Seducing Ingrid Bergman (14 page)

Even now, thinking about it, she feels something open and close, open and close inside her like a jellyfish.

9

There’s a full-page advertisement in
Life
for
The Bells of St Mary’s
, in which Ingrid plays a nun.

‘That’s funny,’ I say. ‘I never imagined you in a habit.’

I pass the magazine across the table. And there she is, a picture of sweet innocence in her dark wimple and robe. Her eyes stare upwards devoutly, shining. Bing Crosby stands in the background looking droll.

‘I always wanted to play a saint.’

I give her a sceptical look. ‘Really?’

‘Joan of Arc is my favourite character.’

‘Wasn’t she a witch?’

She looks at the magazine, shakes her head, smiles. ‘If only people knew the truth.’

‘What if they did?’

‘It’s quite simple. I’d never work in Hollywood again.’

I laugh. She doesn’t smile. ‘Look,’ I say. Below the photograph is an article about her. It begins worshipfully:
She doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t stay out late at night …

Ingrid raises her wineglass in one hand, her cigarette in the other, and nods.

‘Who writes this stuff?’

‘The studio has a whole team of people working on things like that.’

‘Can you be a saint and eat ice-cream at the same time?’

‘It’s no joke. You don’t realize. The press would destroy me.’

‘It wouldn’t make you more interesting?’

‘People would feel betrayed.’

‘Which people?’

She regards me as though I’m stupid. ‘The public, of course.’

‘You really care what they think?’

‘I want them to love me.’

‘You’re sicker than I thought.’

Again she doesn’t laugh. ‘It’s all right for you. You’re not the one who’s married.’

‘Who said I wasn’t?’

Ingrid looks up at me, incredulous. The waiter comes over and pours two more glasses of wine. During the silence Ingrid snaps the pages of the magazine.

The waiter retires.

‘Your girlfriend? The one crushed by a tank?’

‘No.’

‘Who, then?’

‘I needed residency.’

‘Capa, that’s terrible. I don’t approve.’

‘I threw in a year’s dancing lessons.’

‘I can’t believe you did that.’

‘She liked to dance.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I was about to be deported back to the Nazis. What would you have done?’ I look at her and she shakes her head. She doesn’t believe me. ‘I’m serious.’

‘You’re never serious.’

‘I am about this.’

‘Did you love her?’

‘I hardly knew her.’

‘Did you sleep with her?’

‘I tried it on in the car afterwards. She slapped my face and ran off. We didn’t even say goodbye.’

Ingrid tuts. ‘Have you seen her since?’

‘No, never.’

‘And the dance lessons?’

‘I’m still saving up.’

She begins fiddling with a spoon, tapping it against the side of her glass. It makes a series of high clinks. A woman at a nearby table looks over, irritated by the sound.

‘It’s typical of you. Frivolous.’

‘It saved my life.’

‘If you want to save your life, don’t be a war photographer.’

‘It’s my job.’

‘It’s your job to get yourself killed?’

‘I’m short enough to avoid the shells.’

‘All for what? For just a few pictures?’

‘Hey, I risk nothing for less than a four-page spread.’

She blinks for longer than is necessary. Her back remains very straight. Her eyes grow solemn. ‘Don’t you ever get scared?’

‘Let me tell you, it’s not easy changing your pants under fire.’

At first she looks challenging, then frustrated. She shakes her head, begins pulling on her gloves. ‘You’re insane,’ she says.

I don’t say anything, just watch her face tighten, the hair on her scalp slide back.

‘You ought to be careful, Capa,’ she says. ‘One of these days, your luck will run out.’

*   *   *

It happens like this.

My legs ache from all the walking, and my face aches from the rain that soaks me through and drips miserably from the tip of my helmet onto my nose. It’s been raining for days. Everywhere is mud. The smell of shit rises like steam from the fields.

The rain quickens, heavier this time, relentless and drenching. The wind narrows between the farmhouses. You can see the shape of it in the trees, swaying as if in layers of water. A ripple of wind must enter an opening in my sleeve because I feel a chill run up my arm and spread across my back.

