Seducing Ingrid Bergman (4 page)

She says she loves food but doesn’t use make-up. She says she doesn’t mind whether she appears on the stage or in films, as long as she is working. She admits that she’s shy, but declares that inside her there is a lion.

Asked why she chose to be an actress, she says she didn’t choose acting, acting chose her, but without it now she would stop breathing.

Of future film projects, she says she has to trust the voice inside her that tells her what to do.

Does she believe in God?

She says that God hasn’t exactly covered Himself in glory with the recent war.

The interviewer studies her before writing this down. Already she knows he won’t include it.

Asked what she thinks of Humphrey Bogart, her co-star in
Casablanca
, she says that it is possible to kiss a man and not know him, and this is what it was like with Bogart because he kept himself to himself, but in the film he looked at her with such longing that it makes her blush whenever she watches it now, and her husband was worried something might be going on.

She doesn’t say this last bit. But she thinks it, and the way the journalist shuffles uneasily in his chair makes it seem as if he has heard it, too.

She is quick to write him a note to thank him for his time, to compliment him on his professionalism, and to wish him well for the future.

The next day, her picture is featured prominently on the front page.

3

I sit with Irwin at one of the aluminium tables in an Art Deco café on the boulevard Saint-Germain: big smoky mirrors, burnished cutlery, glinting chandeliers.

The pâtisseries may be empty and the cakes just cardboard models; the menus may show less than half what was offered before the war and at more than twice the price, but the food still tastes wonderful. And that’s not all that stays the same.

Despite the hardships, the women in Paris remain immaculately turned out. Every minute or so one of them rises from a table and heads towards the twisty stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, I know, is a lavatory with a dodgy lock. Inside, it’s damp and fetid, with mosquitoes fizzing round the tiles. There’s no toilet as such, just a single richly stained hole in the ground, with cleated blocks on either side where you plant your feet. And here’s the thing – beneath all the elegance and chic, at the base of all these layers of refinement lies this dark stinking hole, and just like everyone else, these women have to squat above it, balance their heels, hitch up their skirts with one hand and somehow dab themselves with the other.

What’s marvellous is the way they return afterwards – poised, graceful, even fragrant – to their tables. The waiters go on waiting, the coffee cups sit exquisitely in their saucers, the poodles sit panting in the taxi cabs outside, and not a word is said.

That’s Paris for you. The tints and smells and textures change around me like a new season. Beyond the window, a blue sky presses everything together. The leaves of the sycamore trees, their dense greenness, seem especially lovely under the sun.

Irwin and I laugh about last night when two women came to blows over him in a bar. A real fight, with hair-pulling and cat-like scratches.

A thickset and tough-looking Brooklyn Jew, with a barrel chest and tight curly hair, Irwin is a writer. He enjoyed some success with his stories and plays before the war, and now he says he’s amassed enough material for a novel. He kids me that I might be in it, and that I’ll recognize myself, either in the figure of the debonair photographer who knows his stingers from his whisky sours, or in the shape of the undersized Hungarian forever jumping onto a train with a bottle of champagne and someone else’s wife.

I make to punch him and we spar for a moment, shadow-boxing, much to the disdain of the patrons, who look at us as though we are crazy.

One thing that has changed: the price of drinks across the city. Champagne and brandy cost $30 a bottle. It’s difficult to get hold of whisky or gin, but the cognac is good value at ten cents a glass, and you can mix it with Coca-Cola to make it last.

The key thing is to remain on good terms with the bartender, and to call him by his first name. Alain stands behind the coffee machine that gleams like a locomotive boiler. The levers hiss as they release their steam. I ask him to add a shot of cognac to my coffee, to give it a kick.

‘You want some?’ I ask Irwin.

‘A bit early for me.’

I realize something terrible. It hits me for the first time. ‘You know what?’ I tell Irwin. ‘It just occurred to me. I’m out of work.’

‘Peace doesn’t make good copy. You know that.’

‘Thirty-one and no prospects. What am I going to do?’

‘You could move into portraits, weddings, set up a stall on the Pont Neuf.’

