Eight Girls Taking Pictures (26 page)

From Tin, Lenny learned to take pictures, use lights, touch up, develop; her vision, so in tune with the
modernisme
of the age, lined up perfectly with Surrealism. Is it the depiction of a dream, or is it the unedited subconscious made manifest? What did it mean when Lenny made a picture of a woman’s hand (clearly a woman of wealth, evidenced by the size of the diamond in her ring) reaching out to open the glass door of an exclusive Paris jeweler, the extraordinary stone scratching the glass as so many other diamonds on the hands of so many other wealthy women had previously done? All those diamonds marking the glass so that, when the woman’s hand was on the door, all those scratches gave the impression of her hand exploding?

The Girl in London, 1935

When Kristof Nash was invited to a small gallery showing of Lenny Van Pelt’s pictures, he went thinking he would see her there. His new wife, Claire, had been Lenny’s friend in New York. Though the young women had not stayed particularly close, they were still in touch from time to time, or they heard news of one another through the grapevine. Which was how Nash knew that Lenny was living in London, which was why he ended up looking her up when he came through the city to meet with the staff of British
BelleFille.

Which was when, after basking in Nash’s appreciation of her still considerable beauty, Lenny asked him to recommend her photography services to British
BelleFille.

“I’m already in London,” she said, “on my own steam, so it isn’t like transferring someone here. I worked with Tin Type for three years, and I’ve been freelancing on my own for two. And”—she lowered her voice and leaned toward him across the table, with a hint of a smile, her gaze direct—“you and I both know that I can do this.”

He appreciated the slight seduction in her approach, and, if he were a man given to seeing the humor in all things, he would’ve matched her smile, maybe said something flirtatious. But he wasn’t, so he didn’t,
though he did give her the name of the primary photographer at
BelleFille,
saying, “It’s up to Georges St. Georges.”

“My God, you are like a beautiful golden goat boy of the Appian Way. Just like Mauritz and, frankly, just like me. Of course, we must work together and everything together.”

Lenny had no idea who Mauritz was, but standing before Georges St. Georges was disconcerting, since it was very much like standing before a mirror, seeing her androgynous self in another person. That Georges St. Georges was fairly close in age to Lenny (in their late twenties, that sunset of youth) made the resemblance even more uncanny; that he was a man and a photographer made her feel twinned.

“I’m a photographer. I’ve recently worked with Tin Type and—”

“Then sometime we’ll let you take pictures. What else can you do?” Georges St. Georges was very close, with both hands smoothing her hair away from her face. “I can see it, the angel and the vamp. The boy and the girl.” Abruptly, he dropped his hands and walked over to his bag to retrieve a very thin brown cigarette, which he lit with a lighter of pure silver. “I shall talk to Mauritz.”

“Should I be talking to Mauritz?” asked Lenny.

Georges St. Georges whirled around. “Is he here?”

“I don’t think so,” said Lenny, hesitant and looking over her shoulder toward the wide double doors leading into the cavernous studio space.

He held out a cigarette to Lenny, but she declined. “Do you know Mauritz?”

“No.”

“Then—and I’m somewhat in the dark—why would you want to talk to him?”

“You said something about talking to Mauritz—”

“Yes.”

“So, I thought—” She took a deep breath as Georges St. Georges calmly watched her, smoking his cigarette. “I want to work, and if this Mauritz is the person to talk to, then I want to talk to Mauritz.”

Georges St. Georges pulled a small silver disk from his pocket. At first, Lenny thought it was a compact. In New York she had known a few men who powdered their noses, moistened their lips with lipstick, and accentuated their lashes with mascara. It had nothing to do with anything as far as she was concerned. But instead of powder, there were ashes. He then stubbed out his cigarette, dropped it inside, snapped the disk shut, and returned it to his pocket. “Did you think that I worked for Mauritz?”

Lenny said nothing.

“The day a photographer works for a model will be the apocalypse. Come around tomorrow at eleven.”

When Lenny later thought about the moment she entered Georges St. Georges’s studio, she thought about how much Tin Type would’ve appreciated its cavernous quality. Tin and all the other Surrealists, whom she suddenly missed very much (with the exception of Breton, the founding father of the movement, who could not have misunderstood women more if he tried), feeling especially soft toward Tin and glancing at her watch wondering what he was doing now—knowing his habits as she did—picturing him shopping and making her one of his assembled meals since, as he always said, “I cannot cook, but I can assemble.” The English, she discovered, had not caught on to the dream-driven aesthetic as readily as the French.

