Crowned Heads (4 page)

“When the war ended in 1945, I was twenty. I’d been in the Army for three years. They were about to send me back to the States on a troopship, but I thought I wanted to stick around Europe awhile. I had myself transferred onto the staff of
Stars and Stripes,
which I’d been doing some minor pieces for, and a year later I was mustered out. I thought writing was okay, but I wanted to try painting, too, and I made tracks for Paris. I spent a lot of money on brushes and paints, an easel, and I settled down to be a great artist, with a girl I’d met in one of the cafés on the Boul Mich.

“One rainy afternoon—this was in March and it was quite cold—I went off to the Louvre to sketch, and Denyse—that was her name—was to meet me there at four. We were going to see
Les Enfants du Paradis,
which Carné had made during the Occupation, but I’d never seen. It was playing on the Champs Élysées.

“I was sketching in one of the sculpture galleries. You know the Canova at the top of the stairs at the Metropolitan? A similar figure, but smaller, less heroic. It was about a quarter to four and the light was getting bad, and I thought the drawing was, too. A young French couple had come by and they were studying the statue. Neither of them seemed to know much about art, but they appeared interested, so I told them what I knew about the figure, that it was a representation of the Greek hero Perseus, and the grisly snake-crowned head was Medusa, the Gorgon, whom he’d slain before he won the beautiful Andromeda.

“We chatted awhile, they thanked me and wandered off among the statues. I thought the place was empty, then I heard a woman’s voice, but not Denyse’s. She said in English, ‘What makes you think you know so much?’ Not harshly, but with this frank directness and a kind of ironic humor. I recognized her right away. She was chic in a simple Chanel suit, a long wool coat, no hat, and dark glasses, which on her were as revealing as her naked eyes would have been. Seeing my expression, she laughed, that same movie laugh I thought I’d heard a hundred times.

“‘You recognize me?’

“‘Certainly.’

“‘Too bad.’ She adjusted her dark glasses. ‘I should have worn my mask.
“Rien d’ailleurs ne rassure autant qu’un masque.”
You know that line?’

“‘Yes; Colette.’

“‘Very good. I am dining with her tonight.’ She asked me if I’d seen her movie
Andromeda,
and her expression seemed to take for granted that I had. ‘Did you like it?’ I said yes, but that I’d liked others better. Which? That’s when I told her about the Dixie cup cover and the chocolate ice cream, and then about wetting my pants at
Madagascar
and my mother taking me out. I saw that I’d made a faux pas, that she didn’t like being reminded of her age, and I tried to make a recovery. I said one of my biggest favorites was
The Player Queen
and that I’d seen it at least ten times. She took that as being perfectly natural on my part, as if everybody would want to see
The Player Queen
ten times—”

“Barry, that’s not a good film, and you know it,” Marion protested. “It’s pure schmaltz.”

“I don’t care. I like it and I said so. Find me a better job of a woman playing a man playing a woman.”

“It’s clever, that’s all.”

“What’s wrong with clever? … Then she sort of jutted out her jaw at me and said, ‘Well,
do
you know anything about art?’ I would have hidden my sketch pad, but she’d taken it out of my hands and was holding it away from her with a critical attitude, turning the page this way and that.

“‘Not a bad thing,’ she said grudgingly, as if she didn’t really want to compliment me. ‘But one doubts you’d make a good artist.’ She handed back the pad and dusted the charcoal from her fingers on the sleeve of my shirt—I’d got it only a few weeks before. She stared around at the statuary, looking, but not really interested. ‘This place,’ she said, ‘it’s like a marble graveyard. A bad anatomy lesson—stone parts of human beings who will never live, never have lived. I think people worship ancient things too much. Like me, you see.’ First came the famous movie pout, followed by the ironic smile. ‘You shouldn’t be drawing in here; you should be out in the street, watching people, where the life and the blood are. You are lucky—you can go there and not be troubled by your fellow creatures. What else do you do besides draw?’

“‘Not much.’

“‘Then you’d best get on with something different, or you’ll soon be
sta-a-ahrvin-n-ng.
’ She really relished the word.

“‘Ahr-r-rt is hahr-r-rd,’ she said, like Duse or Bernhardt, the deep tragedienne voice, causing me to believe that if anyone ought to know the truth of that statement, ‘Art is hard,’ she should. She gave me another look. ‘Do you live alone? No, you’re not the type, I see that. Who is she?’

“‘Just a girl …’

“‘Aren’t they all? You would be better keeping cats; they are cheaper and you can leave them for the weekend.’ She stabbed my chest with her finger. ‘Heart or art. You cannot have them both, you know—eventually you must choose.’

