We went directly to the church of Santo Tomé to see El Greco’s masterpiece. We stood a long while, admiring the scene, which covers an entire wall, of the funeral of a now forgotten Spanish nobleman. The painting is divided into two halves representing heaven and earth. In heaven Christ is surrounded by angels, saints, and saved souls in a blaze of blue sky. On earth the dead body of the handsome count, suited in armor, is being tenderly lifted by the vicar and another clergyman. Behind them stands a crowd of aristocratic onlookers in black suits with pearly white ruffs around their necks. Most are dark-haired men with long, pointed faces. They have mustaches and goatees, and all look more solemn than sad.
“It’s strange. This is a funeral but nobody’s weeping,” I remarked to my father.
“There are no women in the picture,” he observed, teasing me.
“Seriously, Daddy, the picture doesn’t make you feel sad, even though it’s about death.”
“Ah, but it isn’t about death the way you think of it, darling girl. It’s about resurrection and sitting on the right hand of the Lord. The count has been saved, you see, and heaven is waiting to receive him, which is more than we can say for the rest of us.” His great laugh reverberated through the hushed church as we made our way out into the mild April sunlight and went in search of a restaurant.
On the drive back to Madrid in the late afternoon, my mind was filled with vivid images of the art we had seen. “Daddy, do you think El Greco is a great artist?”
“Well, I have to confess I liked him a lot better when I was your age.”
“And who do you like now?”
“Everyone except El Greco.”
“Seriously!” I hated being teased.
“I’ve never been more serious.” He lit a cigar, chuckling to himself, while I stared out the car window at barren hills spotted with patches of green and silvery groves of olive trees — all that seemed to grow in this harsh land that gasped for rain.
“Oh, look, Daddy!” Suddenly I saw windmills standing in an empty field, a magical apparition of white windmills lined up in a row, their black blades revolving in lazy circles.
“Have you read Don Quixote?” he asked me. I shook my head. “Then you must read it at once. It’s one of the great books, and I’m going to make a movie out of it. I’ll find you a copy in English before you go back to Switzerland.”
Many years later, while I was watching scenes from my father’s incomplete film Don Quixote, it all came back to me. The Goyas in the Prado. The bullfights. Flamenco. Our day in Toledo, home to Cervantes as well as El Greco. And the arresting sight of windmills in an empty field. That memory triggered yet another. I returned to Lausanne without a copy of Don Quixote, which I am sorry to say I have yet to read in English, Spanish, or any other language.
“DO YOU MEAN to tell me you’re not allowed to speak to your African servants,” my father thundered in disbelief.
“Only to say things like ‘good morning’ and ‘thank you.’”
“Don’t they speak English?”
“That’s not the problem, Daddy. We’re supposed to keep our distance because they wouldn’t like it if we got too familiar …”
“They wouldn’t like it,” he repeated. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing, Christopher.” The shock on his face made me feel ashamed. It brought back the discomfort I had felt every morning when our houseboy brought me a cup of tea on a tray. “I realize you have to live in South Africa for the time being—there’s nothing we can do about that,” my father was saying, “but I hope you’ll remember you did not always live in that benighted country. My God, after living with Skipper and Hortense, the prejudices of white South Africans should be abhorrent to you.” He stopped, biting his lip, as though perhaps he had said too much, then continued more softly, “Even if you’re forbidden to speak to the Africans working in your house, I hope you’ll remember they are human beings, just like you, and always treat them with respect.”
I nodded, dismayed to see my father so upset, yet feeling an urgent need to defend my mother. So I plunged into the story of how, when we first arrived in Johannesburg, my mother had fixed up the servants’ quarters with rugs and curtains she made herself. She even bought the servants a radio. Soon afterward, they all disappeared in the night, taking the radio with them. “So that’s why we can’t be kind to them,” I finished.
“Christopher, please don’t tell me any more or I’m going to be ill.”
“But …”
“Enough!”
