Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me Part 9

For the long shot in that scene, Huston used a stunt rider, and for the close-up he put me in a saddle mounted on a pickup truck and photographed me with a lot of fright on my face.

I also got to ride a horse in One-Eyed Jacks One-Eyed Jacks, my first picture after The Young Lions The Young Lions. In its first four years, Pennebaker had spent almost as much money trying to develop a good script for a western as it had on the story about the United Nations, but none of the projects, including a western based on the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo The Count of Monte Cristo, worked out for various reasons. Then I heard about a novel by Charles Neider, The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones, which eventually became One-Eyed Jacks One-Eyed Jacks, one of my favorite pictures. It was the first and only picture I directed, although I didn't intend to. Stanley Kubrick was supposed to direct, but he didn't like the screenplay. "Marlon," he said, "I've read the script and I just can't understand what this picture is about."

"This picture is about my having to pay two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a week to Karl Maiden," I said. I'd signed him for the picture, and each week of delay meant another $250,000 lost.

"Well," Stanley said, "if that's what it's about, I think I'm doing the wrong picture."

I sent the script to Sidney Lumet, then Gadg, then two or three other directors, but no one wanted to do it, so I had to direct it myself. We shot most of it at Big Sur and on the Monterey peninsula, where I slept with many pretty women and had a lot of laughs.

On the first day of shooting, I didn't know what to do, so the cameraman handed me one of those optical viewfinders that directors use to compose a scene. I looked into it, then shook my head and said, "I don't know.... It's hard to tell what this scene's going to look like because it's so far away...."

The cameraman came over and gently turned it around. I'd been looking through the wrong end.

"If you think this is bad, wait until we get to the fifth week," I said and laughed. I wasn't embarra.s.sed, although there were a lot of m.u.f.fled t.i.tters behind me. By the fifth week, and even the fifth month, I was still trying to learn. I thought it would take three months to do the picture, but it stretched to six, and the cost doubled to more than $6 million; naturally this didn't please Paramount, which was paying for it.

I tried to figure out what to do as I went along. Several writers worked on the screenplay-Sam Peckinpah, Calder Willingham and finally Guy Trosper-and he and I constantly improvised and rewrote between shots and setups, often hour by hour, sometimes minute by minute. Some scenes I shot over and over again from different angles with different dialogue and action because I didn't know what I was doing. I was making things up by the moment, not sure where the story was going. I also did a lot of stalling for time, trying to work the story out in my mind while hoping to make the cast think I knew what I was doing.

Maybe I liked the picture so much because it left me with a lot of pleasant memories about the people in it-Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens and especially Karl Maiden, who played Dad. I don't want to do it again-a director has to get up too early in the morning-but it was entertaining to try to create reality, make a story interesting and to work with actors. Sometimes I played tricks on them. In one scene Ben Johnson had an argument with one of his compatriots, then shot him. I didn't like the expression on the other man's face before he was shot because it didn't show a fear of death. I wanted him to show shock and terror, so I said, "Let's rehea.r.s.e this one more time." I put him on a saddle mounted on a piece of wood and, without telling him, kept the camera rolling. I walked over to him and said, "Larry, in this scene I want you to-" Then, boom! I slapped him hard and jumped out of the scene.

He had a wonderful expression on his face, just what I wanted, but I had slapped him so hard that I knocked off his mustache, and so I couldn't use the shot. In another scene I was supposed to get drunk, come in out of the rain and rape a Chinese girl. You can't fake drunkenness in a movie. You can in a play, but not in a close-up, so I figured the scene would work better if I really got drunk. I started drinking about 4:15 in the afternoon of the day I was going to shoot the scene after telling the other actors what I wanted them to do. It has never taken much alcohol to put me over the edge, so in no time at all I was staggering around, grabbing hold of the girl. Unfortunately I was too drunk to finish the scene, so a few days later I got drunk again and reshot it. It still wasn't right, and I had to do it on a number of afternoons until it was right.

When we got back to Hollywood, someone said we had enough footage to make a movie six or eight hours long. I started editing it, but pretty soon got sick of it and turned the job over to someone else. When he had finished, Paramount said it didn't like my version of the story; I'd had everybody in the picture lie except Karl Maiden. The studio cut the movie to pieces and made him a liar, too. By then I was bored with the whole project and walked away from it.

Several years before One-Eyed Jacks One-Eyed Jacks, Tennessee Williams had told me he had written a new play, Orpheus Descending Orpheus Descending, with me in mind to play opposite Anna Magnani. I told him I didn't have any interest in returning to the stage, and Cliff Robertson and Maureen Stapleton played the parts. But when Tennessee and Sidney Lumet invited me to be in the movie The Fugitive Kind The Fugitive Kind, which was based on the play, I was divorcing my first wife and needed money. I was a guitar-playing drifter who wandered into a small town in Mississippi and got involved with an older woman, played by Anna, who had been a powerful actress in the Italian film Open City Open City and later in Tennessee's movie and later in Tennessee's movie The Rose Tattoo The Rose Tattoo. She was a troubled woman who I thought was miscast in The Fugitive Kind The Fugitive Kind.

