Seducing Ingrid Bergman (26 page)

‘I wanted to see you. Is that so bad?’

I half expect her to turn away, but instead she stands there motionless. Her eyes stare straight ahead. The chain like a little mouth trembles between us.

She whispers, ‘Have you been drinking?’

The truth is, I’ve been drinking solidly since this morning. When I think of Ingrid, I want to drink. And when I drink, I think of her – so what the hell am I supposed to do? She can smell it on me, probably, see my eyes shining.

‘I don’t get it. When I’m with you, you keep me at arm’s length, then when I’m not, you follow me like a lost puppy.’

I realize how pathetic I must seem. Leaves scrape against the gravel in the drive. A single car slides past on the road outside. My heart thumps so hard, I can feel the roar inside my skull.

An impulse passes through me the way a finger cuts through a candle flame. I reach across to kiss her.

She leans back, puts a finger to her lips, points inside to where her husband and daughter lie in bed, asleep.

The chain remains intact between us. For a moment or two, nothing seems to make sense.

‘Go home, Capa.’ Her head tilts, impatient. She hugs her arms against the cold.

I try to win a smile.

She blows a kiss and closes the door, leaving me inhaling her scent in the darkness, alone.

I stand for several seconds watching her shrink, become shapeless, disappear behind the frosted glass. And as she diminishes, in a mirrored gesture I feel myself retreat.

The light snaps out in the hallway.

I walk back, wrapped in the silence of the night, the warmth of whisky, hopeful, unconsoled.

*   *   *

Early March. A dark afternoon. The darkness spreads like a stain over the beach and the ocean beyond.

I look out the window. Ingrid stands next to me.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘What would you tell Petter?’

‘The truth.’

‘Which is?’

She studies her fingers. ‘That I’ve met someone. That I’m sorry, that I ask his forgiveness, that I’ve tried to conquer my feelings…’

‘You have?’

‘That I don’t wish to cause any hurt, but I’ve decided to leave him, that I’ve found a person I want to be with, and I hope he understands.’

I lean back, impressed. ‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’

She laughs, shakes her head. ‘I wish.’

‘You think he’d fight?’

‘No one likes to be humiliated. Least of all, Petter.’

‘Is it worth it?’

‘I’d be free.’

As if shifting my position will break the silence, I scratch my head with both hands. ‘I don’t want to live in your shadow.’

‘So you’d just go off again?’

‘You could come with me.’

‘Like Gerda, you mean?’

I’m aware of the ocean boiling outside, the wind shaking the trees. I can’t think of anything to say.

She’s back at me again. ‘Well, maybe I will.’

‘What?’

‘Come with you.’

‘Don’t be absurd.’

‘What’s so funny?’

‘What would you do without your cocktail dresses, your nylons and high heels?’ Two flies buzz near the ceiling. The sound is thin and insistent. The buzzing has an edge to it, touching off a feeling of hysteria in each of us. ‘You’re a movie star, for God’s sake.’

‘And you’re a gambler and a drunk.’

I stare at the space between my feet.

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

‘I have nothing to lose, remember.’

‘You have me!’ she says.

Her anger expands, then diffuses like cigarette smoke. ‘I just have this horrible feeling that one day I’ll pick up
Collier’s
or
Picture Post
and there’ll be this piece about you being killed somewhere in some pointless conflict.’

‘I hope I don’t detract from your notices.’

‘You want to play court jester for ever?’

The wind outside rattles the windows. I pour a large whisky, take a good swallow.

‘Look at you. It’s embarrassing. Every day you’re drinking before lunch.’

‘I’d drink before breakfast if I could get up early enough.’

‘Maybe you could hold your booze in the war, but here you’re just a drunk,’ she says. ‘Everyone says so.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yes, everyone.’

The air in the room grows heavy, the walls seem in the wrong place, and the light enlarges until my eyes begin to burn. I don’t say anything for a minute, just clench and unclench my hands. I can feel her gaze upon me, unrelenting, measuring my intentions, hear the shush of the ocean outside. Finally, I say, ‘I need some money.’

‘What happened to the money I gave you?’

