll pay.”

  I almost said, “She’ll pay.”

  First he kissed me, then he said, “Let’s go for a walk. Then back to bed. All right?”

  “Yes,” I said. Yes to it all. I had become a puppy that stands on its hind legs and barks when its master fetches its leash.

  I had grown up in Paris. But now I saw my city with the clarity of the newly arrived. I followed him, stopped when he stopped and started again when he did. I’d always been the kind of girl who walked ahead of her boyfriend. Lionel used to complain that he’d had to skip, to keep up. What had made that quick, independent girl lag so meekly behind?

  But why was I so hard on myself for changing in his presence, when each night, a city transformed itself into whatever he desired? I watched the darkness ask questions to which he always found new answers. I watched him finding the marvelous in the everyday. He used to say he wanted to raise himself to the level of the object, to the glory of the trolley track, the smokestack, and the tunnel.

  He photographed a gutter: a cobblestone cobra winding between two trees. The shadow of a buttress underneath a bridge became the silhouette of a fat man in a crooked top hat. He caught the fireworks showering the welders fixing a tram. The workers greeted him by name and offered us coffee with brandy.

  As we walked alongside the prison wall, he let go of my hand. How could there have been such interesting shadows on that same wall last night—and such dull ones now? I told myself it wasn’t my fault if the shadows were less exciting. His gloom lifted at the entrance to a narrow street of hotels whose neon signs hung like the banners in a Shanghai bazaar. The hotel of the universe, the hotel of the world, the hotel of the princess, the hotel of the king.

  Pausing on the bridge, he meant to say, Look at the Seine. But what he said was, “Regard the breasts.” I was no longer a useful teacher for him. I’d stopped correcting his French.

  We’d only had two lessons. He’d insisted I must be part Hungarian. How else could I know exactly what a Hungarian needed? That lesson ended abruptly. We were too shy to go on. At the end of the second class, he was just about to leave when he turned around and we clung to each other. Until then our loyalty to Lionel had kept us from acting on what, we later agreed, was decided that night I stripped—for him—at Paul and Ricardo’s party.

  As we gazed at the river, I wanted him to embrace me. But he wasn’t there for love. Or anyway, not love for me. I’d never wanted to be the flattering mirror in which a man admires his talent.

  But how could I stop loving a man to whom a city is saying, Tell me what you want. For him, two gendarmes shared a smoke by a streetlamp and traveled back through time to take a break from pursuing the serial killer Landru. For him, the magicians with their long wands lit the last gas lamps in our electric city. For him, an elderly prostitute in moth-eaten furs extended her spotted hand, and the ghost of her lost beauty flirted with the camera. A taxi paused long enough for him to catch the wink of its passenger’s diamond bracelets. For him, for him, for no one else. And for me, if I was with him.

  Often the dawn was coming up when we got back to his room. He pulled the shades, lit the blood-colored bulb, and made negatives from the plates. Watching our night alchemized into art swimming in clear liquid, I knew I’d become a very strange puppy, trained not only to wait for the signs of its master going for a walk but also to associate passion with the smell of developing fluid.

  We went to bed at six. An hour later we fell asleep. I slept for another hour, then got up and dressed for work. On my way out I kissed him. Though he slept more than he admitted, this time he was awake. Insomnia had a starring role in the drama he played with his parents. It gave him something to write about instead of telling them about me.

  “Will you do it?” he said.

  “Do what?”

  “Play dead,” he said.

  No, I thought.

  “Yes,” I said. “Tell me again. What time, and where do you want me?”

  The morning was cold and bleak. Walking to the Métro, I dreaded lying on the damp sidewalk. If Gabor loved me, he wouldn’t make me suffer. He couldn’t bear to see what I’d look like, brought down by an accident or an illness. I could never tell Mama. She would advise me again to leave him.

  But wasn’t it also possible that this proved how much he loved me? He was using his worst fantasy—his lover dead, surrounded by strangers—to inspire his art. I was doing him a favor, but he was giving me something too. I would live forever as the pretty corpse on the sidewalk. I also knew what Mama would say about a man who promised you immortality instead of a wedding ring.

  That morning, at the language school, I was no longer Suzanne the Liar, assuring the rich, unteachable Portuguese widow that her French was improving. Or Spineless Suzanne, absorbing the casual insults the Austrian businessman lobbed my way. Or Saintly Suzanne, refunding the money of the near-mute Chinese boy who shared an apartment—and my classroom—with nine other waiters. I was only pretending to be the underpaid, duplicitous, ineffective, struggling teacher of immigrant French. The real Suzanne was the lover and muse of a brilliant artist.

  By lunchtime it was drizzling. Surely Gabor would cancel the shoot. But when I got to his hotel, I saw him standing outside with three photographer friends. They nodded to me, just barely. I’d met them before, in cafés, where they’d ignored me and talked to Gabor.

