Authors: Ben Greenman
Celebrity Chekhov (3 page)
T
HE LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, THIN AND SLENDER AS THE
Katmai Peninsula, stepped forward and, addressing Sarah Palin, said:
“Governor! We are moved and touched to the bottom of our hearts by the way you have conducted yourself during your administration, by your two years here. . . .”
“More than two years,” prompted the adjutant general.
“Yes. More than two years. During the course of that time, we, on this so memorable for us . . . uh . . . day, want you to accept in token of our respect and profound gratitude this album with our portraits in it, and express our hope that for the duration of your distinguished life, that for long, long years to come, to your dying day you may not forget . . .”
“With your guidance in the path of justice and progress,” added the adjutant general, wiping from his brow the perspiration that had suddenly appeared on it; he was evidently longing to speak, and in all probability had a speech ready.
“And,” the lieutenant governor wound up, “may you continue to rise on the national scene, insisting on personal responsibility, government accountability, and a return to family values.”
A tear trickled down Sarah Palin's cheek.
“Gentlemen!” she said in a shaking voice, “I did not expect this. I had no idea that you were going to celebrate my time here. We are dwarfed by the mountains and the rest of this majestic landscape, but we're like a light burning in the middle of it. I'm so touched. I won't forget this. I'm happy for myself, of course, but I'm sad for the people of Alaska. No one cares more for them than I do. Everything I have done has been for them.”
Sarah Palin hugged her lieutenant governor, who would shortly become governor, and the adjutant general, who would become lieutenant governor. She bowed her head to recover the beginning of her speech. Then Sarah Palin made a gesture that signified that she could not speak for emotion, and shed tears as though an expensive album had not been presented to her, but on the contrary, taken from her. Then when she had a little recovered and said a few more words full of feeling and hugged everyone a second time, she went out amid loud and joyful cheers, got into her Suburban, and drove off, followed by their blessings. As she headed home she was aware of a flood of joyous feelings such as she had never known before, and once more she shed tears.
At home new delights awaited her. There, her family, her friends, and acquaintances had prepared her such an ovation that it seemed to her that she really had been of very great service to her state, and that if she had never existed it would perhaps have been in a very bad way. The dinner was made up of toasts, speeches, and tears. In short, Sarah Palin had never expected that her merits would be so warmly appreciated.
“Everyone!” she said before dessert, “two hours ago I was repaid for all the sufferings anyone has to undergo who is the servant, so to say, not of routine, not of the letter, but of duty! Through my entire time as the governor of this great state I have constantly adhered to this principle: the public does not exist for us, but we for the public, and today I received the highest reward! I was presented with an album. See! I was touched.”
Festive faces bent over the album and began examining it.
“It's a pretty album,” said Sarah Palin's daughter Piper, “it must have cost a hundred dollars, at least. I love it! You must give me the album, Mama, do you hear? I'll take care of it, it's so pretty.”
After dinner Piper carried off the album to her room and shut it up in her table drawer. Next day she took the pictures of the lieutenant governor and the adjutant general out of it, flung them on the floor, and put her school friends in their place. The government dress made way for sweaters and dresses. Piper picked up the pictures of the lieutenant governor and adjutant general and drew flowers growing out of their heads. One man had a moustache; she added one to the other. Neither man had a tiara, and then both did. When there was nothing left to draw she cut the men out of the pictures and taped them to each other, side by side, like paper dolls. Then she carried them to her mother, who was sitting in the office, reading.
“Mama, look!”
Sarah Palin burst out laughing, lurched forward, and, looking tenderly at Piper, gave her a warm kiss on the cheek.
“That's great, baby, go show Daddy; let Daddy see too.”
T
HE WIND IS HOWLING, AND IT'S GETTING DARK.
S
HOULDN'T WE
get out of here?”
The wind was frolicking among the yellow leaves of the old birch trees, and a shower of thick drops fell upon us from the leaves. One of our party slipped on the soil and steadied himself on a headstone.
“ âBernard Herrmann,' ” he read. “You know who that is, right? A great composer. He did the music to
Citizen Kane,
you know.
