“Daddy, does Ramblas mean ‘rambling’ in English?”
“No, it comes from an Arabic word, ramla, which means ‘dry river bed.’ “
It never failed to amaze me how much he knew about everything. “Daddy, didn’t you ever go to college?”
“No, as I’ve already told you, I went to Ireland at the age of sixteen precisely to avoid being sent to college.”
“But later on, after Ireland, didn’t you—”
“After Ireland, I eloped with your mother and started the Mercury Theatre.”
“Don’t you ever wish you’d gone to college?”
“Never. I’ve taught myself everything I need to know.”
“But how?” I waited impatiently while he stopped to give money to a blind man grinding away on a hurdy-gurdy.
“Mostly by reading every book I can get my hands on, but also by listening to people who know more than I do. If you’re curious by nature and willing to admit how little you know about anything, you’ll spend your entire life educating yourself and do a far better job of it than any university.”
We had come to the end of the Ramblas and stood on the waterfront, facing a statue of Christopher Columbus. My father had me notice that the statue’s lifted arm was pointing in the direction of North Africa and not, as it should have been, toward the New World. After sailing west to discover the land he thought was India, my father continued, Columbus arrived back in Barcelona with several “Indians” in tow and got a royal welcome from Ferdinand and Isabella.
“Why didn’t they receive Columbus in Madrid?” I wanted to know.
“Because, in 1493, the capital of Spain was Barcelona.”
As we retraced our steps to the hotel, it occurred to me that if I could spend one full year in my father’s company, I would never need to go to college.
EARLY ONE MORNING I accompanied my father in a chauffeured car that took us north of Barcelona and around the rugged coastline of the Costa Brava. At that time there were no hotels or high-rises standing shoulder to shoulder on a super highway. There were only private villas built into the cliffs and well hidden from the road, including the one my father was considering as a location for Mr. Arkadin. When we arrived at our destination, a splendid villa with gardens overlooking the sea, our Catalan hosts gave us lunch on the terrace. Then they withdrew, leaving my father to explore the house and grounds with me trudging along at his side.
Suddenly, he turned to me, his voice warm with concern. “What’s the matter, darling girl? You don’t look as happy today as you usually do.”
“I don’t want to go back to Florissant.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to be a secretary, Daddy.”
“Come.” He took me by the hand and led me to a stone bench shaded by a trellis thick with grapevines. His hand felt so gentle over mine, so warm and comforting. “If you could be anything in the world,” he asked, looking deep into my eyes, “what would you choose to be?”
I’d be just like you, I wanted to say. “I don’t know,” I hesitated. “I mean, I wanted to be an actress, but you don’t think I’d be any good at it …”
“That’s not what I said, Christopher. You would be good at it—you’d be good at just about anything you wanted to do—but I’d like to see you do something that uses your mind. It would be terrible to waste a mind like yours on acting.”
“And what about my becoming a secretary?”
He was silent for a moment. Then, gazing out to sea, he continued, “Whatever you do in life, it’s not forever, you know. Even if you started out as a secretary, in a few years, you could be doing something entirely different, something you can’t even imagine now.”
“Do you know what I want more than anything in the world, Daddy? I want to go to college.” There. I had finally come out with it. “I know you didn’t go to college and you don’t really believe in it, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t go. I’m sure I’d get a lot out of it. There are so many holes in my education, and I don’t see how I’m ever going to amount to anything if all I can do is speak French and take shorthand and type letters.”
“You’re right. Instead of that finishing school, you should be going to the Sorbonne in Paris. Well, if that’s what you really want, I can arrange it.”
“You can? You mean it?”
“Of course, I can. They love me in France. Leave everything to me.”
“You’re wonderful! “ I threw my arms around him and hugged him so hard that we almost fell off the bench.
