Serafim and Claire (31 page)

A NEW ERA

Medium:
Gelatin silver print

Description:
Woman staring

Location:
Montreal, Quebec

Date:
1930

A woman lies on a low mattress. Folds of the duvet she's wrapped inside gather themselves and collect at her chest, her unseen fists like an arachnid clutching at the centre of a cloth web. Her cheeks do not appear to be flushed with fever, giving one the feeling that she isn't holding this material against her body because the room around her is cold, but that the inclement temperatures are, somehow, coming from within.

There is a bedside table at the head of the mattress. On it is a full glass of water that looks to have been sitting there for some time, minuscule bubbles lining its sides, frog eggs in a stagnant pond. A book rests in front of the glass, a limp marker of ribbon bowing over to touch the wood, inserted in what seems to be the book's title page.

She is young, likely in her late twenties, and is lying mostly on her stomach, staring at some vague and distant part of the room, perhaps into the rainy hills of a wallpapered landscape. Her hair looks unclean, oily, knotted into tufts and bristles. Her head, as if having unknowingly slid down the slope of her pillow, has sunk into the white sheet below it, a ragged weight abandoned in the snow.

The woman's face is devoid of expression, her facial muscles lax. Her eyes appear hazy, like a swirling nighttime pool, misted over.

Claire was whisked
to a hospital, where a doctor inspected a blurry X-ray of her ankle, lowered it from the light, and shook his head. He set it as best he could, applying an ungainly plaster-of-Paris splint to the entire lower part of her leg, and sent her home only after Serafim had covered the cost. For almost two months she lay in bed, dozed and slept, her leg elevated, staring vacantly out the window of her tiny apartment. She had little appetite for the simple food that Serafim brought her, and more than anything she just wanted to be left alone, to sit in silence and look through her window at nothing in particular. Sometimes, still staring through it, she would distractedly scratch at the outside of her cast, never seeming to realize that she couldn't reach the damp itch below.

After seven weeks, the cast was removed, only to reveal how disfigured her ankle was, and would always be. She had lost a lot of muscle as well, which made it look even worse. The doctor doubted it would ever heal to the point where she would be able to walk without a pronounced limp. He didn't bother offering any predictions about dance. Recovery would be slow, he warned, stressing the importance of doing exercises to increase the ankle's mobility. She was given crutches, and told to begin gradually putting weight on it over the coming weeks, in slow increments. But all Claire really used the crutches for was getting to and from bed. Like an infant, she spent her time either in tears, nibbling food, or sleeping.

In the meantime, Serafim had moved in, both because it would allow him to care for her at most hours of the day and because he had nothing and nowhere else to live. He thoroughly cleaned the house and put his few things in a single drawer. Sensing that he wasn't particularly wanted in the apartment, and with Antonino busy wooing a new woman he'd met at an Italian-hall dance, Serafim took to working extra shifts at two of the other studios in the city. He was trying to save as much as he could over the summer, hoping to buy another Leica, to profit from the booming times.

And booming times they were. The main studio he worked in was undergoing massive renovations and expansion, and there was talk of Serafim being promoted out of the darkroom to become a first assistant, someone who helped control the lighting and props, and managed the enormous box cameras and lenses. By mid-October he'd finally saved enough to make his purchase, and he spent every dollar of his savings on the transaction. It put him in such a financial bind that he took to working shifts even at night, just to make enough to cover their rent for the month. He found himself eating as little as Claire.

On the last weekend of October, the newspapers reported that there was a potential financial crisis brewing. The following Monday and Tuesday saw investors fleeing the market en masse. The value of stocks and shares dropped like the blade of a guillotine. It was a catastrophe, to be sure, but thankfully it was one the critics, contributors, and columnists agreed would soon blow over. If there was something the previous decade had taught them, it was that one should never underestimate the robust power and vitality of unfettered capitalism.

By early winter, Claire was hobbling around the flat in her nightgown, shuffling in her slippers to keep the coal stove well stoked and eating apples while curled in bed, her pillow ceaselessly damp. At the same time the analysts and newspapermen were beginning to sound a little less sure of themselves. The lineup of patrons and families in the city who wanted their portraits taken dwindled to nothing. The small bank that had lent the money to the main studio where Serafim worked found itself scrambling to survive. They began hounding the Scotsman who owned it to pay back the substantial loan he'd taken out on his renovations. But the Scotsman had lost big in the collapse, and so had no choice but to file for bankruptcy, forcing Serafim to scrape by on the few supplemental ventures he'd managed to find while saving for his Leica. The work in those studios, however, was also diminishing.