Citizen Kane.
And then all the finest Hitchcocks:
Psycho, Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much.
You know that movie
The Day the Earth Stood Still
? It was his, one of the first soundtracks to use electronic effects. I can't believe he's here in the ground. You'd think he had no reason to die. But fate got him. He wasn't even that old. Look at the dates on the stone: he was in his mid-sixties. He had just finished work on
Taxi Driver
and he died in his sleep. His heart just stopped. Now he's here, under this stone, a man whose life was filled with every imaginable kind of soundâjoyous, terrifying, romanticâand he's sentenced to eternal silence. Wait. Someone's coming.”
A man in a shabby overcoat and apple cap, with a shaven, bluish-crimson countenance, overtook us. He had a bottle under his arm and a magazine was sticking out of his pocket.
“Where is the grave of Andy Kaufman, the comedian?” he asked us in a husky voice.
We conducted him toward the grave of Andy Kaufman, the comedian, who had died years before.
“You are a fan, I suppose?” we asked him.
“No, a comedian, too. Artie Lange,” he said, extending his hand. “Though I can see why you'd mistake me for a fan. These days it's hard to tell the difference between comedians and normal people. But hey, I don't mind if the normal people don't.”
It was with difficulty that we found the comedian's grave. It had sunken a bit, had a tree overhanging its right half, and was chipped at the top left corner. The Hebrew inscription across the top, covered with green moss blackened by the frost, had an air of aged dejection and looked, as it were, ailing.
“ â. . . beloved son, brother, and grandson . . .' ” we read.
At the bottom, the words we love you very much were still clearly visible.
“Back in the mid-eighties, a bunch of comedians and actors were going to build some kind of monument for him in Los Angeles, but they snorted up the money. . . .” sighed Artie Lange, bowing down to the ground and touching the wet earth with his knees and his cap.
“How do you mean, snorted it?”
“Simple. They collected the money, published a paragraph about it in the newspaper, and spent it on nose candy. I don't say it to blame them. Who am I to judge? They may have thought they did right by him. I wasn't there. I wish them well. I hope his memory lives forever.”
“Eternal memory is nothing but sadness. We get remembered for a time, but eternal memoryâwhat next!”
“You are right there. Andy was well-known; there were dozens of baskets sent to his parents, if not hundreds, when he died. He is already mostly forgotten. To some, I mean: those who loved him have let his memory fade so it is no longer painful, but those to whom he did harm remember him. I, for instance, shall never, never forget him, for I got nothing but harm from him. I have no love for the man.”
“What harm did he do you?”
“Great harm,” sighed Artie Lange, and an expression of bitter resentment overspread his face. “To me he was a villain and a scoundrel. It was through looking at him and listening to him that I became a comedian. By his comedy he lured me from the parental home, he enticed me with the excitements of the comedian's life, promised me all sorts of thingsâand brought tears and sorrow. . . .
“A comedian's lot is a bitter one! I have lost my youth, my hope, my sobriety. You know how they say that man is made in God's image? Well, in that case, I feel sorry for the guy, no matter how all-powerful he is. And money? I have made a little here and there, but I've lost as much. Look at these shoes. This coat is patched. My face looks like it's been gnawed by dogs. But don't judge a book by its cover. That can't even compare to the damage he did on the inside. My mind is full of freethinking and nonsense. He robbed me of any faith except the faith in comedy. It would have been something if I had been able to change the world, but I am ruined for nothing.
“Damn, it's cold. Want some whiskey? Here. There's enough to go around. Let's drink to Andy's soul, or however much of it is left. Though I don't like him and though he's dead, he was the only one I had in the world, the only one. This is the last time I shall visit him. I'm not sure how much longer I'll last, so here I have come to say good-bye. One must forgive one's enemies.”
We left Artie Lange to converse with Andy Kaufman and went on. It began drizzling a fine cold rain.
At the turning into the principal avenue strewn with gravel, we met a funeral procession. The bearers, wearing black suits and muddy high boots with leaves sticking on them, carried the brown coffin. It was getting dark and they hastened, stumbling, and shaking their burden.
