Anne-Marie the Beauty Read online

  You wait a long time for your turn to come, and it may even happen, a flash in the pan, before the wheel goes round and turns you into a shadow. Living in a hole in the wall with a hot plate, and your baubles and lace

  Marguerite Orsoni fell to earth with a crash

  Those swaggering Barnums . . .

  They all fell with a crash

  The specter of the wheel that turns is never far

  You know the old joke? A man goes to a psychic. She tells him, don’t worry, the wheel is turning and your troubles are over. The man leaves happy, crosses the street, and a car runs him down

  Well, at least I’m laughing . . . Where were we?

  Gigi did not end up in a hole in the wall . . . But you know, madame, alone in a big apartment where there’s not the faintest sound, and everything is calcifying . . .

  On rue de Courcelles, there was a camphor smell as soon as you got in the door. She smeared that old Elizabeth Arden eight-hour cream all over herself. I said, Gigi, you reek of camphor. She answered it’s an aphrodisiac. Poor thing

  In the days of the Théâtre de Clichy, I was her only friend. All the other girls were jealous

  Men swarmed around her like flies. She fell in love a few times a month. At twenty-three she fell pregnant. For two days, we racked our brains for what to do, and then she said, enough, I’m keeping it. She had no interest in knowing who the father was. He’d just get up my nose, she said

  We were performing Ondine. The wardrobe mistress let out Gigi’s dress at the seams. We only broke for a month, around the time she gave birth

  She had Corinna. Corinna Fayolle, nicknamed Kikine back then. The same girl who showed up at the funeral in a culotte skirt fifty years later

  I remember Giselle’s parents, madame. They cowered in the hospital room as if they were in the way. I had never seen them before. When they came to the theater, they left right after. The mother finally took her coat off, on orders from Gigi, but kept it folded over her arm, as if they were in some official place. From time to time, Gigi’s mother sent Kikine nice little smiles, but from too far away. They were compact, tidy people. You sensed they weren’t rolling in dough. Anyway, no one then was rolling in dough

  We never talked about our parents except to run them down

  Hers seemed inoffensive to me. Paragons, compared to mine

  Whatever else they were, they could be trusted to take care of Kikine. I would not have left my son with my mother for even an hour. Besides, she couldn’t care less about him

  It tore her apart that I wanted to act

  Maybe she’d wanted that destiny for herself

  She told me, it’s hard to be an actress, you need to have the calling. Does she have the calling? Do you have the calling, Anne-Marie? —Yes I have the calling —Since when have you had the calling? —Since always, what do you mean by “calling”? —See? She has no idea what she’s talking about! Having the calling means knowing you have it. Your sister doesn’t want to act, but at least she has the looks

  I had pimples. She gave me some kind of goo from her medicine chest, a tinted paste called Acnomil that was supposed to smother them. My chin looked thicker and of a different color than the rest of my face

  Corinna was part of the troupe. She was the nicest baby on earth, even after she began to walk and babble. Kikine and I were part of the troupe. I say that, mademoiselle, because I was not the kind of person that a group would ordinarily adopt. The neighborhood girls in Saint-Sourd played elastics and skipped rope in the long narrow park just behind our place. I stood watching and was almost never asked to join in. If ever I was, I could not breathe for joy

  Giselle changed nothing about her way of life. She remained indolent. Still lounged about with her long tumbling hair and cigarettes. She did children’s jigsaw puzzles and made collages with the little girl

  There was always someone around to take care of her

  When I had my son, I was a bundle of phobias and terrors, and I remembered how relaxed Giselle had been

  What’s more, she was relaxed about everything. Her relaxation was all-inclusive. At some point in her life, she went to see a shrink, who claimed she did not show enough interest in other people. Gigi told him, if I hear you say “the rich world of the other” once more, I’ll belt you one. The shrink was horrified, really, Giselle, is that any way to talk?

