Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait (53 page)

Audrey
began to suffer debilitating stomach pain during her visit to Somalia, but she
kept quiet about it. She did not want to jeopardize her visit to the ravaged
African nation with personal concerns.

“I
could sense that something was wrong with her,” said Giovanni Brazzo, a
United Nations aide who accompanied her on the trip to Somalia. “She was
emaciated, as thin as the malnourished babies she was trying to help. But she
got up as early as the rest of us, and she probably went to bed even later.
`There is so much to do,‘ she said, `how can I be tired?’ ”

“A
child is a child in any country, whatever the politics,” she said simply.
“Let’s get down to basics. That’s what a child forces you to do. Nothing
else much matters, there is no complicated diplomacy, when a child is starving.
It’s simple. And we’d better do something about it. For our sakes, too. That
is, if we want to continue to call ourselves human.”

Chapter 27

“She
was a star in France, England, the U.S., Italy,” said Tolochenaz’s mayor,
Pierre-Alaine Mercier, on the day Audrey was buried. “She was a star
throughout the whole world. But to me, she was just another neighbor. I used to
see her working on her flowers like anyone else, and we’d say hello. Everyone
knew the same thing about her: She was a person like any other—not at all a
star.”

Audrey
would have adored Mercier’s eulogy more than any other. She would have loved
his tone and the matter-of-factness of his observations. She would have loved
the acceptance in his words, the reality that she had become what she always
wanted to be: someone’s neighbor. Of course, in order to be a neighbor, you
must live in a home. And her beloved home since 1966, La Paisible—“The
Peaceful Place”—was, fittingly, the site of her death and her final
resting place.

Colon
cancer had been diagnosed in November of 1992, two months after her last visit
to Somalia. She’d begun to have excruciating stomach pains while in Africa, and
when she described her symptoms to doctors upon her return, they assumed she’d
contracted an amoebic infection. Surgery in November pinpointed the cancer, but
it had metastasized. Doctors opened her up and closed her. There was nothing
they could do.

She
flew back from Los Angeles, where she had received medical treatment, to
Tolochenaz and her beloved stone farmhouse. The pain was unbearable, reported
friend Henry Gris, but Audrey refused to succumb to it. She didn’t wince, she
didn’t cry. Her expression remained peaceful, as if she were glad, at least, to
be able to die in a place she loved.

As
chance would have it, Audrey’s final film role was as an angel. While Steven
Spielberg’s 1989 melodrama
Always
was
neither a critical favorite nor a box office success, it allowed audiences one
last look at Audrey Hepburn as Hap, an angel who shares her wisdom with Richard
Dreyfuss. “Inspiration,” she advises him,‘ “that’s the divine
breath.”

“It’s
what people count on. They reach for it, they pray for it. And quite often just
when they need it most, they get it; it’s breathed into them. And now it’s your
turn to give it back.”

To
her final days, Audrey never failed to inspire.

Friends
rallied to her side. Doris Brynner, one of her closest pals, spent as much time
as she could with Audrey in the final days. Of course, her beloved Wolders was
with her day and night, and his overwhelming devotion never failed. Her sons
Sean and Luca spent time trying to brighten her spirits, but found that she
brightened theirs. The house took on an air of quiet festivity; people were
coming in and out, the Jack Russell terriers were always barking. There was
more action than there had been in years.

“She
was so elegantly constructed and perfectly dressed that she made all other
women look gross,” said the author Judith Krantz. “Yet she escaped
malice and envy because she was the quintessential waif. Under all that
immaculate, cultivated style we sensed someone incredibly fragile, someone who,
for reasons we never knew, seemed to need us. It was an incredible
transference.”

At
the end, she left the world as she had lived in it: with grace and dignity. She
died on January 20, 1993, with Wolders and her two sons at her side.

Four
days later, mourners arrived at La Paisible, the home she had so often
described as “everything I ever longed for.” They passed through a
simple white gate and still obeyed the unpretentious sign she had erected. In
French, it said: RING, AND ENTER, PLEASE.

And
so they did. Commissioner of UNICEF Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan was one of the
first to arrive. Actors Roger Moore and Alain Delon came soon afterward. Doris
Brynner could not stem her tears and they streamed down her face during the
whole ceremony.