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    Garbo's Faces
    Garbo's Faces
    Garbo's Faces
    Ebook471 pages7 hours

    Garbo's Faces

    By Ulf Wolf

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    About this ebook

    Five-Stars: "Ulf Wolf has created a magical tale that crosses continents and cultures, seamlessly weaving Scandinavian and Indian folklore and establishing an underlying message of universal connectedness. It is an engaging story of relationships: a son's to a mother, an actress' to the world, the myths of one culture to another. The novel is rich in literary detail: astute readers will recognize references to Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale, and film buffs will easily identify Greta Garbo as the actress on whom Harriet is based (and who used the alias "Harriet Brown" frequently throughout her life.)" Laura Strachan -- Strachan Literary Agency

    When Nachiketa is 23 his father reveals to him that his mother is the reclusive Swedish film star, "Harriet Brown" (an alias that Greta Garbo often used). No one knows this and no one must ever know.

    Nachiketa and Harriet do eventually meet and together embark on a decades-long spiritual journey of sporadic meetings, prolonged silences, and extraordinary, shared experiences complete with ancient snakes, trolls, and a mysterious white horse that originally belonged to Mark Helprin. And the boy who was once given away will become the person who knows his mother best.

    This is all a lie, of course, but a lie that tells the truth.

    ====

    Prologue

    When my mother was twelve years old, directing imaginary plays from the little outhouse roof in her tenement back yard, she knew that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the world.

    Standing by her living room window, catching a brown and watery glimpse of the East River these many years later, she knew it to be a bad place.

    Whether this knowledge had gathered little by little over the intervening years—cloud by cloud, regret by regret—and just now let on; or whether it had sprung: gray horizon to horizon upon an unsuspecting sky just moments ago, since breakfast, she couldn't tell. Only that it was so obvious now.

    But she mustn't let this ruin her day. She slipped into her beige duffle coat, donned her sunglasses, covered her head with a gray and black scarf, patted her coat pocket to hear the keys tinkle, made sure she had her cigarettes, and her lighter, and without as much as a word of good-bye to Claire, headed out for her morning walk.

    ====

    A Gift

    My mother gave me away when I was two weeks old. Yes: I was a gift. That's what she later told me: a gift. Of course, I was also the unthinkable, in a world that must never know about me, at least not the world which knew and celebrated her. I was to be hidden from it.

    Later I realized that I was also to be hidden from her, the deeper the better.
    "And given sounds so much better than hidden, don't you think?" she said once after I had come to know her. "And so much better than unthinkable."

    The original benefactee—if I can be permitted to invent a word—was my father. His name was Jiddu and at that time (I was born April 10, 1928) he was a reasonably well known mystic. Indeed, he was quite famous in his day, even though today, if remembered at all, he seems more myth than man. Still, he has left a bit of a legacy, along with not a few schools and foundations scattered here and there about the world. But the man on the street, were you to mention his name, would look at you blankly, take his time, and then shake his head.

    At first Jiddu argued that she should keep me. "Children should be with their mothers," he said. "That's why women give birth and not men." Besides, would a child not be in his way as much as in hers? This, however, he soon had to admit—even to himself—simply was not true. Sure, to him I would be a burden, an inconvenience and an embarrassment, but to her I would be the end of a career, the end of a successful life.

    So in the end he relented—though, from what she later told me, not all that gracefully—and accepted me: a gift to be h...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUlf Wolf
    Release dateNov 4, 2012
    ISBN9781301648429
    Garbo's Faces
    Author

    Ulf Wolf

    Ulf is a Swedish name that once meant Wolf. So, yes, Wolf Wolf, that's me. I was born Ulf Ronnquist one snowy night in late October, in one of those northern Swedish towns that are little more than a clearing in the forest. Fast forward through twenty Swedish years, ten or so English ones, and another twenty-four in the US and you'll find me in front of an immigrations officer conducting the final citizenship interview, at the end of which he asks me, "What name would you like on your passport?" And here I recall what a friend had told me, that you can pick just about any name you want at this point, and I heard me say "Ulf Wolf." That's how it happened. Scout's honor. Of course, I had been using Ulf Wolf as a pen name for some time before this interview, but I hadn't really planned to adopt that as my official U.S. name. But I did. I have written stories all my life. Initially in Swedish, but for the last twenty or so years in English. To date I have written six novels, four novellas and two scores of stories; along with many songs and poems. My writing focus these days is on life's important questions (in my view): Who are we? What are we doing here? And how do we break out of this prison?

