Crowned Heads (15 page)

“The world.”

“About what?”

“About Fedora.”

“Tell them that she had her face on a Dixie cup cover,” she returned, as the rubber wheels bumped over the threshold. “It was enough.”

Silence had fallen in Barry Detweiller’s living room. Marion leaned a little forward from the sofa, hands clasped between her knees, her fingertips tapping together as she looked up at the portrait.

“Well,” she said finally, breaking the spell. “There certainly were a lot of Fedoras.”

Barry smiled, shook his head. “Wrong again, Marion. No matter how much Ophelie looked like and sounded like her mother, she was still Ophelie. There was only one Fedora. What do you think—is it a story?”

“I’m sick that I can’t use it. What are you calling the book?”

“I thought I’d call it
The Last Fedora.
”

“I like it. And I thank you.”

“Anytime.”

She made a move to rise, then sat again. “You haven’t told me the end, though.”

He shook his head. “But it was … the end.”

“I mean how did she die? Was it long, or painful, or … ?”

“It was long and it was painful, but not then; the pain had all come before. She just went.”

“Tell me how.”

“Well, it was a Friday,” he recalled. “The day had begun a good one, but the weather continued changeable. You never knew what to expect concerning her health—sometimes she wouldn’t come down at all—but that day, a blustery one, I went up to the villa and she was out on the terrace. I started reading. Mrs. Balfour was busy with her pruning shears, dropping cuttings into her basket, and I stopped for a cigarette. Fedora sighed, and I thought the pause was worrying her. I read again, watching her over the top of the page. Only the occasional movement of her fingers on the chair told me she was alive.

“Then, suddenly, she wasn’t. I had stubbed out my cigarette and picked up reading where I left off. Balfour was standing to my right, staring at the back of the wheelchair. I read on, and when I next glanced up she had moved and she was on the far side of Fedora, looking down. I could see tears on her cheeks. I thought perhaps it was only a passing moment of sentiment, then I noticed the quiver of her mouth and when I looked at Fedora’s hand I saw that it lay still. She didn’t seem any more lifeless than she had many times before, but she was without life. It had gone from her, we had no idea when. She had simply died, and she sat in death as she had in life, facing the sea. That was all.”

“Where is she buried?”

“Guess.”

“Crete, I’d suppose.”

“She was happy enough to leave Crete, I think, after so many years. She’s buried in California.”

“Surely not Forest Lawn?”

“Monterey. At the Convent of Santa Margarita. Strings had to be pulled, influence brought to bear to get the coffin into the country. I went with Balfour for the funeral.”

“And afterward?”

“She returned to England; she’s there now. She gave me all the signed statements and corroborating information, so no one could dispute me…. She insisted I keep the Mussolini note. She let me use what I wanted from the other letters, then destroyed them. Now she’s waiting to die, just as Fedora did, only in Dover.”

“Looking at the English Channel?”

“Perhaps.”

“I can’t get that picture out of my head—that figure in the wheelchair, always watching, watching the sea.”

“Nor I,” Barry said. “I told you I used to wonder why she spent so much time there, sitting just that way. So still, so silent, so unmoving. I wondered what her thoughts must be, and I thought she seemed to be waiting for something—but what? I think I know now. You probably saw
The Grim Reaper
? It was the first film she did for Improstein. I saw it last year at the Museum of Modern Art, and afterward I thought I knew what Fedora was watching for. The picture’s a disappointment—only a shadow of what it originally must have been. Chopped-up scenes, obvious elisions, awkward English titles, and a badly scratched print Fedora isn’t really good in it; at first, you can’t see much there that might have kindled interest in anyone. Her face looks fat, her teeth are crooked, she’s wearing that silly period make-up—pale face, dark lips. The part’s not sympathetic either. She’s a barmaid, and half the time she’s coy and arch, and the rest lugubrious and self-indulgent—all that melodramatic bathos that was in fashion then. Yet I swear to God, somehow it’s all there. Unformed, hardly realized, but there. You can see what Improstein must have seen. I have a friend who was talking about someone we’d met casually, and he said, ‘She has a good face but she hasn’t grown into it yet.’ That’s what I sensed about Fedora in
The Grim Reaper.
But, at the end, there’s one very moving scene. In order to save her lover, the barmaid stabs a man. She runs away. She wanders from city to city, lost and forsaken. She becomes ill, she’s dying. At last she comes to the ocean and sits on the beach. As she looks out over the water there’s one marvelous close-up, understated and emotionally affecting, then the camera cuts to a full shot. Fedora’s still sitting, her shoulders narrowed eloquently, her arms hugging her knees. As she sits there, immobile, waiting, gradually a long darkening shape reaches out from the horizon, slowly extending and approaching her. It’s a naïve conception, pure German Expressionist, and of course it’s her death she’s waiting for. But what a tremendously powerful scene! And it seemed to me that the old woman sitting on the terrace—that’s what she was doing all that time. She was waiting for her private vision of death to reach out across the sea and take her. She was tired. She’d lived a long time.”

