by Adam Braver
SHE SAT WITH A FISHING POLE in her hand. Her bare legs dangled off the Venice pier. The sky was see-through blue, with the stiffed winged gulls like shadows against the horizon. Sarah pretended she sat alone, ignoring the U-shaped crowd that had gathered out of curiosity around the reporters on the dock. No doubt they were craning their necks and bobbing over one another’s heads to steal a glimpse of the star. Looking out into the expanse of the Pacific Ocean, she kept her back to them as they crept up on the auditorium.
Her line sunk far beneath the water’s surface in the hope of seducing an unsuspecting fish. She sometimes swayed the rod from side to side in order to create some variety, feeling the force of the water mass in its resistance. Closing her eyes. The crisp moist air blowing off the waves reminded her how small she really was in the world.
She thought that she felt a tug on the line, and her body tensed in excitement and pleasure. She centered her weight. Braced her arms. Adopted a grimace that was more anticipation than anything else. By the time she gripped her free hand on the handle for support, the line loosened, then as quickly slackened, reinstated to its former free-floating form. Such is the drama of fishing. In this constant give-and-take, unpredictable rhythm, and seat-edged suspense, Sarah felt whole. The performer and the audience at the same moment. The combustible relationship of energy between actor and viewer that sparks the theater is alive in every act of fishing. Here there is no celebrity, no cues, no critics. Here every bit of business is stage business. With no need to jump and shout and lift her skirt bare ass in public in order to be seen. The same wholeness she felt when she would sit on crushed grass at her uncle Faure’s farm in Neuilly, dragging a line across the lake, each little movement breaking and rustling the dried brown stalks, and causing the fish to scatter, leaving only a constellation of bubbles and ripples. She could sit out there all day long without catching a fish. Just gazing into a sky animated by silky clouds, unable to dream a better life.
Her line pulled again. Jerky in stilted movements. She didn’t feel the usual tugging and fighting. Almost as though the catch had given itself up in a desperate attempt of hopelessness and soulless resignation. Then came a sudden force that lightened momentarily before turning heavy again. She leaned back, rolling her shoulders toward the pier. The ends of her dark hair caught in the breeze. She opened her legs for balance and strength. Stomach muscles taut and ready. Slowly cranking the fly. Reeling it in. Hoisting the catch above the surface, a fish in sequin scales, oddly content, with barely a trace of distress or fight. At least a foot long, and plump with fat.
Behind her a staccato of hands clapped from the mouth of the pier. A whoop and holler. But she didn’t look back, this was not her audience. Instead, Sarah reeled in the fish, watching it come closer and closer. And as she looked into the rainbow prisms of its skin, Sarah remembered a dark winter afternoon when the Mother Superior held a manuscript that the old woman herself had handwritten. A play. A parable. Tobie Recouverant la Vue. Where the son of a blind man kills an evil fish. An ever-watchful angel then descends to tell the son to gut the fish and to pray religiously over the innards. In the final act, at the direction of the angel, the fish’s entrails are rubbed over the eyes of the blind father to give him sight, and the angel, having turned evil into a good purpose, ascends back to heaven. Mother Superior had read her play out loud with spite and vengeance, smiling piously at the end when the goodness of God’s work was brilliantly revealed through the angel’s deed.
ABBOT KINNEY HAD WANDERED BACK to the crowd, rubbing elbows with the reporters, addressing the ones he knew by their first names, and nodding feigned smiles to the unfamiliar. He reiterated all the pabulum that had comprised his announcement about Venice’s defining moment, leaving little time for questions about Sarah Bernhardt and why she was on the pier, other than to say, “You would be too. Like everything else, the fishing is great here in Venice.” Baker stood back and listened. He had read Kinney as being smart, certainly more so than most of the reporters surrounding him. He had a stature similar to Edward Doheny, powerful and firm, with a presence that commanded attention. However, unlike Doheny, Kinney clearly wanted the spotlight.
