Anio Szado

by Studio Saint-Ex

  Consuelo said, “Painting is two-dimensional; sets are not. And I am a sculptress. I don’t need anyone’s help.”

  “Lamotte is not here to help you, but to take over from you. He will bring the sets to life.”

  Bernard was going to design the sets! This alone would guarantee the attention of the press. I said, “This is great news, Consuelo! It frees you to do the work we should have had you doing all along.”

  She stopped whining. “What are you talking about?”

  “I haven’t had a minute to look at the photos from the modeling agencies. It won’t be easy to find the right girls. They’ll have to carry the designs and reflect the story. They have to be able to act, not just walk, and they need some French. Plus they have to look the part. It’s a lot to ask, but you’ve got an eye for these things. Who better to do it than you? I hereby appoint you head of casting.”

  Consuelo straightened her dress. “If I have to take this on along with everything else, the rest of you had better start carrying your own weight.”

  “Aye-aye, Captain,” I said gleefully. The whole silver-tongued, pulling-the-wool-over business wasn’t so hard. I almost did a jig.

  55

  Aye-aye? thought Consuelo. There was nothing more infuriating than mock respect. On the other hand, the girl did have a point. No one knew better than Consuelo what made a woman beautiful—or what types of women to surround oneself with in order to seem the most beautiful in the room. It wouldn’t do for the rose to be upstaged. “Where are the pictures?”

  “I put the box in your bedroom,” said Tonio. “Under the bed.”

  “Come,” said Consuelo to Mignonne, and led her out of the parlor. When she threw aside the sheet that was lolling off the edge of the bed, the corner of the box was visible, almost touching Consuelo’s feet.

  “Get that. Be a love. Get on your knees.”

  “You can’t get it? It isn’t heavy,” said Mignonne.

  “I can, darling. But you will get it for me.”

  The girl looked confused. “What’s going on?”

  “If we’re going to start assigning new roles, it’s my turn to tweak yours. I need an assistant. What a face, Mignonne! You prefer the word ‘helper’? Or ‘minion’? Ha! I’ll have to tell Binty he had it right all along.”

  Mignonne kicked the box. It slid further under the bed and hit the far wall.

  “Temper,” breathed Consuelo. “A little joke, that’s all. I just wanted to see that sweet rosiness right here on your lovely cheeks.”

  Mignonne slapped away her hand.

  Consuelo let the action send her sprawling across the bed. Yes, just like that, she thought, as the girl turned and fled.

  “Tonio!” Consuelo cried out.

  The silence that answered her arranged itself into a faint murmuring, in the slow way that one comes to hear the whispers of a distant brook. Mignonne’s soft sniffling. Tonio’s softer, soothing hush.

  56

  Antoine and Bernard could talk for hours about the visual impact of the set, the logistics, the qualities of the materials Bernard would employ. I sketched and snipped and sewed contentedly while, in the background, the two deep voices carried on—debating the value of simplicity, probing the aesthetics of nature, discussing engines or physics, arguing the pros and cons of building structures oneself versus bringing in experienced tradesmen. Occasionally Antoine would practice his cards or his juggling as they talked. Sometimes he kept up the conversation even as we collaborated, communicating with me through silent pointing or by taking my pencil to enhance or add to my lines without a pause in his discussion with Bernard. A couple of times he seemed to forget himself in the midst of a joke, and put his arm around my shoulders or his hand on my knee as he laughed.

  But he never fully forgot himself when Consuelo was in the room. He couldn’t entirely forget or forfeit who and what he really was.

  Consuelo, meanwhile, flitted in and out as she immersed herself in the model search. The coffee table overflowed with eight-by-ten photos of beauties and less stunning girls. Most had straight blond hair. Many had unusual figures—a little bottom heavy, or overly broad shouldered, or thin to an ungainly extreme.

  The stacks of photos grew. The parlor grew ever more cramped.

