The lights had gone down by the time all this had happened, and we just got to the seats in time. I said, “Now just step up and sit down there.” He said, “Oh, it’s really comfortable.” We watched the first act and then the lights went up and he saw this oval-shaped red velvet royal box with this oval ceiling with gods and goddesses painted on it, and honey—you should have seen his face. He said, “Who are you?” I said, “I’m Eugene Walter from Mobile, Alabama. Who are you?” And he said, “I’m So-and-so from Bergen, Norway.” I said, “Oh, Bergen. That’s the part where all the black-headed Norwegians come from.” He said, “You must have studied some history.” I said, “No, but I’ve read about Norway because I have a Norwegian grandpapa.” Anyway, this went on, and at the next intermission he told me, “I’m the president of the cheese manufacturers’ association of Norway.” I said, “Oh, that interests me strangely. I’ve always loved that bit in
Peer Gynt
where Peer is with those cider girls up there where they take the goats in the summer to those alpine meadows to get fresh green grass for that milk that makes the famous cheese on the mountains. I’ve never tasted that cheese. I’m dying to taste that cheese.” He said, “You mean the
gjetost
?”
I said, “Yes, it’s
gjetost.”
He said, “Oh well, when you come to Norway, you can taste all the cheeses, I’ll see to it.” When the opera was over, we left on a jolly note and exchanged addresses. I didn’t think any more about it because I was going off to a party with Leontyne after the performance. I said, “Now, Leontyne, honey—” She said, “I knew you’d like it.” It was really a great moment.
About a week later, my doorbell rang in Rome and here was an equerry from the Norwegian embassy in Rome with a lovely
gjetost
that had just been flown in. And a beautiful little
gjetost
cutter with a boxwood handle. So I sat down and put on Mozart, and I had some of those whole wheat crunchies that they make in Norway. I crossed myself three times and made a wish and ate my
gjetost.
It was a religious experience. For one minute I was with Peer Gynt in those mountains.
*
Well, Leontyne had a kind of male secretary who had been a singer. He did everything to make her a prima donna. Hubert Dilwood. He would say things to her like “Oh, we can’t accept that part. Those people aren’t important enough.” Leontyne is an immensely generous, kind person, and her natural self is exuberant, but he had done everything to make her standoffish. One reason I think Leontyne enjoyed her Roman summers is because she was free from the agents, the New York coach, and Hubert. But the minute the secretary arrived, you could see this total change.
When she knew she wasn’t going to be in Rome for six months, she asked me to sublet her apartment. I found this very nice young man through the American embassy. I’ve forgotten what he did. Something interesting—a journalist or publisher. He was very neat. Some people living in somebody else’s apartment would destroy it without meaning to. But he was one of those who left the furniture where it was and emptied the ashtrays. Well, that summer, Leontyne came to Rome for a week and stayed in a hotel. She wanted to see the apartment, and I called the young man and said I hoped he wouldn’t mind, that Leontyne was coming to me for drinks and dinner, and she’d like to stop by for a few minutes to see her apartment. He said, No, he would be absolutely delighted to meet her. Leontyne was an hour late, being the prima donna, and had this secretary type with her. And the guy who was subletting had come back from someplace by air that day and had stretched out to take a nap. So when they finally arrived, he opened the door wearing a dressing gown. It’s not as though he were in dishabille. He was in a very elegant dressing gown. They went in and saw the place, and Leontyne was delighted. Then afterwards this secretary said to her, “That’s an insult that this man met you wearing his dressing gown. That’s an insult.” He just catechized her, coached her in this line. So she was disgruntled by the end of the evening.
