Famous Last Words (18 page)

“You have not seen the New York Times?”

“No.” My heart sank. “No. I have not.”

“You will require your best sense of humor when you

do.” Isabella told me. But there was no sense of humour in her voice when she added, “You have been pinioned, as I believe they say in English, by a lady who is making quite a name for herself…”

Julia Franklin.

“Really?” 1 tried to sound as if I had known it was coming.

“So she’s been as harsh with me as she was with Ezra?”

“Yes. I’m afraid she has. You are—what do they saw in

England?—the latest victim of the Ripper. Never fear. however.

You are not alone and the company she promises is

good.”

“What do you mean by the company she promises. Baronessa?”

“There

is to be a whole series.” Isabella explained, “of

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what she calls Portraits of Expatriates—meaning expatriates of the American persuasion. Ezra Pound, as we know. Yourself.

Mrs Simpson, Lady Astor, William Joyce…” (who was

then nothing more than an agitator, but who later would become Lord Haw-Haw) “…and also my friend that I want you to meet, Mister Charles Bedaux.”

It was hard not to ask at once what Julia Franklin had

written about me, but I didn’t want to appear over anxious.

So, for the moment, 1 followed Isabella’s lead. 1 had never heard of Mister Charles Bedaux—this man she wanted me

to meet—and was in the embarrassing position of having to say so.

“Never fear, Mister Mauberley,” she told me. “Charles

Bedaux is not of your circle, but an industrialist. It is most unlikely you would hear of him. However, the purpose of my call is to inform you of his wish to meet you and to place for him an invitation at your feet.”

I thought this a quaint and charming way of putting it and told her I would be delighted to accept. The appointment was for Friday at Tattinger’s for lunch. I asked if Isabella Loverso would be present.

“I most certainly shall,” she said, “since 1 must perform the introductions.”

“I will be glad to see you,” 1 said, which was true. 1 was intrigued by the mystery that surrounded her activities—her sudden departure from Venice following Wyndham’s death; her absence from Neddy’s funeral.

Then she reminded me (as if she had to!) “Take your good sense of humour now and go downstairs and obtain a copy of the Paris edition of the New York Times.”

I was halfway down the stairs when I saw the lobby was

filled with reporters. Thinking they must be there to catch my reaction to Julia P^ranklin’s diatribe—for such I was sure it would be—1 turned and was about to rise again when 1

was met by the sound of a familiar name drifting up from below.

“Senor Hemingway! One moment, please!”

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Ernest? Here at the Meurice? 1 crept down a few steps and peered into the lobby. The crowd of reporters had now sorted itself into two focal groups, one gazing hungrily at the sight of Ernest Hemingway and the other turning to stare at a tall, magnificent woman who was breeching their ranks to draw closer to Ernest himself.

“Senor Hemingway!” she called again, as she strode across the marble. She looked to be about sixty years of age. Red furs hung down like garlands from her shoulders and her piled red hair was like a modern version of a Pompadour, sweeping upward from a wide, pale forehead and heavily

powdered complexion. Every eye was now on her. She removed, as she strode, the glove from her right hand and

placed it in her left, where it remained like a major’s swagger stick.

Ernest, by now, had turned. I could see the lights in his eyes flare up at the impertinence of being so publicly hailed and then die down and soften when he perceived it was a woman of obvious importance who might be importuning

him for some good reason, not for ill. I was shocked by his appearance, for he had aged in the year since 1 had seen him last and had put on weight, though he carried it well. But his eyes were old and very tired. I was surprised to see him in Paris. The last I’d heard, he was on a hurricane tour of the battlefields in Spain, involved in the making of a film in behalf of the Loyalist cause.

“Are you aware of who I am?” the woman asked as she

reached him.

“No,” said Hemingway. ” ‘fraid not, ma’am.” And he even went so far as to smile, first at her and then at the reporters.

“Then allow me to introduce myself,” she said. “I am the daughter of the Duke of Bilbao; sister of Don Alfredo del Roja; cousin of the Marques of Teruel; wife of the Marques de Sol y Santander—all dead. All dead, Senor Hemingway.

