Never Anyone But You

by Rupert Thomson

  During the months that followed Michaux’s return to Paris, Claude saw him regularly. They both had trouble sleeping, and would often telephone each other in the middle of the night. Though he seemed unaware of his effect on her—his ironic approach to life prevented him from noticing, perhaps—he did much to anchor her at a time when she was floundering.

  Robert Desnos didn’t recognize me when Claude and I met him in 1929, and I decided not to mention the night I saw him perform in André Breton’s apartment. I didn’t want to embarrass him, nor did I want to have to describe the whole episode to Claude. She wouldn’t understand why I hadn’t told her at the time, and I wasn’t sure I understood it either. In any case, Desnos had fallen out with Breton, and was about to be “excommunicated” by the Surrealists. I sat back and let Claude do all the talking. She was well aware of the role he had played in the founding of the movement, and she was familiar with his poetry and his ideas. She admired his work to such an extent that she sensed a kinship—a bond that was “stronger than blood,” as she put it some twenty years later.

  “We have so much in common,” she told him on that first day.

  There was something about him that triggered a combination of frankness and hyperbole in her, and I saw him smile, though it wasn’t clear if he was flattered, entertained, or simply wary.

  “When I read your work,” she went on, “I realize that identity is something that can be consciously assembled, like a jigsaw. From a distance, the image looks solid, whole, but that’s an illusion. Up close, you can see the joins. You can see how it has been put together. How it might come apart.”

  “A jigsaw…” Robert nodded slowly.

  “What excites me most, though, is how you play with gender. You demonstrate something I have believed for a long time—namely, that the two genders are contingent, and interchangeable. You’re able to relinquish your masculine identity, for example, and inhabit a feminine equivalent—or sometimes you loiter in the twilight territory between the two.”

  “I do all that?” He was smiling again, but this time it was less guarded, more obviously affectionate.

  “Yes,” Claude said, “you do.”

  Some days later, we called on Robert at his studio on rue Blomet. It was a chilly November afternoon, the puddles on the pavements crisp with ice. Though his stove gave off almost no heat, he was elegantly dressed, in a striped shirt, a tie, and a dark jacket with wide lapels. On the peeling walls hung several works by Francis Picabia and a painting by de Chirico. I peered through the window. Below was a neglected courtyard, two discolored disks of marble adrift in a sea of weeds.

  “It doesn’t look like much,” Robert said, appearing at my elbow, “but in the winter the snow stays whiter than anywhere else in Paris, and when the summer comes the birds sing all day long.”

  He went and changed the record on the gramophone.

  “We’re listening to Jelly Roll Morton,” he said. “I listen to a lot of Fats Waller too. I have to play music nonstop or I can hear the Spaniard fighting with his mistress.” He paused. “Either fighting or fucking. I’m not sure which is worse.”

  The Spaniard. That was how he referred to Joan Miró, who rented the studio next door. It was one of Robert’s jokes. He knew perfectly well that Miró was a proud Catalan. While he was talking, my eye was drawn to the wax sculpture of a mermaid that was fixed to the wall opposite his bed. Her long hair tumbled over her shoulders and bare breasts, and her face was turned to one side, the subtle smile suggesting that she had abandoned the mundane world of Robert’s studio for some deeper and more pleasurable reality. When silence fell, I asked Robert where he had bought her.

  “I didn’t,” he told me. “She was a gift from Yvonne George.”

  Yvonne was a Belgian chanteuse. For almost two years he had been obsessed with her, but she had failed to respond to his attentions. He still found it hard to understand.

  “I mean, what’s wrong with me?” he said. “Am I too intelligent? Too sophisticated? Was she perhaps in awe of me?”

  Claude and I were smiling.

  But if Yvonne had been his great unrequited love, he went on, he had recently met a woman who he felt might be her equal. Even, possibly, her superior. Her name was Youki, which meant “pink snow” in Japanese. He had fallen under her spell the moment he met her, in La Coupole.

  Claude asked if she was Japanese.

