A Lotus Grows in the Mud

by Goldie Hawn

  “I know, Mom. I’m just so tired.”

  I am in Italy making a film called Viaggio con Anita, or Trip with Anita, with Giancarlo Giannini. It is back to back with my last film, Foul Play, with Chevy Chase, which came out of the blue just when I thought my career was over. I’ve brought Oliver with me since his daddy is in London making his music. I never sleep, and I feel like a walking zombie.

  I have a nanny with me, but my Ollie wants only me. So I’m up all hours of the night, trying to find him pasta and bits of ham. Gosh, he is a picky eater. It is a scary time in Italy. The Red Brigade is terrorizing and bombing Europe, so I have been assigned twenty-four-hour bodyguards. It is great, I must admit. I like having someone sitting outside my door every night. They take Oliver, throw him on their shoulders and carry him around alongside me, all the while teaching him Italian. “Ciao, Mamma!” he says as I run off to the set. “Ciao, my bambino.” Yes, my Italian is getting better too.

  I look out the balcony of my room at the Hotel Palazzo in Livorno and down onto the busy Viale Italia and the Grand Quay. Ordinary Italian life hustles and bustles below me, and yet here I am, trapped with a headache I could sell to science.

  The Palazzo is a residential hotel with long corridors and high ceilings, like something out of Sunset Boulevard. It is furnished sparsely—a chair here, a vase there—and just a thought can create an echo. Rendered in pink plaster on the outside, it has big windows and small balconies with huge arches and colonnades, and PALAZZO in big letters across the front.

  Every night after filming, I walk the long, empty hallway back to my room, to take over for the nanny and try to recover from another frustrating day on the set. To tell you the truth, I am getting a little tired of Italians patting me on the head and telling me everything is going to be okay.

  “I find myself crying for no reason,” I tell my mother unhappily. “I can’t always be there for Oliver when he cries, and he hates it when I leave. Plus, the work is so hard. My director doesn’t even speak English. To top it off, I was in the car today with Giancarlo Giannini, trying to discuss a scene, and, you know, he’s just learning English. So I said to him, ‘I think that this would be funnier if I reworked this line.’ And do you know what he said, Mom?”

  “No, what the hell did he say?” she growls.

  “He said that this movie wasn’t meant to be funny. I laughed and told him, ‘No, honey, this is definitely meant to be a comedy.’ And he said, ‘No, this is a tragedy.’ And you know, Mom, I’m beginning to think he’s right.”

  My mom laughs. “Honey, you need some help right now. Why don’t you send Oliver to Bill in London? He’s there for a while, isn’t he, making his TV show?”

  “You know what, I’m going to do that, Mom. That’s a great idea. He’d be better off there with his daddy. Although, it’s gonna be so hard to be away from him.”

  With Oliver in Bill’s care in London, I am left alone in Livorno to finish the movie, commuting to Bill’s beautiful house in Regent’s Park every weekend. This is working much better. However, there are still so many difficulties working in a foreign tongue, speaking a foreign language in a foreign land, and each day is filled with new frustrations. Not least that we are way over schedule.

  So, here I am, facing new challenges daily, unable to express myself properly. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Italians. They love your children; they love your dogs; they’re always ready to feed you, house you and would give you the clothes off their back.

  But the sexual politics are quite different there. For instance, in a scene where I fall into a fountain the director positions the camera so low that he is filming straight up my skirt. Then he attaches my sodden underpants and bra to the antenna of the hero’s car. Or he takes my microphone away and gives it to Giancarlo Giannini.

  “But who can hear me?” I complain. “You have to have sound.”

  “It’s no problem,” they say, “mi amore,” patting me on the head and hoping I’ll just shut up. “Domani. Tomorrow. We fix it tomorrow. It is non importante.”

  Lunch goes on for hours. Wine, pasta, wine, meat, wine, dessert—and more wine. One day, I return to the set, but no one is there.

  “Where is everybody?” I ask the only person I can find.

