Crossing on the Paris Page 31

  2. What was one of the most enjoyable moments when writing this novel?

  It’s easier to choose the least enjoyable moment: writing Julie’s rape scene. When I was finished, I took a bike ride in the sun to decompress, relieved to have gotten through it.

  There were many pleasant moments: writing Vera’s journal entries in first-person, as well as the scene where she goes through the memorabilia in her trunk; describing the meals (as a foodie, I loved researching old steamer menus—you can find originals for sale on-line—and then looking up the recipes in my ancient Escoffier cookbook or the Larousse Gastronomique); or when Constance discovers her inner-suffragist.

  3. Crossing on the Paris tells many stories and also reveals the significant impact that each person’s story has on their attitudes and choices. Have you always been a storyteller? Who has influenced you in your development as a writer?

  For many years my storytelling was limited to my own experience and, when I was younger anyway, I was pretty good at telling an anecdote, filled with fun details (Let me tell you about the first time I went to Mardi Gras . . . ). When I moved abroad, my correspondence took on this oral bent, especially after the advent of email: I’d write long letters to friends describing the strange and amusing side of everyday life. Emails became travel writing, then finally, fiction. As for influences, I suppose it is the mixed and very heavy bag of all the books I’ve read over the years . . . That, and the fact that I have several friends who also write; it is something we enjoy talking about and sharing. I’m an honorary member of the “Mystic Order of East Alabama Fiction Writers”—how cool is that?

  4. As you wrote about this time period, were there aspects of life or travel in 1921 that you found yourself longing for? If so, what?

  Since I’ve lived in Spain for nearly twenty years (and try to visit my family every summer), I am no stranger to international flights. Unfortunately, as the years go by, travelling by plane has become an increasingly unpleasant process. I would love to be able to cross in a luxury liner, eating delicious food and doing zany sports, to arrive on the other side of the ocean refreshed. Also, like the lead in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, I rather envy Faith’s bohemian life in Paris at that time: the energy, the enthusiasm, the absolute glut of creativity.

  5. Which character in the book was the most difficult for you to develop? Why?

  Nikolai. In the first few drafts of the novel, this character was a profoundly disturbed, very quiet man who, from the moment Julie caught his hat on deck, became obsessed with her. And in those original versions, she was immediately leery of him. Although he was interesting and scary, he lacked depth and a history. I decided this character would be more universal and realistic as a sweet-talking manipulator—still dangerous, still dark (I’m guessing he got some of those tattoos in prison), but not a madman.

  6. Did you have an idea from the beginning how you wanted each of the three protagonists to develop? Or did this notion evolve as you wrote the novel?

  Before beginning a novel, I make lots of notes and outlines, write odd paragraphs and descriptions, and construct family backgrounds (and yes, of course, I have a fetish pen—but it’s a completely replaceable Pilot 0.5 V-Ball), so when I sit down to write, I know where I’m going. That said, I must admit that, in the earlier versions, neither Constance nor Julie had reached their true potential. They became stronger, asserted themselves more, with each rewriting.

  7. Do you keep a journal? Was Vera’s elaborate journaling a reflection of some of your own practices?

  I kept a journal when I was a kid—at ten, then again at fifteen—and have kept a few travel diaries as an adult. However, in 2005, at the age of forty-two, I decided to write the memoirs of my youth—alphabetically. The project was challenging in its restrictions, but also very suggestive (Indeed, “A” was the tragicomedy of having my appendix rupture when I was alone at home with my senile grandmother). My oldest friend, Mary Dansak, and I wrote our ABC memoirs simultaneously. We had a wonderful time—emailing each other our vacillating lists of what each letter would represent, discussing our progress—then, that summer, we presented each other with a spiral-bound photocopied book. Perhaps Charles should have participated in the project alongside Vera? After I finished it, like Vera, I found myself reading and rereading my own anecdotes . . . and came to some of her very same conclusions.

  8. Family relationships and dynamics is a poignant theme in Crossing the Paris. Do you think being the daughter of two psychologists shaped your interest in writing about human relationships?