‘I lost it.’ The two flies batter against the lampshade. I can’t meet her eye.

‘How come you always have money to gamble but never any to settle down?’

I start to make a joke.

Her voice narrows to a funnel, down which she pours her scorn. ‘The drinking and the gambling may not be your fault. The world has done that to you. I put up with that, even understand it. But your frivolity – that’s what you bring to the world. And you know something? It drives me mad.’

‘You’re the one who won’t take me seriously.’

Her voice grows shrill. ‘You don’t take yourself seriously.’

As if sensing the vibration rising in each of us, the two flies grow quiet.

Something snaps within me. ‘How would
you
feel after ten years of shit?’

‘I wouldn’t spend ten years doing what you did.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘You wouldn’t.’

Things happen. It’s never just one moment, I know, but there’s always a tipping point. Day after day, little accumulations of hurt build up and you don’t notice until one morning you get out of bed and your heart cracks open with the pressure.

The heat rises in my head, screams for release. Charged, an impulse shoots through me. I pick up a glass from the table and throw it against the wall. Hurled, it smashes with a fat crack. A hollow tinkle follows, a scattering of fragments as splinters hit the floor. A stain from the liquor forms a dark spot on the wall.

There’s silence for several seconds, then an odd thing occurs. It’s as if the action of smashing the glass causes something to shatter within me, too. I shiver for an instant. Everything seems blurred. I feel the muscles in my cheeks go taut. My stomach feels queasy, my hands grow mottled. A tide of nausea rises from my gut. There are tensions and pressures in my face that make the skin there crumple. Something fragile like a membrane breaks. I feel this collapsing inwards and before I know it, I’m crying like a baby. The tears leak from me and I can’t make them stop. Real sobs, torn from me, so that my whole body becomes involved. The first flood dwindles to a subdued but steady stream of weeping. Everything seems to be breaking apart, becoming detached, flying off at all angles.

Ingrid seems startled, open-mouthed. She’s never seen me like this. And it’s as if she knows that in this moment, if she doesn’t hold me tight, I might shatter like a vase into a thousand fragments. Quick to respond, she embraces me.

I cling to the warmth she releases, the scent of her skin.

We must stay like that for several minutes, just rocking gently to and fro. Then she takes hold of my face in her hands, kisses me for one prolonged moment on the brow, and orders me to go to bed and get some sleep.

‘You have every right to hate me,’ I say.

‘I could never hate you, Capa.’

Everything is very quiet now. I watch, numb, recovering, as she cleans up the mess, scrubbing with puritan vigour the stain from the wall and sweeping up the smashed glass.

She’s efficient and brisk, though part of me wonders whether she’s clearing up for me or removing any trace of herself.

She looks at her watch. ‘I have to go now.’

‘Yes.’

She smiles the slight smile of someone enduring pain.

The seconds stretch. A silence opens up between us, grows heavy. She gives a little wave, then she is gone.

I hear the door click like a trap being sprung. A few quick footsteps, a car starting remotely, then nothing. The last sound of her mingles with the empty generalized noise of the ocean and the wind outside.

Once she’s left, I can’t think what to do. I can’t sleep, I can’t read, and I don’t want to drink. I just sit and breathe as the window grows dusty and listen to the cars pass on the road outside: shh shh shh shh.

I take out the harmonica from my pocket, look at it, feel its reassuring weight. A consolation. I run my lips along its pores and blow softly, without quite making a noise.

*   *   *

Petter goes out of his way to be kind, to compensate for any coldness, to atone for any arrogance he might have shown. With the self-discipline and determination that characterize his approach to everything in life, he resolves, again, to be a better person. A better husband, better father, doctor. He vows to perform small charitable acts that make a difference but are not vulgar in the Hollywood fund-raising way. And today he does something wonderful.

He asks one of his patients with a tumour on the brain if she wants anything special.

The lady says what she’d really like is an ice-cream in a cone.

So straightaway Petter jumps in the car and drives out of the hospital until he finds a drugstore that sells ice-cream in cones and brings one back to her. He has to hold it upright while he drives one-handed back to the ward and rushes it to her bed, all the time swabbing with a handkerchief as the ice-cream melts and dribbles around his fingers.