“‘Why?’

“She shrugged. ‘You would have to take the matter up with a wise person, not me. I only know it’s true. They are like oil and water—each repels the other. I know nothing of either. I have no heart and I have no art. I only work work work; that is all I have done in my life—work.’ She lifted her shoulders and sighed. ‘I have been successful in my life, but my life is not a success.’

“‘When are you going to make another picture?’ I asked.

“She gave me a surprised look. ‘You want me to?’

“‘Everybody does.’

“‘Too kind—everybody. I hope you appreciate this. That I am doing you the favor of talking to you. I don’t usually. I never talk to strangers.’

“‘I’m flattered,’ I told her.

“‘You should be.’ She was looking at the statue again, and she said a word I didn’t understand.”

“What word?” Marion asked.

“‘Callipygian.’”

“It means—”

“I know what it means—now. But not then. She laughed. ‘It means he has a beautiful ah-h-hss. If one likes ah-h-hsses. How do you look without your trousers? No, I don’t mean your ah-h-hss. Do you have legs, good ones? I have always admired men with good legs. I once had a friend, he had awfully good legs. Do you know Willie Marsh?’

“‘No.’ I said I didn’t know any celebrities, which I didn’t in those days. Years later I interviewed Marsh about the Bobbitt pictures, and I told him what Fedora said. I guess he was pleased.

“Fedora gave the place a final look; she raised her hand with a weary, encompassing gesture. ‘All this. Those Gr-r-reeks didn’t have it. I have spent much time there, and I know. They just didn’t have it. Not then, not now.’

“‘You don’t like Greece?’

“‘A land of goats and ruins. Nothing but veal and Ionic columns. And I dislike the wine. Give me a good Vouvray
pétillant
every time. Do you have one or two moments for me?’

“Did I have one or two moments for her? I was aware that her look amounted to a survey, long and calculating. My insides were churning. I felt drawn to her, physically moved, hypnotized even. Almost dumbstruck. She was ineffable, she had this winning impudence, a kind of daring—not toward me, who was nobody to her, but a daring of her position, her stardom. As if she were pitting both her power and her vulnerability against a stranger. I felt that I was her instrument. I would have done anything for her, been anything, gone anywhere. As it happened, she only wanted to go to another part of the museum. ‘Come along,’ she said. ‘There’s something I want to look at.’ I went with her, carrying my sketching things, and remembered only as we started climbing the staircase under the ‘Winged Victory’ that Denyse was already late and would be looking for me.

“‘I’m supposed to meet someone,’ I blurted out, and she made a noise, something halfway between a sniff and a snort.

“‘I, too,’ she said. ‘Never mind, they will find us. People can always manage to find me. Somehow.’ She said it so ruefully that I laughed, but she found it no laughing matter. ‘Ver-ry funny, you think. You would find it otherwise if you were I.’

“We got to the top of the next flight of stairs and she headed for the lobby, saying she wanted a cigarette. She didn’t have any, so I offered her one of my Camels. She said she liked the taste, and pocketed the whole pack.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. No thank you, nothing. She smoked and puffed and watched me—a real examination—then she grabbed my sleeve again and felt the material.

“‘Where do you get a shirt like that?’ she demanded. It was a wool lumberjack shirt with the tails out. I told her my mother had sent it to me from Abercrombie’s in New York.

“‘It’s very red,’ she said.

“‘Hunter red, they call it’

“‘You are a hunter? You shoot little animals?’

“I laughed. ‘No. It’s just what they call it, hunter red, like in hunting coats.’

“‘Ahhh. I see.’ She nodded, but she was still looking me over. Then she reached out and turned my head from side to side. ‘Who do you have chop your hair off like that?’ I explained that I went to an Army barber, and she said, ‘If you let the Army cut your hair you deserve such a butchering. I know a good barber; you should go to him.’ When I asked who the barber was, she couldn’t remember. ‘Write your number,’ she ordered, and I gave it to her. ‘I will call you,’ she said.”

“I bet she didn’t,” Marion interrupted.

“I bet she did. I had the hunter-red shirt dry-cleaned, and brought it in a bag to the Sobryanskis’ house around the corner in Rue Monsieur. I handed it to the butler and said to take it to Madame Fedora.”

“You gave it to her?” Marion asked. Barry nodded. “Did she thank you?”

“Two days later the phone rang and a voice said, ‘Is that you? His name is Jérôme; he’s at the Crillon. Get your hair cut.’ Then she hung up.”

“Without mentioning the shirt?”

