Delayed Rays of a Star

by Amanda Lee Koe

  Cutlery plinked as she rose from her seat majestically.

  She turned to the journalist.

  An actress’s authenticity is not in her life, she said, it is in her performance. Now did I dance well, or did I not?

  She could feel the electrified gaze of the whole table on her as she took her time slipping into the mink coat the waiter held out for her. The journalist seemed to have run out of words. Simply, he watched. She exited the restaurant without looking back. Outside, she took a deep breath. The Shanghainese air was briny. Her heart raced from the pure rush of performance, and her body felt lighter than it had in years.

  She broke into a jog.

  Low heels sounding a sharp staccato against the uneven pavement, Anna May ran through the unfamiliar city, weaving through Chinese faces till she stopped short, out of breath, in the middle of a busy street, and turned abruptly, as if to look for someone over her shoulder, though she knew she was alone and expected nothing less. An anonymous face in the crowd who knew neither where she was nor whence she was headed—at least until she was next obliged to find her bearings—she was free.

  十七

  In the village of Taishan there still stands a willow tree, marked by a torn sash tied about its trunk. Once the sash would have been red. But the red had long faded to pink, and even the pink was bleached white by the sun. When the documentary crew met up with Anna May in her ancestral village during her 1936 visit, one of the shots they wanted to nail was of her stumbling upon a willow tree with a red sash, seemingly by pure happenstance, under which she would then sit as she revealed to viewers the story her father had repeated so often to her when she was a child, about the old woman and the new camera.

  The location scout scoured the village.

  He found no such tree, but there was a particularly picturesque willow with a bendy trunk, not so far from the river. He pointed it out to the producer, who agreed it was ideal and procured a red sash, which they tied around it. They wanted to shoot cutaways of Anna May walking up to it as she exclaimed: Look! This must be the willow tree. Anna May was reluctant in the beginning, but they managed to convince her that it would make great content for broadcast; they hadn’t sailed all the way over to China just to capture peasant children playing with water buffalo by the river. She did the shot in one take, and they gave her a stool to sit on as the cameras rolled for her narration.

  * * *

  —

  THERE WAS ONCE an old woman in the village who lived alone in a shack under a willow tree. The rest of her family had moved to the city and done well for themselves: first they pulled rickshaws, then they sold noodles, and when finally they saved enough for a rice mortar, they made a good living as rice merchants.

  When her oldest grandson returned to the village for a short visit, the entire village was eager to ingratiate themselves with him, for he came with a small black object, no larger than his two hands, that was said to be able to transfer scenes and figures from real life onto a flat surface. Hung around his neck on a leather strap, it had an open top fitted on the inside with mirrors, various knobs on the hard casing outside, and two glass eyes. What unchaste malevolence from which white bone spirit had allowed such deception?

  It’s called a photograph, the city grandson explained.

  His village grandmother regarded the object dubiously, asking: But how does it work?

  He went down on one knee and tried to explain to her light, emulsion, negatives, and positives. She waved a hand at him. Every time that thing does that a part of your soul is stolen, she said. How else could our faces appear on a scrap of paper?

  He laughed at her feudal superstition, cajoling her for a picture as he brought out a chair covered with a red cloth and seated her at a nice angle under the willow tree. She grumbled about young upstarts these days but went along with it—he was the oldest grandson, and she would have done anything to please him. He positioned her with artistic flair, raising her chin slightly, unloosing the tight fists she’d made of her hands and placed over her knees.

  Don’t move, he called out.

  The flash went off. His grandmother blinked.

  Then she groaned and toppled over.

  When the young man reached her, she was dead.

  * * *

  —

  IN REMEMBRANCE OF the old woman whose poor soul was swallowed whole by the new camera, Anna May’s father would end the story each time, a red sash was tied around the willow tree in Taishan.

  What do you think I am, a baby? Anna May said each time her father told her the tale. I am not going to fall for a story as silly as that.

  Suit yourself, her father said. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  What happens if you lose part of your soul?

  He smiled at her, smoothing her hair back as he said: Don’t you think it would be best if you never had to find out?

  * * *

  —

  ON THE DAY that Anna May finally decided to chance a visit to the photo studio, she wore a charmeuse dress that had been left uncollected by a customer at Wong Sam Sing’s Chinese Hand Laundry. Taking the hem up and the waist in, she’d altered it in a childish stitch, trying to make it fit her as best she could. The photographer’s studio was filled with portraits, silver gelatin prints and photographic plates of his clients. Anna May observed them on tiptoe before she was called to the backdrop. Looking at the photographer and the camera aimed at her like a gun, her knees went soft. To be an actress, she would give anything. Even if it robbed her, there was no room for fear of the camera. One day, she swore, it would all be worth it. Her eyes were beginning to water. She tried to hold them wide open to round them out, so her pupils would appear larger, her single eyelids more contoured.

  Relax, the photographer said.

  She smiled.

  The flash was blinding.

  十八

  Tawny the housemaid was Anna May’s final role in a movie. She wears a stiff black uniform and keeps a clean house. Another character in the film tells her: You oughta save your wise words for a fortune cookie! Whenever she appears in a scene, the background music switches zealously to East Asian instrumental strings, just in case the viewer has not noticed that a Chinese woman is on the screen.