Kinney was shooting the breeze with an Examiner reporter named Johnson, bragging how he had hired a couple of wetback kids to tread water beneath the pier, then swim out and hook a fish from the King George kitchen onto Bernhardt’s line. He didn’t want her leaving empty-handed, nor with any regrets about Venice of America. He laughed when he said that it didn’t cost him anything. They were a couple of Mexican dishwashers from the hotel; the rest was implied. He lowered his voice as he leaned closer to Johnson, “I don’t want to see any of this in print. If Bernhardt were to find out…She’s a real ballbuster, that one.”
Just then Kinney caught Baker’s eye. “Well, I’ll be. Vince Baker. Venice of America ought to pay you a commission for sending Bernhardt our way. You and the goddamn bishop. We might still be struggling if it weren’t for your story.”
Baker thought of saying something like “glad I could help” but resisted anything other than a perfunctory smile. There was often a power struggle between reporters and subjects as to who was going to subjugate themselves first, all dependant on how badly one needed the other. But these battlegrounds had their own castes, and while Baker and Doheny might engage in the ongoing gentlemen’s duel, Baker was not inclined to lower himself to a second-tier upstart like Kinney. But still he tried to be polite. At this point Kinney was the more likely to get him the facts for an over-and-done-with story.
Baker nodded. “Is she giving interviews today? You letting her talk for herself?” He tried to keep his tone matter-of-fact. He did not want any suggestion of deference, or worse, that they were equals setting the abacus for a future of tabulated negotiations.
“She’s a little busy, can’t you see? You have the quotes.”
“Still I’d like to hear what she has to say.”
Kinney pursed what little lips he had between his mustache and beard, and nodded. “If you want to hear from her, then I’ll be glad to set you up with a good seat on opening night. Do you prefer orchestra or balcony? I don’t need the kind of news that you make.”
Baker ignored him and looked out at Bernhardt, sitting almost childlike on the pier. Her shoulders slightly hunched, head dropped, with her hands gripped high on the pole. Except for the brilliance of the scarf on her head, she appeared ordinary, without mystique or fascination. A woman in her sixties who seemed as likely to single-handedly demolish the mores of Los Angeles as she was to lick her fingertips and reach out over the horizon to extinguish the sun. “Look at this crowd,” Baker said. “There must be fifty people lined up behind us. Just to watch her fish. Incredible what some people will buy into.”
“And you can see that she is most delighted to be here. That downtown boycott may have done her a favor, but the people of Venice are the beneficiaries.”
“Come on, Kinney. Just give me five minutes.”
“Orchestra or balcony?”
Baker watched Bernhardt fish. Her body swaying slightly with the breeze. She looked solid. Firmly rooted to the dock. Balanced. But one errant gust, Baker figured, could topple her over and shatter her into a thousand pieces.
KINNEY STRODE TO THE END of the dock, following his slap and tickle with the reporters. He wore straight-legged linen trousers that bunched full at the waist, a white shirt that clung to the bloat of his body, and an understated tie that traveled the contours of his midriff. He knelt beside Sarah, as much as his legs would allow. Eyes squinting in the sunlight.
She looked up at him, then turned away from the immediate boredom that he inspired, and finished bringing in her fish.
“I see you caught one,” Kinney said, sounding not fully surprised.
“You are a very astute man. I should think you’ll go places.”
He smiled and then coughed to clear his throat. “We’ll get that fellow cooked up for you right away. You’re quite an angler.”
The fish lay still on the deck. No flopping or fighting. One black eye round and protruding, looking upward. The end of the glistening silver hook poked through the side of its cheek, stained by a patch of blood. Sarah dropped the pole to her side. “I have never seen a fish so resigned before,” she said.
“I’d say you caught yourself a sea bass,” Kinney said. He leaned forward a little more to inspect the catch. “That would be my guess.”
She ignored him.
“Chef Louis can do amazing things with a fish.”
She propped herself up on her knees and crawled to the bass, pulling on the line to drag the fish closer to her. She crooked her index finger into its limp mouth, delicately wriggling the hook, then slid it out like a jeweled earring. The thin steel dropped against the wood. In silence.