Being Northern, he had this overcharged sense of black and white. I hate to divide white and black. As a painter, I see twenty-eight shades of white and three hundred shades of honey color, crème caramel, café au lait, chocolate, ebony, jet. But he was always pointing out purported slights to Leontyne and making her nervous. Leontyne is of the open mind and of a vast sense of humor, and she had no chips on her shoulders, but finally I think she believed some of them. He was a pain in the ass. And he really sort of put a wedge between us, because I said something like “Oh, he’s crazy, you know. Don’t listen to him.” And she told me with a giggle one day, “He really would like to wear my costumes and sing my roles.” And one of the more interesting points about him: You’d be talking to him and he would just fall asleep. It’s that ailment only properly identified in recent years—narcolepsy. Anyway, I think he was jealous of anybody who got close to her. He fancied himself as a kind of Phantom of the Opera, running interference and making reservations on trains and planes. Because Leontyne is woman, child, and artist. More than that, she’s Southern woman, child, and artist. So in places like Vienna or Stockholm, she needed a toughie to help her get in and out of hotels or flag taxis or this or that. But she finally got overprotected, and we just sort of had a “coolth.” Instead of a warmth, a coolth. We never really stopped being friends. Just the minuet ended. You see, most of my Aquarius lady friends have a seven-year life. We have a close friendship for seven years, and then we sort of fade away. I’ve had about eight Aquarius ladies, and it was always that pattern. I know that on the seventh year, we’ll have a quarrel. It’s a Sagittarius-Aquarius pattern. But I know that someday, in a restaurant in Vienna or on the street in New York, or going in or coming out of Saks Fifth Avenue, I know we’ll meet. And pick up. And start a new minuet.
I Loved That Neighborhood
The Corso Vittorio Emanuele was a main thoroughfare on
the site of an old Roman road. It’s a wide street, compared to many of the side streets which are medieval in their narrowness, since medieval Rome was built over the ruins of ancient Rome. Just at the corner from the palazzo where I lived, there is a very famous ancient Roman residence that somehow survived intact. Around 1900 they were about to build some apartment houses on that block, and they had to stop because here was a beautifully preserved, ancient Roman residence with kitchens and baths, a latrine and everything, way below sidewalk level. It had belonged to the Argentina family, a noble Roman family, so they called it Largo di Torre Argentina. It’s a sunken piazza with a mosaic pavement, and it’s full of stray cats, street cats.
At one moment, all the stray cats that lived in this sunken piazza discovered how to get into the theater that had been built on top of this Roman residence in the 1700s, where
The Barber of Seville
had its first performance. One cold winter night they just walked in. The theater was closed because there had been trouble with the ceiling, and it was about a year before they got all the funds and the restoration was approved by the city council. The usual story of city government. They went one day to open it, and the stench apparently could have caused a strong man to swoon. When they went into the theater itself, looking up over all these seats were these glittering eyes. They got a man who played the flute and was some pied piper who piped rats out of barns, and he tried to pipe them out, but with no luck. Finally he just dragged an old undershirt soaked in tuna-fish juice and got them all back out. Crazy Rome.
There was a Renaissance palace on the other side of the street, and it sat on a little piazza where there was a church, la Chiesa del Gesù, the headquarters of the Jesuit order with its lovely Baroque curls. That’s what I saw at the end of my terrace, this façade. At the other end of my terrace I saw the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, which is where the first act of
Tosca
takes place. And next door on the other side was another Renaissance palace. Then at the corner was a turn-of-the-century Banca di Roma, the Rome bank. Catty-corner was the palazzo where Anna Magnani lived, and where Eugene Berman lived. John Cheever stayed there for a while when he lived in Rome.
