Around the World With Auntie Mame

by Dennis, Patrick

  “Cutup?”

  “Si, si,” I said, reveling in my pidgin Italian. “Cutup. You know—knife. Grosso coltello.” That was enough to send him hotfooting to the nearest telephone.

  I settled down in the gondola to wait for Cousin Elmore. He wasn’t long in coming, this time loaded down with ominous-looking packages and followed by three men in black.

  “My, you must have bought quite a lot,” I said as Elmore got into the gondola. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that we were now leading a grim little convoy of three boats.

  “Ah sure did,” Cousin Elmore said smugly. “Theah all stunts Ah got planned foah the party tomorrah. Look, Ah’ll show yew one—but jest this one.” Reaching into a bag he brought out the deadliest-looking .45 automatic I’ve ever seen.

  “Hey, be careful,” I said.

  “Don’t be scared, kiddo. It’s on’y a squirt gun. But now let me take some photos an’ then we’ll have lunch. Know what Ah’d like? A lotta gnocchi an’ some coffee-oh-lay. Hahahahahaha! Now, where’ll we go so’s I kin git some good shots, kiddo? You know this town.”

  Flushed with my earlier triumphs and seeing the boats still behind us, I pushed my luck hard. “How about getting some pictures of the Casermette?”

  “The what?”

  “The Casermette. That’s Italian for you know what kind of house, Cousin Elmore. Plenty of hot stuff. All the big guns go there. Ha hahahahaha!” Oh, let me tell you, I was really killing myself.

  “Yeah?” Elmore said with a hot gleam in his little pig eyes.

  “Sure. You can tell all your lodge about it. Get some really great pictures. Let’s go. The Casermette,” I called to the gondolier.

  With Elmore brandishing his new gun, we made a half-circle of the island and, the three motorboats still following, pulled up to the big, bleak barracks near the Fondamenta Nuove. “Don’t look like much,” Elmore said, getting out his camera and light meter, and standing up in the gondola.

  “Oh, but wait till you see the inside,” I said.

  “Ah cain’t seem to git it in focus,” Elmore said. Then the three boats began to swoop down on us. “What the hell?” Elmore asked, rocking the gondola fearfully.

  “Oh, oh,” I said. “It’s the Italian Communists. A regular maffia. Better swim for it, Elmore.” I gave him a slight push. There was a fearful splash. “Home,” I said to the gondolier.

  Back at the house the servants were on the verge of hysterics and every drawer in every room had been ransacked. From what I could understand, the Gerarchi, the Balilla, the Avangardisti, the Giovani Italiana, the Figlia della Lupa—every fascist save Mussolini himself—had been through the place during the last hour and had finally left empty-handed. Elmore’s room had suffered the most thorough going over. However, the place was put to rights before Auntie Mame returned, still seething.

  “Well,” she said, “what are you looking so pleased about, Judas Iscariot? I suppose you’re going to tell me that you pushed Cousin Elmore into the canal and we’ll never see him again. Is that it, Suet Pudding?” she asked caustically.

  “How right you are, Alum Cake. We won’t see Elmore until the Armageddon. And that reminds me, Armageddon kind of sick of your stinking attitude. Hahahahahaha! I didn’t ask him here, you did and . . .”

  “Oh, shut up! I know it isn’t your fault, but if I don’t get him out of here, I think I’ll . . .”

  “But this time, it’s been done, Auntie Mame.” Then I told her what had happened.

  Auntie Mame laughed until the tears came. She hugged me and kissed me and hustled to the telephone to call Bella. “Tomorrow,” she said, “is going to be an evening that all Venice will remember. At last Elmore’s gone and my darling Patrick did it all. Get out your glad rags, Bella, tonight I’m going to give a party in Patrick’s honor. He’s saved me, saved me, saved me!”

  Auntie Mame gave a dinner party for me at the Casino with both Axel and Marcantonio dancing attendance. I got kissed by a pretty girl named Marina who said that I was cuter than Mickey Rooney, and when we got back to Auntie Mame’s house at three in the morning there was still no sign of Cousin Elmore. “He’s gone, my little love,” Auntie Mame sighed happily, “and tomorrow night at the party I’m going to give you a divine new uncle. Both Axel and Marcantonio asked for my hand tonight. So now I’ve got two to choose from.”

  I was just about to tell her that she really had a choice of three, if she’d like to consider Cousin Elmore. But she looked up at the clock and said, “Heavens! Look at the time! I’ll be a sight tomorrow if I don’t get my beauty sleep. Good night, my little love. Auntie will never forget what you’ve done for her.”

