Crowned Heads

by Thomas Tryon

  “I decided the second woman might be her companion, Mrs. Balfour, though I couldn’t be sure. I went down the hill to the village and stopped in the hotel bar. The hotelkeeper’s son spoke English and I encouraged him to talk about the villa, but didn’t learn much. When I asked about the smaller house, he said it originally had been the caretaker’s cottage, but was now owned by one of the large olive-growing families in the village. He took me around the corner to a café, where I met the patriarch of the clan, a fellow named Vasos, with huge white brigand’s mustaches and the most worn-out but the cleanest shirt I’d ever seen; it was darned and sewed and patched in every conceivable spot. I asked if I could stay in his cottage for a while, and he thought that was funny. I explained through the boy that I was a writer craving solitude, so Vasos went away and spoke with his wife. She came and looked me up and down, and after a discussion of price, the boy interpreting, we struck a bargain. Vasos would unboard the house and have it put in habitable order. I paid in advance, went back to Iraklion, stayed the night, then checked out the following day. A taxi brought me back to the village, where I was supposed to pick up someone to go with me to the house, but the hotel barman told me the person had gone on ahead. During my talk with the boy the previous evening I’d noticed a small brass telescope—a nautical spyglass, actually—in a little rack behind the bar, and I asked the bartender if he’d sell it to me. He wouldn’t, but I might borrow it if I chose. He gave me a wink and said something about the girls on the beach.

  “The taxi took me up the hill and dropped me at the cottage. Another, younger, Mrs. Vasos was there, cleaning; the boards had been taken down and the place put to rights. The furniture wasn’t much, but enough. There were views from the windows on all four sides, one largish room and a smaller one for sleeping. The kitchen facilities were minimal, but there was a small gas stove and even a refrigerator—I had found out that the house was wired for electricity when power and telephone lines had been run up to the villa. The bathroom plumbing was even more primitive, but the whole thing suited me fine. Mrs. Vasos would come up on her bicycle late each afternoon and bring me food, which she would cook. I would lunch on bread, cheese, and fruit, and since I don’t eat breakfast it was all simple enough. I’d brought up a good supply of local wine, which was unresinated; it tasted like Frascati, not bad at all, and there was ice, so I didn’t seem to need anything else.

  “When Mrs. Vasos left, I did my unpacking. I put the books I had brought with me on the table, then went out and picked some asphodel, which grew all along the roadway. I put the flowers in a pitcher and set that on the table with the books, and that was about as homey as I could make the place. There were two doors, one at the front, beside the road, another at the back, where a rustic arbor had been put up. It was well covered by a grapevine—at least I thought it was a grapevine, though there weren’t any grapes. Beneath this arbor was a small flagstone terrace. The view, as I said, was stupendous. To the left was a jutting headland, around whose sloping tip lay Iraklion. Directly at my feet, below the terrace, the ground fell away to the gully, with an overgrown path winding from the cottage and around the foundation of the villa terrace above. Beyond this was a sheer drop of several hundred feet, then some barren spaces, neat apple and olive orchards, and small garden plots attached to smaller houses. Way below was a narrow plateau ending in a rocky shelf that went into the water, and while Homer may have called it the wine-dark sea, this day I found the Aegean wildly blue. I waited with my spyglass for a peek at someone on the terrace, but no one came or went. When it started getting dark I saw lights go on at the windows. Sitting in the arbor, I suddenly had the feeling that not all the terrace figures were inanimate, that someone human was lingering among the statues, watching. It was only a feeling, because I couldn’t see anyone. I’d brought a portable cassette player, and I put on some music, I ate, read for a while, and finally went to bed. Later, I thought I heard music again, and got up and looked; but there was nothing, only the dark statues on their pedestals, picked out in moonlight.

  “Next morning I rose early, went out to the arbor, pulled up a chair, and sat with my spyglass handy. Around nine o’clock I saw the second woman come onto the terrace with a basket and clippers and begin snipping the growth in the urns and the flowers in the boxes. It was Mrs. Balfour. She didn’t look that much different from when I’d seen her at the Louvre, though her hair was considerably grayer. I wasn’t being too careful and she must have noticed me observing her, because she ducked behind one of the urns, then hurried inside. I was more careful with my spyglass after that. I drank my coffee, listening to my cassette player, but remained screened behind the grapevine while I kept watch. Pretty soon I heard the sound of a broom and the servant was out, in a white jacket, sweeping the terrace. Next he had a hose and was watering the plants in the urns, then the flowers in the boxes, and when he finished he coiled up the hose and went inside. Then more music. Mine clashed with it, so I shut off the cassette and waited.

