Harpo Speaks! (32 page)

The next morning I checked back and found out how much the old guy had collected. While he’d been sleeping, the dealer had won him a net of twenty-two thousand dollars.

Not long afterward another American, this one a cotton-fabric king, didn’t do so well in the Big Casino. He lost more than ten times the amount the carpet-sweeper king had won, also in the space of one night. The cotton-fabric man came unraveled. He went out on the terrace at dawn and New his brains out.

On the following night I went to Monte Carlo on the hunch that this would change the tide of luck. My hunch was wrong. I lost every cent I came with, inside of two hours. Instead of slinking home, like a good sport, I went around the Little Casino asking everybody in sight, in a loud voice, “Where’s that cliff you’re supposed to throw yourself off of when you lose?”

The management was very sensitive about this, after what had happened on the terrace eighteen hours earlier. They cornered me and asked me how much I had lost. A thousand francs, I said. So they counted out a thousand francs and paid me off, whereupon I was politely heaved out of the joint, black-sock necktie and all, with a strong hint that I never return.

Pete Penovitch, I said to myself, simply wouldn’t believe it, the way they operated this joint. They put down the red carpet for an eighty-nine-thousand-dollar winner, then turned around and kicked a loser out.

The hell with Monte Carlo. I set up my own casino, at the Villa Galanon. I ran the operation my way, and I never had a customer squawk. That was more than the boss of Monte Carlo could ever say.

I had gone to the flea market in Nice, where I bought the nuttiest thing I could find. This was a thing called a Chinese flytrap. It was a fantastic construction of bamboo, wire and string, which flies could fly into but couldn’t fly out of. The Chinese flytrap was designed to be humane, which was why it was so complicated. When the flies were trapped they weren’t killed, or even injured. As long as the bottom door was shut they couldn’t get out, but they could live inside in style until they died of old age, or whatever unswatted flies die of.

I was a gambling man as well as a humanitarian, however, being equal parts Pete Penovitch and Albert Schweitzer, so I turned the flytrap into a casino.

After a lot of serious thinking (I missed Chico, who could have figured the whole thing out in a minute on the back of a pawn ticket), I arrived at what the odds should be on a fly surviving the trap. Two to one. This would give the fly a sporting chance and give the house a chance to win its rightful share as well.

What I did was to catch only a few flies at a time, then block the entrance. When I trapped a batch of customers I marked them, one by one, by dabbing a broom straw in red ink and poking it through a slit in the trap. Then I opened the door and gave them all their freedom.

Here’s where the odds came in: when a marked fly came back and was trapped a second time, I did him in with the blunt end of a chopstick. First-time suckers got painted red and let loose. Second-time losers got squashed. (I used to give the same kind of odds to mosquitoes who pestered me when I practiced the harp. I would only swat the ones who sang higher than the A-flat above middle C. The rest went free.)

I was amazed at how few flies came back to the trap. I’d never dreamed so many flies would be smart enough to know they had a good thing going at 2-1 and would stay away.

Beatrice and Alice were very impressed by what the Chinese flytrap revealed, to wit: your average housefly was a much better gambler than your average person gave him credit for. Aleck was more alarmed than impressed. He said I was dooming the human race by developing a super-intelligent race of flies. But that didn’t stop him from betting on the flies against the trap. When he ran his winnings up to fifteen francs I declared the bank closed and went out of business. Now I knew what it was like to be on the side of management. I couldn’t cover the nut for red ink.

Our summer seemed to divide itself into three phases-the Gambling Period, the Literary Period, and the Society Period.

Woollcott broke me into the Literary Period by easy stages. Step number one was to introduce me to Somerset Maugham. Aleck knew I was already an admirer of Maugham’s. Without knowing who he was, I had singled him out as the best aquaplaner on the coast. When Aleck told me he was an eminent author and perhaps the most famous resident on the whole Riviera, I was doubly eager to meet him.

Maugham’s villa on Cap Ferrat was the most exciting house I’d ever seen. I’d been in bigger and more lavish joints on Long Island and in Palm Beach, but none of them had the beauty of appearing to be carved out of the landscape, like Maugham’s did. It was built around a swimming pool, which was fed by fountains. The house was filled with the cool sound of rushing water, the mingled scents of tropical flowers, and color-the colors of the greatest of the French Impressionists and Moderns. Such paintings I’d never seen in a private collection before.

