Director's Cut

  Ah, movement!

  In Amsterdam in the seventies, two people cycling off into the night together could only mean one thing. At the next rehearsal, Maxim noticed the other young men looking at him with envy. Although his prestige was unearned, he still caught himself feeling a certain pride, as if he had come a little closer to Monsieur Arnaux. When Gala finally arrived and they were able to rehearse their scene, the kisses he planted on her neck were calmer, so prolonged that they no longer reminded anyone of a poultry inspection.

  Slowly but surely over the following weeks, Gala and Maxim grew comfortable with each other’s bodies, but only in the roles of Solange and Monsieur Arnaux. One night, when he ran his hands over her breasts, he felt her nipples responding under the black crepe of her dress.

  THE MANY FACETS OF AMSTERDAM, screeched the neon letters on the facade of the diamond factory, which flicked on behind the actors every night at this time. Somewhere inside the amphitheater someone giggled, but the two actors had eyes only for each other.

  Gala spoke her lines as they were written, and a little later Maxim delivered his speech without a moment’s hesitation, even though his fingers had gone back to those same places, as if they couldn’t believe what they felt there. It made him dizzy with pleasure, not only from the power with which his heart was driving the blood to his loins, but above all because of the violence of the realization that he, he, had been able to evoke a reaction like that. It moved him. Perhaps, yes, perhaps, for just a moment, it wasn’t so much that his excitement moved him, as that being moved excited him.

  Maxim wanted to disappear.

  Maxim wanted to let himself be seen.

  That was why he wanted to act. He saw acting as the only possible way to unite the forces conflicting inside him. It was a childish longing. A lineless drawing. An idea, nothing more. He was full of such ideas, grand but vague, and he trusted them like friends, while he saw facts as enemies. As long as you don’t focus on something, he thought, there’s still a possibility that it can become anything you want. In that same shapeless way, he felt he carried other lives inside him. He had so many desires and they were so extreme; they could never possibly fit into his own image of himself. Now he thought that this was the actor’s paradox: hiding yourself behind your own possibilities.

  So it was tonight, at last, running his hands over the curves of Gala’s body, that he broke through his own limits for the very first time. Maxim felt bigger, stronger, more brazen than usual, and Gala sensed it too. Her body responded to his dream. When others believed in him, he believed in himself. Here was Maxim’s ecstasy. Tonight more people could see him than ever before. In his role, for just a moment, he had disappeared.

  • • •

  The following Tuesday, during the seduction scene, Maxim was wooden and inhibited. All week he had been dreading it. The sweeter that moment became in his memory, the less enthusiastic he grew about trying to perform the same trick again. When the evening arrived, the idea of someone as shy as himself trying to play a seducer seemed completely absurd. Even the Pole’s psychological approach—“So grab ze rutting beach, you are a dog, so take her!”—failed to help him.

  It took a few weeks before he dared to rest his fingers on her breasts again, but when they finally reached them, now lingering longer and more emphatically, no effect was discernible. Gala had now repeated her lines so many times that she no longer heard them. Even her intonation was almost unchanged from one rehearsal to the next. In the absence of any significant response from Maxim, she felt no need to draw on her emotions and lose herself in her performance. She went through the motions as if they had been fixed from the beginning. The underlying passion was gone.

  Maxim was shocked. First by her coldness, and then by his own ferocity. His sense of betrayal at her indifference was as intense as if she were cheating on him. He was angry, he was saddened, disgusted, and he could no longer bear having her body pressing against his own; viciously he shoved her away. On the sidelines the few people who were watching snapped to attention. He slapped her bottom as hard as he could and immediately took another swing at her, now at her face, but she blocked the blow with her arm.

  “Ow,” screamed Gala, “ow!”—but it was Solange who turned around slowly as if to spit fire into his face. Maxim went back to the start of the scene. Their words ricocheted through the lecture theater. He pulled her up against him again. A man like Monsieur Arnaux, he decided, does not allow himself to be betrayed a second time. From now on, he would be less restrained. He would rub her nipples between his fingers until they were hard. He didn’t have long to wait. Solange gasped for breath.

