The New Confessions (43 page)

I had an identical summer house built in a suitable walled garden. Some mornings we spent hours sweeping the fresh snow from the pathways
and lawns, re-creating sunlight with our powerful arc lights. It was an important scene—both bizarre and comic—and a key to Mme. de Warens’s own compromised sexual nature that would have special bearing on
Part I’s
conclusion.

I felt strange directing Karl-Heinz and Doon in a love scene. I intended to fade out on the first kiss to an exterior of the summer house, the panes of glass suddenly opaque and golden with flashing sunlight. The caption I had written was taken directly from the book: “Was I happy? No. I had tasted the pleasure but some invincible sadness poisoned its charm for me.”

How well I understood that emotion! I had never experienced the same natural abandon as I had that first morning with Doon. We made love with intense mutual pleasure and enthusiasm, but she always stopped me when I wanted to tell her how much I cared for her. But you’ve told me that before, she would say. You don’t need to tell me again.

We were back in Berlin by mid-November, the weather having called a halt to filming. I was feeling unwell, I remember, a heavy cold and heavy heart. In Annecy and Chambéry I had felt free of my conscience and responsibilities. The banal truth is that physical distance is all that is required to make adultery safe and worry-free. Now, back at home, duplicity had necessarily to be enrolled as my co-partner. I found the strain of collating my lies and falsehoods with parts of the truth enervating and depressing. And the house seemed like a veritable zoo with the ubiquitous Shorrolds back again for two months over Christmas and New Year’s. Had a year really gone by? I should have been celebrating: my film was being made; I was the lover of the one woman I had ever truly adored. But these equations never work themselves out neatly. In our Charlottenburg villa there were nine of us: five adults and four children and only one bathroom. I started spending nights out at the studio in Spandau just to keep away.

There were huge problems with the film. We edited together a rough cut of the material filmed so far. It came to four hours and forty-five minutes. I did not know how I was going to break the news to Eddie (curiously, it was only now that I found his name easy on the tongue).
Part I
, furthermore, was nowhere near complete. We had still to shoot the Geneva scenes, and the bad weather we had endured at Annecy and Chambéry meant we would have to return there next year. At the same time there was no gainsaying that what we actually had in the can was
superb. A story was unfolding here that was utterly enthralling and both Karl-Heinz and Doon glowed on the screen.

In early January I showed Eddie carefully chosen segments of our rough cut interposed with linking commentary from me. All my caution was needless: he said he was overwhelmed and deeply moved. But then he paused.

“Brilliant. Fantastic. But where’s the film? That’s six months’ work?” He looked sad rather than angry.

“There’s more,” I said. “I haven’t shown you the rest.”

We got down to business. We argued, we haggled. I was in a strong position:
Joan of Arc
had been a great success—not quite a
Julie
, but highly satisfying all the same.
Julie
was still playing in the U.S.A. Eddie wanted
Part I
complete by July ’28. I demanded the end of September. I won. Eddie stipulated that I must forfeit my twenty-five-thousand-dollar completion bonus if I was one day into October. We saved some money by actually closing down the film for two months—March and April. I add this note because I have read the wildest and most irresponsible accounts of the filming of
The Confessions
. It has even been written that I spent five years making a two-hour film. For the record, then, the first phase of
The Confessions: Part I
lasted from July 1927 to February 1928. Phase two was to commence at Chambéry in May 1928.

Doon and I tried to meet as often as we could. She insisted, however, that if we made love we had to be together for a whole night. This not unreasonable demand made life extra-difficult for me, as you might imagine. My lies to Sonia became less and less circumspect. I found the whole business of covering up increasingly effortful. And I was encouraged in my laxity by Sonia’s astonishing naïveté. Or indifference.

I spent a whole weekend with Doon in February. Friday night, Saturday, Saturday night. I returned home on Sunday evening.

“Where were you?” Sonia said.

“I told you. At the studios, editing.”

“But they said you weren’t there. That you’d left on Friday night.”

“That’s nonsense. Of course I was.”

“I telephoned all day Saturday.”

“Well, I was in and out.”

“That would explain it.”

“What?”

“Someone told me they saw you in town on Saturday evening. In a restaurant. Kurfürstendamm.”

Mild panic symptoms. “Yes.… Well, I had to meet Doon Bogan. Script—you know—decisions.”

