Collages Page 5

  Renate wore a purple dress she had made herself and so it did not have the shapelessness of fashion but followed the natural contours of her body like a second skin.

  She was always in movement, throwing her long black hair back away from her face, moving forward to greet the visitors, and when she turned her face towards the bar it seemed as if she set the whole glittering mechanism in motion to satisfy hunger and thirst.

  She was so gracious in her gestures of welcome that the diners often stopped talking and drinking to watch her, as if she were the spectacle they had come to see. The bar man looked at her while he shook his potions, the old chef looked at her over his charcoal pit, the musicians sang for her, looked at her over the black wings of the piano, and one thought of the French word for hostess, entraîneuse,which meant to pull, to magnetize, to lure in her wake.

  Eat, drink, talk, she seemed to whisper as she placed the menu into the visitor’s hand, as if she were giving them the secret to all delights, and often they moed aside to make room and said: “Renate, sit down, have a drink with us.”

  Animator, bringing animation to silent tables, staying long enough to light the candles.

  They arrived in disparate costumes, formal and informal, summer coats, furs, gloves, sport shirts, Hawaiian shirts, Harper’s Bazaar plumes, racing-car goggles, motorcycle helmets, dancing pumps, or leather boots. They arrived heavily made up, with false eyelashes, wigs, or unkempt, ungroomed. No one was surprised. It was the movie colony, at work on films. It looked as if they had snatched a few items from the costume department: beards, gangster’s raincoats, the star’s false jewels. It matched the jumbled styles of their homes, imitations of the styles of other countries which, bereft of their natural atmosphere, looked like stage sets.

  Nothing seemed to belong to them organically, to be stamped with their own identity, but no one seemed to expect that. Even the painters and writers wore disguises which outdid Venetian masked balls. The beards of men shipwrecked for years on desert islands, the unmatched clothes from thrift shops, the girls with hair uncombed, and black cotton stockings, and eyes painted a tubercular violet. In this costume they meant to convey a break with conventions, with the stylish mannequins in Beverly Hills shop windows, but it created the impression of merely another uniform, which they bore self-consciously, and it did not portray freedom, nonchalance. They wore them stiffly, as if on display, like extras for a Bohemian scene, proclaiming: look at me.

  All of them were impatient to drink the dissolvent remedy which would loosen the disguise, disintegrate the self-conscious shell, to drink until the lower depths of their nature would rise to the surface in sodden debris, brash words, acid angers, to shatter the mannequins they stifled in, to shatter the disguises.

  “Renate,” they called, not because they were hungry or thirsty, but because she knew who she was, and as she knew who she was, she might also be able to identify them, with a smile and a word, just as with a smile and a word she had said to Bruce: “You are a poet.”

  There was food on the table, and the glasses were full, but who was at the table? Would Renate know? They were at sea, and Renate was more than a woman, she was a compass. What confused them did not confuse her. If she did not answer their distress signals, if she left them stranded in the vacuum they lived in, then to assert their existence they would have to begin a quarrel with someone, anyone.

  The features became muddied, the façades collapsed. When a glass broke, Renate appeared as if this were a signal of danger, the start of a drama, as if the restaurant had become a ship at sea, and they all floundered on waves of anger. Strangers were flung together and collided in tidal waves of alcohol, in incoherent quarrels.

  I am a star, I am a director, I am a cameraman, I am married, I have two children, I have discovered oil, I have built a house, I have written a script, I won the Oscar, I bought a horse, I rented my ranch, I started the fashion of boar hunting, I am having an exhibition, I am sailing to Acapulco.

  But none of these facts the full-bodied power Renate had when she said: “I am a painter.”

  Her painting had been born from within just as her son had been, organic, part of her flesh, whereas for the desperate anonymous, they were adopted accidental children, not truly their own, and they were not certain of paternity or reality.

  There was one more personage who was not foundering in anonymity like a pilot in weightless space, and that was Leontine who was singing by the piano.

