by Charles Fox
I am not sure what your aim is … you expose a lot of private things, at the same time you are this “special understanding friend.” But in a clan like this, you can only be a “friend” if you serve their interest, and certainly that isn’t done when you make anything controversial public.
You unroll the kidnapping minutely, but seem too cautious to speculate.
I’m somewhat willing to come to see you. But the journey is an exhausting endeavor and as much as I like to see you, it must make sense to me and that it will add to the book. Please write to me your thoughts and what it is you are missing and would like to go after.
Found this little journal from the Rome-times a few days ago. It has a photo with you and me on our terrace in Rome with Anna on my lap.
With love,
Martine
I telephoned her at once. She sounded unhappy, doubtful, hesitant. It wasn’t surprising. I reminded her this was a work in progress, that our discussion was part of the work, and invited her to come and set the record straight. I told her that I had been careful not to intrude, interpret, or speculate. These were not my words. This was not my story. The day after this conversation, there was another e-mail from Martine:
I feel that I was too harsh and projecting, I think that you are right. That I was distraught … and I am still. The book has put me in real upheaval and a lot of anger came up and you are the first one I hit on.
But I also think that you understand that it’s part of a process and I’m even glad because I do feel I have to face my past, my “history” … and you present new information in my somewhat “idealized” version of it … let me know what you think and let’s discuss everything further … I would like to cooperate with you in a positive way.…
I called her the next day and said that what struck me, and what I would like to know from her, is why her voice, apart from those times when I was with her in Rome, was missing once Paul disappeared and she had taken the first letter to Gail. Thereafter, there is no trace of her until Gail invites her to the clinic. I assumed that this was because when we were doing the interviewing, making the transcripts in ’75, the focus was on Little Paul and getting his story, so hers had been eclipsed. She made no answer. Once more I invited her to come to see me and explain what had happened to her voice, why it had disappeared. It would be better if she came to where I was, escaping from all the other demands on her attention. She said she would come and postponed returning to Munich so that she could do so.
It was on a Thursday, a few days later, that she called. She said she would drive up on Friday morning and be with me in the afternoon so we could spend a day talking.
A winter storm was in progress, rain lashing the house, drifting across the lagoon, sometimes heavy enough to obscure the hills. Ducks flew about urgently into the wind.
Los Angeles was being hit by the storm harder than usual. There were reports on the radio of mudslides destroying houses. One such mudslide delayed Martine. She telephoned in the afternoon. She had taken the Pacific Coast Highway and was stuck somewhere south of Big Sur. It was dark by the time she did arrive.
I suggested we go to the studio. She pushed my wheelchair out of the living room onto the deck, sliding the glass door closed behind us. The rain had let up; the night sky was clear. From the marsh came the symphony of frogs. Down the ramp, across the wooden footbridge, to the studio we went, the two of us. Paul was in Ireland somewhere, Jutta in Germany, hopefully fast asleep, the both of them.
In the studio Martine and I sat across from each other, the reading lamp low so that its light rose from the desktop, illuminating her face softly, drawing the pair of us into its close circle. In that light the years dropped away; she was young again, as when I had first come to Rome. The light did not reach far into the darkness. I sensed Paul was there just beyond its edge, where he had stood the last time we were together here.
“What is it you want to know?” Martine chose her words carefully. I repeated my question: Why did her voice disappear immediately after the kidnapping commenced, reappearing only when it was over?
She talked quickly, earnestly:
Jutta is my great love, and no man could ever colonize us. We had each other, and Paul was like a third one. He was so intelligent, fast, so beautiful. Jutta and I wanted to create our lives as a “living theater” and we thought that Paul wanted the same, wanting to get out of the power structure of his family. We wanted to make, the three of us, movies, art. He told us about his father’s castle in Marrakesh, and how fantastic it was. We had pictures of Moroccan castles on the walls. We decided we were going to have artists come and make films together. We had this whole fantasy. But it was more; it was a vision of this life we wanted to create. We wanted to help to create a female world in this sort of tough mafia world, and Paul was the one to help us do it. We had this vision of our “Island of Eternal Happiness.”
