Garbo’s Faces
a Novel — Part 28: The Dark Ages
She did not call, nor did she write, instead she entered what I now think of as the dark ages: she simply vanished (again) — for me. She was still around, officially, featured — though with less frequency — in the press, where I could follow her whereabouts, albeit at a strangely second- or third-hand distance.
I read that her friend George Schlee died in late September of 1964 and I expected to hear from Harriet then, but still: nothing. The papers reported that she returned to New York for the funeral (this was early October of 1964) and there was some speculation in the press about how exactly Schlee had died and how Harriet had handled it, much of it not very flattering. One account had Harriet leaving him collapsed on a Paris street after calling for help — so as not to be involved, was the writer’s conclusion.
Another writer, I think he was American, wondered why she had not arrived in New York on the same plane as Schlee’s body. “If she loved him,” he wrote, “she didn’t realize it until afterwards. Or, perhaps, she is not capable of love.” I know that if Harriet read that, it would crush her.
I tried to reach Cecil Beaton to see if he had her current number, and although I finally did manage to talk to him, he said he did not have it. I didn’t quite believe him but I couldn’t very well challenge him about it, so I had to leave it at that.
My suspicion was confirmed the following summer when I read in the London papers that Beaton had recently spent time with Harriet on one of Cecile de Rothschild’s boats somewhere in the Mediterranean, but now they were no longer on speaking terms.
Again, added the writer.
Although I could not help but keep an eye out for her in the papers — it had become an unbreakable habit by now — I tried to put her as far out of my life as possible.
In the summer of 1966 I returned to India for a few weeks and found Madhuri a little fragile. She had lost some weight, but insisted that she was fine. Her spirit was still strong, and she would not let me pamper her. I told her, of course, about Harriet, and her disappearing again.
“She is an unsettled soul,” said Madhuri, as much to herself I think as to me.
“But after meeting Athansor,” I said. “After visiting the trolls.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “she has forgotten.”
“Forgotten?” I said, perplexed that she would have considered that a possibility. “How can you forget something like that?”
“How can you forget anything?” she wondered.
When I didn’t reply — because it was a good question, and no good answer came to mind — she asked, “Have you ever forgotten?”
“About Athansor?”
“Yes.”
“No,” I answered, “Never.”
“Never?” she said and smiled. “Not even for a moment?”
Her smile was an invitation to rethink my answer.
“Well,” I said after recalling long stints at the drawing table where nothing but the paper and the ink and the form I held in my mind of the building to rise had existed. “Yes, now that I think about it, yes, there have been those moments.”
She smiled a different smile. Not pleased, but knowing. “Perhaps her moments are longer than yours.”
“Years?” I said, but I was beginning to see.
“Who knows?”
Then she changed the subject. “Attra has been to see me.”
When I did not voice the question she saw in my eyes, she added, “Snake.”
“Cobra?”
“Yes, he likes it that way.”
“Where is he?”
“He is with Esh now. Somewhere.”
“Does he come here often?”
“Only the once.”
“Can you reach him? I would love to see him again.”
“I’m sure he knows you are here. And I’m sure he’ll come if he can.”
Either Attra didn’t know, or couldn’t come, for I didn’t meet him that summer. Madhuri and I spent a pleasant month, doing not much of anything. I helped her with the household chores, did some of the cooking, and as she taught me some of her wonderful recipes, I did more of it, just to practice.
Gosh, I said to her, I’m so good I could open a restaurant.
Just what I hear London needs, she said, another Indian restaurant.
Yes, she was herself, a little thinner, but herself. And that is how I left her.
And life, as they say, went on.
I had by now accepted that Harriet had thought better of having a son, and although it hurt, sometimes I thought perhaps I was better off this way. I suffered none of the attention that still plagued her. None of the press, none of the hounding and speculations that would still surface in the various magazines. Harriet-spotting became a New York pastime, and Harriet sightings — as if she were some Unidentified Flying Object — were still written up as fillers on slow days, sometimes in those very periodicals that also featured alien abductions.
Truman Capote is interviewed — I think it’s around the time that New York’s Lincoln Center screens twenty-six of her films, and she’s all the rage for a while — and he calls her an abandoned temple, which leads to other interviews with other notables and to more speculations and further sightings.
She was more than likely an harassed woman at that time. And again I thought that perhaps it was all for the best that I could lead a life without all that attention. Perhaps, I even thought at times, that was her intent. Or, at other times, maybe Madhuri was right, Harriet had forgotten everything, even me.
In 1971, Cecile Beaton published a second installment of his autobiography, and an excerpt called My Love Affair with Ms. Brown appeared briefly in several magazines.
I called him to inquire if it was true, but he did not return my calls. I was not that interested, and I did not pursue it. Still, I can imagine how Harriet must have felt about it. To his credit, though, there was not a word about me.
That same year, 1971, Mr. Rand passed away after a brief battle with prostate cancer, and Hawkes again insisted that I become a partner in the firm, which I finally accepted, though I insisted that the firm retain its original name, which he said was fine.
I visited India several times, to find Madhuri frailer and frailer but still in excellent spirits. I never did get to see Attra on any of my visits, however, and if Madhuri knew why this was, she never said and I never pressed.
© Wolfstuff