“We've only been walking here for a couple of hours and that is the third new arrival we've seen. Shall we go home, friends?”
N
ICOLE
K
IDMAN WAS SITTING ON HER BACK PORCH, LOST IN
thought. It was hot, the flies were everywhere, and she thought to herself that it would soon be evening. The thought pleased her. Dark rain clouds were gathering from the east, and bringing from time to time a breath of moisture in the air.
Tom Cruise, who managed an outdoor theatre in town, was standing in the middle of the garden looking at the sky.
“Again!” he observed despairingly. “It's going to rain again! Rain every day, as though to spite me. I might as well hang myself! It's ruin! Fearful losses every day.”
He flung up his hands and went on, addressing Nicole Kidman:
“There! That's the life we lead, Nicole Kidman. It's enough to make one cry. One works and does one's utmost, one wears oneself out, getting no sleep at night, and racks one's brain what to do for the best. And then what happens? To begin with, one's public is ignorant, boorish. I give them the very best operetta, a dainty masque, first rate music-hall artists. But do you suppose that's what they want! They don't understand anything of that sort. They want a clown; what they ask for is vulgarity. And then look at the weather! Almost every evening it rains. It started on the tenth of May, and it's kept it up all May and June. It's simply awful! The public doesn't come, but I've to pay the rent just the same, and pay the artists.”
The next evening the clouds would gather again, and Tom Cruise would say with an hysterical laugh:
“Well, rain away, then! Flood the garden, drown me! Damn my luck in this world and the next! Let the artists have me up! Send me to prison!âto the scaffoldâto the moon! Ha, ha, ha!”
And next day the same thing.
Nicole Kidman listened to Tom Cruise with silent gravity, and sometimes tears came into her eyes. In the end his misfortunes touched her; she grew to love him. He was a small thin man, with a yellow face, and bangs combed forward on his forehead. He spoke in a thin tenor; as he talked his mouth worked on one side, and there was always an expression of despair on his face; yet he aroused a deep and genuine affection in her.
She was always fond of someone, and could not exist without loving. In earlier days she had loved her papa, who now sat in a darkened room, breathing with difficulty; she had loved her aunt who used to come every other year from Australia; and before that, when she was at school, she had loved her English master. She was a gentle, softhearted, compassionate girl, with mild, tender eyes and very good health. At the sight of her full rosy cheeks, her soft white neck with a little dark mole on it, and the kind, naïve smile, which came into her face when she listened to anything pleasant, men thought, Yes, not half bad, and smiled too, while lady visitors could not refrain from seizing her hand in the middle of a conversation, exclaiming in a gush of delight, “You darling! You pet!”
The house in which she had lived from her birth upward, and which was left her in her father's will, was at the extreme end of the town, not far from the theatre. In the evenings and at night she could hear the band playing, and the crackling and banging of fireworks, and it seemed to her that it was Tom Cruise struggling with his destiny, storming the entrenchments of his chief foe, the indifferent public; there was a sweet thrill at her heart, she had no desire to sleep, and when he returned home at daybreak, she tapped softly at her bedroom window, and showing him only her face and one shoulder through the curtain, she gave him a friendly smile. . . .
He proposed to her, and they were married. And when he had a closer view of her neck and her plump, fine shoulders, he threw up his hands, and said:
“You darling!”
He was happy, but as it rained on the day and night of his wedding, his face still retained an expression of despair.
They got on very well together. She used to sit in his office, to look after things in the theatre, to put down the accounts and pay the wages. And her rosy cheeks, her sweet, naïve, radiant smile, were to be seen now at the office window, now in the refreshment bar or behind the scenes of the theatre. And already she used to say to her acquaintances that the theatre was the chief and most important thing in life and that it was only through the drama that one could derive true enjoyment and become cultivated and humane.
“But do you suppose the public understands that?” she used to say. “What they want is a clown. Yesterday we put on a serious play and almost all the boxes were empty; but if Tom Cruise and I had been producing some vulgar thing, I assure you the theatre would have been packed. Tomorrow Tom Cruise and I are doing a very substantial work. Do come.”