  “Everyone have siesta,” he tells me with a shrug.

  Oh boy, I’m going to be stuck here for another year.

  The siesta must have been good because the next day the director suddenly springs a sex scene on me, in which I am supposed to be naked.

  “No!” I tell him vehemently. “I’m a new mother, and it was never in the original script.”

  “But you were naked before, in Girl in My Soup!” he exclaims, through an interpreter. “I saw you.”

  “That was different,” I protest. “I was all alone, and it was shot very tastefully, through a gauze curtain. This is me and Giancarlo copulating openly in a hammock!”

  With a frenetic waving of his hands and a look like thunder, the director cusses me in Italian. The only word I can understand is “Madonna,” which he now calls me for being too much of a prude. I am as stressed out as I have ever been, I miss Oliver terribly, and I am beginning to suffer the first major anxieties about my relationship, not helped by the long distances between us. Madonna wants to go home.

  Coming back to my hotel every night, exhaustion drags at my feet as I cross that echoing marble lobby and climb the staircase to my room. Lifting my head against the weight of the day, I peep into the hotel bar to see if any of the crew are having a drink. I could use a good belt tonight.

  Up at the counter, several young Italians are standing around a television set, screaming at a soccer match. I notice a man, sitting with his back to them, quite apart, in the corner of the bar. He is looking out onto the veranda. He seems to be staring at the flowers dancing in the breeze. The soft evening light illuminates his face.

  Stopping in the doorway, I stare at him for a long time. There is something about him that I am drawn to, and it is not just the brilliant shaft of sunlight that seems to be pointing an ethereal finger at him from the window. He has an interesting face, deep with lines of experience and wisdom; his fingers are long like my father’s and look as if they could play an instrument. I feel instinctively that this is someone I would like to know.

  Impulsively, I, who has never been known to leave anyone a stranger, walk up and introduce myself. “Buonasera.” I extend my hand. “Il mio nome è Goldie.”

  He places his hand on mine and says his name: “Aldo.”

  I look deeply into his face and realize that he must be at least ninety years old. For me, it is love at first sight.

  I sit down and we begin our fumbling dance of words, a duet of Italian and French with a little German thrown in for the pas de deux. We mix and match the languages we know and listen in open wonder to the lyrical beauty of those we don’t. In our faltering, fragmented sentences, we embark on a great love affair. Soon, he makes me completely forget the need for words.

  Aldo is, without a doubt, the most romantic-looking man I have ever met. He is tall, lean, with a straight back and a shock of long white hair. His face is craggy and crumpled, but he has high cheekbones, a Roman nose, a full mouth and a chiseled jaw. His blue eyes are droopy now and a little watery with age, but they still hold a sparkle that hints at the inner wonder of his great spirit.

  Through our strange mix of languages, we gradually come to know each other. My Italian improves, and so does his German. Our French helps us when we’re stuck. More and more, we are able to communicate. More and more, I am able to understand his incredible history. Having lived through two world wars and fought in the Resistance, he now lives in this hotel, waiting for the end.

  “I met a girl in nineteen forty-two. She sold magazines at a stand in Paris,” he tells me, his tongue curling deftly around his German. “Her name was Rosa. I bought a newspaper and I fell in love. After that, I see her almost every day. But Rosa was Jewish, and when the Nazis came she
was very afraid.”

  “What happened?”

  “The Nazis came for her, but I managed to get her away, into the network, where she could find safe passage out. I held her in my arms, just once, and kissed her. On my way back, I was nearly caught. A bullet nicked me.”

  “Did you ever see Rosa again?” I ask, hopefully.

  “No,” he says, sucking in a gulp of air that tells me the wound in his heart is still fresh. “I lost her forever.”

  Leaning forward in his chair, his eyes moist, he squeezes my hand. “We were like Romeo and Juliet.” He pauses for a moment to compose himself. “I always hoped I would see my Rosa again, but I never did. A few years later, I met Fiorine, my beloved wife, who is now dying. But a little piece of my heart will never stop loving Rosa.”

