by Dana Gynther
“Don’t tell me you’ve met someone, too?” Lee asked.
Man chuckled, clearly delighted at the hint of jealousy. “Nooo.” He slowly made the round with his lighter, before continuing. “Countess Anna-Letizia Pecci-Blunt—she’s the niece of Pope Leo XIII, but don’t hold it against her—is having a costume ball at her house here in town. She’s calling it le Bal Blanc; everything has to be white, from the décor to the guests’ outfits. She wants me to create some sort of attraction.” Man looked directly at her, then flicked his eyes away. “I thought maybe you’d like to help, Lee.”
“So now you’re Prince Charming?” She cocked an eyebrow, then clapped him on the back. “Hell yes, take me to the ball.”
All morning, side by side on the small sofa, they discussed the logistics of such an event.
“When is it, exactly?” asked Lee, pencil in hand. She had her pretty leather appointment book on her knee. Bought for sittings, it was still primarily filled with social events.
“Mid-May. The seventeenth, I believe.”
“My father will be here the following Saturday.” She smiled at the page.
“I’d forgotten all about that,” Man murmured. He lit a cigarette.
“It’s just a week. He’ll be staying at that hotel near the Observatoire.” Lee snickered at his boyish fidgeting. “What, are you worried he won’t approve of you? That he’ll think you’re too old and ugly for his little princess?”
Man shot her a look of panic, which made her burst out laughing.
“I’m sure he’ll love you. You actually have a lot in common.” She gave him a quick kiss. “Now, tell me, where is this ball again?”
“At their place, the Hôtel de Cassini,” he said, moving quickly back to comfortable ground, his own turf. “It’s not far from here, off the rue de Babylone. But if you walk past, all you see is a dismal gray wall. I guess they don’t want us plebeians pocketing a nice view of their palace free of charge.”
“That must be it.”
The son of working-class immigrants, Man’s entrée into French high society had come as a professional, their photographer. Lee knew that, now, even though he was famous and well-respected, he felt ill at ease around nobles—those moneyed eccentrics who enjoyed mixing with the avant-garde—and tried never to sound unduly impressed by them.
“It’ll be held outside, in the gardens,” he continued. “They’re constructing a stage for the band and a dance floor over the swimming pool. Since everything is going to be white, my idea is to use the scene—the people themselves—as a screen. I’m going to project movies on them from upstairs.”
“That’s brilliant.” Lee clapped her hands. “Talk about a traveling picture show. What movies are you going to use?”
“Well, I thought I’d use my own.” He couldn’t hide the pride in his voice. “You’ve never seen them, have you? I’d like to start off with l’Étoile de mer—”
“The starfish?” Her face went pale, her mouth, dry.
Man didn’t notice. “That’s right. It’s based on a poem by my friend Robert Desnos. In the film, he and Kiki play a couple who find a starfish in a jar, trapped like a disembodied hand—”
He kept talking, but Lee wasn’t listening. Upon hearing the word “starfish,” in her mind, she was seven years old and back in Brooklyn, New York.
Her mother had fallen ill and decided Lee—or Elizabeth, as she was called then—would be better off staying with family friends, the Nilssons, until she recuperated. In the city, little Elizabeth felt like she was on holiday: the affectionate couple took her to Coney Island, bought her doughnuts, gave her crumbs for park pigeons, and let her loose in Abraham & Straus’s toy department. Mr. and Mrs. Nilsson and her brother, “Uncle Bob,” were so attentive—more so, even, than her own mother—that she wasn’t homesick at all.
Early one morning, the young couple had gone to Manhattan on business, leaving her in the care of Uncle Bob, who lived upstairs. When Elizabeth woke up, he was watching her from the rocking chair in the corner of her room.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.” He picked her up out of her cot and balanced her on his hip. “Let’s have some fun today.” He carried the little girl up to his rooms. “I’m going to show you my treasures. You know, I’ve been a sailor most of my life and, like Sinbad, I’ve sailed the seven seas.”
