Crowned Heads (11 page)

“Then the front door opened with a bang, and I heard the continuing sounds of Fedora’s protests. A moment later she came into the countess’s room and half sprawled on a love seat, strewing the pillows about, her hair awry, sobbing hysterically. When Balfour stepped toward her with an outstretched hand, Fedora batted it away. She got up and stumbled across the room, her voice rising, until she faced the countess. She bent over her, using all the four-letter words, an incoherent diatribe which stopped abruptly as the old woman leaned forward from her chair and administered a telling crack on the cheek. She motioned to Kritos, who strode across the room and took Fedora away, screaming. The others followed them out, Balfour wheeling the countess’s chair, and I slipped back along the wall and dropped over the balustrade. It was only after I was back at the cottage that I realized I’d forgotten to pick up the lighter.

“I allowed myself a full bottle of wine with dinner, thinking all this over, and another half bottle afterward, sitting in the arbor and listening to the noises coming from the villa. Whatever the reason for Countess Sobryanski’s violence, it certainly hadn’t cowed Fedora; there were interrupted shouts and cries for a long while; the music was turned up, lowered, turned up again. Now nothing made sense to me, but I found myself giving greater credence to Fedora’s talk of being kept prisoner, though what the conspiracy consisted of I had no idea. When things finally quieted down and the lights were turned out, I went to bed and slept heavily. I was awakened far past my usual time by the sound of the Citroën going by. I looked at my watch; it was half-past ten. I hurried to bathe and dress, and when I got to the villa the countess was already stationed under the terrace canopy. Balfour had admitted me, seen me seated with the countess, given me the book marked at its place, and gone away. I read for the usual period in the usual way, and nothing was any different than it had been yesterday; nothing except that Fedora was pointedly absent.

“How Countess Sobryanski could tell the time without a watch I couldn’t imagine, but promptly at one she rang her little bell and gave me another
Merci
and
À demain,
as Kritos wheeled her inside again. The table had not been set for lunch, and since Mrs. Balfour showed me to the door, it was clear that no invitation would be forthcoming.

“‘It seems,’ she said, with that grimly fixed smile, ‘to be going veddy well, doesn’t it?’

“I came back next day, read again, received another
À demain
from Countess Sobryanski, got the gate from Balfour, and at no time had I seen Fedora. The shades of her upstairs room were down, but there was no clue to her whereabouts. I now had an important piece of the mystery in my hands—or head, I should say, though my head wasn’t helping much; I couldn’t figure it out. I went again to read, until I finished the book. When I closed the cover I looked at the countess; she gave no hint of what she thought of my story. She rang her little bell, Kritos came, she inclined her head to me—
‘Merci’
—but instead of saying goodbye, which I’d had every reason to expect, she repeated her customary
À demain.

“Tomorrow?

“Balfour came out, doing her sweet-little-old-lady act. ‘She enjoyed it
so
much,’ she said. She was carrying several books, which she set on the table. Which do you think she would like next?’

“I stopped her short, saying I had agreed to read only my own book, and whatever reading was to follow must be done by herself or Fedora. She gave me a look of unabashed surprise.

“‘Oh, but she has left, you know.’

“‘No, I didn’t know. When?’

“‘Why, two days ago. Count Sobryanski came for her. They’ve gone on the Athens boat.’

“‘Rather unexpected, wasn’t it?’

“‘Yes—no. You see, she decided since our good weather’s almost gone a change might be nice just now.’

“‘Where did the count take her?’

“‘Why, to Menton. The Sobryanskis always have a large party at the end of the season—’

“‘I thought Fedora didn’t like parties.’

“‘Well, not so
tedd’
bly large, if you know what I mean, but it gives her a chance to see her friends—’

“‘She told me she has no friends.’

“‘But of
course
she does. That’s just her; merely a
façon de parler,
if you see.’

“‘No, frankly I don’t. She didn’t seem to me to be well enough for parties.’

“‘She is old, sir, a good deal older than she looks. She—one tires easily at her advanced years and—’ Watching her face, I saw the whole parade of emotions: the urge to lie, the indecision, the groping for excuses, then finally her capitulation. ‘In point of fact, she is not well,’ she said flatly. ‘You saw her, talked with her, you see the trouble with her. She is ill.’

“‘If she’s ill, why didn’t you go with her?’