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      Garbo's Faces - Ulf Wolf

      Prologue

      When my mother was twelve years old, directing imaginary plays from the little outhouse roof in her tenement back yard, she knew that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the world.

      Standing by her living room window, catching a brown and watery glimpse of the East River these many years later, she knew it to be a bad place.

      Whether this knowledge had gathered little by little over the intervening years—cloud by cloud, regret by regret—and just now let on; or whether it had sprung: gray horizon to horizon upon an unsuspecting sky just moments ago, since breakfast, she couldn’t tell. Only that it was so obvious now.

      But she mustn’t let this ruin her day. She slipped into her beige duffle coat, donned her sunglasses, covered her head with a gray and black scarf, patted her coat pocket to hear the keys tinkle, made sure she had her cigarettes, and her lighter, and without as much as a word of good-bye to Claire, headed out for her morning walk.

      A Gift

      My mother gave me away when I was two weeks old. Yes: I was a gift. That’s what she later told me: a gift. Of course, I was also the unthinkable, in a world that must never know about me, at least not the world which knew and celebrated her. I was to be hidden from it.

      Later I realized that I was also to be hidden from her, the deeper the better.

      "And given sounds so much better than hidden, don’t you think? she said once after I had come to know her. And so much better than unthinkable."

      The original benefactee—if I can be permitted to invent a word—was my father. His name was Jiddu and at that time (I was born April 10, 1928) he was a reasonably well known mystic. Indeed, he was quite famous in his day, even though today, if remembered at all, he seems more myth than man. Still, he has left a bit of a legacy, along with not a few schools and foundations scattered here and there about the world. But the man on the street, were you to mention his name, would look at you blankly, take his time, and then shake his head.

      At first Jiddu argued that she should keep me. Children should be with their mothers, he said. That’s why women give birth and not men. Besides, would a child not be in his way as much as in hers? This, however, he soon had to admit—even to himself—simply was not true. Sure, to him I would be a burden, an inconvenience and an embarrassment, but to her I would be the end of a career, the end of a successful life.

      So in the end he relented—though, from what she later told me, not all that gracefully—and accepted me: a gift to be hidden.

      You could plainly see that I was his and her son. The color of my hair and the color of my skin were his; the color of my eyes, and the shape of my nose and mouth were hers. If my father had entertained any thoughts of contesting his involvement, he must have abandoned them the moment he saw me. Very much his, and very much hers. Not that I cared then.

      So, he accepted me, but he didn’t keep me around for long. A week or two, from what I’ve been able to piece together; just long enough to realize what a burden I actually was. Then he packed me off to Madanapalle, a small town smack in the middle of Southern India where he had grown up, and where his mother still lived.

      The long and the short of it: I was raised by a wonderful Indian woman named Madhuri (who among other things knew how to talk to snakes) in a town not so seldom overrun by rats (not in and around Madhuri’s house of course, her snake friends saw to that) and, for three months of the year, home to inclement weather.

      This all happened in the spring of 1928. As I said, I was born in April of that year. In other words, I’m getting on a bit. Well, you do the math, as they say. But I’m doing pretty well, not all that much worse for the wear, if I may say so. This I ascribe to clean air and vegetables.

      A month to the day after giving birth to me, and with the embarrassment now safely out of the way (I was en route to India, in fact), principal photography of War in the Dark—which was the working title for The Mysterious Lady, one of my mother’s many films—began in Los Angeles. This was the first time Harriet had been seen in public since she grew too large to be seen at all in December of the year before.

