by Paula Byrne
‘My mirror, Kater.’
I held it aloft as she donned her sable cape and pulled the hood over her golden hair. Dot from Make-up daubed glycerine onto those perfect lips, and with a ‘We are ready for you, Miss Madou’ from the assistant director, she was primed.
She stood perfectly still, in front of the door of the coach, gazing in wonder at St Petersburg in the depths of winter. The last time I had been in the studio, I had been to Shanghai. I remember Mo painting cloud formations on the top of a real-life express steam train. I didn’t need to go to the real China or Russia. I had it all right here. That day in China, I had learned that when the director uttered the words ‘Quiet on the set’ I dared not move, even breathe.
Mother could stand still for hours without even taking a bathroom break. She was as still as a statue, just like Queen Hermione in my book about Shakespeare. That was a winter’s tale, too. The queen was accused of a bad thing and, to avenge her husband, she locked herself away for sixteen years until she returned as a statue who magically becomes human again – right in front of the audience.
Thus she stood, Even with such life of majesty – warm life –
I stood in the shadows, fidgeting, clutching her hand mirror. Travis had made me a white coat, in honour of my new occupation as ‘assistant to Miss Madou’. My stomach rumbled and groaned. I was so hungry. I hoped no one could hear. The commissary had a new sandwich. I wondered if I would be allowed a Coca-Cola. Or one of those wonderful vanilla milkshakes, with ice cream. My mind wandered.
‘Make-up.’
With those words, I dashed onto the hot set. Mother took the hand mirror and scrutinised her face. A false eyelash had dropped onto her cheek. She removed it expertly, handed back the mirror, and smiled at me. I had done well. I escaped back into the shadows.
‘Cut. Print.’
Back in Mother’s dressing room, there was a buzz of activity. I knew that the first sign that Principal Photography was about to begin was the influx of slim white boxes containing flowers. Her director always sent her tuberoses or white lilacs, the studio sent snapdragons or lilies, her new co-star sent her red roses, a bad mistake, as she loathed red roses, especially ‘American Beauty’. She loved yellow roses, but they were only to be given at the end of the affair. Never at the beginning.
I put the roses on one side to be given away to the maid, then I began my job of filing away the flower cards, not so that Mother could send thanks, but so she knew who had forgotten to send flowers.
That morning, she had swept into her dressing room armed with white vinegar and bleach. She took it upon herself to clean every room she occupied. Surgical alcohol was used to sterilise the bathrooms. She would never sit down on a toilet seat for fear she would contract a disease. Many years later, I discovered the reason for her paranoia. At the time, it was just another mystery to be kept ‘from the Child’.
Then we unpacked the boxes. All of them were marked in German so that only we would understand their contents. The first box contained her African doll, her lucky mascot, her ‘savage’. He was a present from Mo, and he sat on her dressing table, propped up by the mirror. He was always the first to be unpacked and the last to be packed. I never liked him.
Besides, I had my own doll, with silky flaxen-blonde hair, like Mother’s, and enormous blue eyes. My Heidi. Mother said she was very expensive. She came from a famous shop on Regent’s Street in London. When I lay her down, her eyelids closed, like magic. When I pressed her tummy, she cried ‘Mama’. She had her own wardrobe: an outfit for every occasion. I loved to dress and undress Heidi. No one could be a better mother than I was to my doll. On special occasions, I would allow her into my bed.
Travis, one of the kindest of Mother’s friends, made doll clothes that were miniature versions of the ones he made for Mother. He even made Heidi a real sable coat and matching muff to keep her warm. He would wrap the doll clothes in fine tissue, and tie them with pink grosgrain ribbon. Travis was a man interested in detail. He told me that he was born in Texas, where the men rode horses and wore cowboy hats, even to the office. He spoke to me as he would to a grown-up, and if I didn’t understand a particular English word, he would take out his pencil and draw an image to explain it.
Travis had a secret. When he thought that no one was watching, he would take out his hip flask and pour amber liquid into his coffee, his hands trembling. He had such beautiful hands; slender and elegant, with perfectly polished nails. On his pinky finger, he wore a gold and black ring. I think he knew that I was watching him, but he knew that I would never tell on him. I was so good at keeping secrets.