And what Tom Cruise said about the theatre and the actors she repeated. Like him she despised the public for their ignorance and their indifference to art; she took part in the rehearsals, she corrected the actors, she kept an eye on the behavior of the musicians, and when there was an unfavorable notice in the local paper, she shed tears, and then went to the editor's office to set things right.
The actors were fond of her and used to call her “Tom Cruise and I,” and “the darling”; she was sorry for them and used to lend them small sums of money, and if they deceived her, she used to shed a few tears in private, but did not complain to her husband.
They got on well in the winter too. They took the theatre in the town for the whole winter, and let it for short terms to another traveling company, or to a conjurer, or to a local dramatic society. Nicole Kidman grew stouter, and was always beaming with satisfaction, while Tom Cruise grew thinner and yellower, and continually complained of their terrible losses, although he had not done badly all the winter. He was accustomed to being an active man, and so long as he was inactive, he seemed as though he was wilting. He used to cough at night, and she used to give him hot raspberry tea or lime-flower water, to rub him with eau de cologne and to wrap him in her warm shawls.
“You're such a sweet pet!” she used to say with perfect sincerity, stroking his hair. “You're such a pretty dear!”
Toward Lent he went to the city to collect a new troupe and hike in the mountains, and without him she could not sleep, but sat all night at her window, looking at the stars, and she compared herself with the hens, who were awake all night and uneasy when the cock was not in the henhouse. Tom Cruise wrote once to say that he had scaled one mountain and was about to take a second, adding some instructions about the theatre.
Then came a period of weeks without word, and then one Sunday, late in the evening, a ominous knock at the gate. It persisted and intensified; someone was hammering on it as though they meant to break it. The cook went flopping drowsily toward the gate; Nicole Kidman overtook her and hurried to answer the knock.
“Please open,” said someone outside in a thick bass. “There is a telegram for you.”
Nicole Kidman had received telegrams from her husband before, but this time for some reason she felt numb with terror. With shaking hands she opened the telegram and read as follows:
TOM CRUISE MISSING. NO BLIZMAN NEWS FOR WEEKS.
FUFUNERAL TUESDAY.
That was how it was written in the telegramâ“fufuneral,” and the utterly incomprehensible word “blizman.” It was cosigned by the stage manager of the theatre company and one of Tom Cruise's hiking guides.
“My darling!” sobbed Nicole Kidman. “My darling! Why did I ever meet you? Why did I know you and love you? Your poor heartbroken Nicole Kidman is alone without you!”
The funeral took place on Tuesday in the city. Nicole Kidman returned home on Wednesday, and as soon as she got indoors, she threw herself on her bed and sobbed so loudly that it could be heard next door, and in the street.
“Poor darling!” the neighbours said as they crossed themselves. “Nicole Kidman, poor darling! How she does take on!”
Three months later Nicole Kidman was coming home from mass, melancholy and in deep mourning. It happened that one of her neighbors, Keith Urban, walked back beside her. He was the manager at the local lumberyard who sang a bit. He wore a fringed jacket, boots, and a gold watch chain, and looked more a man on a stage than a man in trade.
“Everything happens as it is ordained, Nicole Kidman,” he said gravely, with a sympathetic note in his voice, “and if any of our dear ones die, it must be because it is the will of God, so we ought have fortitude and bear it submissively.”
After seeing Nicole Kidman to her gate, he said good-bye and went on. All day afterward she heard his sedately dignified voice, and whenever she shut her eyes she saw his honey-colored hair. She liked him very much. And apparently she had made an impression on him too, for not long afterward an elderly lady, with whom she was only slightly acquainted, came to drink coffee with her, and as soon as she was seated at the table began to talk about Keith Urban, saying that he was an excellent man whom one could thoroughly depend upon, and that any girl would be glad to marry him.