  “No, she’s French,” Robert said. “Though she grew up in Belgium, like Yvonne.”

  She had just married a Japanese painter called Foujita. He wore round glasses with tortoiseshell frames and a ring in his right ear. He was much older than Youki, though he didn’t look it. Josephine Baker, the dancer, had sat for him. So had Man Ray’s girlfriend, Kiki of Montparnasse. Foujita didn’t appear to be jealous of Robert’s friendship with his wife. Quite the opposite. Not long ago, he had given them both tattoos. He had decided that Youki should have a mermaid, since that was how Robert had described her.

  “What did you get?” I asked.

  “A bear and a ring of stars,” he said. “Ursa Major is my favorite constellation.”

  “But she’s still with this Foujita?”

  “It’s not a problem. They have an open relationship.” Robert paused. “I think something will happen between me and Youki. In fact, I know it will.”

  I looked at Claude. “I hope she doesn’t find him too intelligent.”

  “Or too sophisticated,” Claude said.

  Robert laughed. “I despise you both. I never want to see you again.”

  An evening in March, a new decade. We were still living in the same building on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, but we had moved to a different apartment, where there was more space, more light. Candles burning in the silver-plated Louis XVI candlesticks. A jazz record playing on the gramophone. Champagne.

  Robert came early, with Youki. Though he was approaching thirty, his smile was that of a young boy, and his eerie eyes, which reminded me of opals, were paler than ever. He had been trying to persuade Youki to leave her husband, but so far she had refused. Perhaps she enjoyed playing the two men off against each other. Perhaps she liked the attention. She was a beauty, just as Robert had said. That evening, her black dress clung to her breasts and thighs, and her lips, which were painted a deep glossy red, like Chinese lacquer, stood out against her clear white skin. Living with Foujita, though, she had become accustomed to luxury, and I wondered how Robert could possibly afford her. A few days before, I had been out walking near Parc Montsouris, and Youki had passed by in a chauffeured Delage convertible, her dark gaze sliding over me as if I were a lamppost or a tree. She had looked removed, immortal.

  “I’m so sorry, darling,” she said when I told her. “I just didn’t see you. I’m terribly shortsighted.”

  “It’s true,” Robert said. “Half the time she has no idea who I am, even when I’m in bed with her.”

  The door opened behind him and Béatrice Wanger swept in with an armful of gladioli. Béatrice was an American dancer and a neighbor of ours. She would not be staying long, she told me, as she was giving a performance later, at the Théâtre Esotérique. Her stage name was Nadja, or “La Belle Nadja,” and Claude and I had seen her dance on several occasions. Her slender body would be draped in flimsy scarves and veils that left little to the imagination, and her smile, which did not waver, was intended to convey a mystical or trancelike state. She was usually accompanied by a single instrument—sometimes a flute, other times a gong. I suspected Claude of having slept with Béatrice—she had taken a number of explicit photographs—but Claude had only laughed when I confronted her. Sleep with Béatrice? she said. I’d suffocate.

  More guests arrived. Pierre Albert-Birot, an avant-garde theater director Claude had worked with recently, and Jacques Viot, our old friend from Nantes. Jacques had started writing screenplays, though none had been produced as yet. On their heels was Sylvia
Beach, accompanied by Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes. Georges was thrilled with the collage Claude had devised for the cover of his new novel. Adrienne sent her apologies, Sylvia said. She was in bed with the flu. Roger Gilbert-Lecomte appeared in a smoking jacket and dark glasses. Like Robert Desnos, Roger had been “excommunicated” by the Surrealists. He wasn’t sure why. He had been taking morphine, he said, and hadn’t slept for days. The American editor Jane Heap made a dramatic entrance in a man’s cream linen suit, her lover Margaret Johnson on her arm. But it was Claude who stood out, as always. She wore an off-the-shoulder dress that was charcoal gray over her breasts and black below the waist, and her shaved head was painted gold.

  The singer Georgette LeBlanc didn’t like to be predictable. Instead of commenting on Claude’s gold head, she wanted to know where Claude had bought the dress.

