Collages Page 10

  Tessa’s voice grew lighter and younger, even though the tired heart caused breathlessness between each sentence. She was elated to think that Colonel Tishnar had run away so far from her power and charm.

  “And do you know, Renate, I think he is right. I am sure I would have been unfaithful to him.”

  So there was Colonel Tishnar already won, married, and betrayed, all in a few hours, a victory to stimulate the failing heart of any woman.

  RENATE GREW TIRED OF PAINTING PORTRAITS, of hostessing, of designing dresses, and so she made a plan for a new magazine.

  way out because they were out of the way of people who never left their offices.

  John was a clairvoyant film critic and he wrote for Renate describing all the beautiful and original scenarios written by writers of quality which lay in “cold storage” in the studios. He also wrote a dazzling article made up of all the paragraphs which had been lopped off at the beginning, in the middle or sometimes at the end for the sake of layout.

  Judith Sands offered several stories which were too long or too short for other magazines, and which did not tie up with any journalistic news item like a play on Broadway, a film in Hollywood, or a murder, or burglary or a leap from the fifteenth floor.

  Several novelists had beautiful chapters left out of their novels. The novels had been weighed on a scale and found to be two ounces overweight.

  Betty was dressing dummies for Saks windows, but she was skilled in lively and seductive layouts. She did not split stories into fifteen to-be-continued columns interrupted with gaudy advertisements. She quarantined commercials.

  Henri offered his most secret recipes.

  Harry sold records in a music store, and had stored in his mind the most complete knowledge of jazz music and its composers.

  Renate was inviting contributions born of enthusiasm, inventiveness, novelty, exploration, of people in love with their media and whose love was contagious. What she banished was the bored critics, the imitators, the second-handers, the standardized clichés. Even the first dummy aroused in people a feeling they were at last to know, read, see everything other magazines neutralized, dissolved, synthesized, deodorized, sterilized, disguised, monotonized, mothproofed, and sprayed with life-repellents.

  “It must be alive,” was Renate’s only editorial principle.

  Alive like Don Bachardy’s line portraits of personalities, like Renate’s women and animals, like Judith Sands’ stories of cities and the lovers who had lived in them, or the Consul’s wife’s selection of how writers had written about women dressing (or undressing) and a thousand other scintillating subjects which other editors believed radioactive.

  Renate advertised for capital. The very same evening she received a telephone call: “My name is John Wilkes. I am answering your advertisement. I like the idea of your magazine. I am 27 years old. I made my money in oil wells in Phoenix. Send me the dummy. Here is my address. But do not telephone me. It makes me nervous. I am always on the go for business. I never know where I am going to be. Send me a budget for what you will need to run for a year. Tomorrow I fly to New York for a conference. The next day I may be in Egypt. I am bored with business and welcome a new interest.”

  Renate posted the dummy. The young millionaire telephoned again: “I am in New York. I received the dummy. I like your ideas. Keep working on them. As soon as I can I will fly to Los Angeles and meet your staff and your lawyer. Tell your lawyer to prepare a rough draft of the contract.”

  Renate made the usual inquiry about Mr. John Wilkes. The answer was: “Unknown.” But it was suggested that John Wilkes might have accounts in the name of his company. Or perhaps not in Phoenix at all. So Renate relinquished the search for credit references.

  Manuscripts began to arrive, cartoons, letters, recordings to review, books to review, passes to film openings, theatre openings. Renate and her staff were invited to fashion shows, exhibitions, to travel at half-rates to Paris, to visit film stars, to interview visitors from Japan.

  They all gave up their routine jobs. Renate had cards printed with their various titles. Every morning enough original material arrived to fill a magazine each day.

  John Wilkes was still busy, flying here and there, but always telephoning, always interested. He sent a photograph of himself. He looked as Gary Cooper looked at his age.

  Renate rented an office. Friends helped her to decorate it. The symbol of it was a mobile. Several mobiles hung from the ceiling, setting the theme of liveliness and motion of the magazine.