‘Maybe I should get some business cards printed:
Robert Capa: War photographer – unemployed.
’

In the meantime I order another shot of cognac. In the same instant, a large-eyed man runs into the bar, starts talking in rapid French to some friends in the corner, beneath a cartoon of Napoleon and Charles de Gaulle. A rumour like a gust of wind runs abruptly round the tables, lifting people to their feet. They seem excited, military and civilian alike, while the girls on the barstools start chattering like parrots. Everyone starts to leave without finishing their drinks.

‘What’s going on?’ Irwin asks.

No one stops to answer. They’re all in too much of a hurry. The café empties except for one elderly, red-nosed gentleman who sits, bored and stubbornly unimpressed, reading a newspaper. He sees us looking puzzled, speaks in French without taking his eyes off the paper. ‘Some Hollywood stars are on their way to entertain the troops.’ He turns a page. ‘They’re stopping over in Paris.’

‘Who?’ I’m thinking, Bob Hope, Jack Benny. Rita Hayworth, maybe?

He looks up at us for the first time, evidently sceptical, his cigarette smoked within millimetres of his fingers. ‘You really care?’

Irwin and I exchange a look. Yes, we care.

He returns wearily to his copy of
L’Humanité
.

We finish our drinks, throw some money on the table, including enough for a tip, and leave.

I glance back at the old man who shakes his head as he turns a page, holding the paper upright for a second. Realizing that some wineglasses have been left on the tables, he leans over and pours the remains of one glass into the remains of another until his own glass is brimful. I wish I had my camera to capture the smile on his face. The old devil. Satisfied, he sits back, sips at his drink and returns to his newspaper, which he spreads across the table like a wealth of cloth.

*   *   *

Irwin and I head straight for the Ritz. I decide not to go back for my Contax. Too many photographers already swarm outside.

The lobby is hot and crowded, tense with expectation. But for an hour or so, nothing happens. Then, just when everyone is growing restless and frustrated, a black limousine enters the place Vendôme, with a low rumble on the cobblestones. There’s a flurry of activity. Doors are opened. A woman steps out. Everyone presses to see.

Touched by sunlight, she pulls a hand through her hair, which glitters brilliantly, and then gives a little wave. Quickly she’s surrounded by a crowd of fans and photographers, many of whom have been waiting for hours. All of them are calling out her name. She’s handed a big bouquet of orchids and a spray of pink roses, both so large that she hands them to the man behind her – a tall, dark-suited, stern-looking fellow who shepherds the pressmen, directing the entourage towards the hotel.

There’s such a crush as she enters the revolving doors, it seems there’s a danger that she might get stuck. The glass panels reflect split-second glimpses of her face. Animated, smiling, and unflustered it seems by all the pushing, she is swept through the lobby where I stand with Irwin, each of us on tip-toe, straining to see.

She’s beautiful – more beautiful even than she appears on the screen. She walks as if against a light wind, a slightly absent look on her face. And something in the tone of her body and the way she holds herself seems to give off a flare, a sense of exhilaration, a heightened air of expectancy. All through the lobby, amid the sheet lightning of cameras, an electricity is generated by her passing, by the sheer vividness of this woman. It’s as if there’s something charged about her, a crackle of energy, as if – were you to touch her – you’d probably get a shock.

I feel my vision tighten around her. My eyes take her in, her image stored. Long white gloves. Black polka-dot neckerchief. Ice-blue eyes. Her cheeks are high in colour as if fresh from a bath, her face luminous in the afterglow of flashbulbs.

A narrow skirt constricts her movements, so her steps are whisperingly quick. Her heels click on the floor. But there’s nothing fussy, no visible hurry in her walk, just a rather restrained sense of grace that makes everything else around her look gaudy. Effortless, she seems to glide, and if her skirt did not constrain her motion, did not somehow manage to tug her back, the impression is she might just float away. Her existence is frictionless. The forces that work to pull the rest of us down, appear merely to buoy her up. The mirrors, light fixtures, carpets, serve only to support her progress. She negotiates her way unresisted through the throng.

I nudge Irwin.

‘Oh, boy,’ he says.