Already wide awake, Elizabeth smiled in excitement, eager to hear his adventures. In his apartment, he plopped her down on his unmade bed, the tussled blankets of a restless sleeper. He pulled a wooden box out from under it and sat down next to her. Jiggling his eyebrows, he cracked it open just an inch and peeked inside.
“I want to see,” Elizabeth cried.
“Of course you do,” he said, taking the lid off. He first picked up a silver medallion on a long chain and handed it to her. “Can you read?”
“Yes,” she said with an arrogant toss of her hair. She squinted down at the pendant and slowly made out, “Saint Christopher protect us.”
“Good for you. Ol’ Saint Chris is the patron saint of travelers. Good luck for sailors.”
Next he brought out a sand dollar and a smudgy tuppence coin. “Put out your hands,” he said, then placed one in each of her open palms. “Now, which one do you think is worth more?”
“Can you really use this one as money?” she asked, pointing to the sand dollar with her chin, her hands still outstretched.
“No, but you should,” he said, taking them back and putting them aside.
Then he produced a dried starfish. Its slim, craggy legs were poetically askew; it looked like an underwater dancer who, once in the sun, had stopped midstep.
“Have you ever pretended to be a starfish?” he asked. “See if you can stretch yourself into a star.”
She lay back on the bed, put her arms out straight and opened her legs as wide as she could.
“Very good.” He laughed, tickling her belly. “Except starfish don’t wear nightgowns.”
He reached over and yanked the loose cotton nightshirt over her head. Elizabeth, suddenly nervous, covered herself with one of the blankets.
“I’m going to play starfish, too,” he said. Staring down at her with a playful smile, he unbuttoned his shirt, then took off his trousers. Elizabeth had seen her brothers naked—swimming in the creek or getting out of their baths—but Uncle Bob’s body, muscular and hairy, frightened her. When he slid off his underwear, his sex was standing straight out.
He grabbed the blankets away and hovered over her. “Come on, sweetie. Remember what the starfish looks like. It keeps its legs opened wide.”
“No,” she whispered.
She didn’t understand what he wanted, but knew to be afraid. This was no longer fun, this wasn’t a game. She tried to curl into a ball, to disappear, but he forced her down and spread her legs apart. “Make a star,” he grunted, rubbing himself up and down her small frame. She was already sobbing when he pushed himself inside her. Elizabeth screamed; he immediately came. As he plopped down, spent, Mrs. Nilsson burst in the room. She screamed, too.
Lee almost never thought back on that day; so long ago, it seemed almost impossible, a nightmare in which Saint Christopher broke a delicate starfish in two. Afterward, in a furor of guilt, anger, and confusion, Mrs. Nilsson packed her bags—the new teddy bear from the department store somehow forgotten—and returned Elizabeth, freshly bathed but still dribbling blood, to Poughkeepsie on the afternoon train. When her parents came to the station to fetch her, they were oddly quiet and kept a respectful distance. But even that was hazy now. What was far more real to Lee—the memories that scarred deep—was the treatment she then endured for gonorrhea.
Because of the horrible shame—a small child with a sailor’s disease—Elizabeth’s mother, Florence, refused to take her to the doctor, but treated her at home. Several times a week for the next year, her mother, a former nurse, administered the cure. In the immaculate white bathroom, Florence would bring out the odious instruments—the glass catheter, t
he douche can, the black rubber tubing—and, pursing her lips, jab her daughter between the legs, sending burning chemicals into her undeveloped womb. Then she prodded her cervix with cotton swabs to remove any lingering pus. Elizabeth howled and cried, but her frowning mother remained clinical, bent on completing the task. When it was finished, Florence did not hug or console her daughter. As the little girl limped out of the bathroom to the wide-eyed stares of her brothers, her mother, in thick rubber gloves, began scrubbing wherever Elizabeth had touched with dichloride of mercury. The seven-year-old understood that her body was filthy. Even her touch was infectious.
Later on that year, when the physical cure was complete, Lee’s parents sent her to a Freudian psychiatrist. He made sure little Elizabeth understood that love and sex were two entirely separate things, a lesson she learned well. Since adolescence, random sexual encounters had satisfied a yearning inside her: to enjoy lust with no strings, to wield her power and beauty, to feel her lover’s burning vulnerability, to be someone else.