“How is Doon?”

“What?… Oh, fine, fine. Fine.… Why were you phoning me?”

“Hereford was ill.”

“Is he all right?”

“Seems to be now. Just a bad cold.”

“There’s no need to phone me just because a child’s got a cold, Sonia.”

I found this conversation most disturbing. I looked at Sonia’s expression closely (she was playing patience), but she seemed entirely credulous. Yet she had virtually trapped me in a lie. More intelligent questioning, had she been truly suspicious, would surely have caught me out.
Had she been truly suspicious
 … Why was she
not
suspicious? Over the next few days this question nagged at me. There were only two answers that I could come up with. One: that she was a trusting fool. Two: that my prolonged absences from the home suited her in some way.

I eventually asked Doon.

“Do you think Sonia could ever have an affair?”

“Why not? You are. Do you think you need a special talent?”

“I suppose so.”

“She’s attractive.”

“
Sonia?
”

“Yeah. In a sort of comforting earth-mothery way.”

“Really?”

“Well, I just know Alex used to say she was sort of sexy. He liked English women.”

This did me no good at all. To me, Sonia seemed unchanged. I had not felt a spasm of sexual attraction towards her since I had met Doon that Christmas night in 1926. But once the seed had been sown, suspicion began to flower. She was alone a lot; she was rich; she had servants, a car, and a driver if need be; the children were looked after.… What did she do all day?

It was during the lay-off months of March and April that these suspicions became intolerable. Doon asked me to come with her to a conference of international socialism in Paris, but I excused myself on the grounds that phase two of
Part I
required me in Berlin. I felt I had dedicated enough time and effort to the cause, with my generous donations,
my signing of innumerable petitions and protesting letters to the newspapers. I had managed to cut down on the meetings, but along with Doon I had actually marched twice through the streets of Berlin on KPD rallies. It was enough, I felt. Much as I loved her I did not want to submit that love to the trials of a two-week conference.

Thus, undistracted, I fell to brooding about Sonia and decided, reluctantly, to have her followed. I asked Eddie if he knew of a private investigator.

“Yes,” he said, “what for?”

I lied. I said a friend of Sonia had asked to borrow money from her. I merely wanted the proposed “scheme” investigated, discreetly.

Eddie looked shrewdly at me. “We used to use a man called Eugen for chasing debts. I never met him but his success rate was high.”

“Sounds ideal,” I said. “What’s his address?”

I was relieved that E. P. Eugen lived in an unfashionable northern quarter of the city—Wedding—in a small street next to the infectious-diseases hospital, and with a drab view of the Berlin ship canal at its southern end. I found it—and I am sure all Eugen’s clients felt the same—strangely reassuring to visit such an anonymous address. I traveled there by the
Ringbahn
—it seemed more fitting—and got off at Putlitzstrasse Station. I had never visited this district before: it was oddly spread out—warehouses, a new park that seemed not to have taken to its surroundings, the vast modern functional-looking hospital. I made my way quickly to Fehmarnstrasse.

On the door it said
EUGEN P. EUGEN, LOAN REPOSSESSION AND CHARACTER REFERENCES
. I knocked and was admitted by a young bespectacled girl. A small man, almost dainty, rested one haunch on what I took to be her desk. He turned and examined the dangling, gleaming toe of his boot.

“I have an appointment with Herr Eugen,” I said. “I am Herr Braun.”

“Ah, Herr Braun.” The little man stood up. “I am Eugen. Come in.”

I followed Eugen into his office. He really was very small, not much over five feet, and immaculately dressed. He had neatly parted blond hair with almost-white eyelashes, which gave him a look of childish openness. We sat down. Eugen took a long cigar out of a drawer in his desk and lit it. I imagined this was a reflex gesture. It seemed to say: “I may be a small man but I have a big cock.” I immediately disliked him.

He told me of his terms and I told him my business. I told him that I wanted a woman followed with the utmost discretion. I gave no name, just my address and Sonia’s description. I wanted to know where she went, who was there and what they did. It was simple, straightforward and our discussion lasted less than five minutes. I paid in advance and he agreed to provide a full report in one month. I got up to leave but Eugen was round his desk like a cat and stopped me at the door.

“Would you oblige me with your autograph, Herr Todd? For my secretary. She’s seen
Julie
five or ten times. Fifteen, perhaps.”