If standing near Georges St. Georges was like standing in front of a mirror, then seeing Georges talking close and low to someone who was the mirror image of him, and therefore the mirror image of her, was akin to watching herself from herself. It was strange and surreal and familiar, given that she was already her brother’s twin.

“Miss Van Pelt, please.” Georges gestured for her to join him and the other young man. She moved toward them as if in a trance.

The other young man studied her, nodded, then said to Georges, “You’re right. Again.” Then to Lenny, “I’m Mauritz.”

She almost wanted to say, “I’m Mauritz,” they so resembled each
other and, she believed, were even closer in age than she and Georges. “I assist Georges.”

Georges had been showing Mauritz some sort of clothing when Lenny had walked into the studio, and now he gave one garment to Mauritz and the other to Lenny, saying, “If you want to go down the hall to change, there is a washroom on the left, or I can turn my back.”

“Is this new modesty for the benefit of Miss Van Pelt?” Mauritz held Georges’s glance just long enough for Lenny to understand the men. She wanted to protest that she was here not as a model but as an assistant photographer, but since Mauritz was also being asked to don the clothing and model, she said nothing.

“Perhaps we can locate a dressing room screen for our Miss Van Pelt,” said Mauritz, watching her as he leaned into Georges so that their arms lightly touched. Georges seemed less aware of Mauritz than he was of her; she had enough experience with the territoriality that is a consequence of jealousy to know that the condescension in Mauritz’s voice was a way of locking her out.

She pulled her shirt over her head, exposing her small breasts to the appreciative eyes of Georges and the less than pleased Mauritz—her shifting femininity was going to give him problems, she thought—before kicking off her shoes and stepping out of her trousers and undergarments. Pretending to examine the front and back of the bathing suit that dangled from her fingers, she casually stood before the men, completely comfortable in her nakedness. They had no idea where she was from when it came to her body. Object? Subject? She could turn it all off at will.

It was Georges who broke the silence, saying, “Mauritz, we don’t have all day.”

The resulting photograph, used to advertise a summer fragrance, was so successful than it ended up running for six months in
BelleFille.
The pair sat on the near the end of a dock so narrow it resembled a diving board, bleached white by the sun and seeming to be located on some deserted, pristine East Coast beach, with nothing before them but an
endless expanse of the ocean. Though Mauritz sat closer to the end of the dock than did Lenny (she was closer to the camera lens), each with legs bent to the side, they appeared to be touching; their bodies were almost in profile and wearing identical one-piece swimsuits; their skin identically, wonderfully sun-kissed; their hair in the same careless, boyish style, golden and glossy.

The only thing the camera didn’t pick up was their dislike of each other, fueled by distrust and their desire to win Georges, since neither was the least inclined to share, each wanting his attention as his or hers alone. They buried their mutual aversion beneath a veneer of professionalism and the need to please Georges. All this tension—their physical similarity to each other as well as to Georges, their artistic ambitions, their relationship to love, with one prone to jealousy and the other to indifference—translated into a period of superior work for Georges.

It wasn’t romantic love that fueled Lenny; she wanted to take pictures. Mauritz desired Georges,
and
he wanted to take pictures. Georges also loved Mauritz but not only Mauritz, thus keeping Mauritz in a perpetual state of jealousy, a jealousy that almost eclipsed Mauritz’s own photographic aspirations. Lenny was troubling for him because Mauritz didn’t want to share Georges, either personally or professionally; it didn’t help that she appeared somehow sexually mutable (her beautiful boy self, her siren self) and that Georges had an appetite for novelty and pretty things, compounded by his own sexuality that refused to stay fixed. The result was a difficult triangle where no one ever relaxed.

The studio was drafty and freezing, though it was only November. Mauritz and Lenny sat near each other, as close as they could to one of two fairly inadequate electric heaters, waiting for Georges, Mauritz seeming a little worn.

Lenny was wearing a cream-colored, heavy shirt made from a nubby fabric and cut almost like the shirt of an American sailor, with its V-neck and loose sleeves. It was nearly as long as her chocolate-colored short
skirt with matching chocolate stockings. When she lifted her left arm, the sleeve fell back to reveal a pair of fourteen-karat gold handcuffs, both cuffs on the same arm and connected with a chain, that slid up and down.

“You must think I’m pathetic,” said Mauritz.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t think anything of the sort,” said Lenny.

He sat there fighting back something: the tears, anger, despair that resulted from possessing the person you want without ever feeling as if you actually have him.