Collages Read online

  “When I gradually returned from this dream-like experience I was in your studio. I looked around at your collages and recognized them. It was as if I had been there for the first time. I saw the colors, the luminosity and the floating, mobile, changeable quality. I understood all your stories, and all you had said to me. I could see why you had made your women transparent, and the houses open like lace so that space and freedom could blow through them.”

  When she came home on vacation, she had emerged from her grey cocoon. She was now sixteen and sending forth her first radiations and vibrations dressed in Varda’s own rutilant colors.

  WHEN RENATE AND VARDA MET at Paradise Inn she had been touched by the story of his daughter. Secretly she wished she had had a father who was a magician with colors and who would have told her stories. To please him she wore a cotton dress in colors which recalled the dresses of his women. Her coat was lined with pale stripes of violet, white and green which immediately attracted Varda’s attention. He was as excited by a new combination of tones or materials as other men might be by a new dish, or a new brand of paint. He was always searching for pieces of textiles for his collages. He caressed the lining of Renate’s coat with delight.

  To his amazement Renate took a big pair of scissors from the kitchen and before his eyes she cut out a piece big enough to dress one of his abstract women.

  Varda spent a few days at the inn. There were many parties given for him. At these parties the two painters dazzled each other like two magicians practicing all their spells and charms upon each other.

  But the friendship remained aerial, like two acrobats speaking to each other only when hundreds of feet above the crowd.

  Speaking of modern painting Renate said: “So many of them lack taste.”

  “What they lack is distaste,” said Varda.

  They laughed together, but the distance remained.

  One day Varda absorbed some of Henri’s best wine, the one which fermented the highest content ofeloquence, and he confessed to him: “Renate is marvelous.”

  “She is marvelous,” echoed Henri. “I’m going to name a dessert after her.”

  “She is femme toute faite.”

  “Toute faite?”

  “Already designed, completed, perfect in every detail.”

  “You say this as if it were not a compliment.”

  “I only say it regretfully, Henri. For I myself, I need unformed women, unfinished, undesigned women I can mold to my own pattern. I’m an artist. I’m only looking for fragments, remnants which I can co-ordinate in a new way. A woman artist makes her own patterns.”

  “A good recipe for other women,” said Henri.

  BRUCE AND RENATE ENTERED A DIMLY-LIT CAFÉ where anyone could sit on the small stage and sing folk songs, and if he sang well would be kept there by applause and, if not, quickly encouraged to leave. The tables were beer-stained and sticky with Coca-Cola. The waitresses were heavily made up with Cleopatra eyes, and they wore sack dresses and black stockings. The spotlight on the singers was red and made them appear pale and condemned to sing. The shadows were so strong that when they bent over their guitar it seemed suggestively intimate and not like a song one must listen to. A few figures stood in the shadows on the side, and from this vague group a woman sprang towards them and, touching Renate’s arm, said in a chanting voice: “You are Renate,” giving to the name all the musical resonances it contained and adding, with a perfect lyrical illogic: “I am Nina,” as if a woman called Nina must of course address a woman called Renate. Renate hesitated because she was trying to remember where she had seen Nina and yet she could not remember, and this was so manifest on her face that Nina said: “Of course you could not remember, there are fourteen women in me, you may have met only one of them, perhaps on the stage, when I acted at the Playwright’s Theatre, do you remember that? I was the blind girl.”

  “Yes, of course I remember her, but you do not seem like the same woman, and even now you do not seem like the same woman who first came out to speak to me.”

  It was true that she changed so quickly that already Renate had seen in her a beautiful Medea because of the flowing hair, but a Medea without jealousy, and the next moment she seemed like a wandering Ophelia who had never known repose. It was impossible to imagine her asleep or drowned. She held her head proudly on a very slender neck; she used her hands like puppets, each finger with an important role to play. She was without sadness and so light she seemed almost weightless, as if performing on a stage alone, while her eyes scanned the entire room, her quick-winged words a monologue about to be interrupted. She thrust out her shoulders as if she had to push her way through a crowd and leave.

  Bruce’s speech and thoughts were agile, like those of a rootless person accustomed to pack and move swiftly from city to city, from home to home, and yet he could not follow her flights and vertiginous transitions. A touching, apologetic smile accompanied her incoherence. She herself did not get lost in sudden turns and free associations, but she seemed wistful that others could not follow her.

  “My name is Nina Gitana de la Primavera.” She said “Gitana” as if she had been born in Spain, and “Primavera” as if she had been born in Italy, and one could see the Persian flowers on her cotton dress flowering.

  “But these are my winter names. I change with the seasons. When the spring comes I no longer need to be Primavera. I leave that to the season. It is so far away.” She threw her head back like a young horse trying to sniff the far off spring, so far back Renate thought her neck would snap.

  “I am waiting for Manfred, but he is not coming. May I sit with you?”

