Well, I’m talking about me. You yourself like to foster memories; you can even say it’s the way you live. You’ve hung photos everywhere in your two-room apartment — on the walls, the furniture, even on the door to the bathroom and on the refrigerator. The ones of your family and friends are arranged haphazardly, in a patchwork that only makes sense to you. The snapshots of those you’ve been working with for the last twenty years are framed and prominently displayed. The fact that they’re well-known personalities doesn’t bother you. The opposite, in fact.
We talked about it countless times. “For once,” you’d say laughingly, “it’s the French woman who’s the most uptight of the two!” No doubt about that. It isn’t such exposure that puts me ill at ease. Although that, too. You just don’t show off your life in that way, flaunt the faces of the celebrities with whom you regularly rub shoulders. After all, our work life is no one’s business but our own. You appear in each of the prints as if you were trying to immortalize that moment, the way the worst sixteen-year-old schoolgirl would. To accomplish what? For whom? For you? But you’ve lived that moment, it’s inscribed in your memory. What makes you want to keep a tangible souvenir of it? Why do you need those photos? What do you have to prove? You’d say that your real calling was being a fan, that you’d wanted to work in film to become a professional groupie. One day you admitted to me that you’d stood in the rain for ten hours straight waiting to get Tina Turner’s autograph. You put yourself in a position to get a continual and permanent high being around stars every day. You got a thrill reading fan magazines.
When a photo taken at the Oscars showed you with your arm threaded under Almodóvar’s, you bought dozens of copies of the magazine. No one could even see your face …
I never succeeded in making you admit that there was something dubious, immature about that stuff spread all over your apartment. You’d make fun of my inability to take things lightly. You thought my embarrassment about those photos was more suspect than the pleasure you took in living surrounded by them. I’d call you Miss Desmond, like the American actress played by Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, who can’t stand the fact that she isn’t being worshipped as a silent movie star any more.
Now I feel bad about having made fun of you so often. Could it be that, down deep, you saw those shots as proof of your success? Since the work you did was your whole life? I’m thinking of your empty apartment, those photos of you, your radiant smile in each of them. All those traces of your shimmering life. Thinking of it tears at my heart.
MOLLY, YOU’VE BEEN IN A PRIVATE ROOM FOR EIGHT DAYS. I’m not sure that’s a good sign. After more than a month, it’s now obvious that this coma is going to last.
I know that nurses come in and massage you every morning. Is it possible that you don’t feel them at all? Or are you suspended above your body? Are you watching them doing their work with surprise? Curiosity? Indifference?
You’re still hooked up to your machines. On one side are the ones that help you breathe and feed you; on the other are those measuring your vital signs. No one is allowed to come near you without being dressed like an astronaut: body covered with a layer of pale blue plastic, shoes, too. Apparently, only medical equipment can be in your room. No flowers, drawings, get-well cards, objects, candles, tchotchkes. As you can imagine, I tried everything.
Around you, we’re getting organized. You’d enjoy seeing your friends interacting. I don’t know if you knew how jealous we were of one another. You certainly made connections all over the world. One friend from Rome, another from Berlin, a third from London; and me, the Parisian. Each of us was firmly convinced she was the closest to you. And in her own way, each of us was right. It’s as if you’d divided your personality into four equal parts.
The woman from Berlin was your surrogate mother. You’d put yourself under her wing. She represented solace, the assurance of being understood without being judged. The woman from London was your neurotic twin, the head side of the coin to your tails. Bulimia belonged to her, diets to you. Both of you had the same hang-ups. The Italian woman was your exotic cousin, and you could admire her without being jealous; she’s so different that it’s not even possible to resent her for being beautiful, brilliant, and sophisticated. For you, an American born in Brooklyn, she was the embodiment of European culture at its most refined.
