The Woman in the Photograph (20 page)

When they stepped into the crowded room, the maître appeared at once, exclaiming, “Monsieur and Madame Man Ray!” and the barmen, vigorously shaking their latest creations, called out hellos. As they were escorted to one of the coveted tables next to the piano, Lee dodged champagne buckets and waving cigarette holders, smiling at her various acquaintances. They quickly whispered their drink orders as everyone settled into the semidarkness, waiting for the first set. A saxophone player, his face nearly covered by a fedora, helped a scrawny French girl to her feet. She teetered in
front of the microphone, then grasped it with satin gloves and, with her eyes closed, crooned “Love for Sale.”

Her heavy accent in English and her youthful innocence—her thin body swaying artlessly, her lipstick a dull pink—made the lyrics even more tragic. A prostitute peddling her wares, a nighttime salesgirl. Lee shivered at the idea of a young girl using her body as currency.
Love
for sale, indeed.

When the combo took a break, Jean Cocteau came up to their table. Lee liked Jean, such a talented and charismatic man, but knew he got on Man's nerves. Artistic groups in Paris were always breaking into fractions and, currently, André Breton couldn't stand Cocteau—he called him an unctuous dandy—which had undoubtedly influenced Man's opinion.

“Good evening, Man, Lee.” He bent down and kissed her hand. “Great music tonight, wouldn't you say?”

“Delicious,” Lee said. “Lovely to see you, Jean. Won't you sit down?”

“No, thank you. I'm on a quest.” He looked at them with an air of mystery. “Man, you know a lot of models. Do you happen to know any actresses? I need a real beauty to play a part in a film.”

“You're making a film?” Man's look combined condescension and envy. “Have you found anyone to finance it yet?”

“Yes, of course.” Jean's voice was velvet. “Viscount Charles de Noailles. I believe you made a film for him a year or two ago, didn't you?” He ignored Man's clouding brow and continued. “He approached me about backing a film. He wants a talkie this time. I've got a marvelous idea, but I need a beauty to play a Greek statue.”

Lee nearly jumped out of her chair. “
I'll
do it, Jean!”

Both men stared at her. Jean gently took her chin in his hand and studied her face. “You are gorgeous, Lee. Yes, I think you'll be perfect.”

“Fabulous.” She kissed him on the cheek. “What's the title of the film?”

“
The Blood of a Poet.
”

“Ah, there will be violence?” She jiggled her eyebrows. “A terrible crime?”

“You'll find out soon enough. I don't want to spoil anything for you.”

“This'll be such fun.” Lee beamed, thrilled with idea of being in Jean Cocteau's first film, to work in his milieu, to meet his crowd. Ever since she'd arrived in Paris, she'd been under Man's wing; this time, she could fly entirely on her own.

“Shall we meet next Wednesday for a screen test? Give me your number and I'll call you with the details.”

When he'd moved on to his next group of friends, she turned to Man excitedly, but when she saw his face—the dramatic pitch of his eyebrows, the scowl, furiously sucking on a wilted cigarette—her smile immediately drooped.

“Damn it to hell. What are you thinking, Lee?”

“What's the matter with you?” She looked into his eyes. “What's the problem? I told you I wanted to be an actress when I was younger. And this is even better than Hollywood. A Surrealist film—”

“Surrealist! That phony.” He swallowed his drink whole. “Really, Lee, I can't believe you want anything to do with it.”

She looked out into the crowd.
Here we go again!
She felt like
a small child whose strict father—one very unlike her own—wouldn't let her play with the other kids.

“I just think it'll be fun,” she repeated.

Man turned to Lee and exhaled a huff of smoke. She felt his eyes on her, but didn't look at him. She was sick of it. He couldn't even share her with another artist, couldn't let her go her own way. She felt him fuming next to her—would steam start rising from his suit?—and heard his groans and sighs, but ignored him. She glanced around the room, at the high heels on the dance floor, at the Picabia paintings on the walls, up at the chandeliers. After a few minutes' stalemate, he gently took her hand.

“Do whatever you want,” he mumbled, then stubbed the butt to shreds.

“I will,
mon amour
.” She closed her hand around his—a concession to his belated generosity—but repeated herself to cast aside any doubt. “I will.”