      As an aside: I’m afraid that I can’t refer to my mother by her real name for her estate (which does not include me) has trademarked it, and I really can’t be bothered with the legal wrangling it most likely would entail to obtain the right to use it for this little tale. So, instead I’ll use Harriet Brown, her alter-ego, the name she herself used on so many occasions in the (often misplaced) hope of staying unrecognized and out of sight. They didn’t, or couldn’t, trademark that. Besides, strange though it may seem, she was always Harriet to me.

      Even though she had exercised hard and showed no evidence whatever of her recent pregnancy, no sagging or stretch marks—she was only 22 years old then, and quite resilient—she nonetheless wanted no one on the set that did not firmly belong there, just in case, and she requested that it be blocked off by a maze of black screens. This request was granted, as were most of her wishes.

      She worried unduly. No one did notice, and no one ever found out.

      I am mentioned nowhere, by anyone. Not by Beaton, who did know but had given Harriet his word—which he honored—that he would never reveal her secret. Not even by Miss de Acosta who, if indeed she knew—I am sure she suspected—kept me out of her rambling diaries.

      Officially, I still don’t exist.

      But I came to exist for her, and she for me, and when all is said and done, that is what counts.

      Shoes and News

      I got my first pair of shoes in 1942. My new school would not hear of bare feet in class, so there you have it. It was not my idea. And of course I had to go to high school, both Harriet and Jiddu insisted apparently, and what was an old useless woman to do, said Madhuri. So, freshly shod, off I went to a private school near Hindupur, two dusty days of travel from Madanapalle and my life so far, to learn how to speak English, and how to wear the damn things.

      It took me four months and a lot of pleading with incarcerated toes and protesting insteps, along with many a long discussion with stiff leather and slippery soles stiffer still, to use them with even a modicum of comfort. For weeks the greatest thing on Earth, what kept me going, that shining light ahead, was that one moment, that one glorious moment when after hobbling into my room, after closing the door behind me, I could finally sit down on my bed and ease my feet out of their twin prisons. And there I would sit, on the edge of my bed, for minutes without moving, watching these two sore escapees pulse with hurt and indignation. They didn’t care much for the British, did my feet—for these unreasonable English teachers who saw fit to enshoe their Indian pupils without even the fleetest of notions that Indian feet might beg to differ with their stuffy protocol.

      Free at last.

      Until morning, and what kept me huddled under the blanket until there simply was no putting if off any longer: the painful reintroduction of blistery feet to their dark, constricting cells.

      But, as Madhuri told me more than once, everything can be mastered, even shoes apparently, and in the end I tamed them (or they tamed me, one or the other).

      By spring the shoe-battle was but memory and I was free to fall in with the many books they gave me to read. And read I did. And read. Which is how I discovered I had a gift for the English language.

      Another thing I discovered that spring was that I loved buildings. The grace and mystery of their rising—the British were nothing if not industrious—the alchemy of their conception and design. Seeing marble, or bricks, or plastered, or wooded walls rise around the intricate skeletons of beam and balk to the beat of the architect’s score, a little every day, until one day, new and complete, and with pomp and sometimes a marching band, they almost shone with the long effort, I decided to make buildings my life. And that’s exactly what I’ve done. But now I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

      At this time I still did not know who my mother was.

      Over the years I had asked Madhuri often enough; pleaded with her for an answer. Especially on those days that the question of my parentage was cruelly raised by those neighborhood boys who knew me to be motherless. But while Madhuri would do all she could to comfort me—she’d cook my favorite meals, tell me wonderful stories, she would even teach me snake talk—she could not answer my question, for she did not know either; Jiddu refused to tell her. But, she’d add, your mother must be someone very special. Just look at your eyes. Look at your beautiful blue eyes, Nachiketa.

      In the end it was Jiddu himself who told me, and this on the very day I graduated from college. This was in May of 1951 and I had just turned 23.

