Seducing Ingrid Bergman (29 page)

More quickly than he anticipates, she moves away, leaves the room, closing the door behind her with a gentleness that fails to meet the slam inside his mind.

So, he reflects, it has happened at last. What did he expect, marrying a beautiful actress on the verge of becoming a movie star? Did he really believe that he’d be enough for her, that he could keep her for himself? He always knew this moment would come, always dreaded it. Not that he feels more prepared because of it, or that it makes it any easier now it has arrived.

She doesn’t seem remorseful, doesn’t ask for forgiveness, he notices. She hasn’t expressed any regret or said she’s sorry. Why? Because obviously deep down she feels that she’s done nothing wrong, that there’s nothing to be sorry for. She’s been led astray, he considers. She’s been tainted. She would never have initiated something like this.

Can’t she see that when she accuses him of meanness with money, he is only trying to protect her from the excesses of Hollywood? And when she accuses him of being possessive, doesn’t she understand that the liberties he permits, the freedoms he grants, are beyond what most other husbands would tolerate? For God’s sake, in the last three years she must have cooked him all of three meals, and then wasn’t it just spaghetti?

He recognizes, with the clinical detachment he exercises every day in his job, that he might seem short-tempered, even emotionally cold at times, and he realizes, too, that living in a foreign land far away from his native Sweden might quicken any natural feelings of intolerance in him.

It’s not the way he likes to see himself, or the way he thinks others tend to see him either. He has always regarded himself as chivalrous and dignified. His good manners and formal courtesy make him appealing in a clean and wholesome Nordic way. Women like to dance with him at parties, while men, seeing little threat in this hardworking and likeable hospital doctor, are more than happy for him to partner their wives out on the floor. After all, isn’t he married to Ingrid Bergman? What more could any man want?

He feels humiliated by his inability to keep her and to manage her feelings, by his failure to make her happy. The knowledge of this impotence twists in him until his insides seem ready to snap.

He has a sudden urge to step out onto the balcony, to get some fresh air, to clear his head, even though it’s freezing cold outside.

Closing the door behind him, he stands there for some time, listening to the hum of a distant car, to late-night revellers returning from the hotel bar and casino. He sees the stars in the sky, the moon like a hook, and knows that tonight he will not sleep.

He tries not to be resentful, yet feelings of bitterness consume him. Grotesque images of his wife and her lover torture, gnaw at him. He has never before considered himself a victim. Now, though, a whole new vista opens up: a perspective of the lost, the desolate, the vanquished. How could he have missed it? All these people with their melancholy destinies, and he among them suddenly.

The one consolation he has is that Ingrid no longer seems to be the same person. She’s changed. The old Ingrid loved him, shared his life, his bed. The new Ingrid belongs to someone else. The two are different people, he considers. It’s as if the woman he married has died, and now he must mourn her going.

After a while he begins to piece together a version of their falling out, to arrive at an account that makes sense. The more he rehearses it, the more he believes it to be the only true version of events. He will entertain no other, can see no other. Without escaping blame entirely, he dignifies himself as the victim. Capa becomes a kind of evil genius, wilfully manipulating his wife. Ingrid, meanwhile, emerges as weak and vulnerable, ultimately corruptible and capable of treachery. It’s what he can cope with. It is a start.

Standing out in the cold on the balcony, contemplating this, he finds himself oddly enchanted for a moment by the distances and silence. He breathes deeply, filling his lungs, sucking in the air until the space inside him seems to match the space outside and he closes his eyes, imagining that he might just float away. He’s able to escape for just a few seconds, get a fresh sense of perspective, before he feels again an immense emptiness descend, feels the hollow within him enlarge, the silence widen inside him like a crack along a wall.

*   *   *

The lights of the casino dye the snow red and blue. Cigarette smoke hovers like a fog along the ceiling. A piano plays in the background, ‘I’m Confessin’ That I Love You’.

Straightaway, I win a substantial amount of money. And then again. Each time I win, I double my stake.

A fairground atmosphere surrounds me. There’s the sense of an event. I am the toast of the table. Eager to be entertained, and detecting my recklessness, people buy me drinks.