•  •  •

Lee checked her watch anxiously. She was running late to the cast meeting. Man had wanted to play around in bed that morning—an amorous form of protest, obviously, as he was fully aware that she was expected by nine—and then pouted in silence when she finally got up. From stop to stop, she watched commuters getting on and off the metro; all of them—although half-asleep, bored, or grouchy—seemed absolutely certain of where they were going and what they were doing. She was neither. In the last few days, she'd begun to doubt her impulsive decision to participate in Cocteau's film. Did her community-theater roles prepare her for this? Her modeling? Her short stint as a chorus line dancer?

Lee popped out of the metro on the outskirts of Paris—the train's last stop—and got completely disoriented. Here was that odd, working-class combination of industrial and rural; this Paris was much shabbier than the one close to the Seine. Lee walked several blocks in the wrong direction until, finally, a cartload of farmers—Italian immigrants—gave her a lift to the studio alongside their onions. When she walked in the door, Cocteau had already given general instructions to the strange hodgepodge of characters there—amateurs and professionals, French and international—and many of them were readying to leave.

“Ah, Lee, there you are.” His narrow face broke into a languid smile. “I was beginning to worry.”

“Sorry, Jean.” Nervous about working with a new artist, she breathed out, relieved he wasn't angry. “I've never been out this way before.”

He took her by the hand to introduce her to the other main players.

“Mademoiselle Lee Miller,” he said, “I'd like for you to meet our poet, Enrique Rivero. He's originally from Chile but has been making films in France for the last five years.” Lee looked him over approvingly. Dark and well-built, he had black eyes, a straight nose, and full lips. He shook her hand warmly and gave her a wink. “And this is Féral Benga, the African dancer. He'll be our angel. Doesn't he look angelic?”

Ebony-black and muscular, Féral made a quick pose of a saint—eyes to the heavens, hands in prayer—then smiled at Lee with bright, perfect teeth.

“Wonderful to meet you both,” she said, wondering which of the two might be better in bed.

“
And Lee will be our statue. Her costume is going to take some work.” Cocteau paused, reflective, then scratched his leg. Lee, who was also feeling itchy, suddenly noticed that most of the crew was absently scratching an arm or a side. Next to her, Cocteau pinched a flea from his white shirt. “What the devil is this?”

“I think it's coming from those old beds,” said an older man, hired on to work the lights.

“You mean the soundproofing?” Cocteau said as he approached a wall. Discarded mattresses had been hung on the studio walls to block the noise from the street.

Curious, most of the cast walked toward them; they were crawling with fleas and bedbugs.

“Can't something be done about this?” Cocteau's shout was unusually shrill.

“We can try fumigating,” said the lighting man. “Not making any promises, though.”

“You do that,” Cocteau said, raising his hands in disgust. “Lee, you come with me. We have to get your costume together.”

He flicked on the switch in the women's dressing room and bare bulbs blinked on around a large mirror. There was a counter beneath it littered with a few leftover rouge pots and powder puffs, and a small sink in the corner. Behind a changing screen, she could see racks of old costumes—harem pants, petticoats, ball gowns, peasant clothes, even animal outfits—left stranded from other productions. From a cupboard, Cocteau pulled out two plaster arm fragments, one nearly to the elbow, the other little more than a shoulder, and began sizing them up next to her.

“I
want the statue to resemble the
Venus de Milo,
a symbol of feminine perfection. Unfortunately, since we have to hide your arms somewhere, you can't have a bare torso.”

He looked at her long, graceful arms with repugnance, as if he'd like to dispose of them, then took out a tape measure and began jotting down various measurements.

“We'll whitewash you, truss up your arms, then cover you with a toga.” He reached out and touched her short bob. “I'll make a papier-mâché cast of your hair. We can't have this moving around. As a matter of fact, you won't be doing much moving at all. Imagine you are living stone.”

Lee nodded unhappily. She didn't realize being a statue would be so uncomfortable. Living stone? Would she even be recognizable? Oh, what the hell! At least she was out of the studio, alongside talented people, trying something new.

“I think I can handle that,” she said, game for anything.

