In My Father's Shadow (44 page)

Of the many reminders of Orson Welles in Oja’s living room, I was most drawn to an intimate portrait taken by his cameraman, Gary Graver. Gary had caught my father in a moment of serene contemplation when he was most himself. This was the face of Orson Welles that few were privileged to see, and I remembered Gary’s remark to an interviewer: “Oja and I were his real family.” Once, such a remark would have hurt me, but now I understood how crucial Oja and Gary were to my father during his last years. Without them, my father would have been hard-pressed to make
F for Fake, The Other Side of the Wind, The Dreamers
, and all the other works, complete or incomplete, that filled his days and nights from 1970 until his death fifteen years later.

Oja had a bookcase dedicated to books about Orson Welles, and I had brought her a copy of
Les Bravades
to add to her collection. This was the “portfolio of pictures,” as he called it, that my father had made for Rebecca when she was eleven years old and given to her for Christmas in 1956. His delightful drawings in watercolor, crayon, ink, and gouache were sketched on whatever paper came to hand and accompanied by his equally delightful text — sometimes typed, sometimes handwritten — which told the story of the festival held each year on the feast day of Saint Tropez “in the pretty little fishing village which proudly bears his name.”

During one of our lunches, I told Oja how
Les Bravades
had been transformed from “a portfolio of pictures” made for Rebecca alone into a published book available to everyone. In 1990, desperately in need of money, Rebecca
decided to part with our father’s gift, and while it was upsetting to think of this treasure leaving the family, I understood her predicament. So when Becky asked if Irwin and I would help her sell
Les Bravades
, we agreed. We offered it first to the head of the well-endowed Lilly Library in Bloomington, Indiana, but he pleaded poverty, claiming he could not compete “with wealthy private collectors.” Then Irwin and I helped Becky auction off the work at Swann Galleries in New York. Although we advised her against it, Becky was persuaded to sell her publication rights as well. In the end,
Les Bravades
sold for thirty thousand dollars, which I felt was the bargain of the century, but Becky was thrilled. Living as simply as she did, thirty thousand was a lot of money.

“You won’t believe what happened next,” I told Oja. In 1995, Workman Publishing agreed to publish
Les Bravades
and the editor assigned to the project, Sally Kovalchick, was the same editor who had worked closely with me on Brain Quest, a series of children’s games I did for Workman. One day I got a phone call from Sally. She had found some spelling and punctuation errors in my father’s text, and she wondered what she should do about them. “Leave them,” I told her. “Print the text exactly as my father wrote it, errors and all.”

“But this is not possible,” Oja objected. “Orson had a superb command of the English language. He would never make a spelling mistake.” She seemed deeply offended.

“They were typographical errors,” put in Irwin, the diplomat.

“Oh, well, that’s different.”

Irwin and I exchanged looks while Oja began clearing the table. It was not the first time she had bridled at the suggestion that her Orson was capable of error. On another occasion, I had mentioned that, when my mother was Mrs. Orson Welles, my father would arrange to meet her for lunch at Sardi’s or for dinner at 21, and then arrive hours late — if he arrived at all.

“With me, Orson was never late,” Oja retorted.

Alas, dear Oja, he was not as perfect with others as he was with you
.

O
N SEVERAL EVENINGS
during our weeklong stay, we took Oja to dinner in Primosten. From her house, it was a twenty-minute walk over a rocky path that hugged the shoreline and was shaded by pines with twisted limbs leaning toward the sea. Jasmine and oleander grew by the wayside, their perfume mingling with the tang of salt in the air.

“Look!” exclaimed Oja as we rounded a corner, and there, before our eyes, was Primosten aflame in the setting sun. The village rose in layers of stone
houses topped with salmon-colored tiled roofs. We lingered to enjoy the view, the feeling that we had stepped back in time and were seeing Primosten as it must have looked centuries ago. Then we continued on our way.

Soon we were settled at an outdoor table in Oja’s favorite restaurant. The specialty of the house was grilled fish fresh from the Adriatic. To dine outside on a balmy night added to the pleasure of the meal.

