What falls away : a memoir

by Farrow, Mia, 1945-

  I didn't get to know Paul well, but I was friendly with his girlfriend, Jane Asher, a freckle-faced, redheaded actress who, like Patti Harrison and Patti's younger sister, Jennie, was roughly my age. They were not noticeably serious about meditating; and for me, a slight de-escalation of the intensity of the previous weeks came as a welcome relief.

  Now, on the rocky Ganges shore, the Beatles played their guitars and sang, and we talked, and for some extended moments the heaviness that had settled around me lifted. They were in the land of light, and of youth, strength, and certainty; they seemed beautiful and fearless. Not since high school had I spent time with people my age. It was 1968, an exciting time to be young, but the feeling persisted that I was on the outside, always either too old or too immature. Chilling were the times when I caught myself pretending to be my own age.

  The flat roof of our puri, in the hours when it caught the late-afternoon sun, was a good place to get warm, and read, talk, or meditate, and for George to practice his sitar. I had given up trying to meditate for twelve hours a day and was pleased when I could manage six. But Prudy was meditating

  continuously, and no longer appeared at meals (we left a plate outside her door) or at the evening lectures. Finally, she did not leave her room at all. Even in our setting, this was extreme.

  The ashram seemed a cheery place now, in the spirit of the flower-child sixties. The Beatles were everywhere and so was their music. They even brought their guitars to meals and improvised songs. I heard no complaints from the meditators: our eclectic group had bonded, Beatles and all. Then a self-important, middle-aged American woman arrived, moving a mountain of luggage into the brand-new private bungalow next to Maharishi's along with her son, a bland young man named Bill, People fled this newcomer, and no one was sorry when she left the ashram after a short time to go tiger hunting, unaware that their presence had inspired a new Beatles' song—"Bungalow Bill."

  In response to several frightening, emotional eruptions that occurred during the long hours of meditation, Mahari-shi appointed sets of "team buddies" to look out for one another. Prudence's "buddies" were George and John, and they took their responsibility seriously. Every morning and most afternoons they met in Prudy's room, where they discussed their respective lives, the meaning of existence, and who Maharishi really was.

  "I just wanted to meditate as much as possible," Prudence told me. "It was a special time, and such a holy place. One night when I was meditating, George and John came into my room with their guitars, singing, *Ob la di, ob la da, life goes on, naninani.' Another time John, Paul, and George came in singing *Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,' the whole song! They were trying to be cheerful, and it was so sweet of them. I was grateful, but I wished they'd go away. At first I don't think they realized what the tram-ing course in meditation was all about. They were just having fun. They didn't quite understand until later."

  No one is ever indifferent to Prudence. When the

  frames on her glasses broke—"It's like I'm underwater without them," said Prudy—Paul spent a long time fiddling with a piece of wire and managed to fix them. And when, a day later, they fell apart again, again he wired them together. This went on for some time; Paul's commitment to my sister's glasses was admirable, but it seemed that no matter how he bent that wire, the glasses ended up in pieces.

  Before they left the ashram, Paul and John wrote the song "Dear Prudence" for my sister: "Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play. Dear Prudence, greet the brand-new day . . ."

  "I guess I thought it was really nice, but I didn't know they were going to put it on an album or anything," said Prudy. "I didn't really think about it; it wasn't anything in my mind. Then much later, after India, I heard people saying there was a song. I was really grateful that it was something so nice."

  "Now we will meditate in my 'cave,' " said Maharishi, and I followed him down steep wooden steps into a dark, humid little cellar room that smelled of sandalwood. It was my first time m his cave: there was a small shrine with flowers and a picture of Guru Dev, Maharishi's dead teacher, and a carpet on which we settled ourselves in the lotus position to meditate. After twenty or so minutes we were getting to our feet, still facing each other, but as I'm usually a little disoriented after meditation, I was blinking at his beard when suddenly I became aware of two surprisingly male, hairy arms going around me. I panicked, and shot up the stairs, apologizing all the way. I flew out into the open air, and ran as fast as I could to Prudy's room, where she was meditating of course. I blurted out something about Maharishi's cave, and arms, and beard, and she said, It's an honor to be touched by a holy man after meditation, a tradition. Fur-

  thermore, at my level of consciousness, if Jesus Christ Himself had embraced me, I would have misinterpreted it.

