“I forgot how much you love dance,” Man says. “I should have thought to take you.” He untangles his body from hers and gets out of bed, throwing on the shirt and pants he has draped across a chair. “I’ve been so distracted—this painting is taking everything out of me.”

“It’s all right,” Lee says. “We’ve both been busy.”


Later that day, Man stands barefoot on top of their mattress, facing his painting of her mouth. The bedsheets are covered with drop cloths. Lee is sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, contemplating the inverted V of the painting she can see between his legs. A swatch of cirrus, a blob of her lower lip. From this angle his body bisects the giant canvas.

Her mind is still on the ballet. “Let’s go see it tonight,” Lee says to him. “Come with me.” Lee thinks the match the dance lit inside her will light him up too.

“Tonight? We can’t,” Man says. “It’s the salon.”

Lee has forgotten. Breton’s big hoopla. Posters hang all over the neighborhood, the names of the featured artists printed in one big curve running the length of the page: DALí~ERNST~RAY~ARP.

“Do I have to go?” Lee has not been able to parse the difference between this salon and the other weeknight gatherings Man’s been going to lately. Gatherings where, if she goes with him, she is never sure what role he wants her to play: coy ingenue, faithful mistress, bawdy tomboy. She tries out all of them and none feel like a fit or seem to fully please him.

“Of course! Everyone is going. Éluard wants that new girl of his to be included—what’s her name? Nusch?—and got Breton to agree. And this is a public event, not just one of Breton’s regular things.”

“So Nusch and Paul—who else?”

Man ticks off names on his fingers. “Tristan, Soupault, Aragon. Most likely Tatiana, and Ilse Bing—have you met Ilse yet?”

Lee can’t remember. She knows the core group of Man’s friends, but the more peripheral members, the ones who come and go depending on the group’s shifting alliances, leave her befuddled. Especially the women, whose entrée into these evenings is entirely dependent on whatever man they are attached to at the time. But Lee has gotten to know Tatiana, the blonde from Moscow whose accent is so thick it sounds as though she has sponges stuffed in her mouth. And she likes Nusch, a birdlike woman with whom Paul Éluard has recently fallen in love.

The rest of the women connected to Man’s circle Lee can do without. Recently, Lee bumped into a group of them at Le Dôme; they were gathered close around a café table like buzzards around carrion. Lee pulled up a chair but none of them moved to give her room, so she sat for a while on the outskirts of their group, her martini balanced on her knee because she could not reach a surface on which to set it. Lee realized then—and tells Man now—that the other women don’t like her because she is too pretty; they are intimidated by her, all of them except Tatiana, who has a certain regal beauty of her own.

Man shakes his head. “They acted cold to you that day because you were supposed to buy them a round of drinks,” he says.

“I don’t have the money for that!” Lee says, shocked.

“They think you do, and that’s all that matters. Besides—one round. You do have the money for that.”

As always, Man’s loose hold on finances annoys her. “Well, whatever the reason, they don’t like me and I don’t know how to fix it. And I don’t see why I should have to fix it.” Lee’s mouth sets in a moue of disappointment.

“They like you fine. Everyone likes you. Éluard loves you. And Breton is showing a film of mine tonight. I want you to see it.”

“A film? You gave that up.”

“It’s an old one. It’s really Dada, but everyone was so drunk when I showed it that I can show it to them now and call it Surrealist, and what the hell will they know?” Man smiles.

Lee stands up, stretches, goes into the bathroom. In front of the mirror she executes a faulty little pirouette, wishing she were going back to the Garnier.


The gallery is set up with folding wooden chairs and a projector aimed at the back wall. It is more than half full by the time Man and Lee arrive. People clap for Man when he walks in. He waves modestly and finds them chairs near the center of the room. Two poets walk back and forth in front of the projector, their silhouettes moving in strange distorted patterns behind them as they recite. The room is full of smoke and men and low, hushed chatter, and it is impossible to hear the reading over the audience; no one seems remotely interested in listening to the poets. Lee catches sight of Fraenkel—she can always recognize him from his little caterpillar mustache—sitting in a corner reading a newspaper and intermittently ringing a large brass cowbell.

After a while the audience quiets. Onstage, Philippe Soupault, a fierce, bony man whom Lee has met at several previous gatherings, gives an affected bow, closes his eyes, and begins reciting.

