The Good Inn Read online

  He was especially infuriated at her narrow-minded view of the arts, which she had made all too clear in a most unattractive intoxicated state the night before. After he’d approached her with his interest, she had stated in a most public display for all to hear that “sex on a painting canvas is clearly art, but sex on a moving canvas could never be.”

  Overnight, however, her opinion on the matter had changed, most likely when she woke to find that all her money had been spent. She arrived for work the following day, either in good spirits or more likely because of them. George could smell it all over her body.

  George was another story. How did he end up on the other end of Léar’s lens? In a bed with the most flexible woman this side of the Moulin Rouge? These were exactly the questions that George was asking himself while walking back across the Pont Neuf to his comfortable flat on the side of town that someone like Nickie Willy would feel uncomfortable in.

  The term used for the likes of George and his ilk in Nickie’s circle was bourgeois. But this term, much like a curse word, had different meanings depending on the place and time. In this time and place bourgeois was something to strive for. It wasn’t as much about having money as it was showing that you had money. And showing that you had money was quite expensive. George had fallen into this social trap. And it was a trap. No one with a modest salary could ever keep up the appearances that were necessary for long. The latest thing for the new bourgeois was to have a sitting room, and while George had just enough money to finish his fancy new parlor, afterward, there would be nothing left.

  His father had spent every penny he had sending George to the finest schools, clothing him in the best threads, not so much for his son’s sake but in order to show that he was in the same class as his peers.

  So it was to his father’s great disappointment that George decided to become an actor. He had squandered his family’s savings on a bluff. All in hopes that one day the gamble would pay out and a son would sneak his way into the upper tier of nineteenth-century Parisian society, or a daughter would marry well. For George, the payoff was nowhere in sight and he was eventually cut off. But that was only part of the reason George was here.

  The other reason was because Léar had asked him personally. His exact words were:

  Georgie, my boy, you will make some easy money and it might even be fun. It’s no big deal really, every actor sleeps with his costar. You just get to skip the song and dance. You get to skip the foreplay and start by taking her home after a long day’s work. It’s like we aren’t even in the room. You will not be George. You will be a soldier who wanders upon an inn. If you can act out the classics, as I have seen you do, you can act the part of a soldier alone in a room with a beautiful woman whom you will take to bed without even having to introduce yourself! Voilà!

  Walking away from it all in the cold morning, George had started to doubt if it was such a good idea. There was something about Nickie that worried him, and he wondered if he had really thought the whole thing through. It had been much more uncomfortable than he had expected it to be. Most important, it didn’t feel like art. It just felt like bad sex. Léar had promised him that in the end it would be a more popular attraction than anything seen on a Parisian stage. Even more bold was his statement “Soon every respectable actor in town will be doing it.”

  George opened the door to his flat and stood in the doorway looking in on the nearly finished sitting room that his previous night’s work would hopefully finish paying for. A letter waited for him on his entry room table. He opened it. It was a request for his presence at an audition. The letter was impressively official. From George’s face it was clear he was familiar with the people who’d sent it.

  George’s stern, frozen face warmed; he had been waiting for something like this.

  “Shakespeare, Georgie, Shakespeare.”

  Whether by fate, or chance, or a deal with a devil named Léar, George was going to get his break, and his sitting room.

  As George closed the door behind him, on the cold and on the previous night, another door in a neighborhood a short coach ride away swung open.

  Nickie’s night was just beginning. She had a new dance in mind to perform on this coming night, and no dance could be performed without its going by the owner of the club.

  Nickie burst through the backstage door, turned, spat toward it, straightened herself out, and marched out of the alleyway into the crowded streets.

  If that lowlife didn’t want her new act, then there were plenty of other lowlifes who would! She would take her act elsewhere. What had he called it? “Lewd”? She called it “The Willy Can-Can, Mainly Because She Can-Can.”

  “Too much skin,” he said. He’d be shut down, or worse.

  Turning a corner, Nickie found herself standing directly in front of the Moulin Rouge. It towered over her, as it always had when she had taken her stance at its doors before. This time she was going in, and she wasn’t going to leave without a spot on the marquee.

  “Well, well, Nickie Willy, the new queen of the cancan on the main stage, on the main street, in the biggest show in town. I’ll have to draw up something special for you and make sure it’s on every wall on every building down every street.” Sitting beside Nickie at their usual café was Jules Chéret.

  The seat beside Nickie had always been the most desired, even before all of Paris knew of it. To the often-starving artists of Montmartre, to be in the presence of Nickie Willy was to be moments from profound artistic inspiration, and one never knew when inspiration might strike. Nickie had a sparkling light that was always turned on, bathing all around her in a warm electric glow, and even the darkest, most troubled artist’s soul couldn’t help but be comforted and invigorated by it. The previous occupant of the chair beside Nickie’s had been Toulouse-Lautrec. Nickie and Toulouse-Lautrec had always looked quite strange together. She towered over him even while seated, creating the effect of a distorted mother and man-child. They were the oddest pair. Now the seat was held by Jules. Jules Chéret had been around for many years and had seen it all. He had seen Paris change—in his mind, for the worse. For the young, bright-eyed Nickie, this was still just the beginning. For men like Jules and Félix Fénéon, the end always seemed nearer.