  “Consuelo,” I asked, “aren’t we ready to audition these girls? I need some real bodies to fit the clothes on.”

  “That raises a problem.” She turned to Antoine. “But I’ve thought long and hard, and I have a solution. There’s no room to hold auditions in the parlor. We’ll do them in my bedroom; I’ll have the superintendent dismantle the bed. I’ll just have to move into your apartment, my darling, until I can find us both a bigger place to rent. I’ll keep my clothes here, and go back and forth.”

  “You are talking nonsense.”

  “A wife living with her husband is nonsense?”

  “We’ll hold the auditions at the Alliance,” I said. “I’ve already cleared it with Philippe. He’s holding a date for us. All he asks is that we use the back door.”

  “This should be easy,” said Consuelo as we waited for the first of the models to arrive.

  We sat in the third row, center, where we could scrutinize the features of each girl’s face and the quality of her dramatic gestures, and have the perspective to assess how she moved across the stage. Antoine had volunteered to man the door. He had been given a list of names for each time slot, and had been instructed to note the time of each girl’s arrival and point out the first of a series of scrawled arrows to follow to the wings where the girl would await her turn. He had been instructed, as well, to make a note of the girl’s ability to understand his French.

  After several girls had completed their audition, Consuelo and I listened again to the sound of dainty heels entering the wings. We heard Antoine’s heavy footsteps following behind and his voice pitched in query. “Why don’t you have a favorite author? Because you love so many, or because you do not read?”

  He emerged on the heels of a thin young woman whose alarmed expression made it clear that she wished she had never come. He asked her, “You have at least heard of Gide, have you not?”

  Consuelo yelled, “Tonio!”

  He walked calmly to the edge of the stage. “You cannot seriously be considering her.”

  “Leave her alone! I haven’t even seen her. Will you please go back to your post and let me do my job?”

  Antoine scowled and headed back toward the wings. Consuelo and I waited for the next girl to arrive. We had her walk the stage and strike a series of poses while we scribbled on our pads.

  The audition continued through the morning. “Bold walk,” I wrote. “Strong nose. Small gestures.”

  The next was a clear call. “Choppy stride. Can’t act.”

  “Tell the next girl to walk on,” said Consuelo.

  The model left the stage, then returned. “Excuse me. There’s no next girl here yet.”

  Consuelo huffed. “What is wrong with these people? Can’t anyone ever be on time? I can’t believe how many haven’t even shown up. Go tell Tonio that from now on, any girl who is more than two minutes late is banned, no matter her excuse.”

  I made my way to the aisle and walked against the direction of the arrows to where Antoine stood at the back alley door.

  His brooding expression brightened as he saw that I was alone. He took my hand, caressed it, and leaned down to whisper in my ear. “I never see you anymore.”

  “You see me every day.”

  “With Consuelo there. It is terrible working beside you and having to maintain such propriety. And yet I cannot wait to be with you. It is the only brightness in my day.”

  “When you start working, you don’t even know I exist. I could be anyone.”

  “No one else could collaborate with me so well.”

  “You work well with Bernard.”

  “He is not so altogether enticing, or so maddening.”

  “I think it’s your wife whom you find maddenin
g.”

  “She is frustrating, not maddening. The two aren’t the same.”

  “Your blood runs hotter when you’re near her. All this time when you talked about your fights, I didn’t understand that they brought you both such satisfaction. I never realized a couple could thrive on that sort of angry passion.”

  “Don’t call us a couple, please.”

  “Husband and wife, then.”

  “Only on paper; you know that.”

  “It’s what I thought.”

  “You misinterpret the situation. I receive no satisfaction from conflict. I cannot fathom why you think my arguments with Consuelo do me good. Perhaps it is only because I release the tension that comes of being close to you.”

  “Do you really believe that, Antoine? Because I’m pretty sure the same scenes have been going on between the two of you for years and will continue for years to come.”

