The New Confessions

by William Boyd

  “John, don’t let this come between us, I implore you. I am Eddie now. You must never call me Aram.”

  I decided to humor him. “All right. Eddie. Eddie. But it’s not easy.”

  “I’ve told everyone else in the company. All my friends and associates.” He smiled. “You’ll see, in a day or two it’ll seem the most natural thing in the world.”

  Was he mad? “But why?”

  “I wanted to, for a long time. I had to wait for my father to die, of course. I don’t want to be a Lodokian anymore.” He touched my elbow. “Times are changing, John. Tomorrow’s world is for the Eddie Simmonettes. You’ve never been to America … that’s where I got the idea.”

  It made no sense to me, but it was his right, I suppose. So, no more Aram Lodokian. Enter Eddie Simmonette. And the funny thing about it all, Aram/Eddie was right.

  In March I took the family back home for Thompson’s wedding. It was inconvenient, but I had been touched by a personal letter from him asking me to be there. We traveled first class and spent two days in London at Claridge’s. I booked two suites there, one for Sonia and myself, one for Lily and the children. I did the same at the North British Hotel in Edinburgh. At our window in the North British I stood silent for ten minutes or so looking out at the familiar view. The castle, the gardens, Princes Street. It was typically gray and wet. The castle loomed black over the damp wind-lashed gardens and the town, its cliffs slick and slimy with rain. I thought back to my last visit six or seven years before when we had been making Wee MacGregor Wins the Sweepstakes. Here I was now, twenty-eight years old, wealthy, celebrated, large family, servants … I should have felt pleased with myself, smug, full of I-told-you-so superiority. But the longer I stood there looking out at that uncompromising view, the harder self-satisfaction was to achieve. I knew my father would be unimpressed.

  We had not seen each other for six years. My eyes were smarting with emotion as he was shown into the suite with Thompson and his bride-to-be. Sonia had our family laid out as if for kit inspection. She was a little nervous too: it was her first encounter with her father-in-law. She had the boys spruce in neat golfing outfits—Norfolk jackets and plus fours—and the girls were propped in the corners of a sofa—cherubs in lace—Lily sitting between them. My father was as he had always been: formal, polite, reserve encasing him like a relic in a glass cabinet.

  “Hello, John,” he said. I shook his cool hand vigorously. “And this’ll be Sonia.… You can let go now, John.”

  The reunion was stiff, edgy, the conversation absurdly banal. My father was quite gray now, though he was as thin and upright as ever, impressively fit looking for a man in his mid-sixties.

  Thompson had settled into his portliness. It suited him. He was one of those stout men for whom weight loss would be something of an affront, almost indecent. He was rising steadily up the hierachy of the bank and had, I think he told me, just been appointed to the board—hence his decision to get married. I envied him his young eager wife, Heather (who shyly told me how much she had loved Julie). She was pretty in an innocuous, pinkish way. She fussed nervously over the children, glad to have some diversion. Beside her, Sonia could almost have been described as matronly. For a young woman the beam of Sonia’s hips was unduly broad: her torso seemed to rest on it like an antique bust on a pedestal. She wore dark expensive clothes, sensibly cut, which to some extent disguised her bulk, but she had a solid big-arsed presence these days that slim nervous Heather beside her accentuated. Heather was one of those girls, I could see, whose sunny temperament would not dim even when overshadowed by the grimmest clouds of adversity (she very charmingly rebuffed me some years after when I made a crude and shameful pass at her). I stood with my father and brother—we all stirred cups of tea, held at chest height—and watched the women marshal and drill the children. I think it was then that the last dregs of love I held for Sonia seeped away forever. Why? Why do these things ever happen?… I knew I had Doon now.

  I glanced at father. His face was quite expressionless.

  “Well, Innes,” I said. “Grand to have the family back together.”

  I saw him flinch as I used his Christian name. Thompson called him Daddy—ridiculous in a grown man, I thought.

  “Curious names you’ve chosen for your boys,” he said with a trace of a smile. The old bastard. “That would be the Shorrold line, I take it?”

