In My Father's Shadow (24 page)

“Are you bored by most of the theater people you know?”

“God, yes! But don’t tell anyone.” He gave me a conspiratorial wink and looked relieved when I smiled. “No, darling girl, the thing for you to do is to marry a
very
smart banker, lawyer, or stockbroker who’ll make pots of money and take excellent care of you. Then you can settle down in a lovely home somewhere in the suburbs and have lots of kids. That will not only make
you
happy, it will make me a grandfather!” He laughed his fulsome belly laugh and lit another big, fat cigar as the train crept through the drab outskirts of Barcelona.

Is that the only future Daddy sees for me?
I looked away to hide my disappointment. Perhaps he was right and I should not pursue a career in the theater. Yet I wanted to do far more with my life than make Orson Welles a grandfather.

I
FELT IMMEDIATELY AT
home in Barcelona, a city that welcomed strollers and pleasure-seekers, staying up all night to accommodate them. Well past midnight, throngs of people still paraded up and down the spacious, tree-lined boulevards. Restaurants, bars, and cafés were packed. Children bowled hoops or ran shrieking along walkways reserved for pedestrians, followed by Spanish Civil War veterans hobbling along on crutches and hunched-over grandmothers pushing squalling infants in carriages. It seemed no one in Barcelona went to bed before dawn.

Like a homing pigeon, my father had booked us into Barcelona’s Hotel Ritz. It had first opened its doors in 1919 and still stood on the Gran Via like an imperious dowager wearing the family jewels. The lobby was magnificent with tiled marble floors and archways reminiscent of a Moorish palace. The Ritz had been built, my father informed me, at the height of Barcelona’s
modernista
movement, the Catalan equivalent of Art Nouveau, which began in the late nineteenth century and continued to be fashionable into the 1920s. It was an exuberant style that blended Arabic, Moorish, Gothic, and many other influences.

“Wait until you see Gaudí’s houses,” he told me, smiling broadly, as we rode the elevator to our suite on the top floor.

“Who?”

“Antoni Gaudí. The most inventive
modernista
of them all. He was original to the point of madness, and what’s really incredible is that he got away with it.” A mighty gust of laughter shook the elevator. “The Catalans let this madman turn his fantasies into houses and start to build a cathedral that looks like mounds of melting chocolate and stands unfinished to this day.
Now the whole world flocks to see these creations and the name of Gaudí is inseparable from the name of Barcelona. I’ll take you to see his houses tomorrow.”

Yet when morning came, clear and invigorating, my father decided we should first explore the Ramblas, Barcelona’s most famous promenade for strollers, vendors, and street entertainers. The Ramblas stretched for blocks between two busy streets lined with houses that desperately needed a coat of paint and ended just shy of the port. We began in the northern end, picking our way through the flower market: so many lovely blossoms, all kinds and colors, still wet with dew, bunched and waiting in pails of water to be taken home in armfuls. Soon the flower stalls gave way to vendors of caged birds, but we did not linger here, not liking the sight of hundreds of exotic songbirds in captivity. Farther on we stopped to watch a flamenco dancer from Andalusia, a pathetic old woman in garish makeup, make a valiant attempt to entertain us. My father gave her a few coins.

“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.

E
ARLY 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.

T
HAT 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.

S
OON 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.

My 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
.