Crowned Heads (10 page)

“‘Good morning,’ I said breezily.

“She gave me a sullen look as she advanced on me. ‘So you are going to read to her.’

“‘That seems to be the … arrangement.’

“‘You are wasting your time,’ she said dourly. ‘She will tell you naw-thing.’

“I smiled. ‘Since I am expecting nothing, then I won’t be disappointed. Okay?’

“She came closer and took hold of my arm. ‘You are not to ask her questions, do you understand?’ she said fiercely. ‘Do not trouble her with your infernal newspaper questions about me. She will tell you nothing but lies. Do not ask—do not listen.’ She clung to my arm a moment longer, then released it as the squeak of wheels was heard and Kritos appeared pushing the countess’s wheelchair.

“‘Here’s our visitor,’ Mrs. Balfour said gaily, coming behind, my book in her hand. The countess gave me a
‘Bonjour’
and a regal lift of her cane, directing Kritos to place her chair in its usual spot in front of the balustrade. Meanwhile Mrs. Balfour had exchanged glances with Fedora, who turned angrily away and went inside; perhaps I was wrong, but it seemed to me that Mrs. Balfour’s look had ordered her to do this. The Englishwoman pointed out a chair to the side of the countess, handed me my book, and whispered a suggestion or two.

“‘Speak well up and enunciate clearly so she can hear, and just use a normal expression; she doesn’t like a dramatic reading.’ She turned to the countess. ‘Here’s the author himself, come to read his story to you,’ taking the trouble to include my name as well.

“‘Good morning, Countess Sobryanski,’ I said, with the deference I felt her age and title demanded, but loud enough to bridge the interval between our chairs.

“‘Pas besoin de crier, j’vous écoute,’
she replied. Having assured me in her slangy French that there was no necessity to shout, she could hear, she fixed me with a look up and down with a pair of small eyes, which, while they were clouded, still offered keen penetration. Though a frail little thing, she was obviously still the mistress of her small household on Crete as she must have been of her larger one in Kraków. The years hadn’t been kind to her, however: she wasn’t ugly, but she had none of the loveliness that old people sometimes manage to keep. She was ravaged and blemished, yet somehow it all lent her character, just as her aristocratic air did. She seemed to take no pleasure in my being there, and her look informed me that I was of Kritos’s status, come to do her bidding.

“‘Commençez,’
she ordered peremptorily, and turned her gaze seaward. Mrs. Balfour cued me with a nod; I opened the book and began. ‘Chapter One,’ I enunciated, and read the first sentence. By the time I finished the paragraph Mrs. Balfour had tiptoed away, and I moved into the story.

“I read without a break for half an hour, glancing up at her from time to time. Countess Sobryanski was practically motionless, and I wondered if she were even listening. To test her I stopped abruptly and after a moment the head turned and cocked questioningly. I went on, then stopped at the end of another half hour, announcing that I wanted to smoke. She acquiesced with a nod; I fished out a cigarette and lit it. I puffed in silence, watching her sitting in that curiously rigid and static posture, facing seaward, always seaward, beyond the balustrade. It was an especially splendid day. The water sparkled and the wind puffed the sails of numerous caïques trolling beyond the headland. Some people in bathing suits had pitched a yellow tent on the beach; their cries reached all the way up to us. Yet it seemed to me that, listening, the countess was watching none of this activity, that her gaze was directed past them, toward the horizon, as if out there across the water some strange or marvelous wonder might appear at any time.

“She wore, I noted, only three pieces of jewelry—two little red-colored buttons that might have been carnelians on her earlobes, and pinned at the front of her dress an ivory cameo, possibly the one Queen Mary had given her. Her thin white hair was done up in its usual knot, from which a few stray wisps escaped, and from time to time she would smooth them back. Now at last I was confronting the person I had come originally to see. If my interview with Fedora had failed, I was determined that the one I intended to wring, however I might, from the old woman would not. She intimidated me, though—by her proximity; by her whole demeanor, feeble as it was; and more particularly by her look, which she swung on me again, evidently tired of waiting. Her wrinkled mouth puckered, the lower lip jutted out like the famous Hapsburg lip, and she impatiently rapped the ferrule of her cane on the flagstones. When I flipped my cigarette away and resumed reading, she seemed more content. Occasionally I’d catch her nodding at the end of a passage as if marking it with her own stamp of approval, or she’d murmur something indicating surprise or interest. I stopped on the half hour for another cigarette and at the end of the second hour she rang her little brass bell and Kritos appeared instantly. Taking no notice of me, he wheeled her inside,
‘Merci. À demain,’
she said as she went away.
‘Comme vous voluez, madame,’
I called after her. Yes, I would come tomorrow.

