TALKIES
(first published in Feminist Review, 2006)
‘Louise is the perfect apparition, the dream woman…She is much more than a myth, she is a magical presence, a real phantom…’ – Ado Kyrou, French critic
My first love was a boy called Darren who got in a classroom cupboard with me and showed me his willy. It was dark in there; dark and secret. My second love was Louise Brooks, and it was while watching a special one-night-only screening of Pandora’s Box that I met my last love, Maria.
Maria was in love with Marlene Dietrich and had shaved off her eyebrows and painted on high, thin arcs in the manner of her heroine.
I told her I thought Dietrich was a poor man’s Greta Garbo, and she said Louise Brooks was little better than a whore; but we were newly in love, the insults didn’t take. We could find anything endearing, in those days.
(‘Imagine Pabst choosing Louise Brooks when he could have had me’ – Marlene Dietrich)
In those days, teasing was cute. We’d taunt each other and end up linking our hands together over a bottle of Chianti.
‘How thin and white your fingers are!’ she exclaimed, turning over my hand.
‘Let me read your fortune.’
She held out her small hand and I traced the lines with my fingernail.
‘That tickles!’
My nails were long and painted red. Maria kept hers short and never wore polish. Every tiny difference between us seemed to prove our love as much as our similarities did.
‘Am I your first?’ she asked, her eyes flickering from the light thrown by the candle. ‘Your first woman?’
I nodded. ‘My Eve’, I called her.
There had been men – plenty of men – but no women.
‘I see a handsome stranger and a long, long journey,’ I said.
‘Be serious…’
‘A long life line. A broken heart line. You’re faithless but you’ll die in your bed.’
‘Can you really see all that?’ she asked, looking down at the lines which were as clear as chain stitch on cloth.
I laughed. ‘Course not!’
She looked relieved.
We pressed our palms together, trying to sink into each other’s skin, trying to merge until we were one person.
We used the same shampoo and perfume but we still didn’t smell quite the same. You could always tell which pillow was whose, even if they didn’t have telltale hairs on them, hers Marlene gold, mine from a sleek helmet as black as Louise’s.
When I woke, I pressed myself against Maria’s back. ‘Time to get up,’ she said sleepily.
‘Not yet – five minutes more,’ I murmured into her hair, moving my hand onto her stomach. She grabbed it to stop me going any further.
‘Too tired,’ she said. ‘Not in the mood.’
With my thumb I circled her bellybutton for a while.
‘Falling in love again…’ I sang softly, inhaling the warm morning smell of her.
‘…Never wanted to,’ she continued.
‘What am I to do? I can’t help it,’ I finished.
*
In 1930 Marlene Dietrich played Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel, the film that launched her as an international star. In the same year, Louise Brooks made her first talkie, Prix de Beauté. It was also her last major screen role.
*
After six months of seeing each other nearly every day, we moved in together and saw considerably less of one another. Maria began going to the gym a couple of evenings a week.
‘You should come,’ she said, none too enthusiastically.
‘I only want to be with you,’ I said. ‘Alone.’
(‘Between 1948 and 1953, I suppose you could call me a kept woman. Three decent rich men looked after me’ – Louise Brooks)
When she came back, she never looked like someone who’d been working out. There was no lingering smell of sweat and her hair was always dry, but slightly mussed up…
She’d let her eyebrows grow back, and then she had to have her hair dyed its original brown because the dark brows looked strange with blonde hair.
‘You should find something to do,’ she said. ‘It’s healthier if we have a few separate interests.’
But soon it seemed as though the only times we had together were Sundays.
Lying in bed one Sunday morning, waiting for the paper to thud onto the Welcome mat in the hallway, I drew flowers and hearts on her warm skin with my scratchy fingernails as I told her about Louise.
‘They added another actress’s voice to the soundtrack of The Canary Murder Case. It was shot as a silent film.’
‘That’s showbiz for you,’ she said, her eyes closed.
‘When she was nine, a house painter raped her,’ I said. ‘Her bitch of a mother blamed Louise, said she must’ve led him on.’
I followed a line of fine, light brown hairs from navel to pubes with my forefinger.
