Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, Paris, France
THEY ask her to sign playbills. And she watches them recoil into the awkwardness of newborns trying to touch the world. Patrons of the arts. The powerful. The elite. Shrinking into helplessness in her presence. But in the midst of this lazzo scene, Max Klein appears in the center of the room, spotlighted after Sarah gives the stage to him. He clears his throat and announces in a confident manner that this reception area must be cleared. The houselights have dimmed and everybody needs to find their seats or else risk missing the opening curtain. He encourages them to enjoy the evening’s performance, and reminds them Madame looks forward to meeting with them at the reception following the final curtain. They file out anxiously, fearful of missing the first act. And in that moment of silence when the last has left the room with the final breath of pageantry, it is just she and Max. And they don’t share a word. Barely acknowledge the other’s presence. After a passing of time Max looks up at her and speaks with a formality unique to the moment before she is set to take the stage. “Madame Bernhardt,” he says as though the appointed minion to a head of state. “It is time to take your position.”
SHE RUNS HER TONGUE over lips. Moistening them. The apron feels heavy. Black velvet curtains. She strokes them, watching the slow ripples that travel to the top. She is seventy-six years old now. She has lost her right leg to amputation five years ago, the result of a car accident (in Venice of all places), followed by a stage fall, and the subsequent gangrene. She sits in the chair that will be hers when she takes the stage. She rubs the stump from where her leg once fell. She swears that she feels her toes tickle. Strange, especially given that the opium has not been in her system since May of 1906. She is just out of view of even the most vigilant audience member. There is always one who is trying to look backstage. Trying to catch a glimpse in the wings. Waiting for recognition. A nod. A wink. Even a raised eyebrow. Imbeciles. One illusion is not enough for them. The last ripple finally reaches the top. Barely. Ridiculously slow. The curtain looks settled. She waits. Slowly sliding out of herself. Somehow she will slip into the character of Marguerite Gautier. It is kind of like dying. Where the life you know slides from your body, revealing each moment to you like a photograph in an album. An illusion of shadow and light, still and forgotten. From a distance it is nothing more than abstract images, imbued with relevance by the spaces you fill in. She sees the faces of all those hopeful girls who will never succeed. They flood her mind. Nervously standing backstage. Pushing sweaty hands against their dresses, waiting for the director’s permission to display their wares, those five minutes that can destroy years of dreams. And something so simple seems so complicated. It’s just art. It is just doing what you need to do, expressing things the only way you know how. But suddenly the artistic life becomes business. And every line that you learn has an impact on whether you will ever have the opportunity to speak the next one. And yes, sure, she could have said to hell with it, and paraded her talents down to some back alley theater and spoke the lines from a blacked-out room in a converted basement. She might even have had the same passion. Maybe more. But that is a possibility that she knows will never be answered. She never stood side by side with those hopeful girls. She was too busy being blinded by the footlights becoming who she is. The odd thing is that she never sees herself. Well, not quite true. Occasionally she sees images of Sarah Bernhardt, but they are no more she than they are Marguerite Gautier, Mrs. Clarkson, Jeanne d’Arc, or even Ethel Barrymore. Maybe that is what makes it so much easier to slip into character. She is forever naked.