  The wedding. It was all right—tolerable. Normally I detest weddings. All that false, timely sincerity nauseates me. Donald and Faye Verulam were there, Donald ever more courteous and patrician, Faye aging with tact and charm. I was safe with Faye now, quite relaxed. Various burly Dale cousins showed up and I was surprised to see that old Sir Hector was still alive. If anything he was in slightly better condition than I remembered him from 1919, when I used to push him round the garden at Drumlarish House. He was swigging sherry and trying to eat crumbling wedding cake when I approached him.

  “Grandfather!” I shouted. “It’s me, John James!”

  He was appallingly badly shaved and cake crumbs had caught in the bristles. His moist eyes swiveled uncontrollably.

  “Johnny. How are you, laddie?”

  “Fine, fine.”

  “Got a job yet?”

  “Yes, yes.” I told myself to stop repeating my answers. I felt an immense sadness descend abruptly on me as I looked at this collapsed old man in his bath chair.

  “Great day,” he said.

  “It is, it is.”

  “Get us another of these wee sherries before my nurse comes back.”

  I did, and had a few whiskeys to cheer myself up, which probably explains why I lost control so completely with Oonagh. She had of course been invited to the wedding but obediently filled her role as former family retainer, sitting on a hard chair at the farthest perimeter of the family group. She was drinking tea and had a plate of fancy cakes on her lap when I found her. She was stooped with arthritis and had given up working for my father, unable to climb the stairs anymore. Two walking sticks hung over the back of her chair. She had softened and expanded with age, her hair prematurely wiry and gray. She wore a baggy white blouse, thick skirt and old-fashioned lace-up boots.

  “Not too grand to speak to me, then?”

  “Don’t be silly, Oonagh.” I gave her a kiss. My voice was trembling. I felt my head bulging with a decade’s unspilled tears, like a ripe melon about to burst. I sensed here, today, my youth and past life falling away for ever. The changes wrought in my six years’ absence were too large and dramatic to be unconsciously assimilated. I had been away too long. The geography of my early life, its fixed points and certainties, was hopelessly out of date now. I was faced only with mutability and decay: to look back, to recall, only emphasized our awful fragility.

  “That’s a nice brooch,” I said hoarsely, pointing to a single cairngorm set in silver that Oonagh was wearing at her throat.

  “You gave it to me, silly boy.”

  My face wrinkled and the tears surged. Shoulders heaving, snorkeling back the rush of phlegm, I wrote out a check for a hundred pounds and pressed it into Oonagh’s astonished hands.

  Later, calmer, I had an awkward conversation with Thompson. I think he wanted to be affectionate, but again the years stood between us and we exchanged only platitudes. It was the closest we ever got as adults, however, which is something. This hot fat man is my brother, I said to myself. We can’t ignore these blood ties. I tried. We talked about money. He asked me if I had a lot of capital. I said yes. He looked round and lowered his voice.

  “Get it out of Germany, John, please.”

  “Why? Things are doing better. I even get paid in American dollars.”

  “That’s something. But I’d still shift it. Back here. Or France or Switzerland. It’s sound advice.”

  “I’m filming in Switzerland later this year.”

  He stepped closer. His hand hovered a moment as if he were going to place it on my shoulder. He let it touch my sleeve lightly, like a leaf. />
  “Will you do something for me, John?” he asked. “Get your money, in cash, and take it with you to Switzerland. I’ll tell you where to take it.”

  I obviously looked skeptical.

  “Please,” he said. “Let me set up everything.” He was excited. The smile he gave me was unlike his ordinary weak grin. For an instant I sensed the almost carnal pleasure he took in his job, and why therefore he was such a good banker. For Thompson, nothing else was as much fun as money, and I daresay that included his new wife. I agreed. He promised to send me the details.

  “You’ll thank me for this,” he said. “Believe me, John, I know what I’m saying.” He was right. It was the best and only favor he ever did me.

  Aram Lodokian—sorry, Eddie Simmonette—had leased the warehouses and workshops of an old military factory in Spandau on the Staaken, which were readily converted into studios. They were devoted exclusively to The Confessions: Part I. There we had three stages of various sizes plus all the technical equipment and expertise we required.

  Let me, without preamble, tell of our first day’s shooting as it unfolded to the members of the cast and crew. It will give you the best example of how I conceived The Confessions and how I planned to make it the most extraordinary film in the history of motion pictures. The following account appeared in the August 1927 edition of Kino. My translation.

