The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe (22 page)

* ‘My journey is complete.’

She entered my owner’s life and took charge of everything: house, car, medical appointments, dress fittings, laundry, fruit salads, and – most of all – what she called ‘the demands of home decoration’. Caring about such business was part of my pedigree, but I found it hard to influence Mrs Murray. Her convictions were ingrained at the levels, shall we say, of personal grief and natural obsession, and I could only accompany her and yap quietly as she went about the making of our house in Fifth Helena Drive. As I said, her great model was the house she had sold to the Greensons, the one she had hoped to live in for ever with her husband John. The style of that house was Mexican and Mrs Murray would do it again, better this time, as if to show her skills had only improved with disappointment.

The trip to Mexico was arranged by Mrs Murray down to the very finest detail. It would be the perfect melding of politics and shopping. Marilyn, of course, wanted to find the materials for the new house, but she also wanted to see some people from New York who were now living in
la Patria
, working in the film industry or living the dream. It was the end of February 1962 and there was a true note of magic in the air as we arrived at the Continental Hilton. Marilyn was wearing one of her yellowish Pucci dresses and I remember a lovely breeze passing through the foyer, as if we had arrived at last in a world of perpetual spring.

Mrs Murray arranged for the bags to be taken to the rooms while Marilyn took me to a bar on the roof of the building. Three glasses of Dom Pérignon later, we stood and looked over Mexico with that sense of fulfilment that comes with arrival. I suddenly remembered, or picked up from my owner’s memory, the sleazy little doctor in
The Asphalt Jungle
. He says Mexico City is a great place: the air is pure, it has great nightclubs and restaurants, a racetrack, and beautiful girls. ‘I’m sorry to drag you so far away from your toys, Honey,’ said my fated companion.

‘Are you kidding?’ I barked. ‘This is
heaven
. My first owners, the Scottish ones, they told me Mexico is the home of freedom and
peyote
. I believe they had read Mr Huxley on the subject. I believe they had a healthy attitude towards the business of hallucination. My breeders saw life for what it was.’

‘But isn’t it swell?’ she said, not hearing me. Then quietly: ‘It’s sure nice to be making a home.’
‘A little part of here,’ I said.
She broke some nachos in a white bowl. ‘There you go, Snowball. We got everything we need.’

The look on her face was Mexico and the drumming of my heart was Mexico and so was the scent on the breeze
.
‘A book he read to me on that farm in Scotland,’ I said. ‘It was full of paintings and one of them showed the Aztec city rising from the water of the lake. Underneath, the words of Bernal Díaz from 1519. He was speaking of the moment they arrived in the city, “the day we saw what it was always in our minds to see, and our soldiers asked whether it was not all a dream”.’

That night the Mexican film people threw a party for Marilyn at the Grand Hotel. We made our way there around six o’clock, when a flag was lowered in a huge solemn square, and it seemed part of the ongoing splendour of insurrection that history’s cries for freedom and equality should lead in time to a bourgeois hotel. That is often the way with human struggles, I’ve noticed: they start in
barrios
and rowdy cafes and they end in the grand rooms of plush hotels, or in fetid palaces, bordered by guards and grey sofas. The contradiction seemed very earthy at the Grand Hotel, very much at home, jungle vegetation and overhead fans working together to stir the air. ‘Of course!’ the manager seemed to say, there is a necessary distinction between the glorious masses and the chosen few. In one smiling sweep we moved from the pavement – the popping cameras, the beautiful faces shouting ‘Maraleen, Maraleen’ – to a staircase of white marble. The big shots of the Mexican film industry were looking over the banister, Marilyn lifting me, cocking her head, my eyes dazzled by the men’s smiles and some bright Tiffany glass.

We ate like royalty. A man took me off to the kitchen and gave me a truffle omelette in a silver dish and I nearly cried with pleasure. The man had been a policeman but was now recovered. He made a joke to his comrades about me being
un guapo
and all the men in their white tunics laughed and passed me round. They were all lovely and I finally understood why so many waiters are actors, because good waiters must always be ready for performance. I saw it for myself. The swing doors burst open and out they came with a different posture, a different face, presenting me into the hands of my owner with a nod of officialdom and a sideways glace at the maitre d’.