  Her hair was cut in a boyish style with bangs over her eyes. It had been dipped in a red glow. Her skin was of a creamy chocolate, her eyes black and highly polished. Her fingers were long and sensitive when she touched her long neck, to feel where the voice came from, as if to coax it pure, and out it came honeyed and heavy, warming, tender, at times like silk, at other times like zephyr wool on the skin.

  She wore a long jersey swathe striped black and white, with a turtle neck which accentuated the Ubangi length of her neck, and black tights which gave her the air of a medieval page.

  When she finished her song, she rushed to embrace Renate:

  “You didn’t recognize me! I’m Leontine!”

  “You’ve changed so much!” said Renate.

  “Do you remember the first time we met?”

  “Of course I remember. It was at Canada Lee’s New Year’s party. You were fifteen years old. You had a humorous, turned up nose…”

  “I changed that, for the photographers,” said Leontine.

  “I remember you danced Haitian dances. It was my first year in America. I did not feel at home yet. It was my first meeting with the dead pan faces of New York City, a Greek play with masks, and all the dead pans seemed to say: ‘We don’t know you. We don’t see you. We don’t like you.’ This New Year’s party was my first one in New York, and when Canada Lee greeted me at the door with his warm melting voice and his joyous smile and said: ‘Come in, hang up your coat’ as if he meant it and were addressing me personally, I wept. It was my first personal, intimate, friendly welcome. And then you came and put your arms around me, and took me to meet your father. But he was formal and impressive, as if carved of wood. He had all the Haitian dignity and formality. His stiff silver-gray hair was cut short like the bristle of a hard brush. Immediately he began to tell me a story I never forgot.”

  “It was always the same story,” said Leontine. “About his youth in Haiti and his revolutionary activities, how he was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to Guiana. How he was tied by a chain to another prisoner.

  ”The unendurable heat, the sadism of the guards. The same place and the same conditions as for Dreyfus. He was only seventeen and condemned for life. I forgot how they managed to escape.

  “They worked at it quoto years. They planned well, and found themselves in the jungle, miles from the sea where a boat with friends awaited them. They fed on fruit, and slept in caves, or inside dead trees. They were bitten by insects. The chain binding their arms made walking difficult. They had no way to cut the chain. It was too heavy to wear down by scraping against a stone. On the third day my father’s companion drank polluted water and on the fourth day he died. And my father was chained to a dead man.”

  “At this point I told your father I did not want to hear any more. His story and the gaiety of the New Year’s party all around us was too violent a contrast. I covered my ears. The room was filled with laughter and jazz dancing. The New Year was being greeted with firecrackers and shouts and kisses. Your father sat impervious, unmoved by all the agitation and continued his story. How he had freed himself by cutting the arm off at the shoulder with a small knife. But he had to carry the dead man all the way to the boat.”

  “Covered with ants,” said Leontine. “I’m sorry if I sound callous, Renate, but my father told this story so many times that I couldn’t feel any emotion any more.”

  “You were dancing Haitian dances. Don’t you dance any more?”

  “I was too lazy to be a dancer.
I hated rehearsals. I took up singing instead, which came naturally to me. It didn’t require so much discipline.”

  “And what happened to all the wishes you made? You wanted a life like Josephine Baker’s. You wanted to live in France, and marry a French count and have a palace in Marrakesh.”

  “I did travel with Catherine Dunham. I did get to France, and I did find my French count. He was not handsome, but he was tall and blond. He thought I was not intelligent and so he invented a language for me, half-baby-talk, half monkey-chatter, which he thought I would understand better. He had a sadistic sense of humor. Once he called for me at the Hotel de Crillon in an Arab costume, a poor soiled one, as if he had slept in it for weeks. The manager was entertaining Arab royalty. The secret service men wanted to arrest him. Then they found out he was the son of a deputy. Another time he rented a beautiful apartment for me but gave me no furniture. Then he gave a party for me. We entertained in leotards and jewelry. The fabulous jewelry he had ‘borrowed’ from his mother who alerted the police.