This conversation took place on the Côte d’Azur, where I was continuing the dizzying Easter vacation that began in Madrid and would end in Barcelona. “I am the happiest girl in the world at the moment,” I wrote my grandmother. “I have seen most of la Côte d’Azur, Antibes (where we actually stayed), Nice, Cannes, Vence, Saint Paul, and many other small villages. . . . I have seen a wonderful amount of my wonderful father (which makes me happiest of all).” Yet my time with my father was bittersweet because I knew it could not last. When school ended for the summer, I would be forced to return to Johannesburg and live again with my mother and Jack Pringle. In my heart, I agreed with my father’s appalled reaction to apartheid, and that only made it worse.
WHEREVER WE STAYED, my father had a knack for choosing the most opulent hotel in the area. In Cap d’Antibes, we were pampered guests of the Hotel du Cap. Our suite consisted of two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and an adjoining sitting room. In addition, we could enjoy our breakfast on a sunny balcony while gazing at the Mediterranean. At the time, I never wondered how my father could afford such luxury. In my mind, these grand hotels with their Old World atmosphere were as much a part of Orson Welles as his laugh, his cigar, and the voluminous black cape he sometimes wore in the hope that it made him look thinner. I came to take it for granted that in every hotel, the manager would be overjoyed to see him and the staff would bow to the floor when he passed. On checking into our suite, we would find a basket of fruit or a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice with a gilded card reading, “With the compliments and best wishes of the management” or “We are most honored to have you as our guest, Mr. Welles.”
Another luxury I would always associate with my father was being driven around in a chauffeured car. He, himself, had given up driving long ago. According to my mother, he had smashed up a car soon after he got his license and that had scared him off driving forever. On one day etched in my memory, a chauffeur in cap and uniform came to collect us in the middle of the morning and drive us in style to the town of Vence. By then, my father had been up for hours, devouring newspapers in English and French, calling down to the front desk for more papers in Spanish, Italian, any language, just make it snappy, then making phone calls, notes to himself, more phone calls, then scribbling away on the shooting script for Mr. Arkadin, which seemed to be in a state of permanent revision. As he worked on it, the crumpled pages accumulated like popcorn balls around his feet. I, meanwhile, was out on the balcony, writing letters that went on for pages — to Barbara in South Africa, Marian in London, Alain in Paris, my grandparents in Chicago — until my hand ached. My eyes were drawn up and over the balcony and out to sea where the soft morning sun danced on the waves.
On our way to Vence, my father told the driver to stop the car at the foot of a walled village whose houses seemed to be tumbling down the hillside. This was Saint Paul, he declared, also known as Saint Paul de Vence, “the best preserved medieval village in all of Provence.” As its narrow cobblestoned streets had not been built for cars, we were going to explore it on foot.
We sauntered along, my father’s big warm hand in mine, letting our feet take us here and there, through curving streets, under covered passageways, past ancient walls, up one stone staircase and down the next. At last we stopped to rest in a courtyard with a bubbling stone fountain. It was so peaceful, so perfect, and suddenly I realized why. Not one person in Saint Paul had run up to Orson Welles and asked for his autograph.
We continued
on to the neighboring village of Vence in order to visit the Dominican Chapel of the Rosary designed by Henri Matisse, in my father’s view an even greater artist than his contemporary Pablo Picasso. We entered the whitewashed building and immediately found ourselves in an airy, joyous space flooded by colored light from the stained glass windows. The white tile walls, the white marble floor, the altar covered with a simple white cloth, all added to the feeling of serenity and well-being. I was especially drawn to the stained glass windows that rose from floor to ceiling, revealing a childlike pattern of leaves, the kind that might have grown in the Garden of Eden.
“Well, what do you think?” asked my father, eyeing me in that way he had when he was waiting for me to say something clever.
“This place feels too happy to be a church.”
“And why shouldn’t people be happy in a church?”
