A View From a Broad

by Bette Midler

  “Oh,” Josef said, “if only we could dream up such fanciful interpretations for our visions in the night! I’ve always loved that little mouse for seeing an ordinary bat as something so-mystically beautiful. That’s why I named the boat after his story.”

  “You named the boat?” I asked, surprised.

  “Well, I did. Yes. The boat is part mine, you see. Originally it was my father’s. Now it belongs to the whole family. Would you like to see it?”

  Of course I wanted to see it and from its gleaning wood hull to its polished mahogany interiors, Englen med Sorte Vinger was quite the loveliest vessel I had ever been on. Sensing my enthusiasm, Josef asked me if I would like to see a part of the boat he didn’t usually show to anyone. When I said yes, he opened a small hatch in the middle of the cabin floor that I hadn’t noticed before and climbed down a rickety ladder, motioning for me to follow.

  I descended into a small space so dark I could barely see and for one fleeting instant wondered if it was only his boat Josef wanted to show me. But as my eyes became accustomed to the half-light, I saw that the walls of this lower cabin were covered with yellow cloth Stars of David. Suddenly the whole day changed.

  “During the War,” Josef said, “we ferried Jews to Sweden. Every star is a Jew we saved. Or tried to save. There are maybe forty or fifty stars there, and we never got caught. My father was the town’s greatest fisherman and a master at masquerade. He would give the German guards his freshest eels, sometimes even a lobster if we had been lucky enough to haul one in. He gave the Germans the best of his catch, and they never caught on to what he was doing. Well, towards the end of the War they did, but by then they didn’t care. They just wanted to go home, like everybody else.”

  I was flabbergasted. And moved. Then upset to think how little of what we Americans hear or are taught we really absorb, how little of it really penetrates the heart. For of course I had heard about the Danish underground and the escape route across water to Sweden, but until the moment I stood in that dark, cramped cabin with Josef it was never real to me, more like a movie I had seen once long ago, then promptly forgot.

  I tried to remember where I had first heard about Denmark and the Yellow Stars. Probably in school. Then I remembered I had learned almost nothing in school. In world history I had only gotten as far as Ponce de Leon. (Oh, Ponce! Ponce! The most sensitive and sensible of all the explorers.) Suddenly I wanted to make up for that lack; I wanted to know all I could about World War II, World War I—everything. I brooded. Finally, in utter humiliation and under cover of darkness, I forced myself to buy and read a twelve-pound volume titled Wars.

  I realize twelve pounds is not quite enough weight to constitute truly far-reaching research, but I found out what I needed to know: that what we live through every day is a continuation of the Battle of Jericho, and that there is a kind of Sleazy Nationalism which breeds within the breast of the citizen confusion, dissatisfaction and a burning desire to get what his neighbor’s got or what he thinks he’s got or has been told he’s got. In other words, paranoia, avarice, acquisitiveness, glory seeking (which is really only vanity, after all) and, yes, folks, let us be brave, BOREDOM on a scale so vast as to be incomprehensible are the causes of war and always have been.

  It was a heavy book, in every way. However, it wasn’t the reading I minded, it was the carrying that wore me out. I stuffed Wars into the satchel I always carry in my right hand. After two weeks of lugging it from country to country, my right arm and breast swelled to such gigantic proportions that I was forced to cut off my sleeves and go without a bra. Not a good idea for a hefty young woman even in her own homeland, (not to mention on foreign soil, where bleached-blond women are traditionally treated as Magdalenes, and a bleached blonde with black roots, a swollen breast over her shoulder, and no baby in sight is likely to be treated even worse). I finally gave the book to Miss Frank to carry and managed to hide my deformity by wearing my Karl Lagerfeld camel’s-hair coat backwards until the offending members returned to their former, nonengorged state.

  I was relieved when I finished it and neither Miss Frank nor I had to carry the goddamned book around anymore. In the end we managed to put Wars to pretty good use, though. What was not biodegradable can probably still be found floating among the debris of the great sewage systems of the world where toilet paper is just a hope of the future, although chauffeurs, of course, are not.