  “He never told me where it came from and I wore it at the night club and the same secret service men came to my dressingroom. He had to explain where it came from. Another time we sat for hours in a crowded café and insulted each other. People who were concerned over the racial equality were so shocked by what he said they wanted to interfere, until they heard what I was saying to him. Another time he told me to wear my loveliest dress, we were going to Maxim’s. He left me sitting at our table and went to the coat room to leave his overcoat. He was wearing the jacket of his formal suit over leotards. He insisted on taking me out to dance. Because his father was a deputy, no one interfered with him. Another time I had a jealous tantrum at the Ritz bar, and I began to break glasses. My Count calmly called the headwaiter and said: ‘Bring me a tray with a dozen of your best glasses. If Madame feels like breaking glasses she must have the best.’ This embarrassed me so much I left the place. He always wanted the upper hand; he always won and I enjoyed that. He spread the rumor that I had a neurotic fear of automobiles and made me go about in a horse and carriage, and insisted I ride in it dressed in jeans. That was the time a man stopped the carriage and said to me: ‘You must be Leontine. I am Cocteau.’ With my Count, it was not so much a physical fascination as a mental one. We were both absurd. No, he never did marry me, and I never did live in a palace in Marrakesh, but he made me laugh for three and a half years.”

  “I remember your mother too,” said Renate. “She worked in a factory stuffing woolly animals with sawdust. She smuggled out the best ones for you, bears, camels, donkeys. Your mother was very worried about your infatuation for your cousin, who was much whiter than you. She was afraid he would take advantage of you and then not marry you. She asked me to find out how things were, and I didn’t want to pry. So I invented a charade in which you had to act a woman being made love to, and the cooing, dove sounds you made were so realistic I knew your mother’s fears were justified.”

  “I remember the day I came to get you to go to the beach. I found you bathing in tea, you were ashamed of being so white.”

  “I also remember the day you mentioned a Haitian national party you were going to and I said I would love to come, too, and you looked at me wistfully and said: ‘Renate, white people are not invited.’”

  Leontine laughed, and her long gold earrings tinkled, and her bracelets tinkled, and her long chain of beads, and the spotlight found her lighting up her eyes and smile. She went back to the piano to sing for Renate, and Renate could find no trace of the little girl with tight curls and a turned up nose who played in the streets of Brooklyn with lions, kangaroos and monkeys stuffed and sewn by her mother in a nearby factory which looked like a prison.

  HENRI THE CHEF WAS THE ADOPTED SON of the famous Escoffier. No one knew why he had settled in Paradise Inn, in a kitchen where his historic copper pans and kettles looked like those of a giant. He had hung them all on the wall and kept the copper shining like mirrors in which he could read of his past splendors and victories.

  Henri was tall, but with his chef’s bonnet he seemed to touch the ceiling. He was also sumptuously upholstered by rich eating, and when he moved between the carving board and the stove, he had to pull in his vast stomach.

  When he had finished cooking, the guests wanted to hear his anecdotes. Late in the evening he would bring small roses to the ladies and a profusion of biographical stories.

  All the people he had cooked for bore famous names, from Queen Victoria to Diamond Jim Brady. He described them in a decor of crystal chandeliers, candlelight, lace tablecloths, attended by armies of assistants. He recalled the exact compliments he had received from kings, famous actors, society women, and later, from tycoons, gangsters and business dictators.

  He had been a child prodigy in the kitchen, later a dictator ruling over his own culinary inventions.

  His monumental figure and red face seemed composed of all the delicacies he had cooked, an attrition of sauces, flavors, spices and wines.

  All the stories he served with the dishes were of ancient vintage. He had invented the Crêpe Suzette for Prince Edward, the charcoal broiled steak for Diamond Jim Brady.

  Dazzled by the past, he seemed near-sighted about present celebrities. Perhaps he felt that in the past he had played a major role, and that the visitors who came now were witnessing his aging. At one time his dinners could influence the atmosphere of a political discussion and affect history; they could decide the course of a love affair.