At some point, when we were in love, Paul came to me and said, “I know the right people, I’m going to have myself kidnapped, then we can get a castle in Morocco.” Jutta and I were afraid, but we thought it was more talk, like our vision of a different world. We needed money for our vision. At least, we thought we did. We thought, “We are the New World, the New People,” and we were going to make something totally great and beautiful with the grandfather’s money.
Like the young generation of that time, we were looking for Utopia, for a world of love. That was the aim, the cause, the Holy Grail for which we did everything. And as children of God, everything, we thought, was allowed.
Paul, coming from a very rich family, had on one side the lawlessness of the super-rich, but also on the other side the new lawlessness of the young quester. He was looking for the new world, and his tragedy was that he got caught between these two forces. He thought that with the means of the old world he could build the new world and cooked up the kidnapping. It was his tragic mistake thinking that with the money we could build our parallel world, “A World of Love and Peace.” He didn’t tell us much about his kidnapping plans, but whatever he told us, we sanctioned. We fell into the same mistake of thinking that any means justifies the end.
Paul wanted to find and be part of the new world. His father, and he is very influenced by his father, had done this already to a certain degree. He married Talitha, a golden hippie, left the old world and its confinements and responsibilities [working for Getty Oil, his four children, stepping into his father’s shoes, etc.]. They went to Marrakesh, living a free life, and that’s where Paul saw it first. Talitha and Big Paul also paid dearly for the same reason, not understanding that in order to live a new life you have to change yourself. I think that’s why they got stuck in drugs that eventually destroyed them and my Paul even more, since he also wanted more and risked more.
He asked me to marry him the day he disappeared because he wanted to reassure himself, that his risk would be worthwhile and that I still would be there.
He is not the only one; many young people of that generation who wanted to build a new world got caught in this mistake. You cannot use the wrong means for the right cause. Also the RAF [the Red Army Faction, another name for the Baader-Meinhof group], who took up arms and went into the violent way of wanting to change the world, became tragic victims of themselves and lost their lives. The revolution eats her own children. You can only build a loving world with love, not by violence.
Only the Kommune 1 [a political group in Berlin and our idols at the time]—and that’s where Rainer, our lifelong friend, comes in—understood deeply that before you change the world you have to change yourself. Within! And they did it, and that distinguishes them from all other political groups and that’s why they were the “Heart of the Revolution.”
Paul knew and understood that and he phoned Rainer a few days before he fell in his coma. They talked about it and Paul had a moment where he wanted to come to Munich to work with him, like we do. But it was too late. He could not stop his self-destruction. He did finally get out of t
he role that was assigned to him, but at the cost of his self-destruction. He still calls Rainer when things get serious and when he needs to get a perspective of his state of being.
We always thought we would work our way through the tunnel into the light. We, of course, had been taking acid. We really thought we were God’s children. We could do anything, play any game, everything was maya, illusion. We saw ourselves as visionaries. We thought Paul was like us. We thought, “He understands, and he can provide it all.” We were going to carry on the sixties.
But after Paul told us he was going to get himself kidnapped, things changed. They started to go well for us. We became a little bit known. After we made the Cocaine pictures, we started to get work. Paul didn’t want to be kidnapped anymore, but they were following him. One night when we were in our apartment, he saw them standing out in the street, waiting, and he threw a chair at them from the window.
He asked me to marry him, then he disappeared.
When he had told us about his kidnapping, Paul had told us never to talk about it. So after he disappeared, we were in this dilemma. If we told the police all that had happened to us, about Ciambellone kidnapping us, they wouldn’t take this kidnapping seriously, and at this point I thought it was very serious. If we tell what we know, then the gangsters would come and kill us, or they would kill Paul. We were really stressed. On one hand we knew the truth, but we didn’t know if it would help the police and if we said one word too much, boom.