Then something shifts. Three times I put ten dollars on red. Black comes up on each occasion. I stake a hundred dollars, again on red. A fourth time, the croupier announces black. Each time I lose, I double the bet on red. Eight times in a row, black turns up.

‘Unbelievable,’ says a woman next to me.

When you’re winning, you develop this little edge, a special touch, an aura of invincibility. You’re driven and just go with it. Losing becomes unthinkable, everything falls your way, and there’s this sensation that you’re no longer in control. It takes you over. Then of course, things begin to go wrong, and all of a sudden nothing runs for you. You lose the touch. The charm vanishes. The light no longer shines on you and the money just disappears. Pouf!

It’s crazy, I’m thinking, as the croupier rakes in the chips. Someone really should stop me. It should be someone’s responsibility in this world to take me by the shoulder, to lead me away and say, ‘Enough
’
. Mine, probably. But no one does, and I can’t help myself.

At first I don’t see Ingrid come in, and I don’t know how long she’s been standing there, but long enough probably to clock what’s going on. When I catch sight of her, I smile. But as she sidles over, she shoots me a look of barely disguised distaste.

She refuses a cigarette, moves forwards stiffly. I see the strapping on her ankle. She must have risked aggravating the injury to get down here.

‘What are you doing? Are you mad?’ she says.

‘At myself, maybe.’

She stands behind me, as if claiming me. She puts her hand on my shoulder and allows it to rest there as a plea for me to leave. ‘You could lose everything.’

‘What difference would it make?’ I look at her but she doesn’t answer. ‘I’ll just have to work harder.’

And I realize that this is what being a gambler means: enjoying winning, but not minding too much when you lose – or perhaps not minding enough.

The ceiling seems to lower. Lights swarm. Mirrors tweak everything into another possible world.

I try to concentrate. The motion of the roulette wheel blurs, seems to run backwards like the wheels of a car or a movie unspooling, and for an instant it feels as if time has been reversed.

There’s a momentum to losing, I recognize, a heedlessness that propels you, as when you’re skiing fast downhill. It has its own internal logic. All you can hear is the spin of the wheel, the rattle and clatter, the high hum and chance of it. It’s hypnotic watching the ball drift and click above the rush of numbers, and you’re drawn in as though by a vortex. A piano plays in the background, innocuous enough, and with the slick little pile of chips that is lovely to run your fingers through, the money never seems quite real. So, subtly you’re seduced, lured into it. And when you lose, you face it the same way you face the rain and the snow, relishing that feeling of being at the mercy of something bigger than you.

I’ve lost twelve hundred dollars already. I have a thousand left in the world.

Ingrid urges me to leave now, before it is too late, but there’s the desire as in everything to go to the limit.

I feel a strange kind of power.

The croupier’s French accent is terrible. ‘
Faites vos jeux
.
’

A familiar inner voice whispers,
Bet it all on red
. An unseen hand prompts me.

In the tobacco haze, Petter’s face appears like a goad.

I tell the croupier to put it all on red.

‘
Les jeux sont faits
.’

Ingrid looks grave-faced. Petter walks over, stands right next to her, attaches his arm to hers. He sees me, smiles.

One thousand dollars, everything I have, is stacked in two wobbly columns of chips on the red.

I feel closed-in, assaulted by the world’s hard corners. Everything seems to teeter on the brink like a drop of water at the edge of a tap, the whole room reflected in it.

‘
Rien ne va plus
.’

The croupier spins the wheel and avoids my glance. The ivory ball skitters and hits the chrome ridges. I feel an icy calm descend. A chill enters my kidneys.

The hum of the wheel merges with the hum inside my head. For an instant, everything in the casino seems to spin. The sensation of vertigo quickens, and for a hallucinatory moment Ingrid’s features seem superimposed over the bowl. I drink to make everything steady. The inner voice says not to worry, this is it.

The ball clicks more softly along the notches, then settles. The wheel begins to slow.

I feel my hand move upwards as if tugged by a string.

‘
Vingt-deux. Noir.
Twenty-two. Black,’ the croupier announces.

