Walking Into the Night (2 page)

3

San Simeon, May 20, 1937

My darling Elisabet!

I haven’t forgotten my promise to try to explain what happened. It’s going to be difficult, that’s for certain, because I often doubt if I understand it myself. By saying this I’m not trying to excuse myself, you mustn’t think that. I know that you deserve better.

He wrote slowly, putting down the pen from time to time, screwing on the cap, his eyes distracted, as if he were trying to remember the nuances of a voice that had long since fallen silent. He sat like this for a long while, until at last he grew restless in his seat and strained his ears. He had opened the door to the balcony; a warm breeze lifted the paper on the table before him, then set it down again, carefully as if not to disturb him. The windows and balcony door were open, creating a cross-draft for the Chief, who was having trouble again with his breathing that night.

“My
darling
Elisabet,” he wrote without hesitation. He had changed the salutation in the first two letters as well, so they would all begin in the same way. For a long time he had been unsure whether to use that delicate word—
darling,
whether it would seem impertinent or arrogant. Perhaps this was why he had given up when he first tried to write to her nearly four years ago. It had disturbed him that he had not even been able to find a way to address her. But now he was comfortable with the word and could place it before her name effortlessly, even with enjoyment, finding it a source of solace, murmuring the words softly like a prayer.

He had written the first letter about a month ago. This was the third.

This morning, when I was taking the Chief his breakfast out on what’s known as the Tea Terrace, I suddenly started thinking about our first year at Eyrarbakki. When was it—1908? 1909? It was 1909, wasn’t it? Completely out of the blue I remembered our morning walks along the beach before I went to the office and you sat down at the piano. I was wondering whether we really took those walks every day, but can’t quite remember, though I’m pretty sure it must have been at least every other day. I’m sure we used to walk along the beach whatever the time of year; yet I can only picture us in brilliant sunshine . . .

He suddenly lost the thread, feeling for a moment suspended in midair. He had been about to recall how small he had found Eyrarbakki after his return from Copenhagen, how he had wanted them to move directly to Reykjavik. These Icelandic villages, he had thought to himself, everyone with their nose in everybody else’s business, like a little prison in the midst of the great empty landscape. But he stopped himself. These letters to Elisabet were hardly the right place for such reflections. No, I must keep a hold on myself, he thought, I mustn’t let myself get agitated.

He stood up to calm his mind. He heard footsteps on the terrace, went out onto the balcony and watched one of the kitchen girls walking down the hill. “It was the footsteps,” he told himself, “that’s what distracted me.” They faded but he could still hear the crunching of sand on a beach.

I seem to remember that we still took our morning walks when you were pregnant with Einar, at least during the first few months, but I can’t remember whether we stopped altogether after that or started again later on. Somehow I think we gave up the habit before Maria was born, as it was not long afterwards that we moved to Reykjavik. In 1912. God, it’s all such a long time ago.

“Such a long time ago,” he repeated to himself in the quiet of the evening and chose to leave it at that rather than acknowledge how many years it had been. He gripped the balcony rail with both hands, leaned forward, then straightened up and went inside.

The pale moon had risen above the ragged mountains. He remembered that he had once told her he could trace her footprints in the newly fallen moonlight, but decided this was not the time to remind her of that.

Just as he was about to sit down again he heard his name echoing in the hallway. Twice, louder the second time.

“Christian!”

The Chief could easily have pressed the button beside his bed that rang the bell in his butler’s room, but he never did. “Christian!” he would call, drawing out the last syllable, until his manservant arrived.

During the early years he had put on his jacket before attending to the Chief, adjusting his tie and glancing in the mirror to make sure he was presentable, but now he went out in his shirtsleeves, stopping only to button his cuffs, which he had loosened earlier, and brushing some pollen off one trouser leg, though more from habit than any sense of duty.

Though the Chief heard his approaching footsteps, he called out once more, as if to confirm his need and his power.

On a table in an alcove stood two bronze lions, along with various other bits and pieces—a cigarette case, a vase, and an antique spoon with a broken handle. One of the lions held up a card with the name of the month, the other the date: May 20. He paused beside them, suddenly realizing what had been nagging at his memory for the last couple of days. May 20th. Maria would be twenty-five tomorrow.

He shook his head inadvertently, as if to fend off an unexpected attack. His ears rang but he carried on regardless, pushing open the door to the Chief’s bedroom and entering the gloomy half-darkness with slow steps.

4

High up in the oak by the walkway outside my window bluebirds have made their nest. I watch their comings and goings through a pair of binoculars whenever I have time; there are four chicks in the nest. Yesterday the male made eighteen journeys in just half an hour for food. He never seemed to come home empty-handed, if you can say that of a bird. I’ve been trying to draw them but have lost some of my old skill through lack of practice. I always thought the drawing I did of the black-tailed godwit— the one we hung in the study—was best. I remember how hard it was to capture the shadings of its chestnut breast; it’s as though I was working on it only yesterday. It was around noon on a Saturday. The sound of hammering drifted in through the window, the smell of pancakes carried from the kitchen, and I looked up to see Maria closing the gate to the street and strolling up the path to the house. She looked dreamy, and paused on the way; I seem to remember she was holding a buttercup in her hand . . .