A man telephoned us and said, “We are journalists writing about Paul. He is on a boat. He is safe. We want to tell you that.” I couldn’t find any words. Then he asked, “What is the name of the boat?” We said, “We don’t know, you are the one who said he is safe.” He said, “Did you make those photographs with him?” He was talking about the Cocaine picture. This photograph is famous all over the world. I said, “We didn’t get anything from this.” He said, “This was a good idea of yours.” Then he started to talk very tough with us, and he said, “We are police.” And suddenly, there were like twenty police cars and they took us to the questura like we were criminals. They put us in separate rooms and shone light right in our faces. I knew that Jutta wasn’t going to say anything, and Jutta knew that I wasn’t going to say anything. They didn’t know about twins. They tried several things. First, they said I arranged it with Paul, and he’s somewhere on a ship, that we wanted to do it so our pictures would make money. Then they said it was politically related, because we had been in a Communist student organization in Berlin in the sixties, and we did it to buy weapons for the Red Brigade. They assumed we knew where Paul was. They shouted questions at us from the late afternoon through the whole night until early in the morning. It was exhausting. Especially with all the accumulated fear we had. They were finally nice and let us go and told us to stay in Rome.
So we stayed in Rome.
We became really known. We were in the papers. All the attention was very exciting, I can’t deny it. Jutta was together with Mario Schifano, a very big, known, charismatic, beautiful artist. He lived in the palazzo of Dado Ruspoli. He was Jutta’s great love. He was great friends with the whole Bertolucci crowd; they were very interested in making a film with us. We became in a way the hip girls. We were written about in magazines. We were the new type of women looking for new ways to express ourselves, trying to invent a different way of living. We came out of the sixties and we won, maybe not politically but in a cultural, self-finding sort of way. At some point Mario Schifano said to us, “You should get out of this whole Getty thing. You are popular, you are artists, you should have your own lives.” He hated the Gettys. He got us a hotel and said, “You go into hiding, no reporter will find you.” So we stayed in this grand hotel, in August, very huge. It was Ferragosto, so everyone had left Rome, and we were alone in this enormous hotel. We invited all our friends. Normally we didn’t have any money, but Mario paid for it all. When he got the bill, he asked, “What’s this?” and we said, “You feed us, you feed our friends.” There was a great sense of community and friendship, and we are all one. Then Carlo Ponti called us into his office and wanted to make a film with us, but we were completely disorganized, not reliable. We wanted to be as free as possible, and when you’re free you don’t take any responsibility, make any commitment. Then we moved to the apartment where you met us, with the terrace.
After Marcello told us that they had found that burned-up body on the beach [the Chipmunk], we were really afraid. We were very afraid for Paul. We didn’t hear from Gail and we didn’t hear much from Marcello, until you came. You came at the time they found the body. We were living in this fear, with this kind of guilt, we knew all this stuff and we couldn’t say anything. And at the same time the excitement of being personalities, somebody. We had very exciting lives, and I always felt very connected to Paul. But we weren’t sure what was going on, maybe Paul was safe, maybe he had done it all and we were going to have our castle in Marrakesh. We thought perhaps he was free and the family had taken him away. Then we didn’t hear anything about it except what was written in the newspapers. We had no clue what was going on.
Marcello knew about our vision, but he never mentioned it during the kidnapping. I didn’t trust him one bit. Maybe he was harmless, but I always thought that he had got Paul mixed up with the malavita. He said he tried to keep Paul away from them.