  Perhaps he felt reluctant to admit that among today’s diners there might be one future celebrity who might usher in an equally brilliant era but an era he would not be there to feed.

  As he was past eighty, many of his anecdotes ended in funeral orations. Some of his flambés, accompanied by a list of the missing, seemed like cremations.

  He had two passions: one for the art of cooking, one for the celebrities who had enjoyed his cooking.

  In the art of cooking he was a perfectionist. It would take him days to concoct a sauce. He did his own marketing and waged an unremitting war on all synthetic, frozen, or canned foods.

  But in the matter of names he was not so snobbish. He did not question the composition of a famous name. He loved titles, decorations, prizewinners, publicity’s favorites.

  In Europe he acquired an obsession for quality. In America he acquired gigantism. His dinners grew Gargantuan. His diners had to take walks or dance or swim between dishes.

  He took his diners on an Elysian journey of high flavors. His stories poured out like the most suave of his sauces.

  As he was as much interested in dishes as in personalities, he gave his dishes the names of people he met. Strawberry Pudding Carole Lombard, Naked Butterfly Irvin S. Cobb, Broiled Oysters George Eastman, Tutti Frutti Edna May Oliver.

  Had these personalities flavors which he translated into delicacies? Was Greta Garbo like a flambée, and Julius Bloomfield like borsch? Was William Vanderbilt a crème de France? And Marlene Dietrich a Grenade d’Amour? Was Henry James only capable of evoking shirred eggs, and Sara Delano Roosevelt cinnamon apples, and did Charles Hackett deserve a panâche?

  But drinks he did not baptize with names of people. They deserved enduring abstractions such as Justice, Liberty, Courage, Democracy.

  In the early days of his difficult start in New York he carried home every night some empty bottle of Château d’Yquem which retained its fragrance, and slept on a bench at Long Island station holding the bottle to his nose to make himself dream again of the days when he was serving royalty on the French Riviera. Whereupon he was arrested for alcoholism and vagrancy.

  One night he sat in the Paradise Inn kitchen, like a soufflé which had not succeeded. It was late and he was eating some of his own dinner. Renate saw him, and smiled at him through the open partition. He was talking to himself, grumbling.

  “Anything troubling you?” asked Renate.

  Henri said: “People have lost their palate
. All they say is ‘More.’ It is all those fiery cocktails. They kill the taste. And then they never say the right thing, the kind of thing that puffs me up like a soufflé, the kind of compliment which makes me cook each day better.”

  “They haven’t lost their palate,” said Renate, “they have lost their tongue. They haven’t lost the power to appreciate your cooking; what they have lost is the power of words. They have never learned culinary language. We live in an Era of Basic English.”

  “Basic, basic, what is more basic than excellent cooking. You console me, but I still need words, you know, as actors need applause.”

  “Words have grown scarce. Is that why you so often think of the past? Was it better then?”

  “Yes, people had a literary appreciation of cooking. They could describe their sensations and they were eloquent about them. Poor Henri. He does see too many empty chairs. The people who come now are of a different breed. They are sulky and half-mute. They say: ‘It is good Henri.’ But how good, how does it compare with other recipes, there are so many nuances!”

  “It’s only language that has grown poor.”

  “You may be right. Did I ever tell you about Diamond Jim Brady and the twelve oysters? He once ordered me to serve twelve oysters in each of which I was to place a pearl. He was giving a dinner for twelve Ziegfeld girls. He wanted me to do my very best. While I prepared the oysters I noticed I had only eleven pearls, and I got very worried. I called him up and he said: ‘Don’t worry, Henri. It was done on purpose. The girl who does not get the pearl in the oyster will get a marriage contract from me. You announce it. I can’t bring myself to make such a silly announcement as a marriage proposal. I just can’t bring myself to say the words.”’

  VARDA LIVED ON A CONVERTED FERRY BOAT in Sausalito and sailed the bay in his own sail boat; so it was surprising to see him arrive at Paradise Inn in an old station wagon bringing his newest collages for an exhibition: “Collages are not sea-faring.”