Free Black Mirror by Gail Jones Page B

tending with blackened gloves his brazier of chestnuts; he bends forward and blows at the coals, ever so gently, re-positionsthe chestnuts, one by one, and then lifts his gaze to nod inquiringly in Victoria’s direction. Above him a green Metro sign is blooming. A small dog, chinchilla-like and dressed in flounces, is dragged past her, sniffing. Jules buys just one paper cone of roasted chestnuts and they share this modest meal, encased in novelty.
    In Victoria’s mind everything here is wrapped in cellophane: Paris crackles; it is shiny; it is her own bright faceted gift.
    Later, in bed, she whispers into the night:
    This city: its scent, its scent is feminine.
    Perhaps Jules thinks her absurd; perhaps she is overcome by her own giddy impulse of invention. He is quiet; then he stirs.
    I’ve always thought so, he softly replies. The Metro, too. It is yeasty, rich. Sometimes it smells of menstrual blood.
    In the winter dark Jules Levy stretches sleepily to encompass her. His arm is warm and firm — it almost feels like her own — as it lies, sash-like, across her naked breast.
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    Did you know, Anna, that I was once hypnotised? I was so anxious to become a true Surrealiste that I became instead a shameless and docile body, reconstructed as medium, the object of others’ intentions, a sign, a manikin. I would have lain on a table, Aztec and sacrificial, with my breasts exposed to the regarding sky, inviting knives. I wanted to be oh-so convulsively beautiful, a rose, a swan, an alabaster Venus. Bretonused to say: La beauté sera CONVULSIVE ou ne sera pas — ‘beauty will be convulsive, or it will not be.’ I believed that maxim absolutely. I still do today.
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    It was a late-night party at the Eluard’s apartment. The crowd was eating Swiss chocolates shaped like women, which were proffered in a teapot on a silver tray. Dali was there, smacking his lips. André Breton, with his head like a light bulb, had an organ-grinder’s monkey balancing on his shoulder; Victoria watched him slide chocolate women into the animal’s mouth. Everyone was enacting their own exceptionality. Under the electric apotheosis of too many lamps they were stylised and enticing. Simone. Paul. Breton’s wife, Jacqueline. Leonora, she remembers, wore a violet dress with lime-green hummingbirds embroidered over the bodice, and carried in her manner a sort of party-time excitation. She was by then the lover of the German painter Max Ernst, and Victoria was beginning to discover the sensations of jealousy. The pair were together, in a corner, sucking women at each end. Leonora caught her eye, dissolved her chocolate mouthful, and mimed the words cannibal carnival ; after which she laughed and kissed Ernst with a peck on the cheek. Then in a tender parody of her silent message, she bit at his ear lobe. Victoria experienced the misery in seeing one’s object of infatuation at the far other-side of a room, animated and autonomous. Her feelings were sharp, crystal. Nusch Eluard, with her heart-shaped face, walked over to kiss the light bulb and confirmed Victoria’s aloneness.On the gramophone played Ellington’s Baby When You Ain’t There. It was Jules she was missing. Jewels. Jewels.
    Victoria drank thimbles of Chartreuse and gobbled too many women. Smoke from Gauloises floated in the air. Jelly Roll on piano. Dali talking Hitler. Breton debating Maldoror with Dora and Jacqueline. Leonora began dancing, setting her birds in flight. A tray of trembling desserts, crème passionelle , circulated among the crowd, each on a paper plate cut in the shape of a hand. Eluard was singing: forked tongue, spooned tongue, knifed tongue, forked tongue … When someone suggested, half-serious, a demonstration of hypnosis, Victoria was so very drunk and unhappy that she offered herself immediately.
    Take me. Subordinate me. Give me erasure.
    André Breton, minus his monkey, assumed an air of