Get Lenin (4 page)

Theo would sit at the caf
é
s sketching the passing population, waiters, waitresses and patrons. Among his drawings was a quick free-flowing sketch of Samuel Beckett who one evening sat and discussed the films and style of Sergi Eisenstein with the group. Eva’s English helped the Pole expand on his theories with the Irishman despite the time lag between the effusive Dariusz and the measured responses of Beckett. With Theo’s quick execution, Beckett appeared all twisted and bent like a crow dashing across the page. He told them he’d be back, but was departing for Germany to report on the rise and the abuses that the new Reich was perpetrating. Kissing Eva’s hand gallantly, Beckett asked her to visit Ireland sometime. Smiling back warmly, she promised she would.

Eva loved to photograph the twilight, a time of the day when the darkness around her vision seemed the most bearable, where the shadows blended rather than clashed with the available light. Beside Daruisz's reels of film, hung Eva’s first images of the city; the carousels of Sacr
é
Coeur, the city's bridges, and the museums, all captured in a moment in black and white. Sometimes she would photograph an empty street, or a square just after a rain shower. She captured the storefront lights glistening on the ground, reflected back on the puddles. She photographed the mausoleums of P
è
re Lachaise, wandering amid the graves allowing her thoughts to drift firstly to her parents, then to her happy childhood, and then to Jonas. When alone, she believed Jonas was near, his presence almost within touching distance, a finger-tip away. The feeling would go as quickly as it had appeared, but while it was there she felt his presence as a guardian angel.

Eva began to pin her photographs around the apartment using them to cover damp patches or unsightly stains. Both Dariusz and Theo agreed she had a good eye for a picture. Her favourite image was of a mature Madame who ran a local bordello, Yvette.

Eva had struck up a conversation with her one night in a caf
é
in Montmartre. She had an iron frailty about her that drew Eva. Yvette was buxom, with lush black hair pinned up as best as the pins could do, and modestly attired in tasteful shades of purple and black. Her eyes were green and knowing. She warmed to Eva immediately and agreed to be photographed. The photograph showed Yvette sitting at a table in a caf
é
looking out onto the street, a cigarette in an ashtray and a half empty coffee cup before her. Somehow Eva had caught the vibrant light in her green eyes as she smiled.

She introduced Eva to absinthe. Sometimes when alone with the photograph of Jonas, Eva drank it to numb herself when the memories of his death overwhelmed her.

Sometimes Madame Yvette would join the discussion group as they smoked and drank, open about her profession and taking Eva under her wing. She watched Eva and the almost chemical effect she had on men. The raucous debates that took place were mostly about their simply trying to impress her. Yvette wondered why Eva wasn’t harnessing this power and using it to her ends,

‘
In this life, Eva, our youth, beauty and intelligence are sometimes all we have. In this world, men may make all the decisions, yet we have to bend them to our will. We only have so long before our bloom begins to fade and their attention starts to wander,’

Eva would learn in time to take this advice on board. Yvette had a rare quality. She genuinely liked and understood men and loved being a woman. She had a lover, a married man, and she was content to exist in the shadows. She was also discreet; her lover was a high ranking official in the government and was inclined to talk about what he did just to impress her. It was a useful power to have, she told Eva,

‘
Men! Their flies and their mouths they never keep closed in the presence of beauty. Use it Eva, and if they get too rough . . .’ Yvette produced a small wicked mother-of-pearl handle stiletto from her boot, ‘cut them.’

Theo, Eva, Dariusz and the students immersed themselves in the Paris film scene, spending long stretches in the cinemas sipping from hidden flasks of brandy and whiskey. This was followed by meals, wine and debates into the early hours. Eva and Yvette began to appear in Dariusz’s projects. Devising the scene, he would produce a measuring tape and measure out the distance between the camera and subject. He would spend hours adjusting the lights borrowed from a small amateur theatre nearby to create the mood required. Returning each time to his camera perched on its tripod and peering into the viewfinder, he would grunt or laugh depending on his mood. Everything about Dariusz was measured, carefully thought out and purposely executed. In some instances a three-minute short would take three days to film at eight hour stretches.

During these long spells, Yvette would tell Eva about her life and her adventures, occasionally returning to her bordello to ensure everything was running like clockwork. Once Dariusz was satisfied with everything required for the scene, he would shout ‘Action!’ and Eva and Yvette would perform his carefully composed script. Then he would shoot footage of other things - animals, cars, trains, close-ups of a facial feature, random objects - and splice the various reels together, disappearing for days in his darkroom. In the student cinemas around the city, he would run his final pieces and then the whole ensemble would discuss their merits or flaws.

Theo and Dariusz took French lovers, drawing and filming them, moving onto the next one once the initial passion burned out. They told Eva they were living for the moment, without regret, without worry, never thinking of tomorrow; enjoying now. Eva found their hedonism amusing, as even when seducing women they were still competing against each other, trying to get the upper hand.

Theo would show Eva the charcoal drawings of the girls he was involved with, looking for a reaction. She would simply smile or shrug indifferently, remarking whether or not the piece was simply good or bad. This would irk him and he’d put the piece away with a grunt, making Eva smile to herself. Occasionally they would sleep together in a familiar companionable intimacy when the brandy or absinthe took hold.

During the summer, they took the train to Marseilles, the Mediterranean weather turning their skins brown. Theo had acquired a straw panama hat; Dariusz, aware of the bald patch evolving at the back of his head, wore a felt trilby. He would sit at the coffee houses with the North African aromas drifting over him, sweating, reading or writing in a white vest, his trilby tilted against the sun.