  • A VISIT TO THE LITTLE MERMAID •

  The most amazing thing happened to me while I was in m Copenhagen. I wanted very much to lay my eyes on the Little Mermaid, who had, after all, been my inspiration for Dolores.

  The Danes had gone simply wild over Dolores, sensing that the nutty fruitcake in the wheelchair was, in some crazy way, a tribute to their national heroine. It seemed only fitting that I pay the little statue a visit.

  The day we left on the short drive to the harbor where she sits, gazing out toward Sweden, was gray and gloomy. On the horizon, thunderheads were gathering, threatening rain. Or worse. The weather was so bad, in fact, that Josef suggested we turn back and see the lady some other day.

  But there was no other day for me. On the morrow I would be leaving for Paris and the French Experience, so it was, quite literally, now or never.

  “But she is so much more lovely in the sunlight” Josef insisted. “Perhaps it is better that you don’t see her at all than see her in so unbecoming a light.”

  “That’s all right,” I told him. “I know all about unbecoming light.”

  So on we drove through the gray-green town. Large drops of rain splattered like broken eggs on the windshield. The sky grew darker and darker as chilly gusts of wind nearly shook the car off the road. I thought of The Little Match Girl and The Red Shoes and shivering Jews crossing in the night to the haven of Sweden, just a few miles across the Öresund.

  By the time we reached the small green slope which leads down to the water’s edge where the Little Mermaid sits so patiently, loud claps of thunder split the black and swirling air.

  “We must park here and walk a bit,” Josef said. “Are you sure you want to go?”

  “I must,” I told him, gathering up the collar of the same brown coat I had worn backwards and forwards throughout all of Europe.

  We climbed out of the car and walked towards the water, our heads bowed against the stinging wind and rain.

  “Tell me when we get there,” I shouted at Josef above the breaking thunder.

  “All right,” he said. And then, in a moment, “We’re there.”

  I stopped walking and lifted my head. Not more than ten feet from where I stood was the Little Mermaid. I hope she’s not angry with me, I mumbled, thinking of that loudmouthed wretch Dolores.

  Just then a huge, mean-looking cloud blew in off the sea and hung over the shoreline, enclosing the Little Mermaid and me in a misty envelope of silence and chill. All around the base of the statue green-black waters began to swirl and foam. It became so dark I thought someone had put out the sun. It was eerie.

  I was just about to turn and run back to the car when a clap of thunder exploded directly overhead, and at the very same instant, a bolt of lightning as bright and fierce as anything I’ve ever seen struck the defenseless statue right on the noggin. For one incredible, breathtaking moment, the Little Mermaid glowed pure gold.

  I turned to Josef, my mouth hanging down to the ground, but in his perfect politeness he had already returned to the car so that the Little Mermaid and I might be alone for a while. He had missed the entire event. In all the world, I was the only one who had seen it.

  I suppose there will be other moments in my life as awesome and mysterious, but none, I think, more moving. For there in that little country of cottage cheese and courage, I became a child again, and for the first time since I was six, I felt something we all should feel at least once a year but hardly ever do: the thrilling rush of insignificance.

  • SOMEWHERE IN THE NORTH OF FRANCE •

  “Hath not a mermaid ey
es? Hath she not ears?”

  • SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE •

  We were travelling at quite a clip down one of those twisting coastal roads that seemed to fill up every other frame of the tackier Nouvelle Vague films of the early sixties. Memories of in-numerable Fiats plunging into the sea kept crowding out of my brain the beauty that lay before me. It was a gorgeous, sunny day. The Kind of day when the English Channel is the color it ought to be, not the dismal gray it usually is. The leaves were falling, the birds were singing and oh, boy, did I have gas!

  Not from anything I had eaten, mind you, but from acute aggravation. And who was the cause of my aggravation? You guessed it: Dolores.

  I hated to admit it, even to myself, but ever since her triumph in London and on the Continent, Dolores had been getting cockier and cockier. That pushy piece of tail was capable of doing anything. And did.