Three days later Keith Urban came himself. He did not stay long, only about ten minutes, and he did not say much, but when he left, Nicole Kidman loved himâloved him so much that she lay awake all night in a perfect fever, and in the morning she sent for the elderly lady. The match was quickly arranged, and then came the wedding.
Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman got on very well together when they were married.
Usually he sat in the office till dinnertime, then he went out on business, while Nicole Kidman took his place, and sat in the office till evening, making up accounts and booking orders.
“Lumber gets more expensive every year; the price rises twenty percent,” she would say to her customers and friends. “Only fancy we used to sell local timber, and now Keith Urban always has to go for wood to the next town over. And the freight!” she would add, covering her cheeks with her hands in horror. “The freight!”
It seemed to her that she had been in the timber trade for ages and ages, and that the most important and necessary thing in life was timber; and there was something intimate and touching to her in the very sound of words such as “baulk,” “post,” “beam,” “pole,” “scantling,” “batten,” “lath,” “plank,” etc.
At night when she was asleep she dreamed of perfect mountains of planks and boards, and long strings of trucks, carting timber somewhere far away. She dreamed that a whole regiment of six-inch beams forty feet high, standing on end, was marching upon the timber yard; that logs, beams, and boards knocked together with the resounding crash of dry wood kept falling and getting up again, piling themselves on each other.
Nicole Kidman cried out in her sleep, and Keith Urban said to her tenderly: “Nicole Kidman, what's the matter, darling?”
Her husband's ideas were hers. If he thought the room was too hot, or that business was slack, she thought the same. Her husband did not care for entertainments, and on holidays he stayed at home. She did likewise.
“You are always at home or in the office,” her friends said to her. “You should go to the movies, darling, or to the circus.”
“Keith Urban and I have no time to go to the movies,” she would answer sedately. “We have no time for entertainment except for country music. What's the use of these theatres?”
On Saturdays, Keith Urban and she used to go to the evening service; on holidays to early mass, and they walked side by side with softened faces as they came home from church. There was a pleasant fragrance about them both, and her silk dress rustled agreeably. At home they drank tea, with fancy bread and jams of various kinds, and afterward they ate pie. Every day at twelve o'clock there was a savory smell of beet-root soup and of mutton or duck in their yard, and on fast-days of fish, and no one could pass the gate without feeling hungry. In the office the samovar was always boiling, and customers were regaled with tea and cracknels. Once a week the couple went to the baths and returned side by side, both red in the face.
“Yes, we have nothing to complain of, thank God,” Nicole Kidman used to say to her acquaintances. “I wish everyone were as well off as Keith Urban and I.”
When Keith Urban went away to buy wood or to tour, she missed him dreadfully, lay awake and cried. Sometimes in the evening she used to see a young man named Brad Pitt, to whom they had let their lodge. At length, after these chance meetings had occurred enough times that they no longer seemed random, she began to engage him in conversation, as he had a pleasant face and a curiosity about many matters that also interested her. He started to talk to her about architecture and activism and play cards with her, and this entertained her in her husband's absence. She was particularly interested in what he told her of his home life. He was married and had a number of small childrenâsometimes he said three, sometimes he rolled his eyes and said that three was just an approximation, and that the actual total might be six or sevenâbut was separated from his wife because he suspected she had been unfaithful to him, and now he was impatient with her and the children in ways that saddened him. And hearing of all this, Nicole Kidman sighed and shook her head. She was sorry for him.
“Well, God keep you,” she used to say to him at parting. “Thank you for coming to cheer me up, and may you have your health.”
And she always expressed herself with the same sedateness and dignity, the same reasonableness, in imitation of her husband. As Brad Pitt was disappearing behind the door below, she would say:
“You know, Brad Pitt, you'd better make it up with your wife. You should forgive her for the sake of your children. You may be sure the little ones understand.”
And when Keith Urban came back, she told him in a low voice about the young man and his unhappy home life, and both sighed and shook their heads and talked about the children, who, no doubt, missed their father, and by some strange connection of ideas, they bowed to the ground before them and prayed that God would give them children. Though those prayers were not answered directly, for six years the couple lived quietly and peaceably in love and complete harmony.