The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [98]
Oh God, there’ve been so many people since I came to Paris. Teddy and Larry and Claude and Jim. Bax and Wheero and dozens and dozens of casuals. I’m so tired. What happens when your curiosity just suddenly gives out? When the will and the energy snap and it all seems so once-over-again? What’s going to happen to me five years from now, when I wake in the night (or can’t sleep in the first place, like now), take a deep breath to start all over again, and find that I’ve no breath left? When I start running again and find I can’t even put one foot in front of the other? Then, from outer space, that librarian who is going to be me, who is me, that dreaded librarian from outer space who is always waiting for me, always ready to pounce, is going to take over. And I’ll be cooked. If I don’t stop it.
Stop it!
I wish I could get away from here.
Ah’ll pack mah tru-hunk,
A-and make mah getaway.…
I got my allowance for June last week, so there’s nothing to stop me.
FOUR
July 1
Monday
DIDN’T LEAVE LAST week end after all. Decided it would be silly to run out on them with only one more day’s shooting to complete. And I’ve got to hand it to them, they finished right on schedule. As a matter of fact now that it’s over, I’m kind of sorry it is.
I met a wonderful old man with a donkey last week on the hills. I first noticed him because he looked so authentic fouleing around, and that’s the hardest thing in the world to do. I mean most people look like exactly what they are, like people who’ve been hired to put on funny costumes and mill around a while. But this little old guy really had the knack. He somehow managed not to make his aimlessness pointless. Un vrai artist.
I noticed him the first take on Monday morning. He nodded to me as we passed each other on the hill and I suddenly found myself in another world. And what’s more I knew what I was doing there. I had suddenly become a young maiden from the village below and I was going over the hills to visit my sick grandmother. (Little Red Ridinghood. Must have been the basket they gave me.) And I knew what he was doing there too. He was the Itinerant Tinker—whatever that means. Anyway, after the take we fell to talking, Tinker and I, and he told me he’s been making a living for years now, he and his donkey, hiring themselves out to the various movie companies. He was so old and gentle. I hope he wasn’t a great Comedie Frangaise actor fallen upon old age.
I learned something from him, I hope. Lesson I: No matter what you do you’ve got to try to do it well. Otherwise it’s unbearable. Those first weeks on the film wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d only realized that.
I’ve been thinking. How many things have I ever done well in my life? Done really well? Done wholly with all my attention and concentration focused on the doing? None. Not school. Not college. Not Teddy. Not Jim. Not this.
Concentrate, Gorce.
(I have an attention-span of about two minutes long.)
Perhaps I ought to concentrate on Bax. He’s really the most interesting person of us all now—or at any rate he’s in the most interesting position. A month ago he found himself being dragged unwillingly into this movie deal and now apparently he’s such hot-stuff, Hollywood’s sent for him in a hurry. They want him there by the end of the month. He’s going, too. And what’s more, he’s happy about it. It’s merely a matter of accepting this new responsibility as calmly and seriously as he accepted the leadership of the Sea Scout troop or the Camp Fire group or the organizing of us in this villa. Shows great strength of character, I’m sure. And yet I go through the motions of kissing him a million miles away.
The film unit is folding now. Mac’s job is over. The rest of the bullfighting sequences are going to be shot in Spain in the bullring and for that Wheero doesn’t need any English.
Stefan surprised me by coming around to say good-by to me— me personally—today. He’s going back to Paris to co-ordinate things there. He gave me his card and told me to look him up. Said he might be able