“Lee?” Man asked, tapping her on the knee. “Well, what do you think?”
With his touch, her reverie broke. She got up to get a glass of water. “I don’t know, Man,” she said from the sink. “That film sounds sort of dark to me.”
He came up from behind and put his arms around her. She fell into him, on the verge of tears. “You silly goose,” he whispered in her ear. “It’s because Kiki’s in the film, isn’t it?”
She swallowed hard. “I guess that’s it.”
“Well, that puts me in a pickle, sweetheart. She’s in all my best work.” He paused for a moment. “Hey, I’ve got an idea. A few years ago, I found some hand-tinted film at the flea market. What do you think of that? Projecting color film on the all-white guests?”
“That sounds perfect.” Breathing out, she squeezed him tight, relieved no starfish would be projected onto her body. “Let’s have a whisky to celebrate.”
She forced a bright smile and began to pour.
XVI
The day before the ball, Man and Lee went to the mansion to do a test run. They packed the camera equipment into Man’s Voisin and drove to the rue de Babylone. At the mansion, he parked his car alongside the thick outer wall.
“I wonder if we should ring at the servant’s entrance?” Man mumbled.
Since the count and countess were out, the butler showed them to the second-story room with the best view of the gardens. The white walls were covered in gold relief; rococo patterns thundered from the dome ceiling to the marqueterie floor. The furniture—prissy red armchairs and settees, spindly legged tables, large mirrors with elaborate gold frames—seemed to fight the walls for attention. Lee breathed in. She’d been in elegant old Parisian apartments, with woodworked walls and gold swirls, but this was over the top. Obviously, this mind-numbing décor had given rise to the idea of a pure white party. She joined Man at the French windows and, taking his hand, looked out on the large green lawn. The stage and dance floor were finished.
“Monsieur, madame.” The butler quietly approached them on the balcony. “I believe the countess plans to hang muslin curtains through those trees”—he pointed—“and white lanterns will be lighting the gardens.”
Man stared at the butler uncomfortably, unsure whether he should tip him; Lee, who had grown up in a house with servants, gave the man in white gloves a regal nod.
“I’m sure it’ll be marvelous. We’ll set up here. Merci,” she said, a clear dismissal.
Man, thankful to be left to his own devices, put the 35-millimeter projector together, then pulled out the reels. He opened the tin lid and held the film up to the light.
“Imagine painting a moving picture, one still at a time.” He gave out a low whistle. “Not something I’d ever do. You know, this is a Georges Méliès film—and there it was, wasting away at the flea market.” She looked at him blankly. “I guess you’re too young to remember Le Voyage dans la lune?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell, but then I don’t know many French films. But, you know, when I was a teenager, I dreamed of going to Hollywood to be in the movies. I even practiced signing my autograph—Betty Miller—for all my fans.” She laughed at her younger self.
He handed Lee an old sheet. “All right, Betty, let’s see what you’ve got. Go into the garden and wave this around. Through the trees, on the dance floor, by the stairs. I want to see what the effect will be.”
Lee raced down the stairs—startling a pair of chambermaids—and came out on the finely cut lawn. She waved up at Man, then, from the projector, saw the piercing white dot. Throwing the sheet up to the wind, she jumped around, trying to catch the colored light like butterflies in a net. She liked having the enormous garden to herself, the only one invited. On the long dance floor, she kicked off her shoes, then twirled and leaped, limbs loose, pretending she was Isadora Duncan. She could see faint traces of pink, yellow, and blue on the white platform, on the sheet, on her bare arms. With the single sheet, she was mistress of the entire lawn.
• • •
The afternoon of the ball, Lee waited downstairs in the studio, trying to guess what Man’s costume would be.
“A toga?” she called up. “An angel with big feathery wings? An egg?” She smiled to herself imagining a naked Man Ray, dark and hairy, wearing half a broken eggshell.
Finally, with a satisfied grin, he charged down the stairs in shorts, a polo shirt, and a cardigan.
“Tennis whites!” She gave him a big hug. “How swell! You look like a little boy.”
