“In a moment, you’ll feel a terrible peace.”
“What did you say,” I asked Alice. “A terrible peace?”
“I said ‘a restful peace,’” Alice remarked.
And she was right. The sun came back and everything seemed normal. I had escaped the darkness and my nervousness was gone. Everything moved more slowly. I felt kind of inebriated. I sighed as I looked around at the intensive normality of the room. Books were books and chairs were chairs. Whatever was making me hallucinate had been calmed, turned off.
“Can I go to work now?”
“I want you in the hospital, Alex.”
“The hospital!”
She grabbed her purse and reached out for my hand. I felt that she was my mother, that she was going to lead me to that radiant forest in the woods outside of New York. I stood up but refused to take her hand.
“Just follow me,” she said.
“But I need to be on the set in a couple hours.”
“You need a complete neurological examination, Alex.”
We arrived in the hospital emergency room and Alice sat me down. She walked away, opened a door and disappeared. I sat there, waiting for what seemed like an entire day…but it was a restful day, the kind of day that you’d photograph or paint on a canvas, the kind of day that you’d save for the future when you needed some peaceful memory.
I heard the squeaking wheels of a gurney, and then the ceiling began to float by. I was being wheeled into an examination room. And then I lost consciousness.
When I came back to reality, I was in a recovery room. Alice was there with a hospital physician.
“We found nothing,” he told me. “You’re all right. There’s nothing structurally wrong with your brain – no aneurysm, no tumor. You’re clean as a whistle.” The doctor smiled. “We’ll have you out of here in no time.”
When he left the room, Alice turned to me. “I had to take that precaution. There could have been something that we could only see in an x-ray.”
“But there’s nothing in my brain,” I said, smiling to myself.
A nurse came in, asked me to get dressed, and then they’d check me out of the hospital.
Once outside, Alice and I spoke. “I don’t think you should go to work today.”
“Why not? I’m ‘clean as a whistle,’ remember?”
“You lost consciousness.”
“But I regained it haven’t I?”
Alice put her hand on my forearm, “Alex, I’m serious.”
“And so am I,” Alex said. “I’ll be fine.”
Alice was frustrated but couldn’t stop me. “Just stay with the medication,” she said “and call me to let me know how you’re doing. And if you want to come in, I’m almost always available on brief notice.”
We parted and I went to the set. They were shooting the scene in the beginning of the film where Gillis had first entered the house of Norma Desmond, presumed to be an animal undertaker.
I was holding my camera and taking photographs but when I sat back down, I found myself in a grand Berlin theatre. I was alone as I watched the great UFA films – The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Last Laugh and finally, Murnau’s Sunrise: a song of two humans.
All the years of lonely imagination, the days I spent in my Brooklyn dive, the nights I longed for something of substance as I was banished to the basement, all of this former New York darkness led to the light of a liberation that I only found in this darkened theatre, organ music rattling the rivets that bound the chairs to the floors of the structure and held me in awe as I discovered the way out of my darkness.
“Lights,” Billy called out. And my memory stopped. I was no longer in the Berlin theatre. I was back in the present as Norma Desmond descended the long staircase. She was exhibiting a plaster smile, something that might crumble at any moment. Gillis had to be gentle with her. I took several photographs but each one had a peculiar aura in the lens finder. Were Alice’s pills wearing off?
After the day’s shoot, Billy and I had a drink back in his office. “Quite a day,” he said. You have no idea, I thought to myself. I was thinking of Sabrina’s legs as she sat at her desk in the gallery, then I thought of Margaret’s house and its similarity to Norma Desmond’s home.
Billy snapped his fingers in front of my vacant eyes. “You still with us?” I looked up at him. “Maybe I shouldn’t be giving you this drink.” He handed me a Scotch and soda. I greedily drank it down.
“Got a date with your Norma tonight?”
I grimaced at the thought, preferring to fall back into reverie, this one about my early days in Hollywood, before I met Katharine, when I lived in a one-bedroom place, looking out on the rural city, a Los Angeles that was waiting to be born, still vibrant with fantasies.
I remembered a night when I was working on images for backdrops of Morocco. I showed Sternberg and Marlene what I could really accomplish, how I could tell their story even better than they could.
Back then; I sat in front of a canvas, painting. I had thoughts about a knife that was lying on the table inside my painting. I wanted to either slit my wrists with it or tear apart my so-called work of art.
I was painting Odette sitting on a sofa in the middle of the forest. She had snails and lizards on her naked body, covering the fun spots so that I could get the work past the morality police. The sky was red and yellow. My work looked like Munch’s, like his Scream.
The knife in the painting started vibrating on its table. Then my hand went into the image and I soon followed.
Odette was sitting on the couch, smiling at me, a full and unreal smile that welcomed me into her heart. I reached out to grab her shoulders but all I got on my hands was the paint I used to create her. Then, I reached for the couch and got more paint. I was petrified at the way the reality I created was melting in my hands.