‘My mother would’ve been exactly the same,’ Maria said, opening her eyes. She got up to fetch the papers.
‘Mind you,’ she said when she came back, ‘Louise put it about a bit, didn’t she? I mean, she was no saint.’
I bristled. Six months ago she wouldn’t have been so callous.
‘Don’t look so scandalised, baby,’ she said, crawling back into bed, pressing her cold feet against mine, twirling my hair around her fingers.
‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ I said. ‘Women usually become promiscuous for a reason, not because they’re nymphomaniacs.’
‘For Christ’s sake…Why do you always have to bring everything back to you? I’m sick of listening to your problems, about all the men you shagged because your mother didn’t love you enough.’
She turned onto her side and picked up one of the colour supplements. I stroked her back but she shook me off, like a dog trying to dislodge fleas.
(‘Louise is the cross I have to bear’ – Myra Brooks, mother)
‘Leave me alone,’ Maria muttered. ‘And stop blaming me for everything that’s wrong with you.’
I slid to the furthest edge of the bed, till I was in danger of tipping off. I stuffed my hand in my mouth as I shed tears I couldn’t let Maria see. She wouldn’t understand. How could she, since I had no idea why I was crying?
*
Pandora’s Box ends in London on a foggy Christmas Eve. The time period is clear because Jack the Ripper is on the prowl. By this point Lulu has escaped after being tried for murder and is reduced to prostitution. Her first (and last) customer is Jack.
*
‘She’s a victim,’ Maria said.
‘She’s a symbol,’ I countered. ‘She shows what society does to women who break the rules.’
She poked her tongue out, but later she undid her shirt and lay on her stomach on the bed while I scored her spine with my fingernails. She writhed and bit down on the pillow to stifle her giggles. Loving it and hating it.
‘Of course,’ I said, looking at the red marks I’d made on her skin, ‘the censors cut the lesbian scenes.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ she said lazily. Her eyes were closed. I wondered if she’d notice if someone else took over. If it was me or just the sensations she loved.
‘I wish I understood you,’ I said; meaning, I wish you understood me, I wish you understood how much I need you, how I need all of you, every last drop.
She sat up and stopped my mouth with a kiss, but that was no answer.
‘Maria, we need to talk.’
She sighed and irritably put on her dressing gown, a silky slip of material, though not so fine that you could pass it through a wedding ring.
‘We don’t talk any more,’ I said. ‘Not really. Not properly.’
On her bedside cabinet she had a framed photo of Marlene Dietrich. On mine, a similar frame held a photo of Louise.
(‘I absolutely adored her. She didn't speak a word of German, I didn't speak a word of English. We just looked at each other’ – Franz Lederer)
‘What subject would you like to discuss?’ Maria asked. ‘The meaning of life, perhaps?’
‘You never used to be so offhand. So unfeeling.’
‘You never used to be such a misery. We used to have fun.’
I used to wish we were one person, one body, as though that were really possible. Maria’s face, her stomach, her hair – I thought they were things I could possess.
(‘I had always looked upon my beauty as a curse, because I was regarded as a whore, rather than an actress’ – Louise Brooks)
‘She became a Catholic,’ I said, holding my hand just above the flame of the candle.
‘Who did?’
‘Louise.’
My hand looked white and waxy, as though it belonged to someone else. My long nails looked too perfect, like false ones.
‘Have you ever noticed,’ I said, ‘that statues of the Virgin Mary always show her with smooth fingers – she never has nails.’
‘Very interesting,’ she said, yawning. ‘And what has that to do with Louise Brooks?’
‘Nothing much. Did you know she worked as a saleslady in Saks when the film roles dried up?’
‘Can’t say I did.’
‘And in her last major film she played Lucienne, who’s shot by her jealous lover. It was her first speaking role.’
Maria narrowed her eyes as she looked at me – not at my face but at my hand that shook slightly as I dared it to go nearer and nearer to the flame.
‘Don’t!’ she said, trying to snatch it away.
‘You have to get as close to the centre of the fire as you can, Maria. You have to go that far.’
‘I don’t.’
She leant across and blew out the candle.