  Their concentration did not wane again. No matter how many rehearsals followed, one of them always succeeded in provoking the other by being brazen, taunting, shameless … Some of the pinches and groans remained secret—when she nipped his earlobe or when his tongue shot out to lick the salt from under her arm—but otherwise Maxim and Gala played their excitement openly to the auditorium, where the other students sat and watched politely as if they were learning something. Only the Polish Shirley Temple seemed to have figured out what was really going on. She didn’t mention it during rehearsals because the unsolicited eroticism added a little zest to her directing, but afterward she sometimes looked at Maxim and Gala while sardonically raising the eyebrow over her walleye.

  “Dat shows de real amateurs,” she sneered one day. “They don’t know where de life starts and de acting ends.”

  Strangely enough, the complete lack of restraint that Maxim and Gala displayed was confined to the rehearsal room. Beyond it, Maxim’s shyness descended like a bell jar. Even his breathing became shallower, as if to preserve the air he had left. On the way to the bar on the other side of the road, he sometimes walked beside Gala, but once inside they invariably sat apart and sometimes at different tables. None of the people there suspected that Gala and Maxim were still feeling each other out from a distance. Generally they would both listen to someone else’s conversation while Maxim practiced the kind of quips that came to Gala so easily. With the odd word and an amiable smile, he tried to master his boredom. At first he would glance at his female lead to harvest a smile after each triumph, just as their eyes met now and then in search of support when someone had said something incredibly dull. At times like that they both felt so withdrawn that they might as well have been floating up from their chairs to gaze down on the others. A glance, a gesture, a few nails clawing the air was enough to acknowledge their complicity. And eventually they were so attuned to each other that they could drop the nods and winks. They were so convinced they could read the other’s thoughts that they no longer needed confirmation.

  This intimacy was much more important to Gala than physicality. It excited her more than the moments during rehearsals when they were entangled in each other’s arms and his arousal was pulsing against her body. Then she’d just give a naughty smile and brush against him with a hip or thigh, because that happened to be the role she was playing. It was only teasing and meant almost nothing to her. But the idea that someone could be so taken with her thoughts as to harmonize his own thinking with them—that excited her. It stirred her senses and kept her awake at night, as if he were always somewhere nearby and might lash out again at any moment. It spurred her to stay one step ahead of him in everything she did. She was determined to keep surprising him.

  After that first night, Maxim never missed the last train again. He left on time, often before anyone else, disappearing wordlessly, if possible. Outside he caught his breath, relieved to have his own thoughts to himself again. The cackles and guffaws tumbling through the bar’s open window reassured him, just as the sounds in the big house had reassured him years before: there was a party somewhere!

  Gala watched him go, but he never waved, at least not as far as she saw, not before he disappeared behind the black window in the corner. No doubt, he turned back once he was there. To make him jealous, she leaned a little more heavily on the stud
ent who played Mannequin 2.

  At home in his provincial town, Maxim closed his eyes, called Gala to mind, and took pleasure in her image as young men do. Then, while recovering, he tried to reconcile his image of himself with everything that was happening to him.

  One day toward the end of June, Maxim’s dreams suddenly gathered momentum. It was Mannequin 2’s birthday, so instead of adjourning to the cinema bar after rehearsal, the whole troupe headed off to his place, nearby, above the old diamond factory warehouse on a lane ending abruptly at the canal. There were no chairs or sofas in his attic, only cushions and shabby mattresses. The Pole held out her arms and flapped her hands until two men lowered her onto the cushions. She kicked off her shoes, slid the straps of her top down a little, spread out the fur she invariably wore draped over her shoulders during rehearsals, and lay back like a baby on a bearskin.

