Seducing Ingrid Bergman (16 page)

As for her career, well, there may be lots of beautiful girls in Los Angeles, but few of them can act and fewer still are willing to put in the necessary hours of hard work. How many of them have slaved to learn the techniques? How many of them are determined to be professional like her? And while Selznick might be happy for aspiring starlets to bedamsel his couch, he will tolerate their simpering only for so long. In the end, he of all people knows that it’s the box-office that counts, and he’s smart enough not to discard his prize asset. Still, she knows there are limits and she needs to be careful not to overstep the mark.

It occurs to her again that she’s been living her life, but not living in it, and only now does she feel she’s beginning to pursue an existence that allows her to be true to who she really is. She loves working; it fulfils a profound emotional need within her, and she’s desperate to be successful, but not at any cost. Her time with Capa has awakened a deeper ambition. Yes, she’s happy that her movies make money, but she wants something more.

With Capa – and Joe, who sat behind rather than between them at the cinema as he had threatened – she went to see
Open City
. The film is terrific in depicting the work of the Resistance in Rome before the end of the war. The cast play themselves; none of them is a professional actor, and the vanishingly small budget makes her own films seem over-produced, glossy and contrived. Seeing the film moved her deeply; she appreciated its authenticity. She’d rather be remembered for a picture such as this, she thinks, which is fresh and unsentimental, than for all the money-making hits in Hollywood.

She takes her husband’s letter and slips it back into its envelope, adding it to a growing pile of mail. Then she flops back onto the bed, face down, turns to stare at the ceiling, and lies there without moving for what seems like a very long time.

10

Traceries of light make nets on the low bridges. There’s a wind off the river, a coolness. The water ripples, phosphorescent, nicked with white, its skin lifting and sinking as if something big stirs within. The moon revolves coldly. Clouds spin as in a bowl.

Inside, I lie on the bed, trying to read. The light above me buzzes, mingles with a more fundamental hum inside my mind. The print on the page swarms. The letters blur as if rained-on.

Like a bit of glass or shrapnel that takes years to work its way to the surface of the skin, the taste of bad dreams enters my mouth. I hear shouting on the street outside. A car back-fires loudly. I feel myself fall into the gaps between the words on the page, and without warning I’m crouched ankle-deep in bilge water and vomit at the bottom of a barge, my Contax taut in an oilskin round my neck.

The ramp is down and we’re pouring out thickly like molasses from a jar. Immediately bullets spit and hiss at us, ripping holes in the water where we wade waist-deep.

The sea is grey and freezing. A chill, silvery sensation spreads upwards to cover my legs and my stomach. Planes hum overhead and boats throb in the water until the deep vibration mixes with the fear I feel and I stand open-mouthed, terrified. Shells explode in the water with a thunk, throwing up huge walls of spray. Bursts of gunfire flirt around me. My whole body shakes. Everywhere there’s choking smoke and flak. My ears are full of confusion.

The next moment is lost to me. Gunfire rains down from hidden pillboxes and machine-gun nests in the cliffs. They have a clear view of us. Lines of barbed wire make it easy for the machine-gunners. We’re totally exposed.

The waterline is already stained red. Corpses roll like logs on the waves around me. And everywhere men are crying, blubbering like infants, their faces twisted with fear. My mind darts ahead but can’t conceive of what to do. The only way to survive, I decide, is to keep moving. I ditch my overcoat, discard my shovel and bedroll in an effort to lighten the load. By some miracle, I make it to the beach.

I can’t feel my legs under me. I’ve never been so scared. Mortars and rockets set fire to the sky. Smoke billows from burnt-out tanks and holed barges.

My stomach feels empty, my knees non-existent. I reach for my hip-flask and take a good slug. I lie flat and still for several seconds, slip the Contax from its sheath and get off a few shots.

I dodge from one anti-tank trap to another, get through several rolls of film, shooting blindly, head down, my hands in front of my face to click. But I’m shaking so much that, even before I can load a new film, the wet on my fingers ruins it.

The tide is coming in, pushing me on towards the barbed wire. A bible washes up in the scum. The shells land nearer. The noise is tremendous, deafening. Going to war is a wager, I know. So far I’ve been lucky, stayed ahead of the percentages, but it’s only a matter of time before a bit of shrapnel or a bullet catches me.

