* * *
Workmen stood on scaffolding to paint the facade of a three-story gothic hotel—a single imitation wall fronted with windows and shutters, but hollowed out in the back, supported by diagonal beams. There were platforms and suspended walkways behind certain windows, presumably where an actor might stand to be glimpsed by the camera.
* * *
In front of the facade, a ruined garden and a maze were being painstakingly assembled from unsheathed trees and shrubs. A moss-ravaged fountain taking shape from mastic and wire, its creator standing by with a trowel. As her motorcar drove toward the stone cottage, Sabine noticed a series of cross-sectioned rooms under the glasshouse of the filming stage, the empty living spaces stacked like so many boxes. Then, down by the cliffs, she saw Chip Spalding and Jimmy Thorpe practicing some kind of aerial maneuver from the tethered dirigible, the Australian suspended from the gondola in a harness. He was going to plunge to his death—she was certain of it.
* * *
Her mood brightened, briefly, when she discovered her favorite flowers and chocolates inside the cottage: white lilies and cherries covered in bittersweet chocolate. This was another new dimension to her moods—the fleeting euphoria of her favorite tastes and smells. She let a chocolate-covered cherry melt on her tongue and took a deep breath. The vase of lilies contained the aromatic cloud of her childhood, a dozen feral summers performing for her younger brother and sister in the barn and running through the flowerbeds. Her mother didn’t like flowers in the house, found the browning anthers of a dying lily on a mantel intolerably morbid, so she let them bloom in the beds every year to the heady edge of rotting before they went to seed. That florid, operatic smell was somehow a comfort to Sabine; it evoked her mother as a woman of strong opinions instead of the sad woman in the sealed room at the end of the hallway.
* * *
In the kitchen, there was another bundle of letters and a copy of the revised photoplay waiting for her on the table. She didn’t have the stomach for more letters from strangers, so she picked up the photoplay and began to turn pages. Claude had mailed the script to her in Paris, where both she and Pavel critiqued it for errors of naturalistic judgment before sending it back. She’d also begun some research of her own on consumption, writing away to several sanitariums before receiving a promising reply.
* * *
Six months ago she’d sat listening to Claude under a sheepskin rug as he described his idea for a feature film about a tubercular widow. She was going to play a beautiful monster, a seductress with an otherworldly allure. She sometimes felt like a coil of wire, a medium for the unraveling ideas of men, for storytellers and visionaries. Zola, Pavel, Chekhov, Shakespeare, Antoine, dead and some living, they all needed a filament inside their glass bulbs, something to electrify an inkling they had about human nature and convert it to a shock of recognition.
* * *
She studied the roles, saw the world through the vapored lens of Ophelia or Thérèse, but she also knew her own emotional landscape as if it were fixed and painted plainly on a wall—the shame that had scoured her insides since the age of twelve, when she sensed her family lived apart from the world after her mother’s suicide, or the later thrill of commanding a room’s full attention, of being seen again, the freedom and terror that came with being adored and coveted by men. All these motifs were available to her at any time; it was like lying in bed at the top of a great, darkened house and sensing every room below, omniscient and clairvoyant as she plumbed the concealed spaces in her mind. If she set her mind to it, she could empathize with a cup of tea cooling on a nightstand in a bedroom far below, feel into its tiny universe of despair as its erstwhile drinker dozed off. Where had this emotional gift and burden come from?
* * *
Pavel came into the kitchen and stood with the photoplay over by the window, tsking and sighing as he flipped pages. Helena was outside with the motorcars, overseeing the unloading of the luggage. Sabine took a glass down from the cupboard and drank some water from the tap. It tasted like silt. She poured it out and set the glass on the sink. She wondered what the Montmartre barmaid was doing right at this moment. When the trunks had been arranged for unpacking, Helena, who ran the mess hall during the filming season, came into Sabine’s kitchen and said she was going to walk over to the communal kitchen.
—Apparently, they hired a summer camp cook from the Catskills during the off-season. I will need to examine his credentials.
—As a test of culinary skill, have him make me an omelet. Oh, and would you tell Messieurs Ballard and Bender that I won’t be receiving any visitors today. But I would like to discuss the photoplay here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.
Helena nodded as she headed out the door.
* * *
Pavel continued to stand in her kitchen with the photoplay.
—You read it first, then bring it back to me before bed, said Sabine. See if they made our changes.
—I thought I would stay here during our preparations.
Sabine sat in a chair to take off her shoes.
—Dear God, look at these feet! No, no, I must be alone, Pavey. Go bed down in the main house or one of the actors’ bunkhouses.
Pavel stared at her over the edge of the photoplay. She knew better than to look into that Baltic wall of inscrutable knowing.
—You grow tired of people and lash out. It’s a fault.
—Agreed. Now take your suitcase with you.