After I unpacked Mother’s savage doll, I undressed Heidi and put on her white lace nightdress. I brushed out her long blonde hair with a doll brush that was made of real silver. I popped her into her doll bed. Then I got back to work.
Mother and I decanted vases, gramophone, records, ashtrays, cigarette boxes, pens, pencils, writing paper, special padded hangers, towels, bath mats, flasks. Thermoses, containing her beef tea and chicken soup, soon lined the shelves. Mother was the only star to have her own kitchen appended to her dressing room. Her famous goulash would bubble away on the stove, scenting the air with caraway and sweet paprika.
I went to the studio every day with Mother because of the Lindbergh baby who was taken away and killed in the woods. Mother, hysterical with fear, hired a bodyguard, who stationed himself outside her dressing room. To keep me busy, Mother gave me a list of duties.
Shine the shoes
Pass the hairpins
Pour the coffee (morning)
Pour the champagne (evening)
File the flower cards
Open the mail
Put cufflinks in boxes
Sharpen the black wax eye pencils
Pop out the top hat (this was probably my favourite)
The one duty I didn’t like very much was tidying her vanity table. It was always cluttered with pots of cold cream, flacons of No. 37 Veilchen, make-up, brushes, sponges, photographs, and the savage who stared at me with its tiny red eyes.
I kept my eyes averted from the silver and black glass triptych … mustn’t catch its eye. But I knew he was watching me, trying not to laugh at me, keeping his disdain at bay.
I Like America
Night falls quickly in Hollywood. The Child removes her mother’s shoes and leaves them to cool. Later, they will be stuffed with tissue and stored away in their chamois bags. Slippers are placed on Madou’s feet; she is wearing natty cream silk lounging pajamas, with a black velvet trim.
She looks at me, her reflection in threes. The Holy Trinity. A nimbus of light frames her face. She rubs on cold cream, flannels it off, stares again with deep concentration. Her fair hair is damp and swept back from her face. Her skin is pale, slightly pink, translucent like the finest porcelain. She resembles a beautiful boy. Beautiful boy triplets. How divine. I hum softly:
Mad about the boy
I know it’s stupid to be mad about the boy
On the silver screen
He melts my foolish heart in every single scene …
Madou picks up the telephone. As usual, she’s booked a call to the husband she never sees, back in Europe: ‘Papi, sweetheart, Chevalier told me Lombard smells of cheap talcum powder, so I said, “What place did you smell it?” So, of course he was stuck and couldn’t answer. Can you imagine his face? Mo was magnificent today. Do you know what he said to me? “No one lights you like I do, because no one loves you like I do.” He knows now that he should never have abandoned me. That last picture was an abortion. We belong together. With this picture, we will make history. She has never looked more beautiful, but it’s all down to Mo.’
The Child pours a glass of champagne from the ice bucket, and places it on the poudreuse. She is reading something; fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, no doubt she’ll skip over Schneewittchen. She’s munching on potato
chips, stuffing them into her cakehole, in greedy, fat handfuls.
Madou squints at her reflection, and then relaxes into a state of dreamy contemplation as she continues her telephone conversation: ‘Peter has as much sex appeal as a dish of leftover potato salad. Of course, that pleases Mo. He’s so jealous, unlike you, Papi, who have every right to be jealous, but is never. I have to go now. Kisses to you.’
Tonight, Madou is gay and jocular, but I, for one, have not forgotten her agony when her director ran away. Memory is viciously insistent on such occasions. Again and again, late at night, tired and alone, she’s gazed into me, eyes half-closed in recollection, and told me, told herself, the story. How Mo had discovered her in the filthy backstreets of Berlin, brought her to Hollywood, made her a star, and then left her to the mercy of this nest of vipers.
She was just nineteen and the mother of a baby girl when she boarded the boat train at the Lehrter Bahnhof for New York followed by the long train ride to Pasadena. The little man was dismayed when he first saw her in her grey two-piece suit, looking like a lesbian; he instructed her to lose weight, and to buy better clothes.