  “Just at eleven, Mrs. Balfour came back on the scene, talking to someone behind her, and immediately the servant appeared, pushing the Countess Sobryanski’s wheelchair. I trained the glass on her as she moved in profile; she was very old, and thin. Her white hair was done up in a tight little pug on top, giving her head a skinned look. Her coloring was not the paleness of the aged, but rather dark, as though she took the sun, though her chair was placed exactly where it had been yesterday, shaded by the canopy. She laid the cane across her lap and sat close to the balustrade, facing the sea below. Mrs. Balfour had a book; she sat and read aloud to the countess for about an hour, and at noon Fedora appeared, in a white blouse and dark-blue shorts and a straw hat. She took Mrs. Balfour’s place with the book and read to the countess while Balfour went inside. Then at one o’clock I heard the bell ring. Fedora shut the book and got up, the servant came to wheel the countess, and they all went in—for lunch, I assumed.

  “I had my own bread, cheese, fruit, and some wine, and ate in the arbor, still watching, and listening to Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben on the cassette player. After lunchtime the villa was quiet and I presumed the women must be napping. I had a doze myself, and when I woke up it was after three. My cassette had stopped. I flipped it over, raised the volume, and went into the bathroom to shave. Then I heard an awful racket, a torrent of music blasting down the hill from inside the villa. I went out to the arbor again and saw Fedora at the terrace balustrade, ringing the countess’s bell for all it was worth. Obviously my cassette player was disturbing her and she was turning the tables on me.

  “I switched off my player and waited. She now had a pair of opera glasses, which she brazenly stuck up to her eyes. She couldn’t see me, since I was hidden behind the grapevine, but she stood swiveling the glasses like a sea captain on the bridge looking for icebergs. Finally she went back inside and turned down the music, which I recognized as the Baltic Symphony. Still later, I heard the car starting up, and I went to the front window to watch it pass. It was going fast, and I saw that Fedora was driving. When Mrs. Vasos came, around four, I tried to question her. Since she had very little English, this wasn’t easy and I didn’t learn much more than I already knew. The villagers were fond of the Polish noblewoman because she contributed money to local charities. Though years ago she had gone to show guests the labyrinth at Knossos and the Gortyna ruins, nobody ever saw her anymore. Her son came sometimes, and sometimes the actress, La Fedora. Yes, Mrs. Vasos had seen her in the movies, but she never had anything to do with the villagers. Nobody did, over there. Mrs. Vasos pointed to the ceiling, saying they might as well be on the moon. Had there been any recent visitors to the villa? Yes, an American woman had lately stayed for a week; I assumed that would be Viola. I wondered about the evil-faced servant, and Mrs. Vasos made a contemptuous sound; he was an off-islander, a Macedonian, called Kritos, who saw to the shopping for the house, but never mingled with the locals.

  “I asked Mrs. Vasos if I might borrow her bike for an hour or
so to go down to the beach. She agreed, and I changed into trunks, took a towel, a book, my cassette player and some tapes, and rode off. At the bottom of the road, a mile this side of the village, there was a turn leading to a path running through mounds of sand and low beach growth to the water, but since the road curved just beyond, I had no way of knowing what I’d find. I was surprised to see the Citroën parked under a carob tree. I leaned the bike on its stand a good distance from the car and went along the path to the beach. It was mostly pebbles and rocks like so many European island beaches, so I stayed back in the sand. Fedora was nowhere to be seen, and I had the place to myself. I dropped my towel and bag and stepped across the stones to the water, swam for fifteen minutes, and came out, looking back up to the terrace above. I was able to make out a dark head and a touch of white shirt, and decided it must be Kritos. Mrs. Vasos had said he was every bit as thickheaded as I suspected; his prime virtue, apparently, was that he refused to have anything to do with the villagers.