“Madame Bernhardt, you don’t need to trouble yourself with the messy stuff. Chef Louis…”
She took out her room key from the King George. Long and thin, with sharp jagged cuts, and hooked to a metal-banded slip of paper with the number 511 handwritten in the middle. She rolled the fish to the side. Then placed the tip of the key just below its neck. Catching the sunlight.
“No need to soil yourself.” Abbot Kinney’s voice trembled for the first time. His hands grabbed with no true sense of purpose or direction. He looked back to the crowd at the end of the dock.
Sarah pierced the skin with her key. The flesh popped, and a thin clear fluid washed over her hands. A stale, saltwater smell followed an outpouring of heavy syrup. She drew in a deep breath. Her grip tensing around the makeshift blade. To imagine that anybody would challenge the morality of her life. Especially in the name of God. The same God that she had nearly married. Prayed to. Paid penance. And even had her soul, half Jewess and all, cleansed in his holy water. Accusations destroy and damage. Like a stray bullet fired from hatred straight into her heart.
She drew her hand forward, ripping an incision that seemed more of the genus mutilation.
“Madame Bernhardt, there are reporters back in the crowd.” His pleas were lost against the siren chirps of vigilant gulls.
“It is amazing that they can see the dimness of this star.”
She wasn’t originally cast in Tobie Recouverant la Vue those fifty-odd years ago. But she had begged. The Mother Superior told her that she was too pure and withdrawn to get on a stage and act. That her meekness was a virtue. Something she had interpreted as recognition of her closeness to God. “I could play the fish,” she had suggested with a trace of desperation in her tone. “You can wrap me in paper. Paint it. I can bring it to life so that the angel’s work seems more meaningful.”
The Mother Superior had bowed her head. Her eyes softened then turned strict. Almost manlike. “You will not be given a part in the play. We have assigned a dog to play the part of the fish. He’ll walk on, then walk off. It is that small.”
“But I want to—”
“You don’t need to be in the spotlight. Stay fragile for God.”
Sarah could not make eye contact with the nun. She had turned on her heels and walked down the red stretch of carpet that rolled atop the marble floor. The eyes of a dozen Jesuses looking down on her. Knowing the Mother Superior didn’t understand. She didn’t get it. Sarah did not want to be cast in the play from vanity, or even as a public declaration of her faith. She wanted to feel the power of the angel. To experience the true strength of God that poured through that fish into the blind man’s eyes. To feel some connection of spirit. That’s all.
Abbot Kinney’s complexion turned pale. He edged back a step and averted his stare away from the fish carnage. “Madame Bernhardt, please. The kitchen staff has graciously offered…”
She looked up at him. Her hands still hewing the fish. A thumb slipped beneath the skin, reverently stroking. “Then help me gather my things, would you. Be a good boy.”
Kinney straightened up and looked back to the crowd slowly inching their way up the pier in line with the auditorium. His hands turned jittery. He scooped up the fishing rod. The line swung. The silver hook glowed, then dangled capriciously at his loafers.
“You’re not doing me much good just standing there.” She spoke without looking at him. Her hands now cleaving the fish’s belly into two halves.
Kinney wrapped the line around the pole, securing it with the hook. He tapped the butt of the rod against the pier, and then checked back to the crowd. He sighed. He looked down to see Sarah cradling her face in the fish’s innards. Her nose and mouth engulfed. The bass’s body spread like open wings across her cheeks. “For the love of god.”
The insides were warm against her skin. She swore the heart still pumped. Stomach grinding. Its lungs pressing for air. Blood and fluids that reeked of life on the edge of decay pooled across her cheeks, then leaked in slow streams down to her neck. Nearly fifty-three years later she has finally played in Mother Superior’s Tobie Recouverant la Vue. But she has been cast as neither the fish, nor the angel, nor the blind man, nor his son. Instead she has played all the parts in a one-woman show. Rocking back and forth on her knees. The eviscerated bass held taut to her face as she tries to gain sight. To understand some face of God.
THE CROWD GASPED. Boots and shoes inched forward. One could almost hear the scribble of reporters’ pencils. There was a contemplative silence, as though most people were still trying to decipher what they were witnessing. Maybe the light was playing tricks. Baker stood on his tiptoes, vying for more detail. He watched as Abbot Kinney fruitlessly positioned himself between the heathen and the onlookers. A stupidly long eclipse with a fishing pole in his hand, looking helpless and unusually voiceless.