And what was I in all of that? I arrived last. You and I had the same profession, almost the same age, Jewish Ashkenazi culture, the same sense of humor, and a first name beginning with the same letter. Each of us was what the other could have been if the cards had been shuffled and dealt differently. Yes, I could have been that little girl brought up in Brooklyn by a housewife and a dentist father, inhibited by two cheekier sisters. I could have been that girl who fled the nest at seventeen to escape the narrow confines of a conventional petit-bourgeois family that respected the stifling precepts of Jewishness to the letter. I could have become a confirmed single and spent my life, like you, traveling the world, instead of starting a family.
You could have grown up in Paris in a less traditional family that was nonetheless just as taxing. You would have extended your studies a tad longer, would have a husband and children, would be living in Paris; and the pleasure of traveling for work would have been spoiled by feeling constantly guilty about deserting your family. And today, you would be feeling robbed of that other self stuck in a hospital bed. Like me, you would be feeling the frustration of not being able to speak to her or hear her. You’d be living in anxiety and waiting, in futile questioning. You’d be spending hours on medical forums trying to understand what has happened.
There’s no question that you’d be more rational, less impatient than me. You would definitely have filled one of those eternal, habitual tables of yours, divided into two columns: FOR and AGAINST. You’d say that it helped you think clearly. I’ve always thought it was a waste of time.
This time, if only for you, I do want to try it.
The pluses: you’re in the prime of life, barely forty years old; you’re a fighter and I hope you stay that way, even in the coma; you’re rarely sick, never tired; you’ve always said you had strength born of despair. Now is the time to use it.
The minuses: your coma is lasting an abnormally long time, if I can believe what I’ve read about that on the Internet; you used to eat anything at all and I’m positive you don’t have enough red blood cells, proteins, a lot of healthy stuff. What else? You smoke too much, obviously, but that harms the lungs, not the brain, as far as I know.
Now I know what I hate about that binary way of approaching a problem: it doesn’t leave any place for the irrational.
Were you born under a good star, Molly? In the midst of all this misfortune, will you have any luck?
IT STILL IS USELESS TO INSIST: only your parents and sisters have the right to visit you, just as they have for the last month and a half. I’ll bet they’re talking to you about personal things. They must be bringing up memories, regrets, maybe things they feel sorry for. I’ve never met them, but I figure they have your discretion and your reticence. I hope you’re not being exposed to those maudlin scenes shown in all the American tearjerkers. Remember how we both used to snivel watching Debra Winger dying of cancer in Terms of Endearment? Or when Susan Sarandon, who was at death’s door, forgives Julia Roberts for having snatched her husband in Stepmom? Molly, if you come out of this, I’ll bring you the DVD collection of all the films that made us cry; but still, I’m not planning on rewatching a single one because they never end well for the character in the hospital.
I wonder how your family can stand this waiting, these hours spent in your room at your side, with you so near yet so unreachable.
You would say that in order to better love your parents, you needed to be far away from them. That when you were with them, you felt yourself regressing, becoming a little girl again. And no matter how much I’d explain to you that every adult permanently remains her parents’ child, you didn’t seem convi
nced.
You were outraged at the dinner for your parents’ fiftieth anniversary a few months ago when they lectured you for having given them too expensive a present. “They’ve always dreamed of going on a safari in Kenya, but when I give it to them, they’re obsessed with how much I paid for it. They ought to be happy that I can afford it instead of supervising what I do with my money! In my family, we’re always worrying instead of enjoying.” I explained to you that mine operated on the same model and that it was obvious that Holocaust survivors have a hard time putting any levity in their life, but you wouldn’t calm down.
Your parents had scheduled their trip for next January. My poor Molly, I don’t think they’re about to go.
Your surgeon suggested to those close to you that they install a hotline to your bedside. Now there’s a phone number your friends can call. It’s connected to an answering machine that invites people to leave a message for you. A device regularly plays them out loud in your room, in the hope that you’ll recognize these voices and that they’ll help you resurface, return to where you lost consciousness.
