by Jina Bacarr
‘Sylvie, ma petite, I’m blessed to see you,’ she says without breaking eye contact with me, which does nothing to dim my focused determination in my soul to say what’s on my mind. Now. Without a fancy prelude. I can’t wait any longer.
‘Who was my mother, Sister Vincent?’ I don’t kneel down in the pew, but remain standing. ‘I want the truth.’
She doesn’t back away. Her eyes pierce my heart. Their greyness turns dark. Very dark.
‘She was a prostitute from Paris…’ she begins without making excuses, remaining on her knees as if doing penance for keeping her silence. I see her twisting her beads, gripping the wooden orbs, rubbing her sweat on them till they shine. ‘A beautiful woman dying of consumption when she brought you here.’
‘A tragic heroine, n’est-ce pas?’ I snicker. ‘It sounds like a scene from one of my films. How do I know that’s the truth?’ I can’t stop looking at her, disbelieving what I’m hearing. I admire her courage to look me in the eye. I’m still reeling from knowing the fanciful story she told me as a child. How my mother was a wild and beautiful aristocrat who had a secret affair with a roguish stable hand. How she was forced to give me up lest harm come to me from her enemies. How she died in a suspicious fire rather than reveal my whereabouts. She made it sound so fascinating, I wanted to believe it.
‘Because I would never tell a falsehood in front of Him.’
Her eyes drift upward toward the crucifix with Jesus Christ hanging above the altar. An eerie pause grips me, as if I expect a bolt of thunder to shake the rafters to disavow her words. A pungent scent of leftover incense mixes with the coriander of my perfume spiking from the heat of my body and fills my nostrils.
Still, I wait.
When nothing happens, the nun heaves out a sigh and rustles her black woolen skirts, then continues.
‘I beg you to understand, ma petite. I made up the story because I didn’t want to hurt you. Didn’t want you to carry the stigma of being the illegitimate daughter of a prostitute upon your shoulders.’ She stands and holds my hands in hers, hands with aging, wrinkled skin, veins popping, but the deep sadness in her grey eyes behind the wire rim spectacles doesn’t move me.
‘I can’t believe you lied to me about my mother, Sister Vincent. How you concocted a tale that would make a young girl’s heart swell with such romantic notions she’d cling to them like they were sacred prayers.’ I make it clear how angry I am with her, this dutiful creature who was the only good thing about my childhood and now I find that was a lie, too. She didn’t trust me enough to let me handle the truth. I could have, couldn’t I?
You’re not doing such a good a job now, are you?
‘I made a fool out of myself with that phony story all these years,’ I continue, raising my voice and not caring if God disapproves. He knows what I’ve done and I’m living my punishment. What more can He do to me? ‘Emil knows the truth and I’m more under his control than ever. I have no choice but to do his bidding if I don’t want to end up in the gutter because I will never return here. I’m done… done with you… done with your pious teachings. Lies, all lies. I’ll never believe in you or hold anything you say sacred again.’
‘Please, mon enfant, I beg you to forgive me—’
‘Forgive you? I don’t know if I ever can.’
Bitter words that prick my brain to rethink what I’ve said, but I’ve gone too far. I’ve set myself up for a painful isolation from the one person in my life always there for me. Yes, I’m not thinking straight… I do that a lot these days. But I don’t need Sister Vincent’s preaching to me about my ‘habits’. It’s better this way.
Then, without turning back even when I hear a loud sob behind me and the swish of holy skirts slumping to the stone floor, I race back to Paris, anger and frustration pumping through me. Adrenaline surges through my veins and primes my juices like a glass of Pernod. I need to be with someone, someone to hold me, tell me what I want to hear. That I’m wanted… loved. My sensual urges are on fire, burning like an eternal flame.
There’s no turning back and no one to stop me.
I head up the cobbled Rue Norvins toward a familiar apartment with red velvet walls and a big, soft four poster bed at the top of Montmartre, a place where I can forget how lonely I am. No lies… no promises. Just sex with a beautiful man who doesn’t care who my mother was.