  Everyone was a victim of Dolores’ incredible self-indulgence. One night she couldn’t get her poi balls to work. So the indefatigable woman stopped and started again. And again. And again. And again. For a good fifteen minutes she stood there, center stage, smashing balls into her eyes, her nose, her lovely set of boom-boom curls. Still she wouldn’t give up until her mastery was proved—as if by then anyone cared. By the time she quit, the drummer’s hands were raw and bloody. The conga player needed oxygen. The trumpet player’s lips had fallen off.

  I had created a monster: of that there was no doubt. Then, in Fontainebleau, where we were spending the night after a long but picturesque detour to savor the joys of Brittany’s cuisine, it happened. Without a word of warning, Dolores flew the coop. Took off. On her own. Just like that. It must have been quite a sight: Dolores, dragging her tail behind her, starfish bra bouncing proudly, walking right out of the theater and into the world outside. And she had the gall to take my three yentas with her.

  Naturally, she headed for the beach, which is where they finally found her, brazenly drying her scales in the sun like so many pounds of dead fish.

  “I will no longer be confined to the stage!” she shouted as they tried to pry her off a rock and into the waiting van. “Why should I be? Hath not a mermaid eyes? Hath she not ears? If you prick me, doth I not bleed?”

  Oh, Dolores I thought. Give it a rest.

  Still, it really was quite something. My Ladies had never dared to go out on the street before. I don’t think they were brave enough. Or I wasn’t brave enough to let them. Now, strange as it was, there was something about what Dolores did that very much appealed to me. For when I really came to think of it, why were my Ladies chained to the stage? Why shouldn’t they get to go out now and then?

  “I had created a monster.”

  • RANTINGS OF A MANIC MERMAID •

  Why? Why? Why does that woman treat me so shabbily? Where does she come off trying to tell me what to do on stage! I don’t tell her what to do. How could anyone tell her anything? She thinks she’s so high falutin’ with her phony blond hair and her high-heeled shoes (which she says axe Charles Jourdan. Hah!) and her stupid name in lights. So what! is what I say. So what! That doesn’t give her the right to accuse me of behaving recklessly. The nerve to tell me I’m making too much out of my balls! My audience wants to see me triumph! Needs to see me triumph! Doesn’t she understand what a symbol I am? My victory is their victory! I give them hope! I show them what courage means! She’s jealous, that’s all. She likes to think she’s the only one who has ever tasted success, who’s ever done anything worthwhile. Hah! Who will ever forget my work in Porgy and Bass or Finny Girl or the ever-popular Goldilox? Not to mention my autobiography—Fear of Frying! Even now I am at work on my next offering: Household Hints from the Toast of Chicago. Of course with all the ruckus around here I’ve only gotten two chapters done—How to Get Rid of Silverfish and the very important How to Beat Copper into Submission. Let her match that! She wants to compete. I’ll give her compete. Eat or be eaten, I always say. That’s what this whole world’s about. Well, that and Art, of course. Which is something else about which she knows nothing. Especially my Art. I am a serious artiste. My work has shape and form. It is not, I repeat not, a repellent monument to megalomania, as is the work of some we know. My Revues, my Medleys are my Message. But does that wretched vat of moral decay ever think about the thought and care that go into what I do? Let me see her sing “The Moon of Manakoora” in a wheelchair and make it work! But I don’t get appreciation. I don’t get a Thank you. I get ridiculed. And laughed at. That’s what I get. Well she won’t have Dolores to kick around much longer, I can tell you. She’s nothing but an overbleached, overboobed fraud. And I intend to tell her so . . . tomorrow.

  “Well she won’t have Dolores to kick around much longer . . .”

  • ICE ON PARLE FRANÇALS •

  “Miss Frank! Miss Frank!” I shouted, looking out my bathroom window for the first time and feeling a thrill run through my body, “Guess where we are!”

  “Paris, dear,” the impossible woman replied as she struggled to clean up a particularly vivid room-service mess left over from the night before. “We’ve been here for two days.”