  I am very interested in family dynamics—such a mundane but complicated subject!—but I can’t say if this is due to my parents’ profession. For the most part, they were academic psychologists, working with college students rather than the mentally ill. Neither of my parents was the stereotypical “head-shrinker”—they never asked people about their childhood or tried to analyze what they just said—but my father was a great listener.

  9. Vera, Constance, and Julie were surprised by the unexpected gift of connecting with one another on the Paris. What was one of the unexpected gifts of writing this novel?

  It was making a connection with strangers through writing; the idea that I could write something that would interest someone outside my circle of friends and family. My first and foremost stranger became my agent, Michelle Brower—a great gift.

  10. If you would have been onboard the Paris, what would you have enjoyed the most about being aboard?

  Besides the gourmet meals and lounging on a deckchair, book in hand, I would have enjoyed meeting some of the other people on board. Like Constance realized on the last day, each person on the ship had a unique, individual crossing. Here we met just a handful of the people on board—what were the others doing?

  11. What are your plans now? Are you working on any new projects?

  I have just finished a novel that revolves around a historical monument in Valencia, the city where I live. The Admiral’s Baths was a small, public bathhouse that opened for business in 1313 and finally closed in 1959. Really mind-boggling for an American! The novel is comprised of four long, interlinking stories, which take place at different times in the baths’ history, each with a different female protagonist: Fatima, a young Muslim woman struggling to survive during the Black Plague; Angela, a converted Jew, considered suspect by the Inquisition because of her family history; Clara, an off-beat spinster who meets a French traveler before the Napoleonic invasion; and Rachel, a history professor, who comes to Valencia in 2011 to study the baths after an extremely difficult semester. They all have the bathhouse in common. And something else as well.

  Keep reading for an exclusive look at Dana Gynther’s next novel, coming August 2015 from Gallery Books,

  THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH

  “Hold it. Good. Now just one more.” Edward Steichen looked through the lens, then back up at the statuesque blonde draped in silk and jewels.

  Lee leaned against an antique table in the Park Avenue penthouse; she was nearly holding her breath, affecting aloofness. From the corner of her profiled eye, she watched the photographer purse his lips and squint. He left his tripod to adjust her evening gown.

  “The sleeves on this jacket would make a geisha girl jealous,” he said, pulling the fur collar up on one side and letting it tumble down the other shoulder.

  “Imagine eating soup in this thing.” She jerked her arm to make the thick satin swing, then quickly resumed her pose. Her smileless profile faced a soft light cast by the crystal chandelier hanging overhead. It was as if she were observing an elegant gathering a few steps away, but not able to take part. Odd for someone so used to being in the center of things.

  He snapped the last shot—“At ease, Miller”—then motioned to his assistant to pack up the equipment.

  Lee slipped off the unwieldy jacket and reached for her cigarette case. “I’m going to miss you, Colonel.”

  “I’ll miss you too.” He lit her cigarette, then his own c
igar. “When are you leaving?”

  “Next week.” She threw her head back, blowing out smoke, and stretched. “I can’t wait. I spent almost a year in Paris when I was eighteen and I’ve been itching to go back to Europe ever since.”

  “Is Paris your first stop?”

  “No, I’m starting off in Florence. I’ve been hired to collect Renaissance patterns for a designer. You know, so he can copy bits and bobs from the fifteen-hundreds and have everyone think it’s the dernier cri.” They shared a smile; both had an ample understanding of the fashion world and all its ironies. “I’m travelling over with Tanja Ramm.”

  “The dark-haired model with the perky little nose?” He scrunched up his own in demonstration. “Huh. I had her pegged as a real goody-goody.”

  “With her, at least I’ll have the guise of respectability.” Lee laughed, but there was some truth to what she said. They were so different—Lee often scandalized the shy brunette with her flippant attitude toward partying and casual affairs—that Lee often thought of Tanja as the Good to her Bad. “Really, she’s lovely. Funny and bright. We’ve been close friends for years. We’ll spend a month or so together in Italy then she’s off to visit relatives in Germany. That’s when I’ll head up to Paris.”

  “It is the center of the universe, after all.”