In a letter to Lady Maria St. Just while we were shooting the picture, Tennessee wrote: "Magnani is obsessed with her age; she thinks that her neck is gone, and they are putting tapes on the back to pull it up and together. She regards this as a terrible insult and yet she rages whenever she sees a neck line in the rushes." Tennessee was also growing more troubled at the time, plunging frequently into fits of depression and using alcohol and pills to pull himself out. What haunted him I don't know, though he was deeply worried about the health of his mother and sister. I've always thought of Tennessee as one of the greatest American writers, but I didn't think much of this play or the movie. Like most great American writers, he turned black people into windowpanes. In The Fugitive Kind The Fugitive Kind, they were rendered almost invisible, as if they were props. Blacks were in the story, but they were incidental figures who had nothing to do with the central themes, just as in A Streetcar Named Desire A Streetcar Named Desire, and it seemed to me a subtle form of racial discrimination. I don't mean to say that Tennessee was insensitive. He was acutely sensitive, but he expressed the prevailing perspective of virtually all American authors. The black experience was all but ignored. No one, I believe, wrote well on the subject until Jim Baldwin and Toni Morrison came along. Hollywood was even worse; the black experience was a topic it never touched unless it was bigoted claptrap like The Birth of a Nation The Birth of a Nation, with its undisguised contempt for black people.

Tennessee warned me that Anna Magnani, who was sixteen years older than me and had a reputation for enjoying the company of young men, had told him that she was in love with me, and before we left for upstate New York to film the picture she confirmed it. After we had some meetings in California, she tried several times to see me alone, and finally succeeded one afternoon at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Without any encouragement from me, she started kissing me with great pa.s.sion. I tried to be responsive because I knew she was worried about growing older and losing her beauty, and as a matter of kindness I felt I had to return her kisses; to refuse her would have been a terrible insult. But once she got her arms around me, she wouldn't let go. If I started to pull away, she held on tight and bit my lip, which really hurt. With her teeth gnawing at my lower lip, the two of us locked in an embrace, I was reminded of one of those fatal mating rituals of insects that end when the female administers the coup de grace. We rocked back and forth as she tried to lead me to the bed. My eyes were wide open, and as I looked at her eyeball-to-eyeball I saw that she was in a frenzy, Attila the Hun in full attack. Finally the pain got so intense that I grabbed her nose and squeezed it as hard as I could, as if I were squeezing a lemon, to push her away. It startled her, and I made my escape.

38.

A FEW YEARS AFTER my mother died in 1953, my father remarried, and at seventy he had an affair with one of my secretaries. He changed little as he grew older; always handsome, always a miser, always a charmer, always a philanderer. He never lost the shyness that people, especially women, liked about him. It was something he came by naturally. Though he was very masculine, he also had a gentleness, humility and quietness that people liked, along with a very genuine sense of humor. He was unsuited to do anything in the movie business, but I had given him a salary, a desk, an office, a secretary and an opportunity to look busy and feel useful. Then one day, without telling me about it, he fired one of my friends. When I heard about it, I went to his office and told him that my friend was not going to be fired, and from somewhere inside me a tidal wave rose, crested and flooded, and I reduced him to a heap of shambling, stuttering, fast-blinking confusion. my mother died in 1953, my father remarried, and at seventy he had an affair with one of my secretaries. He changed little as he grew older; always handsome, always a miser, always a charmer, always a philanderer. He never lost the shyness that people, especially women, liked about him. It was something he came by naturally. Though he was very masculine, he also had a gentleness, humility and quietness that people liked, along with a very genuine sense of humor. He was unsuited to do anything in the movie business, but I had given him a salary, a desk, an office, a secretary and an opportunity to look busy and feel useful. Then one day, without telling me about it, he fired one of my friends. When I heard about it, I went to his office and told him that my friend was not going to be fired, and from somewhere inside me a tidal wave rose, crested and flooded, and I reduced him to a heap of shambling, stuttering, fast-blinking confusion.

I said he should consider himself fortunate to have a job, since anybody else with his qualifications would be in a poor-house. I went over the history of our family and told him that he had ruined my mother's life and had used every opportunity to belittle me and make me feel inadequate. I took him apart with pliers, bit by bit, hunk by hunk, and distributed his psyche all over the floor. I was cold, correct and logical-no screaming or yelling-just stone frozen cold, and when he tried to make excuses, I slammed down an iron gate and reminded him what a shambles he had made of our lives. I told him that he was directly responsible for making my sisters alcoholics and that he was cold, unloving, selfish, infantile, terminally despicable and self-absorbed. I made him feel useless, helpless, hopeless and weak. I a.s.saulted him for almost three hours and when he tried to end the conversation I said, "Sit down if you expect to be paid any money from this day forward. You will listen to what your employer is telling you. I am your employer and you are something of an employee-at least you bear that name-and you will do what I tell you."

In three hours I did what in thirty-three years I had never been able to, yet the whole time I was scared. I was frightened of what he he would do to would do to me me. I had always been overwhelmed and intimidated by him, but the more I talked, the more strength and conviction I gained of my rightness and justification. It was like Joe Louis with Max Schmeling in their second fight: I hit him everyplace. He was naked and I was all over him like a cheap suit. Then, when I'd finished saying what I wanted to get off my chest, I dismissed him.

Afterward, I called everybody in the family and told them what I had done and they congratulated me. "Well, it's about time," my sisters said. But inside I felt tremendous aftershocks from what I had done. I thought the sky was going to fall on me because of what I had said.

A few days later I got a call from a psychiatrist who said that my father was seeing him and that he needed my cooperation because his patient was in a serious depression and "on the edge of a precipice."

"Well, Doctor," I said, "I appreciate your calling. When my father has gone over the edge of that depression and smashed himself on the rocks below-when he's. .h.i.t bottom-please call me and I'll see if I can arrange something...."

After that, I always kept my father on a tight leash so that he could never come near me and never get too far away. I had him under control and never let him go.

