Divine Sarah

by Adam Braver

  Baker spotted a destitute man who faced backward near the front of the car. The bum’s feet tapped alternate rhythms while his fingers drummed on his knees. His empty irises darted side to side. At one point they caught Baker’s, before leaping away at the exact moment of recognition. The man spoke to himself in a polite and respectful tone, never yelling and carrying on like some hobos can do, always keeping a reserved expression that painfully tried to hold back a dangerous smile. The man kept looking over at him. Talking. Shifting his eyes. Mumbling. Fumbling with his hands, intermingling his fingers. He then held Baker’s stare for a moment and whispered loud enough for him to hear, “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved than the name of Jesus,” at which Baker laughed hysterically.

  When Baker did file off the trolley at Seventh and Spring, the streets felt eerie, as if they were keeping secrets and engaging in conspiratorial whispers behind the midafternoon curtain of the shopping and business district. The unusual number of young people strolling the sidewalks in vociferous dereliction was a clear indicator of what the real downtown was about. Not Broadway with its theaters, haberdasheries, and ladies’ boutiques. In this deeper downtown, moral requisites looked like afterthoughts. Men sauntered in carnival laughter, trailed by flirtatious young women who looked liked the pen-and-ink models advertising “stylish, natty” ladies’ alpaca bathing suits from $1.98 to $5.00 in the local papers.

  He made his way into C. C. Brown’s, “Home of the Ice Cream Sundae.” Bright lights reflected off the spotless white tiled floor. The counter was crowded with young girls set sidesaddle on the black cushioned stools while their overattentive dates stood beside them, each suitor competitively focused on attracting the attention of the lone waitress or ice cream jerk to fulfill his girl’s wishes, straddling the line between chivalry and puppy dog-ness. Traces of ammonia fumes rose from the floor in battle with the pungency of hours-old spilt ice cream and the sweaty anticipation of love. It was loud inside the place. Reams of laughter unrolled in stark contrast to the funereal utterances of the formal downtown establishments like Al Levy’s. People were alive in C. C. Brown’s. It was the Los Angeles of possibility. This area was not about broken promises or ambivalent possibilities. It was about here. About now. Where yesterday was gone and there was no tomorrow. It was not about dreaming, but about living dreams. All as long as you stayed within its confines and didn’t accidentally cross your way into Chinatown. Baker figured that after the good bishop saved Hollywood, he would surely press his efforts in this direction and into the seediness of the Chinese district. The subject had vaguely come up in Baker’s interview with the bishop, his expression practically cracking into four distinct pieces and slithering off his face when he had said the word Chinatown, as if it were code for hell. Although the bishop’s reaction had hardly registered with Baker during that interview, it should have told him in five words or less everything he needed to know about Conaty. In retrospect he could have predicted the Sarah Bernhardt decency boycott the moment he walked into the bishop’s rancid-smelling office.

  Fay immediately made her way over to the table, the water pitcher in hand. Her expression was equal parts confusion and domain. “Why I’m surprised to see you here,” she said, focusing her stare solely on Baker.

  He leaned in to try to whisper. “I am here to get away from work is all.”

  Fay stepped back, the water pitcher shaking in her hand. “Vince Baker,” she said.

  No reporter likes to have his name blurted out in public, it’s like hanging a fly strip over roadkill on a hot day. Baker leaned in closer, hoping to stifle her volume. He could smell her breath. Two-hour-old cigarette smoke, flat coffee, and the unsuccessful blanket of something minty. She still smelled of this morning, with yesterday’s tastes settled into a ubiquitously sensuous and repulsive brew. “Jesus Christ, Fay.”

  Fay’s nose winced as she forced her eyes to comply with her smile. The almost sandy perfection of her hair was pulled back and pinned to her head with just three symmetrical but renegade strands touching her neck. Her pure blue eyes that radiated simplicity and honesty with a real-world edge looked as though they would explode in either tears or rage.