      You’ll be going to England now, to attend a real school, and this he said as if there was something quite the matter with Indian schools, even those run by leftover Englishmen. I’ve secured you a place at King’s College, he said. Oh, and by the way, I know you’ve been pestering Madhuri about it: Your mother is Harriet Brown.

      At first—I’m sure you can imagine—I misunderstood him. What other choice did I have?

      Sorry, I said. What did you say? I must have heard you wrongly.

      No, he said. You heard me just fine. Your mother is Harriet Brown, is exactly what I said. And now you’ve heard it correctly, twice.

      Coming from anyone else, I could and would have shrugged this off as the insanity it surely was. Good joke, fine show, and all that. But this was Jiddu Krishnamurti, and the terrifying thing about hearing this from him, and twice now, was that my father, from what I had so far experienced, just didn’t lie. And to make matters worse, Madhuri had told me on more than one occasion that Jiddu was the most truthful person she knew. Were my son to tell you that the moon would strike the Earth tomorrow, she’d laugh, I suggest you find some very solid cover. And so I had no choice but to assume that his news, no matter how far-fetched, was true.

      :

      I had heard of her, of course. All the world had heard of her. And, yes, it would explain my pale blue eyes, the twin mystery of my dark face. Pale Eyes, that’s what they used to call me in elementary school. Motherless Pale Eyes. And had Madhuri not taught me snake talk, I am not sure I would have survived my shoeless Madanapalle school days.

      Motherless Pale Eyes, son of a whore or a goat or a dog, bastard son of no mother to be found. And sometimes the larger—or richer—boys, the principal bullies, would then chase me and push me to the ground and kick me, or poke at me with sticks, once or twice even urinate on me. Motherless Pale Eyes. Get out of here. You don’t belong here. Go find your whore mother, if you have one, if she’s still alive, if she didn’t kill herself when she set eyes on you. Find yourself a she goat.

      Look at Pale Eyes, crying now for his goat mother.

      But I did know snake talk, and in the end, after I had reached my limit of shame and humiliation, it took only one demonstration for the word to get out.

      Ganaraj, a fat boy with a very rich and much fatter father, was usually the first to goad, the first to kick, the last to leave me to my misery. One morning they found him not dead but near enough to serve my purpose, bitten not once but thrice by cobras during the night.

      Such a thing had never happened before. Not in Madanapalle at any rate, and nowhere else either, that the doctor knew of. Never, he said again. Three bites, and by three different snakes—different spacing between the fangs you see: here, here and here. The wonder was that Ganaraj was still alive. Well, a wonder to them. I had asked the snakes specifically not to kill, only to mark, and they had done exactly that, deep bites with only a trace of venom from each, though even hardly any venom at all had been enough to usher Ganaraj next door to death.

      When, the following day, I brought the three perpetrators to school—well, that’s not exactly right: the cobras had agreed to come and appear with me at first recess, which they did—it grew very clear to the children what had happened. Especially after I first told the stunned little crowd that I would, then did ask the three cobras to circle me three times in the dirt and then leave in a straight line—one after the other—for the nearby brush, all of which they, as agreed, did, much to the wide-eyed and still shocked amazement of now very meek bullies and their hangers-on.

      And so, word got out and I had no problems with bullies after that.

      Of course, Madhuri soon put two and two together, and while she understood why I had done what I did, she did not approve. She never said anything, though, not as such, but her eyes, usually warm, turned cold and sympathetic both—if that’s a possible mix.

      And so they remained—reproachful and loving, both—until she finally spoke with the perpetrators herself and learned that the cobras had indeed agreed that something had to be done about my unfair treatment at school and were only too glad to do my bidding. Not that this made her approve, but it softened her considerably, and that night she hugged me again, and read me some more of her stories.

      They are a wise race, cobras. More of that later.

      Ganaraj was nursed back to life, but he was never quite the same after that. There was nothing wrong physically, is what they said, but every now and then, especially when he saw me, seems he had trouble working his tongue and he would grow hard to understand. He also had some problem controlling his bladder whenever snakes were mentioned. As you may have already gathered, he never called me Pale Eyes again, and neither did anyone else. Nor was I called motherless, by anyone.

