by Thomas Tryon
“‘I thought Fedora didn’t like parties.’
“‘Well, not so tedd’bly large, if you know what I mean, but it gives her a chance to see her friends—’
“‘She told me she has no friends.’
“‘But of course she does. That’s just her; merely a façon de parler, if you see.’
“‘No, frankly I don’t. She didn’t seem to me to be well enough for parties.’
“‘She is old, sir, a good deal older than she looks. She—one tires easily at her advanced years and—’ Watching her face, I saw the whole parade of emotions: the urge to lie, the indecision, the groping for excuses, then finally her capitulation. ‘In point of fact, she is not well,’ she said flatly. ‘You saw her, talked with her, you see the trouble with her. She is ill.’
“‘If she’s ill, why didn’t you go with her?’
“‘Alas, I am no longer of use to her, sir. The count and his wife will look after her now.’
“It was clear to me that she was lying, and I felt certain Fedora hadn’t left at all, that they had her locked up in her room to keep her from making trouble, or at least out of the way.
“Balfour had taken something from the pocket of her cardigan and was holding it out to me, an envelope, from which I extracted a single page. It was the Mussolini note to Fedora; Balfour was quick to point out that it was written in his own hand, the real McCoy.
“‘It is your payment. It’s worth a good deal of money.’ I said I was sure it was. Then slyly, I thought, she said, ‘There are others, you know.’
“‘Mrs. Roosevelt? Bernard Shaw?’ She blinked at me through her glasses, mute with astonishment.
“Ignoring her surprise, I asked, ‘What makes you think I won’t keep this and just abscond?’
“‘You have an honest face.’
“‘Are you a good judge of honest faces, Mrs. Balfour?’ I asked.
“‘Why, yes, I think so. That is—’ She was getting flustered again. ‘Honesty is always the best policy, isn’t it?’
“‘So they say. But what’s the policy here? Fedora’s gone away, and you’re disposing of her property? Valuable property?’
“‘It doesn’t matter, I assure you. She has many letters from many famous people. She doesn’t need them anymore.’
“‘Mightn’t she want to leave them to someone?’
“‘To whom? She has no one, you see. Except me. I am her heir. So her correspondence will come to me.’
“‘You sound as if you expected to survive her.’
“‘That is not in my hands, sir,’ she answered mildly, ‘but in God’s. Will you accept the note in payment?’
“‘No.’ I tried to give it back to her; she wouldn’t take it, so I dropped it with the envelope on the table. ‘But I’ll read again to the countess, if you like.’
“Her worried expression changed; she became the candy-box lady again. ‘Oh, you are kind,’ she said, ‘so veddy kind.’
“I thought so, too. But I hoped that my ingratiating myself with this one of Fedora’s friends would lead her to commend me to the other one. And if things did not go well with the countess, perhaps Balfour herself could be persuaded to talk, though remembering Viola’s tight-lipped loyalty, I suspected that as far as Balfour went, mum was most likely to be the word.
“The next morning I was back at my old stand. The book chosen was Wouk’s The Winds of War. And I noted its length with apprehension. But I began, and read as was prescribed, slowly, clearly, and without emphasis. The routine never varied; the countess’s arrival on the terrace and her departure were exact as clockwork. As the days passed, an unspoken intimacy seemed to grow between us, but it was that of employer and employee. She was always polite, but clearly it was a matter of noblesse oblige. The line between us, though unmarked, was precise. Occasionally she spoke to me, always in French, and I got the idea that though she could speak English perfectly well, her ease in the other tongue and my lack of it helped keep me in a subservient place. Besides her habitual Bonjour, there might be a commonplace on the good weather—Il fait beau, or if it was brisk, Un peu froid ’jourd’hui—and at the end of the reading always the À demain, until tomorrow, as if she required absolute reassurance of my return to the succeeding chapter.