  Baker sighed as he leaned back in his chair. The booze, the lack of sleep, and the adrenaline push were all starting to catch up. At another moment he might have panicked, but at this particular instance, in the brightly lit hub of L.A. life, where careless youth seemed to live out an infinite eternity, he just looked at her and said she should relax. It really was just work.

  Fay placed the water pitcher on the table. “Boy, oh boy. I am really touched. You know how to melt a girl’s heart.” She looked at him, a smile half-broken, with a hand on her hip. Her eyes darted over the slowly refilling room. “I better get back to the floor. And you better get to work.” She turned and walked away.

  The volume inside C. C. Brown’s began to rise, scored by the teenage girls’ high-pitched screams of recognition and the slurring growl of their male escorts, occasionally punctuated by imitation country club laughter. The shrill was nearly unbearable. The second wave of the afternoon washed in on the coattails of barely contained hormones, a gut-wrenching glimpse of the future, and a sad reminder of the past in which the ghosts of their parents spooked loud and clear. The curse was in getting older. Give or take the notion of predisposition, there wasn’t a kid on this earth who wasn’t open to new ideas, where ideology and politics and pedagogy and ethics don’t cloud every perception. But with each year, judgments begin to fog those ideals until the child begins to see the world through one of the four or so available sets of adult perceptions. It is only the rare ones, the cracks in the gene pool, who break through. Someone, it occurred to him, like Sarah Bernhardt.

  Baker left C. C. Brown’s, having escaped Fay’s petulant glare reflected in the copper kettles that cooked the chocolate sauce. He caught the red car back home, with a plan for an all-day stop at Willie’s, sure to escape whatever chase Fay might be calculating. He wished he could hide out all week. Scott was not going to let up on him until he handed in a Bernhardt piece. And he still had no strategy. By tomorrow, he supposed, he would have to take a ride out to Venice. Hoping he could catch some story.

  Baker arrived back at his Pico apartment at five minutes before eleven, if his clock was to be trusted. He lit the room, still shadowed in meticulously placed clutter. The bed was tossed by rumpled sheets that had been kicked in the corner from last night’s tryst. He thought about Bernhardt. He had not seen her up close. But from the distance on the pier, her eyes had looked weighted down in exhaustion, but her shoulders poised in pride. He supposed he had to admit that there was something intriguing about her. The sun’s golden glow traced the edges of her form, but still he hardly saw her elevated to a level of immortality, something unearthly akin to the progeny of Leda and Zeus as the Scotts of the world would have you believe.

  Baker sat in his overstuffed chair, upholstered in a mysterious green fabric that was fraying in such a way that it resembled a shedding dog. The seat was cluttered with tossed clothes. Some had been partially folded and appeared to have been forgotten. He reached down and pinched a handful of T-shirts and trousers, and then quickly flung them onto a pile of boxes. He wondered what he might eventually say to her, and if she would even talk with him. He would be forced by professional integrity to identify himself as a reporter, and she undoubtedly would scream bloody murder for her people to get him the hell out of there. He had to be careful about making eye contact with Bernhardt. He could tell she was the type who had a spell. The kind of hold that would take you prisoner, locked into the cell of her world, where you quickly relinquished all your strength and stature. Sublimated by her power. When she said dance, you danced.

  He stayed in his chair into the early morning, listening to a light rumble of thunder that sounded as natural as a distant train. Then he heard the beginning of the rain. Large, heavy drops that fell dumbly down, splattering again
st the concrete with the first coating of wet. The rain began to scratch against his window with paw print remnants, and then pick up into the fast but steady rhythms of Mexican maracas. He kept his eyes closed while he listened. The rain was cleansing. Reassuring. Today was being whitewashed, and tomorrow morning when he finally did go outside, Los Angeles would sparkle. The bushes would glisten green. Sparkling lawns. The leaves twinkling off the trees. It would be the city of angels. And he would remember the power of being here. The place where anybody can make anything possible.

  Sarah Bernhardt kept crossing his mind. A lot, considering that he didn’t really care about her. He wasn’t thrilled with having to lower himself to talk with her. But he was curious to see her again. He would catch some story tomorrow.

