Petite Mort

by Beatrice Hitchman

  Where was André? I heard a clock ticking – no, not a clock – and there, making its waddling way towards me, was a monstrosity. A clanking figure made of metal, the size of a child. Someone had painted a crude face on it: red for the lips, blue for the eyes, though the paint had run on the mouth before it had dried, and it was this that made me squeak.

  André’s laugh rang out, and he stepped forward. ‘Do you like her?’

  I watched the automaton come towards me. It was nothing to be afraid of – stage-magicians used them. But this one was unfinished: though its legs marched smartly, its arms were mismatched pieces of metal and hung by its side. It wheezed up to me, fell over onto its side and froze, fixing me with its blue eyes.

  André peered down into its face. ‘Back to the drawing board,’ he said.

  ‘Did you make it?’ I asked. ‘What for?’

  ‘Work,’ he answered, and for some reason, the room felt flat and irritable.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about your wife,’ I prompted.

  He looked at me. ‘Adèle, she’s not dead. She just needs a rest.’

  I decided to press my advantage, and crossed to him, placing my palms on his chest. ‘You have something to tell me, don’t you? That’s why you sent for me.’

  His hand slid under my breast.

  ‘No,’ I said, pushing him away, ‘tell me what you want me for.’

  He sighed. ‘Very well,’ he said.’It is an offer of some importance, after all.’ He was looking at me strangely, I thought, his lips twitching. ‘You will make a wonderful new assistant for my wife,’ he said.

  In the corner, the automaton convulsed and then was still. ‘Are you—?’ I said. ‘Are you joking?’

  Smiling, he shook his head.

  From the stairwell outside the apartment, I heard an entirely new sound. High, yet girlish: it sounded like Mathilde laughing.

  Shuffling from the ground floor caught my attention. I peered down through the banisters, and saw Monsieur Z rustling on his newspapery bed; he looked up at me and grinned, revealing pink and toothless gums. ‘Happy,’ he cackled, and indicated upstairs with his chin.

  I opened the front door and stepped inside. The hall was in darkness, but a wavering, flickering light – candles – came from the salon. I hesitated, listening – and heard low chatter: Camille’s voice, as though telling an anecdote. And then again, Mathilde’s giggling.

  I peered round the corner so that I could see into the salon.

  The first thing I saw was that the furniture had been rearranged. The dining table had been dragged to sit cross-wise in front of the fireplace, and the large mirror from over the fireplace placed on top of the table, so that the mirror’s back was supported by the mantelpiece. Mathilde’s family miniatures lay piled carelessly just inside the door. The room was lit by two candles, one on either side of the mirror; and on the dining table were scattered an array of pots of powder and kohl.

  Mathilde was sitting up to the table, facing the mirror, expectant and child-like; Camille was to her right, leaning in to dab at Mathilde’s eyes with a finger greased with Vaseline. Agathe stood behind Mathilde, watching the proceedings. Even she was smiling, enchanted at Mathilde’s transformation.

  When she saw my movement out of the corner of her eye, Mathilde swivelled to look at me. She was painted chalky white, with black swirling details on her cheeks, and one black tear-drop eye: a pierrot.

  Camille stood back, smiling. Her glance flickered to the corner of the room, where I saw the squat black valise she had arrived with. A skill, she had said the night she arrived: I’ve got a skill.

  ‘You weren’t the only one who was clever,’ Camille said. ‘I’ve taught myself. I used to practise on the little ones after school.’

  ‘You never told me,’ I said.

  Camille tossed her head, which meant, you never asked.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Mathilde said, ‘Isn’t it exciting – you can find her employment at Pathé! Surely some of the directors could make use of Camille?’

  ‘The actors do their own,’ I said coldly. ‘Most of them,’ I corrected. For what did I know about the individual habits of the stars?

  Camille had waited patiently for Mathilde to stop speaking, and now bent gently to dust powder over her cheeks: I suddenly saw, as she moved into the candles’ range, that she had made herself up. It was no more than a touch of rouge and the lightest shading around the eyes, but she looked finished.