THAT EVENING, I sat at the desk in my hotel room, describing the Costa Brava in a letter to Grandmother. “It has a savage and natural beauty that I have not seen elsewhere,” I wrote her. “Whereas the Côte d’Azur’s charm lies in cultivated beauty which everyone can enjoy without any discomfort, the Costa Brava’s charm lies in the impression one has of being the first person to stand on those rocky cliffs and gaze at the lashing waves.”
I did not tell Grandmother that I would soon be leaving Florissant and attending the Sorbonne. Nor did I tell her that while I was rhapsodizing about the Costa Brava, I was also eavesdropping on a telephone conversation my father was having in the adjoining room. It was clear from his solicitous tone, his fervent assurances, that he was speaking to someone important to him. How could she think he had forgotten her when every day, every hour, he thought of her and missed her terribly? He had wanted to call, but he had been so occupied with Christopher … but of course he still loved her, he was besotted with her, how could she think for a moment … In a few days Christopher would be back in Switzerland.
I clapped my hands over my ears to shut out this unknown woman. Why, when I knew nothing about her, did I feel so sure she would take my father away from me? Moments later, my father stuck his head around the door and asked if I was ready to go out for dinner. “Who were you talking to?” I asked him.
“Oh, that was Paola.” He gave me his Harry Lime smile. “You don’t realize it, but you’ve already met her.”
“I have?”
“Yes, you saw her in the rushes I showed you the other day. She plays Raina, Mr. Arkadin’s daughter. Remember?”
I called up the image of a tall brunette with black, magnetic eyes. In fact, her eyes—heavily lashed and framed by thick, black eyebrows—were the most striking thing about her. “She’s very beautiful.”
“She certainly is. She’s also a genuine Italian countess, you know. The Countess di Girfalco … but she lets us commoners call her Paola Mori.” He laughed with delight, but for once I didn’t join him.
“Am I going to meet her in person?”
“Not here in Barcelona, but you will when you come to Paris. Paola and I are planning to live there after we finish the picture, and then you’ll have a place to stay while you’re going to college.”
“But won’t Paola mind? I mean, maybe she doesn’t want me staying with you.”
“Christopher, you worry too much about everything, just like your mother. Paola is the most warmhearted, loving, mothering kind of woman you’ll ever have the good fortune to meet. She’s a lot like Hortense Hill, you know, except that she’s incredibly beautiful and only twenty-three.”
Only seven years older than me, I thought. Why couldn’t she be old? Old and ugly with hairs growing out of her chin. Well, I consoled myself, perhaps like all the other women in my father’s life, she wouldn’t last long.
SOON AFTER MY return to Florissant, I wrote my mother about my vacation with my father, describing in detail what we had seen and done in Madrid, the south of France, and Barcelona. “And now for the most fantastic news of all,” I exulted. “Daddy is going to send me to the Sorbonne!” Wasn’t this the best plan for my future now that my French was so fluent? I had been moved up to the most advanced class the pensionnat had to offer, but in truth, I had outgrown Florissant. I was eager to move on to a university where I could study in depth the subjects that most interested me: French literature and art history.
M
y letter went on to spell out the details of my father’s plans. He was going to rent an apartment for the two of us (I decided to leave Paola Mori out of our ménage for the time being). When he had to be out of Paris, I could stay either with the de Courseulles or with friends of his. Through Alain, I had already met a large number of boys and girls my age. In fact, it was amazing how many people I knew in Paris …
In a matter of days I had my mother’s cold reply. “I can live with your dislike of me and poor Jackie who has tried so hard to be your friend,” she began. “I can survive your ingratitude in spite of all we have done for you; I can even brush aside your disloyalty to us as the by-product of your pathetic schoolgirl crush on Orson (for which I am partly to blame), but the one thing I cannot tolerate is having a daughter who is a bloody fool.”