“‘Alas, I am no longer of use to her, sir. The count and his wife will look after her now.’

“It was clear to me that she was lying, and I felt certain Fedora hadn’t left at all, that they had her locked up in her room to keep her from making trouble, or at least out of the way.

“Balfour had taken something from the pocket of her cardigan and was holding it out to me, an envelope, from which I extracted a single page. It was the Mussolini note to Fedora; Balfour was quick to point out that it was written in his own hand, the real McCoy.

“‘It is your payment. It’s worth a good deal of money.’ I said I was sure it was. Then slyly, I thought, she said, ‘There are others, you know.’

“‘Mrs. Roosevelt? Bernard Shaw?’ She blinked at me through her glasses, mute with astonishment.

“Ignoring her surprise, I asked, ‘What makes you think I won’t keep this and just abscond?’

“‘You have an honest face.’

“‘Are you a good judge of honest faces, Mrs. Balfour?’ I asked.

“‘Why, yes, I think so. That is—’ She was getting flustered again. ‘Honesty is always the best policy, isn’t it?’

“‘So they say. But what’s the policy here? Fedora’s gone away, and you’re disposing of her property? Valuable property?’

“‘It doesn’t matter, I assure you. She has many letters from many famous people. She doesn’t need them anymore.’

“‘Mightn’t she want to leave them to someone?’

“‘To whom? She has no one, you see. Except me. I am her heir. So her correspondence will come to me.’

“‘You sound as if you expected to survive her.’

“‘That is not in my hands, sir,’ she answered mildly, ‘but in God’s. Will you accept the note in payment?’

“‘No.’ I tried to give it back to her; she wouldn’t take it, so I dropped it with the envelope on the table. ‘But I’ll read again to the countess, if you like.’

“Her worried expression changed; she became the candy-box lady again. ‘Oh, you are kind,’ she said, ‘so veddy kind.’

“I thought so, too. But I hoped that my ingratiating myself with this one of Fedora’s friends would lead her to commend me to the other one. And if things did not go well with the countess, perhaps Balfour herself could be persuaded to talk, though remembering Viola’s tight-lipped loyalty, I suspected that as far as Balfour went, mum was most likely to be the word.

“The next morning I was back at my old stand. The book chosen was Wouk’s
The Winds of War.
And I noted its length with apprehension. But I began, and read as was prescribed, slowly, clearly, and without emphasis. The routine never varied; the countess’s arrival on the terrace and her departure were exact as clockwork. As the days passed, an unspoken intimacy seemed to grow between us, but it was that of employer and employee. She was always polite, but clearly it was a matter of noblesse oblige. The line between us, though unmarked, was precise. Occasionally she spoke to me, always in French, and I got the idea that though she could speak English perfectly well, her ease in the other tongue and my lack of it helped keep me in a subservient place. Besides her habitual
Bonjour,
there might be a commonplace on the good weather—
Il fait beau,
or if it was brisk,
Un peu froid ’jourd’hui
—and at the end of the reading always the
À demain,
until tomorrow, as if she required absolute reassurance of my return to the succeeding chapter.

“During our earlier times together I had discovered certain things about her, chief among these the fact that, like many old people, she had the habit of dozing off while I read, but unlike most, she was adroit at disguising it; her fingers on the armrest would continue their spasmodic movement, as if this would fool me into thinking she was still awake. Once or twice when I spoke her name, she would start, and raise her mottled hand, a sign that I should continue; but dozing or not, her head seldom changed its seaward gaze. The few sounds she made were light murmurs, sometimes a wheeze, or a hoarsely indrawn breath I never heard expelled. She had the querulous impatience of the aged combined with the abrupt peremptoriness of the nobility, an aristocrat of the old school used to issuing orders and seeing them obeyed. Whatever remarks I made she answered with a nod or shake of the head, or a monosyllabic response if it was necessary. Like her body, her voice was frail, but she spoke with an autocratic precision that easily carried across the distance between us.