  “I forget,” Claude said.

  Jane and Margaret came over. They ran The Little Review. They had been the first to publish Hemingway.

  “Claude, you look spectacular,” Margaret said. “Like a Buddha.”

  “Or something recovered from the tomb of Tutankhamun,” Jane said. “One of those extraordinary artifacts.”

  Margaret looked at me, and then at Claude. “I hear you were interviewed by the Chicago Tribune.”

  “Who’s Who in Paris.” Claude gave her an ironic smile.

  “Americans,” Jane said. “What do they know?”

  We all laughed.

  Jacques asked Claude if she’d been writing.

  She nodded. “My book’s coming out in the spring.”

  It was a sensitive subject. Claude had been writing on and off for years, but it was only in 1926, with Adrienne’s encouragement, that she had started collecting the various pieces into a book. When she finally delivered the manuscript, it wasn’t at all what Adrienne had been expecting, and she turned it down. Claude had found another publisher—eventually—but Adrienne’s rejection had been a shock and an embarrassment, and relations between the two of them had cooled. I wondered if that was the real reason why Adrienne had chosen not to come.

  Someone behind me said, “Isn’t Georgette sleeping with that Armenian mystic?”

  “Gurdjieff?”

  “That’s right—Gurdjieff…”

  I moved away across the room. The air was a rich tangle of languages—English, Hebrew, Greek.

  Over by the window I spoke to Kiki. Her eyelids were painted a copper color, and her blouse was unbuttoned almost to the waist. She had finished with Man Ray, she told me. She had started seeing Henri Broca, who was publishing her memoirs.

  “I can hardly wait,” I said.

  Kiki downed the contents of her glass and went off in search of more.

  I opened the window to let in some air. Dark trees, a shouted insult. Carriage wheels.

  “Is that Dalí?” I heard someone say.

  A dapper, narrow-shouldered man with slicked-back hair and a mustache was standing on the threshold to the room. Salvador Dalí. I had seen his show at Camille Goemans’s gallery on rue de Seine towards the end of the previous year. I walked up to him and held out my hand.

  “I’m so glad you could come, señor.”

  His huge dark eyes moved from one part of my face to another, his mustache twitching. “And you are?”

  “Marcel Moore. I live here.”

  “Ah yes. You’re one of the famous lesbians of Paris, are you not?” His remark caught me off guard. Though direct, it was playful, edged in wit.

  “You’re very well informed,” I said.

  “Of course.” He stood up a little straighter, eyes widening. “I am Dalí.”

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  “Some milk, perhaps.”

  I fetched him a glass of milk.

  “We have many lesbians in Paris,” I told him. “In fact, this room is full of them.”

  “I adore lesbians.” He sent a rapid, febrile glance around the room.

  “Do you live in Paris now, señor?”

  “Sometimes. But I’m about to buy a house in Port Lligat, not far from Cadaqués. Do you know the area?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “You must visit. I insist.”

  I introduced him to Sylvia and Jane, who were standing nearby. Leaving the three of them together, I went to look for Claude. She was deep in conversation with Robert Desnos and Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes. I asked if they had met Dalí.

  “Not yet.” Georges looked in his direction. “Did you know that Gala has left Paul? She’s with Dalí now.”

  “That’s an unlikely combination,” I said.

  Robert shrugged. “She’s very ambitious. She must think he’s going to be rich.”

  “See that mustache?” Georges said. “Apparently, he got the idea from Velázquez.”

  “Where did you get the idea for yours?” Robert asked.

  I wandered out of the room and down the corridor. When no one was looking, I slipped into our bedroom and closed the door. A gray kitten was curled up at the foot of the bed, one paw over his eyes. Constant Lounsbery had arrived at our apartment with a wicker basket a few days before. After performing in three of Albert-Birot’s plays in as many months, Claude’s poor health had forced her to give up acting, probably for good, and Constant had thought a pet might comfort her.

  “Kid,” I said. “Dear Kid.”

