“Wagon,” Claire said. “Fix her wagon.”
“Yes,” Isolde said. She threw back her head and laughed.
“Good a reason as any to wed.” Temple’s brow crumpled shut. He ought to go, he realized. There was something predatory and unscrupulous about Isolde. He ought to be attracted to her but wasn’t, and so she had no use for him. She dismissed him in the strangest way. She simply willed him gone.
He stood up slowly, creaking his medium frame upright. Isolde watched him with lowered eyelids, disdainfully and impatiently.
Claire felt herself flutter with annoyance. He ought to stand up to Isolde, she couldn’t help feeling. Johnny would. Johnny was very good with superior women. But then Johnny was a bully of sorts and reduced flamboyant women with outright disapproval. And Temple was fair and reasonable. She raised her chin rockily in his direction and smiled sweetly at him. He looked at her, bit his lip and shook his head as if to say he was going crazy without her.
“Gute Nacht,” Isolde said imperiously. Her upbringing had been exclusive enough that she felt she needn’t worry about the likes of him.
“Good night.” He bowed stiffly at Isolde, then came back over to Claire and bent down. Claire thought he was about to kiss her forehead. She could feel his breath on her eyes. He picked up her hand and kissed it while he held her eyes with his. “Take care you don’t meet the ghost in the hallway,” he whispered mockingly. He turned abruptly and left. The door swung shut.
“I’d be careful there if I were you,” Isolde said shrewdly.
“You’re a fine one to talk.” Claire tittered nervously.
“You know I don’t mean it from a moral standpoint.”
“Well, what then? You can’t tell me you feel for Johnny. You’ve always despised him.”
“At least Johnny has a sense of humor about himself. He might be awful, but at least he knows it. I mean, there’s nothing you can blame someone for for being a barbarian.”
“So what are you doing? Blaming Temple Fortune because he’s assumed an attitude of his affluence? Hard-earned affluence?”
“It’s just a facade. It came to him too late to make any difference in his character.” Isolde got up and threw open the window. She turned and sat on the sill and regarded Claire. “Hot flashes,” she said.
“Oh,” said Claire, impressed.
“They’re not so bad. Actually I rather enjoy them.” She fanned herself. “So sensual, somehow. No, I just mean I can imagine you getting hurt with this Temple. There’s something ice-cold about him.”
“Really! I—”
“No, I mean it. Why has he got no children? No ex-wives? He’s old enough. Successful enough. I’m not sure. Something devious there.”
Claire shrugged. “You’re just peeved because he’s not after you. And I like him.”
“Yes, I can see that you like him. You go all pink when he walks up to you. Just be careful.”
“All right, mom.”
Isolde went to the desk and drove her finger across the calendar. “We can still have it on the seventeenth.”
“It has a lovely sound,” Claire agreed. “May seventeenth.”
“I can’t imagine them arresting me on my wedding day, can you?”
“No.” Claire leaned forward. “Probably not.”
“Oh, come.” Isolde stood behind her and unraveled Claire’s thick copper braid. With a big-toothed tortoise-shell comb she meandered down the hair, taking long, luxurious, hypnotizing strokes.
“Isolde?” Claire said suddenly.
“Mmmm?”
“Why did you sleep with Hans?”
“You mean why did I betray Blacky, or why did I enjoy sex with Hans?”
“Hans. What was it about him that intrigued you?”
“He was so”—she pushed Claire away and loosened her robe—“delightfully wicked.” Then a telltale look of anguish found its way across her face. “You wouldn’t think it to know him, but at the moment of truth, he was”—she hesitated—“quite tender.”
Then, seeing Claire’s unbearable sympathy in the mirror, she narrowed her eyes, grabbed hold of Claire’s arms and hurled her against the puffy chair. She then bombarded her with a series of hand-crocheted pillows.
Cosimo, down the hallway, looked up at the sound of their laughter. He listened, then sprang from his messy bed and reassembled the echoing selfsame notes on the rickety upright.
