The Richard Burton Diaries (156 page)

Sunday 5th
Here we are again ready to set off for the dreaded Tjentiste
by helicopter
we hope this time. Today has all the hall-marks of being dreadful. Many thousands of people. Speeches. National Anthem. The Internationale.
¹⁰⁹
And on top of it all they want me to work! Just so that Tito can see a bit of action. After all that they want us to fly to a place called Niš (pron Neesh) to the annual beano of the Yugoslav theatrical profession.
¹¹⁰
We are expected to stay the night and come back tomorrow morning for work again. Strange behaviour. The film sometimes seems to be very much in second place to all kinds of social activities. [...]

Later Today:

Well, as prognosticated by Dr and Mrs Burton, it was a dreadful day though not as boring as I thought it might be. [...] First of all, we arrived in plenty of
time to see Tito at eleven o'clock only to find out that His Excellency didn't expect to see us at all. It was the ineffable Popovi
who had insisted that we were there so early because of the danger of being delayed en route. [...] However we hung around the unfinished hotel and I drank coffee while E had a drink or two. Then suddenly there was a flurry of Generals and we were hastily put into cars and driven across fields where we were presented to the Marshal and Wife. Some bloke made a speech introducing the Tito I presume, whereupon the old man tore off up some steps to the podium, batteried with mikes and let us all have it for about 30 minutes. The crowd was huge. I guessed 50,000 trying vaguely to fit them into Cardiff Arms Park in my mind's eye.
¹¹¹
‘Many more than that,’ said the Generalissimo in English and quite sharply. In fact Tito seemed much less friendly today than he was yesterday. E remarked on it feeling a trifle miffed I suppose. I can only assume that his attitude changes subtly but definitely from public to private. There was none of the hugging and kissing of Brioni. Fact is that I was pretty well pissed off with the man-o-the-people because he didn't make more fuss of Elizabeth. He and Madame Broz did at least ask about her mother and at the end of the day when we had done a very actionful shot for their Majesties, Madame sent E her love and Tito said something which was I suppose ‘hear hear’ or something. And at the final handshake he said in English ‘Hope to see you again.’ You'll be lucky, mate. I swear to God there is more nonsensical protocol than with English royalty. [...]

After the speech which was apparently full of platitudes [...] about the heroism of the mighty dead and that the world and even their ‘allies’ – meaning Russia apparently – still did not believe the extent of the Jugoslavian sacrifice – we went back to the hotel not knowing whether we were invited to lunch with Tito or not. Not quite sure whether we wanted to be or not we put three tables together and ordered lunch at the hotel-restaurant. Five minutes later there was yet another panic and they came [...] in a sweat to say that we were expected to have lunch with Tito and the surviving partisans of the battle of Sutjeska. Furious [...] we got into the ever-present Mercedes and drove about 10 miles to the place. It was an open restaurant, obviously just shoved up for the day. We stood there, E and I and Maria and Vessna the new interpreter for 45 minutes signing endless autographs waiting for Tito to arrive. After all that we found we were not sitting with him but stuck with the scintillating Popovi
and Hardy Krüger. The latter obviously has a very nasty attack of jealousy and resentment of the red carpet treatment I get everywhere. He too is a bore and I hear from the other lads who live around the hotel with him that, typical Teuton, he bullies defenceless people like waiters etc. He works without cease on Wolf to write in flashbacks of Tito and himself enlarging his
part and enabling him to get to grips with R. Burton etc. and Wolf refuses and Krüger persists with Wolf saying: I wasn't paid to re-write the plot mate. I was hired to put the translation into palatable English. The insults began according to Ron and Brook. One sample: Krüger: ‘You are a stupid man.’ Wolf: ‘And you're the Nazi Tab Hunter.‘
¹¹²

E is in the worst state of lassitude I ever remember of her. She has always been naturally somewhat indolent – not the kind of girl one finds rushing off to play golf and tennis, God Forbid – but now, I mean for the last couple of days, she can barely move one foot in front of the other. It's largely of course the reaction from the tension of the past week but it's bloody worrying. [...]

Monday 6th
[...] The helicopters yesterday were the usual farce. For once we left on time but only seven people allowed again. From the air we could see huge concourses of people milling about before we landed and endless streams of buses. And thousands of cars. We landed on the football field where there was of course no one to meet us. [...] However [...] we were escorted to a car and drove off through dense crowds to the new hotel. [...] To add to the mania, incidentally, when E, bright with fury at the whole mess-up of the lunch came with me to location she sat down in my trailer on one of the banquettes and went right through it, legs kicking in the air. Nobody dared laugh or they would have been brained with a hand-bag but it was unquestionably funny. Ron had to leave the cabin. Once I knew she hadn't hurt her very vulnerable back I became faintly cracked myself. That sort of thing only happens when an entire day turns out to be a bastard.

Tuesday 7th, Tjentiste
Am in Tito's hut and shall tonight sleep in his bed. For the first time it is really cold and fortunately the two little heaters from the other hut are with us and are going full blast. If the electricity fails again it will be mittens and woollen stockings all around. [...] As I say, once this lot get going they are very efficient but getting them going is torture. I doubt whether I've had more than five minutes on film in two weeks, and I have a definite stop-date. I am playing the part of a patient actor and hope to God I don't have to lose my temper. [...]

