Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 (19 page)

I never saw Lou naked. Before and after the surgery she wore the same loose jackets and jumpsuits. Obviously, I was curious. Had her operation really been entirely about the driver's seat? Or did she want to look more like a man? Not asking felt like the right thing to do: virtuous and decent. I didn't assume the right to pry into Lou's personal life just because I was her employer.

What mattered to her was racing. The seat belts were constricting; the straps had crushed her breasts. Had Armand paid for the operation? Had he and Didi known and not told me? Did they assume I would have objected? I would never have dissuaded Lou from something she wanted so badly that she was willing to face the combined assault of physical pain and vicious gossip.

 

The lead-up race to Montverre was the rally at Brooklands. We accompanied Lou to England, where she spent several weeks training. Gabor experimented with angles, light, and exposures to capture the strain and exaltation on the drivers' faces. Critics have remarked that his grimy, sweating racers resemble the martyred saints in the work of the Spanish Old Masters.

The Montverre Women's International was being promoted as the contest of France against Germany, Britain, and Italy. Just as I tried to stay out of the political aspects of Lou's relationship with my brother-in-law, so I tried to ignore their idea of racing as a nationalistic blood sport.

A British girl, Alice Ascot, would be driving the Rolls-Royce, an Italian named Elisabetta Todino was piloting the Bugatti. But Lou's most formidable competitor would be the German, Inge Wallser, pitting her Mercedes against Lou, in our Rossignol. My concerns about Lou's prospects increased when I saw Gabor's photo of Inge sitting on the hood of her car and smoking a cigarette. Only Gabor's genius could have made it clear that behind those dark glasses were the eyes of a woman who would stop at nothing to win. Perhaps his photo alerted me to a resemblance that I would register consciously only later. Something about Inge Wallser reminded me of Arlette.

The photo I admired most was one that I can hardly bear to look at now. It's an image of Lou Villars, suited up, wearing goggles, peering under the hood of her car before the start of a race. To me, and to many others, that photo represented the essence of Modernism. I thought it was great art. Now I know that it was a photograph of the nightmare that would be our future.

On the morning of the Brooklands race, I saw Gabor taking my picture as I got out of my car. I was driving the sensational bi-color black and burgundy Juno-Diane, the luxury top of the Rossignol line, the sleek but substantial coupe whose generous curves and forward slouch always made me think of a lion crouched on its paws, ready to spring forward.

Was Gabor photographing the car? His camera seemed to be focused on me.

This so unnerved me that the race was well under way before I could give it my full attention. How pitiful I was to be thinking about a photo as Lou Villars and Inge Wallser outdistanced the Bugatti and the Rolls.

Lou ran second for the next few laps, never quite catching up. But during the tenth lap, Lou tromped on the gas and cut toward the inner lane, swerving and nearly sideswiping the Mercedes. For one horrific moment it seemed as if Lou and Inge might crash. At the last instant Lou swung away and pulled out in front. Inge seemed to regain control. Then her car skidded across the track and smacked into the wall.

Lou sped on as if nothing had happened. The spectators gasped, then fell silent and stared at the twisted, smoking Mercedes.

Inge stepped out of the wreck, straightened up, and waved at the fans. The crowd was on its feet, cheering Inge—and Lou, the new champion of Brooklands.

The race was over, but Lou never let up as she sped through the final circuits. She crossed the finish line, then did a slow, ceremonial victory lap. Finally she coasted to a stop, climbed out of the car, swept off her helmet, and bowed. We shouted. Armand whistled. I heard myself—was that really me?—yelping like a greyhound.

Lou Villars was a hero. Didi, Armand, Lou, Gabor, and I were champions together.

Would we have been so delirious if disaster hadn't been nearly averted? What if Lou and Inge were killed? It would have been a tragedy. Senseless carnage.
Our fault
. The death of two gifted young women drivers. The loss of a colleague and friend. And the end of our hopes for Rossignol Motors.

All of France would have mourned Lou Villars. Germany would have worn black for Inge Wallser. It would have been another nail in the coffin of our family auto business, a warning against speed and recklessness, against the determination to win at any price.

