by Jina Bacarr
I’m drenched. His sweat, my sweat, and a myriad of milky fluids that make me wish I had no sense of smell. I’m grateful no one in this hotel room uses the bidet to wash clothes in and I make speedy use of it afterward. I refuse to check the sheets for any physical signs of my womanhood (I rang for the maid to change the bedding as soon as Jean-Claude grabbed his trousers and took off for parts unknown) and rest in the adjoining dressing room on a gold-satin méridienne while she tidies up the room. Then, wrapped in a fluffy, clean-smelling white robe with a big ‘R’ embroidered on the back, I crawl into the white canopied bed and curl up into a ball, moaning in pain and crying.
I’ll never forget how Jean-Claude looked at me with naked lust before diving into me. In spite of the heated hotel room, I shiver. I was merely a vessel to him, a vase to be broken. I prayed it would be quick.
It wasn’t.
I clench my thighs together tight to protect what’s left of my girlhood… no, there’s nothing left but a searing tear in my body that will heal, but will my soul? I feel lost, humiliated, used… and broken.
Like that poor, lonely vase.
I refuse to report to Emil the specifics of the evening except to deliver a dramatic Elizabethan moment with four simple words. The deed is done. I can’t speak about it and he respects that. He does, however, reflect on the sheen on my cheeks, the glint in my eye, the sway of my hips. Things I don’t notice. I hide from him what I am feeling, which not only surprises me, but pleases the female urges I’ve ignored for so long.
I shall explain…
First, I tell Emil, I need to close the door to my public life. I need to think, rest, drink tea instead of coffee to find my footing. This is the perfect time to send scripts my way. I ask for privacy and promise him he will never again be disappointed in my performance.
Then I sleep for two days, allowing my body to heal, my soul filling up with a new understanding that the pleasant tingling between my thighs that makes me tremble, my knees weak, is not something to be denied. That in spite of the pain, the anguish, the humiliation of being bought and sold like a bolt of silk, something wonderful and mysterious happened to me when Jean-Claude forced my legs apart. Before I could protest, I felt his warm breath on my face, hovering there, waiting to see if I was ready for him…
The odd yet pleasurable note is, I wasn’t ready then… I am now.
Why is my body betraying me? My belly full and aching, a burning within me that is forbidden. This can’t be happening to me, it can’t!
A week, then two… I spend sleepless nights wishing I had another chance to be with a man. A good man who would kiss me, hug me… hold me… then I slow down my breathing, relax my body, and let it react in a most natural way as I close my eyes and imagine in my mind I’m with a gorgeous man as he runs his hands over my breasts, cupping my soft flesh. Not like I did with Jean-Claude. I pushed him away and told him to hurry up. Foolish words. Whatever deep desires I possess, they’re getting stronger every day, a growing pleasure between my legs that won’t go away. An intense hunger that becomes so deliciously painful, I can’t deny it any longer. I need a release.
I rummage through my trunk for pieces of costumes I’ve collected from my films. Wigs, gaudy jewelry, lace-up boots, princess satin slippers. I don a fetching outfit dripping with fringe, a black wig, red satin wedge heels with tie-around straps that wind up my calves… and my lace veil.
No… not my veil.
I run my fingers over the veil. Tiny, static shocks prick my fingers as if a sacred aura clings to the only link to my past, a holiness I dare not violate. I return the lace veil to its secret place. It’s not my past I wish to embrace tonight, but the moment of becoming a woman on my own terms denied to me.
No one recognizes me as Sylvie Martone when I haunt the cabarets in the Place Pigalle. I heard the makeup girl whispering to the wardrobe attendant about the decadent fun found here. This is the first chance I’ve had to see it up close. I brace myself when I slip through a door with etched glass, the smoked-filled building drawing me in, my feelings intensifying when I glance over the crowd of nubile girls in scanty frocks. Tough, muscular men from the underbelly of Paris’s gangs crowded together in the stuffy room. An accordionist pumps out a slow, sensual rhythm that moves my soul to dance… and more.
