Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

by Francine Prose

  Didi married me for the third time in a church in France, to please or to spite his pious brother who, when we met at one of those hellish French Sunday family lunches, asked Didi, right in front of me, “Are you sure it’s even legal?” At that same lunch, Armand asked if he might have seen any of the films in which I’d appeared. I said no, most likely they had never been shown in France. Later I learned that Armand never went to the movies.

  Apparently, the Church had no problem with opium. Or if it did, Armand ignored it. He only smoked at night. During the day, he was a sharp businessman, working beside my husband. He was also an excellent driver, having practiced his skills in the ambulance corps during World War I. He’d insisted on driving himself, even though he’d been a colonel, a rank that came with the family name. He’d been wounded in battle, which, he claimed, was how his drug use started.

  Armand was one of the founders of the Order of the Legion of Joan of Arc, the right-wing veterans organization with a small private army and close ties to the military and the pope. Why direct your prayers to a loving God when you can have the crown of thorns and the martyred French soldiers flying up to Jesus?

  Because of Armand’s nationalism and his prejudice against foreigners, I was literally trembling the first time I invited Gabor to dinner. I meant to seat my friend and my brother-in-law at opposite ends of the table, but circumstances intervened. Armand was high, but not high enough to miss the fact that Gabor spoke with an accent. There was an incident involving a grape that mortified Gabor. Somehow he’d gotten the idea that polite society sliced grapes in half with knives, and his flew across the table and practically hit Armand. Luckily I was able to help Gabor see the humor in it.

  It took me years to appreciate my brother-in-law’s good qualities, but I will say that by the time of his death I loved him like a brother. We learned not to talk about politics or religion, and to put the past behind us. It was Armand who, in a sober moment, taught me how to drive and gave me, as a belated wedding gift, the beautiful Rossignol sedan that I still treasure and occasionally take for a spin, though usually now with a driver. Even then, when I went out with friends, I preferred to have a chauffeur. I felt obliged to keep up with some world-class drinkers. And the cocktails at the Chameleon Club were notoriously strong.

  By then I had learned to have things my way—an accomplishment, for a woman. My way meant never being bored. Boredom frightened me as much as, or possibly worse than, death. Only later, looking back on that time, did I understand that boredom was a luxury and a blessing.

  Didi and I were married for almost twenty years. Like every marriage, ours had its ups and downs. My husband was kind and gentle when we were alone, but with his friends he sometimes turned mean. They gathered in his library, and when I heard them laughing, I often felt they were laughing at me.

  I knew they were wounded creatures. Many, including Didi, had been tormented by cruel schoolmates and intolerant fathers. But my sympathy for them decreased with every minute I spent at the Chameleon, where men and women with odder quirks and more troubled pasts could relax and have fun and laugh at jokes that were not about the hostess. When I heard my husband and his friends laugh that way, I felt as if I were back in Hollywood, in the crowd of extras, watching the other girls get picked to prostrate themselves in front of the Golden Calf.

  The first years I knew Gabor Tsenyi were not the happiest in my marriage, but later I turned back to Didi, for reasons I will explain. I can’t recall who introduced me to Gabor. I think we met in a café. He seemed like a charming man with an adorable accent and unusually lively dark eyes. Then he showed me his photos. After that all I wanted was to see what he saw.

  That was partly why we spent so many evenings at the Chameleon. Gabor was always on the prowl for photographic subjects. Eventually I saw the world as a series of scenes that belonged in his photos, whether he knew it or not. Sometimes he took my advice, sometimes he politely ignored me. I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Or maybe it mattered a little.

  For Gabor, the Chameleon Club was a treasure trove. The beauty and style of those dancers! Watching them, I’d ponder what it meant, really meant, to be a man or a woman. Is it our clothes, our sexual parts, our bodies and brains and souls? In one of Lionel’s books he describes me as staring at the dance floor in search of information. He had come closer to the truth than he could have known.

  At first, I liked the variety shows, especially the sailors and sailorettes. Contortionists are like magicians: you never get tired of trying to figure out how it’s done. The crowd was very appreciative. There was a lot of whooping and whistling. It was relaxing to let down your hair and make noise.