  The shrink could not come to grips with the likes of Giselle Fayolle

  His lamebrain grids were not designed for that type of animal. I say this affectionately, monsieur

  Raymond Lice played Argan in The Imaginary Invalid, and wanted nothing to do with la-di-da stage directions. All the Argans and Orgons and Orontes, he said, are prehistoric types. Civilization landed on them like a ton of bricks, but they don’t understand a thing about it. Scratch below the surface and you’ll see, they are straight out of prehistory, genetically primitive

  Just like Giselle, Marietti, a hateful communist woman, once said

  Gigi laughed. She agreed

  It was a happy time

  The world wasn’t going to hell in a handcart, the way it is today. You threw a beer can out the window, you didn’t give a hoot

  Sometimes I got in a real funk, back on rue des Rondeaux

  Rue des Rondeaux was more than I could take. Not even because of the graveyard or the wall but because of how far it was from everything, out on the fringes

  No one came to visit rue des Rondeaux

  It was as if I’d landed back in the place I was from, but even more alone

  I’d fixed up a nice, orderly room for myself, with a set of shelves where I put my theater books. I had an easy chair

  Sometimes, sitting on my bed, I didn’t know where I was anymore, more lost in that simple decor than in the depths of the forest

  Prosper Ginot never went up to Paris. None of the actors from the Comédie de Saint-Sourd ever went to Paris to make a career. Not Armand Cheval, nor Odette Ordonneau

  If you had seen their majesty, madame

  No Paris actor ever had that majesty, no

  It’s true that my behavior is disturbing. The other day I threw my glasses in the garbage bin, and yesterday I opened the fridge with an oven mitt to grab a jar of stewed apples

  That didn’t happen when my husband was around. Or not much. I was more alert. He wasn’t a man to laugh at that sort of thing

  When he woke up, his coffee cup had to be positioned on the little shelf of the machine, the coffee pod inserted, all ready to go, so he only had to push the button. Believe it or not, it gave me pleasure. I liked preparing his morning routine

  I miss my husband

  We all have our little manias

  I’m old now. It’s important to have a hand to grab onto

  But mind, I’m not being sentimental. I’ve never been the sentimental kind. Well, yes, I used to be, unfortunately, but in secret and without all the claptrap that goes with it

  I would have loved to play Elvire. Giselle played her. Very badly. In the middle of the run, she left to shoot a film. She was replaced by a wretch of a girl with a high-pitched voice. If you ask me, a high-pitched voice in theater should be like flat feet used to be in the army: you’re out on your ear. End of story

  Giselle had no understanding of the lament, the universal nature of the lament

  You can’t ask an indolent person to understand anything about it

  She went from rageful to tremulous

  Stony, with the inflections of a religious fanatic

  Whereas in Elvire you have to arrive on stage with a sword and knightly armor

  I would have done a good job of it, madame . . .

  Any man who hears this lament should capitulate, no matter how debauched he is. Any man who doesn’t is a brute. That Don Juan is a real son of a bitch. I could never stand to look at him in painti
ngs

  Giselle left us high and dry. She decamped mid-run, snapped up by the movies

  Overnight, we became people of no account. She dropped in on the fly to collect her things or smooth the feathers of her replacement, her cheeks on fire, always in a hurry to leave. We were the go-nowhere people, the little neighborhood troupe unraveling, bit by bit, into oblivion

  It pained me not to see Corinna anymore. I loved that kid. I made her dressup clothes from costume remnants. We played rock paper scissors

  I asked Giselle to let her stay with me once in a while. But she had moved on to another life

  Shouldn’t feel sorry for oneself

  On stage, you leave nothing behind. The stage doesn’t given a damn who occupies it, Giselle, Giselle Fayolle, Anne-Marie. There’s nothing left of anyone, not an odor or a shadow

  I had a happy life you know

  I didn’t have the figure for the movies

  Giselle had a dressing room. She was the only one who had her own dressing room. When they emptied it, all that was left was the flowery daybed, always heaped with clothing, shawls, underclothes, her kimonos. Gigi was hopelessly messy