I smile pretty when an outrageously handsome man with the rich darkness of a Moorish night sparking in his eyes slides up to me, buys me a cognac. We drink… stare… then drink again before he pulls me out onto the tiny, round dancefloor and we dance… twirling me… tossing me into the crowd… then dragging me back to him… working his jaw as his eyes haunt me… executing the sultry steps of the Apache with a graceful rhythm thumping in my blood as he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder.
He carries me down a narrow flight of stairs to a cool, dark cellar reeking of wine and sweat… and hot, sticky passion. With amazing strength in his arms, he slides me down his broad chest in a slow dance, rubbing my breasts against him, and then lays me down onto a soiled and dirty mattress. I arch my back, lift my hips, ignoring the lumpy, hard spots digging into my flesh. I reach out to him and he lowers his muscular body over me, and I wait, my breathing coming so fast, dizziness makes my head spin.
Strong hands wrap around my waist and when he enters me, this time I moan with pleasure…
8
Sylvie
Sylvie Martone talks!
Paris
1935
Hitler became German Chancellor two years ago, my country is in a political crisis, but the people of France love me.
My foray into talkies is an astounding success.
Emil builds a brilliant marketing campaign around my pictures that reflects the desperate decisions Parisians face every day. Not as Ninette. He showcases me as a woman struggling to make a living for herself in these hard times. I become every shop girl, every laundress, and every office matron working hard to bring home her own bacon. I make films about floozies fleecing men, good girls turning to sin, socialites on the run. That doesn’t change the fact I’m still a piece of property to be exploited by Emil and the studio.
And I’d better look good doing it.
If I gain a few pounds, they give me pills to kill my appetite.
They shave my eyebrows and draw on skinny ones.
If my roots show too much – my hair darkens as I enter my twenties – the crew takes a break while I get a quick bleach touchup.
I’m whisked off to every film opening on a major publicity campaign, always in a long, sexy gown with a fur stole slung over my shoulder or fluffy feather boa with a handsome actor or producer at my side (Emil hovers in the background, making sure the press shoots plenty of pictures with me in the forefront). Silents are passé, yes, I tell them, and I embrace the chance to continue my career in speaking roles. Thanks to Miss Brimwell and her strict voice lessons, I’ve developed a rich mezzo soprano voice which adapts well to talkies.
All this partying is in addition to my nights carousing at my secret haunts. I develop not only a taste for champagne, but the white powder offered to me by musicians and artists I meet, eager to share illicit drugs sneaked into Paris from Berlin.
Sniffing the drug off my long nails, I head out for a night with a handsome gigolo hired by the studio to escort me on a junket down to Cannes. Rich celebrities can’t wait to be seen with me, drink and do drugs with me. When I do press interviews, I sober up quickly. I can’t forget I started out in this business as Ninette.
I feel like I’m losing myself, what I am.
And it frightens the hell out of me.
Emil wants to control my sex life.
He’s not pleased with my nocturnal jaunts, saying it’s bad for my image.
I should fire the purveyor of the gossip on set – a script girl I barely know – but it’s my own fault for not being more careful. A jealous fille de joie saw me dancing and cavorting with several men in a seedy club and told her friend who told the script girl. She couldn�
�t wait to spread the story.
It didn’t take long for word to reach Emil.
He insists on soliciting my partners, but I reject the men Emil chooses for me, preferring instead to find my lovers among the artists I meet in Montmartre and the university students in the Latin Quarter. Tall, muscular men with deep, sexy voices and stubble beards who aren’t afraid to find a woman’s secret places with their kisses, who take me in their arms and capture my soul with their fire, who don’t care or don’t know I’m Sylvie Martone.
Emil finds another way to make me do his bidding.