I figure it’s time to beat it. I turn and run, back to the water.

The nearest boat is fifty yards away. The riptide hits me, slaps me in the face. The water reaches right up to my chest. I hold the cameras high to keep them dry. Bullets ping close to me.

I’m just a few feet from the boat when it takes a direct hit and explodes. There’s blood and debris everywhere. The stuffing from the kapok jackets drifts down in a blizzard of white feathers.

I’m shivering with cold. My head thuds with the endless shelling. I think of my mother, my brother, of Gerda, and in a series of lightning-fast thoughts I have the absurd luxury to wonder whether in her last moments she thought of me.

As if in answer, another boat appears ghostlike amid the smoke. I manage to scramble aboard.

I can still taste the vomit in my mouth, which mixes with the smell of oil and the scent of salt water to make me nauseous, so that even now as I try to collect myself, I feel the gorge rise in my throat.

And I endure all this only for some idiot in a darkroom back in London in a stupid hurry to overheat the negatives, let the emulsion run and melt almost all of the pictures.

Only a few shots survive. They blame my trembling fingers for the fact they’re out of focus.

That was 6 June 1944. Exactly one year to the day later, I met Ingrid. The worst and best days of my life.

That must mean something, I think.

In an adjoining room, someone flushes the toilet. The water drains noisily, recalling that moment in a train when you press the pedal and see beneath your feet the blurred hurtle of the tracks, hear that sudden vortical roar.

*   *   *

Irwin is hunkered over his typewriter when I walk in. There are several screwed-up pages and abandoned drafts surrounding him on the desk. He’s working to a deadline.

He doesn’t stop typing, nor does he look at me, but he speaks with a cigarette still in his mouth. ‘You know something?’

I sense from his tone that it’s not going to be a compliment. ‘What?’

‘After a few days back in the States, she’ll have forgotten you ever existed.’ He pulls the carriage back hard, continues clacking away.

‘Things are different now.’

‘Don’t delude yourself, Capa. These may be strange times, and it seems like anything can happen.’

‘It has.’

‘But when the dust settles, you’ll see things haven’t changed that much. The rich will retreat back into their palaces, leaving guys like you and me to press our noses against the glass.’

I look at him. ‘I didn’t realize you were so bitter.’

‘Skip it.’ He stops typing, rests his cigarette in the ashtray, stares at the page in front of him.

Silence.

He rips a piece of paper out of the machine, screws it up and throws it at the waste bin next to me, misses.

I don’t pick it up.

He takes a clean piece of paper, places it on the roll together with a carbon, and starts typing again. ‘Have you told her about Gerda?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much?’

‘You think I tell her everything?’

He plants the cigarette back in his mouth. ‘Don’t you think you should?’ He looks at me and carries on typing. His fingers clatter on the keys. The sound is like a machine-gun going off inside my head.

*   *   *

In the red light of the darkroom, I show Ingrid files of photographs and contact sheets. She inspects the images hung up to dry, watches as I rinse one print in liquid and lift it, still dripping, with a pair of tongs.

‘You’re an artist,’ she says.

‘There’s nothing artistic about war. I just get close enough and click.’

‘But you’re creative, aren’t you? That doesn’t change. Why don’t you photograph other things?’

When I ask her what she means by ‘other things’, she struggles to come up with stuff other than flowers and landscapes and faces. I need something more, I tell her. I’m tempted to say that I need to feel history going on around me, even if I’m only able to touch it in small ways. But that’s not exactly true. The feeling is more immediate than that. What I need, I suppose, is the idea of the world moving ahead in a direction connected with me, and the direction is always dictated by war. So there’s really no alternative. That’s the way it is, and that’s not something that changes either.

‘Is it worth it?’ she says.

‘Someone has to show it.’

‘Does it have to be you?’

‘I remember in Spain, this one guy stood up. I had him in my viewfinder. And the instant I clicked the shutter, he was hit. Absolutely at the same moment I took the photograph.’

She eyes me sceptically. ‘So you want them to be shocking, but you also want people to say, hey, great photograph?’

