Seducing Ingrid Bergman (13 page)

*   *   *

I take photos of her everywhere. I’m not used to having anything so luminous in the viewfinder. The light floods in through the lens, and I have to be careful not to over-expose the shots.

Why does the camera love her so much? Something magical and mysterious must happen in that moment when her image hits light-sensitive paper.

In the darkroom of the
Life
offices, I watch a series of prints emerge from their tray of chemicals. I see her redefined, traces of her developing so that here she is, posed like a tourist on the steps of the Sacré Coeur, arms raised at the Trocadéro, laughing dramatically outside Notre Dame.

Her image appears each time from the blankness, precisely outlined. In the red light, I hold the photographs with a pair of tongs, rinsing them in trays of developer and fixer before hanging them up to dry. Sometimes I need to rub the surface of the print with my fingertips or blow on it to develop the tone. The fumes can be overwhelming. My fingernails are brown as though I’ve smoked a million cigarettes.

The shots of Ingrid differ from my usual pictures, which are quick and improvised. Instead these are lovingly composed, soaked with light.

We sit in a café on the boulevard Saint-Michel, watching the day transform into a late summer’s afternoon – trees in leaf, colours brimming, the windows taking sun. The radio plays ‘Exactly Like You’, and for a few seconds its rhythm seems to match the rhythm of the city outside. I don’t know whether it’s the music or Ingrid sitting there, her spoon poised over her ice-cream, but everything merges at this moment – the leaves, the sunlight, the scent of vanilla, the street with its sliced shadows – and if I had to define happiness, its one clean note, well, this is the closest I’ve come to it. I want to hold onto the feeling, to keep a part of it.

And it’s funny, but whenever I talked to the GIs and they understood there was a chance they might die the next day, each of them became anxious to tell you about his girl. When things grew tense, many of them would start speaking about this marvellous young woman waiting back home, and you just knew in your heart they couldn’t all be telling the truth. You knew there was no way that the poor girls sitting in their cosy parlours back in Gary, Wichita, Poughkeepsie or wherever, could possibly measure up to the image of them desperately projected inside these men’s heads. But there they were, imagining their sweethearts as starlets and – this is the amazing thing – really believing it. They had to, I suppose. Because the alternative – the idea that there was nothing wonderful to return to, nothing worth staying alive or fighting for – was too damn hard to face. And in time, from their wallets, each would pull out a crumpled snapshot of a girl, as ordinary and pretty and snaggle-toothed no doubt as any other young woman in her home town, and no different from the fat-ankled girls in Budapest.

These were men, remember, for whom cynicism had become second nature, whose daily existence was atrocity and horror; men who’d seen that viciousness has no limits. Yet these soldiers, so routinely tough and worldly-wise, would sit on their bedrolls and fish letters from their breast pockets, showing them off with all their misspellings and large childish handwriting, with all the cracked and lovelorn phrases that could have come from any dime novel.

I never said anything, of course. In fact the hardest thing has always been just to stand aside and record what’s going on, and not to interfere. I’ve been called callous and morbid, and a lot worse because of it.

The simple fact is, you have to concentrate. Your job is to hold the shutter open when everyone else is busy closing their eyes. You can’t allow yourself to flinch, not even for an instant.

And if you want to take a good photograph, if you really want to capture what’s going on, then there’s no alternative: you need to get close. Fear might squeeze your stomach, terror press at your head, and you might recall every warm and comfortable bed you’ve ever slept in, but you can’t allow those things to get in the way. There’s no time. Reason kicks in afterwards. It’s only later you have the leisure to consider that you might have been brave or reckless. It’s only later you understand what an idiot you’ve been, only later you realize how lucky you are to have come through in one piece. And in war, when you get close, you learn one thing: there’s nothing one man won’t do to another in order to survive.

One of the editors knocks, sticks his hand round the door. ‘Everything okay, Capa?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘You’ve been in there a long time.’

‘I’m working.’

‘On what?’

I don’t like being interrupted. ‘When do I get paid?’ I know he doesn’t like talking about money. ‘Can you give me an advance?’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘I just need a couple of hundred.’

‘I’m sorry, Capa. You know I can’t do that.’

‘Have I ever let you down?’

‘We’re full with stuff from Japan. I’m surprised you’re not there.’