I heard a clicking sound and when I looked around, I saw my Leica. It had managed to get on top of its tripod and was taking pictures of me, long exposures. I had to stand very still to avoid becoming blurred.
I remembered a telegram I received that morning, once I managed to escape from my canvas. It was from Marlene. She told me she had a job for me. That I didn’t need to report for work that day on Morocco, that she had gotten a better job for me, that I was to meet her at a studio on La Brea Avenue.
I washed the paint off my hands, got dressed, grabbed my cameras and darted out of the door, afraid I would be late. But I was just in time. Marlene met me in this new studio and she introduced me to Charlie Chaplin, in costume as the little tramp, waiting for a camera set-up on City Lights. He was about to come out of the limousine where he would meet the flower girl. He spoke with me briefly, told me he’d seen my work and wanted to hire me. What did I need with my paintings? I had a chance here to play with history and I took that chance and created the photographs he wanted. I recorded his magic on my Leica. I went to the lab with my work, developed and printed it, then waited all night for Chaplin to return. I didn’t need sleep. I was living out a dream in my waking body. And when I saw him that morning, he complimented me on my stills. I was exhausted then but still ready for another day’s work.
Each day working on City Lights was like one of Alice’s pills. I waded easily through reality, never once falling back into one of my dreams or hallucinations.
By now, three hours had passed and Billy was gone.
On the drive back home, my mind began wandering again, this time to the sailboat in Bora Bora’s lagoon. I could see it now from the perspective of the shore. I witnessed the water as it became a misty pink. I saw myself on the deck, panicked, then escaping the scene and packing my things. I left the Bora Bora Hotel for the island’s airport and made my way to Papeete for the flight back to Los Angeles.
Finally free of memories, I turned my car into my driveway. I went inside, straight to my studio where my unused paints and brushes seemed to be waiting for me. I wanted to do a painting of Katharine on the night that I met her. I ignored the late hou
r and started to gesso a wooden canvas that sat on my easel. And as I worked on the background and slowly made it black, I recollected, more than a recollection, I was actually back at the scene of the awful ecstasy. I was in Salka Viertel’s house, where I met Katharine in 1930.
Each night, Salka held a kind of émigré’s court in her Santa Monica Canyon home. Her house was a shelter for everyone from Germany. On the night when I met Katharine, I was escorted to Salka’s house by Marlene. I remembered sitting in the back of her limousine with Josef von Sternberg as I watched Beverly Hills erode into nighttime orange groves. They looked like the trees that I enjoyed playing on when my mother took me on a vacation in the countryside. That was a time when my mother had a beau who drove us out on Sundays. The Great War had ended and the gnarly branches of the trees reminded me of the soldiers that were coming home, their limbs contorted or chopped off. I felt like I was a magician as I climbed those trees. When I’d come to a branch that cut off suddenly, I’d imagine it was a leg and I could perform real, lasting tricks that would turn a man’s stump into a thriving, young leg. Each tree was a series of people, like a little platoon that was waiting for my touch to ease their pain and release them from their mangled formation. The trees would become people and walk away, leaving me in a sweet evening light. Then my mother would call me and I’d run into the house where we were staying and watched as she gave her attentions to Mr. Charles, the man who wanted to be my stepfather but never got further than those weekends in the country.
When we arrived at Salka’s, I met Greta Garbo dressed in a man’s suit. While people spoke German, French and Italian, I would ease my way through the openings in the crowd, looking for the person who would interest me most. When I got near the piano, I felt Marlene’s hand on my arm.
“I want you to meet Arthur,” she said.
Sitting at the piano was a sprightly Polish gentleman, playing Chopin, his sparkling blue eyes focused on the keys when they needed to be but mostly, they were gazing into the eyes of his audience. Marlene presented me to him and Arthur stopped to reach out his hand and shake mine. After perfunctory introductions, Arthur delved into my past, my childhood in New York, my motion picture stills, even, eventually, the topic of my artwork - a private world that most people could not get me to talk about.
“I started drawing as a game,” I told him, “I’d see things in my mind that wouldn’t go away until I sketched them down and gave them something to do, someplace to be. I made many friends that way, drawing from my imagination.”
“And where are these artworks now,” Arthur asked, “Hanging on walls back home in Manhattan? Or maybe they’ve made their way to the living rooms of some of the guests who are here tonight.”
“I don’t usually let them out of my sight,” I told him. “I trust my photographs much more, they don’t try to be anything that they aren’t.”
Arthur’s hands went back to the piano and, in a youthful flash, he was playing Elgar’s ‘Salut D’Amour.’ It was Katharine’s cue to float by me with her beckoning smile, to touch my shoulder as she made her way outside to Salka’s little waterfall. I followed her.
As I looked into this girl’s magnetic eyes, I sensed that she would cause me more pain than pleasure. Her smile was wary; her hand froze around her champagne glass. For a moment, I fell into one of my visions. I saw her burying me in the sand of some beach. My head was all that showed. I was completely dependent upon her for my survival. But I didn’t believe she would ever dig me out.