But now I’m out of practice and can’t capture the blue sheen on the birds’ backs and wings, even though I can picture it and know it from the sea and the sky. In fact, I came across a dead bird down on the hillside the other day and brought it home so I wouldn’t have to rely on my faulty memory. But it didn’t work—there was no way I could find the right shade, even with my new watercolors.

The steamer I wrote you about will leave tomorrow morning. The warehouses are now packed with iron and cement for the Chief’s endless building projects here on the hill. I dreamed last night that I sailed away with the ship; I was wearing the blue hat I bought in Copenhagen, waving from the deck. I’ve dreamed this dream before but this time I woke up disoriented because it’s years since I’ve seen that hat or even thought about it. Could I have left it behind?

He folded the letter carefully; five densely written sheets, a polished, almost feminine hand, in blue ink. He didn’t date it and wrote nothing on the envelope but her name. He didn’t seal it but opened the bottom drawer of the desk and laid it on top of the other two letters, next to a small boat whittled from a piece of wood that bore the name
Einar RE 1
and a pebble from home. He laid it carefully on top of the other two letters and decided not to wonder if he would ever send them.

5

Beneath the peaks of the Santa Lucia range, a few miles inland from the coast, rises the castle built by William Randolph Hearst. Seventeen years ago, before Hearst arrived with his plans, there was nothing on these hills but sunbaked gravel, the odd oak that had managed to put down roots, laurel and sage, and, on the lower slopes, winding, rutted cattle tracks and dry creek beds which ran out in the middle of the plain, having abandoned the attempt to reach the sea. During winter and spring the low-lying land is green, but the grass bleaches during the summer and turns yellow by fall. The shore is lined with sandy beaches, rocks, dunes, and bluffs. The village of San Simeon, with its fish-drying frames, boats, and fishermen’s shacks, so empty and silent it seems even the Almighty has overlooked it, lies a stone’s throw to the north.

The summer heat can become unbearable down on the plain, but up in the hills the air is cooler. In the spring the wind sweeps like a white wing over the sand and flats, but in the winter it howls and rages. Sometimes when he can’t sleep he remembers the nights when Einar crawled into his bed, afraid that a ghost was blowing on a blade of grass outside his window.

The Chief had printed a leaflet containing information he wanted the staff to tell guests about the place. He calls it the Ranch, and the hill the Enchanted Hill. The staff are never allowed to use the word
castle
to refer to the place. The information sheet notes that first to be built were the three guesthouses, the Casas del Mar, del Sol, and del Monte. In parentheses: “a total of eighteen bedrooms and twenty bathrooms.” The print is small, so that everything will fit on one page. Kristjan has advised two waiters with poor eyesight to learn the information by heart so they don’t have to squint at it in front of visitors. There are one hundred and fifteen rooms in the main building: fourteen sitting rooms, twenty-six bedrooms, two libraries, thirty fireplaces, a beauty parlor, a barbershop, and a movie theater. The refectory, which is what Hearst calls the dining room, is said to be over three thousand square feet, which Kristjan believes is probably accurate because it takes him about forty seconds to walk the length of the room when he’s not in a hurry. The leaflet makes no mention of the service wing, where the staff live, nor the secure vaults in the cellar, though it’s mentioned that there is a switchboard and telegraph facility in the construction foreman’s office. Kristjan finds the descriptions of the two swimming pools—the indoor bath, which is known as the Roman Pool, and the other, which is named after the sea god Neptune—unnecessarily detailed, but that doesn’t seem to bother the guests, whose appetite for information is insatiable. Kristjan welcomes them on the south stairs and escorts them to the rooms they’ve been assigned while the houseboys bring in their bags. Generally guests arrive ill-equipped for their stay on the hill, especially actors and other movie types from Hollywood. The staff provides them with toiletries, tooth powder and brushes, cologne, combs and razors, perfumes, and all manner of unguents, riding clothes, bathrobes, and bathing suits. It takes about five minutes to fill them in about the place, longer if they’re curious. Some ask if they can keep the information sheet but that’s against the rules. However, they’re always left with the day’s menu and a schedule of mealtimes, along with a short description of the movie to be screened that evening.

The Chief’s a stickler for rules and order. Many people find him intimidating.

The leaflet once contained a fairly detailed description of the main building but when Mr. Hearst saw it he had it removed. It’s called Casa Grande. All vistas lead to where it stands at the top of the hill, with the guesthouses clustered in a semicircle a little lower down, like ladies-in-waiting at the feet of their queen. Some say it resembles a gothic cathedral, its chalk walls corpse white, the campaniles towering grandly aloft, as if their peals were intended more for heaven than for us here below on earth.

Guests have to come to the main building for food and drink as there are no kitchens or refrigerators in the guesthouses. Not even a kettle. The occasional person gets up the nerve to complain about this after a drink or two, though never directly to the Chief. Some would prefer breakfast in bed but the Chief regards this as a waste of time. It’s good for people to have a breath of fresh air in the morning, he feels. To walk here in the dew with the sun sparkling on the sea below and a refreshing breeze blowing off the mountains. It’s good for them. This is no place for lazy-bones, he’s fond of saying.