I’m dropped from a film for allegedly violating an obscure morals clause in my studio contract nobody ever pays attention to or there’d be no one making films. I realize if I want to stay on top, I have no choice but to acquiesce to his wishes. A sour moment in our relationship that makes me feel young and raw again – that I have no say in my own life no matter how much money I make or how many box office hits I have. No doubt Emil was the ‘unknown source’ making the accusation that was never proven, but it was enough to ‘suspend’ me. I hate how he uses his dominance over me to make me date the producers and studio moneymen who pay my salary. I’ll bed them, if I must. But it’s a cold bed. Not hot and passionate like the straw pallet in an artist loft in Montmartre, or the book-filled garret of the dashing young philosophy student.
Do I fall in love?
No, Sylvie Martone cannot fall in love. It’s against Emil’s rules.
God knows, my heart is fragile. I have no one to share everything I’ve worked so hard for.
On a whim, I drive out to the convent in my new, Italian, red Bugatti roadster to show Sister Vincent and ask her advice on how to nourish my wandering spirit. She blesses herself numerous times when she sees the expensive vehicle and asks if we can go for a ride with the top down. She never stops oohing and aahing the fancy car and I never get around to telling her the real reason I sneaked out of Paris. I’m lonely. I don’t make friends easily – a byproduct of fame. The irony is I’ve built a golden cage for myself and even when I fly away, I must return to that cage alone. No man could ever understand my passion to make films, the sacrifices I’ve endured, that I’m not made to bear children and make a home.
The truth is, I can’t bear a child.
Or so it seems. More than once I’ve fallen madly in love with a man and find such passion in his arms he can’t stop and I don’t want him to, hoping a child will be born of that passion, knowing I can give that child everything, love her, and adore her.
And pray the man of my passion will marry me.
Then I wait… and again I’m disappointed. My monthlies flow and I nurse an empty heart instead of a baby.
So I’ve embraced my fans as my children, my films are my legacy to them. I make sure the bouncy schoolchildren in my neighborhood behind the carriage gate of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine have shoes, the mothers have milk, and their husbands and brothers the tools they need to ply their trades.
To do so, I must work.
I have no choice but to fall in line, do what Emil wishes.
I never want to go hungry. I’ve seen the destitute humiliation of the people who live in the northern parts of Paris, men with their backs broken from arduous labor, children begging for sous, women selling their hair to buy bread.
That thought is on my mind a lot. The world is in a Great Depression, though France is hit later than the rest of Europe. What else can I do but act? I never learnt to make lace in the convent, I have no trade. I’ve gotten used to an extravagant lifestyle with an expensive haute couture wardrobe, jewels. Then Emil insists I take an expensive apartment in the Trocadéro in the 16e arrondissement where I can entertain film industry notables.
But I’m still that girl who had the brashness to act out her dream at the Durand movie theater, except now I’m a star. And those kids who threw tomatoes and cabbages at me, made fun of me, have to pay to see me up there on the silver screen.
Just like I promised on that day… so long ago.
I have a string of big hits over the next few years. Unfortunately, I start believing my own publicity, the worst thing that can happen to an actor. I get cocky… sometimes arrogant if I don’t get what I want. It’s my way of lashing out at Emil for his mental abuse and demands, for his insistence I do his bidding with the men he chooses, men who can keep my career on top and his coffers full. It doesn’t help I’m spoiled by my fans who follow my every move, embrace every story in Ciné-Miroir about my escapades and who my latest lover is… and every time I’m photographed in a new frock or fancy hat, a knockoff shows up on the racks of Le Bon Marché and Aux Trois Quartiers department stores. The public adores me and I adore them. I’m at the height of my success and I’m only twenty-five. My figure is svelte and my platinum hair glows bright and shiny under the spotlight of the public.
But there’s another side to me.
My heart is dark… and the more I’m forced to do Emil’s bidding to gain favors from the studio, the darker my life becomes. A life filled with alcohol and wild parties, men who love me, use me, then leave me. Then I start showing up late on set, forgetting my lines, missing my cues because I’m drinking too much.
‘You’re on a downward spiral, Sylvie. If you don’t watch it, you’ll end up like your mother,’ Emil blurts out when he finds me in a drunken stupor in my Trocadéro apartment, empty bottles tossed about on the Berber carpet. ‘Lying on your back for a few sous.’