*
Barry Detweiller, “My Ten Years with Fedora,” an interview with Maurice Derougemont,
Life,
August 12, 1968.

*
Fedora, The Woman and the Legend
(New York: Guild Books, 1970; reprint Hammond House Press, 1972).

*
Film historians seem to disagree concerning
Tsigane
(A&B 1936) and whether it was a remake of her earlier German film for Improstein,
Zigeuner
(Impro-Berliner Films 1917). No known print of the latter still exists.

*
O. E. Improstein,
My Years with UFA
(Berlin: Schwelgren Editions, 1935).

*
New York Times,
April 21, 1975.

T
HE HOTEL IS NOT
widely known outside the tourist trade, but those who enjoy really “getting away from it all” have heard through friends who have visited there that if one wants only to sun and swim and fish and read and drink and make love, Boca de Oro and Las Cinco Palmas is “just what the doctor ordered.” Less a cut-rate resort than an undiscovered paradise, it lies on the western coast of Mexico several hundred miles southeast of the tip of Baja California.

Since the government has not seen fit to build a road or airstrip, Boca is inaccessible except by water, and an excursion boat comes and goes daily from the nearest large town, Mirabella, an hour or so away. There are no telephones or direct mail service; electricity is limited.

Life is slow, easy, even boring at Boca de Oro. The
playa,
or beach, is crescent-shaped, the “mouth of gold” from which the place derives its name. The hotel is built on the north point of the curve, which is situated at the mouth of the Rio de Oro, where the river spills out of the jungle onto the golden sickle of sand. Half a mile away, on the opposite point of the crescent, are some houses belonging to foreigners, one with a handicraft shop attached, which is run by an unmarried American couple, and a ramshackle dock, bar, and restaurant combined into what is called, but hardly passes for, “a yacht club.” Beyond these, over a quaint wooden bridge, lies the village: a score of adobe dwellings, a store, a cantina, and a church. The villagers live mainly by fishing and by the practice of native crafts which are sold in the Americans’ shop, or they are employed as menials at the hotel.

Las Cinco Palmas (since there are considerably more than five palms, one wonders at the name) is owned by a Mexican consortium in the capital and is managed by Esteban “Steve” Alvarez, from Guatemala City, and his Swiss-born wife, Cupie. The hotel compound consists of a large, rambling open-air bar and dining room with a thatched roof, the structure fronting the view and surrounded by individual native-fashioned cabañas of stone and clay foundations, timbers, bamboo, rattan meshwork, and more thatched roofs. Scorpions live in this hard-packed brush and are a nuisance, or worse; more than eighteen thousand people in Mexico have died of scorpion bites in the last ten years. The cabañas are set attractively among winding paths colorful with flowers and shaded by palm trees; a parrot—red, blue, orange—lives in one of these, and it whistles rudely like a drugstore cowboy appraising the girls on a Saturday evening outside a pool hall. Each cabaña has its private patio—many of which overlook the bay—with a table and two rainbow-painted chairs and a native-woven hemp hammock strung between the porch posts.

Though Boca de Oro undoubtedly manifests the exotic allure of all such tropical places, the atmosphere is generally peaceful. There is nothing spectacular about the bay, which is warm and clear and placid. In the morning, with the change of tide, it rouses itself from slumber, seems to turn over with an audible flop, makes itself comfortable, and returns to drowse again. Even before the mangy dogs start to bark, the motors of the fishing boats setting out from the village can be heard moving around the points of the horseshoe. Their catch will be a source of interest to the curious tourist: orangey-green fish with unfamiliar Spanish names,
róbalo,
and
bacalao,
and
merluza,
hooked together in wet, shiny clusters. Most of the fish will go to the hotel to feed the guests, local seafood being the one dish the chef seems unable to ruin.