The next day the Mill buzzed with activity. There were the nervous, last-minute scenes for the film Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, and now the added confusion of preparations for the wedding.
Claire didn’t know what to shoot first. Every direction held a picture, some alluring scene or angle. There was a softness to the very air. She had just completed what she felt was a brilliant composition of the fruit orchard, what she hoped would be reminiscent of Bonnard’s Garden, but in muted gray tones and shadows. She was walking carefully along the muddy path when she found herself near the film crew. They were shooting the scene where the heroine regains her ability to feel, but perhaps only at the expense of all that is precious to her: her loyalty and self-respect.
There Mara was, at the end of a group of young trees. Puffin had explained the script to Claire, but it hadn’t really meant anything to her until now. What a brilliant actress Mara was. She had that rare ability to be able to change her accent utterly. It was the scene where she, the staid Englishwoman, is forced to decide about the love of her life, an inappropriately young German.
“What am I supposed to do?” Mara’s character was saying. She held her belly and swayed back and forth. “Oh, life isn’t how you think it will be,” she moaned. “It doesn’t turn out the way you expect, does it? I always thought if I got to a place, a certain place, everything would be settled. I would be there. But there is no place. There is no ‘there’! All I ever will remember is my desire.” Her head fell to the soft ground. “All I ever will regret. It never was the boy I loved, but my desire of him.”
The camera was on her, but they were quite far off. The gaffer, spotting Claire, made violent signals toward her to be quiet, but she knew enough and had already stopped. She stayed where she was.
Mara spoke softly, her words garbled at times by the thundering birdsong. She wore silk, bright red in the lush expanse of green. She fluttered like gossamer in the breeze. Temple Fortune stood, his arms bent and in front of him, much like a conductor at a symphony concert. Or, Claire marveled, like a hypnotist, drawing the performance out of a mesmerized Mara.
Mara was so good, Claire forgot everything, even herself, for a moment and was captivated. Then, Temple Fortune’s peripheral presence wafted toward Claire like the intrusion of sound waves. The right side of her body, the side toward him, became more alive than the other, or she became more aware of its life. The blood that raced through it did so with an almost wanton obligation and she thought how, how in God’s name do people resist such audacious temptation? Why would they even want to? Wasn’t its existence justification enough for an affair? “Affair” sounded so shabby compared to the almost spiritual elevation of this drive. She dared not look at him. If simply standing beside him could bring on such shortness of breath, such intense generation of bodily fluids, wasn’t one obliged by life itself to meet its fulfillment? Wasn’t this something most people spent their entire lives waiting to feel? Wasn’t that reason enough to give in? Wasn’t one supposed to give in? And if not, wouldn’t God forgive any weakness put upon by so magnificent a passion?
Suddenly Mara broke down. “I cannot continue,” she sobbed, “my concentration has been broken!”
“Damn!” Puffin swore. “It was superb.”
“Never mind.” Temple went gently through the grass to Mara. He smoothed her cheek. “We’ll start again in a moment.” He patted his assortment of pockets like a kindly grandpa looking for a sweet to placate her.
“My mouth has run dry,” she said, full of rage.
“Makeup.” Puffin pursed his lips. The sun was
moving quickly, and there wasn’t much time.
The lighting technician stood behind her and measured the light on her hair. The makeup girl patted her beading face with pats of a rather filthy-looking little sponge.
“Water!” Temple stood behind Mara with the lighting technician and gestured the assistant, who came running.
“Watch the grass, watch the grass!” Puffin yelled. He leaped behind the assistant, smoothing the tall grass with his arm, gently back and forth.
“Not that water.” Mara pushed the bottle thrust at her away, and it dropped, spilling, to the ground. “I want my Evian.”
“Oh, do take this, Mara,” Puffin exclaimed. “The light is changing so fast. We’ll miss the shot. German water won’t kill you, you know. Überkinger is marvelous stuff.” To prove his point, he took a slug.
“I can’t do it.” Mara began to tremble. “I’m a mess. I don’t trust this light. I know I look awful. I can feel it. You know I can feel good and bad light for me, Temple. You know I can.”