‘Mr Huston is a most wonderful director. I have to tell you he is wonderful.
Smaaaaart. Si
.’
‘You worked with him, right?’
‘
Si
, on
The Unforgiven
. He is what I am calling my lucky director, okay? To me, he is lucky.’
Marilyn giggled. ‘You should see him at the crap tables. Luck ain’t even in it.’
‘Ah,
si, si
. John is
obstinado
, no – at the roulette, no, and the whisky?’
‘
Obstinado
,’ she said.
‘I tell you, Maraleen. Without a doubt. He reminds me of John Steinbeck. You know Mr Steinbeck? I directed
La Perla
– yes, it doesn’t matter. Long time ago I directed
La Perla
. Okay? He is the same kind of
macho
,
si
. The same
hombre muy obstinado
. Drinking. Ho.’
‘You can talk to me about Steinbeck,’ I said. ‘I know half of
Travels With Charley
by heart. Charley the dog and the big man cross the country. Charley knows more about geography than the writer, no? And Charley is the artist lying in wait while the pines go black against the sky.’
‘Isn’t there a rumour, he’s about to get the Nobel Prize for Literature?’
‘
Es verdad
,’ said the man, whose name was Emilio Fernández. He had a nice moustache and a very serious wife called Columba. She was an actress but her dark eyes told you she wasn’t so willing to participate in all this excitement. It sometimes happens. She had decided Marilyn might be a threat to a male artist’s integrity.
‘You are soon working again with Mr George Cukor,’ said Columba brightly. ‘Is true?’
Marilyn half closed her eyes. ‘I love George.’
‘Is a bedroom comedy, no? Not hard to make political engagement with this kind of material?’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Marilyn said. ‘It’s set in a bedroom. What other kind of politics is there?’ She shrugged and Mr Fernández let out an enormous laugh, while his wife pressed her lips together.
A young friend of theirs who had written the screenplay of a movie about a cockroach was very attentive to Marilyn and she liked his jokes. His name was José and he later sent her a forest of poinsettias. But all evening my excitement grew at the promise of Cantinflas, the modern Quixote who was dining at the other end of the table and making everybody laugh. I felt I had waited a long time to meet Cantinflas. They called him the Charlie Chaplin of Mexico. In fact he was much more than that: a verbal idealist, a picaresque under dog, the spirit of the nation. I kept looking along the table at him and seeing his thin moustache and wishing I knew him as a friend. But in a sense I had always known him, by osmosis, by intuition, this impoverished Everyman, this satirist, for whom politics and art were twinned. In a country of illiterates he took over the language; in a country of migrants he took over the city. He laughed at the law and made life spectacular. The eternal
pelado
had known my kind all his life, and then, in the midst of my reverie, he stood up at the end of the table and proved it. He spoke English as he had when he was Mr Fogg’s valet in
Around the World in Eighty Days
.
‘In Vaudeville, in Godville – we need our props.’ He took up a small, crushed hat and the whole table erupted with applause as he put it on his head. The cheers continued as he took up a bottle and poured himself a drink, then another, holding the bottle and cocking the hat. He twisted his mouth from side to side as if a bee was on his nose and took up a leg of chicken from the plate. Marilyn clapped. We watched him eating the chicken, but there was something in our concentration that made it seem as if we were staring at a Velázquez. He ate greedily like a dog and knew it like a man. ‘If work was precious,’ he said with a mouthful of chicken, ‘the rich would no doubt have hoarded it up for themselves.’
‘
Viva Cantinflas!
’

The table shook with delight and uproar. He began to smoke a cigar. ‘In the great tradition of enormous welcomes,’ he said, ‘offered since ancient days by the denizens of Mexico with their benisons for the roughly transplanted – I mean, the weary sailor who expects courtesy for his Cortez-y, the noble plunderer who begs safe harbour – it has been our habit to accept them with hungry eyes before enjoying their oppressions. In short, ladies and gentleman, we join with the law-givers of our nation in welcoming America to our table. She comes in armour of harmony. About time, too, and no mistake in the hour of our death, Amen.’

The man beside me was actually crying with laughter. He thumped the table. There was something quicksilver and brave in the performance: Cantinflas had no notes and the routine was new, but nothing seemed ill-fitting and the words he spoke were fiery and nonsensical and they cheered every one up. ‘Her skin is like porcelain snow as on the peaks of our volcanoes. Our guest is not from the mansion house, my friends. She is from the house in the
barrio
next to the thieves’ market, as I am – not the King of Siam, but a man
– and by her talent alone she has made herself the Queen of Love and Intelligence.’

Everyone looked at Marilyn and she laughed that wonderful laugh of health and good times and better ones to come. ‘Marilyn is here with us and she is a fact of democracy.’

‘I love you Cantinflas,’ I said. The people at the table were cheering and they seemed in that moment to be the people who knew best how to live, who knew how to be themselves. And they felt proud, most proud of Cantinflas and his words. Proud of his dissidence. One of the actors came to his side in the part of Hotel Manager. Cantinflas turned to him and shied like a horse.

