The first disaster struck before a foot of film had turned. Helene Rednitz, who was playing Thérèse le Vasseur, came down with bronchitis and after a week in bed went back to Berlin. Leo, Karl-Heinz and I went to Geneva and spent two days patrolling bars, theaters and variety shows looking for a replacement. We found our Thérèse in the Théâtre de la Comédie, a young girl playing a chambermaid in some tired farce. Her name was Anne-Louise Corsalettes. I decided to call her Anny La Lance (after a small village on the Lake of Neuchâtel) and, I would like to say, a star was born. I certainly enjoyed the opportunity it afforded me of saying, “I want you to be in my movie,” but Anny was no actress, she just looked perfect. Rousseau described Thérèse as “a girl of feeling, lacking in coquetry, with lustrous gentle eyes.” Anny had large dark eyes and a blunt, quite pretty face. She was a big girl with strong shoulders and hips and it had been her clumping exits and entrances in the farce that had attracted our attention and had taken us backstage. Naturally, she was overwhelmed at our offer.
Anyway, that was Anny La Lance and she performed well under my direction. She did everything I told her and bore me no ill will when I set her up in order to get the right response (as in the diary passage quoted above, when Jean Jacques’s house at Môtiers was stoned by hostile suspicious villagers). Filming was going well and I was shooting German and English versions concurrently — such are the problems of sound. Karl-Heinz’s English accent was strongly Germanic and Anny spoke only French, but I could overdub later.
My one vague worry was the long silence from Doon. We had spent a rather awkward Christmas in Paris, neither of us accustomed to reunions. We were not at our best. Neither of us was a good letter writer, either, and a month elapsed before I sent a cable to her Paris address, but there was no reply. I was surprised, but assumed she had gone off somewhere to make a film.
The day after I wrote that diary entry, Eddie Simmonette turned up. It was in the evening and we had just finished dinner when he arrived. I knew there was something wrong because his clothes were dirty. He was unshaven and the cleft in his chin was dense with bristles. He had driven all the way from Berlin, via Austria, an arduous journey that had taken him five days. He brought the worst news. First, the luckless Georg Pfau had been arrested and incarcerated for some reason. His connection with Realismus Films had led to the studio’s being investigated. Shortly after that, Eddie had apparently been declared a “non-Aryan.” The scandal attaching to this had prompted the banks to foreclose on him and the creditors to rush in. The studios were shut down, the staff paid off, all Eddie’s property impounded.
“Everything?” I asked. I felt a horrible cold nausea squirming in my body, like something trapped in a burrow.
“The lot.”
“What about The Confessions?” I could hardly get the words out. “The negative?”
“Oh, I’ve got that in the back of my car. And that old trunk you kept there. No, I’m talking about my house, the studios—”
There and then I made him take me out to his car — a big Audi — and open it. I saw the flat gleaming aluminum boxes. I counted them — fourteen. I let my forehead touch the car’s cold roof for a few seconds.
“Have you heard from Doon?” he asked.
“No.”
“She made a long-distance call, looking for you. I couldn’t speak to her — the police were there.”
“When was that?”
“Ten days ago.”
It made no sense — I thought she knew where I was — but I had no time to ponder on it. We summoned the crew to a meeting in the hotel dining room and told them what had happened. Eddie said he would pay them off the next day. He speculated vaguely about setting himself up in Paris and reassembling everything at the end of that year once he had a secure base.
Later that evening Eddie and I talked alone. He told me that after paying off the crew and settling the film’s debts he would have approximately two thousand dollars left in the world.
“It’s over,” he said. “I’m sorry, John.”
“For the time being,” I said bravely. “It survived talkies and the Wall Street crash. We’ll just have to postpone it.” Half of me actually believed this, I suppose; the other half wanted to lie down and die.
“You have some money here, don’t you?” he asked.
I had, in Geneva. My profits from Julie, which Thompson had told me to transfer from Germany, minus certain payments to Sonia.
“Yes. Why?”
“I want to sell you the negative to The Confessions,” he said, “for fifty thousand dollars.”
To this day I sometimes wonder if Eddie fooled me. Sometimes I am convinced he did; at others, absolutely not. He knew I had money in Switzerland because I had passed on to him Thompson’s advice to me — which he had chosen to ignore.
At one dark stage in my life I was convinced he had set up The Confessions: Part II only to get me to Switzerland for the express purpose of selling me Part I. He must have known I would buy it. In the end, though, I have to absolve him; the plot was far too complicated even for Eddie’s Byzantine mind. For example, he could not have known he would be investigated and declared a non-Aryan by the Nazis. But out of disaster the cards fell conveniently for him. I had something over seventy thousand dollars in a bank in Geneva. Eddie had pitched his price just right.
It took a couple of days to sort out our affairs in Neuchâtel. We bade each other morose farewells. Karl-Heinz said he would go back to Berlin to see what he could do for Georg. I told him I would go straight to Paris and urged him to join Doon and me there. He said he would wait and see.
Anny La Lance contemplated the sudden demise of her short-lived film career and the resumption of her old identity with surprising calm. She said it had always seemed too good to be true and asked only for a lift back to Geneva, where both Eddie and I were going.
We spent a day with a lawyer. Fortuitously, Eddie had brought all the necessary documents with him. Now we had cause to bless the existence of Jean Jacques! The Confessions: Part I belonged entirely to Realismus Films Verlag A. G. The film negative and everything that had been shot of Part II were now purchased by John James Todd, Esq., for fifty thousand dollars less the legal fees the advocate demanded. I went to my bank and withdrew the money, in cash — all of which, to my surprise, Eddie managed to fit into his briefcase.
It was a mild wintry day, the sun shone on the lake, as we sat in a café enjoying a farewell drink. Anny was still with us, holding on to her lost future until the final minute. Parked nearby on the curb was Eddie’s big Audi, which was now mine — he had generously included it in the deal.
“So,” I said, “that’s it. When are you off to Paris?”
“I’m not going,” he said. “I’m going to America.” He patted his briefcase. “See what I can do there.” He smiled. “Why don’t you join me? Eh, Johnny? That’s where the future lies.”
“My future’s sitting in that car,” I said. “No, I’m going to Paris. Find Doon.”
I rang the doorbell on Doon’s apartment door. She lived in a rather shabby building on the Rue de Grenelle. There was no answer. I went to look for the concierge. This turned out to be a beefy man in vest and braces who was watering the weeds in the damp courtyard with weedkiller. He told me Mlle. Bogan had gone.