The Age of Light

by Whitney Scharer

  The next person to take the stage is Claude. She—Lee can still hardly believe this person is a woman—jumps up and then stands silently for a few moments, staring out at the crowd. When she begins, her deep, raspy voice fills the room.

  “What—can—I—do?” she shouts, commanding everyone’s full attention. The audience is silent.

  “In a narrow mirror, display the part for the whole?

  Mistake the aura and the splatterings?

  Refusing to throw myself against the walls, throw myself against the windows?”

  Her eyes squint to slits, her mouth a black hole in her white face.

  “While I wait to see all this clearly, I want to hunt myself down, to thrash myself out.

  I want to stitch, sting, kill, with only the most pointed extremity.

  The rest of the body, whatever comes after, what a waste of time!

  To travel only at the prow of myself.”

  Claude pauses, lights a cigarette. No one moves, and Lee feels her own breath held tight in her chest, her cold forgotten, her eyes seeming to water only to give the scene more clarity. Claude blows a smoke ring that hangs in the air before she sucks it back into her mouth, and then she turns around and takes off her jacket, beneath which, pinned to the back of her shirt, is a photograph of her own face, one eye heavily shadowed, her mouth on that side done up with lipstick in a Cupid’s bow, and on the other side her skin bare and white. Both man and woman, neither man nor woman. Claude stands still so that everyone can see it, then reaches around with one arm, pulls the photo off, and rips it neatly in two, letting it drop to the floor before she walks from the stage to the crowd’s applause.

  Later, walking home, Lee is able to breathe deeply through both nostrils for the first time in days, and to smell things—a fire, or roasting chestnuts, she thinks, but then remembers that chestnuts are in New York, and this city must have different winter smells she can’t even identify yet. Her annoyance at how Man introduced her to his friends has faded, and she feels relaxed and happy.

  Man walks next to her, matching his pace to hers.

  “I thought that was absolutely wonderful,” Lee says, and then, softly, “Thank you for inviting me.”

  “My pleasure. I loved Tristan’s new work. The frog poem.”

  Lee doesn’t remember Tristan’s poem. “I thought Claude was the best. ‘To travel at the prow of myself.’ Wasn’t that good?”

  “Yes. It’s exactly what André was getting at in the manifesto,” Man says, and launches into a long monologue about Surrealism that Lee has heard before. The prow of myself, she thinks. Lee doesn’t know—or really care—if she has fully understood what Claude was getting at, but she wants to be how the words made her feel: alone but not lonely, needing no one, living her life with intention.

  “I think what I liked about Claude,” Lee starts again, when Man has stopped talking, “is that she just didn’t seem to care if anyone liked her.”

  “I don’t think liking her is the point.”

  “I just mean—” Lee is frustrated at how inarticulate she feels. “I guess…I don’t know. She’s just so ugly.”

  Man laughs, and Lee continues. “That’s not what I mean. Stop laughing at me.”

  “Why should I?” Man says, but kindly, and as they cross a street, she notices that they have matched their steps exactly. They walk a few blocks in silence, close to home now, and the streets and shops, shuttered and dark this late at night, begin to look familiar.

  “Oh dear,” Lee says, then sneezes several times in a row, pulling her damp handkerchief out of her purse and dabbing her face with it.

  “Poor cricket,” Man says, and pulls out his own handkerchief and offers it to her. “I’ve kept you out too long. Let’s get you home. You’re close to here, aren’t you?”

  “Two streets over.”

  Lee clutches Man’s handkerchief in her hand. When they get to the door of her hotel, Man says, “You’re going to be all right?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He nods, looking unconvinced. “My mother always recommends a hot toddy and a flannel around the neck. I never bother about the flannel, but the toddy helps. Here they make them with Lillet.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  “I could get you one.” Man peers down the empty street, at a shuttered bistro a few doors down.

  Lee forces a smile. “I’ll be fine. I just need to go straight to bed.”