I open one eye, curious. What’s he talking about?
‘Your mother wasn’t an aristocrat seduced by a stable hand,’ he continues, knowing I hear every word, his harsh words rattling my brain and sobering me up. ‘But a prostitute who haunted the cabarets on the Butte.’
No, no, I insist, crying. It can’t be true.
Emil goes on a rant, reminding me the public adores me and believes what he calls the phony biography put out by the studio publicity department. If the truth ever gets out, he threatens, and my fans find out I’m illegitimate, it will destroy their nostalgia for Ninette along with my good girl trying to get a break image the fans love.
And my career.
I calm down, slow my breathing. ‘You’re wrong, Emil. The fans believe in me, sending me stacks of mail every week, pouring out their stories to me, their hopes, and their dreams.’ I bury my head in my hands, knowing losing them is my greatest fear. I’d die if the people of France hated me. Just die… they’re my true family and I’d be lost without them.
Again, I’m caught in Emil’s spider web, his cruel words digging in my spine like sharp claws, tearing away at my flesh.
‘Think about what I said, Sylvie. And don’t come back to the studio until you’re sober.’
He slams the door, leaving me to stew in my vodka… or whiskey… whatever I gulped down after Marcel left… or was it Henri? It’s not important. I can’t forget the director’s words. Is this why God is punishing me? Why I can’t have a child of my own? Because I’ve chosen this life in pictures instead of taking the veil? Because I abandoned Him and everything Sister Vincent taught me?
I have to know if what Emil said about my mother is true because he doesn’t make threats lightly. He never leaves a stone unturned when it comes to controlling me. I wouldn’t put it past him to hire a detective agency to dig into my past. I always suspected there’s more to the story than Sister Vincent let on, but I chose to ignore it. Not anymore.
I sleep off my binge, throw cold water on my face, then pick up my brassiere, stockings, and garters strewn about on the white carpet. I pull on panties and jump into a pair of tailored, grey-pleated trousers, white blouse, and houndstooth jacket. Then, as a misty dawn breaks over Paris, revealing blue and slate rooftops like stepping stones back to my past, I head west outside the city and cover the distance to the convent in Ville Canfort-Terre, pushing my fancy motorcar to go the limit.
I came back here soon after I had my hair bobbed and my film flopped to ask Sister Vincent for guidance, then again
when I bought the car, revealing as much about my life as I had to, leaving out the compromising details. Guilt washes over me. I continue to write to her, though not as much as I should. (As long as I toe the line, Emil has given up trying to stop me.)
I have a raging hangover, my head is splitting, and confusion rules my brain. I’m so damn tired I can’t keep my eyes open—
My head droops and I don’t know why, but I jam my foot down on the gas pedal and accelerate through the wooded area outside the convent. The motorcar bounces over the road, hits a rock, bounces back and in an instant I’m wide awake.
My God… where did that tree come from?
I swerve, gripping the steering wheel hard and twisting it to the right, putting my shoulder into the awkward movement and ripping my jacket sleeve. Panting hard, I screech to a halt and, in a moment of self-deprecation, I bang my head on the steering wheel. Cursing… hurting inside. What insanity induced me to drive in this condition? I could have been killed if I’d slammed into that tall chestnut tree.
I push any idea of my mortality out of my mind. I’ve got bigger issues at stake.
Like, who is my birth mother?
I park the motorcar outside the gate and find Sister Vincent in the chapel, praying. In a pew. First row. On her knees. Her back is to me as my high heels echo on the stone floor, announcing my arrival. She continues mumbling in a voice as soft as a celestial cloud. As if she knows I’m coming and she’s asking God to give her strength.
I stop.
She turns. Smiles at me. She looks as calm and serene as she always does. A vibrant joy in her grey eyes shines through the glass of her spectacles with such intensity I wonder if the lenses will crack. The fine lines around her mouth have deepened. I like to think that’s because she smiles a lot, not because she worries about me.
