Mirror, Mirror. Paula Byrne

from my mother’s dressing table. I tried not to look in the mirror, but I swear I heard it say, ‘Go ahead and eat it, porker.’

      Mo no longer appeared at the breakfast table for Mother’s scrambled eggs. Never mind, more for me. She glared at me when I had extra helpings, and smoked her cigarette, puffing furiously.

      ‘A bigger dress size. How can that be?’

      Mother is ashamed, but nothing that anyone else says can hurt as much as the things that I say to myself. When I pulled on my bathing suit, over my hips and belly, I tried not to notice the soft rolls of fat. In the blue rectangular pool, I felt light as air. I spent hours floating until the skin on my fingers wrinkled.

I was sure that Mo would be replaced before too long, and I was right. The next morning a dozen long-stemmed red roses appeared in their long, white coffins. American Beauty. Whoops. I waited for the storm.

      ‘Why can’t the shop girls cut the thorns from the roses? But if they were not stupid, they wouldn’t be working in a florist’s shop.’

      The sender of the red roses appeared in her dressing room. She cooked him a perfect omelette in her crinoline and wig, and somehow managed to never get a drop of oil on her dress. The next evening, he appeared at the house of mirrors for her famous pot au feu. Mother looked divine in a Hausfrau apron with a bandana tied around her hair. She removed his shoes, and massaged his feet. I poured the champagne into crystal-cut glasses that sparkled and gleamed. I loved to hear the hiss of the bubbles as they danced around the rim of the coupe. The breasts of Marie Antoinette, Mother said, with a smile.

      At dinner, she smiled and tapped her finger on the side of his head: ‘You see, there’s nothing there. Quite empty. Nothing inside that pretty head. Not a single idea, and that’s what I like.’

      Nevertheless, there was talk over dinner about the New Deal. I liked the nice new president who seemed to be trying to help people who couldn’t afford food. The thought of being hungry made me feel ill. Mother had her own views on why the bad times didn’t seem to affect the motion-picture industry: ‘Nobody wants to pay for reality during a depression – that’s there for nothing.’

She glanced at the LA Times on the sideboard.

      ‘All those millionaires jumping out of skyscrapers just because they lost some of their precious money. All they had to stop doing was being so dramatic and get a job.’

      I had eaten so much at supper that my new pink organza dress split its stitches. I heard it tear as I stretched for the salt cellar. My cheeks burned hot, and I could feel the sweat under my waist and my arms. Mother was too absorbed in her new friend to notice. I asked permission to leave the table, and scarpered. On the way to my bedroom, I played my daily game of dodging all the mirrors.

      Back on the hot set, Mo was displeased with his star. He barked out his criticisms, called her ‘a fat cow’ in German.

      ‘Drop your voice an octave and don’t lisp.’

      ‘Look at that lamp as if you could no longer live without it.’

      ‘You are the Empress of Russia, not a German milkmaid.’

He made her descend a staircase forty-five times, over and over again, until she got it right. She did it without demur. Her velvet crinoline, so magnificent, was heavy, and the intense heat of the lamps burned onto her face, but she didn’t perspire, and never once complained of fatigue. She was so courageous. Didn’t flinch, despite the insults, and the pain etched on her lovely face. Over and over and over again. Up and down. Down and up. Such a soldier, such a queen. She had 10,000 men. He marched her up to the top of the hill, and he marched her down again.

      But I was furious. Why was Mo being so cruel to my mother? What had she done that was so bad?

Bonne Nuit, Merci

      That gorgeous tart-face and her garter belt launched a legend. But, more than this, Madou knew how to sustain a legend.

      The reflection is of a movie star, but as I know all too well, she is also a woman who reads. Knut Hamsun, Selma Lagerlöf, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Friedrich Hölderlin. She worships Rilke; she knows, by heart, the writings of Erich Kästner. Very fancy, very modern.

      According to her myopic critics, her acting talent isn’t supreme, her singing voice at best mediocre; she can’t dance for toffee. None of that matters a jot. She isn’t a celebrity; she is a Movie Star.

      Here’s what I think about Moses von Goldberg. He saw her as someone who could take his direction, someone pliant, and ready to be moulded. Poppycock! I once heard him say, ‘I can turn you off and on like a spigot.’ Their first film together set the tone for their professional relationship: the clever, gentle, sophisticated, older gentleman dominated and humiliated by a crass showgirl. He would return to this theme over and over again.

Lola Lola had to be able to inspire obsession in an intelligent man, and that was exactly the quality he was looking for. Madou had it naturally. It couldn’t be faked. Eventually, inevitably, the girl destroys him. He should have known. But how could he have known that Professor Unrat’s descent into a grinning cuckolded stage clown would mirror his own doomed relationship?

      As I say, he wasn’t counting on her intelligence. She was no statue, or puppet. When he deserted her, to save himself, she found her own way. He left Hollywood to make another picture, telling her that she’d be better off without him, that she would develop as an actress. But she was terrified of losing his light. Then she had an idea. She would steal his light.

      For days, she watched Herr Direktor’s films in the projection room, over and over again. The others thought she was vain, but she was mastering his art. Light and shadow. Shadow and light. Another director was found, and on the first day of shooting she asked for her mirror.

      She looks at him scornfully when he brings her a hand mirror. She points her finger, and I am wheeled in front of her: an eight-foot mirror on castors, dotted with light bulbs. She looks around the set at the crew, who are half mesmerised, half shocked. She is terrified, but, always the warrior, she sets about her job. She instructs the electricians to plug in the lights, and the grips to position me, so that she can see herself exactly as the camera will see her.

Then she makes her next move.

      ‘With your permission, gentlemen,’ she issues instructions to the electricians high up.

      ‘You on the right, come down, but slowly, there stop, set it.’

      Then it is the turn of the small wattage lights, and then the all-important key lights. The spotlight near her face, but high, high above it, and a little to the right. She raises her finger, until she feels the exact amount of heat.

      All the time, she stares at me, the mirror, and, like a miracle, shadows begin to appear. She is moulding, shading, highlighting. Then the face appears, in all its luminous beauty. A small butterfly shape flutters under the nose. She is ready for the camera to roll.

      The crew, hardened and tough, begin a slow, appreciative, clap. She smiles: ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’

      She has taken control of Joan Madou, the Movie Star.

      Mo was vanquished, and he knew it. Vanquished by a mirror.

The Little Napoleon

      A bad day at the studio.

      The crew was pale. Nobody said a word.

      ‘Do it again.’

      ‘Why are you so incapable of doing anything correctly?’

      ‘Clear the set.’

      This was the third time Mo had cleared the set. I waited outside