In the spring of 1965 I visited the Navajo Indian reservation in Arizona and met an old medicine woman. She was charming, with intelligent dark eyes, and I asked her if she could tell anything about me simply by looking at me. Through an interpreter, she said yes, she could, and she dipped her hand into a box of flowers beside her and sprinkled yellow cornflowers over my head and shoulders, letting them fall around me. She said alcohol had played a very important part in my life, and that I was about to be struck by lightning. As she said it, I felt a strange sensation streak through my nervous system.

"Both your parents are dead," she went on.

"No," I said, "one of them is dead-my mother-but not my father."

Within minutes, I was informed that there was a telephone call for me at the tribal office. It was one of my sisters calling, to tell me my father had just died. We both laughed, and I said, "And not a moment too soon."

I got in my car and drove all the way home. It took almost twelve hours. I was with a woman named Honey, who was from Holland, and when we got home and were in bed I told her about my father and how I felt about him. Then, as I began to drift off to sleep, I had a vision of him walking down a sidewalk away from me, then turning around to look at me, a slump-shouldered w.i.l.l.y Loman with a faint smile on his face. When he got to the edge of eternity, he stopped and looked back again, turned halfway toward me and, with his eyes downcast, said: I did the best I could, kid I did the best I could, kid. He turned away again, and I knew he was looking for my mother.

Then, like her, he became a bird and started rising in the sky, soaring higher and higher until he found her beside a cliff, where she had been waiting for him.

My father was so secretive about money that we never found out how much he had when he died. He left his second wife their home and about $3,000 from an insurance policy, but he had hidden the rest-who knows how much-in bank accounts under false names. It's probably there to this day. Curiously, years before, he had done something accidentally that almost made him a success. After he died, the price of gold shot up and for the first time it became profitable to refine the tailings from the old gold mines on which he'd lost so much of my money. But by then we had long since disposed of them.

If my father were alive today, I don't know what I would do. After he died, I used to think, "G.o.d, just give him to me alive for eight seconds; that's all I want, just eight seconds because I want to break his jaw." I wanted to smash his face and watch him spit out his teeth. I wanted to kick his b.a.l.l.s into his throat. I wanted to rip his ears off and eat them in front of him. I wanted to separate his larynx from his body and shove it into his stomach. But with time I began to realize that as long as I felt this way I would never be free until I eradicated these feelings in myself. With time, I also may have seen a little of him in me. Maybe it was in my genes all the time. He was a very angry man, as I was for most of my life. His mother had deserted him when he was four years old, and he must have experienced some of the same feelings I had. As children, my sisters and I never had much emotional security, and perhaps he didn't either. Physically and emotionally, each generation is linked, like the strands in an endless rope, to the generations before it and those that follow it, and families' emotional disorders can be transmitted from one to the next as surely as a genetic disorder. Like us, he had been left as a child to fend for himself emotionally as best he could. As I've said before, I don't believe any of us is born evil. We are all products of our childhoods and genetic and environmental forces over which we have little control.

My sisters have tried to help me understand my father more. As Fran reminded me in a letter, our father's father "was a mean-spirited, rigid, terrifying martinet of a person who had made life so unbearable for our grandmother that she ran off when Poppa was just four years old. Left him abandoned.... Left to a miserable, loveless and terrified childhood with a self-righteous, loveless disciplinarian instead of a father. That was our father's wound and terror from which he never recovered. He grew up to be six feet tall...and inside his strong masculine presence was a very complicated, troubled and isolated person...at odds with himself and often with the world."

Ultimately I realized that I would have to forgive my father if I was ever going to be able to get on with my life.

39.

THE HAPPIEST MOMENTS of my life have been in Tahiti. If I've ever come close to finding genuine peace, it was on my island among the Tahitians. When I first went there, I foolishly thought I'd use my money to help them; instead, I learned I had nothing to give them and that they had everything to give me. of my life have been in Tahiti. If I've ever come close to finding genuine peace, it was on my island among the Tahitians. When I first went there, I foolishly thought I'd use my money to help them; instead, I learned I had nothing to give them and that they had everything to give me.

Tahiti has exerted a force over me since I was a teenager. It began in the library at Shattuck, when I used to thumb through the National Geographic National Geographic, and it continued after I went to New York and searched libraries for any book that mentioned Tahiti and combed the film archives at the Museum of Modern Art looking for images of Polynesia. In the early 1960s MGM asked me to play Fletcher Christian in a remake of Mutiny on the Bounty Mutiny on the Bounty and said it would be filmed in Tahiti. Previously David Lean had asked me to play T. E. Lawrence in and said it would be filmed in Tahiti. Previously David Lean had asked me to play T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia; Lawrence of Arabia; I had gone to Paris to meet with him and Sam Spiegel, and they had announced I was going to be in the picture. But when I had gone to Paris to meet with him and Sam Spiegel, and they had announced I was going to be in the picture. But when Mutiny on the Bounty Mutiny on the Bounty came up and David said he expected to take six months filming came up and David said he expected to take six months filming Lawrence of Arabia Lawrence of Arabia, most of it in the desert, I decided I'd rather go to Tahiti. Lean was a very good director, but he took so long to make a movie that I would have dried up in the desert like a puddle of water.

From the moment I saw it, reality surpa.s.sed even my fantasies about Tahiti, and I had some of the best times of my life making Mutiny on the Bounty Mutiny on the Bounty. The filming was done largely on a replica of H.M.S. Bounty Bounty anch.o.r.ed offsh.o.r.e, and every day as soon as the director said, "Cut" for the last time, I ripped off my British naval officer's uniform and dove off the ship into the bay to swim with the Tahitian extras working on the movie. Often we only did two or three shots a day, which left me hours to enjoy their company, and I grew to love them for their love of life. anch.o.r.ed offsh.o.r.e, and every day as soon as the director said, "Cut" for the last time, I ripped off my British naval officer's uniform and dove off the ship into the bay to swim with the Tahitian extras working on the movie. Often we only did two or three shots a day, which left me hours to enjoy their company, and I grew to love them for their love of life.

