Divine Sarah

by Adam Braver

  She turned around and took Max by the arm, pulling him to walk away. “Pardon me for not issuing a formal good-bye,” she said, turning around. “But I am due at the theater any moment to bid a heartbreaking farewell to ones who love me even more than you.”

  The boy scampered off quickly, running as if guard dogs nipped at his heels, yet staring at the page the whole way.

  Max just shook his head and said, “Sarah, you really shouldn’t have.”

  “I know, Molly. I just wanted to be Sarah Bernhardt one last time.”

  They paused for a few minutes, staring over at Coral Canal. They didn’t talk. Eventually they turned to make the processional march to the theater.

  “I swear I smell steak searing,” Sarah spoke. “I must be hungry.”

  “Maybe the little café at the end of Rose Street.”

  “Listen to you reciting the street names like a local.”

  “After the last few days I’m starting to feel like I was born here. And that I will die here.”

  “Oh, Molly.”

  Sarah closed her eyes. Inhaling the fantasy fragrance of red wine, pure chocolate, and savory meats. Imagining they were back in Paris and dreaming of possibilities. She rolled her shoulders forward in pleasure. “I swear,” she cooed, “if you were not such a Molly I could really fall in love with you.”

  A STRANGE ANTICIPATION welcomed Sarah Bernhardt as she walked into the theater. The cast stood idly, scattered about the stage. Constant Coguelin and Edouard de Max were deep in thought, trying to recall their characters and hoping they hadn’t been left behind in Salt Lake City or some other stop along the way. Irma Perrot, Marguerite Moreno, and Sacha Guitry formed a triangle, walking a circle in metered breaths while training their eyes on the person directly across from them. Standing in the darkened back at stage right, Ibé was guarding his wigs like a devastated parent, cracking his finger like a whip at anybody who dared approach him without invitation or permission. The technical crew all scattered about, tying off knots, testing footlights, ensuring the spot would work with the calcium carbonate gathered from Pasadena. And to outsiders like Kinney, it must have looked frantic. Disorganized bumbling fools crossing paths, unknowingly holding ends of the same rope and pulling in desperate frustration. But to Sarah, who stood a pace behind her longtime confidant, the evening sea air still following her through the shutting door, this looked as magnificent as the play itself. Stripped away of all the conneries and redundant exercises that Molly insists on for three days prior, and just leaving this night-before energy. Each crew member was so perfectly placed, doing exactly what he or she needed to be doing, flowing in and out of one another with the precision of ants stocking their kingdom. And in this one moment, this single solitary moment, she was glad that she had not quit from afar. Max looked back at her and nodded with a gingerly proud smile on his face. As though he had known that all he had to do was get her in the door, and all would return to normal. Maybe he had been right.

  She stopped while Max kept walking. Nobody had noticed her yet. She held her hands flat against each other in prayer position, and drew her index fingers up to her mouth, resting the tips against her upper lip. She was truly going to make that announcement. Change the course of this whole drama. A play that had had a run longer than God knows when. And everybody drums up the same enthusiasm and emotion nightly, hearing cheers and applauding, but in the backs of their minds and the fronts of their hearts there is a nagging misery that they choose to ignore and then override it with rationales, forever fearful of breaking such a long string of success. But she was going to change the whole direction of this play of her life by rewriting one single scene. One simple scene toward the end of the final act (after all she was sixty-one now, and there should be no denying the realties of age), and she would breathe a new life into this drama that would inspire all to stop going through the motions, but instead start living.

  Max stopped a full three paces ahead. “Come on, Sarah,” he barked with a stage whisper. “Come watch their eyes light when they see you.”

  It was probably only one or two pairs of hands clapping. Then like an approaching train the volume increased, rolling across the stage. Even Ibé put down his wigs for a moment (spiking a comb through a long falling curl) and put his arms out with a walruslike clapping motion. And they were all standing, rising to their feet to see her—her own crew. It was the moment between the kiss and the sex. When he tells you that you are the most beautifully magnificent creature that he has ever laid eyes on—seducing you into believing his own myth.

  Kinney himself was standing, breaking a commanding and paternal applause. Max stood beside him, his hands barely touching, avoiding eye contact with her. Maybe he was embarrassed to be found so quickly beside the Baron of Venice. Or perhaps it was his routine expression, the same predictable one that is known to accompany habitual lovers the morning after. She tried smiling at him with her dignified public smile, the same one worn by regals that gently stretches across the face like a fine line between invulnerability and the illusion of accessibility. She never could control expressions when they came from someplace real. She gave a subtle wink to let him know that Henriette-Rosine was hiding happily behind the curtain and waiting for him.

  The crew stood side by side in front of the stage, forming a tunnel that led up to the edge. And she walked as far as she could, trying to keep up the eye contact with Max, trying to let him know that all would be okay; instead catching Kinney’s proud and demanding eyes, as though his browbeaten daughter had finally captured the prince’s heart.