  ‘So I’m afraid there are no opportunities at present,’ I said.

  Mathilde turned to look at me, bewildered.

  Camille said smoothly: ‘But you could have a word, couldn’t you, Adèle? I thought you and M. Durand were close.’

  I fled to my room, curled up in bed, and held onto my own toes for comfort. The rain continued whispering at the window late into the night, and still the laughter came from the salon, and Camille did not come to bed.

  I thought back to that afternoon. What on earth were you thinking? André had asked, grabbing my wrists after I had reached up to try to slap him. An established actress will take over the Absinthe role. What did you expect?

  He had let me struggle, turning my head away from him.

  ‘Think about it,’ he had said, ‘just think,’ over my tears. ‘Don’t you know how often the assistant becomes the understudy?’

  I had sniffed and hiccuped, caught out.

  ‘Besides, you’d come and live with us. My wife finds it preferable to have someone there all the time. She and I each have our own quarters. You will be in the room just above mine.’

  André smiled and gave my shoulders a little shake, till I began to smile in turn.

  ‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Really?’

  ‘You will have your pick of gowns. All the advantages of knowing the studio people. And me, of course. As much of me as you like.’

  I thought of myself, whisking a costume away from my own assistant: You have not sewn the hem correctly. Take it back, please. Would I say please?

  André looked at me with narrowed eyes.

  ‘I don’t want to be a costumière for ever,’ I said, trying out the words.

  In the early hours, Camille came to bed. She turned away from me, and soon I heard her breathing steady and slow. Her nightgown fell below her shoulder blade, exposing the new skin growing over her scars. They were healing on their own, without any help from me.

  André had said: ‘I’ll send my driver for you tomorrow evening. Of course you will have to be vetted by my wife. My car will take you to our house in the Bois de Boulogne. All you have to do is be there to meet it.’

  André, v.

  A rainy November evening in 1904: five years after André stepped off the boat from New York to Paris, and into his proper life.

  As usual, he was in the Pathé building long after everyone else had left, reclining and doodling on his sketch pad. He had nothing to do apart from be perfectly himself: there was an invitation, of course, to a gallery opening later in the evening, but he was not obliged to attend. He loved above all things the long hours after dark, when the hum of the human factory workers had subsided. He had his best ideas at night, because it was then that he was left alone with the noises he loved: the clanking of the stage-machinery pistons, the hiss of water in the pipes above his head, on its way to douse down the film-strip laboratory floor.

  Then, mixed with the mechanical sounds, André heard something that should not have been there: footsteps, approaching his door. He frowned: a little flare of temper, and dropped his sketch pad as the knock at the door came.

  ‘Come in,’ he barked. The door opened a crack, and one of the runners poked his head into the space. ‘This came for you, M. Durand,’ he piped, holding out a flat, oblong parcel in trembling fingers.

  André snatched the parcel, tossed it onto the table, and tried to get back to his thoughts. He locked his fingers behind his head and closed his eyes. The pitter-patter of the runner’s feet receded, and he sighed and inhal
ed the factory sounds.

  But the parcel had made a dent in the weave: an oblong silence where there should have been noise. It lay staring up at him.

  André swore. Who had sent him a film idea at this time of night? What could possibly be so urgent? But he would get no rest until he had, at least, looked at it.

  One quick peek – and then it would go where ninety-nine per cent of the ideas he received went. Giving in, he tore the manilla envelope that was used for inter-departmental traffic, and found, as he had expected, a note from Charles Pathé:

  This came from a friend. Of interest. Difficult trick. C.

  André smiled. Declaring something difficult was a lure of Charles’s, designed to pique André’s interest: but it was a phrase without bite because they both knew that André never found camera tricks difficult. His films were the talk of Europe: his speciality was the illusion; films which made the audience cover their face with their hands; and he did it all with a shrug and a smile, finding it easy. Inevitably he would stride into Charles’s office the following morning and toss the script onto his desk, along with the sketch book containing the solution. Not so difficult then, Charles Pathé would smile, and André would answer: Apparently not.