While we were filming, reports began circulating that it was months behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget because of me me. Initially I didn't realize this, but MGM was blaming me for budget overruns that it was responsible for, just as Twentieth Century-Fox had used Elizabeth Taylor as a scapegoat for its miscalculations and production excesses on Cleopatra Cleopatra. When I arrived in Tahiti, MGM still didn't have a usable script, the H.M.S. Bounty Bounty wasn't finished, and the ordinary preproduction preparations were several weeks behind schedule. Once filming started, the studio realized it had underestimated the cost of shooting a picture on location in French Polynesia, and then it fired the director, Carol Reed, causing further delays and extra expense. Dishonestly, MGM portrayed me as the source of the delays. It wasn't true, but reporters in the entertainment press, who didn't like me for refusing to give interviews, and who seldom did any independent digging on their own unless it involved t.i.tillation, accepted what MGM's press agents said; it fit their preconceived notion of an eccentric, cantankerous Brando, and quickly the distortions were carved in granite. For the first and only time in my life, I asked a press agent to present my side of the story, but then discovered too late that he was an MGM plant. Though he was supposedly working for me, he was on the MGM payroll and had been instructed secretly to keep placing the blame on me. I didn't learn about this until many years later. At the time, I was still of a mind to ignore what people wrote or thought about me, so I hadn't paid much attention to what was going on until the stories of my alleged profligacy had been woven into the tapestry containing all the other myths about me. wasn't finished, and the ordinary preproduction preparations were several weeks behind schedule. Once filming started, the studio realized it had underestimated the cost of shooting a picture on location in French Polynesia, and then it fired the director, Carol Reed, causing further delays and extra expense. Dishonestly, MGM portrayed me as the source of the delays. It wasn't true, but reporters in the entertainment press, who didn't like me for refusing to give interviews, and who seldom did any independent digging on their own unless it involved t.i.tillation, accepted what MGM's press agents said; it fit their preconceived notion of an eccentric, cantankerous Brando, and quickly the distortions were carved in granite. For the first and only time in my life, I asked a press agent to present my side of the story, but then discovered too late that he was an MGM plant. Though he was supposedly working for me, he was on the MGM payroll and had been instructed secretly to keep placing the blame on me. I didn't learn about this until many years later. At the time, I was still of a mind to ignore what people wrote or thought about me, so I hadn't paid much attention to what was going on until the stories of my alleged profligacy had been woven into the tapestry containing all the other myths about me.

The first director on the picture, Carol Reed, was a talented Englishman whom I admired. When MGM replaced him with Lewis Milestone, we were told that Carol had had an argument with the studio and quit. Later I learned that he'd been sacked because he wanted to make Captain Bligh a hero. In reality, Bligh was was a hero, but Charles Laughton hadn't played him that way. Since Laughton was the definitive Bligh, the studio didn't want to revise history in the new version, which wasn't a remake of the original but a kind of sequel that picked up where the other one left off. I had seen the 1935 version of a hero, but Charles Laughton hadn't played him that way. Since Laughton was the definitive Bligh, the studio didn't want to revise history in the new version, which wasn't a remake of the original but a kind of sequel that picked up where the other one left off. I had seen the 1935 version of Mutiny on the Bounty Mutiny on the Bounty and was impressed with the performance of Charles Laughton but not with that of Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian. He hadn't even bothered to speak with an English accent; nor had Franchot Tone, the costar. They made no concessions whatsoever to the fact that they were portraying British seamen, and it seemed absurd. As always, Clark Gable played Clark Gable. and was impressed with the performance of Charles Laughton but not with that of Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian. He hadn't even bothered to speak with an English accent; nor had Franchot Tone, the costar. They made no concessions whatsoever to the fact that they were portraying British seamen, and it seemed absurd. As always, Clark Gable played Clark Gable.

If I had been Trevor Howard, I would never have accepted the responsibility of playing Bligh in the remake because there was only one Bligh, right or wrong, historically correct or not. Laughton's characterization renders anybody else's useless. Carol Reed wanted to be historically accurate and to depict the mutineers as pathetic as they were in life. But the studio didn't want it that way, and I've never met a studio that had the integrity to stick to the truth if it was able to make more money by distorting it, and so Reed was dumped.

During a break in the filming, I climbed one of the tallest mountains on the island of Tahiti along with a Tahitian friend. At the top, he pointed to the north and said, "Can you see that island out there?"

I couldn't see anything.

"Don't you see that little island out there? It's called Teti'aroa." Finally, I discerned a slender pencil of land lying on the horizon about thirty miles away, and before long, it was exerting as mystical a pull on me as Tahiti itself. I asked other Tahitian friends about it and was told it was owned by an elderly American woman named Madame Duran, who was blind. It had been given to her father, a doctor named Williams, by the last king of Tahiti, Pomerae V, and Williams had lived there for years, established a coconut plantation and was buried there. After he died, Madame Duran took it over, and she too had lived there for many years.

After the movie was finished, I continued to think about Teti'aroa and reread my books on Tahiti to see if it was mentioned. Somerset Maugham had written about it, and I discovered that a leper had spent most of his life there. A friend, Nick Rutgers, told me he had once visited the island, knew Madame Duran, offered to take me there and introduce me to her, so I returned to Tahiti. Since there wasn't an airstrip on the island, I had to hire a fisherman to take us to Teti'aroa. As we approached the island, I realized that the thin sliver of land I'd seen from afar was larger than I thought and more gorgeous than anything I had antic.i.p.ated.