Then, in December, kneeling next to the bed where Claire was still holding vigil over the blank window of her apartment, Serafim said, “I have some wonderful news.” She didn't ask what the news was. “Last night, I accompanied Antonino to serenade this new lover of his. He can't sing so well — but he is getting married.”

Claire's eyes moved from the window down to Serafim for a slow second, then back to the window. “That's nice.”

“Would you . . . like to come? It might be good to get out.”

“No, thank you.”

But Claire would find that marriage was to become a topic of discussion the whole of that long winter. First, Cécile, inspired by Claire's impetuosity, asked Gilles for a divorce. As she'd anticipated, he was devastated. And he refused her, coldly citing the upcoming election and the fact that a divorce would cost him precious votes. If he lost, he told her, all his efforts would be for naught anyway, and with nothing left, he would gladly grant her the divorce she sought; if he won, however, he would ask her to stay with him at least until midway through his term. As it happened, he won. Their home became unbearable. Cécile urged him to lash out, to ruin her reputation and expose her as an adulteress, but he refused. Such a reaction had not been in her plans. Nevertheless, she wrote Claire a letter outlining the success she felt in her brief experimentation with rashness, telling her that she was now committed to getting to his mid-term and their inevitable separation, as well as looking forward to living in Montreal again, where she would be closer to Claire and where they would be able to see each other every week if they wished. Claire didn't respond to the letter.

The next talk of marriage came from Serafim. Encouraged by how easy the process had been for Antonino, he confessed his concerns about him and Claire living in sin.

“Wouldn't it be nice — better — if we were married?” he asked her one frigid Saturday morning.

Claire stared through the window, ignoring him.

“Well? What do you think?”

Finally, she looked over at him, as if distracted from some enthralling spectacle. “What are you talking about?”

“Marriage. I am talking about you and me getting married.”

Claire was incredulous. For the first time, she felt the urge to ask him to go away, to leave her apartment and life forever. She had no idea how she would get by, but she didn't care. “Come here.” Serafim eagerly crouched near her bed, where she took his hand and pulled it under the sheets, guiding it beneath her nightgown and onto the scar of her stomach. She ran his fingers down the length of it. “Do you know what this means?”

Serafim's face tensed up. “No.”

“It means I can never have children. You would be marrying a broken woman. Is that what you want?”

Serafim pulled his hand away, stood up, and took a measured step back.

“I didn't think so.” She returned her gaze to the window.

Without saying anything, Serafim put on his coat, hat, scarf, and gloves, and went out for a long walk in the snow. Claire half expected him never to return, and she was surprised that this possibility didn't bother her in the least.

But several hours later Serafim did come back, stamping his feet clear of snow on the landing, hanging his scarf with staid determination on the coat stand. He walked into the room and squatted beside her again.

“You are right. It's not quite . . . how I imagined my future. Not what I've always had in mind, I mean. But I'd still like to marry you, broken or not.”

Claire shook her head as if at a bird that had just spent a great deal of effort learning how to pick its lock only to gain access to an adjoining cage. “Fine,” she sighed. “But just you and I, and at some small, out-of-the-way church. Those are my conditions.”

Serafim gave a single, serious nod. “Fine.”

“Now,” she said, burying herself farther beneath the covers, “would you be a dear and put some more coal in the stove? It's freezing in here.”

They were married on a Monday evening, in a side chapel, a precarious crack serrating the ceiling above them. Serafim found the rings in a pawnshop, and Claire wore the most modest dress she owned. It was blue. Cécile and Antonino were asked to be the witnesses, and after the quick ceremony they decided to go out for a drink. It was one of the first times Claire had tried walking without crutches, and their progress from the chapel to the closest tavern was slow. When they finished their second beverage, Antonino, trying to heighten everyone's mood, gauchely suggested they find a place to go dancing. The table cringed at the mistake, panning over at Claire, who simply looked into her glass. Soon afterwards, Antonino and Cécile were deep in a discussion (which was on the cusp of an argument) about Lionel Groulx and his encouraging views on corporatism, something of which Mussolini was also a proponent and therefore Antonino felt he had to outwardly despise.

