In truth, I am young, just thirty, and paying my dues. Greatness will come later. It is endless, tedious work. I suffer as much as anyone in history has. I feel familiar grumbling in my gut and my groin. I want to eat! I want to love! But first I must suffer for my art.
And for Jerry Lewis!
He plays a clown called Helmut Dorque (pronounced Dork), sentenced to a prison camp for insulting a Nazi. We extras are political prisoners, brought into a separate area, bordered by barbed wire.
Today I am one of a few adults among children. We are looking through the barbed wire, at Jerry clowning on the other side. He wears a chalky face and charcoal on his lips. He salutes and knocks himself out. He “sews” with a hair from his head. He puts on a too-small jacket. His pants fall down.
We all laugh. I make sure to laugh the loudest of all. But the camera is not even on me.
Catching my attention is a little minx sitting on the set. She is called Elsa (not her real name). Does she work for the studio in Stockholm? I think so. I know she is a leggy young blonde with an insolent air. A princess. Yet she notices Graus, as he trudges back and forth, in agony.
When Jerry calls “cut,” I am full of energy and at the woman’s side. At first, she ignores me, her nose in the air. Yet she is intrigued by the filth on my face, the torment in my heart. She keeps looking at me. She knows I am a man who confers greatness on women.
“Shouldn’t you be with the others?” she asks, haughtily.
“I’m not one of many,” I say.
“But you’re an extra.”
“I am extra. There is more of me than of most men.”
I can see a faint ripple go through her pale skin. I am no flatulent producer! I am a peasant! I am Graus! She feels the truth of this.
“I shouldn’t even be seen speaking to you,” she says.
“It will be our secret,” I say. I place a card in her hand with the address of my Stockholm hotel. My hovel. Where the peons, the trash of the production are staying.
“What makes you think I would ever come to such a place?” she says.
She will have to climb through the mud and dirt to reach it. She will do it, if she wishes to be a woman.
“You have always wanted to be there,” I tell her.
She knows it is true. But it is time to return to work. Jerry is calling.
That night, I wait. But I do not doubt. I know that, sooner or later, Elsa will descend to Graus’s level. Smoking, I look out the window at the crappy street. I see a roach creep across my floor.
Then a taxicab pulls up.
I watch Elsa get out, demurely covered by a fur coat. Her feet are in black high heels. She carries a shiny purse. She has probably come from a fancy function. As the cab pulls away, she looks at her surroundings and shudders. Is it from fear or excitement?
Both!
I have switched on no light. I have left the door unlocked. I turn, as it creaks open. She stands there, lit only by a dim bulb hanging in the hall. Our eyes meet. Then she opens her fur.
She is dressed as a chambermaid.
My blood moves.
Without a word, she removes one high heel. Then, with it, she suddenly smashes out the hall bulb. Its fragments scatter to the floor. We are plunged into total darkness, where we both belong, where we are at home. Then she enters and shuts the door behind her.
Of course, I expect to be her master.
“I believe these shoes need shining!” I say, and point to my scuffed-up loafers.
She does not move. I clear my throat.
“I said, I believe these—”
“I heard you!” she yells at me, shocking me into silence.
I regroup, a bit—what’s the stupid American expression?—thrown for a loop.
“That’s no way to keep your job, cheeky young miss,” I say.
Elsa only rolls her eyes. Then she starts marching around the rotten room, rubbing dust and blowing dirt from surfaces. Then she looks at me with a face of purest disgust.
“What a pig you are,” she says.
“Excuse me?”
“Yes, you. You’re scum, you know that?”
I can’t believe my ears. This isn’t the way this encounter is supposed to go. She is supposed to accept my supremacy and her own lowliness. Instead, she goes on and on, blaming me first for befouling the room—“Haven’t you ever heard of a vacuum?”—and then for befouling everything on earth.
Something strange is going on.
Even though she is the maid, Elsa is turning the tables. Her gesture of subservience—wearing the costume—has given her the license not to serve. She is willing to be menial; that gives her the power to be superior. I don’t understand it, either, but I find, to my amazement, that I like it.