Montmartre
The heady warmth of smooth brandy quiets my fears and calms me.
I lie nude on the rich, cherry-red velvet coverlet, listening to the sound of my own breathing, the minutes ticking by on the grandfather clock in the study. Like droplets of water falling on my forehead.
Tick… tock.
Drip… drop.
Then a cool breeze tickles me between the legs as the rugged artist tantalizes my bare skin with his long paintbrush.
‘Bastien, again… please, mon amour.’
‘You’re drunk, Sylvie… sloppy drunk, but you’re beautiful.’
I wiggle my hips. ‘Hand me my pills. And the brandy.’
I need it, crave it… I can’t turn off the painful thirst for the alcohol circulating in my brain. My mouth is dry. I’m heaving up gulps of air. My eyelids are heavy as a profound weariness descends upon me. Weighing me down as if I’m bound by restraints, my feelings and emotions wrapped up in a realm of fantasy, knowing what comes next. Pure ecstasy.
‘Where did you get these pills?’ he asks. ‘They’re a powerful sedative.’ He rattles the glass bottle of sleeping pills I sweet talked the studio doctor into giving me.
‘I have my ways… give me the pills.’
‘What if Hélène shows up and finds you here?’
‘Who the hell is she?’
‘My patroness…’
‘You mean your posh whore.’ I see him grin wide, his bare chest shiny with sweat.
‘She’s doesn’t trust me.’
‘Neither do I.’ I smirk, then wiggle my hips again to get what I want. Him. And the pills.
‘Zut alors, Sylvie, I can never resist you,’ he says, handing me the pills and then the brandy. ‘You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever made love to.’
‘Until the next one comes along.’ I have no illusions about Bastien and his loyalty, or lack thereof, but the struggling artist is good for my ego… and my needs.
His fingers are cold, colder than I would have imagined when he touches me. I don’t care. I’m all in a fever, wrapped up in darkness and secrecy and—
Desire.
Sending me to a place I both need and fear.
I hear the crisp snap of a matchstick hitting the iron bedframe and the scent of that fear mixes with the pungent odor of a familiar smell filling the outrageously red bedroom. A cool, damp musky smell that reminds me of rich earth.
Bastien inhales deeply and blows out the smoke before offering me the bud. I shake my head, preferring the lovely dream my pills promise. I down the rest of the pills with the brandy, then gasp when I feel his soft kisses teasing me, and then his curious mouth moving up and down my body, his lips dancing over my skin with a wicked playfulness both intimate and frightening.
My heart beats faster, my breaths frantic.
The room begins spinning around me. A nauseating dizziness takes hold of me. I shouldn’t have taken so many pills. I’m powerless to resist their effect. I refuse to acknowledge I’m on a drunken, drug-induced binge, drowning my sorrows with a man I don’t love but enjoy, except tonight he seems nervous. I assume that’s because I dropped in unexpectedly, enticing him to soothe my lonely soul with his gorgeous body.
A pity, I remember little of what happens afterward except I’m never disappointed. All I recall is waking up with a raging headache and a lovely soreness between my legs and a woman shouting… then Bastien shouting back.
‘She’s a drunk and an addict,’ the woman yells. ‘Get her out of here.’
‘Do you know who she is?’
‘No, and I don’t care. She’s nothing to me. Get rid of he
r or we’re through.’
‘You don’t mean that, ma chérie.’
‘I’m not paying for this rattrap so you can bring your tart here. We have an agreement. I own you and you service only me. Toss her out now or you can sell your ass to another rich pigeon.’
Then a door banging… the grandfather clock striking three… someone picking me up and carrying me out into the chilly night.
And I pass out. Again.
9
Juliana
Once upon a time on the silver screen
Burbank, California
Present Day
‘My grandmother was Sylvie Martone, a famous French actress…?’ I choke on the words. ‘And a Nazi collaborator?’