Right across the street was the Puerto Rico coffee shop that sold chocolate and bonbons and coffee. All kinds of coffee. There was a fresh fruit and vegetable place where they went to some little town early in the morning to pick up their stuff. And it was he who told me, after I had been dealing with him for about a year, he said, “Signor Walter, you know, you make such a fuss, paying every time.” He said, “Now everybody here, really, they have a running account and pay once a week or once a month.” I realized, of course, that they charged a little fee for this, but you see, they delivered right to my apartment, even when they had to walk up five flights before the elevator was put into this Baroque palace. They delivered. As did the bakery. As did the mushroom shop. As did the wine shop. As did the butcher. As did the delicatessen. When the first sausages came, sometimes the delicatessen man would call me and say, “Signor Walter, the
salsicce di stagione
just came in from the country.” Now, there are some sausages you age; they just hang in the storeroom forever because they’re smoked and they’re made to do that. But some sausages you eat instantly, like the blood sausages and some of the white sausages. You just eat them when they’re ready. I’d say, “Well, send them over.” And the young man and his mother who owned the wine shop went out into the country to buy wine, which they bottled and put under their own label. It was this country wine. Some of it was so good, because it was made on a farm in a small quantity in old wooden casks as they’ve done it for centuries. There was nothing added. It was all wine. Wherever they would go, they’d always bring me a bottle of whatever that farm wine was. Across from the wine shop was a mushroom shop. It had blue and white tiles and a gray tile floor. The tables were oiled slate, very shiny. And then there were just these little baskets with every kind of mushroom they’d gotten from their secret pickups. Nobody would tell what groves or what glades or where the mushrooms came from. They had their country people who would meet them by the highway. And they had all these baskets; you could get a hundred different kinds. And of course, that bakery. I mean, it was worth getting up early in the morning and going on the terrace because the whole neighborhood was filled with these smells of fresh bread. And when I say fresh bread, I don’t mean cotton wadding and cardboard. I mean bread. And I could call the greengrocer and say, “Have you any—” It was these long, green fleshy leaves that were called
barba defrati
—monk’s beards or friar’s beards—these prickly green things. You boiled them and buttered them and ate them, and oh, God, were they good. They’re like nothing else on earth. I always liked some crumbled bacon on mine. I never found out what they are botanically. They don’t grow commercially. They grow somewhere in the woods, and people pick them. They just pull them up by the bunches when they’re ready, and that’s it. They’re in the market for two weeks and never again and never before. That’s one of the things that people tell each other as they pass them on the street. “Yes, the first of the season—they’re in.” I could tell my greengrocer, “I want three bunches. And ask the boy to pick up the paper at the newsstand and a loaf of bread at the bakery on his way.” And that’s the way it was.
The people in my neighborhood were all such fun, and they were all fascinated by me. They were my friends. The dear old lady and her dear goopy son who had the fresh fruit and vegetable market a block away from where I lived were my friends. The newsstand dealer was my friend. The barber was my friend. I liked to talk to them. At first they just thought I was this quiet and studious type living in their neighborhood. Then they began to realize that I was in movies, or they would see me in a commercial on television. Little by little they got a picture of me. They would linger when they delivered things.
Some of these shops were on the Via del Gesù, which is this narrow street of little shops with apartments above. Then in the middle of the block is a small Baroque palace, and across from it is a kind of tiny little piazza. Then on the other side of the Largo di Torre Argentina, the Roman ruin square, there was another narrow street, and it had a lot of little shops. It had the delicatessen. It had the greengrocer. It also had a couple of Baroque palaces. All of these things grew up around the palaces. I suppose once it was lean-tos or tents or something, and then little by little the people who swept the street in front of the palace were given space to build something. So there are all these strange little buildings. Then another street over you would have printers and engravers and craft people. Everything is all mixed up, you know, like downtown Mobile. I loved that neighborhood.
*
I immediately got a maid and, shortly thereafter, a secretary for three hours every morning. For a working day I had to have a maid and a secretary. The secretaries were all pretty young girls; no middle-aged ladies. The first was Margaret Aubrey Smith, a very pretty English girl with brown hair, brown eyes, pink cheeks. She was a cat lover—passionate cat lover—thank God. Then this very pretty girl named Theodora Lurie, a distant, distant, distant cousin of Alison Lurie. Then there was a girl who lasted only a month. Her lover was a violinist in the London something orchestra, and she followed her lover from school and London to Rome. And he was going on down to Sicily, so she went off with my keys and petty cash. About a month later she came in and apologized and said she had to do it, had to do it. I said, “Oh, youth.” What do you say? “You crazy little slut, you didn’t have to take the keys and the money?”