Seducing Ingrid Bergman (21 page)

Someone taps him on the shoulder, whispers in his ear. He walks off without looking back.

I’m handed another glass of champagne. The music tinkles on, while the women flit like insects through the garden and the night. The party unfolds slowly. I measure three more drinks before I meet Ingrid again.

‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ she says.

‘It’s all right.’

‘What did you think of Petter?’

‘I liked him.’

‘
You
don’t have to live with him.’

‘Neither do you.’

Her eyebrow lifts quizzically.

I say, ‘At least he spoke to me.’

‘Don’t be like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘I said I’d phone you.’

‘You said you probably would.’

‘Well, I probably will.’

‘You want me to hang around all day, waiting?’

I can see that already she feels compromised in talking to me again. Petter is dancing happily with the wife of one of the producers, a foxy red-head with a twitchy tail. Beyond him, I see Joe keeping an eye on me from the other side of the pool.

‘Why don’t you write a book?’ she says.

‘A book?’

‘Or even a screenplay?’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘In Hollywood, they pay four hundred dollars a week for that.’

‘That’s obscene.’

‘Where else would you make that kind of money?’

‘What would I write about?’

‘I don’t know. About war,’ she says, and improvises in a voice that makes everything seem achievable. ‘About what it can do to a man. How it can ennoble him, make him crazy, heroic…’

‘I’ve never known war to ennoble anyone.’

She gives one of her earrings a little tug. ‘Not even you?’

Inspired, I say, ‘I know something I could write about.’

‘Oh?’

‘About how an obscure Hungarian Jew with a Leica round his neck in post-war Paris comes to love and be loved by the most beautiful woman in the world…’

Her mask drops for a second. ‘Don’t you dare!’

‘I’m joking.’

She smiles tightly. ‘I’m warning you.’

‘You as well?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ I say. I stub out a cigarette with my foot on the lawn.

Joe is still watching from across the pool.

‘It would bore me to write it up,’ I say. ‘The pictures are the point.’

‘The point is you could be near me.’

‘It doesn’t feel real.’

‘Haven’t you had enough of reality?’

I light another cigarette. ‘I don’t like seeing you waste your talent.’

‘Look who’s talking.’

‘Can’t we go back to Europe?’

She sighs. It seems she’s rehearsed this argument before. ‘I’m in the picture business, and this is where they make movies.’

‘Do you feel American?’

‘I’m a resident alien.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I pay ninety per cent income tax.’

‘You want me to feel sorry for you?’

Selznick lopes over, tells her there’s someone he wants her to meet. He steers Ingrid away as if rescuing her from a bore. And maybe he is.

I wander back inside the house, half angry with Ingrid, half angry with myself, cursing the studio, cursing Petter, my own impatience.

The young women on the gold sofas all have consorts now – three fat men with loud voices and outsize cigars – and I notice how the girls laugh and throw their heads back to reveal their throats whenever one of the guys makes a wisecrack. I notice, too, how the knots of their legs have loosened and come undone.

At least there’s a poker game, in a room off the library.

I watch for a while, and then when someone retires, without warning there is Joe behind me. He steps forward and pulls back a chair, as if vouching for me. He even winks, and I wonder what he’s up to. When I look up, John Huston smiles as he deals, one eye closed against the smoke that leaks from between his teeth. He snaps the cards out so fast and hard, the edges must come close to ripping his fingers.

It’s no limit, high stakes poker. The best kind.

To my surprise and delight, I manage to win the first two hands.

‘Lucky son-of-a-bitch,’ Huston says.

Holding his cigar with three fingers, he twists it in quick half-inches between his lips. The dark hair on his eyebrows is wrestled into a dense nest, a mess of insect feelers which seems to twitch as he inspects his cards.

When he learns who I am and what I do, he starts telling me about the games in London he enjoyed while waiting for D-Day, and the way they’d continue playing without flinching as the bombs went off around them – one bomb shattering the windows and spraying glass onto their table.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘I was there.’

‘Of course you were,’ he says.

But the only thing that sprays over us tonight is the moonlight and the smell of exotic flowers, the blue of the pool and the music from a small orchestra performing popular numbers such as ‘Prisoner of Love’ and ‘To Each His Own’ into the small hours.

