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“What is it?” she said. She tried to comfort him. “Don’t cry, darling. Did something frighten you? Here, mummy will take you upstairs. Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”
“Good night, Christopher,” Ned said.
“Say good night, darling.”
She went up, climbed into bed with him, and finally got him to sleep, but he kicked so much she came back down, holding her robe closed with her hand. Ned had left her a note: his back was giving him trouble, he had gone home.
Truus’ place was taken by a Colombian woman who was very religious and did not drink or smoke. Then by a black girl named Mattie who did both but stayed for a long time.
One night in bed, reading Town and Country, Gloria came across something that stu
Still, lying there with the magazine on her knees she could not help thinking of it. What had actually become of Truus? She looked at the photograph again. Had she found her way to Amsterdam or Paris and, making dirty movies or whatever, met someone? It was unbearable to think of her being invited to places, slimmer now, sitting in the brilliance of crowded restaurants with her complexion still bad beneath the makeup and the morals of a housefly. The idea that there is an unearned happiness, that certain people find their way to it, nearly made her sick. Like the girl Ned was marrying who used to work in the catering shop just off the highway near Bridgehampton. That had been a blow, that had been more than a blow. But then nothing, almost nothing, really made sense anymore.
THE CINEMA
I.
At ten-thirty then, she arrived. They were waiting. The door at the far end opened and somewhat shyly, trying to see in the dimness if anyone was there, her long hair hanging like a schoolgirl’s, everyone watching, she slowly, almost reluctantly approached…. Behind her came the young woman who was her secretary.
Great faces ca
When he was introduced to her, Guivi, the leading man, smiled. His teeth were large and there existed a space between the incisors. On his chin was a mole. These defects at that time were revered. He’d had only four or five roles, his discovery was sudden, the shot in which he appeared for the first time was often called one of the most memorable introductions in all of film. It was true. There is sometimes one image which outlasts everything, even the names are forgotten. He held her chair. She acknowledged the introductions faintly, one could hardly hear her voice.
The director leaned forward and began to talk. They would rehearse for ten days in this bare hall. A
They began to read, sitting at the table together. Make no attempt to find meaning, Iles told them, not so soon, this was only the first step. There were no windows. There was neither day nor night. Their words seemed to rise, to vanish like smoke above them. Guivi read his lines as if laying down cards of no particular importance. Bridge was his passion. He gave it all his nights. Halfway through, he touched her shoulder lightly as he was doing an intimate part. She seemed not to notice. She was like a lizard, only her throat was beating. The next time he touched her hair. That single gesture, so natural as to be almost unintended, made her quiet, stilled her fears.
She fled afterward. She went directly back to the Hotel de Ville. Her room was filled with objects. On the desk were books still wrapped in brown paper, magazines in various languages, letters hastily read. There was a small anteroom, not regularly shaped, and a bedroom beyond. The bed was large. In the ma
The next day she was better, she was like a woman ready to work. She brushed her hair back with her hand as she read. She was attentive, once she even laughed.
They were brought small cups of coffee from across the courtyard.
“How does it sound to you?” she asked the writer.
“Well…” he hesitated.
He was a wavering man named Peter Lang, at one time Lengsner. He had seen her in all her sacred life, a figure of lights, he had read the article, the love letter written to her in Bazaar. It described her perfect modesty, her instinct, the shape of her face. On the opposite page was the photograph he cut out and placed in his journal. This film he had written, this important work of the newest of the arts, already existed complete in his mind. Its power came from its chasteness, the discipline of its images. It was a film of indirection, the surface was calm with the calm of daily life. That was not to say still. Beneath the visible were emotions more potent for their concealment. Only occasionally, like the head of an iceberg ominously rising from nowhere and then dropping from sight did the terror come into view.
When she turned to him then, he was overwhelmed, he couldn’t think of what to say. It didn’t matter. Guivi gave an answer.
“I think we’re still a little afraid of some of the lines,” he said. “You know, you’ve written some difficult things.”
“Ah, well…”
“Almost impossible. Don’t misunderstand, they’re good, except they have to be perfectly done.”
She had already turned away and was talking to the director.
“Shakespeare is filled with lines like this,” Guivi continued. He began to quote Othello.
It was now Iles’ turn, the time to expose his ideas. He plunged in. He was like a kind of crazy schoolmaster as he described the work, part Freud, part lovelorn columnist, tracing interior lines and motives deep as rivers. Members of the crew had sneaked in to stand near the door. Guivi jotted something in his script.
“Yes, notes, make notes,” Iles told him, “I am saying some brilliant things.”
A performance was built up in layers, like a painting, that was his method, to start with this, add this, then this, and so forth. It expanded, became rich, developed depths and undercurrents. Then in the end they would cut it back, reduce it to half its size. That was what he meant by good acting.
He confided to Lang, “I never tell them everything. I’ll give you an example: the scene in the clinic. I tell Guivi he’s going to pieces, he thinks he’s going to scream, actually scream. He has to stuff a towel in his mouth to prevent it. Then, just before we shoot, I tell him: Do it without the towel. Do you see?”