‘It’s a way of taking a stand.’

‘I can think of safer ways.’

‘That pay better?’

After a silence, she says, ‘You really think you can change things?’

‘You think I should stop trying?’

‘You obviously enjoy it.’ Now she’s getting cross. When I don’t answer, she goes on, ‘My husband has spent the last three years treating soldiers, then having to send them back.’

I say, ‘Maybe he shouldn’t treat them so well.’ I notice she doesn’t laugh. ‘Anyway, I thought you said he was a dentist.’

‘He is. I mean he was,’ she corrects herself. ‘At least that’s how I think of him. He re-trained as a brain surgeon.’

‘That’s even worse. A brain surgeon, and he still can’t see his wife is unhappy?’

This touches off something in her. ‘At least he’s smart enough not to get himself killed.’

*   *   *

My mouth feels furry. There’s dust everywhere – on the dresser, on the table, the long thin bed with its iron headboard like a grille.

I’m trying to read. But as the light beyond the window ebbs, a strange thing happens. Perhaps I nod off for a moment. Either that or I must have chosen to lie on an especially soft part of the bed because, beneath my weight, the mattress seems to give and I feel myself falling. It’s a tiny instant, a split-second of terror like those moments when you tumble in a dream. My whole body seems to jump. I sit bolt upright, breathless. The blood thuds in my ears.

I notice a dent in the lampshade, the bubbles in a pane of glass, the pitted surface of bricks beyond the window. The world is full of holes and cracks, and people seem simply to disappear into them. I think about how mysterious this is. Nothing seems smooth or beautiful just now.

The city outside becomes a gap of darkness like a river seen at night. Slowly, as in a double exposure, a more intense darkness seems superimposed over the room. I’m conscious of a sweet smell, a perfume. And abruptly I feel something touch me, graze my arm.

The cold touch of fingers, is it? A hand against my skin?

I freeze, paralysed by dread, experience a hot panic. A sweat breaks out across my back. Ghosts swarm, flicker palely.

I hear a voice, a woman whispering. The suspicion hardens into a certainty. Blind, I can’t see her but I know she’s there. I can feel it behind my eyes. The idea seizes me, won’t let go. Her presence hovers as in a fogged mirror.

The thought launches a terror within me. The grille behind me is cold as a stone. It’s so black outside now, I cannot manage a shadow. The darkness presses, pinning me down.

*   *   *

Ingrid listens to him tell her how her skin glows, how her eyes look dreamy, especially after wine. He says this as he puts his arm around her.

She has sensed in recent days and weeks a new self starting to appear, as if a fledgling identity were beginning to emerge. She has grown into the space left blank in her marriage. It’s as if finally she’s surfacing, having been submerged against her will.

It occurs to her that this might register in the way she looks, and wonders if a photograph would pick it up. It’s at this moment that she notices something odd. Capa doesn’t seem to have his cameras with him. She knew there was something different, something missing. There’s an absence at the centre of his chest. Then she discovers that he’s pawned them. When she asks him why, he says, ‘To be with you.’ He needs the money, he says.

She’s appalled. How could he do that? That’s just nonsense, she tells him. How could he believe that? It would be the equivalent of her giving up acting, of rejecting the best part of herself. Unthinkable.

She looks across at him, his hair with a glisten of brilliantine, a smile stretching the corners of his mouth. How can he live in such a disposable way, with no thought for personal possessions, no sense of tomorrow? She admires the sensibility, finds his heedlessness appealing, but there’s something about it that also unnerves her, makes her feel uneasy, even scares her. An inner discipline asserts itself. ‘You shouldn’t compromise your work for me,’ she says.

He touches the place on his chest where the Leica would hang. ‘You wouldn’t, I suppose.’

‘No, you’re right. I wouldn’t,’ she says. ‘I practise something every day. Even now I’m doing my stomach exercises.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? So you don’t notice the fat.’ She rolls up her blouse to expose the convexities of her belly, pushes an accusing finger into her midriff. ‘Petter wouldn’t allow that.’

‘What else wouldn’t he let you do?’

‘You leave him alone. He loves me. He’s a good manager.’

‘But a bad husband?’

She swats away a fly. ‘I’m a bad wife.’