Around the World With Auntie Mame

by Dennis, Patrick

  “That’s it,” Auntie Mame said, sitting up again. “It’s that gin you serve, Bella Shuttleworth. That poisonous cheap gin!”

  “You’re a God-damned liar, Mame Dennis,” Bella shouted. In moments of emotion the girls always lapsed back into maiden names. “That was the best English gin—straight from London. And if it’s good enough for Neville Chamberlain, it’s good enough for you, ducky. But that isn’t the point. The problem at hand now is how to get rid of this slob.”

  “Exactly, darling, it’s up to you to save me,” Auntie Mame said, and fell back on the bed.

  The rest of the morning was given over to changing Auntie Mame’s compresses, to sporadic plans for the forthcoming Renaissance ball, and to thinking of ways to get rid of Cousin Elmore.

  By noon Auntie Mame was just able to dress for luncheon— and a rather important luncheon, at that, since both contenders for her hand were coming. They arrived punctually at one, and Auntie Mame, looking pale and interesting, urged them and Bella to have cocktails while she stuck to Fernet-Branca and murmured something about a slight indisposition. To round out the party, Auntie Mame had also invited a distinguished German rabbi, a French cardinal, and a Greek poetess said to be the biggest thing since Sappho. Lunch was served in the cortile and almost everything was pink—linen, prosciutto, and wine. Auntie Mame was white, and only toyed with her food, but she turned the color of ashes when, in the midst of a brilliant discussion of Jean Cocteau, she looked up and saw Cousin Elmore making his way noisily across the pavement in his lavender mesh sport shirt and a pair of oxblood Jesus sandals that squealed with every step.

  “Looks good enough to eat,” he said, pulling up a chair right next to Auntie Mame. “Hahahahahaha!” The discussion of Cocteau came to an instant halt.

  However, Elmore Burnside felt right at home in any society and was never at a loss for something witty to say. Within five minutes he had managed indirectly to insult everyone at the table. He polished off Auntie Mame’s two serious suitors, Axel and Marcantonio, with a long dialect story about an Italian and a Swede improvidentially caught in a Turkish bath on ladies’ night. Of Elmore’s fifty thousand old jokes, at least forty-nine thousand depended entirely on the most unlikely circumstances. As an encore he told me about Izzy and Paddy Paddy—a very long story involving mackerel, ham, circumcision, and rosary beads—and that just about took care of the cardinal and the rabbi. I was a little relieved to discover that, owing to their and Elmore’s unfamiliarity with English, they didn’t understand it. I shouldn’t have been. Elmore retraced his steps and painstakingly explained the whole sordid joke with lots of “ Oi wehs” and “Faith and bejazuses.” Auntie Mame went from white to a delicate green.

  Another feature of Cousin Elmore’s great sense of humor was his love of gimmicks. He wouldn’t have been caught dead without some witty appurtenance such as his false nose, his itching powder, his badge that read “Chicken Inspector,” or his electric cane. He doted upon boutonnieres that squirted water, fake roaches that could be slipped into coffee cups, and rubber dog turds. However, one of his favorites was a murky glass bubble which he would insert into one nostril while pretending to blow his nose. When the handkerchief was taken away, the sight was one that made strong men weak.

  “Guess Ah caught mahself a li’l ole cold,” Cousin Elmore said, elaborately whipping out his handkerchief. Then he blew his nose and left the glass bubble protruding horribly from his right nostril. My stomach was already churning, but Auntie Mame saved the day. She rose weakly from the table and fainted dead away. Luncheon could not be said to have been a great success.

  A WEEK LATER AUNTIE MAME WAS AT HER WIT’S END. She had lost ten pounds and twenty friends and still Cousin Elmore stuck to her like glue. Every ruse she and Bella worked out failed dismally; even the trumped-up cable from the Belle Poitrine (“Come Fill the Cup”) Brassière Company of Buffalo—Bella owned the controlling interest—offering Cousin Elmore the sales-managership at fifty thousand a year left him curiously unmoved and unmoving.

  Auntie Mame didn’t like Cousin Elmore in the least, but she made the mistake of dismissing him as merely a big, good-natured oaf, who also happened to be the bore of creation. Bore he was, and oaf, too, but no one who really knew Elmore could possibly call him good-natured. Behind his appallingly hearty façade, behind his endless protestations of being just a country boy, Elmore was deceitful, stingy, bigoted, pig-ignorant, and very, very cruel. During the all-too-many times when I was alone with him and he felt free to cast aside the dubious delicacy which he affected in the presence of women, he regaled me with such jolly reminiscences as a lynching party he once organized in South Carolina; how he had dipped a cat in kerosene and set fire to it; how he had once foisted a shipment of faulty girdles on a Jewish merchant and then reported him to the Chamber of Commerce for selling shoddy goods. When I didn’t laugh he accused me of being dolefully short on humor.

