Seducing Ingrid Bergman (25 page)

In the vaulted living room, the sound echoes sharply and is slow to fade.

‘My God,’ Petter says.

The girl recoils, horrified, and runs crying to her room.

Ingrid herself starts to cry, clenching her fists as if she wants to squeeze herself dry of tears. In a fit of self-loathing she throws down her pocketbook.

Petter goes to see Pia, pausing on the stairs to hurl a judgemental look at his wife.

Ingrid feels ashamed, and experiences a sudden hatred for her life, for what she has become. It seems as if, after all the hard work she has put in today, everything is spoiled.

She leaves her pocketbook on the floor and slowly makes her way to her bedroom. The house with its vaulted beams seems suddenly cavernous, like an old railway station that makes her feel small and cold and desperately sad. Did that really just happen? She can hardly believe it. She wants to apologize to Pia, but will wait until Petter is gone from her room so she can talk to her daughter alone.

She tries to rehearse what she might say, to find some words of comfort, some justification for her behaviour, but she knows there is none and that what she did is unforgivable.

A numbness comes over her; a little buzz starts inside her head as if she has drunk too much.

She grows composed enough to notice a brown moth by the window. Papery, weightless, it clings to the wall and remains motionless. She watches it for what seems like several minutes. She makes a conscious decision to empty her head of everything else, to concentrate on the moth. She waves her hand at it. It remains perfectly still. She blows on it, but it doesn’t budge. She wonders if it might be dead. But if dead, she considers, how can it cling to the wall like that?

Her attention switches. She’s conscious of Petter still talking to Pia. She hears his reassuring voice, if not the words he is saying. She hears her daughter still sniffling, but calmer now. Even though they are in the next room, they seem a world away.

With her finger she begins to draw shapes in the condensation. The glass is cold. It squeaks a little. She presses the finger to her cheek.

Everything around her in this instant seems especially vivid: the feathery branches of the redwoods elastic in the wind, the sky dark but crisp with stars, and the tight weave of the carpet beneath her feet, the green appearing to leap out.

She opens the window, admitting a cool blast of air. She breathes in deeply, filling her lungs. Then something else catches her eye.

Two dark smudges move in the distance, beyond the drive. She registers the fact that two reporters – who else could they be in those gabardines and homburg hats? – are waiting across the road.

A sensation of dread overtakes her. The pull of negative spaces. She feels as if she’s falling. The tops of the trees become blurry, the sky darkens visibly. The carpet rises to meet her. She tugs the window shut again.

In the renewed silence, she feels the warmth creep back into the room, sees the trees retreat to a safe distance, the tide in the carpet ebb.

She removes her shoes like a penitent and makes her way to her daughter’s room.

*   *   *

The next evening she meets Capa at a brick-walled restaurant out of town. She takes in the din of voices, the clash of cutlery, the subdued music. The chatter around them ceases for a minute as they take their seats. Gradually the buzz resumes, but at a higher pitch and with sly glances fired in their direction from the surrounding tables.

‘I’m starving,’ he says.

‘We can’t stay here.’

‘You want to go to Hamburger Heaven?’

‘No.’

‘Schrafft’s?’

‘It’s not that.’

‘What, then?’

‘You see those two?’

‘Where?’

‘At the table opposite.’

‘Where?’

‘Don’t look.’

‘You recognize them?’

‘I don’t want to take any chances.’

‘Honestly. Let’s eat.’

‘We can’t stay here.’

‘You’re not hungry?’

‘Come on. Let’s go.’

‘You’re over-reacting.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I thought you said the best thing to do was just to ignore them?’

‘We should leave.’

‘You’re making a mistake.’

‘I can’t do this,’ she says.

17

She hugs me from behind. I feel her breasts press through her sweater against my back. Her fingers come together around my waist. She puts her lips to my neck, adopts a spoilt, babyish tone. ‘Can I ask you something?’

My tongue feels dusted with something heavy. ‘Sure.’

‘Why won’t you let me get close to you?’

‘Are you kidding? I can’t get near you most of the time.’

‘You know what I mean.’