  “Who is Manfred?” asked Bruce.

  She repeated the name but separated its syllables: “Man—fred.” As if she were examining its philological roots.

  “Man-fred is the man I am going to love. He may not yet be born. I have often loved men who are not yet born.”

  Bruce, who never swerved in the path of a drunkard, who had once invited a potential burglar to come in for a coffee, was afraid of this beautiful undrowned Ophelia who borrowed her language from mythology. He feared she had the power to snap the cord which bound him securely to ordinary life.

  He wanted to leave. But just then a new singer climbed the wooden stage, and began to talk before he sang as if to sell his own songs.

  Nina never ceased talking except to stare at Renate and Bruce and touch their faces delicately with her fingertips as if she were still playing the blind girl on the stage. Then she spread open her hands and to each separate finger she said severely: “You talk too much.”

  Renate wondered how anyone had been able to put the words of playwrights in her mouth when her own overflowed so profusely. But she was able to quote Gertrude Stein accurately and sing a Mozart theme when she mentioned the composer. So her memory was not lost in this multitude of disconnected selves.

  Bruce asked her questions as if he were a reporter interviewing her, but a reporter accustomed to deal with the poetics of space, air and water.

  “Say something I will always remember,” he asked, thinking that in this way he might solve the elusive nature of her talk.

  She meditated silently and then gracefully made five gestures. She touched her forehead, her lips, her breasts, the center of her throat, then placed her hand under her elbow and held it there and said: “Remember this.”

  “As-tar-te,’” she murred. “Every word has several personalities enclosed in it, and if you separate the syllables you can catch all its aspects. Bruce is too short for you. It does not describe you. Have you ever noticed how short American names are? They are like lizards who have lost their tails. This happened when America was first settled. It was a rebellion against the long European names. You should have a name like a merry-go-round. It should have a joyous sound, and it should turn.”

  Her body was thin and supple. Her eyes large and green. She had a pure straight nose, finely designed lean cheeks, a tender but not
too full mouth and beautiful teeth. Her long curled hair covered her shoulders. On stage she looked like Vivien Leigh. In life she looked as if she had dressed in old stage clothes, an Indian print cotton not made for her, which was off the shoulders and which she was too thin to hold up securely, covered by a dusty violet cape.

  Every now and then she exposed her teeth, placed a finger on the middle tooth and hissed as if she wanted to let the breath out of her body, like a balloon about to fly. With a long thin finger she designed a large S on the bar table, explaining that this was the sign of the Infinite. The hiss had been a prologue to S S S S S S.

  “Julien and his wife do not want me to go out alone because they think I am mad and that the madhouse people will pick me up and that they will give a shock treatment to wake me up.”

  “You are dreaming awake,” said Renate. “Many people dream awake. And some are jealous of having no dreams and they either drink or take pills to make them dream.”

  “I am not going home to Julien and Juliana tonight. I love them but that is not my home tonight. I must find my real home tonight. The police will not let me sit on trees. I did once at Pershing Square. I loved climbing the tree there, and listening to the preachers, and watching the hoboes who listen to the songs and the prayers. They were all lost people like me, and even their clothes did not belong to them. You could see they were dressed with what people gave to charity collections and from Thrift Shops. Each piece of clothing had belonged to a different human being. I sat up there for a whole evening but then I could not get down again. And when the police found me they took me to a big building and they gave me a shock to wake me up. Silver Fox said to me once, ‘Nina, you have something to give to the world and the world has nothing to give you.”’

  “Who is Silver Fox?” asked Bruce who was determined to find a key, and had hopes that this story would make sense and that he might identify the characters.

  Each word came out of her mouth caressed as if it were a beautiful word, a sensuous word. When Bruce asked his questions she looked as if her magic trick had failed. But she was indulgent towards his blindness.

  She drank wine, and when the glass was empty she held it against her cheek as if to warm it, and no one could have sworn they had seen her drink. Towards midnight she refused another glass but said she was hungry. She paused to try and remember when she had last eaten. “Oh, yes, last night.”

  So Bruce ordered a sandwich. It was a big Italian sandwich, clumsy and as large as her face. Before starting she pulled up her dress once more because her breasts were too small to hold its strapless top. Then she handled the sandwich as if it were a wafer. She looked mischievously at Bruce as if she knew he did not believe she would eat it, and he was amazed to see it vanish while her eyes remaining fixed on him seemed to say: “I will swallow it but you won’t see me eat it.”

  “You have magical powers,” said Renate, “and yet Bruce and I feel we must protect you. Bruce and I will take you wherever you want to go tonight.”

  Nina asked for the time, although Renate was sure she did not care. It was part of her exquisite politeness towards conventions. Nina braided her long hair and took her bracelet off in preparation for the journey.

  “People are afraid of dreamers,” she said. “They want to put me away.”

