She tossed her hair. ‘Then we have a deal?’
‘No-not on your terms.’
‘I see you still don’t believe me.’ Her face had strangely darkened. ‘What will convince you? Do you want a preview tonight?’
‘Not if you would consider it an option on my services.’
‘Don’t be rude.’
‘I don’t mean to be rude, Märta. I’m simply not on your wavelength. We’re not communicating at all. You’re speaking to me about a parcel you label sex, and I’m saying if it has no other name, it’s a poor product. Haven’t you ever been in love? What would happen if you fell in love?’
‘I wouldn’t be where I am,’ she said stiffly. ‘Craig, I have never and will never let myself be used.’
‘But you will use someone else.’
‘How am I to take that? Are you being sarcastic, chastising me?’
‘I’m simply trying to believe you. I can’t believe you. I’m appalled.’
‘Quit simpering at me. Don’t be a sanctimonious child. And don’t start categorizing me with your cheap writer’s clichés-prefab characterization-Enter, the cold, calculating devourer of men, et cetera.’
‘I’m not judging you. I confine myself to observing, imagining, reporting. I’m trying to find out who you are. Do you know?’
‘You’re damn well sure I know,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you who I am, and who I am not. I am an actress, a great actress, the greatest in this century. That means one thing to me-my art comes first, and everything else can go merrily to hell. In this world, there are two kinds of actress. One is the actress-woman. She is schizoid. She is one-half public performer and one-half private human being. She is the one who winds up emotionally bankrupt, soon forgotten except for a fund-raising benefit and a ghost-written memoir. The other is the actress-actress, who is not split in two halves, but is of a single indestructible piece, single, whole, self-sufficient, self-directed, devoted only to herself as celebrity and artist. Everything in her life, every judgment, decision, every choice and turning, must measure up to one standard-is it good for the actress that I am? This applies to homelife, leisure, children, finances-and above all, it applies to love.’
She swallowed her drink, then, instead of asking Craig for another, she brushed past him to the table and began pouring her own.
‘I was fortunate,’ she went on, ‘because I became an actress-actress early. The moment I was brought to America. I perceived how detestable and degrading the market-place was. American show business, I found, was exactly like American sports and commerce and politics-a game of naked bartering. In Hollywood, on Broadway, what they had to offer was a good role with good money. But beauty, personality, talent were not necessarily enough to win the role. There were dozens of beautiful and trained young girls for every part. Then, on what would the choice be based? What could win such a role? The added offer of easy sex? No, not even that was enough. These dozens of girls were all too eager to divest themselves of pants and maidenheads. In fact, so eager were they, so uniformly accessible, that even I, as a young Swedish girl, was shocked. But then, because I was clever, I saw what extra was needed to win the role. Beauty was good, but too cheap. Nonconforming beauty was better. Acting talent was good, but too widespread. Overlaid on it there must be personality. Sexual availability was good, but there was a monotony to it, like raw steaks displayed in the meat market. But to offer something different with sexual availability-to offer fornication with skill, real skill-and once it be made known, to make the experience gradually more difficult to possess-that, and those, were the extra factors I understood and put into use.’
She held her vodka before her, not drinking, and her earnestness was such that Craig felt she had forgotten his presence. But now she seemed to address him.
‘Have you ever slept with a starlet? Groomed hair, cameo face, cherry lips, and figure always either forty, twenty-four, thirty-five or thirty seven, twenty-four, thirty-five? If you’ve slept with one, you’ve slept with one hundred, one thousand. The same eagerness to oblige, the same tired endearments in accents of dramatic schools, the same practised wigglings, the same superficial gamut of love play-warm pliable receptacles of love by rote, as if waiting in the wings for the cue, only waiting horizontally-until they can get the waiting done and be on with their real roles, the payoff. That was wrong, and it was not for me. At once, I knew that I would not be another pound-pounds-of easy flesh, to evaporate from memory by daybreak, to be paid off by some minor casting man with a bit part. I would be no starlet. I would be more, and I would be an experience. And so I went at this as I went at my public career. I schooled myself in the art of satisfying in bed as well as on stage. No matter how I did it, or how long I took. But I did it, and a night with Märta Norberg became not a passing physical release for a producer or director or banker, but an adventure in a new dimension of sensuality, and an enslavement and commitment. Soon, as I made my way, I was able to resist the pastry cutter in other ways. I would not let them coiffure my head like all the others. Or shorten my nose. Or artificially inflate my breasts to the minimum expected size. Or learn the same carriage, and same, same diction. I stayed myself, and that made me unusual and different and remembered. And all the while, I remained a wonder in bed, and when this was known, and I was known, my roles grew larger, better, choicer, until they were the best, and exposure and publicity made me a household name. And when, at last, I was bigger than the spoiled men, the potbellied men, the sadistic men who had so often humiliated me-when they needed me, and I did not need them-I was able to becom e what I really was and am this day-remote, reserved, selective. My skills were less needed, but I had them when they were needed-a rivalry for the best play purchased, for the best director imported, for the great leading man, for a percentage of the gross. I kept my distance and gave sparingly, but when I gave, I gave well.’ She paused. ‘I still do, Craig.’
In a curious way, her story had moved him. His perception had filled in so much that had not been told. Yet the story made her even more difficult to understand. ‘But now you can do as you please, Märta. You’ve spent a life trying to be yourself again. You’ve won. You are yourself. Why not love whom you wish and when you wish?’
‘Because avarice never ceases,’ she said with a smile, ‘and mine is the avarice of the ego. My monument is in people’s minds. To keep it there, I must continue building it. I have been idle too long. I must build again. And the materials I most urgently require are story properties. You have one such property, and I want it. Since I can’t have it for cash alone, I am willing to return to the market-place with my unique skills. But I am who I am, and I deserve to have what I want on my terms. Be sensible, Craig, I can dictate. You cannot. Despite this advantage, I am fair, because you are an artist as well as a man, and unless you are rightly rewarded you will not work happily, and I will suffer as well as you. So I offer you a fortune, and I offer you an experience, one that will be impressed upon your brain until it is senile, one that will mean more to your biographies than the silly prize. I am giving you all of me for a part of you. I’m leaning over backwards, and I don’t want to go on like this any more. Simply say yes, and we’ll seal the bargain with a kiss, and you’ll stay the night. Now, are you happy-?’
‘I’m revolted,’ he blurted out. The sympathy she had weaned from him had fled, as her cold bargaining had resumed. ‘For some money that can be earned elsewhere and some loveless convulsions in the hay, and a behind-the-hand conversation piece-you want a tooled novel, hammer and chisel and nails and plane, pounded and hacked out, slanted, a sham-’
‘Goddammit,’ she cried suddenly, ‘I’m sick of your friggin’ writer divinity-’