On the other hand, if Lou and Inge had collided and died in the wreck, many more people would be alive than are alive today.

Paris

June 1934

Dear parents,

Mama, I've been thinking of a story you used to tell about your courtship. Evenings you would wait for Papa at your parents' door, and you'd smell his pipe smoke and know he was approaching, and that he'd started smoking because he loved you and hadn't yet found the nerve to say so. You said you felt as if you'd drunk a glass of plum brandy distilled just for you by God. Don't get married, you used to say, until you meet someone who makes you feel that tipsy.

By that definition, I have fallen in love with a car. Race cars, to be exact. The minute we reach the track I feel a giddy intoxication. The crowd around me senses it too. We are all punch drunk with excitement. Some chemical surges inside us when the cars roar off. My heart learns a jazzy new rhythm that makes me happy to be alive! I know what you are thinking. Why does our son never sound like this when he's talking about a girl?

But lest you think I've been going to the races to squander the pennies I've squirreled away in this bleak economy, let me reassure you. My relationship with the races is like my connection to the brothels. I don't go to participate but to document a way of life.

It's some of the best work I've done, and for once my interest coincides with that of the larger culture—which is
very
interested in fast cars and their drivers. I've been selling my work to a journal with tens of thousands of readers.

Auto
has money to pay an artist—me!—who would be taking the same pictures whether they paid him or not. Speed is the greatest challenge I have faced so far: how to render it in black and white and in two dimensions. I have gotten more abstract, turning wheels and windshields into arcs of light. Meanwhile my curiosity and love for everything human has inspired portraits of trainers, mechanics, gamblers, and their molls, characters as fascinating as my old friends the thieves and pimps.

The baroness's husband and brother-in-law are sponsoring a driver, Lou Villars, the woman in the tuxedo on the cover of my book. If I have time, I'll send you a print I rather like: a photo of Lou checking her engine, as she does before every race.

Last week
Auto
ran, on its cover, my picture of Lou winning the women's competition at Brooklands, in Great Britain. The event occurred on the name day of Joan of Arc, which had special meaning for her. How alive Lou looks, how victorious and proud, a savage goddess painted with road grit and motor oil. France needs a heroine, as do we all. And wouldn't you agree: better a race-car driver than a general or a dictator.

If only Lou's success could bring her the happiness it has brought me. But according to the baroness, Lou is a tormented soul.

Yesterday evening, the baroness and I went to the Chameleon Club to see
The
Mikado
sung by bearded men in kimonos. It was supposed to be hilarious, but I wasn't laughing. I'd noticed that my photo of Lou and Arlette was missing from the wall. It gave me a queasy feeling, like glancing in the mirror and seeing I'd lost a front tooth. I searched the club. My other pictures were there. But not the double portrait.

Clovis Chanac had insisted that Yvonne take down the photo. Arlette is his girlfriend now, and he doesn't want her and her Amazonian sweetie, or ex-sweetie, on a wall outside a toilet in a cross-dressers' club.

What if my book, with Lou on its cover, is declared obscene and confiscated from the shops, where it's still selling nicely, if not quite so briskly as before? Speaking of censorship, have I told you that my friend Lionel has been put on the literary map by his government's efforts to prevent his memoir,
Make Yourself New,
from being imported and sold in the States? A judge ruled his masterpiece obscene!

I couldn't stop myself from asking Yvonne if she thought something might happen with
my
book. And what if it didn't end there? Men like Chanac are always looking for foreigners to deport.

Yvonne said, “Chanac isn't thinking about you. He doesn't care about books enough to burn them, like the stupid Germans. Lou's the one who had better watch out. Chanac
is
thinking about her.”

That same night, Lou appeared at our table drunk, though she was supposed to be in training. The Rossignols had asked her to stay away from the club. Everything depends on her winning at Montverre.

Always the diplomat, the baroness pretended not to notice her presence. Lou asked if she and I could speak privately. We went outside for a smoke.

Lou said, “Do you remember when Yvonne used to keep those disgusting lizards? Do you know she told fortunes with them?”