  “WELL, I GIVE UP!” AUNTIE MAME SAID TO BELLA and me on one of the rare occasions when Cousin Elmore wasn’t around. “That braying jackass follows me like a shadow. I can hardly take a bath without having that bloody bore swim up the drain. I’ve tried every way to get rid of him short of suicide.”

  “There’s always murder,” Bella suggested.

  “Don’t think I haven’t considered it. Here I have my choice between two of the most attractive men in Europe and what happens? Every time Axel or Marcantonio invites me out, Cousin Elmore tags along, telling his dreadful old jokes and . . .”

  “Well, I’m glad that you realize it, ducky,” Bella growled, “because now it won’t come as such a surprise when I tell you that socially you’re going to be the deadest duck in Venice if you can’t get rid of that cousin.”

  As though to prove Bella’s baleful prophecy, the telephone rang. It was Axel Falk begging off from the afternoon at the Lido that he and Auntie Mame had planned. Without knowing exactly what, I realized that Something Must Be Done.

  Auntie Mame decided to spend the afternoon at Capellini’s being fitted for her ball costume under the watchful eye of Antonietta. Since Cousin Elmore had once almost caused a riot at Capellini’s by putting on one of Auntie Mame’s hats and wandering in and out of the dressing rooms doing what he considered a riotous imitation of a woman, I took him in hand and dragged him off to the Piazza San Marco for a few beers. He was in his usual grim form, calling Giuseppe the waiter, “Juicy-Soupy,” and saying killing things about leading a dog’s life in the Doge’s Palace. I sat with a stiff, set smile wishing I were dead when suddenly, with his third beer, Elmore became serious. If there was anything worse than a jocular Elmore, it was a serious one. It wasn’t so much how he said things, it was what he had to say.

  “Ah wonder if Dollfeather’s finished orderin’ her dress foah that party she’s givin’?”

  “Oh, no, Cousin Elmore,” I said. “She’ll be there all afternoon—at least. That period ball means a lot to her.”

  “An’ it means a lot to me, too, kiddo. Ah’ve kinda set it as mah deadline.”

  “To leave Italy?” I asked hopefully. “That’s a very good idea. You know the monsoon season starts in Venice just about then—big tidal waves and . . .”

  “No, kiddo, it’s mah deadline with Tidbit—with yoah Auntie Mame. Ah’m already fixin’ mah costume.”

  “You’re not planning to come to the party?”

  “Yes, and Ah’m goin’ as a gesture.”

  “A gesture?”

  “That’s right, son. A court gesture. Lak Ah am in real life. You know, always cheerin’ people up, makin’ ’em laugh, helpin’ ’em forget their troubles.”

  “I—I don’t think you’d enjoy it very much,” I said hastily. “You know, it’s a lot of trouble wearing costumes and . . . besides, I’m not sure that they had court jesters in the Renaissance.”

  “That don’t mattah. Besides, Ah got somethin’ motty important to take up with yoah aunt that night. Ah want to save her.”

  “Save her? Who,
Auntie Mame?” Cousin Elmore in an evangelical role seemed odd, to say the least.

  “That’s right, kiddo. Now tell me the truth, how’dja lak a new uncle?”

  “A new uncle? Why, it really wouldn’t mean much to me one way or another. I’m practically grown up—going to college this year. I suppose Auntie Mame will want to marry again and it doesn’t much matter to me whether she picks Axel or Marcantonio. They’re both . . .”

  “Theah both a couple of dirty foreigners, that’s what they are!” Elmore said with some feeling. “One’s a slick Swede and the other’s a dirty dago. That’s what Ah’m tryin’ to save her from. What Ah’m tryin’ to tell yew is that Ah plan to carry yoah auntie off mahself.”

  “You what?”

  “Yew hudd me. We’re Amurricuns and, what’s more, we’re Burnsides. Ah mean to marry Mamie mahself an’ save her from that sneakin’ Swede and that stinkin’ wop!”

  I was too stunned to speak, but not too stunned to notice a rather evil-looking man in a black uniform eying Elmore from the next table. He wrote something in a notebook. In a flash I began to see a way to get Cousin Elmore out of Venice and out of Auntie Mame’s hair. A band was playing somewhere and I pretended that I hadn’t heard.