  Max stayed behind with the impresario while Constant’s and Edouard’s hands guided Sarah up to the stage and into the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, where Cesare Angelotti was about to meet the painter Mario Cavaradossi, and thus begin the tragic fall of the strong but vulnerable opera star named Tosca.

  Framed by Cavaradossi’s mural in progress and Angelotti’s youthful ambitions, both of which would soon witness their demises, Sarah drew in a deep breath. And in that breath the tragic will of Tosca entered her lungs and refreshed her blood cells until she was neither Henriette-Rosine nor Sarah Bernhardt. Instead, somewhere in between. Just where she needed to be.

  EPILOGUE

  March 29, 1920

  Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, Paris, France

  THEY ask her to sign playbills. And she watches them recoil into the awkwardness of newborns trying to touch the world. Patrons of the arts. The powerful. The elite. Shrinking into helplessness in her presence. But in the midst of this lazzo scene, Max Klein appears in the center of the room, spotlighted after Sarah gives the stage to him. He clears his throat and announces in a confident manner that this reception area must be cleared. The houselights have dimmed and everybody needs to find their seats or else risk missing the opening curtain. He encourages them to enjoy the evening’s performance, and reminds them Madame looks forward to meeting with them at the reception following the final curtain. They file out anxiously, fearful of missing the first act. And in that moment of silence when the last has left the room with the final breath of pageantry, it is just she and Max. And they don’t share a word. Barely acknowledge the other’s presence. After a passing of time Max looks up at her and speaks with a formality unique to the moment before she is set to take the stage. “Madame Bernhardt,” he says as though the appointed minion to a head of state. “It is time to take your position.”

  SHE RUNS HER TONGUE over lips. Moistening them. The apron feels heavy. Black velvet curtains. She strokes them, watching the slow ripples that travel to the top. She is seventy-six years old now. She has lost her right leg to amputation five years ago, the result of a car accident (in Venice of all places), followed by a stage fall, and the subsequent gangrene. She sits in the chair that will be hers when she takes the stage. She rubs the stump from where her leg once fell. She swears that she feels her toes tickle. Strange, especially given that the opium has not been in her system since May of 1906. She is just out
of view of even the most vigilant audience member. There is always one who is trying to look backstage. Trying to catch a glimpse in the wings. Waiting for recognition. A nod. A wink. Even a raised eyebrow. Imbeciles. One illusion is not enough for them. The last ripple finally reaches the top. Barely. Ridiculously slow. The curtain looks settled. She waits. Slowly sliding out of herself. Somehow she will slip into the character of Marguerite Gautier. It is kind of like dying. Where the life you know slides from your body, revealing each moment to you like a photograph in an album. An illusion of shadow and light, still and forgotten. From a distance it is nothing more than abstract images, imbued with relevance by the spaces you fill in. She sees the faces of all those hopeful girls who will never succeed. They flood her mind. Nervously standing backstage. Pushing sweaty hands against their dresses, waiting for the director’s permission to display their wares, those five minutes that can destroy years of dreams. And something so simple seems so complicated. It’s just art. It is just doing what you need to do, expressing things the only way you know how. But suddenly the artistic life becomes business. And every line that you learn has an impact on whether you will ever have the opportunity to speak the next one. And yes, sure, she could have said to hell with it, and paraded her talents down to some back alley theater and spoke the lines from a blacked-out room in a converted basement. She might even have had the same passion. Maybe more. But that is a possibility that she knows will never be answered. She never stood side by side with those hopeful girls. She was too busy being blinded by the footlights becoming who she is. The odd thing is that she never sees herself. Well, not quite true. Occasionally she sees images of Sarah Bernhardt, but they are no more she than they are Marguerite Gautier, Mrs. Clarkson, Jeanne d’Arc, or even Ethel Barrymore. Maybe that is what makes it so much easier to slip into character. She is forever naked.

  MAX KLEIN WALKS UP TO HER. He shows her a note, and then pushes it deep into his pocket, the last swirl of curved ink disappearing. She can see him crumple it in his pants, the fabric bunching and wrinkling, gloved around his fist. “A message from President Millerand,” he whispers, and she says, “Yes? Has he rewritten the play?” and Max replies softly, “No, just the usual good luck note.” They both stand quietly. The murmur of the audience droning before them. Thousands and thousands of words that have blended into one indistinguishable sound that is void of meaning. She turns to look at Max and steals a full glance without his noticing. He is beautiful. Soft and tender despite his tightly threaded expression and recent aging. He is strength woven by a lifetime of insecurities. His devotion to her is uncompromising, but she does not see him as subordinate or lacking. It is the love of the spiritually connected. Lifetimes of incarnations that have not-so-accidentally rounded the corner into one another and partnered for yet another go-around. It doesn’t warm her like she thinks it should. Instead it grounds her. Makes her place on the earth seem more assured. A gravitational hand to hold in order to keep from shooting off into outer space. She thinks to tell him that she loves him. Not in the usual manners—the petulant child who tosses out I love you as some form or apology or distraction, nor as the invertebrate lacking in lucidity who suddenly finds herself in love with the whole world. This would be real. The kind that makes the skin crawl. But she decides against it. Too unprofessional. She needs to be summoning Marguerite. Calling on her to inhabit this body. Charging her with the energy being conducted through the house. She is supposed to be driving out Sarah Bernhardt. Freeing her for the next three hours until she is harkened back for the final curtain calls. To love Max too much is to endanger the moment. He looks back at her, evidently not noticing her stare. In perfect synchronization he nods as the houselights dim. She smiles at his perfection. It is her last chance to say how much she loves him. She starts to round her lips to form Je, but instead pushes out a hard steady plosive that contrasts with the pastoral breathiness of the single-vowel word that speaks a thousand philosophies. She looks at him again. This time she speaks: “Onward.” The word hangs clear and distinct, its edges sharpened and crisp among the blurred crowd din. With her hands pressed against her stomach and feeling for breath, she prepares to take the stage. She has no choice.