‘You can’t get close to an atom bomb.’

‘You’d find a way.’

I recall one story that came over the wires. Apparently the light from the explosion was so intense, it developed previously undeveloped film through the walls of a laboratory. I slide a thumb across my eyebrow. ‘I don’t deserve a rest?’

‘Since when have you ever wanted a rest?’ He looks round and sees some pictures of Ingrid hung up, twisting slowly in the red light. His lips lift into the tension of a smile. ‘You thinking of retiring, Capa?’

‘Me?’

‘I didn’t think you were the type to follow a woman.’

‘I didn’t follow.’

He tilts his head as if guessing at something. ‘No?’

‘I was pulled.’

‘You still got the stomach for it?’ There’s a hint of mockery in his voice.

I say, ‘It’s my liver I’m worried about.’

*   *   *

I’m broke. Nothing new about that, I suppose. I’m always broke, with no regular source of income, other than a small retainer from
Picture Post
and
Life
. And the magazines have their own staff photographers who are desperate for work. They won’t keep me on for ever.

Methodically I go through all my clothes, checking each of the pockets of my jackets and trousers. I find notes and dollar bills in the unlikeliest places, including five tucked inside an old sock.

I make a small pile of notes on the bed. Enough for a game, at least.

And this time I get lucky. The cards go my way. I don’t count or memorize them – I don’t have the patience. I follow no strategy or plan. The trick is always to remain optimistic and only to fold when loss seems unavoidable. It’s important to think and play as if you know you’re going to win.

Baffled, Irwin scratches his head. ‘What’s your system, Capa? Have you been taking lessons?’

‘No system. I just go on my nerve.’

‘I seem to be losing quite a lot at the moment.’

‘Hey,’ I say, knowing exactly what he means. ‘I thought you were married.’

He looks straight at me. ‘So is she.’

‘You disapprove?’

Irwin reveals that he’s going to leave soon. He’s had enough of Paris. He plans to head back home to the States. He’s moving with his family to a beach house in Malibu, where he intends to write his novel.

‘Isn’t that close to Hollywood?’ I say.

‘It’s close to the ocean.’

‘Do you know anyone there?’

‘Are you trying to be funny?’

I smile.

He stabs out his cigarette.

I pat him on the back. ‘Think about it,’ I tell him. ‘We’re all winning.’

‘How do you figure that?’

‘We’re alive, aren’t we?’

*   *   *

She brings a small overnight bag with her, which seems astonishingly to hold the entire contents of her bathroom cabinet as well as a change of clothes.

Mid-morning when I wake up, I hear a shushing noise, then a series of low scrapes. I wonder at first if it’s a mouse scurrying about the room. We’re only two doors from a bakery, after all. But the scuffling is thicker, more regular and pronounced. I open my eyes, sit up, and there is Ingrid, up and fully dressed already, with a pan and brush in her hand. Her head is bent towards the floor.

I watch for a few seconds. ‘What are you doing?’

She rises, smiles. Her voice like sunlight floods the room. ‘Good morning.’

I can’t believe this. She’s cleaning up after me, tidying my things, folding my clothes, putting my shoes together under the bed.

‘There’s a maid who does all that.’

Ingrid rolls her sleeves up. ‘She should be fired.’

I’ve never lived in a place so neat. ‘I won’t be able to find anything now.’

‘I couldn’t stand it. It was such a mess.’ She pronounces this last word with particular distaste. ‘How can you live in such squalor?’

I sit up and fold my hands behind my head. ‘It’s the way I am.’

‘Well, it’s not the way
I
am. I have a clean Scandinavian soul.’

‘You do?’

‘And you’ll have to get used to it.’

I light a cigarette, shake out the match, drop it, tinkling, into an ashtray. ‘No wonder the Nazis loved you.’

She straightens, stung by this. ‘You can be a real bastard sometimes.’

‘Weren’t you one of their pin-ups? Blonde hair, blue eyes…’

‘I don’t have blonde hair.’

‘It looks that way in the movies.’

‘Pictures can be deceptive. You should know that.’

‘Hey!’

‘What?’

‘Come here.’ I motion her over to the bed.

Arms akimbo. ‘Why?’

‘Because…’ I raise my arms, signalling an embrace. ‘I want you to.’

‘Why are you so cruel?’