I told her no, I didn't. I knew about the lizards but not the fortune-telling.

She said, “Is that a Hungarian thing?”

Such is the mood in Paris now that I bristled at the word
Hungarian.
I said,
“
No
,
it is not a
Hungarian thing
.”

Lou said, “I should have stomped the damn reptile.”

I said, “You shouldn't drink, Lou.”

A few weeks later, when the baroness and I went to watch Lou practice, I spotted Chanac at the track. Having been fired from the police and subsequently elected to the Municipal Council, he had every reason to be there, to keep an eye out for foreign spies disguised as drivers and coaches.

Chanac wasn't looking for spies. He was watching Lou. He'd come to the track a few times and several times sent his men. They stare at Lou, and not in a friendly way. They should be rooting for her to win and uphold the honor of France.

For the moment, we are probably safe. One can't go around arresting people for training to race the world's most innovative car, about which I hesitate to write in detail, in an international letter.

By the way, in addition to my work for
Auto
, more American magazines are hiring me to take celebrity portraits. Last week I went to the Ritz to photograph Gary Cooper, who was in Paris to promote his new film.

The baroness mentioned she'd known him in Hollywood. I asked her to accompany me, and at first she agreed, but at the last minute she called to say that something had come up. Should I give Mr. Cooper her regards? No, she said. Don't bother.

Mr. Cooper's photo practically took itself. He was a perfect gentleman, professional and polite. He knew precisely how to pose to give the editors what they wanted. He even knew where to put the lights to accentuate his cheekbones.

However far apart we are, we should thank God that things have worked out. Though I know you miss me, you must admit that Gary Cooper is in every way a more rewarding subject than the graduating class of our town's Academy for Young Men.

Mama and Papa, don't bother refusing, but soon I will be sending a check for a fraction of what you sacrificed to help a son who never dared imagine he would be able to a make a living, doing what he loves. I thank you, I kiss you. Keep me in your prayers.

Your devoted son,
Gabor

From
Paris in My Rearview Mirror

BY
LIONEL MAINE

A Season in Hell

 

PARIS 1935

WHEN I WAKE
at 3:00
A.M
., alone, as I often am now, I must try very hard not to think that one day, in the near future, I will have to leave Paris. If I let the thought cross my mind, I won't sleep for the rest of the night.

The gloom and doom economy, the coming war, unemployment, riots, street crime, financial scandals, serial killers, Nazis at home and next door—what red-blooded Parisian male would admit to noticing or caring? The women worry constantly, as women always do.

Life goes on, as always. If you can scare up a franc or two, you can still go to the Café de la Rotonde, and it's fun, like trawling, casting your net on the waves. You never know what you'll find: lovely mermaids, tasty perch, or a shark like Lou Villars.

I never understood Lou. She always wanted to talk about cars. She assumed an American guy would be conversant with the fine points of camshafts and piston thrust. Once she asked if I had the inside dope on what Detroit was up to. As if I gave a shit about Detroit! Did I ask Lou Villars about Rimbaud's
Season in Hell
? Not that anyone talks poetry anymore. The conversation is all about speed and miles per hour. Lou's language.

When Lou realized I had no idea, she considerately changed the subject to some esoteric carburetor problem. I pretended to know what she meant. After all, she was in charge. Too bad I couldn't bring myself to charm her into bed. It would have been the closest I came to having sex with a man. Lou had balls on the Hemingway scale. Bigger than Hemingway's, maybe.

Every few months there was a nasty crash at the track. But Lou never seemed afraid. She drove like a lunatic on Nazi speed. No one could predict how high and far she would rise. Whatever it took to win, she had. It was thrilling to watch her.

I could never figure out how much Lou knew about the Rossignols. The right-wing lunatic junkie brother-in-law was her mentor and idol. People said Lou took elixirs distilled from bulls' balls. I wish I'd had the nerve to ask her for a dose. That would have steered the conversation away from the secrets of Detroit. But Lou decided what we talked about. It was a new experience, for a guy like me to admit that a woman was, so to speak, in the driver's seat.