Seducing Ingrid Bergman (7 page)

*   *   *

At the market near Les Halles, I buy half a dozen peaches, soak them in Courvoisier, pour champagne over them, and wait.

*   *   *

Ingrid makes her way to the salon next to the swimming pool in the Ritz.

She feels the hairdresser kneading her temples, straightening her face, as if forcing her to look at herself in the mirror, as though compelling her to think about why she’s here, what she’s doing, making her examine the vast pattern of accidents that have led to her sitting in this particular place at this precise moment in time.

The stylist speaks good English and smiles a lot. She works without hurry, attends luxuriously to Ingrid’s scalp.

Ingrid closes her eyes and relaxes, happy to place her head back in the rest and submit to the slow massaging of her temples. She relishes the two rich applications of shampoo, the needling rinse of warm water. It feels wonderful.

The hairdresser asks, ‘You have children?’

‘A girl. Seven years old.’

A thick white towel is lifted from her shoulders to rub the wet from her hair. ‘The same as me.’

‘Really?’

For a fleeting instant, Ingrid experiences one of those forks in her imagination. She entertains the mad idea that perhaps they could exchange places, swap lives for a time. The hairdresser might become a movie actress and she could become a hairdresser in Paris. They’re about the same age, she guesses, with similar figures, and they’re both tall. A parallel life. Think of it. It’s not impossible, she considers. Just imagine. Like those stories of paupers and princes swapped at birth.

It’s funny, she decides. Most women dream of being a movie star, while sitting here in the salon she fantasizes about being a normal citizen.

She suggests it to the hairdresser, who laughs, dismisses the thought instantly. ‘You’d soon grow bored.’

Ingrid considers for a few seconds. ‘So would you.’

After a silence, the hairdresser asks, ‘Where is she now, your daughter?’

‘She’s at home.’

‘Here in Paris?’

‘In Los Angeles.’

A look of puzzlement, perhaps even a hint of disapproval, registers itself as a frown on her brow. ‘You don’t miss her?’

‘Of course.’ She puts her hands together and stares at them. ‘Her father takes good care of her.’

‘He must be wonderful.’

‘I wouldn’t leave her otherwise.’ And it’s true, she reflects. Pia is her father’s darling; he dotes on her. She’s always so gentle and compliant with Petter, whereas with her, things can be more of a battle, whether it’s going to bed on time, getting up in the morning, or simply eating her food. Ingrid recognizes that she is more the disciplinarian, and she tells herself that this is because she cares; Petter spoils Pia, she thinks, though at least she’s consoled that, while she’s away, Pia will be happy. ‘We also have the most fantastic lady who helps out.’

‘Are you getting her a present?’

She meets the woman’s eyes in the mirror. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to carry home all the toys.’

Ingrid thinks of Pia, the way they often sit together on the long beige sofa in Benedict Canyon. Sometimes they hold each other for so long of an evening that Pia falls asleep and has to be separated stickily, peeled from her mother’s cheek, where a round red blotch remains. Ingrid especially loves, as she lifts Pia away from her face, that tickly, flickering sensation of her lashes brushing against her cheek. She can picture it now: Pia’s delicate, freckled nose, her lips deliciously pink and wet. She remembers when she was first born. It was like falling in love all over again; she recalls feeling touched by her own tenderness, and knowing for the first time what her own mother must have experienced – that strange and unanticipated sensation of holding a part of your own self wrapped in your arms. The detail pierces her.

Before Ingrid leaves, the hairdresser asks for her autograph. Ingrid consents, graciously. How can she resist that smile? She borrows a pen from the counter and starts to trace the shape of her name. That first big lopsided letter. Those airy, rounded, confident strokes making little dents in the paper, the childlike loops of her signature. Herself.

Back in her hotel room afterwards, she is startled to find it transformed into a garden. A whole room full of flowers. Strange, showy blossoms, with a single white rose, and a short note.

She pushes her nose into some of the petals, savouring their heady scents. The mingled fragrance is overwhelming. Odours swarm as in a hothouse.

Sweet, she thinks, but she also feels a little uneasy.

Joe comes in. He looks round warily. ‘I see you have an admirer.’

Ingrid reads the card and smiles.

‘Anyone I should know about?’

‘Just a photographer.’

‘Oh, one of those,’ he says.

‘Yes, one of those.’

‘I’ll see they’re taken out.’