  “Of course.” They stand together on the same step, the sudden silence awkward until Lee breaks it with another cough. She turns from him and fumbles with her key at the door. Once she’s pushed it open, she gives him a wave because she can’t think of what to say.

  “Stay in bed tomorrow, if you still feel sick,” he says. “Don’t worry about work.”

  Lee locks the door behind her and leans against it, and inexplicably her eyes fill with hot tears. Sniffing, stumbling, she makes her way through the dark hallway and up to her room, where she sheds her clothes quickly and crawls under the covers, the pillow cool against her warm cheek and soon wet as the tears keep trickling from her eyes.

  She wakes to voices below her, with no idea how much time has passed. In the hallway she hears the hotel proprietress, Madame Masson, arguing with someone in a loud whisper. Lee rolls over and tries to go back to sleep, but before she can, there is a sharp knock on her bedroom door. She pulls a blanket around her shoulders and opens the door to find Madame standing in the hallway.

  “Ah, you are awake,” Madame says. “A man at the door brought this for you.” She holds a teacup in her outstretched hand.

  Lee, confused, sleepy, takes the cup from her. “Is he still here?”

  “I sent him away. It is far too late for visitors.” She sniffs dramatically to express her disapproval.

  Lee carries the teacup over to the window and stares down at the dark, empty street.

  Back in bed she cradles the teacup in both hands. Lillet and whiskey, sweet and bitter both. As she sips it she is shocked to feel her eyes fill with tears for the second time this evening. Lee pictures Man carrying the cup down the street, the liquid spilling into the saucer. The tenderness of the gesture. Even though the toddy has gone cold, the warmth of the liquor goes all the way through her.

  In the morning Lee is not better. Though it’s freezing in her room her sheets are damp with sweat. When the weak January sun has risen high enough in the sky to pierce the curtains with light, Lee knots her wrinkled dressing gown at her waist and hobbles down to the kitchen, feeling deeply, profoundly sorry for herself. She puts the kettle on to boil, and rinses out the teacup Man brought her so that she can use it again.

  The kitchen is cold, and someone else’s dishes fill the sink. Lee can’t stand the squalor, so she takes her cup and goes back to her room, and as she starts up the stairs Madame Masson calls to her from her office to tell her she has mail.

  Mail! A letter from her dearest friend, Tanja, and another envelope, smaller and slimmer, on which Lee is surprised to see her father’s handwriting. She hasn’t heard from him since the telegram about the Kotex ad. But here is his handwriting on the creamy envelope, his script as tall and angular as he is. Lee carries the letters upstairs and climbs back into bed.

  She is curious about what her father has to say, but starts with Tanja’s letter, several pages thick and written in wobbly handwriting, as if it has been dashed off on a train. Tanja has been traveling through Europe for almost as long as Lee has been in Paris, accompanied by a chaperone named Mrs. Basingthwaite. Her letters read like excerpts from an Anita Loos novel, full of non sequiturs and gossip.

  Last week I took this perfectly harrowing car ride through southern Spain with a man I met in Seville. We went to Ronda (I can’t remember, have you been there? It’s beautiful—that bridge!) but the man drove like we were racing on a backcountry road and not practically clinging by our fingernails to the side of a mountain. And he had this pair of what I thought were opera glasses that he kept on his lap
the entire time, which I thought strange, because what was he going to do? Bird-watch on the motorway? But then he unscrewed one of the lenses and took a giant swig! That was when I thought Mrs. Basingthwaite might not be so ding-a-ling after all and I should interview my companions a little more thoroughly before I went on transcontinental driving trips with them.

  Lee laughs and then starts coughing, and has to put down the letter for a bit while she searches for a handkerchief. She can almost imagine her friend sitting in bed with her, strands of her dark brown hair shoved messily behind her ears and a big smile on her face.

