SOLANGE, BEST WISHES

Two and a half months without any news. Two and a half months. Without any direct news, at least: Ted and the executive producer had heard. He was location scouting in Africa. He had called from Luanda. He had visited studios in Lagos with his assistant and the director of photography. He had called from Kinshasa. The Congo was complicated. The Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) and the Presidential Protection Division (DPP). The North—Kivu; and the South—Kasai. The Ugandan and Rwandan armies. And over in Tshikapa there was a full-on epidemic of Ebola. He had to retreat to Brazzaville. Even in Brazzaville, it was chaos. George’s agent was fed up with it. She stayed tuned to the news like never before, at least she tried to—the news from over there.

Recently, he’d been moving around south of Cameroon, near the border with Guinea; he had sent a fax from a town called Kribi. She was following him on her mobile tracking app. At the end of the fax, which the producer showed her, he had added a line, in French, by hand: ‘Solange, best wishes.’

She was left with ‘best wishes’ just like she had been left with his kola nuts: inside the skin, a bittersweet taste that was better than nothing.

She had received her contract: the Intended, three scenes with Cassel, interior day, location of shoot to be determined, $23,000. Everyone was making some sort of salary sacrifice (except Jessie, apparently). Africa had drained the budget, swallowed it up. On the other hand, given the cheap cost of local labour, fitting out a boat on the spot ended up being cheaper than a boat in the studio. As for the river, the location scouting had come up with the Ntem, the Dja or the Lobe. They still had their work cut out with the choppers. If they stayed in Cameroon, the tracks were supposed to be accessible in the dry season; he was scouting for caves that would be four-wheel-drive accessible. But it was borderline for George, whose window of availability was right when the rainy season began.

So that was the bulletin to the yellow hills of Hollywood, the news filtering through, bits and pieces, in the stress of preparations, among the cross-purposes, both obtuse and obvious, the contradictory, conflicting interests, all in an attempt to come up with a film.

Olga had been recruited: from the mourning dress to the crew’s uniforms, from the raffia sarongs to the brass leggings, it was a real costume film. Natsumi had been promoted to costume props and was already at work on the ‘polished gold ring stuck in the lower lip’, on the charms and amulets, the feathers, the ankle and wrist bracelets. The make-up artist was brushing up on scarification, tattoos and teeth filing.

It did her good to spend time with the girls during her long Los Angeles days. She worked on her mourning dress with Olga; they chose the material together on Pico Boulevard. A grey dimity cotton. Mother-of-pearl buttons. A double hem in pleated crepe, with a ruffle and a belt. Puff sleeves with lace cuffs. Period stockings. A real corset. Long underwear. What wasn’t visible on the screen was also important—a corseted woman, an Intended stiffened by grief.

She had ended up acting in ER, three episodes in a row. The wife of a diplomat refuses to leave the hospital until she can determine the fate of her son. She starts living in the waiting room, in the corridors and the cafeteria, her YSL suit more and more crumpled, both noble and a nuisance, and a romance develops with Dr Barnett. Finally, an interesting role, and she could pay for her house in Bel Air. They were talking about a comeback for her in the next season.

Two and a half months. How long does it take for a relationship to break off ? For an affair to unravel? Love deteriorated. Idiotic love, which stops you from living. Desire, which is a form of hell. Ciao ma belle. Best wishes. In the ER studios, in the arms of Dr Barnett—she was with him everywhere. Playing a woman rescued from a fire—a telemovie about Los Angeles firemen, a fee and a role beneath her capabilities; the director knew it and made the most of it. And she couldn’t take refuge in the hollow of his shoulders. Rose was virtual on Skype; George was filming or on Lake Como; Olga was not really a confidante—and all the others, competing actors and actresses, were out for her blood. Lloyd, a kind and professional agent, treated her with long-suffering sympathy, as if all he could do now was wait for the end, the end of a terrible illness, one of those horrifying tropical contact diseases.

But the film was going to happen: George’s contract was signed. Lloyd looked enigmatic, like the person who predicts the exact date of plagues—locusts, ulcers, the annihilation of herds of animals, the descent into darkness.

A year earlier, she had committed to the next Chabrol film. In a fit of sensible behaviour, she turned up in France on the scheduled date and it was during this very film shoot that Kouhouesso had reappeared in Los Angeles, and was looking for her—yes, looking for her, so it seems—and by the time she arranged to return, he was no longer taking calls; then he replied too late. Desynchronisation. No dates, no meeting places, no peace of mind. ‘It’s hardly convenient’: the last sentence she was left with, the last text from Kouhouesso. The next meeting, the only scheduled date, the only commitment, was playing the Intended, towards the end of the shoot, in six months’ time.

She couldn’t wait that long.

Incredibly motionless. Unmoving. Immovable. Anchored. Watching films he has watched. Polanski and even Pollack. Listening to Leonard Cohen on a loop. Preparing her role as well. Only hearing conversations in which, through various convolutions, his name cropped up. Reading books he had read. Biographies of Conrad. The story ‘The Forest’, by Robert Walser, in the last book she’d seen in his hands: she read and reread ‘The Forest’, looking for clues, tracks, the map of Kouhouesso’s brain, the shape of his thoughts, ‘incredible images of worlds where the forest went on forever…’

She looked for Kribi on Google Earth: the forest extends to the sea, unless it’s the river, a thread of river for every thread of tree root…and the trees continue, beyond the Equator, through Gabon, through the Congo, and up to the north of Zambia.

Her stomach all scrambled, her mind on fire. A tight thread linked her to him, over there, in his forest. In which unimaginable, dense vegetation? Or in which coastal bar with which girl, which Favour, which Lola? She remembered that slightly old-fashioned novel from her childhood, Future Times Three, by Barjavel. The Traveller journeys through time, but he has a little rip in his spacesuit. In his belly. He disembowels himself. His intestines stay in the past while his body returns to the present. Poor gutted chook. She was the traveller staying in one spot. And which seer could read her future, when her entrails were uncoiled in the labyrinth?