“I don’t remember the last time I actually played,” he said, flicking a racquet to and fro. “But it’s perfect for an aristocrat’s ball.”
“You wouldn’t want anyone to think you were groveling to the ruling class, would you, Man?”
“Conquer them with nonchalance and bare legs, I say.”
“So do I get a tennis outfit, too?”
“Come upstairs and I’ll show you,” he said. He ran up, somehow invigorated by his sports clothes, and she followed. On the bed lay a chic white tennis skirt with a halter top to match. “Madeleine Vionnet designed it. She’s happy for you to wear it tonight; she says she can’t get better advertising than a coat hanger like you.”
Lee had modeled some of Vionnet’s flattering designs for Vogue—exquisitely draped, natural, and timeless—and loved them. She immediately put it on: the short skirt, the ankle socks and flat shoes, the top. Man tied the halter in double knots so no wise guy could undo it. She added some lipstick, then turned to him and curtsied.
He whistled. “You’ll be the belle of the ball.”
“Or at least the belle of the projection room.”
That evening, Man Ray slowly turned his long car into the mansion’s narrow street, stopped at the gate, and rang. A couple of menservants, dressed all in white, were soon at the door; one carried the photography equipment into the house, while the other parked the car down the road. Lee and Man walked into the spectacular garden. Long, thin curtains blew through the trees, while hundreds of lanterns bobbed on the branches like houses for fairy folk.
The servants were buzzing over last-minute preparations. The champagne fountain was being arranged in one corner, while the white-clad orchestra was settling in onstage. Lee and Man followed the valet upstairs to the Louis XIV projection room, checked everything, then went to the bar for a drink.
As the guests began to arrive, Lee strolled around the garden to see if she knew anyone. There was the pianist Arthur Rubinstein, posing as an oriental prince, and Jean Cocteau, whom she recognized despite a powdered wig and plaster mask, because of his long, skinny legs. Amused, she noticed that the countess had elevated her rank and become an empress.
Back inside the mansion, she found Man on the upstairs balcony. When a handful of couples began dancing on the white platform, he switched on the projector. Vibrantly colored figures and faces, distorted by distance and movement, suddenly came to life on the guests. The dancers gasped, stopped, and tried to gra
b the images, to straighten them out on their clothes. People crowded onto the dance floor, whirling a waltz, laughing in delight as they saw their partner’s face turn green, then orange, an oblong mermaid flit on a shoulder, yellow skeletons land on a large behind.
“It’s stunning!” Lee cried, looking down from the balcony, arm in arm with Man. Her feet tapped to the music as she watched the happy crowd below. After another minute, she blurted out, “Oh, Man, you wouldn’t mind if I went down for a little bit? To see the effect up close?”
“Of course not,” Man said. “I can’t go with you, though. When this film is over, I’m putting on another one. Then I guess I’ll repeat the Méliès. They do seem to like it.” He looked down on the crowd, pleased with their reaction.
“See you in a minute,” Lee called from the door, then disappeared.
In the dark garden, waltz turned to jazz. She walked toward the white dance floor with her hands in the air, trying to touch the movie-colors like a child reaching for a rainbow. Suddenly, one hand was plucked down. It was the baron, George Hoyningen-Huene, dressed as a sheik.
“Lee, darling,” he said, twirling her around once. “You look fabulous—and you won’t get too hot on that packed dance floor.” He cocked his head in that direction. “Shall we?”
After dancing with George, Lee went from one partner to the next, doing the foxtrot, the Charleston, the tango. As she started the Lindy Hop, the film changed, from colored fantasy to black-and-white script. Everyone on the dance floor tried to read each other’s bodies, to find a full word. The man dancing beside her lunged at a shape on her arm: “Got ‘u’!” he cried in English, delighted with his wit. Lee looked up at the balcony to wave at Man, but could only see the flickering light from the projector. After a few more numbers, she wound back through the garden and up the wide staircase, to see how he was doing.
“You having fun?” Clearly annoyed, his lips jerked into a terse smile. “You do realize, Lee, that you are not a guest. You’re my assistant. That’s the only reason you’re here.”