He took the first warming sip. It was morning. The day barely begun. Another morning in which he had awoken not on straw in a room crowded with a thousand men snoring and coughing and groaning, the smell of sweat and vomit and excrement, but in a bed in a room filled with sunshine, a view of open countryside and mountains, the smell of coffee, albeit ersatz.
The door to the bathroom was open behind them, the edge of the zinc tub just visible. Not a latrine, but a real bathroom. No line to stand in. No stench.
He felt clean. So clean, after so many months of never being clean.
Clean and warm, he thought. Clean and warm.
He knelt to Peterkin’s level. “You are such a good, generous friend, Peterkin,” he said, and he hugged the boy, Dagobert licking his shoe as if reading his mind as the tears welled. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to imagine these were Luki’s small, thin shoulders, that Luki and he were together again, holding each other in some place where he could keep her as safe and warm as this soothing milk.
He would wait until the house had emptied for the day, he decided. Until Varian, Danny, T, Maurice, Gussie, and Nanée left for the CAS office, with Dagobert or without him, depending on what Nanée had in store for the day. Until Jacqueline took Aube to school and Maria had Peterkin occupied. Until Rose had finished cleaning the breakfast dishes and Madame Nouget was off to the daily shopping, all those lines to stand in. Then he would develop the photograph of Nanée’s neck.
THAT AFTERNOON HE found Nanée reading in the small greenhouse, as she so often was, her book not the usual pretty French paperback with an elegantly lettered plain white cover, but something heavy and brown and British.
“I developed it this morning,” he said. “I’m going to print it. Your neck. Would you like to help?” The invitation out before he lost his nerve.
In the bathroom darkroom with her a few minutes later, he inserted the negative into the enlarger carrier and adjusted the f-stop and enlarger head. Who is she, this woman in the dramatic cape, who you’ve inexplicably melted? she’d asked him the last time they were together in this red darkness. Who are you? he wanted to ask her now.
He’d developed the photo and run a test strip that morning, so he would have some idea what exposure he wanted. He meant to solarize the image in the manner Lee Miller had stumbled upon by accidentally letting light onto a developing print, partially reversing the blacks and whites into eerie silvers. If he did it well, re-exposing and redeveloping the print, the boundaries between dark and light at the neck and under the jawline would appear brightly outlined, the photograph more dramatic and surreal, otherworldly.
The neck, not her neck, he realized he was thinking, the art stepping in, taking over.
He took a deep breath—the scent of citrus and verbena, of Nanée beside him, watching. He set the timer and turned on the machine.
Someone knocked on the door just then. Of course they did.
“I’m developing a photograph,” he called out. “Could you use one of the upstairs loos?”
They heard Maria’s voice gently asking Peterkin if he could hold it while she carried him upstairs, then the girl scooping him up and hurrying away.
When the exposure was done, Edouard placed the paper in the roasting pan of developer. As soon as the image began to appear, he removed the print from the pan and submerged it in water.
“But you can barely even see the outlines,” Nanée protested.
He waited ten seconds, then held the flashlight above the print and turned it on for just a second.
“Edouard! But won’t that ruin it?”
Already, the flashlight was off again, and he was setting the paper back into the developer, his mind on the art, on this image but also on another one, a self-portrait he had taken years ago. It would be interesting to see what might happen if he solarized that one. Not who was she, but who was he? The negative should be in the ones she brought from the cottage. He hadn’t realized until she brought him his work how much he needed the reminder of all he had created to believe he could create again.
As the image began to rise from the print, Nanée made a little sound. Surprise, he thought. Not mirth but something else. Discomfort? Had he misread her? He had imagined she would be amused. We play to the death. Then we keep playing, she’d said with such spunk when he first played the murder game with them. He’d hoped this photograph would make her laugh.
He set the tray down in the bathtub.
“She’s stunning,” he said, wanting to reassure her as they watched the image grow bolder on the paper. Just Nanée’s chin stretched high so that, in the eerie silvers, the image—nothing but her neck and the line of her jaw up to the underside of her chin—created a Rorschach test of a photograph. Was it a woman’s neck tipped back provocatively, or a man’s penis?
She touched her hand to her collarbone, where in the image there was a small discoloration that might be a shadow or something on the lens, and she laughed. She did laugh. “Is that obscene, or am I obscene for thinking it might be? At least you can’t tell it’s me!”
“Ah, but of course it will be titled Nanée’s Beautiful Neck.”
He hesitated, then reached out to her. Touched her neck. Her skin.
He kissed her there, at the base of her throat. Up her neck. Underneath her chin. On her jaw. Her sensuous lips.
She groaned almost inaudibly.
Someone again knocked on the door. Good god, what timing.
Nanée called out, her voice deep now, “We’re developing something in here. Could you use one of the upstairs loos?”
Rose grumbled on the other side of the closed door that there was no pleasing anyone in this house.
And already Nanée was untucking his shirt, her hands warm on his skin.
“Wait,” he said, realizing there was no proper place to make love and not wanting this first time to be up against the damn toilet.
He lifted the trays one at a time, carefully, so that no chemicals spilled, and stacked them in the sink.
“The photograph,” she objected.
But the photograph he could print again.
“Are you sure?” he whispered. “I don’t . . .”
She hesitated, then whispered something back, her breath warm. “I’d rather be wild than broken,” it sounded like.
He skinned off his shoes, dropped his pants, knelt to remove her shoes, her slacks, her panties that were the smooth white of her flying scarf. She pulled his shirt off. He pulled the soft cashmere over her head, unhooked her brassiere, and lifted her so that her legs straddled his waist. He carried her into the zinc tub and sat with his back against the cold metal, her warm body on his in the red light and chemical smell, with the single photograph, not yet fixed or rinsed, growing darker and darker, to become nothing at all. And that was fine. That was somehow as it should be. A thing that could be redone again, anytime.
Monday, November 25, 1940
VILLA AIR-BEL