MAX KLEIN WALKS UP TO HER. He shows her a note, and then pushes it deep into his pocket, the last swirl of curved ink disappearing. She can see him crumple it in his pants, the fabric bunching and wrinkling, gloved around his fist. “A message from President Millerand,” he whispers, and she says, “Yes? Has he rewritten the play?” and Max replies softly, “No, just the usual good luck note.” They both stand quietly. The murmur of the audience droning before them. Thousands and thousands of words that have blended into one indistinguishable sound that is void of meaning. She turns to look at Max and steals a full glance without his noticing. He is beautiful. Soft and tender despite his tightly threaded expression and recent aging. He is strength woven by a lifetime of insecurities. His devotion to her is uncompromising, but she does not see him as subordinate or lacking. It is the love of the spiritually connected. Lifetimes of incarnations that have not-so-accidentally rounded the corner into one another and partnered for yet another go-around. It doesn’t warm her like she thinks it should. Instead it grounds her. Makes her place on the earth seem more assured. A gravitational hand to hold in order to keep from shooting off into outer space. She thinks to tell him that she loves him. Not in the usual manners—the petulant child who tosses out I love you as some form or apology or distraction, nor as the invertebrate lacking in lucidity who suddenly finds herself in love with the whole world. This would be real. The kind that makes the skin crawl. But she decides against it. Too unprofessional. She needs to be summoning Marguerite. Calling on her to inhabit this body. Charging her with the energy being conducted through the house. She is supposed to be driving out Sarah Bernhardt. Freeing her for the next three hours until she is harkened back for the final curtain calls. To love Max too much is to endanger the moment. He looks back at her, evidently not noticing her stare. In perfect synchronization he nods as the houselights dim. She smiles at his perfection. It is her last chance to say how much she loves him. She starts to round her lips to form Je, but instead pushes out a hard steady plosive that contrasts with the pastoral breathiness of the single-vowel word that speaks a thousand philosophies. She looks at him again. This time she speaks: “Onward.” The word hangs clear and distinct, its edges sharpened and crisp among the blurred crowd din. With her hands pressed against her stomach and feeling for breath, she prepares to take the stage. She has no choice.
SHE IS AT HOME.
IT’S LIKE AN ILLUSION, the way she paces the floor. Left with only one leg, her feet still seem to fall heavy, stomping the boards. Sometimes rattling the stage walls. She is solid. Rooted to the floor. And it extends beyond gravity. It is more a matter of connection. It is like language. She is the meaning created by the listener and the speaker. It is command. And yet, almost conversely, she seems to float across the stage. Gliding. As though all movement suffers no effort. Gliding among the actors as though they are inanimate objects and she is the breeze. Strike that. She is nothing like language. She is not a voice or a tool or an instrument to convey thought through the artifice of metaphor. She is meaning. In all its literal glory.
SHE DOESN’T EVEN FEEL herself breathe.
THREE HOURS LATER she is still onstage, seated on a stuffed feather bed that is draped by a thin comforter and bordered by a mound of pillows. She is costumed in a long white negligee with an embroidered lining that hangs below the neckline. Her face is powdered a consumptive white, and heavy black eyeliner helps to draw out the sickness. Her left leg hangs over the bed, the foot dressed in a lace slipper. The stump of her right is carefully hidden below the covers. Since the amputation her set designers have worked miracles to create the illusion that hides the phantom leg. She is about to die as Marguerite Gautier once again. Soon the character of Julie Duprat will enter and light two candles. She will kneel before the bed and watch the tragic figure scream out in pain with three long howls. There will be pauses, one beat longer than normal between each scream, and the theater will be in resolute silence, until the next howl picks up as the other fades away. And then she will sit up twice. Each movement is so simple and shapeless on its own, but within context she will be in desperation, reaching out with one final attempt to grasp onto her mortal life. Then she will cry out for Armand. She will scream for him as though he is just outside the theater on the Place du Châtelet, so close but unable to hear his own name. And the audience will all tense and sway their bodies, as though trying to help give her call more force, as though there truly is an Armand Duval standing right outside the stage doors on the boulevard. And tears will fill her eyes. They will crawl down her cheeks, running traces through the foundation. The theater will be stunned into silence, cooperative by their own tears. And then she will cough one time, enough blood will rise to stain her gown. And then she will die. She will not grasp for the floorboards as she used to. Partly because the loss of her leg has stilted her range of motion. Mostly though, she has come to see Marguerite’s death less and less as a struggling battle to hang on to life, but instead as a willingness to let go in a slow silent mourning for her lost love and passion.