“Did you ever live with Orson?” Oja asked me during dinner.

“Only when I was a toddler.” I explained that before my father went to Hollywood in the summer of 1939, he and my mother had agreed to a trial separation. My mother had gone to stay with Geraldine Fitzgerald in Ireland, and I had been left with my nanny in New York. However, as soon as my father was settled in a rented house in Brentwood, he sent for me. “It turned out we were living next door to Shirley Temple,” I went on, referring to the child movie star who was a national idol. “I was about sixteen months old and just beginning to walk. One day, while I was playing on the lawn with my father, Shirley Temple’s mother wandered over with Shirley by her side. ‘When are you going to put Christopher in pictures?’ Shirley’s mother asked my father. ‘Oh, I’m going to wait until she’s two years old,’ he answered. ‘I want her to have a normal childhood.’ “

Oja laughed. “Orson was such fun, always making jokes. People don’t realize what a wonderful sense of humor he had …”

Before tears could fill her eyes, we asked her to tell us about Primosten. It used to be a remote island, she began, but in the sixteenth century, it was settled by farmers and fishermen who were fleeing from the Turks. Eventually they built a bridge to the mainland and Primosten ceased to be an island. “Today, everyone who lives here depends on tourism, especially during the summer months.” She sighed, remembering the still undiscovered village she had known as a child.

Yet Irwin and I found Primosten relatively unspoiled. One day, we went exploring on our own, and once we had distanced ourselves from the souvenir shops with their outdoor racks of postcards, we found the part of the village that retains its authentic flavor. Here were narrow, winding streets paved with cobblestones worn smooth from centuries of fishermen in heavy boots, tramping home with the day’s catch. One street led us to a sleepy square lined with restaurants and outdoor cafés, a place to linger over a cup of Turkish coffee and listen to the rustling leaves of the shade trees. It was past noon and we decided to stop and rest.

All of a sudden, a group of Croatian men sitting at a nearby table burst into song. It was so spontaneous and so lovely. In four-part harmony, their pure and mellow voices filled the little square with the folk songs of their fathers and grandfathers. They were singing for themselves, not for us. Some traditions not even the invasion of tourists could touch.

J
AKOV
S
EDLAR
,
A
Croatian filmmaker, was directing a documentary about Orson Welles, and I had agreed to be interviewed for it while I was staying with Oja. While Jakov and his crew were setting up the lights and camera in Oja’s living room, I wandered around, as I had before, enjoying the art on the walls and especially the oil my father painted of himself and dedicated to Oja and her family. In this unusual self-portrait, the face of the large man seated in an armchair with a watchful dog on his lap has been left vague, as though covered in white veils, whereas every other detail in the painting is clear and exact. There were photographs everywhere of Oja’s parents and her sisters, who loved Orson and adopted him as one of their own. Oja had given him not only the gift of herself but a home and a family in Croatia.

During my interview with Jakov, he asked me how I felt about the fact that my father had taken up with Oja Kodar. I smiled. Here was my opportunity to tell the world that Oja had been the most important woman in my father’s life. “Why was she so important?” Jakov persisted. I was glad to elaborate. Oja was far more intelligent and evolved than the other women in his life; so my father could never grow bored with her. As an artist herself, a talented sculptor and writer, she was capable of understanding a man like Orson Welles at a profound level, and of empathizing with his struggles as an independent filmmaker. But one reason above all others made Oja a unique figure in my father’s life. I paused while Jakov leaned forward expectantly. “My father’s life was his work,” I continued, “and of all the women who attempted to live with him, only Oja was capable of entering fully into his creative life. She worked by his side, day after day, acting in his films, collaborating on his screenplays, doing whatever needed to be done at any hour of the day or night.”

When I had finished the interview, Oja, who had been listening in the next room, came out and hugged me. “It was a poem, what you said. A beautiful poem.” Her eyes were moist with emotion. Then she took me by the hand. “Now we are going down to the sea, and I am going to tell you a story about Orson, and Jakov is going to get it on film.”