  The club took a turn for the worse when it inaugurated a new revue, “By the Sea, By the Beautiful Sea,” that produced two unlikely stars, Arlette Jumeau and Lou Villars.

  Everyone had been excited when the owner, Yvonne, announced a show with an undersea theme. What delightful fish would her choreographer, Pavel, produce?

  A girl costumed as Neptune, in a fake beard and trident, sang a scorcher about how lonely it was at the bottom of the sea. Then the lights flickered, cymbals crashed, a gale swept over the ocean, a belly dancer fell off a cardboard ship. She shimmied while Neptune leered, then the two women—the sea “god” and “his” spangled queen—fell in love. Fatima was a genius, as belly dancers go, and everyone missed her when she left to marry a cop from the provinces. Three girls and a boy played starfishes, and as they crawled across the stage, they seemed to have five legs apiece. Meanwhile a school of angelfish rippled their sleeves like gills.

  No one could have predicted how distasteful Arlette’s routine would eventually become. But I had a premonition, the first time I saw “The Little Mermaid.”

  The audience knew about Arlette and Lou. Theirs was a stormy romance, spiked by public brawls over Arlette’s boyfriend Eddie, of whom Lou was pathologically jealous. Would the crowd have loved it so much without having heard the rumors?

  Surrounded by squirming aquatic creatures, the mermaid and sailor danced. Rather, the mermaid wriggled, and the sailor shifted from foot to foot. Still, the heat between them was clear to everyone in the room. Lou, who wasn’t especially tall but was broad in the shoulders and chest, lifted Arlette and spun her like an airplane propeller.

  I told Gabor, “We’ve seen her somewhere. Remind me. How do we know her?”

  He asked if I remembered the javelin demonstration at the Vélodrome d’Hiver. Was it really the same girl who’d thrown the spear? I recalled a British bore droning on about female organs. How long ago had that been, and how marvelous it was that Gabor and I had been friends all that time! He said she’d been working at the club, but oddly, I hadn’t noticed.

  Gabor said he’d given Lou the Chameleon’s business card. He assumed that must have been how she got to the club. But he’d never brought it up, and she seemed not to remember. It was typical of Gabor not to insist on being thanked for the enormous favor he’d done her.

  Lou tossed the mermaid from arm to arm. By the sea, by the beautiful sea. She gently lowered Arlette. Mouth to mouth, groin to groin, they kissed and mimed sex onstage.

  Lou’s calf eyes were moist with desire as she stepped away from Arlette. Was her sorrowful look put on? Had she threatened to kill herself again? Or this time was it Eddie who’d almost thrown himself into the river?

  The spotlight found Arlette’s bobbed hair, shellacked a metallic gold. Stretching out her soft white arms, she began to sing in a quavering adenoidal voice, nasal even by the standards of the day, a song about a drowning mermaid and the sailors who try to save her.

  It was troubling, how quickly the spectators threw themselves into the game. During the verse about the Chinese sailor, Lou pulled her eyelids and pantomimed struggling to lift the mermaid. The crowd jeered until an Asian gentleman dressed as Anna May Wong cried from a banquette, “Mes amis! S’il vous plaît!” Several audience members shouted that they were sorry.

  When t
he English sailor (Lou donned a British navy cap) also failed, everyone laughed. From the wings, a bass voice growled the opening bars of “Rule, Britannia!” When the German sailor (Lou in a Wagnerian helmet with horns) gave up, the Germans (who knew there were so many in the room?) made it sound like a good idea to let the mermaid drown.

  I was afraid to ask Gabor why Yvonne allowed this. I assumed he would defend her. Yvonne had bills to pay. Would he think the only reason I could ask was because I was rich? Did he not believe that a rich woman could be as sensitive as a poor one? Would he wonder why I couldn’t just relax and have fun? He would never have said that. He was tactful and kind. He might not even have heard me as he made a rectangle with his fingers and framed the audience and the stage.