And I have come here to do them honour with a public

gesture of my contempt for those such as you who have

abetted their murderers.”

At which point she struck Ernest harshly with her bare

hand, fully in the face, but cleanly without employing her nails. And then she spat at his feet, looked him in the eye

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and said, “PorEsparia”—turned away as smartly as a soldier and marched to the doors and out of the hotel.

Ernest, to his credit, didn’t lift a finger during the attack, but stood his ground and endured it all like someone in a dream. His expression was mainly one of wonderment that someone not his mother nor his wife—though dressed in

female garb—had actually struck him. In a public place.

I overheard one of the reporters, an Englishman, say to Hemingway, “What, may one ask, was that all about?”

And Ernest, fully awake and angry at last, all red in the face except where the livid marks remained from the blows, said; “just some crazy Fascist in a red wig, thinks she’s the Queen of Spain…” and he turned and began to sweep the reporters before him into the gloomy shadows of the bar.

And as he went 1 heard him say; “my shoesi You fellows

see that? Why, she spat on my shoes!”

The following morning, taking advantage of the sheets of rain, I fumbled my umbrella open as I crossed the foyer, held it up like a shield before my face and barged through the doors undetected by the few reporters who hung about—

as always.

Nowhere. Nowhere could I find the Times of yesterday.

I tried six kiosks and three shops and finally gave it up, telling myself by hook or by crook I would find it back at the hotel, even if I had to pay a dozen chamber maids to ransack all the waste paper baskets, room by room.

Later, arriving back at the hotel with an armful of papers—

everything but the New York Times—I passed the desk and enquired after mail. Checking my pigeonhole the clerk informed me that although there were no letters, there was a

copy of the New York Times. “Yesterday’s.” Astonished, I allowed the clerk to place it in my hands and I looked down to see there was a note attached. “Saw you were in the

hotel,” it said, “and thought you might enjoy the enclosed.

Best—Ernest.”

The bastard.

I reached my suite somewhat out of breath, with the other ,, papers still tucked under my arm and carrying the Times

very carefully between two fingers, much the way one carries certain animals—by the tail, so they cannot turn and bite you.

I poured myself a very large Scotch, with just enough

water to pale the colour from deadly auburn to narcotic amber. Then I placed eight cigarettes, eight white cartridges all in a row, on the table underneath the reading lamp, and my lighter beside them. When I sat. 1 even adjusted my

clothing in the manner of a suicide who is determined his corpse will flatter him. I lighted one cigarette. I sipped; then I gulped from the glass; then I sipped again and put it down.

I opened the paper, leafing through the pages, playing out the role of casual reader even though I, in the mirror, was the only audience.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Pages one

to five.

Page six. There it was. HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY:

OUT OF KEY WITH HIS TIME. A PORTRAIT—by Julia

Franklin.

I gasped and choked on my cigarette smoke. My eyes began to water. For a moment I could not see. I dabbed at the tears with my handkerchief only to discover its cologne was an irritant and thus I watered more. I waited. OUT OF KEY

WITH HIS TIME. The one sure way to kill an artist deader than a dodo…out of date…passe…inconsequential…out of key with his time.

At last, I could see again. I steadied the page and continued to read. I will not repeat it all here, though one brief passage bears on the story of these walls and must be told.

“The most astonishing thing about this man of letters is the fact that even though Mr. Mauberley currently lives out his exile in Europe, where new fires blaze up every day, he appears to be totally unaffected by the march of events.

Instead, he avoids all confrontation with his diminishing talents by spending an inordinate amount of time with the dissolute aristocracy of faded England and with the morally bankrupt crew that mans the elite but sinking lifeboat of a Fascist-dominated Europe… .

“How sad that a man once considered to be among the

giants of twentieth-century American letters should have

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passed his zenith by the time he was thirty. And now that he is forty and has ceased to write, it is perhaps even sadder to have to say that his departure from the literary scene is no loss to culture. His works, all along, were paste. They have already been replaced by the diamonds, however rough, of writers such as Hemingway, Farrell and Stratton. …”

I read it once. I reread it twice. I read it till I cringed. It was deadly; cruel; precise—and alas—very much of it was true. Not all, of course. Not all. But—oh—the sight of oneself, caught in the eye of one who cannot lie.