“What I mean is, most churches are dark and gloomy and make you feel you should kneel and ask forgiveness for your sins, and this place … well … it makes you feel good just to be standing here.”
“You’re right.” He squeezed my hand. “Matisse felt we should bear our burdens with a light heart. He calls this chapel his masterpiece, you know. He says it’s the result of his entire life as an artist.” (Matisse was still alive on that day we stood in his chapel.)
“Daddy,” I whispered, even though we had the chapel to ourselves, “do you think there really is a God up in heaven who cares what happens to us?”
“Now, Christopher, that’s two separate questions. Is there a God? Question one, and question two. Does he give a damn?”
“At moments I want to believe in God, like now,” I went on, still whispering, “but I suspect people made up the idea of God a long time ago because it was too scary to imagine a world without him …”
“The God of the Old Testament is terrifying! Haven’t you read your Bible?”
“Seriously, Daddy …”
“On the subject of God, one can’t be too serious.”
“Does that mean you believe in him?”
“One minute you sound like an atheist and the next like the Grand Inquisitor.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it’s just that at moments you frighten me and I wish—now don’t misunderstand me—I wish you were less intelligent. A lot of men will be scared to death of you, you know, even though you’re so beautiful. But to answer your question, I can’t go as far as you do and say I don’t believe in God. I want to allow for the possibility that there might be a God, somewhere, in some mysterious form. So I guess that makes me an agnostic.”
He smiled down at me and took my arm, leading me out of the chapel and into the sunshine.
WE TRAVELED BY train from the Côte d’Azur to Barcelona, and it took us something like eighteen hours. The train, carrying livestock as well as passengers, made every stop along the way, and at each station the wait was interminable while crates of chickens were unloaded or a cow was led lumbering down a ramp. To pass the time, I told my father that I had begun studying French dramatists at Florissant, progressing from the classical plays of Corneille, Racine, and Molière to such contemporary dramas as Jean Anouilh’s Antigone. “I gave a dramatic recitation before the entire school — I played Antigone — and afterward Madame Favre praised me to the skies, which she very rarely does. She said that if I want to become an actress—“
“Which I hope to God you don’t!”
“—I definitely have the talent.” I stopped, remembering another conversation that seemed to have taken place in another life when my father had been none too pleased by my success in Todd School’s talent show. Then I had been ten years old, but now I was old enough to have it out with him. “Why don’t you want me to become an actress?”
“Because it will make you miserable.” He had said as much when I was ten.
“But I love doing it. I don’t feel a bit nervous when I’m up on a stage. In fact, it feels like home, and Madame Favre says—“
“You mustn’t listen to what people say, Christopher. They don’t always know what’s best for you, but I believe I do. It isn’t a question of whether you have the talent to become an actress. Of course, you do—you get that from me, unfortunately—but that isn’t enough, you see, because you don’t have the temperament for it. In that way, you are very like your mother.”
“I’m not like my mother at all!”
He laughed. “We won’t go into that.” The train lurched forward and began chugging out of the station, having left a few bewildered hogs on the platform.
“Why don’t I have the temperament for it?” I could feel tears tickling the back of my throat.
“You don’t want to be in the limelight. How you’d hate it if you ever became famous! I’ve seen you scowling at all those poor people who ask for my autograph—don’t think I haven’t noticed! No, you hide in a corner, like your mother, not wanting to draw attention to yourself, but all the time, you’re listening, listening, not missing a thing, and making endless notes in that busy brain of yours …”
“No, I’m not!” But even as I protested, I knew he spoke the truth.
“And while I haven’t seen you on a stage, I’d wager you can’t project, like your mother, because you are an interior person and too private. An actor has to be something of a damned fool, you know, and a grand exhibitionist, ready to strip off his clothes and stand naked on the stage. He has to turn himself inside out to find whatever warts and moles the part calls for. Your mother couldn’t do that. She was such a lady that she couldn’t be anything else.”
“Stop comparing me to my mother!”
“But why? I thought you and your mother were close.”