Every day is alike. When the boats have put out, usually around six, the hotel begins to stir. The kitchen fires are lighted, and then can be heard the clink of china and silverware as the checkered cloths are set at long communal tables where guests share in the informal atmosphere characterizing Boca de Oro. Soon the beachboys come forth and rake the sand, and the canvas chairs, stacked the previous night, are set out in rows within a roped-off enclosure.

While the beachboys are attending to these duties, the maids have appeared, gathering from the village or from quarters behind the kitchen, and the gently percussive whisper of their straw brooms is heard, as they sweep from the curving walkways fallen bougainvillaea petals, hibiscus blossoms, spiders’ webs spun in the night. One girl goes to plump up the cushions in the open-air pavilion that houses a collection of dog-eared paperback books left by former guests; this is called the “library,” a pleasant, shady spot in which to relax in a hammock and read or watch the sea. Another girl goes to the cement and rock basin near the kitchen to feed the giant sea turtles, and to wet them with buckets of sea water. A gardener comes with a hose and swishes the walks and plantain leaves when the maids have finished sweeping. With their brooms they also rout the pigs that have snorted their way out of the brush behind the hotel to scrabble for leftovers where the garbage is dumped.

Meanwhile, from farther up the mouth of the river, a string of horses is being led to be tethered on a rail under a
palapa,
the traditional palm-thatched umbrella common to the beaches of Mexico. Horses may be rented for riding excursions up in the hills; the gentler burros as well.

The first guests appear from their cabañas, shading their eyes at the bay, then wander into the dining room, where coffee has been set out on the bar. After breakfast they go onto the beach, each taking the chair and umbrella in the place allotted to him. By then, speedboats will have put out from the yacht club, towing water-skiers—jaunty and nearly off balance—to the mouth of the bay, where they crisscross each other’s blue-white wakes.

At noon the excursion boat appears from around the point, and the lilting Latin rhythms of marimba and accordion and maracas are heard. Day-trippers wave from the rail, while the boat anchors out from the hotel and smaller craft bring them ashore. Their complacently inquisitive looks change to ones of startled apprehension as they are borne beachward on a sweep of waves, until they can clamber onto the sand, trying not to wet their ground-gripper shoes.

For three hours they swarm across beach, take over the bar and dining patios for lunch, ride the burros up to see the view, or snap their Instamatic Kodaks at local color: women squatting at the edge of the river, using wooden paddles on their cotton clothes the way their ancestors did in the days of the
conquistadores.
The river does not flow immediately into the bay, but is checked in a brackish lagoon by a tidal sandbar until the lagoon floods and runs over the top of the bar, the current devouring the sand and cutting a channel which eventually widens to empty the dammed-up water into the bay, fresh water meeting salt. The tourists gather to watch the sides of the bar cave in, when the river exerts its final pressure, and a good deal of Kodachrome film is exposed to record the phenomenon. That is what one does at Boca de Oro, watch the river flow into the bay.

Around a quarter to three they will load up again and be returned to the excursion boat, the marimba will play, maracas shake, the whistle sound, the boat will weigh anchor and be gone. Ten minutes later the
playa
will be peaceful again, back in the possession of the hotel guests. By five it will be deserted as they all disperse for their naps and to get ready for dinner.

Between six and eight they gather in the bar, drinking. From eight to ten they dine. Days are short at Boca de Oro, and few are not abed, singly or otherwise, by 1
A.M.
Tomorrow will be no different from today, the fishing boats putting out at six, the beachboys raking, the maids sweeping, the gardener watering, breakfast, beach, the excursion boat, marimbas, maracas, burros, the rest. The only thing that changes is the guest list. As the brochure says, Las Cinco Palmas is perfect for “getting away from it all.” At ten the Delco generator is shut down, and illumination is provided in each cabaña by candles or by kerosene lanterns, which are difficult to read by, but cast romantic shadows. Later, those still awake are in the bar, drinking again, and applauding the young and handsome couple who perform the flamenco as it is done in Madrid; the rest are making love or sleeping.