* * *
In the morning, they assembled at the cottage to discuss the photoplay. Sabine had read it in the early hours, after Pavel had dog-eared and bordered the pages with his Cyrillic-looking criticism—kill the grand entrance, no speechifying, pray the actor doesn’t opt for a death-flop here. Claude and Hal arrived looking harried, having spent half the night supervising set construction. Sabine kissed each man on both cheeks, her face barely touching theirs. Pavel didn’t shake hands with either of them but he gave them a deferential Eastern bow before sitting on the divan in his waistcoat with a sprig of rosemary in one hand. This was a new affectation—ruminating with a sprig of fresh herb or a wildflower between two fingers, twirling it back and forth, sometimes pausing to savor its fragrance. Sabine had made some Japanese tea and served it from a glazed-blue porcelain teapot on a lacquered tray, pouring out four tiny ceramic bowls. The tea set had been a gift from a Tokyo lover years ago, a young theater booking agent with samurai blood.
* * *
Once everyone had a bowl of tea in the sitting room, Sabine said:
—Has Mr. Summers arrived? I’m anxious to meet the man I will seduce into ruin.
Claude looked at her.
—Harold Spruce is the character’s name, said Claude.
—He’s expected any minute now. His family owns some sugar plantations in the Caribbean and he’s been sailing through the Bahamas on his yacht. Not a bad sideline for an actor, said Hal.
Claude delicately rested his tea bowl on his knee.
—Did you have a chance to read the revised script, Sabine?
She noticed that his hands were shaking slightly.
—We did, said Pavel.
—And? asked Hal.
Sabine shifted in her chair.
—All things considered, it’s a very nice melodrama. The role feels demanding and complex. Are there pages still missing? The ending seems incomplete.
—Nash Sully is still working on the ending, but we’re all set to start shooting on May first, said Claude.
* * *
Pavel leaned forward to set his tea down on the low table, took out the annotated photoplay from under the cashmere shawl draped around his shoulders.
—We have itemized some additional modifications. But first, I’m curious how you will film all these nocturnal scenes?
—Medical carbon arc lamps. They use them to treat skin conditions. We’ve bought dozens of them, said Claude.
Pavel continued flipping through his notes.
—I do hope
I won’t have to wear dark glasses between scenes, said Sabine.
—We have a way of filtering out some of the glare, said Claude.
Pavel repositioned the photoplay in his lap.
—We crossed out the exeunts and entrances on the grand staircase, the elocutional speeches—is this how you say it?—the muttering she is making all the time into the windowpane. Wherever possible, we want Sabine to be natural. We watch her like a little fly on the wall …
Pavel placed the photoplay facedown on the table.
—Now, we are still not understanding the airship.
—It’s for stunt work and aerial shots, said Hal.
Pavel turned another page, pressed the rosemary sprig to his nose.
—And, tell me, what business does a tubercular widow have riding in a zeppelin as if it were a Packard? We asked this question on the last version and never received a reply.
Claude turned to Sabine instead of Pavel.
—She has one foot in the afterlife, floats through her days …
Sabine, her face turned to the windows, said nothing.
—And she also floats above the river, Pavel said. Well, obviously, Sabine’s feet won’t leave the ground, so you will need to double her for those scenes.
—Naturally, said Claude.
* * *
There was a long silence. They all watched Pavel flip pages.
—Then there is the question of additional preparation.
—What kind of preparation? asked Hal.
Sabine let her gaze drift into the hazy blue air above the Hudson. Claude studied her faraway expression, a look that suggested the talk had turned to horse racing or the stock market. Her eyes suddenly narrowed and came back to the room as she removed a torn and tattered newspaper advertisement from her pocket and handed it to Claude. He read it several times before passing it to Hal.
WANTED: A GOOD HOME FOR SOON-TO-BE ORPHANS
Two children, boy and girl. Mother an addled, consumptive widow; father tragically deceased. Contact Salvation Army Headquarters in Albany, New York, for adoption particulars.
—I found this advertisement in one of the American newspapers and it broke my heart. I kept wondering why a neighbor or family member hadn’t taken in the children, both under the age of twelve. Why did they have to resort to advertising in the newspaper? So I took the liberty of corresponding with the Salvation Army and then the sanitarium superintendent. The husband was a railway tycoon and left behind a large estate. Dorothy, the widow, is still alive. And she has agreed to a visit.
Claude sipped his tea, tried to steady his voice.
—A visit?
—I want to meet a real consumptive widow and her children. She is in a sanitarium upstate.
—To prepare properly for the role, Pavel added.
A new mood took hold of the room. Any delays could plunder the budget. Claude crossed his legs, tapped the rim of his tea bowl. He felt a headache coming on, two thumbs pressing behind his eyes. Hal abruptly set his oriental bowl down on the table, the greenish tea sloshing over the side, and stood to pace the room.
—For the love of God, do you people have any idea how much money I have on the line with this picture? I’m borrowing money from half of New Jersey and Brooklyn …
Sabine cut her glower across the room as he paced, her mouth thinning with sarcasm.