  When Anna May passed on in the spring of 1961 from pulmonary failure brought on by liver cirrhosis, all the papers recycled that exquisite folk proverb in their obituaries, passed on to the statuesque Chinese actress by her laundryman father:

  Every time your picture is taken, you lose part of your soul.

  It was Rudi, reading papers in the kitchen of his chicken ranch in the San Fernando Valley—purchased for him by Marlene as a retirement home and project—who saw the notice. They’d printed one of the publicity stills from Shanghai Express to accompany the obituary, the one with Anna May in a heavy brocade gown next to Marlene in a dress of glossy black feathers.

  Marlene had “just popped by” the ranch in a tight skirt and ankle boots, with enough filet mignon to feed a battalion. She’d rounded off her North American performances and was about to set off on her French tour. She wanted to make sure he was well fed while she was gone. The meat had already been presliced into half-inch-thick strips for steak. She chucked the whole lot of them into the freezer.

  All Tami’s got to do is thaw them and put them on a greased pan, Marlene said. Not more than two and a half minutes each side. Idiot-proof, isn’t it? Where is she anyway?

  Marlene did not know that Tamara had fled to the chicken coops just to avoid her, and that whenever Marlene left the ranch, Rudi threw out every last thing she brought. Now she was tasting the filter coffee Tamara had prepared. This drain water is what you drink? Marlene made a face. I just splurged on the most gorgeous espresso machine, the latest Faema with an electromagnetic pump, a real beast. You’ve got to come over and try it sometime.

  Sh
e threw Tamara’s coffee down the sink and put the kettle on.

  As they waited for the water to boil, Rudi folded the paper in half and showed it to her. Taking the paper from him, what Marlene saw first was the Shanghai Express publicity still. She’d always liked that picture. They looked so good together—Jo really knew how to dress women. Then she saw the obituary notice. A heart attack, liver problems.

  Instinctively, she turned away, busying herself with the coffee beans and the bean grinder. She hadn’t mentioned to Rudi that she’d seen Anna May just a few months back, before the year had ended. Had Anna May been ill then? She’d said nothing, looked fine as ever. Older, sure, but that face, that figure? She could upstage anyone in a scene at any time. To think they were just two bits of calico looking for a big break when they first met. She heard Rudi say: Wasn’t she one of your special friends?

  Oh, Marlene said. I would hardly call it that—

  What would you call it?

  Walking away from Marlene toward her car, Anna May had looked to be in such good shape. That woman was always making a late entrance and an early exit. No, Anna May had not been a special friend. She was the one who’d got away.

  Marlene swallowed.

  Come now, she said to Rudi, trying to distract herself by teasing him. Are you jealous?

  He laughed. Jealous?

  Don’t think you know it all, she said, pushing away the paper and trying to sound playful. Like I always said, sentimental love is better with a man, but romantic love is better with a woman.

  And? he prompted.

  And I am a sentimental person, she said. I love women, she added. I just can’t live with them.

  But, Mutti, Rudi said, not unkindly. Who could you live with?

  She was not sure how he meant it and so pretended not to hear him. Surely the water for the coffee was ready. Marlene strode over to the stove top with a slight limp. Her leg was hurting again, but she did not want Rudi to worry. She rinsed out the filter paper and filled it with freshly ground coffee, pouring scalding-hot water over the cone in a steady spiral. Breathing in the bloom, she turned back to Rudi, to see if he was still looking at her. She was glad that he was, and to keep his eyes on her she said: What? Her voice came out husky, but he would not know why. What are you looking at, she repeated, egging him on.

  Your legs, he joked. What else?

  How well he knew her, didn’t he know just what to say! She let herself cheer up at once. Back in her element, Marlene pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, smiling at him as if he were a man she’d just met, not the stoic who had sheltered in her shadow for decades, whom she came over to play house with whenever she was burned out from everything else she’d orchestrated to happen around her.

  Darling, she said, the legs aren’t so beautiful. I just know what to do with them.

  The Most Handsome Bureaucrat in North-Rhine Westphalia

  13

  Chop up my body when I die, Marlene said to the Chinese maid, so you can get it out of my apartment unnoticed. It’s possible, I should think, with a good boning knife. Double-line my Louis Vuitton trunk with trash bags, the one with dinky trolley wheels. No body bags or stretchers. Take the service entrance. Make multiple trips.

  I’ll never forgive you if a picture gets out.

  Did you see that picture of Garbo in the papers?

  Ugly, ugly, ugly—and her hair so long!

  The newspapers say it’s liver cancer. Smelly pee suits her. Watching the sugar bowl like a hawk, so her maid couldn’t pinch even one cube! I’m so much nicer to you, aren’t I, choupette? By the way, that woman had huge feet. She tried to avoid wide shots in all her movies.

  They got her, dammit.

  All those years of hiding for nothing.

  They got her good.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN MARLENE’S TIME finally came, hordes of fans followed her Parisian funeral procession along the streets of the 8th arrondissement to her favorite church, La Madeleine. Some came turned out in coattails like Madeleine de Beaupre in Desire, others festooned themselves with cheap black feather boas in honor of Shanghai Express’s Lily.