‘I didn’t mean to be.’

‘No?’

‘I was only teasing.’

‘My mother was German. Did you know that?’

‘So was my girlfriend.’

‘Did she have blonde hair and blue eyes?’

‘She was Jewish.’

‘And I’m a shiksa. Is that it?’

‘Come on. I’m sorry.’

She allows me to kiss her on the cheek, but no more. ‘You haven’t washed yet. You don’t smell too good,’ she says.

The zipper on her bag makes a high tearing sound. She puts on her dark glasses, straightens her jacket, places her hat at a fetching angle. And within seconds I’m listening to the regular beat of her heels as they tick-tock down the hall.

*   *   *

She’s checking her face in the bathroom mirror. Expecting to see something changed, expecting not to recognize herself, she’s surprised to see her features unaltered, except for a hint of pinkness in her cheeks and something rubbed about her mouth where she’s been kissed. Yet inside she feels completely different, utterly transformed.

It’s like that sensation you get in a lift, she thinks, when you’re not sure whether you’re going up or down, and all you’re left with is a queasy feeling and a faint impression that your insides are failing to keep pace with the rest of your body.

A trace of herself, it occurs to her, is left behind each time a movie is completed, each time a photograph is snapped, an impression taken and sustained beyond her physical body. Something of her essential self, it seems, is arrested and kept.

She thinks of the photographs Capa has taken of her in the last few weeks. It wouldn’t be hard, she knows, for anyone to guess her relationship with the man behind the lens. She touches her fingers to her throat, lifts the hair from her neck and lets it fall.

There’s a knock at the door. The spell is broken.

Joe steps in. ‘I checked your room. You didn’t come back last night.’

‘I’m a grown-up, Joe. What do you want me to say?’

‘You said you were staying in.’

‘I changed my mind. Is that allowed?’

‘I need to know you’re safe.’ After a silence, he goes on. ‘You know what this holiday romance could do to you?’

Ingrid stiffens. ‘You think that’s what this is?’

‘Isn’t it?’

She feels her insides slip. Has she deceived herself? Are her feelings really that shallow? No, she decides. It’s not possible to be so deluded. She knows in her heart it is much more than that. Why else does she experience such torment? Why else would she delay seeing Pia? She longs to see Capa, when she thinks of him now, and wants to feel his arms around her, holding her. It comes to her as a revelation. The idea makes her want to smile. It’s only now that she absorbs the fact.

‘You needn’t worry,’ she says. ‘If there are consequences, you won’t be to blame.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

A small silence follows. ‘Joe, I’m going to need your help.’

‘Don’t ask me to be a part of this.’

‘I’m asking you to trust me.’

‘You want to buy my silence?’

‘Don’t insult me.’ She seems thrown out of gear.

‘You know the score. You’re valuable property. They’ve invested a lot in your reputation.’

‘All I ask is that you let me live for a few weeks.’

‘You’ve had a few weeks.’

A smile rouses creases in her cheeks. ‘I’m not exactly Mata Hari.’

‘You’re not Snow White either.’

‘This is very difficult for me, Joe.’

He nods, turns to leave, but his essential chivalry wins through. ‘All right. But I’m not taking sides.’

She feels a surge of gratitude. ‘Thank you, Joe.’

The door closes quietly.

She goes over to the bed and lies down, exhausted. She crosses her arms over her eyes, considers.

She wants to live life intensely the way she has the last few weeks, to enjoy the kind of love Petter would probably think improper. It’s as if she’s been granted a kind of permission, the liberty to do things, and she wants to seize this freedom, even though she finds it frightening. After all, there’s nothing and no one to hold her back; no one, that is, except herself. She feels invulnerable and wants the feeling to last for ever. At the same time, she knows the whole thing is impossible and struggles to see how it might be sustained.

Her mind follows an invisible bias to a place she visited on holiday as a child at the northernmost tip of Denmark. There, she remembers, two seas – each moving in opposite directions – meet and clash spectacularly. The wind tears at you, swallowing all sounds. Gulls flap like bits of paper. You become conscious of an edge where the horizon ends. You can go no further. This is the limit, the final boundary, and you go right to the point where the land comes to a stop and, trembling like the heather, put one foot in each of the two seas. The water is freezing, but you can still feel the pull of the current in different directions on your legs.