Читать книгу Mirror, Mirror - Paula Byrne - Страница 15

Tonight, back home, they quarrel fiercely. He stalks over to her desk, where he finds a love letter. She sits, with her stillness, looking at her reflection, while he rages behind her, waving the letter, with a theatrical flourish worthy of a Drury Lane actor. I have heard this all before. It is a well-rehearsed narrative. I am the only witness, the sole audience member, forced to endure this man’s appalling arrogance.

MO: It was I who found you on the filthy streets of Berlin and brought you to Hollywood. My mistake was to fall in love. I ought to have known that you were unfaithful to the core.

MADOU: You knew about my history before you met me.

MO: Yes, I saw you posing for photographs with violets and lavender at your groin. I know all about Gerda. And that other woman who sang that song, Margo. Margo Lion.

Yes, he knew all about them. That stupid song they would sing at the cabaret. What was the song?

MADOU: ‘My Best Girlfriend.’

MO: Yes, that absurd song. Drawing attention to yourself in that revolting manner.

MADOU: Why don’t you stop bouncing up and down like a rubber ball.

MO: So it was Berlin. I know you were curious, and wanted to try everything, but don’t forget it was my idea to introduce you to Hollywood with that Sapphic kiss. Full on the mouth. Dressed in men’s evening clothes, and top hat. My idea. Not Yours. I changed your name from Maria to Joan.

As he continues his ranting monologue, her face turns very still. Only her eyes move. I know she is thinking over the Berlin scenes she has talked of so often when we are alone. Her mind is drifting back to the bare-breasted whores who chatted with clients at the Café Nationale. The rent boys, on every corner, flicking their whips, dressed in leather and feathers. The White Mouse, on the Behrenstrasse, where Anita Berber danced her naked dances of Horror, Lust and Ecstasy, wearing her drugs in a silver locket around her neck. The little hotels in the Augsburger Strasse, where you could rent a room for an hour. God, how she missed that life. So much colour, so much excitement.

Mo was a fool. She alone had taken her inspiration for Lola Lola from the cross-dressed boys from the cabaret. One of the blonde transvestites she especially admired wore ruffled panties, a feather boa, and a white silk top hat. The boys treated her like a sister, and they went dancing; she in her men’s tails and top hat. She liked to wear her dead father’s monocle. It made her feel close to him.

Of course she preferred women, but they were impossible to live with. Mo knew about her past. Why did he insist on being so bourgeois? She lights a cigarette and turns around.

‘You know, Mo, in America, sex is an obsession, in the rest of the world it’s a fact.’

He suddenly bursts into laughter. She can always make him laugh, even when he’s angry with her. He bends down to kiss the nape of her neck. He is sorry. He should not have read the letter, which she left open for him to see.

Mo was obsessed by her from the first time he saw her in that beastly revue, Two Neckties. He had almost given up hope of finding his Lola Lola, when, by accident, he saw her in the play. The first time he laid eyes on her, she was standing offstage, leaning by a pillar, and she looked aloof and bored. She spoke only one line. She was wearing a conventional dress, but when she twirled around, she showed her underwear.

But it was her face – that face, so exquisite, but with the promise of devilry. What he loved was her nonchalance, and her cold disdain in the face of the knowledge that a famous Hollywood director was in the audience. She was equally indifferent when he invited her to his office for a screen test. She looked bored, and made no effort to be charming, and that was what interested him, poor little fool.

He asked her to sit on top of a piano and sing a ditty. She complied, but was sullen and dragged on a cigarette, blowing smoke out of the side of her mouth. She was asked to sing a song in English. The pianist, though able, was unfamiliar with the tune, although tried his best to accompany her rather mediocre singing, it must be admitted. Madou knew her limits.

Every time he made a mistake, she berated him, ‘It’s music, remember. Call that piano playing? How can I sing to that rubbish? You’re not playing a washboard, jerk!’ And again: ‘What do you have for brains?’

Pale with anger, she climbed down from the piano, and she slapped him, hard, across the head: ‘And I have to sing this crap – just don’t screw up again, or I’ll kick you.’

She knew that the studio executives, brought over from Hollywood, were horrified by her open contempt for a fellow artist, but Goldberg was delighted. This crass, uncouth, trampy woman was exactly what he had been searching for. He had found his Lola Lola; seducer of men, corrupter of morals, careless, contemptuous and carnal.

Mo knew that she could love no one, only herself. But that skin; white as milk, Parian marble, semi-translucent; pure white and entirely flawless.

He saw that she was so utterly beautiful, even before she was beautiful. He knew what he had to do; he would dominate her with his light to create perfection. That way she would never leave him.