Teti'aroa was actually several islands: a coral atoll a few feet above sea level encompa.s.sing about 1,500 acres on over a dozen islands. By far the largest encircled a wide, crescent-shaped, breathtaking lagoon. A dozen varieties of birds watched as we waded ash.o.r.e; ahead of us, thick stands of coconut trees stood in the sand like brigades of sentries adorned with feathery crowns; everywhere broad sandy beaches stretched in front of us. The lagoon was about five miles across at its broadest point and infused with more shades of blue than I thought possible: turquoise, deep blue, light blue, indigo blue, cobalt blue, royal blue, robin's egg blue, aquamarine. As I admired this astonishing palette, several flawless, white, flat-bottomed clouds rolled past me at about two thousand feet, as if they were on parade and I were on a reviewing stand. A shadow fell across the island briefly, then moved on, and the sun shone again like satin on the riotous colors of the lagoon. It was magical.

Madame Duran, who lived alone on the island except for a friend and helper named Annie, gave me a gracious welcome. We talked for seven hours without stopping. As isolated as she was, she knew that I was an actor. She rarely left the island, but she had a radio that was her only link to the world, and once she had heard me give an interview. She seemed lonely, but she was full of energy, curiosity, vitality and wisdom. She had been blind for almost twenty-five years, but could distinguish light from dark. She lived comfortably, she said, in a small house built of coral and cement, and got around by using a technique she had invented; she had strung wire from tree to tree and used it to guide herself around the island, holding on with a rag wrapped around her hand. When she came to a tree, she felt her way around to the other side, then grabbed the next wire and walked on.

Madame Duran was anxious to hear any news about America and told me stories about the island-about her father, shipwrecks and old Tahitian friends-and to this day I regret I didn't write them down. For company she had Annie, an old woman who was part Chinese, and at least forty dogs and cats, most of whom lounged in the shade around us as we talked. Her biggest nemesis was the dogcatchers from Tahiti. Whenever they tried to set foot on the island, she went after them with her umbrella.

It was a pleasant visit, and a few months later I returned to the island and brought her an apple pie. She had taken a shine to me and I to her, and I asked her to tell me more about the history and magic of Tahiti. Once again we talked for hours. I sensed that she might be growing concerned about her health because she was getting older, and I asked if she had ever thought about selling the island. "No," she answered, "I don't think so." But two or three years later I got a note from her in which she said she was thinking about selling Teti'aroa because she had hurt herself in a fall and might have to move back to the city where she had grown up, Vallejo, California, for medical care. When I asked how much she wanted for the island, she said $200,000. After we struck a deal, I called the governor of Tahiti, a Frenchman, and told him I planned to buy the island if it was acceptable to the Tahitian and French governments. After meeting with his cabinet, he a.s.sured me enthusiastically that I was welcome in the community, but that it would take a while to process the papers and he would let me know when they were ready. Puzzled by the delay, I asked, "Can you think of any reason why I would not be granted a permit to buy the island?"

"Oh, no," he said, "we're delighted to have you among us. We're proud proud to have you." to have you."

A year later, the paperwork still had not been completed and the governor left office. On his last day at work I received a telegram declaring: YOUR PERMIT TO BUY THE ISLAND OF YOUR PERMIT TO BUY THE ISLAND OF TETI'AROA HAS BEEN REFUSED TETI'AROA HAS BEEN REFUSED.

I thought that was the end of it, but the next time I was in Tahiti, I went to Teti'aroa to see how Madame Duran was getting along. The first thing she said was that she was disappointed that I'd changed my mind about buying the island, but now she had another offer, from an American businessman I knew; it had been approved by the government and she was going to accept it.

I was shocked, and said: "Madame Duran, I wanted to buy the island and still do, but I was denied permission to do so."

"How could permission have been refused?"

"I don't know."

She said, "The politicians here are as crooked as pigs' tails. You just keep trying."

Shortly thereafter I was in Paris and decided to look up the man who had been appointed the next governor of Tahiti, a suave, charming Corsican. After a couple of hours of trying to a.s.sure him that I would be a good neighbor, he said the government wouldn't stand in my way if I wanted to buy the island and Madame Duran still wanted to sell it to me. I contacted her, but she told me she was about to sign a contract to sell Teti'aroa to the businessman for $300,000. I told her what I'd been told in Paris, but said I couldn't afford that much.

"Well," she said, "I asked you to pay two hundred thousand and you agreed to it, so that will be my price."

I said, "I can't do that. It's unfair. If you can get three hundred thousand for it, please take it."

"No," she insisted. "It's yours if you want it. The only thing I ask of you is that you not cut down any of the Tow trees."

I made not only that promise, but also another to preserve the island in its natural state as much as possible. I have kept those promises. No one, incidentally, ever asked me for a bribe. I wouldn't have paid one if they had, though I suppose bribery begins with a smile that you don't mean, and I used as much charm as I could to persuade the government.

I urged Madame Duran to keep her house and live there for as long as she lived, but she said, "No, it's yours now. I'm going back to Vallejo."

Shortly after she returned to California, Madame Duran died.

40.

