{"id":6465,"date":"2017-10-14T18:39:41","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T17:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/verityholloway.com\/?p=6465"},"modified":"2019-02-27T20:54:03","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T20:54:03","slug":"the-fools-way-part-ii-gods-orchid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/verityholloway.com\/?p=6465","title":{"rendered":"The Fool’s Way Part II – God’s Orchid"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been translating Nils Asther’s memoir from Swedish because I apparently have nothing better to do. Catch part one here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s fair to wonder what would have happened to Nils Asther had he not attracted the attention of Mauritz Stiller that evening. The teen had no money, no qualifications, no home to go to, and in his mind at least, no family.<\/p>\n

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Mauritz Stiller<\/p><\/div>\n

Stiller was born in Helsinki in 1883, and fled to Sweden to avoid being drafted into Czar Nicholas II\u2019s army. He was a pioneer of silent films, writing and directing more than thirty-five features\u00a0in his lifetime. The night he laid eyes on Nils, Stiller was eating\u00a0out with a fellow screenwriter, Sam Ask. Stiller ushered Nils and his companion over to Ask. \u201cDoesn\u2019t this one look like an actor?\u201d<\/p>\n

(Nils\u2019 friend was ignored for the rest of the evening. Poor boy, he was lovely, but he had a face like the back of a tram.)<\/p>\n

Soon they were joined by a hefty gentleman with thick curly hair. He looked out of place in the noisy eatery, standoffish and over-eager at the same time. This was Hjalmar Bergman, a respected author. Having established himself as highly literary and intellectual, the death of his father brought about huge debt, and Bergman was forced to write more crowd-pleasing works. This required research, such as\u00a0drinking, snorting cocaine, and fraternising with gorgeous young men.<\/p>\n

Tonight was Bergman\u2019s lucky night.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe looked at me as if I were an angel fallen from the skies,\u201d Nils wrote. \u201cIt took a while before he sobered up. He asked me my name and what I did. I told him that I was kicked out of my adoptive parents\u2019 house and from the Spyken school in Lund. Now I had decided to become an artist. Hjalmar Bergman reacted negatively. Not many artists could live on their jobs. Such fancies! Movie actors made big money. I was assured that all the artist dreams would be beaten out of my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hjalmar Bergman<\/p><\/div>\n

Debt be damned, Bergman was besotted. He rented an apartment for Nils, with a little kitchenette and a big bed with red curtains. Unaccustomed to older men being kind to him, Nils wondered if Bergman was his true father. When he asked him this, the writer became tearful. He only wished it were so! Trying to shrug off the emotion, he said if he were Nils\u2019 father, he would pack him off back to school \u2013 even if he had to bribe the teachers to put up with him. From now, on Nils would be Bergman\u2019s \u2018foster son\u2019, along with a young German lad who was coincidentally also a gorgeous actor who liked to do uppers on trains. Bergman had a type.<\/p>\n

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Nils at 22-years-old, by Einar Jolin, 1918.<\/p><\/div>\n

Bergman isn\u2019t widely known outside of Sweden, but in 1919 he published a drama based on his relationship with Nils: God’s Orchid<\/em>. In it, an oafish father watches his beautiful son grow up and wonders how anything so perfect could have been created by him. The boy is compared to Christ, but he\u2019s full of guile, always with his eye on the next opportunity to escape his low upbringing. They bicker and make up and bicker again, with the father\u2019s obsessive love always verging on something more unhealthy.<\/p>\n

In Bergman\u2019s letters, he says of Nils, \u201cIt\u2019s not his fault he\u2019s a degenerate, nor mine\u201d. But they encouraged each other. Nils doesn\u2019t talk about cocaine in his memoirs, but Bergman joked that if he ever wanted anyone killed, he\u2019d just send them out to party with his foster son.<\/p>\n

After drinks, Bergman sometimes liked to arrange Nils where he could sit and stare at him, which isn’t at all skin-crawlingly weird. \u201cYou are Jesus to me,\u201d he said on one such occasion. \u201cI will love you as long as I live.\u201d He dared to kiss his cheek. Another time, he gifted his \u2018foster son\u2019 with a copy of Death In Venice<\/em>, which is a bit like handing\u00a0someone a neon sign blinking \u201cRUN AWAY\u201d.<\/p>\n

Aschenbach Off, Hjalmar<\/strong><\/p>\n

But Nils had nothing to run away to. His behaviour seems deliberately coquettish \u2013 at one point, he describes undressing in front of Bergman before inviting him to stay over. He always protested their relationship was never more than platonic. \u201cHe never tried to rape me,\u201d he wrote, nevertheless describing all the awkward caressing as if that’s just what writers are like. It seems his need for a father figure meant he was willing to put up with almost anything.<\/p>\n

Strange men started coming up to the apartment, seeking Nils\u2019 company. That some of these men were publishing professionals makes me suspect Bergman deliberately fed\u00a0rumours that he was getting more for his money than he really was.\u00a0Everyone knew what was going on. Or thought they did. The\u00a0artist Nils von Dardel teased Asther\u00a0about it. \u201cI know very well Bergman likes you, the pederast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mauritz Stiller paid close attention. In 1916, he got Nils into the Royal Dramatic Theatre for tuition. \u201cTry not to get expelled,\u201d he said. Next came a film role, in Stiller\u2019s The Wings<\/em>. It\u2019s a strangely post-modern piece, a film within a film, and you can see what remains of it here.<\/p>\n