I was so shocked by her reaction that several moments passed before I was able to read on. “You are worse than a fool if you really believe Orson will set you up in an apartment in Paris and pay your tuition at the Sorbonne. He will promise you the moon and the stars—he is very good at that—and then leave you high and dry. You are much too young, at sixteen, to be left anywhere on your own. So if you join your father in Paris, you can forget about seeing me ever again. I’ll cut you off just like that!”
I was so taken aback that I had to stop reading her letter and take a few deep breaths before I could continue. Then came the final blow. “On the other hand, if you still want a relationship with me, you must stop seeing Orson or having anything to do with him. There will be no more visits, letters, or phone calls from now on. Jackie and I will not tolerate Orson’s interference in our plans for your future.”
Sobbing, I fell on my bed. I was six again and terrified of the mother who had turned inexplicably into a witch who was lunging at me, foulmouthed, hitting any part of my body she could grab, hitting to hurt with closed fists. Even then her fury had struck me as out of proportion to my “crime.” Now she was just as angry with me, just as out of control, and I was as helpless at sixteen as I had been at six.
Time passed, making room for other memories. The afternoon I fell off the swings in the school playground, landing on my hands and breaking both wrists. Then my mother rushing to school, driving me to the hospital at breakneck speed, and making such a scene that I was attended to at once. It had always been my mother who made sure I was fed, clothed, cared for. Buying me a mountain of presents at Christmas. Celebrating my birthday with an elaborate party—would I ever forget the one where she had a circus tent erected in the backyard, complete with clowns, acrobats, and pony rides? She had never vanished in smoke, as my father had done, for years at a time. No one had needed to send her five letters to five different addresses with an appeal for money for my tuition or school uniforms, only to have them all returned and stamped Moved. No Forwarding Address.
When at last I stopped sobbing, I realized I could not join my father in Paris if it meant losing my mother. (Knowing her, I took her threat to cut me off “just like that” very seriously.) Maybe at eighteen or nineteen I could have done it, but not at sixteen.
The days that followed were the most distressing of my life. My friends at the pensionnat kept taking me aside and asking what was wrong. Was I ill? Had there been a death in my family? I forced myself to smile and pretend everything was fine. Meanwhile, Jack Pringle was communicating from Johannesburg with Madame Favre. In a copy of his letter, which fell into my hands a good forty years after it was written, he wrote, “We were pleased to receive your letter … regarding Christopher’s development. Her last visit with her father was, we fear, rather unsettling. Chrissie has written us several letters with which we are not altogether pleased. They exhibit an unattractive conceit, and a tendency to forget the reasons why she was sent to Florissant. This has led us to reply in a somewhat sharp manner. You may find that she is somewhat upset in the next weeks, and it could well be that it is our letters which have upset her. We fully realize that our letters may have this effect, and I would ask you not to intervene if you notice that she is unhappy.”
In spite of my stepfather’s directive, Madame Favre invited me to have tea with her one afternoon in her private apartment. I was no longer intimidated by this gaunt, white-haired woman with piercing blue eyes. She had put herself out to be kind to me ever since, at the behest of Jack Pringle, she had given me a bad report. My stepfather claimed that if I got a good report, I would turn into “a slacker,” whereas a bad report would make me work harder.
It happened like this. The entire school was assembled in the lounge and Madame began reading our reports aloud, one by one. When she got to mine, my immediate reaction was that there had to be some mistake. Everyone knew I was the best student in the school, the only one, in fact, who took her classes seriously. So it was ludicrous to say that I was “not applying” myself or “not progressing rapidly enough.” The gross unfairness of my report turned my cheeks a flaming red.
Barely able to suppress my indignation, I waited until Madame Favre had finished and then asked if I might speak to her in private. She immediately confessed that the “bad” report had not been her idea but my stepfather’s, and that I deserved not only a good report but an excellent one. From that moment on, Madame Favre was my friend.