  Everyone crawled around wearing blankets and lengths of fabric, whipping up clouds of dust that hung over the candles and incense pots like stuffy halos. While a circle loudly formed, Maxim opened one of the wooden skylights. When he turned back, he saw Gala lying on her stomach beside Mannequin 2, who rested his head on the small of her back as if he had just received his first birthday present. Maxim had to brace himself and urge three people to move along a little before he succeeded in sitting down next to Gala, determined to do everything in his power to stop Mannequin 2 before he started unwrapping.

  When the hash was passed around, Maxim considered joining in. It would have fitted his idea of living a life that teemed with forbidden pleasures and sensual abandon, if only the dope smokers he had known hadn’t seemed so small. They didn’t smoke because they, like him, wanted to experience something unprecedented, but because they had already abandoned all hope of anything unprecedented ever happening in their lives. Mannequin 2 sucked back like that as well. The way he enjoyed himself was flaccid and listless. He passed the joint to Gala. She took it and studied the filter through her lashes, as if reluctant to give in without a struggle. Then she pursed her flaming red lips, sucked, and closed her eyes. She handed the joint to Maxim and, keeping her eyes on him, opened her lips to let the smoke spiral up out of her mouth.

  Maxim played his role as best he could. Since he had never smoked, the usual slapstick ensued—mouthing the joint, sucking, holding in the smoke, coughing and trying to hide his choking—but by the fourth or fifth toke, he had the knack of it. He held his breath until Gala looked at him. Then he opened his mouth the way he had seen her do it. A little later she seemed to dissolve behind the smoke escaping from his lungs.

  He came to because Gala was shaking him. Urgently. A couple that had been going at it in the corner quickly gathered their clothes and rushed off. Mannequin 2 leapt around over the cushions.

  “What kind of idiot opens a window?” he shouted while throwing a bucket of water onto a length of tulle that was being consumed by flames. The wind had blown one of the curtains too close to an incense pot. The Pole noticed it first and attempted to douse the flames with her whiskey. Finally she was forced to sacrifice her fur, which Mannequin 2 now used to attack the smoldering cushions. He had almost conquered the fire, but he was no longer in the mood for a party.

  Outside with Gala, Maxim realized that this time he wouldn’t even make the night bus. Gala ran in the opposite direction, toward the water at the end of the lane. She stepped onto the dock and took a few deep breaths.

  “I’m dizzy,” she said. “I have to lie down.”

  “We shouldn’t have smoked.” He put his arm around her shoulders. He was shocked by how suddenly the smile that always lingered around her lips disappeared. She wobbled and grabbed hold of him.

  “I’ll take you home,” he said, although he could see that it was too late for that.

  “It’s not the smoking.”

  All at once Gala’s knees buckled and she lay down flat on the planks. Maxim looked around, as if expecting to find someone standing by with instructions. A stiff breeze was blowing over the water and pushing up cold and damp between the planks. All Gala had on was a thin skirt and a sleeveless T-shirt. He sat down next to her.

  “Come on,” he said gently, “this is no place to lie down.”

  “It’s fine.” Her voice sounded clear. She knew what she wanted. “I’ll just rest a little, then I’ll be okay again.” She scooped up some water and splashed it on her face. Startled, she sat up. “Although … headache,” she said, “you need to be careful not to hurt yourself.”

  “Always,” said Maxim with growing uncertainty, “and everywhere.” Now he really wanted help. He would have gone to fetch some if he hadn’t been so scared that Gala would tumble into the canal if he let go. She looked around. She tried to see what was hidden in her blind spot, and when she turned her head far enough, the advertising boat appeared, in the same place where it had been tied up the whole time.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed, beaming like a child, “the diamond!” The discovery seemed to revive her. “Yes, the diamond, how beautiful!” She wanted to get to the boat and tried to stand up, but when that was too much for her, she crawled over on all fours. Her skirt caught on a nail and tore. Maxim jumped up and tried to stop her, pulling her up onto her feet. She reacted like an angry child and lashed out with both hands, as if he were trying to keep her from a treasure she had spent years searching for.