  July 17, 1927. Realismus Studios, Spandau. Seven A.M. Director John James Todd assembles the entire cast and crew of the film on the largest of the studio’s three stages. Everyone is present whether he or she is required for that day or not. They number in all 167 men, women and children. Todd addresses the company, welcomes them to the film and demands total dedication. He stands above the crowd on a scaffolding platform, part of a set representing Mme. de Warens’s bedchamber in her château at Annecy. His voice is clear, his German simple yet full of errors. His curious accent demands extra concentration. He is a dark intense man of average height, somewhat thick-set. His demeanor is one of almost uncontrollable energy and excitement. He tells his audience that they are immensely privileged to be working on what, he assures them with breathtaking confidence, will become the most celebrated film in the history of cinema. Such is his conviction, such the evident pride and exultation in his own face, that this short furious speech is greeted by loud cheering. Some people shed tears. Todd passes through the crowd, men and women press forward to shake his hand and clap him on the shoulders.

  Seven-thirty A.M. On a smaller stage we find the interior of Isaac Rousseau’s house in Geneva. Suzanne Rousseau (Traudl Niemoller) is in the throes of giving birth to Jean Jacques. At one side of the stage sits a fifteen-man orchestra playing Massenet’s “Elégie” Todd spends an hour filming close-ups for Suzanne Rousseau’s face as she is instructed to scream and scream again. His perfectionism reduces her to tears. Standing behind the camera is Karl-Heinz Kornfeld. Todd has asked him to be present during this scene, dressed in costume as if witnessing his own birth.

  At 9 A.M. an ambulance arrives containing a nursing mother and her male child born literally a few hours earlier. They are installed in a bed a few feet away from Suzanne Rousseau’s. As the moment of Jean Jacques’s simulated birth arrives, the baby is removed from its real mother’s breast, is smeared with olive oil and held aloft—screaming, dripping between the splayed legs of the actress. Todd spends another thirty minutes filming close-ups of the infant’s face until the exhausted mother insists she and her child be returned to the maternity ward at the local hospital.

  At the end of the morning’s filming there follows a one-hour break for lunch. Karl-Heinz Kornfeld dines alone with Todd in a private room.

  One-thirty P.M. Returning to Stage 3 we notice that there are two cameras set up, one on Suzanne Rousseau’s deathbed and one facing Karl-Heinz Kornfeld, who has been once again placed in a position that afforded a clear view of the bed. The orchestra plays an adaptation of Fauré’s Requiem as Suzanne Rousseau dies, calling for her baby boy. Isaac Rousseau looks on, glycerin tears tracking his face. “Think of your own mothers!” Todd bellows at the actors as the cameras turn. “My son! My son!” Suzanne Rousseau sobs pitifully. “Think of your mother dying!” Todd shouts. The music builds. Todd himself weeps uncontrollably. Some of the crew begin to cry. At the final sonorous chords Suzanne Rousseau gasps, tries to raise herself from her pillow and falls back, dead. At that moment, at a sign from Todd, a door in the studio wall opens, and through it comes a bewildered old lady in a dowdy overcoat and black straw hat. Karl-Heinz Kornfeld looks on for a moment in total shock before collapsing sobbing on the ground. The old lady shuffles forward calling, “Karl-Heinz! Karl-Heinz!” Todd cries, “Cut.” Pandemonium reigns.

  The old lady turns out to be Kornfeld’s mother, whom he has not seen in five years. Todd has secretly brought her to the studios for just this entrance, transporting her from Darmstadt, where she has been living in impoverished widowhood.

  I have to tell you that Karl-Heinz very nearly did not forgive me for this little trick. But the emotion registered on his face was astonishing. I did it because I wanted Karl-Heinz to be bound up in this film in a way that would be unparalleled. Which is why, so to speak, I wanted him to witness his own beginning; and why I enjoined them all to substitute their own mothers for Suzanne Rousseau. I knew Karl-Heinz’s guilt over his neglect of his mother and I knew that, as his head filled with morbid images, her sudden appearance would be devastating. I was absolutely right. He was ruined, wordless, shivering with confusion and emotional fatigue. The music was excellent and essential too. I used the orchestra for all the important scenes; they were kept permanently on hire and at hand. The actors gave the performances of their lives, even the baby.… That was a brilliant stroke. Such a fragile, wrinkled thing, still red and squashed looking. To see it held there screaming in the arc lights was enormously affecting. Unfortunately, and despite our best efforts, it developed a chill and nearly died. Some meddling relative persuaded the mother to sue (I had paid her handsomely) and we were obliged to settle out of court to avoid the adverse publicity she threatened. Aram/Eddie was mightily displeased at this unforeseen addition to the budget, but when I ran the film for him he had to concede the power in what otherwise might have been a hackneyed scene.