  Toulouse-Lautrec had been a close friend and confidant of Nickie’s for her first year in Montmartre. At the time, he was the most celebrated affichiste in town. Pierre Bonnard, who was also at the table, was a contemporary of Toulouse-Lautrec and Chéret. He had worked his way up from being an illustrator for the Paris Daily News to being acknowledged as a bona fide artist. His work was beginning to gain as much notoriety as that of Seurat and Manet, who also were fans of his work.

  The poster artists of Paris were Nickie’s people. They had done what no artists before them had been able to: made money.

  Toulouse-Lautrec himself had not needed money, as he came from it, but when his friends saw that businesses were willing to pay handsomely for (at the time) their otherwise worthless art if they simply incorporated the names of products in the design, they happily offered their services.

  A whole new generation of young starving artists were, for the first time in their lives, not starving. More important, their work was being seen and the streets of Paris were their art gallery. Of course, this bold shift in the marrying of art and commerce came with a price. Many shunned them as sellouts, phonies, or slaves to the bourgeois. Many alliances and friendships had been broken.

  Toulouse-Lautrec was now deceased. In the one year that he had spent with Nickie before his untimely death at only thirty-six, he had left his mark on her. From that point on she was to be owned by the lights of Paris alone and never by a single man, no matter what gifts he came bearing. It was Toulouse-Lautrec who had introduced Nickie to Félix Fénéon. Pierre Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec had illustrated for the magazine La Revue Blanche, which Fénéon edited. Félix, who had once celebrated the early works of his peers, now threatened their lives for selling out and turning their
art into advertising. Their relationships soon soured, as did his affair with Nickie—on an occasion when she overheard his response to a poster bearing her image, he had said:

  This one is just like the rest of his works, the female types are plump and they grind their asses and stick out their tits, grinning from ear to ear. One would think that Nickie Willy would have had more to offer the world when finally we were able to peer upon her hidden talents; alas, all she was hiding was skin.

  After she heard of his comments Nickie’s already delicate friendship with the always controversial Fénéon soured. Her friends of course sided with her, and would lovingly describe her as half fairy and half streetwalker, and this she took as a compliment.

  Félix was becoming the stuff of modern French folklore and was spoken of lovingly by his friends as some sort of cultural terrorist. He had even begun a well-organized underground campaign to tear down every poster in Paris, and he would have continued to, if he didn’t have other problems. At the moment, Fénéon was wanted in connection with an explosion in a nearby café, of which he may or may not have been the architect. It was in protest of the political state and how it had suffocated his preferred artistic movement—one of the many things that disappointed Fénéon about mankind and what it had done to his Paris.

  Nickie loved all of these men in her way and never took sides. She stayed neutral and found that by doing so, she was always the person they could turn to for a favor. Favors were her currency. Tonight she was surrounded by all her most brilliant friends. Beside her, Chéret and Bonnard argued passionately about Fénéon’s artistic and political turn. Fénéon was noticeably absent after his recent remarks about their dear Nickie. On the other side of the grand table sat celebrated musician Erik-Alfred-Leslie Satie with Claude Debussy, who was quietly comforting his friend about a drubbing he’d recently received from a critic who’d referred to him as a “clumsy but subtle technician.” Debussy was suggesting that Satie define the terms of his own brilliance. “You should call yourself a ‘phonometrician’!”

  But politics and art bored Nickie. For her, it was all about the skin, the bones, where you put your hands, and how little you needed to wear your clothes.

  Nickie failed to mention, however, that her hypnotizing gyrations were, in the end, only half of what had gotten her this coveted spot in the biggest show in town. Colette, who had up until that night been the star of the show, had kissed another woman onstage. Not just any woman, her mentor, Mathilde de Morny, the Marquise de Belbeuf—whom she had become romantically involved with. The two had performed a new pantomime entitled Rêve d’Égypte. A small riot broke out, which the police had been called in to suppress. Her scandalous act and its fallout had set in motion Nickie’s rise to fame.

  And on this night, George would get the role he desired at an important theater in town. It would be his first big break on the road to many.

  Nickie would dance at the Moulin Rouge in place of Colette and be an overnight success. From that night on, every man of importance who came to see her show would request her company for a late dinner. Gifts would always be given. Her risqué dance routine would become the talk of the town. Her act would even inspire a filmmaker named Méliès to film her performance so it could be seen all over the world.

  Now . . .

  Léar paid attention to nothing outside of his own conquests except the competition. As he worked to finish his film, others had heard of his plans. From Méliès to Pathé, they all were preparing their own risqué reels. At the time, Léar was not overly concerned. He wasn’t just making a pornographic peep show. He was making a film.

  The solution of how he could distribute his groundbreaking film had yet to come to light, and this was proving to be a major setback in his plot. He knew Georges Méliès and the others had heard of his grandiose plans and were aware that he was up to something. He also knew they would do what they could to beat him to the punch as they had in the past, and eventually would again. He felt that time was running out.