“During our earlier times together I had discovered certain things about her, chief among these the fact that, like many old people, she had the habit of dozing off while I read, but unlike most, she was adroit at disguising it; her fingers on the armrest would continue their spasmodic movement, as if this would fool me into thinking she was still awake. Once or twice when I spoke her name, she would start, and raise her mottled hand, a sign that I should continue; but dozing or not, her head seldom changed its seaward gaze. The few sounds she made were light murmurs, sometimes a wheeze, or a hoarsely indrawn breath I never heard expelled. She had the querulous impatience of the aged combined with the abrupt peremptoriness of the nobility, an aristocrat of the old school used to issuing orders and seeing them obeyed. Whatever remarks I made she answered with a nod or shake of the head, or a monosyllabic response if it was necessary. Like her body, her voice was frail, but she spoke with an autocratic precision that easily carried across the distance between us.
“She stubbornly manifested that capricious defiance of the aged, as if nothing passed before her ancient eyes except that which affronted her, but in time she seemed sufficiently used to me to allow herself a direct query concerning myself, my origins, my family, and she was apparently more interested in my writing than I’d thought, for once she confessed dryly that the book had pleased her. Mention was made both of Viola and of the Marshes, Willie and Bee, all of whom she knew and obviously regarded in a better light than did Fedora. She was leading me on, but to what end I still couldn’t tell; you didn’t divine with Countess Sobryanski. When I mentioned the fact that she, too, used to write—the story that Fedora’s picture The Mirror had been taken from—she sniffed and said that what had originally been a novel idea had been ruined by Hollywood, nor had she enjoyed her brief stay there. She would return me to my reading, or say she was tired from talking, ring her bell, and be whisked inside by Kritos, but unfailingly the À demain trailed back over her shoulder.
“One day when the reading period had ended and she should have rung her bell for Kritos, she ignored it, choosing instead to investigate me a little more. Why had I come there from so far away? I supplied the same excuse I’d given Fedora, and received the same reply.
“‘Vous êtes menteur.’ She, too, saw I was lying. ‘You want information about her. Why?’
“‘She interests me,’ I admitted, trying to resuscitate my French, which wasn’t easy. There’s been a lot written about her; most of it is—’ I gestured with my hands: nothing of consequence, I meant. ‘I didn’t expect to find her here, though; it was you I wanted to talk with.’
“Balfour had meanwhile appeared in the doorway, waiting for the countess, but she was ignored.
“‘What makes you think I would talk about her to you, or to anyone?’ she demanded with some asperity.
“‘I guess I really didn’t expect you would. Fedora told me if I wanted to hear stories I must bring a basket of fruit and write billets-doux and serenade your windows, and then you would let down your hair.’
“‘God spare us your serenades, though I would accept the fruit. As for billets-doux, Il Duce himself was not above writing one … as you know.’ She said it with sly innuendo and waited.
“‘Yes, as I know.’
“‘One book, one letter—c’est entendu?’
“‘Entendu.’ Understood. ‘But I would prefer having the letters from Fedora’s own hand.’
“‘That is impossible. She is gone.’
“‘Will she be coming back?’
“‘Who can say with Fedora? She is a trial to those who know her. We are old friends; once we were good friends. One doesn’t close the door in the face of friends. The door will be open if she returns.’
“‘Sh
e told me she has no friends.’
“‘She is right. How may one be Fedora and have friends?’ She let her glance dwell on me for some moments, nodding slightly, then she drew herself up and said, ‘But you and I understand one another, hein?’
“‘Exactly what do we understand, madame?’
“‘That you will read and be paid. But’—she riveted me with a look—‘while you do not serenade our windows, you do listen outside them, n’est-ce-pas?’
“Again I lied, saying, as planned, that I’d come looking for my lighter; again she called me menteur, and worse, an eavesdropper, producing the lighter from the folds of her dress. Obviously she’d seen me plant it. She gave me a look of mild contempt for my clumsiness, then Kritos, despite her earlier wishes, took her away, while Balfour came and detained me at the balustrade. She seemed nervous, agitated.
“‘You must not keep her talking. It tires her, and you disrupt her schedule.’ I explained that it was not I who had begun the conversation, but the countess. Balfour bit her lip, then inquired what topics of social intercourse the countess had interested herself in.