      There was a downside to this, however: I now found myself alone, left to myself even by those who had been my friends, few though they were; they were now afraid of me. Which left me and Madhuri, with a lot of time on our hands. Perhaps not such a bad thing, she said. I have a lot to teach you.

      :

      So, Oh, and by the way, I know you’ve been pestering Madhuri about it: Your mother is Harriet Brown.

      I still held his hand in mine. The light curtains upon which many white suns and golden moons danced in a repeating pattern swayed slowly in the open window and I could hear many people moving about outside, some talking, some laughing, some taking what sounded like tearful leave of each other. We, too (though now suddenly stranded), were in the middle of a goodbye. Jiddu was off to somewhere again, America I believe, or Japan, I could never keep track; well, I could, but chose not to. At least he had come for my graduation, that was something, but now he was off again.

      He was always formal with me, always shaking hands, never embracing, just hand embracing hand.

      Sorry, I said. What did you say? I must have heard you wrongly.

      No, he said. You heard me just fine. Your mother is Harriet Brown, is exactly what I said. And now you’ve heard it correctly, twice.

      Harriet Brown?

      Harriet Brown.

      "The Harriet Brown."

      Yes.

      I still held onto his hand, no longer in farewell, but for support. The curtains still moved with the breeze, still swelling with light, but everything beyond them had gone silent, as if the world outside had simply emptied, or as if everybody in it had suddenly frozen in place, holding their breath, the better to hear.

      But of course, he went on, as if all this were well-known to me, "no one knows, or must know. You have no mother, Nachiketa. Officially. You know that, of course. You cannot tell anyone."

      I didn’t know that, of course, at all, but I said yes, of course, of course.

      He then, with some difficulty, let go of my hand—or rather, made my hand, which now seemed to suffer some strange rigor mortis, let go of his. And with my hand now left clutching the air, he turned and walked out.

      Take care of yourself, he said as he reached the door, and with that quick, dark backward glance of his that I had come to dislike, he left.

      The door closed behind him with a light squeak and a soft click, leaving me still clutching his hand, or so my hand seemed to think. Left me thinking of Harriet Brown and her blue eyes and of me and my blue eyes and of Jiddu leaving me to pack my books and clothes and not so many other things and travel back to Madanapalle on my own, and of me and who I was, and who I had suddenly become: no longer motherless; though I had no mother, of course. Officially.

      Three days later, safely back in Madanapalle after a blistering and a little too eventful a journey, I told Madhuri. By this time Jiddu had told her as well, because she hugged me and cried and spoke to me first in snake talk (which she always used when she wanted to show how special I was to her and how precious was our relationship) then—snake talk no longer up to the task at hand—in our normal tongue about how unfair the world had been to me and about how much I looked like Harriet Brown, really, if you paid no mind to my black hair (it was so black by then it was nearly blue), or my dark face, and looked at me as I would look had I been born a Scandinavian prince, which is what Madhuri said I was, wasn’t I? And would I please to take off my shoes in her house, if I didn’t mind so very much. Her house was not a Hindupur school for snobby boys, you now.

      We didn’t mind so very much at all, neither me nor my feet.

      And Harriet Brown was my mother. My mother. Harriet Brown was my mother. Now that Madhuri said so too, it was wholly true. Completely, if not officially.

      But no matter how true it was, you might as well have sat me down and told me that Devaki was my mother and that Lord Krishna and I were indeed brothers, the news could not have been stranger to me. Born to a living Hollywood goddess. Jiddu, as my father, yes, that made sense—at least he looked like me—and I knew that Madhuri was my grandmother, some things you just know. But Harriet Brown. That would take some getting used to, to put it mildly.

      Scandinavian prince: pale blue eyes looked back at me from the bathroom mirror. Scandinavian eyes, perhaps, yes, but that was about all. All that made any sense.