  Lee has been more circumspect lately in her own letters. The last one she sent to Tanja, just a week or so ago, started out with a description of Lee’s new life, but as she wrote, a story about the strange aristocratic woman who lives on her hotel floor morphed into a story about a photo shoot Man did of an actual aristocrat, and then became a description of Man’s photos of Duchamp, and then a story about Man’s work habits, and before long she had filled four pages and mentioned his name seventeen times. So she had ripped up the letter and started over, a more restrained missive in which she explained a new technique she had learned for studio work and mentioned Man only once, to say that he was an excellent teacher. At the end of Tanja’s letter, she brings it up.

  I’m glad for you. I’m glad this is working out. When you left New York I didn’t think it was a good idea. You had such a wonderful life there, and I had this vision of you moving to Paris and being alone and penniless in an alley with an opium addiction. I’m sure that sounds a little extreme, but I was worried about you. But from all you’ve written, this sounds like the right choice. You’re doing what you’ve always wanted to do, and I’m glad you’ve found a place where you can learn from someone as talented as Man Ray sounds.

  Lee finishes her tea and then slices open her father’s letter. A single page, front and back, beginning with pleasantries. The annual Poughkeepsie tree lighting was particularly well attended, and her brother Erik has been promoted to technical adviser at Carrier, where he is now in charge of an entire division. Lee flips the page over and continues reading.

  Your brothers and I went to the cemetery last month, and they both commented on how hard it was to visit your mother without you there. I said a few extra words to let Ellen know you were thinking of her even though you are far away.

  We think of you often and hope you are doing well. I tell everyone that soon we’ll be seeing your photos in all the magazines as you said we would. When you have a publication, be sure to write to me and let me know, so that I don’t miss it. Speaking of publications, a small journal put out by the Poughkeepsie Architectural Society just ran a few of my prints—some recent shots I took of the lovely new Deco building on Cannon Street. I’m hoping the work leads to further commissions and I enclose copies so that you can see my work.

  Lee wipes her running nose with her handkerchief. She feels vaguely guilty about missing the visit to her mother’s grave, but mainly because it must have made her father sad. Lee and her mother were never close, and by the time Lee started modeling, Ellen was actively jealous of her daughter’s beauty and success.

  But it is not the lines about Ellen that nag at Lee; it is the part of the letter where her father writes that he is now a published photographer. She reads through that section again, but doesn’t look at the pictures, which are still tucked inside the envelope. Her father, published before she is. How like him to wait to write her until he has something to say about himself. And he doesn’t ask her a single question, just assumes she hasn’t had her work published, twists the knife by reminding her that everyone back home is waiting around for her to be successful. She is a disappointment to him, she thinks, and the flare of envious anger she felt when she read his words turns to frustration.

  Lee thinks back over the past months, how she’s delayed and delayed using Man’s darkroom. What is she waiting for? Being his assistant has become a sort of habit, her own work something that lives on undeveloped rolls of film. How silly. I will travel at the prow of myself, Lee thinks, and gets back out of bed and goes into the hallway, where she dials the number to Man’s studio and stands impatiently, waiting to be connected. Finally he answers.

  “I wanted to thank you for stopping by with the drink last night,” Lee says, her voice hoarse and scratchy.

  “It’s nothing. How are you feeling?”

  “Not well, but I’m sure I’ll be better soon,” she says, and then, after clearing her throat, “I have a question for you. When I get back, if there is a light day where we don’t have too many appointments, I have some film I’d like to develop, if it’s no trouble.” She hates how obsequious she sounds and wills herself to stop.

  “I believe I already told you that you could use the darkroom whenever you’d like.”

  Is his tone interested or patronizing? Lee cannot tell, so she forges ahead. “Yes, I suppose you did. I just have a few rolls. I think I know what to do—I won’t need your help.”

  “Have you done it before?”

  “My father showed me how a few times—”

  “But you haven’t done it by yourself?”

  “No, not by myself.”

  “Ah.” Even through the phone his voice sounds smug. “Are these pictures important?”

  Lee thinks back to what she shot, walking through the city the other day. “To me.”

  “I think I should develop them for you, and then you can print them.”

  “How am I going to learn if you do it for me?”