Our host, wearing only shorts and sandals, came bounding downstairs to greet us. Maugham was then fifty-four, but he looked no older than thirty-four. He was lean and brown and he sizzled with energy and good cheer. Aleck, I noticed, was relieved to see that the eminent author and I hit it off well from the start. I was on my best behavior, and so was Aleck.

Maugham wanted to show us the rest of his joint before giving us tea. He took us upstairs to the master bedroom, his pride and joy. It was situated so that he could dive out of his bedside window and straight into the pool when he woke up in the morning. This, I thought, was terrific.

While Maugham and Woollcott were turned away, discussing a painting on the far wall of the bedroom, I pulled off all my clothes and plunged into the water.

Looking up, I saw Woollcott looking hopefully at Maugham, to see if I had shocked him. Maugham’s reaction was not what Aleck expected. He pulled off his shorts, kicked off his sandals, and dove into the pool to join me.

Maugham and I met several times afterward, at parties and in the surf, but after that summer I didn’t see him again for eight years, and I was sure he would have forgotten me. At the opening of Dead End, in 1936, I spotted him during the intermission. He was sitting several rows behind me, with S. N. Behrman. I crawled back on all fours, monkey-fashion, across the tops of the seats. I was about to reintroduce myself when Maugham said, “Terribly sorry I haven’t a banana for you, Harpo.” He hadn’t forgotten.

Aleck was pleased with my success at Cap Ferrat. Next, he allowed me to meet H.G. Wells. I got a bit confused about who this guy was, and in trying to make conversation I said, “I’ve heard a lot about your company, Mr. Wells. Especially out West, when I was on the Pantages-time. Every town we played in had a Wells Fargo office.”

I passed my Maugham, but I flunked my Wells.

In the middle of the summer I acquired a partner in crime. Ruth Gordon arrived at Antibes. Ruth was a special pet of Aleck’s, and his special nickname for her was “Louisa.” I remember he once took Ruth and me in his arms and said, “You two are the world, do you know that? Every man as pretentious as old Alexander should have at least one Louisa and one Harpo beside him always, to remind him of what really makes the world go round, and that everything else is pretending.”

We did a pretty fair job of making Aleck’s world go round for the rest of the season, Ruth and I. The first week she was there, I borrowed Guy’s car and took her for a spin through the countryside. I’d heard Aleck speak of a famous restaurant on a mountaintop at a place called St. Paul. I decided to take Ruth there.

I drove north. I got lost. It never occurred to me that Guy’s jalopy could get lost in its own neighborhood. I assumed that it knew the roads so well that it could find its way whonk-a-whonka-whonk anywhere you wanted to go. Not so. We wound up driving from nowhere to nowhere.

Ruth’s French was no better than mine. We kept stopping to ask people on the road, “St. Paul? St. Paul?” The natives gave us funny looks, shrugged, and went on smoking their pipes, milking their goats and tying up their haystacks as if they’d never seen us.

I took to asking, “Cincinnati? Cincinnati?”-and got a better response. People pointed, at least. But everybody pointed in a different direction.

Somehow, we finally made it up the mountain to St. Paul. We were famished. The restaurant was down a long flight of stone steps from the village square. The innkeeper was overjoyed at having two Americans for lunch. The gist of his welcoming speech was that we deserved to be served only the specialite de la maison, omelette au rhum. Whatever the hell that was, we wanted it. Trusting souls that we were, we believed that anything with a French name was good to eat.

What we were served-after a soup with wine in it-was an omelet doused with rum. We lapped up the soup and the omelet. Ruth, it turned out, was just as vulnerable to alcohol as I was. When we finished the omelet, we were higher than two kites. The innkeeper insisted we have crepes suzettes. When we finished the crepes suzettes, which were prepared with brandy, we were skunk drunk. I remember staggering forth from the restaurant-Ruth and I helping each other up the flight of stone steps, which had lengthened considerably during lunch-and then walking around and around the village square so I could sober up enough to drive. I remember driving down the mountain and laughing like hell because the car had no brakes. I remember stopping to ask the natives the way to Galveston, Texas.

The next thing I was conscious of was being back at the villa and Guy coaxing me to drink some thick black coffee that reeked of cloves. God and the patron saints of Harpo and Louisa had seen us home. They must have placed along the route somebody who knew where Galveston was. How else we could have made it I’ll never know.