  “I have to go there. I have to go there now!” she shouted, and Maxim, having no idea what to do, let her go.

  It was only a small boat with a glass superstructure. The cheaply mounted panes of glass were designed to imitate the shapes of a cut stone, ending at a blunt point where the name of the factory was written in glittering letters. The pane that served as a door hung on rickety hinges. Gala had no trouble jerking it open and sat down on the floor of the glass cage, sheltered from the wind.

  “And now we set sail,” she shouted.

  “Yes,” Maxim answered to accommodate her. “It’s just like we’re about to set sail.” The boat almost shot out from under him when he stepped into it.

  “No,” intoned Gala, as if the adventure ahead demanded her utmost concentration, “not like we’re about to set sail. We’re going.”

  “We can’t,” Maxim tried, and, when she insisted, he added, “We’d need the ignition key!”

  Gala stood up impatiently and started untying the thick rope with her small hands. “Now. Now.” He helped, and while they disentangled the hawser their hands touched. Finally he put a foot against the dock and pushed off. They shot off toward the middle of the canal, where they were picked up by the sluggish current caused by the nightly opening of the locks around the city. Drifting on the fresh polder water that was flushing the canals, they passed under a high brick bridge on their way into the old city.

  “They always make me mournful, these houses.” Gala was lying on the bottom of the boat with Maxim beside her. The imposing facades along the side of the canal were only partly visible and distorted by the glass panes of the diamond advertisement.

  “Mournful?”

  “The way they’ll be in three hundred years, the broken windows, the crumbling walls.” She squinted. “The damp has got under the canvases and in the wind they crack even more. Rooms stripped bare, only the marble mantel still in place. I can’t stand it.”

  “Why should they fall apart? They’ve been here for centuries.”

  “Can’t you see?” Baffled, Gala sat up and pointed at the sky. “There, what’s left of a chimney. Splinters of broken rafters against the moonlit sky!”

  Maxim was still hoping that it would turn out to be a game, something like shapes in clouds or, for his part, a Strindberg monologue, but when her voice started to quiver and he noticed a fat tear in the corner of an eye, he knew he was in deep trouble.

  “And the quays, crumbling, caving in.” And sure enough, now she really was crying. “Slowly the sand is carried off to the sea.” She stared at him again with that bizarre, intense look, the way old people can stare at a chi
ld, as if they’d like to suck the life out of it.

  “I thought everyone saw that.”

  Maxim shook his head cautiously.

  “No,” she went on, “how could they? Those girls on bikes there … They’re already being eaten away. Like skeletons, people sit in their regular spot behind the window. The advertisements have blown off the walls. The neon lights shatter on the shop fronts. Only a few old, thick cables are left hanging, dangling in the wind. They could fall any minute now. Dear God, why doesn’t anyone see it? I always thought everyone could see that.”

  “Yes,” said Maxim. “Oh yes, now I see it.” But of course he couldn’t see anything. His heart was in his mouth. He deeply regretted the whole adventure. Living life to the full placed exaggerated demands on people. Wasn’t there some way of plunging in one foot at a time instead of immediately going under?

  To his relief, he discovered a paddle under the seat. They were bobbing up and down in one of the widest canals, not far from a houseboat that was within paddling range. But just when he was about to get up, Gala turned around to face him and laid her head on his chest. Suddenly calm, she briefly raised her upper body so that he could wrap his arm around her.

  “It won’t be long now,” she said. “Take care of me. You’ll take care of me. Promise? Promise you’ll take care of me!” He promised and she grinned, open, radiant. “It’s going all right, isn’t it? I’m still talking. I am, I can hear myself. Maybe it’ll drift over.”

  The floating home was already behind them when the advertising boat threatened to get caught behind one of the basalt titans bearing the piers of a bridge from the thirties. While a nest of grebes stared at them, Gala and Maxim bobbed up and down in the filth that had gathered in the backwash. But finally they caught a faster current away from the center of town and passed the tall somber figures with their heads bent under their heavy load.