The Resistance Girl. Jina Bacarr
mumbling and snickering. ‘Good. Now we can get back to the film Monsieur Durand so kindly allowed you to attend for a nominal fee.’
Moving in a slow waltz across the stage in front of the film, I become the human shadow of the actors on the screen – the flapper and the playboy – performing their jazz baby antics in a nightclub scene bigger than life behind me, toying with the act of love and seduction with their body movements, their eyes, their lips…
I mirror every gesture, every movement… I’ve watched the film five times and memorized the title cards so it’s easy for me to recite the dialogue loud and clear like the film does have sound. Flapper with headband plays hard to get. Playboy offers her champagne.
Monsieur, you are too kind.
And you are so beautiful.
How do I know you won’t take advantage of me if I drink the champagne?
You don’t…
Now you intrigue me…
Mon Dieu.
‘Go home, Sylvie!’
‘No,’ someone yells in a loud voice with such authority, a hush comes over the audience. ‘Let her go on. She’s good.’
‘Thank you,’ I say to my unknown benefactor, giving him a wave. I can’t see who it is since the theater seats are again sheathed in darkness. ‘I’m staying right here. You’re all watching me, aren’t you? No one’s left the theater…’ I pace up and down the wooden stage, keeping their eyes moving on me so they can’t look away. ‘You’re glued to your seats because you can’t not watch me. I make you feel something inside you… hate, pity, even envy because I’ve got the guts to stand here and pour out my heart doing what makes me fly to the moon. I admit I have a lot to learn about acting, but the raw truth is, I set off your emotions. To be a great actress you need to show your feelings, not let anyone stand in your way. Sure, I memorized the lines, but to be a great actress, to make you, the audience, feel the depth of the character’s emotions, you have to suffer. To know the heartache when you cry yourself to sleep at night because it’s lonely and you don’t have anyone to snuggle up to, and it’s so cold your toes freeze or so hot in summer the air is as stifling as a tomb. It’s made me tough… and not anyone, not even you out there with your insults and rotten tomatoes are going to stop me.’ I pick up a mushy tomato and hold it up high before tossing it down on the stage and squashing it with the toe of my shoe. ‘I make this promise right now. Someday, you’ll see me up there…’ I gesture toward the screen with the party-goers dancing and boozing. ‘And you’ll have to pay to see Sylvie Martone on the big screen. Remember that when I’m a big star and you’re still sitting in the last row.’
Dead silence.
I tap my tomato-juiced toe on the stage, giving them a moment to think about what I said – brave words, but I’m not waiting to see what happens next.
I spin around on my heel and head for the back exit, my film career lasting not even twenty-four minutes.
The length of a one-reeler.
‘It took real guts to make that speech, mademoiselle, after those rabble-rousers kicked you around like a dead toad.’
I feel a tug on my arm and smell the cigar smoke before the man blows it in my face. I don’t cough, though I want to. I recognize that voice. He yelled at the audience to let me go on. I sense it’s more important I put all my attention on him, give him a pious nod for saving my butt. I look up slowly, not surprised to see the man in the white Panama hat.
‘Thank you for what you did, monsieur, but it won’t do any good. They’ll do it again the next time I sneak into – I mean, come to the theater and they’ll bring even more rotten vegetables.’ I wrap my lace shawl over my face. ‘I have to go…’
I try to be polite as Sister Vincent taught me, but the good sister is probably frantic waiting for me, saying a novena, wondering what mess I’ve gotten myself into. The sister often makes excuses for me, but today I dread showing her my uniform soiled with seedy tomato mush.
‘You’ve got real acting talent.’
I stop. ‘Me, monsieur?’
‘I’ve been watching you… Sylvie, n’est-ce pas?’
I nod. ‘Yes.’
‘At first, I was merely amused when I saw you acting out the scene in my film—’
‘Your film?’ My pulse races with a different kind of excitement than I’m used to when I’m called into Sister Ursula’s office for being late to vespers.
‘But that performance on stage, the way you grabbed the audience by the throat, pulled every emotion out of them and didn’t let them go…’ He smacks his fingers against his lips. ‘You were magnifique!’
‘Who are you, monsieur?’ I beg to ask, my head aching with the downside of my exuberant high crashing then soaring upward again at hearing his praise. ‘Don’t make fun of me, please.’
‘Allow me to introduce myself, mademoiselle.’ He takes off his white hat and bows from the waist, his cigar dangling from his fingers and dropping ash everywhere. I catch a glimpse of Monsieur Durand wiping his sweaty face with his long, black cravat, but he makes no move to reprimand the man. In the next moment, I find out why. ‘I’m Emil-Hugo de Ville, the esteemed and successful director of such films as…’
He rattles off a long list of motion pictures – some I know, some I don’t – but what’s most important is, he said he was a film director.
I try to get my feet to walking, but my fervor to leave the theater is gone. He proffers me a small white card, and, with sticky fingers, I take it. I hold it up to the bare lightbulb hanging from ceiling, turning it this way and that, marveling at the elegant, raised text on the pristine, white card. Under his name I make out an address in Paris on Rue de Sevis and the name of a film studio, Delacroix Films.
‘Are you really from Paris, Monsieur de Ville?’ I sound like a country schoolgirl because I am a country schoolgirl. ‘I’ve never been to Paris… the Eiffel Tower and the Moulin Rouge…’
‘Call me Emil,’ he says, then continues, ‘I often travel to villages and towns outside Paris to gauge how my films are doing.’ He leans down closer to me and I feel oddly breathless as if I’m standing on the edge of a cliff. He tells me at first his only interest in me was that he thought me pretty enough to be a background player in his next film, but after my stage performance—
I giggle. He calls it a performance. I call it my moment of liberation. I never expected it to last past this afternoon.
I don’t protest when he guides me out of the back of the theater toward his parked Citroën as shiny as a tart lemon. He keeps talking about how he can make me a film star if I leave everything behind and become his protégé. It will take hard work, he says, and I’m buying it. Long hours, hot lights, scripts to memorize, no time for anything but the work… and dedication. He doesn’t let me get in a word. I couldn’t speak if I wanted to as he opens the passenger door and ushers me inside the plush vehicle.
I should run, tell him I’m not that kind of girl, but I don’t. I have no illusions about my looks. Except for my white-blonde hair, I’m ordinary-looking. Taller than most girls my age, skinny with no bosom, and a deep dimple in my left cheek Sister Vincent says means I was pinched by an angel when I was born. Now I feel more like the devil is after my hide because I want to go with him. Want it badly.
I don’t protest when Monsieur de Ville puts the motorcar into gear and off we