But Sarah obviously heard the anticipation of the audience. She twisted her torso so that her face had peered around Kinney’s frame, the fish mask cupped over her nose. Then she rolled her eyes with a tragicomic smile up to the sky where just a wisp of cloud hung lightly, in order to both bring about a laugh, and also to reassure her fans of her character’s confidence.
Baker almost laughed out loud at the defiant clown who at once mocked and acquiesced. The precision timing, the exact body language, an expression contorted for effect without being prey to exaggeration. He had never seen her before, hadn’t ever really known much about her before the bishop’s wrath, but he always had a slight admiration for public defiance. In her small act, he could see her commitment to her art, and her extreme confidence in herself. In watching her on the pier, one wouldn’t ever suppose the intense controversy surrounding her and its cancerous effect on body and soul. But as she turned slightly to the right, Vince Baker was able to see both her eyes, shaped like turned acorns, pupils like wilted buds, and in them he recognized the gem of celebrity. One that twirls in the spotlight of the sun, hoping to catch all the rays that will burst it into one startlingly magnificent light for all the world to see. He almost left. He didn’t have time for that shit.
WITH A SLIGHT CHUCKLE from the crowd, followed by some scattered hand-claps, Kinney exclaimed, “Jesus Christ, you’re killing me with this craziness,” in the same voice of all those self-indulgent, where-are-they-now directors who schemed to keep her off the stage because true talent always threatens the stability of mediocrity.
Sarah fell out of view from the crowd with the drama of Hamlet’s last breath. Her fall braced by her free hand. The fish was turning deadly and rancid. Its soul long ago risen. The scales turned stiff and prickly. She slid the bass from her face, wiping its grayish remains with the sleeve of her blouse, and threw the spent carcass at Abbot Kinney’s dancing feet. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to the purity of the Pacific. The rich blue. Staggered whitecaps stapled across the water top. Mother Superior’s parable had come true. It took all those years to finally find the truth in her play beyond the dramatic verisimilitude. But here she lay, evil turned pure, and the blindness gone. Finally able to see.
She closed her eyes again to imagine herself now walking back into the Grandchamps convent in Vers
ailles. The reds are still brilliant. Despite the age in her legs she still feels the same sense of fear and anticipation that she had the first time she entered as the nearly nine-year-old Henriette-Rosine. Mother Superior strides down the corridor. She hasn’t changed. A nose too large for her face. Cursory black eyes set back beneath the wrinkles. A figure stout and resolute, both womanly and sexless at once. She comes up and takes her pupil’s hand. “You understand what it is to see now?” she asks.
Sarah nods her head.
“What it means to anticipate what other people think of you.”
Again she nods.
“That you don’t need to think about those people, because God won’t let you down.”
Sarah moves back in nimble steps. Her bones ache. Her jaw is tired. She bites down on her lip. She can almost taste blood.
“You look unsure, Henriette-Rosine.” Mother Superior’s voice echoes through the great hall. “You can demur to his embrace.”
Sarah’s fingers roll into a clenched fist. She feels her carotid artery start to fill her neck in pride and valor. The wind takes hold of her chest in a stopped-up bellow. “I suppose I don’t believe it anymore,” she declares. “And I’m not sure I ever did.”
The Mother Superior places her hand over her mouth, for one moment looking damsely.
Sarah kneels beneath the Mother, fixed in the spotlight. Keenly aware of the hush over the room. Her eyes welling between the fine line of performance and depth of character. Her voice is calm and modulated, almost a whisper, but at once projected from the strength of her chest. “I don’t play fragile and meek very well.” She looks up with a sad smile that trembles off her bottom lip. “I have only ever been successful by my strength. My truth is strength. And I cannot demur nor diminish myself on the trial of faith. It has never worked for me, and it still doesn’t.”
Mother Superior leans forward and cradles Sarah’s head against her breasts. “God will still watch over you. And wait.”