“A wrought-iron table had been set for lunch between the two pairs of French doors, and I was happy to see that there were three places, which meant Fedora would be joining us. Balfour came out with a tray and began laying plates of food about. It was simple—a shrimp salad, rolls and butter, sliced cold meat, which I suspected was the inevitable Greek veal, fruit, cheese, and a bottle of wine; not Vouvray, I noted. She asked me to be seated, then called through the door. In a moment Fedora came out. Her expression was enigmatic as she took the chair I held for her, and she began to attack her plate hungrily. Mrs. Balfour picked at her food, while I ate at my normal speed, listening to her polite chatter: she understood that I was acquainted with their friend Willie Marsh, such a nice man, veddy distinguished, and Bee Marsh, tedd’bly charming, and she told several anecdotes about the filming of
The Miracle of Santa Cristi.
Since Fedora had been incarcerated in her hotel suite during most of the time on the film, I wondered how Balfour had gleaned so much information. She never touched on Willie’s infatuation for Fedora during that period, while Fedora herself made no response whatever; she was too busy eating, with that unconscious greediness old people sometimes have. She’d got a smear on one lens of her sunglasses and when she took them off to wipe them with her napkin, I saw how bright her eyes were, the pupils abnormally enlarged. The sacs under them had puffed, and again I thought she’d been crying. She talked erratically and I could see that she was high on something again, and was probably having a hunger attack. As she spoke she brandished her cutlery, and in slicing her meat, when she switched hands she dropped her knife; I bent and retrieved it, and Mrs. Balfour got up to bring another from inside. Fedora unconcernedly wiped hers on her napkin and used it to finish cutting the meat. ‘One must eat a peck of dirt before one dies,’ she observed, emphatically shaking her hand with the impaled veal. ‘I’ve eaten my peck, but I don’t die. Why is that, I wonder.’ She was not talking to me, nor to herself, only to thin air. She half rose from her chair, looking through the balusters down to the water. ‘Who are those people on our beach? We are pri-i-ivate here; why do they come with their tent, their fat, ugly bodies?’ She launched into a jeremiad about the trouble people caused her. Then, seeing my eyes on her, she interrupted herself. ‘You are staring again,’ she said, plunking down her fork and taking up her wineglass. ‘Why do you look so strange?’

“I tried to cover my amazement, but the truth was that I had suddenly been struck by something so obvious, yet so trivial, that while one aspect of my picture of her cleared, another immediately darkened and offered itself to my utter puzzlement. She pushed her chair back angrily, tipping it over as she got up, and took her glass to the balustrade. She started to shout at the bathers and wave them off the beach. I righted the chair and followed, observing her closely. Though she had stopped shouting, she kept waving in the air, though no one below seemed to pay attention; I doubted they had heard her. She sagged momentarily against the railing and drained her wine. Until now she had manifested little but that bitter, disdainful humor I had witnessed on the beach and at my cottage, but now she turned with the little-girl look that was also part of the Fedora legend, a pitiful, waiflike expression. ‘Help me,’ she said.

“‘Certainly,’ I replied. ‘Tell me how.’

“‘Help me get away from here.’

“More puzzlement. ‘Surely you’re free to come and go as you please … ?’

“She shook her head angrily, then seized my arm, and I felt that strong grip again. ‘I can’t. They won’t let me.’

“‘Who won’t?’

“‘I am not free. I am a prisoner here—you must see that. That Kritos, he is a
zloi chelovek.
’ I didn’t understand the phrase, but understood that the servant was possibly an impediment to her. ‘He hits me,’ she went on.

“‘Hits you?’

“She pushed up her sleeve and showed ugly bruises on her arm. ‘He keeps me here. To read to her. That is what I do, read to her. My life is ending and I am here in this damned place reading, always reading.’ She brought her face closer to mine. ‘Be careful. You will end up the same—reading to her.’

“‘The countess Sobryanski is your friend, isn’t she? Mrs. Balfour, also?’