  He kept his eyes closed. And listened to the rain.

  THE RAILCAR WAS STILL and dark, and though tightly sealed, the barks of seagulls and the low groans of thunder rumbled throughout the train’s narrow passage as though part of the atmosphere.

  She dropped her head back and began to hum “Sur le Pont d’Avignon.” The childhood song rarely came into her head. Often she would try to summon it during insomniac nights, but the simple melody could never compete with the thundering thoughts that banged through her mind. It was only the rare times like these when the lyrics and melody just appeared free and uncluttered. When all became pure, and she heard her mother’s sweet voice singing peacefully and calmly of dancing on the old bridge of Avignon. Sur le pont d’Avignon/Tout le monde y danse, danse. Mama’s golden hair gleaming in the shadows. Sweet butter on her breath. Henriette-Rosine would be resting her head on a crushed feather pillow, lying on a mattress that was as secure as the wood frame that supported it. Four years old. In Paris. Neuilly on the banks of the Seine. Those were the nights before Mama left. Before she disappeared into travels for more than two years. When Henriette-Rosine still believed her father was working in China and would return any day. Before she found herself living alone with the family nurse in a windowless room at 65, rue de Provence, waiting for her mother to return. When all was still perfect. All was still hopeful. A voice of the universe telling her that all the world dances around. Sur le pont d’Avignon/Tout le monde y danse, danse/ Sur le pont d’Avignon/Tout le monde y danse en rond.

  She stopped humming for a moment, and loosed a content, sleep-filled sigh.

  She leaned her head back and began to hum again.

  Sur le pont d’Avignon/Tout le monde y danse, danse.

  Henriette-Rosine was ready to go to sleep. She closed her eyes. The side of her face turned against the softened upholstery.

  Sur le pont d’Avignon/Tout le monde y danse en rond.

  The smell of sweet butter washed over her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  May 17, 1906

  MAX thought she looked at peace in the morning light. Her body in a deep slumber, something that eluded her almost every night since she had arrived in America. Now she slept soundly. Tucked into the railcar bed, lying on her back with her head propped up by a pillow set just below her neck. To some she might have looked like a perfect specimen at a viewing. He sat down next to her and stroked her hair. He froze when she had startled for a moment, twitching her head and making mumbling half-words. There were all those stories about waking people from sleepwalking, and how they never again recovered from the disorientation. Shocked into mental illness, permanently placed in a state of anxious melancholia. Max felt the warmth of her breath cross his cheek. It had floated with dandelion ease, stopping just before his skin in pure intoxication.

  Kinney had arranged a brunch with certain patrons of the area. They had paid charitable prices for the front-row seats and had been promised an intimate brunch with the star. Although it was not for another hour and a half, Max needed to wake her. Most of her clothes, and the comfort of her bath, were in her room at the King George. She was not one who rose quickly in the morning, nor was she especially brisk with things like changing locations.

  “You have come to kidnap me.” Her voice was gravelly. Her eyes only half open. She crossed her arms over her chest in a dead man’s pose and looked up at the ceiling. The blankets pushed down heavy on her, cocooning her in safety.

  “I wish I could let you sleep all day,” Max said.

  She lifted her right arm up and beckoned him with her hand. “Come here. You deserve to have comfort.”

  “That’s all right.” He shook his head. “I’m fine.”

  “Ridiculous. Come keep warm under the covers. We can watch the ceiling together.”

  Max was the kind of man who lifted the world on his shoulders for show, and then forgot it was there. In such desperate allegiance to clocks and schedules. He had the strength to mow down the threats, yet when he looked in the mirror, he was still the same scared little boy who first peeked out from between his mother’s legs to see the world. He didn’t move, just maintained his stance over the bed.

  “Let’s just hide all day here,” she said. “Keep the covers on and the curtains drawn. And we can read dialogue. We can pick a play that we have never read together and recite it for an audience of nobody other than ourselves. Then when we exhaust that, we can solve the mystery of Marguerite Gautier.”