  I AWOKE LATE THE FOLLOWING MORNING WITH THE household in an uproar. There were men on the roof setting up fireworks, men in the cortile laying a dance floor, men putting up a band shell, floodlights, and Renaissance garlands. In the kitchen the caterers were quarreling with the servants and there was already talk of mutiny because the waiters had seen the Renaissance costumes which Auntie Mame and Bella had planned for them—black tights with white appliquéd cod-pieces, black-and-white harlequin tunics. Auntie Mame was off at the hairdresser’s being pummeled and pounded, crimped and enameled for the big evening. There was still no sign of Cousin Elmore—not even so much as a request for bail—and I happily wrote him off as lost in action. Then I rolled over again and went back to sleep.

  By the time I’d finally got up, bathed, and shaved, the orchestra—also Renaissance—was down below practicing such pseudo-Italian favorites as “The Isle of Capri” and “The Piccolino.” At dusk all the lights went on amid loud cheers. Then they went off, accompanied by loud cursing. Finally they went on again and stayed on. Looking out of the window, I saw Bella’s gondola charging downstream toward Auntie Mame’s door, so I got into my costume—a matter of seconds. Since I don’t go much for costume parties, I had chosen comfort over style. I went as a monk in a long white terry-cloth beach robe with a hood. Tied with a black rope and with sandals it looked reasonably authentic, and worn, as it was, over nothing, it was a lot cooler than the velvet doublet-and-hose outfits that prevailed that night.

  I got down in time to greet Bella, who marched in looking like a tub of spoiled ricotta cheese, enveloped in white damask and ermine tails. “My God,” she said as she saw me, “Fra Lippo Lipschitz!” I was too tactful to reply. But then Auntie Mame swept down the stairs, delectable in black velvet sewn with pearls. The orchestra struck up a rousing Renaissance rhumba and the party was officially on.

  Three hours later it was even more on. There were better than five hundred guests, not counting the Life photographers and gate crashers. Everybody who was anybody in Venice had dug up some sort of black-and-white Renaissance rig to come to the party in. Auntie Mame was whirled off her feet, what with Marcantonio, dashing and very Italianate in striped hose and white linen, dancing with her whenever Axel, looking like a blond Hamlet in slashed black wool, wasn’t. It was almost midnight before I got to dance with her myself.

  “Having fun?” I asked.

  “Oh, darling, more than I’ve ever had at any party before. And I have only you to thank.”

  “Made up your mind about my new uncle yet?”

  “Oh, Patrick, that’s the awful part of it. I can’t. They’re both so divine. So divine, in fact, that I’ve decided to ditch them entirely. I’m still too young for any permanent entanglements. Heavens! It’s almost time for the fireworks. I must ask Bella if she . . .”

  “Mame!” Bella’s raucous voice called out. “Mame!” I could see a mountain of white with bobbing ermine tails forcing her way through the dancers. “Ducky!” Bella cried when she got to us. “Do you see what I see?”

  Our gaze followed her trembling forefinger, and there, coming down the stairs, was Cousin Elmore, got up like nothing human. His costume—I can never forget it—was an old union suit, one leg ineptly dyed yellow, the other green. His middle was wound in a plaid muffler, his stomach bulging below it, while above he spo
rted a billowing magenta rayon cowboy shirt with bells insecurely attached to its lavish fringes. A ruff of toilet paper encircled his neck and on his head he wore an orange balaclava helmet, streaming with dowdy ribbons.

  “Patrick Dennis,” Auntie Mame said through white lips, “you told me that . . .”

  “And it was true, Auntie Mame,” I said, still not quite believing what I had seen. “I swear to God it was. Wait, I’ll get rid of him.” In ten paces I was across the floor and propelling Cousin Elmore into a cloakroom. “Cousin Elmore,” I said, “what in hell are you doing here?”

  “Ah came on wings of love. Ah escaped from the jail. An’ Ah knew that if Ah came here when Mamie was holdin’ this masquerade party, nobody’d evah notice me.”

  “Nobody’d notice you?” I said, eying his costume. “You’ve got to get out of here. It isn’t safe. You’re wanted by the police.”

  “Ah know it. Ah’m goin’ an’ Ah’m takin’ Dollfeather with me. Yuh know what they thought when they arrested me theah in the wateh?”

  “I haven’t the faintest notion,” I said, averting my eyes.