  They’ve all brought umbrellas. Gabor had known what the weather would be. He wanted the puddled sidewalk, the drenched corpse, the scalloped black discs of the open umbrellas, the mourners’ shiny black raincoats. He ran to me and embraced me. My doubts and resentments vanished.

  He handed me a coat. He’d traded a dozen eggs to a corporal in the Hungarian army for this double-breasted greatcoat. It was the coat a homeless girl might wear with only a slip underneath, a fringe of lace Gabor could catch on film from his window, if he used the right lens.

  I asked him where he wanted me to lie. He said, “Over there beneath the plane tree where the pave
ment is dry.”

  I lay down beneath the tree. The pavement was cold and wet. He told me to roll onto my side, bend my knees, and shut my eyes. Lift the hem of my coat. Like that. He whispered that he loved me. He asked if I was all right. I said I was fine. He thanked me and said he was sorry.

  I’d lied. I wasn’t fine. Playing dead made me think about the dead who weren’t pretending. I thought about my father and how, after he was killed, I believed I would always be counting the days till I saw him in heaven. I stopped believing in heaven long before I stopped counting. I remembered the letter from the army, edged in black. My mother said we were lucky to get it. After the war, she showed me a photo of unmarked graves. She said those were the unlucky ones. I said we were all unlucky. Mama’s health was fragile. No matter where I was, I felt a pang whenever she had an attack.

  Lying on the sidewalk, I wept for Mama, for Papa, for the widows and orphans, the maimed and wounded veterans begging in the streets. Lionel used to say it moved him to see women cry, but he was lying. I even wept for Lionel and for the unhappiness I’d caused him.

  As the dampness seeped through the heavy coat, I thought how someday I would be dead and buried in the cold ground. Sooner than we could imagine, Gabor and I would be skeletons in distant parts of the earth. I would lie beside Mama, and he would return to his parents in the cemetery above the town he thought he’d escaped. He’d told me he wanted to be buried in Paris. But I didn’t believe him, no more than I believed that Lionel liked to see women cry.

  I fought back tears. A weeping dead girl would have spoiled the shot, though only Gabor would have noticed. Anyone else would have thought: raindrops.

  Again Gabor asked if I was all right. I nodded. He said he was going upstairs. I heard him shout down from his window—but not to me. I lay still. The wet earth stank of dog piss. Gabor’s friends stood above me. One knelt and felt my wrist for a pulse. He remained like that for a while. I heard the voices of strangers. Gabor’s friends told the gathering crowd that the police had been called.

  A woman said, “How tragic! So young!”

  A child was crying, “Let’s go, Mama! I’m cold! I’m scared.” Obviously I couldn’t tell the kid not to worry. The crowd’s reaction to that would have been something for Gabor to film. But not the image he wanted. He would punish me by spending more time with the baroness. I didn’t think he was sleeping with her. But she gave him money, bought his prints, introduced him to glamorous people. I was ashamed to be thinking about her when I was supposed to be dead. Was this how I would spend the afterlife, competing with my rival, worrying because Gabor had mentioned that the baroness had offered to set up a studio where he could work, instead of in the hotel room where he and I spent almost every night?

  At last I heard a van pull up. Hands loaded me on a stretcher. It was even colder inside the van, which reeked of blood and poultry. The engine started, we pulled away from the curb, then stopped. Gabor was still taking pictures. The van turned a corner and stopped again.

  Only then did I open my eyes. An elderly man was driving. His helper rode beside him, reading a magazine with a naked girl on the cover. The driver asked if I could walk back on my own.

  He said, “Forgive me, Mademoiselle. But you look unwell, and your coat is soaked.”

  I said, “It’s my boyfriend’s coat.” He seemed to find the mention of a boyfriend reassuring, though I could tell they both wondered why this boyfriend didn’t take better care of a girl like me. I couldn’t bear their pity. I’d rather they thought I was a whore who’d gotten paid for posing. I didn’t want them knowing I’d lain on the sidewalk just because a man asked. Did they know that another woman had paid them to cart me away, a rich woman who was in love with him and could buy him whatever he wanted?

  I walked back to Gabor’s hotel. It wasn’t far, but my legs shook. I felt as if I’d died on the street and been resurrected. The strangers had dispersed. Gabor’s friends were leaving. Gabor looked ecstatic, though normally he was too superstitious to be happy until he saw the final print.

  He said to me, “I’m glad you’re alive.”

  “So am I,” I said.

  He took my face in his hands and kissed me. It was difficult to stop, and when we did, the looks we exchanged contained (or so it seemed to me) a promise about the future.

  First I had to go back to work. I returned his wet coat. He seemed shocked by how heavy it was.

  He said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Suzanne.”

  I said, “Don’t apologize. I love you.”