  Max grinned and told her that he wished that they could do that (and the truth was that he really did wish that they could do that), but it seemed like years had passed since their schedules had ever allowed for that kind of recreation. “I really am sorry,” he said. “But we have the Patrons’ Brunch.”

  “Patrons’ Brunch?”

  “Yes, I told you. It is on your itinerary.”

  “It is just the way you say it: Patrons’ Brunch…Is that your term?”

  “Well, that is how Kinney has billed it.”

  “Can we please refrain from using his antiseptic vernacular. It is not only distasteful, but it is also in contradiction to the whole notion of what we are about. We produce art to give people a vehicle by which they can view the world in new ways—not limited jingoistic phrases that one can take comfort in without thinking.”

  “Sarah, I will call it whatever you prefer.”

  “No. Call it what you prefer. That is my point.”

  “What if I prefer ‘Patrons’ Brunch’?”

  She kicked the covers up and off, and then sat up. “You know, Molly, you are truly more effective than a two-bell alarm clock.”

  “Come then,” he said.

  Sarah sat on the edge of the bed. She braced her forehead in her palms. And for one brief moment, Max saw her as different from the Sarah that they had worked to preserve in reputation and memory. Almost as ordinary. Her unwashed face was stripped of makeup, other than black lines that traced her eyes. Shoulders stooped in resignation and wear. And she stared off as if there were no thoughts in her head. Then she dropped her hands to look back at him with a twinkle that was equal parts innocence, power, malice, and instability. He smiled for the Sarah that again he recognized. She dropped back onto the bed and kicked her feet up in the air. “Please tell them thank you, but I will have to decline.”

  “I am afraid that that is not an option.”

  She pouted out a blast of breath. “Then you can go in my place. I can sign some pictures now. You’ll bring them. And then you apologize for my current condition, of which they won’t even question because they will be certain that I must have at least one, and you can answer the questions. You have heard them all a thousand times before, and certainly you must have the quips and stories committed to memory by this point in our partnership.”

  “I am flattered by your confidence, but this is not negotiable. Part of the contract. Plus we are never in a position to turn down money.”

  “And then when do you expect that we can discuss the play? We are opening tomorrow, and it is still in chaos.”

  “The play is not in chaos. Last night’s run-through was smooth. The set is working. The cast is comfortable. The only issue is the sudden change in your relationship to your c
haracter. Frankly, that is something for you to work out with me. Not to throw the entire company into disarray with.”

  “Again, it is clear how little you know about acting.”

  “But I do know about the theater.”

  “And when do we meet to discuss these changes? We haven’t shared more than one or two serious sentences about it. You keep telling me we will get to it, but something else of greater importance manages to take precedence. And now it is a brunch that is sure to last half the day. Then you will have to attend to your new boyfriend Kinney, and then another silly run-through, and soon it’s dinner. And you will say that we should discuss the matter after dinner. So where does that leave us with tomorrow being opening night? What room does that leave for changes? You don’t think that I can ask the actors to rethink their entire motivations three hours before curtain. It’s ridiculous enough to bring it up to them with only one day in advance.”

  “Sarah, why don’t you just play Marguerite as you have always played her—for now. We can look at revamping the production once we have some time. When we are back in Paris.”

  “And act a part that I don’t feel? I might as well quit.”

  “I promise we will make time today to discuss this.”

  “You will put that on the itinerary?”

  “Once we are back at the hotel, yes.”

  “Because I cannot perform as Sarah Bernhardt reciting the lines of Dumas’s Marguerite.”

  “I know.”

  “I can only go on if I am Marguerite.”

  She straightened herself into a firm posture. Patted her hair into place. Tugged down on her dress and then grabbed the material at the hips to center it. She arched her chin up slightly, as the photographers always tried to suggest. Shoulders rolled back. A long breath to expand the lungs. “I wish you were a playwright who could write me out of this scene,” she grumbled. Then she knocked her knuckles twice against the warm door for luck, before opening it. She stood in the doorway, a one-dimensional die-cut of radiance pasted between the deep blue sky and the haunted red train. Like a spirit revealing itself to the day.