  In a few weeks they were in touch with all the countries they had wanted to visit, all the personalities they had wanted to know. It was if everyone responded to the ebullience and felt attracted to the atmosphere not yet desiccated by story conferences and dehydrated by editorial policies. Secret wishes and fantasies were being materialized. Every encouraged idea generated a new one. Renate could hardly contain the richness. It was like an oil well which had overflowed. Circulation problems? Only a problem of circulation of the blood.

  John Wilkes applauded, laughed, shared in the universe born of yes. He sponsored Renate’s gaiety and originality, her belief that ideas must only be handled by the one who gave birth to them or else they withered.

  “Is it time for a celebration?” they asked.

  Renate said: “Let’s wait until John Wilkes comes. Let’s wait until the contracts are signed.”

  But they bought champagne. It was such a delight to buy champagne and fill in a slip which would be paid by the expense account. No more concern over narrow personal budgets. What a delight to take a taxi when carrying heavy portfolios and charge it. What a delight to eat in a new restaurant every day and be treated like a millionaire so one would write flatteringly about the dinner. What delight to visit the printer all of them knew, and to be able to say to him they would pay him handsomely this time. What delight to plan for Christmas in June, to reserve hotel rooms for the film festivals at Venice, to plan for Spoleto, to accept invitations to the jazz festivals.

  John Wilkes arrived. He and Renate spent three whole days with lawyers. Renate looked tired but elated. “He says yes to everything.”

  In the climate of enthusiasm, new ideas proliferated.

  At last the contracts were done with. The young millionaire had consented to everything. He had also agreed to meet the staff, and to have champagne with them. They were to gather at Renate’s house.

  The sun gold-leafed the sea, the tips of the leaves, the window panes, the pottery and the paintings. Cars arrived. Everyone seemed to feel lighter, to walk more confidently.

  Bruce brought Renate an umbrella for her trip to Paris. It was made of cellophane, and planted with bunches of plastic violets. To walk in the rain and yet be able to see the sky, the buildings, the people. And her face behind it when she opened it was like the face of a mermaid in an aquarium. The violets seemed planted in her dark hair.

  But John Wilkes did not arrive. The telephone rang. He excused himself. He had been called to a conference in Denver. Anyway, he had to take the contracts to his own committee and mail the checks to close the deal.

  There was a moment of suspense.

  “Oh, we mustn’t be superstitious,” said Renate, “that’s how millionaires behave. They are always in business conferences. They have no time for celebrations.”

  They drank the champagne, but for the first time their gathering seemed more like the gathering of other magazine staffs, solemn and cautious.

  The next day there was silence and suspense, as if the post office, the telegraph office, the bank, and the postman must not be disturbed in the performance of their duties. They did not telephone each other with new ideas.

  On each desk there was a pile of unpaid bills. On Renate’s desk a bill from the printer for the dummy, writing paper and cards, and a bill for the rental of the office.

  Each one had a personal, intimate problem he did not want to share with the others: doctor’s bills, insurance
bills, a parent to support, all the obligations which were going to be met with money earned while doing what they loved to do. An unknown writer had seen his name on the cover. An unknown singer had believed herself discovered.

  But no check came.

  Renate broke her promise not to telephone John Wilkes. But when she did he took a long time to come to the telephone. His answers for the first time, sounded vague and evasive.

  Renate asked her lawyer’s advice. The lawyer spoke to his neighbor who worked for the F.B.I. Quiet investigations were made. Two weeks had passed since John Wilkes had signed the contracts and promised a check.

  It was then Renate discovered that the young millionaire was a gardener in a millionaire’s home in Phoenix. He liked to play the role of millionaire. He had done it before. He had been in New York, had been present at several conferences over new projects, studied them, signed contracts, and vanished.