Just like that – ‘lose the weight’ and, good soldier that she is, she did. She stopped eating. She took up smoking, sipped beef tea and hot water with Epsom Salts and drank endless cups of coffee. She loathed American coffee, but she drank the ‘gnat’s piss’ all the same.
She adores Mo, refusing to believe the stories that he began his working life as an errand boy in a lace-making warehouse in New York. In her eyes, he was a genius of aristocratic Prussian stock. Her saviour.
In Hollywood, he set about the business of lighting. He despised most actors. ‘Directing actors is practising puppetry,’ he told her. ‘It’s about light and shadow.’
That first day on the hot set, she complained about her Slavic nose. He smiled, took out a phial and painted a silver line on the centre of the nose – then climbed onto the set to adjust a tiny spot to shine directly on the line from above her head, reducing the nose by a third.
Madou was a quick learner. From that moment on, she would sit before me or some other mirror, and draw a line of white paint down the centre of her nose (in a shade lighter than her base), lining the inside of her lower eyelid with white greasepaint – using the rounded edge of a thin hairpin.
Then she held a saucer over a candle, where a black carbon smudge would form on the underside, and mixed in a few drops of lanolin. Warmed and mixed with the soot, it created a perfect kohl for the eyelids, which she applied with a hairgrip – heavy at the base line, then fading up towards the eyebrow.
Together, they created the famous look, the mysterious face with the sculpted cheeks. The play of light and shadow created with diffused light. Nobody lights you like I do, because nobody loves you like I do. He is a painter of chiaroscuro who sees everything in terms of light and shadow. He places his light, and only then builds a scene around it.
Who else would think of using veils and nets to create shadows? To the amazement of the crew, he removes his cigarette, and burns holes in the net to make the individual spots shine through. Then, when he is satisfied, he sets her in the light he has created for her. He is a magician, a sculptor. She is Galatea, with skin as white as milk. He is Pygmalion. Herr Direktor, her master, Lord of Light. She is his willing slave.
Together they create magic. It is a perfect partnership. He is in love with the image on the silver screen, and so is Madou. But there is a third person in this relationship. Moi. I am the mirror, that never lies.
The Garden of Allah
Mother slipped off her travel pajamas and dressed herself in tailored tweed trousers and a silk shirt. She was cooking goulash for Mo. She tied a lace apron around her waist, and twisted a scarf around her hair.
Mo had found us a new house in Beverly Hills, just north of Sunset Boulevard, on the corner of Bedford and Benedict Canyon. It was a low, white Spanish-style villa, set in an acre of manicured lawns, with the requisite blue swimming pool, ‘for the Child’. I loved the sun-drenched garden; a riot of colour, with huge red and gold trumpet-shaped flowers, orange and lemon trees, figs, camellia, gladioli, and lush green palms, which rustled like paper in the warm breeze. Beside the guest house was a miniature rose garden. Hummingbirds, tiny mechanical jewels, hovered and spun. My bodyguard showed me how to make a bird feeder with sugar and water, which I hung from a tree in the shade.
The Mirror House was perfect for a movie star. Inside, the walls were lined with exquisite hand-painted wallpaper, and lacquered floors were strewn with animal skins. The sunroom was dominated by a large jungle mural, and the sofas and armchairs were covered in butter-soft white leather.
I thought it was oh-so-elegant. Mother thought it vulgar and ‘oh-so-Hollywood’. She lowered the blinds to black out the sun, and rarely ventured out into the garden for fear of ruining her milky-white skin. The only rooms she liked were her ivory and gold bedroom, and the stunning mirrored dining room; its verre églomisé panels depicted towering palms, and wild jungle animals.
Mirrors. There were mirrors everywhere. It was a mini-Versailles. They lined the walls of the interiors, and if that weren’t enough, there were mirrored fireplaces and mirrored furniture; a French-style dressing table, a backgammon table, and mirrored lamps. The doors were framed with mirrors. In Mother’s bedroom, there was even a mirrored ceiling.