—You people, ah, c’est bon, the same ones who invented modern photography and cinema? And this person …
She drew one elegant hand down her indigo, lace-trimmed day dress.
— … is the human being that people pay to see in your reels. You might take money from investors who run glove factories and hog farms, but I am the big heart and bosom of this whole enterprise. Without me there is no film, no studio. Please don’t ever forget it.
* * *
Hal Bender stopped pacing and silence gutted the room. He looked at Sabine, shook his head slowly, looked at Claude. The battle between the French and the Americans, between the Lumières and Edison, between art and commerce, between the French cuff and the derby hat, was suddenly intensely personal. Claude saw the betrayal on Hal Bender’s face, the wounded reply he made with his eyes. He’d been enlisted to smooth things over between Claude and Sabine a hundred times, to expedite visas and build a stone cottage to satisfy an eccentric French actress’s pedantic whims, and this was his thanks. He sat back down, folded his arms, but refused to look at Sabine.
* * *
Claude tried to ease the tension in the room.
—What are you hoping to learn with a visit to a sanitarium?
Pavel took up a large leather-bound volume from the couch beside him, opened it, and faced them, as if he were about to sing from a hymnal.
—Gentlemen, as you may know, I am conversant in the esoteric arts. For example, I have made a study of the homeopathic materia medica in my spare time …
—Jesus Christ and all the fucking saints, said Hal, looking out through the windows.
Pavel continued.
—Consider it a German treatise on human frailty. We now use it as part of our approach to a role. It allows for a more natural and truthful representation of the personality at hand. Allow me to highlight a few traits of Tuberculinum, the remedy and the tubercular personality type. Here—let’s see—ah, yes …
He angled the homeopathic bible into the watery light of the windows.
—Tuberculars are hedonistic, stylish, and emotionally superficial … they crave freedom … they move through the world sensing they might suffocate, that the air is too heavy to breathe. A chill between the shoulder blades and an aversion to meat. They crave cold milk, want to use foul language, and are afraid of dogs.
Pavel looked up at them, grinning.
—Isn’t it wonderful? A precise science of senses and moods!
Hal put his head into his hands and said, I’d enjoy using some foul language right about now.
Sabine had softened by the time she looked over at Claude.
—Your sister, when she was dying in the Paris hospital, did she have any of those traits?
Claude sensed a trap. She was asking him to choose between his allegiance to Hal and his devotion to her. He looked to Hal, who was still staring at the carpet, then back to Sabine. He’d invested every penny of his own savings in the feature’s success. A trip upstate could jeopardize the rehearsal schedule. And if the weather turned bad in May they might lose shooting days, which would cause delays and increase costs.
—No, Odette didn’t show any of those signs. She hated milk and she loved dogs.
Sabine tossed her head back, looked up at the ceiling, exasperated.
—You’re lying, just to prove a point and embarrass me.
—You’ll note, gentlemen, said Pavel, in Miss Montrose’s contract, that she is entitled to photoplay approval before shooting. We feel this preparation will vastly improve her performance and the film.
* * *
Flushed in the face, Hal stood and buttoned his coat. He looked a few feet above the divan but wouldn’t bring his eyes to settle on Sabine.
—I’m going to be plain. We begin filming on the first day of May. If Miss Montrose is not ready to shoot, for any reason barring her own death or incapacity, then we will sue her for breach of contract. She has already agreed to do the film. I’ll be on set all day making sure construction is on schedule. The crew, at least, know the value of an honest day’s work.
Sabine watched as Hal walked to the front door and went out into the daylight. He was a complete stranger to her. Where was the diplomat who’d brought her marzipan and wine after a fight with Claude?
* * *
Pavel brought the sprig of rosemary to his nose and closed his eyes.
—I would not call this an auspicious beginning.
—My tea tastes like acid, Sabine said. Pavel, will you leave Claude and me alone for a moment?
Pavel gave a nod and followed after Hal. She watched him go, then turned to Claude.
—Of course.
—A cat will also bite the hand that feeds her, if she’s cornered. I have a good mind to get on the first boat back to the continent. The French respect me, at least … and they understand me.
She pulled some stray hair away from her face and tucked it behind one ear.
—We’ve bet everything we have on this film, said Claude.
—You sound like a businessman from Toledo.
—Is that so terrible?
—It’s unimaginably disappointing. All this talk of money. I wouldn’t even know how much I make in a year.
—That’s a privilege of the rich.
Silence bloomed again. They both stared at Claude’s shoes.
—She was scared of them, her whole life. At the end, in the hospital, she had terrifying dreams about dogs.
—Odette?
He nodded.
—And she made my father furious because she wouldn’t eat meat when she was a child. The Vegetarian of Alsace was her nickname in primary school.
She looked at him.
—Does consumption find the person to infect or does the person find the disease?
—Ah, now that sounds more like Claude Ballard, the French cinematic visionary whom I have allowed into my bed precisely once.
—That was another lifetime.
—To me, it feels like yesterday.
The Electric Hotel: A Novel Page 15