A beautiful idea that made me enthusiastic on the spot. To talk to you, finally! After eight weeks of silence, what a relief! In principle, it was a great idea.
In reality it was another story. I hung up several times without leaving a message. I could not afford to sob as I spoke, or let myself be carried away with emotion, rage, grief. But how could I sound cheerful, like somebody doing well in the best of worlds? What could I say to you, aside from some banalities: “It’s me, I miss you, thinking of you, if you only knew how impatient I am to come and see you and hold you in my arms … OK, uh, well, kisses and see you soon, my darling ostrich, take care of yourself.” Pitiful …
It’s not a question of leaving you any stressful messages. It’s just a matter of sending you regards, in hopes that hearing those whose identity is associated with these voices in a dormant corner of your brain will make memory return. Or at least that some of these recollections are prodding you, because who knows what’s become of your memory bank, your brain? How to lift that trapdoor, that leaden silence keeping you in this perverse state of sleep? Can our voices pull off a miracle like the one brought about by the kiss of Benoît’s Prince Charming? Is there a secret formula that can put an end to your coma, Molly, and break this spell?
FOR LACK OF POSITIVE MESSAGES TO DELIVER TO YOU IN A TONE MORE OR LESS NATURAL, we’ve had the idea of enlisting some people from your photos, those VIPs who were kind enough to ask for news of you to begin with. We’ve drawn up a list of your fifteen favorite personalities, the ones whose voices we think you’d be most likely to recognize, and we’ve supplied them with that magic telephone number that we were having more and more trouble dialing ourselves. The most famous blonde in French film has even left you a long message.
When I think that it’s thanks to Tom Cruise that we met … I was working for a movie magazine, and you were a publicist. Tom Cruise was insisting on some absurd requirements in exchange for the sale of a series of photos of him that I urgently needed because we were finalizing the issue. You’d listened uncomplainingly to me defending my point of view. Then, in a very calm voice, in contrast with my stridency, you’d said to me, “So I’m going to explain to him that you accept all his conditions and I’ll give you access to the photos. Then, if he sees the magazine, he can blow a gasket about it all by himself because I’m quitting this gig in fifteen days. As a matter of fact, I agree with you: he’s unmanageable.” A friendship was born.
Since that time, you’ve changed jobs, and so have I. I counted: we’ve both been doing the same work for ten years.
Do you remember that young intern last year who sent you a cover letter? You forwarded me a copy of it with the following comments: “He’s cute. He thinks we live in the dark and watch masterpieces while we eat popcorn.” You’d underlined a sentence in which he explained, “I’m dreaming of spending entire days next to you in the dark.”
You ended up letting him come in so you could explain to him that you spent the lion’s share of your days hunting down news items in order to find out about films that are being produced, watching stuff that was mostly a chore, and reading screenplays every day that were more often hard to stomach than mind-blowing. That hadn’t seemed to discourage him. So you dealt him the death blow by asking him if he liked gambling. Thinking he was giving the right answer, he’d answered that he hated it. That put an end to the interview.
You and I gamble all the time, for real. We take risks, put substantial sums on several projects. We bet on a story, a team whose job it is to tell it. And then the film is shot. We wait with our stomach in knots. When the betting is closed and the film is finished, when it has been released to theaters, the audience returns its verdict. It is only at that point that you know whether you’ve gambled well, whether you’ve won or lost. You call that having the knack. The trick, the mojo. But you need luck as well. It’s the reason why you always wear a charm bracelet on your right wrist. I remember a tiny cube of dice, a miniature fish, a key, an imp. If you come out of this, I’ll have a little four-leaf clover made for you. Me, the person who has never found one.