I signed, grudgingly, but without comment,

“Too, I am a great admirer,” he said in English, in a soft confidential voice. Then as I left he added pointedly, “Good day to you, Herr Braun.”

It was only two weeks before I heard from him. I was busy with the approaching restart of the film. Leo was away in Switzerland supervising construction of a huge set near the small town of Grex, which was doubling as eighteenth-century Geneva. I was working on a revolutionary technical device and was plotting its integration with the film when Eugen’s phone call was transferred to me in the photographic laboratories at Spandau.

“I wasn’t expecting to hear from you,” I said.

“There is good and bad news,” he said. “I must discuss them with you.”

We arranged to meet in a small café around the corner from his office in the late afternoon. It turned out to be a cellar café, a few uncomfortable doors away from the main entrance to the Institut für Infektionskrankenhaus. Eugen sat at the back of the café at a thin table, eating stuffed cucumbers. He had a bad fresh graze on his forehead and chin; apart from that he was as dapper as ever. He stopped eating as soon as he saw me and lit one of his stupid cigars.

“Can I offer you some beer? Some wine? There is excellent food here. Excellent—and at modest prices.”

“No, thanks. What happened?”

“Your wife. She discovered me.”

Eugen told me that it was his practice to use a small motorbike to follow cars. In this manner he had followed Sonia undiscovered for ten days. The day before yesterday she had not used the driver but had taken the car herself. She took an unfamiliar route and Eugen thought he was finally on to something. She motored out to the country. Somewhere near Dallgow, in a quiet lane, Eugen turned a corner and almost
ran into the back of Sonia’s car (our Packard), which was deliberately parked to bring about this result. Eugen braked, skidded and fell off his bike. He tore his clothes, grazed his face and was momentarily stunned. Sonia confronted him, brandished a revolver (it must have been a child’s toy—I had to admire her nerve and aplomb) and demanded to know why he was following her.

He looked down at his cucumber.

“I had to confess a powerful infatuation,” he said. “I’m sorry, but it’s the best excuse. It always works.” Sonia had gone through his wallet and had found his business cards (here I was thankful for Eugen’s euphemistic job description).

“But I must tell you,” he went on. “Good news. She’s an honest woman. There’s nothing illicit in her life, nothing. She meets her friends, she takes her children to the park. She shops. She plays cards twice a week with other women. That’s all.”

We haggled aimlessly for a while over his fee. He said the damage to his motorbike, clothes, face and self-esteem were barely covered by the unearned portion of his advance. I gave in and returned home somewhat relieved. Sonia never mentioned the incident to me. Why? Did she suspect me? Or was she flattered by Eugen’s subterfuge? Although I was reassured I still harbored illogical worries, even though there was nothing in Sonia’s demeanor or increasingly, round, placid face (Berlin was plumping her up) that could reasonably give me cause for alarm.

Is this the time for a brief tribute to Eddie Simmonette? I owe him so much (mind you, he owes me a fair bit too) and I will never forget his generosity and tolerance, his help and understanding, when I went to him in April 1928 and told him my plans to revise completely certain aspects of
The Confessions
and reshoot some of the previous year’s scenes.

I was bold—I pushed my luck—only because of that deathbed promise old Duric had extracted from him. But, sentimental reasons aside, there were sound commercial reasons for backing a John Todd film in those days. Anyway, I made my bid because I was fretting about certain sequences of the film and was seeking some means of resolving them.

The plain fact is that by 1928 there was nothing much more to be done with the camera. Every so-called trick and gimmick you see on today’s cinema screens had been discovered before three decades of the century were up. Rapid cutting, multiple exposure, moving cameras, angled shots, back lighting, matte screens, selective soft focus, vignette
masks, crane shots, lens diffusion, etc., etc., were all at the director’s disposal. It was as if, to take an analogy, the history of painting had moved from mud daubings on a cave wall to modern abstract expressionism in twenty-five years. We were even experimenting with a kind of 3-D picture in those days and this was one of the new techniques I wanted to employ. A firm in France was producing a type of embossed film that when projected on a screen gave the actors, if not a true three-dimensional effect, at least that of a bas-relief. It was particularly effective in close-up. The film stock was expensive but we had budgeted for it. I planned to use it in the famous cherry-picking incident, which we would film in Chambéry that summer.