People reach for their drinks. I feel a couple of consolatory slaps on my back.

I smile, take it in, bow theatrically like a matador, inviting an ironic round of applause.

When I look round, Petter has vanished.

‘Happy now?’ Ingrid says.

She turns and walks away.

My stake of a thousand dollars is raked from the table. Next to the red, the black becomes a hole through which I fall into a larger darkness, an irresistible plunge into nothingness.

I feel absolutely no pain at all.

*   *   *

Stepping out into the starless blackness and the snow, I feel curiously light, afflicted with a kind of dizziness. Though the cold and wind press through me, my nerves are so numb anyway that I hardly feel a thing.

I wander back to the chalet. The beam of my flashlight skids against the walls, jiggles its zero on the snow. When I point the torch up into the sky, it reflects nothing back, just blackness. Blackness and silence. The dark seems an extension of myself.

Back at the lodge, the doorman – an ex-serviceman probably fallen on hard times – stands in the cold between the inner and outer doors.

I stop, rummage in my pockets, find a couple of notes I didn’t know I had, and pass them over. He thanks me, half-salutes.

I reach my room and collapse on the bed. I am more tired than I realize. I feel an ache behind my eyes as if I’ve just drunk very cold water. And as though a cloud or vapour steals over me, my insides slip, a sort of letting go. I feel myself drift, then sink, and though I do not expect to after all that has happened, I sleep like a baby for a full eight hours.

*   *   *

The final morning sees a heavy fall of snow. It accumulates quickly, building in bright banks, burying cars in the town and generating drifts beyond. The weight of it oppresses the roofs. The hills fill as if picking up static. Visibility is down to a hundred yards.

The ploughs are out early and the cable car still operates. For those of us who leave tomorrow, it’s our last chance to be out on the slopes. The funicular arrives with a few crisp inches on it.

My skis are waxed and my boots secured. I go higher than I’ve been all week.

At first the going is sluggish, and I have to drive with my poles to make any sort of progress. There are a few soft spots where I almost sink in to my hips, but once I get started, I soon gather speed.

Though the storm eddies densely, I can still make out the mountain’s white shadow, the grey shapeless trees. The snow pecks at my eyes and nose, clings for a second before melting. Flakes snag in my lashes and tremble there. A quick watery taste trickles into my mouth.

Underneath the top snow, the ice has a glassy smoothness. I hunker down as the ground dips, holding the poles horizontally under my arms. My knees are clamped together and I’m conscious of picking up speed. The wind tugs at my jacket. The skin of my cheeks is pressed back. It’s like freewheeling on a bicycle or sledding with my brother on the slopes above Budapest – that flood of oxygen into the lungs, that heart-in-the-mouth excitement.

The whiteness and silence pour past. The snow seethes around me. I feel this little kick inside. A hurried shush is followed by nothing as my skis leave the ground. It’s the same feeling I had when I jumped into the Danube from the Elizabeth Bridge, when I chased and clung to the back of a streetcar, the head of a gang of boys.

Energized by a new lightness, I seem to be flying. I feel giddy for an instant, weightless, all but lifted into the air.

Something happens. The equilibrium shifts. It’s as if a switch is pulled. Suddenly the current reverses within me. The awfulness of the storm mixes with the heartache of the last couple of days. Blind anger – at myself, mostly, at the world, at Petter – drives me on.

The world tilts. I feel cheated, incomplete.

The moment I learnt of Gerda’s death, something dark entered me, the sense of loss like a hole. I always swore I’d never let another woman get close; I couldn’t stand to. And all I know is that each new relationship has seemed a dilution of the original energy and ecstasy of that love. Then Ingrid came along and it’s as if slowly my faith was renewed, only for everything now to come undone. I can’t believe what a fool I’ve been.

I wonder for an instant whether, if I can go still faster, it might be possible to get ahead of time, to rewind it, and for a second the space seems to warp around me.

My skis hit the ground with a thump. I let out a long wordless howl that trails in a cloud behind me. The vibration shudders up my legs until my whole body is shaking. I want to hurt someone suddenly and I don’t care if it is me.