Ingrid watches him move towards the door. ‘Joe?’

‘Yes?’

She picks up the white rose, hesitates, puts it back with the other flowers. ‘Nothing,’ she says.

5

She’s due back today. Two weeks of waiting. Two weeks of going to the racetrack and countless hands of Red Dog with Irwin.

I can’t sleep. I wake with the birds at five o’clock. My throat is dry from too much wine and too many cigarettes. The cups, the stuff on the floor and the chairs seem startled into an absolute stillness. Objects lack a dimension at this hour. I pull back the curtains and unhook the shutters. The sky is pink and milky. Pigeons scrabble, their claws loud on the skylight. Lines of washing, strung from windows, stretch across the street.

The sun bubbles behind the rooftops. As the shadows harden, slowly the objects in the room begin to tremble. They come alive and are themselves again. Beyond the window, things begin to glint.

A half-pleasant chemical whiff, a hint of toxicity, hits me when I open the bathroom door. Bottles of developer and fixer surround the sink. Long thin strips of film like flypaper are hung up to dry. And amid these there she is, her image haunting several of the negatives, transparent, vivid in her lipstick, sticky.

*   *   *

We take an evening stroll through the shaded arcades of the rue de Rivoli, and across the Pont Neuf towards the iron fences of the Luxembourg.

There’s a small bistro around the corner from the gardens. It’s warm enough, we decide, to eat outside. We order steaks and drink spumante, and watch the waitress disappear through a beaded curtain into the kitchen.

At dusk, bulbs hung from the trees illuminate the courtyard. They tremble gently in the breeze and mix with the scent of lilac and the faint strains of a guitar inside.

‘Capa,’ she says, looking at me.

‘What?’

‘I’m just getting used to your name.’

‘Did you read them any more poems?’

She blushes. ‘I stuck to the funny stuff this time.’

A dent appears in one corner of her mouth. As she lifts the drink to her lips, I notice her wedding ring click against the side of her glass. I see her glance at it, possessing it for an instant, giving it weight.

I fumble for a match.

Something in the action prompts her to reach for her pocketbook. ‘I got you a present.’

‘You did?’

Ingrid pulls out a purse, a tortoiseshell comb and a couple of photographs; then, following a moment of deliberate suspense, she produces a silver-plated harmonica. ‘There,’ she says.

‘You got that for me?’

It’s a lovely thing, with a metallic gleam like vodka, and a sliding button at the side to sharpen the notes or make them flat. The name of the make, Hohner, is italicized across the front.

I hold it up admiringly. It’s cool to the touch and heavier than I expected, about the weight of a small pistol. For a second I balance it on my palm, registering its density. I blow into it, whizzing my lips across the holes. It makes a surprisingly loud noise. Guests at a table close to us turn around disapprovingly. One of the waitresses looks over. She’s holding several plates on her arm.

‘Shh! Not here,’ Ingrid says.

I run my mouth over it the other way, going down the scale this time. I do it so fast that my lips begin to burn.

‘You have to practise.’

‘I promise.’ I look again at the craftsmanship. The holes along the side in the dark resemble a strip of celluloid.

Ingrid adopts a mock-stern voice, wags her finger. ‘And don’t you dare pawn it!’

I open my palms in protest.

Her look of scepticism softens into amused tolerance. She begins repacking her pocketbook, including her comb and purse, but I stop her before she returns the photographs. There’s one of a girl with honey-blonde hair and a cloche hat.

‘Is that your daughter?’ I lean over to get a closer look. ‘She looks sweet.’

‘She’s spoilt,’ she says, though immediately a look of pride fills her eyes. ‘But she’s adorable, too.’

I spy another photograph. A man, this time. ‘Your husband?’

‘Father,’ she corrects me. She puts it away. ‘You remind me of him.’

‘I do?’

‘He owned a photography shop in Stockholm. He was always pointing a camera at me.’

‘Is that how you learnt to act?’

She laughs.

I notice the girlish way she draws in her cheeks, then looks up over her glass as she drinks. Her eyes seem mobile, liquid. I point at her glass, now empty. ‘Another?’

‘I’ll start saying things I shouldn’t.’

I call up another round of drinks.

Ingrid plays at being cross.

‘Your father didn’t mind all the boyfriends knocking at your door?’

‘There were no boys. I was far too shy and awkward for that.’