  There is silence on the line, and then, “You’re right,” he says. “Let me help you the first time. Teach a man to fish and all that.”

  “Thank you.” Lee swallows hard, which makes her cough, and she holds the phone away from her mouth. When she puts it back to her ear, she hears Man asking if she needs anything.

  “No, no, I’m fine.”

  They hold the line for a few more seconds, the silence so thick she could reach out and touch it. “Thank you again for the toddy,” she says finally.

  “It was no trouble.”

  She thinks of how far he must have gone to get it, what he must have said to get a café to let him take its cup. “Well, it was delicious.”

  “Take care of yourself, Lee,” Man says, and when she hangs up the phone she realizes he’s never before called her by her first name.

  Chapter Nine

  The next day, Lee wakes up with a clear head, and it feels like a gift to have the energy for everyday tasks. Why doesn’t she appreciate it more when she is healthy? She hums to herself as she gets ready to go to the studio, stepping lightly down the steps from her hotel’s front door, her rolls of film tucked in her purse. As she walks along, she admires how her new suede step-ins look against the cobblestones.

  What a beautiful day it is, Paris hers for the taking, the winter air crisp and invigorating. At the corner of Avenue du Maine and Rue des Plantes, she stops at her favorite street vendor and buys a croque monsieur, taking off her gloves before she removes its waxed paper wrapper. As she eats, she is filled with purpose and benevolence. Man is low on his favorite printing paper, and the shop is over a kilometer out of her way, but it will make him happy that she has taken care of this for him, so she heads toward the 15th, pleased with herself for thinking of it. She takes a shortcut through passage Dantzig and pauses to look at La Ruche, with its odd circular structure and oversize awnings that hang over the windows like half-closed eyelids. As always, there are a few people huddled near the gate. Beggars or drunks, most likely, but they could be artists who got home too late to be let into the ateliers inside. Lee crosses the alley and sets the rest of her sandwich next to a man sleeping under a rough brown blanket. That could be her, she thinks. If Man hadn’t hired her, she might be living rent-free in the squalor of La Ruche with all the rest of the starving artists. She reaches into her purse to touch the film canisters and feels profoundly fortunate.

  It is late afternoon by the time
Man is ready to help Lee develop her film. She stands in the hallway waiting for him, as excited as she used to be on the first day of school. The developing room, near the end of the hall, was originally a broom closet. Inside it, Man has nailed a plank at counter height, and above that a small shelf with bottles and trays stacked neatly on it. Lee steps in, with Man behind her. The space is tight for one person, claustrophobic for two. Dim light comes from a small hurricane lamp sitting on the counter. Man closes the door and pulls a thick black curtain across it, fussing with it until it falls completely evenly. The room is so close that even when Lee leans against the wall she cannot help but brush against him. She rubs her tongue along her teeth, a nervous habit, and tries to give him room to maneuver in the small space.

  Man is in professor mode. “Light is our tool,” he is saying. “Film is just a surface for capturing and holding light, but until the film has been developed, extra light becomes the enemy.” As he talks he arranges the supplies, lined up on the table where he has placed black tape to mark their spots.

  “Always put everything in the same order. Otherwise you’ll be fumbling around in here and you’ll drop something. Place the tools in the order you’ll use them: film, church key, scissors, metronome, developer, stop, fix, water bath.” He touches her shoulder and moves behind her, an awkward dance in the small room. “Before you blow out the lamp, put your hands on the supplies and close your eyes so you can remember where they are.”

  Eyes shut, Lee moves her hands across the supplies. The room is silent except for the hiss of the lamp’s wick.

  “Ready?” Man asks, and when she says yes, he reaches around her and blows out the lamp. The flame turns to a sharp red point and dies out. The small room fills with the smell of smoke. Of course she knew it had to be pitch-black, but somehow it is darker than she thought it would be, the darkness thick and alive and warmer than when the room was lit. She feels Man behind her but cannot see him. His hand hovers over hers, heat radiating off his skin.