      :

      Naturally, I became not a little obsessed with her. Especially once I arrived in England and could see, over and over, her many films.

      Harriet Brown: my mother.

      Still, there were studies to attend to, and perhaps luckily so, for they took my mind off her, sometimes for hours at a stretch. And so my days passed, and my years.

      I got to go back and see Madhuri during the summer of 1953; Jiddu even paid for aeroplane tickets this time, but other than that, it seems I did nothing but study and watch Harriet movies for four years.

      And yes, of course, my love for buildings grew: somewhere along the way I had decided to become an architect.

      The Christina

      I receive an unexpected phone call in the summer of 1955.

      I have just moved from Cambridge to London, where the endlessly well-connected Jiddu has found me a simply wonderful flat. The weather is warm and sunny and I’m looking for work as an apprentice architect, though not too hard, not yet anyway.

      Truth be told, Jiddu has already found me a position with the well-respected, if rather stuffy, architectural firm of Grason and Hewitt, but I have already had second (and third) thoughts about that firm. To Jiddu’s credit he seems to understand why and has given me time to look elsewhere for something more to my taste, as he put it, before a final decision. I’m not looking too hard, though—Jiddu is very generous that way, and he’s given me until the fall to find something else. Meanwhile he’s paying my bills, so I am not starving.

      This is the summer that the papers confirm that Harriet is no longer making pictures but lives in an apartment in New York and does not see anyone; and it is the summer when, as I said, I receive this telephone call.

      The call is from a man who introduces himself as Mr. Beaton, and who, with little preamble, then proceeds to not so much invite as to order me to accompany him to Greece: We’re leaving in two days, he informs me, he has already purchased the tickets. Someone there wants to see me. This he says with a mixture of confidence and significance, as if letting me in on a vital secret.

      Naturally, never having heard of the man, I decline and protest that some mistake has been made, so he finally gets around to explaining that the someone who wants to see me is Harriet, and that he is a friend of hers.

      We left two days later. It was a Friday.

      :

      I had never been to Greece—only to India and England, and to America if you count the first two eventful weeks of this curious life of mine, which I don’t. Neither had I ever set foot on a boat quite as beautiful as the Christina. I say boat. That’s the wrong word. She was a ship. She must have been over a hundred meters long. The only boat I had seen up close before this was the Andromeda, the passenger freighter which brought me from India to England and King’s College. They were both seagoing vessels by definition, the Christina and the Andromeda, but that’s pretty much where their likeness ends.

      White, sleek, and, well, dangerous is the word that came to mind, she lay quite still, although testing her mooring lines—which protested by creaking—as if impatient to get away, as if insulted by being tied to the dock. All I could do was gawk at her, a child again before a wonder of the world.

      Mr. Beaton, so English that the moon falling down in his back yard would not have ruffled a single one of his feathers, was not quite as impressed, apparently, and left me to my gawking for a while to see about getting aboard, as he put it.

      In my experience, there’s wealth, and then there’s wealth. And then there’s the Christina. What I had trouble reconciling, as I stood gawking on the dock, was how any one man—for Beaton had briefed me that the ship belonged to Mr. Onassis, one of the richest men in the world—could possess, privately, what surely should belong to nations. He owned many boats, Beaton had explained, the Christina just one of them. How does any one man amass such a fortune? And in one lifetime? There was no getting my wits around this, and I was still grappling with it as Mr. Beaton returned, trailing a short man who turned out to be Mr. Onassis himself, and who—much to my surprise—came at me with arms outstretched in welcome. Then he embraced me, and patted me on my back several times, fatherly: Welcome, welcome, welcome, kissed me quite wetly on both cheeks (to my continued amazement), then turned and led the way up the long gangway. Mr. Beaton fell in behind him and I, still stunned—the assault of welcome more like an unexpected whirlwind than anything else—brought up the rear.

      Once aboard, we were guided by Mr. Onassis through a maze of dark, oak paneled passageways to finally arrive at a light brown, highly polished door marked: Lesvos.

