The priest was placing the remains of a partially cooked kookaburra in a thin cover of fabric. The small bird was attached to another dead kookaburra and while their bodies were tied to each other and placed on the cloth, you could hear living kookaburras in the trees. Their strange laughing caw, which normally would be trilled to notify other kookaburras of their presence, was grim this evening. It was more a cry than a laugh.
The audience for this sacrificial ritual was seated on the ground, bowing their heads out of respect for the life they had taken away from nature. Their native skins were olive hued and the men, uncharacteristically for any culture, stood naked while the women, covered in a little loincloth, gathered around them in a circle. After the kookaburra had been wrapped, after they had been quickly mummified, one man, a young athlete came forward and howled as he took hold of the remnants of the birds and placed them on the top of the totem pole. As the sacrificed kookaburras fell to their resting place on the new apex of the totem, a moan spread through the audience and the young man who performed the ritual of placement raised one hand and laughed/cackled like the kookaburras that were hiding in the trees. Then this native stepped down from the totem pedestal, his eyes falling on Katharine who watched from the nearby forest of flora.
The young man, Hitu, didn’t betray the white woman’s hiding place. He returned to the ceremony that ended with sobbing, followed by a mimicking of the Kookaburra’s laugh.
Katharine knew she was spotted but she couldn’t move. She didn’t want to move. She enjoyed being the prey, it gave her the kind of thrill that she associated with the lovemaking she and I had been sharing on the beaches during the South Sea nights.
When the ceremony was over, the panoply of natives wandered about their sacrificial altar while Hitu, his eyes still on Katharine, moved in her direction. When he was six feet away, Katharine stood up and stared at him. She extended her brave hand and Hitu froze. At first, he didn’t want to touch this alien creature, this person from the other side. But as he became increasingly hypnotized by Katharine’s growing smile, he let himself go and allowed himself to be touched on the shoulder by the white woman.
Katharine was no stranger to temptation and she wasn’t about to expose any false modesty when this fine man stood before her. She looked at his genitals, then up at his face. Her face was miming her thoughts, that she could have a sudden adventure. She took Hitu’s hand and they wandered into the tropical forest where Katharine welcomed the embraces of the Bora Bora native. They were far out of sight from Hitu’s clan.
Their lovemaking was something rare, something immediate, special and unavoidable. Katharine felt no guilt for the pleasure as she rapturously clung to the back of this miraculous native. After their experience, they went back to Hitu’s cave where the last glow of the setting sun lit up a collection of paintings. Katharine was in awe at the purity of these works. She felt as if she were discovering a new Gauguin in Tahiti. Hitu’s coarse use of color and the creation of a faint light around each scene, what she called a Bora Bora Aura, sucked Katharine into his work.
As she was examining the paintings, then, by torchlight, another man wandered into Hitu’s cave. Katharine’s native miracle stood up and spoke in his indigenous tongue with this man, Trini. The man who seemed disturbed at first, backed off and let Katharine continue to examine the works. That’s when Katharine got the idea in her brain that she wanted to bring Hitu’s work out into the world. She negotiated a purchase of one of his pieces, a landscape with a trio of Tahitian youth languishing on the beach. Katharine kissed Hitu lightly on the lips, and then retreated, with her painting, to the make believe side of the island, the place where I waited in ignorance for my independent young woman’s return.
On the set of Tabu that day, F. W. Murnau and company were photographing a series of boats that rowed out of their lagoon to a waiting western yacht. I was on one of those boats. There was another photographer with me, just an amateur, who held no ostensible threat. It wasn’t till that evening, when Michel introduced himself to Katharine that I discovered who he really was. Michel didn’t appear on the crew as a regular hire, he was just as significant to the director as I was. Michel Lumiere, as he introduced himself to Katharine, was the legitimate son of my errant father.
It was Katharine’s surrender to Michel’s connection with the beginning of motion pictures that started the first rift between us.
“It is an honor,” Michel said to Katharine. She blushed. “You are very brave to come on this trip,” Michel told her. “Most women would want to be in the security of their home.”
“This is her home,” I said.
Michel laughed. “What, this South Sea paradise?” Then, looking only at Katharine with a presumptuous stare of already being accepted, he asked if her parents were missionaries.
“No,” Katharine laughed. “I’m here on my own.”
“She’s here with me,” I informed him.
“Yes,” she said, placing her arm on mine. “Alexander and I are working together.”
“What’s your job,” he asked.
Holding up her camera, she said it was to record the shooting.
Looking at me, Michel said “just like us then?”
Katharine looked at me. She clearly saw my jealousy, my discomfort with this competition.
Michel came closer, patted his hand on my back. “We’re brothers, you know.”
“Half-brothers,” I corrected him.
“We share a father.”
“But not a mother,” I added.
“I see,” Katharine said, her eyes attempting to subtly examine Michel’s buffed body.
“Our father knew Alex’s mother.”
“Long ago,” I said, “and just for a while.”
“Alex is, as they say, a child of love.”