Still, the attraction was addicting, immediately. She looked at me and laughed. “What’s that weird expression on your face?”
“What expression…?” I said defensively, a little impatience showing itself. There was something about her that made me ill; maybe it’s the way I was drawn to her despite my instinct to run away.
“Do I know you?” she asked. Was she really interested or just saying something to mask my silence?
“I’m here with Marlene.”
“I see,” she told me. “Then you must be high.”
“High?”
Katharine took the drink out of my hand and placed it down on the pond’s ledge. “You get high just by being stuck, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that your fear is kind of attractive to me.”
I moved back a pace, placed my hands on the clay waterfall pool. I was caught out. This young lady was on to me.
She reached out her hand. “Katharine Houdini,” she said.
“Alexander Lumiere,” I said. “Are you here alone?”
She gestured to the living room. “With my mother.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen,” she said confidently - proud to be young and perceptive. “My mother brings me here because she thinks I’ll learn a lot about life around these icons.”
Pause.
“How old are you, Alex?”
“Twenty and counting.”
“Well, don’t count too fast.”
“Aren’t we all supposed to want to be older when we’re as young as we are?”
“It’ll come, young man.” She reached out and adjusted the collar of my shirt, then pulled back and seemed like she was disgusted with me, like I was unprepared to deal with her. For a teenage girl, she had a world-weary attitude that didn’t match her fresh looks.
“You’ve been through a lot, you must have gained quite an education.”
“I’m in high school, still.”
“You seem more like a graduate student.”
“Is it my impatience?”
Suddenly, she kissed me quickly on the lips.
I pulled back slowly, amazed at this girl’s nerve.
She looked seriously at me, her eyes sizing me up. Was I enough of a man for her? She seemed like someone with more experience than I, like someone that would suck me into a relationship that I couldn’t keep pace with.
“Ever been to the South Seas?”
“Where?” I asked.
“Tahiti. Bora Bora to be exact.”
“Are you inviting me?”
“You’re a photographer, right?” Katharine asked as she touched my hand.
“How did you know?”
“Research,” she said kind of solemnly. “You don’t think you’d be standing out here with me if I didn’t know something about you, do you?”
I looked down at my glass, jiggled the contents, and without looking up, said, “I suppose not.”
“My father is working for Murnau.”
“Tabu?” I queried, “What does your father do?”
“Cinematography.”
“Roberto Houdini,” I identified him with enthusiasm. “I know his work.”
“As he knows yours.”
“Oh, does he?”
“Someone I know showed him your portfolio.”
“How did that happen?”
Katharine glanced towards Marlene, standing in the living room. She looked our way.
“I see.” I finished my champagne. “So, is this a job interview?”
“A prelude to a job interview.”
“Is your father here tonight?”
“No, but he’ll be in his office tomorrow.” Katharine smiled. “And you’ll be done with Chaplin’s film any day now, won’t you?”
I stood there, excited to the roots growing out of my feet. I planned on staying in this garden with Katharine forever. I could see myself as a tree she would climb, grab to avoid falling. I sighed with relief. “We wrap up in three days.”
“And the ‘Tabu’ crew leaves in three weeks.”
“To what, exactly, do I owe this great fortune?”
Katharine laughed, and then gave me a serious eye. “Your work, of course…but your name doesn’t hurt your reputation, Mssr. Lumiere.”
Then, as he was meant to, Arthur Rubinstein played ‘Salut D’Amour’ again.
Marlene stepped out into the courtyard. “Have you made a new friend?” she asked.
> “It seems you made one for me,” I said.
Marlene nodded in acknowledgement. “The job would be perfect for you.” Then, glancing at Katharine, she added, “for both of you.”
TABU
During the first days of production when we started shooting Tabu, Katharine sought something more interesting than spending her Tahiti days with the film crew. So she devoted some of her time to the other side of the island where the trapped people lived their lives in permanent isolation. A small city existed there, a medieval city, one that believed in vengeful and loving spirits. She had her camera, her eye, and her young ambition. She had the potential of her own death in her lens. At least that’s the story Katharine told me years later.
Katharine said that she photographed a rare sacrificial rite, one that Margaret Mead must have missed. This group of Tahitian natives had an intensity that electrified Katharine. She had come of age and the world was her hunting ground. But Katharine didn’t hunt like a man, she didn’t pursue things that could be brought home and put on the wall, she pursued realities that revealed themselves in unique ways…and she found them, in this tiny city belonging to the Toomatakuls who inhabited the untraveled valley of Bora Bora’s netherworld.
As Katharine would confess to me, it was when dusk became dangerous that she decided to stay and watch even though it was too dark to photograph; her Leica didn’t have the aperture that would let this dark reality become illuminated on film.
From the bushes, Katharine watched the tribe, maybe 100 feet away from her, as they began their ceremony. The Toomatakuls who weren’t naked were dressed in ritual vestments that were made from the native trees. On a natural pedestal, formed from volcanic rock, she could then see a partially filled totem – a tall horizontal column that had a series of mummified animals lain one atop the other.
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