  But it was the lasting effect on Karl-Heinz that most gratified me. He had been typically blasé about the film during the run-up to the first day’s shooting. His brand of relaxed, lazy cynicism was the last thing I required from the man who was going to ignite the imagination of the world as Jean Jacques Rousseau. In one day he saw himself born, saw his mother die and then had her miraculously resurrected. It was a shock from which I never wanted him to recover, and from that day his dedication to The Confessions was second only to mine.

  Consequently, he completely understood when I rescheduled the entire filming program after we had been going little more than a month. The plan had been to shoot all our interiors before going to France and Switzerland to do our location work at Geneva and Annecy. But I realized, as the day approached for Doon and Karl-Heinz to play their first scenes together, that filming out of sequence—here and now—would have a disastrous effect on the intensity of mood we had been striving so diligently to achieve. It was quite obvious to me that the vital moment in this story of Jean Jacques as a young man was his meeting and subsequent love affair with Mme. de Warens. To film scenes after that meeting before it occurred (in film time) would be asking too much of the actors to reproduce the heights of feeling I required. Normally, chronological filming is something I am happy to dispense with, but here I knew it was essential. And Karl-Heinz, who had his doubts anyway about producing a convincing heterosexual yearning (this was to be of a different order from the melodrama of Saint-Preux and Julie) agreed. I spent three nights with Leo and our production manager working out a new schedule, then Leo went to Annecy to see if our locations could accommodate our early arrival. We wound up our first segment of filming at Spandau with the celebrated sou
p-pissing scene. We used real urine (mine) and did not tell the actress playing the quarrelsome crone. Her hawking and spitting when she tasted the soup was entirely authentic. I told her it was laced with vinegar (I had a half-empty bottle nearby), but she took some persuading and the prop was crucial.

  We left for Annecy in September, a huge caravan of actors, technicians and equipment that occupied an entire train. I was exhilarated to see this troop assembled at my behest, but I was also troubled. When Rousseau went to meet Mme. de Warens for the first time he envisaged the encounter as a “terrifying audience.” Now, I felt something of that type of apprehension. I was leaving Berlin and my family behind me. Once that had happened, once those checks were removed, I knew it would be impossible for me to control my feelings for Doon any longer. Currently, a fragile equilibrium existed. Doon thought I was being loyal to Sonia, and interpreted my massive effort of self-control as a sign that I had realized we should only be friends. Apart from script conferences and costume fittings and the like, I had seen her socially only three times since that Christmas night, in each case in response to an invitation from her to attend KPD meetings. I tolerated these interminable harangues only because they brought me physically close to her and because afterwards we would go for a drink or a bite to eat. But even then we had only managed to be alone once. Doon always tried to invite other comrades along, and because it was she, they always accepted. My God, the deadly humorless earnestness of those young men and women! I would stare at Doon, enmeshed in passionate debate, and gave the occasional nod or muttered the odd fatuous remark—“Now that’s a fascinating concept,” or “I couldn’t agree more,” “That’s an outrage”—as token of my participation. But all that was behind us. For a month or more we would be living in the same building: the Imperial Palace Hotel on the lakeshore at Annecy.

  In those days—1927—Annecy was not the fashionable resort it was to become, but I found it a delightful place, with its spectacular view of the blue lake and its ring of mountains. I loved the old town with its canals and arcaded streets, and the way the castle dominated so many of one’s images of the place reminded me vaguely of Edinburgh. I thought of Jean Jacques here, aged sixteen, arriving at the crucial nexus of his life, walking these narrow lanes.… Even the cathedral, which the guidebooks describe as “a poor Gothic building,” holds a precise and particular charm. Jean Jacques had sung as a chorister here and his voice had echoed beneath this indifferent vaulting.