Seducing Ingrid Bergman (2 page)

How she wishes her parents were alive to witness this. Or her Aunt Mutti. Someone. She thinks of Pia, her six-year-old, at home in bed, asleep. Will she understand what this means? Of course not. She’s probably dreaming about riding her bike, the wobbly first attempts just yesterday, leaving her mother running to keep up, hands outstretched to prevent her falling. She feels a need to reach out and grasp her now.

As a young girl herself, Ingrid cultivated the shy habit of glancing upwards through her long and perfectly spaced lashes and shooting a stare from under her fringe. It is the same look she offers now as the lights spear into her eyes.

Naturally she feels nervous, her heart racing, the words trying to line up and stand to attention inside her mouth. But she feels wonderful, too, and this slides into a sensation of calm that extends slowly to her legs, her head, the words that she says and that she hears herself utter as they are hurled by the sound system beyond her over many hundreds of raked seats.

Her face is lit, her eyes grow watery. She thinks she might cry, but she doesn’t, not properly. This is what she’s worked for, prepared for all her life, and she’s not going to spoil it. The quivering that she experiences within her subsides.

‘I’ll do my best in the future to be worthy of it,’ she says.

Applause, deep and appreciative this time, reverberates around the theatre in a series of overlapping waves as she moves with grace and without visible hurry from the stage, escorted by Jennifer Jones.

From the wings she watches Bing Crosby josh with Gary Cooper, the pair of them clowning together on stage, enjoying that male camaraderie and wisecracking energy she loves to be a part of on the set.

Afterwards, at the party hosted by David Selznick, when Ingrid returns to her husband’s side, she notices how quiet and reserved he is. Perhaps he’s having trouble absorbing the enormity of what has happened. He tries to look pleased but, she observes, something tugs at the corners of his mouth. It’s obvious that he finds the adulation distasteful. He must resent the way everyone wants to talk to her, the fawning attention of the press, the way he is left alone at the table, working a toothpick at a stubborn bit of meat between his teeth.

She realizes he hasn’t enjoyed a moment alone with her since she received the award. When eventually he manages to get near her, it is to urge her to leave early. He smiles stiffly and touches her hand just once as if in consolation for some great sorrow. Later she won’t remember agreeing or making excuses, but she does recall being driven home just minutes after midnight, Petter stone-faced and silent next to her, their legs not touching in the back of the car.

‘Aren’t you pleased?’

‘It’s nothing less than I expected.’

A sourness revolves in her stomach. ‘You really thought I’d win?’

‘They’d have me to contend with if you didn’t.’

‘You don’t seem happy.’

She watches the tree-lined boulevards float by, with their manicured lawns and hacienda-style houses. North Fairfax Avenue dissolves into Sunset, which melts into West Sunset. She notices how the reflections swarm, shaky as a back projection pouring across the windows of the car.

‘You understand what this means?’

The vibrations of the engine mingle with the smell of petrol to make her feel queasy. The fragrance Petter wears next to her becomes a part of that. ‘What does it mean?’

He smiles, kisses her on the cheek. ‘Nothing.’

The car pulls into Benedict Canyon. She realizes she’s hungry. She’s always hungry. It hits her now like a light switched on inside her head. They left before the dessert was served, before the dancing began. And though she knows she shouldn’t, sitting here with the gold statuette in her fingers and her name on everyone’s lips, with the city lit and flickering like a train outside, she feels more than a little flat.

2

I’ve learnt to sleep anywhere.

Tonight, though, it’ll be a hotel room in Paris, with a bathtub, a bottle of Scotch and a buzzer for room service right by the bed.

In the streets on this May day, the sound of cheering mingles with the peal of church bells, the honk of klaxons and the smell of freedom released like a gas. Thousands of people wave home-made tricolours and brandish American flags with too many stripes or too few stars. The air-raid sirens sound a final all-clear.

Irwin directs two men with moving picture cameras from the Signal Corps. The cameras putter like small outboard motors and hum above the celebrating crowd. But the jeep jerks around so much and brakes so abruptly, it’s a struggle to keep the lenses steady.

I sit braced in the corner as the jeep slews around, my Rolleiflex and Contax primed. In case one of the cameras jams, I alternate shots. And I’m snapping away like crazy.