ONCE I BECAME the lawful owner of Teti'aroa in 1966, I arranged to be taken there by a government boat from Papeete and to make the final landing in smaller craft filled with some of the things I expected to need on the island. Setting sail for Teti'aroa was as exhilarating a moment as I've ever had. There were about ten of us in two boats, Tahitian friends and me. When the government boat left us outside the reef, the surf was too high to attempt a landing through the channel I'd used on previous trips; however, one of the Tahitians said he knew of a pa.s.s on the opposite side of the main island, so we went around and the first boat made it to sh.o.r.e quickly. I was in the second boat, a big rowboat crammed with a lawn mower, a keg of beer, an electric generator, rakes, shovels and other tools, all packed in boxes that the five of us were using as seats. As we glided toward the reef following the route of the first boat, I felt the current begin to pull us toward the island, and in front of us saw row after row of eight- and ten-foot-high waves. They rose up and seemed to pause in a moment of uncertainty, then suddenly collapse on the reef with explosive force. Later I learned that when a big Tahitian wave hits a coral atoll like Teti'aroa, the pocket of air beneath the curl of the wave is densely compacted by the weight of the water, and when the wave breaks on the reef, the compressed air that is released erupts with ferocious energy, sending a huge tower of water into the air. We watched this spectacular show from outside the reef as we waited for the right moment to make our landing. A Tahitian at the front of the boat kept a watch on the waves, then said in Tahitian, "Let's go!" The five of us began paddling as hard as we could, and I'd never had more fun in my life. But suddenly I noticed we weren't going anywhere; then I realized that we were going the lawful owner of Teti'aroa in 1966, I arranged to be taken there by a government boat from Papeete and to make the final landing in smaller craft filled with some of the things I expected to need on the island. Setting sail for Teti'aroa was as exhilarating a moment as I've ever had. There were about ten of us in two boats, Tahitian friends and me. When the government boat left us outside the reef, the surf was too high to attempt a landing through the channel I'd used on previous trips; however, one of the Tahitians said he knew of a pa.s.s on the opposite side of the main island, so we went around and the first boat made it to sh.o.r.e quickly. I was in the second boat, a big rowboat crammed with a lawn mower, a keg of beer, an electric generator, rakes, shovels and other tools, all packed in boxes that the five of us were using as seats. As we glided toward the reef following the route of the first boat, I felt the current begin to pull us toward the island, and in front of us saw row after row of eight- and ten-foot-high waves. They rose up and seemed to pause in a moment of uncertainty, then suddenly collapse on the reef with explosive force. Later I learned that when a big Tahitian wave hits a coral atoll like Teti'aroa, the pocket of air beneath the curl of the wave is densely compacted by the weight of the water, and when the wave breaks on the reef, the compressed air that is released erupts with ferocious energy, sending a huge tower of water into the air. We watched this spectacular show from outside the reef as we waited for the right moment to make our landing. A Tahitian at the front of the boat kept a watch on the waves, then said in Tahitian, "Let's go!" The five of us began paddling as hard as we could, and I'd never had more fun in my life. But suddenly I noticed we weren't going anywhere; then I realized that we were going backward backward. We were paddling as hard as possible, but we were going into reverse. I looked around and saw a wave that must have been thirty feet high coming from behind us with my name written on it. It said Welcome to Tahiti, Marlon Welcome to Tahiti, Marlon. I looked fleetingly at the coral reef in front of us and couldn't believe what I saw; suddenly the reef had become a vast, dry meadow of stone tinted a pretty shade of pink. Like a gargantuan pump, the wave behind us had sucked almost all the water from the reef and a.s.sembled it into a giant fist that was about to smash us. It hit like Joe Louis, and when the pocket of compressed air detonated, we were launched toward heaven. We bounced two or three times in the sky on the top of the wave, then began rocketing toward the hard, pink reef at what seemed like eighty miles an hour at a ninety-degree angle. The Tahitians jumped out of the boat, but I didn't move fast enough. It crashed into the reef bow first and cracked in half, with me clinging to one half like a rodeo rider trying to stay on a crazed bronco. As the boat slammed into the reef, I heard another wave coming from behind and looked around: it seemed even bigger than the first one. I could either ride it out in my broken half of the boat or try to escape to the reef. I jumped onto the reef. If the wave smashed into the boat with me still in it, I figured, it might turn upside down. As soon as I jumped, the second wave exploded and dragged me several hundred yards across the coral, which was as sharp as razor wire, slashing my body from head to foot. Had I known what I learned later, I would have grabbed a piece of coral, held on to it and let the wave pa.s.s over me, then come up for air before grabbing another piece. But I didn't know that then, and I was a mess when I limped to sh.o.r.e. I could walk but was bloodied all over, and the Tahitians warned me that I was in for a bad infection from the coral.

There were no antibiotics on the island, so it meant I had to return to Papeete to see a doctor. We radioed for help, but it took four days for the government boat to return. This time it carried a special craft with a shallow draft that Tahitians call a reef jumper. They wait for a wave to pa.s.s, then attempt to skim across the reef before the next one.

From the island I watched the government boat arrive and lower the reef jumper into the ocean. A tall, distinguished-looking man with gray hair got in, followed by eight younger Tahitians. He must be their leader, I thought; he was a proud, patrician-looking figure. While the younger men waited for his orders with their long oars extended, he stood up and surveyed the reef like an ancient mariner, waiting for a pause in the waves and the right moment, reminding me of the legendary heroes of ancient Polynesia. You could see that he'd obviously had a lot of experience. He waited about twenty minutes, surveying the waves, gauging the speed of the wind, studying the patterns of the swells and breakers. The waves looked as big and powerful as they had four days earlier, but the gray-haired man seemed supremely self-possessed and confident. Finally he looked around and gave the signal. The eight men started stroking and pulling on their oars and the boat rocketed toward sh.o.r.e as if propelled by a two-hundred-horsepower motor. I was very impressed; it was beautiful to watch. But then a wave came up behind them and knocked the boat thirty feet into the air. Everybody went flying, half of them outside the reef, half inside, and their oars went everywhere. The boat turned over on its side, then rolled bottom up like a soggy doughnut. Suddenly I felt I had to rethink all those legends about Tahitians' knowledge of the sea.