“‘Oh,’ I said airily, ‘we were talking about fairy tales. Did you ever read the one about Rapunzel? The one who let her hair down?’ I left her standing by the balustrade, and crossing the terrace, I glanced through one of the French doors. The countess’s chair was empty, while she occupied another one at a table laid for lunch. Kritos had just ladled soup into a bowl, and she was spooning it up, blowing on it to cool it. She saw me, nodded. ‘À demain,’ she called through the glass. Then Balfour came up beside me and showed me out.
“I spent the afternoon in the arbor, staring up at the villa’s terrace—not with the spyglass, for there was nothing to spy upon. I thought and wondered and cogitated, and found it more and more baffling. It was all very peculiar. I had been certain that the countess was somehow toying with me, drawing me out for some particular purpose, though I had no idea why. I knew I was being baited, and wondered how I could do some baiting in return. Since the morning reading session I had one more important piece to the puzzle, or thought I did, but still it made no sense to me. I decided the time had come to give the ladies a shaking up. When Mrs. Vasos came I negotiated with her to have something sent up from the village, the largest and best apricots to be had in Iraklion, and a small basket as well. If it took these to get the countess to let down her hair, I would see to it. Next morning I scribbled a note, folded it and tucked it among the apricots, which I arranged in a pyramid, and when I went up to the villa I carried along the basket by its woven handle.
“It was a brisk, bright morning, with a spanking breeze, which put white tips on the blue water below, and clouds passed intermittently over the sun. As the countess was wheeled out and placed under the canopy, I brought the basket from behind my back and presented it to her. She took it in her lap and examined the apricots, pressing several and apparently finding them to her satisfaction. But her chary look indicated that she considered the gift suspect. I knew that in itself it was not sufficient to cause her to let down her hair regarding Fedora, but I wondered how long I would have to wait until she discovered the little bomb I’d included. So far she hadn’t noticed the note, but only set the basket on the table at her side and said, ‘Merci.’
“I casually asked if she’d ever read Madame Bovary; she said she had. I recalled to her the part in which Emma’s faithless lover, Rodolphe, sends her a basket of apricots with a concealed note renouncing her as his mistress and canceling their plans to run away to Italy. She nodded, remembering the scene, but the clue went undetected, my own note unobserved. She rang her bell for Kritos and demanded a knife and a serviette; she intended to sample the fruit.
“‘Fedora once was to have done a film of that story,’ she remarked. ‘Someone made it, didn’t they?’
“I said David Selznick had sold Metro a movie package, starring Jennifer Jones.
“‘Ah, yes, she won an Oscar, I believe. Fedora, no. C’est dommage.’ I agreed that it was a disgrace that Hollywood had never honored her work. Kritos came with the knife and napkin, and when he tried to help her she pushed him impatiently away and used the knife to halve the apricot, scooping out the pit which she dropped into her napkin, and proceeded to eat.
“‘Dites-moi, m’sieu’, qu’est-ce que vous y pensez?’
“What did I think of what? I wondered; she was pointing her knife out to sea.
“‘What do you think of her, our Fedora?’
“I realized that she was indicating the direction of the Athens boat, which Balfour had particularly told me Fedora had taken with Count Sobryanski. I said I thought that she was probably the most fascinating woman of our time, and the greatest screen actress the movies had ever seen.
“‘Yes, yes, we all know this,’ she said, eating the other half of her apricot, and using her napkin on her lips, ‘but what do you think of her, really? Do you find her beautiful still?’
“‘Certainly. She’s remarkable.’
“‘And young?’
“‘Quite young. She has had a long career.’
“‘Perhaps too long, do you think?’ She laid the knife and napkin on the small table at her left elbow, giving an infinitesimal nod of satisfaction. ‘Délicieuse,’ she granted my gift. It was enough, she having now affirmed my carefully deduced theory.
“‘Not at all,’ I replied easily. ‘How old is she, would you say?’