A split-second later, there’s a flash. The explosion deafens everyone, a concussive shock, sending clumps of soil and grass a hundred feet into the air. There’s no suspense or hovering, no moment at which you’re conscious of a shell screaming its way towards you. The sound comes after it hits.

Things in this instant fly off at all angles.

My ears ring. My heart slams inside my chest. My skin stings as if flayed.

There are screams of pain, terrible cries of anguish.

I run to get close, to get closer, through the smoke and the noise and the confusion, to where the shells landed, so I can see first-hand what’s happening. I hold the camera in front of me like a torch.

There’s a rhythm to the shelling, a heavy
pom pom pom
, with the space of a few seconds between each new launch of ordnance. Gaps are smashed into the farmhouses and hedges. The holes smoke as though the explosions come from underground.

One guy is hurt. He pitches sideways and staggers as if tipsy. He’s coming towards me, stupefied.

I get off several shots, framing him in the viewfinder. I watch him, paralysed for a moment, not so much with fear but with fascination, because he’s looking straight at me.

His eyes are staring, intense, and it’s as if he’s asking me a question and waiting for a response, or as though he’s accusing me of something. With an odd, otherworldly roll, his eyes turn inwards. For the first time he must glimpse with appalling clarity what is happening, recognize the vast space opening up beneath his feet. His head lolls at a dreadful angle. His eyes, still open, are fixed into the distance. He stands for a moment in a strange motionless pose before falling to the ground.

‘No,’ is all he says.

At this moment something inside him seems to collapse. Frightened, he starts to pant, inhaling desperately in shallow gasps.

It’s not long before his whole body is convulsing. He cries, not quite soundlessly. One of his arms makes a violent movement, and abruptly the convulsions stop.

The blood turns his uniform crimson, mixing with the grass and the mud as it spills on the ground around him.

‘It’s all right,’ says one of the men tending to him. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

But I know just from looking at him, with his face already grey like water half-frozen, that it is not going to be all right. He is not going to be okay. He stares ahead dumbly as if at some dark secret place, a hidden inner landscape, cold as the space between the stars.

And the only way I know of answering that look of his is to show it, to expose it, somehow to communicate the stink and the hell and the waste of it, so that in the end there exists no gap between the camera and the action – so that, even though you can’t smell the sweat and stench of decay or feel the rain on your face, nevertheless when you look at the photograph you’ll feel as if you’re there, while those who
are
there won’t even notice because I’m so much a part of what’s going on, and when they see the images later they’ll be moved to say, ‘That’s how it was.’

It’s only when something tragic happens that the fact hits home and the men remember why I’m here. And they recognize that I’m here because I want to be and not because anyone compels me. I’m here because I’ve chosen this job. It’s my decision to risk my life. The more conscious they become of this, the more they consider me plain crazy, even dangerous. They can’t understand why any sane person would do such a thing, and you can sense them getting edgy as if I might bring them bad luck. Because it’s clear they’d do anything to get the hell out of here, seize any chance to take the boat home. I know what they’re thinking. What son-of-a-bitch wants to take those pictures anyway? Doesn’t that make me some kind of vulture? Or a voyeur, at least? Doesn’t that make me one of the damned? And the more you see, the less you feel. So they loathe me at these moments for having the freedom of choice they never had, and for choosing wrong.

*   *   *

Ingrid tells me to get on the bed and to stand on one leg. I ask her why, and she says to just do it. So I stand on one leg on the bed, wobble a bit but hold it steady. The mattress is hard and springy beneath my feet.

‘That’s good.’

Once she sees I’m not going to fall over, she tells me to close my eyes.

‘Still on one leg?’

‘Trust me.’

‘All right.’

‘Try to keep your balance.’

I close my eyes.

At school in the gym, I remember, there was a yellow line that stretched the whole way down the hall. The teacher told us to walk along it, to imagine it as a tightrope strung high above the ground, understanding that one wrong step would cause us to fall off. It seemed easy, a simple matter of putting one foot in front of the other. In fact it proved surprisingly difficult. Very few of us succeeded in maintaining our balance the whole way. The teacher stood with his arms folded, laughing out loud as first one and then another tipped sideways, stumbling. I was one of the few who managed it.