Each time someone new comes to the table, Huston introduces me with a flourish. ‘You know the Normandy landings?’ he growls. ‘They only exist because this man recorded them.’ And, ‘If you ever go to war, make sure you take this guy with you.’

If this is his calculated way of disarming me, it seems lamentably successful. After my initial burst of luck, things no longer go my way. The pile of cash I started out with quickly dwindles to the zero of Selznick’s middle initial and I hear but don’t see Ingrid leave with Petter, his laugh like a scatter of stones on the drive.

The night ends as I sit with Joe, and we play that game where you take it in turns to burn holes with cigarettes in a napkin that holds a coin over a glass.

‘It’s good,’ I tell him, ‘that we’re friends at last.’

He burns a small hole in the fabric of the handkerchief.

‘If you go on,’ he says, ‘you’ll destroy everything she’s worked for.’

‘She’s unhappy.’

‘You think she’ll thank you for it?’

‘It worked for Selznick, didn’t it?’

‘The studio has spent a lot of money placing that halo on her head. People won’t take kindly to you decanonizing her.’

I laugh.

‘I’m serious. She embodies decency for people.’

‘That’s quite a weight you’re loading on her.’

‘Nobody’s imposing it. She created it herself.’

‘You’re saying I can’t see her?’

‘I’m saying you better watch yourself.’

I don’t respond.

‘It’s in nobody’s interests to change things.’

‘Least of all yours.’

‘Least of all hers.’

I burn one final hole clear through the white cotton of the napkin, and this time the nickel drops.

*   *   *

I meet William Goetz in his office after a liquid lunch at Romanoff’s.

It’s something Ingrid has set up. He’s interested in publishing a book, he says, about the war as the basis for a screenplay.

Tall, wiry, smart, there’s a tension that extends from his face to his braces. His handshake is firm, his eyes clear, his hair slicked back like a seal’s.

Around him, pot plants lend a vaguely tropical atmosphere, an obscure lushness to his office, seeming to articulate a statement about the law of the jungle. He leans back in his big leather chair. Its upholstered buttons add to the impression of tautness in him.

He has faith in me, he says, his eyes narrowing confidentially. The leather chair creaks beneath him. The rubber plant behind him flourishes.

‘You come highly recommended, Mr Capa.’

Something knowing in his manner makes me wary. ‘That’s good to hear,’ I say.

The sun is in my eyes. He sees this and tips the blinds, but the wrong way. The light widens in an extravagant dazzle. My eyes wince at the brilliance. With a small clatter, he tugs the blinds down again. A crimp remains in one of them.

‘So what do you think? You think you can do that?’

‘When do you want it by?’

‘I don’t want it quick,’ he says, throwing his weight forwards. ‘I want it
good
.’ He emphasizes the word like a suppressed threat.

I accept his offer of a cigarette.

He scrapes open a desk drawer, pulls out a long, thin manila envelope and slides it towards me. He gestures for me to take it.

‘What is it?’ I say, picking it up as if it might sting me.

‘Why don’t you open it?’

Inside is a wad of hundred-dollar bills. I try hard not to look impressed.

‘An advance,’ he says. ‘To show good faith.’

‘Yes.’

He leans back. His fingers form a pyramid that, for a moment, resembles absurdly the emblem on a dollar bill. Then, reaching behind him, he re-opens the blinds to signal that the interview has come to an end.

Beyond the window, the sun burns fiercely, making the asphalt wobble and shimmer as in a mirage.

*   *   *

Selznick refuses to deal with Petter any longer over Ingrid’s contract. Her husband, he says, is ungrateful, stubborn, impossible to work with. And he’s instructed his attorney to speak no further until Lindstrom gives some ground.

Ingrid likes to steer clear of negotiations and stay sweet with her producer. She leaves any talk of money to Petter and tries not to get involved. But this time it’s hard to detach herself. She knows that Selznick, while bringing her from Sweden and helping to make her a star, has also hired her out to other studios at a vast profit, kept her out of work, prevented her from performing on the radio, never increased her salary while taking an ever larger slice of her income for himself. And now as if to spite her, and to needle Petter, he’s bought the rights to the film of Joan of Arc – a role he knows she has coveted since girlhood – and given the part to his lover, Jennifer Jones. The news is a knife to Ingrid’s heart.