  Renate could imagine him clipping rose bushes and listening to the talk of rich oil men resting on chaise-longues around their pools: “I am investing in Playboy. I am producing a play. I am backing a film.”

  And Renate could see the young, shy, handsome gardener, studying the roles he was to play while watering the lawns and planting bushes. He had learned a trade which gave him elation and a sense of power. He had done it well.

  When she telephoned him the telephone was probably right in the kitchen, or in the tool house where people could hear him. And the genuine millionaires were probably sitting a few yards away, planning other investments.

  There was no law to jail a man who swindled one of illusions and not of money. The gardener watered other people’s dreams. It was not his fault that they grew so big and had to be pruned.

  RENATE AND LISA HAD MET IN ACAPULCO when she was there for a few days designing a mural for the new hotel.

  She was sitting in the dining-room when she saw a Toulouse-Lautrec figure walk down the stairs, a Toulouse-Lautrec with a Rousseau jungle for a background. Renate’s eyes were also caught by the brilliant native color of her dress. She used Mexican textiles. She wore jewelry copied from the Aztec days of gold exuberance. The bouffant hair was not in fashion then, but she wore it naturally, and it made her face small and delicate. She had a small straight nose such as one only sees in paintings, eyes always mocking, a slender neck and a fine head attached surprisingly to a voluptuous body. Her body was heavy but in the way of primitive women, that is, not inert but alive and rhythmic, graceful and vibrating. Her movements had a vivacity and a flow and something more; she had provocative movements, as if she were about to undress. She rolled her hips, her shoulders, like a strip-teaser about to slide out of her clothes. She had the swinging roll of sailors and prostitutes suggesting the rocking of ships or of beds. She thrust her breasts out as if she would separate herself from them and fly off. Her hands would rest on different parts of her body as if to indicate where the eyes should alight. She shook her head, alert and animal, and laughed with a ripple which ran through her whole body. It was as if she kept dancing just enough to keep her jewelry tinkling and her earrings swinging.

  Renate and Lisa talked on the terrace at night after dinner while waiting to see what the evening would bring. In spite of her two children, a girl of seven and a boy of nine, the men treated her as if she were a young woman. Her laughter was inviting as she lay on the chaise-longue, eclipsing the vivid tropical flowers, petal soft, perfumed among the dark heavy tropical foliage. But her exotic plumage did not seem a permanent part of her. One felt she was uncomfortable within it, and that her natural state was nudity.

  She could flirt and tease and laugh with people she did not like, like a professional. She never conserved or economized her charms, or refused anyone the fullness of her laughter, or the long glance into her igniting eyes, or proximity to her tanned skin. Acapulco was a perfect background for her. Her skin was naturally swarthy and she seemed like a native, in harmony with the climate, never too warm, never estranged from it, never intimidated by darkness, strange bird voices, monkey chatter, or the sudden discovery of an iguana practicing camouflage and almost invisible, frozen in the sun, the color of the rock it lay on.

  When Diego Rivera painted her, with his Mexican brush, he made her mouth twice as thick, her nose twice as wide, her eyes twice as large, adding fierceness, and it was no longer Lisa, because Lisa was this paradox between a jungle-luxuriant body and a delicate Toulouse-Lautrec head.

  In Acapulco no one ever thought of profession, titles, background, or past history. Everyone lived in the present and looked at each other with an appreciation of appearance only as one looked at the sea, the mountains, lagoons, birds, animals, flowers. Races, classes, fortunes, all blended into an object for the pursuit of pleasure. Swimming, sunning, dancing, idleness, made people part of the scenery, for the pleasure of the eyes only. Quality was a matter of contribution to the beauty of the spectacle. This unique qualification was determined by how one looked walking down the stairs to the dining-room, because spotlights had been planted between the cactus and the palms, and the descent, and pause, just before entering the dining room was like a small stage, high above the diners, well lighted, and well designed so that hundreds of eyes could determine if this figure was, or was not, an aesthetic contribution to the isle of pleasure. Anyone at this moment could achieve membership into the club of the deshabillés.