I turn and kiss her on the lips. ‘How close do you want me to get?’

Her hair curls under my chin, touches my throat. It tickles a little, and I’m aware of a mingled feminine scent of shampoo and perfume. But there’s something suffocating about it suddenly, and her questions all up close.

‘I need you to love me.’

‘And I need to defend myself.’

She recoils. ‘Against what?’

I sit down with a thump on the sofa, fiddle with my watch.

She plants herself down next to me, tucks her legs up under her, leaves her two shoes next to each other on the floor. Wearily she picks up a script bound by three brass tacks, and begins reading.

I notice how lovely she is, her lips tensed in concentration as she learns her lines, the way she puts her hand to her mouth, then flips a page. I feel guilty suddenly for being so mean. She looks so sad and serious, and I’ve looked forward to seeing her all week.

Needing to be forgiven, I point at the script. ‘What is it?’

It is her turn to be sullen. She lifts the cover so I can see.
Arch of Triumph.
The brass tacks shine. She lets it fall to her lap, flips another page where the lines are printed at a slight angle.

‘Any good?’

She shrugs, rejects the offer of a cigarette.

‘What’s it about?’

There’s a few seconds’ delay before she answers. ‘Passion versus duty.’

‘Oh?’

‘Things are fine until he refuses to marry her.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Even
you
would think he’s stupid,’ she says, without looking up.

She tucks her hair behind both ears to reveal two hoop earrings, gypsyish. I want to nibble them for a second, to taste the metal in my mouth.

‘If he married her, he’d have a passport and be able to stay in France.’

‘Does she love him?’ I lean across, rest my head on her lap so that she has to adjust her position.

‘Yes.’

‘So what happens?’

‘Do you care?’

‘I’m intrigued.’

‘He’s deported.’

‘What does she do?’

‘She has an affair with a new lover, who then shoots her in a rage.’

My unshaved jaw makes a crackling noise against her top. I see her red lips in granular close-up, her chin with its microscopic down of hair. ‘She’s obviously unstable.’

She turns a page, moves her legs away from some vague ache. The fabric in her sweater changes its sheen around her breasts. ‘She’s passionate.’

‘Unstable,’ I say.

*   *   *

After all the battles and the snow, the bullets in the throat and the reek of burnt explosives, finally I finish
War and Peace
. There’s a marvellous scene towards the end where Pierre meets Natasha again. Aside from one small encounter in a passing carriage, he has not set eyes upon her for many years. His wife is dead now, so finally he is free, and she too is alone.

She has grown old and pale and thin. The shape of her face has altered, her eyes gone watery with age, and at first he does not recognize her. The woman he longed for and loved in secret, this woman who stirred him so that he could think of nothing else – here she is at last. And it’s tragic because he does not know her, cannot see who she is, until abruptly he recognizes a look in her eyes, a familiar glimmer that revives a distant memory, triggers a remote echo in his brain. He realizes it is her, Natasha, the woman he adores, and he experiences a flash of joy that transforms him, that reawakens his yearning and literally makes him glow.

It is an extraordinary moment. Reading it makes me want to cry, for Pierre, for Natasha, for Ingrid, for me, for everyone – and for all the time that is lost between people who love each other and find themselves apart. Now it’s all over, with the last few pages read, I’m sitting in the tub and I want to blubber. I feel this terrible sense of grief, a desperate sense of emptiness. It’s overwhelming, as though people I know have died. The feeling persists within me, lingers like a splinter.

As for my own life, the war is a distant echo. No one’s heard of me here. My name means nothing. Would anyone other than Ingrid notice if I were to pack my bags and leave?

And another thing: I’ve written virtually nothing of the book commissioned by International Pictures. When William Goetz telephones, I tell him that it’s going well, and when he asks how close I am to finishing a first draft, I tell him that I don’t want to rush it, that I want to give him something good. He seems happy, though he’s keen to see a few chapters. I tell him I’ll tidy up the opening section and send it over, when in fact all I have is a stack of blank paper and a few scribbled notes.