  All that was left was the daybed she was lying on the first time I saw her, where she smoked and primped her life away

  When I think back to the Théâtre de Clichy, the image of that piece of furniture returns, all alone in the room with nothing on top of it

  Now that I have nothing to do, monsieur, I thought time would lie heavy on my hands. It’s just the opposite, the days and nights gallop along so fast it makes me dizzy

  Literally dizzy

  All the same, there’s nothing normal about opening the fridge with an oven mitt

  My mother was half nuts. I wonder if I might be following suit

  I already have some of her quirks

  I collect light bulbs, I keep empty bottles

  In the evening I crunch on orange and lemon Ricola drops to make little pieces. I make a dozen pieces and put them in a cup by my bed, and I crunch some more when I’m under the covers, between sips of herbal tea

  It bores me just to suck them

  She did the same with Vichy pastilles**

  My mother could not look at herself in a mirror without putting on a face, though she was a pretty woman. Even in shop windows. The slightest hint of a reflection, and out came the face. She thrust her chin forward, making her mouth a bitter line while curving her lips up a little at the corners to compensate

  Now I do it too. I’ve seen myself. I thrust out my lower jaw as soon as I spot a mirror

  I couldn’t stand to see her do it, but I do the same thing

  Apparently it’s quite common

  From time to time, she gamboled home down rue Chelles, rue Carmelin, the nasty little streets near our home

  I don’t like nutters

  Better to shoot me dead

  When we were playing The Moods of Marianne, I had a lover Giselle knew

  He took me to a place with dark exposed beams and we ate paupiettes. Then we went back to his furnished room, where he dressed me up as Jacqueline Huet, a newscaster from the sixties. He had the jewelry, the string of pearls, the blouse with the pussycat bow, the whole kit and kaboodle. He also had a blonde wig, but I did not want to wear it. We covered my black hair with a chiffon scarf. Next, he declared his love, using the polite form of address, vous, and calling me Jacqueline. Then he pounced. I had orders to fend him off. I could scratch, hit, and bite, and we smacked each other’s faces until he gave the signal, and Jacqueline had to surrender, in spite of herself

  Afterwards, things simmered down, he called me a telly slut, a whore and so on

  . . . but he was nice about it

  We got along well

  He was a leather salesman

  He never wanted me to be any other woman but Jacqueline Huet

  And then he went back to Brest, where he came from

  Before my husband, I had several lovers. But I became attached too quickly

  There was one who drove a Matra-Simca, with room for three in front. He drove at breakneck speed, lying on the seat with the steering wheel at arm’s length. It was his coming-up in the world

  He could not bear to be contradicted. If I made the mistake of saying Oh Serge be careful! he’d say What??! and his chin muscles would clench and go wobble-wobble, and it was obvious he’d be sulking for at least three months

  I lacked lightness. My body was light but not my thoughts

  You know, mademoiselle, with men it is good to be beautiful on the outside but inner beauty is never good

  I say that in all seriousness because it’s a serious matter

  Giselle had loads of suitors because she had the heart of an artichoke

  After the show, we went out for drinks with people from the theater. Then some went home and we moved to another bar. Later we went somewhere else again. The other girls went home to bed. We could do four or five places a night. What’s a person looking for, going from bar to bar like that?

  I haven’t a clue what we talked about. Nothing. Not much happened. By the end the only ones left were drunks, sent packing by the hookers on the boulevard

  I sat tight

  I wasn’t in anyone’s way

  People smoked. I thought about life. The night sounds were soothing, the zinc bar, the loud voices

  What have you got to lose by sitting around bored, monsieur?

  One day my father fled to a resort in the South of France

  We didn’t have much to do with him. He always came home late, planted his hands on either side of his plate, and said, who’s the boss around here? —You are. —What am I? —You’re the boss, papa. My mother would say, where would we be without a boss?

  That’s right!