  Still, I flung the essentials into my faded cloth shoulder-bag, stuffed passport and money into a pouch hung around my neck, and without a plan, and nothing to lose, I dashed out of the guarded gates headlong into the spreadmg Indian twilight.

  The next weeks had the quality of a long hallucination —sometimes blurred, sometimes jaggedly sharp. I walked and rode and hitched, I traveled in buses, cars, trains, an elaborately hand-painted truck, a bullock cart, rickshaws, a steamer, and an airplane. I crossed bridges and waded through streams, I wandered along peaceful country roads past rippling mustard yellow fields, and through the slums of Calcutta; I slept in hotels, huts, and dives; I rode an elephant, killed cockroaches the size of mice, and kicked a rat clear across a room. I saw the lacy Taj by moonlight, and by day I explored countless temples, monasteries, and palaces. At ninety-five pounds, with my cropped hair, I dressed and looked like a boy, and that seemed a useful thing throughout my travels. I wasn't afraid, but I was lonely; and when I begged my brother Johnny, who was back in California, to come on a great adventure, he did.

  It wasn't even light when I jolted awake, feeling something fumbling at my neck. The woman who had given me bread the night before was now laughing into my face. Quickly, I traced the outlines of my passport and traveler's checkbook still inside the pouch. The woman was making signs that she only wanted to touch my hair, unusual blond hair, but I was already backing out of the hut; it wasn't until I noticed her fingers missing—not in a neat, clean way—that I began to run. The river was shockingly cold. With my bar of Ivory soap, I scrubbed the leprosy off.

  In southern Goa, the white sand beach was completely

  deserted except for a barefooted, bearded young man who was walking toward us wearing faded, sawed-off jeans and a T-shirt, and carrying an empty bucket. We recognized, in a flabbergasting coincidence, our brother Patrick's closest friend. Along with another neighbor from Beverly Hills, he'd been living on this beach in a lean-to made from palm fronds. At their invitation, and lacking any better plan, we decided to stay awhile, and assumed our share of the household chores, which included walking a couple of miles into town to buy food and sodas in the marketplace, cooking supper on an open fire, washing our clothes in boiling sea-water, drawing fresh water from the town well, and a brand-new skill, rolling fat hashish joints.

  We went through our daily routines with little if any conversation, to the tuneless, woody wails of our host's flute. The weather was hot, the water was warm, and the days passed in a haze of hash, until one morning when my brother and I were out swimming just beyond the surf, a large fin sliced the water between us. Like cartoon whirligigs, we churned through the surf until we were safely back on the sand. As we sat, panting, I glanced at Johnny and saw (as I had a thousand times before) our father's ocean blue eyes fixed upon the waves. After a long moment, my brother quietly said, "I want my razor-sharp mind back."

  The next day, we left: our friends in Goa. I didn't have the slightest idea where to go, or what to do, or how to go about it. But it was time to make a decision. I considered staying in India, but as much as I liked it, I did not feel at home there.

  So thinking. This is only temporary, I telephoned my agent, who'd been trying t
o contact me about a movie to begin shooting immediately in England. In a Calcutta hotel room I read the script, dawdled awhile, then phoned my assent, knowing that with this job, a busy and protected life would take shape around me, albeit temporarily, and this time it would be in London.

  G liapt er S ev e

  n

  The movie was Secret Ceremony^ directed by Joseph Losey. EUzabeth Taylor and I were set to play a delusional mother and daughter, and my father's old pal, Robert Mitchum, was cast as my father. Peggy Ashcroft and Pamela Brown played the batty aunts. The movie people dyed my hair soot black, hoping to create any slight resemblance between myself and ravishing, raven-haired Elizabeth Taylor. When that failed to do it, I wore a long dark wig.

  Frank, who was in Miami, had invited me to stay in the vacant flat in Grosvenor Square. The idea made sense, and was appealing because I imagined I'd feel less cut off from him. But m fact, staying in the apartment where we had lived as newlyweds returned me to Frank's world, and I began to miss him even more acutely.