“Now tell me, Christophare,” she began while pouring our tea in her pleasant living room, “why are you so unhappy these days?” I burst into tears and told her everything. When I had finished, she kept stirring her tea, twirling the spoon around and around in her cup while she gazed out the windows at Lac Léman and the towering Alps beyond. What would it be like, I wondered, to have such a view every day of one’s life? I mopped my eyes, determined to lift myself out of my misery. At last Madame said in a quiet voice, “I think your mother is very frightened.”
“Frightened?” Furious, hysterical — those were the adjectives that sprang to my mind.
“Yes, she is afraid of losing you, don’t you see? And so she threatens you in this way to make you stay with her. She is also afraid of what might happen if you go to Paris to be with your father. I think she is trying to protect you from him, Christophare, and that is why she does not want you to see him.”
“But Madame, Daddy is the kindest, most generous, most wonderful …” My voice broke, and I buried my face in my hands. She leaned over and patted my shoulder.
“Now Christophare, I am going to say something that perhaps I shouldn’t, but somebody needs to say it to you. The feelings you have for your father are not natural. You do not feel about him the way a daughter normally feels about her father.”
“What do you mean?” I did not intend to address her so sharply, but I suddenly felt under attack.
“I mean that when you are expecting to see your father or stay with him — and I have observed this several times since you have been with us at Florissant — you get much too excited and overwrought, as though you were going off to see a lover.” She gave a little laugh. “Then, when you return from these visits, you are much too dejected, again as though you have been parted from a lover. Don’t you see, Christophare? To feel this way about your father is not natural or desirable. If I were your mother, I would also be thinking about limiting your visits with him.”
“But, Madame, my mother wants to end my visits for good.”
“That is what she says now, of course, but I do not think she means forever.”
That gave me some hope. Perhaps if I gave my mother time to calm down, she would come around. As Madame Favre had suggested, she may have been overreacting out of her fear of losing me.
Although I managed to say “Au revoir” to Madame and thank her for the tea, I left more troubled and confused than I had been before our tête-à-tête. If what Madame had said about me and my father were true—and I suspected it was—what was so wrong about it? How was I supposed to feel about him, a man who, quite apart from being my biological father, was an extraordinary human being and a great creative force? Hadn’t my mother always said Orson
Welles was not to be judged by normal standards? “Orson is a genius, Chrissie, and you can’t expect a genius to behave like an ordinary father.” Always my mother had been my father’s champion, explaining away the long lapses when I didn’t hear from him. Always she had encouraged me to think well of him, no matter what he failed to do. How often she had told me I would never have a better companion in the world than my father … how often, until now.
STUNNED BY A blistering letter he received from my mother, my father turned to his staunch allies, Hortense and Roger Hill, in the firm hope that they would come to his defense. (I knew nothing of this until years later when Skipper gave me the correspondence.) First my father appealed to Granny, writing, “I sent a very happy and loving Christopher back to school this Spring. We exchanged letters … and she begged me to keep a week free for her before school this fall. Then she went to South Africa, and after that silence.” He told Granny that, not understanding why he was no longer hearing from me, he had wired my mother repeatedly and finally received “a communication” bursting with “hysterical anger.” “[Virginia] seems to have the idea that I have been poisoning Christopher against her,” he wrote to Granny. “This charge is utterly false… I have never spoken anything but warmly of Virginia to anyone … and certainly it would be unlike me to begin with Chrissie.” He went on to explain that although he had discussed my future with me on several occasions, he and I had talked “only in general terms as I should think any father or even friend would have the right to with a young lady of sixteen.” He assured Granny that his conversations with me had always been qualified by his “pointing out to Christopher that she must talk these things over with her mother as a point of final authority” (which is not how I remembered it). He concluded, underlining words for emphasis, “Now Virginia writes (and I quote exactly), ‘If I could prevent your seeing Chrissie until she is of age I should do so. The Hills agree with me. I am in constant touch with them.’” He signed it “in great haste and unhappiness” with a huge, dashing capital O.
In My Father's Shadow Page 18