They stayed in a run-down but clean hotel managed by an Arab who would bow every time Theo and Eva passed the front desk. As in Paris, Eva had a room to herself, the men sharing the room beside her. Her room had a view of the harbour from the balcony and she woke to the sounds of the fishermen from the wharves and the cries of the gulls.

By day she would wander the narrow streets and photograph the old women, the boys kicking footballs, and the men gathered around hookahs smoking. She would sit and talk with them. As a mark of respect, she wore modest attire, a scarf or hat covering her hair, remembering her grandfather’s travel journals from Iran, Egypt and Palestine.

One afternoon in her room Theo asked her to take a photograph of him; an unusual request,

'I'm thinking about going to Albi for a few days. The cathedral is supposed to have vivid depictions of the damned around its altar.' Theo noted that Eva was still concentrating on her view finder.

'What about your moody friend Sandrine?’ Eva suggested without looking up.

Theo's smiled broadened. Sandrine was a waitress he had met in the Bistro Beno
î
t and had taken as a lover. She was an unpublished poet, voluptuous with lush red hair and chestnut brown eyes. At the very mention of her name, Eva would mimic the hand gestures Sandrine would make when emphasising a point.

''She's finishing a collection of verse, cannot be disturbed.'

It was Eva's turn to smile. 'She's always finishing a collection, Theo. Still she suits you. She's passionate about what she does and very much in love with you.’ The last three words were an imitation of Sandrine's voice.

Theo had hit a nerve. He liked that. 'But she's not you.' Theo had shifted his body slightly in the chair, leaning toward her. 'Noticed me all of a sudden, Kassinski?'

'Always have.' Eva looked up and met his gaze. He was handsome, unpredictable and generous, but couldn’t replace Jonas, never in a lifetime. 'I'm happy with the way things are, Theo. You know the story.'

A shadow flashed across his features. 'You've never told me once how you feel about me.' He was gazing out of the window again. She felt a seismic shift in their relationship. Bringing her gaze back to the viewfinder, she said as gently as possible 'I'm still here, aren't I?'

Without looking toward her Theo said, 'Eva, I'm in love with you.'

This was met with silence, followed by the shutter click.

He wouldn’t make eye contact as he lit another cigarette. A shadow crossed his features as he exhaled.

Then events across the border with Spain became the centre of discussion; the gathering clouds of civil war. Theo had gone to the city of Albi to sit in the caf
é
s of Toulouse Lautrec, armed with his sketchbooks, leaving Dariusz and Eva alone. Dariusz had told her over coffee in the men’s apartment that he was in love with her. She smiled and told him also that there was no possibility it could ever be reciprocated. She told him about Jonas, that Theo was comfortable with the arrangement, and that was the way she wanted things to remain.

Though he smiled, Eva could sense a deeper hurt from him, his large eyes welling up before she looked away. On his return, Theo sensed immediately the uneasy atmosphere between Eva and Dariusz which was now hanging about them. Neither of them said anything to Theo, but he figured it was Eva’s allure and a curt rejection to an advance that was the reason.

Dariusz was perhaps a little more fragile than Theo, always a bit more sensitive to criticism, whereas Theo believed absolutely in his own capabilities. The three began to drift apart over the remaining weeks.

They returned to Paris after a month, with the news that the Spanish Civil War had escalated and now the International Brigades were being formed. Dariusz and some of his French friends had signed up to fight Franco’s forces. Theo and Eva tried to talk him out of it, but nothing could shake him, Eva suspecting that it was in reaction to her rejection.

‘
Europe’s being twisted in the hands of Hitler and Mussolini’s Fascism. It has to be fought,’ Dariusz argued. ‘The battle against this rise of evil is going to be on Spanish soil. Something has to stop the Fascists. The Socialists have to unite!’

In his fervour, almost overnight Daruisz turned his back on film. Theo and Eva were shaken by his sudden change. He hardly spoke to them from then on and left that autumn, marching over the Pyrenees and into Spain, armed with his camera, tripod, notebooks, and tilted trilby. There he and his French comrades linked up with the German, British, Irish, Canadian and German Socialists who had arrived to assist their brethren in Spain.

Theo became disillusioned and restless in Paris. Then he received the news that his father had suffered a stroke and his mother was unable to cope with him alone. He decided to return to Poland.

By the late summer of 1936, Eva found herself back in Krakow, Theo almost a distant memory; a chapter closed. He tried a few times to rekindle their relationship but his letters remained unopened. He came to the library where she had resumed her assistant duties, this time without any headscarf or over-sized clothing. She had started to radiate a confidence that attracted men and women to her, to build friendships and to socialise.

When she saw Theo with his hair trimmed, a well-cut suit and clean shaven appearance, she rejected him outright, furious at what he had become. With heated whispers across the desk, she repeated to him that they had no possible future together. It had been fun, a wonderful adventure, and she thanked him sincerely for his help in healing her. but that was it.

He scowled, his face a sneer beneath his flawless grooming, and told her it would be the last time she would ever see him. Her parting image of a man she had spent nearly two years with was of an immaculately clad businessman storming away from the desk.

She returned to her chair in Henk’s library and felt the comfort of home, but couldn’t settle, the fifteen months in France embedded into the marrow of her bones.

The winter turned to spring and the days began to slowly lengthen. For Christmas, Henk bought her a bicycle. She kept busy taking photographs around the country, and cycling to the central train station, travelling by train on the weekends. She would display her photographs in the library and her work came to the attention of the dramatic society. She photographed the stills for the Dramatic Society’s productions and took head shots for the budding actresses who would post them hopefully out to Hollywood.