The next day, I scanned every page of the Paris papers, thinking for certain there would be mention of the scene between Ernest and his titled attacker in the lobby. Not a word. I looked through them all—twice. It seemed somehow unfair that I must be made to pay for my sins while Ernest got off scot free. And then I remembered. Of course. He had taken all those reporters into the bar and kept them drinking all night long.

At noon on Friday I went around past the bridges and onto .the terraces of the Tuilleries. I had forgotten my umbrella and arrived at Tattinger’s covered from head to toe with a fine Scotch mist.

Isabella Loverso greeted me in the porches—alone, for she wanted to explain the purpose of our luncheon. My heart did a turn when I saw her. Having completely sentimentalized her, I had forgotten how much strength there was in

her height and how real’her beauty was. She came along

those porches with the energy of Danilova or Karsavina: of someone who had danced all her life. There was a great, wide smile of genuine pleasure on her lips and in her eves and in the way she took my hand in both of hers and welcomed me. But this was briskly dispensed with. She wanted

to come directly to the point.

Under any other circumstances, she assured me. she would

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not have swept me quite so quickly off my feet. But recent events (the Abdication, the creation of the Rome-Berlin Axis, certain crises in Germany) made it necessary for her to leap upon what she called my “timely” arrival in Paris, and set up post-haste this meeting with Charles Bedaux. Francois Coty, the perfumer, was also to be with us at lunch.

Protesting that I did not have a mind for intrigue, I told her I would be glad to hear what either man had to say, though I would promise nothing brilliant in response. This seemed to satisfy her.

Crossing the dining salon she took my arm and said; “we do not trust Francois Coty greatly, though he can be useful.

Be aware that he is somewhat dangerous—and indiscreet.”

I mumbled something like “very well”, still having no

idea why she spoke to me of “we” or of who that “we” might be. And then she said; “Charles Bedaux is extremely important to us. He is the whole reason I have brought you

here, Mister Mauberley, and you will not be too surprised, I hope, or think it rude of me if I hardly take part in the conversation. I am really only here to be certain you meet with this friend.”

At which point—on the very word—we arrived at the table where Bedaux and Coty were already seated.

“Monsieur Bedaux is born French,” said Isabella Loverso while Coty seated her beside him. “But he is also an American like yourself, Mister Mauberley.”

“I see.” I just kept smiling. It was all like a scene in a film, and I had the distinct impression that Garbo would arrive at any moment. Garbo—or a gun.

Bedaux, having become an American citizen, kept American business hours; none of this two o’clock d la fourchette for him. You ate at noon and were back in the office by ‘1:30

sharp. If you ate alone, you were back at one. Period. He was a “time-study” man; an efficiency expert who controlled a vast, indeed a world-wide, network of management consultant firms. I was fascinated to note how wide-spread the

influence of one man could be. for his clients included (amongst a great many others) Campbell Soup. General Electric, Eastman Kodak. Goodrich Rubber, and Swift…and in

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Europe, E. I. du Font de Nemours, the Flat motor company.

the Societa Metallurgica Italiana, the Eisenwerke Aktiengesellschaft Rothau-Neudek (steelworks. Czechoslovakia)

…and in Britain, Crosse & Blackwell and Imperial Chemical Industries of London…to say nothing of the AngloIranian Oil Company.

As for Francois Coty, he had once been the guiding force and inspiration of a militant right-wing group that called itself Solidarite Francaise, made up mostly of homosexual hoodlums who were given to wearing leather and boots. This fact had given rise to one of the best bilingual puns I have ever heard, when in 1934 it was said that Coty was about to produce a new cologne he would call: “Eau du Cuir!”

True to her word, Isabella Loverso offered little to the conversation other than her attention. She watched both myself and Bedaux with her eagle’s eyes all through the meal. Coty seemed to be of no real interest to her. And I wondered how we were connected in her mind.