  “Another dip and I went back to my towel, spread it, got out my book, and lay in the sand. I read on my stomach, chin propped on my hands, at right angles to the shoreline. My eye kept darting from the page to the horizon, where a string of freighters was working its way out beyond the headland. Then, way down the beach to my left, coming around the point, I saw Fedora. I’d brought along my spyglass which I trained on her. She was wearing the straw hat and had a wicker carryall in one hand, with a pair of espadrilles hung on the handles. Occasionally she would bend and pick something up, inspect it, throw it away or drop it in the basket. As her face focused more clearly in the glass, I saw that it looked sullen and unhappy, and her free hand absently stroked her cheeks—the strokes seemed hard ones, almost slaps, as if she were subconsciously punishing herself. When she came closer I kept low until she disappeared beyond the rise of the hollow in which I lay. She hadn’t seen me—or so I thought until, a moment later, as I moved to straighten my towel, a shadow fell on it. Looking up, I was surprised to see what I had not expected to see, namely Fedora. She was standing at the top of the rise behind me, staring down at me impassively, a bit curious, but no more than one would be about a worm or some crawling insect. There was disdain there, and hauteur, and the visible aloofness that was so much a part of her legend, just as I’d noticed it that day at the Louvre, but somehow aggravated now into petulance.

  “‘We are pri-i-i-vate here,’ she stated before I could utter a greeting. ‘No trespassing permitted.’

  “I said I was not a trespasser, but the lessee of the gatekeeper’s cottage.

  “‘You play your music too loud,’ she snapped out next.

  “‘So do you,’ I replied, but with a smile. Her heavy-lidded eyes pondered me ungenially for a moment, and she gave a little shrug, as if to say so what. Her boredom showed in her whole expression; her mouth sagged open, her large eyes seemed to float in an unfocused state, as if they lacked the impulse to actually see what they were looking at. She wore a lot more make-up than I’d seen on her before, and her hair was dyed, lighter than I remembered, and carelessly styled. Older, yes, lined, yes, unhealthy, yes. Still, for a woman of her years she looked remarkable.

  “I’d scrambled up and given my name without mentioning our former meeting, but since the name appeared to mean nothing to her I added that I was a friend of Viola Ueberroth’s. She made a nasty face. ‘She’s a silly thing, isn’t she?’ Well, I thought, Vi’s loyalty certainly had never rubbed off on her friend. ‘How do you know her?’ she asked idly. I briefly explained my acquaintanceship with Vi.

  “‘She sent the countess a book I wrote,’ I said. ‘From London. Did she get it?’

  “Fedora’s head whipped around and she gave me a narrow, scrutinizing look, then she burst into laughter; the washerwoman’s laugh I remembered from the Louvre, but somehow harsher, almost vulgar.

  “‘Viola sends many books. Which was yours?’

  “I supplied the title and she gave a scornful nod. ‘The countess—yes, she was deli-i-i-ghted—deli-i-i-ghted.’ I could hear the calculated note of sarcasm. And she had known all along which book, because in the next breath she said, ‘You are not as goodlooking as your picture; they touched it up, yes?’ Another laugh, the ring of brass, and I wondered where the joke was, it all seemed to amuse her so. When I said I was also acquainted with Willie Marsh, she again scrutinized me carefully. I remarked that I had interviewed Willie some years back and that he had spoken affectionately of her.

  “‘Ah, yes, Little Willie,’ she returned with a mocking slur, ‘a man of taste and discernment. And Bee—how is she, dear Bee?’ Another, more prodigious gale of laughter; Bee, it seemed, was quite the funniest thing.

  “‘Sorry; I thought they were friends of yours,’ I said.

  “Her look darkened and she shook her head. ‘I have no friends,’ she stated lugubriously, as if pandering for my sympathy, pity even. She seemed terribly weary, of everything—me, herself, the world—but I sensed that the fatigue encompassed a physical debilitation as well, spirit and body together. She had herself planted with spread feet on the rise, arms straight down and clutching the handles of the basket, but her stance seemed not so much an effect of defiance as an attempt to stabilize herself. I remembered the stories about the dope bust in Nice and wondered if she might be high on something. Or was it only wine with lunch? She momentarily lost her balance and when I reached to steady her she pushed my hand away. ‘Do not touch me,’ she said indignantly. Then she gave me a crafty look. ‘You do not say what you are doing here.’