Wherever I wandered, I would catch a glimpse of a pudgy little girl, dressed in lurid puff-sleeved organdie dresses, which did little to conceal the rolls of fat around her middle. How horrid she looked. How she must be avoided. I resolved from the first to spend as much time as I could outdoors. That was easy to do if one lived in Hollywood.
Floating on my rubber ring in the blue pool made me feel weightless. Under the watchful eye of my bodyguard, I spent hours in the water as soon as I returned home from the studio. But I was always careful to ensure that I was dressed and ready for dinner when Mother called.
Today, Mother was in the best of moods. The rushes of The Red Queen were a triumph. Mo was happy. As soon as he arrived, Mother removed his shoes, washed and massaged his feet, and encased them in soft Turkish slippers. I poured him a glass of ice-cold champagne. Mother stirred the goulash. I always wondered how she managed never, ever to get a single drop on her clothes.
‘Oh Mo, those long dresses mean that for once they can’t see the famous Madou legs. Serve those damn furriers right. What a joke.’
Mother chuckled. She had also taken a hearty dislike to her handsome co-star, which made her director very happy.
‘Peter … that … useless abortion. Do you know he orders ice-cream for dessert? A grown man! Only Americans eat like children. You know he has Kotex stuffed down there. That mennuble.’
Mo puffed on his pipe and listened. Then he took a deep breath.
‘Sweetheart, have you thought about Kater’s schooling? She needs to be around friends her own age. She shouldn’t be in a soundstage all her young life. It’s not healthy. There will be no kidnapping. She is well protected.’
‘But Mo, she speaks only German. It’s impossible. I will engage a tutor. Maybe you’re right. You are always right.’
I froze. I wanted to learn more English, and I wanted to go to American school, but I couldn’t bear not to be with Mother in the studio.
‘Mutti, who would fetch your hand mirror? And sort the flower cards, and thin your fake eyelashes?’
I need not have worried. Mother had not the slightest intention of sending me to school. She was terrified of me becoming ‘American’, and I was never allowed friends of my own. I worried that I would not be allowed on-set the next morning, as Mother was filming the ‘Examination’ scene. It was my favourite costume, and I longed to see her under Mo’s lights.
When dinner was over, I excused myself from the table and prepared for bed. First, I took my bath. The water turned a rosy pink. My tummy hurt. I
called aloud for Mutti who screamed when she saw me: ‘No, this cannot be. She’s only ten.’
(Oh, I thought, so I am ten, not eight or nine.)
‘It must be the Californian weather. Look at the Italians, and the Mexicans are even worse. I should have kept her in Berlin, where it’s cold.’
She was striding around the bathroom.
‘Kater, you must not go near a man. Do you understand me? Stay away from men. Why have you done this to me?’
She towelled me down and gave me a pink silk sanitary belt and a napkin, told me this would happen every month, and sent me to bed. I had no idea why I should stay away from men. Did that mean all men, like Mo, and the pool man? And what about my bodyguard, who helped me to feed the hummingbirds? Life with Mother was so confusing.
I knew she was angry with me. Later, she phoned her mother in Berlin to share her disappointment. I heard snatches of conversation: just a child, Californian heat, never stops eating this terrible food, enormous, diet, tennis lessons, so dreadful for me, how can anyone bear to be a mother of girls … and then I drifted into sleep.
Sigh No More
Long after the Child is fast asleep in bed, Madou cleanses her face with witch hazel and puts on a dusky silk nightdress. She has sent Mo home. She wants to be alone. She sits at her dressing table, staring at me, without really seeing. I tell her, over and over again, that she is even more radiant, even more luminous than ever before. She searches her face for fine lines, but there are none on Nefertiti.
It’s that wretched child that has caused her to feel so bad. So selfish. So she’s growing up. No longer a child. Puff-sleeved dresses will return with a vengeance. But Madou has nothing to fear. In this new picture, she will be at her loveliest. Goldberg will make sure of that. It will be his parting present. He will leave her, again, but he will give her his light.
