A View From a Broad (17 page)

My first indication of what Australian wildlife was really all about came when I was walking in a field behind one of the beaches in Sydney, and I saw a sign that said:

WARNING: THIS AREA IS INFESTED WITH TAIPANS.
KEEP OUT.

Taipans? What the hell were they? Was this just another example of the racial snobbery that some said ran just under the hip Australian veneer? Or were taipans some sort of land mines planted by the Japanese?

As it happened, the next night I was introduced to a young man who lived and worked on an animal refuge in the hills just on the outside of town. He told me what taipans were. In fact, he told me a lot. “You may not know it,” he said, “but Australia has more poisonous animals than any other place on earth. Not only
more.
The most deadly. The taipans you wanted to know about . . . they’re snakes—big, long, ornery snakes that make the cobra look harmless. But of course, we also have the tiger snake and the brown snake and the death adder. Not to mention the sea snakes, which we’re beginning to think are responsible for more deaths than we imagined. And other things, too.”

“What do you mean,
other
things?” My eyes darted all around.

“Well,” he went on, “We’ve got the funnel spider—
very
deadly! and the blue-ringed octopus—which can kill you in about thirty seconds; and several varieties of conefish and stonefish; but the deadliest of all, the deadliest living thing in the world, in fact, is the sea wasp. We get it up along the northern coast by the thousands.”

“The sea wasp!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t know bees could live in the ocean.”

“It’s not a bee,” he said, “it’s a giant jellyfish—nasty-looking thing, actually. But don’t forget, even the adorable little platypus can put you in the hospital for days.”

Well, I was in shock! Australia was awash in venom, the land and sea teeming with things to stop your heart or paralyze your lungs. One could be killed instantly. Anywhere.

But brave and feckless as I am, I refused to allow this information to dampen my enjoyment of either the fauna or anything else in Australia. Every dream has a dark side, after all. I simply dealt with any fear I may have felt in the most direct and intelligent way possible. I never left my room again.

T
he Magic Lady, however, left hers. Ever since that day in Fontainebleau when Dolores decided to go out on her own, I had been waiting, maybe even hoping, for The Magic Lady to do the same. In Melbourne, she finally did. But unlike Dolores, who, shameless hussy that she is, chose to flash her tail not more than fifty yards from hundreds—nay, thousands—of sun worshippers who couldn’t help noticing her, The Magic Lady chose to go where there were no people at all. Only animals. Perhaps after four months on the road and thousands of new people to face every night, an animal refuge was a refuge indeed. In any case, when they finally noticed her missing and went to find her and did find her and took her back, The Magic Lady protested vigorously. “You have no time to go hobnobbing with a bunch of marsupials,” the stage manager told her, rather peeved at the problems her outing had caused him. “Then you must
make
time!” The Magic Lady snorted. “For me, for you, for everyone.”

And now as I sit here, eight thousand miles away from the nearest kangaroo, I wish to hell we had.

On November 20, 1978, almost a week before we were to wind up the tour in Sydney, Miss Frank left to go home to Boston. It wasn’t that we had a fight or any some such; how could I ever fight with Miss Frank? It was simply that our time in Australia had been extended, and then extended some more, and Miss Frank had to get home by Thanksgiving. She had promised her family she would be. And Miss Frank never breaks a promise.

Still, as I saw her board the plane, I had to keep myself from shrieking out and ordering her back. Even though the tour still had a week to go, I knew, as I watched Miss Frank wave goodbye and disappear into the plane, that it was over.

I stayed for a moment to see if maybe I could see her little head peering out the window. But it was no use. Lifting up the collar of that same old brown coat which I had by now taken to wearing backwards
and
inside out, I turned and started back to the car.

A week to go, and no Miss Frank!

That,
was my punishment for sure.

I felt myself falling apart. But actually, by Melbourne,
everyone
was falling apart. After four months on the go we all had come down with a severe case of Road Fever, a condition marked by alternating periods of intense silliness and overwhelming despair which has the peculiar quality of being both a disease
and
an addiction.

No one talked about it much, but we all knew that the great circle was almost completed. In a week our little show would take its place on that Big Marquee in the Sky. Still, it wasn’t just the realization that the tour was almost over which made everyone display that strain of manic gaiety which is, inevitably, a manifestation of underlying sadness and a sense of loss.

It was something more: you can go around the world for the first time only once, and after that, the question is
What do you do for an encore?

As I watched Miss Frank’s plane disappear, I wished we were starting all over again. After all, there were plenty of places we hadn’t been to yet—Lapland, for example. I wondered what the Lapps would think of Dolores, or The Magic Lady. Or me.

And the really extraordinary thing was—I wasn’t afraid to find out.

W
hen Vilmos Angst first appeared at the door of her suite, wild-eyed and tearful, pleading with Miss M to come back to Sweden and be his Urtha in
Thighs and Whispers,
The Divine was most moved to think that the world’s greatest director would come as far as Australia to persuade her to be in his film.

But by his fiftieth appearance, the last one being in her dressing room, which he managed to penetrate by disguising himself as an air-conditioner repairman, Miss M’s attitude had changed from one of ego-maniacal delight to sheer annoyance. Where a week ago she had been flattered, now she felt hounded. For Angst refused to take no for an answer.
Thighs and Whispers,
which Angst was certain would be his most important, his most profound film to date, simply could not be made without her. Urtha lay at the very center of the symbolic core of his story, and only
she,
The Divine One herself, could play this most fiery and demented of all the Swedish fish goddesses—the Fish Goddess being, of course, the most revered in all of Norse mythology. Miss M’s suggestion that the baboon dream of
his
goddesses, thereby eliminating the need for Urtha, somehow just didn’t pan out.

“You see,” Angst told her as he popped out from behind a potted palm in the hotel lobby, “the baboon can dream only of
baboon
goddesses. And Urtha must have something more. Something that we can see and understand immediately, something elemental, something to which man has, throughout history, responded to with the greatest passion and commitment—tits.”

Well! This little tidbit of character analysis certainly brought Miss M down. Even if Angst’s company hadn’t been known for paying the lowest salaries in all of cinemadom, The Divine would never have accepted
the role. Not now that she knew what she was wanted for. What had she worked all these years for? She was beyond showing her vabooms. Now she wanted to show she could act. And she remained certain there
was
a difference between the two, despite what her manager told her. Still, no matter how firmly she refused him, Angst persisted.

Then, one day while Miss M was walking along a deserted stretch of beach gathering clam shells to send back home as gifts from Down Under, Vilmos Angst, filmmaker and pest, leaped shrieking out of an overhanging gum tree, brandishing in one hand a contract and in the other a .38.

“You must understand,” Angst told her, “I don’t know yet if it will be you or me. I only know if you don’t sign, one of us must die. The death of
Thighs and Whispers
must be avenged. Don’t you understand? With this film we, together, could have taken yet another major step out of the . . . the . . . how you say? . . .”