  SHE IS AT HOME.

  IT’S LIKE AN ILLUSION, the way she paces the floor. Left with only one leg, her feet still seem to fall heavy, stomping the boards. Sometimes rattling the stage walls. She is solid. Rooted to the floor. And it extends beyond gravity. It is more a matter of connection. It is like language. She is the meaning created by the listener and the speaker. It is command. And yet, almost conversely, she seems to float across the stage. Gliding. As though all movement suffers no effort. Gliding among the actors as though they are inanimate objects and she is the breeze. Strike that. She is nothing like language. She is not a voice or a tool or an instrument to convey thought through the artifice of metaphor. She is meaning. In all its literal glory.

  SHE DOESN’T EVEN FEEL herself breathe.

  THREE HOURS LATER she is still onstage, seated on a stuffed feather bed that is draped by a thin comforter and bordered by a mound of pillows. She is costumed in a long white negligee with an embroidered lining that hangs below the neckline. Her face is powdered a consumptive white, and heavy black eyeliner helps to draw out the sickness. Her left leg hangs over the bed, the foot dressed in a lace slipper. The stump of her right is carefully hidden below the covers. Since the amputation her set designers have worked miracles to create the illusion that hides the phantom leg. She is about to die as Marguerite Gautier once again. Soon the character of Julie Duprat will enter and light two candles. She will kneel before the bed and watch the tragic figure scream out in pain with three long howls. There will be pauses, one beat longer than normal between each scream, and the theater will be in resolute silence, until the next howl picks up as the other fades away. And then she will sit up twice. Each movement is so simple and shapeless on its own, but within context she will be in desperation, reaching out with one final attempt to grasp onto her mortal life. Then she will cry out for Armand. She will scream for him as though he is just outside the theater on the Place du Châtelet, so close but unable to hear his own name. And the audience will all tense and sway their bodies, as though trying to help give her call more force, as though there truly is an Armand Duval standing right outside the stage doors on the boulevard. And tears will fill her eyes. They will crawl down her cheeks, running traces through the foundation. The theater will be stunned into silence, cooperative by their own tears. And then she will cough one time, enough blood will rise to stain her gown. And then she will die. She will not grasp for the floorboards as she used to. Partly because the loss of her leg has stilted her range of motion. Mostly though, she has come to see Marguerite’s death less and less as a struggling battle to hang on to life, but instead as a willingness to let go in a slow silent mourning for her lost love and passion.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Divine Sarah is loosely based on real circumstance (and draws from certain incidents and legends in Sarah Bernhardt’s life), but the drama, narrative, and most of the characters are imagined. Combinations of characters have been formed into one, and real circumstances have been bent and mutated for the purposes of storytelling. Advance apologies to those protectors of Sarah. But I think that she would have recognized the intent behind this book—to create a truth that might have been hers within a mostly fictitious world and setting.

  I am indebted to Sarah’s memoir Ma Double Vie, translated by Victoria Tietze Larson, La Dame aux Camélias by Alexander Dumas fils, the technical assistance of Bill Ratner, Alec Hodgins and his French class, and the volumes of information in public libraries and posted on various Web sites. And lastly to the power of imagination that can take scatterings of facts and fictions and create brand-new worlds. Something Sarah Bernhardt would believe in and support.

  Special thanks to the people at William Morrow: Henry Ferris, for leading the charge; Michael Morrison, for his faith; and Lisa Gallag
her and Sharyn Rosenblum, for their savvy.

  Thanks to Nat Sobel. I am forever reminded that my words might be tucked away in a manila envelope in a drawer if not for him.

  As always, thanks to Chuck Newman, Tom Lisk, Mel Saferstein, Jerry Williams, and Mel Yoken for being willing to help in a thousand different ways.

  And finally, the love and support of friends and family.

  About the Author

  ADAM BRAVER was born in Berkeley, California. After attending college in Vermont, he received his MFA in creative writing and now teaches at Roger Williams University. His work has been published in The Pittsburgh Quarterly and Cimarron Review, where several of the stories from his first book, Mr. Lincoln’s Wars, first appeared. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

  ALSO BY ADAM BRAVER

  Mr. Lincoln’s Wars

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