“She stubbornly manifested that capricious defiance of the aged, as if nothing passed before her ancient eyes except that which affronted her, but in time she seemed sufficiently used to me to allow herself a direct query concerning myself, my origins, my family, and she was apparently more interested in my writing than I’d thought, for once she confessed dryly that the book had pleased her. Mention was made both of Viola and of the Marshes, Willie and Bee, all of whom she knew and obviously regarded in a better light than did Fedora. She was leading me on, but to what end I still couldn’t tell; you didn’t divine with Countess Sobryanski. When I mentioned the fact that she, too, used to write—the story that Fedora’s picture
The Mirror
had been taken from—she sniffed and said that what had originally been a novel idea had been ruined by Hollywood, nor had she enjoyed her brief stay there. She would return me to my reading, or say she was tired from talking, ring her bell, and be whisked inside by Kritos, but unfailingly the
À demain
trailed back over her shoulder.

“One day when the reading period had ended and she should have rung her bell for Kritos, she ignored it, choosing instead to investigate me a little more. Why had I come there from so far away? I supplied the same excuse I’d given Fedora, and received the same reply.

“‘
Vous êtes menteur.
’ She, too, saw I was lying. ‘You want information about her. Why?’

“‘She interests me,’ I admitted, trying to resuscitate my French, which wasn’t easy. There’s been a lot written about her; most of it is—’ I gestured with my hands: nothing of consequence, I meant. ‘I didn’t expect to find her here, though; it was you I wanted to talk with.’

“Balfour had meanwhile appeared in the doorway, waiting for the countess, but she was ignored.

“‘What makes you think I would talk about her to you, or to anyone?’ she demanded with some asperity.

“‘I guess I really didn’t expect you would. Fedora told me if I wanted to hear stories I must bring a basket of fruit and write billets-doux and serenade your windows, and then you would let down your hair.’

“‘God spare us your serenades, though I would accept the fruit. As for billets-doux, Il Duce himself was not above writing one … as you know.’ She said it with sly innuendo and waited.

“‘Yes, as I know.’

“‘One book, one letter—
c’est entendu
?’

“‘
Entendu.
’ Understood. ‘But I would prefer having the letters from Fedora’s own hand.’

“‘That is impossible. She is gone.’

“‘Will she be coming back?’

“‘Who can say with Fedora? She is a trial to those who know her. We are old friends; once we were good friends. One doesn’t close the door in the face of friends. The door will be open if she returns.’

“‘She told me she has no friends.’

“‘She is right. How may one be Fedora and have friends?’ She let her glance dwell on me for some moments, nodding slightly, then she drew herself up and said, ‘But you and I understand one another,
hein
?’

“‘Exactly
what
do we understand, madame?’

“‘That you will read and be paid. But’—she riveted me with a look—‘while you do not serenade our windows, you do listen outside them,
n’est-ce-pas
?’

“Again I lied, saying, as planned, that I’d come looking for my lighter; again she called me
menteur,
and worse, an eavesdropper, producing the lighter from the folds of her dress. Obviously she’d seen me plant it. She gave me a look of mild contempt for my clumsiness, then Kritos, despite her earlier wishes, took her away, while Balfour came and detained me at the balustrade. She seemed nervous, agitated.

“‘You must not keep her talking. It tires her, and you disrupt her schedule.’ I explained that it was not I who had begun the conversation, but the countess. Balfour bit her lip, then inquired what topics of social intercourse the countess had interested herself in.

“‘Oh,’ I said airily, ‘we were talking about fairy tales. Did you ever read the one about Rapunzel? The one who let her hair down?’ I left her standing by the balustrade, and crossing the terrace, I glanced through one of the French doors. The countess’s chair was empty, while she occupied another one at a table laid for lunch. Kritos had just ladled soup into a bowl, and she was spooning it up, blowing on it to cool it. She saw me, nodded.
‘À demain,’
she called through the glass. Then Balfour came up beside me and showed me out.

“I spent the afternoon in the arbor, staring up at the villa’s terrace—not with the spyglass, for there was nothing to spy upon. I thought and wondered and cogitated, and found it more and more baffling. It was all very peculiar. I had been certain that the countess was somehow toying with me, drawing me out for some particular purpose, though I had no idea why. I knew I was being baited, and wondered how I could do some baiting in return. Since the morning reading session I had one more important piece to the puzzle, or thought I did, but still it made no sense to me. I decided the time had come to give the ladies a shaking up. When Mrs. Vasos came I negotiated with her to have something sent up from the village, the largest and best apricots to be had in Iraklion, and a small basket as well. If it took these to get the countess to let down her hair, I would see to it. Next morning I scribbled a note, folded it and tucked it among the apricots, which I arranged in a pyramid, and when I went up to the villa I carried along the basket by its woven handle.