‘You were a daddy’s girl?’

‘I was still an infant when my mother died.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘And
your
father?’ she asks quickly, not permitting an instant of self-pity. ‘Was he a photographer?’

‘He was a gambler and a drunk.’

‘Does that worry you?’

‘Not if I don’t think about it.’

‘How do you avoid thinking about it?’

‘By drinking,’ I say. ‘And gambling.’

I whizz my lips across the mouth of the harmonica, making a low sound.

Ingrid says nothing for several seconds, just squeezes her eyes in a way that makes her nose wrinkle. ‘I worry about you sometimes, Capa.’

‘Don’t.’

‘You know something?’

‘What?’

‘I’m never sure when you’re joking.’

‘Is that bad?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.’

Our eyes lock. It is she who looks away first.

I lift my wrists as the waitress takes my plate away. We watch her retreat into the kitchen. The beads click and close behind her, sway like a grass skirt.

*   *   *

Walking back to the hotel, I take Ingrid’s arm. A little tipsy, she doesn’t resist. With the fresh air, I’m conscious of the alcohol, its warmth, and the shine of it inside me.

In this crazy time just after the war, an odd democracy seems to be emerging. For the first time, it seems possible to meet and speak to anyone, no matter who you are or where you’re from. The war has mixed things up, made them topsy-turvy so that anything seems possible. And here we are, the two of us, walking arm-in-arm. It’s summer and we’re in Paris, with the trees in leaf and dense with blossom.

There’s a moment, I know, when you can kiss a woman. A trusting, vulnerable look enters her eyes. You hear yourself utter nonsensical things, and you feel this pull suddenly, an otherness. Shadows place themselves sympathetically. A face is lifted into brilliance. A vibration starts inside your chest.

I recognize the sensation. It overtakes me for an instant. I imagine I see it in Ingrid’s eyes; that tender, defenceless look, and I feel a mad impulse just to reach out and touch her face, feel the need to pull her towards me and press her lips to mine. Every fibre of my being, every instinct wills it, but something stops me, draws me back.

What am I thinking? I must be nuts. I tell myself not to be ridiculous. She’s married, with a family, for God’s sake. I remember who I am, who she is, and I wonder if she’s thinking the same.

Just before we reach her hotel, without warning it begins to rain. A heavy summer downpour, sudden and glorious, the raindrops fat and splashy, drenching us both.

We run the last hundred yards or so, our feet sloshing in puddles.

She’s laughing.

I try to hold my jacket over her. As we near the revolving door of the hotel, she disengages her arm, pushes the damp hair back from her brow.

She stands there wet-faced and expectant. ‘Don’t fall in love with me, Capa.’

The tone is light and allows us both to enjoy the moment.

‘You mean, I have a choice?’

An instant before she enters the hotel, I see her turn. For a split-second, she stops and smiles. I move off, glad of that last look, oblivious to the rain that falls warm and aimless, soaking me through.

When I get back to my own hotel, it is late. The air is hot and sticky.

The elevator arrives. Stepping in, I pull the slats back until they are fastened. The brass diamonds of the gates repeat themselves around me. A hollow forms in my stomach as the lift clanks upwards towards the top floor.

*   *   *

She sets off early in the afternoon wearing her dark glasses. She has no map and no particular plan in mind except to strike out beyond the confines of the place Vendôme, with its shop windows full of perfume and shoes.

Heading south, she decides not to take the Métro – heeding Joe’s advice, for once – but to stay above ground so she can see everything and breathe it in. She enjoys the anonymity of the city, the feeling that no one knows her here and that she can toddle along as if invisible, with little fear of being recognized or pursued. She likes the world as seen through dark glasses. The green of the trees seems more vivid, the clouds above her more sharply defined, and she likes the feeling of being hidden, the power it confers.

She walks down rue Castiglione towards the Tuileries, registers the geometrical line of the trees. Paris is such a planned city, she considers, everything designed in squares and circles, laid out in careful symmetries. It makes her realize how planned her own life is, how organized, and how much she longs to do something spontaneous, to break free. She hasn’t thought about it much but, approaching her thirtieth birthday, she knows this is an obvious time to take stock. Seeing so many young men on the streets using crutches, with just stumps left where there should be limbs, and noticing the number of young women dressed all in black, makes her realize how lucky she is and reminds her of her duty to live the best life she can.