"Well, certainly," I stammered. "For how long?"
"How do I know? Until you kick me out, I guess."
As my menfolk were all busy outside the house, I helped her up with her bags—every one of them from Hermes in Paris and stamped C.P.W. "Stick around while I settle in," she said. "I haven't had a soul to talk to since I left Mexico City. Why don't we have a little drink?"
"Oh, of course," I said, nonplused. "I'll go down and get something . . ."
"Don't bother, I have it right here." She opened a devastatingly smart bit of luggage, which I'd thought was a shoe trunk. It turned out to be a small, portable bar, equipped with silver-topped bottles and silver drinking cups in three distinct sizes. "Scotch and faucet water okay with you?" she asked genially.
"Lovely," I said uncertainly. I felt suddenly terribly naughty, as though the two of us had conspired to make fudge on a hot plate against all dormitory rules.
"Will I need any of this drag?" she asked, unfurling three Fath evening dresses, the likes of which I hadn't seen in some years.
"Not unless the Governor invites us to a ball," I said.
"That's funny," she said and laughed.
I didn't think it was so very funny, but I was pleased to be as one with this astonishing butterfly. Simply fascinated.
And the fascination continued. She was a widow of thirty. She had been born abroad of a Greek father and an American-born mother, an only child christened Costanza Papazafiropolos. (Yes, Pa-pa-za-fi-rop-o-los, seven syllables with the accent on the fifth and that's the last time I'm going to try to write it.) Her father was an international banker, directly descended from Croesus, I believe, and her mother had not only a pot of gold, but a heart of gold as well. (She must have had to have taken on such a name at the altar.) Her recent forebears had been English, French, Russian, and Italian—all with tides and lots of pounds, francs, rubles, and lire. "Costanza," I gathered, was Greek, French, Russian, or Italian for Constance, because she insisted on being called Connie. Fortunately, she had turned in her maiden name for a nice simple one like White when she married an American. Unfortunately, a shell in Korea put an end to the marriage and Connie was at loose ends, drifting from one spot to another while Mama and Papa supplied the cash from some smart watering place on the Continent.
Connie had been magnificently educated in almost every capital of the world. She spoke, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Arabic, Greek (both ancient and modern), Russian, British English, and pure unadulterated Americanese. She played championship tennis, golf, and bridge. She swam like Eleanor Holm and shot like Annie Oakley. She could discuss the international situation or the baseball scores, Picasso or Petty, Shakespeare or Spillane with equal ease and authority. Although most of her clothes had been made right on her back in the great dressmaking houses of Paris, London, and Rome, she could look just as dazzling in a shirt bought in the boys' department of Sears, Roebuck, which she patronized regularly. (Well, I guess I could look dazzling in a cheesecloth shift with a great big square emerald ring like Connie's to set it off.) Plain rather than pretty—which she was the first to admit,—Connie still wasn't the kind of girl you'd want to leave your husband alone with for too long. Not that Connie would have dreamed of applying any seductress tactics; she was a real gentleman among women. But she was so sparkling and warm and vital that men adored her, even when she was beating them at their own games. And while almost every woman alive should have hated Connie, I found that all but the most poisonously pretentious females loved her just as I did.
Connie got around the problem beautifully by being frank and friendly and free of any illusions of her own importance. She never took herself seriously or gave herself any airs, and that was probably the keystone of her monumental charm. She knew prime ministers and princes and presidents and porters and pants pressers and paupers all over the world and she treated every one of them exactly the same. She was terribly interested in everything and everybody, and her aliveness was so contagious that wherever she went, whole rooms full of the dreariest people imaginable came alive and interesting, too.
Bill and I were thrilled to have her staying with us, and at dinner the first night her charm was sufficient to stop the honeymooners from giggling, while even the bird-watcher and uranium-hunter became almost scintillating, which they certainly hadn't been B.C., or Before Connie.