Blind this time, I hold my balance for a few seconds but soon there comes a tumbling sensation. It starts inside my ears and extends to my legs. I become disorientated, feel myself plunging headlong, and the next thing I know I’m toppling like a log onto the bed.

Ingrid laughs.

I pull her down next to me so that she shrieks. Our heads are very close.

‘Just one thing.’ She props herself up on one elbow, keeps the hair out of her eyes with her hand.

‘What?’

She looks at me intently.

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t want to get pregnant.’

‘Haven’t I been careful?’

‘When are you ever careful?’

‘When it matters.’

‘And it matters now?’

‘Absolutely.’

She looks sceptical. ‘What makes me so different?’

‘Everything.’

‘I don’t want to get pregnant.’

‘Trust me,’ I say.

*   *   *

Tonight in Paris, the sky is purple, thin like the skin of an onion, layer upon layer making it opaque. The trees around the streetlamps seem apparitions. The air is stirred-up, the moon risen, obscurely tugging at something.

Ingrid is tired, her nerves stretched tight. Her head is buzzing from too much wine, too much coffee, too many things on her mind.

She stands for a few moments in the middle of her hotel room, as if trying to make connections between all the parts of her life. She finds herself laughing at some small funny thing that is private between her and Capa, and knowing it is small and exists just between them makes it all the funnier. At the same time she’s shocked to find herself entertaining the idea of a little world which only the two of them inhabit – a world that her husband, Petter, has been banished from, in which he’s invisible, in which he doesn’t exist. For the first time, she feels life is possible, even preferable, without him.

She grows conscious of the night outside, its late fragrant flowers and simmering insects, the seethe of people, the city’s lazy nocturnal warmth, and the lamps that hang like fruit. And with it comes a heedless sense, a refusal to feel afraid or regret anything, only a determination to keep the excitement going, and never to look back.

Ingrid stands by the long window in her room, when Joe enters clutching yet another telegram.

‘They’re getting impatient,’ he says. Silence spreads like a carpet between them. ‘What shall I tell them?’

She laughs, looks out of the window onto the square. ‘Can I ask you a question, Joe?’

‘Sure.’

‘Do you think it’s right to stay married to a man when you no longer love him?’

Joe looks on gravely, stares at the floor. His hand holding the telegram falls to his side. ‘You realize what you’re saying?’

‘You think I’m crazy?’

‘I think you’re lucky to have a husband who loves you, a healthy daughter, a beautiful home. Most women would kill for what you have.’

The thought chases through her brain. ‘Well, what if I want more?’ She says this not from any sense of triumph, but out of despair.

His look is full of pity. ‘If you’re not careful, you might end up with a lot less.’ He stands motionless for a moment. He makes a scroll of the telegram and slaps it several times against his thigh before turning and leaving the room.

Ingrid stands by the window, touches it with her finger. The glass feels cold. She presses the finger repeatedly to her hot cheek, then presses her cheek against the window. She has the sensation of life existing mistily on the other side. Her thoughts swerve towards Capa, and it’s as if a rib of hers cries out. Flickeringly his image returns to her, spun on a dodgy inward projector, mingling with the lights of the city outside. She unsticks her face from the window, leaving a shapeless patch of redness where her skin has pressed, still warm.

*   *   *

When we come out of Maxim’s, it’s raining and we take a cab. The streets of the city appear inky, rinsed. Between the blur of the wipers, the streetlamps seem swollen then fractured for a moment. The shadows of the trees look dark and ragged. Headlights splinter to form Xs like kisses. And as if by magic, droplets of rain tremble upwards on the windshield, forced backwards by the wind and speed of the car.

We’re pressed next to each other in the back of the car. She crosses her legs towards me, nuzzles her head into my neck and smiles. I enjoy the feeling of warmth, the sense that our bodies fit together, the knit of our limbs.

Still, when the cab stops outside her hotel and she motions almost routinely for me to follow her up, it comes as a surprise when I hear myself say no. I tell her that I’m tired, and that anyway I promised to meet Irwin.