‘I am not ready to pay my check,’ he said. ‘A check is an imposition, an insult to the free man. I demand you countermand your demand if you call yourself a man.’

‘Señor,’ said the man playing the hotel manager. ‘It is rumoured you have been speaking freely of freedom. The bill is doubled. I believe you used the word “democracy”?’

‘I said “geography”. I said Miss Monroe was the Queen of

Knowing Where She Is.’
‘Señor. There is no charge for the cognac. No charge for
the chicken and the cigar. This is your bill for the use of
expensive words.’
He looked at the bill and the comic’s face snarled with
feigned disgust. ‘El Capitán! If my eyes are my eyes, it says
here that the cost of our evening is four times the national
debt.’
‘That is correct, Señor. You have overspent. It is not cheap
in this country to praise beauty.’
‘Ah, ugliness! Ugliness,’ said our hero. From the side of the
room came the sound of violins, the kind of sad music heard
in silent movies. Marilyn’s eyes were wide with excitement
and I nuzzled into her waist. ‘It is the dog! I tell you, the
dog!’ Cantinflas said, pointing. I’m sure I must have blushed
under my whiskers. Marilyn laughed and rubbed my cheek.
‘The dog is the navigator. I believe he is the geographer.’ ‘How so, Señor?’
‘Marilyn’s dog is the dictator of optimism. I say he has
slipped into Mexico to run a campaign for president. He has
attached himself to this wonderful woman for the purpose of
running our country.’
The table roared and Marilyn hugged me and I was almost
dizzy with the attention.
‘You are insane. This is a dog!’
‘Indeed, a dog. A small white dog. A small dog belonging
to
la chica moderna
. He is here as a guest of the Mexican film
industry.’
‘
Si
. And your point, Señor? At this establishment we
charge very heavily for nonsense.’
‘And what do you charge for wisdom? Tell me, el Capitán.
Is it or is it not the case that a female rhinoceros was elected
to public office in Brazil?’
‘That is right, Senor. Two years ago. I believe the candidate’s name was Cacareco.’
‘An able public servant.’
‘Indeed. A rhinoceros. An able public servant if you
happen to live in Brazil. Elected by the popular vote.’ ‘The popular vote! That phrase will be added to your bill,
Señor.’
‘And I put it to you, el Capitán. The people of Malawi
returned a parakeet as district officer. The people of Poland
once voted a pig head of police. He is said to have exhibited
a sense of justice most natural and fitting for the people.’ ‘Please don’t give me “The People”.’
‘It is certainly what I will give you, el Capitán. I give
you the people. And I give you choice! And I give you
democracy! Sir, I give you beauty! And I give you – with all
the heavens in attendance, with history at our beck and call
and the rebel spirit of Cuauhtémoc guiding our lightning – I
give you the dog of Marilyn Monroe for president!’ The table erupted more than ever before and everyone stood
up with glasses aloft and voices raised, the hubbub of good
cheer infecting everything and Marilyn in love with the great
joke and the spirit of Mexican reason. People gathered round
and stroked my ears and kissed Marilyn’s hand and Cantinflas was mobbed by his friends. The waiters lined the back wall of the dining room and applauded. There was dancing and Marilyn and Cantinflas were like teenagers – Norma Jeane and Mario Moreno – dancing a snaky-hipped rumba and laughing their heads off. Later, Mr Fernández made a phone call and had them open the Ministry of Education, so that Marilyn and the rest of us could see the murals of Diego Rivera. (The painter was stupid about Trotsky, but what the hell. You can’t expect all visionary people to be visionary in the same way.) Cantinflas and Marilyn and the young screenwriter grabbed bottles of champagne and led a procession across the square, then up the street to the ministry. The place was dark but someone found candles, and soon light flickered over their faces, over Marilyn’s happy eyes, as they made their way down the corridors in search of Rivera’s offering of a dream they
could share,
The Day of the Dead
.
Marilyn and the screenwriter found a corner where they
could take off some of their clothes. She was kissing him
and he lay on top of her and soon she moaned in his mouth.
He was fast. (Nice to see old people enjoying themselves.)
Privacy’s not really my bag so I lay at their feet and wanted
to snuggle into their snuggle, and once they stopped moving
I took my chance and spooned into their legs. ‘
Bueno
,’ said
the young man. ‘A little heartbeat at my feet.’ The next day
the fellow sent the flowers to our hotel room and Marilyn
replaced the card with another one before sending the
bouquet on to Cantinflas.