  I had been in London for nearly two weeks but we had not yet begun filming. I couldn't sleep at night despite the prescription sleeping pills and I spent my days in bed. Although I

  often felt claustrophobic, I couldn't bring myself to go outside. The plump English doctor gave me stronger pills. The disorder in my mind, and mounting depression, reached a crescendo, and finally that same doctor was standing beside my bed asking what "a rolling stone gathers no moss" meant. When I had no reply, he checked me into a clinic. I spent three days there, heavily medicated, before Barbara arranged my escape: I pulled my coat off the wire hanger, slipped into my shoes, and as a nurse dropped her trayful of tea, we climbed out the window and down the fire escape.

  "If you kill yourself," said Barbara, "I'll never forgive tf you.

  Within hours, I was in Miami. It was a hot and humid night as the taxi drew up to the Fontainebleau Hotel. A giant sign said FRANK SINATRA in lights, and all the way out on the driveway I could hear the band playing, "It's my kmd of town, Chicago is . . ." He was standing in that familiar smoky light with his tuxedo and microphone and hair and black tie.

  Through a restless night we dredged up our regrets and loosed them on each other. The old dreams roused themselves too, and choked the sky with their changing forms. By morning we had spent everything, and we fastened ourselves together with shaking promises.

  The next day or the day after, I went back to London. We agreed we'd finish our respective movies. Then we would see. I moved out of the London flat and into a rented cottage in the country, near George and Ringo. Frank and I spoke regularly on the phone, and we wrote to each other, and I turned my attention to work.

  The mere presence of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in London was creating a stir. In a studio adjoining ours, Richard Burton was making Where Eagles Dare, and the

  two companies had synchronized the couple's schedules. They were living in a sizable section of the Dorchester Hotel, while Elizabeth's numerous little dogs, who were not permitted to enter the country because of quarantine laws, could be visited on the Burtons' yacht, moored in the Thames for that purpose.

  Workday lunches with the Burtons took place in a restaurant near the studios and generally lasted about two hours. Without fail, Elizabeth saw to it that I was invited to lunch and any other event she thought I might enjoy. "I feel protective of you," she recently told me. "I always have."

  I was night-shooting the week my mother came to visit me in the country cottage. So I wasn't there when two men came and broke our windows, and turned the house inside out. They tied up my mother, and pulled the rings off her fingers, even the engagement ring from my father that she never took off. The next day I took her to Cartier, and while she cried I bought her a new ring. It had been my ring the thieves were really searching for, the diamond engagement ring Frank had given me; and my mother hadn't known it was right there, in the case with my glasses. Soon after, I sold it and the diamond koala bear and the rest of the jewelry and gave the money away.

  Secret Ceremony also took us to Holland, where we filmed in an immense, decaying seaside hotel. In the off-hours I rode horseback on the beach, and Bob Mitchum wrote beautiful little poems on shreds of paper. Every evening we all gathered in the lounge where Richard Burton recited his many favorite verses in a golden voice. As he drank, he became more and more disrespectful toward his wife. But Elizabeth always held her own, and even when he turned mean, she was so good-natured that she kept the rest of us laughing. At the start I was in awe of Elizabeth—I'd seen every film she'd made since National Velvet. Now, working with her, I experienced her legendary loyalty, her generosity, and her down-to-earth humor. Bob, Elizabeth, Joe, and I

  became friends and shared good times, and in the process I grew stronger.

  My friendship with Joe Losey continued through the years; he was the most tortured man I'd ever met, and one of the most sensitive. After we finished Secret Ceremony, I reconnected with my old friends: Maria Roach, Dali, Ruth, Liza, Lenny Gershe, and Yul. After a few months, although I loved Frank no less, I began to believe that we should not be looking for a future together.

  I wish I could tell my children that throughout the sixties I was busy fighting bigotry, but it wouldn't be true. Events in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Jackson were a long way from Beverly Hills. My all-white consciousness began to awaken after I read Letter from the Birmingham Jail, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s eloquent expression of his moral philosophy. Dr. King's dream and the civil rights struggle roused my own slumbering social conscience.