Down by the harbor there are warehouses full of antiques and works of art that the Chief has amassed. There are even more warehouses in New York, where people are employed in inventorying and cataloguing the vast quantity of statues, swords, torchères, fireplaces, paintings, tea sets, altarpieces, columns, and vases which Mr. Hearst keeps buying, even though no more can be accommodated here in the houses on the hill. Sometimes he buys whole castles in Spain and Italy and has them demolished stone by stone and strut by strut so they can be loaded on board ship.

So here I am in this labyrinth, Elisabet dear, he wrote, deciding to put the description of the castle into the envelope with the letter, a bird of passage that has lost its way. I’ll always be a stranger here, so there is little to remind me of what I miss, and this makes it easier for me to discipline my thoughts. Though I can still be caught unawares. It doesn’t take much, no more than the outline of a pale cheek glimpsed through the trees. I try to perform my duties diligently and occupy my mind with as many small details as I can, because it makes the time pass faster and prevents things from stealing into my mind.

It’s very peaceful here late in the evening and you never know what visitations may take place in the silence. But I have nothing to complain of, least of all to you.

The Chief is calling. Sometimes I think everyone is afraid of him except me. I’m afraid of nothing but myself.

6

I see now that I may have given a misleading picture of this establishment and my life here on the hill. I see I called it a “labyrinth,” but on reflection I don’t think this word gives the right impression. The truth is that I’ve mostly been happy here, but perhaps I chose not to write that to you, perhaps I felt subconsciously that you would be more likely to forgive me if I told you I’d been miserable all along. Why do I do this? I ask myself. Will I always feel like a naughty child in relation to you? Even now I find it difficult to tell you what I’m thinking for fear that you will disapprove.

I know I wouldn’t have stayed this long anywhere else. When I first came here in 1921, I felt as if a whole new world was opening up before me. And at the same time the old one disappeared. It was as if this labyrinth had been built expressly for me to lose myself in, and I managed to do so successfully for years.

Life here used to be one long round of parties. On weekends there were never fewer than twenty people, mostly guests from Hollywood, friends of Miss Davies. You’ll have read about these people in the papers and seen them in films: Clark Gable, Rudolph Valentino, Gary Cooper, Chaplin, etc., etc. Sometimes I felt as if I was in a movie with them. These people liked me and turned to me for advice about all sorts of things, especially in relation to the Chief. No one wanted to offend him.

I enjoyed the way the guests deferred to me and I did nothing to play down my relationship with the Chief, though I never bragged about it. I said as little as possible and let people draw their own conclusions. “Do you think it would be all right to go horseback riding this evening?” “Could I borrow a bathing costume?” “Would you be so kind as to get this script to the Chief? I’m sure he’ll want to finance the picture if he reads it.”

No one knew what I’d done before coming here, no one wondered at my being a servant; on the contrary they looked up to me as people often do here with Europeans. “Iceland?” they would ask. “Where’s that again?” They thought it was quite something when the Chief answered for me and said I was a true Viking.

I was always busy. I never gave myself time to let my thoughts wander. I knew that if I did, the memories would flood over me. During the week the building work went on from morning to night; it’s still in progress, the Chief’s forever extending or altering. On Fridays Miss Davies would generally set off from Los Angeles with her companions; they’d travel through the night, arriving early on Saturday morning. We’d have their breakfast ready; afterwards they’d go to bed and rise again at noon; lunch would be served at half past two. After that the guests would sun-bathe or go for a swim, some played tennis, others went for a ride over the hills. Supper would be served at half past eight and afterwards they’d watch a movie; most slept late on Sundays and ate lunch before they left.

One of the guests once offered me a job. He had had too much to drink that night and I suppose it was his way of expressing his gratitude for my services. The following day when he woke up he came directly to find me and asked me to please forget all about it and never mention to the Chief that he had tried to poach me. I assured him I hadn’t taken him seriously and wouldn’t mention his indiscretion to anyone, least of all the Chief. He was very grateful.

Three weddings in the summer of 1928, I see I’ve written in my diary, two costume balls, four birthdays, two concerts . . . I see also that this was the summer when the Chief ordered us to move the oak which used to stand right in front of the main building. He bumped his head on the lowest branch when coming out of the house one day and his hat was knocked off. Although he didn’t hurt himself, he told me to get in touch with the head gardener and have the tree moved ten feet. Each foot cost a thousand dollars. He didn’t care.

This is my world, Elisabet, and I admit that I was dazzled by it. At first I suppose I felt the way I did when I arrived in Copenhagen and discovered that I could leave the past behind. When I’m trying to assuage my conscience I tell myself that this wanderlust is the sign of a born traveler, this eternal longing to be free. I remind myself that I’m descended from a long line of seafarers; that I couldn’t wait to leave home when I was a boy.

When I’m depressed I see how pathetic an excuse this is.