  “I’m sorry, Cousin Elmore, but with all that racket I didn’t quite hear what you said about Marcantonio. Would you mind repeating it—just a bit louder.”

  “Ah said he was a stinkin’ wop—just like the rest of these stinkin’ wops, and by Christ Ah hate ’em all.”

  “Thank you, Cousin Elmore,” I said, averting my face just as the man at the next table took a candid camera shot. At that moment the square was filled with sound and color. First came a brass band playing the “Giovinezza,” a sprightly marching air of the Fascisti and then the carabinieri trooped in. In their slightly silly operetta uniforms, their feathered Napoleonic hats, they made for a picturesque though rather inefficient police force.

  “Gawd damn if that don’t look lak one of mah lodge uniforms,” Cousin Elmore said.

  I’ll grant that the carabinieri did look a little like Knights Templar gone gaudy. “What lodge is that, Cousin Elmore?”

  “The Stalwart Sons of the Secession—Lodge Numbah One-one-five. Even sounds lak one of ouah marchin’ songs. It goes lak this:

  “Stalwart Sons of the Secession

  Evah marchin’ to the fo-ah

  Fightin’ Yankees’ crool aggression

  Fo’ the States’ Rights we adoah

  The tune ain’t exackly the same, but it’s close. We Sons have a big convention every year. Why, last year at Chattanooga, Ah raised more hell than innybody in the whole lodge. They all call me the Big Cutup.”

  “What did you do, Cousin Elmore?”

  “Well, hahahahahaha! Ah had mah ee-lectric cane—the same one I got with me heah—an’ Ah’d come up behind these people an’ . . .”

  “You know what I’ll bet, Cousin Elmore,” I said, “I’ll bet these are the southern Italian branch of the Stalwart Sons of the Secession. See that big one there with the sword and the mustache? Why don’t you take your electric cane and . . .”

  The words weren’t out of my mouth before Cousin Elmore and his electric cane were halfway across the Piazza San Marco. I turned to the man in black at the next table and said dramatically, “Anarchisto! Anti-Mussolini!” pointing in the general direction of Cousin Elmore. Then all hell broke loose and I had just time to get under a table.

  IF AUNTIE MAME HAD BEEN, SOCIALLY SPEAKING, A dead duck that afternoon, she was a bird of paradise that evening. With Cousin Elmore carted off to God knew where, she was perfectly free to get up an impromptu gathering with no fear of Elmore’s lousing it up.

  Although I didn’t tell her what had happened, I assured her that Elmore wouldn’t be around for at least twenty-four hours. I didn’t like to think of Elmore undergoing heroic doses of castor oil or mustard enemas or any of the other anal forms of torment so popular with the fascists. But, as Elmore had so often proclaimed, he was an Amurricun citizen, and so he would get off with little more than a fine and sharp reprimand. “Go ahead, Auntie Mame,” I said, “ask anyone you like for this evening. The coast is clear. I fixed everything.”

  “Oh, Patrick darling, you’re an absolute genius,” she said, kissing me on her way to the telephone.

  The company that evening was made up of the few Serious Thinkers in Bella’s and Auntie Mame’s Venetian circle. Aside from Bella and Marcantonio della Cetera, there were the former Chinese ambassador and his wife, a famous Lutheran anti-Nazi, a wounded Spanish Republican aviator, a left-wing Yugoslav lady lawyer, and a Liberian Whig leader.

  Finished with eating, the Serious Thinkers had settled down to Good Talk, which was mostly about the wars raging in Spain and in China and the sorry state of the world. Auntie Mame had a well-furnished mind when she chose to display it and that evening she was being very much the liberal intellectual leader.

  Correct me if I’m wrong, Dr. Chung,” she was saying, “but I had always thought that in the last Chinese election . . .”

  “Yah know when the Chinks have their best elections, Dollfeather?” a voice called out. “Just before bleakfast! Hahahahaha ha!”

  Auntie Mame’s jaw dropped. So did mine. There stood Cousin Elmore, dirty and disheveled. “W-why, C-Cousin Elmore,” she said, giving me a look that should have stunted my growth forever, “I—that is Patrick—I mean I didn’t think you’d be home tonight.”

  “Better late than never, Cupcake. Hahahahaha ha!”

  “Who says so?” Bella growled, gathering up her bag.