  During the summer of 1968, while I was filming Secret Ceremony in London, Rosemary's Baby was released and became the number one movie in the country. Its success, and my own too, were abstractions that translated into surprisingly little satisfaction.

  I managed to dodge my divorce from Frank until August 1968; after I returned to California, his people arranged for the proceedings in Mexico—I don't know why. On the morning of the seventeenth, Mickey Rudin and I were the only passengers aboard the Learjet. I sat as far away from him as the compact plane would permit, but when our eyes met by chance, I smiled so as not to hurt his feelings. He shuffled through papers or lay, moist and heavy in his seat, with his tie loosened and his eyes closed. I fiddled with a large hole in one of my sleeves. The sun and salty sea of Goa had faded the once-yellow cotton shirt to a wheat color. My worn-out sandals had taken me clear across India

  and through the damp months in England. But shopping never got any easier, and I wore a thmg until it was in tatters. It crossed my mind that maybe people got dressed up for divorces—I didn't know.

  At the Juarez airport, a fast-talking little man in tinted glasses and a shiny suit sprang out at us. After flinging a perfunctory nod in my direction, he then referred exclusively to Mr. Rudin.

  As if it were an emergency divorce, we flew into town and came screeching to a halt in front of a nondescript office building. From the paparazzi outside I could tell this was the place. Once mside I asked, Where's the bathroom? and I threw up. I was then taken to a fair-sized room crammed to the ceiling with the press and their artillery. A well-lit desk held center stage as if sitting, illogically, in a boxing ring. I was cowering, backing up, even as someone pushed me into the room toward the desk. For scariest occasions I don't wear my glasses; now I also flipped my eyes out of focus. Fuzzy cartoon papers materialized on the table in front of me. A pen leaped into my hand. The walls were a tangle of metal, glass, lights and flesh that whirred, clicked, flashed, and hurled bold questions in foreign languages. The floor shook so badly I could barely form a signature.

  And that, more or less, was that. The day had the hurried, rancid flavor of a backstreet abortion or a high-stakes cockfight, and it left an imprint of deep personal shame. Apart from the bathroom request, I don't think I said anything at all on the Juarez trip. Mr. Rudin didn't try to talk either. The last time I laid eyes on him we were reentering L.A. from the airport. By then he was chat
ting a blue streak to the driver: traffic was bad, practically at a standstill (galloping hooves, the rush of wings). On the freeway, I stepped out of the car, closed the door politely behind me, and hitched a ride to Frank's.

  By the time I got there Mr. Rudm had called and put a

  negative spin on how I had gotten out on the freeway and disappeared into some stranger's car. Frank was so mad he seemed to have forgotten all about the divorce, so finally I said, Well, we're not married anymore, so I guess I can hitchhike if I want; which calmed him down and after a while everything was okay. Still, I was careful not to stay too long.

  I was living, for the moment, in the crumbling, single-room coffeehouse formerly occupied by my brother Patrick and his family. My encyclopedias were stacked in boxes on the wooden floor and covered with a madras bedspread to make a table. Like the beach cabin of my early summers, this house too was on a cliff and it faced the sea.

  Again I was without moorings in an unfamiliar world, but by then unfamiliarity had itself become the familiar, and the late sixties was unlike any other time. In the inflamed idealism of my generation, things almost made sense —pieces came together to form one vaguely comprehensible whole, and in response to it, fragments of myself were drawn together too, and the heavy numbness began to lift. Light and feeling flooded the dormant parts as they struggled to become one.

  This new me celebrated spring and sought the center of each moment. I marched against the war in Vietnam, and sang new songs, and went wherever anyone was kind enough to invite me. Along the way I met writers, artists, rock stars, movie stars, revolutionaries, folksingers, and regular folks. I saw them all as teachers who awakened a vision of countless thousands of golden threads streaming, spinning, weaving through time and space, connecting all of humanity, creating a shimmering cloth, a fragment of Being, through which we could transcend our separate selves to touch an infinite whole.