  He turned the paper over:

  LA PETITE MORT

  A drama of a haunting

  André’s lip curled. Charles was losing his touch: when had there been a ghost which André could not conjure? Mercifully, the script was just a few pages long, and well formatted – not like some of the scribbles he got nowadays. He quickly found the scene which would require his attention:

  The Doppelgänger, enraged, steps out of the mirror.

  Intertitle:

  HOW DARE YOU CONJURE ME WITHOUT MY PERMISSION?

  The Doppelgänger wraps its hands round the girl’s throat.

  The sluicing of the pipes overhead faded out and was replaced by the tingle in his elbow that signified an idea.

  André tossed the script aside, and reached for his pencil and sketchbook. Designs ran down his arms and fingers and onto the page. He drew a stage model of the standard set-up for Pepper’s Ghost, the illusion which had so amazed London three seasons ago. The action ran as usual on the stage: but a sheet of glass was added during the interval, running invisibly stage left to right. Via a series of projections, the reflection of an actor in the wings was thrown onto the sheet of glass: and a ghost appeared to walk back and forth on stage.

  In the silence of his room, André furrowed his brow. It was easy enough to duplicate a person in the same shot. One simply filmed the same scene in two passes, confining the action to one side of the shot only on each pass, and then laid the two sections of film over each other to get the full picture in the finished print. Or a better option might be to block off a part of the camera lens, and expose one side of the film – have the girl step towards the mirror – and then rewind the film, block off the other half of the lens, and shoot the other side – have the same girl play herself stepping out of the mirror.

  But in this type of trick, the doubles usually stayed firmly on their respective sides of the set, and never touched each other. The contact of nebulous hands on living throat: that was more difficult.

  Half an hour passed; the clock struck eight, and André tore the sheets from his pad and ripped them into strips. He flung the script into a drawer.

  As he stared at his desk, unseeing, the invitation to the gallery opening swam into focus. Suddenly he did not want to be alone in his office any more.

  He locked the drawer with its shameful contents before he left, locked his office, smiled at the night porter on his way out, and hailed a cab which took him to Montmartre, and to a rainy pavement outside a gallery lit by electricity and champagne.

  Juliette and Adèle

  1967

  I say: ‘But he did work out a method by the winter of 1913.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How was it done?’

  Adèle shrugs. ‘I don’t know exactly.’

  ‘Why not? You were there.’

  She leans forward: ‘Have you ever stood under cinema lights? After two minutes, you smell your own hair burning. I was alone, faint and dazzled, being told what gestures to make, one by one. I do remember there was a mirror, and that the director became very irate, and kept moving me around, saying I wasn’t hitting my marks. But apart from that – a blank.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ I say. ‘There must be something.’

  A hiss of steam from the coffee machine; someone comes into the café, and Adèle Roux is looking at me.

  ‘I’ve got you wrong, haven’t I?’ she says. ‘I thought you were a person who let things happen to them, but you’re not. You have to find things out. You won’t rest until you know.’

  It’s the best summary of myself I have yet heard.

  She passes her hand in front of her mouth as if hiding a smile. ‘But when we come to the part about the film,’ she says, ‘you will see why I wasn’t concentrating.’

  10. juillet 1913

  THROUGH THE GLASS PARTITION, André’s driver tells me about his daughters. ‘Our eldest, we hope, may be a doctor one day.’ His eyes crinkle. ‘Why not? It’s changing everywhere, isn’t it?’ Failing that, he says, a doctor’s wife. ‘She’s turned out good-looking. A bit like you.’ He winks: complimentary rather than lascivious, but I’ve turned my face away.