  Lisa’s origins were even more obscured by her knowledge of many languages, of many countries, her exotic costumes, her home in Acapulco, her rootlessness, her several husbands no one had known, her mysterious income.

  Anyone seeking to include her in a realistic novel would have had to resort, even against the grain, to impressionism. Her Mexican servants treated her as one of their own because she ate their food. A Mexican god was cemented on a column in her garden. There were no books in her house, but many canvasses and supplies of paints.

  Having situated her in Mexico permanently in her memory, Renate was all the more startled to run into her on Third Avenue, New York, before the elevated was removed. Lisa was carrying a brown shopping bag. Her hair so wild and abundant was hidden by a handkerchief. For a moment, in the striped light of soot-filtered sun, Renate wondered if all she remembered had belonged to Acapulco and not to Lisa, for she could not find in Lisa herself any gleams of gold, of sun, no tinkling of bracelets, no pearly laughter. Lisa wore a dark winter coat and seemed to have amalgamated with the city and the winter.

  “Renate! What are you doing in New York?”

  “I’m having an exhibition on 57th Street. And you, Lisa?”

  “Do you remember the Acapulco sailing and fishing contests? Well, Bill was with one of the newspapers, a reporter for Field and Stream. He came in his trailer to cover the celebration. I had just finished building my house and I had a housewarming. We began to dance together Sunday night, the night of the prize distribution, and we continued to dance together for two or three nights. I don’t remember that we stopped for meals. I had just divorced my third husband, and I felt like beginning a completely new cycle. But I couldn’t persuade Bill to stay. Instead he gave me an hour to get ready and took me away in his trailer. We went from Acapulco to Fraser, Colorado, on another assignment. I arrived there with gold sandals, and it was snowing. While Bill covered his story, I waited for him in a cafeteria and played the slot machines. All my life I had dreamed of finally settling in Acapulco and living there and going native. And here I was in a snowstorm, sleeping and traveling in a trailer on my way to New York.”

  As they talked, Lisa led Renate to a small and shabby apartment house. They walked to the top floor.

  “Bill is poor because most of his salary goes in alimony.”

  When the elevated passed they had to stop talking. This gave Renate time to wonder why Lisa had not clung to her beautiful life.

  When they reached the top floor, instead of a dark, anonymous door, Renate found a canary yellow garden gate. Lisa had covered the walls of the h
allway with lattice of vine-covered trellis; the ceilings hung with potted plants and cages filled with singing birds. When she touched the gate Mexican bells chimed. Lisa shed her dark coat and appeared in a flaming orange dress. The small apartment was no longer in New York. Rugs, panels, murals, paintings, statues, serapes, white fur on the bed. It was Acapulco. She had placed her stone gods in niches, her jewelry overflowed from a coffer, and a record player spun tender Mexican songs.

  There were Mexican paper flowers in a jar, silks on the windows, and the shutters were painted yellow so that even on this dark day the sun seemed to be shining. There were more birds singing in the small kitchen.

  This gallant effort at transplantation touched Renate. Would Lisa survive in this illusory set? Bill had torn her away but had not won her to his own life. What quality did he possess that she should be willing to risk withering her essentially primitive and tropical nature?

  “Bill has gone for liquor,” said Lisa. “He will bring back my sister who lives nearby.”

  At this moment they both arrived. Bill was small, not handsome, and he was cursing the chiming bells over the door and the wicker gate which clung to his coat. His tie was askew, his coat rumpled, and the end of an unlit cigar hung from his lips. He was in harmony with Third Avenue, and so was his harsh accent, and his way of exaggerating his homeliness and bad manners as if he were proud of them. Lisa’s sister had the accent of a street boy and the impersonal mechanized politeness of a telephone operator. Both of them talked to Lisa as if she were a pretender, as if everything she wore, or said, or hung on the walls were artificial, not hers by birth.