  He couldn’t care less about subtleties

  He absconded one day in October. We only found him because he bounced a check, or I don’t know what. I went with my aunt to bring him back

  When we got there, he was lying alone in an enclosed space with a swimming pool in the middle, no greenery, surrounded by white bars

  We saw him through the bars. He lay on a deck chair which faced the opposite direction from all the other deck chairs that lay empty. His body massive, feet apart. In a black swimsuit, dark glasses, and cowboy hat. On a huge striped towel

  I had never seen my father’s body, I mean not really

  Certainly not lying down, idle

  Where I come from, the lying-down position is good for one thing: pushing up daisies. And how!

  After a while, he got up and entered the water, the way old people do, in the shallow end. Chest back, knees slightly bent, forearms floating horizontally

  My father made no attempt to swim but stayed put, bobbing in the water with his white hat

  We waited for him to come out but he did not come out

  You mustn’t believe it was common, monsieur, to drift along in life, not in our neck of the woods. You had to be bold

  Before we left, he wanted to show us the sea. It was a seaside resort, I forget the name. We walked down the beach, past the campsite, with my aunt, my father’s sister. The beach was almost empty. There were just a few people with mini-umbrellas, mostly alone. We passed a couple in their sixties wearing loud Hawaiian shirts. The man was fat, he hurled a piece of wood a few feet for a dog that fetched it, over and over. My dad said, that mutt’s a real dolt. He still wore his cowboy hat. I don’t know where he’d got it from. I thought, they must all tell themselves the same baloney, these oldsters in their tropical and Wild West getups. They thought of themselves as living outside landscape. They didn’t give a hoot about the rinky-dink beach, off-season

  Meanwhile back in Saint-Sourd, my mother had committed suicide

  A little vein slashed in the bathroom, a slapdash job, so my sister
would get to her in time

  She was not used to my father getting himself talked about. She took great pains to be the center of everything, the single joy of her misery. The beach escapade with all the fuss and worry made her blood boil

  Wanting to be elsewhere was her specialty. Since when did others want to be someplace else? I never understood what kept those two together

  Anyway, we should never look too closely at our parents’ marriage. And what couple should we look at closely, mademoiselle?

  By the time I met my husband, I was done with all my attempts at love’s bliss that never came to anything

  My mother never forgave my father his extravagant escape

  Not long after, I told her I was taking singing lessons. She laughed and laughed as if she had never heard anything so ludicrous. But Anne-Marie, you’re such a bad singer! —That’s just it —You’ve never had an ear. Always looking for attention! Now I’ve heard it all! . . . And with what money, pray tell? —It’s free. —What has possessed you, when did this start? This whole family is ganging up to push me over the edge. I can’t take any more! I’ve got myself some cyanide

  After her second child, Giselle returned to theater

  We didn’t see each other but I kept track of her career

  I said to my husband, let’s go, I’ll introduce you. Naturally I had told him about the days of our youth

  She was playing in Break of Noon at the Metropolis***

  We were not allowed backstage. We had to wait for her downstairs in an overheated little room with the other second-class citizens. I had gained weight. I wasn’t sure she would recognize me right away

  Giselle was at the height of her glory, madame

  After a long wait, we heard her voice in the stairway. She appeared in a purple coat, her arms full of flowers. There were a lot of people. It was difficult to get close to her. We were ill at ease. My husband did not understand why I was so shy. He whispered, go on, show yourself . . . At a certain point, she moved toward the exit. I said, Gigi? . . . What happened next was wonderful, monsieur. She turned and said, Anne-Marie! . . . Anne-Marie, darling!

  She hugged me, which she had not done with any of the others waiting in the lobby. Right away I asked about Kikine. She was thirteen. No one called her Kikine anymore. Giselle remembered rock paper scissors and the little tyke traipsing around backstage, cutting imaginary objects with her fingers. I congratulated her on her new baby girl. We talked about old times, Mireille Camp, Raymond Lice. And Poupi Canella who’d made a career in vaudeville. I introduced my husband. She said to the people around us, this is Anne-Marie Mille! We were at the Clichy together!