Rain pitter patters down on the large blue umbrella Ridge holds over me as we walk quickly by the soundstages so familiar to me, a path I’ve walked for years bringing me to a crossroads. I wave to actors I’ve worked with zooming by in golf carts, production people I’ve known since I first stepped onto the lot as a bouncy nineteen-year-old to give my first studio tour in French. I feel like everybody is watching me with curious eyes, asking themselves, Did you know Juliana Chastain is related to a French actress who slept with the enemy during the war?
The rain hasn’t let up and neither have my insecurities. I keep telling myself it’s a mistake. I can’t be related to a traitor.
I am, according to Ridge. And he’s about to show me the proof.
‘I couldn’t believe it either, Juliana,’ he says, ‘but pictures don’t lie. I went through the historical footage in our company film library and that led me here where I found more info in the studio archives. Press shots of her sitting at Paris cafés with Nazi officers, newsreel footage of her publicizing her films in Berlin, even cozying up to a handsome SS captain in 1943.’
‘I still can’t believe it. Are you sure it’s her, my grandmother?’
‘Yes,’ he says with a firmness not to be challenged. We enter the studio movie theater through glass doors and shake off the rain. ‘I called in a favor and put the image you sent me through photo recognition software to identify her. Sylvie Martone was born in Paris in 1910, but there’s no date of her death. She disappeared after the war. According to the French studio bio, her mother was an aristocrat, father unknown. Raised by pious nuns at the Convent of Saint Daria in Ville Canfort-Terre before she ran away at sixteen to Paris and spent her career under the tutelage of Emil-Hugo de Ville, a prominent director, also her manager.’
‘None of this proves she was working with the Nazis.’
‘If you’re thinking she was forced to do publicity for Goebbels’ film campaigns, that may be true… but there were rumors she had an affair with an SS officer.’
‘No!’ I cry out, wiping raindrops off my sleek trench coat. ‘I won’t believe my grandfather was a goose-stepping monster.’
Ridge gives me a friendly hug and doesn’t let me go, comforting me. I admit I like it. He knows how much I’m hurting inside and is trying to get me through it. ‘I thought you’d be happy to find out your grams was in show business until I started digging into her personal life and found the newspaper stories and press photos from the war. So I sorted through our film catalog of World War II newsreels in both English and French and came up with proof of her working with the Nazis.’
‘Do you have the films?’ I ask as he ushers me into the small studio theater where the producers, directors, and actors watch the daily rushes.
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, I’m ready… I think.’ It’s so quiet, yet I feel in my bones the place is reeking with ghosts of screen legends giving Sylvie Martone a thumbs down as Ridge dumps an old cardboard box of 35mm films on a table, then sorts through them.
I’m afraid to watch as he sets up the projector, my heart pounding.
I trust him. We started out in the film business together, worked our way up. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a young woman in jeans and college sweatshirt wave to me from the corner. I wave back. I’ve seen her around Ridge’s office dropping off films from the studio. Harper is shy, spending her time huddled over old film, going over each frame for scratches and splits in the film.
As Ridge sorts the old films, I realize I’ve never seen him so over-the-top freaked out, rambling on about how Sylvie Martone was a major star in French cinema beginning with silent films.
‘She had a successful career that started in 1926 and lasted throughout the war,’ Ridge rushes his words, pulling out the round metal blue cans, finding what he’s looking for, then threading the film through the projector.
‘So she wasn’t an innocent young girl seduced by the Nazi war machine,’ I ponder, tapping my fingers on the plush seating. Sylvie Martone was a bona fide movie star just into her thirties when the Occupation began. She didn’t save anyone but herself, her career.
I shake my head back and forth. No excuse for her behavior.
I sink down into my seat. I’m getting deeper and deeper into a situation that could have dire consequences… a sad, heart-wrenching feeling sitting on the edge of my brain that I should have let sleeping film stars lie, that I’m digging up a piece of history my mother tried so hard to spare me from and I have no right to do so.
I try not to think about it… not yet. First, I must see for myself this woman who betrayed France.