  Just then, a young woman turned into the lane. “Sorry I’m late!”

  “That reminds me,” I said, “Consuelo said to turn away any girl who isn’t on time.”

  “A bit of tardiness is the least of our worries.” He peered at the girl. She was tall and blond, quite striking. “Tell me,” he asked in French, “what do you think of Roosevelt’s approach to the war?”

  The girl answered in English. “Roosevelt what?”

  “Thank you,” said Antoine. “You are dismissed.”

  The girl’s jaw dropped. She rushed off.

  I stared at Antoine. “The war?”

  “Surely it isn’t too much to ask that a girl have an opinion regarding the war. Do you think she knows there is a war going on? She’s even more obtuse than the others.”

  “What do you mean ‘the others’? What have you been doing out here?”

  “I don’t want my story told by idiots who cannot even deliver the words.”

  “You’ve been sending girls away?”

  “I am assessing how they talk. It is necessary for them to be able to deliver their lines in French. I don’t expect their grasp of the language to be flawless, but I won’t have my story garbled. And so I ask each girl a simple question. In answering, she reveals both her competency with the language and the quality of her thought.”

  “Antoine! They need to act, not teach.”

  “They do have to teach. It is their job to convey the messages in the story.”

  Consuelo rounded the last corner of the twisting hallway. “What is going on?”

  “He’s been sending girls away because they haven’t been able to prove, in a second flat, that they’re quite as smart as he is.”

  Antoine said, “Half these girls cannot speak a word of French! Where did you find them, behind the makeup counter at Barneys? New York is full of beautiful, intelligent girls and these are the ones you pick? I would rather rip up my manuscript than have it made a mockery of by a crew of misspeaking twits. I will not allow the story to be told by people who cannot even understand it.”

  “You’re an idiot, Tonio. It only matters how the girls look and move. They need a basic understanding of French, but that’s more than enough. They won’t have any lines to speak.”

  Antoine frowned. “How so?”

  “The story’s told through a voice-over,” said Consuelo. “We’re telling your story, abridged, while the models act out the gestures.”

  “And who will speak the voice-over?”

  I hesitated. “We assumed you would.”

  Just then we turned our attention to yet another young woman who was teetering down the lane on too-high heels. She reached for a garbage can to steady herself. The lid crashed down and rolled wobbling to a reverberating stop.

  Antoine said, “You wish me to proclaim to the world that I have sunk to this: writing and reading macerated scripts for bumbling models?”

  The girl reached us. She stood with one hand on the wall. “Is it okay if I just do the audition here? I wore the dumbest shoes. Gorgeous, but dumb.”

  “How apt,” said Antoine.

  Consuelo studied his list. “Not many prospects left.” She turned to the girl. “You’re hired.”

  “She cannot even walk!” protested Antoine.

  His wife stuck out her chin. “Blame yourself if we end up with incompetents on the stage.”

  Antoine’s face darkened almost to purple. He thrust the clipboard at Consuelo. “You are on your own.”

  57

  Bernard’s set design could not have been more different from Consuelo’s. As I contemplated his oversized watercolors that were spread across the apartment floor, a wave of excitement flowed through me. For the first time, I saw how the stage could become a character in its own right as well as a vital backdrop for both the story and the costumes. Bernard had filled his pages with broad sweeps of color: gradations of blue-tinted hues from peaceful dove grey to brilliant turquoise, shades of yellow that ranged from warm and tawny to an acidic lemon, skies that transformed themselves from merciless ovens to cool, starry canopies whose beauty was as quenching as a spring. Most of the shifts would be achieved through lighting, he explained, some of extended duration and others lasting only moments. The harshest yellow, for example, would make a brief appearance only once, in a single flash near the end of the tale.

  While Consuelo’s designs had been hard and stagnant, Bernard’s were something more like music.

  “There’s such a sense of movement,” I told him, “even though the setting is a desert.”