  “Absolutely! The language and cuisine, the art scene, the fashion—I love all of it. I can’t believe four years have gone by since I was there.”

  “When you get there, you should look up Man Ray.”

  “Is that a person or a robot?” She smiled behind her cigarette.

  “He’s the best photographer in Paris, though he’s actually a New Yorker. He’s extremely innovative. He does abstract work, surrealist art, portraits, film... but he’s been known to lower himself and do fashion shoots from time to time. I’m sure he’d love to use you.”

  With his cigar clamped in the corner of his mouth, Steichen began rifling through his briefcase. He pulled out a French Vogue, opened it to a marked page, and handed it to her.

  “This is his. It’s called Noire et Blanche.”

  She took the magazine in both hands and sat with the image on her lap. In it, the oval head of a woman lay on a table, an African mask stood next to her, held upright by her hand. Lee studied the juxtaposition of the two faces. Their eyes were both closed, their surfaces smooth, the hair shiny and still. Their features—both the ebony mask and the pale woman—were honed down to the bare essentials of beauty.

  “It’s incredible,” she breathed.

  How different this was from her modeling jobs, a variety of poses meant to set off fashionable gowns, striking accessories, the latest hats. This was bold—though she couldn’t quite decide if it were sophisticated and sensual or primitive and slightly terrifying. The nearly disembodied head, the nude shoulders, the serious stoniness—it was as if the woman were asleep, in a trance, or a mask herself. She wondered what the man who took the shot was like, who the woman was. Were they a pair?

  “I could write you a letter of introduction if you’d like,” Steichen suggested.

  Lee Miller looked up at him; her slanted blue eyes were shining, her full lips parted with excitement.

  “What am I saying?” he said, with a laugh. “With that face, you don’t need any letters.”

  “Don’t be so sure, Colonel.” She winked at the older man. “Looks like your Ray Man might prefer a voodoo doll or a Tiki mask to a mug like mine.”

  Lee & Man

  1929 - 1932

  I.

  Lips pressed together in concentration, Lee sat under a lamp at a wooden table, tracing over a penciled design in India ink. With deliberate strokes, she colored in the dark spaces around a stylized artichoke, the central detail of a High Renaissance hat. She was finishing off her first batch of fashion-worthy patterns—sketches made in the dim light of the Uffizi Gallery and Pitti Palace, then inked over at the pensione—and was eager to send it to New York and be rid of it.

  “Hello there.” Tanja breezed into their room, a knitted shopping bag over her shoulder, a fresh loaf of filone sticking out the top. She peeked down at Lee’s drawing. “What are you working on?”

  “A hat I found yesterday in Perugino’s ‘Lamentation over the Dead Christ.’ It made me laugh.” She carefully blew on it then picked it up to show Tanja. “I mean, look at it! More than a hat, it looks like the tattooed skull of a sailor, like the head of Ishmael’s buddy in Moby Dick.” She set it back on the table with a small snort. “I thought it was funny—imagining the chic ladies of Manhattan strutting around in hats like these—until I started tracing it. It’s a pain in the neck! I can’t believe I agreed to this ridiculous job.”

  “You need a break. Are you hungry? I bought some of that chicken liver pâté you like. The one with capers and anchovies.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Lee stood up to store away her things, to make room at their only table. Slowly guiding her finished drawings into the cardboard portfolio, she knocked over the ink. Deep black seeped across the oak like an evil spirit, onto her cigarettes and over her sketchbook. “Damn it to hell! Grab a towel, a rag, something—”

  Tanja snatched the Guardianoff her bed, one week old and twice read, and handed it to Lee, who crumpled it to soak up the ink with newsprint.

  “Shit, I think I’ve got some on my dress.”

  “Who wears ecru to work with India ink?” Tanja muttered, a loud aside.

  “Who comes to Florence to work at all?” Lee pitched the soggy newspaper into the bin then rinsed her hands in the basin in the corner. She examined her knee-length dress, staring down at the spattering of tiny black flecks on the hem of pale brown chiffon. She shrugged—“Not a bad look”—then turned back to Tanja.