She comes home and sees Petter sitting upright on the sofa, having just returned from the hospital, still with that lingering hint of antiseptic in the smell that surrounds him. She has to remind herself that she’s married to this man.

When she raises it later, it’s clear that he does not want to discuss the contract. ‘Leave it with me,’ he says.

‘I have left it with you, and now see what happens.’

‘You have to be tough with these people.’

‘You have to be tactful.’

‘They think you’re a pushover if you don’t play rough.’

‘This isn’t an arm-wrestling contest, Petter.’

‘Look,’ he says. ‘We’re in a strong position.’

She doesn’t feel as if she’s in a strong position. She feels she’s perched on the edge of a cliff and that the slightest breeze might blow her off.

‘Trust me,’ he says.

She was eighteen and nine years younger than Petter when he first came to dinner as the guest of her cousin. And he seemed so grown up, so tall – a full six feet three inches. He could swim and ski, and even box. He lent her books. He took her out on Saturday nights to dinner and danced with her afterwards. And what a terrific dancer he was – so light-footed for a big man – and she so clunky and self-conscious; he made her feel like she was floating on air. On Sundays they drove out to the woods where they hiked and enjoyed a picnic, or else strolled along the harbour, and slowly they became inseparable until it was hard to consider herself apart from him. He seemed the answer to every question she’d ever posed. So when he asked her the single most important question, she answered him after only a second’s hesitation.

She thinks of this now, and it seems it must have happened in another life. Whatever glue helped to fasten her and Petter together, she concludes that it has dried, its adhesive quality vanished, allowing them to drift like two limp bits of paper, apart.

In a fury of efficiency she tidies the house, changes the sheets on the bed, though the maid only changed them yesterday. It makes her feel better, and fits in with the crispness of the air outside, the lawn freshly cut and the apples in the bowl on the table downstairs.

Tonight, she knows, there is another party and she wants to surprise Capa, to impress him with her new dress, which she’s had made specially.

She has a long bath, washes her hair, and puts on a favourite platinum necklace. It looks good above her neckline, she decides. And she puts on lipstick. She likes the glitter of it in the mirror. A vivid red strip.

When she emerges from the bedroom, she’s wearing a black off-the-shoulder number and looks sensational. Her bare shoulders glisten.

‘How do I look?’ she asks Petter, thinking even he will be pleased.

‘Overdressed,’ he says.

15

I dial her home number.

No answer.

I hang up, dial again.

No answer.

I hang up, dial again later.

Petter answers.

I hang up.

Shit.

*   *   *

I sit outside with Irwin, smoking cigarettes and drinking Margaritas, watching the orange of a sunset wobble and sink into the waves.

‘I have to admit, Capa, I’m surprised you made it out here.’

I smile.

‘I suppose you’re having fun?’

‘It’s better than being shot at.’

‘Oh? I thought you liked that.’ Ice cubes rattle as he swirls them round his glass. His eyes search mine. ‘Is it how you imagined?’

‘There’s no metro,’ I complain, ‘and no sidewalks.’

‘Where do you want to walk?’

‘The light is a disaster for hangovers, the nearest store a mile away, while the restaurants are so awful you have to go to people’s houses to be sure of a decent meal.’

There’s a loaded silence.

‘And Miss Bergman?’

‘She works hard.’

‘Ah-ha.’ He throws his head back to release a gust of laughter. A cloud of cigarette smoke billows towards the sky. His laughter collapses into a cough. ‘Well, don’t say I didn’t tell you.’

‘I’ve taken her picture plenty of times.’

He takes a last swallow, gets up to refill our glasses. ‘You’ll need a bigger camera if you want to impress in this town.’

He’s right, of course, but there’s something smug about his tone that I resent, that hint of bitterness that surfaces the more he has to drink.

He says, ‘You know what I read the other day?’

I can tell from his expression that he’s lining up a wisecrack. ‘What?’