  “Everything alive has movement, and natural elements give the perception of life to things that are dead as well. Sand, for example, is never still. The sky cannot be. When I paint a portrait, there’s no point in asking the sitter to be completely motionless—not if I want to capture his or her essence in the work. And anyway, people can’t be still if they try. The day my subjects stop moving is the day I’ll put away my brushes for good.”

  He pointed to a series of sketches outlining the contours of a plane that had crashed in the sand dunes. “Even a piece of metal has to be shown to change in the course of the story. Nature and perception act upon it, just as the elements of the story act upon the audience.”

  Consuelo entered the parlor and gave the drawings a cursory glance. “Looks like it’s coming along. What happens next?”

  “Maquettes. I’ll work up a miniature set based on the drawings. I’ll need to work quickly, and they won’t be perfect, but it’s an important step. You’ll want that as you’re planning and blocking out the movement. You’ve started working with the actresses?”

  “Models,” said Consuelo. “The only actress is me.”

  Bernard wrinkled his nose. “You do know that gets under your husband’s skin? Why not call the cast ‘actresses’?”

  “Tonio is just being immature. He was getting on board when it seemed to him that we were putting together a legitimate show. But as soon as he’s reminded it’s about fashion, he storms off.”

  I said, “To be honest, I’m not sure I could call many of them actresses, either. Some of them shouldn’t even be called models.”

  Bernard looked worried. “Even for our own sakes, the show has to be of high quality. I know I can’t afford to have clients question my creative judgment or integrity. I will continue to do the work, but perhaps the credits shouldn’t mention my name.”

  “It will be fine,” I said quickly. “The girls just aren’t used to having speaking parts.”

  “Saint-Ex isn’t narrating?”

  “He’s pulled out of the show.”

  “Entirely?”

  “We’re going ahead anyway,” said Consuelo. “It’s for his own good.”

  “Not if it flops,” said Bernard. “The three of us will look bad if we fall flat on our faces out there. But for Saint-Ex, it would be a disaster. He is already so low. If this makes him a laughingstock, it will be the end of him.”

  “Cut,” yelled Consuelo. “Take a fifteen-minute break.”

  Sitting in the front row of the Alliance for yet an
other run-through, I put my head in my hands and rubbed my forehead. What was the objective? I had to keep reminding myself: present the story, display the fashions, win over the hearts of the audience for their own benefit and for Antoine’s. There had to be a way to do all three.

  The girls were progressing beautifully in their movements and had begun to master the ability to flow their actions into expressive poses. But as soon as I had them add in their speaking lines, everything fell apart—the poses became stilted, the walking became awkward, the voices stumbled.

  Bernard came from the back of the theater and crouched in front of us. “It’s bad.”

  Reluctantly, I concurred.

  Consuelo said, “They should all have their mouths sewn shut. They’re ruining my scenes!”

  I sighed. “We have to go back to a voice-over. It’s the only way to do this without embarrassing us all.”

  “I’ve talked to Tonio. He’s adamant.”

  “Bernard? Won’t you reconsider?”

  “I cannot, Mignonne. Saint-Ex forgives me for continuing to work on the sets, only because he’s the one who asked me to get involved. But if I were to take over the narration, I’m not sure he’d speak to me again.”

  “He would if it went well, if it goes as planned.”

  “At this point, the chances of that are slim. Why don’t you do it?”

  It would be foolish to draw further attention to my relationship with Antoine. That a designer would design costumes was a given; to also narrate the production hinted of obsession. I said, “It has to be a man.”

  “Hire someone?” asked Bernard.

  “With what?” Though Antoine’s publishers had released some funds for the production as an advance against his future sales, the allotment had already run out.

  Consuelo wrung her hands. “You must know someone, Bernard.”

  “Who would be willing to put in the time, and for free? Only your husband’s most loyal friends. They are hard to find now—and none would be willing to take the chance of having this blow up around Saint-Ex.”