“Fabulous.” He gave her a preoccupied pat on the shoulder. “Come back in the morning for a fitting. If we have the bug situation worked out, I'd like to begin filming the next day.”

•  •  •

Lee stood awkwardly, her balance thrown off, nervously awaiting her entrance. Her arms were bound around her ribs and waist as if she were hugging herself tightly. It was difficult to breathe. Her whole body was painted white, except for dark red lips; the two broken arms and the sculpted hair were smoothed into place with a mixture of butter and flour. Her skin itched all over; she suspected the tenacious fleas who managed to survive the pesticide had found new lodgings in her costume. Trying to ignore it, she peeked out from under her
thick, white lids to watch the action. In the first scene, the poet was on his own.

Enrique walked out on set—bare-chested, wearing breeches and a powdered wig—to his place at the easel. Lee admired his looks, a handsome libertine straight out of
Les liaisons dangereuses,
but when Cocteau caught sight of his naked back, he realized his actor had a huge scar.

“What's this?” he asked, mildly annoyed but mainly curious. He ran his finger along the deep groove on Enrique's shoulder blade.

“I was shot by a lover's husband back in Chile,” Enrique said, his words intensified by his musical accent. “A cuckold can be surprisingly dangerous.”

Interested, Lee tipped her head back to see them better. She knew the perils of a jealous man. Having a lover shoot a man in the back, though, was beyond her experience.

“I see,” said Cocteau, nodding slowly. “It's not bad. This is a story about the pain of the poet, after all.” He cleared his throat. “Poets shed not only the red blood of the heart, but the white blood of their souls.” He picked up a prop paintbrush from next to the easel, dipped it in black ink, and painted a swirl around the scar ending with a star. “Poets have scars that they turn into beauty. Continue!”

Enrique returned to the easel and filming started. He made a line portrait—or, rather, traced one Cocteau had drawn—and was shocked to see the mouth come to life (at least he pretended to be; the moving lips would be added later). When he tried to rub it out with his hand, the mouth became trapped on his palm. In a panic, he tried to rid himself of it, to toss it away.
Failing, he tried to meld it with his own mouth, in a long, suffocating kiss, then to rub it into his skin, a slow, licking caress moving from his neck down his torso.

Lee watched this scene of fearful auto-eroticism, trying not to smile lest she crack her makeup. She thought most men—Man especially—would love to have a working mouth on their palms. The possibilities! Watching Enrique pet himself—his black eyes flashing as he stroked his muscular chest—she thought perhaps she could use one as well.

The poet, desperate, then spied the statue on the side of his room, a Greek goddess, a Venus, his muse. Lee in plaster. He placed his hand over its mouth.

“Cut! Great job, Enrique. Lee, you're up.”

A member of the crew carefully picked up the hollow sculpture made to Lee's likeness as Cocteau helped Lee to its place on the set, guiding her with a firm hand. The statue would now come to life. Her heart pounding, she stood straight, trying not to sway. In the lights, the rancid butter around her hairline started to melt. Her nose twitched.

“Now then, Enrique, put your hand on Lee's mouth. Gently; you don't want to smear the lipstick. Action!”

She felt his warmth for just a moment, then he briskly tore his hand away. Imagining an awakening after a long sleep, she fluttered her eyelids and took short, labored breaths. In that costume, she could scarcely do anything else.

“Lee! The muse is now alive.” Cocteau's voice trilled with passionate energy. “You must egg the poet on, into the mirror, inside himself!”

Trying not to stammer, Lee said her lines in French, the words she'd
rehearsed a thousand times at home, worrying about her pronunciation as much as her delivery.

“There is only one way left. You must go into the mirror and explore. I congratulate you. You wrote that one could go into mirrors, but you didn't believe it. Try, always try . . .”

They did a half-dozen takes: Cocteau wanted her voice more lilting, more mysterious (even though a French woman would dub it later); Lee lost her balance and nearly fell; a lightbulb blew; Enrique accidently smiled. Finally, their director was satisfied.

“All right, now. We're going to take advantage of Lee's makeup—I daresay you don't want to put it on again—to film the statue's final scene. It will take place after the poet's trip into the mirror. Furious with his muse for sending him deep within his psyche, he comes out and, with that mallet, breaks her to bits.”