  My discomfort increased when the tone of “The Little Mermaid” got uglier. Maybe the fans were getting bored, so Arlette upped the ante by adding two new verses, one about an American sailor and the other about a Jew.

  The American, in a top hat and a uniform spangled with stars and stripes, succeeded in saving the mermaid, though when it came time to have sex, the Yank couldn’t perform and ran away. A few seconds later, the Jewish sailor shambled into the spotlight.

  In a prayer shawl and a yarmulke, Lou shrugged and turned up her palms in the gesture that had become shorthand for the weak, fake-innocent Jew. There were plenty of Jews in the audience. But there was none of the protest, however mild, that Arlette got from the other groups. No one spoke, no one breathed. It was one thing to joke about Germans, but quite another to mock the Jewish sailor for refusing to save the mermaid unless he was paid in full, up front.

  Arlette stopped singing. The band fell silent. Tension jittered the air.

  Finally Arlette waved to the band and flashed the musicians a grin. They picked up their drumsticks and raised their trumpets. She sang the verse about the French sailor who bravely jumps into the waves and catches the mermaid in his muscular arms just as she’s going under for the last time. He rescues her, they marry, and proudly produce a half dozen healthy French babies. Everything is forgotten or at least forgiven. The German, the Chinaman, the Englishman, the American, the Jew, everyone’s in on the joke.

  Lou picked Arlette up again and spun her in triumph. The shortest of the dancers pranced out in baby bonnets, fish tails, and sailor suits.

  “Bravo!” shouted the crowd. Why didn’t anyone say anything? Why did no one object?

  It was Lionel Maine who finally made the fuss that the rest of us should have made. Maybe it was his being American, without European manners or the European fear that a relative might be watching. Or maybe it was the fact that by the time Arlette added the extra verses, his belly dancer girlfriend, Fatima, had been forced to leave Paris for not having her papers in order.

  Perhaps it was just that Lionel could get aggressive when he drank. I never understood why Gabor loved him or thought he was so brilliant. He was the sort of cowboy-caveman other men admire. I always had mixed feelings about him. I admired his spirit. But he annoyed and insulted me, both. When he looked at me, he saw an old witch, though I was younger than he was.

  One night, as the applause for Arlette was beginning to subside, Lionel started swearing. His French deteriorated. He shouted something about a military parade and puppets and Arlette not having a soul, until Fat Bernard and one of the African dancers hustled him out of the club.

  Gabor looked as helpless as I felt. We should have followed Lionel out. But what could we have done, a woman in very high heels, and a short Hungarian worried about his camera? Later, we learned that Lionel had been beaten up. I will forever feel guilty for not having helped him, though later I would make up for my momentary inaction.

  Arlette signaled the musicians and repeated the last verse. The audience cheered, as if she’d staggered up from a knockdown. Why was I surprised? Everyone wants to be on the winning side.

  I looked across the table at Gabor. I wanted to tell him . . . what? That he and I were outsiders. We didn’t carry on like maniacs every time we heard the word France. We had friends from everywhere, painters from Russia and Japan, Romanian sculptors, Jewish composers, Argentinean medical students.

  Gabor was looking at Yvonne, who was staring back. I knew what they were thinking. What would they do if a Hungarian sailor failed to save the mermaid? That would never happen. Arlette knew who had the power, at the club and elsewhere.

  After the show, Lou, who had changed into a tuxedo, sat in a booth with Arlette, in a sequined evening gown. They greeted the adoring pilgrims who trooped over to pay their respects. I watched for a break, then introduced myself.

  I told them that the famous photographer Gabor Tsenyi wanted to take their picture. I said the session would take place in his studio, and that they would get paid. Arlette gave me a filthy grin. What would they be wearing, and what exactly did he want them to do?

  I said, “You’ll be sitting as you are now, dressed as you are now.” All they had to do was show up, spend a few hours, and collect their money.

  I waved Gabor over. We set a date. Gabor put his arm around me. Lou had her arm around Arlette. For a moment we remained like that, two couples, each entwined. Then we moved away and let the next group of fans approach to say how much they’d enjoyed the performance.