“‘I told you, I have no friends, none—’ She broke off suddenly and released me. Mrs. Balfour had finally reappeared in the doorway with the knife. She had been gone a long time; I thought perhaps she had looked in on the countess.

“‘Finished already? There is fruit and cheese, madame, sir.’ She held up the plate of fruit, offering it as Fedora crossed back to the table, where she set down the wineglass, then started inside.

“‘I’m going for a walk,’ she said, staggering slightly as she went through the French doors. Balfour bit her lip as she watched her go, then turned to me with the fruit. I took a bunch of grapes and sat again. We could hear Fedora’s voice coming from behind the closed doors of what I assumed to be the countess’s apartment, harsh and strident, making demands for money which she seemed to think was being withheld from her. Mrs. Balfour darted several looks at me while Fedora’s tirade continued, then I glimpsed her passing through the rooms, toward the hall. She went out; the door, then the gate slammed. I was about to put a few questions to Mrs. Balfour, but she rose abruptly and said she was sorry, she must be excused, please to finish my grapes and to attempt the cheese, she would see me at the same hour next day. She went in and I heard her giving Kritos a list of things she wanted from the village.

“I sat popping grapes into my mouth and thinking, trying to puzzle the thing out, then Kritos appeared, obviously waiting for me to leave. I made as long a job of the grapes and two wedges of cheese as I could, while the Macedonian cooled his heels. Then, when he wasn’t looking, I took my cigarette lighter from my pocket and slipped it behind one of the wooden tubs holding a clipped yew, stretched elaborately, got up, and walked through the doorway into the back hall. The red wool shirt hung on a hook, shapeless, and patched at the elbows. I glanced over my shoulder at Kritos, proceeded to the front door, and waited for him to open it. He followed me out and unlatched the gate, then closed it behind me with an emphatic if unnecessary bang, and I went down the road to the cottage.

“I waited in the arbor with the spyglass. Fedora appeared on the beach, as I’d expected, and advanced on the group of swimmers, gesticulating with an angry expression. I tracked her as she engineered an erratic course up toward the headland, carrying her espadrilles one in each hand, flinging her arms about, throwing her head back, and making circles as she went. Then she was walking into the water, clothes and all. I heard the Citroën and went to the front window to see Kritos passing. I estimated that if he was driving to the village it would take about fifteen minutes each way. I wanted to go back up to the villa while the countess and Balfour were taking their naps and do some reconnoitering, and figured I had at least half an hour to do it; if I was spotted I would say I had come looking for my cigarette lighter.

“I put down the spyglass and dropped over the edge of the terrace, then went across the path along the gully and up the hillside under the villa terrace. On the far side the ground was high enough to allow me to clamber over the balustrade, and I kept close to the building wall, under the windows, checking first the upstairs ones, then the various rooms behind the French doors, passing from one to the other and peering through the unwashed panes to view musty interiors, with ceilings of cracked plaster and watermarks on the walls, conventionally but sparely furnished with heavy, old-fashioned pieces. One had a large bed with hangings and a small fireplace, a few knickknacks on a table, and I guessed this was the countess’s own room, for it was through these doors that she was sometimes wheeled.

“There was no time to make a closer examination, for I heard voices coming from the corner of the room, and I saw a movement and ducked out of sight. I glimpsed Balfour as she passed inside, then stopped and stood looking out the closed door. She listened to the countess, who was speaking, apparently about money, for I heard francs mentioned several times, and the Bank of Monte Carlo. It seemed to me they were discussing Fedora’s finances; at least I made some connection between her name as Balfour mentioned it and the money the countess spoke of. Next I caught several other names—Mussolini, Mrs. Roosevelt, Bernard Shaw, and then my own!

“What followed was even more puzzling. Even as I stood listening I heard the Citroën rattling up the road. From where I was I could see the turnaround outside the wall, and the car spinning on the gravel. I had to duck low not to be seen by Fedora, who was sitting in the passenger seat. Kritos came around the car, yanked open the door, and urged her to come out. I realized that instead of going to the village he had driven down to the beach to bring her back. When she refused to leave the car, he brought her struggling from it, then half dragged, half carried her to the gate, where his beefy arm held her until he had pushed it open and pulled her through. The gate slammed shut and he locked it from inside.