  Auntie Mame hurriedly rushed into a flurry of introductions beginning with the Yugoslav woman and adding, “Of course you know Marcantonio.”

  “Ah sure do. Yugo your way and dago theirs. Hahaha hahaha!”

  He called the Liberian “Snowball” once and “Uncle” twice. He greeted the Loyalist aviator with a hot one involving Spanish fly, and said to the Chinese ambassador, “Lissen One-Hung-Low, is it true what they say about Chinese women?” Within fifteen minutes all the guests had left.

  Auntie Mame was so furious that she slammed her bedroom door in my face and wouldn’t give me a chance to explain. But when I turned out my bedroom lights and opened the window I did notice the man in black lurking in the shadows of Auntie Mame’s house. This rather unsettling sight gave me hope for the morrow.

  THE NEXT MORNING AUNTIE MAME WAS UP AND OUT before I even got down to breakfast. I figured that she was either hopping mad or else getting a final fitting for her ball costume, or—more likely—both. It wasn’t long before Cousin Elmore joined me, dressed for the day in a Confederate cap and a scarlet slack suit. Two cameras and a light meter dangled around his neck. “Rooty-tooty, tutti-frutti!” Elmore said, helping himself to oranges and grapes.

  “Would you like an egg?” I asked.

  “Egg-zactly! Then Ah wanna tell yew my programmy foah today. First Ah wanna go out an’ git some things foah mah costume to wear at the party tomorrah. Then Ah thought Ah’d take some photos. An’ then Ah’m gonna hire me a boat.”

  “What do you want with a boat?”

  “Why for when Ah take mah little Cupcake off, right after the big party.”

  “Listen, Cousin Elmore,” I said, “have you, um, discussed this at all with Auntie Mame? I mean I’m not at all sure that she’ll be receptive to such . . .”

  “Now lissin, kiddo, Ah’m a man of the wuld an’ Ah kin tell when a little lady kinda takes a hankerin’ for me. Why, yew saw how she acted the very first time we met.”

  “Auntie Mame, um, wasn’t herself that night,” I said.

  “Besides, I bin motty lonely jes travelin’ in lonjeray. Motty lonely. An’ Tidbit’s been lonely, too. Ah’d lak to settle down, quit sellin’ an’ jes sorta keep an eye on that little lady’s affairs.” I gazed at him quizzically. Cousin Elmore flushed and once again I could almost see the meanness and craftiness of his nasty little soul bubbling up through his veneer of good-fellowship
. “Now lookee here, kiddo,” he said almost angrily and almost as though he were trying to convince himself as well, “Ah’m older’n yew an’ Ah know a lot about the ladies. Ah know it’s me she wants. That’s why she’s tryin’ to make me jealous with all them foreign gigolos. That’s why . . .” Elmore went on and on. Like most men who are supremely unattractive to women, Cousin Elmore was somehow able to find invitation in every insult, a caress in every blow, come-hither in every go-yonder and a yes in every no. “Besides,” he said, “Ah got a way with the gals. Ah happen to of read that famous book How to Keep a Woman Happy. It’s by Ryder Haggard! Ha hahahahaha!”

  Elmore was still going on about his sexual conquests as he parked his big rump in a hired gondola. As I got aboard, I noticed that two men in black were putt-putt-putting slowly behind us in a small motor launch.

  “I’ll wait for you here at the landing,” I said to Cousin Elmore as he made his way toward a dim shop that sold souvenirs and novelties.

  “Okay, kiddo. Ah’d prefer yew not to come. Ah want mah costume to be a big surprise. ’Specially to Dollfeather.”

  “I’m sure it will be,” I said. Then I saw one of the men in black trailing Cousin Elmore. As I reached into my pocket for a cigarette, the other—the man I’d seen the day before—sidled up to me.

  “Who is he?” the man asked in heavily accented English.

  “Buon giorno,” I said. “Who’s who?”

  “Him,” he said, darting his head toward Elmore. “The man in the red shirt.”

  Looking at the man’s black shirt and then at Cousin Elmore’s red one gave me an inspiration. “Don’t tell anybody,” I muttered, “but he’s the leader of the Red Shirts. Sinister.” Then I added what I hoped was an Italian translation. “Sinistro .”

  “Sinistro?” the man said, giving me a piercing look.

  “Si. Molto sinistro.”

  “American?” the man said, writing furiously in his notebook.

  “South American,” I said. “And the leader of the Stalwart Sons of the Secession. They’re very active in keeping the Civil War going. They call him Il Big Cutup.”