“No matter, no matter,

Animal cracker

The dish ran away with the quadroon.

When all was a clatter

Spitter spitter spatter

The bride

a groom

Room

Room

Room

I took the lettuce off the wall

and ate it.”

Someone in a middle row launches a crumpled ball of paper at him, and soon everyone is booing and whistling. Lee is surprised they don’t like it; the poem sounds to her like much of the other Surrealist writing she’s heard, which to her ears is all a bunch of gibberish. Soupault is unperturbed by the booing, keeps going, but finally Tristan gets on the stage and drags him off. A few moments of nothing, and then there is the hiss of film moving through the projector and the audience settles again. Tristan announces Man’s film, Le Retour à la Raison, and images project on the wall. Silhouettes of screws and pliers. The front of a Bugatti with a woman’s eyes where the headlights should be, blinking. More tools, scissors and hammers, dark black against a white background. Riotous and weird like all of Man’s work. As the film continues, some people in the audience, which quieted down initially, cough and shuffle. Chair legs scrape the floor. The combined rustle of restlessness. Beside Lee, Man sits coiled tight.

He leans toward her and whispers, “They don’t understand it.” Lee takes his hand. Though she’d never tell him, the truth is that Lee doesn’t understand it either. It feels to her as though she is sitting in the studio flipping through a stack of unrelated photographs. But maybe that is the point? Lee grows hot with embarrassment on Man’s behalf. She wants everyone to love the film. To love him.

Suddenly, there is the snap of nitrocellulose breaking. Man jumps up and moves to assist Breton, who kneels beside the projector and runs his hand along the film reel to stop the strip from unfurling further. The audience’s murmur becomes a din. People relax in their seats or turn around in their chairs to talk to the people behind them. Lee scans the room for people she knows. A few rows up and over, the Mdivanis sit together, impeccable in plus fours. Lee has not seen them since Patou’s party, and once she notices them she keeps her eye on them, wondering if and when they will talk to Man. She wonders if Man knows they are here, if he has seen them since he told her about them all those months ago.

Tatiana is wearing a trim hat with a veil and, perched on top, a small stuffed bird. Lee catches her eye and they nod at each other. A row up is Claude Cahun, looking more normal than usual in a black suit and red bow tie, and next to her is a dark-haired woman with a small camera hanging from a strap around her neck. Her hair is short, cut like Lee’s, and she has a perfectly centered mole at the nape of her neck, just above the collar of her white linen dress. She looks familiar, and Lee realizes she’s seen a picture of her before, posing with a Leica in the latest issue of Das Illustrierte Blatt. It must be Ilse Bing, the woman Man mentioned earlier. In the photo—and now, as she turns and scans the room—she wears an expression of calculating intelligence, and Lee is almost as intrigued by her as she is by her expensive camera.

Lee is just about to get up and say hello to Tatiana when the film starts up again. Man stands at the front of the room with Breton. More of the same images appear, tools and shots of a stark landscape, and this time the audience doesn’t settle. People continue to murmur as the film projects in front of them. Man’s gaze roves around the room, but he doesn’t look perturbed that they are talking; he’s more curious than anything else. Lee wonders if anyone—Man included—could explain the point of the film.

When it is over, there is a light smattering of applause. Man clearly expects some sort of follow-up, some questions, but Tristan just shouts from where he stands in the corner that it’s time to go into the gallery, and the audience stands and moves en masse into the next room. A few people start closing the folding chairs to make more space. Someone sets out bottles of wine and immediately a cluster of people forms around the table. Lee sees Man across the room but decides to get a drink, finding herself pushed up behind Ilse and Claude in line.

Lee hasn’t seen Claude since she had her gallery show, and she has heard through Man’s circle that Claude traveled south in the summer with some of the painters and set up a studio in Antibes. The coastal weather has agreed with her. Her cheeks aren’t as sallow, and she’s let her hair grow in so that she looks like a stylish little boy. Claude stands close to Ilse, and as they shuffle forward in the slow-moving line they link arms and whisper secretively. They don’t notice Lee until they’ve been handed their wine, and then as they pass Claude leans toward her, her breath hot against Lee’s ear. “Are you coming tonight?”