The postman cycled out to Galanon with a special-delivery letter one afternoon while we were playing badminton. Aleck must have been expecting it. When he saw the return address he made a joyful little gasp and threw his racket aside, conceding the game. He tore it open like it was money from home. As he read the note, he beamed and beamed and I thought he was going to dance one of his tippytoe jigs. Instead, he turned serious.

“Harpo,” he said. “He’s coming. He’s coming to have lunch with us next Wednesday. Bernard Shaw!”

“Bernard Shaw?” I said. “Didn’t his name used to be Bernie Schwartz? Ran the cigar stand in the Hotel Belvedere?” I was kidding, of course. I’d heard them speak of Shaw many times at the Round Table. He was an English politician or songwriter or something.

Aleck was in no mood for gags. He cut me off with a huffy stare, and trotted away to find the girls and tell them the great news.

The coming of Mr. and Mrs. George Bernard Shaw to Villa Galanon was Woollcott’s supreme coup of the season. Everything had to be exactly right for the occasion. For Guy, preparing the Wednesday lunch was the longest and toughest battle he ever fought.

It took four days to decide on the menu. What made it so hard was the fact that Shaw was a vegetarian. How strict he was about his diet, Aleck didn’t know. Ruth was sure that Shaw ate bacon. Beatrice didn’t think so. Alice said there were all kinds of vegetarians, some liberal, some orthodox. The liberal ones ate fish and fowl, only laid off red meat, and Shaw was certainly a liberal in every other respect, wasn’t he? Woollcott did not agree.

On the fourth day they settled on omelet with truffles, broiled tomatoes and eggplants, asparagus, artichokes, green salad, hot breads, aspics, mousses, ices, cheeses and wild strawberries with thick cream.

Sounded pretty good to me. I made a rapid calculation. “‘You know something, Aleck?” I said. “A feed like this would have set Shaw back thirty-six cents at Max’s Busy Bee.”

That was my first and last contribution to the planning of the Great Lunch. I got the impression that Woollcott would be very happy if I would take my flytrap and leave, and not return until the honored guest had safely departed.

On the fifth day Aleck and Guy worked on the wines. On the sixth day Guy went to market. He shuttled from village to villa all day long, with load after load of precious bottles and groceries.

When Wednesday dawned, Aleck was as jittery as a girl getting ready for her first date. He went over the menu-which couldn’t possibly be changed by this time-again and again. He couldn’t decide what to wear.

The hour approached. All was in readiness. By now, Aleck looked elegant. He put on a wide Italian straw hat and a linen cape and got in the jalopy beside the gardener, who was substitute chauffeur for the day, and off they went to Antibes, to pick up the Shaws.

Alice, Beatrice and Ruth went upstairs to change. Guy was in the kitchen, screaming at the aspic to jell. I was alone-which, I guessed, was how everybody wanted me.

The hell with them. The hell with the whole affair. I went down the cliff to the little, sheltered cove we used for nude bathing, took off my clothes, and went for a swim. I came out of the water and stretched out on a towel to sun-bathe. I’d get dressed and go back up to the villa when I damn well felt like it. Maybe in time for lunch, maybe not.

I was startled out of my doze in the sun by a man’s voice, blaring from the top of the cliff: “Halloo! Halloo! Is there nobody home?”

I wrapped the towel around myself and scrambled up the rocks to see who it was. It was a tall, skinny, red-faced old geezer with a beard, decked out in a sporty cap and a knicker suit. There was a lady with him.

“Where the devil’s Woollcott?” the guy asked. Without waiting for an answer he said, “Who the devil are you?”

I told him I was Harpo Marx.

“Ah yes, of course,” he said, with an impish grin. He held out his hand. “I’m Bernard Shaw,” he said. He caught me flat-footed. Instead of shaking hands he made a sudden lunge for my towel, snatched it away, and exposed me naked to the world. “And this,” he said, “is Mrs. Shaw.”

From the moment I met him, I had nothing to hide from George Bernard Shaw.

Aleck came roaring back to the villa, wild-eyed and wringing wet with flop sweat. The Shaws had not arrived at the hotel, as expected. Aleck had waited for a while, then tried the railroad station, where he learned that a couple answering the Shaws’ description had hired a driver to take them to Villa Galanon.