William Boyd - The New Confessions

VILLA LUXE, June 21, 1972

I am sitting at my “lookout” with my binoculars, trying to discern what’s going on at the public beach. A police car has arrived and someone has been arrested, I think, but it is really just beyond my range. Perhaps a nudist? My hand shake is too pronounced. I consider buying a tripod.

Emilia shouts from the house that I have a visitor. I wander over. It’s Ulrike. She wants permission to go down to my beach. I say, of course.

We stand on the pool terrace, in shade, looking at the hot empty pool.

“It’s a shame about your pool.”

“It’s that fig tree. Over there. The roots, they’re pushing through the concrete searching for water. See the cracks?”

“From so far away, with such force. It’s incredible.”

“Apparently they can get through a foot of concrete. It’s always happening — cisterns, septic tanks.”

“Ah. Nature,” She said it with no cynicism. A sense of awe, rather.

I gestured at her bag.

“Off for specimens? I saw you the other day, in your boat.” I felt and attempted to ignore the beginnings of a blush. “What are you working on?” I asked quickly.

“Certain kinds of crab.”

“Really?” What more could one say about crabs? “Plenty of crabs on those rocks.”

She frowned as if she could sense my indifference.

“I wrote a small thesis on the fiddler crab. You know, the ones with one oversized claw.” She paused. “Do you know that before and after the male fiddler crab mates, he soothes the female by stroking her with his claw, very gently?”

“No. I—”

“And then — this is amazing — they make love face to face.”

“Really?”

“You see? I said ‘make love’ as if they were humans. Apart from us they are the only animals to do this. Face to face, like so.” She held up her hands analogously. “Just us and the fiddler crab. Why should that be?”

“I don’t know.”

A breeze shook the tree we were standing beneath. The dappled light spots shifted on her face and the air-blue toweling jerkin she wore. We were two feet apart.

“Extraordinary,” I said.

She picked up her bag.

“My boyfriend said they are showing your film— Julie . Maybe when we go back I can see it. He says it’s very good.”

“It is. But he should see my—” I stopped just in time. “I was very pleased with it. I’m delighted it’s being shown. Doon … Doon Bogan is marvelous.”

I waited, wisely, prudently, until well after Julie was released before going to the Lodokians with my new plan. Aram had been pestering me for weeks to sign a new contract with Realismus but I had delayed, calculating that the audacity of my proposal would be easier to take if Julie was steadily earning money. So I was annoyingly evasive on the matter of what we should do next whenever Duric and Aram brought it up.

I was busy enough, anyway, with the success of Julie , attending gala premieres in Munich, Hamburg and Frankfurt, consenting to inumerable press conferences and interviews. Long profiles appeared in UFA-Magazin, Film-Photos, Illustrierter Film-Courier and Kino . It was the most successful and talked about film in all Berlin until the premiere of Potemkin at the end of April. Aram sent Karl-Heinz and Doon on an international promotional tour, to Britain, France and Italy, but they both surprisingly refused to go with the film to the U.S.A. — Doon, I believe, out of some perverse sense that she was in exile, and Karl-Heinz for the odd but simple reason that, he claimed, it was not his sort of country.

For my part, the success of Julie was highly gratifyingly. I felt calm, with a new deep self-assurance, which explains why in the many newspaper and magazine articles that appeared I was several times described as “impassive” or “brooding.” I was brooding — on what to do next — and was moving forward with steady determination. Karl-Heinz’s advice had been astute: my new obsession had saved me. I had not forgotten Doon (we met from time to time at receptions, but there were always dozens of people there; her attitude towards me is best described as pleasant), but I found her easier to cope with.

In June profits from Julie were such that Realismus paid me a bonus of seventy-five thousand dollars, a vast sum in those days. Aram offered me another fifty thousand to direct two films for the studio: Frederick the Great with Karl-Heinz and Joan of Arc with Doon. I asked for time to think it over.

I read and reread Rousseau’s Confessions and my plans for it altered daily. The scale and grandeur of my project burgeoned in my mind. After blocking out a preliminary outline I calculated that the film would last eight or nine hours. For a week I was in despair, but then suddenly realized that its great length could in fact be its greatest asset. I would make not one but three 3-hour films of the book — a truly epic moving picture, and a fit monument to the man who had inspired it.

In March, Sonia announced that she was pregnant again and at the same time, though unconnected with this news, I rented for my own use a small wooden villa in the country, about an hour from Berlin in the woods of the Jungfernheide. There I spent weekdays alone, working secretly on the first draft of The Confessions , returning home at weekends. To my vague surprise, on a Friday as I motored back to Charlottenburg I found myself actually looking forward to rejoining my family. Vincent had lost his terror of me and Hereford proved to be an engaging, affectionate baby. I spent many hours teaching him to walk, during which he took the most appalling tumbles, crashing into tables, falling down steps, bouncing off walls. He would hit the ground— slap! — and look stunned for a moment, as if deciding what was the correct response to this misfortune. All one had to do was laugh ostentatiously—“Ha ha ha, Hereford, ho ho ho!”—and he would immediately join in, no matter how bruised or winded he was. He was a cute little fellow, still shitting himself at every opportunity.

I made one mistake that summer which was to have bitter consequences later. One Wednesday in June I drove into the city to attend Leo Druce’s wedding. He was marrying Lola Templin-Tavel. The ceremony took place in the pretty English church (St. George’s) in the gardens of Schloss Montbijou, with a reception afterwards at the Palast Hotel. After the service Sonia felt ill and left me to go on to the reception myself. There was an impressive turn out at the Palast and I remember asking myself how Leo Druce, tyro co-producer, had managed to invite so many luminaries to his wedding — Pola Negri was there, Emil Jannings, Walter Ruttmann, Tilly de Garmo, Michael Bohnen the baritone, Conrad Veidt, Lil Dagover and many more. It was a spontaneous reflection, I bore no ill will to Leo, but I remember commenting on it — prophetically — and ironically complimenting him on his ability to get on in the world. He said, with typical modesty, that they had only come because of Lola. I might have added that that was precisely my point, but I refrained.

It was a hot day and not enough of the Palast’s windows opened to provide any kind of breeze. I felt stifled in my morning suit and stiff collar, and drank rather too much chilled fruit cup to compensate. I began to enjoy myself and the steady stream of compliments I received as a result of Julie ’s success. That day I felt a kind of power emanating from me that was further generated by the secret that I owned.

I was talking to Leo when Aram approached. He was wearing a corn-yellow and gold-brocade waistcoat with matching spats. On anyone else they would have looked absurdly comical, but somehow Aram could carry off the crassest vulgarity. We congratulated Leo all over again on his good fortune (a touch insincerely: Lola’s famed vivacity had a distinct neurasthenic note to it) and congratulated ourselves on the news of Julies sale to RKO.