  I was about to give him a stroke when the door creaked open and Claude walked in, a lit cigarette between her fingers.

  “How’s he settling in?” she asked.

  “See for yourself,” I said.

  She leaned down and pressed her lips to his small striped head, then tickled him behind his ears. He yawned and stretched.

  “You’ve really taken to him, haven’t you,” I said.

  Straightening again, she smiled at me through the smoke spiraling upwards from her cigarette.

  Later, we walked back up the corridor, back into the drawing room. Claude’s aunt, Marguerite, was talking to Dalí. She was curious about the fragrance he was wearing. It had been made for him personally, he told her, in Barcelona. The principal notes were orchid, lotus wood, and amber, but he suspected that chocolate might also be involved. Claude’s aunt was laughing. Chocolate, she said. Of course.

  Dalí turned to me. “You have gold paint on your lips, and on your cheek.” He came up close and spoke into my ear. “You have been kissing a god, perhaps.”

  Later still, a group of us left for the Théâtre Esotérique. As we crossed rue Mazarine, Georgette started talking about a fifteenth-century Breton song called “Gwerz Penmarc’h.” In four brief stanzas, drowned sailors addressed the people of Pointe de Penmarc’h, who lit fires in their parish church and lured unsuspecting vessels onto the rocks. It was a song sung by the dead, she said. It was part lament, part curse. Somebody asked if we could hear it. Georgette began to sing. Slow, forlorn, and filled with regret, the song also had an edge of menace and defiance, as if the dead posed a threat to the living, and though it was a chilly night people stepped out onto their balconies or peered down from open windows, and when she finished applause came from all around. As we walked on, she told us she had learned the song from a lover—in Quimper, she thought, or was it Quiberon?—and that she had only slept with him once.

  “Only once,” Robert said, “and yet he taught you that beautiful song.”

  “He was lucky to have had me at all,” Georgette said.

  She was almost sixty—her waist had thickened, and her arms were fleshy—but I could still see the young woman she had been, impassioned and brazen, the dark hair tumbling, the sultry mouth and eyes. She had lived with Maurice Maeterlinck for almost twenty years—she had inspired many of his plays—but in the end he found her attitude to sexuality too bewildering and painful. It was known, for instance, that she went to bed with other men—w
ith women too—and that she considered such behavior quite normal. In those days, in Paris, it sometimes seemed that women were more powerful than men.

  There was a crowd outside the theater, the cold air clouded with breath and smoke. My latest poster was on display—La Belle Nadja in her veils.

  Dalí was at my elbow suddenly. “Did you do this?” Up close, he smelled of old gardenias, their petals browning at the edges. There was no hint of lotus wood, or chocolate.

  “I thought you left,” I said.

  He gave me a wide-eyed, wild look. “I left,” he said, “and yet somehow I’m still here!”

  I laughed. Drawing was my great love, I told him, though I wouldn’t dream of comparing my draftsmanship with his.

  He leaned closer to the poster, his nose an inch from the glass, his mustache tips needle-sharp. “Té un gran talent,” he said, reverting to his native language. “Very—how do you say—economic.”

  “Economical,” I said. “If you mean concise, that is. Otherwise you’d be talking about money.”

  “I love to talk about money,” he said.

  Smiling, I took his arm. We went inside.

  He had never seen Béatrice dance before, and I seemed to watch her through his eyes. She had painted her eyebrows black, her eyelids too, and her lips were so red they looked poisonous. The veils in which she had wrapped herself were even more transparent than usual; like a mist that is burned off by the early morning sun, they seemed in danger of disappearing altogether. Béatrice, I knew, saw it differently. She had told me once that she felt clothed by the gaze of the audience. She only became naked if people lost interest and looked away. No one looked away that night, least of all Dalí. There was a stillness in the house, a sense of rapture.

  When I took him backstage after the show, he threw himself on the floor in front of Béatrice. She watched, one eyebrow raised, as he kissed her bare feet, first one, then the other. Upright again, he asked her where she had got such an extraordinary body.