I decide it’s time to get down to work. It’s not Goetz I want to impress, though; it’s Ingrid. I need to show her I can be self-disciplined. I need to prove to her that I can produce something worthy, something she can point to and be proud of.

I sit alone in Irwin’s beach house, with its view of the ocean, take out a pen and start to write. I write many pages, read each one over and throw it away. The writing seems flat, lacking the vividness and immediacy of the pictures, missing the straightforward urgency and intimacy of being there. I took the photographs so I wouldn’t have to say anything, knowing that when people saw them, there would be nothing left to say. And now here I am trying to recapture what I thought I’d caught already. The whole thing seems ridiculous. So I just sit for a time, measuring the silence, waiting for the words to come.

Slowly the moments untangle. I’m able to put things together bit by bit like a complicated mosaic, images dissolving and reforming, quickening like bits of mercury so that faces swarm together and seem to merge into one. Walls fall away, melt into dead spaces, lit with ghosts. The carbonized remains of a man being handed down from the cockpit of a bomber. The feet of Italian children poking out from their small coffins. A soldier struck by a shell while tucking into his C-rations, his body ripped open so that it’s impossible to distinguish between the beans in his stomach and the beans blown from the tin. They are still there, ready to haunt me. Like a secret army, they invade me, colonize my body, lie in wait, ready to attack.

I understand suddenly why I can’t allow myself to feel too much, to become sensitive again, because to do so would be to expose myself, to grow mad with compassion, to become vulnerable to all the terror and the dread. And so I retreat into numbness, into drunkenness, to deaden the senses, to plug the emptiness, to stay alive.

Hours pass. Days and nights and months flow around me. The darkness presses fold upon fold. I remember a warm night with Gerda on a beach in northern Spain. The stars, I recall, seemed magnified, enlarged beyond anything I’d seen before, flickering like bits of phosphorescence, so that even now recollecting it, I begin to feel dizzy. It was the last time we were together and able to relax and talk about things other than the war. The last time, though we could not know it, we were able to sit down and enjoy each other’s company. The next day, we pushed south towards Madrid. I feel sad and nostalgic to think of that night when we laughed to see the stars so big and trembly. And I grieve again for the time that has passed, for the people that have gone, shocked into consciousness of the darkness, the waves outside and the bits of light we cling to.

And then this morning after just a few hours’ sleep, I feel a tug on the bed. The mattress slides sideways, given a small heave. Accompanying it is a tinkle. The light fixture jiggles visibly.

I jump up. In this instant the ceiling seems to move closer, the floor threatens to open into a void. A feeling of nausea rises within me and is gone.

It is all over in a matter of seconds; less, perhaps. I wonder if I’ve imagined it, but no. It is a small earthquake, I discover afterwards.

I don’t know why I’m surprised. Tremors are frequent in this part of the world, and I’ve experienced bigger quakes before, but for some reason, this one unsettles me. I feel shaken by it, displaced, as if the world has been thrown out of focus, as though the floor has been pulled from under my feet.

*   *   *

This is what happens.

At eleven o’clock at night, I watch from outside her home in Benedict Canyon. The hall light goes out, followed by the light in the living room. A moment later a bedroom light snaps on, illuminating the leaves of a walnut tree next to the window. Shadows grow solid. The grass shines waxily. Thick branches spill over the fence.

A few quick seconds later, something alters shape in the darkness. I see it in the corner of my vision. The curtains twitch in her bedroom, and straightaway she’s there. Her face at the window, pale as the moon. A ghost.

For a painful instant I hardly dare to breathe. Everything remains incredibly still. Then she spots me.

Another minute and I’m at the door, with Ingrid peering over the chain. She looks startled. So must I, I realize.

‘What are you doing here?’

I see that her instinct is to close the door. Before she has a chance, I put out a hand. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Please.’ Bedraggled, red-eyed from lack of sleep, unshaven, I know I must appear like some desperate animal pawing at her door. ‘I have to speak to you.’

‘Are you nuts?’

I don’t answer. I wasn’t expecting this. I look away, see a spiderweb in the hedge, the ponderous heads of flowers.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘I want to check that you’re okay. After the quake.’

‘Capa?’