  Aldo reminds me so much of my father. He is a dreamer and a born storyteller. Listening to him, I wonder if my father ever had a secret love, if Mom was his first and only sweetheart, or if, on his travels as a musician, he ever fell for anyone else, as Aldo did with Rosa.

  Like Daddy, my new friend is also a great lover of music. He persuades the bartender, who stands drying glasses in front of a mirror pitted with time, just like Aldo’s hands, to switch off the television when nobody is around and play his 78s. Side by side in this cavernous bar, with its elegant columns and ornate moldings, we listen to his favorite Italian opera—Puccini and Verdi, Rossini and Bellini—music that is both strange and wonderful to me, and very different from the Bruch and Bach and Tchaikovsky that Daddy always played at home.

  Sipping a cappuccino, I sit in reverential silence while the amazing voice of the Italian diva Renata Tebaldi fills the room with an aria from Tosca. I stare and stare at Aldo’s exquisite hands as they sway in time to the music, his eyes closed. Beautiful, gentle, expressive, they are so like my father’s.

  His physical fragility belies his inner strength. Hidden beneath a body that is crumbling and causing him pain beats a heart that has seen so much, has borne so much and knows so much.

  Knowing Aldo is at my hotel in Livorno waiting for my return each night lifts my heart. I feel like a married woman scurrying away from her demanding husband to meet her grateful lover. He is my guru and my spirit guide on this earth. He is the one who, for the moment, seems to make sense of my life.

  I can tell how much he also looks forward to our nightly chats. His whole being lights up when I come into the room after a hard day’s filming. It fills me with such joy to see him so happy; it erases the frustrations of my day.

  Aldo and I develop a fascinating relationship, incredibly deep despite the language barrier. I grow to love him more and more. He knows I am an actress who goes to work every day, and who flies to London each weekend, but he doesn’t want to know any more than that. It’s not importante.

  What is importante is how much we have come to mean to each other. When filming in Livorno finally comes to an end after four months, I am stricken by the thought that I may never see Aldo again. Relieved as I am that the movie is over and that I can now spend a glorious summer in London with Oliver and Bill (where our beautiful daughter will be conceived), it is still one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

  “Here, I bought you something,” I tell him, unable to hide my tears as I hand him a large red geranium to remind him of us. “You have to water it regularly.”

  “Like our friendship, my darling,” he whispers, “or it will die.”

  Knowing his time on this earth is running out, I write to Aldo soon afterward. He writes straight back. In his long, sloping handwriting he tells me of the sad deterioration of his wife, his own failing health and his sorrow to be old and dying. I keep every single letter he sends me, to remind me of his gentility.

  My dear Goldie, I hope that you will remember me always. I will never forget Goldie, the little blond American, so very dear, who writes to me with her own hands. Her letters designed with the heart…I am older and tiresomely alone with my poor wife who is always more ill…I have perhaps made many sins, many errors and many mistakes in error. Now comes the time of reckoning, Judgment Day. I have lived a long course of life, now I close the book of lost debts. I have retired to a home for old men called “House of the Old.” I want to try even this last experience. I am fascinated. To you, Goldie, a hug, a caress to your blond hair, an unforgettable look at your blue eyes, the fruit of the loom.

  I write back:

  Dearest Aldo, I have read your letter over and over again. It makes me so sad that I cannot be near you and comfort you. I picture you in my mind’s eye and I see you walking the enormous hallways of the huge hotel and at times pretend that I am turning a corner and by surprise run into you. It always makes me so happy not to have missed you. I am planning a trip to Europe soon and I will try to come and visit. I must brush up on my French; my textbooks are collecting dust on my shelves.

  You were so dear to bring me words of comfort. I care so much about you and feel as though I have found a kindred spirit. I feel you know so much about life. When you are having one of your bad and tired nights think of me because you are so valuable to me, as I am sure you have been to the many lucky people whose lives you have touched in your life. Please don’t hesitate to write. Love and kisses. P.S. It is still quite warm here. I’m waiting for the cool breath of autumn.