  “Don’t be snide,” I said. “I meant we’re right next door to Les Galeries.”

  “Oh, how nice for you, dear.” Miss Frank was unimpressed. “Why don’t you get dressed and go look at some paintings?”

  “Les Galeries, darling, is a department store. The biggest in Europe.”

  “Really?” said Miss Frank, her eyes lighting up a bit. “Do you think they have panty hose?”

  Poor Miss Frank: hers was an endless quest for panty hose to replace the ones I was destroying at the rate of two or three pairs a night. “Oh, yes, I’m sure they do. Shall we go?”

  It took us exactly three minutes to be dressed and out the door. I was especially excited not so much by the thought of purchasing underwear as by the thought that I had finally found a place in Paris where I could buy one of those beautiful French baskets for the back of my brother Daniel’s bike. Of course, I had seen many fancy shops on the Rue de Rivoli where I could have bought one, but I was, if the truth be known, scared to death to go in them. Only two groups of people intimidate me absolutely: salespeople and the French. So imagine my terror of having to face a French salesperson! I would be mortified—unable to remember even my name, let alone what I wanted to buy. Once, on a previous trip to Paris, I had gone into a shop by the Louvre to buy one of those wonderful plastic replicas of the Venus de Milo. But as soon as I stepped foot in the store all I could think about was whether I had brushed my teeth, and if I had half as much class as the counter display. When the perfectly coiffed saleswoman, dripping with pearls and pretension, turned and asked if she could “vous aider,” I fled.

  But a department store! That I was sure I could handle. After all, I had been to Bergdorf’s and triumphed. Certainly I could deal with Les Galeries, which would be, with all its French signs stripped away, nothing but a glorified K-Mart. As soon as we arrived, I sent Miss Frank off to Lingerie and strode confidently by myself into the basket department.

  Oh, what a heavy sigh of relief I breathed when I saw that the salesman in Baskets wasn’t wearing a single piece of gold anywhere on his body and was definitely prêt-à-porter. There’s nothing he can do to me, I thought. I can stay on top of this. Then, taking a moment to form the sentence in my mind, I spoke.

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” I said proudly. “Avez-vous un paquet pour les bicyclettes?”

  “Excusez-moi,” the salesman replied, “but could you speak a little slower? I don’t speak English too well.”

  “But I was speaking in French,” I said, my bubble of confidence beginning to burst.

  “Alors. Je regrette. Encore, s’il vous plait.”

  I began all over, this time just a little slower to make sure of my pronunciation. “Bonjour, monsieur, Avez-vous un paquet pour les bicyclettes?”

  “Excusez-moi,” the salesman said again, exasperation creeping into his voice, “but now what language ar
e you speaking?”

  “I’m speaking French!”

  “I’m sorry, but what you were speaking was definitely not French. Perhaps it was some other language you think of as French.”

  “It was French! Perhaps you weren’t listening.”

  “Only two groups of people intimidate me absolutely: salespeople and the French.”

  “I listened. All day long I listen to people who say they are speaking French, but unless they are French, they aren’t.”

  “What you mean is they’re not speaking perfect French.”

  “Anything not perfect is not French. And now shall we proceed? In English.”

  “Why don’t you speak French?” “I am speaking French!”

  I couldn’t believe it. Only in the store two minutes and already I was feeling inadequate and upset. Nevertheless, I did want one of those baskets, so I decided to go on. Things could only get better.

  “I would like a basket for a bicycle. Nothing too big.” I hoped that was a fairly neutral statement.

  The salesman held up a lovely dark cane basket for me to inspect. “Perhaps something like this?”

  “Oh, that would be perfect,” I said, “but would it fit on a boy’s bike?”

  “Ah, mon Dieu! Boys’ bikes! Girls’ bikes! We have no such things here,” he almost shouted. “Only in America do bicycles have gender. It’s just another part of your obsession with sex!”

  “Oh, really?” I said, incredulous that we were going at it again. “The French ain’t exactly slouches in that area.”