  From Make Yourself New

  BY LIONEL MAINE

  The Guillotine

  I DON’T WANT to name-drop, but Picasso told me a story.

  One night, I ran into him at a café. It was four in the morning. I assumed he couldn’t sleep either. By then it was unusual for him to appear without his entourage. We remarked on this and chatted about the pleasures of solitude. He invited me to sit down.

  Picasso said that there used to be a guy who sat alone every night in a corner of the café Le Select. Long crazy hair, ragged coat, nursing one glass of headache wine, muttering to himself as he shuffled what looked like animal teeth from one pocket to another. Tiger fangs, it turned out.

  It seems he’d been a painter who so worshiped Gauguin that he’d tried to walk in his idol’s footsteps. He traveled to some exotic island and went native, but something went wrong. He came home to live in Paris on a tiny pension from the state. If the French know one thing about you, it’s how you make a living, though they mock us Americans for being obsessed with money.

  Picasso felt sorry for the guy but also a little nervous. He tried not to make eye contact, though for Picasso it’s always a challenge to dim those glorious brights, as large and wild as the saucer eyes of the dog in the fairy tale.

  One night, the guy was shambling back from the toilet when he stopped at Picasso’s table and said he’d heard Picasso was buying tribal masks.

  Picasso digressed from his story to talk about masks and carvings. He said they were not merely sculptures but sacred magical objects. They functioned as ambassadors—diplomats—between the human and spirit worlds. The artists who made them were natural Cubists, producing weapons for the arsenal of our war against the demons.

  To be honest, I’d heard him say this before, in a different café. Word for word, with the same conviction. Now that Picasso was famous he’d distilled his repertoire down to a couple of subjects. Unless he was talking to a girl, in which case his range expanded.

  But I hadn’t heard the story about the guy with the tiger teeth. Anyhow, he and the guy climb up to the guy’s airless, packed-to-the-rafters sixth-floor hovel, where it smells like the spray of a thousand male cats. The guy has been painting. Lurid tropical landscapes. Picasso sort of likes them. No one’s doing anything like it. No one since Rousseau. And this guy’s better than Rousseau.

  They’re not there to look at his work. The man shows Picasso a closet full of masks. Not all masterpieces, not all good. But some are terrific.

  Picasso’s knees are shaking. But he keeps cool and makes a lowball offer for the entire collection. Generous, he tells the guy. A steal, is what he’s thinking. The man accepts.

  A few days after the sale,
Picasso feels guilty for having cheated the guy. It’s not as if the maestro hasn’t participated in some sketchy transactions. That great Iberian piece he bought from Apollinaire and claimed not to know was stolen. Those flea market dealers he charmed into selling him Benin heads for nothing. But for some reason this one gets to him. He can’t get it out of his mind.

  So he finds the guy in the usual corner and sits down and orders a bottle of expensive wine. The man drinks and drinks—a different beverage completely from the swill he can afford.

  The funny thing is that the wine makes him more, rather than less, lucid. He asks Picasso if he wants to know about his time in the jungle.

  Sure, Picasso wants to know. Should he ever want to sell the masks, a good story about their provenance might increase their value.

  Well, somehow (Picasso forgets this part) the guy wound up in Malaysia, installed among an especially sweet and attractive tribe of little brown people. And who did they think he was? An artist, an emissary, an outer-space alien? Regardless, they’re so hospitable, they give him a beautiful wife. A goddess. He gets lucky: a ready-made household. He’s never been happier in his life.

  For a while a missionary lived nearby, but he was called back to Missouri. Before he left he told the painter that their new friends used to be cannibals, not all that long ago. But they’d been converted and saved by the power of Jesus Christ.

  Picasso laughed. He said, “Lionel. You’re a smart guy. Do I have to tell you the rest?”

  Eventually, the painter discovered that his neighbors had kept up their tribal traditions. Every Sunday they head-hunted picnickers from Singapore. Picasso couldn’t remember how the poor guy found out. Maybe some weird-tasting liver in the cassoulet he’d taught his wife to make. He had the wife growing flageolet beans! Learning the art of French cuisine!