All the young men want suddenly to shake our hands. Several have climbed trees and shinned up lampposts, clinging on with one arm and raising a free hand in salute. Women print our cheeks with kisses, fill our arms with flowers. Children are hoisted on their fathers’ shoulders, lifted from the crowd to see. A nun wearing sunglasses waves her handkerchief. Two gendarmes, caps tilted back, join in the revelry rather than attempting to keep the peace. Local mademoiselles, in floating skirts and light print dresses, belt out the Marseillaise.

The women look pretty, the way only French women can – that original girlishness, that poise and elegance, as if femininity were invented here, along with perfume, good cooking and saucy lingerie.

One girl, with sun-browned legs and hair piled up high above her forehead, rides a bicycle and tries to keep pace with the jeep. Her skirt, shaped like a lampshade, lifts as she pedals to reveal a rhythmical glimpse of voluptuous pink thigh. She knows this and smiles, holding her skirt with one hand to stop it billowing completely. She seems to enjoy the feeling of us looking and the sensation of wind on her skin.

I manage to get off several rolls of film, just taking what’s there. People are crying, they’re so happy. The whole population of Paris seems to press into the streets, spilling out so that they fill every space available, perching on ledges, massing on balconies, one boy poised atop a statue like a Cupid on a cake. A group of old men cluster round a board, reading of the German surrender, needing to witness it in print to be convinced that the war in Europe is finally over.

And it really is. I think about what that means for me. At last I’ll be able to brush my teeth instead of using my finger. I’ll be able to shave using a mirror rather than just by touch. It means I can pay some kid to polish my boots again. It means fresh bread and cheese instead of C-rations. Oranges, maybe. Soap and shampoo. A fresh change of underclothes. Whisky in a glass instead of a tooth mug. The freedom to come and go whenever I please and talk to whoever I want – and no one shooting at me when I raise my camera.

I don’t go in for crazy angles or anything. Nothing fancy. I just concentrate on getting close enough to see the expression on people’s faces, fix them in the viewfinder, then click. All it takes is a certain sensitivity to the moment and a steady pair of hands, a quick eye and a willingness to push yourself forward. With a camera you can’t help but have a point of view.

*   *   *

Wine cellars bricked up during the war are re-opened. It’s like opening the tombs of the pharaohs. The rich odour of casks and the stored perfumes of Burgundy leak from windows, inundate the streets, thread a delicate ribbon of scent down the avenues. Everywhere, the brasseries and bistros overflow with grateful soldiers. The menus may be shorter and the prices higher, and some of the wine may be sour or corked, but after the first mouthful no one notices; each new glass tastes like a nectar specially brewed.

We drink to celebrate. We drink to forget. We drink because getting drunk helps to keep the nightmares at bay.

Irwin reminds me about the dance halls on the rue de Lappe, the casino at Enghien-les-Bains. If you have enough money, he says, there are girls who are also models around the Champs Elysées. If you’re not so flush, there’s always La Maison des Nations, with its Oriental room and prints of Mount Fuji and the girls unfailingly luscious and young. Or if you’re down to your last sou, then there’s still the Bastille. There amid the shadows and the sickly sweet scents, he says, you’ll find women with kohl eyes and black chokers, and though they may be a little older, they’ll still open their legs and give you a wild time.

It’s a wonder the city doesn’t crumble, he says, with all the fucking that’s going on.

We end up in the Dôme around midnight. The tables are full. All the windows are open. A thick band of smoke moves levelly across the ceiling and wafts like the conversation into the air outside. The noise is tremendous. Men and women are pressed together so tight that you can almost smell the fermentation. The next thing I know, Irwin is disappearing off, one hand clutched by a long-lashed mademoiselle who stares up at him – adoringly or drunkenly, it’s hard to say – the other raised to wave a helpless goodbye. The poor sap. He doesn’t stand a chance.

At the same time, I become conscious of a shimmer of colour and scent off to my left. A woman’s face flashes amid a group of friends, a face wide like a cat’s. She keeps glancing in my direction, then pretending she hasn’t. And when she tilts her eyes, the whole room seems to tip sideways. I make my way to where she stands, intent on restoring some kind of balance.

‘American?’ she says.

I shake my head. ‘Hungarian. Budapest.’

She points at my uniform. ‘You fight with Americans?’