“What are you,” I laughed, “ a child of hatred?”
“Why no, Alex, I’m a child of legitimacy.”
For a moment, there was no response, then I let out with a nervous laugh. “My mother and father were just good friends.”
“Good friends,” Michel echoed. He placed his hand on my shoulder. He had an annoying habit of touching me, welcoming himself into a camaraderie that didn’t exist.
“Our father is a very friendly man,” Michel told Katharine while staring into her eyes. “You must meet him some day.”
“I’ve been in Paris.”
“Marvelous. You must look us up the next time you’re in the city.”
“I’d love to,” Katharine responded with a licentious laugh.
“And you, too, my brother.”
I flinched as I smiled back, revealing the fact that I was put off by his insolence, his confident way of worming his way into my life. We were biological brothers, perhaps, but his confident and assuming solidarity made me ill.
Michel took Katharine’s hand and kissed it with an annoyingly upper class formality…then a laugh that expressed his freedom around people, his godforsaken self-confidence.
We had dinner together, the three of us. I sat there, guarding my interest in Katharine while I knew that her adventurous heart might make a visit to my brother at any moment, that the beach at night was the thing that could dispel any fidelity she had towards me. But I smiled and laughed; I remained convivial as we talked about the exquisite beauty which surrounded us. There was little chance that I’d betray my anxiety. I had fought too long to become the imperturbable gentleman, a fraud that pleased Katharine and everyone else. I even offered to stay near the fire later in the evening when Katharine and Michel decided to take a walk along the shore.
I held my abandoned feelings to myself as I watched them walk off, then in the distance saw Katharine trip and Michel grab her forearm as she was trying to maintain her balance. He touched her. This was a criminal act to me, a motivation to eliminate my competition. But I just laid back and listened to the south sea winds as they twirled through the palm tree fronds. I remembered the night before and what I thought was the
fact that I had won her heart and faithfulness.
She had stretched the full length of her warm, naked body across mine after we had made love on a deserted spot of beach. “This is fun,” Katharine said.
“Just fun?”
Her eyes grew softer, and then she closed them and kissed me long and slowly. “I guess it’s some kind of destiny,” she whispered as the distant waves broke beyond the lagoon. At the word ‘destiny,’ my defenses were broken. After years of being alone, I had finally found a woman who was meant to be with me, who was confessing her desire to bond with me. The moonlit night, the tropical moist air, they sealed shut my infinite security as my beloved mate fell asleep across my chest.
When I came back to the moment, Michel and Katharine were out of sight. I stared at the dying fire, imagining the two of them in an embrace. I thought about Katharine resisting Michel’s advances. It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered her debauchery was viral that day.
I thought about my father, about the companionship that he gave to my future nemesis. I would know Michel for a lifetime, as things would turn out, but on that unbearable night, I would come to wish him dead as I imagined a developing romance that I wasn’t to know about for certain until a long time later. Another thing I didn’t discover until much later was that her clandestine encounter with Michel wasn’t only about making love, it was about making business. She decided for some Katharine reason to show Hitu’s painting to Michel (a painting she hid from me) and, on the following day, to introduce Michel to Hitu. And at that meeting, a great deception was initiated between the native artist and my half-brother.
When Katharine returned that night, the sun returned with her. She explained, in 1930 feminist terms, that she had every right to spend the night with another man, that she was a free soul. An avenging flapper was the way that I saw her.
That morning, after I’d had a sleepless night and after Katharine sedated me with her sex, she spoke about her ambitions. She wanted to be a female journalist and photographer. She planned on travelling the world, going to the political and artistic hot spots, the places where she could overflow with creativity.
Katharine’s next adventure, she explained, was to meet Adolf Hitler, to photograph and interview him. His maniacal nature intrigued her. It would also be the start of her brilliant career, something that would make her mother proud.
I went to work that morning with Katharine’s closed eyelids emblazoned on my brain. There was so much there that I wanted to have for myself and the threat of her freedom intensified my desire instead of persuading me to look elsewhere for love. The fact was that I didn’t want anything easy in this life. I wanted to work hard for my discomfort. I couldn’t think of anything more wondrously inspiring than Katharine’s independently torturous nature. For the rest of the assignment, Katharine and I were inseparable, except of course for her daytime photojournalist activities with the Toomatakuls and her nighttime disappearances to pursue a dual romance with my half-brother.
KATHARINE
When the shoot was finally over and we made our way back to what we called civilization, Katharine was all over me with her ambitions. During this trip to Tahiti, she had managed to unite the plans she had for her future as a journalist with her attachment to me.
“We have to go back to Germany.”
“Back?”
“Alright, then, back for you and a first time for me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But it won’t be the only place we’ll go. I see us traveling the globe, capturing the spirit of the world. You with your camera, me with my words. Things are changing quickly and we can be together guiding the way.”
Guiding the way of the world, I thought. Katharine’s plans for us were a bit inflated. But before I knew what was happening to us, Katharine managed her interview with Hitler and I captured him with my camera.