      He knocked, then again, then entered, closing the door behind him. After a short while he returned and signaled for me to go in. I hesitated, as if for confirmation, and he nodded, yes, you can, then stood aside and again gestured for me to enter. I finally did, alone, and I heard the door shut softly behind me.

      I found myself in a large cabin—a stateroom is what they call it—with several large, rectangular portholes facing the sunlit sea. The cabin was very light, and smelled faintly of lemon. She was sitting in a low armchair, her face at first hard to perceive, an outline against the bright light of the sea behind her, but as my eyes adjusted, her features materialized, one by one.

      She sat very still, looking in my direction, and did not rise to greet me.

      Once I could see all of her properly, she struck me as an unfriendly woman with largish feet—I tend to notice feet, foundations.

      Then, as her eyes met mine, she struck me as a very lonely woman.

      Then, as she briefly looked away—although age had made some inroads—she struck me as the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

      This was my mother.

      Still, she did not greet me. Nor rise.

      Instead, she said, Let me look at you, Nachiketa.

      I said nothing.

      Turn around, she said. Turn around. And she signaled with her hand the little swirl she wanted me to perform.

      I performed it.

      Again, she said.

      And again.

      Who picked your clothes? she asked.

      I wore a brown suit with a blue shirt, open at the neck. Jiddu had bought them for me during my second year at Cambridge. I thought they suited me rather nicely. Jiddu, I said.

      Your father. Perhaps it was a question.

      So I answered, just in case, Yes.

      I thought he had better taste than that, she said.

      I did not know what to say to that.

      You know who I am, of course, she said, which I thought was an arrogant thing to say.

      Yes, I said. I know who you are.

      And you know that I can never be your mother.

      "But you are my mother, I answered. Are you not?"

      I am, yes, of course I am, but can never be, she said.

      Officially, you mean?

      Yes. That is what I mean. Officially.

      Jiddu told me.

      He is right.

      To which, again, I had no reply.

      Tell me about your school, she said. What subjects are your favorites?

      Actually, I informed her, I live in London now, I’m finished with school.

      Ah, yes.

      But I went to Cambridge. And to answer your question, my favorite subject was Architecture. Medieval Architecture, to be precise. As she studied me, I felt not a little judged and I found that I did not like her very much.

      Yes, yes she said, as if I were wearing on her patience a little. I remember. Jiddu told me. You are an architect. That is what you know, how to make buildings. You design them.

      Not quite yet, I said. I am an apprentice. I am learning.

      To which she made no reply. Instead she said, What else do you know? This struck me as an odd question, deserving of an odd answer.

      Snakes, I said.

      Which she ignored. Then, after some apparent deliberation, she said, Buildings are good things. They don’t fly away.

      Ma’am? I said.

      It’s a good career, designing buildings.

      I agree.

      There is much value in buildings, she went on. Good things to own. They stay put, buildings do. They don’t fly away. Or age; not very fast anyway.

      I wouldn’t own the buildings, I said. I would only design them.

      I know, she said.

      She looked me over again, from head to toe, then her eyes reached my face and settled on mine. Held them for quite a while. In silence. I could make nothing of her expression. Then, as if she suddenly had lost interest in me, she found and lit a cigarette with a gold Ronson lighter. She inhaled deeply, looked back at me, then asked, through a cloud of smoke, Why such old buildings?

      Ma’am? I said again.

      Medieval. It means old?

      Yes, I said.

      Why did you study such old buildings?

      It’s a way of— how was I to put this, now that I realized that her English was not the best? To me it was a way of grasping the fundamentals of the subject, I said. Like examining its foundation. What modern architecture is based on. The roots.

      She studied me through the sunlit smoke for a brief moment, then squinted a little while she removed a small flake of tobacco from her tongue with practiced fingers. Tongue once again tobacco-less, she said, I understand. I was glad to see that she did.

      Then, before I could say anything in turn, she asked, Snakes? What do you mean, you know snakes?