Before twenty-four hours were up, Connie had staked a claim on Bill and me and on the whole ranch. She rode like a jockey, and the three of us often took all-day rides together, inconsiderately leaving the bird-watcher to watch birds, the uranium prospector to prospect uranium, and the honeymooners to giggle, once freed of Connie's magic spell. When the three of us went to La Dona Luz in Taos for lunch, Connie got into a technical discussion of wine with Frenchy, the owner, and insisted that he show her his cellar, which she pronounced the best in America west of Twenty-One. When we went antiquing in the shops of Santa Fe, Connie invariably knew more about the antiques than the dealers did. On Artie's night off, Connie marched out to the kitchen with Bill and, cantankerous stove and all, put a dinner onto the table the like of which I have never eaten. Connie was a joy and a delight to everyone—to everyone, that is, except to Connie herself.
Rich and popular and dazzling as she was, Connie was not especially happy. In fact, you might even say that she was especially unhappy. Widowed and alone in the world, Connie had the means and the entree to go wherever she chose. But she had been everywhere and she was sick and tired of gallivanting from one corner of the globe to the next. She kept an apartment in New York, but with her husband dead and the place silent and filled with memories, Connie found it just as gloomy and depressing and seedy as Bill and I later found it bright and gay and elegant. She could have joined her parents and lived like a queen, trooping from one smart spot to another, but that would have been only a slight change from the A-deck gypsy life she had always led. While Connie had what almost everybody else in the world wanted, Connie wanted what almost everybody else in the world had—roots, something to do, a purpose in life, and a place to call home.
She seemed to be finding them all at Rancho del Monte.
Within a week of her arrival, Connie had taken to bustling around the place as if she owned it. She could receive guests, check over menus, make beds, and answer inquiries as though she had taught Cesar Ritz all he had ever known about the hotel business. Since she did my work with amazing speed, efficiency, and cheer, and was simply competent and not aggressive or busybodyish about it, I couldn't have cared less. In fact, I was delighted to have someone so pleasant and helpful around the place.
One day, though, when Connie was tooting around Santa Fe visiting old friends whom she'd met in various parts of the world at various times I had a little surprise waiting for her when she got back. Connie's surprise had been a surprise to me, too, because I hadn't expected it either. It consisted of a party of four Central Europeans who had rolled in quite unannounced around lunchtime. Hotel La Fonda and the Bishop's Lodge, they had explained to me, were far too grand for them. That should have tipped me off right then and there, because neither La Fonda nor Bishop's—both of which are excellent places to stay with marvelous food, service, and accommodations—could possibly be described as "too grand." But since half the people we know are Europeans, I put it down to foreign eccentricity. The four Europeans themselves, however, were quite grand and equally fussy. They asked very cautiously about the rates, which I said would be ten dollars a day apiece, then they went into a long conference in a language that was totally unintelligible to me. (It was Hungarian, I discovered later, which is totally unintelligible even to Hungarians.) Then, in a melange of English, French, and German, with an Italian expletive or two tossed in for good measure, they made sure whether the rates included meals.
"Yes," I said. "Oui. la. Si." (for Italian) "Si." (for" Spanish), and "Da."
How many meals?
"Three," I said. "Trois. Drei. Tre. Tres." That seemed to cover that.
"Oh, I like this—the numero quatorze—viith the double bed and the private terrace," one of the women said, bursting into Connie's room. "Ja, Maxl?"
"Ja, Roszika," her husband agreed, pushing past her into the room.
I told them rather peremptorily that the room was occupied and when they heard by whom, all four of them settled for what was vacant and more or less shut up.
The party showed up at the lunch table in full force, having spent a stimulating hour demanding things like eiderdown quilts, hot water bottles, bidets, bath sheets, and candles in case of a power shortage.
Their luncheon conversation, carried on in several languages at once, consisted of three topics: soup, the travail of travel, and Connie.
The soup, as they all dived into it, proved to be too hot. "Oh, Gott!" they roared, "mein mouth—la bouche—la bocca!"