  Had she elected to bed down with Molière, Balzac, and company for the burial proper, Père Lachaise would have gladly transferred some anonymous bones over to the ossuary to make room for the shell of her body, but Marlene chose to be laid to rest in the nondescript, unpretentious Friedhof III cemetery in suburban Schöneberg, near the house she was born in. She had not been back to Berlin in more than thirty years, not since her last cabaret performance at Titania Palast in 1960. Her body was freighted from Paris to Berlin in a lead-lined coffin, draped first in the French tricolor, then the American Stars ’n’ Stripes. The German Schwarz-Rot-Gold was nowhere in sight.

  Marlene had a long-running joke about her funeral service.

  If she had it her way, the church doors would be minded by a beefcake bouncer, armed with an annotated list of her guests-in-mourning, and a basket of mixed carnations. The list would be divvied up into two columns: those who had Made It, and those who had Not Made It. A red carnation would be handed to the former, a white one to the latter. Between pews her guests would suss out each other’s color-coded carnations: You bedded Marlene and I didn’t? Ensue fervid catfight or fisticuff to the elegiac score of Bach’s fugue in D minor, as the good pastor harangues: Blessed indeed, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them! She laid it out once to Jean Cocteau, and he’d wanted to turn it into an absurdist play. Only after you’re dead, love, he said, so I don’t have to pay for the rights. In practice, of course, the city officials of Berlin were too humdrum for anything quite so lively, and Marlene might have been disappointed to know that at a simple graveside service, after her coffin was lifted out of an open black Cadillac, a Lutheran minister read the stock Twenty-third Psalm as she was lowered into the ground, and that was that.

  Postburial a small scuffle did break out between a troupe of transvestites in secondhand organdy gowns holding up xeroxed posters of Marlene as Lola Lola in The Blue Angel and a band of jackbooted neo-Nazi skinheads who were attempting to sling feces onto her gravestone. Before the police were alerted, the transvestites had already driven back the skinheads, and after everyone left, they played Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” on a boom box to send off their dead queen, returned to the earth on a balmy May day as spring turned to summer.

  But May 6, 1992, was still two and a half years away, and for now the maid was trying to shush Marlene as she expounded on various creative and gruesome ways her body could be disposed of on the sly. Please, Madame, the maid said as she prepared to clean Marlene. Bad luck to say such things! She placed her two palms together and shook them toward the ceiling.

  Then the bath towels came toward Marlene, and she struggled to get free.

  I don’t need a wipe down, Marlene said, I just need more perfume. I want the whole church to smell fresh and green as a Saint Laurent fougère when they’re praying over me. Marlene spritzed the air around her generously, like her flacon of branded fragrance was a spray can of air freshener. There, she said. Nice again. The maid pointed hesitantly to a damp shape on the sheepskin spreading out from under Marlene. What? Marlene demanded right away. What’s that, she said, but now she felt the sticky wetness of pee on the backs of her thighs.

  Marlene resolutely ignored the maid, keeping her eyes fixed on the TV till the maid left the room. Oprah was on. Marlene turned the volume up. She could feel the sodden maxi pad silhouetted against her thighs like a rancid, tumescent tongue. For a long time Marlene had been wearing sanitary pads daily to manage the dribbles of her incontinence, discarding them under the bed wrapped up in pages torn from Vogue. Listen, Oprah was saying, you can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once. The squeak of unoiled metal made Marlene jump. She turned to see the maid pushing in the dis
used wheelchair, usually folded into a spidery alcove of the kitchen. Put that back right where you found it, Marlene shouted over the TV, I am not going to sit on that dummy! Marlene began throwing whatever she could get her hands on in the wheelchair’s direction. A fork. She saw the maid ducking. Her peace prize medallion. Hey—hey, I got you, Oprah boomed on the TV. Lots of people wanna ride with you in the limo. But what you want is someone who’ll take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

  Liberated from their weighted placeholder, the cut-out obituaries of friends, enemies, lovers, peers floated off the table like black-and-white confetti.

  She tried to clear her head.

  Look now, Marlene said to the maid. Let’s be reasonable. First, turn off the TV, I love Oprah, but her voice is so loud, she needs to go easy. Stow that contraption, only invalids have any use for it. Chuck the basin, too. We’ll walk to the bathroom like civilized people. I’m going to have a proper bath.

  With Marlene leaning all her weight on the maid, they reached the bathroom on foot together. Marlene began to wheeze as they were nearing it, and the maid carried her over the threshold, setting her down on the toilet bowl.

  The maid flipped the lights on.

  Marlene had forgotten about the full-length mirror, from which a ghoulish old woman gaped back at her. She turned away as soon as she could, but not quickly enough. The maid ran the bathwater and helped Marlene disrobe. The legs that slid out from under the silk chemise were so thin and misshapen. What a hoot that they had once been insured by Lloyd’s of London via Paramount for a million dollars. Everything became a fantastic joke if you could afford to hang around long enough for the punch line. The maid was about to help remove her bloomers when Marlene remembered the waterlogged pad between her legs.