“I don’t want to talk about my mother!” I began to cry but softly.
“Good God in heaven, what have I done!” He patted my hand, suddenly awkward and flustered while he fumbled for the linen handkerchief poking out of the breast pocket of his black shirt. “All I want for you is to be happy, and I don’t think you will be if you become an actress. There now, dry your eyes and stop making me feel like a cad.”
I mopped my eyes while we sat in silence, staring out of the grimy windows at the countryside passing before us. We had crossed the Spanish border at last and how different the land looked from the south of France. Little grew here except gnarled olive trees and low-lying scrub.
“There’s another reason why a life in the theater wouldn’t suit you,” my father resumed. “You are too damned intelligent. Most actors are children, you know, not very bright or original, and if you had to spend every day of your life with them, you’d be profoundly bored.”
“Are you bored by most of the theater people you know?”
“God, yes! But don’t tell anyone.” He gave me a conspiratorial wink and looked relieved when I smiled. “No, darling girl, the thing for you to do is to marry a very smart banker, lawyer, or stockbroker who’ll make pots of money and take excellent care of you. Then you can settle down in a lovely home somewhere in the suburbs and have lots of kids. That will not only make you happy, it will make me a grandfather!” He laughed his fulsome belly laugh and lit another big, fat cigar as the train crept through the drab outskirts of Barcelona.
Is that the only future Daddy sees for me? I looked away to hide my disappointment. Perhaps he was right and I should not pursue a career in the theater. Yet I wanted to do far more with my life than make Orson Welles a grandfather.
7
The Phone Call
I FELT IMMEDIATELY AT home in Barcelona, a city that welcomed strollers and pleasure-seekers, staying up all night to accommodate them. Well past midnight, throngs of people still paraded up and down the spacious, tree-lined boulevards. Restaurants, bars, and cafés were packed. Children bowled hoops or ran shrieking along walkways reserved for pedestrians, followed by Spanish Civil War veterans hobbling along on crutches and hunched-over grandmothers pushing squalling infants in carriages. It seemed no one in Barcelona went to bed before daw
n.
Like a homing pigeon, my father had booked us into Barcelona’s Hotel Ritz. It had first opened its doors in 1919 and still stood on the Gran Via like an imperious dowager wearing the family jewels. The lobby was magnificent with tiled marble floors and archways reminiscent of a Moorish palace. The Ritz had been built, my father informed me, at the height of Barcelona’s modernista movement, the Catalan equivalent of Art Nouveau, which began in the late nineteenth century and continued to be fashionable into the 1920s. It was an exuberant style that blended Arabic, Moorish, Gothic, and many other influences.
“Wait until you see Gaudí’s houses,” he told me, smiling broadly, as we rode the elevator to our suite on the top floor.
“Who?”
“Antoni Gaudí. The most inventive modernista of them all. He was original to the point of madness, and what’s really incredible is that he got away with it.” A mighty gust of laughter shook the elevator. “The Catalans let this madman turn his fantasies into houses and start to build a cathedral that looks like mounds of melting chocolate and stands unfinished to this day. Now the whole world flocks to see these creations and the name of Gaudí is inseparable from the name of Barcelona. I’ll take you to see his houses tomorrow.”
Yet when morning came, clear and invigorating, my father decided we should first explore the Ramblas, Barcelona’s most famous promenade for strollers, vendors, and street entertainers. The Ramblas stretched for blocks between two busy streets lined with houses that desperately needed a coat of paint and ended just shy of the port. We began in the northern end, picking our way through the flower market: so many lovely blossoms, all kinds and colors, still wet with dew, bunched and waiting in pails of water to be taken home in armfuls. Soon the flower stalls gave way to vendors of caged birds, but we did not linger here, not liking the sight of hundreds of exotic songbirds in captivity. Farther on we stopped to watch a flamenco dancer from Andalusia, a pathetic old woman in garish makeup, make a valiant attempt to entertain us. My father gave her a few coins.
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