Then one morning, in the winter, I went to the train station. I wanted to go to Germany to visit Anna, my daughter, and my parents for a couple days. I didn’t tell the police I was leaving Rome. I purchased a ticket and waited for the train. I bought a paper and saw the picture of Paul’s ear. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I sat down on a bench. I was shaking. It seemed so unbelievably cruel. I thought, How is Paul going to survive this? How can anyone go through so much pain and fear and everything? I sat on the bench for a very long time. The train came and left and I went back home and laid down. I got very depressed. Still no word from Paul’s family. We went to the Sorrento Film Festival in December. Fassbinder, he was one of the icons of the political movement in Germany, he was going to be there and he was going to make a film with us. While we were there Marcello called us and told us Paul is free and he wants to see us. Jutta and I said, “Let’s pack up and let’s go back to Rome.” So we went up to our room and when we came down with our bags we met Fassbinder in the lobby. He wanted us to come with him. There was this instant. There was this feeling that we were choosing our future lives. Paul was free—Fassbinder was waiting. We decided to go to Rome.
Jutta and I are very defensive about Paul. He is part of us. We don’t want to shed any bad light on him. But I think I have a kind of fantasy about him that I blend out the really heavy stuff. Because of what he was and the speed of his mind, one wanted him to be more than he was. He was like a promise. Morocco was disastrous for him. He was highly intelligent, highly sensitive. He wanted to be with his father, and what his father was doing was all wrong. He was neglected and spoiled at the same time. We were all in the same boat. We all paid a high price. Paul paid the highest price.
* * *
She fell silent, finished. I spun on. A pattern was forming in the mosaic. Munich, Munich, Munich. It had kept cropping up in both her account and Gail’s. The Munich gang Gail said they had almost paid a ransom to. When she began talking about Paul organizing his own kidnapping to finance the art, it fit with my idea of what had happened, but now something very different was emerging and I looked at Martine anew. Had I been wrong? Was it the haywire politics of the sixties, the German Red Army Faction, the Baader-Meinhof? Was that what Little Paul, at sixteen, so sure of himself, had been swept up by—Kommune 1, Rainer Langhans [Martine’s guru], Uschi Obermaier, Munich? Sex, the rejection of bourgeois values, it was all there. Had these people made a plan, released the idea into the world? They needed money; revolutionaries have their expenses. If it had been these people, they must have been surprised when they quickly realized, in Munich, there was suddenly and si
lently another player on the field, the Calabresi mafia, and that they were in a race for Little Paul, or rather his grandfather’s money. The mafia had gotten to Little Paul first. He had been, as Bob Dylan put it, “a pawn in the game,” nothing but a name, as he himself had said. Had he been a naïf caught between the old and new eras, cultures and criminals, Baader-Meinhof and Calabresi, the sixties and seventies, between the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper and David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs, between Easy Rider and A Clockwork Orange? What chance had he, the son of those who imagined, as Fitzgerald said, that they were different, that wealth might also buy license to break natural law without penalty? No wonder the Munich group had been so persistent and the Calabresi had been so worried that the ransom would go to Munich.
Now I began to wonder if Little Paul had boasted to the Munich group that he knew people who would stage the kidnapping on their behalf and that he had then approached the Chipmunk, a Napoletano cigarette smuggler who in turn had approached his friend Piccolo, a bandy-legged Calabrian Lambretta mechanic connected with kidnappers. If, unbeknownst to anyone, Piccolo had sold Paul to the Calabrian mafia. Paul had then changed his mind, but it was too late. The mafia had already picked up his scent and were coming for him.
He had proposed marriage to Martine in Piazza Navona the night he disappeared because he knew they were coming for him; Martine herself had said as much. So even before it began it must have been a nightmare for Paul. He had been out of his depth, gotten it all wrong. Haves and have-nots became their opposites and thus they were one and the same; Little Paul had become caught between them, between left and right, have and have-not, between two parties who attached to money more strongly than to life itself.
The Calabresi had murdered the Chipmunk to cut him out of the deal. Piccolo was the villain, as far as I could see. He had betrayed them all. Paul had first recognized him as he had been carried out of the car in the beginning, identified him again at the cutting of the ear, and surely it was Piccolo, short, bow-legged, as Chace described the man, who had come out of the bushes, waving a gun when the money was handed over. Piccolo was there all along.