"Why don't you just wait a moment," I said patiently, feeling a bit like a governess just employed in a motherless home. "It will cool."
So then they all clattered their spoons down onto the place mats and began telling me in unison what an awful trip theirs had been.
"Oh, Gott! It wass terrible! Mein Gott! The roads! Oh, Gott! The prices! Oh, Gott, dot hotel in Alb-you-queer-kay!"
Oh, Gott, they moaned in chorus. Why had they ever left Budapest with its strudels, its noodles, its Danube, its tziganes? I tactfully refrained from saying that the reason was probably because none of them would have been very popular with the local commissar and that they were damned lucky to be out of Budapest alive.
Their complaints continued for a good twenty minutes in a variety of tongues and then they all tackled their soups again. Mein Gott! It was too cold.
So the soup went back to the kitchen for reheating.
While they waited, they burst into a polylingual discussion of Connie, leaving me quite out of the conversation, but when they pronounced her father's unpronounceable name with a reverence reserved usually for Our Lord and when they lapsed occasionally into French, I got sufficient breezes to understand that they fairly worshiped "la belle Costanza . . . tres chic . . . tris amusante . . . tres riche," even if she was staying at a flea bag like Rancho del Monte.
The soup came back. You guessed it. Oh, Gott! It was too hot.
Although I could not fathom what a charmer like Connie could possibly see in a quartet like this one, I decided that they were all fast friends from happier days on the Continent. That night I had Connie's seat shifted to the table assigned to the four Hungarians, just so they could talk over old times without any interruptions.
Connie had been delayed and charged in just as the first course—undoubtedly too something—was being served. There was such a babble of tongues, heel-clicking, and hand-kissing as I've never heard. Then I dug into my dinner, feeling rather pleased with the cosmopolitan air the ranch had suddenly acquired and even more pleased that it was all going on at another table.
But right after dinner, Connie, who was generally the life and soul of every evening, pleaded a sick headache and stamped up to her room, shooting a look in my direction that would have withered an oak tree as she passed.
The next morning there was no sign of Connie. I assumed she was still sleeping until I noticed that her car was missing. She had apparently got up at sunrise and gone off someplace on her own. But that was like Connie, and I didn't give it a second thought.
Her friends, however, appeared in full force for breakfast. Mein Gott, the coffee was too hot. Mein Gott, the coffee was too cold. Mein Gott, the coffee was too strong. Watered, Mein Gott, the coffee was too weak. Mein Gott, the eggs were too soft. Mein Gott, the eggs were too hard.
When I ventured to ask, without much caring, whether they had all passed a comfortable night, they told me in no uncertain terms.
"Mein Gott, it was horrible! There was a fly in my room!"
"Mein Gott, it was wretched! My mattress was too hard!"
"Too hard? Ach, mein Gott, my mattress was too soft. It was miserable!"
It didn't take me long to gather that they hadn't had too good a night. Still, I felt that any friend of Connie's ought to be a friend of mine.
After breakfast they all moved out to the terrace to soak in the sunshine. They grumbled quietly among themselves for almost half an hour, then the cantata began again. "Mein Gott, the heat! I can't stand it!" they howled. If they were up in the mountains, they complained, why wasn't it cool like the Tyrol, the Alpes-Maritimes, the Apennines? Like all the places where they weren't?
With a grim smile, I resumed my nursery governess role once again. "I know what you'd all like," I said with more enthusiasm than conviction, "a nice picnic in the mountains. A fête champêtre."
They looked at me with a certain amount of suspicion, but I plunged right on. "I'll ask the cook to put up a nice lunch for you and you can hike right up those mountains there. They're called the Sangre de Cristos, and they're higher than the Apennines and very cool."
An hour later, equipped with their lederhosen, Tyrolean hats, alpenstocks, and my clothesline, they set off on what I had always considered a brisk walk rather than an arduous climb. A fairly spiffy luncheon had been packed for them—"Mein Gott, it's so heavy!"—and I was looking forward to a whole day of their absence.