“Not a word. I figured the butler probably kept it…. Anyway, we finished our cigarettes, then passed through a number of galleries, mostly the Italian masters, but nothing interested her much until we got to the Dutch and Flemish school, where one caught her eye. It was a Hals, a portrait of an old woman, and she stopped, staring at the wrinkled face with a disdainful expression. ‘She looks like a washerwoman, I think. Can you believe I was once a washerwoman? Yes, it’s how I began my life, washing other people’s clothes. And my mother before me.’ I said I thought her mother had been a milliner, and that’s when she set me straight; about her father, too. ‘Hear my laugh—’ She put her head back, her hands knuckled on her hips, and let loose with that laugh. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is a washerwoman’s laugh. Don’t be deluded by the movies.’ She looked back at the Hals and became grave, almost melancholy. ‘It must be dr-r-readful to get old like that. One would rather be dead.’

“‘Would you honestly?’ I thought she was trying to make an effect, but decided she wasn’t.

“‘If it came to that, I would.’ Then she did an odd thing. She opened her coat and held it out away from her body. ‘How do you think I keep my figure?’ ‘Admirably,’ I said. She laughed. ‘I have lived in Switzerland all through that damned war and I tell you they did not starve, the Swiss. Neither did I, but I did not get fat. The Duchess of Windsor says one cannot be too rich or too thin; the Duchess of Windsor is right. I am dieting anyway. It is the curse of a woman’s vanity.’

“Personally, I thought her vanity was serving her well. She looked almost like my own contemporary, but she must have been thirty years older, at least.”

“Vando’s work, of course,” Marion interjected.

“I was certain it was. We walked along and she talked about herself and her work. She said, ‘I do not practice an art, I practice a trade, like any journeyman. Like a plumber or a carpenter—that’s what I am.’

“We’d come to the entrance of another gallery when she suddenly turned again and spoke sharply to someone who’d come up behind us. ‘Ah, Balfour, there you are, I’ve been waiting.’ She said it with such irritation and grandeur, rather like a queen who had been kept cooling her heels by a footman—but of course she hadn’t been waiting at all. Obviously her friend had been scurrying all over the place, looking for her. She was a wispy little thing with sensibly arranged hair and a plain face, which said she was surprised to see Fedora talking with mere me. Fedora turned back and again felt the fabric of my shirt. ‘Good wool. Hunter red. Abercrombie’s.’ She seemed to be filing the information. Then she stepped away from me, with an expression that was almost blank, as if she didn’t know me or didn’t care to. I thought it was an act for her friend’s benefit. I said quickly, ‘Since you did me the favor of talking with me, would you let me return it?’

“‘How?’

“‘Let me take you to dinner some night while you’re in Paris. There are some swell bistros in—’

“‘Saint Germain; I know.’ She gave her throaty Slav’s laugh. ‘I thought you’d get around to that.’

“‘Maybe I could even try a painting of you, if you had the time.’

“‘Young man.’

“‘Yes?’

“‘Do you know what they paid me in Hollywood? By the hour?’

“‘No …’

“She laughed again, outrageously, too loudly for the Louvre, and said, ‘Neither do I. But it was a lot. More than you could afford. Besides, no one will ever paint this face—at least not the way one wants it painted.’ She turned to her companion. ‘This poor young man saw
Madagascar
when he was a baby. The natives frightened him and he wet his diapers. We must run that movie sometime; it’s been yea-a-ars. Come along, Balfour.’ Without another word to me, she went off. Her friend gave me a sniff and trotted after her.

“I followed them both at a distance. By that time I’d completely forgotten about poor Denyse, who was probably doing some scurrying of her own. There was a crowd gathered around a painting, which was roped off by velvet cords on stands, and it was difficult to get near it. I saw that it was the ‘Mona Lisa.’ Fedora was standing against the far wall, using a pair of opera glasses on it. She had removed her dark glasses, and when she brought the binoculars away from her face I saw it in all its simple beauty. She wore hardly any make-up—lipstick and some penciling of the eyebrows. It was a strange and exciting moment, watching her looking at the actual portrait of the woman she had played in
La Gioconda.
Don’t tell me comparisons are odious. They favored each other in the strangest way. A case of art copying nature as nature had copied art. They were undoubtedly the two most often reproduced women’s faces in the Western world. I was mesmerized again. I thought how both of them epitomized the un-understood enigma of all womanhood. The older, Italian one was far from any modern standards of beauty as shown in
Vogue
or
Harper’s Bazaar,
and the other, the movie one, was the apogee of them. Taken together, I thought they embodied the most subtle mystery and power. I could see why some publicity guy dubbed her the ‘Mona Lisa of the screen,’ and the ‘perfect work of art.’ She really was just that, a perfect work of art.