Subsequently I learned that Polynesians who live on high islands seldom know much about low-island living and vice versa. The men I'd come ash.o.r.e with the first time and those that came to help us the second time weren't used to landing on an atoll like Teti'aroa, which is only eight feet above sea level. A few feet offsh.o.r.e, it plunges straight down at seventy degrees to a depth of about three thousand feet. When a huge wave comes along, the reef pulls the footing out from under it, and then the wave crashes down and flings any boat in the wrong place into the coral like a battering ram. The reef around Teti'aroa can rip out the bottom of a boat with the efficiency of a carbide saw, as the wreckage of at least ten vessels strewn along it attests. Once, several years after I bought Teti'aroa, a family from California, sailing home from Australia, smashed their sailboat on the reef and swam ash.o.r.e to one of the islands. Exhausted, with no food and suffering badly from shock and exposure, they were there for a week, thinking of themselves as shipwrecked survivors like the Swiss Family Robinson, until they saw a pa.s.sing boat and the fisherman told them that they were only a couple of miles from the hotel I had built on the island.

On my next trip to the island a few months later, I left Papeete aboard a three-masted, square-rigged sailing ship, the Carthaginian Carthaginian, which dropped anchor off the reef, and we rode to sh.o.r.e in a small boat across a placid sea. We pa.s.sed through the surf without any difficulty, and I jumped out of the boat and swam over the reef. There were so many fish everywhere, beautiful fish of all colors and hues, that I could have closed my eyes and hit one with a spear anywhere I threw it. On the beach I walked to the end of one of the islands. Extending from it was a long, narrow sandspit stretching five hundred yards into the sea, and at one end, near the water's edge, was a small palm tree only a few feet high. It was dark by then, and I decided to lie down under the tree. Coconuts were scattered near its base, and I noticed that they were triangular-shaped. I picked one up and realized that by working it into the sand, I could make a wonderful pillow. I lay back with my head on the coconut, my feet in the water, and looked up into the sky while a sensuous breeze blew across me. The temperature of the water was almost exactly the same as the air around me. Then, for a moment, I remembered the great, worn face of Mr. Underbrink scowling at me from behind the princ.i.p.al's desk at Libertyville High School as he lectured me about how I would never amount to anything.

If you're so smart, Mr. Underbrink, I thought, why don't you have an island?

I slept under the coconut tree until dawn but before dozing off, I looked up into the stars and thought, Here I am on a tiny speck of land in the middle of a ma.s.sive ocean on a planet in the middle of an inconceivably large area we call s.p.a.ce, and I am sleeping on the skeletons of dead animals (which is what coral reefs are made of). After that night, I have never considered myself as the owner of the island, only that I have paid for the privilege of visiting it. I think of all the Tahitians who have been there before me, lain on that same beach and looked at the same stars five hundred or a thousand years ago, and I feel the spirits of those people whenever I go to Teti'aroa.

41.

A DOZEN OR SO buildings built from native coral, cement and plaster were on Teti'aroa when I bought it, and most were badly in need of repair. I've always loved projects and began restoring the buildings while keeping my promise to change the island as little as possible. One of the first things we did was to rebuild the leper's house, plant flowers around it and dedicate it to his memory. Later I began what became a twenty-year endeavor to make the island financially self-supporting. We started work on a modest hotel built in the Tahitian style, a school, homes for the Tahitians who worked on the island and, after our cook pulled a can of DDT off a shelf and mistakenly used it instead of flour to bread some fried fish, a rudimentary airstrip. Until then a mishap on the island could have been fatal. With no doctors or nurses, medical help was thirty miles away, and the only way to get it was to hail a pa.s.sing fishing boat or wait for a chartered boat from Papeete. buildings built from native coral, cement and plaster were on Teti'aroa when I bought it, and most were badly in need of repair. I've always loved projects and began restoring the buildings while keeping my promise to change the island as little as possible. One of the first things we did was to rebuild the leper's house, plant flowers around it and dedicate it to his memory. Later I began what became a twenty-year endeavor to make the island financially self-supporting. We started work on a modest hotel built in the Tahitian style, a school, homes for the Tahitians who worked on the island and, after our cook pulled a can of DDT off a shelf and mistakenly used it instead of flour to bread some fried fish, a rudimentary airstrip. Until then a mishap on the island could have been fatal. With no doctors or nurses, medical help was thirty miles away, and the only way to get it was to hail a pa.s.sing fishing boat or wait for a chartered boat from Papeete.

Even before the incident with the DDT, I was reminded of the precariousness of life on Teti'aroa while I was diving in the pa.s.s between two of the islands. I'm a pretty good swimmer, and I decided to see if I could free-dive-without using an air tank-all the way to the bottom, forty feet down. On the way I pa.s.sed several reef sharks six or seven feet long, enough shark to make me worry, but I didn't seem to bother them, so I kept going. Holding my breath, I touched bottom, but there, waiting for me, was a solitary shark that was a lot bigger than the others. It turned its head, gave me a look and then began swimming in my direction. I didn't like the way he looked, and he obviously didn't like the way I looked. Unfortunately I was in his backyard. He started swimming faster, moving his body back and forth to gain purchase in the water, and when he was a few feet away I thought I could see him sizing up my calf for his lunch. I'd read somewhere that in situations like this divers are supposed to look the shark squarely in the face and smack it on the nose. Instead, I started clawing my way to the surface like a scalded cat. Whether the shark followed or not, I don't know; I don't even remember getting to the surface.

