They grew larger, magically. Then, the lips. The perfect Cupid’s bow.
Finally, it was time for the review dress. It was the green velvet one we’d seen in the sketch that first day. Edged with mink. Travis had excelled himself. Everyone would remember this dress. Garbo would be mad as hell when she saw it. Travis had created an oversized muff that matched the trim and the hat. Mother was right to insist that her hair should be pulled back, so the Cossack hat, set at a rakish angle, did not detract from the face. On anyone else the huge hat would be absurd. She had never looked more ravishing.
How to transport her to the soundstage, when the dress was so wide she could only exit the door sideways? A horse and cart were sent to her dressing room. I leapt forward to help her into the cart.
‘No, Angel. You must not touch the velvet or it will leave finger marks.’
Travis obliged, wearing special gloves. There was a special bucket seat at the back of the cart for me. Mother stood erect, holding onto a rail. The horse set off at a snail’s pace, transporting his most precious cargo.
When she entered the soundstage, the crew burst into spontaneous applause. Piercing whistles reverberated around the set. A film crew has seen and heard it all. They are tough, hard to please, impressed by nothing. Mother bestowed a tiny smile in grateful acknowledgement. Mo took her hands and kissed them reverently. Then he led her to the set. I followed behind, curious to see Mo’s latest creation. It was the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen.
Hundreds of grotesque, malformed gargoyles and hobgoblins writhed and screamed, or smirked insanely. They lined the doorways, corridors and tables of the Imperial Palace. Oversized Byzantine saints and martyrs glared menacingly from great heights. Wooden crucifixes with emaciated male figures peeked out between huge stone pillars. Flickering candles in iron-branched candelabras created shadows of frightening intensity.
Worst of all were the El Greco skeletons: they twisted over mantels, peered through windows; macabre guests at the long banqueting table, bent over bowls of rotting, waxen food. The figures were draped in mouldering shrouds and grave clothes, their lean fingers reaching out to me. On the wall, near the door, I saw a dried, withered body of a child hung up by its hair. On a pedestal, I saw a screaming man being forcibly sodomised by a metal pike.
Cleverly, these corpses only served to highlight Madou’s ethereal beauty, so she had no fear of them. Not that anything or anyone could inspire fear in my mother. As for worry about her small daughter witnessing this set of cruelty, she had no such concerns.
Nor did she need to fear the width of the iron doors: they were gargantuan. Looking back with adult eyes, I know that those doors were gigantic! It took at least five people to open and close them, so heavy they were. The imperial throne was shaped into a double-eagle, and there was a huge mirror curved into a winged gargoyle.
Finally, Mo pointed to his living sculpture: three topless maidens, looped by their wrists to a horizontal cartwheel, twirled their contorted bodies around and around in a slow dance like erotic trapeze artists. Mother did not flicker.
‘Mo, it’s superb. But I want to see my troops.’
First, she called for her special huge mirror, and it was rolled on, cables coiled around its base, snake-like. When the lights were plugged in, she looked at her reflection. A nimbus of light surrounded her face.
The Red Queen in lush green velvet. Mo kissed the back of her neck – looked at her in the long mirror, and smiled as he went back to work.
Madou was incomparable in that scene. Hundreds of handsome Cossacks created two straight lines. If she felt nervous, it did not show. She walked between them, to inspect her guard, staring intently at their crotches. She halted and looked down at one of the troops, talking to his trousers, and not his face, saying, ‘Hmm, you’re new here.’
When a sword was pushed into her abdomen, she purred, ‘Is that your sword, or are you just pleased to see me?’
She was magnificent, electrifying. She was in command. The spoilt German bride, transformed into an empress, ready to defeat her faithless, gormless husband and his army. Every male gaze was turned upon her, longing to kiss her hand, ready to die for their queen.
Then she turned, picked a piece of stray hay from a bale, and placed it seductively between her lips. She sucked the straw, staring boldly at her director. Teasing him, taunting him. He had not instructed her to do this. He who controlled her every movement, every gesture. I could tell by his face that she had overstepped the mark. There was a stunned silence. He stared at his star. She held his gaze, cool and still.
‘Cut. Print.’
Tonight, back home, they quarrel fiercely. He stalks over to her desk, where he finds a love letter. She sits, with her stillness, looking at her reflection, while he rages behind her, waving the letter, with a theatrical flourish worthy of a Drury Lane actor. I have heard this all before. It is a well-rehearsed narrative. I am the only witness, the sole audience member, forced to endure this man’s appalling arrogance.
MO: It was I who found you on the filthy streets of Berlin and brought you to Hollywood. My mistake was to fall in love. I ought to have known that you were unfaithful to the core.
MADOU: You knew about my history before you met me.
MO: Yes, I saw you posing for photographs with violets and lavender at your groin. I know all about Gerda. And that other woman who sang that song, Margo. Margo Lion.
Yes, he knew all about them. That stupid song they would sing at the cabaret. What was the song?
MADOU: ‘My Best Girlfriend.’
MO: Yes, that absurd song. Drawing attention to yourself in that revolting manner.
MADOU: Why don’t you stop bouncing up and down like a rubber ball.
MO: So it was Berlin. I know you were curious, and wanted to try everything, but don’t forget it was my idea to introduce you to Hollywood with that Sapphic kiss. Full on the mouth. Dressed in men’s evening clothes, and top hat. My idea. Not Yours. I changed your name from Maria to Joan.
As he continues his ranting monologue, her face turns very still. Only her eyes move. I know she is thinking over the Berlin scenes she has talked of so often when we are alone. Her mind is drifting back to the bare-breasted whores who chatted with clients at the Café Nationale. The rent boys, on every corner, flicking their whips, dressed in leather and feathers. The White Mouse, on the Behrenstrasse, where Anita Berber danced her naked dances of Horror, Lust and Ecstasy, wearing her drugs in a silver locket around her neck. The little hotels in the Augsburger Strasse, where you could rent a room for an hour. God, how she missed that life. So much colour, so much excitement.
Mo was a fool. She alone had taken her inspiration for Lola Lola from the cross-dressed boys from the cabaret. One of the blonde transvestites she especially admired wore ruffled panties, a feather boa, and a white silk top hat. The boys treated her like a sister, and they went dancing; she in her men’s tails and top hat. She liked to wear her dead father’s monocle. It made her feel close to him.
Of course she preferred women, but they were impossible to live with. Mo knew about her past. Why did he insist on being so bourgeois? She lights a cigarette and turns around.
‘You know, Mo, in America, sex is an obsession,