It was late afternoon when we walked down the steps to the garden at the bottom of Oja’s house, then passed through the iron gate that led to the sea. In place of a sandy beach, rock formations jutted over the water. Some formed natural platforms for sunbathing, but most were jagged outcrops. Easy as it was to dive off the rocks into the inviting sea, it was almost impossible to clamber out again without the aid of the ladders that hung down into the water.

Today, though, we were not dressed for swimming. Oja and I were wearing white pants, sandals, and summery tops. Jakov told us to walk slowly down the stone steps carved out of rock and sit together on the bottom step, looking out to sea. Oja and I did this several times while Jakov shouted at the crew rearranging their equipment on the perilous rocks. Soon the sun would set, but now it blazed down on the water. A few sailboats did their stately dance around the islands. “When you and I are dead,” Oja murmured, “we will still be here on film. This is forever.”

The camera started rolling and Oja told me the story she had been saving for this moment. When Orson was living in Italy and she was in Primosten, he would hire a boat and cross the sea to visit her, a trip that took seven or eight hours. Hoping to come and go unnoticed, he usually arrived at dawn and left in the middle of the night. On the days she expected him, Oja would come down to the sea and sit on the rocks, as we were doing now, and watch the horizon for Orson’s boat to appear. One day, which happened to be her birthday, he arrived with a huge red ribbon tied around his chest. “What do you think I am bringing you for your birthday?” he asked her.

“Your heart,” she answered correctly. He also brought her a recording he had made especially for her. “Now every year on my birthday,” Oja continued, “I play Orson’s recording, and I come and sit here on the rocks and look out to sea, and sometimes I imagine that if I look long enough, I will see Orson’s boat coming toward me.”

“Do you mind telling me what was in the recording? If it’s not too personal, that is.”

She paused half a breath before answering, “A declaration of his love for me.” She had decided to tell this story because, just as Orson had often said how proud he was to be seen with her, she was proud that he had loved her so much. “I wanted people to know this,” she concluded.

“I always knew how much he loved you, even before I met you.”

“You knew about me, Chrissie, didn’t you?”

I loved it when she called me by my childhood name. “Yes, I knew …”

The cameras were still rolling, but Oja and I were no longer conscious of being in a documentary. I squeezed her hand. “My father is here with us. Right now. I can feel it.” The strong connection I felt with Oja, and she with me, had brought him back.

With Oja’s hand in mine, I thought,
No one has loved him more generously or understood him more profoundly than the two of us
. We saw, without malice or envy, what a towering figure he was and will remain. We are the ones who trace his silhouette against the sky.

E
ARLY IN 2005
, S
TEFAN
Drössler and I began discussing my participation in the Orson Welles retrospective to be held at the Locarno International Film Festival for eleven days beginning on August 3rd. Even though Stefan had given me the option of attending incognito, I had decided to represent my father publicly. So I told him I would be glad to introduce my father’s films to festival audiences, participate in the daily workshops, and do whatever I could to add a personal touch to the occasion. Delighted, he replied that he had several ideas in mind. Most of all, he wanted me to introduce
Macbeth
on the evening it would be projected on a gigantic movie screen in the Piazza Grande, the huge square in the old part of town. During the festival, the Piazza Grande was converted into an outdoor movie theater with a seating capacity of nearly eight thousand. Was I prepared to get up in front of such a crowd and say a few words about being in
Macbeth
at the age of nine? “Of course,” I told him.

Although I had agreed to do whatever was asked of me, the reality did not sink in until a blustery day in March when I met the festival directors, Irene Bignardi and Teresa Cavina, who were passing through New York. They came to our home for a glass of pinot grigio before the three of us went out to lunch in a nearby Italian restaurant. “You realize that every journalist in Locarno will want to interview you,” Irene began soon after we were seated. She was a tall woman with a strong, handsome face, dark hair, and arresting blue eyes. “I hope you’re prepared for all the media attention you’re going to get.” Teresa, a blond, mild-mannered woman with a soft voice and dreamy look, added that they would do their best to coordinate the interviews so as to leave me free to spend most of my time at the Welles retrospective.