  “Let’s get out of here and get a drink. I’m desperate for some air.”

  They left their dark pensione on the via Porta Rossa and strolled over to the sunlit Piazza della Signoria, the city’s beating heart. In the two weeks they’d been in Florence, they had become habitués in a few local cafés, where the flirty barmen and waiters remembered their names and preferences. Heads always turned as the two slender, short-haired models—one dark, one fair—walked by.

  “Lee, Tanja! Le bellissime ragazze!” The awkward youth, his hair slicked back with pomade, his waist cinched in by a white apron, was quickly joined by an older waiter, whose smile was equally large.

  “Sit, sit! Chianti, no?” The older one asked, his limited English the better of the two. “Cold?”

  “Si, grazie,” Lee answered. She had picked up a handful of phrases since they’d been in Italy, but was looking forward to being back in France, where she could truly speak the language and not just pretend.

  Sitting back with closed eyes, her bare arms soaking up the sun, she tried to think of ways to get out of her research assignment. Would the seven completed drawings be enough? Maybe she could claim tuberculosis, malaria, the plague? Or that she was kidnapped by gypsies? Perhaps Tanja could write a letter saying she’d lost all the feeling in her hands?

  The older waiter ceremonially served the wine as the younger one slid a generous plate of almonds to the center of their table. “For you,” he managed.

  Lee raised her glass to them with a tired smile, then took a long sip.

  “Oh, Tanja, I’m so fed up with these stupid designs.”

  “I have some news that might make you feel better. I’ve seen Mr. Porter this morning—”

  “Hooray,” Lee said, her deadpan voice oozing sarcasm.

  Before their departure, Tanja’s grandfather had somehow procured a letter of introduction to an elderly art dealer, Bancroft Porter, one of Florence’s fin-de-siècle English expatriates and a lifelong bachelor. Since their first meeting the week before, they’d been saddled with him every day; he’d insisted on showing them every last monument, statue, painting—hell, every last rock in the city. Mr. Porter fancied himself their guide and chaperone, but Lee suspected what he really li
ked was the good-looking boys they attracted.

  “Really, Tanja, not Mr. Porter again,” Lee continued, pouring herself another glass. “He reminds me of our Art History professor back at the League. What was his name? Dr. Rowell! Remember him, with his jowly drone and never-ending lists of dates?” Lee affected a whiney monotone, “And this master, 1443-1497, used walnut oil to—”

  “Oh, Lee, he’s not that bad,” Tanja began, then giggled. “Well, almost. But today he told me that he’s managed to get us into Bernard Bereson’s salon this afternoon.” She beamed at Lee with expectation, but was met with a blank stare. “You know, the historian and critic, the man museums turn to if they’re not sure a piece is authentic? Mr. Porter says Bereson is the leading expert on Renaissance art in the world.”

  “Not more Renaissance art! Tanja, I’ve had it up to here.” Tipsy, she flung her hand over her head, nearly hitting a passing waiter. “All of these old expats are the same. Stodgy, self-satisfied and, well, boring. Like characters out of a Henry James novel. I’d rather spend the afternoon on my own than with them.”

  “Working?” Tanja threw her an incredulous look.

  “Of course not.”

  Feeling the wine move from her empty stomach straight to her head, Lee swooped up a handful of almonds and tipped them into her mouth. Crunching, she gazed around the large square: a horse-drawn cart laden with tomatoes clopped along the ancient brick pavement, past grandiose palazzos and tall narrow houses; young men lounging under the arcades called out to a trio of girls, heads covered in black lace as they scurried off to mass; two clusters of plump, pink tourists—British? Or Germans, more like—studied the open-air statues. One lot was peeking up at a marble woman being violently abducted, shading their eyes with Baedeker guidebooks while trying to ignore the hopeful beggars orbiting around them with shy, half-opened hands; the other, at the foot of an equestrian Medici, was swatting away a persistent souvenir vendor. He turned around in frustration and caught Lee’s roving eye. With a professional smile, he made a beeline toward her. Rushing across the square, his arms stretched out to unfold a series of photographs tied together with a glossy red ribbon.