Ridge lowers the lights and shows me newsreels from the war years of 1940 to 1944 showing Sylvie smiling and waving into the camera at various locations in Paris. Cafés, movie theaters, Le Grand Palais – always with a Nazi presence close by. Then afterward, he hands me a large, untouched photo shot for a daily newspaper showing Sylvie smiling big and arm in arm with a handsome, sneering SS captain.
I don’t know what to say when Ridge pulls up stories from the film magazine Ciné-Miroir on old microfilm about Sylvie before the war and later gossip tidbits in Le Matin and Paris Soir about her dining here and there with members of the Nazi party.
I translate the stories into English for Ridge and Harper until I can’t read anymore. No doubt my grandmother enjoyed a brilliant career during the Occupation along with an active social life with the hierarchy of the Wehrmacht.
‘From late 1941 to 1944, she starred in films produced by the German-owned Galerie Films during the Occupation,’ Ridge says. ‘Then her career fell apart when Paris was liberated and according to my source, she was accused of what the French government called collaboration horizontale.’
I squirm in the plush red seat. No need to translate. I grip the armrests, attempting to remain calm. Somehow she escaped to Switzerland, according to Ridge, and that’s where the trail goes cold.
Or does it?
Something doesn’t sit right with me, doesn’t make sense. How did my mother end up at a French convent? Why did Sylvie leave her that photo dated 1949? So many questions and so far, all the answers point to a woman selfish and interested only in keeping herself in the spotlight.
Why did I ever start digging up the past, why couldn’t I leave well enough alone? No wonder my mother never spoke about her family.
She was so ashamed. So am I.
Harper has been quiet up to now, waiting while I compose myself. She tells me Ridge asked if she could sit in so she could tell me about her restoration work. How hundreds of nitrate reels of silent films discovered decades ago in an outpost in Ontario were miraculously preserved under an old ice hockey rink. Silent films that made their way across the country from one movie theater to another and ended up there, all but forgotten until a construction crew unearthed them.
She tells me in a quiet voice reels of films starring my grandmother were in that cache of films, a woman I never knew existed until today.
‘I went through the catalog we put together and found seven two-reelers listed starring Sylvie Martone from 1926 to 1928,’ she says, sitting down next to me. Her dark blue eyes twinkle when she looks at Ridge. I smile. Have I been missing something? ‘They’re from a serial called Ninette shown in weekly inst
allments. I can’t wait for you to see them.’
An ache in my heart surfaces that I never expected. In spite of the evidence of Sylvie’s betrayal of France, I want to see her.
Ridge loads up the projector with another reel. ‘I know this has been a shock, Juliana, but you had to see it.’
‘Shock? I can’t breathe… my pulse is racing… I’m sweaty. I thought my grandmother was an actress or a Paris model. Not working with the Nazis. My heart is thumping out of control.’
‘Sit back and relax and meet your grandmother before the war. When Sylvie Martone was beloved in all of France as Ninette.
Her lips move as I watch her on the silver screen, but her voice is as silent as light speeding through time and space. A young woman flirting with the camera in a film about a girl called Ninette in Les Orphelins Perdus (Lost Orphans). I lean closer, wishing I could hear her speak, but the actress with a twinkle in her eye keeps her secrets from me, secrets that rock my world, tear me apart.
I can’t believe it. The girl with the mirth of a mischievous fairy is the younger version of the woman in the photo.
Sylvie Martone.
My grandmother.
Still, I watch. The luminous nitrate emitting from the old silent film hypnotizing me.
Heart pounding, my hand shakes as I massage my aching forehead to clear my vision. I’ve been staring at the screen too long, the whirring sound of the projector behind me and the arc of the light beaming off the ceiling in the darkened screening room giving me chills as it takes me back to a more innocent time. A time when wildflowers and ribbons graced this young girl’s hair.
I’m breathless, a sense of self-awakening in me that both frightens and intrigues me. Like a curious hummingbird peeking through your window. Wanting attention. You can’t look away.