“‘I would not say. She may tell you that, if she chooses, but not I. It would not be kind. Though kindness is hardly in her lexicon. Do you find her pleasant? Enjoyable to be with? Sociable company?’ Again she was toying, her little eyes watched me closely—even as I was now watching her.
“‘I’ve seen her only a few times, madame. Not enough to know her, really.’
“‘A few times can be quite enough in her case, I think.’ She looked out to sea again. ‘If anyone can know her. She is unfortunate; she is lonely and unhappy, yet she thinks of no one but herself. She is the most selfish of creatures.’
“I observed that this was often the case with famous stars; the countess nodded thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘that is her trouble, being a star. She is a martyr to her fame. She was not always the way you have seen her, the world has seen her.’
“That morning I’d noticed the postman coming up from the village, a rare occurrence. When I made a point of mentioning the fact, Countess Sobryanski said yes, she’d had a letter from her son.
“‘How is Fedora?’ I asked.
“‘She is in hospital. Receiving proper care and attention.’ I appeared to accept her statement, though I was now certain beyond any doubt that Fedora was not in a hospital, nor was she in the hands of Count Sobryanski. I glanced up to the upper windows, where the shades were still drawn, then back to the old woman, who pointed her knife at the book and set me to reading, while she selected another apricot and sliced it in the same delicate way. I read until Mrs. Balfour interrupted us. She’d brought out Fedora’s red shirt, which, because of the breeze, she insisted on draping around the countess’s shoulders, then she was alarmed to see that she’d been eating the fruit; evidently a question of her digestion. Balfour took the knife and napkin, and started to remove the basket of apricots as well, which would have upset my plan, so I asked her to leave them; I might have one myself.
“I continued reading, the countess dozed. Sun streamed in several shafts through torn places in the canopy, and as her head nodded to the side a ray struck her eyes, and she came suddenly awake. She looked blankly about, as though uncertain of her surroundings, then she belched: the apricots.
“‘Ought she to make another film, do you think?’ she resumed, as if there had been no interruption in our earlier discussion of Fedora. ‘Would they still come to see her?’
“‘Undoubtedly they would.’
“She turned to me again. ‘You are loyal, even if you are deceitful.’
“‘Deceitful, madame?’ I was enjoying
this. ‘Perhaps, but then I am not alone in that, am I?’
“‘Qu’est-ce que vous vouez dire?’ Her voice crackled, demanding what I meant.
“‘You also have been deceitful, haven’t you? Or should I really believe that I was brought here merely to read to you, and to be paid off with Fedora’s memorabilia?’
“‘You have a pleasant voice,’ she said grudgingly.
“‘So does Mrs. Balfour, I’m sure—nor does she really have laryngitis, I think.’ She laughed, a few faint barks and said I was probably right.
“‘But such small deceptions must not be held against an old woman. When you are my age deception comes easily, and you discover that small deceits are easier than large truths.’
“‘Large truths are often painful, I know. But in my business you always look for the deceits; they make more interesting news. You enjoyed the apricots?’
“‘Quite tolerable. I hope you did not pay a lot for them—they take advantage of you, the Greeks.’ She pointed her cane over toward the headland, behind which lay Iraklion. ‘It is easy to be victimized, là-bas.’ I followed the tip of her cane, not seaward, but in the opposite direction, along its length to her face. She caught me looking at her, and now jabbed the cane at the book, indicating I should go on. I did not. I closed the book and set it on my knees. She’d had her fun, played her game; now I was going to have my fun and play mine. I said:
“‘It’s true, you can be easily victimized in Greece. I have been.’
“‘Is that a fact? Who has victimized you?’
“‘You.’
“‘I?’ She gave me an angry snort and an affronted look. ‘I fail to see how a weak old woman might go about victimizing a strong and clever man such as yourself. Expliquez, s’il vous plaît.’
“‘Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps it’s not me, but Fedora who is being victimized.’
“‘Pfaugh! Fedora should be used to that; she has been victimized all her life. Say what you mean, m’sieu’.’
“‘I cannot say, madame. I can only suggest. Allow me to suggest, however, that there is a plot afoot here. A connivance, if you will; a conspiracy even.’