She has the kind of glamour that has little need to declare itself, yet is always on display. Blessed with beauty, she’s unable to diminish its impact on those around her. It simply glows from her, blinding us, an inner incandescence spilled. She slips through an encircling group of pressmen who instinctively part to make way. It’s as though magnets contend around her, at the same time pushing people away and pulling them towards her.

Familiar to those assembled as a giantess on screen and billboards, here she is among us now. It’s as though we know her already. She has spoken to us, stared us in the face, her fears and desires exposed, her dreams and disappointments projected into our heads. And though remote and brilliant as the stars in the sky, nevertheless there seems something shy about the smile she bestows.

She sails towards the elevator, which a trembling bellboy holds open. Flashbulbs go on popping like champagne corks. Her face takes on a shine from the lights. Her dreamy progress continues into the lift. And then as the door sucks shut, she is gone.

I can still smell her perfume trailed like a ribbon behind her, haunting the foyer, still hear the tick of her heels. The murmur and buzz that follow her are sustained as a high hum. No longer solid, she hovers among us, a rumour in the stirred-up lobby, a ghost in a photograph.

*   *   *

We grab some lined paper and a pen from the desk, and busy ourselves scribbling at a table. We make several false starts and screw up many pieces of paper because we want to get it right.

The note needs to be witty and intriguing, bold and provocative; otherwise she won’t bother to read it. The thing is to project an attitude of casualness, but for the message to be urgent underneath.

‘Okay,’ Irwin says. ‘Read it one last time.’

I recite it in a whisper that only the two of us can hear.

SUBJECT:     Dinner.

DATE:     6 June 1945.

PLACE:     Paris, France.

TO:     Miss Ingrid Bergman.

1. This is a joint effort. At your service, Robert Capa and Irwin Shaw.

2. We planned to send flowers with this note, inviting you to dinner. Consultation with our financiers, however, reveals it is possible to pay for either flowers or dinner but unfortunately not both. Dinner won by a close margin.

3. Our taste is for champagne but our budget is for beer. Our supply of charm is unlimited.

4. We do not perspire and we sleep standing up.
We will call you at 18:15.
Signed: two veterans of love and war.

We give the bellboy a dollar to push the note under her door.

*   *   *

A little after 18.15, I slip a second dollar bill to the receptionist and phone through to her room.

To my amazement, she answers. My scalp freezes, my stomach does a flip. I can see my face in the mirror opposite. My eyes have a faraway look.

I’m surprised by her Swedish accent. It sounds much more pronounced on the telephone than it does in her films, where I guess she suppresses it. Her voice is huskier, too; husky and lovely like velvet brushed by the back of the hand.

Irwin is impatient. ‘What did she say?’

‘I think I’ve just glimpsed paradise.’

‘You mean she said yes?’

‘She’s never heard of us,’ I say, teasing him. ‘But she’s hungry.’ My arms spread wide to enlarge my smile.

We whoop like cowboys in the movies after they’ve lassoed a steer. Across the lobby, behind his desk, the receptionist regards us over his pince-nez with a look of utter contempt.

The shops in the square are full of jewellery and perfume. The air is warm and light. The slam of a car door makes me flinch for an instant. A pigeon explodes upwards towards the roofs.

We race back to the Lancaster to wash and take a shave. I straighten my eyebrows, comb back my hair and put on a favourite white shirt and dark tie. Today is one of my handsome days, I decide. The soak in the tub, the shot of cognac in the coffee, the apparition in the Ritz. It’s all coming together, mixing like the ingredients of a dream.

Irwin sits on the bed and finishes counting every last bit of money. He puts all the coins and notes together in his wallet.

‘We have enough for one good evening,’ he says. ‘And that’s it.’

‘What do we call her? Ingrid?’

‘Too familiar.’

‘Miss Bergman?’

‘Too formal.’

‘Mademoiselle?’

‘She’s married, isn’t she?’

‘Is she?’

*   *   *

The restaurant is noisy, crowded. I check my watch. Irwin keeps looking towards the door. It’s gone nine o’clock and still there’s no sign of her. The maître d’ approaches. Irwin makes a star of his hand and signals five more minutes. But it’s clear we won’t be allowed to hold the table for much longer.