My Life as a Silent Movie: A Novel

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. I bought a one-way ticket to Paris. Everytimewe’dflowntoEurope, myhusband,who’dbeensixfeetthree,hadcomplainedbitterlyabouthowclose together the seats were in economy. In his honor, I bought a seat in first class. He’d paid for all that frugality, and now I had three credit cards with nothing on them and limits that added up to more than my yearly salary. This time, at Kennedy, the ticket agent wasn’t even curious. People bought tickets there at the last minute to every place on the planet you could possibly fly. As soon as I got to my seat, the flight attendant, a man about my age, asked me if he could bring me a beverage. He had the most beautifully buffed nails I’d ever seen. I had him bring me a double Scotch. Then I fastened my seat belt. Now there was no going back. First class was nearly empty, and once the curtain was drawn it was like being on a separate plane, steerage a faint din behind us. The flight attendant had his hands full with a pair of Japanese businessmen who kept ringing before he’d fulfilled their last urgent desire. There was only one other woman, sitting a few seats ahead of me. I couldn’t help noticing her. She was beautiful. She was maybe ten years younger than me, in her thirties, or maybe she was my age but with great makeup, maybe even great cosmetic surgery. I knew I was naive aboutsuchthings.Herskinwasassmoothasmydaughter’shadbeen.Howwas that possible? To move through the world and show no signs of age or wear. She had short, sleek dark hair like a seal and teeth as subtly, as expensively white as natural pearls. She was with a man at least ten years younger than she was, and he watched her lips, his lips parted, apparently holding his breath, as he waited for her to 5 40 speak. Was she a movie star? Some hotel heiress? She looked familiar. Everything about her—clothes, hair, makeup, purse, shoes—was perfect. Like the clothes Mosjoukine wore in the postcard. Just looking at them made you want to touch them, touch her. Her skin and the baby alpaca of her sweater would be equally soft. Couldyouchangeyourlife,yourluck,ifyouhadbetterclothes?IguessedSophie Desnos, ardent communist, probably would not have thought so. A month earlier, I would have agreed with her. You were who you were on the inside, and I measured people either by what they knew—I was a professor—or by what they had given to life. That part of me was pure mom. Who did you love? Who loved you back? Now,Iwondered,ifyoulookedinvulnerable,wouldthedevil,thegrimreaper, God himself or herself, stand back and let you stroll by, untouched? All I knew was I had the profound feeling I wanted the seal woman’s life. I wanted it like sex, like religion, like heroin, maybe. I could taste it in my mouth. Instead, I orderedanotherdouble .Infirstclass,alltheliquoryouneededorwantedwasfree. Dinner found me too far into my Scotch to be hungry. Even in first class, the feature film was a Sylvester Stallone movie I didn’t think had been released in the States. Impossible to watch even in the name of needed distraction. I got out the envelope with the fax John had sent. One bio said Mosjoukine had gotten his start as a double for Valdemar Psilander , the great Danish actor, in new endings filmed for the Russian market. It was one of those odd movie facts I had heard before, how, in the silent days, distributors would film sadder endings to suit the lachrymose tastes of Slavic audiences. If, in an American or French or German film, a drowning couple was rescued, in the Russian ending they died. My supposed father had been one of the lovers going under. Not exactly an auspicious beginning for a happy film life. Another talked about how much Abel Gance had wanted Mosjoukine to play the title role in his epic six-hour Napoléon. There had been much correspondence , apparently. Would that be at the Cinémathèque Française? My husband would have known. In the end, Mosjoukine declined. Maybe, one source suggested, because of the time involved or the money, but Mosjoukine had written Gance to say he had decided no one but a Frenchman should play 41 Bonaparte, the greatest Frenchman of all. Gallant, that refusal, smooth. Like his picture. Another short paragraph mentioned Mosjoukine’s many women, including, briefly, Kiki de Montparnasse, that spirit...