  “I’d already concocted the fiction that I was having a leisurely holiday, I wanted to be alone and think, and that Crete seemed a good place for it. ‘I must say,’ I went on offhandedly, ‘I didn’t expect to have you for a neighbor.’

  “‘They usually don’t…. But you lie. You came here to see me.’

  “‘Actually, I came to see the countess Sobryanski.’

  “‘You waste your time—she will not see you. You seek information, isn’t it so? You spy on us with a glass. Don’t deny it—we have seen you. Shall I tell you how to go about your snooping? We are three old women, you see, all alone. We long, we pine. You must woo us. You must write us billets-doux and send us baskets of fruit and serenade our windows, make our hearts flutter, and then we shall let down our hair to you. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair—you remember that little fairy tale? That is what you must do. Make love to us, three old ladies, inflame our cold hearts, and we shall let down our hair and tell you all the stories you care to hear.’ She wheeled and stumbled down the other side of the rise. I watched her until she reached the path and went from sight around the bend. ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel,’ I heard, and shortly afterward, the Citroën engine. A moment later I heard something else as well—the sound of a sharp metallic impact—then the car drove away. I grabbed my things, rolled up the towel, and hurried along in her footsteps, already knowing what I would find.

  “The bicycle was not as badly damaged as I expected, but she’d run over the front wheel and it was bent, the spokes were mangled, which made riding difficult. I walked the bike up the hill and had trouble explaining to Mrs. Vasos, who had to ride it down again, what had happened. She tapped her temple, indicating that Fedora was crazy in the head and what could you expect? I gave her money to have the wheel repaired, and she went off, the bicycle bumping and veering crazily.

  “After my meal I sat in the arbor, watching the villa and thinking about my ‘interview’ with Fedora. It was likely to be the only one I would get, but what a disappointment. I thought that what in her had once been a witty and endearing irony had turned to bitterness, to petty meanness that was far from the exalted realm where I, to say nothing of thousands of others, had ensconced her. The goddess was a harpy. Still, the familiar famous face haunted me. I thought about the remark I’d overheard about Gloria Swanson’s wrinkles: She hasn’t got them, you know. By my calculation Fedora was at this time in her late seventies; but she looked no more t
han fifty or fifty-five, an incredible manifestation of age retardation. Some years earlier I had done a magazine piece on gerontology and it was inevitable that the name of Emmanuel Vando had come up. It was only in recent decades that further steps had been taken in the direction which the doctor pioneered. In the 1960s it was steroid hormones, in the seventies it’s something they call prostaglandins, or PG, which while naturally derivative from animal glands, has been found to be available through chemical manufacture. These synthetic estrogens, or ‘duplicate compounds,’ as they are known in scientific circles, had been first announced by Vando when he read a paper to the Société de Pharmacopée in Basel shortly after the start of World War II. Rumor and fad and beauty parlor theories had done much to damage his reputation, but the truth was that Pope Pius XII owed his long good health to the injection of substances from cow’s placenta into the bloodstream, while Churchill’s vitality through the stress of the war was claimed to be partially the result of similar treatments. Also, whatever one might say about Vando the mountebank, the fact remained that it was he who had initiated a new phase of scientific inquiry, and if Fedora was a result of his theories, I decided she was a good one.

  “In consequence of our latest meeting, though, I found myself suffering from acute dislike of her cavalier ways, and next morning I was still fuming over the bicycle business. Resuming my watch, I saw that the same daily schedule was in force up at the villa. Kritos came and swept and watered, then, precisely at eleven, the countess was wheeled out and placed under the canopy, where she sat watching the view. Mrs. Balfour came and read to her; the music played from inside. At the end of the hour Fedora appeared and they traded places. Promptly at one the reading ended and the countess was taken inside. I saw no one for the remainder of the afternoon. That evening I ate the dinner Mrs. Vasos had prepared, veal and peppers with the inevitable rice, a salad, and bread, cheese, and wine. I could get tired of Greek cooking, I thought, sitting in my arbor and watching the sunset. When darkness fell, the usual lights shone at the windows up at the villa and I felt depressed. I’d drunk not merely my usual half bottle of wine, but almost a full one, and I was feeling desolate. I wondered what the hell I was doing on that island by myself, without friends or company, all in the name of an interview with someone I’d now taken a violent dislike to, and I made up my mind to call it quits and take the boat to Athens. But then something happened that changed everything.