  “Well, Ah’ll tell yew. They thought Ah was a Red ! An’ yew know why? It’s because of all that foreign riffraff that’s always hangin’ around Mamie. That Marcantonio, he’s a wop, ain’t he?”

  “He’s an Italian,” I said icily.

  “Well, he ain’t even in favor of Mussolini. What kind of Eyetalian is that?”

  “An intelligent one, you damned fool. Nobody in his right mind would be for Mussolini.”

  “An’ that Axel. He’s a Socialist. Prob’ly got a bomb on him right now. Jest imajun, a Socialist!”

  “So’s the whole Swedish cabinet, you bloody nincompoop. It happens to be a Social-Democratic country.”

  “That’s just what Ah mean. Reds an’ Bolsheviks, the whole lot of ’em. Why, when Ah told ’em down at the jail about all these radicals and revolutionaries and spies hangin’ around Mamie they carried on somethin’ terrible. Course Ah couldn’t understand their lingo. So Ah got a boat outside—to save yoah auntie.”

  “Everybody in Venice has got a boat outside this house tonight, you loudmouthed slob!”

  “P-Patrick,” Auntie Mame said, floating toward us. “The man at the door says that there’s some sort of official . . .”

  “Dollfeather,” Elmore blubbered, “Ah come on wings of love to save yew. Ah know yew cay-uh foah me an’ Ah . . .”

  “Old Jabberjaws here has shot off his big mouth to the Fascisti and God only knows what stupid lies he’s told that pack of Black Shirts. But you can be sure that he . . .”

  “Cupcake, Ah on’y told ’em that . . .”

  I’ll never know exactly what Cousin Elmore did tell them. At that moment armed Black Shirts burst in at every door. There was a blast of a whistle and then all the lights went off.

  “Mamie,” Elmore called, “come with me!” He reached out and grabbed my arm, tugging at it. With my free arm I swung out, connecting, I guess, with Elmore’s potbelly. Free at last, I caught Auntie Mame by the hand. “Come on,” I said, “we can get out the side way. There’s a window right over the water.”

  “Oh, Patrick! My party . . .”

  “The party’s over. Come on!”

  We jumped into the first boat we could find, a trig motor launch.

  “This’ll do,” I said. “We can always send it back in the morning.”

  “Do you know anything about running one of these, Patrick?” Auntie Mame whimpered.

  “More or less.” I started the motor with a resounding roar. The boat backed up and crashed into the foundations of Auntie Mame’s house. There was a lot of shouting and yelling. I poked something and the boat shot forward, throwing both Auntie Mame and me to the floor boards. Struggling there in our voluminous costumes, I heard a lot of yelling and cursing and faint but definite splintering of wood. Then I was back at the wheel and we were free of the mass of boats around the pink palazzo and headed straight for Isola di San Giorgio, just as the pink and blue fireworks began exploding off Auntie Mame’s roof.

  “Should we try to make it all the way to Yugoslavia?” I asked dubiously.

  “I th-think not, darling. Mal de mer, you know. Why don’t you just try to get to the station. We’ll think of something there.”

  “I’d better keep off the Grand Canal and go by back ways. That is, if I can.”

  “I do hope you can, my little love. I’m rather weary of Venice. So—so damp,” she added, as a wave splashed over the side of the boat. “This is such a peppy craft, so much faster than a gondola. I wonder who owns it?”

  “There’s something painted on the side,” I said. “See if you can make it out while I slow down and get my bearings.”

  When the next barrage of pink and blue rockets lit up the skies, Auntie Mame leaned precariously out of the boat to read its inscription. “Oh, Patrick,” she said, “it says that it’s the property of the Venetian Police Department.”

  “Oh my God!” I gasped, giving the throttle a jab that fairly lifted the fast boat out of the water. We roared forward into the night, churning up a wide, white wake behind us. I saw Auntie Mame’s hair blow wildly in the cool wind. I looked again and saw that she was smiling. Then she began to laugh.

  “Don’t think this is any big comedy, Dollfeather,” I bellowed over the roar of the motor.

  “It’s a riot—in every sense of the word—Cupcake,” she yelled back. “I think we’ll catch the next train for Austria— Vienna, I guess. After all, Vienna lot of trouble. Hahahahaha ha!”

  “You’re damned right we are and don’t forget that this is a police state, we’re driving stolen property, and you’re the hottest thing in Italy. We’ll probably get a gallon of castor oil apiece when they catch us.”

  “Nonsense, my little love.” Auntie Mame laughed. “In Italy what could be better—a police boat with a monk at the helm. Why, I couldn’t be safer with Il Duce himself. Now, off to the station. Precipitevolisimevolmente!”