As their tones became more ardent, Serafim reached a hand over to Claire's. “Thank you,” he whispered.

She gave him a sad grin. “You're welcome.”

Soon afterwards, the two of them had formed a morning ritual, whereby Serafim would get out of bed, refuel the stove, and, while it warmed the room, brew some strong coffee in the percolator, turn on the radio, hand Claire a cup in bed, and sit on a chair next to her, both of them sipping away while listening to the morning news. She had initially taken him to be a tea man, but it seemed she was wrong on that count. They kept no tea in their cupboards whatsoever.

It was during one of these mornings, near the end of February 1930, that Claire shot up in bed and pointed at the radio's speaker. “Are you hearing this?”

Serafim, taken aback, wasn't used to seeing her animated in any way. “Yes. No. What?”

She grabbed onto his arm. “Would you be able to buy a newspaper on your way home today?”

“Of course,” he agreed. He was so glad to see her inspired, or interested in anything at all, that he brought home virtually every paper published in the city, including the two major English journals. The effort paid off. Claire spent her days poring over every one of them, maniacally following what would come to be known as the
Phi-Phi
Affair.

Phi-Phi
was a French musical comedy that had been playing in the city for some time. With the turn of the economic tide, the Catholic and Protestant “vice crusaders” found themselves newly frustrated and with much time on their hands. The musical comedy in question, which had opened in Paris at the end of the Great War and had been playing and touring throughout the world ever since, had salacious lyrics and revealing young chorus girls, and it dealt with the horrifying theme of adultery “flippantly.” The righteous-minded flooded the main francophone newspaper,
Le Devoir
, with letters of moral outrage. Though the musical was already in its seventh showing in Montreal, the police chief now felt obliged to respond to the outcry. Just before the curtain went up, he had his officers storm the building and arrest seventeen members of the cast for “participating in an immoral production.” The affronted performers were released on bail shortly thereafter and the French troupe returned to Paris, swearing they would never set foot in such a backwards land again. The morality squads patted themselves on the back.

Less than a month later,
Jazz Time
, an American burlesque revue, was also censored by the police, this time at the Gayety Theatre. While Claire was smug with the knowledge that the manager of the Gayety was in hot water, it was only the performers who were arrested, sixteen this time, all of them American. The dancers were again released on bail and quickly returned to their country, with a shaking-fist oath never to come back. In a single axe swing, the city's long-running ties to Broadway and Hollywood were severed.

Soon after, an official municipal theatre censor was appointed, and a law was passed requiring all traditional and musical productions to submit their scripts and lyrics for approval. The censor, like the one put in place for films, pledged to prohibit all productions that did not contain “respectable morality and family values.”

On top of this, and for the first time, the movie industry could boast both sound and undreamt-of budgets, allowing ritzy musicals to be filmed once then screened countless times at nickelodeon theatres everywhere. Before, the only way to see Al Jolson in Montreal had been with the purchase of a prohibitively expensive ticket for the balconies at the Princess Theatre, when he happened to be passing through the city on one of his brief off-Broadway tours (aboard his private ten-car train). Now he could be seen any time, for pennies, at a commoners' cinema. The once-thriving musical stage in Montreal was in its death throes, and as soon as Claire was sure of this, she stopped asking for papers and returned to her bed.

As the spring fringed their apartment's window with green, Serafim was determined to get Claire outside. He saved his nickels for weeks to buy two tram tickets for one of the “golden chariot” lines, streetcars that were designed much like bleachers in a stadium, in successive tiers that sloped to the front, offering optimum sightseeing potential, the open wind in everyone's face. They went on a Sunday to Stoney Point in Lachine, and meandered through the countryside on a lone tramcar, coveys of birds that had been feeding in the long grass beside the tracks exploding into flight as they passed. Serafim caught Claire smiling, twice.

He would also go into record shops and, stealing processing time and chemicals from his odd jobs in darkrooms around the city, trade
carte de visite
portraits of the workers there for used 78-rpm vinyls, having no choice but to take their word on what was the newest and trendiest in jazz. He would wrap the records in the nicest newspaper pages he could find — usually illustrated fashion spreads of stick-thin women with modernist-sketched faces — and present them to Claire in her bed with great ceremony. Judging by her reaction when he eased the gramophone needle down onto them, however, the vendors were seldom telling him the truth.