  Outside the car, the city has gone away without anything to go on. It seems one moment a white-aproned waiter inclines over a lady in furs, frozen in the act of obsequiousness; the next, the avenue is white dust and lined with poplars – neat façades behind high walls – countryside, but pruned and arranged for the rich, speeding along too fast, pressing me into the sides of the car as we corner. I fold my hands over my valise and wish he’d watch the road.

  ‘First time in an automobile?’ the driver says.

  ‘No,’ I say, and then: ‘When I was little there was a horse and trap; we hired it to take us on picnics. Only the pony was used to deliver milk the rest of the time, so it kept trying to stop in at every house on the way.’

  He laughs out loud, confident hands on the wheel, and I feel a little better.

  The house radiates wealth: gold stone, its shutters beaming wide, its windows blue in the summer evening. The mansard roof is slate and the lawn trimmed a perfect poison-green. In a spin of gravel, the car swings round a turning circle in the drive and stops outside wide steps leading up to the front door.

  The driver hops off the cab and clicks the car door open for me. He touches his cap: ‘Hubert, Mademoiselle,’ he says. ‘I look forward to being of more service to you in the future,’ and smiling, he steps away.

  Inside, led by the butler, Thomas, the house isn’t what I expected: a smell of camphor and the old stone of the marble floor. The hall is dark apart from the yellow pool of a lamp, standing on a marble occasional table: as we move through, a wash of colour from a stained-glass window dapples my feet. Further back, a glimpse of a snail’s shell staircase, drifting up into the floor above.

  Thomas stands for a moment listening outside a door halfway down the corridor, his hand in readiness on the door knob; he raps with his other knuckle and without waiting for an answer, goes in.

  She is sitting on a sofa under the large front window, head bent over a book; as we enter, she puts it down on her lap.

  ‘Mlle Roux, Madame,’ Thomas says.

  She says: ‘Oh – the new assistant!’ as if she has never heard of such a thing; Thomas withdraws, closing the door behind him.

  She looks down, produces a bookmark and inserts it, marking the page. Makes a business of it; smoothing the covers and closing it and putting it down again, this time beside her; and then we look at each other.

  You always ask yourself: how much of what I remember is real, and how much of it is detail that I have embellished afterwards? In my mind’s eye, she makes a quick movement, as if she is hesitating to speak, and we stay like that for I don’t kn
ow how long – but when I try to square that trembling image with what I know of her now, I can’t imagine her doing it.

  I felt, in those couple of seconds, that I’d known her for a long time. I thought, as she finally started to smile, and her teeth appeared, I saw her recognise me too. Perhaps that was what she had been going to say, but stopped herself: Don’t I know you?

  ‘My husband tells me you have aspirations in the cinema.’

  Now she has fixed her eyes on the window behind me, with a slight frown, as if momentarily distracted by someone passing by, and I’m glad of the interruption, because her voice is a disappointment. Unremarkable: the accent aristocratic but not Parisian. Not the rich chocolate I’d imagined.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I am extremely keen to learn.’

  ‘And can you read?’

  ‘Fluently.’

  ‘Good. And you know the duties involved in being my assistant? Clerical, as well as the social aspect? You’ll answer my correspondence and help me keep my paperwork in order. And you don’t mind about the money? You will have your own rooms, your own suite, and you can eat your meals with us if you like. I expect M. Durand explained.’

  I nod, thinking that I’ll have to be careful not to use his first name.

  ‘Are you able to start immediately? We can send for your things. There isn’t anyone at home waiting for you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’ll ask Thomas to show you to your room.’

  The smile broadens until all her teeth appear, and above them, her eyes, wide and amused.

  Three days later I returned to rue Boissonnade one last time, to collect my things.

  I went in the last hours of the night so that nobody would see me. Wisps of mist hung in the street and wreathed themselves about the hall door; I crept past Monsieur Z and up the creaking staircase and turned my key in the lock of the apartment.

  From Agathe’s room came the sound of snores. I moved on, past the salon door, which was propped open. In the dead light the furniture looked august and almost expensive; Mathilde’s family were frozen on the mantel, glinting in their silver frames.