  Before pictures could move, Eugène Pirou had perfected the “art” of the pornographic still. The jump to the moving image, however, was timid to say the least. The Kiss was the first attempt. It was exactly what it sounded like, a fifteen-second kiss between two well-dressed, proper individuals of opposite sexes. It had created quite the stir. Men had flocked to the peep show machines to peer down into a little hole in the top and watch this risqué entertainment. The floodgates had been opened and a few enterprising men saw a sea of potential. It was initially Pirou, the infamous photographer of harlots, the “peddler of skin,” who had suggested the idea that to tease one’s audience only required a window looking into a forbidden moment from afar, but to seduce one’s audience, and then to “have them,” one must be in the room with these strangers, one must be able to watch them up close and personal, in motion. So far he had only been able to capture the former. The moving picture camera was the first device that would be able to capture an act that was all about action.

  Léar had met Eugène Pirou while he was competing with the Lumière brothers in the Pigalle with his own projection equipment. Pirou was known for nude photography. His picture cards pushed the envelope and were highly sought after. They were only found in the most obscure and often dangerous places. It was a conversation between the two that led Léar, who at the time went by his less theatrical birth name, Albert Kirchner, to suggest he secure a moving picture camera for Pirou to experiment with. A partnership was born.

  Léar and Pirou came together to advance this new genre that would make its actors more “transparent” with Le coucher de la mariée, produced by Pirou and directed by Léar. The short starred a young Nickie Willy, who performed a striptease during a bath scene. Léar scoffed at his peers’ “modest” attempts to package the exploitation of the sexes and had plans to take it much further. Another early attempt at exploring this genre was What the Butler Saw, a mutoscope reel from the early 1900s. It depicted a scene of a woman partially undressing in her bedroom, as her butler shamelessly watches her through a keyhole.

  Léar felt these were mere foreplay. They were prudish attempts to capitalize on what Léar, in his heart, knew the men of Paris really wanted. These were just child’s play, and ten years later, film was moving in a much different direction.

  Now it was about the story. The story was what would make this medium real. This was what would elevate it from a novelty to an art. Léar was planning on being the name behind this art. This is why he had asked for Bernard Natan specifically.

  Not long after completing filming, Léar had sat down with Bernard Natan, whom he had paid well to visit him in Paris from his home in Romania. Léar had heard that Natan knew how to distribute the kind of movie he had made. He had supposedly done it before and was in fact the only man who had tried besides Léar and Pirou.

  Both Natan and Léar had heard of each other, but they had never met. Léar knew that Natan was a successful director of movies in his homeland and that he had designs on making a splash in Paris. The rumor was that he had also directed, starred in, and successfully distributed a long-form pornographic film throughout his country sometime around 1906.

  Men had returned from trips bragging about having been invited to a showing of this film and had described it as like nothing they had ever seen. He also knew that Natan had been arrested for his previous “morally objectionable” cinematic experiments and had served time. It was rumored that he was at present on the run from the law for a number of crimes Léar assumed must have been related to the distribution of censored materials. In other words, he was something of a hero to Léar.

  Natan knew that Léar was a successful businessman who had already made “legitimate” movies and was well connected in the industry—an industry that at this point consisted of only three types of people: those with camera equipment, those with projection machines, and those with neither. Léar had access to both.

  Natan wanted to meet somewhere out of the way. Léar
had assured him that no one in Paris would be looking for him or accusing him of anything, but after spending two years in a Romanian prison, as well as following from afar the trials and tribulations of the unfortunate Jewish soldier accused of treason, Alfred Dreyfus (whose innocence had been officially and definitively recognized the previous year), Natan had grown even more eccentric and jumpy.

  In the end, they met in the last place Léar thought anyone would ever think to look for someone having such a conversation: a church.

  Léar picked the place and Natan picked the time. Early on a Sunday morning, the two sat in a pew in the empty church. Léar was not accustomed to waking this early. They had both arrived at exactly seven forty-five A.M. Léar had begged for a later hour but Natan had insisted upon it. He explained that it had something to do with an escape plan. He said that he would have only forty-five minutes, so Léar might want to get to the point.

  One wouldn’t think a man like Léar would have been comfortable at all in a sanctuary like this, but he explained the moment Natan sat down next to him:

  “My first film was Passion du Christ. Do you know who my producer was? The Roman Catholic Church. It’s true. That is where I got my first break. It was the first film ever to depict the life of Christ. Now everyone does it. But at the time, it was quite shocking that someone would go to that place.”

  Léar continued. “In 1901, I began making scènes grivoises d’un caractère piquant (saucy scenes of a spicy character). My partner’s name was Pirou, perhaps you have heard of him? Together we began experimenting with making short-form peep shows more complex and realistic.

  “But now,” he explained to Natan, “I want to do something that will change everything. I want to reinvent myself and my work. I want to make a movie with sex . . . that tells a story. Christ, if the Roman Church could see me now.”