  On the pavement they found giant pipelines resting beside an excavated street. Nina bent over one of the openings and laughed into the drainpipe and then ran towards the other end to see if her laughter was coming out of it.

  The friend she wanted to stay with was not in. So Renate and Bruce drove her to Malibu. She thought the room was small; then she opened the window and said: “Oh, but there is so much more to this room than I thought. It’s enormous. There is a roar in my ears.”

  “It’s the ocean,” said Renate.

  Then Nina asked for silver foil paper. “I always glue silver foil paper on the walls to make them beautiful.”

  She wanted to mop the tile floor with beer. “The foam will make it shine.”

  “Do you want to sleep?” asked Renate.

  “I never sleep,” said Nina. “Just give me a sheet.”

  She took the sheet and covered herself with it, and then slid to the floor saying: “Now I am invisible.”

  The next day she wanted to go to the theatre. There was a play she had already seen but wanted to see again.

  She carried a brown paper bag with her which she would not allow Bruce to leave in the car when they entered the theatre.

  During the play there was a scene at a dining-table. The actors sat around talking and eating. At this point Nina opened her brown paper bag, took out a sandwich and a pickle and began to eat in unison with the actors. She whispered to Renate: “The audience should not just watch actors eat. They should eat with them. They will feel less lonely.”

  Then she laughed softly: “I have a friend who says the best way to remember a beautiful city or a beautiful painting is to eat something while you are looking at it. The flavor really heps the image to penetrate the body. It fixes it as lacquer does a drawing.”

  After the performance she insisted on visiting the actors. “I don’t know any of them but they like to see friendly faces.”

  A friend hailed her. He was a television actor. He took her arm and guided her out of the theatre.

  Bruce and Renate did not see her for several days. Then she reappeared one day and she was wearing a new dress and new sandals.

  “I got a job,” she said. “Do you remember the young actor we met at the theatre? They had just finished a reading of a children’s play for a radio show but the star could not laugh like a witch. He remembered that I had done this once to frighten people at a party I did not like. So they put me in this soundproof room. I could see the men behind the glass windows running their machines. They wore earphones and never raised their eyes to see what I was doing. They blinked some red lights and I heard a voice say: ‘Now start laughing like a witch until I tell you to stop.’ I felt that I must laugh, must keep on laughing and attract their attention, or else they would leave me in that room and forget all about me. I was all alone in a room without echoes. You don’t know the loneliness of being in a room without echo. I had to laugh like a witch with nobody to laugh for, or to laugh at. To wind myself up I went to each corner of the room pretending each corner was a different person, and I laughed, laughed, and finally I was laughing so hard I was afraid I could not stop. I thought if no one comes into the room, if no human being comes in and says: ‘It is enough,’ I will not be able to stop. I watched the wheels turning and hoped the tape would give out. And finally it did give out and its tail rose up like the tail of a snake and it slapped the young man in the face, the young man who would not look at me. Then the young man opened the door and said to me: ‘We got a lot of footage out of that,’ and handed me a check. I bought this dress, do you like it? See, it is wide and loose like a tent. All I need to do is pull it up a little above my head, and then sink down, and I am completely covered and can go to sleep. And do you like my sandals? I brought you a present. I found her waiting for an audition.”

  It was Nobuko who came walking over the small stones of the patio with short, tiny steps. Though she had walked up the hill from the bus stop, no dust showed on her white socks and wooden sandals. She was carrying flowers she had picked up on the way, which she offered to Renate.

  NOBUKO WAS SMALL AND DAINTY. She carried her head heavy with the bun of glossy black hair on a delicate neck gently undulating as in classical Japanese prints. The flawless golden skin at the nape of the neck exposed by the open collar of the kimono attracted the eye with a delicate yielding quality and had been justly declared an erotic zone. She had a chanting child-like voice, a laugh like windchimes and a graceful way of standing and sitting creating an aesthetic delight. Her eyes were small, narrow, intensely brilliant; her nose had almost no bone like the nose of a child. She kept a precarious balance between sprite, woman and child.
Her face was the face of the moon become woman. Her talk was light and breathless, with a tone of voice ranging from song to dove’s cooing to a schoolgirl’s laughter in forbidden places.

  She wore a kimono of white cotton embroidered with eyelets, and over this a black transparent one, the layer of white like the pearly glaze of pottery, a bride seen through a widow’s veil. The obi was red. On the back of her black silk coat appeared a large red chrysanthemum.

  “I must apologize, because in Japan my mother owns a kimono for each day of the year as each design must match the season and the flower or plant in bloom that day. I should not be wearing chrysanthemums in February when they only bloom in May. I would like to learn American freedom in clothes, in everything. I would like to be like you, Renate, you are the freest woman I know. I only saw such freedom in Italy where they are so natural, and in Japan everything is unnatural.”