“Oh, yes.” Puffin wagged his head. “We all know quite well that you were a model. We’ve all heard it before, haven’t we?”
“I’m not talking to you.” Mara threw the overturned bottle at him, barely missing his ear. “Make him stop, Temple,” she cried. But she was looking at Claire. It was Claire who was upsetting her, really.
“Oh, don’t cry, for God’s sake, she’ll have to start all over!” Puffin said.
“I’ll run and get some Evian,” Claire spoke up.
“Just look at me!” Mara held a mirror at arm’s length. “I’m a mess!”
“You’re not,” Temple soothed her. He looked up and met Claire’s eyes. “You’re perfect.”
Claire turned and fled. Puffin ran up behind her. “Here,” he said hurriedly, “take Temple’s keys. She’s got some water in the trailer. It will be quicker.”
Claire moved swiftly through the grass. She didn’t stop until she got to the trailer and she let herself in. There was the water on the vanity. She grabbed it and then turned to go. She looked at his keys in her hands. There was a small marbled loop on a chain holding the cluster of keys. His keys. Claire arched her neck, holding the keys between her breasts. The open door of the bathroom allowed the sunlight on the scrubbed white tiles. She lowered her eyes and picked the keys up to her lips. She held them, breathing onto them, drunkenly inhaling their nearness and then she saw herself, accidentally, in the blinding mirror. There was a quick rapping on the trailer door. An assistant had come to relieve her of running back with the water. She lurched and dropped the keys. She let him in and walked, shaken, back to the Mill.
5
All the village showed up for the wedding.
A circle of dirndled Bavarian girls danced gracefully around the maypole surrounded by a larger circle, a herd of clumping fellows in lederhosen, knee socks, and starched shirts. They hooted and grabbed the girls around their waists and twirled them about to the delight of the more demure guests, not yet drunk enough or carefree enough in their costumes to be dancing.
No one had asked the villagers directly, but as long as they wore their Trachten they felt they were entitled to come. It had always been that way when there was a festivity at Saint Hildegard’s Mill. Luckily Evangelika knew this and had a slew of the village women in to help with the preparations and the serving.
There were tables of rich and unusual foods. An entire pig, fruit oozing from every orifice, went round and round on the garden spit. Cosimo and Friedel the gardener had outdone themselves, having strewn flowers in garlands from tree to tree. Claire was kept busy shooting everything. The morning slipped away. All she had to do was turn and frame and she’d be looking through the lens at yet another sun-dappled Renoir.
The ceremony itself had been short and sweet. Now the real, more businesslike, business of celebration was underway.
Claire decided to fake advantage of the cool dark kitchen to reload. The sun was too high anyway. She stepped over the massive beams still used for steps and went in.
Temple Fortune sat in the place of honor, under Evangelika’s elbow, at the otherwise unpeopled table. They were changing scenes, he said. He’d slipped away. The sun was too high. “I was just thinking that,” she said, and they both smiled, remembering the last time they’d held each other’s eyes.
He was drinking a clear soup. “I have this bloody gastritis and I need something plain,” he said.
One thing Evangelika loved was an undernourished man.
“Will you join me?” he asked Claire.
“Oh no,” she said shyly.
“Please,” he said.
She lowered herself down across from him, keeping her spine straight. She must control herself near him.
Evangelika smacked an empty bowl before her, then eased in some ladlefuls of her magnificent broth. Temple leaned over the table with a spoon of grated cheese, which he sprinkled across the top. It melted in. He looked at her to ask if that was the right amount. But there was much more to that look.
The noise outside seemed far away. They ate their soup quietly. He wanted her to take a hunk of the crusty sunflower bread he’d torn off for her and dunk it in the fragrant soup.
Evangelika stood approvingly behind them, waiting, with her ladle on her hip.
Claire could not remember anything ever tasting better. He insisted she take a glass of beer. “Full of vitamins.” He smiled. “They don’t use preservatives here, you know, it’s food after all. And fresh.” Then, “I have a lovely kitchen at home,” he confided. “I enjoy cooking. It relaxes me.”