For many years, you’ve had your room at my place, and your habits. In Manhattan, you found me a hotel around the corner from your office. We’re always together at film festivals, except at night, because your messiness and my fussiness don’t go hand in hand, and our jet lag is never in sync, so one of us would keep the other from sleeping. Most of the time you’re ahead of me because of jet lag and the fact that you travel more often. As was the case in London recently, we spend ten or so days one-on-one, five or six times a year, a united front against the rest of the profession, seeing and discussing films. And now, I’m preparing to go without you to a festival where I’m going to feel lost, where everybody is going to ask me for news of you, and where I can’t imagine not having you beside me.
I’m probably going to get to know that young assistant you just hired. (“Hallelujah! He’s an ace backgammon player!” you’d said.)
Don’t worry, I’m going to help him, enough so that he can stand in for you, but not too much, so that he won’t imagine he could take your place.
While waiting to leave for London again, I ended up being taken along on a side trip for people from the film world to Saint Petersburg, a place I’d never been. You often went to the Moscow Film Festival, which takes place every year in July, but you didn’t tell me anything about it, except that year when you’d fallen in love with an actor who you said was young enough to be your son, which made you hold back.
I’m very uncomfortable here, despite the beauty of the city, and I think you would have felt the same. The younger jet set sends even more shivers down my spine in this country than it does elsewhere. The women have a heady beauty, but there’s nothing relaxed about it. It seems to be a very concrete form of currency. What the men are thinking is written on their faces. Face and neck are squashed into a single severe mass, and there’s a restrained violence that their tailored suits don’t soften. Molly, don’t be shocked, but at the point we’ve reached, I figure that it’s time to have all religions start contributing. I managed to give the group the slip this morning, enough time to go and light a candle for you in a tiny, freezing cold, jam-packed Orthodox church.
The congregation was composed of old women whose religious fervor blew me away. The beauty of the chants, the intensity of the faces; it wasn’t that different from Tarkovsky’s films. Since you’ve been in that elsewhere I find inexplicable, I’ve thought more about Bergman, Fellini, Lynch, Wenders, Huston, Visconti, and Truffaut than about more contemporary directors. Just as in literature, the classics are a better refuge, because of their crystal-clear lucidity and amused humanity.
A half hour went by, and I couldn’t leave that church. I lingered on the steps by the entrance, caught by the beauty of the chants, intoxicated by the incense, bewitched by the sound of a bell hanging from a chain that a pries
t shook.
I’ve never gone with you to pray. Even to a synagogue. You’ve explained to me a hundred times that you’re not a believer. That you don’t succumb, as I do, to the beauty of the liturgical chants. But you turned on the waterworks when Elton John sang “Candle in the Wind” at Lady Di’s funeral.
We were at the Toronto Film Festival that day, or rather that night. Because of the time difference, it was three in the morning when the broadcast began. A giant screen had been set up in the largest stadium in the city to show the ceremony, and you’d insisted on going. The crowd was unbelievable. Young people, old people, children in strollers, kids on their bikes. You’d brought sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. It was like a kind of mourning festival. All the smells you’d associate with celebration: food, beer, people lying down and smoking grass. But the faces looked transfixed, frozen with grief. In the stadium, the sobbing spilled out in sheets, like a giant wave of tears. Your comments jumped from one subject to another, from the dignity of the two boys, so tiny behind their mother’s casket, to the beauty of Nicole Kidman on the arm of Tom Cruise; from the noticeable absence of Stanley Kubrick, who’d been filming with them in the greatest secrecy for the last year, to the surprising appearance of Steven Spielberg, who’d made the trip. Only Elton John succeeded in interrupting your chatter. On the way back, you pointed out the windows that were still lit up. “You see, nobody is sleeping, everyone watched. It reminds me of when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I was seven, and it was the first time my parents had let me stay up that late.” You asked me if I would have let my children stay up all night to watch the funeral, and when the answer, “Of course not!” popped out of my mouth, you howled with laughter and called me a “French tight-ass.” You were right: if it hadn’t been for you, I would have missed that strange moment, suspended in time, that planetary communion.
Mon amie américaine Page 2