It was a brief meeting but it was a stepping-stone into history for Katharine and me. Mostly for Katharine, I was just her photographer after all. After the interview, we made our scintillating way through France and took a ship to New York. It was there that she found more personalities to interview - Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine, George Gershwin, Charles Lindbergh. Katharine was at the top of her game and I was watching her back as her success and fame grew into something that seemed to be ordained. She sold her stories and my pictures to all the top publications – Life Magazine, the New York Times, and Vanity Fair.
It was in New York, my birthplace and prison, that Katharine and I were joined in marriage. Then, as we traveled around the country to interview the famous, we also took time out to record the victims of the depression, the farmers who lost their farms, the urban dwellers who lived on fumes and hope.
By the time we made our way back to Los Angeles, Katharine was a force to be reckoned with, both by the public and in the privacy of our new and elegant Hollywood apartment.
“You won’t believe it,” she told me early one morning, “I’m going to interview the President.” Katharine absolutely glowed as she told me the news. She had the country in her untrustful hands and her proclamations became policy. She became the public spokesperson for the millions who made up America, an icon of confidence for the downtrodden. She interviewed the men who made decisions that affected the whole country and she had landed a nationally published column of her own in hundreds of newspapers.
It was a wonderful run for her and it sparked the flames of self-notoriety that made its way into our bedroom.
“We’ve done it, Alexander.”
“Done what?”
“We have the heart of America in our hands.”
“Let’s give it a chance to beat in peace while we sleep.”
“Sleep? Why, I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again.”
SABRINA
One day during the Sunset Boulevard shoot, I spoke with Sabrina. There had been another visit from Mssr. DeColette. It worried her. Would I be stolen from Sabrina before she had finished with me?
“What did he say,” I asked.
“Nothing. He just promised to come back later. He gives me the creeps.”
Sabrina was giving me the creeps. She stood there in one of her Vogue outfits. Where did she get the money for them? That was not a hard question with all the dates she had with the men of money and influence.
Then what did she see in me? Did she see anything?
I looked in her soft Italian eyes, the big beacons of seduction then assured me that I had something for her, something that would satisfy her and be one of the keys to her heart, if she had one.
Rain started tapping on the gallery’s skylight.
Sabrina looked around. The gallery was empty and she went up to the front door. She flipped over the Open sign, locked the door, then turned back to me, placing the key in her opulent bosom. As she approached, she picked up that morning’s L.A. Times.
“The film’s getting a lot of press,” she said, showing me one of my production stills from the newspaper.
I looked at a shot I took of the Sunset Boulevard set. “It’s a wonder what those publicity seekers can do, isn’t it?”
“It’s a wonder what you can do,” she said.
There was just the briefest moment of silence and during that silence, Sabrina took me by the hand and walked me to the back office. She closed the door, then gave me her kittenish dirty look as she began to unbutton her jacket.
The rain was letting up a little and it seemed to unnerve me. I felt more comfortable in that cocoon of water that held all my feelings in check. I could maintain my sanity better when it was raining, what little sanity I had left.
Sabrina smiled again. This time, she moved close to me and placed a kiss on my forehead. “You poor child,” she said, “forced to sell other artists work just to survive.”
“The buyers just don’t appreciate what I have to offer.”
“You want appreciation,” Sabrina asked as she pulled me close to her. Where was her subtlety, I wondere
d as she kissed me aggressively, marking me as one of her possessions with her scent.
We made our way to the couch as she continued to undress me. Sabrina lay on top of me, smothering me in a way that I loved. Her twenty-two year old body was something that told me stories about her adventures as she removed her pants and lay back on top of me, wearing only her thin blouse. Her hair was falling all around my head as she moved closer like a praying mantis.
The rain was growing into hail as we made love on that comfortable couch of mine, as Sabrina used all her talents to make me addicted to her licentious lovemaking.
In a while, the rain had calmed down again and was a softer patter on the windows. Sabrina was quite different in our post-coital moments. She was calculatingly submissive. Or that’s what I thought at first, before she became a real person to me.
It was time for the Catholic to confess and Sabrina told me about her religious upbringing, her stern father who thought she was a slut just because he was attracted to her.
“I was fourteen when he first slid into bed with me.”
“Did your mother know?”
“She didn’t believe me. She slapped me, in fact, when I told her that her husband would visit me in bed when she was fast asleep. Hah! She stayed asleep. Ever since the first day I told her, in tears, about what my father was doing to me while she dreamed of her perfect family, she tortured me with her epithets, with insults that made me responsible if a shred of what I had told her was true.”
Incest, the fact of life for the privileged few, brought back memories of my mother, of the nights she chose to play with her teenage son instead of sleeping off her hangovers.
Now, Sabrina and I had a deeper bond, one which would rattle the sedate cages of all the normal men and women who lived such boring lives, lives filled with taking out the garbage and cleaning up the garage, taking your child to the orthodontist, of falling to sleep before your husband or wife could make that thrilling love to you that you knew had ended when the first child appeared.
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