“Really,” Claire said. “I’m afraid I’ve fallen into the category of hurry up and get it on the table. I never meant to, but I’ve become that way.”
“That’s all right. As long as your art stays pure, as they say. I think it’s all right if you serve the occasional hamburger.”
“Oh you do, eh? I’d better not admit that my son lives on hamburgers and pizza.”
“Well. It must be nice at least to have a son.”
“I didn’t know you were so sulky, Temple.”
“Now you do.” They held their spoons in midair and regarded each other. “I’m sorry,” he said ducking his head “all of a sudden I don’t know if the story I’m working on is even the slightest bit interesting.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it.”
“Oh, you know.” He leaned back on two legs of his chair looking like an American cowboy with his jeans and his vest. “It started off this wonderfully symbolic story of a woman going through this metamorphosis—this experience—a second chance that goes awry. Ursula Braun wrote the story, you know. I saw it so clearly when I first read it. I loved it. It was so …” He held up the palms of his hands. “… so simple. Here’s a woman who has a second chance at love, at life, but fears she no longer can feel. Worries she has not the heart.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know the writer.” Then, she thought, I do, on the other hand, know the feeling.
“What, really? She’s world-famous. The critics’ darling. But since you admitted you don’t know her, I’ll tell you something.” He lowered his voice. “I’d never heard of her either.”
They grinned at each other.
“I’m afraid I don’t keep up with all these literary geniuses. Puffin does. Great reader, Puff. He keeps me abreast. I’m afraid I’m too visual. Good for some things, bad for others.” He gazed at her wistfully.
“Puffin turned you on to the story, then?”
“Yaa. I’d be little more than a moron without Puffin. He’s too much. Went to all the best schools, did Puff. Knows it all.”
Claire’s eyes were drawn to the palms of his hands. She wanted to lean over and press her lips to their center.
“And now”—she heard his voice above her imagination—“now it all looks so complicated. So busy.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if my work is worthy of Ursula Braun’s story. You know, the writer took the title from the painting. Bronzin
o’s Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time. You know.”
“I didn’t. I knew the name of your film, but I didn’t know the source.”
“Oh, it’s lovely,” Temple said. “Full of angels and screeching supplicants. Sort of lewd.”
“Listen,” Claire said, “I’m sure once you get back to London and start editing—”
“Now,” Temple said worriedly, “I’m not even sure we were wise to shoot it here in Germany. We’ve lost so much of the spirit of it. The Italian atmosphere. The sharp lines of shadow and light. I was so happy at first. Even Puffin thought it would work.”
“It was originally meant for the South?”
“Well, yes, Florence.”
“Hmm. Well, all I can comment on is what I’ve seen you working on this past week. I mean, I shot a lot of your setups. I don’t usually like to use someone else’s perspectives, but they seemed clear. It seemed …” She searched her mind for the word that would soothe him, that would give him back the faith he’d lost in himself. She traced the worry lines across his forehead with her eyes, memorizing them. “Your angle … your work in general seemed to have integrity. A mystical integrity.”
“Now here’s a girl up on all the latest metaphysical jargon,” Temple scoffed, but the lines had disappeared. She’d done her job. He slurped his soup, happy again. “You know,” he said, “it’s funny. Here we are, bugs in a rug, wedding going on, middle of a murder investigation. Life’s still a funny old place, isn’t it?”
“If they could only decide it was murder. I mean, maybe it was suicide. I wish it were. They’re not sure, are they?”
“Ah. Why would a guy like Hans commit suicide?”
“You knew him, did you?”
“Not well at all. He struck me as content with his lot, though. You know, no-second-thoughts kind of chap. Can’t see him kicking it in. I think he fell.”
“Maybe,” Claire suggested, “he killed himself over Isolde. Getting married to Blacky.”
Evangelika smacked the dough she was kneading at the other end of the table. They’d forgotten she was even there. “Not likely,” she snorted, and they laughed.
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