This incident reinforced my sense of isolation. If the shark had taken a bite out of me, I probably couldn't have gotten off the island for treatment until it was too late. I wasn't on Teti'aroa when the cook mistook DDT for flour, but those who ate the fish became very sick. Fortunately two people missed the meal and were able to look after the victims until a boat came by and took them to Papeete. Still, I decided we needed an airstrip.

In the mid-seventies, after I'd owned the island a few years, the hotel was operating in a bare-bones fashion and the airstrip was in, an elderly Tahitian called Grandpere went fishing and returned with a fat red fish about three feet long. He said it was a red snapper, but to me it resembled a picture I'd seen of a red poison fish that appeared occasionally off the lagoon. I told Grandpere so, but he a.s.sured me that this wasn't a poison fish. "It looks like one," he said, "but it isn't."

"Okay," I said, figuring that if you have gray hair in Tahiti you must know what fish are safe to eat.

At two o'clock the next morning, I woke up with no sensation in my lips; they were completely numb. My feet were tingling, the palms of my hands were itching, and I had a headache as big as a Buick. I knew it was the fish, though I hadn't eaten very much of it. I had read stories about fish poisoning in the South Seas and didn't want to die that way: depending on the toxicity of the species, some kill you within hours and some take three or four days to send you screaming into the arms of death. I had heard stories of people ripping the flesh off their bodies because they itched so much. I got up and went around the island and learned that everybody who had eaten the fish was sick. Being captain of the ship, I had to give what medicine we had to them, and then radioed Papeete to send a charter plane to take them off the island.

Sickest of all were Grandpere and four of his friends. They had eaten the poison fish with fafaru fafaru, a Tahitian version of Limburger cheese to the ninth power: sc.r.a.ps of fish (usually intestines and innards) are left out in the sun to rot in a coconut sh.e.l.l filled with seawater until the mess stinks and worms flock to it. Then the sh.e.l.l is emptied and fresh seawater is mixed with the bacteria left by the rotting process to create a bacterial soup that is then used to marinate fresh fish. After four or five hours the fafaru is ready to eat and it smells like the foot of a dead alligator left out in the sun for two months. It is putrid beyond description, the only thing I've ever seen buzzards refuse to eat. In fact, I've heard that buzzards have fainted from the odor.

Not all Tahitians eat fafaru, but some, like Grandpere, adore it. At meals they usually sit downwind of everyone else at the table, but you can still smell people who have eaten fafaru a mile away. Unfortunately, Grandpere and his friends had put pieces of the poison fish in their fafaru the night before, and they were in terrible shape. The plane took them to Papeete, where their stomachs were pumped and they spent two or three weeks in the hospital enjoying a vacation.

Although we established an air link between Papeete and the island, it was never first-cla.s.s service, or anything approaching it. It was usually provided by an ambitious pilot on Papeete who decided he was going to establish an airline with one and a half planes, though because of breakdowns it was more often like half a plane. Before takeoff, one of the pa.s.sengers had to get out and crank the propeller.

Once, after spending a few weeks on the island, I had to go to Los Angeles for a movie and the pilot arrived from Papeete in what for him must have been a sleek, fancy, upscale airplane, a two-engine two-engine crackerbox that Wiley Post would have discarded. There were five of us leaving Teti'aroa that morning, but a few minutes after we took off one of the propellers stopped turning. "Mayday, Mayday," the pilot said into his radio, "my starboard motor has quit...." Then he turned around and told us casually, "Don't worry, this thing can fly on one engine." crackerbox that Wiley Post would have discarded. There were five of us leaving Teti'aroa that morning, but a few minutes after we took off one of the propellers stopped turning. "Mayday, Mayday," the pilot said into his radio, "my starboard motor has quit...." Then he turned around and told us casually, "Don't worry, this thing can fly on one engine."

I knew enough about flying to know that when one motor conks out, the pilot has to use a hard right or left rudder to compensate for the loss of power on one side and keep the plane from flying in circles. The pilot did what he was supposed to do quickly, and since we were only about five minutes out of Teti'aroa, he turned around and headed back to the island. But now the other motor started choking and missing.

"All right, everybody," I said, "we're going to have a contest. Everybody put your palms up. We're going to have a sweat contest. The person who sweats least..."

As we descended over the reef and the pilot took aim on the landing strip, the second motor kept kicking in and out, then the motor that had failed originally suddenly came to life. But when it kicked in, it started pulling us toward a grove of coconut trees at the edge of the airstrip; then the pilot applied the opposite rudder, and we veered away in the other direction. The motor quit again. With the second engine still fluttering in and out, once more we veered toward the coconut trees. The trees, I recalled, had once stood up to a 110-mile-an-hour hurricane, and I wondered what would happen when an airplane ran into them. While I was pondering this, the warning bell indicating that the plane was in a stall went off. As I listened to its bleating and the sound of the engines alternately dying and coming to life, I had the thought, What a funny way to go it would be, to die on this gorgeous island.

By now we were flying straight toward the coconut trees; they were only two or three hundred yards away and I admired how pretty they were up close. Suddenly the original motor that had failed came to life with a roar and the plane veered away from the trees after cutting off several fronds with one wing.

After the pilot had slammed the plane down on the runway, I sat in my seat and thought, Well, Marlon, I guess not today.

After I got out of the plane, I kissed the pilot on both cheeks as French custom dictated, looked up at the coconut trees and remembered that I had to be in Los Angeles the following day. I went back to my room, threw myself on my bed, looked out through the sh.e.l.l curtains at the lagoon and said to myself, To h.e.l.l with it. Though they sent another plane to pick us up later in the day, I stayed on Teti'aroa for another two weeks. I simply didn't feel like going back to Los Angeles yet.