I fish out my press pass, hand it to her.

She unfolds it, sees my passport-sized photograph with its official stamp, and reads. ‘Capa?’

‘You see that?’ I say. ‘Signed by Eisenhower himself.’

She nods slowly, impressed.

Amid the riot and clamour that surround us, she has the coolness of a flower shop. Her face is bright and open, her eyes meltwater-fresh. She twiddles her fingers, indicating that she wants a cigarette. She would have seen the GIs throwing packets of Camel from their jeeps. I pull a cigarette out of my pack and watch as she takes it with one hand, folding her other arm across her chest.

I pat my pockets for a matchbox.

She holds the cigarette cocked and ready. The blue flame illuminates her face. She pushes her hair back, tucks it behind her ear. Her eyes are green, her irises flecked with hazel. There’s a blue tint on her eyelids, a dusting like pollen. The sweetness of her perfume cuts through the sourness of the bar.

‘I like you,’ she says.

‘You don’t know me.’

‘We can work on that,’ she says, this time in French.

With touching clumsiness, someone starts playing a violin, managing a few romantic spasms. If I close my eyes, I could be back in the Café Moderne in Budapest on a Saturday night.

She seems tense and expectant. I notice how she holds her cigarette some distance from her body as if she’s ready to give it away. I notice, too, the pale band of skin on the third finger of her left hand where a ring has been removed. And there’s something fragile about her that makes me want to protect her, to clear a space around her, and make sure that she’s all right.

After a few shy words and a little kissing, and the kind of speed you associate with a dream, we’re alone together in the warm shadows and silence of my hotel bedroom, the lights of cars re-tilting the angles of the walls.

She pulls the single pin in her bun. A plait unravels, slips down like a sigh. In lifting her dress, she gives off a sweet smell, an odour composed of shampoo, tobacco, lipstick, powder. She seems to pour herself upwards. Bits of her hair cling to the fabric as she tugs the slip over her head. And giddy as if we were breathing helium, we immerse ourselves, descend into each other. The night becomes all raw sensation, blind will, and I experience an incredible warmth across the whole of my body.

Afterwards, naked, lazy, sitting up in bed, we share a cigarette.

‘I won’t stay,’ she says.

‘You can if you like.’

I stroke her hair, which seems to spark in the darkness and change colour as my fingers move through it. I switch on the lamp. And it’s only now that I see the thick pencil line she’s drawn down the back of her legs to pretend she’s wearing stockings.

‘I’ll be gone in the morning,’ she says.

‘I’ll still be here in the afternoon.’

She smiles, looks around, takes in the room, its bare furnishings and mess of magazines and clothes. She sees the cameras on the floor in the bag next to my boots, but it’s my helmet she seems most interested in. She’s surprised by how heavy it is, and holds it with both hands for a moment as if measuring its weight. She tries it on. It’s too big for her, and her hair squeezes out the sides in little blonde licks. She tilts it, regards herself in the mirror, watches it wobble on her head, and when one long strand snags in the straps as she removes it, I feel something take a deep scoop out of my chest.

*   *   *

Floor-to-ceiling white wardrobes contain rails of dresses, black at one end and white at the other, with all the other colours – navy, camel, lemon, teal-green, magenta – pressed next to each other in between. Ingrid looks at them, hands on hips, and frowns. Evening dresses, cocktail dresses, ball gowns, a small mink coat. They hang like shadows of herself, clinging to an imagined silhouette. She runs her fingertips across them, enjoying the answer of the fabrics. A current shoots through her, a crackle of static, as she feels the textiles scrape against her nail.

Now that she’s famous and acclaimed, she can’t just pull something on; she has to think about everything she wears because she will be noticed, and the way she dresses will be commented upon in the magazines. This is a fact, a consequence of her success, and there’s no point bitching about it.

She does her best to retain a private existence, to keep her feet firmly on the ground. She works hard, remains dedicated, professional. She’s known for the commitment she shows to her roles, the conviction she gives to them. But it’s as if, at times, the barrier between her public and personal life dissolves, the two blending imperceptibly together like adjacent paints. And she understands how easy it is to be seduced by stardom, to grow blind to its predations. She’s seen it happen often enough. Her husband warns her daily of its dangers, reminds her she must stay on her guard.