  In one of his final letters to me, Aldo writes:

  My dear friend, I was happy to receive your unexpected letter. It gave me in my solitude a moment of joy. I am so very alone and I thank you. I would like to be listening to music and reading poetry with you, Goldie. I still have the little plant you left for me. Every day I look at it, and every day I think of you…The photographs (of your children) were very pretty. You say that with her smile Katie could stop a war. Well you, Goldie, with your words, could stop even death, perhaps mine.

  Your letter is doubly propitious because I am tired, Goldie, so very tired. But I am still painfully alive. I live in this unhappy scene of the world; the same in sleep as awake and so often my thoughts take me to you like a distant dream…I think of you with affection. Aldo. P.S. I enclose a photograph of old Aldo, very old. It was taken by two German tourists who were kind enough to mail it to me. Look at my hands, so skeletal, as has become my life. In the words of an old Italian song, don’t forget me.

  I write to Aldo for more than four years, sending him gifts, flowers and photographs, and I visit whenever I am in Europe. One day, his letters stop coming, and I know in my heart that he is dead. I try to find him, to send flowers to his grave, but the world has swallowed this remarkable human being whole and closed over him like water, leaving no trace.

  From the briefest of chance encounters, from a kind word to a stranger, Aldo and I ended up giving each other so much. To this day, I feel the light of his life illuminating mine. One should never be closed to new friendship, no matter how old or tired or busy. Every relationship has its unique gifts, and Aldo’s gifts to me were priceless.

  Blanche DuBois, Tennessee Williams’s character in A Streetcar Named Desire, said, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” I feel that deeply. There is something about being vulnerable to a stranger. Not vulnerable in the sense of being endangered, but vulnerable in that you are in unfamiliar territory, a place where you need to avail yourself of the help and kindness of others. It not only helps you restore your faith continually in humanity, it is also so humbling.

  I never want to get so comfortable that I forget the importance of those small connections people can make with other human beings. When you are comfortable, you can miss so much, and I for one don’t want to miss a thing.

  postcard

  Oh heart beat in my womb, pounding out the rhythm to the music of my soul, making me throb from head to toe, giving each other life. I know in my heart, as she will know in hers, that we are separate people alone in this world; but now we have each other as close as two can be, sharing our warm secret that we will always keep.

  —A poem
to my unborn daughter

  grief

  Your joy can be measured only by the depth of your sorrow.

  My eyelids flicker open and then close. I am in that delicious state of wakeful nothingness, floating weightlessly just before sleep. It is a warm afternoon in early 1982, and I am lying on my bed for a rare afternoon nap. Curled over into the fetal position, a blanket pulled right up around my neck, my mind drifts with the tide of my thoughts, back and forth, lapping gently against the inside of my skull.

  Through the swirling water, something begins to emerge like an image on photographic paper. Only this isn’t static; it’s moving. It is as if I’m witnessing something but am detached at the same time. I can see my father. He is in his new apartment in Los Angeles, and he is busy in his kitchen with something.

  I smile. What is Daddy doing? Is he cooking hush puppies? I wonder. Or is he creating something with his beautiful hands?

  I continue to watch him as he walks from the kitchen into his dining area. Then I suddenly see him clutch his chest and fall to the floor.

  In a blind panic, I awaken with a start, sit up and call his name.

  What in the world was that? What have I just seen? I jump out of bed, hoping to dispel my bad dream and shake myself back to reality. I run to the bathroom to splash some water on my face. Looking into the mirror at my own reflection, I say, “I’m gonna call Dad.”

  Walking back into the bedroom, I pick up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Daddy?” I am so relieved just to hear his voice.

  “Go? Hi, honey, how are you?”

  “I’m fine.” I exhale. “How are you, Daddy? Are you okay?”

  “Oh, I’m fine.” There is a weariness to his tone.

  “So how was your day, Dad, on a scale of one to ten?”