Two hours later they came pounding down the hillside, soaked and shivering and mein Gott-ing for all they were worth. New Mexico has an average of five days of rain per year. That had been one of them. And don't think I didn't get it hot and heavy from them on account of the downpour, not only in French, German, and English, bits of which I could understand, but mostly in their native Hungarian which, all in all, was a blessing since I couldn't follow a single word. I was able to gather, however, that they'd never been so miserable in all their lives and that I was to blame for it all.
While they were up in their rooms screaming down to Ronnie for hot lemonade and specific brands of aspirin not manufactured in this country and squabbling over who was to have the first mustard bath, Connie came sneaking in.
"Where in the world have you been, Connie?" I asked. "Your friends have all . . ."
"My friends?" she fumed. "Smile when you say that. And if you ever put me at the same table with them again, I’ll scratch your eyes out!"
"But, Connie, I thought you knew them," I said, bewildered.
"You bet your life I know them," she said. "And I know a few more just like them. Those people are 'professional refugees' and I've seen them in London and Lisbon and Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro and New York and Mexico City and almost any other place you care to name."
"But Connie," I said, "Bill and I know lots of European refugees. They like it here. They say that Santa Fe reminds them of the Continent. They've all been charming."
"Sure they have—good guys and grateful to get out with their skins. But these four have never been within a hundred miles of the Iron Curtain; they never were near a Nazi. They left their native countries years ago, and they left in style, their fortunes with them. They've sat through the wars—hot and cold—at a safe, comfortable distance. They're refugees only by definition—their own! This bunch would go to heaven and wind up telling Saint Peter how much more efficient the central heating was in hell."
"But, Connie," I said, "how did they ever get into our place?"
"I can't tell you that," she said, "but I can tell you how to get them out."
"Oh, I couldn't ask them to leave, horrible as they are. They're still paying forty dollars a day and . . ."
"That's what you think. Wait till they start cutting corners on the bills—a night here, a meal there, a
nd that sort of thing. Wait till you count their linen. And wait till you count the real paying guests they've driven away from here. Then you'll see that it's worth forty dollars a day to keep them out. Anyhow, I'd just as soon make up the difference out of my own pocket, if only to be rid of them . . ."
"We couldn't let you do that, Connie," I said unhappily.
"But you could let me give them the bounce, couldn't you?" she asked slyly.
"Well, yes, I suppose . . ."
"Good. How far are we from the Atomic Energy Commission's testing grounds?"
"Oh, it's miles away. I've never even heard a pop."
"Well, don't tell them that in case they ask. I'll have them out of here in no time at all. Put me back at your table for dinner. Promise?"
Connie ran upstairs and in a minute's time there was such ach-ing and mein Gott-ing and mon Dieu-ing that I couldn't hear myself think. However, I could hear all sorts of luggage bumping and thumping on the floor above me. A minute later, Connie was back downstairs drawing on her gloves.
"I'm just going to hide out at El Nido for an hour or so," she said. "They'll be well on their way before then. But remember, don't let them gyp you on the bill and don't take a check." With that, Connie was out on the terrace. "Auf wiedersehen," she shouted up toward their rooms. "Remember," she shouted, "Malhuevo, New Mexico. About three hundred miles south. Very smart, very gay and very inexpensive. I'll meet you there for dinner at Casa Dolorosa. Hurry! Vitel Vite! Precipitevolisimevolmente! Au revoir!" Connie got into her car and zoomed out of sight.
Taking Connie at her word—as I have learned one must always do—I began preparing their bill, but without much hope. How wrong I was. Before the ink was dry, the four of them were down the stairs, their belongings cascading behind them. They were speaking pure gibberish interspersed with ach Gotts.
"Leaving so soon?" I asked pleasantly.
"Why you aren't telling us about the atom explosions?" Maxl demanded furiously.
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