And now to await lunch and work and my lovely old E in the evening. It's not a bad life. Not really. Not like the other morning when I was figuring out the repercussions of my suicide on the people who like me.

Wednesday 8th
[...] A miserable night in Tito's bed which for some reason, what I'm beginning to believe is typically Jugoslavian, refuses to have sheets or blankets which adequately cover the bed. This meaning a freezing shoulder or
a damp calf. Went in to get Maria's mug this morning – the only adequate drinking vessel we have – and she was completely covered with the clothes. Woke up with an awful feeling of deja vu. I was back in my cold damp childhood without even the prospect of a fire to light and leap and dance of burning anthracite. I shudder to be reminded of anything that happened to me before the age of about thirty and though I had a fantastically happy childhood I don't want to be reminded of Caradoc Street and that awful bathroom window which was broken by Rhys Oates’ daughter when she was taking her monthly bath and which was never mended throughout my children [
sic
], and what is more ludicrous never allowed to be mended.
¹¹³
What a monster that Elfed was. Eleven years with the same broken window which would have cost sixpence and fifteen minutes to replace. If anybody had mended it he would have broken it again. What a foony mann. It is hard to remember that that idiot of my childhood is now a benign and elderly man. Had a bitter little contretemps with E this morning. [...] Ended up by her saying she would go on the boat and me saying good idea and her saying that when I was sober I was a pain in the ass and perhaps I should start drinking again. So you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. [...] We had the Bozzacchis all evening. They mean sweetly and Claudye helps to unpack etc. but it means eternal conversations and no long readings of books. I must have dropped hints by the thousand that my favourite occupation is sitting alone in a room with E drinking tea, me, and drinking, her or not drinking and simply and simple-mindedly reading books or occasionally chatting. But one might as well drop a canister of water on a prairie fire. [...]

Thursday 7th, Tjentiste
¹¹⁴
[...] Last night we sat and made our own supper. I looked up the various articles in the dictionary and asked for everything in Serbo-Croat. What's more, almost everything arrived as asked. I was flushed with success. E made some soup with an egg broken into it. Very good. I desserted on chocolate and fancy biscuits. [...]

Have just written a telegram to Kate who has a birthday on the 10th. She will be 14 years old. How she goes the time. And how she grows the girl. She is a head taller than Liza and as tall if not taller than E which makes her around 5'4". I hope she doesn't grow too tall. 5'6" is enough I think.

[...] How much happier E and I are when we are left alone. Last night, apart from the waiter, we saw nobody and it was delicious. People get on our collective nerves and as one attacks one of them the other defends. E attacks Brook. I defend. I attack Raymond. E defends etc. Fact is that we're wearing them all out. Raymond's relief when I say or we say that we shan't need him for
a few days is palpable. He can't wait to get away. He is rapidly getting old. Any minute or dark day now he is going to look his age. Terrible to be a middle aged pouff. He's actually 50 odd. I hope he's no longer in our employ when he's 60 odd. Still ogling fellow travellers. Creeps-giving. [...]

Received a cheque yesterday from Ron's Vicky for $3,350 which means $10,000 return on a $40,000 investment in about six years which is not bad. She is certainly the only one of our friends who has ever paid back anything. John Sullivan – over $100,000 and not a cent return. Heyman, ditto. Tim Hardy £12,000 and nil return. etc. etc. Including our various friends we must be owed a million dollars. Alexandre of Paris too yet owes us about $125,000. No sign of repayment – not even the interest. [...]

Friday 8th, Tjentiste
¹¹⁵
[...] Yesterday having sat around in make-up all day long I worked in Foca at 5.30pm. Did a scene with the girl who plays Vera who, of course, doesn't speak a word of English.
¹¹⁶
She shall be dubbed. However she was obviously experienced and had a go and was very nice. She had a ‘film face’ – a dark haired girl of about 30 that I'm pretty sure I shan't remember when next I see her where I saw her before. I mean if I saw her in the street. Or at a party or something like that. An oval face, regular features, a good standard voice. about 5'4", standard build. In short, like a thousand other actresses everywhere. [...]

We had sent Maria back to Kupari with Raymond the day before yesterday as she was quite clearly and understandably bored up here when the rain came down without stop. [...] So with everybody else congregating in the other hut and waiting for the call we sat and read all day. E reading thriller after thriller and me alternating between a ‘Bony’ thriller and a book called
Bridge over the Drina
described as Yugoslavia's ‘greatest novel by Nobel Prizewinner Ivo Andri
’ and good it is too though it's not a novel at all in the ordinary sense of the word so far anyway.
¹¹⁷
More a series of anecdotes loosely woven in and around the history of the bridge over a period of 300 years. I doubt if I would have read it with the same interest were it not that I am close to the actual scene of events. There is a description of an impalement, in detail, which horrified me. I didn't know that impaling was so exact a science. The ‘master’ impaler was able to so do his job that though the pointed stick went right through the body from bottom to shoulder through the anus it must avoid all the essential organs so that the poor bastard would live as long as possible, some for a few hours, some for as long as a day. [...]