  Auntie Mame in Her Mountain Retreat

  “AND OF COURSE WE WENT TO AUSTRIA,” I SAID. “Auntie Mame was violently anti-Nazi and refused to go near Germany. However, you never used to run into that sort of thing in Austria—at least not in 1937.”

  “Austria seems an odd place for a woman like your aunt to visit. What was she up to?”

  “My aunt is a jewel of many facets,” I said pompously. “Actually she was interested in a real-estate venture and made quite a pretty penny during her Austrian visit. It was also very healthy for both of us, as we spent most of our time high in the Tyrolean alps. In fact, I think I have some snapshots upstairs. I’ll show them to you. Excuse me, dear.”

  I went upstairs and counted to a thousand. At 956 I was saved. The telephone rang. When Pegeen finally finished talking, she’d more or less forgotten about the whole thing. Feeling safer, I took a cautious sip of my drink.

  ACH, MY LITTLE LOVE, ”Auntie Mame said, pushing back from our table at Am Franziskanerplatz, “such a good dinner—Rindsuppe mit Nudeln, Butterteigpastetchen mit Geflügelragout, Rahmschnitzel mit Hausgemachten Nudeln, Essiggurken, and Nussrollade mit Schokoladeüberzug . Too gemütlich!”

  “Kind of fattening, also,” I said.

  “Nonsense, darling. Now be a dear and give me a light. Are you sure you wouldn’t like one of these?”

  “No thanks,” I said. “Lucky Strikes are good enough for me.”

  “Ach, no spirit of adventure.” Auntie Mame poked a cigar at least a foot long into one corner of her mouth, inhaled deeply, and had a frightful coughing fit.

  “Do you really like smoking those stogies?” I asked, knowing that she didn’t.

  “Ja wohl, Liebchen!” she lied. “It’s so utterly Viennese.” She blew a big smoke ring up over my head, said, “ Rechnung, bitte,” to the waiter and, the cigar still clenched between her teeth, began to draw on her long, black gloves.

  In less than a week Auntie Mame had grown more Viennese than the Danube its
elf. She began each morning in her big tufted bedroom in the Hotel Sacher with an early snack of coffee and rolls, then Gabelfruhstuck—which usually included a couple of big sausages, a schooner of beer, coffee, and maybe a side order of goulash—at eleven. That usually held her until she was able to make it to lunch. Around four in the afternoon there was her kleine Jause, which featured coffee, lots of whipped cream, and several dozen pastries. We dined at seven or eight. She spent her days strolling the Ring, saying “ja” and “ bitte” for no reason at all, and going to Farnhamer on the Kärntnerstrasse for a lot of new costumes which were straight out of The Merry Widow. I mean her getups were so very Viennese that even the Viennese stared at her. But as though the picture hats, the plumes, the boas, the muffs, and the ten pounds she had already gained weren’t enough, the big cigars were the newest fillip to transform Auntie Mame into the true Alt Wien gnädige Frau. It was just too much.

  “Now, my little love,” she said, inexpertly flicking an ash, “off to the Volksoper for eine kleine Nachtmusik.”

  “Oh God, what’s for tonight? The Student Prince? The White Horse Inn? Der Zigeunerbaron?”

  “No, Liebchen, it’s Die Pillangóprinzessin. Auf Wiedersehn,” she said to the waiter and tripped out to a waiting taxi in an aura of plumes and cigar smoke.

  Auntie Mame puffed furiously away at her cigar all the long distance to the Volksoper and said, “Alt Wien!” several times. I was quite dizzy from the cigar smoke, and it seemed to me that Auntie Mame was looking a trifle peaked. Nonetheless, she descended from the cab with a twitch of her boa, tossed her cigar butt into the gutter, and minced into the theater, all satin and feathers and saucy light-operatic tosses of her head.

  Die Pillangóprinzessin had already begun, but since I’d been dragged to an operetta every night since we’d arrived in Vienna, I knew just about what to expect. It was the usual Austro-Hungarian strudel about a lovely Graustarkian princess who, in order to avoid marrying the unknown princeling her mean uncle, the regent, is trying to foist off on her, runs off to a quaint alpine village disguised as a goose girl, where she falls in love with a dashing young lieutenant of the guards, little wotting that he is a Graustarkian prince who, in order to avoid marrying the unknown princess his mean uncle, the regent, is trying to foist off on him, runs off to a quaint alpine village disguised as a lieutenant of the guards, where . . . Well, you get the idea.