He doesn’t tell anyone about this because that would be bragging and would detract from the simple act of kindness. But the woman appreciates it very much, and it makes Petter feel virtuous, reaffirming the image of himself as a fundamentally good man.

Back home that evening, he’s brushing his teeth at the same time as Pia. Their toothbrushes shush in unison, the sound of his brushing a tone lower than hers. They share a look and a smile in the mirror – a smile that acknowledges that they are father and daughter, that brushing their teeth together is an intimate act, and the minty flavour and clean smell become a part of that.

Pia asks, ‘Why was mummy crying last night?’

‘Because she’s sad,’ Petter says.

‘Do you still love mummy?’

‘Yes, of course. Very much.’

‘Does she love you?’

‘I think so, yes.’ He’s been dreading this. He must restrain himself, not grow emotional. He hates himself at this moment. ‘Though sometimes people don’t love each other enough.’

‘How much is enough?’

‘That’s difficult to say.’

‘To infinity?’ The girl stretches wide her arms.

Petter smiles. ‘That would be good.’ His next utterance is inspired. ‘That’s how much we both love you.’

‘Why is mummy never home?’

He feels the acid in his stomach rise to his throat and contend with the freshness of his breath. ‘You’ll have to ask her that.’

The taste of toothpaste still lingers in his mouth. His throat feels dry. This is terrible, he thinks.

Pia ponders for a moment, twists her lips sideways in thought. ‘Daddy?’

‘Yes, sweetheart?’

‘Would you be sad if mummy died?’

*   *   *

Technicians at the studio restore some early home movies that Ingrid’s father made when she was a child.

She sits in the small projection room alone, watching the images unfold in drizzly black and white on a single reel. The first film, lasting just one minute, reveals her on her first birthday in a park with her parents on a sunny August day. She’s wearing a white dress and is kissed by her mother, who is kneeling. Her mother stands and must then take the camera, for it is her father who next walks into shot. He’s in his best suit, his hat at a dandyish angle so that you can only see half his face, and he’s swinging a cane. He, too, kneels and kisses Ingrid.

The next film records moments on her second birthday. There she is again in a pretty white dress, more frilly this time. She puts both arms around her mother’s neck and kisses her broad forehead as she bends low. The angle switches for the shot that follows. With almost comic formality for a two-year-old, Ingrid shakes her mother’s hand and curtsies, something she has obviously practised for the camera. She doesn’t look into the lens.

The final film, taken when she was three, shows her no longer in a white dress but in a dark coat and scarf, even though it is a summer’s day. She’s carrying flowers, a bunch of lilies, along a path. She’s in a churchyard. She passes several gravestones before stopping and placing the flowers on her mother’s grave.

The whole sequence of three films lasts less than five minutes. The reel slaps to an end. The lights come on.

She’d like to pretend to herself that she remembers these moments, but she doesn’t. They are all a blank. This is all she knows of her mother, a woman with a kind smile who kneels to kiss her in a park on a summer’s day in Stockholm before the end of the First World War.

Ingrid sits there motionless, unblinking, absorbing the images one by one. She asks the projectionist to run the reel again, which he does another five times.

She feels a deep sense of sadness but doesn’t cry. She tries hard not to be sentimental. Her immediate thought, though, is that she wants Pia to see these films; she wants her daughter to see her grandmother so that she can know something of her, so that she can recognize where she came from, no matter how unsatisfactory and inadequate this glimpse of the past might be.

She also wants to draw a line from that girl in a white dress on her first birthday to the girl in a dark coat at the age of three. And she wants to extend the trajectory of that line until it reaches herself sitting here and now in this room, looking backwards, fascinated, a little frightened, belatedly grieving, and hopelessly confused.

*   *   *

‘You seem distant,’ Petter says, at dinner in the kitchen of their home.

Ingrid regards herself in the mirror above the table, inspects the puffiness under her eyes. She pulls her face sideways, grimaces so that all her teeth show. ‘I feel ugly.’

‘Try smiling for a change.’

Her eyes remain fixed on the mirror rather than looking at him. ‘I don’t want to lie to you.’