      I grew up with them.

      "Yes, there are many snakes in India, I know that. But you said you know snakes. How can you know snakes?"

      When I didn’t answer right away, she said, What is there to know about them?

      There’s a lot to know about them, I said.

      Snakes are snakes, she declared for my benefit.

      No, snakes are not just snakes. There’s a lot more to them.

      She frowned.

      They are not much understood, I said. Much maligned.

      Maligned?

      Spoken badly of, I explained.

      Well, they should be. They are horrible creatures.

      No, ma’am, they are not.

      Again, it was as if she had simply not heard me, for instead of answering she said, What else?

      Ma’am?

      What other things did you study?

      Oh, Mathematics. Literature. Some Religion.

      What sort of literature?

      Indian, and American. And some English authors too.

      You have read Hemingway?

      Of course.

      And Huxley?

      No.

      I am a friend of his. With some pride.

      Before I had a chance to reply, she continued down the list. How about Henry James?

      Yes, ma’am.

      You have read him?

      Yes.

      Do you like him?

      No.

      Why not?

      I find him boring.

      And this was the first time I heard her laugh; and the first time I glimpsed the person behind that beautiful face. "That’s because he is boring, she said. His sentences are far too long, and they twist and turn too much. I can never make out what he’s talking about and by the time I come to the end of one of those long slithery things I don’t remember how it began and I have to start all over."

      Yes, I agreed, "he is a little convoluted."

      What does that mean? Convoluted?

      Twisting too much, I said.

      Yes, yes, she said.

      Then she said convoluted several times to herself. Looked up at me. That’s how you say it? Convoluted?

      Yes, I said. That’s how you say it.

      It is a good word, convoluted.

      I agreed. It is a good word.

      In the long silence that followed she looked down at her wristwatch, then up at a beautiful and painstakingly polished brass clock on the teak wall to the right of me, as if to confirm her initial reading. Then sighed. Whether from regret or for show, I could not quite tell.

      We’re about to sail, she said. You must leave now.

      When I said nothing, she added, Cecil will take you back.

      Back to where? I found my voice again.

      To England, she said.

      When again my voice went missing, she realized correctly that her sudden announcement had quite stunned me, and added—and I can only assume by way of comfort—I will send for you.

      I stood still for several more moments, not sure what to do, still surprised at the sudden dismissal. Then I took a step towards her, to shake her hand perhaps, maybe even to embrace, I’m not really sure what I had expected or even hoped. But I stopped when she did not make to rise but instead waived her right hand at me, Tell Cecil to get you some decent clothes.

      Then she turned her face towards the nearest porthole, and made a show of surveying the glass and the sky beyond. The audience was definitely over.

      Mr. Beaton and I watched the Christina pull away from the dock, happy to be untied at last, and head out into the Mediterranean. Harriet was not on deck, there was no one waving in our direction. All we saw aboard her were deck hands, busy pulling in and storing the thick lines that had tied her to the dock.

      We spent the afternoon at our hotel and flew back to London the following morning. Two days later Mr. Beaton, who must have gotten word from Harriet, pulled up in a black and gray Bentley and brought me to his tailor. Time to spiff me up, he said. Harriet’s footing the bill.

      His tailor was a man who fussed and mumbled a lot, but who really knew what he was doing. He measured me for what must have been an hour before letting me go. Back into the Bentley, for shirts, coats, and shoes, and a decent umbrella, as he put it.

      Three suits were delivered a week later, and I must admit that Mr. Beaton (and his mumbling tailor) knew clothes. Spiffy indeed. I examined myself in the closet mirror. Absolutely nothing wrong with these suits. I looked rather smashing, what.

      The new wardrobe also came in handy as I continued to look for positions at firms other than Grason and Hewitt. I had returned to that outfit twice, once to meet the partners and a second time to meet some of the senior architects, but each visit had left me with an ever stronger sense of mothballed and spider-webbed antiquity.

      G&H—which is how Jiddu

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