  I waited to see him appear at his window and wave. Someone grabbed my arm. It took me longer than it should have to recognize Lionel. How strange that, only months ago, this stranger had been inside me.

  Gabor had said they’d had a drink, and that it was all right with Lionel if Gabor and I were together. Who was Lionel to approve or not? How sweetly old-fashioned of Gabor to ask his friend’s permission. The thought was infuriating, and yet I had to admit that it pleased me to know they’d been talking about me.

  Lionel hadn’t changed much. But our lives had changed. I might have recognized him sooner if I hadn’t known him so well.

  I said, “Lionel, I was just thinking about you.”

  “Thinking what?” He was hoping I’d say I missed him.

  “Thinking about your writing,” I lied.

  “Suzanne, I’ll always adore you,” he said. “But he’s a thieving son of a bitch.”

  Lionel put his arm through mine. I wished that we were friends. I wanted to know what he thought about my loving a man whose bills were being paid by another woman. He was the last one I could ask. It would have been too cruel.

  I’d asked my friend Ricardo, who said that one had to put up with a lot when one loved an artist. I knew he was talking about Paul, who was said to have slept with every eligible man, and many ineligible men, in Paris.

  The baroness would have said I was being dull and provincial. If she thought about me, which I doubted. Whenever I ran into her, it took her a while to remember who I was. Or anyway so she pretended. There are some people who remain your best friends even if you haven’t seen them for ages, and others with whom you start from scratch every time. The baroness was one of those. She and I always began anew, and we never got very far. Occasionally she called Gabor on the phone she’d had installed for him—and he had to go to her house, regardless of how late it was. She’d decided to hang a print of his work and needed him to tell her where it should go.

  How long could I persuade myself that their relationship was all about Gabor’s art? Would he leave me for her? She was still attractive. I couldn’t forbid him to see her. What choice did I have? I couldn’t support him. I could barely feed myself and my mother. If he had to go back to journalism, he would be miserable—and blame me. Our happiness depended on the baroness’s kindness.

  Lionel said, “That son of a bitch. First he stole my girlfriend, and now he steals my idea.”

  I said, “No one stole me, Lionel.”

  He said, “I was the one who saw the dead man on the street. Actually, in the Luxembourg Gardens. Where they have the pony rides. I told Gabor.”

  How typical of Lionel to think he was the only person who’d ever seen a corpse on a Paris street. Every night, some poor clochard dropped dead under a bridge. Gabor had seen plenty of them. He didn’t need to steal Lionel’s idea. And he hadn’t stolen me.

  I said, “I’ll tell him you were here.”

  He said, “You two deserve each other.”

  I said, “Why don’t you write about it? Isn’t that what you do?”

  “For all you know, I already have. Look! Your poor little shoes are wet.”

  Gabor and I deserved each other! I could have kissed Lionel for that.

  Moments later Gabor appeared. He’d seen us from his window. He hugged me, then Lionel, then stepped back, a little shyly. Lionel and I were about to be charmed into not minding something we should have minded.

  Gabor said
, “I don’t want to be rude, but can I ask you two dear friends to continue your conversation out of camera range? I’m still trying to get the final shot. I apologize, darling. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I said.

  “Great,” Lionel said. “Everyone loves everyone else. Everyone but me. Can I borrow a few francs? Just until my check comes from home. Two days at the most.”

  Gabor pulled out a bill and gave it to him. The baroness’s money.

  Gabor said, “Let’s have a drink soon, Lionel. There’s so much I want to talk about with you. For example, these photos . . .”

  “What about them?” said Lionel, more interested than he’d been in anything I’d said.

  Already they were forgetting me, my boyfriend and his friend, starting out on a journey I wasn’t invited to join. In a way, it was sadder than playing dead on the street.

  Gabor said, “They were never about the girl or the crowd. I wanted the afterimage of her presence and her subsequent absence. Remember the pictures you showed me at that creepy gallery with the homosexual pornography and the Victorian spirit photos? I swear, the girl’s ghost had just appeared in my lens when I saw you two, down here. Give me a few minutes. Maybe it will return.”

  “Ectoplasm,” Lionel said.

  “Exactly,” Gabor replied.

  And who was I, exactly? The girl who’d lain in the puddle of frozen dog piss. The girl whose death hadn’t mattered. Whose body wasn’t the point. The point was some residue that my death had smeared on the rainy air.

  Lionel said to Gabor, “Take the girl. Steal all my ideas. What can I say? What can anyone do?” He turned to me. “You know what, Suzanne? Your boyfriend’s a fucking genius.”

  From The Devil Drives: The Life of Lou Villars

  BY NATHALIE DUNOIS

  Chapter Four: Early Days at the Chameleon

  LET ME START with a suggestion for my sisters in academia. Those of you who may be thinking about writing a doctoral thesis that bridges the disciplines of psychology and literature might consider an underexplored topic: the dream life of the biographer.